The Battle of Hürtgen Forest is largely forgotten (most Americans and Germans, unless they are students of military history, will have a hard time pointing out the forest on a map, much less knowing its significance!) as it was overshadowed by the Battle of the Bulge, and is considered to be, for the most part, a bungled campaign and American defeat.
It lasted six months from September 1944 until February 1945 and cost about 33,000 American and 28,000 German casualties in total. It potentially delayed the end of World War II in Europe by months, as the Americans were unable to break through the Westwall by the time winter hit and were forced to dig in and wait until the spring thaw (March 1945) to launch any sort of offensive into the heart of Germany. The battle was a German defensive victory from September to December 1944, with heavy losses among the forces committed on both sides. The Americans finally cleared the forest in February 1945, capturing the Roer River dams. The Americans attacked blindly into the forest dozens of times without their usual advantages of armor and air support, and paid dearly for it. The 28th Infantry Division affirmed its grim nickname (the "Bloody Bucket") by taking over 6,000 casualties in the span of a week; the 112th Infantry Regiment suffered 2,316 casualties out of an authorized strength of 3,207. The 9th Infantry Division suffered 4,500 casualties while advancing less than two miles. At Hill 554 near Paustenbach, the Germans reported that the Americans (3rd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment) attacked "five or six times" without regard to casualties; they requested a short one-day armistice to recover the wounded and dead, and then immediately attacked again. The battalion did not take the hill for two weeks.
All or parts of eleven divisions, their attached units, and a Ranger battalion were thrown into the forest, chewed up, and spat out by a combination of poor weather and terrain, halfhearted planning, and a vicious, well-executed German defense;
The Germans had prepared the forest with trenches and bunkers made of concrete and logs, topped with dirt and all but invulnerable to anything but direct artillery hits. The Hürtgen Forest is located in a rough area of northwestern Germany, cut by deep rivers with forested banks of seventy-five to one-hundred foot tall fir trees and bare hilltops. Small farming villages such as Schmidt, Kommerscheidt, Kleinhau, and Hürtgen (the namesake of the forest, and where the forester's office is located) dot the hilltops, connected by narrow roads. As most of the forest was a state-owned tree farm, the foliage was often planted in neat rows, close together. This conveniently restricted any enemy movement, made control of large units impossible, and simplified the placement of antipersonnel and antitank mines (along the few firebreaks, logging trails, and roadsides) The placement of the trees also meant that their branches interlocked, often only four or five feet above the ground, depriving the forest floor of sunlight and forcing men to stoop down to walk. Artillery exploding in the treetops showered the men below with splinters of wood and lethal steel fragments; often the only way to survive was to "hug a tree", exposing only your helmet. The forest quickly took on a ghastly look, reduced only to "toothpicks" in some areas.
General Courtney Hodges told in an interview in 1983 that he
"would never pick it (the forest) as the place to be. it was assigned as part of my corps sector, and reluctantly we had to fight in it..."
The tanks and tank destroyers that tried to fight in the Hürtgen Forest encountered severe difficulties when attempting to support the infantry, having to fight in areas where tanks are not very effective and tank destroyers are next to useless; airbursts in trees often killed the turret crews of the vulnerable tank destroyers. As well as the conditions, they had to contend with German tanks, who, perched on hilltops and hillsides, could often snipe at them and the infantry they supported with impunity.
