World War II Day by Day

Huertgen, Germany • November 16, 1944

On September 19, 1944, elements of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First U.S. Army entered the 10‑mile-wide, 20‑mile-long Huert­gen Forest (Hürtgen­wald) south­east of Aachen. The ancient capital of Holy Roman emperor Charle­magne and a northern node on Germany’s “dragons’ teeth” defensive West­wall (known to the Allies as the 390‑mile-long Sieg­fried Line), Aachen was the first major city inside Germany targeted for capture by the Western Allies. It eventually fell on Octo­ber 21, 1944. From Aachen Hodges’ First Army made for the Huertgen Forest, which lay less than 10 miles away and stood in the First Army’s path to a Rhine River crossing south of the large cathedral city of Cologne. Tragically, it was in the thick, hilly forest that GIs experienced some of the fiercest close-combat fighting of the entire Euro­pean War. Indeed, the battle to push through the Huertgen Forest to the Rhine was the longest fought on German soil during World War II and was the longest single battle ever fought by the U.S. Army.

Initially, the goal of U.S. Army commanders was to pin down German forces in the area to keep them from rein­forcing their front lines further north during the Battle of Aachen. In a second phase the army wanted to advance to the Roer (Rur) River, which flows from Belgium into Germany and on to the Nether­lands. Of course, beyond the Roer was Hodge’s real objective, a bridge­head on the Rhine’s east bank. How­ever, little did Ameri­can com­man­ders know that the reason for the desperate German defense in the Huertgen Forest was to prevent a break­through just north of their staging area for the forth­coming Ardennes Offen­sive, better known to the Allies as the Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945).

On this date, November 16, 1944, Hodges moved the men and equip­ment of his First Army through the dense ever­green Huertgen Forest toward the banks of the Roer River. Over­head, U.S. and British war­planes flew in the war’s largest air support of ground troops. Unfor­tu­nately, Hodges’ grinding assault to reach the Rhine failed even to secure the Roer, dammed at two stra­te­gic loca­tions. The dams (lower right corner in map below) were even­tu­ally secured in Febru­ary 1945 after the Germans had destroyed the dams’ out­flow con­trol appa­ra­tus, flooding the Roer, and there­by delaying the Americans’ final push to the Rhine by a critical two weeks.

The casualty rate for every forested meter taken was mind-boggling and a need­less trag­e­dy. The First Army lost 25,000 out of nearly 100,000 men fighting in and near the forest. One infan­try divi­sion lost three com­man­ders in a single day. A rifle com­pany suffered more than 500 per­cent casual­ties after replace­ments were factored in. The short tenure of new com­pany and platoon leaders meant that some men never learned their leaders’ names. Local foresters provided German units with much of their intel­li­gence, which gave the under­strength enemy an advan­tage denied to the intru­ders. Felled trees blocked forest trails, which often were mined, booby-trapped, and led nowhere. The ridges above the forest tree line afforded the enemy good places to mount artil­lery and moni­tor activity at lower ele­va­tions. Although it limited visi­bility, the tangled forest pro­vided enemy snipers a safe venue from which to operate. Amer­i­can offi­cers tucked their field glasses inside their shirts to avoid being tar­geted. In other areas the Germans trimmed the lower branches of trees to provide better fields of fire for their machine guns

In villages such as Huertgen, which was taken on Novem­ber 28, fighting was often hand to hand and house to house, with GIs using rifles, machine guns, and grenades thrown through doors and windows. So chaotic and brutal was combat in the Huertgen Forest that many German officers said it exceeded that on the Eastern Front. In early Decem­ber, with Hodges’ men finally out of the forest yet exhausted by a remark­ably resil­ient enemy in the reck­less first phase of fighting, the Wehr­macht (German armed forces) prepared its Ardennes Offensive.

