79 years ago today in 1944, a bloody clash of arms that was set to become the longest single battle:
ever fought by the U.S army and the longest battle of the war fought on German soil began as American troops entered the jaws of the Hürtgen Forest.
Though largely overshadowed due to the wider coverage given to the subsequent Battle of the Bulge, the battle at Hürtgen was to be one of the fiercest fought on the Western Front with many soldiers coming to call it the ‘Death Factory’ or ‘Meat Grinder’ of the U.S army (U.S troops pictured).
In the aftermath of the D-Day landings, Allied forces had swept over much of France and the Low Countries in a seemingly unstoppable tide.
Within a couple of months, they were faced with the western frontier of the Reich itself.
Eager to keep the momentum going and to defeat the enemy as swiftly as possible, the Americans chose to cross the Rhine and invade Germany.
The ancient medieval city of Aachen near the Belgian border came under siege. U.S commanders however had severely underestimated the enemy, believing that after their retreat following the Normandy Landings the German soldier would be psychologically exhausted and would easily yield to them. The contrary however would prove to be the case.
The German garrison at Aachen under Oberst Gerhard Wilck proved to be a tougher nut to crack than expected. All along the line moreover Bradley and Hodges’ soldiers were encountering especially stiff resistance from the enemy.
The exact motives which led to the attack on the Hürtgenwald have remained the subject of debate amongst military historians, but it has generally been surmised that Bradley, Hodges and Collins feared on the one hand that the Germans might use the Rur dam to release water that would swamp their forces.
The best way to take hold of the dam was to head through the forest. On the other hand, they may have hoped that cutting through the forest and seizing the town of Schmidt would serve as an outflanking manoeuvre to prevent any further reinforcement of the garrison in Aachen or anywhere else along the German frontier.
Others still have claimed that the decision to attack the forest was nothing short of a blunder.
A military blunder was certainly what it appeared to be to the Wehrmacht. General Walter Model and his comrade could hardly believe his luck.
Known as ‘The Führer’s Fireman’, Model was a genius of defensive warfare who had proved his worth many times over on the Eastern Front at holding the line against the Soviet onslaught.
In the densely wooded terrain of the Hürtgenwald, the Americans’ overwhelming advantage in numbers and air superiority would count for nothing, the trees concealing enemy positions from the air and hampering the use of tanks and vehicles.
The forest had been prepared well in advance as part of the Siegfried Line with many concrete bunkers, blockhouses and minefields straddling the woody domain, their presence concealed with mud and snow.
The forest was also laced with hidden lines of barbed wire and various booby traps.
The cover afforded by the conifers moreover meant that it was especially difficult to use any artillery or mortars.
The Wehrmacht could make excellent use of the terrain to outflank and infiltrate the enemy, cropping up behind their lines, or holding out until the Americans had passed to attack them suddenly from the rear.
With the weather taking a turn for the worst, the air growing cold and wet, the battlefield became an undulating morass of mud that was almost impossible to traverse and even harder to provide supplies to or get wounded back out.
In short, the Germans had created a nightmarish death trap for the Americans.
In terms of the forces facing one another, both the Americans and the Germans were relying on green recruits.
The Americans had lost many men during the battles that had followed Normandy and were now sending well-trained but ultimately unexperienced warriors into the meat grinder.
Having lost so many men in Russia, the Germans too were relying at this stage on boys and old men to plug the gaps in their greatly diminished ranks.
A crucial difference though was that unlike the Americans, the Germans had the asset of crack veterans that had years of fighting experience and commanders who were well accustomed to the necessities of fighting in winter and in forested terrain.
After the bombardments of the U.S air force and the advances of the Sherman tanks came to nothing, the infantry was sent in to clear the forest.
No sooner had they entered than they began suffering especially heavy casualties. American soldiers had been trained to fall flat on the ground whenever they heard an incoming artillery shell.
In the Hürtgenwald however every shell and mortar would explode prematurely after bouncing off the tree canopy, leading to a showering of burning hot shrapnel and splinters of shattered wood over the hapless soldiers. Eventually they realised that they had a better chance of preserving themselves if they hugged the trees.
After the first day alone, the 60th Infantry Regiment’s 2nd Battalion was reduced to a mere third of its strength, having been cut to pieces by the Germans. For every inch of ground gained the Americans were made to pay with their blood as they were mercilessly cut down, harassed, and terrorised by the Germans.
After a month of fighting they had gained 3,000 yards at the cost of 4,500 men. Fresh units were sent in to relieve the battered survivors and to take the Germans on from a different angle only to find themselves with neither air or armoured support.
As October turned to November moreover, the weather turned increasingly grim and impeded the American advances even more.
Though American forces eventually managed to cross the Kall Valley, cut the German supply route to Monschau and capture the objective point of Schmidt, their own supply lines were still highly limited by the poor terrain and lack of roads.
Before long the 116th Panzer division had rumbled onto the scene and blasted the Americans out of Schmidt, hurling them backwards until they were met with a small number of Sherman tanks who managed to destroy five Panzer IV’s.
By the second week of November the number of American wounded was in the thousands and a German doctor brokered a ceasefire to tend to the injured and mutilated souls.
During this ceasefire many American soldiers’ lives were saved by German medics before they were sent back across the dividing line to fight and kill one another again.
While the wounded were being tended to the American warlords drew up plans for a fresh offensive that would take them to the Rur river.
Known as Operation Queen, the Americans deemed tanks to be essential this time and engineers began demolishing the forest to make routes for the armoured juggernauts. Though objectives were taken, the progress once again was slow and painful as the Germans put up a hard fight at every turn.
Only with fresh bullet-fodder and elite units such as the Rangers was any ground gained and even then the enemy continued to make counterattacks for every morsel of German soil lost. By December the battle was over and the Battle of the Bulge was set to begin.
On the whole the battle was a defensive victory for the Germans who incurred enormous casualties on the Americans. Between thirty-three and fifty-five thousand Americans were lost in the battle, a quarter of them being lost not in combat but to diseases, frost-bite, trauma or accidents.
The Germans meanwhile lost about 28,000 men and though the cost had been lower for them, in the long run they needed their men more than the Americans did, a fact which was clearly to be lost on them when they launched the ill-fated Battle of the Bulge.
The forest of Hürtgen was not taken and cleared until the middle of February 1945.
