 The Germany of Siegfried, of mythical heroes, and the barbaric splendor of all that goes with war, but the foretaste of defeat. Was this myth that Hitler had given his people all that they now had left to back their pledge to him in return? My Fuhrer, the West Wall stands and will hold come what may. The 58th volume of the United States Army's History of World War II is entitled The Siegfried Line Campaign by Charles B. McDonald. It covers the fierce fighting along the German frontier near the city of Aachen in the fall and early winter of the year 1944. This volume was prepared by the Office of the Chief of Military History as a part of the most comprehensive historical program ever attempted by any nation. It will provide the American people with the full report of the U.S. Army's role in World War II and a permanent record of the accomplishments of the men who fought its battles. In his preface, the author says, This period may eventually be regarded as one of the most instructive of the entire war in Europe. A company, a battalion, or regiment fighting alone and often unaided was more the rule than the exception. In nuclear war or in so-called limited war in underdeveloped areas of which we hear so much today, this may well be the form the fighting will assume. It has been said that those who ignore their history are condemned to repeat it. The story of the Siegfried Line Campaign takes place in northern Germany. It is the story of savage combat by small units against a tenacious enemy, formidable defenses, inhospitable terrain, supply problems, and weather as hostile as any enemy threat. There was no mistaking that frontier. Like those legendary dragon's teeth that sprang from the earth as armed men, its anti-tank obstacles stretched in a ribbon of mute sentries uncoiled across the quiet countryside. Built in the late thirties, the myth of the Third Reich was built into those dragon's teeth, drawing the face of Germany in a grimace of defiant scorn for a world at peace. Now the years of war were passing elsewhere, and the neglected line with its empty fortifications was becoming part of a landscape where earth and myth merged into one, as that summer now merged into fall. And with fall, the Allied threat came at last. Its armies sweeping the enemy before them across Europe like leaves are swept before a vengeful wind. But confidence, not vengeance, was what lit the faces in General Courtney Hodges' First Army. What was the myth to men who had landed at Normandy on D-Day, made the break from the beachhead and liberated Paris? After moving at unprecedented speeds, all three corps of the First Army readied the thrust into Germany, assured that even the frontier would scarcely check the enemy's retreat before them. It was the Seventh Corps under General J. Lawton Collins that would set the First Army's pace and make the main effort. In order to breach the Siegfried Line's fortifications before the Germans had a chance to man them, Collins mounted a reconnaissance in force the day after the first patrols had penetrated the frontier. To the north, with only their own tanks to cover them, they attacked across open field where every step forward was a gamble, overroads alive with mines and villages alive with snipers. Fences and backyards were the only shovers. And too often, no shover at all. Within five days the Seventh Corps had seized the high ground around Aachen, pierced the forward band of the Siegfried Line along an 11-mile front and penetrated the heavier line of fortifications in two places. Now the closest enemy was Delay. Every day, every hour of it, General Collins knew, must bring the Germans closer to their defenses. Since July, Hitler himself had taken personal charge of Germany's war. His strategy for the Western Front could now be summed up in two words, stand fast. And backing his edict with reinforcements, 15,000 men of the German 12th Infantry Division had reached the Rohr River the night of the 16th and were pouring into the defense positions of the Siegfried Line. They were waiting as the Seventh Corps reconnaissance burst into a full-scale attack on the line's main fortifications, extending to the south, into the gloom of a forest straight from the German folktales of the brother's grin. The stifling embrace of its densely interwoven trees, obscuring the sky itself, the Hurtgen Forest, a name that would come to symbolize the long-drawn heartbreak and despair of war, as surely as its fairytale counterparts had enshrined the nightmares of childhood. On the same day, Hitler's heavy reinforcements appeared to dispute the Seventh Corps passage of the Siegfried Line. To the north, over the Netherlands, the whole sky blossomed with parachutes in the war's largest airborne assault. The Operation Market Garden had succeeded. The Siegfried Line would have been outflanked, ending the Hurtgen Forest nightmare almost as soon as it began. But the weather, combined with unexpectedly firm German resistance, to prevent the airborne troops from keeping the foothold over the Rhine that would have set the stage for the drive to Berlin. Again, there was no alternative. The Siegfried Line campaign would have to continue. Only deceptively open country and the villages to the north, down to the shadowy heart of the Hurtgen Forest itself. The foot soldiers of the Seventh Corps carried their assaults. But for every yard advanced, the next came that much harder. The line had been