Lead Like Patton At Bastogne
Germany started the Battle of the Bulge with a bang. A huge, ugly bang that crashed into the American troops and relentlessly drove them backward.
The German penetration into the American lines in the Ardennes Forest wasn’t large; it was absolutely massive. A quarter of a million men, almost 1,500 tanks and more than 2,000 artillery pieces were unleashed on the Ardennes and the thinly held American lines on Dec. 16, 1944. The Allies’ commander, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, had thought the Germans might launch a significant operation, but he hadn’t imagined just how gigantic it could be.
With Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First Army and Gen. George Patton’s Third Army involved in operations of their own, Eisenhower had no reserves to deploy. The weather was terrible, and American air superiority, which could have dominated the Germans, had been eliminated. For the first time since D-Day, the Americans were facing an enemy more numerous, more mobile and better equipped than themselves.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/14/patton-bastogne-bulge-leadership-managing-lessons.html