The terrain was often so bad, as in the Kall Valley and its namesake trail, that tanks could hardly pass at all
"Before daylight the next morning (4 November), the tankers of Captain Hostrup's Company A, 707th Tank Battalion, warmed up their motors for another try at traversing the precipitous trail across the river. The 1st Platoon, commanded by 1st Lt. Raymond E. Fleig in the forward tank, was to lead. Lieutenant Fleig's tank had only just entered the woods and begun to advance...an explosion. It had struck a mine...the mine disabled a track, and the tank partially blocked the trail. The platoon sergeant, S.Sgt. Anthony R. Spooner, suggested winching the other tanks around Lieutenant Fleig's immobilized tank. Using the tow cable from Fleig's tank and the tank itself as a pivot, Spooner winched his own second tank around and back onto the narrow trail. Fleig boarded what now became the lead tank and continued down the trail, directing Sergeant Spooner to repeat the process to get the remaining three tanks of the platoon around the obstacle. As Lieutenant Fleig continued to inch his tank down the dark trail, sharp curves...necessitated much stopping and backing. The lieutenant noticed that his tank was tearing away part of the thin left shoulder of the trail....he made his way toward the river, crossed the bridge, and proceeded up the opposite slope. There the route presented little difficulty except for three switchbacks where Fleig had to dismount and direct his driver. It was just beginning to grow light when his tank churned alone into Kommerscheidt. Back at the start of the wooded portion of the trail, Sergeant Spooner succeeded in winching the three remaining tanks of the platoon around the disabled tank. Sgt. Jack L. Barton's tank in the lead came to a sharp bend made even more precarious by a large outcropping of rock from the right bank. Despite all efforts at caution, Barton's tank partially threw a track and was stopped. Captain Hostrup came forward to determine the difficulty and directed the next tank in line under Sergeant Spooner to tow Sergeant Barton's lead tank back onto the trail. The expedient worked, and the track was righted. Using Spooner's tank as an anchor, Barton successfully rounded the curve. When he in turn anchored the rear tank, it too passed the obstacle and both tanks continued."
The 707th Tank Battalion supporting the 28th Division lost 31 of 50 M4 Shermans and the 893rd Tank Destroyer Battalion lost 16 of 24 M10s.
This video shows how bad the terrain was. This was filmed on October 11, 1944 near Zweifall, on the northwest fringes of the Forest. The tanks are of the 746th Tank Battalion, supporting the 9th Infantry Division:
[Video removed, as the YouTube account associated with it was terminated. The video showed tanks slogging through mud and up hills, winching each other and pushing at and knocking down trees]
The 746th Tank Battalion suffered the following losses and destroyed the enemy equipment given below during the month of October 1944
746th tanks lost;
| Tank | Lost |
|---|---|
| "Tank Medium, M4 (75MM gun)" | 10 |
| "Tank Medium, M4A3E2 | 1 |
| "Tank Light, M5A1" | 1 |
Of these;
| Reason | Lost |
|---|---|
| "Lost to AT gun fire" | 3 |
| "Lost to AT rocket fire" | 5 |
| "Lost to mines" | 3 |
| "Lost to artillery fire" | 1 |
Enemy tanks and equipment destroyed;
| Tank/Equipment | Destroyed |
|---|---|
| "MK 4" | 2 |
| "MK 5" | 4 |
| "MK 6" | 2 |
| "Half tracks" | 5 |
| "Trucks" | 5 |
| "AT Guns (47MM)" | 6 |
| "AT Guns (75MM or over)" | 5 |
| "AT Guns (Bazooka on wheels)" [this most likely refers to the 8,8 cm Raketenwerfer 43, or "Puppchen"] | 8 |
| "AT Rocket Guns" [presumably Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck] | 8 |
| "Machine Gun (Open emplacement)" | 134 |
| "Pillboxes (With machine gun)" | 50 |
| "Pillboxes (Without machine gun) | 35 |
The fall of 1944 was notoriously wet and gloomy. The P-47s and P-38s of the 365th, 370th, and 404th Fighter Groups (the main groups tasked to handle the Hürtgen area) could only bomb German positions when the clouds cleared. When the weather was good, (which was unfortunately not very much, only 10 days in the whole month of October if I remember correctly) their support to the infantry was excellent.
The implied objective within the forest, the important series of Roer River dams, was not even defined as one until late in November 1944 when General Courtney Hodges pushed for air attacks (which never happened) on the dams to prevent their usage as a weapon by the Germans to delay the allied advance. If the Americans had not attacked into the heart of the forest, but had instead swung south, around it, and attacked the dams from the side and behind, the battle could have been won by late October or early November, offering American ground units a firm foothold in Germany and a chance to dig in before winter arrived.
Sources:
The Battle of the Hürtgen Forest - Scorpio's Website
A Dark and Bloody Ground: The Hürtgen Forest and the Roer River Dams, 1944-1945, by Edward G. Miller
United States Army in World War II, European Theater of Operations: The Siegfried Line Campaign, by Charles B. Macdonald
Three Battles: Arnaville, Altuzzo, and Schmidt, by Charles B. MacDonald
746th Tank Battalion After Action Report, Aug.-Dec. 1944 PDF