Date of Award

Summer 1996

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

Committee Director

Craig M. Cameron

Committee Member

Carl Boyd

Committee Member

Bruce Campbell

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.H47 H356

Abstract

The resurgence of the Wehrmacht on the western front in the fall of 1944 was the product of the German Army High Command's attempt to overcome the severe effects of attrition by institutionalizing fanaticism and generating extreme self-sacrifice among its soldiers. The nature, form, and purpose of the Wehrmacht's resurgence in the west has never been fully explained and only examined in the context of operational histories. The Ardennes offensive has traditionally been used in the operational histories of the Allied campaign in Europe to demonstrate the Wehrmacht's physical ability to reorganize weapons, equipment and personnel effectively. The counter offensive, however, was the end product of three months of psychological strengthening that took primarily an ideological form. Through an examination of first person accounts &om German officer, microfilmed German unit records, and the secondary literature on the European Theater of Operations, the German resurgence in the West will be analyzed.

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DOI

10.25777/2pqt-he17

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