Foreword
Recovering rapidly from the shock of German counter offensives in the Ardennes and Alsace, Allied armies early in January 1945 began an offensive that gradually spread all along the line from the North Sea to Switzerland and continued until the German armies and the German nation were prostrate in defeat. This volume tells the story of that offensive, one which eventually involved more than four and a half million troops, including ninety-one divisions, sixty-one of which were American.
The focus of the volume is on the role of the American armies—First, Third, Seventh, Ninth, and, to a lesser extent, Fifteenth—which comprised the largest and most powerful military force the United States has ever put in the field. The role of Allied armies—First Canadian, First French, and Second British—is recounted in sufficient detail to put the role of American armies in perspective, as is the story of tactical air forces in support of the ground troops.
This is the ninth volume in a subseries of ten designed to record the history of the United States Army in the European Theater of Operations. One volume, The Riviera to the Rhine, remains to be published.
JAMES L. COLLINS, JR.
Brigadier General, USA
Chief of Military History
Washington, D.C.
5 June 1972
The Author
Charles B. MacDonald is the author of The Siegfried Line Campaign and co-author of Three Battles: Arnaville, Altuzzo, and Schmidt, both in the official series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. He has supervised the preparation of other volumes in the European and Mediterranean theater subseries and is a contributor to Command Decisions and American Military History. He is also the author of Company Commander (Washington: 1947), The Battle of the Hürtgen Forest (Philadelphia: 1963), The Mighty Endeavor (New York: 1969), and Airborne (New York: 1970). A graduate of Presbyterian College, he also holds the Litt.D. degree from that institution. In 1957 he received a Secretary of the Army Research and Study Fellowship and spent a year studying the interrelationship of terrain, weapons, and tactics on European battlefields. A colonel in the Army Reserve, he holds the Purple Heart and Silver Star. As Deputy Chief Historian for Southeast Asia, he is currently engaged in preparing the official history of the United States Army in Vietnam.