U.S. Thrust Into Huertgen Forest Bogs Down, Turns Hellish

Above: Map of the Huertgen Forest (Hürtgenwald) and surrounding villages. From Septem­ber 19, 1944, to Febru­ary 10, 1945, U.S. and German forces fought each other in the thickly wooded Huertgen Forest. The terrain was a 50‑sq.-mile (129.5‑sq.‑km) expanse of tall, dense pine­woods rising from steep rocky crags and tree­less ridges laced by plunging valleys and deep winding ravines and streams east of the Belgian border in today’s German state of North Rhine-West­phalia. Much too late did the abra­sive, con­ceited, often ill Hodges and his over-con­fi­dent First Army head­quarters truly appre­ci­ate the chal­lenges First Army sol­diers faced fighting in a fore­boding and dis­orienting environ­ment like the Huertgen Forest. The pro­longed forest-clearing cam­paign cost Hodges’ army at least 33,000 killed and wounded out of 120,000 men deployed. The 33,000 figure includes 9,000 friendly-fire and non­combat casual­ties among men suffering from hypo­thermia, frost­bite, pneu­monia, trench foot (aka immer­sion foot), self-inflicted wounds, and com­bat exhaus­tion (8,000 cases of “psycho­logical collapse”). The Germans suffered 28,000 com­bat and non­combat losses, of which 12,000 were fatali­ties. Many were killed by U.S. artil­lery or fighter-bombers before they reached the front lines. Mortar rounds caused the greatest pro­por­tion of battle casualties on both sides.

Left: This destroyed farmhouse on the main route through the Huertgen Forest served as shelter for a regi­mental com­mand post. The men of Maj. Gen. William G. Weaver’s 8th Infan­try Divi­sion, 121st Infan­try Regi­ment nick­named the farm­house the “Hürtgen Hotel” (see faded sign on wall). Photo taken January 8, 1945.

Right: A German 155mm heavy mortar crew firing in defense against a U.S. attack on Novem­ber 22, 1944, in the Huertgen Forest. German defenders fired mortars and artil­lery from posi­tions whose ranges had been calcu­lated in advance. Germans also used their 88mm guns to fire at Allied bombers en route to Rhine­land cities or to fire directly at Allied tanks or through forest tree­tops. Though Amer­i­can fire­power was greater (8 inch and 240mm), it was initi­ally limited by an ammu­nition short­age (fewer than four rounds per day). Both sides used their artil­lery to smash and shred the closely bunched trees, some as tall as tele­phone poles whose splinters, along with red-hot shell frag­ments, smashed down on men and inflicted heavy casualties on anyone caught in the open.

Left: A 1st Infantry Division half-track negotiates a muddy road in the Huertgen Forest. Rain turned forest roads into muddy rivers, making it nearly impos­sible for wheeled vehicles to get trac­tion. Roads, tracks, and fire­breaks were often mined, some­times three mines deep. Each platoon of light tanks required a squad of infantry and another squad of engi­neers to per­form mine removal. Both sides booby-trapped the narrow paths and forward posi­tions by laying trip-wires hidden in the churned-up earth or snow. For Amer­i­cans at this stage in the war in Europe, forest fighting was learned on the job, a risky busi­ness when com­bined with short­ages of ammu­nition, seasoned veterans, and good weather. Photo from February 15, 1945.

Right: Men of the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team trudge along a snowy track through the Huertgen Forest on a misty day in early February 1945. The men must have been confi­dent that the enemy had evacu­ated the area or at least had not zeroed in their mortars on this track, a tech­nique Germans com­monly employed in the other­wise impen­e­trable forest. The 517th RCT fought engage­ments in the Ardennes Forest (Decem­ber 16, 1944, to Janu­ary 25, 1945) followed on Febru­ary 3, 1945, by engage­ments in the Huertgen Forest, where it was mostly attached to the new 78th Infantry “Lightning” Division in Hodges’ U.S. First Army.

Battle of Huertgen Forest: Unrelenting Bloodbath in Woods Southeast of Aachen