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Aachen 1944 - Germany Turns a City Into a Fortress and US Infantry Changes the Method
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00:00Imagine standing on the border of a hostile nation, looking at a city that has stood for over a thousand
00:06years,
00:07knowing that every window, every cellar, and every sewer grate is rigged to kill you.
00:13By September 1944, the United States Army had perfected the art of the sweeping armoured breakout.
00:20But what happens when an army built for speed is suddenly forced to fight in a phone booth?
00:25Welcome to the meat grinder of Arken.
00:27This was not just another spot on the map, but the ancient capital of Charlemagne,
00:33the symbolic heart of the First Reich, and the very first major German city to be assaulted by American ground
00:40forces in World War II.
00:43Before we tear into the tactics, the concrete and the blood spilled in these streets,
00:48if you want to understand the brutal realities of warfare without the Hollywood gloss,
00:53hit that subscribe button, turn on notifications, and join our community of military history analysts.
01:00We dissect the battles that shaped our world, and your support keeps this channel firing on all cylinders.
01:07To understand why Arken became a slaughterhouse, we have to rewind the clock and look at the strategic whiplash of
01:13the late summer of 1944.
01:17Following the breakout from the Normandy beachheads in July and the destruction of the German 7th Army at the Falaise
01:24Pocket in August,
01:25the Allied war machine was operating on pure adrenaline and high-octane gasoline.
01:30American and British armoured columns were racing across France and Belgium, covering dozens of miles a day.
01:36The Wehrmacht appeared to be in full collapse, a shattered force fleeing back toward the borders of the fatherland.
01:43Optimism in the Allied high command was infectious, with generals from Dwight D. Eisenhower down to division commanders
01:50openly predicting that the boys would be home by Christmas.
01:54But logistics is a cruel master, and it does not care about optimism.
01:58The American way of war is, at its core, an industrial enterprise heavily reliant on an uninterrupted flow of beans,
02:07bullets and gas.
02:09By early September, the logistical tether of the Allied armies had stretched to the breaking point.
02:15The primary supply port was still all the way back at Cherbourg on the Normandy coast, nearly 400 miles behind
02:22the advancing front lines.
02:23Although the famous Red Bull Express, a massive fleet of two-and-a-half-ton cargo trucks, was running 24
02:30hours a day, it simply was not enough.
02:33An American armoured division on the move consumed up to 25,000 gallons of fuel every single day,
02:40not to mention the hundreds of tons of artillery shells, small arms, ammunition and rations required to sustain combat operations.
02:49The great port of Antwerp had been captured intact by the British.
02:53But the German army still controlled the Scheldt estuary, leading to the sea, making the port utterly useless for unloading
03:02transport ships.
03:03The Allied war machine sputtered, coughed and ground to a halt right on the doorstep of Germany.
03:10This logistical pause was the greatest gift the German High Command could have asked for.
03:16It bought them time, the one commodity they desperately needed to resurrect their shattered defences.
03:23And those defences were anchored on a formidable barrier known to the Germans as the West Wall, and to the
03:30Americans as the Siegfried Line.
03:32Constructed in the late 1930s, the Siegfried Line was a band of fortifications, stretching over 390 miles along the western
03:41border of Germany.
03:42Unlike the French Maginot Line, which relied on massive, self-contained underground forts, the Siegfried Line was designed for defence
03:50in depth.
03:51It consisted of thousands of mutually supporting concrete pillboxes, troop shelters and communication trenches, all hidden within the natural contours
04:01of the terrain.
04:02In front of these bunkers lay the infamous Dragon's Teeth, rows of reinforced concrete pyramids designed to belly out and
04:10trap advancing tanks, exposing their vulnerable underbellies to anti-tank fire.
04:15The Siegfried Line had been stripped of its weapons and neglected during the years of German victories, but in September
04:221944, it was hastily re-armed.
04:25Aachen sat right in the middle of this defensive belt, essentially serving as a massive, fortified roadblock.
04:32The city itself lay in a depression, surrounded by a ring of hills that offered perfect observation posts for German
04:39artillery spotters.
04:40To bypass Aachen completely would mean leaving a heavily garrisoned fortress, sitting right astride the main American supply lines leading
04:49toward the Rhine River, a tactical risk that Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges, commander of the United States First Army, was
04:58not willing to take.
04:59Hodges was a steady, methodical infantryman, a stark contrast to the flamboyant George S. Patton to his south.
05:06Hodges commanded the First Army with a quiet, ruthless efficiency, but he was about to send his men into an
05:13environment for which they were fundamentally unprepared.
05:16We have to look at the American military doctrine of 1944 to understand the shock that awaited the infantrymen at
05:25Aachen.
05:25The United States Army was built, equipped and trained for a war of mobility and overwhelming firepower in open terrain.
05:35The doctrine emphasised finding the enemy, pinning them down with massive artillery barrages and then manoeuvring armoured and infantry forces
05:44to destroy them from the flanks.
05:46Urban warfare, or fighting in built-up areas, was practically non-existent in the field manuals of the time.
05:53During the race across France, American forces had deliberately bypassed major cities whenever possible,
05:59leaving them to be isolated and starved out, or relying on the French resistance to handle the internal fighting.
06:06Paris had been handed over largely through political negotiation and a German commander's refusal to burn it down.
06:13The American infantryman had not yet experienced the nightmarish, three-dimensional meat grinder of city fighting.
