By Keyword:   Chapter PROLOGUE 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 EPILOGUE Or, Page Number: Click on an image to see a larger, more detailed picture.		1944: Desperate Acts  pg. 577    These signs pointing toward Malmédy and Saint-Vith, Belgium, testify to another barbaric episode in the war. In a last desperate ploy to avoid defeat, Hitler sent as many men and tanks as he could muster against the Western Allies in the Ardennes in mid-December. Near Saint-Vith, the Sixth SS Panzer Army encountered fierce American resistance, which halted its progress. In frustration and in blatant violation of the rules of war, soldiers in the First Panzer Division at Malmédy turned their guns on the Americans they had captured, killing 86. Photo: Suddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst Hands lifted in surrender, American soldiers march before their German captors. The last great German offensive of the war was designed to split in two the Allied armies on the Western Front. Helped by foggy weather, which kept American and British planes grounded, the Germans were initially successful. But their advance ended when reinforcements arrived for the Allies and planes could resume their bombing of German supply lines. Photo: Suddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst Bodies of German soldiers lie strewn over the battlefield of Bastogne, Belgium, the site of one of the fiercest confrontations of the Battle of the Bulge. Reinforced by paratroopers, the Allied forces refused to surrender even though they were encircled and outnumbered. When the clouds lifted, Allied planes dropped supplies, and Bastogne was relieved the day after Christmas. Photo: Corbis-Bettmann  December 28, 1944: Members of Hungary's Arrow Cross abduct 28 Jews in a Budapest hospital. They will murder them two days later.  December 31, 1944: Hungarian Arrow Cross members storm a Swiss-sponsored "safe house" in Budapest and attack residents with machine guns and hand grenades. Three Jews are killed but the rest are saved by a Hungarian military unit; See January 11-14, 1945.  December 31, 1944: 1944-47: Civil war in the increasingly Sovietized Poland incidentally kills thousands of Jews.   1944: Desperate Acts  pg. 577  The Holocaust Chronicle © 2009 Publications International, Ltd.