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253 Chapter 12 The End of the Retreat Operations in the West and the Transition to Positional Warfare 1. The German Army of the West’s Defensive Fight between Aachen and Nancy Hitler and the Wehrmacht High Command entertained plans for an offensive through the end of 1944. But the various operations staffs in the west were fully occupied with preventing the defense line between Antwerp and Belfort from collapsing again in the face of the pressure from the Allied offensives. As Field Marshals Rundstedt and Model had made clear as early as September 7, the point of acute danger was located in the Aachen area. Both commanders expected an enemy thrust via the old imperial city toward the Rhein-Westphalia industrial region.1 That fear seemed to be confirmed when on the evening of September 12 American troops occupied the first West Wall pillbox south of the city. In the event, however, that was not the beginning of a large-scale breakthrough offensive. As noted earlier, Lieutenant General Hodges, commanding the U.S. First Army, had decided to advance cautiously. But he did allow the two corps near the Reich border to conduct a reconnaissance-in-force. Major General Collins, commanding the U.S. VII Corps west of the Aachen–Monschau line, was satisfied with that concession for the moment. His G-2 section assumed that the Germans could only fight a delaying action there. Collins, therefore, wanted to punch through the West Wall during the reconnaissance phase.2 He ordered three divisions—the U.S. 3rdArmored and 1st and 9th Infantry Divisions —of his corps to line up for the attack along a thirty-kilometer sector. The city of Aachen itself was to be spared, but from the very beginning, no plans had been made to establish a definite main effort . A certain concentration of American forces developed only in 254 Part 3 what was known as the “Stolberg Corridor,” through which the 3rd Armored Division was supposed to move with its flanks screened by infantry.3 The preparations for a thrust into the territory of the Reich proceeded in a similar manner on the right wing of the U.S. First Army. The estimate of the enemy situation developed by Lieutenant General Gerow’s U.S. V Corps agreed essentially with that of the VII Corps. The American planners estimated some seven thousand Germans in the sector of the U.S. VII Corps and perhaps only six thousand Germans in the forty-kilometer-wide sector of the U.S. V Corps, which ran west of the line from Prüm to Bitburg.4 Gerow had the U.S. 5th Armored and the 4th and 28th Infantry Divisions. He intended to have one of his divisions advance in the direction of Prüm–Bitburg. He picked September 14 as the date for the V Corps attack.5 Combat operations near Aachen began earlier. The LXXXI Army Corps, which held the positions on the German side, was very weak. Lieutenant General Friedrich Schack had only the worn-out 275th and 49th Infantry Divisions on the right wing between Maastricht and Aachen.6 The battle groups of the 9th Panzer Division7 and 116th Panzer Division, with about forty battle tanks, were located in the Aachen–Roetgen area, about ten kilometers north of Monschau.8 The 353rd Infantry Division was behind them. The sector against which Collins intended to send his tanks was still one of the strongest defensive positions along the entire Seventh Army front, but there was little prospect that it could withstand an American attack for any length of time.9 The German military command also faced a problem that was mostly beyond its control. On September 11, Hitler ordered the evacuation of the population in the threatened territories in the west, including the city and rural areas around Aachen.10 The Nazi Party officials as well as the police stations that were responsible for conducting the evacuation, however , simply pulled out without first making it clear to the population that anybody who did not leave the city immediately would be considered a traitor. That resulted in the eruption of an immediate panic behind the German lines, as the disorganized civilian population was driven into the streets with no guidance.11 By that point American units had taken the first West Wall pillbox along the outskirts of the city. Farther south, the Americans had passed the little town of Roetgen, closing to the front of the line [18...

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