Original subtitles

Narrator: On the german border...

A forest of dark secrets.

American gis called it the 'death factory.'

World war ii was fought on

Vast landscapes across the planet.

Marty (over radio): Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Narrator: But the evidence of that war is disappearing fast.

Pete: That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the water!

That's it. Congratulations.

Narrator: Now, technology expert pete kelsey...

Pete: I've gotta scan this.

Narrator: And military historian marty morgan...

Marty: Oh my god, look at this view!

Narrator: Are using 21st century technology to

Strip away the present and

Reveal the buried secrets of world war ii.

This time.

Why was the hürtgen forest a death trap for the us army?

How did the winter impede the us advance?

Pete: So he's now losing heat really fast.

Narrator: How did the nazis turn the forest itself into a weapon?

Marty: Woah!

Narrator: The hürtgen forest.

Dense, dark, and today, eerily quiet.

For 50 square miles, there's nothing but trees.

Us military commanders expected to get through these

Woods on their way to berlin, in a couple of weeks.

Instead, through the fall and winter of 1944, it took six months,

And cost tens of thousands of american lives.

The battle of hürtgen forest is carved into history as

America's bloodiest battle.

Why?

What happened here?

What led the us army into this mire?

The story begins in the summer of 1944.

June 6th, british, canadian and us troops stormed the beaches of normandy.

By early September they'd liberated paris,

Most of northern France and belgium.

Allied troops were racing to take germany.

Marty: And that will all come to a grinding halt here,

At the german border.

Allied forces are going to be confronting german soldiers

Fighting for german soil.

And from this point forward,

Things were only going to get worse.

Narrator: Military historian marty morgan and tech wizard

Pete kelsey have come to the hürtgen forest.

They're looking for traces of an epic world war ii battle.

They've set up their hq in a farmhouse,

Near the edge of the forest.

Pete wants to build a 3d virtual terrain map.

He'll combine german government lidar scans,

With more sophisticated aerial tech,

To lift away the trees and ground cover.

He hopes to reveal the scars of battle beneath.

Pete: Let's bring it up, and look at that.

Christoph: That is amazing isn't it.

Narrator: Pete and marty are joined by professor christoph rass,

A german military historian.

He's studied the battle of hürtgen over many years.

Christoph: You have the americans advancing from the

West, and then as they get to the border of germany,

They have the eifel mountains in front of them.

Narrator: The eifel mountains block the way,

Funneling them into a narrow valley,

Known as the stolberg corridor.

This is the direct route into germany.

But to the south of the corridor lies the massive

Hürtgen forest.

American commanders realize the germans could hole-up in

The forest, then attack the american flank.

So on September 12th 1944,

General cota sent in an advance party.

6,000 men of the 28th infantry division marched on the forest.

Their mission, to clear the germans out.

Pete: So, in a sense the americans are walking in,

Unknowingly walking in, to a heavily defended area

That looks like that.

Christoph: Yes, and it's an impossible choice.

You have to secure it, you can't go around it.

And then as you go in it, for a while you lose all of the

Advantages you have.

Pete: And it's, to me, it's pretty clear that this terrain

Is going to make moving any heavy equipment all but impossible.

Narrator: Lidar shows a man-made barrier,

10 miles long.

This confronted the advance party,

Before they even reached the woods.

Marty: Holy cow!

Narrator: Could this explain the loss of

Thousands of american soldiers?

Pete and marty go to check it out.

Marty: It's an incredible sight to see isn't it?

Still here after almost eight decades.

Pete: Unbelievable.

It seems to go on for miles in both directions.

Narrator: These square based pyramids of concrete

Are called dragon's teeth.

They were positioned to stop tanks and trucks,

In their tracks.

Pete: You'd come upon this and it's a bit intimidating!

Marty: Right.

This belt should be going miles to the north,

And miles to the south.

Narrator: These teeth were fiendishly simple,

But precision made.

How effective was this line of defense?

Pete puts his tech to work, to find out.

Pete: We really want to create a 3d model of the dragons teeth.

So with me I have a tablet equipped with essentially

A 3d handheld scanner.

And as I move around using this device,

In real time it's going to be capturing data in 3d as I go.

Narrator: Pete's scanner bouncs infrared light off the teeth,

To capture every detail.

From there he can build a precise 3d virtual model and

Demonstrate how they might have worked.

Advancing tanks would quickly become stranded

And vulnerable to enemy fire.

