Why Did Hitler’s Best Tanks Fail At The Battle Of The Bulge?

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[00:00:02]December 1944, Hitler's most infamous fighters, the Waffen SS, leads a massive armored attack against American forces along the Belgian-German border.

[00:00:17]It started in one fell swoop.

[00:00:19]We chased away the Americans.

[00:00:22]They are skilled, ruthless veterans and in command of the biggest and best tanks in the German army.

[00:00:29]They had better tanks than we did.

[00:00:33]I counted seven rounds bounce off that tiger. He just turned that turret and boom.

[00:00:43]The Americans are outgunned, outmanned, and caught in a fight for survival.

[00:00:49]They were only suicide candidates against the Panther.

[00:00:53]This is the Sixth Panzer Army, Hitler's specially crafted war machine at the Battle of the Bulge, one of history's greatest tank battles.

[00:01:12]>> [music] >> The Ardennes, December 16th, 1944.

[00:01:36]Over 1,700 German tanks and 200,000 infantry attack US forces along a 140-km front.

[00:01:45]The Battle of the Bulge has begun.

[00:02:11]Spearheading the [music] attack is the newly formed Sixth Panzer Army, made up of Hitler's most trusted and ruthless killers, the Waffen SS.

[00:02:22]Their role is to punch through the thinly defended American line with 60,000 infantry, followed by two elite panzer divisions that will drive west and secure bridges over the Meuse River.

[00:02:34]A third SS division will then advance northwest and capture Antwerp. By seizing this key Allied port, Hitler hopes he can stop the relentless Allied advance that has been routing his forces for the past 6 months.

[00:02:51]We already found out about the American army during the invasion.

[00:03:01]We were impressed by the high number of people and the amount of material.

[00:03:06]We couldn't keep up with that.

[00:03:15]You could be as brave as you wanted, but no soldier can endure that.

[00:03:19]They were simply overwhelmed by the vast amount [music] of material.

[00:03:23]At that point, a fight was basically already useless.

[00:03:33]The German High Command cannot sustain a lengthy offensive against the well-supplied Allies.

[00:03:39]They must take them by surprise, striking quickly with heavy armor.

[00:03:48]And the Sixth Panzer Army is the best-equipped armored force in the Ardennes.

[00:03:55]With more than 600 tanks, including 160 Panzer IVs, 215 Mark Vs or Panther tanks, and nearly 100 Tiger tanks.

[00:04:11]At 57 tons, the Tiger I easily outmatches the American Sherman tank.

[00:04:17]It's protected in [music] places by up to 100 mm of steel plate and is one of the heaviest tanks on the battlefield.

[00:04:24]But its real edge is its powerful 88-mm main cannon.

[00:04:34]With the enormous penetrating power of the 88, we were able to effectively fight the American tanks.

[00:04:42]Some of them we destroyed completely.

[00:04:52]We were able to let the enemy come fairly close.

[00:04:56]First of all, because of our own armor, and because of the strength and the impact of the 88 gun.

[00:05:10]They had better tanks than we did. We had small guns on our on our big tanks.

[00:05:16]76-mm was not strong enough for most of those German tanks.

[00:05:25]The Sherman was an easy opponent for us.

[00:05:29]They could fire at us, but it wouldn't penetrate our tanks.

[00:05:33]They had to come close, within a few hundred meters, to have a chance.

[00:05:40]The Sherman is relatively light and fast, but carries a low-velocity 75-mm [music] main gun that cannot penetrate a Tiger's frontal armor. Its own frontal armor is just 51-mm thick, making it highly vulnerable to the firepower of the Tiger.

[00:05:59]The Americans are outgunned, heavily outnumbered.

[00:06:05]All they have to [music] stop the Sixth Panzer Army are less than 60 Sherman tanks, 180 anti-tank guns, and only 35,000 infantry, and most of them are new arrivals who have never been in combat.

[00:06:23]During that time, the Americans received a steady stream of reinforcements that had just completed their training, but had not seen active combat [music] yet.

[00:06:34]That's why all these troops here that bedded down on the night from December 15th to 16th were totally caught by surprise.

