World: Not By Arithmetic

On the western front, from Arnhem to Switzerland, the battle had reached a stage close to stalemate, where some new factor seemed due to be injected and soon.

After nearly a month of cruel and costly fighting, the U.S. First Army's line, inching up to the Roer River, was just twelve miles east of Aachen—which was taken four weeks before the offensive started.

The Germans suffered their worst pangs last week in the Saar, where the blast furnaces* were under paralyzing shell fire from the advancing Third Army (see below). But the struggle for the Saar was beginning to resemble the bloody infighting...

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