01x08 - The horror of Hürtgenwald

[bunniefuu]

[somber music plays]

♪ The bright horses have broken free
From the fields ♪

♪ They are horses of love
Their manes full of fire ♪

♪ They are parting the cities
Those bright burning horses ♪

♪ And everyone is hiding
And no one makes a sound ♪

♪ And I'm by your side
And I'm holding your hand ♪

[tank engine roaring]

[somber music plays]

My name is Christian Berkel.
I'm an actor and a writer.

My father was 17 years old, my mother 13.

He was coming
from working-class background.

She was from a well-of Jewish family
of intellectuals, anarchists.

And he was a misfit.

And he broke into her apartment
and suddenly they were standing there

in front of each other
and they fell in love.

And her father made him go back
to school and they wanted to marry.

But in '38, they couldn't anymore
because she was Jewish

and she had to leave the country.

She first went to Spain to see her mother,

who was fighting against Franco
as an anarchist.

And then she went to Paris to live
with her aunt, who was a famous designer.

And there she met my father, Otto,
once more.

He now was in the army,
in the Red Cross as a doctor.

And he had to go back to the front.

And the Germans took over Paris

and all the Jews were sent
into camps in France.

My mother was sent in the Pyrenees,
in a camp called Gurs,

which was a very terrible camp.

People died there on a daily basis.

And the women who still lived
in 1943 in this camp

were all deported to Auschwitz.

My mother got somehow lucky.

She was put in a train
and sent back to Germany,

if you can call that luck.

Anyway, she changed her name.
Nobody realized she was Jewish.

She was working in a hospital.

She met my father again
for one week in 1944.

And when he left back
to the Eastern Front, she was pregnant.

And he was taken a w*r prisoner
in Russia and only came back in 1950.

[explosions]

[Christian] Tuesday, September 12th, 1944,

was the day the whole world
was waiting for.

About three months after the Allies
set foot on the French coast,

they were knocking on the door
of the German Reich.

The first American troops
of the 3rd Armored Division

entered Germany and occupied Roetgen.

A little further outside the village
they were confronted for the first time

with the Siegfried line
and its rows of Dragon teeth.

The US Department of Psychological Warfare

wrote the following impression
of the simple GI's

at the border crossing into Roetgen.

"Crossing the German border has somehow
been an 'awe' to the GI.

Even in n*zi Germany,
cows have four legs, the grass is green,

and children with freckles stand around
our tanks."

[male reader 1]
Diary of an unknown soldier,

brought back home by Gene R. McCarty,
September 13th, 1944.

"Shortly after noon,
the unit arrived within the German border.

All g*ns went immediately
into position and started firing.

The sight of Dragon's teeth,
pillboxes and other forms of blockades

became a fixed picture
in each man's mind."

[Christian] In May '38,

Hitler ordered the construction
of a Western Defensive Line: Westwall.

Six hundred and thirty kilometers
long stretching

from the lower Rhine
right up to the Swiss border.

Dr. Fritz Todt was tasked to oversee
the construction and building work.

In 1940, only about half of the planned
defensive works had been completed

and the enormous costs
of about 3,5 billion Reichsmarks

had brought
the German Reich close to bankruptcy.

During a propaganda campaign,
the Westwall construction was described as

'der Friedenswall' to the Western Nations,
the Wall of Peace

behind which the German farmer could
peacefully work his field.

For the Allies,
who called it the Siegfried line,

this impressive stronghold
not only signaled authority but also fear.

And they realized they would have
to suffer great losses to get through it.

But the Siegfried line was outdated.

From September 13th,
the Allies moved on through Germany,

conquering village after village
in the direction of Aachen.

US General Courtney Hodges realized
that he had to protect his right flank.

This meant they had to go through
the Hürtgenwald.

From then on, the bitter misery began.

The initial tactical objective

was to capture the villages
of Schmidt and Monschau.

[g*nf*re]

[airplane engine roaring]

[ominous music plays]

[Christian] Joseph Conrad wrote
in his novel "Heart of Darkness":

"The horror, the horror".

And those words are exactly
what crossed the minds of soldiers

who fought in Hürtgenwald.

