(Germany originally intended to attack on November 27, but had to delay its initial assault due to fuel shortages). Many of these pictures never ran in LIFE magazine, or anywhere else.įor its final offensive to succeed, Germany needed four factors to work in its favor: catching the Allies off-guard poor weather that would neutralize air support for Allied troops the dealing of early, devastating, demoralizing blows against the Allies and capturing Allied fuel supplies intact. Here presents a series of photographs made by LIFE photographers throughout the fighting. Today, the conflict is known as the Battle of the Bulge. While Allied forces ultimately triumphed, it was a vicious six weeks of fighting, with tens of thousands dead on both sides. But the vital battle that would come to define the war in Britain had been won.From mid-December 1944 through the end of January 1945, in the heavily forested Ardennes Mountains of Belgium, thousands of American, British, Canadian, Belgian and French forces struggled to turn back the final major German offensive of World War II. The Luftwaffe continued to bomb Britain until the end of the war. On 17 September, Hitler was forced to delay his plans to invade Britain.
RAF fighters shot down 61 German aircraft for the loss of 31, inflicting the highest losses the Luftwaffe had suffered for over a month. However, the German raids were decisively defeated. On 15 September, now known as Battle of Britain Day, the Luftwaffe mounted its largest and most concentrated attack on London in the hope of drawing out the RAF into a final battle of annihilation. This would be the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombing known as the Blitz… Hitler was outraged and on 5 September, he ordered the Luftwaffe to concentrate its attacks upon London and other major British cities… On 7 September, nearly four hundred German bombers targeted docks in the East End of London, killing 490 civilians and injuring 1,200. Churchill immediately ordered RAF Bomber Command to launch reprisal raids on Berlin the following night.
0 kommentar(er)
