Eisenhower was unable to muster such an advance, however, as a crisis brewed far behind the front lines. The swiftness of the Allied march had overstretched already-tenuous supply lines, hindering the flow of fuel and other stores to armies deployed hundreds of miles from coastal delivery points. The Allies faced other challenges as well as they neared the German border, beginning with the West Wall, known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line. The layered defensive network along Germany’s western border was a relic of the 1930s, but as German armies fled France, 200,000 laborers were put to work fortifying it, adding concrete bunkers, gun pits, minefields, tank traps, and other assorted obstacles.
Miles behind the West Wall was an even more daunting barrier – the Rhine River. Slicing across western Germany, the long, meandering waterway stretched from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea, widening to a quarter mile across. Stout bridges spanned the river, capable of supporting the heavy armor and towed artillery of an invading army, but German engineers were already at work sabotaging each one. Eisenhower envisioned his forces battling past the West Wall defenses and driving to the banks of the Rhine. They would then pause for a massive buildup as his own engineers assembled pontoon bridges and other temporary crossings.
The first American troops reached German soil in September, but early progress was short-lived, as one of Eisenhower’s premier armies was drawn into a slugfest that would stretch for more than three months. It became one of the bloodiest episodes of the war.
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Allied forces approaching Germany’s western frontier had never been stronger. American, British, Canadian, and French armies were swelling in size, and each brandished an array of firepower unimaginable just two years earlier. The M4 Sherman tank remained a workhorse, and though it was outgunned by heavier German Panther and Tiger tanks, American assembly lines turned out the Shermans in far greater quantities. As for air power, the Germans were still producing high-quality aircraft, but with so few skilled pilots remaining, the skies had largely been ceded to Allied air forces, teeming with four-engine heavy bombers and the most versatile, game-changing aircraft of the war, the P-51 Mustang.
Despite such power and modernity, the great mass of troops and tanks that swept across the French countryside in August slowed to a halt in September, starved of fuel, ammunition, and other provisions. Thousands of tons of supplies arrived each day in coastal France, but rail networks remained in disarray after months of Allied bombings intended to disrupt German troop movements. Around-the-clock truck convoys proved slow and cumbersome and were often delayed by bottlenecks that jammed key roads. The early September capture of Antwerp, a deep-water Belgian port close to Allied forces battling in the north, was expected to provide substantial relief, but the Germans maintained control of the 60-mile estuary connecting the harbor to the sea, leaving the port inoperable until November.
As dwindling stocks of fuel and ammunition stalled both the US Third Army, locked into a brawl with a stubborn lot of Germans in Lorraine, and the US First Army, fighting further north, the Germans took advantage, reorganizing and fortifying their defensive lines with their own limited resources.
Unable to carry out his broad advance, Eisenhower made a fateful decision that September, approving a bold gambit by the notoriously risk-averse Montgomery. The plan, codenamed Market-Garden, was to airlift 35,000 British, American, and Polish troops behind German lines in Holland, where they would seize a series of bridges leading to Germany. British armor would smash through the German front along the Dutch-Belgian border, link up with the paratroopers, and eventually establish a bridgehead across the Rhine, circumventing the teeth of the West Wall defenses. Allied forces would then pour into the Ruhr Valley, Germany’s industrial heartland, shutting down armaments production and hastening the end of the war.
It was a bold, audacious plan, but the operation was doomed from the start. Poor planning, weather delays, and several strokes of misfortune—the paratroopers landed in the midst of recuperating SS Panzer forces—led to the near annihilation of an entire British airborne division. Much territory in Holland was seized, but Montgomery’s forces fell short in the end of crossing into Germany. The news was no better in the south, where the Third Army had been badly bloodied by German opposition along the Moselle River and in the fortress city of Metz.
