Bulge: Thrust

Kampfgruppe Peiper assaults mixed American forces consisting of elements of the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion, the 51st and 291st Engineer Combat Battalions, the 203rd AAA Automatic Weapons Battalion, and the 825th Tank Destroyer Battalion, at Stavelot and Trois Ponts.

1944-12-18

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Kampfgruppe Peiper assaults mixed American forces consisting of elements of the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion, the 51st and 291st Engineer Combat Battalions, the 203rd AAA Automatic Weapons Battalion, and the 825th Tank Destroyer Battalion, at Stavelot and Trois Ponts.

Stavelot, Belgium

The Losheim Gap is a 5 miles (8.0 km) long, narrow valley at the western foot of the Schnee Eifel, on the border of Belgium and Germany. Most accounts of World War II describing the Battle of the Bulge focus on the attack by the Germans around the Siege of Bastogne and the Battle of St. Vith, while the Germans' primary ambitions were actually anchored in taking the Losheim Gap. In this region of the border between Belgium and Germany, it is the only region conducive to military movement. In 1944, "Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein" (Operation Watch on the Rhine) was planned by Hitler to trade space for time by an attack which would advance through the Allied armies to Antwerp. This would be through "the Ardennes, a region that had long fascinated Hitler, where German armies had attacked with tremendous success 1914 and again, at Hitler’s personal instigation, in 1940 .... (but not also, as is often erroneously remarked, in 1870. That advance was from the Saar-Palatinate through the Wissembourg Gap into Alsace)".

Wikipedia: Battle of Losheim Gap

German

American