Film military museum in Boalsburg focuses on Huertgen Forest WWII battle

BOALSBURG — About 30 people attended a screening March 18 of the 2007 German documentary “You Enter Germany: Bloody Huertgen and the Siegfried Line” at the Pennsylvania Military Museum. The film focuses on the World War II battle of Huertgen Forest.

Military museum educator Joe Horvath welcomed the audience and gave background information on the battle, which was a series of skirmishes that took place between Sept. 19, 1944, and Feb. 10, 1945, in a 50-square-mile area of dense forest east of the Belgian–German border.

It became the longest battle on German soil during WWII, and was the longest single battle the U.S. Army had ever fought. Although it officially ended in February 1945, the majority of the Battle of Huertgen Forest was fought during the three wet, cold, miserable months of mid-September through mid-December 1944.

Horvath noted that 13 American divisions fought in the Huertgen Forest, including Pennsylvania’s 28th National Guard Division. The main supply road was similar to old logging trails in Pennsylvania.

“The guys from Pennsylvania said that Huertgen Forest reminded them so much of the woods back home,” said Horvath.

The film featured some rarely seen archival footage, and several moving eyewitness accounts by survivors from both the American and German sides.

According to the film, the Huertgen Forest was a dark, foreboding place, once described by military historian Charles B. MacDonald as a “black-green ocean of forest in which the GI’s felt like Hansel and Gretel, who had lost their way.” Its towering, closely spaced fir trees and their thick canopy filtered even the noon-day sun, producing a dimly lighted, foreboding scene. In the heavy autumn rains, the forest and its narrow dirt roads became a vast sea of axle-deep mud, swamping all manner of military vehicles, including Jeeps, trucks and tanks, making travel nearly impossible.

The U.S. commanders’ initial goal was to pin down German forces in the area to keep them from reinforcing the front lines further north, between the city of Aachen and the Ruhr River, where the Allies were fighting a trench war among a group of fortified towns connected with field fortifications, tank traps and minefields.

A secondary objective may have been to outflank the front line. The Americans’ initially planned to take the towns of Schmidt and Monschau, and advance to industrialized areas along the Ruhr River. The German army intended to bring the Allied thrust to a standstill. They slowed the Allies’ progress, inflicted heavy casualties and took advantage of the fortifications of the Germans called the Westwall, known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line.

The Germans fiercely defended the area for two reasons: It served as a staging area for the Ardennes Offensive (which became the Battle of the Bulge), which was already in preparation, and the mountains allowed access to the Schwammenauel Dam at the head of the Ruhr Lake which, if opened, would flood low-lying areas downstream and deny any crossing of the river. The Allies only realized this after several major setbacks, and the Germans were able to hold the region until they launched their last-ditch offensive on the Western Front, into the Ardennes.

On Feb. 10, 1945, the Americans were finally out of the Huertgen. But, they had paid a terrible price in casualties. The battle claimed 24,000 American casualties, including those killed, missing, captured or wounded, plus another 9,000 who succumbed to non-combat causes. Estimates of German casualties were reported to be high, but less than the Americans.

Even today, people still speak regretfully of the nearly 61,000 dead in the Huertgen Forest, and the ‘All Souls’ Day battle’ on Nov. 1, 1944, that is taught at the School for Command Preparation at Fort Leavenworth as an “American disaster.” James Gavin, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, once called Huertgen ‘a battle that never should have been fought.’