America's Stalingrad: The Battle of Aachen

The dawn of World War II’s apocalyptic phase

In October 1944, the town of Aachen was one of the most dangerous places in the world. American soldiers found themselves in one of the most vicious urban battles of the Second World War in one of the oldest cities in Europe. German soldiers defended this ancient city, the resting place of the first Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne with a renewed ferocity.

Despite the city’s extensive history, the modern brownstone buildings reminded New York Times reporter Drew Middleton of apartment blocks one might find in a bustling Manhattan.^[1] The city was the pride of German nationalism and defended with the tenacity of famous German warriors of the past, such as Arminius, Frederick the Great, and Gebhard Blücher. As American GIs moved through the rubble, going street by street, house by house, and room by room, there was no shortage of ways to become a casualty. Snipers lurked along the rooftops, machine gunners hid in the cellars, and falling debris made it even more dangerous. Panzerfaust rounds, which seemed like flaming footballs, hurtled down the street with terrifying speed, sending U.S. tanks and vehicles scurrying back from where they came. The “invaders” as the Germans called them, then returned fire with a vengeance, using the biggest guns in the U.S. arsenal to blast the threat at point-blank range before infantry finished them off with bayonets, grenades, and flamethrowers.

Once the firing stopped, they moved on to the next street to do it all over again. Brief lulls of quiet were punctuated by never-ending staccatos of German MG-42s’ firing down the street just to let the Americans know what awaited them, prompting one GI to yell, “The sons of bitching bastards. The fucking fucking bastards” as he emptied the clip in his M1 rifle up the street if only to let the Germans know he was there too.^[2] The staggering rubble the fighting left made identifying streets a lost cause. An intelligence officer observed the town, “It was as dead as a Roman ruin.”^[3] By the time the last holdouts of the German defenders fell, most of the town had been obliterated by U.S. artillery and bombs, and the citizens emerged from shelter to pillage whatever they could find.

After being stalled in Normandy for nearly two months, Operation Cobra became the decisive breakthrough that launched the rapid Allied advance across France. This operation began a fast-paced push that sent American forces racing toward Germany. The speed at which the Allies moved ensured that the Germans could never set a new defensive line. The first army entered Germany 233 days ahead of schedule, quickly stretching supplies to the absolute limit.^[4] The advance across France was as rapid as any during the war but gave many soldiers a sense of naivety. Though they were successfully advancing, the farther away they became from supplies and replacements because the Allied Air Force had destroyed much of the infrastructure throughout France and Belgium that had to be rebuilt from scratch. The Big Red One was not immune, and though they arrived at the outskirts of Aachen on September 12^th, they were under-strength and running dangerously low on supplies.^[5]

Nonetheless, the highest-ranking generals believed that the war would soon end. During a visit to France in the fall, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall said, “We have them licked. All they have is a thin shell; when we break that, they are finished.”^[6] Ralph Gordon, who served in the 1^st ID, wrote of the race across France, “The days that we drove across France were as enjoyable as days in combat can be. During the last seven days of August, we traveled over three hundred kilometers across northern France. The company met little resistance as the Jerries were fleeing toward the Fatherland.”^[7] From the highest-ranking generals to the frontline soldiers, everyone sensed that the war could be won in the West by Christmas and that the worst of the fighting would be behind. However, the advance became bogged down as roads became muddy because of the rain, and the supply system became overstretched. The official historian of the division, SB Mason, noted of this development, “It was depressing for the veterans too, for the exhilarating success of the rapid jumps after the St. Lo Breakthrough, and the astonishing successes of a fortnight previously on the road to Mons had dimmed the painful memory of our losses in Normandy.”^[8] Any happiness American soldiers felt about the hard fighting and success in Normandy was quickly lost, as they realized the rejuvenated Germans were waiting for them, and the fighting would likely be the slow attritional warfare that had only occurred a month earlier in Normandy.

