Hürtgen Forest
Forest along the border between Belgium and Germany
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
| Hürtgen forest German: Hürtgenwald | |
|---|---|
View looking west over the Kall Valley in the Hürtgen Forest | |
| Map | |
  Hürtgen forest, North Rhine-Westphalia  Hürtgen forest (Germany) | |
| Geography | |
| Coordinates | 50.7008°N 6.4284°E |
History
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
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
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]