Marty: What this wall does is it reduces a modern mechanized army,

To a rabble of lightly armed infantrymen.

Narrator: But pete and marty notice something strange.

These teeth don't appear to have bitten hard steel.

There are none of the scrapes and grazes that heavy armor

Would leave on their surfaces.

Marty: If engineers came here and wanted to blow a path

Through this band of obstacles,

That would be an enormous task that would take an enormous

Quantity of explosives and it would take a lot of time.

Pete: Sure.

Narrator: Us army engineers improvised.

They buried the teeth with earth,

And easily passed over them.

This line of defense, was monumentally ineffective.

Nevertheless, by September 18th,

Just five days into the battle,

The 28th division had sustained 1,500 casualties

And six days later withdrew to belgium.

Now the 9th infantry division took up the fight.

What kind of defenses would they encounter?

Narrator: The dragon's teeth were only the first line

Of defense on germany's western border.

Marty morgan knows that they were part of a much more

Complex defense system in the hürtgen forest.

The germans called it 'the west wall'.

The americans knew it as the 'siegfried line.'

The us 9th division entered the forest on September 29th, 1944.

They suffered 4,500 casualties in their first three weeks and

Advanced less than two miles.

They couldn't even see the german defenses.

Pete and marty can't see those positions either.

But maybe a high-fidelity scan will fix that.

Pete: Harm! Harm: Hi pete.

Pete: Oh, am I glad to see you.

Look at this, a very, very impressive, very large drone.

Basically, what this drone can do,

Is get this very accurate laser-based unit into the air.

This rather amazing piece of technology in a sense,

Is going to make the invisible, visible.

Harm: Back up, running.

Pete: Wow!

Narrator: This flying scanner is capturing finely detailed data,

To augment pete's 3d terrain map.

Lasers penetrate the tree canoy to record what lies beneath.

Then, using advanced processing software,

Pete can strip away the trees,

To uncover hürtgen as never before.

Back at hq, the results are impressive.

Christoph: We have so far never seen lidar with such resolution.

And look at the details you can see.

Marty: Could those potentially be bunkers?

Narrator: Only 3 miles from the dragons teeth,

They've spotted something.

It looks like an elaborate system of german bunkers.

Pete: I've got the drone lidar loaded up, and look at this.

Narrator: Armed with new scanning data,

They're looking for these hidden defenses.

Pete: Hey marty. Marty: You got something?

Pete: Look at that.

Marty: Oh yeah! Now we're talking.

Pete: Right where it should be.

Wow! Talk about high ground.

Marty: Yeah.

Pete: According to the lidar, this is the highest point in the area.

Marty: It's got a commanding view down onto the road.

Narrator: At the end of October,

The 28th infantry return to the forest.

Advancing through these trees is deadly.

Pete: Whoa, look at that gun port looking right at us!

Wow! Oh yeah.

Yeah yeah yeah. This thing's intact.

Marty: Wow standing water.

That's a bit of a surprise considering how cold it is out here.

Pete: Is it me, or does that pattern on that wall right

There, look like somebody threw a grenade in here,

And the fragmentation just went everywhere.

Marty: You know, it does look a little bit like there are

Some impacts on the side of that wall.

Narrator: It must have been daunting to advance on a gun

Emplacement like this.

And the scan reveals that it's one of nine,

In just this short stretch of the forest.

The lidar clearly shows that the bunkers command

Strategic high ground.

They have interlocking fields of fire.

Pete spots something odd.

These bunkers don't seem heavily damaged.

While others nearby are completely shattered.

Pete: Clearly there's a lot of damage to this place.

But what happened here?

Was this part of some great battle?

Was this an air strike?

Narrator: Pete's gathering data for a 3d model of the

German bunkers.

He'll capture every bullet strike, crack and fracture,

To learn how some were destroyed.

Back at hq, he and marty are trying to work out why

Some bunkers remain intact, while others are blown to smithereens.

Pete: I've been looking at some of the scan data,

From these demolished bunkers.

On this first one, this roof slab,

Which is at least three feet thick, maybe four,

Has been split in two places.

The walls on either side, specifically over here on the

Right, you can actually see that it's bowed out.

Marty: It's popped out, at that angle.

Narrator: On close examination,

Pete concludes that these smashed bunkers weren't

Attacked from the outside.

Pete: This is almost certainly an explosive charge from inside.

There is no sign of an assault or pitched battle or anything

On this bunker, so almost certainly post-war demolition.