[00:06:48]It started in one fell swoop. And we chased away the Americans.

[00:06:56]The Americans took everything.

[00:07:01]The bad Germans are coming. Let's run.

[00:07:04]That's kind of what it looked like.

[00:07:09]The Americans are caught by surprise, and the Germans quickly punch through their defenses all along the line.

[00:07:17]>> [music] >> Desperate US commanders order all available forces to the front.

[00:07:27]Primarily and during the Battle of the Bulge, they would just move us to wherever there was a hole to fill.

[00:07:35]And we with our M16 half-tracks, [music].50-caliber machine guns, and we were anti-aircraft and anti-personnel, and our job was to protect the tanks.

[00:07:52]We were moving down a fire lane. The two Shermans were over over our left, probably 50 yd.

[00:07:59]And coming over the horizon and towards the [music] Sherman was a Tiger tank.

[00:08:08]A big Tiger tank.

[00:08:13]Square front, reinforced barrel, and he just laid the trees down as he went.

[00:08:23]And came right on through.

[00:08:28]Those Shermans, I counted seven rounds bounce off that tiger.

[00:08:40]And it didn't bother him any more than fleas on a dog.

[00:08:45]He just kind of shook them off.

[00:08:51]And he just turned that turret ever so slowly, and boom.

[00:08:59]Out went one of the Shermans.

[00:09:06]And then he turned a little more.

[00:09:09]Boom.

[00:09:16]So we got out of there as fast as we could.

[00:09:20]We usually end up on the short stick. We had the light tank, and if one of them 88 shells hit that tank, it just blows it apart.

[00:09:34]They burn up, and you always [music] have casualties, body parts, dead ones, fire, and everything else.

[00:09:47]It's a sad thing. It really is.

[00:09:51]You stop and think how many guys, thousands of them, GIs laying in the gutters, laying along the roads, all mangled [music] up, torn apart, everything.

[00:10:18]By the evening of December 17th, lead elements of the 6th Panzer Army have advanced more than 65 km into Belgium.

[00:10:26]At the spearhead is an elite battle group of the 1st SS Panzer Division, led by Lieutenant Colonel Joachim Peiper.

[00:10:34]Peiper is a veteran of the Eastern Front, a winner of the Iron Cross, and a former staff member of Heinrich Himmler, the infamous overseer of the Gestapo and the Nazi death camps.

[00:10:46]He is a ruthless leader, and his Kampfgruppe Peiper, with 120 tanks and 150 armored vehicles, is the most powerful armored formation in the Ardennes.

[00:11:00]By the 18th of December, they are only 68 km from their primary objective, the Meuse River bridges near Houffalize.

[00:11:07]But, they must first take a bridge across the Amblève River in the small Belgian town of Stavelot.

[00:11:13]The Allies are determined to stall the German offensive long enough to allow reinforcements to join the battle, and 250 Americans make their stand at the bridge in Stavelot.

[00:11:28]We are on the on the half-tracks, traveling at night for a long period of time, and it was cold. It was very, very cold.

[00:11:41]And all the while, there were red tracer bullets all over the sky. It looked like you call kinds of red stars running around.

[00:11:52]And I think that started a little bit of fear in me, and yet, uh I won't say that I was brave about it, but I kind of got numb, I think, to the whole thing.

[00:12:07]We pulled over on the side of the road.

[00:12:11]Now, there was a river running across, and then there was a bridge at the end.

[00:12:15]That much I knew.

[00:12:18]Lieutenant Authority and Sergeant Lowe said they were going to take Sergeant Armstrong and Sergeant Whaley's civilian vehicles with them over the bridge, and that they wanted us to get our guns ready for firing.

[00:12:35]The object was to hold them as long as possible. Hold them 6 hours, if if possible.

[00:12:42]We knew which way they were coming.

[00:12:44]There had been some previous intelligence that said that they were going to be coming down that hill road.

[00:12:52]It began to become light, and you could hear clanking, a lot of clanking, which was a sign that there were tanks nearby.

[00:13:03]The ominous clank is the sound of Kampfgruppe Peiper advancing straight into the heart of Stavelot.

