“Everyone had a score to settle. But along the Western Front the German Army scarcely existed any longer as a cohesive, organized force. Decimated during the Ardennes offensive, the Reich’s once-powerful armies had been finally smashed in the month-long campaign between the Moselle and the Rhine. Hitler’s decision to fight west of the Rhine rather than withdraw his battered forces to prepared positions on the eastern banks had proven disastrous; it would be recorded as one of the greatest military blunders of the war. Nearly 300,000 men had been taken prisoner and 60,000 were killed or wounded. In all, the Germans lost the equivalent of more than twenty full divisions.”
Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1966. p. 130-1