Narrator: So, just as us forces overcame the dragon's teeth,

They also got past most of the bunkers on the siegfried line.

Pete: If these bunkers weren't destroyed in battle,

How in the world did the americans get past them?

Marty: The siegfried line was presented as this impenetrable wall.

And what we now know, is that it was not as much of

A tough nut to crack as had been expected.

Narrator: Marty thinks that american troops likely spotted the bunkers,

And somehow got a small force around behind them, to attack.

Marty: This structure was oriented towards the west,

And instead our forces slip in on it from its blindside.

Narrator: At some cost, the second line of german

Defense is breached.

But as the american army advance deeper into the

Hürtgen forest; they come up against an obstacle more

Fearsome than any man-made fortification.

The forest itself.

Narrator: October 1944.

Us troops have breached the dragons teeth and they've

Overcome a daunting system of concrete bunkers,

In germany's siegfried line.

But pete kelsey and marty morgan are looking deeper

Into the forest for evidence of full-on battle.

Something on the lidar has caught pete's attention.

Pete: I thought you should have a look at this.

What do you think?

Marty: Definitely not german, no trenches.

They look oblong, they don't look like shell craters.

But then look at all of this behind them.

Pete: Right, there's so many of them.

Marty: Wow, there is something going on here.

Narrator: These scars on the landscape are six miles beyond

The dragon's teeth and two and a half miles east of the

Concrete bunkers.

Marty soon zeroes in on them.

Marty: Huh.

The lidar has collected this fascinating range of imagery of this site.

And what I want to have a look at, is this big one here.

Oh, look at this on the other side of this tree.

That is a dug position, oh yeah.

That's a fox hole.

There are just positions absolutely everywhere,

That's one right here.

Foxhole.

Foxhole over there.

Man, this is something else.

Narrator: This is the evidence pete and marty

Have been searching for.

Since their return to the forest,

The 28th division had advanced rapidly over the siegfried lin.

But right here, that stopped.

The americans dug foxholes when they couldn't advance.

And marty's found something even more significant.

Marty: This is special.

Obviously, this is a troop shelter, not a shell crater.

Dug by americans during the battle of the hürtgen forest,

75 years ago.

This shelter position would have had logs over the top of it.

It provided some measure of shelter and comfort,

In a battle that was not known for providing many comforts.

A position like this could have housed as many as 20 people.

The size of it makes me think it was probably associated

With maybe a communications center, maybe a battalion headquarters

Or maybe a medical aid station.

And if it wasn't for the lidar you'd never think for a second

That anything was up here.

Narrator: This was no temporary refuge.

It was part of a complex of properly engineered dugouts.

A whole battalion of 800 men hunkered down in this vicinity.

The us army was getting bogged down in a static war of attrition.

Even the trees seemed to be against them.

Marty: The forest is as much of a character in this drama,

As the two opposing sides that are confronting each other

On the battlefield.

And that's because the forest is the great equalizer.

It creates circumstances where neither side can bring their

Most powerful weapons to bear.

The american military by this point,

Is making extensive use of armor support,

Tactical close air support and artillery support and yet the

Hürtgen forest, strips those advantages away.

Narrator: The hürtgen forest, planted a century earlier by

The prussians, was a stout defense.

Standing 100 feet high and set just 8 feet apart,

The trees were a massive obstacle.

Marty: And this is part of the reason why the battle of the

Hürtgen forest descends into this stalemate where the

Americans aren't able to make significant progress

Across the battlefield.

Because the battlefield is the forest and you are fighting that,

As much as you are fighting the enemy that opposes you.

Narrator: Aerial reconnaissance was also

Obscured by tree cover.

The troops were advancing blind,

And without aerial support.

After three weeks in the woods they'd suffered 4,500 casualties.

There are some trails through the forest.

The us army used them to send tanks,

Trucks and artillery to the front line.

But hardly any arrived.

Pete's come to the kall trail to see if he can work out what happened.

Pete: We've heard stories that there's actually a tank track

Embedded in this trail and sure enough, here it is.

And I've got to scan this.

We have to scan this.

What an amazing artifact.

Wow, look at that.

Yeah, that's pretty amazing.

That's got to be 20 feet, probably more.

Narrator: Pete sets to work with his static scanner.

He wants to build a 3d virtual model of the tank track.

Maybe it'll explain why the world's best equipped army

Had to fight without its most powerful weapons?

