The Battle of Hürtgen Forest, known in Germany as Schlacht in Hürtgenwald, is
the most extended single Battle the US Army has ever fought.
It was composed of a series of ambushes, skirmishes, and offensives in the Hürtgen
Forest on the Belgian-German border between September 19 and December 16 of 1944.
The US's goal was to keep the Germans busy from reinforcing the units fighting in the Battle of
Aachen. Additionally, American troops were tasked with capturing Schmidt and Monschau,
paving the way for venturing into the heartland.
American author Ernest Hemingway, a reporter for a magazine at the time,
and friend of Col. Lanham, an American officer who took part in the clash,
described the Battle as "Passchendaele with tree bursts."
As a WW1 veteran himself, he recalled the grim encounter of 1917 in which British and Canadian
forces suffered more than 300,000 casualties in gaining a little more than a five-mile salient.
In Hürtgen Forest, the Americans suffered nearly the same fate.
Surrounded by overgrown darkness and attacked by the cold weather,
they paid with blood every inch of ground they took from the last German defenders of the Reich.
Many Allied soldiers believed the Battle was useless because it had no clear strategic purpose
from the very beginning. It was a failure that cost more than 30,000 unnecessary lives in the US.
The admirable German resistance shown during the fierce encounters was a prelude of
what was to come with every future Battle the Americans would face as they approached Berlin.
American GIs referred to the three months of continuous combat
as the Green Hell that almost broke US troops' morale on the Western Front.
WW2 Nears an End
After the successful landings in Normandy and Southern France in the Summer of 1944, the Allied
advance began to slow down as they ventured further West towards the heart of Germany.
For every inch the American forces took, German resistance increased significantly to the point
that everyday movements became even slower and almost imperceptible to those on the ground.
German citizens, caught in the struggle of surrendering to the Russians or the Americans,
or fighting to the last man, suffered from the daily Allied
bombardments of American B-17 Flying Fortresses.
In September of 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower recapped his plan for winning the war.
One day he cabled American Officers (QUOTE): "The enemy has continued to reinforce his
forces in the West. Present indications are that he intends to make the strongest
possible stand on the West Wall, in the hope of preventing the war spreading to German soil."
The West Wall was the Siegfried Line,
a heavily fortified German position at the border with France and Belgium.
Eisenhower devised that the final Battle before the liberation of
Europe would unfold in three phases that he classified in a series of battles.
Those would be the approach to the Rhine river, the seizure of bridgeheads over the river,
and one last advance that would lead straight into the heart of Deutschland.
He established that Seven Allied armies would cross the Rhine from north to south,
including the US Ninth, First, Third, and Seventh,
with the support of French First, Canadian First, and the British Second armies.
The crucial objective was to neutralize the German war machine by subduing the industrial
centers in the Ruhr and the Saar regions in the north and center of the Reich's territories.
Once that was clear, Berlin was the ultimate target…
In early October 1944, the US First Infantry Division arrived at Aachen
to support the XIX and VII Corps encircling the city's German garrison.
On October 22, after a ferocious but futile resistance,
German commander Oberst Gerhard Wilck surrendered and gave way to the Allied forces.
The Allied Command concluded that it was necessary to capture the Rur Dam to prevent
the Germans from flooding the surrounding areas where US units would be operating.
American commanders Collins, Bradley, and Hodges,
agreed that the quickest and best route to the dam was straight through the Hürtgen forest…
Historian Russell F. Weigley would later write (QUOTE): "The most likely way to make
the Hürtgen a menace to the American Army was to send American troops attacking into its depths."
And that was precisely what was about to happen.
A Hostile Environment
Since August 1944, shortly after the Southern Invasion of France concluded,
the Allied supply line had worsened, which often resulted in shortages of food, ammunition,
and winter clothing for the troops that would fight during the last months of the year.
Logistic problems slowed military operations until they could keep up
with the supplies that Allied units required at the front.
Added to that, the US soldiers quickly discovered that they were not just
fighting against the tenacious German defenders and their fighting spirit,
but the environment itself of the Teutonic wilds.
In the early winter of 1944, when the US began operations near Germany, the weather was cloudy,
wet, and cold, with rain and snow. At Hürtgen Forest, things were no better. In the outskirts
of cities, the roads and villages in the forests were naturally protected by the terrain.
