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The Prayer That Helped Win The Battle Of The Bulge
It was so effective it earned a priest the Bronze Star
On December 16th, 1944, the German army launched a massive assault along the Allied lines in the Ardennes Forest. It would be Germany’s last major offensive of the war. In just six months, Germany’s massive armies had been pushed out of France and back into more familiar territory closer to the Fatherland. Despite being pushed back to the German border, the Nazi war machine was not willing to go down without one last push.
Adolf Hitler ordered all of his remaining forces in the region to concentrate on a massive attack in a bid to shatter the American lines and force a retreat with the possibility of a crushing encirclement in the frozen tracts of woodland. At first, the assault was a success. The United States was unprepared for such a vehement attack from an army they believed was spent. Panzers rumbled through the cold winter morning and surprised weakly defended positions.
It looked like the Battle of the Bulge would turn into an utter disaster.
The reason for Germany’s initial success was a spate of bad weather, which was keeping the United States’s superior equipment out of the action. The air was cold. The sky was overcast. Snow and rain and sleet were falling along the roads. The…
