Sipsey Street Irregulars: Hürtgen Forest: America’s Longest, Most Costly Battle During World War II

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Hürtgen Forest: America’s Longest, Most Costly Battle During World War II

In truth, the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest ended up as one of the Army’s most colossal military blunders, right up there with the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. Army leadership gravely misunderstood the impracticalities of the difficult geography, which limited air support, logistical resupply, and the use of armor for infantry support. To boot, much attention was focused on the taking of the villages of Schmidt and Vossenack — two locations with very little military value — while almost no attention was paid to the far more strategic targets of the Ruhr dams to the north (at least until late in the battle), which would have provided unfettered access to the German war machine."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: Not by any means the only blunder of its kind in WW2. Pelelu , Merrell's Marauders, The invasion of the P.I. were all a colossal waste of human life that didn't take a single day off the war. In fact a good case can be made that everything MacAurther did during the ENTIRE war was a complete waste as under his plan the USAAF wouldn't have been within bombing range of Japan until the fall of Formosa in late 1945. C. Nimitz "Central Pacific" campaign won the war in the Pacific. "Mac" had nothing to do with that. ---Ray; November 10, 2015 at 12:45 PM
Anonymous said...: Mac's greatest contribution would have been the march into China in the next war, but he was too much of a grandstanding jackass to get the president on his side.; November 11, 2015 at 12:46 AM
Anonymous said...: I'm no military genius by any stretch of the imagination, but wouldn't the theory of "Blitzkrieg" dictate passing an impenetrable area like that, in order to gain ground and restrict losses? Maybe high Command intentionally wanted to slow the advance down to give the Russians time to get to Berlin?; November 11, 2015 at 5:57 AM
Josh said...: I get the idea that US and Russian commands had little care for losses, especially when they knew they had Germany on the mat. It wasn't their lives being wasted (save for in the case of the Russian commands where Stalin was a literal threat to their lives if results weren't obtained). It's stupid to fight in built up areas and in forrests, if you surround them long enough in such areas they will come out to you on their own eventually.; November 11, 2015 at 1:49 PM

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Sipsey Street Irregulars

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Hürtgen Forest: America’s Longest, Most Costly Battle During World War II

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