Lecture | The Battle of the Bulge 1944 – 45

Wednesday 11th December
6.30pm-8.00pm

Maj Gen Mungo Melvin’s lecture will describe the Battle of the Bulge of 80 years ago.  Following the successful landings on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944, the Western Allies fought a bitter three months’ long campaign in the hedgerows before breaking out and sweeping across northern France and liberating Paris. At the same time, the Red Army was smashing German forces on the Eastern Front. Hopes were thus high that the Second World War in Europe was approaching its final stages. Yet a number of disappointments in the West, including the ‘Bridge too Far’ at Arnhem and the delays in opening up the river Scheldt and the port of Antwerp, as winter approached meant that momentum in the West was lost. Hitler, sensing an opportunity, planned a major German counterattack designed to split and defeat the Allied forces and to seize Antwerp. Having achieved these objectives he could then re-focus on the Eastern Front and defeat the Red Army in turn. This was the conception of Operation ‘Wacht am Rhein’ (Watch on the Rhine), the name of a popular patriotic German song. On 16 December 1944, out of misty snow-bound forests of the Ardennes, German armoured columns suddenly broke through thinly manned American defences and forged forward, taking many thousands of prisoners in the process. The surprise had caught the Allies off-guard, both strategically and tactically. Would they be able to respond in time in order to block the German advance, let alone mount a sufficiently well-resourced response to throw the Germans back? Thus the stage was set for the ‘Battle of the Bulge’ during the winter of 1944-45. In his presentation, Mungo Melvin will not only describe the battle of 80 years ago, but also draw some interesting comparisons with the current fighting in Ukraine.

Mungo Melvin retired from the British Army in 2011, following a career of 37 years in the Royal Engineers and the General Staff. He attended the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Hamburg, 1986-88, served as the chief planner in 1st (UK) Armoured Division in the First Gulf War and commanded an engineer regiment in the Balkans. Later career highlights included Chief Engineer of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps and General Officer Commanding of the British Army’s Support Command in Germany. He also taught strategy at the Royal College of Defence Studies. Following his retirement from active service, he served as a reservist 2011-2018, employed mainly as a military historian and senior mentor. He was a specialist military advisor to the UK’s House of Commons Defence Committee from 2012 until 2017. During this period he was also President of the British Commission for Military History. Since 2012 he has been a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, London. From 2016 to 2024 he served as Chairman of the Royal Engineers Historical Society, and has been an Honorary Vice President of the Western Front Association since 2018. His biography, Manstein: Hitler’s Greatest General published in 2010 was awarded as the best military biography of the year by the United States Society for Military History in 2012. As the British Army’s senior advisor for the First World War centennial commemorations, Mungo Melvin edited the Army’s Battlefield Guide to the Western Front of the First World War (2nd edition, 2015). His next major work, Sevastopol’s Wars: Crimea from Potemkin to Putin, was published in April 2017. Having co-written and edited the latest volume (XIII) of the Royal Engineers history (2000-2019), published in April 2024, he has several new literary projects underway. Mungo Melvin continues to advise NATO and UK forces.

6.30pm Drinks Reception (Drink included in ticket price), 7.00pm Lecture Commences

£11 non members | £9 Friends

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2 courses £25

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