By fall 1944, the opportunity to win the war before Christmas had all but ended as Operation Market Garden, a British plan to cross the Rhine River using airborne divisions, failed and, at the same time, took vital resources away from U.S. armies facing the German border. From early September to October, the 1^st Infantry Division remained relatively static along the line, receiving supplies and replacements. The quality of those replacements, however, was suspect at best. The Replacements Infantry Replacement Training Command (I.R.T.C.) was supposed to produce quality replacements, but the system proved quite fragile.^[9] At these camps, they were supposed to be stockpiling replacements put through 15 weeks of training. They would then be shipped overseas, reported to replacement depots, and eventually assigned to a unit. However, in 15 weeks of battle in France, the U.S. army suffered 29,000 killed and 106,000 wounded and missing, 90% of which were among foot soldiers, far more than what IRTC was producing.^[10]

Thus, the quality of replacement soldiers dropped precipitously. One warrant officer exclaimed of the replacements arriving at his unit, “We had to take them over behind a hill right in the middle of the action and teach them how to load their rifles.”^[11] A division might have 20,000 men, but only 5,500 were frontline foot soldiers who took disproportionate casualties.^[12] This created a cycle in which men were constantly shuffled directly into the frontline to replace those men. Corporal Ralph Gordon, who served in the 16^th Infantry regiment of the 1^st ID, observed the process firsthand while he was at Aachen,

Replacements came in quickly while we were on the hill, as the Company had to be kept at full strength while defending the Crucifix. It is challenging for a replacement to join an outfit like ours while on the line. When a replacement reported to the command post, he was assigned to a platoon and put straight in a hole on the front lines. It must have been hard not knowing who was around him or where the Jerries were. He usually got the privilege of occupying a hole where a GI was just hit, and not knowing anyone around him; he must feel very much alone and scared. Nonetheless, the replacements continued to pour in while the Company was in this position.^[13]

Joining a unit as experienced and challenging as the 1^st ID would have been a massive challenge for anyone, let alone soldiers with little training. Replacements quickly became veterans if they managed to last more than a few days without becoming a casualty. The bonds that had been formed are hard to describe, even if men were new to the unit. Amid the battle of “Dawson’s Ridge,” (named for the heroism of Captain Joseph Dawson) a soldier told a reporter how two men who had been wounded in mid-September had gone AWOL (absent without leave) from the hospital, hitchhiking their way to Aachen to report for duty out of concern for their buddies who were up on the ridge.^[14] The combination of inexperienced new troops and the dangers of urban combat set the stage for the real difficulty in Aachen. Despite the advantages in firepower and experienced leadership at Aachen, historians Todd Helmus and Russell Glenn noted that,

The urban battle is often up close and personal. Many targets are within a 50-meter range. Usually, advancing forces must clear individual buildings that can contain multiple floors of the enemy. Friendly forces that enter each room may face the barrel of an enemy’s rifle, a cowering civilian, or a comrade in arms. These soldiers will have split seconds to decide whether or not to engage. Enemy forces masked in civilian clothes will complicate this decision even further.^[15]

An urban setting was a combat environment in which you could be completely safe in one place and five feet away in absolute danger. For example, as the 26^th Infantry reported, “Adding to the difficulties was the Germans' clever use of the city sewer system. A group of the enemy would work along the passageways in the sewer and then appear in areas thought to be cleared. Each maintenance hole had to be located, grenades thrown, and the sewers thoroughly blocked and covered.”^[16] That no doubt added to the challenge of clearing city blocks, as each manhole had to be examined before being cleared. Even then, it was never a sure thing, as German soldiers could easily flank American forces through houses or side streets.

From a strategic perspective, large scale urban fighting was uncommon, and the U.S. needed more training or know-how to meet the problem. The army avoided urban battles mainly by doctrinal design because they favored the defender, and casualties would be high.^[17] At best, the 1st Infantry had received word-of-mouth accounts of urban fighting conducted by other units, and that news was far from reassuring.^[18] Those accounts would have likely come from the 2^nd and 8^th Infantry Divisions, which engaged in a month-and-a-half-long siege of the port city of Brest in Brittany during August and September. While most American forces and the 1^st Infantry Division were galloping east to Germany, these divisions became tied down in a bitter urban battle. Every street and house in Brest were heavily fortified; the battle cost the VIII Corps 10,000 casualties. But the lessons they drew were relatively simple: stay off the streets, preserve infantry if all possible, and maximize the use of firepower to blast your way around or through buildings.