06:20If we look at historical precedents, the American military in 1944 lacked the institutional memory of urban combat
06:28that they would later acquire in places like Seoul in 1950,
06:33Hue City in 1968,
06:35or Fallujah in 2004.
06:38They were about to learn the same bitter lessons that the German 6th Army had learned in the rubble of
06:43Stalingrad just two years prior.
06:45A city neutralises the advantages of a mechanised army.
06:50In the tight, winding streets of a medieval European city,
06:54the mighty M4 Sherman tank, weighing 30 tonnes and armed with a 75mm gun,
07:01goes from being an apex predator to a blind, clumsy target.
07:06Tanks cannot look up, their turrets traverse slowly,
07:09and their armour is thinnest on the top and the rear.
07:13Artillery, the great killer of the battlefield,
07:16loses much of its effectiveness when the enemy is dug deep into reinforced cellars beneath multi-storey stone buildings.
07:23Air support becomes incredibly dangerous due to the risk of friendly fire
07:28when the opposing lines are separated by nothing more than a plaster wall.
07:33The burden of taking Aachen would fall squarely on the shoulders of the infantry,
07:39specifically the men of Major General J. Lawton Collins' 7 Corps.
07:46Collins, known as Lightning Joe,
07:49was one of the most aggressive and capable corps commanders in the European theatre.
07:54He selected two of his most experienced divisions for the task.
07:58The first was the legendary 1st Infantry Division,
08:01the Big Red One, commanded by Major General Clarence Huebner.
08:04These men were the definition of combat veterans.
08:08They had fought through the deserts of North Africa,
08:11the mountains of Sicily,
08:13and had bled heavily on the sands of Omaha Beach.
08:16If any unit in the United States Army had the grit to take a fortified city,
08:21it was the Big Red One.
08:22Joining them was the 30th Infantry Division known as Old Hickory,
08:26commanded by Major General Leland Hobbs.
08:29Originally a National Guard unit from the Carolinas and Tennessee,
08:33the 30th had proven itself to be one of the most reliable
08:36and hard-hitting combat divisions in the theatre,
08:40famously holding the line against the massive German counter-attack at Morton a month earlier.
08:45These American divisions were heavily supported by artillery,
08:48with access to hundreds of guns ranging from 105mm howitzers to massive 8-inch guns.
08:55The American artillery branch was arguably the best in the world,
08:59utilising centralised fire direction centres
09:03that could mass the fire of multiple battalions onto a single grid coordinate within minutes.
09:09But as they approached Aachen, the weather began to turn.
09:13October in western Germany brought cold autumn rains,
09:16dropping temperatures into the miserable low 40s Fahrenheit,
09:20and turning the ground into a thick, sucking mud that bogged down vehicles
09:25and exhausted the foot soldiers.
09:27Low cloud ceilings grounded the Allied tactical air forces,
09:31stripping the Americans of their air supremacy.
09:34Facing this American juggernaut was a German military apparatus
09:38that was deeply wounded but far from dead.
09:41The defence of the West was overseen by Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt,
09:45but the man directly responsible for the sector was Field Marshal Walter Model,
09:51commander of Army Group B.
09:53Model was known as the Führer's firemen,
09:56a master of defensive warfare who specialised in scraping together shattered units
10:01and forging them into a cohesive line.
10:03Under Model was the German 7th Army,
10:06commanded by General Eric Brandenberger
10:09and the LXXXI Corps under General Friedrich August Schack.
10:14The forces defending Aachen and its surrounding sectors
10:17were a bizarre mix of elite veterans and hastily conscripted replacements.
10:22The German war economy, despite being heavily bombed by Allied aircraft,
10:27had been decentralised and was still churning out massive amounts of infantry weapons.
10:32Because they lacked the tanks and artillery to match the Americans in the open field,
10:36the German High Command shifted their doctrine to favour infantry-heavy formations
10:41known as Volksgrenadier Divisions.
10:44These divisions were smaller than a standard infantry division,
10:47but they were heavily armed with automatic weapons,
10:50specifically the revolutionary Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifle
10:54and the MG42 machine gun,
10:56which fired up to 1,200 rounds per minute.
10:59More importantly, for the coming urban battle,
11:02these troops were equipped with thousands of Panzerfausts.
11:06The Panzerfaust was a cheap, single-use, recoilless anti-tank weapon
11:11that fired a shaped-charge warhead.
11:14It had a short range of only about 30 to 60 yards,
11:18but in the confines of a city street, that was more than enough.
11:22A 15-year-old member of the Hitler Youth,
11:25hiding in a basement window with a $30 Panzerfaust,
11:29could instantly vaporise a $50,000 American Sherman tank and its entire crew.
11:34The initial commander of the Aachen garrison was Lieutenant General Gerhard von Schwerin,
11:40commanding the 116th Panzer Division.
11:43Schwerin was a realist.
11:45He saw that the city was surrounded by American forces,
11:48he saw the civilian population suffering,
11:51and he initially planned to surrender Aachen to spare it from destruction.
11:55He even drafted a letter to the American commanders.
11:58But this treason was discovered by Nazi loyalists,
12:01and Schwerin was immediately relieved of command,
12:05narrowly escaping a court-martial and execution.
12:08Hitler was absolutely furious.
12:10He issued a direct, unyielding order that Aachen was to be defended to the last man.
12:16There would be no retreat, no surrender,
12:18and no evacuation of the remaining civilians.