Hürtgenwald was a horrible place,
dark and dense.

Even a high noon sun couldn't light it
more than a twilight feel.

At night the temperature was dreadful,
and fell down well below zero,

making the soldiers shiver like a leaf,
have chattering teeth from cold,

and making them end up with hypothermia
and trench feet.

The Hürtgenwald is a forest plateau
measuring 140 km²,

north-east of the German-Belgian border,
running along the border near Aachen,

and forming the northern-most tip
of both the Ardennes region of Belgium

and Luxembourg and the Eifel region
of Germany.

So, it's here that the US soldiers
were sent into the dark woods

on October 6th, 1945.

[ghostly g*nf*re]

[Christian] This is Private Eddy Slovik.

He was part of the GIs
who crossed the Siegfried line.

He went through that row of dragon teeth

deep into the mouth
of the dangerous dragon.

Slovik's death was the basis
of a book called:

" The Execution of Private Slovik"
by William Bradford Huie.

In the 60s, Frank Sinatra wanted
to make a movie out of it.

But because of the outrage it provoked,

and the fact that he was campaigning
for JF Kennedy, he canceled the project.

In 1974, it became a TV movie
starring Martin Sheen.

And even Kurt Vonnegut mentioned
Slovik's name in Slaughterhouse 5.

[ominous music plays]

[Christian] How come that the execution
of Slovik had such an impact?

During World w*r 2 around 40,000 soldiers
were convicted of desertion.

Forty-nine of them
were sentenced to death.

But only private Slovik
had to confront the firing squad.

He's the only truly unique modern soldier.

He stands alone,
stands out in his category.

Private Slovik was k*lled
by the United States,

for the crime of refusing to serve
the United States,

with a bayonet and a r*fle.

He's the only American soldier
who was ex*cuted for desertion,

since the American Civil w*r.

Private Eddy Slovik was part
of the 28th Infantry Division

that planned to start the attack
in the Hürtgen Forest.

On October 8th, he informed his commander

that he was too scared to serve
in a frontline r*fle company.

And that he would run away if he had to.

The next day, Slovik deserted.

His execution was carried out
on January 31st

by a firing squad of 12 men
from his division.

The death warrant was signed by
five-star General Eisenhower

in late December 1944,
during the Battle of Bulge.

At the end of that battle,


His wife didn't have any clue
of the death sentence.

The army denied responsibility,

claiming that Slovik himself
should have notified her.

Private Slovik was buried in
Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial

in Fère-en-t*rd,

alongside 95 American soldiers
ex*cuted for r*pe and m*rder.

In 1987,
Slovik was reburied next to his wife.

Last letter of Private
Eddy Slovik to his wife.

"Everything happens to me.

I've never had a streak of luck
in my life.

The only luck I had in my life
was when I married you.

I knew it wouldn't last
because I was too happy.

I knew they would not let me be happy."

He said to the soldier whose duty it was
to prepare him for the firing squad:

"They're not sh**ting me
for deserting the United States Army.

Thousands of guys have done that.

They just need to make an example out
of somebody.

and I'm it because I'm an ex-con.

I used to steal things when I was a kid,

that's what they are sh**ting me for.

They're sh**ting me for the bread

and the chewing gum I stole
when I was 12-years-old."

The Battle of Hürtgenwald is the name
of a series of three battles

fought in between the German Army
against the American one

in the Northern Eifel Region of Germany
at the end of 1944.

This forest battle was not only
the first major field battle

of the US Army on German soil,

but it was also a first
in many other ways.

It was, for example, the first time

that the US army had to fight
in this kind of terrain.

The Hürtgenwald became
known as "The Death Factory",

and the warfare
the Americans experienced there

was in many ways a precursor
to the Vietnam w*r.

This was just a dark,
almost hermetically, inaccessible wood,

where orientation via the sun
was impossible,

as the sun was almost never visible.

Walking in meant losing the way out.

-[ominous music plays]
-[tank engine roaring]

[Christian] Tanks could hardly be used
inside the dense forest,

air support was severely limited
due to low visibility.

At forest-floor level, radio sets
didn't work amid the trees and hills.

