In the frozen, fog-bound Ardennes in December 1944, American military police held their own soldiers at gunpoint and demanded the name of Mickey Mouse's girlfriend, World Series scores, or state capitals. General Omar Bradley himself was detained by a guard who insisted the capital of Illinois was Chicago. This episode explains how the Allies were caught so completely off guard in the largest and bloodiest single battle the United States fought in World War II, with roughly 81,000 American casualties and over 8,400 killed.

From the 'ghost front' where exhausted divisions rested beside raw replacements, through Otto Skorzeny's Operation Greif commandos in captured American uniforms, the siege of Bastogne and Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe's one-word reply 'Nuts', the weather break around December 24, Patton's 48-hour pivot north with pl ...