12:21The city was to become a fortress,
12:23a meat grinder designed to bleed the American army white
12:26and buy time for the massive winter offensive.
12:29Hitler was already secretly planning in the Ardennes forest.
12:33Command of the city was handed over to Colonel Gerhard Wilk,
12:37a fanatical officer who commanded the 246th Volksgrenadier Division.
12:42Wilk immediately set about turning Aachen into a fortress of death.
12:46He ordered his men to barricade the streets
12:48with overturned streetcars, rubble and concrete.
12:51They knocked loopholes into the thick stone walls of the medieval buildings,
12:56creating interlocking fields of machine gun fire that covered every intersection.
13:02They utilized the city's extensive sewer system
13:04to move troops undetected beneath the rubble,
13:07allowing them to pop up behind American units that had just cleared an area.
13:11They heavily mined the approaches
13:13and registered their mortars on every open plaza and street corner.
13:18The German defensive doctrine in an urban environment was brutal and effective.
13:24They understood that the Americans relied heavily on their vehicles and their artillery.
13:29By forcing the Americans into the narrow streets,
13:32the Germans stripped away those advantages.
13:34They turned the multi-storey buildings into vertical battlefields.
13:38A standard tactic was to place machine guns in the basements
13:41to sweep the streets at knee level,
13:43while snipers and Panzerfaust teams occupied the top floors and rooftops
13:47to fire down onto the vulnerable tops of American tanks.
13:50This layered defense meant that an American infantry squad
13:54could not simply walk down a street.
13:57They had to fight for every single room,
14:00from the cellar to the attic.
14:03When you compare the industrial backing of the two forces,
14:06the contrast is stark.
14:08The United States was producing thousands of tanks
14:11and millions of rounds of ammunition
14:12from factories in Detroit and Ohio
14:14that had never seen a single enemy bomber.
14:17The American logistical tail stretched across the Atlantic Ocean,
14:21a marvel of modern engineering and supply management.
14:24The Germans, on the other hand,
14:26were fighting out of the rubble of their own cities,
14:28relying on a localized, increasingly desperate supply chain.
14:33Yet, in the specific tactical environment of a ruined city,
14:37the technological edge narrows significantly.
14:40A high explosive shell from a Sherman tank might blow a hole in a building,
14:45but it rarely killed the men dug deep into the reinforced cellars.
14:49The Americans had the numbers, the artillery and the air power,
14:53but the Germans had the concrete, the shadows
14:56and the fanatical desperation of men defending their own soil.
15:00Lightning Joe Collins and his staff drew up the plan for the assault.
15:04The 30th Infantry Division would attack from the north,
15:07punching through the Siegfried Line defences and hooking around the city.
15:10The 1st Infantry Division would attack from the south and east,
15:14completing a double envelopment to encircle Archen entirely.
15:18Once the ring was closed, elements of the Big Red One,
15:22specifically the 26th Infantry Regiment under the command of Colonel John F. R.,
15:27sights, would drive straight into the heart of the city to clear it out.
15:32It looked clean on the map in the command tent.
15:35Draw a circle, pinch the flanks, drive to the centre.
15:39But maps do not show the jagged edges of a shattered concrete pillbox.
15:43They do not show the mud that sucks the boots off a man's feet.
15:46And they do not show the hidden machine gun nests
15:50waiting in the darkness of a collapsed storefront.
15:54The American infantryman, trained to manoeuvre through the hedgerows of Normandy
15:58and the open fields of France,
16:01was about to step into a claustrophobic nightmare of brick, mortar and blood.
16:07As the artillery batteries of the 1st Army loaded their guns
16:11and the men of the Big Red One checked their weapons in the freezing October rain,
16:16the stage was set for a collision of industrial might and fanatical defence.
16:21The encirclement was about to begin, and the Americans were about to find out exactly what it costs
16:27to tear a fortress city apart, room by terrifying room.
16:31The encirclement began not with a scalpel, but with a sledgehammer.
16:35On the 2nd of October 1944, the 30th Infantry Division launched their assault on the northern edge of the Arken
16:43Sector,
16:44slamming into the concrete teeth of the Siegfried Line.
16:47The objective was to punch through the pillbox belt,
16:50cross the small but heavily defended Worm River,
16:53and swing south to link up with the 1st Infantry Division.
16:57But the terrain itself seemed to fight alongside the Germans.
17:01The Worm River Valley was a muddy, flooded swamp,
17:04and the autumn rains had turned the ground into a thick, gelatinous paste
17:09that sucked the boots right off the feet of the advancing infantrymen.
17:13To understand the sheer nightmare of this assault,
17:16we have to look at the anatomy of a German Schartenstand,
17:20the standard, reinforced concrete pillbox of the West Wall.
17:24These were not simple concrete shacks.
17:26They were subterranean fortresses, often featuring walls and roofs up to 10 feet thick,
17:33reinforced with heavy steel rebar.
17:35They were designed with overlapping fields of fire,
17:39meaning that if you attacked one pillbox,
17:42you were automatically taking flanking fire from two others.
17:46The embrasures, the small slits where the machine guns protruded,
17:50were stepped in a way that deflected incoming bullets,
17:54making it incredibly difficult to shoot back into the bunker.
17:59American artillery, even heavy 155mm howitzers,
18:04would often score direct hits on these roofs,
18:07only to see the high-explosive shells detonate harmlessly against the thick concrete,
18:13leaving nothing but a scorch mark.