[00:13:10]Four of the biggest tanks in the German Army, and the only thing standing in their way are 250 men and a few anti-tank guns.

[00:13:30]The Ardennes, a remote collection of fields, forests, and villages along the German-Belgian border.

[00:13:38]At first glance, this place seems untouched by the modern world.

[00:13:43]But, closer inspection reveals grim evidence [music] of a dark and violent past. It was here, in the winter of 1944, that Hitler launched his great Ardennes Offensive, forever remembered as the Battle of the Bulge.

[00:14:04]December 16th, in an effort to change the course of the war on the Western Front, three German armies launch a surprise attack on American forces in the Ardennes.

[00:14:17]On the northern front, the 6th Panzer Army breaks through thinly defended American lines.

[00:14:23]At the spearhead of the attack is the elite [music] SS Kampfgruppe Peiper.

[00:14:28]Now only 68 km from their primary objective, the bridges along the Meuse River. But first, the Germans must capture the strategically important town of Stavelot.

[00:14:39]Defending Stavelot are 250 men, [music] including a few dozen from the 825th Anti-Tank Battalion. Among them is Gunner Lou Celentano.

[00:14:50]It began to become light, and you could hear clanking, a lot of clanking, which was a sign that there were tanks nearby.

[00:15:04]And when they finally [music] did appear on the hill in front of us, they looked like tigers to me.

[00:15:14]They were between buildings, >> [snorts] >> so in order to get a good shot at them, we had to destroy the buildings first.

[00:15:22]A job that our guns could do quite quite easily.

[00:15:27]Look these on the houses first.

[00:15:31]We have a.50 caliber on the tracks, too..50 caliber is quite a gun.

[00:15:44]And now the four tanks were within our sight.

[00:15:54]The 3-in M5 Anti-Tank Gun has a muzzle velocity of almost 800 m/s, enabling it to [music] penetrate 92 mm of armor at ranges of over 900 m. But even that is not enough to penetrate the 100-mm frontal armor of Peiper's Tiger tanks.

[00:16:14]Tactics were supposed to be fire at all the vulnerable spots, which means, you don't fire right in the belly, because in the belly is where he's got all his armor.

[00:16:27]Part of our luck was that the roads were extremely slippery.

[00:16:36]They were so sliding from side to side that they may not have given us the attention really that that they would have given in dry weather.

[00:16:47]Of course, I was worried about the distance.

[00:16:52]And I remember giving the order 900 yd.

[00:16:55][music] That's really sticks out in my mind, that 900 yd.

[00:17:03]As we were taught, we crossfire. I fired on first tank, and uh Sergeant Howse's gun fired on the last tank.

[00:17:15]And as luck would have it, we hit the first and last tanks immediately.

[00:17:25]I said 900 yd, and I I think I hit it right on the nose, because to hit them on first shots like we did, there may be a lot of talent involved, but I think we were it was 50% luck, because we really hit them hard right off the bat.

[00:17:47]We hit the tracks on both of our tanks.

[00:17:51]That was pure, unadulterated luck.

[00:17:54]Once his track is broken, now you've got to go for his turret, because he still can move that turret.

[00:18:02]They were disabled [music] on the two ends, and the two guys in the middle got caught. They couldn't move.

[00:18:07]They couldn't move forward, couldn't move backward, and we kept firing.

[00:18:20]Everything fell into place. That training really paid.

[00:18:24]But in war, I guess, luck is uh an unknown quantity, but it sure counts.

[00:18:37]The Americans destroy four tanks and slow Peiper's advance, but it is not enough to stop him, and his tankers advance into the center of Stavelot.

[00:18:50]>> [music] >> This is the Amblève River that runs through Stavelot.

[00:19:06]Now, on the morning of the 18th, Peiper attacked onto this bridge.

[00:19:23]Peiper had mobile armor here on both sides of the bridge, coming down from the north. They had time, [music] the few hours before that, to zero the whole location in. So, he could actually throw shells down here.