Narrator: Back at hq, pete kelsey is examining

A 3d virtual model of the old tank track.

There's something strange about it.

It's a big piece of equipment to leave lying around.

Pete: Marty have a look at this.

I was doing some scanning up on the kall trail and

Look what is in the middle of the road.

Marty: Well, well, that appears to be

A section of track from a sherman tank.

Ok, I'm not thinking that this is from a mine because the

Tracks don't appear to be damaged.

And then also, they are belly up.

So, what we are seeing is actually the surface that

Would be in contact with the road.

Narrator: If it's upside down, it hasn't just come adrift.

So, it's a puzzle.

Marty: You said it was at a bend, didn't you?

Pete: That's right.

Marty: Yeah. Was it uphill? Downhill?

Pete: It was on a very marked slope, uphill.

Marty: Yeah.

I bet you they put this here, to provide traction for

Vehicles trying to climb the kall trail.

Pete: Really?

And that would explain why they are upside down,

In a perfectly straight line going up the grade!

Marty: That would explain it.

So, you have some spare parts lying around, you have a need,

You make it happen.

Narrator: Marty and pete have proof that heavy equipment

Struggled on these narrow trails.

When a tank got stuck, it became a 30 ton roadblock.

Whole convoys would be vulnerable to enemy ambush.

The us army was forced to improvise.

The tank track was their ingenious solution.

But even these difficulties can't account for the terrible

Death toll suffered in the battle for hürtgen forest.

Marty suspects the most lethal enemy is all around them,

Hiding in plain sight.

To test his theory, marty is meeting with

Explosives expert, trevor lawrence.

Trevor: Okay marty, so there's your second world war mortar bomb.

Marty: Nice, 3 inch?

Trevor: It is. Marty: Excellent.

Inert I hope?

Trevor: Yeah, it certainly is.

Narrator: Marty's theory is based on the difference between

A conventional mortar and a super quick fused mortar.

The conventional mortar explodes on impact with the

Ground, and some of its force is absorbed by the earth.

But a mortar with a super quick fuse,

Coming down in a forest, is brutally different.

Marty: It all comes down to this.

This very simple weapons system,

Of mortar tube plus mortar bomb.

As the mortar bomb descended down toward a target in a

Heavily forested area, branches of trees could come

Into contact with this simple point-detonating fuse and that

Would set the round off well above the ground.

Narrator: To demonstrate what happens when a mortar explodes overhead,

Trevor has prepared a powerful experiment.

Trevor: Ok so, what we're gonna do here is try and replicate

What we saw in the forest, in the second world war.

So, we've built this scaffolding structure and

Across here we've put these thick pine boards,

Which are similar in a way to the branches.

Marty: So, you can simulate basically,

What this would have done on impact.

Trevor: Absolutely, and what we are going to do is use one

Of these, which is if you look, quite similar.

So it's a very similar sort of metal, very brittle cast iron,

And we are going to fill that with explosive exactly the same

As would be inside here and detonate it up in the canopy.

Narrator: They'll use an ultra-high-speed camera,

To film what happens.

Marty: This is a camera capable of a high motion capture rate,

And what that means is that when we record the explosion,

We can slow it down to this very elegant slow motion.

Narrator: All personnel withdraw to a bunker,

As trevor prepares for detonation.

Marty: Are we ready out there?

Trevor: We are all good to go.

Confirm range clear.

Man (over radio): Confirm range clear.

Trevor: Roger, range clear.

Standby.

Firing in 3, 2, 1, firing.

(explosion).

Marty: Woah, I felt that in my chest.

Wow!

Narrator: The ultra-high-speed camera captures every detail

As the mortar explodes.

First there's a blast wave, this alone can be lethal.

Then the mortar shatters,

And shards of hot shrapnel burst out.

Finally, the tree branches shatter,

Creating a hail of deadly debris.

An overhead blast is utterly devastating.

Gis below had no real defense.

Marty: Oh my god, look at this.

The aluminum sheets really took it on the nose!

That sheet's even worse than this sheet.

That's just plain vicious, look at that.

Trevor: Look here, we've gone right through the scaffolding.

Marty: Oh my god, yeah.

Straight through it.

Those fragments sliced the steel pipe, like that.

They'd go right through the people beneath it.

If you had a larger mortar concentration coming in on a

Platoon that was dug in, you could wipe out everybody.

Trevor: Absolutely, and 30 men dug into a position,

Almost everybody would be either dead or injured.

