BBC - Great Battles of War (1971) Part 2 Battle for the Bulge

Former BBC producer Peter Batty's classic documentaries have won awards throughout the world, and the three films in this collection were written and directed by Batty in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Films use current location filming and authentic historic film clips to document the events, and military leaders from both sides give their account of the battles.

Part 2: Battle for the Bulge

December 1944 witnessed the last major German offensive of the Second World War. The Battle for the Bulge, as this campaign in the Ardennes forests of Belgium and Luxembourg is now more familiarly known, was the biggest single pitched battle of the Western Front – more than a million troops took part. It was Hitler's most desperate gamble of the War; he in fact planned every move. It was the climax, too, of the Allied invasion in Western Europe. But it was also a time of American humiliation, for it saw the largest mass surrender of US forces of the whole European War – and a surrender second in size only to that at Bataan in the Pacific in 1942. Because Hitler was banking on a quick victory, which he hoped would split the Allies and provide a respite in the West while he held off the Russian threat from the East, he ordered Germany's remaining film-stock and surviving cameramen to be lavished on covering the campaign. But when the plan failed, much of their efforts lingered unseen in the library vaults and even unprocessed in laboratory cellars until brought to light for this documentary.

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