Hitler's Last Stand (2018) s01e03 Episode Script

December 1944.
U.S. Rangers capture a Nazi stronghold
on the German border.
But a series of counterattacks
and artillery tree bursts
leave just a handful of men
to defend their critical capture.
In their extreme vulnerability,
the Rangers must consider
an unthinkable plan
to ward off the next attack.
It's that desperate.
They have to call the artillery strike
on their own position
and hope to survive.
On June 6, 1944,
Allied forces finally
land troops in Normandy
to open the Western Front.
But Nazi fanatics and diehards
continue to fight ruthlessly for survival.
D-Day was a battle.
The Allies still need to win the war.
December 7, 1944.
Bergstein, Germany.
Members of the American
2nd Ranger Battalion
go behind enemy lines
to reconnoiter the German stronghold
of Hill 400.
As second in command,
Lieutenant Len Lomell
scouts for Dog Company.
The Rangers are not here to fight.
They creep through the darkness
to identify the German bunkers
and machine gun nests
they will need to capture
when they launch their assault
on Hill 400 in the morning.
After the rapid collapse of Nazi forces
in France over the summer,
the fight moves towards the German border.
In autumn 1944, the entire situation
for the German soldier changes.
It's the first time now in this war
that he's fighting on home ground.
This is something that gives him
a new motivation to continue.
Adolf Hitler orders
defenses to be strengthened
along Germany's borderlands,
which run through the Hurtgen Forest.
The Allies call the 390-mile
series of fortifications
the Siegfried Line.
By December 1944,
German forces have bogged down the Allies
in the Hurtgen Forest
for nearly three months.
And Allied armies
have pushed the Western Front
up to the German border
and to the base of Hill 400.
Hill 400, to some extent,
is the key to the Hurtgen Forest.
The hill is a natural fortress--
rocky, tree-covered,
and 45 degrees on its steepest slope.
To these natural defenses,
German troops have added bunkers
and machine gun nests.
Holding the hill permits its occupier
to observe troop movements
for miles around,
including the Cologne Plain.
If you get Hill 400,
you immediately can put
artillery observers atop that hill.
At that stage,
then you can call down U.S. artillery
upon any German movement in the area.
Hill 400 emerges as this,
like, solid-gold real estate
that both sides understand
they have to have.
The Rangers now have
orders to seize the hill.
Lomell's scout is the first step.
He went up Hill 400
and scouted out the different positions
and was able to bring back
that crucial intelligence,
which helps, uh, shape the attack
on December 7th.
Lomell and the other scouts
slip into the town of Bergstein
at the base of the hill.
Just before 6:00 AM,
Lomell's men of 2nd Ranger
Battalion's Dog Company
prepare to jump off.
We've got an MG on the left side.
And there's one on the right.
Most have arrived
just in time to move into the line.
The men have had little or no sleep.
There's one right
at the end of the road.
Suppressing fire!
At 0600 hours,
the Rangers charge from their positions.
They must fight their way
through Bergstein
to their first objective.
As they move from the cellars,
they're receiving incoming artillery fire
from the Germans,
and men are being shredded
by these artillery shells.
They're also being sniped at.
American forces hold
just a sliver of the village.
They are surrounded on three sides.
And they can easily
be cut off by the Germans
and annihilated.
The Germans wanted it back at all costs.
They only need
to advance a few hundred yards,
but combat in built-up areas like towns
is a challenge.
The walls provide shelter to both sides.
It is also easy to get disoriented.
Urban combat
is some of the most difficult combat
that any soldier can encounter.
It's not a situation
where you're firing at somebody
a hundred yards away.
You're firing at them
at point-blank range,
and in many cases, it's hand-to-hand.
Move, move, move!
Men from Fox Company
join Dog Company
as the American Rangers
continue to fight to the edge of town.
Ah! Ah!
Medic! Medic!
Medic!
Ah!
The battle
for Bergstein will rage
even after the attack
on the hill begins
the Germans relentless
in their attempts to drive out U.S. forces
and the Americans
equally determined to hang on.
Lomell and the two companies
finally close in on their first objective.
They converge
in front of the hill
in front of the field,
and it's been described as a sunken road
where there's a little bit of cover
from the defenders on top of Hill 400,
as well as the machine guns
that are arrayed at the base of the hill.
Lomell has fought
with many of these men
for a long time.
Six months earlier, on D-Day,
Lomell,
along with Staff Sergeant Jack Kuhn,
destroyed five of the Germans'
main artillery guns
at Utah and Omaha beaches.
