The Fall of Germany, 1944–1945
Hitler’s last gamble in the West, and the five months of fighting that ended the Third Reich — from the snow of the Ardennes to the Rhine and the Elbe.
On 16 December 1944, in fog and snow, Hitler threw his last reserves against a thinly held American line in the Ardennes. The offensive the Allies came to call the Battle of the Bulge drove a deep salient into the front and produced the bloodiest fighting the US Army ever did in Europe. Kampfgruppe Peiper’s Tiger IIs led the drive; at Bastogne the encircled 101st Airborne held on until the weather broke on 23 December and the transports and fighter-bombers came.
The gamble failed, and with it went the last of Germany’s armoured reserve. What followed was five months of collapse: the crossing of the Rhine, the bridge at Remagen, the closing of the Ruhr pocket — and the heaviest machines Germany ever built, the Jagdtiger among them, abandoned by their own crews for want of fuel. The vehicles of that final campaign in the West, from both sides, are gathered here.
