On the same day as Hitler's withdrawal order, 7 January, Montgomery held his press conference. Montgomery praised the "courage and good fighting quality" of the Americans. He also praised Eisenhower.
Then Montgomery described the battle for a half-hour. Coming to the end of his speech he said he had used the whole power of the British Group of Armies. He called the battle "the most interesting, I think possibly one of the most interesting and tricky battles I have ever handled."
Despite his positive remarks about American soldiers, the Americans thought he took credit for the success of the campaign. They thought he made it sound like he had rescued the Americans.
Patton and Eisenhower both felt he did not describe the share of the fighting played by the British and Americans in the Ardennes. They thought that he did not tell about the part played by Bradley, Patton and other American commanders. Montgomery did not mention of any American general beside Eisenhower. This was seen as insulting.
Montgomery saw his error and later wrote: "I think now that I should never have held that press conference."
Bradley and Patton both threatened to resign unless Montgomery's command was changed. Eisenhower had decided to fire Montgomery. Eisenhower allowed Montgomery to apologize.
Casualty estimates from the battle vary widely. The official U.S. account lists 80,987 American casualties, while other estimates range from 70,000 to 108,000. According to the U.S. Department of Defense the American forces suffered 89,500 casualties including 19,000 killed, 47,500 wounded and 23,000 missing.
An official report by the United States Department of the Army lists some 108,347 casualties, including 19,246 killed, 62,489 wounded and 26,612 captured and missing. The Battle of the Bulge was the most violent battle that U.S. forces experienced in World War II; the 19,000 American dead were unsurpassed by those of any other engagement. British losses totaled 1,400.
The German High Command's official figure for the campaign was 84,834 casualties, and other estimates range between 60,000 and 100,000.
The Allies continued to push on in the battle. In early February, the Allies launched an attack all along the Western front: in the north under Montgomery toward Aachen; in the center, under Courtney Hodges; and in the south, under Patton.
The German losses in the battle were serious in several ways. The last of the German reserves were now gone, the Luftwaffe had been destroyed and the remaining German forces in the West were being pushed back to the defenses of the Siegfried Line.
The initial success of Hitler's Ardennes offensive, launched 16 December 1944, caused Churchill to ask Stalin on 6 January 1945 for Soviet help by launching a Soviet attack. On Friday, 12 January, the Soviets began the Vistula–Oder Offensive, planned to begin on 20 January.
During World War II, most U.S. black soldiers still served only as truck drivers and as stevedores. In the midst of the Battle of the Bulge, General Eisenhower was short of replacement troops so he allowed African American soldiers to join the white military units to fight in combat for the first time. More than 2,000 black soldiers had volunteered to go to the front.
This was an important step toward a racially integrated United States military. A total of 708 African Americans were killed in combat during World War II.
Nothing
Nothing is a concept of being without any form of matter.
Moon
The Moon is Earth's largest natural satellite. We usually see it in the night sky. Some other planets also have moons or natural satellites.
Our moon is about a quarter the size of the Earth. Because it is far away it looks small, about half a degree wide. The gravity on the moon is one-sixth of the Earth's gravity. It means that something will be one-sixth as heavy on the Moon than on Earth. The Moon is a rocky and dusty place. The Moon moves slowly away from the earth at a rate of 3.8 cm per year, due to the effect of .
Because the moon is round, half of it is lit up by the sun. As it goes around (or orbits) the Earth, sometimes the side that people on Earth can see is all lit brightly. Other times only a small part of the side we see is lit. This is because the Moon does not send out its own light. People only see the parts that are being lit by sunlight. These different stages are called Phases of the Moon.
It takes the Moon about 29.53 days (29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes) to complete the cycle, from big and bright to small and dim and back to big and bright. The phase when the Moon passes between the Earth and Sun is called the "new moon". The next phase of the moon is called the "waxing crescent", followed by the "first quarter", "waxing gibbous", then to a full moon. A full Moon occurs when the moon and sun are on opposite sides of the Earth. As the Moon continues its orbit it becomes a "waning gibbous", "third quarter", "waning crescent", and finally back to a new moon. People used the moon to measure time. A month is approximately equal in time to a lunar cycle.
The moon always shows the same side to Earth. Astronomers call this phenomenon tidal locking. This means that half of it can never be seen from Earth. The side facing away from Earth is called the far side or dark side of the Moon even though the sun does shine on it—we just never see it lit.
Before people stood on the Moon, the United States and the USSR sent robots to the Moon. These robots would orbit the Moon or land on its surface. The robots were the first man-made objects to touch the Moon.
Humans finally landed on the Moon on July 21, 1969. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their lunar ship (the "Eagle") on the surface of the moon. Then, as half the world watched him on television, Armstrong climbed down the ladder of the "Eagle" and was the first human to touch the Moon as he said, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
Even though their footprints were left on the moon a long time ago, it is likely that they are still there, as there is no wind or rain, making erosion extremely slow. The footprints do not get filled in or smoothed out.
More people landed on the moon between 1969 and 1972, when the last spaceship, Apollo 17 visited. Eugene Cernan of Apollo 17 was the last person to touch the moon.
Because it is smaller, the Moon has less gravity than Earth (only 1/6 of the amount on Earth). So if a person weighs 120 kg on Earth, the person would only weigh 20 kg on the moon. But even though the Moon's gravity is weaker than the Earth's gravity, it is still there. If person dropped a ball while standing on the moon, it would still fall down. However, it would fall "much" more slowly. A person who jumped as high as possible on the moon would jump higher than on Earth, but still fall back to the ground. Because the Moon has no atmosphere, there is no air resistance, so a feather will fall as fast as a hammer.
Without an atmosphere, the environment is not protected from heat or cold. Astronauts wore spacesuits, and carried oxygen to breathe. The suit weighed about as much as the astronaut. The Moon's gravity is weak, so it was not as heavy as on Earth.
In the Earth, the sky is blue because the blue rays of the sun bounce off the gases in the atmosphere, making it look like blue light is coming from the sky. But on the moon, because there is no atmosphere, the sky looks black, even in the daytime. There is no atmosphere to protect the moon from the rocks that fall from outer space, and these meteorites crash right into the moon and make wide, shallow holes called craters. The moon has thousands of them. Newer craters gradually wear away the older ones.
The giant impact hypothesis is that the Moon was created out of the debris from a collision between the young Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet. This is the favored scientific hypothesis for the formation of the Moon.