Improvising against Tyranny

The Power of Ordinary Americans from the Battle of the Bulge to the Streets of Minnesota

As the “bleak midwinter” tightens its icy grip over much of the continent this week, my mind turns to the Battle of the Bulge, which raged in the Ardennes Forest from December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945, ending eighty-one years ago today.

This was the last major German offensive of World War II, launched during one of the coldest European winters in decades, resulting in approximately 80,000 Allied casualties.

It was the largest, bloodiest single battle fought by US troops in that ghastly war and signaled the death knell of Hitler’s rancid Third Reich.

Ever since watching William Wellman’s compelling 1949 film Battleground, depicting the heroic US defense of Bastogne, I have been struck by the image of US soldiers, surprised, shocked, frostbitten, and outnumbered, fighting off Hitler’s screaming troops and fearsome panzer divisions as they stormed through a supposed “quiet sector” along the Western front.

What struck me most about this grisly encounter (which Churchill dubbed “the greatest American battle of the war”) was that it was the ordinary foot soldiers, not the top brass, who were largely responsible for victory.

They improvised, regrouped, made stands, took charge when their senior officers were dazed, confused, killed, or missing, and showed momentous determination, grit, and valour under horrific conditions, disrupting the critical timetable of Hitler’s final blitzkrieg.

A case in point: twenty-year-old US Lieutenant Lyle Bouck ordered his 18-man platoon, plus four forward artillery observers, to create a barricaded perimeter to resist the German advance. Amazingly, they held off 500 Nazi paratroopers for almost an entire day. Behind the German airborne troops was the 1st SS Panzer Division’s armoured spearhead, led by the notorious Waffen SS Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Joachim Peiper.

Peiper’s orders were to cross the Meuse River within the opening hours of the battle. Thanks to the efforts of Bouck and other valiant US soldiers, he never made it.

When Bouck and his remaining troops, having run out of ammo, were captured, the Germans asked where the rest of his troops were. He stated, “This is it.” Not believing him, they spent several hours searching the surrounding woods to see where other US GIs may be hidden, adding further delay to the time-dependent attack.

Battle-weary and dejected, Bouck and his men were sent to a POW camp, thinking that they had completely failed.

After the war, however, historians noted that they were instrumental in blunting Hitler’s final gambit. They subsequently became one of the most decorated US platoons of WWII.

Hitler underestimated the pluck, ingenuity, and dogged courage of the common US soldier. His miscalculation led to the disastrous failure of fascism on the Western Front.

Today, with the rise of fascism in the U.S., I see a parallel.

It is not the higher-ups in the Democratic Party, the overlord strategists, who are making the critical democratic stands, but folks in the streets.

As Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times recently observed, the foiling of the Trump agenda is being done by small groups of courageous, creative, and nimble Americans, who, despite formidable odds, are making a valiant stand for democracy against masked and murderous ICE agents on the streets of their country.

There is a great lesson in this. Wherever you are, whatever the odds, making a stand makes a difference and can buy time as larger forces organize to defeat your enemy.

Today, on the streets of Minneapolis, we see ordinary citizens standing up to the brutal stormtrooper tactics of ICE. Some, tragically, like Renee Good, and just yesterday, Alex Pretti, have paid with their lives. Others, from pre-schoolers to priests, have endured family separation, incarceration, beatings, pepper spray, and jackbooted brutality.

But in the past, when tyrants have underestimated the spirit and courage of ordinary Americans, they have been unpleasantly surprised.

From the snow-covered forest of the Ardennes to the frigid streets of Minnesota, resistance is fertile.

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