Units Involved

1944-12-16 00:00:00 UTC - 1944-12-16 00:00:00 UTC
Attackers: United States
Defenders: Nazi Germany
Outcome: Nazi Germany victory

The Losheim Gap is a 5 miles (8.0 km) long, narrow valley at the western foot of the Schnee Eifel, on the border of Belgium and Germany. Most accounts of World War II describing the Battle of the Bulge focus on the attack by the Germans around the Siege of Bastogne and the Battle of St. Vith, while the Germans' primary ambitions were actually anchored in taking the Losheim Gap. In this region of the border between Belgium and Germany, it is the only region conducive to military movement.[1]

In 1944, "Operation Wacht am Rhein" (Watch on the Rhine) was planned by Hitler to trade space for time by an attack which would advance through the Allied armies to Antwerp. This would be through "the Ardennes, a region that had long fascinated Hitler, where German armies had attacked with tremendous success in 1914 and again, at Hitler’s personal instigation, in 1940 .... (but not also, as is often erroneously remarked, in 1870. That advance was from the Saar-Palatinate through the Wissembourg Gap into Alsace)"