Len was shot in the side
as he was scaling the cliff.
But despite this wound, this gaping wound,
kept climbing
and completed the mission.
He fought through the maze
of fortifications on the top
and found the guns on top of Pointe du Hoc
and disabled them with thermite grenades.
This action
had a profound impact on D-Day,
saving countless lives.
Lomell would earn citations
from the American, British,
and French governments.
Lomell now eyes their next objective.
The U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion
must take Hill 400
and hold it for 24 hours, until relieved.
By 0700, 120 men
from Dog and Fox Companies
have made it to the base of the hill.
Between them and the tree line
is a field 100 yards wide.
The Rangers know
once they begin, they cannot stop.
Cross an open field
under machine-gun fire from MG-42s--
what was called "Hitler's bone saw"
because it-- it rattled off
over 1,200 rounds per minute.
The entire field itself
was mined with Bouncing Betty mines,
and these are mines that would
shoot up into the air
and then detonate
around the area of your groin
and-- and sever legs and body parts.
The odds were definitely
stacked against the Rangers
on December 7th.
German artillery and mortars
begin targeting the Rangers' position.
The first shells fall 75 yards
behind the Americans.
The German gunners fine-tune.
The shells start to drop closer.
Meanwhile, U.S. artillery responds
and shells German positions
in the tree line.
Fire!
Basically what's known as
a rolling barrage or a creeping barrage.
This is American artillery
that is creeping in front of the Rangers.
As the German shells drop closer
to Dog and Fox Companies from behind,
the Rangers are pinned between
the two artillery barrages.
Among the artillery weapons
aimed at the Rangers
is the Nebelwerfer 41.
The German rocket launcher
fires 5.9-inch shells.
Each salvo fires six rockets
one second apart.
Concussive force alone can kill,
even if the high-explosive fragments miss.
As the rockets close in
on the American Rangers,
an unexpected order is given.
These are very
battle-hardened troops,
but somehow in the mix of this,
there was an unseasoned, untrained officer
that ordered a scout
to go out and reconnoiter the field.
Fox Company's
Sergeant Herman Stein
is one of several Ranger NCOs
to question the order given
to one of the enlisted men.
And they universally said,
"Don't go out there. Don't go."
They said it several times,
and they tried to stop the man from going.
Stein and the others
knew the order meant
certain death for whoever went.
Can the weight of their experience
force the officer to back down?
No. Don't go!
December 1944.
The American 2nd Ranger Battalion
prepares to attack a key position.
They must take Hill 400,
which overlooks the town of Bergstein,
just inside the German border.
As they wait to jump off,
a newly assigned officer
orders a man to scout the field out front.
The non-commissioned officers
argue it is too dangerous.
The officer then
looked at the man and said,
"This is a direct order.
Go out into the field."
And he actually did,
and as he went into the field,
he was shot in the gut.
What might have
triggered a court martial
in another unit
is a hallmark of the 2nd Ranger psyche.
In 1942,
the United States didn't have
special operation forces or commandos.
The Rangers were a new thing.
They were all volunteers,
and they had a very tough
weed-out process.
These men had to march and climb
and shoot and fight.
Very few people were able to make it
through the actual training.
It molded men
who could think outside the box,
question orders, and take initiative
if they thought it was
in the best interest of the mission.
That mindset would prompt Fox Company
Sergeant William McHugh to action.
McHugh realizes
that the German mortars are closing in
and would strike them
before their jump-off time.
Sergeant McHugh shouts,
"Let's get the bastards!"
And then he raises
his tommy gun over his head,
and they charge across the field.
And it's been described
as like a tsunami--
a band of screaming, shooting Rangers
descending on these German
machine gun nests,
crossing this open field.
McHugh spurs Dog and Fox Company
to charge straight towards
the German guns.
Because they jumped off early,
some of the incoming artillery
they dodge is American.
There's a real danger
of being hit by their own friendly fire
from this artillery,
but the fact that they leave
only a-a few minutes early
saves many of their lives.
Men were being hit by the artillery,
by the German bullets,
and then even by mines
as they were crossing the field.
But they didn't have a chance to look back
or even help anybody.
They were just moving forward.
Standing in the Rangers' way
is a regiment of the 272nd
Volksgrenadier division,
commanded by Captain Adolf Thomae.
The Volksgrenadier divisions are formed
after the assassination attempt
on Adolf Hitler
by senior officers in July 1944.