Antennas snapped off;
batteries were affected by the damp.

Mine-detection equipment was jeopardized
by thousands of metal shards

from shell bursts falling onto the ground.

In addition, Germany had learned
to use mines made of glass and even wood

to bypass metal-detection equipment.

The Germans had two objectives:

To defend the area and access
to the Ruhr Dam

and to keep control of the region
as it fitted

into their planned offensive
into the Ardennes.

[woman, in German]
Letter from Christa L., 19th September.

"My dear brother,

The soldiers here said
that the enemy is already in Aken,

which was freed yesterday.

Eupen is already occupied.

The western front lies
under heavy g*nf*re.

At Trier they already penetrated


When is it our turn?

One should take all possibilities
in account,

although we all hope that we will
be spared one way or another.

Who knows if and when
we will see each other again."

[expl*si*n]

There were 13 big bombs shelters
in the city of Aachen.

This one here, in the Casinostrasse,
could hold 2000 people.

They all seemed strong enough to endure
the constant Allied bombing.

Even if the old city was trembling
on its fortresses.

Every family had its own room.

And as they stayed longer here,

they tried to make it look like home.

They painted the walls.

It's not wallpaper. It's all done by hand.

And around the city
there was the Westwall,

made to protect Germany.

It was the only defense that was keeping
Aachen out of Allied hands.

[upbeat music plays]

"Lid openers, pep pills,
wake-up, white cross, crack,

ice, scooby, pookie, trash, rocket fuel."

Historians estimate that Germans

swallowed about 200 million
methamphetamine pills.

Thanks to Pervitin, the German soldiers

could march for days and stay awake
for more than 50 hours.

There were even chocolates produced
containing 13 milligram of the drug.

But Pervitin had also disastrous
side effects, from feeling slightly dizzy,

sweating, depression, addiction and so on.

Some soldiers even got psychoses
and heart attacks.

The Nazis experimented with cocaine

and speed in all their forms
in the concentration camps.

They made Jewish prisoners
drag heavy bags around

to see how long humans
could keep going while on this pep.

These tests took thousands of lives.

But the Allies weren't any different.

The American soldiers were also fighting
under influence of speed.

The Pentagon gave between


to U.S. troops during the w*r

and they were even added
to the American emergency b*mber kits.

The British army consumed an estimated

seventy-two million Benzedrine tablets
during the w*r.

In the run-up to D-Day,
General Montgomery himself provided

a hundred thousand pills to his soldiers.

By the end of the w*r,
n*zi Germany was experimenting

in the concentration camp
in Sachsenhausen,

with a much stronger drug.

n*zi researchers found
that holocaust victims could march

for up to 90 kilometres per day
without rest,

while carrying a 20 kilograms backpack.

This might have had an enormous impact
on the course of the w*r,

but the w*r ended before D-IX could be put
into mass production.

[somber music plays]

Here on this spot,

the remains of soldier Benno Schott
were found in 2009.

He was k*lled on October 14th
in an a*tillery strike.

His bones and his identity disc
were discovered

during reconstruction work
in Raffelsbrand.

He was buried 67 years after his death
in Vossenack.

[man, in German] Letter from Benno Schott
to his family, October 13th.

"Dear mother and siblings,
I'll try to write you something.

I hope the "Tommy" will allow me such.
They're about 100 meter from us now.

At the moment, it's realtively quiet.

Apart from the bombers over our heads
and the shootings every now and then.

Real closeby a grenade exploded just now.

It doesn't even phase me anymore.

So I'll write on,
for so long I'm allowed to do so.

Yesterday I was really lucky,

when a grenade hit us
just two meters behind me.

I'm glad you can't see me now,
you wouldn't recognize me.

I haven't washed and shaved for two weeks.

I greet you all. Kisses, Benno."

[mellow music plays]

[Christian] On October 14th,

Feldmarschall Rommel
was forced to commit suicide

on suspicion of involvement
in the assassination attempt

on Hitler on July 20th.

If he accepted to die by poisoning,

there would not be any measures
taken against his family

and he would get a state funeral.

