STRIKE INTO NAZI HEARTLAND SLOWED AT AACHEN

Near Aachen on Franco-German Border • October 2, 1944

After a rapid overland drive through France following their Normandy break­out (July 25–31, 1945), the Western Allies approached the Siegfried Line, or West Wall, the exten­sive defen­sive net­work on Nazi Germany’s western border. The Battle of Aachen from Septem­ber 12 to Octo­ber 21, 1944, became one of the U.S. Army’s largest and toughest urban battles of World War II. The ancient and pictur­esque capital of Charle­magne’s Holy Roman Empire had been incor­porated into the Sieg­fried Line; the Allies hoped to cap­ture their first city on German soil quickly and advance into the Ruhr basin, Germany’s right-bank industrial heartland in today’s North Rhine-Westphalia.

On this gray and dismal morning, October 2, 1944, Maj. Gen. Leland S. Hobbs’s 30th Infantry Divi­sion left its line of departure for Aachen, 10 miles/16 kilometers to the west. Their advance was immediately met with fierce German resistance, requiring extensive use of flamethrowers to snuff out die-­hard German defenders as well as explosives to clear reinforced concrete pill­boxes. Progress was slow and costly despite the U.S. Ninth Air Force bombing and strafing enemy positions wave after wave augmented by divisional heavy artillery at point-blank range.

The task of capturing the city itself, mostly devoid of its civilian popu­la­tion, fell to the 26th Infan­try Regi­ment. Endowed with enor­mous sym­bolic impor­tance dating to the ninth cent­ury, Aachen fostered fana­tical resis­tance among its defenders. Cau­tiously Ameri­can infantry­men advanced into the city, supported by M4 Sherman tanks or M10 tank destroyers and other armored vehicles, towed 155 mm/­6.1 in. “Long Tom” howit­zers, Browning M1919 machine guns, bazoo­kas, flame­throwers, and other deadly hard­ware.

Aachen’s urban environment required a slow, deliberate sledge­hammer approach. Tank-infantry teams—i.e., an M4 Sherman supported by a platoon of infan­try­men fitted out with satchel charges—would blast open a building, infan­try would step through the gaping hole(s), climbing up and down stairs to attics and cellars and floors in between, and use grenades or flame­throwers to elim­i­nate any­one not surren­dering. This went on from building to building, block after shattered block. For overcoming hardened urban defenses like bunkers, the approach was known as “knock ’em all down.” A 90‑pound round fired by a “Long Tom” against a bunker wall resulted in defenders inside suffering mas­sive head­aches and bleeding from eyes, nose, and ears before they waved the white flag or were killed if they took flight. Smaller bunkers were taken out by grenades tossed through rifle slits in their walls.

The “meat grinder” aspect of the Battle of Aachen is perhaps best illus­trated in a com­par­i­son of num­bers: 100,000 attacking Allied sol­diers vs. 18,000 enemy defenders, of which 500 were police officers, 5,000 home militia (Volks­sturm), and much of the remainder Col. Wilck’s 246th Volks­grena­dier Infan­try Divi­sion. Many men in the 246th had less than 10 days infan­try training. Both adver­saries took heavy casual­ties: 7,000 of which 2,000 were KIAs on the Amer­i­can side, an esti­mated 5,100 dead and wounded on the German side just in Aachen itself. The high num­bers of German casual­ties and enemy taken pri­soner (5,600, of which nearly 3,500 were captured within the city) rela­tive to their num­ber at start of com­bat is poi­gnant and attests to the brutal nature of urban war­fare when the odds in man­power, equip­ment, and aircraft were overwhelmingly stacked in favor of the Allies.

Unfortunately, the 5½‑week battle for Aachen threw a mon­key wrench into the Allies’ time­table to cap­ture the Ruhr indus­trial com­plex and thus cripple the enemy’s war-making capa­bil­ity. And before that could happen there was the pesky matter of wresting con­trol of a series of Roer River dams behind the Huert­gen Forest, a short dis­tance south­west of Aachen, that stood in the Allies’ way to a Rhine River crossing and the Ruhr beyond. The 6‑month Battle of the Huert­gen Forest would turn out to be the longest single battle the U.S. Army ever fought.