The idea behind
the Volksgrenadier divisions--
you can already see this in the name
"Volks," which means people,
kind of grass-root formation
inspired with Nazi ideology,
with a belief of one community
serving for a common cause.
As Germany grapples
with manpower shortages,
older men and teenaged boys
are conscripted from civilian life
to form a replacement army
loyal to Hitler.
Members of the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine
report for combat service.
Injured soldiers
also return to the lines faster.
Heinrich Himmler mobilizes
49 new Volksgrenadier divisions
in about eight weeks.
Himmler ensures that they are well-armed,
but hurries them into battle.
While overall results have been mixed,
the 272nd has fought well
in the Hurtgen Forest.
At Thomae's disposal
are 36 pieces of direct artillery support.
Just that morning,
his troops had planned
to retake Bergstein.
But the U.S. Rangers
were the first ones to attack,
and this puts Thomae very quickly
into a defensive position.
The Rangers' premature attack
gives them a slight advantage
over the Volksgrenadier.
The artillery is actually coming in
right as they're crossing,
and it keeps the Germans'
machine gunners' heads down.
The Rangers
who make it across the field
capture the German outer positions.
The Germans that are overrun,
um, are either bayoneted, in many cases,
or they're fleeing for their lives
up the top of Hill 400.
The U.S. Rangers press on.
Speed and surprise add to their arsenal.
Both Allied and German artillery
continue to fall on the base of the hill.
The Rangers have no choice
but to continue to the next line
of German defenses.
Fighting is heavy
as two companies
of the American 2nd Ranger Battalion
charge up Hill 400,
a stronghold on Germany's border.
Rangers try to clear German
bunkers and machine gun nests
as they move uphill.
This is close-quarters combat.
This is personal.
In some cases,
it's directly hand-to-hand fighting,
with bayonets and knives, pistols.
That's the level of intensity
that these men had to go through
just to get up that hill.
Lieutenant Len Lomell,
second in command of Dog Company,
is amongst the first Rangers
to reach the summit.
Others quickly catch up.
Their ascent has taken less than an hour.
Members of Fox Company
use grenades and gunfire
to force the surrender
of the German hilltop bunker.
By 0830, the Rangers
have claimed Hill 400.
To that point in the war,
it is one of the deepest incursions
into Germany
by U.S. or other Western allies.
These men
were all running on adrenaline.
Their nerves were taut
from the-- the charge itself,
the artillery that was falling,
the close-in combat.
Get these bodies
outta here right now.
They get to the top of the hill--
that was an exhilarating feeling.
That's what they told me.
The capture of Hill 400
is a remarkable achievement.
But it was just the beginning.
Lieutenant Lomell
orders the Rangers to dig in.
On the exposed hillside,
security is elusive.
The only real refuge that they had
was the command bunker,
an observation bunker
on the top of Hill 400.
Some Rangers take shelter
in positions captured from the Germans,
but that is not always possible.
The German foxholes
that were facing the American lines,
they weren't facing the sides
or flanks of the hill
where the Germans
were going to be coming from.
New foxholes
prove difficult to dig in the rocky soil.
The ground is frozen solid.
They're barely able
to-- to claw through it,
and some of the men
actually use their fingernails,
and they're bloody
as they-- they claw through the dirt
the best they can
to dig this shallow hole
with their trench knives
and their bayonets.
Anything that they can to just
get a little semblance of cover.
Foxholes are a critical perimeter defense
against the inevitable
German counterattack.
German doctrine very much cherishes
the idea of offensive action.
So even if you lose a position,
you are supposed to attack, counterattack
as quickly as possible.
German high command
considers Hill 400
to be of vital importance
for a top-secret reason.
Seventeen German divisions,
totaling over 200,000 men,
amass in the nearby Ardennes Forest.
Hitler has been planning
a surprise offensive
in a bid to turn the tide of war.
Their leaders go to great effort
to conceal the build-up
from Allied reconnaissance.
If the Americans sit on Hill 400,
they can spot German assembly areas
in the rear.
Captain Adolf Thomae
receives a battalion
of the 6th Fallschirmjaeger regiment,
an elite group of paratroopers,
as reinforcements.
Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model
offers Thomae's men an added incentive.
Field Marshal Model
promises the German unit
re-seizing Hill 400
an Iron Cross for each individual soldier
and a seven-day leave.
Having pre-ranged
all the positions on the hill
with his guns,
Thomae begins to shell the Rangers.
When the Germans attack Hill 400,
the infantry attacks along
the slopes towards the hill,
and the German artillery
is putting fire onto the U.S. soldiers
sitting on top of the mountain.