The reality was that the battle of Aachen was a result of geography than thorough strategic planning. The only two ways for large, mechanized armies to invade Germany were north via the Northern European Plain, which had already failed (Operation Market Garden), or through the wooded, hilly area around Aachen, which more or less would give a direct route into the heart of German industrial regions along the Rhine River.

The Attack Plan

Many American soldiers had no compunction about potential civilian casualties or destroying a German city. The document containing the plea for surrender lobbed into the city via artillery explicitly stated “If the military and party leaders insist on further sacrifice, we have no further course but to destroy your city.”^[19] In one incident on October 8, engineers attached to the 26^th infantry regiment packed an abandoned car full of explosives, scribbling “V-3,” which mocked the German rocket program that produced the V-1 and V-2.^[20] They proceeded to roll it down the street into German lines, resulting in a tremendous explosion. It did minor damage, much to the engineers' disappointment, but fellow soldiers applauded them for their effort.

In terms of the civilian population, the reality was that no one knew how many German civilians were left in the city. Intelligence from the 1^st Division artillery estimated that were 6000 civilians left in the town.^[21]. The 16^th Infantry Regiment intelligence section guessed that there were 1000 civilians in the city and 20,000 civilians in the suburbs.^[22] Though one would assume that the foot soldiers on the front line would have a better estimation than the artillery, who were situated miles behind the frontline, the credibility of German prisoners of war or civilians was taken with a grain of salt.

There was a debate about how liberal to be with the use of artillery and bombs in Aachen, given that it was the first major German city they would be assaulting. That debate did not last long; the 1^st division leadership thought the idea of limiting firepower to preserve a few buildings and German civilians who refused to leave would unnecessarily put their soldier's lives at risk. General Huebner, the division commander, went even further and ordered that any military-age male in Aachen would be treated as a prisoner of war regardless of whether or not they were in uniform.^[23] It was not the same as weeks earlier when the Americans were welcomed into French and Belgian towns as liberators.

Starting on October 11, after the Germans refused the ultimatum, the 1^st ID stayed true to its promise and began the battle with massive artillery and bombing runs. The 26^th Infantry Regiment fought in the city itself while the 16^th and 18^th were east of the town, attempting to cut off the only road leading into Aachen and a series of hills and ridges that overlooked the city. While the 26^th advanced into Aachen, the 16^th and 18^th would secure their right flank that was hilly wooded terrain dominated by three hills: Observatory, Salvador, and Lousberg Hills. Though they had received replacements, and supplies were slowly getting to the front, most companies were described as “chronically under-strength.”^[24] As much as 70% of the infantry in the 1^st ID were replacements. ^[25] They made up those deficiencies with very experienced commissioned and non-commissioned officers, many of whom had been wounded in previous battles.

Colonel John F.R Seitz’s 26^th Infantry would be tasked with taking Aachen itself. Seitz was a West Point Grad and a seasoned veteran of campaigns in Africa, Sicily, and Normandy. The tactics he developed would quickly be nicknamed “Knock ’em Down” by the GIs. “Knock ‘em Down” called for two battalions from the 26^th Infantry regiment to blast their way forward using the overwhelming firepower of the American war machine. The two men leading the battalions were Lt. Colonel Derrill Daniel (2^nd) and Lt. Colonel John Corley (3^rd). Both men were also graduates of West Point and had led companies in Africa and Sicily; Corley earned a Silver Star for heroism only two days after he landed in Africa during Operation Torch.^[26] These men were quality professionals who had displayed strong leadership and could solve problems. These officers were the most important soldiers in the U.S. Army in the fall of 1944. At a time when most units were under-strength, dealing with weather, and running low on supplies, quality leadership was an essential factor, and their planning and leadership no doubt contributed to the victory at Aachen.

