Скачать или смотреть When 600 Germans Surrounded Him — He Called Artillery on Himself to Save Them All

When 600 German soldiers closed in on a frozen American foxhole in the Ardennes, Second Lieutenant Jack H. Treadwell faced a choice no officer should ever have to make. Outnumbered nearly fifty to one, cut off from reinforcements, and surrounded in the snow-covered forests near Meyerode, Belgium, Treadwell did the unthinkable—he ordered American artillery to fire directly onto his own position.
On the morning of January 17, 1945, during the final, brutal days of the Battle of the Bulge, Treadwell and just thirteen American scouts walked straight into the path of an entire battalion of the 18th Volksgrenadier Division. Escape meant certain death. Silence meant allowing hundreds of German troops to smash into unprepared American lines behind them. There was only one option left—turn the most powerful weapon in the U.S. arsenal inward and trust a system built for industrial war.
This documentary reconstructs the moment when American artillery doctrine reached its deadliest expression. Using after-action reports, artillery fire direction logs, German war diaries, and postwar interviews, we break down how U.S. forward observers, FM radio technology, and pre-registered fire missions allowed division artillery to deliver annihilation within minutes—even when the target was the man making the call.
What followed was not a single barrage, but a precisely coordinated storm of time-on-target artillery strikes that transformed a forest into a killing zone and shattered a German attack before it ever reached American lines. It was not just an act of bravery—it was a demonstration of a system so fast, so accurate, and so overwhelming that the Wehrmacht never fully understood it until it destroyed them.
This is the true story of how communication, mathematics, and American industrial power saved thirteen men, stopped six hundred, and revealed a hard truth about modern warfare: in industrial war, courage matters—but systems decide everything.

🎯 What You’ll Learn in This Documentary
The tactical situation facing U.S. forces during the Battle of the Bulge


How American forward observers operated behind enemy lines


Why U.S. artillery was faster and deadlier than anything the Germans could counter


How “time on target” strikes worked—and why they were so devastating


The role of radios, fire direction centers, and pre-registered targets


How this single action reshaped artillery doctrine after World War II



📚 Historical Sources & References
Primary & Scholarly Sources:
U.S. Army After-Action Reports, 106th Infantry Division – January 1945


Bundesarchiv, 18th Volksgrenadier Division War Diary


U.S. Army Field Manual FM 6-40 – Tactics and Technique of Division Artillery (1944)


U.S. Army Field Artillery School – The Field Artillery in the Battle of the Bulge (1946)


U.S. Army Operational Research Group – Artillery Effectiveness Study (1945)


U.S. VII Corps After-Action Report – January 1945


U.S. War Production Board – Final Industrial Production Report (1946)


Veterans History Project, Library of Congress – Jack H. Treadwell Interview (1982)


Field Artillery Journal – The Fire Direction Center: Heart of Modern Artillery (1945)



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