Hitler s Bodyguards Tried to Take Bastogne and Failed
The division had been ordered to fight through unsuitable terrain, starved of essential supplies, and denied the air support this type of operation demanded.
The story of Hitler’s Bodyguard, the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte (LAH), in the battle for Bastogne does not begin until after the siege of that city had been raised by the U.S. 4th Armored Division, part of General George Patton’s Third Army, on December 26, 1944. By then the American Bastogne salient posed such a threat to the flank and rear of German Army Group B that it could no longer be ignored in fact, by then Bastogne was becoming the center of gravity of the whole Battle of the Bulge.