So there is a danger
that German shells will also kill
German infantrymen.
The artillery proves persistent.
This is every minute, this is every hour
it's coming in.
And there's no place to run or hide,
and it's random death from above.
Along with
standard artillery rounds,
part of Thomae's strategy
is to create tree bursts.
The Hurtgen Forest had conifer trees
that were over a hundred feet high
in some places,
and the Germans designed
their artillery barrages
to strike above the canopy
so that not only would deadly shrapnel
rain down on the Americans,
but also splinters that were razor sharp
that could slice through the body.
Standard Allied training
was to drop to the ground
in the face of incoming artillery.
During a tree burst,
such a move would prove fatal.
Soldiers had to overcome their instincts
and stay upright
to let their helmets protect them.
If there was a tree nearby,
they'd actually hug the tree
because it would prevent the shrapnel,
and splinters from the wood
wouldn't be able to hit them.
As the Germans
start to counterattack,
Lieutenant Len Lomell
and his fellow Rangers
are dangerously exposed.
Captain Adolf Thomae
rallies more than 100 German troops
against the American 2nd Ranger Battalion,
who have just captured Hill 400.
The German Volksgrenadier
and the Fallschirmjaeger
attack in small groups.
The result is brutal close-in fighting.
The Volksgrenadiers possess
an extremely effective weapon
for this kind of battle.
The MP-44.
The world's first assault rifle.
Equipped with a 30-round magazine,
the gun can switch
from single-shot to rapid fire,
with the flick of a lever.
The MP-44 has an effective
range of 164 yards
in the full-automatic position
and 437 yards in the single-shot mode.
Armed with both MP-44s
and its precursor, the MP-40,
some German forces approach a location
defended by Dog Company Sergeant Ed Secor.
When the Germans counterattack,
they are not running into open fire,
they're trying to infiltrate
the enemy positions
and try to circumvent the strong points.
Secor and a private
had secured good coverage.
Sergeant Secor was positioned
under an overhanging boulder
in a shallow foxhole.
But a German bullet
renders Secor's weapon inoperable.
In response,
the usually mild-mannered Secor
charges out to recover guns
from dead German soldiers nearby.
He immediately grabbed
two MP-40 machine pistols,
and then with both hands,
fired into the mass of oncoming Germans.
When they are empty,
he then pulls out his pistol
and continues to fire.
Sergeant Secor's daring actions
thwart the German counterattack.
Captain Thomae and his men retreat
to regroup and try again.
During the German attack,
Lieutenant Len Lommel's hand
is injured by shrapnel.
Despite his own wound,
he must devise a defensive
strategy for the Rangers--
now down to about 40 able-bodied men.
He has Herm Stein from Fox Company
bring his men closer to Dog Company.
He also needs more information.
Len Lomell
really understood reconnaissance,
so he sent out two-man scouts
to sort of probe portions of the hill
to find out where the enemy was.
So many of the Ranger
radios have been damaged,
communication is difficult.
It was hand signals,
or a runner would run up to a position
and say what is going on.
In response,
Lomell then has the Rangers concentrate
in front of the German build-up
so they can meet the attack
with full force.
When Captain Thomae
leads his troops back up the hill,
Lomell, Stein, and their fellow Rangers
are ready for them.
The Germans, however,
do not attack on a single front.
They probe the Ranger line for weaknesses.
Lomell counters by constantly
shifting his men.
This is a situation
of very scarce resources--
the resource being the GI or a Ranger.
So they had to be very smart
in how they defended the hill,
and that's what they did.
They moved his men around
according to the threat.
Lomell's mobile tactics
lead the Germans to believe
that the Rangers occupy
the hill in great numbers.
Had the Germans realized,
they could have easily overwhelmed
the American forces.
But as the Rangers repel
the second German counterattack,
they suffer further casualties.
Just after 1600 hours,
Lomell sends a message
to his superiors in Bergstein
that he's down to 25 men,
who remain surrounded by German troops.
It is like king of the castle.
They're holding a-a perimeter
on the top of the hill.
The Rangers
bring the wounded they can reach
to the observation bunker
at the crest of Hill 400.
And that
becomes the field hospital.
They don't have any real medical equipment
or anything like that.
They just have some bandages.
If they're lucky, they might
even have a morphine syrette,
but that's scarce, too.
There's very little in terms
of medical supplies.
But many others lay out of reach
and remain exposed to incoming shrapnel.
In daylight,
there was no way for the Rangers
to evacuate their casualties.