[00:19:41]This armored battery, who was supporting the engineers, found themselves having to pull back away from the bridge, and they actually had to allow Peiper onto the bridge at that time.

[00:19:54]A Tiger Royal, a big Tiger Royal, swept over the hill, come down to the bridge area, and he caught Sergeant Armstrong's half-track before they had even a chance to to get out of their vehicle.

[00:20:12]A couple of rounds from this Tiger Royal tank, and they were completely destroyed.

[00:20:26]We knew that that big Tiger Royal tank was coming. We could hear it coming.

[00:20:34]And we know [music] we're next.

[00:20:37]There's nothing on God's earth we can do.

[00:20:54]December 18th, 1944.

[00:20:57]Day three of the Battle of the Bulge.

[00:21:03]Hitler's Sixth Panzer Army has advanced more than 65 km into Belgium.

[00:21:10]Leading the attack is Kampfgruppe Peiper.

[00:21:13]This powerful armored column from the elite 1st SS Panzer Division seems unstoppable.

[00:21:24]Their objective, the bridges across the Meuse River. Taking them will open the way to the Allied Seaport at Antwerp.

[00:21:32]By the morning of the 18th, Peiper and his tanks are only 68 km from the Meuse.

[00:21:37]Nothing stands in their way but a handful of Americans defending the bridge in the village of Stavelot.

[00:21:45]A big Tiger Royal swept over the hill, come down to the bridge area, and he caught Sergeant Armstrong's half-track before they had even a chance to to get out of their vehicle.

[00:22:03]We knew that that big Tiger Royal tank was coming. They're bigger than most buildings, for God's sake. We could hear it coming.

[00:22:15]The Tiger Royal, or King Tiger, is a battlefield monster.

[00:22:20]It weighs 70 tons, more than twice as much as a Sherman, and is plated with armor that is in places 180 mm thick.

[00:22:29]Its long-barreled 88 mm main gun can penetrate even the heaviest Allied [music] armor at ranges of over 3,000 m, make most powerful tank on the World War II battlefield.

[00:22:44]This is one of Kampfgruppe Peiper's Tigers.

[00:22:48]This is a King Tiger II.

[00:22:50]This was the warhorse of Kampfgruppe Peiper's unit.

[00:22:55]After looking at a Sherman, and then you see this, then you see what a tank is.

[00:23:01]They were firing 25-pounder shells from close range into this Tiger.

[00:23:07]And we can see here where they've glanced off the front armor, which is around 186 mm thick. And this here is a shell that actually went in to this Tiger and exploded it out.

[00:23:21]Wouldn't have stopped it at 25 yd. That's how powerful this thing is. It's sporting an 88 cannon. It's one of the best cannons the Germans had in the field.

[00:23:33]this, you can forget it. Your war was over if you get hit by one of these things.

[00:23:44]We knew that that big Tiger Royal tank was coming.

[00:23:50]And Lieutenant Daugherty had already started ahead.

[00:23:54]He and Shugart, his driver, jumped out of the vehicle just a few seconds before the Tiger Royal fired, and picked that Jeep up and knocked it across the road in pieces, practically.

[00:24:11]Now, we know we're next.

[00:24:15]There's nothing on God's earth we can do except try to get out of there.

[00:24:23]But Celentano and his men can't move their M5 anti-tank gun.

[00:24:29]Repeated firing has driven the tails deep into the ground.

[00:24:34]I think the gun dug in so far because we fired so many rounds, it was very difficult to get them out of the ground.

[00:24:46]Then the Tiger Royal, for some reason or other, wanted to get into a better position to be able to fire on us, and he backed up into a huge building.

[00:25:05]And the whole building came right down on us. And we made our escape before that Tiger Royal got a chance to do any firing.

[00:25:15]The whole building came down on us.

[00:25:21]Despite the Americans' efforts, Peiper and his column cross the bridge, take Stavelot, and push on towards the Meuse River. Peiper leaves behind a small force of SS troopers to protect his rear, and they quickly live up to their notorious reputation.

[00:25:38]As Peiper's pushing west, the troops behind him are basically running riot.

[00:25:44]They're they're going into houses, they're throwing hand grenades into cellars full of civilians.

