Скачать или смотреть Hitler’s Last Insane Trap Against 200,000 Allied Troops

The Germans were scraping the bottom of the barrel, and they knew it: 11,000 exhausted men against over 200,000 British and Canadian troops. Among them were a “stomach battalion” too sick to eat and a reserve of deaf soldiers who couldn’t hear the shells tearing the air. Facing annihilation, they gambled everything.

On February 10, 1945, they opened the sluice gates of the Schwammenauel Dam. A torrent of water cascaded over farmland and towns, drowning the land in a labyrinth of muck and sinking villages. The plan was simple: stall the enemy, trap their 1,000 vehicles in a quagmire, and buy time to protect the Reichswald. Then, nature, too, turned against the Allies. Freezing rain lashed the waterlogged wasteland, worsening the situation.

But Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery was not backing down. Half the battlefield was drowned under five feet of water; the rest was a wasteland of craters and mud. Still, his men were riding Buffaloes and DUKWs, and they would push forward...