Battle of the Bulge (1965 film)

In December 1944, Military Intelligence officer Lt. Col. Daniel Kiley and his pilot, Joe, are flying a reconnaissance mission over the Ardennes forest. They buzz a German staff car and photograph its occupants, causing the chauffeur to flee the car without stopping the engine. The German officer inside scolds him, referencing the German fuel shortage.

The officer, Col. Hessler, returns to base, where General Kohler briefs him on the new plan to pierce American lines. At the same time, German soldiers disguised as American troops, led by Lt. Schumacher, begin Operation Grief to confuse the Allies. Hessler's orderly, Conrad, remarks upon the staggering losses Germany has sustained during the war, causing Hessler to lose faith in his young commanders, until they break into a chorus of Panzerlied for him.

Meanwhile, Kiley returns to headquarters and warns that the Germans are planning a new offensive. His superiors, Gen. Grey and Col. Pritchard, do not listen, believing Germany lacks the resources and manpower. Seeking proof, Kiley visits an outpost on the Siegfried Line, where Maj. Wolenski sends Officers Lt. Weaver and Sgt. Duquesne on patrol. They capture obviously inept young German soldiers. Kiley believes this is proof that the Germans are keeping their more experienced men back for an offensive, but is again dismissed as a "crackpot".

Hessler launches his attack the next day. Wolenski leads his men into the wooded area of the Schnee Eifel to fight back, but they are overrun. A group of Allied tanks, led by Sgt. Guffy, also attempts to slow the Panzers, but their tanks' weak guns and thin armor make them ineffective. On the trip back to Amblève, Guffy's crew moves black market goods from a nearby farmhouse. Lt. Schumacher and his disguised troops capture the only bridge over the Our River that can carry heavy tanks, and Hessler continues toward Amblève, secretly observed by Kiley. Guffy meets up with his girlfriend, Louise, and they split the proceeds of the racket.

Schumacher later takes control of a vital intersection of three roads that connect Amblève, Malmedy, and the Siegfried Line. He sabotages the road signs, and the rear echelon of Wolenski's troops takes the wrong road to Malmedy. They are captured and slaughtered by SS troops, though Weaver escapes. Other US soldiers become suspicious when they witness Schumacher's "military police" lay explosives incorrectly on the Our bridge.

Kohler orders Hessler to bypass Amblève, but Hessler wishes to thoroughly break the Americans' will to fight, and Kohler relents. Hessler's tanks and infantry storm Amblève and take the town. Although many Americans, including Wolenski, are captured, Grey, Pritchard, Kiley, and others escape to the Meuse River to regroup for a counterattack. Guffy learns that Louise died in the German assault on Amblève.

Facing the dangers of a foggy night, Col. Kiley conducts an aerial reconnaissance. He and Joe find Hessler's tank through a gap in the fog, and radio the coordinates, but German fire causes the plane to crash near an American fuel depot, killing Joe. In Hessler's command vehicle, Conrad confronts the Colonel and calls him a warmonger. In response, Hessler demotes Conrad to the fuel battalion.

Meanwhile, Gen. Grey's forces, with the Meuse at their back, prepare to fight off Hessler. The American tanks are destroyed, but the Germans expend much of their fuel. Guffy encounters Weaver, who has taken command of a small force of wounded men. The surviving Americans head to the depot, the same one in which the wounded Kiley is recovering. Aware of the German fuel shortages, Hessler leads a company toward the fuel depot to capture its stocks. Weaver and Guffy arrive there first; recognizing that Lt. Schumacher's battalion is still among the American soldiers in disguise, they open fire and kill the saboteurs. The Americans flood the road with gasoline and set it alight, setting off a panic among the young German commanders, who are all either shot or burned to death. Hessler's tank is exploded by a fuel drum, and Grey arrives in time to see the Panzers burning.

Out of fuel, the remaining German soldiers retreat. Conrad, bringing up the rear, throws aside his weapons, done with the war.

The aviation reconnaissance scenes with Henry Fonda were filmed with one or more Cessna L-19 aircraft, which did not fly until December 1949. The scenes could not have been filmed with a Piper L-4, which was widely used during World War II, since the L-4 did not have an electric starter on the engine. It had to be started on the ground by someone pulling the propeller. [3]

The final tank battle is a rough depiction of the Battle of Celles on December 26, 1944, where the U.S. 2nd Armored Div. smashed the German 2nd Panzer Division. The film creates the false impression that large numbers of American tanks sacrificed themselves against heavy Tiger IIs and, in the process, lured the enemy off course, which caused them to run out of gas. In reality, they were already stranded. The tanks that were used, despite the claims of the producer in an interview in one of the DVD extras, are not historically accurate. Although the M24 Chaffee light tanks used in the scene were World War II-era vehicles, they were not used in the scale shown in the film but were relatively rare.

