In late 1944, during the wake of the Allied forces' successful D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, it seemed as if the Second World War was all ... in the Ardennes Forest, a 75-mile stretch ...

But last week the Battle for France, also an important sector of the Battle for Europe, was well on the way to being lost. Arthur Koestler, brilliant novelist (Darkness at Noon) and acute observer ...

Allied with France and Britain ... was surrounded by Germans and stuck in a forest with no means of escape. The Russians disintegrated and were taken prisoner by the thousands.