These air burst mortars, digging in is no protection from them.

Narrator: This is what stopped the americans in hürtgen fores.

It's called a tree burst.

Thousands of us soldiers die this way.

It's crushing for morale.

Soldiers know they face death at any moment.

Foxholes offer no protection.

And to make matters worse, it's November.

A wet fall is becoming a bitter winter.

Narrator: 50 square miles of forest,

The hürtgen was treacherous territory.

(gunfire, explosions).

After three months of fierce fighting,

The us army was bogged down, stuck.

And the winter of 1944 was exceptionally cold.

Marty: This is January.

This gives at least a strong impression of the actual time

Period of the battle of the hürtgen forest,

And it gives you the visceral impression of what it's like

To be here in winter time, because it's cold!

Narrator: The us army was reputedly the best equipped

Fighting force in the world.

So, how would they fare in a german winter?

To find out, marty morgan and pete kelsey are conducting

Some tests with local re-enactor, michel zeimet.

Marty: The american soldiers that fight this battle, they,

They, they bring uniforms, weapons and equipment that we

Have available here, because michel has brought it.

And, not all of it was ideal for the type of environment

That the hürtgen forest provided.

Narrator: Trialling world war ii standard issue kit,

May prove revealing.

Marty: Which jacket are you wearing, michel?

Michel: I'm wearing the meccano jacket,

Which was some sort of coat.

It's not very great for cold weather but it's already

Something, I would say.

Narrator: Many of the soldiers are still wearing the uniforms

Issued to them in the summer.

They're forced to improvise.

Marty: Here's a look that you often see in the battle of the

Hürtgen forest where they have put on the gas mask cape and

Then they throw the helmet on, on top of that.

And so, the gas mask cape is not intended as a piece of

Cold weather gear and it's being adaptively used as that.

Now that we've got all the gear on,

I'm thinking of an experiment that we can conduct.

Pete, do you have that thermal imaging detector?

Pete: I do.

Narrator: Pete applies the latest thermal imaging technology,

To see how these clothes perform in cold conditions.

Pete: Let's have a look.

So, what you're looking at, what's bright,

Is where heat is being lost.

The poor gi is suffering.

Michel is cold.

You don't even have to tell me you're cold, you're cold!

Michel: I won't lie!

Narrator: This bright image proves that after just minutes,

An american gi would have been losing critical body heat in this uniform.

Pete: Whereas, over to marty who's wearing 21st century

Synthetics and goose down,

You can see how his core is much darker,

Which means warmer, which means marty is not losing heat.

Narrator: And it's not just the body's core that suffers.

If a soldier's feet get cold and wet,

Trench foot becomes a deadly threat.

Pete: I'm going to take a wild guess that michel's feet are

Probably pretty uncomfortable.

Leather boots, which were probably perpetually wet.

Narrator: But many soldiers didn't even have the basic

Equipment that michel is wearing.

Standard issue meccano trench coats were in short supply,

Many never got them.

Marty: Here's the real test, let's see what it would look

Like if he was equipped like a lot of guys were,

And that is without the meccano.

Can you take it off?

Pete: So, he's now losing heat really fast.

Marty: In so many of the period photos this is what you

See them wearing in the hürtgen forest and that

Garment's just not up to the task, it's too lightweight.

Pete: And of course, if we were looking at a poor gi in a

Foxhole, he's going to be soaking wet.

So, michel's thermal signature would be dramatically

Different if he was wet.

Narrator: Ill equipped for freezing conditions,

American troops paid a high price.

It's estimated that 70,000 us soldiers suffered injuries

Caused by that harsh winter in the hürtgen forest.

Trench foot and hypothermia did more damage than the

Dragon's teeth or the bunkers.

And all the while, the german army fought ferociously in

Defense of the fatherland.

Narrator: December of 1944 in the hürtgen forest.

The freezing conditions and the tree-burst mortar fire are

Taking a terrible toll on the american forces.

But where are the german mortar rounds coming from?

Have the german infantry built further defenses,

Beyond the siegfried line?

The lidar looks blank,

Except for some faint, twisting lines.

They seem to stretch for miles and they're pockmarked with

Shell craters.

They're less than five miles ahead of the us foxholes.

Marty and christoph go to investigate.

Marty: What do you think, we're about 50 meters from it?

Christoph: Yah, if we draw a line from the wood,

We should see it.

Marty: Oh yeah, I see it. Oh god look at that!