In order to support the story
of his tragic death,

Hitler declared a day of mourning
to commemorate Rommel,

burying him with full military honors.

Rommel was very popular.

And the German people
would have probably not accepted

that one of their heroes
would have been sentenced to death.

[piano music plays]

US engineers used white tapes,
sometimes several hundred meters long,

to guide supply and medical personnel
in and out of the forest.

[piano music continues]

[Christian] The contrast with the German
defenders couldn't be bigger.

They had all the knowledge needed
and had exact fire plans

for their a*tillery, mortars
and machine g*ns.

Plus, the Germans had gathered
lots of experience

in this kind of warfare in Russia.

Possible approach roads
were blocked by concrete obstacles,

'Dragon Teeth' and minefields.

And everywhere there were pillboxes
with machine and anti-tank g*ns,

barbed-wire obstructions
and countless minefields and booby-traps.

By October 16th, 2700 meters of ground

had been gained at the cost of 4500 US

and 3200 German casualties.

[upbeat music plays]

[Christian] On that same day,

the Volkssturm was officially announced
by the n*zi Party.

The Volkssturm was a national militia
of men between the age of 16 and 60.

And who were not yet employed
by the German Army.

Many German civilians realized
that this was a desperate attempt

to turn the course of the w*r.

Sardonic old men would remark:

[in German] "Wir alten Affen sind des
Führers neue Waffen."

Another joke about the Volkssturm went:

"Why is the Volkssturm Germany's
most precious resource?"

"Because its members
have silver in their hair,

gold in their mouths,
and lead in their bones."

The Volkssturm units were composed
of members of the Hitler Youth, invalids,

elderly, or men who had previously been
considered unfit for military service.

[g*n shot]

I expected it to be a lot stronger.

Well, this Panzerfaust,

literally translated as "Fist of tank",

it's a simple, very effective weapon.

It was used to attack
a tank or other vehicles,

and it could be used by anyone.

Old, young, men, women.

[somber music plays]

[female reader 1] Poem by Ruth Crisp.

Dedicated to her son CPL Ketchell Crisp.

"To a Mother her boy is the only,
soldier, sailor, or marine.

Her love is his protection.
His victory is her dream.

She thinks of him as her little boy.

Although he is now a man,
no harm can ever come to him.

His life is in her hands.

She is watching for him through her eyes.

He will know when danger is near,

for mother will be there to warn him
just like she has done for years.

Her faith and love is his victory front,

every breath she breathes a prayer
for his safety and his return

and she'll be waiting for him there,
she wonders how it's going to end.

If he needs her she must be ready

to take him in her faithful arms
for still he is her baby.

She loves his handsome salute.

She loves his brown and brawny hands.

And if they were gone
she would love him more,

her boy and Uncle Sam's."

The writer of this poem, Ruth Crisp,
grew up on a tobacco farm.

She wrote this for and to her son

and it was surprising
that she was able to write anyhow.

Her son, Ketchell Crisp, was part of one
of the first elite Army Rangers.

He was born in Indiana,
second of eleven children.

He crossed the Atlantic Ocean
to go to Europe and to fight in the w*r.

I guess Ketchell was astonished

by the intensity of his mother's love
when he got this poem.

Here in this forest,

Ketchell got wounded in his face
by a ricocheting b*llet.

After surviving shrapnel,
wounds and World w*r II,

he died in 1974 of a heart attack.

[man, in German]
Excerpt, from October 18th, 1944,

from the diary of Hubert Gees.

"Again we had to use
our primitive equipment

to hastily dig in the hard,
stone-like soil.

While doing that we experienced
heavy a*tillery fire.

Gunsmoke and earshattering explosions

in the trees all around us.

Instinctively we lay still
in our shallow shelters.

The smell of gunsmoke was intense.

Our paramedic got hit by a grenade
shell in his back, the size of a fist.

He didn't survive.

Our boys once learned
all those patriotic songs.

But not every victim had the luck
to die swiftly and painless."

[Christian] After the first


both sides were exhausted
and the intensity of fighting decreased.

There are even stories of Germans
who planted expl*sives

underneath wounded men.