[00:25:50]Babies as young as 9 months old, pensioners in their 70s, they're doing just what they want, basically.

[00:26:02]The village lies in ruins.

[00:26:05]130 civilians are slaughtered, including the family of Arlette Mignon.

[00:26:13]>> [music] >> I was only 2 years old. We were living here, my parents and my two sisters and me.

[00:26:22]The worry of the 19th, there was lots of movement, and we started to panic. So, we went down to the cellar.

[00:26:31]In the afternoon, we heard footsteps [music] on the first floor, and even though my mother was scared, and since my mother could speak German, she told them that we were civilians, but they shot at us anyway.

[00:26:45]My mother was hit, and she died with my two sisters.

[00:26:49]And I was in my father's arms.

[00:26:53]To make sure everyone was dead, they shot at us again.

[00:26:59]And my father got a bullet in the foot, and a bullet went through my leg.

[00:27:06]To be safer, my father brought me up to the attic.

[00:27:11]The Americans came and took us to the hospital and saved our lives. [music] Later that day, American reinforcements arrive in Stavelot, wipe out Peiper's rear guard, and destroy the bridge.

[00:27:27]But it's too late. Peiper's main force is already on its way to the Meuse.

[00:27:36]As the 1st SS Panzer Division pushes west, the 12th [music] SS Panzer Division is ordered to clear the twin towns of Krinkelt-Rocherath, held by stubborn remnants of the US 99th Infantry Division.

[00:27:50]The 12th SS is well equipped, fielding more than 14,000 men, 90 tanks, and 60 SP guns, including 40 Jagdpanzer [music] IV tank destroyers.

[00:28:07]The Jagdpanzer IV is protected by 80 mm of sloped frontal armor, and is powered by a 300 [music] horsepower engine, enabling it to reach top speeds of 40 km/h.

[00:28:20]It is a 26-ton tank killer equipped with a 75 mm high-velocity cannon, able to rip through even the most robust Allied armor.

[00:28:31]With all that firepower, it should be easy to take the twin towns. But in 1944, the whole German war machine, including the 12th SS, is running out of gas.

[00:28:48]You can't start an offensive that leads forward if you have a shortage of gas.

[00:28:55]You have to watch every single liter of gas you spend.

[00:29:05]A speedy progress was just not possible.

[00:29:11]And inwardly, we were hoping to reach American gas dumps.

[00:29:19]On December 18th, we attacked Krinkelt.

[00:29:27]And we made it into the center of the village, close to the water tower in Krinkelt.

[00:29:41]Close by the water tower was a heath field, and we forged ahead, and we opened fire towards the village where we assumed the Americans were hiding.

[00:30:02]>> [music] >> We were under attack by anti-tank guns.

[00:30:19]>> [music] >> There was a terrain with hedges to the right.

[00:30:22]And it was very well camouflaged in there.

[00:30:27]And it hit us and our company commander full on from the side through a gap in the village.

[00:30:34]>> [music] >> He was leaning outside the hatch with his torso to shoot at the Americans with his assault rifle.

[00:30:56]He took a deadly blow to the neck from flying shell parts.

[00:31:01]>> [bell] >> The gunner's and my hats and headsets were blown from our heads by the explosion.

[00:31:27]It had been placed so cleverly and had hit us in such a weak spot that we had to be allowed.

[00:31:37]We all made it out of the tank, although the driver was injured.

[00:31:49]For me and my crew, the operation in Klingenthal had ended.

[00:31:56]It goes on like this for 2 days.

[00:32:01]The Americans bring lethal fire onto the fuel and ammunition-starved 12th SS, and the German advance stalls only a few kilometers from their start point.

[00:32:12]The 6th Panzer Army is now 5 days behind schedule, and the German High Command orders the 2nd SS Division, originally intended to follow Peiper's [music] advance to the Meuse, to move south and attempt their own breakthrough.

[00:32:28]The well-equipped 2nd SS advances with 28 Panzer IVs, 28 self-propelled guns, and 58 Mark V Panther tanks.

