Breathtaking new photographs, including several vivid full-color images, offer a never-before-seen look at the war-weary soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge who fought through the frozen Ardennes Forest in a mountainous region of Belgium in the dead of winter. They show soldiers on both sides battling the frigid weather as they fought each other during Nazi Germany’s last-ditch effort to drive back Allied forces between December 1944 and January 1945.

An American Sherman M4 tank moves past another gun carriage that slid off icy road in the Ardennes Forest during push to halt advancing German troops.

German Fuhrer and Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler and members of his General Staff review plans for ‘Operation Bodenplatte,’ an airstrike in support of the Ardennes offensive.

American troops man the trenches along a snowy hedgerow in the northern Ardennes Forest during the Battle of the Bulge.

Soldiers with the Seventh Armored Division trudge through snow in a bombed-out Belgian village in 1945.

A fifteen year old German soldier, Hans-Georg Henke, cries being captured by the US 9th Army in Germany on April 3, 1945.

Nazi prisoners of war hold up their arms as Allied soldiers round up captives January 20, 1945 near the French-German border.

American GI’s helped local residents to load themselves and their belongings onto US trucks so they could escape the fight.

This German plane was shot down by Allied guns and was found lying in snowy field in the Ardennes Forest.

This American soldier shaves in the cold during a lull in the fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.

An American soldier, just back from the front lines near the town of Murrigen, shows signs of fatigue January 1, 1945.

American soldiers of the 1st Army huddle around campfire in the snowy countryside of northern Ardennes Forest during lull in the Battle of the Bulge.

Hard going for US tanks at Amonines, Belgium, on the northern flank of the ‘battle of the bulge’.

German POWs carrying body of American soldier killed in Battle of Bulge through snowy Ardennes field.

View of German soldiers aboard a Jagdpanzer IV/70 tank destroyer from the 12th SS Panzer Division during the Battle of the Bulge.

Soldiers of US 1st Army hacking at frozen ground to dig foxholes near their machine gun position during a lull.

Allied aircraft vapor trails in skies above US soldier unloading a jeep outside a farmhouse in the Ardennes Forest.
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Tags: Battle, Bulge, photos, Rare

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