Who are the participants in the battle of the bulge?

Answer 1

The majority of the Allied Forces in the battle were United States Armed Forces (U.S. Army and its Air-Force, along with U.S. Marines.

They were fighting the German Army (Wehrmacht) & Air Force (Luftwaffe), as well as several SS Panzer & Waffen SS divisions. The battle, which the Germans initiated as a last-ditch attempt or "hail-mary" pass to turn the war back in their favor: it was an intricately detailed plan to "divide & conquer" Allied Forces at their weakest point on the Front (the Ardennes Forest) in the dead cold of winter. The German tactical & strategic ingenuity brilliantly enabled them to mobilize their armies & logistics without the Allies catching wind of such substantial troop/vehicle/hardware movement. In fact, the Germans moved hundreds of Panzer tanks into the Ardennes without alerting Allied Intelligence - done in single file, tank behind tank, over narrow roads at slow pace...in the arena of tank warfare, these were conditions you never wanted to find your armored divisions in.

And the Germans nearly pulled-off a victory in that battle, nearly bursting that "bulge" created in the western front by their surprise offensive into a dagger that would've sliced the Allied Front in two all the way to the Atlantic coast - marooning Montgomery & the British to the north, & U.S. General Patton & his 3rd Army to the south. What prevented it from succeeding was largely the 101st Airborne near Bastogne, which held the line at all cost. After the weather cleared, Pattons's Third army was able to move in, and always claimed they "rescued" the 101st Airborne. The 101st, for their part, insist they didn't need rescuing, they were merely relieved (and way overdue to be relieved).