Battle of the Bulge Trivia
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50 free Battle of the Bulge trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Battle of the Bulge — Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein to the Germans, the Ardennes Counteroffensive to Allied planners — ran from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945 and was the largest and bloodiest single battle the United States fought in the Second World War. Hitler's plan was to punch through a thinly held American rest sector in fog and snow, cross the Meuse in four days, seize Antwerp and split the Allies into a negotiated peace. Fuel, roads, weather and stubborn GIs on Elsenborn Ridge and at Bastogne made sure it never got close. This quiz covers the planning at the Adlerhorst, the three German armies and their commanders, Kampfgruppe Peiper and the Malmedy massacre, the 18-man platoon at Lanzerath, Skorzeny's English-speaking commandos, the siege of Bastogne and McAuliffe's one-word reply, Patton's 48-hour turn, Montgomery taking over two US armies, the furthest German reach at Foy-Notre-Dame, Operation Bodenplatte, and the casualty figures on both sides. There is also the V-2 that hit an Antwerp cinema and Churchill's verdict on the 'greatest American battle of the war'. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a history quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was the German codename for the December 1944 Ardennes offensive?
Wacht am Rhein
Wacht am Rhein, 'Watch on the Rhine', was a cover name taken from a patriotic hymn, chosen so that anyone who heard it would picture a defence of the river, not an attack.
Q 02The Battle of the Bulge was timed for bad weather to cancel which Allied advantage?
Air power
Air power. The attack opened on 16 December 1944 under thick overcast and it worked at first: only when the skies cleared on 23 December could fighter-bombers start wrecking German columns and supply lines.
Q 03Which future novelist was captured in the Battle of the Bulge while serving as a scout with the US 106th Division?
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut. Sent to Dresden as a prisoner, he survived the firebombing of the city in the meat locker of a slaughterhouse, the experience he later turned into Slaughterhouse-Five.
Q 04Why was the American line in the Ardennes so thin?
It seemed a quiet sector
It seemed a quiet sector. The Americans used the wooded Ardennes to rest worn-out divisions and break in new ones, so the surprise attack fell on the weakest stretch of the whole Allied line.
Q 05Which miniseries has an episode titled 'Bastogne' about the paratroopers of Easy Company?
Band of Brothers
Band of Brothers. In the episode the company holds a line in the forest outside the town while fending off frostbite, hunger and German shelling.
Q 06Whose Third Army reached Bastogne from the south on 26 December, ending the siege?
George S. Patton
George S. Patton. He turned his army north in days, and the first tanks into Bastogne were led by Creighton Abrams, the officer the M1 Abrams tank was later named after.
Q 07Roughly how many men did Germany commit to the Battle of the Bulge?
About 300,000
About 300,000. Counts run from some 200,000 in the first wave to over 400,000 in all, many in new divisions scraped together from sailors, airmen and civilians swept up in a last call-up.
Q 08Besides Belgium, the Battle of the Bulge was fought across the north of which small country?
Luxembourg
Luxembourg. Freed only that September, its northern towns fell back under German occupation for weeks; at Clervaux about a hundred Americans held the castle until shellfire set it ablaze.
Q 09Which Normandy port, captured in June 1944 with its harbour wrecked, was the first big port the Allies took in France?
Cherbourg
Cherbourg. Its German garrison had mined and wrecked the docks so thoroughly that repairs took months, one reason the Allied armies were still short of supplies when they reached the German border.
Q 10What was the nickname of the truck convoys that supplied the Allied armies racing across France in 1944?
Red Ball Express
Red Ball Express. The name came from the red dots that marked priority freight on American railroads, and its trucks ran in a loop on one-way roads closed to all other traffic.
Q 11Hitler first told his generals of an Ardennes counter-attack in September 1944 at which headquarters, bombed by plotters two months earlier?
Wolf's Lair
Wolf's Lair. On 16 September 1944 Hitler cut into a routine briefing at this East Prussian base to announce he would strike back out of the Ardennes, with Antwerp as the goal.
Q 12Which field marshal led Army Group B into the Battle of the Bulge?
Walter Model
Walter Model. He thought Antwerp far beyond his means and pressed a 'small solution' aimed only at the Allied armies east of the Meuse, but Hitler overruled him.
Q 13What did the 'bulge' in the name Battle of the Bulge describe?
A wedge pushed into the Allied line
Q 21Which secret weapon did American gunners first turn on German ground troops in the Battle of the Bulge?
Proximity fuse
Proximity fuse. A closely guarded secret, it set off a shell in the air just above its target with no need for a direct hit, so troops caught in the open had no cover from the bursts.