[00:32:45]The Panzer was, until the end of the war, the most functional and best tank in the world.

[00:32:51]Based on three components, velocity, cross-country mobility, and the tank protection.

[00:33:05]The Panzer definitely achieves the best results in all three.

[00:33:14]The Shermans didn't stand a chance against the Panzer.

[00:33:19]On December 24th, lead elements of the 2nd SS Panzer Division advance towards Manhay.

[00:33:26]To protect their rear, 2nd Lieutenant Fritz Langanke and a platoon of four Panthers are ordered to secure the village of Freyneux.

[00:33:36]So, we entered the village staggered.

[00:33:42]I stopped and saw it. I saw vehicles and started shooting.

[00:33:53]Same time, American tanks were shooting on us.

[00:33:57]It's an ambush. The decisive battle, the one that will determine whether or not the 2nd SS can take the Meuse River bridges, is about to begin.

[00:34:08]>> [music] >> The Battle of the Bulge enters its ninth bloody day, and elements of the 6th Panzer Army have driven 80 km into Belgium.

[00:34:29]But stiff US resistance has stalled their advance.

[00:34:40]Desperate to reach the Meuse River, the 2nd SS Panzer Division is ordered to attack the Belgian village of Manhay.

[00:34:50]To protect their rear, 2nd Lieutenant Fritz Langanke and a platoon of four Panthers are ordered to take the village of Freyneux.

[00:35:02]On December 24th, I was a member of the 2nd SS Tank Company Das Reich, and I was leading the first platoon.

[00:35:19]So, we entered the village staggered.

[00:35:32]Ahead of us was the steeple and other houses.

[00:35:37]We didn't find a couple of bushes hits the fuel or street.

[00:35:57]I stopped and saw it. I saw vehicles and started shooting.

[00:36:06]Same time, American tanks were shooting on us.

[00:36:11]The Sherman M4A3 has a relatively underpowered 75-mm cannon, but at close ranges it can still be deadly, especially if their target is the vulnerable 50-mm armor plating on the side of a Panther tank.

[00:36:34]I recognized a Sherman on the left side of the street.

[00:36:38]And fired at it.

[00:36:43]We received lots of hits on the front side.

[00:36:48]That the welds on the right side burst, and all of a sudden we had sunlight coming There's an enormous noise inside, and your nerves have to be solid for that, for sure. And we had some.

[00:37:16]The other vehicles had been hit as well.

[00:37:19]I saw that the barrel of one of them had fallen off.

[00:37:22]The fourth had not been hit, and it pulled back with the others.

[00:37:33]It pulled back as well. It returned to the bluff and stopped there.

[00:37:41]I was rather sure that it was just a question of time until the American tanks would show up here as well.

[00:37:50]In the meantime, I did some observation on the area around us.

[00:37:57]I fired on three different points in the area, like a tree, and something to get the exact distance.

[00:38:16]This is common procedure to measure the distance for firing later to assure 100% hits.

[00:38:27]The thing I had prepared this before, because shortly after five Shermans showed up.

[00:38:35]The distance wasn't that big, maybe 500 or 600 m.

[00:38:49]As I had the exact distances, I managed to shoot the first four Shermans with only one round each.

[00:39:10]The last one tried to back off. I finally managed to reach this one as well.

[00:39:23]The battlefield is littered with burning tanks on [music] both sides, but the Americans win the day. They stopped the advance towards Manhay, putting an end to the 2nd SS Panzer Division's hope of reaching the Meuse River.

[00:39:38]Farther north, the 1st SS is not faring any better. Kampfgruppe Peiper, the once powerful spearhead of the 6th Panzer Army, is now in a battle for survival.

[00:39:50]They've been trying for 9 days to cross the Amblève River gorge, but each time US engineers blow the bridges just as they arrive.

[00:39:59]To make matters worse, US forces are now securely [music] in control of Stavelot. Peiper's elite battle group is cut off and running dangerously low on fuel and ammunition, and American reinforcements are closing in.

[00:40:13]The noose tightening on Kampfgruppe Peiper.

[00:40:24]>> [music] >> December 23rd, 1944.

