Voices of the Bulge
Untold Stories from Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge
by Michael Collins and Martin King
It was the battle to end all battles—an offensive designed to shift the momentum of a fading war back into German hands. With almost one million soldiers eventually taking part in the fighting, and casualties reaching unfathomable proportions, it was an battle that would, in many ways, define the war for generations to come.
The massive German counteroffensive operation, codenamed Wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine), was launched in the early morning hours of December 16, 1944. To most Americans, the fierce combat that raged across the Belgian countryside from December 1944 through January 1945 would soon be known as “the Battle of the Bulge.”
While many books have been written on the now-legendary battle, few, if any, have been able to respectfully and compellingly capture both sides of the conflict equally. Until now.
Filmmakers Michael Collins and Martin King, producers of the documentary
Voices of the Bulge, bring you this companion oral history, featuring those same voices from the film and many others. Collins and King spent more than twelve years researching, interviewing, and compiling information for the book and film. They collected accounts from both military and civilian sources and from both sides of the battle. The result is an important and riveting account of the Battle of the Bulge, where the struggle is relived by the survivors who did the fighting and the civilians who witnessed the heroic effort.
Told through numerous first-person accounts taken from the authors’ interviews of American officers and enlisted personnel who successfully repelled the German attack with their courage and blood, the story of the American struggle is uniquely and vividly portrayed here. To provide a well-rounded perspective, however, German veterans, including SS soldiers, were also interviewed by the authors after decades of silence. They give eyewitness accounts of the massive German buildup and onslaught that threatened to turn the tide of the battle in Western Europe and made it one of the most crucial battles in the history of the free world. This incredibly rare and complete perspective of events gives Voices of the Bulge a unique place among histories of this crucial campaign.
Complete with a DVD of Collins and King’s documentary of the same name,
Voices of the Bulge is a fitting tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice and to those veterans who persevered to finally tell their stories.