18:15How do you root out an enemy who is buried under 10 feet of reinforced stone
18:20and pre-sighted on every square inch of your approach?
18:23You do not outmanoeuvre him.
18:25You dismantle his fortress piece by bloody piece.
18:28The American infantry had to invent a brutal close-quarters methodology on the fly.
18:33The standard tactic became a deadly, synchronised dance of suppression and assault.
18:38First, American riflemen and light machine gunners
18:42would pour a massive volume of .30-caliber fire at the pillbox embrasures,
18:46forcing the German gunners to keep their heads down.
18:49Under this covering fire,
18:51a small assault team would low-crawl through the mud,
18:54navigating around razor wire and S-mines,
18:56the terrifying, bouncing betties that sprang waist-high
19:00before detonating a lethal cloud of shrapnel.
19:03The assault team carried the primary bunker-busting tools of the era,
19:08the satchel charge and the flamethrower.
19:10A standard satchel charge was a canvas bag
19:13packed with 20 pounds of high-explosive C2, or TNT,
19:17rigged with a short pull-friction fuse.
19:20The infantrymen had to get close enough,
19:22usually within 15 yards,
19:25to heave this heavy explosive package
19:27directly against the steel door of the bunker
19:30or right into the firing slit.
19:32If the satchel charge failed,
19:34they called up the flamethrower.
19:36The American M2 flamethrower was a terrifying weapon,
19:40both for the victim and the operator.
19:42Fully loaded with thickened, napalm-like fuel
19:45and compressed nitrogen,
19:47the rig weighed 72 pounds,
19:49making the operator slow, clumsy,
19:51and a prime target for every German sniper in the sector.
19:55The weapon had a maximum effective range
19:57of only about 20 to 40 yards,
19:59and it provided just a few seconds of continuous fire.
20:03The operator would step out of cover,
20:05squeeze the trigger,
20:06and send a 2,000-degree rod of liquid fire
20:09directly into the pillbox aperture.
20:11The goal was not always to burn the defenders alive,
20:14but to rapidly consume all the oxygen inside the bunker,
20:18suffocating anyone who survived the initial blast of heat.
20:21This was savage, primitive warfare,
20:24reminiscent of the brutal trench raids of the First World War,
20:28but executed on an industrial scale.
20:30While the 30th Division ground its way south,
20:34the 1st Infantry Division launched its attack
20:36from the opposite direction on October 8.
20:39Their primary obstacle was a heavily fortified ridge
20:42known as Ravelsberg,
20:43dominated by Hill 239,
20:46which the Americans dubbed Crucifix Hill,
20:49due to a large cross perched at its summit.
20:51Crucifix Hill was the linchpin of the German southern defence,
20:55bristling with 43 mutually supporting pillboxes
20:58and hundreds of entrenched Volksgrenadiers.
21:01The assault on Crucifix Hill fell to Company C
21:04of the 18th Infantry Regiment,
21:06commanded by Captain Bobby E. Brown,
21:09a former professional boxer
21:10and a hardened combat veteran.
21:13Following a massive preliminary bombardment
21:15by American artillery and tactical bomber strikes,
21:18Brown led his men up the muddy, heavily mined slopes.
21:22The German defensive fire was withering,
21:25pinning the American platoons to the ground.
21:27Realising that the attack was stalling
21:29and his men were being slaughtered,
21:32Captain Brown grabbed a pole charge,
21:35essentially a heavy explosive
21:37attached to a long wooden stick
21:39and sprinted entirely alone
21:42toward the first German pillbox.
21:45Dodging machine gun fire,
21:47he shoved the charge into the embrasure
21:50and blew the bunker apart.
21:51He then returned to his lines,
21:54grabbed another charge
21:55and destroyed a second pillbox.
21:58Wounded by a mortar shell,
22:00he refused medical evacuation,
22:02crawled back for more explosives
22:04and destroyed a third pillbox,
22:07single-handedly breaking
22:08the German defensive line on the hill.
22:11Captain Brown would receive the Medal of Honour
22:13for his actions that day,
22:15but his heroism highlights a grim reality
22:18of the Arken campaign.
22:20Even with overwhelming air superiority
22:22and massive artillery support,
22:24the final yard of the battlefield
22:26always had to be taken
22:28by a lonely, terrified infantryman,
22:30armed with nothing but high explosives
22:33and sheer willpower.
22:34By October 10,
22:35the two American pincers were closing,
22:38squeezing the Arken corridor
22:40down to a gap of less than two miles.
22:42Inside the city,
22:44Colonel Gerhard Wilk
22:45and his garrison of 5,000 men
22:47were trapped,
22:48but they were not alone.
22:49Field Marshal Walter Model,
22:51realising the symbolic
22:52and strategic disaster
22:54of losing Arken,
22:55ordered massive counter-attacks
22:57to keep the corridor open.
22:59He threw elements
23:00of the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division
23:02and the 116th Panzer Division
23:05against the flanks
23:06of the American 30th Infantry Division.
23:08This resulted in desperate,
23:11chaotic tank battles
23:12in the small farming villages
23:14surrounding Arken.
23:15Here, the technical limitations
23:17of American armour were exposed.
