The Battle of the Bulge - Hitler's gigantic counter-offensive in the Ardennes Forest - was America's greatest crisis in World War II. In December 1944, the snow-covered Ardennes was so quiet it was termed by the Allied planners "the Ghost Front". The US placed its greenest units among the wooded hills, along with the combat-shattered units requiring time for recuperation. Beneath the trees just miles away, however, the Germans were stealthily massing two full panzer armies and 300,000 assault troops. For week after week, Hitler poured the cream of the Wehrmacht into the "quiet" sector, for a suprise attack designed to shatter the American front. The success of Hitler's gamble depended as much on achieving suprise as on the fighting skill of his troops. And while the Germans were eventually defeated in the Bulge, the preparations forthe attack marked a victory for German stealth, deception and organization. In "The Ghost Front", Charles Whiting examines the calm before the storm, demonstrating that the Allies could have anticipated the attack had they not been lulled into a false sense of security. For weeks prior to the battle, nocturnal German patrols probed every part of the American front, mapping trenches, headquarters, tanks and artillery emplacements. In one incident,a Sherman intelligence infiltrated agents into the Allied lines, many of them released concentration camp inmates who had beenfed false information. Enemy signalmen filled the airwaves with a blizzard of misleading orders and unit outes. In neutral Luxembourg, German-speaking civilians provided information to the Wehrmacht while relaying false data to the Allies. The German deception campaign was comparable in magnitude to the similar effort undertaken by the Allies prior to Normandy.