One GI lay motionless for 72 hours,
struggling to remain conscious

so that he could warn
whoever might come to his rescue.

[man, in German] Letter from Anton Bayer
to his brother, October 19th.

"How unlucky that it had to be Aachen

as first city
that had to fall in this terrible w*r.

Many times I think
about how 1000 years ago, in Aachen,

European culture sprouted its origins.

Let's hope that our culture
will not be buried there."

[religious music plays]

Meanwhile, on October 21st,

the Allies had conquered
the city of Aachen.

Aachen also became
one of the first denazified cities.

But after a couple of months,
the new mayor got m*rder*d

by the SS unit's
Werewolf Assassination Command.

[somber music plays]

[Christian] German High Command

was sure that the American attack
on November 2nd,

named in German "Allerseelenschlacht",
because it happened on the date

of the Roman Catholic
"Feast of all Souls",

also called the Day of the Dead,
aimed to capture the Ruhr Dams,

and with this, stop the possibility
of a flooding of the valley.

For they were sure that losing the dam
would damage the German preparations

for the Ardennes Offensive,
and furthermore,

would have allowed
an American flanking attack.

This means that the defence
of the dam and Hürtgenwald

was of the highest priority
of the Germans.

By November 3rd, even though casualties
had been heavy,

US troops had managed to advance
over Vossenack to Schmidt,

and the neighboring Kommerscheidt.

This church changed
seven times the occupier.

At one point,
the Germans were standing behind the altar

and the Americans
were standing over there.

[in German]
Letter from Lieutenant Gehricke.

"The batttle goes on relentlessly.

It's raining and it's freezing cold.

Everyone is near breaking point.

Our strength has reduced
to critical levels.

Grenades explode constantly.

The woods look
like they've been trampled by giants.

Trees are being burnt by the fire
and lie in piles on the ground.

Streets and roads
are being covered by thick layers of dirt.

We look like pigs,

We don't sleep
and all our clothes are damp.

The infantery is exhausted
and nobody takes charge anymore.

Some of our men are being forced to fight
at gunpoint."

[Christian]
Soon after the Allerseelenschlacht,

Ernest Hemingway arrived in Hürtgenwald.

He only wrote the short novel

" Across the River and into the Trees "
about it,

which tells the story of a w*r veteran,

and there's few pages on traumatizing
Hürtgenwald experiences.

[male reader 2] From " Across the River
and into the Trees ",

written by Ernest Hemingway.

"In Hürtgen, they just froze up hard.

And it was so cold they froze up
with ruddy faces.

Very strange.

They all were grey and yellow
like wax-works in the summer.

But once the winter really came,
they had ruddy faces.

Real soldiers never tell anyone
what their own dead looked like,

he told the portrait.

And I'm through with this whole subject.

And what about that company
dead up the draw?

What about them, professional soldier?

They're dead, he said.
And I can hang and rattle."

[Christian] Hemingway's
not the only American writer

who was part of the Hürtgenwald m*ssacre.

JD Salinger was a young soldier,

who wrote in the moments in between
the horrifying fights,

the first part of his first and only novel
" The Catcher in the Rye ".

After the w*r he suffered
from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hürtgenwald was probably the event
that triggered the disorder.

[Christian] But the most astonishing thing
is that, on the German side,

there was also a very important writer:
Heinrich Böll.

[man in German] Heinrich Böll:
"You are now entering Germany".

"More than 28 times,
the villages of Vossenack, Schmidt,

Simonskall and Kommerscheidt
were taken by different military rulers.

In Vossenack the 'front' came
straight through the parish church.

The American soldiers fired
from the organ stage,

and Germans firing back from the sacristy.

In Monschau the German army fired at women

tending to their vegetables
in their gardens.

What couldn't be true,
became true nonetheless.

The w*r was lost and it was almost done."

It's fairly unlikely
that a nightmarish place like this one

would produce two Nobel Prize winners,

and it's not clear
how this horrific period

had any influence on their work.

It could be a coincidence.

But still, I cannot get rid
of the idea and feeling

that both writers were somehow affected by
the violence and pain of that moment.