Amid the struggles of Montgomery and Patton, Lieutenant General Courtney H. Hodges forged his own path to Germany in the center. His First Army numbered some 250,000 men, and many were veterans of the North Africa and Normandy campaigns. Their march to the West Wall, spearheaded by the infantry and armored divisions of the VII Corps, had to pass through a narrow corridor bracketed on the left by the German city of Aachen and on the right by the Huertgen Forest, a dense patch of woods stretching across fifty square miles. As the 3rd Armored Division led the way toward the West Wall, its flanks were protected by two infantry divisions, with the 1st Division wheeling toward Aachen, and the 9th Division ordered into the Huertgen, where German forces awaited.
The Huertgen in September
Lead elements of the 9th Division moving into the Huertgen Forest encountered only light resistance at first, allowing one regiment to make substantial early progress. Two other regiments attempted to seize a large clearing atop a high ridgeline, but German defenses there were more formidable and blocked the Americans from further advancing. Alarming numbers fell before the German guns, and when the division pivoted towards the town of Schmidt, sitting astride a critical crossroads deep in the forest, casualties soared again. In the early weeks of fighting, the 9th Division tallied more than 4,500 casualties while gaining only a few thousand yards.
It mattered little that the 9th Division held every material advantage. American edges in troop strength, armor, and mobility were nullified by the density of trees and scarcity of quality roads, and persistent rain and fog grounded all air support. The Germans had also cleverly designed their defenses, fully meshing their fortifications with the trees and foliage, concealing snipers, machine-gun nests, landmines, and other death traps. Each attempt by the 9th Division men to advance through the woods was repulsed by withering machine-gun and artillery fire from an entrenched enemy largely unseen.
It all became a cauldron of death and despair. The bleak surroundings were dark and forbidding, with endless rows of thick fir trees up to 100 feet high allowing little sun and moonlight to reach ground level. Steep ridges, deep gorges, and narrow foot trails carved into the forest precluded tank support, as did fallen trees stacked by the Germans across the few roads and logging trails. When engineers attempted to clear the roadblocks, the Germans lobbed artillery and motor shells at the exposed men.
Ordered to push deeper into the Huertgen, it became an exasperating, dispiriting exercise for the Americans. Wet and shivering in their lightweight uniforms, the men were frequently blocked by pockets of Germans ensconced in concrete pillboxes and other strongpoints covered in logs and protected from artillery fire. When the 9th Division men attempted to dig their own foxholes and entrenchments, German shells crashed into treetops above, sending steel shrapnel, tree limbs, and sharpened splinters raining down. Endless landmines and booby-traps encased in mud added to the horrors.
The Americans had greater numbers, but with the Germans shrewdly using the terrain to their advantage, and handfuls of defenders thwarting entire companies and battalions from advancing, there was little hope the 9th Division would achieve its objectives.
Bloody Aachen
There was better news on the First Army’s other flank, where the 1st Division had reached the outskirts of Aachen, the ancient German city cherished by the Nazis for its historical importance. Aachen was the birthplace of Charlemagne, the first Roman emperor, who once led a Holy Roman Empire that lasted hundreds of years – a period Hitler considered the “First Reich.” The Allies had prioritized its capture, hoping its loss would be a demoralizing blow to German soldiers and citizens alike.
After US forces surrounded Aachen in early October, surrender demands were refused by the garrison, ordered by Hitler to hold the city all costs. A series of bombardments leveled much of the city, and the 1st Division charged into Aachen. Fighting raged for days as the two sides battled savagely in the rubble-filled streets and from house to house until the garrison finally surrendered. There was little cheering from the Americans, staggered by the loss of an estimated 10,000 killed and wounded.
November Horrors
As the fighting in Aachen reached a crescendo, Allied headquarters was plotting a broader strategy for late autumn. The push to Germany across the length of the Allied front was to resume, with Hodges’ First Army pressing in the center, flanked by the Third Army in the south and the Ninth Army in the north.