penetrated, pillboxes captured and destroyed. But of the enemy, an enemy that had fled halfway across Europe and now suddenly turned to fight with the resistance as inexplicable as it was fierce, an enemy that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere all at once in the confusion and uncertain shadows of the thick trees, the only proofs were the prisoners and the dead laid out at peace on the forest floor. Nineteen days had passed since General Lightning Joe Cullins had pierced the first dragon teeth of the Siegfried Line. But now as September closed around his Seventh Corps and those on either side of him, the entire First Army for the first time since the breakout at the Normandy Beachhead was stopped. The author of the official Army history from which our narrative is drawn, Mr. Charles B. MacDonald, has been discussing this critical period of World War II with General J. Lawton Cullins, retired Army Chief of Staff. General Cullins, the First Army Seventh Corps actually had broken through the Siegfried Line before coming to a halt. But it was not only the fortifications that had stopped them. At that time, you were the Seventh Corps commander what was the situation? Yes, after the breakthrough in Normandy in late July, we had the Germans on the run and we wanted to keep them on the run. We didn't want to give them a chance to stop and organize themselves. But I had hoped to get through the Siegfried defences before we had to stop. But just as we had crossed the German frontier we began really to run out of gasoline and ammunition, and unfortunately, out of good weather. And the loss of the good weather caused our close-upport aviation practically to stop. And this was a real blow. Men were still in good shape and were anxious to keep going, but they were tired. And even more important, our tanks began to need replacement and repairs. For example, the Soviet Union, which had spearheaded our attack, normally had some 230-odd tanks. But when we hit the Siegfried defences, only about 75 of them were fully operating. Now, you remember also that the Siegfried defences east of Aachen were very powerful defenses and from the high ground overlooking our positions they were looking right down our throats. Now, an attacker in order to break through has to move and when he does that, he gets out into the open and then he becomes vulnerable to enemy fire. The next step now was to build up supplies, bring up reinforcements and reorganize in order to exploit your breakthrough with a new drive by the First Army to the Rhine River. Yes, that's right. We had to do all of these things, but we still had unfinished business right where we were. In fact, there were three attacks that had to be launched. To the north of Aachen, the First Army had to get its 19th Corps through the Siegfried defences and then south of Aachen and the Hurtgen Forest, the 5th Corps, the right wing corps of the First Army had also to get forward. But in order for them to move, the 7th Corps in the center had to clear the Hurtgen Forest. These things were necessary to exploit the breakthrough that we'd already made through the first set of the Siegfried defences and then in addition, we had Aachen, the city of Aachen on our left and while we dominated the high ground overlooking Aachen, we couldn't go past the city and leave a pocket of resistance there on our left rear. So therefore the 7th Corps had to capture Aachen. Now all of these things, these three attacks had to be coordinated and my judgment, never has received proper public recognition for the great job that he did in leading the First Army all the way from our breakthrough in Normandy to our meeting with the Russians on the Elba River. Aachen, ancient capital of the Holy Roman Empire was attacked on October 8th. For 13 days, this shrine to Germany's resplendent history was convulsed in the tumult of modern war. All the vain hopes of the 20th century were crowded through streets that had witnessed the serenity of medieval culture and learning and the coronation of 32 emperors and kings. To the Americans, the surrender of Aachen meant another concentration of enemy resistance wiped from their path. To the returning refugees evacuated when the order had come for the city's last ditch defense. In these crumbled ruins lay the still warm ashes of the myth of the Third Reich. Waiting now not the thousand years into the future that Hitler had pledged it but more than a thousand years back to the day when the city had given birth to Charlemagne, Emperor of the West. In terms of war, Aachen now belonged to the past. For the man of the 19th Corps north of Aachen it was the same yard by yard man by man struggle on the Roar River and the Cologne plain that opened to the Rhine. But below Aachen, still lying a thwart the entire south wing of General Hodges First Army the Hurtgen Forest remained unclear. November came and with it the staggering assault delivered by the 28th Division of General Giraud's 5th Corps but the merciless forest absorbed that wholesale tragic heroism and asked for more. It had become a nightmare from which there was no awakening even as a new enemy joined the old. The worsening weather was an enemy the men could come to grips with but to almost as little avail. And like the old one it seemed to become more tenacious as the days passed. The October attack had broken into a series of minor engagements when General Eisenhower determined