Hans Wijers – författare

During the first week of the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans’ 6th SS Panzer Army rolled down the road to Bütgenbach, where the 26th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division held out against constant attacks at the southern end of Elsenborn Ridge. Meanwhile, Jochen Peiper’s SS battle group raced toward the critical river bridges at Stavelot and Trois Ponts, massacring American prisoners along the way near Malmedy. The U.S. 30th Infantry Division and other units put up stiff resistance, destroyed the bridges, and forced Peiper’s men to withdraw.

Most accounts of the Battle of the Bulge focus on the center, where the 101st Airborne held Bastogne, but the Germans’ main thrust actually occurred to the north, where Sepp Dietrich’s 6th SS Panzer Army stormed through the Losheim Gap on its way to Liege and Antwerp. In this region of thick forests, snowy fields, and muddy trails during the battle’s first week in December 1944, U.S. troops from the 2nd and 99th Infantry Divisions successfully halted the best of the German war machine, including the 12th SS Panzer and the 3rd Fallschirmjäger Divisions.

Against-all-odds actions by the 1st Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge. Firsthand accounts from American and German soldiers. Details on Jochen Peiper and the notorious Malmedy Massacre.

The U.S. Army''s bloodiest battle of World War II. From-the-foxhole stories of American soldiers in combat. Based on official U.S. Army documents and after-action reports.

First-person German accounts of bloody combat. Includes never-before-seen photos.

This is the story of their bitter combat--in the words of German and American soldiers who were there.

Assault guns (Sturmgeschütz in German) were armored fighting vehicles similar to tanks, with the chassis and tracks of a panzer but without the rotating turret, which allowed the mounting of a larger gun. They were usually used to support infantry assaults, but they also proved effective as tank destroyers, especially late in the war when German tank inventory diminished. Among the most famous variants are the Sturmtiger and Brummbär (“Grouch”). Hans Wijers has assembled hundreds of photos—most of them never seen anywhere before—of these vehicles at war on the Eastern Front of World War II.