This is the YANK MAGAZINE report on the first major battle to be fought on German soil during the Second World War.
Aachen, the Westernmost city in Germany was defended by some 44,000 men of the Wehrmacht as well as assorted elements of the First SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Division which combined to offer a stubborn defense that lasted nineteen days. This article, written by YANK correspondent Bill Davidson, who witnessed some of the most vicious urban combat of World War II, believed that the battle for Aachen was simply a re-staging of the battle of Stalingrad and he supports this point throughout much of the article:
“Godfrey Blunden,the Australian war correspondent, was here in Aachen…he was immediately struck by the similarity between the two battles. ‘There is is the same house-to-house and room-to-room fighting, the same combat techniques, the same type of German defense. In Stalingrad, the Germans held Murmia Kurigan Hill and planted it thick with 88s and six-barreled mortars.'”
Historian Stephen Ambrose remarked that the Battle of Aachen was unnecessary.
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