Still fretting about harassing attacks from the Huertgen Forest, Hodges ordered the veteran 28th Infantry Division to relieve the 9th Division. Known as the Keystone Division (it was originally comprised of Pennsylvania National Guardsmen) the 28th had cut its teeth battling the Germans in Normandy. Among its many heroes was the division commander, Major General Norman D. Cota. As assistant division commander on D-Day, Cota was the highest ranking officer to land on Omaha Beach, and after leading his men through a firestorm of horrors on the beach—a rarity among officers of such rank—Cota was awarded with command of his own division.
Though US planners were still convinced a single division was enough to win control of the forest, they were aware of the punishment the 9th Division had absorbed and reinforced the 28th Division with additional armor and artillery. In early November, the veteran division moved into the woods with confidence, the men knowing they were well-provisioned and loaded with firepower.
Instead, the butchery continued. Lead battalions were hammered by artillery barrages and slowed by the same obstacles and resistance that impeded the 9th Division. Shell bursts in the treetops again shredded defenseless men below, and tanks were still of little use, hampered by the terrain and endless landmines. The Germans had only one advantage—possession of working roads and trails—but used them effectively to move small units into whatever path the Americans were pressuring.
One of those paths was just outside of Schmidt, where the Germans staged a spirited defense around two prominent dams. The First Army had yet to cross the Roer River—another obstacle between the West Wall and the Rhine—and with control of the dams, the Germans could flood the Roer and its adjoining valley at an opportune time, washing away temporary bridges and isolating forces that had reached the opposite bank.
As November wore on, temperatures plunged and the heavy snowfall and driving sleet added to the misery of the 28th men. Most still lacked cold weather uniforms, and as foxholes filled with ankle deep water, there was an epidemic of trench foot, a painful fungal condition that could prevent a man from simple walking. Thousands more were wracked by frostbite, exposure, and respiratory illness. Beyond the physical toll, the men suffered psychologically, worn down by the cold, darkness, and snarl of German marksmen and machine-gun nests. Across the division, grizzled veterans became as paralyzed with fear as teenaged replacements thrown into combat for the very first time.
After three months of failure, Hodges remained determined to win control of the forest but continued to send in his army piecemeal. With the 28th Division badly mauled—its red keystone shoulder patch became known as the “Bloody Bucket” after the division suffered more than 6,000 casualties—the 1st Infantry Division was ordered into the fray. Still recovering from its own harrowing experience in Aachen, the 1st Division suffered another 4,000 casualties in the forest. The 4th Infantry Division—veterans of Utah Beach on D-Day and some of the fiercest fighting in Normandy—took over and 6,000 more men were killed or wounded. More units followed—notably the 8th Infantry Division and a brigade-sized component of the 5th Armored Division—but it wasn’t until December 13 that US forces were able to reach the far eastern edge of the forest.
With the dams near Schmidt still in German hands, Hodges finally ordered a multipronged attack to envelop the area. Just days into the operation, the Germans launched their massive counteroffensive in the nearby Ardennes, another densely wooded region in southern Belgium. Hodges’ stretched-out army took the brunt of the German blitz, with a handful of mostly inexperienced divisions posted there to guard what was considered a quiet sector. One veteran division—the luckless 28th Infantry—was also there. Sent to the Ardennes to recuperate from the horrors of the Huertgen, the battered Keystone men soon found themselves in the path of 200,000 German soldiers and hundreds of tanks. In what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, the vastly outnumbered 28th Division clawed back against its fast-charging foes, acquitting itself remarkably well considering the condition of the soldiers. Their scrappy defense helped blunt the main German thrust in the early days of the melee, delaying progress of an operation that depended on speed.
Aftermath
The US finally claimed victory in the Ardennes in late January, putting the Germans once again on their heels. The nearby Huertgen Forest had been secured and cleared of all German resistance, but it was one of the costliest campaigns of the war. Of the 120,000 Americans who entered the woods in those autumn months, some 24,000 were killed or wounded, with another 9,000 men incapacitated by trench foot, exposure, or combat fatigue, better known today as post-traumatic stress.
Virtually every surviving veteran of the Huertgen became haunted by the experience for years to come.
