In this thesis, the author, who participated in the Battle of the Bulge, recreates the story of the battle.

The 1944 German Ardennes offensive failed. It was overly ambitious, built on erroneous assumptions, insufficiently supported by logistics, and depended on the weather for success. Yet, the offensive achieved more than it should have given the strength and combat experience of the Allied armies in Europe. Previous attempts to explain the limited success of the German offensive have emphasized the failure of Allied strategic intelligence - Ultra. Intelligence is an accurate, but incomplete explanation for initial German success in the Ardennes. Three conditions allowed the Wehrmacht, approaching its manpower and logistical end, to crush the US First Army. First, coalition warfare so weakened the First Army that it became vulnerable to attack. Second, the Allies failed to develop a unified intelligence network capable of assessing the information that indicated the timing and target of the German attack. Finally, a well-executed German security and deception plan surprised the Allies. The well-executed German offensive manipulated both Allied intelligence and the Anglo-American coalition.

Many histories written by professional historians discuss the Battle of the Bulge; however, none of them incorporate the growing field of environmental history as a lens of analysis. This paper aims to address that hole in the scholarship by evaluating the impact that environmental factors exerted on the American army's ability to fight in and around Bastogne and St. Vith, Belgium during the first week of the battle. Had it not been for the environmental factors and the Americans' ability to make better use of the natural and manmade conditions than the Germans, the Allies would not have been able to achieve eventual victory. In the historiography of the battle, weather conditions are usually referenced only as the setting in which the fighting occurred. This paper goes further than simply using the environment and climate as a stage set. By looking at the way environmental conditions impacted strategic, operational, and tactical issues, a new perspective is opened up. The role that these environmental factors played is emphasized and shows that they had a greater effect on the outcome than scholars have previously credited. This paper uses first person accounts from participants, from the command level to the soldier in his foxhole, as well as unit histories, oral histories, and the vast amount of secondary sources to focus on and synthesize the effects that the environment had. Without exploiting the environmental factors that existed in the Ardennes, the American army would not have been able to hold off the German offensive.

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