It's clearly visible.

I expected it to be overgrown but it's not.

Christoph: No, see. Starts from here.

Marty: Oh yeah. Look at it, right here.

Oh wow, this is incredible.

Christoph: Yup.

We could now basically follow it for 10 kilometers.

Marty: Is it that long? Christoph: Yes.

Marty: Uninterrupted? Really? Christoph: Yes, yeah.

Marty: My gosh.

Narrator: The dragons teeth, the bunkers,

Now this third line of defense.

The german strategy was 'defense in depth'.

Instead of relying on a single line of defense,

They were prepared to retreat from one line,

Only to create another line a few miles behind.

Christoph: When they built this trench,

The west wall has already been breached.

So, they lost what they think of as their most powerful line of defense.

Marty: And it falls to this.

Christoph: Then it falls to this.

Marty: They dug trenches in the woods.

Christoph: The americans have to fight for every inch of the way.

Narrator: This 'defense in depth',

Enabled the germans to counter every american advance.

Us forces still haven't achieved the decisive

Breakthrough they'd hoped for.

But by mid-December 1944 the tide is turning.

Marty: This trench line really is a metaphor about the different

Situations that the germans and the americans were in.

Narrator: These german positions are little more than

Hastily dug scrapings.

No concrete defenses here.

After many months of guerrilla warfare, they are desperate.

Was this the site of fierce fighting?

21st century tech may have an answer.

Pete: And we're hoping that the answer lies with our

Friend andreas here, who happens to have the ideal

Piece of kit for this, which is a magnetometer.

And between the two sensors it can pick up variations in the

Earth's magnetic field.

Narrator: Andreas scans the ground.

The magnetometer can detect disturbances caused by intense heat.

Pete: Oh, look at that.

Those jump right out at you.

Andreas: Those are two really, really big ones here.

Christoph: These are not caused by agriculture.

That means we had a chemical fire there of

1,000 degrees or higher. A very, very strong fire.

Pete: So probably ammunition burning.

Christoph: Yeah.

Andreas: Well, we don't really see a trench, not a structure,

Not a linear structure.

Christoph: If you look at these anomalies,

The black ones, without the white rim.

These are usually man-made holes.

The earth has been shifted. Somebody dug a hole there.

Pete: There's so many of them. Christoph: Yes.

We're standing on a green pasture,

Underneath you have the war still present.

Pete: It's amazing.

Narrator: And there's more.

Lukas has been over the area with a metal detector.

Lukas: We found a container for a german gas mask.

Narrator: The gas mask is evidence of battle.

And it holds a grisly secret.

Blatt: This is a very nice find.

It's a canteen bottle, maybe from a german soldier.

And we see here the bullet.

And here it is going inside, and there it is going outside.

Narrator: This battlefield of shallow scrapes and relics,

Is evidence of german desperation and a 'last ditch' mentality.

And wave after wave of american infantry keep coming.

Marty: We keep pouring humanity into that battle.

We keep pouring divisions that get so hopelessly banged up,

That they have to go somewhere to repair themselves after the hürtgen.

That was the cost of the battle of the hürtgen forest.

It just, it took in humanity and it spit out what was left.

This was one of the toughest battles the american military

Fights in the second world war.

Narrator: Small wonder that many didn't make it out alive.

In a sense, the whole of the battle of hürtgen forest was

Part of 'defense in depth'.

Because behind german lines, hitler was amassing a huge

Force of troops and tanks, for a massive surprise attack.

On December 16th they would crash through the american lin,

To start a new fight.

'the battle of the bulge' was hitler's last desperate bid

To defend the fatherland.

But the german army was overstretched,

And the offensive failed.

By February 1945,

The americans were out of the woods and

Across the ruhr river, heading for berlin.

The battle of hürtgen forest cost almost 30,000 american lives

But critically weakened the german army.

It played a vital part in the eventual defeat of hitler,

In may 1945.

Sadly, even after the war, the forest went on killing.

Marty: There's an extra level of sadness to this cemetery.

Because here you have buried 3,001 victims of the hürtgen forest,

Mostly german combatants but also 35 german civilians,

Russians, belgians, and even 100 men who lost their lives

Here after the war ended, attempting to clear all of the

Unexploded ordinance that was left behind.

So, the hürtgen forest was even claiming lives,

After the end of world war ii and that somehow makes this

Place seem all the more tragic.

Captioned by cotter captioning services.