If they had to bring a wounded man down,
they had to fight their way down the hill.
Help me!
The injured
and dying Rangers call out.
Help me!
Help me!
Finally,
Lomell can't take their cries any longer.
Len felt completely
helpless on that front,
and then he felt helpless
by the men that were dying in the bunker.
And there was a real question
whether or not they were going
to be able to hold out.
I mean, the whole hill
was about to be overrun at any moment.
Gather round.
I suggest that we leave.
Lomell proposes the unthinkable.
That the Rangers abandon Hill 400.
After a series
of German counterattacks
to retake Hill 400
Lieutenant Len Lomell
proposes a shocking plan
to the remaining members
of the two U.S. Ranger companies.
Desperate to help his injured men,
he suggests handing Hill 400
back to the Germans.
There was a real question
whether or not they had
enough men to hold that hill,
because of the constant artillery
and the-- and the counterattacks,
and it was at this point that he was,
you know, proposing a solution
to save his men.
Lomell explains,
based on his experience,
the Germans would care
for the American wounded
if they surrendered the hill.
His willingness to do so
was an insight
into how bad the battle was becoming
and how slim a chance
some of these guys had
of surviving their wounds.
It's an indicator into what kind
of crisis you're dealing with
at Hill 400.
Lomell believes
it will be the fastest way
to get Ranger casualties treatment
and save the lives of the dying.
In World War II,
American and German soldiers
generally treat
each other's wounded and prisoners
according to the Geneva Convention.
German soldiers captured
by American and Western allies
had a death rate
of less than one percent
while four percent of U.S. soldiers
died in German captivity.
Relatively low numbers
by wartime standards.
But
That would only be the case
after the intensitive combat had ebbed.
If the hill fell
in heavy combat,
the wounded would likely
be overrun as well.
Lomell was at an inflection point
in the battle.
The men or the mission.
And he floated the idea,
do we move off the hill
and leave the wounded
so that the German medics
can tend to them?
What do you think?
The Ranger
response is unanimous.
It's a no.
No. Absolutely not, no.
I say we stay, too.
They are outnumbered,
and the wounded vulnerable,
but to abandon the hill
would mean their sacrifices
have been in vain.
Well, all right.
We'll stay.
At 1652,
Lomell sends an urgent call
to his superiors in Bergstein,
the town below the hill,
for reinforcements.
Another German counterattack
tries to break the remaining Rangers.
The Americans hold them off
in hand-to-hand fighting
with fixed bayonets.
The forest is so black.
You're not able to see somebody
unless they're right on top of you,
and it's close-in and intimate
because you are face-to-face
with the enemy.
A platoon of reinforcements
from the 2nd Rangers Easy Company
finally arrives from the village below.
- It's good to see you.
- Good to see you, sir.
And help Dog and Fox companies
fight off the next German counterattack.
Move!
You all right?
Lomell sustains another injury,
this time in his upper thigh
and is now one of the many
Ranger casualties
who needs medical care.
They hope that some can be evacuated
under the cover of dark.
Rangers from Charlie
and Dog Company's mortar battalion
climb the hill with litters
for the wounded.
The stretcher bearers work silently.
German troops
continue to occupy the slopes.
And just picture
the-- the dead weight of a wounded man
on a stretcher,
and you've got to somehow
haul this person down.
It's a broken hill
with tree roots all over the place,
and it's so easy to trip
or get caught by the enemy.
It's extremely perilous.
Though wounded, Lomell oversees
the evacuation of the Ranger casualties.
At 2140 hours,
he is amongst the last of the injured
to leave Hill 400.
Lomell was-- was losing a lot of blood.
His-- His finger was dangling
from his tendon.
He did not want to leave his men,
but h-his wounds basically
forced him off the hill.
Sergeant Herm Stein
is now in charge of Fox Company.
The night is broken
by periodic shells and sniper fire.
If the few dozen Rangers
survive until morning
they know that
another German counterattack
will surely come.
The 2nd Ranger Battalion
has kept Hill 400 out of German hands
for much of December 7, 1944.
And by 1700 hours on December 8th,
they've withstood two more counterattacks
coming from three sides of the hill.
Hill 400,
you can't think of it as,
oh, here's the Americans
controlling the whole hill.
It's more like, here's a handful of guys
in little clumps
here and there on that hill
who control the ground
they stand on, kind of,
controlling the entry points,
the exit points,
controlling an area 30 yards away.
That-- That's problematic.
Another heavy
artillery bombardment begins--
a sign that the next
counterattack is imminent.
