- 2 months ago
German artillery could hit American positions with frightening accuracy, yet still fail to knock them out. From the Hürtgen Forest to the Battle of the Bulge, this military history narration follows the real problem German gunners faced: they could shell the foxholes, cut the wires, and even score direct hits, but American units kept firing back.
The story moves through Huen, Hill 314, and Dom Bütgenbach, showing how U.S. artillery, forward observers, radio networks, and preplanned fire missions turned a defended position into a moving system of combat power. Even when observers were wounded or communications were cut, the fire kept coming. The result is a gripping World War II documentary-style analysis of artillery, foxholes, counterbattery fire, and the hidden mechanics of battlefield survival.
Created for listeners who enjoy WW2 stories, military history, battlefield analysis, and narrated history about the Battle of the Bulge, Normandy, and the Hürtgen Forest. It also fits search interest in artillery history, American infantry, German artillery, and historical war stories with clear tactical explanation and strong storytelling.
The story moves through Huen, Hill 314, and Dom Bütgenbach, showing how U.S. artillery, forward observers, radio networks, and preplanned fire missions turned a defended position into a moving system of combat power. Even when observers were wounded or communications were cut, the fire kept coming. The result is a gripping World War II documentary-style analysis of artillery, foxholes, counterbattery fire, and the hidden mechanics of battlefield survival.
Created for listeners who enjoy WW2 stories, military history, battlefield analysis, and narrated history about the Battle of the Bulge, Normandy, and the Hürtgen Forest. It also fits search interest in artillery history, American infantry, German artillery, and historical war stories with clear tactical explanation and strong storytelling.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00At 5.25 on the morning of December 16, 1944, the village of Heuven, sitting on the German border in
00:08eastern Belgium, stopped being a quiet place.
00:11The first rounds arrived across the entire front line at once.
00:15Artillery and rocket fire, walking through the foxholes of the 3rd Battalion of the 395th Infantry.
00:22600 men holding a frontage meant for a great deal more than 600 men.
00:28Within minutes, every telephone line in the battalion was cut.
00:32A single minute of that fire told the men in the holes everything they needed to know.
00:38The Germans were not registering. They were not probing.
00:42They knew precisely where the American line was, and they were standing on it.
00:47In a forward command post, a staff officer of the 99th Division listened to dirt shake down from the ceiling
00:54and made a joke that outlived the war.
00:57Army intelligence had assured them the enemy had two horse-drawn guns in the entire sector.
01:03They sure are working those two poor horses to death.
01:07Hold on to that joke.
01:09Not because it's funny.
01:10Because of what it tells you about the men underground that morning.
01:13More than a thousand German guns were firing along an 80-mile front, and inside the frozen earth, under logs
01:21and sod, Americans were cracking wise.
01:25At 5.55, the shelling lifted.
01:28Then the sky went pale.
01:30German searchlights, angled up into the low cloud, bounced an artificial moonlight down onto the snow.
01:36And out of that gray glare came the infantry of the 753rd Volksgrenadier Regiment, advancing at five separate points.
01:46Everything the German plan required had already happened.
01:49The line had been shelled.
01:51The wire had been cut.
01:53The defenders had spent half an hour with their heads down in the dark.
01:58By every rule of war as the German army understood it, the men in those holes should have been stunned,
02:04scattered, deafened, and slow.
02:07They were none of those things.
02:10The American line opened up at ranges where nobody misses.
02:14Machine guns, rifles, mortars, and men firing rifles from the lip of a hole at figures 30 feet away.
02:21Some of the grenadiers were hit so close that they fell forward into the American foxholes,
02:26and the rest of that particular argument was settled with hands and rifle butts.
02:31The ones who reached the village streets were hunted out of the houses.
02:34And once the wire was patched, the artillery came down on the open ground behind them and stayed there.
02:40By the end of that first day, roughly 200 Germans lay dead in front of Höfen, and 19 more were
02:47prisoners.
02:48The battalion that killed them lost four men.
02:52If you find yourself wanting more stories like this one, American units that history filed away as a footnote,
02:59hitting like genuinely helps this reach the people who care about them.
03:03Subscribe if you'd like to come along.
03:06Four dead.
03:08Against an attack by a division, opening with a bombardment that severed every telephone line the defenders owned.
03:15Now hold two facts side by side, because this entire story lives in the space between them.
03:21The German fire was good.
03:24It landed on the American positions.
03:26Not near them.
03:28On them.
03:29Those gunners had studied that ground for weeks, and their opening barrage did exactly what it was designed to do.
03:36It blanketed the line.
03:38It cut the communications.
03:40It arrived as a complete surprise.
03:43And it changed nothing.
03:46Two days later, the arithmetic around Höfen had grown stranger still.
03:50American graves teams counted 554 German dead in and around the village.
03:5753 more were taken prisoner.
04:00Against that, five Americans killed and seven wounded.
04:05I want to be very clear about something before we go any further, because it will save you from the
04:09wrong answer.
04:11This is not a story about German incompetence.
04:15The men firing those guns were professionals from an army that had been perfecting indirect fire since 1914.
04:22They had broken the French.
04:24They had broken the Poles.
04:26On the eastern front, they had reduced fortified cities to gravel.
04:31When a German artillery officer said he could put steel on a map coordinate, he could.
04:37And that is what makes the pattern so strange.
04:40Because Höfen was not a fluke.
04:43Go looking through German after-action reports, prisoner interrogations, and the post-war accounts written by German commanders in Allied
04:50custody,
04:50and you keep finding the same complaint, worded a dozen different ways, from Normandy to the Rhine.
04:57We shelled them.
04:59We hit them.
05:00We saw the impacts land in their positions.
05:03And then their line fired back.
05:06A German battery commander could watch through his instruments as his rounds walked across an American company.
05:12He could see the earth lift.
05:15He could see men go down.
05:17And 40 minutes later, that same American company would be shooting at his infantry.
05:23And, this is the part that ruined careers, American shells would be arriving on his own guns.
05:30So here is the question this whole investigation turns on.
05:34And it is a more difficult question than it first appears.
05:37What, exactly, would the Germans have had to destroy in order to knock an American position out of the fight?
05:52The obvious answer comes fast, and it's the one most people reach for.
05:57The Americans dug deep.
05:59Deep holes, log roofs, sandbags, reverse slopes.
06:05Cover beats shrapnel.
06:07That's a real answer.
06:09It's also a real part of what happened at Höfen, where the dugouts were well built,
06:13and the casualties from that opening barrage were remarkably light.
06:18But hold that answer loosely, because it collapses the moment you test it.
06:22It collapses because one month before Höfen, in a forest barely 40 miles to the south,
06:28the German army had already solved the American foxhole.
06:32Completely.
06:34They had found a way to make a hole in the ground worse than useless.
06:38A way to kill men who were doing everything right.
06:41Doing it by the book.
06:43Deep and covered and quiet.
06:46It worked.
06:47It worked so well that it cost the United States Army more than 30,000 casualties
06:53in a stretch of woods that appears on no strategic map worth the name.
06:58The Germans knew how to knock out an American position.
07:02They had proved it.
07:04So what happened between that forest in November and the searchlights at Höfen in December?
07:09November 16th, 1944.
07:11A forest on the German-Belgian border.
07:1450 square miles of fir trees packed so tightly that a man could lose his platoon at 20 yards.
07:21Gray clouds sitting on the treetops.
07:24A steady drizzle coming down through the branches.