Trees were numerous and densely packed, making air support unavailable due to the high canopy
and the poor visibility provoked by the fog and grey skies.
Some GIs said that there were deep ravines where even at midday, sunlight barely penetrated,
leaving entire areas almost pitch dark.
An unnamed US officer wrote (QUOTE): "I never saw a wood so thick with trees as the Hürtgen.
It turned out to be the worst place of any."
On the ground, armor and other vehicles could barely move through roads because of the
thickened trees and conifers, rendering tanks almost useless for the Offensive.
The Allied military advantage in armor
and manpower was significantly slowed and diminished because of the terrain.
Small groups of defenders could hold out against a superior force without effort.
Four regions formed the Hürtgen forest, 11 miles long and 5 miles wide in all.
Infiltration and flanking tactics were simple maneuvers employed by
both armies that often resulted in little terrain gain since the Offensive began.
Misinterpreting German topography proved to be a major error. Joe Collins, VII Corps commanding
officer, would later acknowledge the mistake (QUOTE): "We had not studied that particular
part of the zone. That was an intelligence failure, a real combat intelligence failure."
To make matters worse, the German defenders fortified the forest with bunkers, pillboxes,
MG nests, mines, tripwires, and barbed wire, making the US advance particularly painful.
The Meat-Grinder
The American forces numbered approximately 120,000 able men
led by Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges. In comparison, the German troops were initially
composed of barely 5,000 men and 2,000 in reserve under Generalleutnant Hans Schmidt's command.
Reinforcements would bring that total number up closer to 80,000.
More than half of the German units were integrated with underage boys and old
men no longer fit for combat. Two companies of Düren policemen were known by the German
garrison as the "family fathers" because their youngest were in their early 40s.
The First Phase of the Offensive began on September 14, 1944,
with the capture of Schevenhütte. American forces of the 47th Infantry Regiment
tasted for the first time the German will to hold them off for as long as possible.
On November 7, the First Phase ended with an unofficial ceasefire that a
German regimental doctor, Hauptmann Günter Stüttgen, negotiated with the US forces.
The Americans failed to retain control of the positions at Kall Valley.
It would not be until February 1945 when US forces seized control of the Kall Trail and Schmidt.
Operation Queen was part of the Second Phase. The objective was
to capture the northern section of the forest and move to the south of Duren.
On November 16, the 22nd Infantry Regiment
soldiers began climbing a ridge toward the Roer River plain.
The men were about to start 18 days of hell in what many of them would call the meat-grinder.
Ernest Hemingway, who at the time lived in a house near the village
of Vicht when he worked Collier's magazine, said that it would (QUOTE):
"Save everybody a lot of trouble if they just shot them as soon as they got out of the trucks."
The Double Deuce regiment was one of the many units that first landed in
Normandy in June of 1944 and made it into Europe's heart.
Commanded by Hemingway's friend, Colonel Charles Lanham, the unit was famous for its motto
"Deeds, Not Words." They fought since the beginning of Phase 1, but by November 20,
1944, the unit suffered severe casualties. The regiment lost more than 50% of its men.
It cost the regiment 3,000 casualties to advance a little more than 6,000 yards in 20 days.
Collins of the VII Corps said (QUOTE): "We had to go into the forest to secure our right flank.
Nobody was enthusiastic about fighting there, but what was the alternative?…If
we had turned loose of the Hürtgen and let the Germans roam there, they could have hit my flank."
It is estimated that one or two US infantrymen fell for every two yards gained.
The casualty rate of the regiment was a stunning 80 percent of its strength of 3,250 men.
Units from other divisions and regiments were mauled in the campaign.
The German garrison was firmly dug in and was tough to beat.
The Aftermath
The initial Offensive ended in failure. The Germans were victorious in the defense.
When the campaign ended in December 1944, the US suffered 33,000 casualties.
German losses were almost the same.
In February 1945, almost six months after the Offensive began,
the US would finally capture the Hürtgen Forest.
A memorial sculpture on Kall Bridge today recalls the ceasefire of November 1944.
It was created by Michael Pohlmann, who said that the Offensive was (QUOTE):
"A controversial battle with no true strategic purpose that ended
up making it to the history books like the US Army's longest battle ever fought yet."