For all the experience and preparation, the initial attack on October 13 was what one might call a clown show. 2^nd battalion hardly made it a block before it was subject to a fusillade of rifle and machine gun fire. The GIs quickly scurried back up the street or ducked into the buildings. Seitz was barking into his radio, trying to prod the tanks to move forward to support his infantry. Slowly but surely, a few vehicles and anti-tank crews braved the fire and began to put rounds into machine gun positions at the end of the streets. But German defenders were scattered through every building waiting for American troops to pass before ambushing them. Even for all the lessons they tried to draw on, the GI’s learned the hard way; Daniel remarked at the end of the day, “we quickly learned that in street fighting, strange to relate, one should stay out of the street.”[27]

By the time darkness fell on October 13^th, American troops had managed to clear a few blocks to gain a foothold. To Seitz, it was obvious that the tide had turned when more firepower was brought to bear. He emphasized to Corely and Daniel to use their firepower, if they had to knock an entire block down to clear it, so be it. He also wanted units to constantly attack to keep the German defenders of balance and ensure they could not dig in. The defenders came from a patchwork of units and undertrained but could still be an extreme nuisance. Aachen's street layout resembled less a grid and more a network of winding central roads, with narrow side streets branching off on either side. Daniel and Corley opted to use daily “phase lines” to keep the advance coherent. Whenever they reached these phase lines, they paused and allowed other units to finish clearing other sectors. This also informed artillerymen behind the frontlines where they could drop artillery, which could be especially dangerous in an environment where friendlies and hostiles could be mixed up all over the place. It was a disorienting for the GI’s where their daily objective might simply be the end of a street; when an NCO told his squad they were moving out, a private asked, “Where to, next room or next door?”[28] 

A GI on the lookout for enemy snipers

Aachen was also a microcosm of the Americans’ ability to bring massive firepower to a battle. During October alone, the 33^rd field artillery battalion fired 19,569 rounds in support of the 1^st ID, averaging anywhere from 20-50 fire missions a day during the heaviest days of the battle, despite ammunition shortages throughout the 12^th Army group.^[29] There were no restrictions on using weapons (what the military would call today “a free fire zone”), allowing total discretion for soldiers to use whatever means necessary to take the town. The regiment was loaned the biggest gun in the American arsenal, the 155 MM, placed on a motor carriage. It became the modern version of a medieval battering ram, brought up to blast buildings before infantry would move up with flamethrowers, grenades, and bayonets. One tank destroyer spent all day firing sixty-four rounds at point-blank range to destroy nine buildings, one after the other.^[30] Despite the advantage in firepower, the Americans were still outnumbered numerically three to one, exactly the opposite of what an attacker was supposed to have according to the field manuals. This forced Daniel and Corley to use their infantry sparingly; Corley’s 3^rd battalion only had one infantry platoon in reserve.^[31] An officer later complained that the attack was, “a job that should have been done by two regiments.”[32] Any fruitless losses could be devastating, as they simply did not have men to make up for mistakes.

The 155MM on a motor carriage became the GI’s best friend in Aachen

Civilians also complicated the environment. An officer stated that “civilians must be promptly and vigorously expelled from any area occupied by our troops.”[33] It wasn’t uncommon for American troops to discover civilians firing at them. The ones they captured claimed they had been forced to do so, but it also made clear that now the GIs were fighting not just the Wehrmacht but seemingly the whole of German society. A patrol was pushing up the street when they took a rifle shot from the rear. They hit the deck assuming it was yet another sniper albeit a poor one. When they turned around, they were stunned to see three young boys, all under the age of 12, one of whom was holding a rifle and staring them down.[34] A sergeant sprinted directly at them, snatched the gun from the boy while he was fumbling with the bolt knob, and escorted them to the rear. It was an unnerving experience for the GIs.[35]

Throughout the week of October 14-21, the, 26^th Regiment methodically clawed its way through the city. On October 18, 3^rd Battalion reached one of Aachen’s iconic buildings, the Hotel Quellenhof, and one of the last strongholds of German resistance. American tanks and artillery were firing at point-blank range into the hotel, which served as the city's defense headquarters. That night, 300 soldiers from an SS Battalion slipped into the hotel, repelling several American attacks. A fierce German counterattack briefly overran some American infantry positions situated in buildings adjacent to the hotel, temporarily easing the pressure on the Quellenhof, but was eventually driven back by a concentrated barrage of American mortar fire.

