Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare From Stalingrad to Iraq
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Map 2.3 The Soviet Counteroffensive, November 1942
Armor, for both the Soviets and the Germans, proved to be extremely important to successful city fighting. Soviet armor was primarily used in stationary firing positions. Though stationary, the armored vehicles were heavily camouflaged and carefully sited to cover avenues that the attacking Germans could not avoid. Unlike antitank guns and machine-gun positions manned by infantry, the stationary tanks were immune to all but a direct hit by artillery and often required an enemy tank or assault gun to knock them out. They were important anchors in the Russian defensive scheme. German tanks were equally invaluable. They provided the firepower and shock action necessary for German infantry to overpower skillfully defended Russian defensive positions – particularly bunkers and dug-in Soviet tanks. Their firepower made up for the relatively low numbers of infantry in the German force. They provided an important psychological advantage that boosted German infantry morale and intimidated defending Soviet infantry. Finally, their mobility meant they could be rapidly repositioned to weight a particular sector or exploit success. It was no coincidence that the major successes achieved by the Germans in their four major attacks in the interior of Stalingrad included major components of German armor. Rather than having a limited role in urban operations, Stalingrad demonstrated that armored forces were key and essential to successful urban operations.
Losing the Battle
The battle for Stalingrad was simultaneously a tribute to Soviet army skill and endurance, and an example of the incompetence of German senior leaders. German commanders executed Operation Blue poorly. A large factor in that poor execution was the inept strategic and operational guidance and orders of Adolf Hitler. Several senior officers were removed from their positions because of their conflicts with Hitler. Among these were the chief of the Army General Staff, General Franz Haider, and the commander of Army Group B, General Fedor von Bock. In both cases it was directly due to Hitler’s refusal to act in accordance with a real appraisal of the battlefield. Hitler personally took command of Army Group South and gave very specific operational and tactical guidance down to battalion level through much of the battle. He made the key flawed decisions to launch operations into the Caucasus before the Volga line was secure; to elevate Stalingrad from a secondary campaign objective to a primary campaign objective; to require all of Stalingrad be captured not just controlled; and to hold fast as the Sixth Army was surrounded and later not to break out when the 6th Panzer Division and Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s Army Group Don was only 20 miles away. It is doubtful that any army could recover at the tactical level from the terrible position the Sixth Army ended up in as a result of Hitler’s amateurish involvement in operations. However Hitler did not single-handedly set up the conditions for the Stalingrad defeat. Collectively the senior German military was also guilty of incompetence for ignoring the weaknesses of the allied armies protecting Sixth Army’s flanks; not understanding the limited capabilities and strength of XLVIII Panzer Corps, the Army Group reserve; and completely underestimating the Soviet military’s competence, strength, and intentions prior to the launching of Operation Uranus. It was the sum of the failures of Hitler and other senior leaders that led to the debacle at Stalingrad. The great lesson of Stalingrad is that urban warfare, for all of its painful brutality at the tactical level, is often won or lost due to operational and strategic decisions made at levels above the tactical and often immune to the conditions of the concrete hell of urban warfare.
CHAPTER 3
AMERICAN URBAN WARFARE
Aachen, 1944
Eighteen months after Stalingrad, on the opposite side of the European continent, the US Army was tested in major urban combat of when the Americans approached the German city of Aachen in October 1944. The battle for Aachen demonstrated many of the characteristics of urban warfare seen at Stalingrad. It also highlighted some of the basic requirements of successful urban operations that were missing in the Stalingrad battle. Finally, Aachen demonstrated some uniquely American characteristics of urban operations. Though not conducted on the same scale as Stalingrad, the battle for Aachen was nonetheless one of the key battles on the Western Front of World War II as the Allies sought, and the Germans contested, the capture of the first German city of the war.
Drive to the German Border
The Western Allies opened the Western European Front on June 6, 1944, when troops were landed at Normandy. For the next seven weeks German and Allied forces dueled in the hedgerows of Normandy. The terrain suited the German defense and the Allies were continuously frustrated in their attempts to break out of their beachheads. Finally, on July 25 the American First Army’s Operation Cobra succeeded in breaking out of the beachhead. In the next weeks a battle of maneuver ensued. A German panzer counterattack was defeated at Mortain, August 7–13, 1944. Meanwhile, the Americans activated General George Patton’s Third Army which quickly captured the Brittany Peninsula, turned east, and dashed through light resistance across central France.
Map 3.1 The Battle for Aachen, October 1944
Meanwhile, the failed German counterattack left the German Seventh Army dangerously exposed to the American armored spearheads spreading out in all directions through the gap in the German lines. In orders reminiscent of Stalingrad, Hitler ordered that the German army not withdraw, and fight for every piece of French soil. This set up the German Seventh Army to be enveloped by elements of the US First and Third Armies which hooked north and east behind the Germans. Simultaneously the British launched an offensive on the opposite side of the front designed to envelop the Seventh Army from the north. As the Allied pincers began to close, the German command recognized the danger and belatedly began to withdraw. Though some of the German Seventh Army escaped the trap at the Falaise pocket, the bulk of it was destroyed and the American and British forces then turned and began to pursue the rapidly retreating Germans toward the German border.
By the middle of September the US Third Army was approaching the German fortress complex in Lorraine centered on the famous city of Metz. The US First Army liberated all of Northern France, Luxembourg, and southern Belgium and was approaching the German frontier defenses, known as the Siegfried Line, along the German–Belgium border. The British 21st Army Group had pursued the Germans north, liberating western Belgium and Antwerp. The British were poised to liberate Holland and cross the Rhine. It was at this point in the offensive, after seven weeks of continuous high-tempo offensive operations, that the bane of all senior commanders – logistics – began to dominate operational decision-making.