The US M47 Pattons representing German King Tiger tanks and the M4 Shermans, as represented by the M24 Chaffees, contributed much to the myth of the superior size and firepower that US armor had to contend with. In World War II, although it was true that tank for tank, the Tiger II was superior to the Sherman, most of the anti-tank duties were actually the task of the tank destroyer units.

It is implied that Bastogne was bombarded by all the German tanks in the German armoured division whereas in fact only half the force were involved, the rest bypassing the town.

Aside from the initial American encounters with the German offensive is the absence of cold weather and snow in which the real battle was fought. There is no trace of snow at all in the film's major tank battle scene, and some battle scenes were fought in flat and bare territory, unlike the mountainous, forested and grassy nature of the Ardennes. The film was shot on location in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range and Madrid, Spain.

The sequence with Schumacher and his men was based on Operation Greif, the plan to parachute English-speaking Germans using American equipment behind American lines to sow confusion and capture the bridges.

Absent from the movie is the response by General Patton, whose Third Army relieved the siege of Bastogne. Also, there are no African-Americans in the movie even though the 761st Tank Battalion (The Black Panthers) played a role in Patton's Third Army and the 333rd Artillery Battalion, consisting of mainly African-Americans, were heavily involved in the fighting in and around Bastoigne. Indeed, there is no reference to British forces in the area although British troops were largely kept behind the Meuse River and thus almost entirely out of the fighting. Also not mentioned is General Eisenhower's decision to split the Bulge front into two, transferring temporary command of two American armies to Field Marshal Montgomery in the northern half of the Bulge; the film implies an all-American operation.

There is also no mention of the role of Allied air power in hitting the Germans hard at the first sign of clear weather. In fact, in the film, the sky during the battle is clear and partly cloudy.

The film's opening narration, by William Conrad, mentions both Montgomery and Patton but is inaccurate: "to the north, stood Montgomery's Eighth Army. To the south, Patton's Third Army."

In fact, Montgomery's northern command was actually the 21st Army Group. The Eighth Army, Montgomery's previous command, was actually in Italy at the time of the Battle of the Bulge. Although Patton actually was in charge of Third Army during the battle, it was part of a much larger American force in the south and was one of four American armies of the 12th Army Group under General Omar Bradley.

The film recaptures the major aspects of the battle by depicting how the inexperienced replacement American units stationed in the Ardennes were initially overwhelmed and how confused the situation became. The film points out the superiority of heavy German tanks and their major weakness, a lack of fuel.

Some early scenes, showing discussions among German officers, accurately depict the Third Reich's desperation to cut American-British supply lines to neutralize the Allies' huge logistical advantage.

The characters of Kiley and Hessler were loosely based on Colonel "Monk" Dickson and Waffen-SS officer Joachim Peiper. However, both names were changed, as the fictional characters bore marked differences from their real-life inspirations. For example, Peiper did not die in a tank attack but lived until he was murdered by vigilantes in 1976.[4] Peiper had been sentenced to death at the War Crimes Tribunal but this sentence was later reduced.

Screenwriter Bernard Gordon claims to have rewritten John Melson's original screenplay.[5] Some of the original choices for director were Richard Fleischer, who turned it down, and Edward Dmytryk, with whom Jack L. Warner of Warner Bros. refused to work.[6] The technical advisor on the film was Maj. Gen. (then Col.) Meinrad von Lauchert, who commanded the German tank division that made the most headway in the actual battle.

For an economical price and with no restrictions, the Spanish army provided an estimated 500 fully-equipped soldiers and 75 tanks and vehicles, some of which were World War II vintage.[7]

Eisenhower came out of retirement and held a press conference to denounce the film for what he considered its gross historical inaccuracy.[8]

It was one of the most popular films at the British box office in 1966.[9]

The original VHS release of the film for home video use was heavily edited to fit on one VHS tape and used a full-screen "pan and scan" technique, which is often used in network telecasts of widescreen motion pictures. The 1992 Laserdisc and 2005 DVD releases run at their full length and are presented letterboxed in the original 2.76:1 aspect ratio. A Blu-ray release followed in 2007, also in the original 2.76:1 aspect ratio. In 2018, a new film, Wunderland, retold the story of the Battle of the Bulge.

• Dell Movie Classic: Battle of the Bulge (June 1966 )[10][11]

• List of American films of 1965

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Battle of the Bulge (1965 film).

• Battle of the Bulge at IMDb
• Battle of the Bulge at the TCM Movie Database
• Battle of the Bulge at AllMovie
• Battle of the Bulge at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Battle of the Bulge at Rotten Tomatoes
• Spanish locations
• Marcus Wendel (May 14, 2006), "Heer Units". Viewed December 26, 2006.