The Siegfried Line campaign in the autumn of 1944 was one of the most costly fought by the US Army during World War II, with about 48,000 battle casualties including at least 8,250 killed in action. About half these casualties were incurred in the Hürtgenwald. The rationale for the bloody push into the Hürtgen was confused, and the conduct of the campaign was clumsy. As an attritional campaign, it mauled six German divisions and hampered German efforts to rebuild its forces prior to the Ardennes offensive. The Wehrmacht lost over 12,000 killed in the forest fighting and many more prisoners and wounded. The forest fighting favored the defender, and the Germans were able to hold the First Army at bay with an assortment of second- and third-rate units. German commanders later argued that Hodges’ concern over the threat posed by the Hürtgen to the right flank of VII Corps was unfounded as they lacked the strength to attack through the forest. Yet the Hürtgen fighting had unanticipated consequences. Gen Maj G. von Gersdorf, chief of staff of the German 7th Army, believed that the Hürtgen fighting had profound and seldom recognized effects in undermining the later German offensive in the neighboring Ardennes, stating that in his opinion the Hürtgenwald fighting “was one of the primary reasons for the failure of the (Ardennes) offensive by the German right wing. The Hürtgenwald clear of (American) forces and under German control would have enabled us to start the offensive with quite a different impetus. Since the (right wing) was the center of gravity in the Ardennes offensive, the Hürtgenwald evidently was one of the decisive factors leading to the failure of this operation.” From a narrower tactical perspective, the Hürtgen portion of Operation Queen was a failure. The First Army was unable to exit the forest with enough strength to push on to Düren, and the offensive failed to solve the problem posed by the Roer dams.
The US Army operations in the Aachen corridor were more skillful and successful than the Hürtgenwald battles. Territorial gains were not particularly impressive – the deepest penetration into Germany by the First and Ninth armies after crossing the German frontier was only 22 miles. Yet Eisenhower’s limited objective – to tie down the Wehrmacht in an attritional battle until logistics were ready for a renewed offensive in 1945 – was accomplished. During the autumn fighting, the Wehrmacht lost 95,000 men to the First and Ninth armies in prisoners alone, and other battle casualties were comparable to US losses.
The Wehrmacht’s record was likewise rather mixed. The ability of the Wehrmacht to rebuild after the “void” of late August and early September 1944 was rightly dubbed the “miracle of the west.” Rundstedt’s and Model’s skill at delaying the American advance with an absolute minimum of reinforcements was a testament to their tactical skills. On the other hand, the Siegfried Line campaign hinted at the continued lack of strategic perspective of the Wehrmacht since its abdication of decision-making to Hitler. The slow, deliberate retreat of the Wehrmacht only served to ensure the desolation of German cities and towns by the superior firepower of the Allies. The final year of the war would be far more costly to the German civilian population than the previous four years of the war combined, and would leave Germany in ruins. The cruel paradox of war was that in defending Germany, the Wehrmacht merely served to ensure its devastation.
Germany has had little reason to memorialize the horrible battles of the autumn of 1944, and few monuments or museums exist to commemorate the bitter 1944 fighting. There is a small museum to the Hürtgen fighting in Vossenack and a small memorial to the 116th Panzer Division in neighboring Simonskall. There are at least six German military cemeteries in the Hürtgenwald and the Soldatenfriedhof Vossenack also includes the grave of GFM Model, who committed suicide rather than surrender after the encirclement of Army Group B in the Ruhr pocket in April 1945.
The concrete fortifications of the Westwall are one of the few durable reminders of the war, but, even in this case, they have been much more thoroughly obliterated than the German fortifications along the Altlantic coast. In recent years, more interest has been shown in this aspect of Germany’s forgotten past, and an archeological survey of the Westwall in the Aachen area found that fewer than 10 percent of the fortifications still survive. Most of these bunkers are relatively small and overgrown, so locating them can be a challenge without a guidebook. The dragon’s teeth, so characteristic of the Westwall, are thoroughly hated by local farmers and most have been removed. Hans-Josef Hansen’s book Auf den Spuren des Westwalls takes at look at the contemporary impact of the remaining Westwall.
Some larger structures connected with the Aachen fighting survive – for example, the air-raid shelter (Zivilschutzbunker) on Lütticherstrasse. The Hürtgenwald has returned to peace as a state nature sanctuary, and the German government expended a considerable amount of time and effort in the late 1940s and early 1950s to clean up the remaining mines and war debris. The dirt road through the Kall ravine is little changed since the war, and, for those interested in visiting, the article in After the Battle magazine by Karel Magry (Number 71, 1991) is an excellent guide to help discover what remains of the forest fighting.