In May of 1940, the brilliant German tank commander Heinz Guderian emerged with lightning speed from the so-called impenetrable Ardennes forest in South Belgium and Luxembourg, heading for the Meuse River and the fall of France. Incongruously, four year later as the Allied armies took a breather near the Rhine River and the heart of Germany, American GIs held a front of eighty miles with only four divisions because Eisenhower's high command considered the Ardennes forest "impenetrable." Adolf Hitler and his staff couldn't believe their good luck and took full advantage of the Allied blunder,