this country is at war with Germany. We shall go on to the end. I remember the

sheets of blame which came up and almost blinded us for my guns.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the World War Two podcast star,

Mangas Wallace. In December 1944 the Germans launched the Battle of the

Bulge, their last major offensive in the West, commencing in the depths of

winter with the hope that the weather would neutralise allied air superiority,

three Germanaries attacked through the Ardens. I've looked at part of the Ardens

offensive before but from the American perspective. In this episode I'm joined

by Anthony Tucker Jones and we're going to reverse the tables and look at the

operation from the German point of view. Anthony has been with us before in episode

156 where we discussed Winston Churchill and this time we're looking at his

book Hitler's War, the German Battle of the Bulge. Anthony, welcome back and

let's start with the with the planning of the offensive. There have been

somewhat of a route across France for the Germans in the summer of 1944. When

did Hitler first consider going on the offensive in the West? They are

obviously under a lot of pressure in the East as well. Hitler decided pretty

much after the crushing of the German pocket for ladies in Normandy, the

Duregen Initiative Germany needed to conduct counteroffensive on the Western

Front and indeed on the Eastern Front. For me I was always fascinated by the

key point that's often overlooked with the Normandy campaign is that after the

German collapse an awful lot of them got away. There's always that row amongst

the British Canadians, the Poles and the Americans about not closing off that

...