07:26That morning, the rifle companies of the 22nd Infantry Regiment
07:31rolled up their blankets and ate a hot breakfast.
07:34It would be their last hot meal for 18 days.
07:38Their commander was Colonel Charles Lanham, West Point, class of 1924.
07:43A man who led from the front and expected everyone under him to do the same.
07:48Less than a mile away, German infantry of the 275th Division
07:53were easing out of their bunkers into the wet dark.
07:56Listening for exactly the attack that was coming.
08:00Now, everything you learned about American positions in the last few minutes,
08:05the deep holes, the discipline, the light casualties under heavy shelling,
08:10I need you to set it down for a while.
08:13Because in this forest, none of it worked.
08:16Here is what happened to a man in a hole in the Hurtgen.
08:19He did everything correctly.
08:22He dug deep.
08:23He kept below ground level.
08:25He heard the round coming and he got down.
08:28And every instinct he had trained into himself told him that the earth on either side of his shoulders
08:34was about to save his life.
08:36And then the shell never reached the ground.
08:39It struck the crown of a hundred-foot fir tree, thirty feet above him, and detonated there.
08:46Steel came down.
08:47But not only steel, the tree came apart as well, and the wood became a second weapon,
08:53splinters driving downward like nails,
08:56whole limbs and trunks falling on men who were pinned in place by their own good discipline.
09:02A hole in the ground protects you from fragments traveling sideways.
09:06Against fragments traveling straight down, a hole is not cover.
09:11A hole is a container.
09:13That is the German counter to the American foxhole.
09:16And I want you to understand that it was not luck.
09:20Every part of that forest had been pre-registered by German artillery observers,
09:24square by square, weeks in advance.
09:27They did not need to see you.
09:29They needed only to know which square you were in,
09:32and the trees did the aiming for them.
09:35The Americans had no experience of this.
09:38Many of the German troops holding the woods had fought in the forests of Russia and Finland,
09:42and knew precisely what a tall stand of timber does to an artillery shell.
09:47The G.I.s learned it the way you learn things in a war,
09:50which is to say afterwards, from the men who didn't.
09:54A sergeant of the 22nd's 1st Battalion, George Morgan,
09:57later put the place into a few sentences that have stayed in the record ever since.
10:03You couldn't recover all your dead, he said, because you couldn't find them.
10:07You couldn't get protection.
10:09You couldn't see.
10:11Artillery came through the trees like a scythe,
10:14and after each new attack, there was only a handful of the old men left.
10:18And within that, ordinary men kept doing extraordinary arithmetic with their own lives.
10:25Private First Class Francis McGraw of the 26th Infantry
10:29was firing a machine gun into a German counterattack
10:32when a shell dropped a tree directly across his field of fire.
10:37So he climbed out of his hole, in the open, under that fire,
10:41and moved the gun past the log.
10:43A near burst threw the weapon into the air and knocked him down.
10:47He got up, retrieved it, and went back to firing until the ammunition was gone.
10:53Now the price.
10:55The 22nd Infantry took 2,678 casualties,
11:01the highest of any single regiment in the entire campaign.
11:05The 4th Infantry Division had to be pulled off the line to be rebuilt from scratch.
11:10And a few miles away, another outfit was being taken apart in the same way.
11:16In the fighting on the fringe of that forest in early December,
11:19the 2nd Battalion of the 26th Infantry, 1st Division, the Big Red One,
11:25lost Companies E and F almost entirely.
11:28Company G was shattered.
11:30Of the officers on the battalion roster at the start of December,
11:347 would still be there at the end of the month.
11:37Remember that battalion.
11:39Remember that number.
11:407.
11:41It is going to walk back into this story in about 20 minutes.
11:44And when it does,
11:46it is going to do something that should not have been possible.
11:50But the Hurtgen matters here for one reason above all others.
11:53It is the proof that the German army knew how to knock out an American position.
11:58Not in theory.
11:59In practice.
12:01At scale.
12:02For six weeks.
12:03At a cost of more than 30,000 American casualties.
12:07When German gunners were given the right ground and time to prepare it,
12:11they could reach into holes and kill the men inside them.
12:15So the Americans adapted.
12:17And they adapted in the crudest way imaginable.
12:20Because there was nothing else available.
12:24Where the advance stopped,
12:25men cut timber and roofed their holes.
12:28Logs across the top,
12:30then sod,
12:31then whatever else came to hand.
12:33If the shell was going to burst above you,
12:36then you built a lid.
12:37That is the fix that carried into December.
12:40That is why the dugouts at Höfen
12:42were described as deep and log-covered.
12:45And why the casualties from that opening barrage were so light.
12:49And it is only half an answer.
12:52Possibly less than half.
12:54Because here is what a log roof does not explain.
12:58At Höfen,
12:59the German barrage cut every telephone line the battalion had.
13:03Overhead cover does not repair a severed wire.
13:07Overhead cover does not tell you
13:09where the enemy is forming up in the dark.
13:12Overhead cover does not put 554 German soldiers
13:16into the frozen ground
13:18in front of a village
13:19in three days.
13:21A lid keeps men alive.
13:24It does not, by itself,
13:26keep a position killing.
13:28And killing is the whole question.
13:30A position that survives but cannot hurt you
13:33has been knocked out just as surely
13:35as one that has been wiped off the map.
13:38The Germans did not need those men dead.
13:40They needed them silent.
13:42So what made an American position keep firing?
13:46For that, we have to go back four months
13:48and about 400 miles
13:49to a rock outcrop in Normandy
13:52where 700 Americans were cut off,
13:54surrounded,
13:55out of food,
13:56out of ammunition,
13:57and out of medicine.
13:58And where the answer turned out to be something
14:01that was not on the hill at all.
14:036 a.m., August 7, 1944.
14:07A steep, stony hill
14:08above the Norman town of Mortin.
14:11The French call it Montjoie
14:13because pilgrims coming over the crest
14:15used to catch their first sight
14:16of Mont Saint-Michel,
14:1827 miles west.
14:20To the Americans,
14:21it was Hill 314,
14:24after its height in meters.
14:26Sentries had just reported
14:28400 German soldiers
14:29climbing the eastern slope in the dark.
14:322nd Lieutenant Robert Weiss,
14:3421 years old,
14:36was lying among the boulders
14:37with a pair of field glasses on a tripod
14:39and a 35-pound radio in a leather case.
14:43He was wearing the wool serge shirt
14:45his father had worn in the First World War.
14:48His radio had a range of five miles,
14:51just enough to reach the howitzer batteries
14:53dug into the west.
14:55It ran on batteries
14:56that were already dying
14:57and could not be replaced.
15:00He could not see the Germans,
15:02so he called his first fire mission
15:04by sound and by map coordinate
15:06in the dark
15:07on an enemy he could only hear.
15:10700 Americans were on that hill,
15:12most of the 2nd Battalion
15:14of the 120th Infantry,
15:1530th Division,
15:16plus attachments.
15:18Overnight,
15:19tanks of the 2nd SS Panzer Division
15:21had rolled through Mortan below them
15:23and cut them off completely.
15:25The battalion had bazookas
15:27and mortars
15:27and not much else.
15:29What it had instead
15:30were two forward observer teams
15:32from the 230th Field Artillery Battalion.
15:36Weiss ran one.
15:37Lieutenant Charles Bartz ran the other.
15:40Both had spent the previous day
15:42plotting fires
15:43across the ground below them,
15:44which is a small detail
15:45that decided a great deal.
