Victory Was Beyond Their Grasp: With the 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division from the Huertgen Forest to the Heart of the Reich

452 Pages·2015·8.95 MB·English

by  Douglas E. Nash

Victory Was Beyond
Their Grasp
Victory Was Beyond
Their Grasp
With the 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division from the
Hürtgen Forest to the Heart of the Reich
by Douglas E. Nash
CASEMATE
Philadelphia & Oxford
Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2015 by
CASEMATE PUBLISHERS
908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083
and
10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, OX1 2EW
Copyright 2008, 2015 © Douglas E. Nash
Originally published in 2008 by The Aberjona Press
ISBN 978-1-61200-305-4
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-306-1
Cataloging-in-publication data is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Editor: Patricia K. Bonn
Technical Editor: Edward Miller
Cartographer: Tom Houlihan
For a complete list of Casemate titles please contact:
CASEMATE PUBLISHERS (US)
Telephone [phone], Fax [phone]
E-mail: [email protected]
CASEMATE PUBLISHERS (UK)
Telephone [phone], Fax [phone]
E-mail: [email protected]
Contents
Illustrations
Foreword
Prologue
Acknowledgments
Guide to Tactical Symbols
Maps
1. The Story of a Suitcase
2. The Volks-Grenadier Division
3. Origins and Lineage of Füsilier Company 272
4. Of Mortal Coil—The Men of Füsilier Company 272
5. Arrival in the Hürtgen Forest
6. The Battle for Bergstein
7. Fight for Control of the Kall River Gorge: The Assault on “Castle Hill”
8. Two Divisions Collide at Kesternich
9. The Defense of Kesternich
10. The Interlude of January 1945
11. The Americans Drive on the Dams
12. Withdrawal Beyond the Roer
13. The Retreat to the Rhine
14. The Battle for Hönningen
15. Last Stand on the Wied Defense Line
16. From the Hürtgen Forest to the Heart of the Reich
Epilogue
Endnotes
APPENDICES
A. Command and Staff, 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division
B. Volks-Grenadier Division Crew-Served Weapons
C. Standard Organization of a Volks-Grenadier Division and a Füsilier Company
D. Volks-Grenadier Division Numbering
E. Higher Headquarters of the 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division from 2 November
1944 to 12 April 1945
F. Table of German Rank Equivalents
G. Knight’s Cross and German Cross in Gold Holders, 272nd Volks-Grenadier
Division
H. Füsilier Company 272 Casualties and Replacements, September 1944–March
1945
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Tactical Unit Symbols
Map 1 Overall Situation in the West
Map 2 Initial Positions of 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division, 5 November 1944
Map 3 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division Shifts to the Right, 20 November 1944
Map 4 Overall Situation: Hürtgen Forest, late November 1944
Map 5 German Counterattacks on Bergstein, 6 December 1944
Map 6 Füsilier Company 272 Engagement at Giesenheck, 13-14 December 1944
Map 7 Divisions Collide at Kesternich, 13-15 December 1944
Map 8 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division Counterattacks at Kesternich, 15 December
1944
Map 9 Overall Situation in the Eifel/Hürtgen Forest, early January 1945
Map 10 Action at Simmerath, 4-5 January 1945
Map 11 Assault on Raffelsbrand-Ochsenkopf, 10-17 January 1945
Map 12 The Allied Offensive Resumes, 30 January 1945
Map 13 Second Battle of Kesternich, 30 January-3 February 1945
Map 14 American Breakthrough at Dreiborn and German Counterattack at Herhahn,
3-4 February 1945
Map 15 The Assault on Schmidt, 5-8 February 1945
Map 16 Capture of the Schwammenauel Dam, 8-11 February 1945
Map 17 German Defense Routed at Vlatten, 2 March 1945
Map 18 Retreat to the Rhine, 3-10 March 1945
Map 19 Defense of “Fortress” Hönningen, 15-18 March 1945
Map 20 Defense of the Wied River Line, 23-25 March 1945
Map 21 Battle of the Ruhr Pocket, 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division Disbands near
Olpe, 2-12 April 1945
Map 22 Last Days in the Harz Mountains, 10-21 April 1945
Figure 1 Surrender leaflet, 13 December 1944
Figure 2 Surrender leaflet heralding Allied offensive, 30 January 1945
Foreword
This book is an attempt by an American historian to describe the experiences of one
German Army combat unit during the Second World War and how they fought and
died.
As a former commander of Füsilier Company 272, although only for a short period
of time, I can say that these soldiers, despite the overwhelming odds against them and
the technical superiority of the enemy, did as much as humanly possible to carry out
their duty.
Like their brothers who served on the Eastern Front, they fought and died for their
comrades and to protect their loved ones back home, and not for Hitler and National
Socialism.
And like generations of Germans soldiers before them, they served their country
honorably and bravely.
May they never be forgotten by younger generations.
May this book serve as a reminder of the horror of war and the suffering that both
sides endured as they fought each other in that forest of death—the Hürtgenwald.
Helmut Aretz
Oberleutnant and former commander, Füsilier Company 272
Prologue
“Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the
straightforward pathway had been lost. Ah me! How hard a thing it is to say what was
this forest savage, rough and stern, which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter
is it, death is little more.”
Dante Alighieri
Inferno, Cando I
(Longfellow translation)
The Battle of the Hürtgen Forest—known by German veterans as die Hölle im
Hürtgenwald (the Hell in the Hürtgen Forest), lasted from 12 September 1944, when a
costly reconnaissance in force was carried out by the US 3rd Armored Division near
the Siegfried Line at Roetgen, until 10 February 1945, when the US 78th Infantry
Division secured the Schwammenauel Dam and reached the Roer River.1 During this
five-month period, the German armies defending the Siegfried Line (known to German
troops as the Westwall), were practically destroyed as an effective fighting force and
ended with Allied troops poised to cross the Rhine, the last natural barrier to the heart
of Germany.
The fighting was slow and enormously costly in lives and materiel. Losses in the
two Allied armies participating in the fighting along the Siegfried Line, the US First
and Ninth Armies, were substantial (this does not include the Battle of the Bulge, a
separate battle that delayed the outcome in the Hürtgen Forest for nearly two months).
All told, during the fighting for the German frontier, First and Ninth Armies lost a
combined total of 68,000 men killed, wounded, and missing.
Additionally, the Americans lost another 71,654 men as non-battle casualties, from
diverse causes like trench foot, sickness, and battle fatigue, bringing the total number
of US casualties in the campaign to nearly 140,000 men.2 Exact numbers of Germans
killed, wounded, and missing during the Siegfried Line campaign are unknown due to
the loss of key records, though they were at least as high as those of the Allies. The US
First and Ninth Armies reported capturing over 95,000 Germans during this period
alone.
American battle casualties within the ten divisions (seven infantry, one airborne, two
armored, plus elements of another) and supporting units that took part at one time or
another in the Hürtgen Forest portion of the Siegfried Line campaign totaled 33,000
men, more than twenty-five percent of the troops engaged, an extremely high figure by
US Army standards at the time. The U.S. suffered some 24,000 killed, wounded and
missing. In addition, another 9,000 were classified as being evacuated under the
Disease, Non-battle Injury (DNBI) category. German losses were at least equally as
great. Since German units were fighting at reduced strengths to begin with, their
percentage of casualties was correspondingly higher. Many German divisions were
virtually wiped out, only to be hastily rebuilt and committed to battle in the forest and
destroyed again.
In all, during this five-month period, some 140,000 U.S. troops faced off against
80,000 Germans in the Hürtgen Forest, on some of the most brutal battlefields ever
faced by soldiers of any nation during that war. It was a struggle that measured ground
gained in yards, not miles.3 Unlike the rapid Allied advance across France and the Low
Countries in the late summer and fall of 1944, the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest became
a slugfest. The fighting there had much more in common with trench warfare in World
War I than the “modern” mechanized war, or Blitzkrieg, that evolved during World
War II.
The Battle of the Hürtgen Forest witnessed dogged defensive fighting by the
Germans and equally determined Allied assaults. It was characterized by battles for
key towns such as Schmidt and Kesternich, and for objectives hidden in the seemingly
endless forest, such as Dead Man’s Moor (the Todtenbruch) and the Raffelsbrand
hunter’s lodge. Interrupted by Germany’s last-ditch offensive in the Ardennes,
WACHT AM RHEIN, that became better known as the Battle of the Bulge, the large-
scale fighting in the Hürtgen resumed again with added ferocity on 30 January 1945,
when the US First and Ninth Armies were finally able to begin the long-delayed
operation to capture the Roer River Dams, which finally fell on 10 February 1945.
During the course of this final phase of the Siegfried Line campaign, the Allies,
operating from a position of strategic advantage and employing numerical superiority
combined with overwhelming firepower, steadily ground down the weary German
defenders. By March 1945, the entire portion of the Wehrmacht that fought on the
Western Front had become reduced to nothing more than an enormous Alarmeinheit
(emergency unit), composed of a polyglot of various Army, Air Force, Navy, Labor
Service, Volkssturm, and Waffen-SS units, all invariably hastily thrown together, poorly
trained, unfit, and increasingly unmotivated to fight to the last for their Führer.
The Allied success in the Hürtgen Forest and along the length of the Siegfried Line
paved the way for the even more successful Rhineland campaign, which began at the
end of February 1945. In the space of less than two weeks, both the 12th and 21st
Army Groups were able to overwhelm the German defenses along the Roer and had
closed up to the western bank of the Rhine by 10 March. Seizure of the bridge at