Battle of Aachen

Background

By late September 1944 the American pursuit across France had stalled on the German frontier. VII Corps had crossed the border on 12 September and broken into the West Wall south-east of Aachen, only to be halted in the Stolberg Corridor. On 22 September Hodges shut down almost all offensive operations on the First Army front: the Germans were recovering, supplies were short and his divisions were spread over about a hundred miles. Bringing Simpson's Ninth Army into the Ardennes cut that front to sixty miles and let Hodges concentrate on the Aachen Gap.

Before any drive to the Rhine he had unfinished business. Corlett's XIX Corps, waiting along the little Wurm river north of the city since 18 September, still had to break through the West Wall. Once through, it was to turn south and meet VII Corps near Würselen, north-east of Aachen, encircling the city.

Aachen itself had little military value. It sat in a saucer of hills, its roads mattered little now that the Americans had other routes to the Rhine, and Allied bombing had shattered its railways. Its value was symbolic. Charlemagne had ruled from it, and between 813 and 1531 thirty-two emperors and kings had been crowned there; to National Socialist ideology it stood for the First Reich. Of a pre-war population of 165,000, fewer than 20,000 remained. In September the 116th Panzer Division's commander, Schwerin, had tried to spare the city and been relieved. Hitler now demanded a house-by-house defence, and containing the city was tying down the equivalent of an American division.

The armies

XIX Corps made the main effort. Hobbs's 30th Infantry Division was to assault on a front little more than a mile wide at Marienberg and Rimburg, nine miles north of Aachen, with Harmon's whole 2nd Armored Division ready to exploit and the 29th Division making diversions on the northern flank. Twenty-six artillery battalions supported the attack, and 360 medium bombers and 72 fighter-bombers were to open it. In VII Corps, Huebner's veteran 1st Infantry Division held a twelve-mile semicircle round the city and could free only the 18th Infantry for the push north and two battalions of Seitz's 26th Infantry for the city. American guns were rationed: Bradley reimposed ammunition rationing on the day the attack began.

Köchling's LXXXI Corps held the sector with two Volksgrenadier and two infantry divisions, about 18,000 infantry and artillery combat effectives. The 49th Division had absorbed 4,326 replacements from a ragbag of straggler, security and machine-gun battalions. The corps had 239 guns but few tanks: four Tigers of the 506th Heavy Tank Battalion and seven Panthers of the 108th Panzer Brigade. The real hope was Rundstedt's theatre reserve, the 116th Panzer and 3rd Panzer Grenadier Divisions under Keppler's I SS Panzer Corps, delayed by bombed railways. Inside the city Wilck commanded roughly 5,000 men, including 125 policemen, with about five Panzer IVs and 33 guns.

The battle

The West Wall breach, 2–7 October. This is CDB90's Westwall engagement (468). Rain postponed the attack set for 1 October. At 09:00 on 2 October the medium bombers missed their targets, one group bombing a Belgian town 28 miles away, and the fighter-bombers hit not one pillbox. Twenty-six artillery battalions fired 18,696 rounds in twelve hours. The 117th Infantry crossed the Wurm, two to four feet deep, on duckboards south of Marienberg; one company lost 87 men in under an hour, while another took its pillboxes with flame-throwers and pole charges. By evening the regiment held Palenberg. The 119th Infantry was pinned behind the railway embankment by the Rimburg woods and castle, and the tanks bogged in the mud.

On 3 October a flanking task force cleared the Rimburg woods and Combat Command B of the 2nd Armored Division crossed into Übach under what veterans called the heaviest shelling since Mortain. German counterattacks on 4 October failed; one battalion that reached Übach was cut to 25 men. On 6 October, the high-water mark, a 49th Division counterattack retook four pillboxes and about a hundred Americans. Then the armour took Beggendorf and Baesweiler, and on 7 October the 117th Infantry drove two miles into Alsdorf. Hobbs reported a hole 'big enough to drive two divisions through': a bridgehead six miles long and four and a half deep, for more than 1,800 casualties and 52 of CCB's medium tanks.