15:48Now,
15:49the German commanders
15:49had a clean,
15:50correct problem in front of them,
15:52and they understood it perfectly.
15:54Until Hill 314 was eliminated,
15:57the southern arm
15:58of their entire counteroffensive
16:00was going nowhere.
16:01The men on that hill
16:03could see from horizon to horizon.
16:05Every road,
16:06every crossroads,
16:07every column of vehicles
16:09moving west toward the sea
16:10lay open beneath them.
16:12As one of the American company commanders,
16:15Lieutenant Ralph Curley
16:16put it in his report,
16:18the German formations
16:19were closed up tight,
16:21and that made them
16:22a definite target.
16:23So the Germans did
16:24what any competent army does.
16:26They shelled the hill.
16:28For six days and nights,
16:30they shelled it,
16:31along with mortars,
16:32along with tank fire,
16:34along with infantry assaults
16:36by a regiment-sized force
16:37of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division
16:40coming up the slopes.
16:42This was not harassing fire.
16:44This was a serious,
16:46sustained,
16:47professional effort
16:48to erase a battalion
16:49from a piece of high ground
16:51by an army that had
16:52every reason in the world
16:54to want it gone.
16:55Watch what it achieved.
16:57Over 300 of those 700 men
17:00were killed or wounded.
17:02More than half the officers
17:03who started were gone.
17:05Among the injuries
17:06the surgeons later cataloged
17:08were wounds caused
17:09not by steel but by rock.
17:12Shells bursting on the outcrops
17:13turned the hill itself
17:14into fragments.
17:16They ran out of food.
17:18They ran out of ammunition.
17:20They ran out of radio batteries,
17:22which, for Weiss,
17:24was the same thing
17:24as running out of oxygen.
17:26They ran out of morphine
17:27and plasma and bandages
17:29while the wounded lay in the open
17:31among the boulders.
17:33And men who could have been saved
17:35in an aid station
17:35three miles away
17:36died where they were
17:38because there was no way
17:40to reach them.
17:42On the 10th,
17:43at around half past four,
17:4512 C-47s came over
17:47at 300 feet
17:47and dropped supply packs.
17:49Roughly half of them
17:51drifted into German hands.
17:52What the Americans recovered
17:54was mostly food
17:55and ammunition.
17:57No medical supplies.
17:59No batteries.
18:00And that is when
18:01the artillery battalion,
18:03three miles behind them,
18:04did something
18:05that has no real precedent.
18:06Lieutenant Colonel
18:08Louis Viman,
18:09commanding the 230th,
18:11ordered ten smoke shells
18:13opened up.
18:14His staff pulled out
18:16the smoke canisters
18:16and the base ejection charges
18:18and packed the empty projectiles
18:20with bandages,
18:21dressings,
18:22sulfonylomide,
18:23and morphine serrettes,
18:24then replaced the steel disc
18:26in the nose
18:27so the fuse
18:27wouldn't ruin the contents.
18:29Four more shells
18:30were filled with sand
18:32to the same weight,
18:32to be fired first
18:33for adjustment.
18:35Then a radio message
18:36went up to the hill
18:37explaining what was coming
18:38and how to open it.
18:40The adjustment was finished
18:41around half past nine at night.
18:44Then they fired medicine
18:45at their own men.
18:47Physics took its cut.
18:49The plasma didn't survive
18:50the shock of the barrel
18:52or the impact on the rocks.
18:54Bandages came out crushed.
18:56Some rounds were never found
18:57in the dark.
18:58But bandages came out
19:00and morphine came out
19:01and penicillin came out.
19:03And Frank Dennius,
19:05a 19-year-old observer
19:06from Athens, Texas,
19:08up there with the rest of them,
19:10remembered the faces
19:11of the wounded men
19:12when the medicine reached them.
19:14He could still see those smiles
19:16decades later.
19:18Now hold the whole picture
19:20because this is the moment
19:22the question changes shape.
19:24Six days of shelling,
19:26half the garrison down,
19:28no supply,
19:29no medicine,
19:30dying batteries,
19:32every physical condition
19:33the German army
19:34could possibly impose
19:35on a defended position,
19:37imposed in full.
19:39And the hill
19:40never stopped firing.
19:42Not the men on it.
19:43The hill.
19:45Because every hour
19:46of those six days,
19:48Weiss and Bartz
19:49and Dennius
19:50kept talking
19:51into their radios.
19:52And every time they talked,
19:54German columns
19:55on the roads below
19:56came apart.
19:58The 230th alone
19:59fired 8,000 rounds
20:01during the battle.
20:02The German counterattack
20:04that was supposed
20:04to reach Avranches
20:05and the sea
20:06reached neither.
20:08So ask the question again
20:10and ask it precisely
20:12this time.
20:13What would the Germans
20:14have needed
20:14to destroy?
20:16Not the men.
20:17They killed and wounded
20:19300 of them
20:20and it made no difference
20:21to the volume of fire
20:22coming down.
20:23Not the guns.
20:26The guns were
20:27three miles west,
20:28dug in,
20:29invisible,
20:30and out of reach
20:31of everything
20:31the Germans had
20:32on that battlefield.
20:34Not the observation post.
20:35There was no observation post.
20:38There were men
20:38lying in rocks
20:39and there were
20:40three separate
20:40observer parties
20:41and losing one
20:42changed nothing.
20:44The killing power
20:45on Hill 314
20:46was not on Hill 314.
20:49The Germans spent
20:50six days attacking
20:51a place that was,
20:52in the only sense
20:53that mattered,
20:54empty.
20:55And the German command
20:56was not stupid.
20:57They worked this out.
20:59Somewhere behind
21:00the American line
21:00stood the guns
21:01that were actually
21:02doing the killing.
21:03And if you cannot
21:04silence the eyes,
21:05you silence the guns.
21:07They tried exactly that.
21:09What they discovered
21:10when they tried it
21:10changed how German artillery
21:12fought for the rest
21:13of the war.
21:14And it had nothing
21:15to do with accuracy.
21:16Before we go looking
21:17for those German guns,
21:19I need to give you
21:20a number.
21:21It is the least
21:22dramatic number
21:23in this entire story,
21:24and it explains more
21:25than any other
21:26single fact
21:27you will hear today.
21:29Artillery men
21:30in every army
21:31of the Second World War
21:32divided their work
21:34into two categories.
21:35And the difference
21:36between them
21:37is the difference
21:38between annoying
21:39an enemy
21:39and removing him.
21:41The first
21:42is neutralization.
21:44You put enough steel
21:45onto a position
21:46that the men
21:47in it
21:47stop shooting,
21:48stop moving,
21:50stop thinking,
21:51and press themselves
21:52into the earth.
21:53It is cheap.
21:54It works fast.
21:56It also stops working
21:58the moment
21:59the shelling does.
22:01Neutralization
22:01does not kill
22:02a position.
22:03It pauses one.
22:05The second
22:06is destruction.
22:07Actual destruction.
22:09The military definition.
22:11The one in the manuals.
22:12meant putting roughly
22:1330% of the defenders
22:15out of action.
22:16Kill or wound
22:18one man in three
22:19and a unit
22:20ceases to function
22:21as a unit.
22:23Here is what that costs.
22:25To militarily destroy
22:27a target occupying
22:28100 yards by 100 yards,
22:30the estimates of the period
22:32ran to about 600 shells.
22:35600 rounds
22:36into a square
22:37the size of a couple
22:38of city blocks.
22:40Now do something
22:41with that number.
