64 years ago, Hitler launched Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein ("Operation Watch On The Rhein"), his last-gasp attempt to knock the Western Allies out of the war.
It didn't work, of course. "Of course", because hindsight is always 20/20.
This is sometimes said to be "one of the few times SIGINT failed us"--I heard the saying several times in my military Signals Intelligence career--but you can't intercept what is not there. There was very little, almost no, intercept regarding the attack, including very little from ULTRA intercepts, and the High Command had gotten so used to reading Hitler's mail, as it were, that if ULTRA didn't say it, they assumed it wasn't there. Patton was the exception, apparently seeing a gap that no one else noticed, and ordering his Operations staff to prepare contingencies, "just in case."
Fortunately.
The defense of Bastogne by the 101st Airborne Division and a few elements of the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions is the part of the story of The Bulge that Americans know, if they know anything. Like usual, there is so much more. Malmedy. The smaller, but more heinous, massacre of the Wereth 11. The fall of the 106th Infantry Division. And thousands of small acts of courage.
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