Sublime

The following day, December 16, 1944, the world of SHAEF turned upside down. Out of the snow and freezing cold of the Ardennes four German armies—two panzer and two infantry—some twenty-eight divisions with more than 300,000 men and close to 1,500 tanks, smashed through the lightly held Allied line in the forest.

In November 1943, Rear Admiral John Hall took command of the 11th Amphibious Force and assumed the responsibility for depositing the Army’s Fifth Corps on the landing site designated as Omaha Beach—nothing less than the most important operation in American history.

But the heroic stand of the U.S. 30th Division outside Mortain, which Collins called “one of the outstanding small-unit actions of World War II”75—combined with the round-the-clock bombardment from the air—forced the Germans to fall back.

Stavka had awaited the assistance of General Winter. The thermometer fell to 22 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, so that German lubricants hardened while Russian weapons and tanks still worked—the T-34 had a compressed-air starter, immune to frost.

This was the memo he was going to release if the D-Day invasion failed. “Our landings…have failed…and I have withdrawn the troops,” he wrote. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the

“The only thing that mattered was that I did my best to make sure everyone else came back alive.”