Last week we got word that Frank Tangherlini, who lives in San Diego, was visiting family in Wellfleet. He’s 101 — one of the few remaining U.S. Army veterans who survived the siege of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge, the deadliest campaign of World War II for America.
The Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944 had pushed the Germans back to the Ardennes forest in Belgium. But by December, the advance had stalled, the weather was bitterly cold, and the exhausted troops were stretched out over a 600-mile front. The Germans launched a major counteroffensive designed to punch through the lines and split the Allied forces. The attack caught the American command by surprise, and the Germans made fast progress, creating the “bulge” in the front that gave the battle its name.
On Dec. 22, 1944, strategically critical Bastogne was surrounded, and the Germans sent Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, in command of the 101st Airborne Division, an ultimatum: “There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town.” This elicited McAuliffe’s famous reply: “NUTS!”
The beleaguered soldiers held out and were reinforced by the arrival of the Third Army on Dec. 26. By Jan. 25, 1945, the Germans had been pushed all the way back, and the tide of the war had turned. But the cost was enormous: 19,000 American soldiers died, and tens of thousands more were wounded or captured.
Those who fought the Nazis 80 years ago understood why they were fighting, and if there was any doubt, the U.S. War Dept. published pamphlets that explained the meaning of fascism. They called it “government by the few and for the few.” Fascists, our soldiers read, “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate.”
One has to wonder what U.S. soldiers in 2025 understand when they are deployed to Los Angeles and are told by the president that peaceful protesters are “invaders.” What do they think when he makes a political speech at Fort Bragg and urges them to ridicule reporters while a pop-up shop on the base sells MAGA-branded clothing and faux Trump credit cards labeled “White Privilege”? Do they know, like the heroes of Bastogne knew, that soldiers swear allegiance to democracy and the Constitution, not to one political party or a single strongman?
The War Dept.’s teaching on fascism continued: “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”
Frank Tangherlini hoped his war would lead to disarmament. “I’m disappointed with the way things have developed,” he tells reporter Tyler Jager, considering the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. “They’re killing everyone,” he says. “If we cooperate, think what we could do.”