Battle of Aachen: Urbanized Meat Grinder for U.S. and German Armies

Above: Map of U.S. encirclement of Aachen, the first impor­tant city on German soil to fall to the advancing Western Allies, who launched attacks from mul­tiple directions (see arrows). Aachen was one of the largest urban battles fought by U.S. forces in World War II. Though the battle for the city (Octo­ber 2–21, 1944) ended in Aachen’s capit­u­la­tion, the Germans’ tena­cious defense signif­i­cantly disrupted Allied plans to advance into Germany.

Left: The commander of an M4 Sherman tank looks through binoc­ulars from his turret hatch on the day before the city of Aachen fell. The tanks mounted an extra .50 cali­ber machine gun in front of the turret, use­ful in street fighting for sup­pressing fire from upper-story windows. In the dis­tance is an M10 tank destroyer, a lightly armored vehicle sporting a 3 in./­76.2 mm gun and a fully rotating, open-topped turret specifi­cally designed to take out enemy tanks. In 1 2‑day period (Octo­ber 9–10) the 30th Infan­try Divi­sion claimed 20 German tanks: 12 destroyed by 105 mm howitzers, 5 by supporting tanks and tank destroyers, and 3 by bazookas.

Right: American urban tank-infantry teams fire a powerful M12 155 mm/­6.1 in. Motor Carriage “Door Knocker” gun for heavy direct fire against fortified German posi­tions on Aachen’s streets in October 1944. These wea­pons were used to clear out German bunkers when tank fire proved ineffec­tive. With bitter expe­ri­ence as a teacher, GIs assumed every building, cellar, air-raid shelter, and sewer was occu­pied by hos­tile forces. Light artil­lery and mortar fire thus swept enemy streets ahead of advancing infan­try­men, who made pro­active use of demo­li­tion charges, flame­throwers handled by 2‑man teams, bazookas, and grenades. The Battle for Aachen was remem­bered by 1 soldier as a fight “from attic to attic and sewer to sewer.”

Left: Col. Gerhard Wilck (sitting in front pas­sen­ger seat, head bowed) and his head­quarters group after their surren­der. On the after­noon of Octo­ber 19, 1944, Wilck, who com­manded the 246th Volks­grenadier Infan­try Divi­sion, which had taken respon­si­bility for this sector of the Sieg­fried Line, issued a written order of the day: “The defenders of Aachen will pre­pare for their last battle. Con­stricted to the smallest pos­sible space, we shall fight to the last man, the last shell, the last bullet, in accor­dance with the Fuehrer’s orders. . . . I expect each and every defender of the ven­er­able Imperial City of Aachen to do his duty to the end, in fulfill­ment of our Oath to the Flag. . . . Long live the Fuehrer and our beloved Father­land!” Fanat­i­cal exhor­ta­tions like this one did little to fore­stall the city’s tragic end. On Octo­ber 19 and 20 resis­tance swiftly collapsed inside and out­side Aachen. Their bags already packed and ready to go, Col. Wilck and his staff surren­dered to the Amer­i­cans on Octo­ber 21, 1944, the colonel ceremonially handing over his sidearm to his captors.

Right: The endless procession of German pri­soners captured in the fall of Aachen march through ruined streets into cap­tivity. Civil­ians who wit­nessed their homes reduced to rubble by advancing Amer­i­cans and well-entrenched German defenders heaped abuse on their exhausted country­men as they passed by, causing Amer­i­can soldiers to occa­sionally separate the 2 groups. Eighty-five per­cent of Aachen was destroyed when captured. “The city is as dead as a Roman ruin,” wrote a U.S. observer, “but unlike a ruin it has none of the grace of gradual decay. . . . Burst sewers, broken gas mains and dead animals have raised an almost over­powering smell in many parts of the city. The streets are paved with shattered glass; tele­phone, electric light and trolley cables are dangling and netted together every­where, and in many places wrecked cars, trucks, armored vehicles and guns litter the streets.”

Contemporary Newsreel Account of Battle for Aachen, October 1944