[explosions and g*nf*re]

[Christian] The Americans were really
afraid of German a*tillery,

especially when a*tillery projectiles
exploded in the treetops.

The trees didn't only break down or burst,

they also catapulted
razor-sharp iron shards

and splinters of wood on the soldiers.

German artillerymen also knew
that shells equipped with timed fuses

set to detonate in the air before impact,
increased this splinter-effect.

Soldiers of both sides were told
to "hug a tree" for body protection,

their heads protected by their helmets.

[male reader 3] Gilbert Maas' w*r diary.

"The Germans had thrown in
many new troops,

heavy a*tillery, and tanks,
of which some were Mark VI's.

There was a complete
Flak Regiment Engineer Battalion,

which immediately attacked
and lost 480 men.

And the German g*ns were firing
eight to ten rounds a minute

for periods of 20 minutes
on a 24 hours-a-day basis,

to keep our troops from advancing.

Hitler's best troops had retaken Schmidt

under orders to restore
the line at all costs.

On November 3rd,

a regiment commanded by
Lieutenant Colonel Carl Peterson

of Bradford, Pennsylvania,
struck toward Vossenack,

overran Germeter,
and took both places before nightfall.

Things looked good.

One of the prisoners taken at Vossenack

couldn't understand why the Yanks
were coming through the forest.

"Why take Vossenack?
The road leads nowhere," he said."

This small path was the only supply route
leading from Vossenack to Schmidt.

Because of the bad weather,
the American troops hardly moved forward.

But on the other side,

the Germans were also hindered
to advance their reserves.

The US forces conquered Schmidt,
but on November 5th,

the Germans struck back
with a counter-attack.

And the American troops had to withdraw.

Many of them were taking prisoners
of w*r or k*lled.

The fighting was brutal,
and often they didn't take any prisoners.

The fight for Schmidt alone cost
the US Army 6184 casualties.

While the Wehrmacht had lost
about half that number.

Lieutenant Bernard Arnest
served as Chief w*r Artist

for the U.S. Army Historical Section
during World w*r 2.

He covered the Battle of the Bulge,
was part of the Hürtgenwald as*ault,

and was on one
of the first patrols to meet

with the Russian Troops
at the end of the w*r.

He was not the only w*r painter;
there were lots of them.

It's a bit like in the old days
where painters escorted the big battles,

and their paintings were
the only visual memory of that moment.

[man in German] Excerpt from the diary
of corporal Bernard Weber.

"What we went through
is impossible to explain.

Let me just say that, a few days ago,

we took one of the villages back
from the Americans.

I've experienced nothing like this
in the two years I've been in service.

Nobody is spared.

The Americans fought back desperately.
They knew they had nowhere to go.

The village lies in ruins and we proved
that no one can hold us back."

[Christian] On November 7th,

there was a first contact between
German and American medics.

The Americans found out
that the Germans allowed them

to recover the wounded and ceased firing.

Three US medics approached
the German lines unarmed,

intending to briefly cross
to the other side

to give medical help to wounded GIs.

A German sentry meets them.

He doesn't speak any English.

They offer him cigarettes,
while the GIs got Kommissbrot,

German Army bread.

This is the beginning
of the 'Miracle of Hürtgenwald'.

German regimental surgeon Stüttgen
and a German medic,

both wearing red cross armbands,
approached the American lines

and invite an American unit commander
to their command post.

With covered eyes, he is being led
to the Mestrenger Mill.

In the following days, Stüttgen manages
to negotiate three cease-fires.

Thanks to him and the support by
his regimental commander, Oberst Rösler,

hundreds of wounded soldiers
and prisoners of both sides

can cross the lines to be exchanged,
treated and fed.

German medics recover American soldiers,

and carry them long distances
behind the lines for treatment.

For several days, Stüttgen's hospital
bunker is run and managed

by German and American medics,
working hand in hand.

Soldiers of both sides were deeply moved
by what they were witnessing.

[male reader 4] Letter by
Captain John C. Ausland to his dad,

November 11th, 1944.

"Dear dad, Yesterday I lectured
one of my men for threatening to run

should we go through
another bombing like July 25th.

Yet I must admit
that I'm frightened myself.

