That scene lasts about five minutes the film is 167 minutes long. SS Panzer leader Jochen Peiper, leads his despondent men in a rousing version of the Panzer Lied, the Wehrmacht tank branches’ fight song. Employing a complex and quick-witted strategy wherein he literally wheeled his 3rd Army a sharp 90 degrees in a counterthrust movement, Patton broke through the German lines and entered Bastogne, relieving the valiant defenders and ultimately pushing the Germans east across the Rhine. That is exactly what happened in 1965 when the movie The Battle of the Bulge was released, but instead of a major. MacAuliffe met a German surrender demand with a typewritten response of a single word: “Nuts.”Įnter “Old Blood and Guts,” General Patton.

Nevertheless, Brigadier General Anthony C. Food, medical supplies, and other resources eroded as bad weather and relentless German assaults threatened the Americans’ ability to hold out. 101st Airborne Division, which had to be reinforced by troops who straggled in from other battlefields. The Belgian town was defended by the U.S. Bastogne provided a road junction in rough terrain where few roads existed it would open up a valuable pathway further north for German expansion. The capture of Bastogne was the ultimate goal of the Battle of the Bulge, the German offensive through the Ardennes forest. Patton employs an audacious strategy to relieve the besieged Allied defenders of Bastogne, Belgium, during the brutal Battle of the Bulge.

Battle of the bulge tank song