Hürtgen Forest
| Hürtgen forest German: Hürtgenwald | |
|---|---|
 View looking west over the Kall Valley in the Hürtgen Forest | |
  Location within North Rhine-Westphalia  Location within Germany | |
| Geography | |
| Coordinates | 50°42′03″N 6°25′42″E / 50.7008°N 6.4284°E |
The Hürtgen forest (also: Huertgen Forest; German: Hürtgenwald [ˈhʏʁtɡn̩ˌvalt]) is located along the border between Belgium and Germany, in the southwest corner of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The forest lies within a triangle outlined by the German towns of Aachen, Monschau, and Düren, covering 130 square kilometres (50 square miles) in area. The Rur River runs along the forest's eastern edge.
History
[edit]Before World War II, the Hürtgen Forest was a dense, rugged woodland, spanning about 50 square kilometers, mostly used for timber production. The area was sparsely populated with small villages and had limited strategic importance.[citation needed]
Geography
[edit]The Hürtgen Forest lies at the northern edge of the Eifel mountains and High Fens – Eifel Nature Park. Its terrain is characterized by plunging valleys that carve through broad plateaus, with hilltop plateaus that have been cleared for agriculture.[citation needed]
Battle of Hürtgen Forest
[edit]
During World War II, the rugged terrain of this area was the scene of the long, bloody, drawn-out Battle of Hürtgen Forest, which took place over three months during a cold fall from 19 September 1944 to 16 December 1944. The Germans successfully defended the area while gaining time to launch a surprise counter offensive in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944, the Battle of the Bulge.[1][2]
The forest was further devastated by fires in the summer of 1945, ignited as the weather warmed leftover white phosphorus munitions.[3][full citation needed]
The battle is commemorated in the 1944 Hürtgen Forest Museum, opened in 1983. There are three German war cemeteries; the one at Hürtgen was opened in 1952 and is the resting place of some one hundred postwar victims of mines and unexploded ordnance.[4] Beside other small memorials, the road that rises from the Kall River Valley to the town of Schmidt incorporated the track of a destroyed Sherman tank.[5]
References
[edit]- ↑ Whiting, Charles (July 2007). The Battle of Hurtgen Forest. Spellmount. p. 274. ISBN 978-1-86227-396-2.
- ↑ MacDonald, Charles B. (29 March 2016). The Siegfried Line Campaign. ST JOHN Press. ISBN 978-1-944961-30-5.
- ↑ DW broadcast[full citation needed]; also subject of 2020 1944 Hürtgen Forest Museum exhibit.
- ↑ "Kriegsgräberstätte: Hürtgenwald-Hürtgen-Kriegsgräberstätte - Bau, Pflege und Instandsetzung | Volksbund.de".
- ↑ "Sherman Tank Track Kall Trail - Kommerscheidt - TracesOfWar.com". tracesofwar.com. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
External links
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| International | |
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| Other | |