A battalion of the 110^th Infantry Regiment from the 28^th Infantry Division was brought in from the V Corps sector on October 18^th to fill a gap between the battalions. Initially tasked with defense, this battalion's mission shifted on October 19–20 to actively supporting the urban assault, effectively serving as the depleted regiment's third battalion. On October 21^st, American troops finally captured central Aachen, including the iconic cathedral built in 805 AD. That same day, the last Germans holding out in the Hotel Quellenhof surrendered, but not before a few Germans left, out of ammunition, threw a few champagne bottles left behind at the Americans from the top floor.[36]

Even before the capture of central Aachen, most German commanders concluded that the town was lost and shifted their focus towards throwing off the 16^th and 18^th regiments fighting to the east of Aachen. If they could force them off, the 26^th regiment might be forced to withdraw for fear of being surrounded. What followed was some of the worst fighting of the war. The 18^th regiment stated that they were only able to hold off wave after wave of German infantry and tanks with “blood, iron, and sheer guts.”^[37] Baker Company from the 2^nd battalion of the 18^th Infantry Regiment was pulled off the line after being described as “beginning to show signs of weariness.”^[38] Although the after-action report does not specify what constituted these signs, it is clear that leaders in the battalion knew that this sort of fighting could quickly lead to a loss of morale and made efforts to relieve units engaging in this type of combat. Throughout these battles, the overwhelming firepower of the Americans was on full display, and they were able to stop German assaults dead in their tracks. In the last week of October, fighting petered out as the Germans ran out of men, sulked, and pulled back; the Americans had won.

Taking Aachen came at a tremendous cost; the division officially documented 2,385 total casualties during October 1944, the division's costliest month of the entire war. Battle fatigue cases totaled 279, meaning the rate of battle fatigue for October was almost 20% based on these statistics but almost certainly much higher if focused exclusively on infantrymen and leaving out non-combat injuries (sickness, accidents, etc.).^[39]  Helmus and Russell point out that at Aachen, “Daily rates of combat exhaustion indicate that during the period of city fighting, the ratio of stress casualties to WIA was 30:100, a value considerably higher than the typical 20 percent maintained throughout most of the division’s World War II history.”^[40]

Despite the ferocity of the German defense, the Americans' ability to adapt and their superior firepower ultimately tipped the balance. The battle for Aachen dragged on for weeks, becoming a brutal example of the difficulties of urban warfare. But by the end of October 1944, Aachen—the first German city to fall to the Allies—was under American control. The victory was largely symbolic and was merely a harbinger of the deadliest phase of the Second World War. 1945 was the deadliest in terms of casualties, both military and civilian. It was if the gods of war required one final bloodletting before letting the world return to peace.

References

Ambrose, Stephen. 1998. Citizen Soldiers. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Atkinson, Rick. 2013. The Guns at Last Light. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Baumer, Robert W. 2015. Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books.

Beevor, Antony. 2016. Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble. London: Penguin Random House.

1962. "First Division Museum." First Division Musuem Archive. Accessed October 26, 2020. https://firstdivisionmuseum.nmtvault.com/jsp/PsImageViewer.jsp.

Gabel, Christopher R. 2003. "“Knock ’em All Down”: The Reduction of Aachen, October 1944." In Block by Block: The Challenges of Urban Operations, by William G. Robertson, 63-88. Fort Leavenworth: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

Gordon, Ralph. 2012. Infantrymen: The Story of Company C 18th Infantry 1st Division From June 6, 1944 to May 8, 1945. Scotts Valley: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Helmus, Todd C., Glenn, Russell W. 2004. Steeling the Mind : Combat Stress Reactions and Their Implications for Urban Warfare. Santa Monica: RAND.

n.d. "John Thomas Corley." The Hall of Valor Project. Accessed January 6, 2021. https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/6914.