23:19The standard M4 Sherman tank
23:21was a reliable,
23:23mass-produced workhorse,
23:25but its short-barrelled
23:2675mm gun
23:28lacked the kinetic energy
23:30to penetrate
23:31the thick frontal armour
23:32of the German Panther tanks
23:34or the low-profile
23:36Sturmgeschutz III
23:37assault guns
23:38at standard combat ranges.
23:40The American tankers
23:42had to rely on
23:43outflanking manoeuvres,
23:44using their superior
23:46turret traverse speed
23:47and numbers
23:48to get side or rear shots
23:50on the German armour.
23:51But in the narrow,
23:52muddy farm lanes
23:53of western Germany,
23:55flanking
23:55was often impossible.
23:57To counter this,
23:58American commanders
23:59began employing
24:00a devastating new tactic.
24:02They brought up
24:03the M12 gun motor carriage,
24:06a self-propelled
24:07artillery piece
24:08mounting a massive
24:10155mm gun
24:12on a tank chassis.
24:13Normally,
24:14these guns sat
24:15miles behind the line,
24:16firing in high arcs.
24:18At Arken,
24:20the Americans drove them
24:21right up to the front lines,
24:22sometimes within
24:23a few hundred yards
24:24of the enemy,
24:25and used them
24:26for direct,
24:27point-blank fire,
24:28firing a 95-pound
24:30high-explosive shell
24:31directly into a German tank
24:33or a concrete bunker
24:35was the modern equivalent
24:36of a Civil War artilleryman
24:38rolling a Napoleon cannon
24:39loaded with double canister
24:41right up to the enemy line.
24:43The concussive force
24:44was so massive
24:45that even if the shell
24:47did not penetrate
24:48a German tank's armour,
24:49the sheer kinetic impact
24:51would often spall
24:53the steel on the inside,
24:55sending lethal shards
24:57of hot metal
24:57tearing through
24:58the crew compartment
24:59or simply knock the turret
25:01entirely off its ring.
25:03As the battle
25:04for the perimeter raged,
25:05Lieutenant-General
25:06Courtney Hodges
25:07decided it was time
25:08to crush the city itself.
25:10On October 10,
25:12the Americans delivered
25:13a formal ultimatum
25:14to Colonel Wilk,
25:15demanding unconditional surrender
25:17within 24 hours
25:18or the city would be destroyed.
25:20Wilk,
25:21under strict orders
25:22from Hitler,
25:23and fearing execution
25:24if he yielded,
25:26ignored the ultimatum.
25:27The next day,
25:28the American artillery
25:30unleashed hell.
25:31Over 300 guns
25:32of the First Army
25:33opened fire simultaneously,
25:36dropping thousands of tons
25:37of high explosives
25:38onto the ancient city.
25:40P-38 lightnings
25:41and P-47 thunderbolts
25:44dove out of the low clouds,
25:46dropping 500-pound bombs
25:48and firing unguided rockets
25:50into the medieval architecture.
25:52The bombardment was designed
25:54to shatter the German will
25:56to fight,
25:56but as history has shown
25:58time and time again,
26:00bombing a city into rubble
26:02often makes it harder to capture.
26:04Just like the German bombing
26:06of Stalingrad in 1942,
26:08the American bombardment of Aachen
26:10simply turned the city
26:12into a jagged,
26:13three-dimensional maze
26:14of concrete and twisted steel,
26:17providing perfect cover
26:18for the defending infantry.
26:20On October 13,
26:22the 26th Infantry Regiment
26:24of the Big Red One,
26:25commanded by Colonel John Seitz,
26:28crossed the line of departure
26:29and plunged into the urban meat grinder.
26:33They were immediately met
26:34by a wall of lead.
26:36The Germans had barricaded the streets
26:38with overturned streetcars
26:40filled with rocks
26:41and covered every intersection
26:43with interlocking MG-42 machine gun fire.
26:46The MG-42,
26:48known as Hitler's buzzsaw,
26:50fired at a cyclic rate
26:51of 1,200 rounds per minute,
26:53a sound so terrifyingly fast
26:55that the individual gunshots
26:57blended into the sound
26:58of tearing canvas.
27:00Any American soldier
27:01who stepped into a street
27:02was instantly cut in half.
27:04What happens to an army
27:05built for speed
27:06when the enemy turns
27:07every living room,
27:09every sewer,
27:10and every church steeple
27:11into a heavily armed fortress?
27:13They are forced to adapt
27:15or they are forced to die.
27:18The American infantry
27:19quickly realized
27:20that standard field manual doctrine
27:23was a suicide pact
27:24in the streets of Aachen.
27:25They abandoned the streets entirely
27:27and adopted a tactic
27:29known as mouse-holing.
27:31Instead of walking down the sidewalk,
27:33an American squad
27:34would enter the first house
27:35on a block.
27:36They would clear the ground floor
27:38with Thompson submachine guns
27:40and fragmentation grenades.
27:41Then, instead of going out
27:43the front door
27:44to reach the next house,
27:45they would place
27:46a shaped charge
27:47of C4 plastic explosive
27:49against the interior dividing wall.
27:51They would blow a hole
27:52right through the plaster and brick,
27:55step through the smoke and dust
27:56into the neighbour's living room
27:57and clear that house.
27:59They moved block by block
28:01entirely inside the structures,
28:04never exposing themselves
28:05to the deadly snipers
28:07and machine gunners
28:08waiting in the streets.
28:09This type of fighting
28:10negated the range advantage
28:12of rifles
28:13and turned the battle
28:14into a terrifying,
28:15intimate brawl.