Q 22How did the Battle of the Bulge open?
Artillery barrage
Artillery barrage. Guns and rocket launchers opened up at 5:30 am, and the surprise was so complete that some American outposts first took the noise for their own side firing.
Q 23Which weapon killed 567 people in an Antwerp cinema on the Battle of the Bulge's first day?
V-2 rocket
A wedge pushed into the Allied line. Newspaper maps showed the front sagging westward, and the reporters' nickname beat the Army's official title, the Ardennes Counteroffensive.
Q 14Which SS general led the Sixth Panzer Army, given the lead role and the shortest route to Antwerp?
Sepp Dietrich
Sepp Dietrich. Once Hitler's chauffeur and bodyguard, he owed the main role to loyalty more than skill: after the July bomb plot Hitler trusted the SS above his army generals.
Q 15Allied newspapers named the Battle of the Bulge offensive after which German commander, though Hitler had planned it?
Gerd von Rundstedt
Gerd von Rundstedt. The 'Rundstedt Offensive' was Hitler's own design; the old field marshal, commander in the West, was not told of it at first and thought it far too ambitious.
Q 16The German plan for the Battle of the Bulge counted on capturing which American supplies along the way?
Fuel
Fuel. They got very little: the spearhead never reached the great American dumps near Stavelot, which were evacuated or burned as its tanks drew close.
Q 17Why did Allied codebreakers get so little warning of the Battle of the Bulge?
Radio silence
Radio silence. Back on home soil, German orders could go by courier and telephone wire instead of over the air, leaving the codebreakers little to intercept.
Q 18During the Bulge's spy scare, which American general had to prove his identity to sentries by naming the capital of Illinois?
Omar Bradley
Omar Bradley. Stopped three times by guards hunting Germans in American uniform, he also had to place the guard on a football line of scrimmage and name the husband of the film star Betty Grable.
Q 19Which SS commando led English-speaking Germans in American uniforms behind the lines in the Battle of the Bulge?
Otto Skorzeny
Otto Skorzeny. Already known for freeing Mussolini, he sent out jeep teams dressed as GIs; only a handful got through, but the scare they started put checkpoints across the whole Allied rear.
Q 20Operation Stösser, launched on the first night of the Battle of the Bulge, was what kind of mission?
Paratroop drop
Paratroop drop. The night jump scattered Colonel von der Heydte's men so widely that only a few hundred ever assembled, too few to hold their crossroads.
V-2 rocket. It came down on the cinema roof in mid-afternoon; 296 of the dead were Allied soldiers, and it took rescuers about a week to dig through the rubble.
Q 24In the Battle of the Bulge, which ridge held by the 2nd and 99th Divisions blocked the Germans' best roads west?
Elsenborn Ridge
Elsenborn Ridge. The Germans never took it, so the SS spearhead meant to lead the whole offensive was squeezed onto poorer roads to the south and fell far behind its timetable.
Q 25Which 70-ton German tank rode with Kampfgruppe Peiper in the Battle of the Bulge?
Tiger II
Tiger II. For all the dread the 'King Tiger' inspired, Peiper kept his out of the lead: lighter Panthers and Panzer IVs made the dash while the heavy tanks were fed in behind.
Q 26Which American tank, the mainstay of US armoured units in the Battle of the Bulge, was outgunned by the German Panther?
M4 Sherman
M4 Sherman. It had the edge over the older Panzer IV, but against a Panther it usually won only when numbers let a crew work round for a shot at the flank or rear.
Q 27SS troops shot 84 American prisoners at the Baugnez crossroads in a massacre named after which nearby town?
Malmedy
Malmedy. A few men feigned death and escaped to American lines, so word of the killings spread almost at once and enraged the troops fighting in the sector.
Q 28Who were the Wereth 11, murdered by SS troops on the second day of the Battle of the Bulge?
Black American soldiers
Black American soldiers. The eleven artillerymen, cut off in the retreat, were taken in and fed by a farmer, Mathias Langer; it is believed a neighbour then told an SS patrol where they were.
Q 29American troops in the Battle of the Bulge improvised snow camouflage from what, supplied by Belgian villagers?
Bed sheets
Bed sheets. The Germans came in white snow capes with white-painted panzers; the Americans answered by draping Belgian linen over men and vehicles, a gift recorded on the walls of the Mardasson Memorial.
Q 30What forced Kampfgruppe Peiper off its planned route west on 18 December 1944?
Blown bridges
Blown bridges. American engineers wrecked the crossings at Trois-Ponts as the lead tanks arrived, turning the column north into the valley where it was later trapped; in 1940 German armour had met only slight resistance here.