22:43An American rifle company
22:44on the defensive
22:45did not sit
22:46in a 100-yard square.
22:48At Dom Butkenbach,
22:50one American battalion
22:51held a front
22:51of over 2,000 yards.
22:54Even a single company
22:55frontage swallows
22:56several of those squares,
22:58and each one
22:59wants its own
23:00600 rounds.
23:01And every one
23:02of those shells
23:03has to be fired
23:04by a gun
23:04that is standing still
23:05in a known place
23:07for as long
23:08as the chute takes.
23:10That is the trap.
23:12Not accuracy.
23:14Time.
23:15Destruction is not
23:17a marksmanship problem.
23:19It is a problem
23:19of staying.
23:21Staying in position,
23:22firing steadily,
23:24for long enough.
23:26And by the summer
23:27of 1944
23:28on the Western Front,
23:30a German battery
23:31that stayed in position
23:32and fired steadily
23:33was a battery
23:35that died.
23:36Let me show you why,
23:38through the eyes
23:38of the men
23:39it happened to.
23:41Picture a German gun crew
23:43somewhere in Normandy
23:44in July.
23:45The guns have arrived,
23:46and arriving
23:47was already the hard part,
23:49because a great deal
23:50of German artillery
23:50still moved behind horses,
23:52and horse-drawn guns
23:54manage perhaps 25 miles a day
23:56before the animals
23:57have to rest.
23:58The battery
23:59is a museum.
24:01Field Marshal
24:02Hans Eberbach,
24:03commanding 5th Panzer Army
24:05against the British,
24:06later wrote
24:07that his artillery
24:08included guns
24:08from every major power
24:10in Europe.
24:11Every different gun
24:12needs its own ammunition,
24:14its own firing tables,
24:16its own spare parts,
24:17in a supply system
24:18being bombed daily.
24:20The crew is now waiting
24:22for one thing
24:23before they can fire.
24:24Not an order.
24:26Silence in the Sky
24:28Because two miles up
24:30and a few miles back,
24:31there was a small
24:32olive-drab aeroplane
24:34loitering.
24:34An L-4,
24:36a militarized Piper Cub
24:38with a radio
24:39and an extra window
24:40cut in the roof
24:41so the observer
24:42can look up
24:43as well as down.
24:44Two of them
24:45were issued
24:46to each American
24:47artillery battalion.
24:49The effect of that
24:50aeroplane
24:50on German gunnery
24:51is one of the most
24:52quietly astonishing
24:54facts of the war,
24:55and it was noticed
24:56in every theater.
24:58When American
24:59spotter planes were up,
25:00German batteries
25:01generally did not
25:02fire at all.
25:03They waited for dawn
25:05or dusk,
25:05put out a few rounds,
25:07and stopped.
25:08Not because they
25:09were ordered to,
25:10because firing
25:11while that aeroplane
25:12was overhead
25:13was suicide,
25:14and every crew
25:15knew it.
25:16So the German gunner's
25:18day was structured
25:19around a clock
25:19he did not control.
25:21Fire briefly,
25:22move,
25:24wait.
25:25fire briefly,
25:26move again.
25:28Which means
25:29that whatever else
25:30German artillery
25:30could do
25:31on the Western front,
25:32it could not do
25:33the one thing
25:34that destruction
25:35requires.
25:37It could not
25:38stay.
25:39Now put the two
25:40halves together.
25:42To knock out
25:43an American position,
25:44the Germans needed
25:45600 rounds
25:46into every 100-yard square
25:48that position occupied,
25:50delivered continuously,
25:51from guns holding
25:53one location
25:53long enough
25:54to complete the shoot.
25:56What they had instead
25:57was a doctrine
25:58of the short,
25:59violent surprise
26:00concentration.
26:01Hit hard,
26:02hit fast,
26:03then get out.
26:04Because that was
26:05the only kind of fire
26:06that let a battery
26:07survive
26:08to fire again.
26:10That is why
26:11the Höfenbarage
26:12lasted about
26:13half an hour
26:14rather than
26:14half a day.
26:16It was not
26:17a decision
26:17about tactics.
26:18It was a decision
26:20about staying alive.
26:21And they could not
26:23have afforded
26:23the ammunition,
26:24even if they had
26:25owned all the time
26:26in the world.
26:28The German artillery
26:29supporting 5th Panzer
26:30Army in Normandy
26:31was firing something
26:33on the order
26:33of one-tenth
26:34of what the British
26:35were putting out.
26:37That is not
26:37a shortfall.
26:39That is a different war.
26:41You want to know
26:42what American ammunition
26:43supply looked like
26:44from the inside?
26:46In March of 1945,
26:48one battery
26:49of the 337th
26:50Field Artillery Battalion
26:52fired its 300,000th
26:54round since coming
26:55into combat in June.
26:57One battery.
26:58Four guns.
27:00So here is where
27:01the answer stands.
27:02And notice that
27:03it has quietly turned
27:04into something bigger
27:05than a story about artillery.
27:07Every German bombardment
27:08of an American position
27:09carried an expiry date
27:11built into it.
27:12Not chosen,
27:14imposed,
27:14by the airplane overhead,
27:16by the counter-battery guns
27:18waiting to answer,
27:19by the trucks
27:20that never came
27:21with enough shells.
27:22The German gunner
27:24could hit you.
27:25He could hurt you badly
27:26for 20 or 30
27:27or 90 minutes.
27:29And then,
27:30whether his job
27:31was finished or not,
27:32he had to stop.
27:34The American army
27:35built its entire
27:36defensive system
27:37around what happens
27:38after the shelling stops.
27:39That is the hinge.
27:42Not thicker earth.
27:44Not tougher men.
27:46A defensive system
27:47designed around
27:48the certainty
27:49that the enemy's fire
27:50had a deadline
27:51and that everything,
27:52therefore,
27:53depended on what
27:54your position could do
27:55in the 60 seconds
27:56after the last round fell.
27:59Now,
28:00a system like that
28:01has an obvious weak point,
28:03and any competent enemy
28:05would go straight for it.
28:06If the killing power
28:08of an American position
28:09lives somewhere else,
28:10in guns miles away,
28:13then the whole thing
28:14hangs on a thread.
28:15A radio.
28:16A telephone wire.
28:18A 22-year-old
28:19with field glasses.
28:21Cut the thread,
28:22and the position is deaf,
28:24blind,
28:25and finished.
28:27On the 21st of December,
28:29at Dom Butchenbach,
28:30the Germans cut the thread.
28:32For three full hours,
28:34an American battalion
28:36had no communication
28:37of any kind
28:38with its artillery.
28:40And the shells
28:41kept coming.
28:42Three hours before dawn,
28:44December 21st, 1944.
28:47A low ridge
28:48in front of the hamlet
28:49of Dom Butchenbach,
28:51four and a half thousand yards
28:53west of the American anchor
28:54at Würzfeld.
28:56The American foxhole line here
28:58was easy to find.
29:00Someone had dug it
29:01along a double row of trees,
29:02and behind it stood
29:04a handful of farm buildings.
29:06From the German side,
29:07that line of trees
29:08was a ruler
29:09drawn across the landscape.
29:12Holding it
29:12was the 2nd Battalion
29:14of the 26th Infantry
29:15under Lieutenant Colonel
29:17Daryl Daniel,
29:18a man who had taken
29:19a doctorate at Clemson
29:20before the war
29:21and now commanded
29:22a thousand yards
29:23of frozen Belgium.