28:17The standard American infantry rifle,
28:19the M1 Garand,
28:20was a masterpiece of engineering,
28:22firing a powerful,
28:2430-caliber armour-piercing round
28:26from an eight-round,
28:28N-block clip.
28:29But it was a long,
28:30heavy weapon,
28:31unwieldy when trying
28:32to pie a corner
28:33in a narrow hallway
28:34or clear a dark cellar.
28:36The Germans,
28:37conversely,
28:38were heavily armed
28:39with the MP40 submachine gun
28:41and the revolutionary
28:43Sturmgewehr 44.
28:45The Sturmgewehr
28:46was the world's first
28:47true assault rifle,
28:49firing a shorter,
28:50intermediate cartridge
28:51that allowed for controllable
28:53automatic fire.
28:54In the confines
28:55of an Aachen apartment building,
28:57a German Volksgrenadier
28:59with a 30-round magazine
29:01of automatic fire
29:02had a distinct advantage
29:04over an American rifleman.
29:06To level the playing field,
29:07the Americans relied heavily
29:09on the M1000,
29:11918 Browning Automatic Rifle,
29:13or BAR,
29:15and the liberal use
29:16of hand grenades.
29:17An American squad
29:18would literally throw grenades
29:20up stairwells,
29:22down laundry chutes,
29:23and through floorboards
29:25before entering a room.
29:26The fighting became
29:27a slow, grinding friction
29:29that wore down a man's soul.
29:31Soldiers fought for days
29:32without seeing the sun,
29:34covered in white plaster dust,
29:36deafened by the constant
29:37concussions of explosives
29:39in enclosed spaces.
29:40They fought in the sewers,
29:43wading through freezing,
29:45waist-deep filth,
29:46to ambush German patrols,
29:49trying to flank them
29:50underground.
29:51It was a subterranean
29:53and vertical war,
29:54a blue-collar job of death
29:56where progress was measured
29:58not in miles,
29:59but in rooms cleared
30:01and stairwells taken.
30:02Meanwhile,
30:03on the outskirts of the city,
30:05the trap finally slammed shut.
30:07On October 16,
30:09after two weeks
30:10of some of the most brutal,
30:12mud-soaked fighting
30:13of the Western Front,
30:14the exhausted men
30:16of the 1st Infantry Division
30:17and the 30th Infantry Division
30:19finally linked up
30:20at the top of Ravelsberg Hill.
30:22The Asian Corridor was closed.
30:24The Ring of Steel
30:25had slammed shut
30:26around the city,
30:28trapping thousands
30:28of fanatical defenders
30:30inside a cauldron
30:31of their own making.
30:32But surrounding a fortress,
30:33and actually digging
30:35the enemy out of the rubble,
30:36are two very different
30:37kinds of hell.
30:39With the city completely cut off
30:40from the outside world,
30:42the fighting inside Aachen
30:43devolved into
30:44a prehistoric struggle
30:45waged with modern
30:47industrial weapons.
30:48The men of the 26th Infantry Regiment
30:51were no longer fighting
30:53a war of sweeping manoeuvres,
30:54but a claustrophobic,
30:57three-dimensional campaign
30:58of extermination.
31:00The focal point
31:01of the German resistance
31:02in the final days
31:03centred around the Kurhaus,
31:05a massive, palatial resort building
31:08and the adjacent Hotel Quellenhof.
31:11This was the high-rent district
31:13of Aachen,
31:14characterised by thick stone architecture,
31:17wide boulevards,
31:18and sprawling
31:19underground utility tunnels.
31:21Colonel Gerhard Wilk
31:22had turned the Hotel Quellenhof
31:24into his primary
31:25defensive bastion,
31:27garrisoning it
31:27with some of his
31:28most fanatical troops,
31:30including elements
31:31of the 1st SS Panzer Division
31:33that had managed
31:33to infiltrate the city
31:34before the ring closed.
31:36The American assault
31:37on the hotel
31:38was a masterclass
31:39in brutal,
31:40close-quarters
31:41infantry tactics.
31:42The GIs did not charge
31:44the front doors
31:45like a Hollywood movie,
31:46because doing so
31:47would have meant instant death
31:48from the interlocking
31:49MG-42 machine gun nests
31:52positioned in the lobby
31:53and mezzanine levels.
31:54Instead,
31:55American infantrymen
31:57used the sewer system
31:58and adjacent basements
32:00to manoeuvre
32:01underneath the German positions.
32:03They packed satchel charges
32:05against the load-bearing walls
32:07of the hotel
32:07and detonated them,
32:10collapsing entire sections
32:11of the building
32:12onto the defenders.
32:13When the infantry
32:14finally breached
32:15the ground floor,
32:16the fighting devolved
32:17into a terrifying
32:18room-by-room grenade duel.
32:21Soldiers fired
32:22Thompson submachine guns
32:23and Browning automatic rifles
32:25at point-blank range,
32:27the muzzle flashes
32:28illuminating the suffocating clouds
32:30of white plaster dust
32:31that filled the unlit hallways.
32:34How do you break the will
32:35of a commander
32:36whose own head
32:36is on the chopping block
32:37if he surrenders?
32:39You bring the heaviest sledgehammer
32:41in the American arsenal
32:42and you drop it directly
32:44on his front porch.
32:45Realising that infantry assaults alone
32:47were costing too much
32:48American blood,
32:50the battalion commanders
32:51called up the armour.
