part of the battle took place at the Belgian city of Bastogne. The 101

A crucial German shortage of fuel and the gallantry of American troops fighting in the frozen forests of the Ardennes proved fatal to Hitler's ambition to snatch, if not victory, at least a draw with the Allies in the west. Lieutenant General George S. Patton's remarkable feat of turning the Third Army ninety degrees from Lorraine to relieve the besieged town of Bastogne was the key to thwarting the German counteroffensive. General Patton had moved his 3^rd Army 100 miles north to relieve Bastogne.

The Battle of the Bulge was the costliest action ever fought by the U.S. Army, which suffered over 100,000 casualties

Skies cleared on Dec. 27 and by the end of January the bulge was pushed back to original lines. The race for Berlin was now on.

One of the reasons Hitler was able to rise to power was anti-Semitism that was prevalent in Europe, a carryover from medieval days when Jews were persecuted and isolated. Germany was forced to accept responsibility for WW I. Hitler blamed the Jews for selling out Germany. Because of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, many Germans were ready to blame Jews themselves.

On the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938 anti-Jewish riots broke out in Germany. Many of the rioters were NAZI officials and even the police. This incident became known as Kristallnacht. The excuse was it was an impromptu response to the assassination of a NAZI official by a Jewish youth in France.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynypuxgCbH4

Concentration camps were created to hold enemies of the state; over 26,000 Jews were sent to them as a result of Kristallnacht and the Jews had to pay 1 billion marks for the damages done by the rioters.

Many Jews in Germany could see the writing on the wall and those who could afford to tried to flee the country. To leave Germany, you had to abandon all property and bank accounts. Most countries would not accept destitute refugees and others, like the U.S., had immigration quotas. Only a little over 100,000 Jews were able to leave; and many of them went to countries eventually overrun by the Germans.

The luxury liner SS St. Louis set sail from Hamburg, Germany with 900 Jewish passengers on May 13, 1939 headed for Cuba and eventually the United States. They had paid the Cuban embassy $200-$300 ($3,000-$5,000 today). They were denied entry in Cuba, sailed to the U.S. and denied entry there. They had to return to Europe where over a quarter of the passengers were killed by the NAZIs.

Toward the Final Solution

When the NAZIs came to power there were about 9 million Jews in Europe. The NAZI goal was to incarcerate or annihilate the race.

The Warsaw Ghetto in Poland had 1.5 million people jammed into 1.5 square miles. Their food ration was thin soup and a slice of bread a day. 43,000 were dying every day in 1941.

In 1943 the Germans began rounding up the residents and sending them to concentration camps such as Treblinka in Poland. The Jews fought back (the Jewish Fighting Organization) and the Jewish Uprising lasted almost a month but it was brutally put down by the SS. The ghetto was destroyed and the survivors were sent to Treblinka or other concentration camps where most of them died. The Soviets could have come to the aid of Warsaw but did not.

The Final Solution

As the Germans army marched across Europe, the SS rounded up Jews and special SS units called Einsatzgruppen Units lined them up in front of mass graves and shot them. But this was too slow and wasted precious bullets. They tried carbon monoxide but that burned too much valuable fuel. They settled on the relatively inexpensive Xyclon gas.

Members of an Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squad) before shooting a Jewish youth. The boy's murdered family lies in front of him; the men to the left are ethnic Germans aiding the squad. Slarow, Soviet Union, July 4, 1941.

In a 2 day killing spree at Babi Yar in the Ukraine, over 33,000 people were massacred.

At the Wannsee Conference, a Berlin suburb, on January 20, 1942 the details of the "Final Solution" were worked out. The meeting was convened by Reinhard Heydrich, who was the head of the S.S. main office and S.S. Chief Heinrich Himmler's top aide. The purpose of the meeting was to coordinate the Nazi bureaucracy required to carry out the "Final Solution," which provided for:

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  Deportation of Jews to killing centers.
  
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  Immediate death for those who were unable to work or the very young, the old, and the weak.
  
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  Segregation by gender of the remaining Jews.
  
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  Decimation through forced labor with insufficient nourishment.
  
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  Eventual death for the remnant.
  
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  Medical experimentation for those that are suitable
  

3 million Jews were killed in the extermination camps, 3 million more by other means.

Heinrich Himmler said, “I do not feel justified in exterminating the men…while allowing the avengers, in the form of children, to grow up”.

Another 5 million others were killed by the NAZIs – POWs (especially Soviet), disabled and mentally challenged (Hitler called them useless eaters), gays, Gypsies (Romany), and Slavs.

Even after Kristallnacht and the outbreak of World War II, the United States wouldn’t increase the number of Jewish immigrants allowed. It wasn’t until 1942 that U.S. officials began to hear about the death camps from the head of a Jewish organization in Switzerland; and even then they were skeptical. In January 1944 President Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board to expedite Jewish immigration.

As the Soviet army pushed into previously occupied territory, they discovered some of the death camps. In 1945 they discovered Auschwitz.

The reports of the death camps finally convinced many Americans of the horrors of the Nazi regime.

At Dachau, some prisoners actually ran to meet their American liberators, but inside the camp were the same horrors.