29:25I told you to remember
29:27this battalion.
29:28This is the one
29:29that was taken apart
29:30on the edge
29:31of the Hurtgen
29:31three weeks earlier.
29:33Companies E and F
29:34virtually annihilated.
29:36Company G shattered.
29:38Rifle companies
29:39now standing
29:40at about a hundred men each,
29:42nine-tenths of them
29:43replacements.
29:44Men who in many cases
29:45had joined the outfit
29:46days before.
29:48Seven officers left
29:49from the roster
29:50at the beginning
29:50of December.
29:52Two heavy machine gun platoons,
29:54manned by gunners
29:54who had never fired
29:55in action.
29:57Not enough automatic rifles.
29:59Not enough grenade launchers.
30:02Against them,
30:03the Germans had finally
30:04assembled everything.
30:05The entire 25th
30:07Panzer Grenadier Regiment.
30:08At least a battalion
30:10of tanks
30:10from the 12th SS
30:11Panzer Regiment.
30:13And the guns
30:13and rocket launchers
30:14that had been battering
30:15the twin villages
30:16to the north,
30:17released at last
30:18after repeated pleas
30:19from the 12th SS.
30:21At around three
30:22in the morning
30:23it started,
30:24and this time
30:24the Germans
30:25did not do
30:26the short,
30:26sharp raid.
30:27This time
30:28they did everything
30:29the doctrine asked for.
30:31Guns,
30:31mortars,
30:32tank fire,
30:33and werfers,
30:34together,
30:35on that line of trees.
30:37Now,
30:38pay very close attention
30:39to what this bombardment
30:40achieved,
30:41because the American
30:42official history
30:43is completely honest
30:44about it,
30:44and it is not
30:46a story
30:46of German failure.
30:48The fire
30:49continued unremittingly
30:50until first light
30:51in the east.
30:52It inflicted
30:54many casualties.
30:55It destroyed
30:56weapons
30:57by direct hits.
30:58It tore
30:59large gaps
31:00in the main
31:01line of resistance.
31:02American
31:03counter-battery fire
31:04went out
31:05in reply,
31:05and it was
31:06intense.
31:07And it failed.
31:09It did not
31:10stop the
31:11German shelling.
31:12Read that
31:13again slowly.
31:14Many casualties.
31:16Weapons destroyed
31:17by direct hits.
31:19Large gaps
31:21torn in the
31:22main line
31:22of resistance.
31:24And the
31:25American guns
31:25could not
31:26shut it down.
31:28That is a
31:29successful bombardment
31:30by any standard
31:32any army
31:33has ever used.
31:35If you had been
31:36a German artillery commander
31:37watching the observed
31:39results come in,
31:40you would have reported,
31:41correctly,
31:42that the enemy's
31:43forward line
31:44had been broken up.
31:45And then,
31:46in the gray light,
31:48the panzer
31:48grenadiers
31:49came across
31:49the open fields
31:50in assault formation,
31:52walking into a
31:53position that
31:54by every measure
31:55had just been
31:56wrecked.
31:58Here is what
31:59happened next,
32:00and it is the
32:01single most
32:01important thing
32:02in this entire
32:03investigation.
32:04The American
32:05forward observers,
32:07men lying out
32:08in that wrecked
32:09line,
32:10in the holes
32:10that had just
32:11been shelled
32:12for three hours,
32:13called for a
32:14defensive barrage
32:15to box
32:15their own front.
32:17Not near their front,
32:19around it.
32:20A wall of shellfire
32:22placed against
32:23the outside edge
32:24of their own foxholes,
32:25close enough
32:26that fragments
32:27from American guns
32:28were landing
32:29among American men.
32:32Ten field artillery
32:34battalions
32:34ultimately joined
32:35that shoot.
32:36Ten.
32:38And they were not
32:39all from the same
32:39division.
32:40Batteries of the
32:412nd and the
32:4299th divisions
32:43had been tied
32:44into the 1st
32:45division's
32:45fire control system,
32:47which meant
32:47a lieutenant
32:48lying in the mud
32:49outside Dom
32:50Butgenbach
32:50could reach
32:51across divisional
32:52boundaries with
32:53a sentence
32:54into a radio.
32:56Over the
32:57eight hours
32:57that followed,
32:58the regimental
32:59cannon company,
33:00the 1st
33:01division artillery,
33:02the 406th
33:04field artillery group,
33:05and reinforcing
33:06batteries from
33:07two other
33:08divisions
33:09fired more
33:10more than
33:1010,000 rounds
33:11in support
33:12of that
33:13one battalion.
33:1410,000 rounds.
33:16Remember the number
33:17from earlier?
33:18600 rounds
33:20to destroy
33:20a 100-yard square.
33:22The Americans
33:23were spending,
33:24in eight hours,
33:26what an entire
33:26German corps
33:27could not have
33:28spent in a week.
33:30Some tanks
33:31did get through
33:31the storm.
33:32They broke
33:33the right flank,
33:34overran two platoons
33:35of the regimental
33:36anti-tank company,
33:37then drove along
33:39the hedgerows
33:39deliberately hunting
33:40the machine guns,
33:41which had no defense
33:42against moving steel.
33:44Three of them
33:45reached the buildings
33:46and fired point-blank
33:47into the barns
33:48where Daniel
33:48and his command post
33:50group were fighting.
33:51A tank destroyer
33:52of the 634th
33:54caught seven panzers
33:55in succession
33:56as they came
33:57one by one
33:58over the ridgeline.
34:00And now the detail
34:01that should have
34:02decided everything.
34:03For one period
34:05of three hours
34:06during that fight,
34:07all communication
34:08between the hard-pressed
34:09rifle battalion
34:10and the artillery
34:11broke down
34:12under German fire.
34:14Three hours.
34:16No wire.
34:17No radio.
34:19The thread cut.
34:20Exactly the vulnerability
34:22that the whole
34:23American system
34:23supposedly hung on.
34:25This is the moment
34:26the German plan
34:27was built for,
34:28whether or not
34:29anyone on their side
34:30realized it had arrived.
34:31And the American shells
34:33continued to arrive
34:34with devastating effect.
34:36That sentence sits
34:37in the official history
34:38without fuss.
34:39And it is the answer
34:40to the question
34:41you have been carrying
34:42since Höfen.
34:43The fire did not stop
34:45when the talking stopped
34:46because the fire
34:47did not depend
34:48on the talking.
34:49Those concentrations
34:50had been planned
34:51in advance,
34:53plotted,
34:53numbered,
34:54and held in fire
34:55direction centers
34:56miles to the rear.
34:57The observers
34:58had done that work
34:59days earlier.
35:00The same thing
35:01Weiss and Bartz
35:02did on Hill 314
35:04the day before
35:04the Germans arrived.
35:06When the wire
35:07went dead,
35:08the guns simply
35:09kept executing
35:10the plan
35:10that already existed,
35:12onto ground
35:12the Germans
35:13had to cross.
35:14When it was over,
35:16an American patrol
35:17walked into the woods
35:18from which the final
35:19assault had come
35:19and counted
35:21300 German dead.
35:23That is probably
35:24why the tanks
35:24that reached
35:25Daniel's command post
35:26arrived alone.
35:27Their infantry
35:28was lying
35:29in the trees
35:29behind them.
35:30The commander
35:31of the 12th
35:32Volksgrenadier Division
35:33told his superiors
35:34he could not
35:34attack again.