Sergeant Herm Stein of Fox Company
endures the bombardment
with an assortment of weapons
at the ready.
The Rangers who remain on the hill
keep the weapons of the killed and wounded
and collect those abandoned by the Germans
to prevent running out of ammunition.
It's risky.
There's a real danger
with using captured German weapons
because they make a distinct sound,
and if you're an American combatant
hearing a German weapon,
you could potentially think
it's a German firing that weapon
and fire upon your own men.
As the artillery eases,
150 German troops
under the command of Captain Adolf Thomae
charge the hill.
The fifth counterattack
is the strongest yet.
German troops advance to within 30 yards
of the observation bunker
on the top of the hill.
The Ranger numbers continue to dwindle.
They resort to desperate measures
to hold their position.
They call in artillery support,
virtually onto the hilltop.
It's that desperate.
They have to call the artillery strike
on their own position
and hope to survive.
Blow!
It's a system
the Rangers have a lot of confidence in.
By December 1944,
U.S. artillery is among
the best in the world,
very sophisticated forward observation,
communications equipment,
accuracy.
It certainly is better
and available in more quantity
than German artillery.
American artillery
rings the Rangers' positions.
While dangerous for the Rangers,
it achieves the desired objective.
Many Germans are killed.
Those that are not are forced to retreat.
But the battle still exacts
its toll from the Rangers.
Even with the reinforcements
from Easy Company,
the Rangers are now down
to 22 able-bodied men.
Lieutenant Kinnard
went directly
to the commanding officer at corps
to beg for reinforcements.
They're now it's way past 24 hours.
Corps comes back and says,
you must hold that hill at all costs.
And he goes back and reports back
that the reinforcements
weren't going to arrive.
Even worse,
they start to run critically low
on ammunition.
As a second night falls,
the remaining Rangers dig in again.
What happens to most people
is that you don't think
about death or life.
You just think
you're going to die anyways,
so it doesn't matter.
And I think that's what
a lot of those Rangers felt.
Then out of the darkness,
a relief force finally arrives.
A battalion from the U.S. 13th Infantry,
8th Division, ascends.
Originally tasked to hold Hill 400
for 24 hours,
the Rangers have survived 40.
It was all about
the collective sacrifice
that they had made
and all the men that had died
prior to that-- that point in time,
that they said no, absolutely not.
We will not give an inch.
We will hold this hill.
At 2230 hours,
Sergeant Herm Stein
is one of the last Rangers
to walk off Hill 400.
In taking and holding the position,
the 2nd Rangers suffer 23 men killed
and 106 wounded.
Four are missing in action.
450 German troops are killed
and 64 taken prisoner.
German Captain Adolf Thomae
would receive the Knight's Cross
for his defense of Bergstein
and repeated attempts to reclaim the hill.
Herm Stein from Rangers' Fox Company
is later awarded
the Distinguished Service Cross,
for extraordinary heroism on December 7th,
and serves out the rest of the war.
Len Lomell also survives the war
and was presented with the Silver Star
for his heroic leadership on Hill 400.
I think in some ways
it represents like the gold standard
of who we are as Americans.
These are individuals
that are willing to sacrifice their lives
for something larger than themselves.
It's pretty extraordinary.
While Hill 400
is one of the deepest
penetrations into Germany
by American or British forces
to that point in the war,
the Allies fail to capitalize.
Depleted troops cannot advance further
and do not discover
the massive German build-up
in the Ardennes Forest.
Maybe the best term
is that they are now
combat ineffective.
When you suffer 33,000 casualties
in the space of five weeks or so
and almost all them concentrated
in the rifle companies
among the forward-leaning combat troops
this is definitely
going to have an effect.
So, in most of those companies
you are talking about anything
from about a 50 to 100 percent
casualty rate,
and especially among the officers.
The Germans
are able to slow down significantly
the Allied advance in the Hurtgen Forest.
However, at the same time,
the Germans also suffer drastically
in these battles,
and these are casualties
the Germans actually cannot afford.
Only eight days later,
on December 16, 1944,
Germany launches
its last major offensive of the war,
which would come to be known
by the Allies as
the Battle of the Bulge.
The Germans want to drive
a wedge between the Allies,
between the Americans and the British.
Hitler's army
would take them completely by surprise
and effectively end the fighting
in the Hurtgen Forest.
The Battle of the Bulge would prove to be
one of the largest and bloodiest battles
fought by the U.S. during World War II.
The setbacks suffered
mean the war in Europe
will last another six months.
Captioned by Visual Data Media Services