Kingseed, Col. Cole C. 2013. From Omaha Beach to Dawson's Ridge: The Combat Journal of Captain Joe Dawson. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.

Mason, SB. 1948. Danger Forward: The Story of the First Division. Washington DC: Society of the First Division.

McManus, John C. 2010. Grunts: Inside the American Infantry Combat Experience, World War II Through Iraq. New York: Dutton Caliber.

Regiment, 16th Infantry. 1962. Reports of Operations - 26th Inf Regt, 1 Oct 44 – 31 Dec 44 . Wheaton: First Division Museum.

1946. "The Making of the Infantryman." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 51, No. 5 376-379.

Wheeler, James. 2017. The Big Red One: America's Legendary 1st Infantry Division. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

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[1] Drew Middleton. Our Share of Night. (New York: The Viking Press, 1946), 348.

[2] Ibid., 354.

[3] Intelligence officer quoted by Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light. (New York: Henry Holt and Company. 2013), 298.

[4] Christopher R Gabel. "Knock ’em All Down”: The Reduction of Aachen, October 1944." In Block by Block: The Challenges of Urban Operations, (Fort Leavenworth: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. 2003), 65.

[5] Ibid., 66.

[6] George Marshall quoted by Atkinson, 300.

[7] Ralph Gordon. Infantrymen: The Story of Company C 18th Infantry 1st Division from June 6, 1944 to May 8, 1945. (Scotts Valley: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 2012), 55.

[8] SB Mason. Danger Forward: The Story of the First Division. (Washington DC: Society of the First Division. 1948), 145.

[9] "The Making of the Infantryman." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 51, No. 5 376-379 (1946): 376.

[10] Ibid., 377.

[11] Warrant officer quoted by Atkinson, 411.

[12] Atkinson, 409.

[13] Gordon, 81.

[14] Kingseed, 217.

[15] Todd C. Helmus, Russell W Glenn. Steeling the Mind: Combat Stress Reactions and Their Implications for Urban Warfare. (Santa Monica: RAND. 2004), 40.

[16] 26^th Infantry Regiment after action report, 9. All after action reports and primary sources come from the First Division Museum (Wheaton IL, declassified in 1962)

[17] Gabel, 85.

[18] Gabel, 72.

[19] 1st Division Headquarters. Documents re Surrender of Aachen, Germany Oct 1944.

[20] 26^th Infantry Regiment, 6.

[21] 1^st Division artillery Headquarters, Journal, 1 Oct 44 – 31 Oct 44, 2.

[22] 16^th Infantry Regiment, 7.

[23] 16^th Infantry Regiment, 7.

[24] John C McManus. Grunts: Inside the American Infantry Combat Experience, World War II Through Iraq. (New York: Dutton Caliber: 2010), 105.

[25] Stephen Ambrose. Citizen Soldiers. (New York: Simon & Schuster. 1998), 145.

[26] Military Times, “Valor Awards for John Thomas Corley”.

[27] Robert W. Baumer, Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books.2015), location 5050.

[28] Irving Schwartz. Letters from War – “Our Battle for Aachen,” 1944,

[29] 33^rd Field Artillery Battalion, Journal and File, Jun 44 – Dec 44. 1-10.

[30] Atkinson, 294.

[31] 26^th Infantry Regiment, 8.

[32] Antony Beevor. Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble (London: Penguin Random House.2016), 34.

[33] Ibid., 36.

[34] Ibid., 36.

[35] The incident became a German propaganda coup.

[36] Baumer, location 6058.

[37] 18th Infantry Regiment. After Action Report - 1st Bn, Jun 44 – May 45, 5.

[38] 18^th Infantry Regiment, 5.

[39] James Wheeler. 2017. The Big Red One: America's Legendary 1st Infantry Division. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas), 317.

[40] Helmus and Russell, 59.