35:36And in the late
35:37afternoon,
35:38Daniel paid the gunners
35:38the compliment
35:39that infantrymen
35:40reserve for artillery.
35:42He said he didn't
35:43know where they
35:44got the ammunition
35:44or when they found
35:46time to flush the guns.
35:47He said a hundred
35:49Germans came at
35:50one of his platoons
35:51and not one of them
35:52got through.
35:53But the whole thing
35:54rested on the men
35:55who had made that plan
35:57and who called that
35:58barrage onto their
35:59own heads.
36:00And the life expectancy
36:01of those men
36:02was being measured
36:03in days.
36:05In one artillery
36:06battalion on that ridge
36:07of 48 forward observers
36:0932 were gone
36:11inside six days.
36:13So if the observers
36:14were dying that fast
36:15who was left
36:16to call the fire?
36:1748 forward observers
36:19went to work
36:19with the 15th
36:20Field Artillery Battalion
36:22on Elzenborn Ridge.
36:24Six days later
36:2532 of them
36:26had been evacuated
36:27for wounds
36:28or exposure.
36:29Two out of three.
36:31In under a week.
36:33That is not a statistic
36:34about bad luck.
36:36It is a statistic
36:37about the job.
36:39The forward observer's
36:40whole purpose
36:41was to be where
36:41he could see the enemy,
36:43which meant being
36:44where the enemy
36:44could see him.
36:46At Krinkelt and Rocherat,
36:48the American history notes,
36:49almost in passing,
36:51that losses
36:51among the artillery observers
36:53were unusually high,
36:54and then moves on
36:56because everyone involved
36:57already knew.
36:59So if the men
37:00who carried the radios
37:01were being killed
37:02at that rate
37:02and the fire
37:03never faltered,
37:04then the fire
37:05cannot have depended
37:06on those particular men.
37:08It didn't.
37:10And this is the layer
37:11underneath everything
37:12you have heard so far.
37:14December 18, 1944,
37:17just before
37:17half past eight
37:18in the morning
37:19on the road
37:20east of Rocherat.
37:21The fog that had covered
37:23the fight all night
37:24lifted,
37:24and three German tanks
37:26drove straight down
37:27the American foxhole line,
37:28machine guns working,
37:30with infantry
37:31rushing forward
37:31behind them.
37:33Lieutenant Stephen Truppner
37:34of Company A,
37:361st Battalion,
37:369th Infantry,
37:37got on the radio
37:38and reported
37:39that his company
37:40had been overrun.
37:41Then he asked for artillery
37:43to be fired
37:43onto his own position.
37:45An American battalion
37:46shelled that ground
37:47for 30 minutes.
37:49Twelve men
37:50came out of Company A,
37:51alive.
37:53I am not going
37:54to dress that up.
37:55There is nothing
37:56to add to it.
37:57But I want you
37:58to notice something
37:59technical inside it
38:00because it matters
38:01enormously.
38:03Truppner was not
38:04an artillery officer.
38:05He was an infantry
38:07company commander.
38:08And he was able,
38:09in the middle
38:10of being overrun,
38:11to speak into a radio
38:12and have a field
38:13artillery battalion
38:14place its entire fire
38:16onto a grid square
38:17within minutes.
38:19Now hold that thought
38:20and go back two days
38:22and ten miles north
38:23to Höfen on the 16th.
38:25When the German infantry
38:27broke into the village,
38:29Lieutenant Colonel Butler
38:30picked up a telephone
38:31and called the forward observer
38:32of the 196th Field Artillery Battalion,
38:35a young officer
38:36named Llewellyn,
38:37whose observation post
38:39was a three-story brick building
38:40sitting in the forward line
38:42and whose little party
38:43was at that moment
38:44fighting Germans
38:45off the ground floor.
38:47Butler asked for three
38:49five-minute concentrations
38:50on his own positions.
38:52The shells came in promptly.
38:54When the fire lifted,
38:56Butler sent his reserve,
38:58one platoon,
38:59into the counterattack,
39:01picking up strength
39:02from the foxhole line
39:03as it went
39:03and drove the survivors
39:05back out of the village.
39:07Over the course of those days,
39:09Butler's battalion
39:10called fire
39:11onto or beside
39:13its own positions
39:14at least six separate times.
39:17Same pattern again
39:18on the 22nd of December
39:19on the 9th Division front,
39:21where Sergeant Peter D'Alessandro
39:23of Company E
39:24found his position collapsing
39:25and made a last stand
39:27with grenades
39:27and an abandoned machine gun.
39:30When he could hold no longer,
39:31he called for a mortar barrage
39:33on top of himself.
39:34He survived,
39:36and he was awarded
39:37the Medal of Honor.
39:38An infantry lieutenant,
39:40a battalion commander,
39:42a sergeant.
39:43Now watch it happen
39:45one level lower still.
39:47July 17, 1944,
39:50in the Normandy hedgerows.
39:52A forward observer party
39:53from the 230th Field Artillery
39:55is working ahead
39:56of the American line
39:57when German machine gun fire
39:59kills the officer in charge.
40:01The party does not withdraw.
40:04Frank Dennius,
40:0619 years old,
40:07a private first class,
40:09a fire control instrument operator,
40:11which is to say
40:12the man who sets up the equipment,
40:14takes over the officer's job.
40:16Under fire,
40:17he calls,
40:18observes,
40:19and adjusts the artillery
40:20that carries the infantry forward.
40:22He gets a silver star for it,
40:25the first of four.
40:25And on December 22,
40:28at Bütchenbach,
40:29the same man,
40:30now a sergeant,
40:31had his observation post
40:32located by German tanks
40:34and taken under direct fire.
40:36He stayed in it
40:37and kept the artillery coming
40:39until the attack
40:40was beaten off.
40:42Here is the thing
40:43I want you to see clearly,
40:45because it is the difference
40:46between the two armies,
40:47and it is not
40:48a difference of courage.
40:50In the German system,
40:52calling artillery fire
40:53was specialist work.
40:55Their fire planning
40:56ran on careful survey,
40:58artillery reconnaissance units
41:00moving forward
41:01to fix positions on the ground,
41:02firing data recalculated
41:04each day against the weather,
41:06worked out on mechanical calculators
41:08at a computing center,
41:09and sent out by teletype.
41:11It was competent.
41:13It was also a closed loop.
41:16Fire belonged to artillerymen,
41:18and shifting a lot of guns
41:19onto a target
41:20that nobody had surveyed
41:22took time
41:23and the electrical situation
41:24rarely gave.
41:26In the American system,
41:28requesting fire
41:29had become a common skill.
41:31Fire direction
41:32was centralized at battalion.
41:34Every battery could,
41:35in practice,
41:36shoo for anybody,
41:37and one observer's request
41:38could be pushed up.
41:40Three minutes to add the division.
41:42Three minutes more
41:43to add the Corps.
41:44There was a documented case
41:46in Italy
41:46of a single Piper Cub pilot
41:48calling five separate
41:50Corps-level missions
41:51inside one hour.
41:53On the northern shoulder
41:55of the bulge,
41:56348 guns
41:57and a battalion
41:58of chemical mortars
41:59were placed under the control
42:01of one headquarters,
42:03so that anyone
42:03who could see a target
42:04could reach all of them.
42:07Which brings us to the answer
42:08that the Germans
42:09could not have found,
42:10no matter how carefully
42:12they looked through
42:12their instruments.
42:14They kept trying
42:15to knock out the position
42:16by killing the men in it.
