Key Position in The Battle of The Bulge
The area around Höfen and Monschau was critical because of the road network that lay behind it. The Germans had planned a seven-day campaign to seize Antwerp, and they were counting on that road system to help them achieve that objective. The Battle of Elsenborn Ridge became a decisive component of the Battle of the Bulge when the U.S. Army was able to deflect the strongest armored units of the German advance.
Both sides in the battle were relatively well trained, armed and led, and employed newer, more lethal weapons and tactics. This gave the battle a brutal intensity and impact, resulting in high casualties and traumatic memories and experiences for the participants.
Read more about this topic: Elsenborn Ridge
Famous quotes containing the words key, position, battle and/or bulge:
“With one days reading a man may have the key in his hands.”
—Ezra Pound (18851972)
“He who is usually self-sufficient becomes exceptionally vain and keenly alive to fame and praise when he is physically ill. The more he loses himself the more he has to endeavor to regain his position by means of the opinion of others.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)
“There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rains tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.”
—Federico García Lorca (18981936)
“The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to
the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.”
—Walt Whitman (18191892)