32:52But standard M4 Sherman tanks
32:55were struggling
32:56to penetrate the reinforced stone
32:58of the hotel
32:59and the surrounding bunkers.
33:01The Americans adapted
33:02by bringing up
33:03the M10 tank destroyer,
33:05a thinly armoured vehicle
33:06mounting a high-velocity
33:08three-inch gun,
33:09and the massive
33:11M155 gun motor carriage.
33:13These self-propelled
33:14artillery pieces
33:15were driven straight down
33:16the boulevards,
33:18completely exposed
33:19to sniper fire,
33:20to unleash direct
33:21point-blank devastation.
33:23Firing a 95-pound
33:24high-explosive shell
33:26from a distance of 200 yards
33:27into a hotel lobby
33:29does not just kill the enemy,
33:31it fundamentally alters
33:32the architecture
33:33of the battlefield.
33:34The concussive overpressure alone
33:37was enough to rupture
33:39the internal organs
33:40of the German defenders
33:41hiding behind the walls.
33:44Under this unrelenting,
33:46pulverising firepower,
33:48the German defence
33:49at the Hotel Quellenhof
33:51finally shattered.
33:52Colonel Wilk
33:53and his surviving staff
33:54were forced to abandon
33:56their luxurious command post
33:58and retreat into a massive,
34:00heavily reinforced concrete
34:02air-raid bunker
34:03in the centre of the city.
34:04By the 21st of October 1944,
34:08the situation for the German garrison
34:10was hopeless.
34:12They had run out of
34:13anti-tank ammunition,
34:14their medical supplies
34:15were exhausted,
34:16and they were drinking water
34:18from shattered sewer mains.
34:19The Americans brought
34:20a 155mm gun
34:23directly up to the steel doors
34:24of Wilk's final bunker
34:26and essentially
34:27knocked on the door
34:28with a high explosive shell.
34:30Realising that his men
34:31were about to be entombed alive
34:33and that further resistance
34:35was a mathematical impossibility,
34:37Colonel Wilk
34:38finally defied
34:39Hitler's stand-or-die order.
34:41He surrendered
34:42the city of Aachen.
34:43The sight of the surrender
34:44was a stark contrast
34:46in the realities of war.
34:47Wilk and his staff officers
34:49emerged from the bunker
34:51in immaculate,
34:52tailored uniforms,
34:53wearing their iron crosses
34:54and polished jackboots.
34:56They surrendered
34:57to American infantrymen
34:58who had not bathed
34:59in three weeks,
35:00men who were covered in mud,
35:02dried blood,
35:03and brick dust,
35:04their uniforms torn
35:05and stinking of cordite
35:07and death.
35:08Nearly 3,400 German soldiers
35:10marched into American captivity
35:11that day,
35:12leaving behind a city
35:14that had been erased
35:15from the map.
35:16The tactical
35:17and strategic lessons
35:18drawn from the rubble
35:19of Aachen
35:20fundamentally changed
35:21how the United States Army
35:23viewed urban warfare.
35:24Prior to this battle,
35:26the American military doctrine
35:27was predicated
35:28on bypassing cities,
35:31treating them as obstacles
35:32to be isolated
35:33rather than objectives
35:34to be taken.
35:36Aachen forced the realization
35:37that in the heavily industrialized,
35:41densely populated landscape
35:43of Western Europe,
35:44cities could not always be ignored.
35:47The American infantry
35:48had to write the manual
35:49on urban combat in real time,
35:51paid for with their own blood.
35:53They learned that the infantry squad
35:55is the supreme arbiter
35:57of the urban battlefield,
35:58but that squad cannot survive
36:00without the immediate,
36:02direct fire support
36:03of heavy armor and artillery.
36:05This exact same bloody lesson
36:07would have to be relearned
36:09by the United States Marine Corps
36:1124 years later
36:13during the Tet Offensive.
36:14In 1968,
36:16when the Marines assaulted
36:17the citadel in Hue City,
36:19they initially relied
36:20on light infantry tactics
36:22only to be butchered
36:24by entrenched
36:24North Vietnamese Army troops.
36:26Just like the GIs at Aachen,
36:28the Marines in Hue
36:29had to abandon the streets,
36:31adopt mouse-holing tactics,
36:33and bring up heavy M48 pattern tanks
36:36and ONTOS anti-tank vehicles
36:38to blast through the masonry
36:40at point-blank range.
36:42The geometry of a city
36:43negates technological superiority,
36:46forcing the attacker
36:47to destroy the very infrastructure
36:49they are trying to capture.
36:51From a logistical perspective,
36:53the Battle of Aachen
36:54was a terrifying wake-up call
36:56for the Allied high command.
36:58The American way of war
36:59relies on an overwhelming expenditure
37:02of ammunition
37:02to save infantry lives,
37:04and at Aachen,
37:06the First Army fired
37:07over 300,000 rounds of artillery.
37:10This staggering consumption rate
37:12completely overwhelmed
37:13the already strained supply lines
37:15stretching back to the Normandy beaches.
37:17The Red Ball Express
37:18could not deliver heavy artillery shells
37:21fast enough
37:21to keep up with a static,
37:23attrition-based siege.
37:25This localised expenditure
37:27contributed directly
37:28to a theatre-wide artillery shortage
37:30in November 1944,
37:32forcing General Eisenhower
37:34to severely ration artillery ammunition
37:36across all Allied armies.