42:18But the ability
42:19to call down the fire
42:20of ten artillery battalions
42:22was not lodged
42:23in any particular man.
42:25It was distributed.
42:28It sat in the infantry lieutenant,
42:31in the sergeant,
42:32in the nineteen-year-old
42:33instrument operator,
42:34in the battalion commander
42:36with a telephone.
42:37Kill the observer
42:39and the company commander
42:40does it.
42:41Kill the company commander
42:42and a sergeant does it.
42:44There was no head
42:45to cut off.
42:46That is why the pattern
42:48held from Normandy
42:49to the Rhine.
42:51The German gunner's problem
42:52was never that he missed.
42:54It was that the thing
42:55he was trying to destroy
42:56had no single point
42:58of failure anywhere
42:59inside the beaten zone
43:01of his guns.
43:02And there was one more property
43:04of an American position
43:05that the German command,
43:06I think,
43:07never fully allowed itself
43:08to believe.
43:10An American position
43:11that had been destroyed
43:12did not stay destroyed.
43:14The battalion that stopped
43:16the 12th SS Panzer Division
43:18at Dombudgenbach
43:19on December 21st
43:21was, three weeks earlier,
43:23a battalion that no longer existed.
43:25Go back to the 2nd Battalion
43:26of the 26th Infantry
43:28and look at what was actually
43:29holding that line of trees
43:30on December 21st.
43:32Companies E and F
43:34virtually annihilated
43:36on the fringe of the Hürtgen.
43:38Company G
43:39shattered.
43:41Rifle companies rebuilt
43:43to about 100 men each,
43:44nine parts in 10 of them
43:46replacements.
43:47Seven officers surviving
43:49from the December 1st roster.
43:51Machine gun crews
43:52who had never fired
43:53at a German.
43:55That is not
43:56a veteran battalion.
43:57That is a name
43:58with new men
43:59poured into it.
44:00And that name,
44:01filled with strangers,
44:03held its ground
44:04against the entire
44:0525th Panzer Grenadier Regiment
44:07supported by SS armor,
44:08and broke it,
44:10and counted 300 German dead
44:12in one patch of woods
44:14afterwards.
44:15Now think about
44:16what that means
44:16from the other side
44:17of the field.
44:18In the Hürtgen,
44:20German artillery
44:21had done everything
44:22an army can ask
44:23of artillery.
44:24It had genuinely
44:25destroyed those companies.
44:27That is a rare
44:28and expensive achievement.
44:30And it was real.
44:32And it bought them
44:33roughly three weeks.
44:35Because behind
44:36the American line
44:37stood something
44:38the German army
44:39no longer possessed
44:40in any meaningful form.
44:42A machine
44:43for putting
44:43a destroyed unit
44:44back together.
44:46Wounded men
44:47off the line
44:48and into surgery
44:49in hours.
44:50Replacements
44:50arriving in a steady stream.
44:52Weapons,
44:53ammunition,
44:54winter clothing,
44:55radios,
44:56flowing forward
44:57continuously
44:58in quantities
44:59that meant
44:59a division could bleed
45:00and stay in the fight.
45:03Compare the other
45:04side of that ledger.
45:05By the middle of July
45:06in Normandy,
45:07one German division
45:08had reported
45:098,000 casualties
45:10and the entire
45:12Army Group B
45:13had received
45:14just over
45:145,000 replacements.
45:16About 12%
45:17of what it had lost.
45:20Field Marshal
45:20von Kluge
45:21told the High Command
45:22bluntly
45:23that the defense
45:24might not hold
45:25because he could not
45:26afford the casualties.
45:28That is the asymmetry
45:29that makes
45:30everything else
45:30in this story
45:31work.
45:32When German artillery
45:34destroyed an American
45:35position,
45:36it removed that position
45:37from the war temporarily.
45:39When American artillery
45:40destroyed a German position,
45:42it removed it permanently.
45:45And now I can give you
45:46the answer to the question
45:47we started with
45:48in full.
45:49The Germans could hit
45:51American positions
45:52but never knock them out
45:53because a defended
45:55American position
45:55in 1944
45:56was not a place
45:58and it was not
45:59a group of men.
46:00It was a claim
46:01on fire.
46:03The men in the holes
46:04were not the weapon.
46:05They were the eyes
46:07and the anchor
46:07for a weapon
46:08that lived several miles
46:09behind them
46:10spread across
46:11dozens of batteries
46:12coordinated through
46:13fire direction centers
46:15that could mass
46:15everything within range
46:17onto one grid square
46:18in minutes
46:19executing plans
46:20already drawn up
46:21before the attack began.
46:24To knock that out,
46:26German artillery
46:26would have had to destroy
46:28at the same moment
46:29four separate things.
46:31The men in the holes
46:33who were replaceable
46:34in days.
46:35The observers
46:36who were interchangeable
46:38with anyone else present.
46:40The communications
46:41which failed for three hours
46:43at Budgenbach
46:44and changed nothing.
46:45And the guns themselves
46:47which were beyond their reach
46:49and protected by an aeroplane
46:51that made German batteries
46:52afraid to fire at all.
46:54They could reach
46:55exactly one of those four
46:57and it was the one
46:59that grew back.
47:01That is why
47:02the German gunner's experience
47:03was so maddening.
47:04His shells landed
47:06where he sent them.
47:07His observations
47:08were correct.
47:09His reports
47:10were honest.
47:12And the enemy line
47:13kept killing his infantry
47:14because he had never once
47:16been shooting at the thing
47:17that was doing the killing.
47:20Now, having spent 1944
47:23learning that they could not
47:24destroy an American position,
47:26the Germans got to spend
47:27the last weeks of that year
47:29finding out what the reverse
47:30looked like.
47:31There was a device
47:32the Americans had held back
47:34for two years.
47:35A small radio set
47:36built into the nose
47:37of an artillery shell,
47:39sturdy enough to survive
47:40being fired out of a gun barrel,
47:42which detected the ground
47:44rushing up
47:44and detonated the shell
47:46in the air above it.
47:47The proximity fuse.
47:49The men called it
47:51the funny fuse.
47:52It had been available
47:54for a long while
47:55and had been forbidden
47:56over land.
47:57For one reason.
47:58The fear that a dud
48:00would fall into German hands
48:01and be copied
48:02and then used
48:03against the bomber fleets
48:05over Germany.
48:06The release for general use
48:08had been scheduled
48:08for Christmas Day 1944.
48:11The German offensive
48:13began nine days early
48:14and the restriction
48:15was lifted
48:16inside a couple of days.
48:19Understand what that put
48:20into American hands.
48:22Everything the Germans
48:23had achieved
48:24in the Hötchen
48:25with tall fir trees,
48:26bursts overhead,
48:28fragments coming
48:29straight down into holes,
48:31the Americans
48:31could now produce
48:32anywhere,
48:33over open ground,
48:34in any weather,
48:35without needing a forest
48:37to do it for them.
48:38And they could produce it
48:40in the volumes
48:40we have been talking about.
48:4210,000 rounds
48:43in eight hours
48:44for a single battalion's front.
48:48The effect
48:49on the German infantry
48:49was immediate
48:50and it was psychological
48:51as much as physical.
48:53Prisoners spoke repeatedly
48:55of what those airbursts
48:56did to men at night.
48:58An American intelligence report
49:00noted that German commanders
49:01had begun offering
49:02a reward
49:03to any soldier
49:04who could bring in
49:05an intact fuse.