There is nothing so ominous
as the uncertainty of a future battle.

The next blow could be the last,
and I hope it will be.

We are all anxious to bring
this business to a conclusion.

As always, we shall do our best.

Your son, John."

[man in German]
Diary entry from Hubert Gees,

November 12th, 1944.

"Early afternoon a badly wounded
American soldier cried for help.

My commander, Lieutenant Lengfeld,
sent me to the MG

with instructions that if American
paramedics came to rescue the man,

I shouldn't engage in further violence.

The American's heartbeaking cries for help
lasted for hours

and Lieutenant Lengfeld ordered
our paramedics to go get him.

Just as Lieutenant Lengfeld made his way
to the seriously wounded American,

and was in the process
of crossing the streeet,

he tripped on an exploding mine.

We hurried him back to our camp

and tried providing some first aid,

but two big holes in his back indicated
there was a lot of internal damage.

When we lost Lieutenant Lengfeld,
I lost my very best commander."

As the battle raged on
towards a hallucinatory level,

the Americans learned to cover the mines

with metal meshing
to indicate their location.

But still more scary surprises await
behind the minefields:

a network of trenches, foxholes,
sn*per positions, log bunkers, anti-tank,

mortar pits all
with interlocking fields of fire.

In some areas, the Germans
created lethal "tunnels of fire",

by cutting lower middle-level
tree branches

for several hundred meters
into one direction.

The sn*pers were lodged high up
in the branches.

On November 16th, 1944,

the US Army launched a new offensive
in the Hürtgenwald,

called Operation Queen, and another one
at the Rurfront further to the north.

At the start of the attack,

the US infantry regiments suffered
countless casualties

and were repelled by heavy a*tillery
and machine g*n fire.

On November 19th, the attack
had to be halted for two days

to recover the wounded and to regroup.

Even though strongly superior in number,

the American advance proceeded only slowly

and Hürtgen would only be
captured by November 29th.

[male reader 5] Letter from
Captain John C. Ausland to his Dad,

December 6th, 1944.

"There are fights, and there are fights.

But, as you know,
some are more difficult than others.

[explosions]

[male reader 6]
"This has been the worst yet.

Rain, cold, the forest in clever defense
and a desperate enemy have made it tough.

Perhaps better days are ahead,
but this has been terrible,

and six steady months of w*r
don't lighten the burden.

But strangely,
my nerves are fairly steady,

my mind is clear
and my sense of humor intact.

The only really bad moment

was when I almost took up smoking
to work off nervousness.

Your son, John."

[Christian]
Ultimately, the German Army managed

to keep the Americans away from the dams,
up to the point

when the Ardennes Offensive
was launched on December 16th.

With that the Battle in the Hürtgenwald
came to an end.

At least for a while.

[male reader 7] Letter from
Captain John C. Ausland to his father,

December 15th, 1944.

"The Hürtgen Forest
has been cleared of the enemy.

Another battle is ended,
thank God for that.

All is well
and I can afford no complaints.

John."

[Christian] Private Pedro Cano is
recognized with a Medal of Honour

for his valuable action
in the battle of Hürtgenwald.

In December 1944,

his company met heavy enemy resistance
near Schevenhütte, Germany.

In two days, Cano eliminated
nearly 30 enemy troops.

Later, while he was on patrol,

Cano and his platoon were surprised
by German soldiers

who caused numerous casualties
within their platoon.

Cano lay motionless on the ground
until the Germans closed in,

then tossed a grenade into their midst,

wounding or k*lling all of them
and himself.

Cano sustained serious injuries
and returned to the States

and was placed
in a Veterans hospital in Texas.

He passed away six years later.

Cano received the Medal of Honour
on March 18th, 2014.

[somber music plays]

On Christmas Eve,
a real fairy tale happened.

Elisabeth Vincken and her son Fritz

spent the winter of '44
in a small hunting cabin.

And hoped that the Father, who was doing
his service in the city of Monschau,

would celebrate Christmas Eve with them.

But when it seemed impossible for him,

they decided to postpone
the Christmas dinner until New Year.

A sudden knock on the door started
an evening

that took a very unexpected turn.

