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In the Hürtgen Forest campaign, the United States Army suffered 33,000 casualties out of the 120,000 men deployed.
(Stalin, who clearly hated the Swiss, had urged the Allies at the Teheran conference a year before to attack southern Germany through Switzerland.)
American doctors did not of course know then what the Germans had discovered after the battle of Stalingrad. The combination of stress, exhaustion, cold and malnourishment upsets the metabolism, and gravely reduces the body’s capacity to absorb calories and vitamins.
Despite the reluctance of Russian historians to accept the fact, there can be no doubt that the success of the Red Army’s advance from the Vistula to the Oder was in large part due to Hitler’s offensive in the Ardennes.
Perhaps the German leadership’s greatest mistake in the Ardennes offensive was to have misjudged the soldiers of an army they had affected to despise.