49:07Patton wrote to Washington
49:09that the new shell
49:10was devastating
49:11and that he was glad
49:12the Allies had thought
49:13of it first.
49:14The Germans,
49:15that winter,
49:16learned what it feels like
49:18when the other side
49:18can genuinely destroy
49:20a position.
49:22They were being taught it
49:23by an enemy
49:23who had spent five months
49:25proving it could not
49:26be done to them.
49:28Which brings us back
49:29to Elsenborn
49:30and to the end
49:31of the argument.
49:32By the 23rd of December,
49:34the 12th SS Panzer Division
49:36had thrown in the sponge
49:37at Budgenbach.
49:39The 3rd Panzer Grenadier Division,
49:41caught by American artillery
49:43as its assault waves
49:44were still forming,
49:45could not make
49:46a second attempt.
49:47The 277th
49:49and the 326th
49:50Volksgrenadier Divisions
49:52had both been fought out.
49:54Four American infantry divisions
49:56now stood on organized ground
49:58from Monschau to Weissmus,
50:00and the northern shoulder
50:01of the German offensive
50:02was jammed shut.
50:04But somebody still had to try
50:06one more time.
50:07On the 26th of December,
50:09a fresh German division
50:11was ordered to attack
50:12the Elsenborn Ridge.
50:14What happened to it
50:15took less time
50:16than it will take me
50:16to describe it.
50:18And it is the cleanest answer
50:19to the question
50:20in this whole film.
50:21December 26th, 1944.
50:25The open, rolling ground
50:26east of the Elsenborn Ridge,
50:28the 246th Volksgrenadier Division,
50:31formed up for the attack.
50:33The men in it
50:34were conscripts,
50:35most of them new,
50:36sent against high ground
50:38held by the 99th Infantry Division,
50:40an outfit that 10 days earlier
50:42had been the greenest division
50:43on the American front,
50:45and that the German plan
50:46had counted on brushing aside
50:48in a morning.
50:49The attack was cut down
50:51virtually at the moment
50:52of its start,
50:53not after it had crossed
50:54the fields,
50:55not at the wire,
50:56at the moment of its start.
50:59Because from the ridge,
51:00American observers
51:01were watching
51:02the assault waves form,
51:03and the concentration
51:04of an entire American corps
51:06was already plotted
51:07onto the ground
51:08where they were standing.
51:10The men on that ridge
51:11had blasted their foxholes
51:13out of frozen earth
51:14with explosives
51:15because shovels
51:16would not cut it.
51:17The holes had been roofed
51:18with felled timber.
51:20Communications had been laid
51:22in redundant lines.
51:23Likely approaches
51:24had been registered
51:25weeks earlier.
51:26Every lesson
51:27of the previous five months
51:29was standing on that hill,
51:30and none of them
51:31were about how
51:32to survive shelling.
51:33They were all about
51:34how to keep killing
51:35after the shelling stopped.
51:37At sunrise on the 27th,
51:39Sepp Dietrich
51:40and his 6th Panzer Army,
51:42the formation Hitler
51:43had personally chosen
51:44to carry the main effort
51:45of the entire offensive,
51:47were sitting east of a ridge
51:49they could not take.
51:50The main effort
51:51had already been handed
51:52to somebody else
51:53a week before.
51:54Go back now
51:55to where we started.
51:56Höfen.
51:575.25 in the morning,
51:59December 16th.
52:01The wire cut.
52:02The searchlights
52:03on the clouds.
52:04Six hundred men underground,
52:06one of them joking
52:07about two overworked horses.
52:10Sometime after that,
52:11in a prisoner cage
52:12behind the American lines,
52:14a German officer
52:15captured in front
52:16of that village,
52:17a lieutenant
52:18who had commanded
52:19the 5th Company
52:19of the 753rd
52:21Volksgrenadier Regiment,
52:22asked his interrogator
52:24a question.
52:25He wanted to know
52:27which unit
52:27had defended Höfen.
52:29He was told,
52:31the 3rd Battalion,
52:33395th Infantry.
52:35He said it must have been
52:36one of their best formations.
52:39It wasn't.
52:40It was a battalion
52:41of draftees
52:42that had been in the line
52:43for about six weeks
52:44in its first serious action
52:47of the war,
52:47holding a village
52:49it had been told
52:49would be a quiet place
52:50to spend the winter.
52:52What became of them?
52:54Lieutenant Colonel
52:55McClernand Butler
52:56stayed in command
52:57until the 30th of April,
52:591945,
53:00when he collapsed
53:01from exhaustion.
53:02The war ended
53:04six days later.
53:05He went home to Illinois,
53:07worked for the telephone company
53:09in the town of Ottawa,
53:10and grew old there
53:11with his wife, Madge.
53:13Robert Weiss
53:14came off Hill 314
53:16on the 12th of August, 1944,
53:18with about half the men
53:20he had gone up with.
53:21He became a lawyer
53:22in Portland, Oregon,
53:23and in 1998,
53:25he finally wrote
53:26the whole thing down,
53:27because the men
53:28on that hill
53:29had never had anyone
53:30tell it.
53:31Frank Dennius
53:32went home to Texas
53:33with four silver stars
53:35and two purple hearts,
53:37enrolled at the University
53:38of Texas
53:39in October of 1945
53:40at the age of 20,
53:42took degrees
53:43in business and law,
53:44and spent the next
53:4570 years in Austin.
53:48He died in 2018,
53:50aged 93.
53:52Lieutenant Stephen
53:53Truppner's company
53:54came out of the fight
53:55east of Ratshoreth
53:56with 12 men.
53:58So here is the answer,
54:00as simply as I can put it.
54:02German artillery
54:03could hit American positions
54:04all day long,
54:05and it did.
54:07What it could never do
54:08was knock one out,
54:09because the thing
54:10that made an American
54:11position deadly
54:12was never inside it.
54:16The killing power
54:17sat miles behind,
54:18in guns the German
54:19gunner could not see,
54:21reachable by any American
54:22who could see him.
54:24Kill the men,
54:25and replacements arrived.
54:26Kill the observer,
54:28and a sergeant
54:28took the radio.
54:29Cut the wire,
54:31and the shells
54:31came anyway,
54:32off a plan
54:33already written.
54:35They spent five years
54:36perfecting the art
54:37of putting steel
54:38on a map coordinate,
54:39and they never understood
54:40that they were shooting
54:41at an address
54:42where nobody lived.
54:45Thank you for staying
54:46with me through all of this.
54:47If this told you
54:48something you hadn't
54:49heard before,
54:50about the observers,
54:51about Hill 314,
54:53about a battalion
54:54of draftees at Höfen,
54:56then a like
54:57genuinely does help.
54:58It's the thing
54:59that decides
55:00whether a story like this
55:01reaches other people
55:02who care about it,
55:03or quietly disappears.
55:05Subscribe and hit the bell
55:06if you'd like to be there
55:07for the next one.
55:09And tell me
55:09where you're watching from.
55:11I read the comments,
55:12and the map they draw
55:13always surprises me.
55:15If somebody in your family
55:16was in this war,
55:17an artilleryman,
55:19an infantryman,
55:20a man who carried
55:21a radio for a living,
55:22I'd like to hear his name
55:24and where he served.
55:26This channel exists
55:27because those names
55:28are still worth saying
55:30out loud.
55:30but I'm not sure
55:30I'm not sure
55:30but I'm not sure
55:30but I'm not sure
55:30but I'm not sure
55:30but I'm not sure
55:30but I'm not sure