When Elisabeth Vincken opened the door,

she was face-to-face
with three American soldiers,

one of whom was seriously injured.

They intended no harm,
all they needed was a warm shelter

to recuperate after being lost
for more than three days.

Elisabeth decided to serve
the postponed Christmas dinner

to her starving guests.

And as the cabin in the woods filled
with the wonderful scent of the oven,

there was another knock on the door.

Small Fritz opened the door,

but couldn't say a word
when he saw three German soldiers.

Elisabeth rushed to the door

and welcomed the Wehrmacht soldiers
by wishing them a Merry Christmas.

The men told her
they had lost their regiment

and asked if they could spend
the night in the cabin.

The woman agreed
and offered them a hot meal,

but also said they had three other guests
who you will not consider friends.

Elisabeth Vincken continued:

"It's Christmas Eve and there
is no sh**ting here," she warned firmly.

The Germans understood that the woman
was harboring Americans,

but decided to obey her.

They left their weapons on a pile
of wood and entered the warm cabin.

The Americans also surrendered
their weapons.

The atmosphere was tense,
but gradually, the ice broke.

The Germans shared a loaf of bread

and a bottle of red wine
with the Americans.

The truce in the cabin lasted
until the following morning.

After that the Americans and Germans
each went their separate ways.

The German corporal had first pointed
his enemies in the right direction,

in the direction of the American lines,
and handed them a compass.

Later, when Fritz was around 60 years old,

he met one of the American soldiers
after a long search.

Way after Christmas,
on February 8th, 1945,

the US Army finally managed
to capture Schmidt for good,

after which the fighting
in the Hürtgenwald was finally over.

The Germans opened the floodgates
of the Ruhr and Urfttal dams

before they fell into American hands.

[somber music plays]

[Chistian] This is Julius Erasmus,
a First World w*r Veteran,

who was a Hauptmann in a Pionier formation

during the Second World w*r.

His family was k*lled during
the Battle of Aachen.

In the Summer of 1945,
Julius arrived in Vossenack.

And when he was confronted
with several bodies of German soldiers,

he decided to bury them.

At the start of his project,
he buried about 120 soldiers

and marked their graves
with wooden crosses.

Several men in Vossenack began
to assist Julius

and they recovered the remains
of over 1569 soldiers,

German and American.

Later he was employed by
the German w*r Graves Commission,

which created the German military cemetery
of Vossenack on Hill 470.

Julius Erasmus is what I call
a post-w*r hero.

After liberation and in the years
that followed,

the Hürtgen forest
was still a place of death.

And many people stepped
on mines during a simple walk.

One hundred and six people were k*lled
in the Monschau region.

The clearance of the mines
started in the summer of 1945.

It was dangerous work that was conducted
by 182 German prisoners of w*r.

During the next two years,
thousands of mines were removed

from the forests and fields.

[in German]
Schu-mine, Springmine, Tellermine 35,

Tellermine 42, Tellermine 43.

The attempt of the Americans to cross
the Hürtgenwald area

was a complete disaster
and a gigantic mistake.

The German military couldn't figure out

why the Americans wanted to pass-through
the forest

as their outstanding
a*tillery and tactical air support

couldn't be of much help
in the dense forest.

The losses during the fighting
for the Hürtgen Forest were very high.

The Americans lost 33,000 men,

because its infantry,
unlike the German infantry,

was insufficiently equipped for combat
in places like the Hürtgen Forest.

And they couldn't use their predominance
of armored vehicles or in the air.

The Germans also suffered serious losses,

twenty-eight thousand men were k*lled
or wounded.

Field Marshal Walter Model called it:

"An Allied defeat of the first magnitude".

Before the Battle of Hürtgenwald,

no American soldier
had suffered such misery

as did the men in that nightmarish forest.

Their overcoats were soaked
and caked with frozen mud

and they became too heavy to wear.

Rain seeped into radios
and rendered them useless,

and the forest floor was so tangled
with brush and debris

that men broke under the physical strain
of carrying weapons,

moving supplies forward
and evacuating the wounded.

The slaughter and misery dragged
on well into December 1944.

[somber music plays]