upon the crushing new offensive that would sweep the entire western front. The 9th Army under General William H. Simpson was moved in north of Aachen. Today the weather delayed its opening blow until at last November 16th dawned upon the heaviest air bomb apartment in direct support of ground troops to be launched in all of World War II. The British 2nd Army to the north the American 1st and 9th Armies were to drive for the Rhine. Again the main effort would be made in the Aachen sector as the most direct route to the vital rural industrial area Germany's arsenal and there again it would be made by the 7th Corps the onslaught did not miss its mark. By now Germany's war losses and weapons and equipment were so enormous as to defy instinct. The summer months alone had taken over a million German casualties and now new and uncounted numbers pressed the total to near 4 million since the war began. Yet they fought back their communications shattered their supply lines smashed they returned the attack with a ferocity that seemed whetted by their losses. This was no fairytale this was no myth 10,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on the German defences but still the Germans replied on the Alliance Supreme Command down to the exhausted GI it had not even the fairytales it was war war demanding new men new courage and giving nothing in return but those demands pressed harder hopes for the sweeping success of the great November offensive had been swallowed just as the Hurtgen Forest swallowed new reserves and asked for more it was war that demanded casualties any way it could get them and the winter became as vicious an enemy as any lurking the remains were still measured in yards in feet in depth still they were gains and while battle strategies might founder the inexorable rules of war would demand that either advance or retreat must eventually prevail even in the Hurtgen Forest one of those must prevail it was advance each man advanced on his own terms trapling the bleak fragments of a myth that fled before every step he took forward existed though nothing but cold and mug had ever existed beyond the Hurtgen Forest war became human again but that did not repeat it ready enough desolation and waste and sheer loss of everything to be valued there was always another engagement another pocket of desperation defending what was already lost clinging in desolate wastes of roads and towns and people in ruin the hollow entreaties of defeat dragon teeth the barbed wire and hidden guns of the secret line were behind where the Hurtgen Forest nightmare lay at last splintered and torn open to what winter sunlight there was three months had passed since the first patrols had pierced that frontier but even now these two American armies were barely 22 miles inside Germany the November offensive was three weeks old the armies ready to flood the plane if either side had burst the dams hidden high in the Hurtgen Forest a week of hard fighting because no one could have named its end the First Army broke through to the Roar River and the plane opened out toward the Rhine where hopefully that war, even this war might end the Siegfried Line campaign was a part of history but was it a part and perhaps after all the real part of war General Collins the dash of long sweeping drives was conspicuously absent from this campaign but that is what much of war is like long periods of dogged determined fighting yes that's correct as a matter of fact I think the chief of military history has put it very well in his foreword to your book when he says that you germies waged the campaign described in this book but the individual soldier pitting his courage and stamina against harsh elements as well as a stubborn enemy emerges as the moving spirit of these armies as a matter of fact no part of the fighting in Europe tested the American soldier quite like the Siegfried campaign did and the fighting in the Hurtgen Forest the American soldier there proved that he could take some pretty hard knocks and still slug it out and I might say that if this story lacks the smashing climax this is because the historian unlike the novelist is never the master of his material ordinarily of course the campaign would have continued with a big push across the roar river to the Rhine yes but as a matter of fact while we were slugging it out in the Hurtgen Forest Hitler was planning to move to the south of us that he hoped would end the war and there about 25 miles south of Aachen he hit a very thinly held part of our line made a breakthrough there and it led into what became known as the battle of the bulge and this goes a long way toward explaining the fierce resistance put up by the Germans on the roar plain and in the Hurtgen Forest Hitler headed to his counter offensive Hitler had ordered that no Allied soldier was to be allowed to set foot beyond the roar river yes but fortunately in the battle of the bulge we used up all of the German reserves of men and material west of the Rhine River and the attacks of the first and the ninth armies through the Siegfried defences prior to the bulge had chewed up all the local reserves available back north north of the bulge to renew our attack across the roar river and the Cologne Plain things moved along very rapidly and we soon had Cologne as a matter of fact within two weeks and we were firmly on the Rhine and thereby had guaranteed the ultimate success of our war in Europe