[00:40:31]The Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's great Ardennes Offensive, begins to falter.

[00:40:37]Kampfgruppe Peiper, the spearhead of the 6th Panzer Army, is no longer on the offensive, but fighting for survival.

[00:40:54]Peiper's running low on fuel and ammunition, and the Americans are closing in.

[00:41:01]Peiper orders his tankers to dig in in the village of La Gleize.

[00:41:06]One of the men is Sergeant Rolf Erhardt.

[00:41:10]A large number of American Shermans appeared on the back slope road. After the first Tiger fired and missed, the Sherman formed up an unexpected front and began firing rapidly.

[00:41:22]The American shells burst through the house.

[00:41:25]Suddenly, Tiger commander Hentschel appeared with both hands pressed against his head.

[00:41:30]The Tiger had taken several hits.

[00:41:33]The American supremacy of approximately 15 Shermans negated the weapon's superiority of our Panzers.

[00:41:40]After these losses and the shortage of everything, what would the next day bring?

[00:41:47]December 24th. The Americans prepare for one big final push against Peiper's forces at La Gleize. They amassed 4,000 men and over 200 Sherman tanks.

[00:42:01]At 0300 hours, they attack.

[00:42:07]The attack went perfectly and exactly as planned.

[00:42:11]The instant they started shooting, we opened up with tank, machine gun, and mortar fire.

[00:42:35]We were all in the town by 10:00 that morning. We were utterly amazed at what we saw there.

[00:42:41]Besides scores of dead and wounded Germans, we found over 175 vehicles in the immediate vicinity of La Gleize alone.

[00:42:53]>> [music] >> We're in La Gleize.

[00:43:02]This is one of Kampfgruppe Peiper's Tigers.

[00:43:07]So, here we have a testament to the power of a German tank in 1944. They didn't come bigger or better than this machine here.

[00:43:16]It was left in a field behind this schoolhouse here in La Gleize, because La Gleize was the place where Peiper made his last stand.

[00:43:25]This is where the net tightened around him.

[00:43:30]By Christmas Eve, 1944, the game was more or less up for Kampfgruppe Peiper.

[00:43:38]Peiper abandons La Gleize. He leaves all his armor behind. He leaves all the half-tracks, all the artillery, all the tanks, everything, and he goes out of [music] this place on foot. He walks out of La Gleize.

[00:43:54]On Christmas Day, Peiper and the 800 [music] remaining men of his armored battle group straggle back to German lines. In 9 days [music] of fighting, they have lost 70 tanks. More than 2,000 men are killed, wounded, or captured.

[00:44:12]Across the Ardennes, the fighting continues, and on January 12th, 1945, the Germans are overwhelmed by Allied reinforcements and air power.

[00:44:23]And the Battle of the Bulge comes to an end.

[00:44:27]Hitler's final gamble has failed.

[00:44:36]We did the best we could.

[00:44:39]Soldiers and soldiers tried to fight as hard as they could.

[00:44:43]If you're lacking a lot of things, you can fight as much as you want, but if there's no material, you can't go forward. You just have to go back.

[00:44:56]That's how simple it is.

[00:45:01]Only our faith was stronger than what we had.

[00:45:05]That's how it was.

[00:45:11]The casualties on both sides are enormous. More than 90,000 German soldiers are killed, wounded, or captured. Almost 20,000 Americans die, and 50,000 are wounded.

[00:45:24]We lost a lot of people.

[00:45:27]We would lose 40, 50 men at a crack.

[00:45:31]How many times I got [music] out of tanks alive, yet my buddy that couldn't get out would be half in and out of it. And all I heard was, "Lester, I'm on fire. Get me out." And you'd see the fire gush out over him.

[00:45:49]He died right there.

[00:45:53]At the time, I didn't think anything of it. All I was worried about was getting out of there.

[00:46:00]You know, I was very proud the next day, but you also realize that that cost, you know, that's another thing that happens. So, you kind of later realize what it cost.

[00:46:11]Some of your very best friends.

[00:46:16]But, uh wouldn't want to do it again.

[00:46:20]That's for sure.