Closing the ring, 8–16 October. Before dawn on 8 October the 1st Division's 18th Infantry took Verlautenheide by night attack, then Crucifix Hill (Hill 239) that afternoon; on the night of 9 October two companies took Ravels Hill (Hill 231) without a shot. The 30th Division's three miles to Würselen took nine days. Mobile Regiment von Fritzschen struck Alsdorf on 8 October; the 108th Panzer Brigade broke into Bardenberg on 9 October and was cleared only on 11 October. On 12 October the first regiment of the 116th Panzer Division and SS troops of Kampfgruppe Diefenthal attacked all along the line. The 116th Infantry, lent by the 29th Division, gained barely a thousand yards in Würselen in three days. On 15–16 October the 3rd Panzer Grenadier Division threw tanks through the 16th Infantry's line near Eilendorf, but artillery and strafing P-47s broke the attack; one company counted 250 German dead. On 16 October two battalions of the 119th Infantry forded the Wurm at 05:00 and a third worked down the east bank to Hill 194. At 16:15 two scouts walked up Ravels Hill and closed the gap.

The city, 11–21 October. Huebner's ultimatum expired on 11 October, and about 300 fighter-bombers and twelve artillery battalions hit the city. Daniel's 2nd Battalion, 26th Infantry, swept west through the centre on a 2,000-yard front under the motto 'Knock 'em all down', each platoon with a tank or tank destroyer driving defenders into cellars for the grenadiers, every manhole blocked. Corley's 3rd Battalion fought through factories towards the Lousberg. From 14 October a self-propelled 155 mm gun fired over open sights, flattening a building or a concreted steeple with a single round. SS-Battalion Rink drove Corley out of Farwick Park on 15 October; he stormed the Hotel Quellenhof on 18 October and, with Task Force Hogan, took the Salvatorberg and Lousberg on 19 October. On 21 October, as Corley's 155 mm gun turned on a bunker in Lousberg Strasse, Wilck sent out two American prisoners under a white flag, and the garrison surrendered at 12:05.

Aftermath

MacDonald counts 6,000 prisoners taken by the 30th Division and 5,637 by the 1st, 3,473 of them in the city, about 1,600 of whom were rounded up only after Wilck's surrender. The 30th Division and its attachments lost about 3,000 men from 2 October, and the two battalions of the 26th Infantry 498. The Germans counted 45 tanks lost. Some 6,000 of the 7,000 civilians still in the city were evacuated during the fighting.

MacDonald's verdict is that the defenders, though they could not stop the encirclement and held out only five days after it, imposed a telling if costly delay. He also shows how they did it: the equivalent of twenty battalions counterattacked the 30th Division, but rarely more than two at a time, as Rundstedt's reserves were spent by instalments rather than in one blow. American air power and artillery, at least 74 batteries against 69, did the rest.

The battle cost Corlett his corps: Bradley relieved him on 18 October on grounds of health, and on 22 October the Ninth Army took over XIX Corps. The First Army turned next to the Hürtgen Forest. Aachen was the first large German city lost in the war; Wikipedia, citing Ziemke, says 85 per cent of it was destroyed. Gabel's study for the Army's Combat Studies Institute argues that, for all its improvisation, the reduction of the city was a methodical, linear battle won by small combined-arms teams and firepower, with no special equipment or doctrine.

Wargaming it

Aachen is really three battles, and each suits a different scale. The West Wall breach on 2–7 October is a company or battalion game: a shallow river, a railway embankment that stops tanks, pillboxes to be reduced by flame-throwers, pole charges and direct fire, a moated castle, and German guns ringing a cramped bridgehead. The American player has plenty of artillery but rationed ammunition, and must decide when to push armour into a bridgehead with no room for it.

The fight to close the Würselen gap on 8–16 October works at regiment or division level on the slag heaps and mining villages north of the city. Here the German player holds the interesting decision. Rundstedt wanted the 116th Panzer and 3rd Panzer Grenadier Divisions committed as closed formations; in practice they went in a regiment at a time. A what-if lets both divisions strike together on 12 October, when Corlett was already worried that the 1st SS Panzer Division was behind them.

The city itself, on 13–21 October, is a skirmish or platoon game with a high body count of buildings: one tank or tank destroyer per platoon, sewers to block, a 155 mm gun that the umpire should let the American player use sparingly, and objectives at the Quellenhof, the Salvatorberg and the Lousberg. Weather should govern air support throughout, since rain grounded the fighter-bombers on many of these days.

Maps and pictures