37:38We can compare this logistical strangulation
37:42to Ulysses S. Grant's campaign
37:44at Vicksburg in 1863.
37:46Grant realised that he could not take
37:48the heavily fortified River City
37:49by direct infantry assault
37:51without suffering catastrophic losses.
37:53Instead, he surrounded Vicksburg,
37:56cut off its supply lines,
37:57and subjected it to a relentless,
37:59grinding artillery bombardment
38:01until the Confederate defenders
38:03literally starved into submission.
38:05At Aachen,
38:07the Americans applied
38:08this same principle
38:09of total siege,
38:10but compressed it
38:11into a brutally fast,
38:13industrialised time frame.
38:15The intelligence failures
38:16surrounding Aachen
38:17were equally profound.
38:19In September 1944,
38:22Allied intelligence officers,
38:24suffering from a severe case
38:26of victory disease,
38:27believed that the German army
38:29was a hollow shell,
38:31incapable of mounting
38:32a cohesive defence.
38:34They looked at the
38:35Volksgrenadier divisions,
38:36made up of older men
38:38and teenage boys,
38:40and assumed they would
38:41simply surrender
38:42at the first sight
38:43of American tanks.
38:44What the intelligence analysts
38:46failed to factor in
38:47was the psychological power
38:49of fighting on home soil.
38:51When the German soldiers
38:52were retreating across France,
38:54they were fighting
38:55for someone else's country.
38:56At Aachen,
38:57they were fighting
38:58for their own homes,
38:59their own families,
39:00and the sacred soil
39:02of the fatherland.
39:03This fanatical desperation,
39:05combined with the incredibly
39:07strong concrete
39:07of the Siegfried Line,
39:09turned a supposedly
39:10defeated army
39:11into a lethal,
39:13unyielding force.
39:14Politically and economically,
39:16the fall of Aachen
39:17was a seismic event
39:18for both sides.
39:20For the Third Reich,
39:21losing the ancient capital
39:23of Charlemagne,
39:24the symbolic birthplace
39:25of the first German empire,
39:27was a devastating blow
39:28to civilian morale.
39:29Joseph Goebbels' propaganda machine
39:32had promised the German people
39:34that the West Wall
39:35was impenetrable,
39:37and Aachen proved
39:38that the American war machine
39:39could and would
39:41breach the borders of Germany.
39:43Economically,
39:44the battle showcased
39:46the terrifying disparity
39:47between the two nations.
39:49Germany was fighting
39:50a decentralised,
39:51desperate war of survival,
39:53relying on cheap,
39:55mass-produced weapons
39:56like the Panzerfaust
39:57to counter American steel.
39:59The United States,
40:00completely untouched
40:02by enemy bombing,
40:03was rotating fresh,
40:05fully-equipped divisions
40:06into the line,
40:07supported by a logistical tail
40:09that spanned an ocean.
40:10Yet,
40:11for all of America's
40:12industrial might,
40:13the butcher's bill
40:14at Aachen
40:15was staggering.
40:16The United States'
40:17First Army
40:18suffered over 5,000 casualties,
40:20including dead,
40:21wounded,
40:22and missing,
40:23just to capture
40:24a few square miles
40:25of shattered brick
40:26and concrete.
40:27The German defenders
40:28suffered roughly
40:29the same number
40:30of combat casualties,
40:32alongside the thousands
40:33taken prisoner.
40:34The ultimate tragedy
40:35of Aachen
40:36is that it was not
40:38the end of the nightmare,
40:39but merely a preview.
40:41The time and resources
40:43expended to reduce
40:44this single fortress city
40:46delayed the American advance
40:47to the Rhine River
40:48by crucial weeks.
40:50This delay
40:51forced Lieutenant General
40:52Courtney Hodges
40:53and the First Army
40:54to pivot their axis
40:56of advance
40:56into a dense,
40:58heavily wooded area
40:59just south of Aachen
41:00to protect their flank.
41:02That area
41:02was known as
41:04the Hürtgen Forest,
41:05a place where
41:06the American army
41:07would soon experience
41:08a level of slaughter
41:09that would make
41:10the street fighting
41:11in Aachen
41:11look like a mere skirmish.
41:14Cities are monuments
41:15to human civilisation,
41:17testaments to our ability
41:18to build,
41:19to trade,
41:20and to thrive.
41:21But when the machinery
41:22of war rolls into
41:23the city limits,
41:24these monuments
41:25become the most efficient,
41:27terrifying slaughterhouses
41:28ever engineered by man.
41:31Aachen proved
41:32that no amount of concrete
41:33can withstand
41:34the focused application
41:35of high explosives,
41:36but it also proved
41:38that the ultimate price
41:39for every yard of rubble
41:41must always be paid
41:42in the blood
41:43of the infantrymen.
41:44What do you think
41:44was the most critical factor
41:46in the American victory
41:47at Aachen?
41:48A. The overwhelming use
41:50of direct fire artillery
41:52and air power
41:53to pulverise
41:54the German defences.
41:55B. The brutal adaptation
41:57of the American infantry
41:59to mouse-holing
42:00and close-quarters
42:01urban tactics.
42:02C. The complete
42:03logistical encirclement
42:05and strangulation
42:06of the German garrison.
42:07Let us know
42:08your tactical assessment
42:09in the comments below
42:10and make sure
42:12you are subscribed
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42:14a battle on our channel.