Though the breakout from the Normandy beachheads had been wildly successful, the Germans had managed to either defend or destroy virtually all the major port facilities along the French coast. Thus, the two Allied army groups, the 12th US Army Group and the British 21st Army Group, were both primarily reliant on logistics brought over the Normandy beaches. The volume of supplies that the Allies could move over the beaches was limited. Further, the French railroad system had been effectively destroyed by Allied airpower. Thus, most of what was brought ashore was moved forward by truck. There were simply not enough trucks for the job, and thousands of miles traveled quickly began to wear out the trucks that were available. Thus, by mid-September 1944, the Allied spearheads began to grind to a halt for lack of fuel. It was at this time that the leading combat elements of the US First Army reached Aachen, which was virtually undefended.
The supreme Allied commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, was acutely aware of the logistics problems. He also understood that the German army was in full retreat, that the western defenses of Germany were largely unmanned, and that there was an opportunity to possibly end the war before Christmas. Eisenhower had the logistics capability to sustain one of the three major axes being pursued by his armies, but the cost of doing so was stopping the other two offensives in their tracks. For a variety of valid, if arguable, reasons, Eisenhower determined to back his northern attack led by the British Field Mar
shal Bernard Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. Offensive operations in the US 12th Army Group were suspended and the US First and Third Armies halted. The US forces in the vicinity of Aachen reverted to the defense.
The Aachen terrain corridor was a stretch of relatively open ground that could give large formations access into northern Germany. To the north of the Aachen area was Holland and that approach was characterized by numerous canals, estuaries, associated bridges, and marshes. It was not a promising approach for large mobile formations. South of Aachen lay the Hurtigen and the Ardennes forests. These dense forests lay over steep hills and ravines, had a very limited road network to the east, and thus were excellent for defensive operations and unsuited to large mobile operations. The next eastward avenue suitable for the movement of large mobile formations was far to the south in the Lorraine. It was in this area that Patton’s Third Army operated. Thus, the best approach route into Germany in the northern part of the front was through Aachen, and it was in the northern part of the front that the bulk of the Allied combat power lay.
The Plan to Capture Aachen
Aachen had a special place in German history and in the ideological underpinnings of the Third Reich. Hitler declared the city a “festung” city, a fortress city, and that it was to be defended to the last. Toward this end the Nazi government evacuated most of the citizens as the US forces approached. When the initial impulse toward Aachen in September failed to take the city, the Nazi propaganda machine began to portray Aachen as a reverse Stalingrad. According to Nazi propaganda, the US Army would be lured into a battle for Aachen and destroyed.
The failure of Field Marshal Montgomery’s offensive to cross the Rhine in September – Operation Market Garden – is well documented. Less well known is what German officers on the Western Front came to call “the miracle in the West.” Warfare at all levels, tactical through strategic, is often a matter of simple choices which slow or speed a campaign or battle. Minutes, hours, and days often spell the difference between victory and defeat, or swift victory and slow destruction. The delay caused to the American advance by logistics problems, lasting through the last two weeks of September 1944, was the breathing space that the German command needed to reorganize units, bring forward supplies, and shuffle reinforcements to the west. Thus, at the end of September 1944, when the US armies were ready to resume their advance, they faced a much more formidable foe.
When offensive operations began again on the Western Front in October 1944, not only were the German forces no longer in full retreat, but General Eisenhower had adopted a new strategy for the front. Eisenhower determined that with the failure of Operation Market Garden any single thrust deep into Germany was too risky. Instead he adopted a broad-front strategy. Eisenhower’s concept – to attack simultaneously with all Allied armies from Holland to the Swiss border – was bold and insightful. It leveraged the Allies’ great advantage in resources, and somewhat mitigated any advantage the Germans may have had in tactical skill and equipment. Within the context of this broad-front strategy, General Courtney Hodges planned for his US First Army to resume offensive operations in early October. His initial major objective was the German city of Aachen, which lay on the tri-border point between Holland, Belgium, and Germany. Hodges’ concept was that the Aachen battle would penetrate the Siegfried Line, and open up the Ruhr industrial area to Allied occupation as a prelude to crossing the Rhine River.
The approach to the Aachen, and the battle itself, was controlled directly by the US First Army. This was required because the Aachen sector of the front was split by a corps boundary. The XIX Corps was positioned north of Aachen while the southern portion and the main part of the city were in the zone of the VII Corps. The First Army plan to capture the city was relatively simple. The XIX Corps would attack north of the city and drive east and then southeast to encircle the city from the north. After success in the north, the VII Corps would launch its attack northeast to link up with the XIX Corps. Once the two corps had linked up and isolated the city, elements of VII Corps’ 1st Infantry Division would assault the city directly to capture it.
Aachen lay in the sector of the German LXXXI Corps, under General der Infanterie Friedrich Köchling. The corps was part of the rebuilt German Seventh Army, part of Army Group B under Field Marshal Walter Model who was tasked by Hitler with stabilizing the situation on the Western Front. The entire front was commanded by the venerable German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. Having staved off a coup de main seizure of the city in early September, the German command recognized that Aachen had to be held as long as possible for several reasons. First was the importance of the Siegfried Line defenses, two belts of which ran to the east and west of the city. Second, the political symbolism of an ancient German city resisting the Allied assault was extremely valuable propaganda. Finally – and this was a factor which influenced all German operations in the battle – the German counteroffensive planned for the west, Operation Wacht am Rhine, later known as the Battle of the Bulge, was to be launched out of the German Eifel Mountains into the Ardennes forest south of Aachen. A successful penetration at Aachen would place the Allies deep in the northern flank of this planned attack and make it very vulnerable to counterattack.
The German LXXXI Corps defended the Aachen sector with four infantry divisions: the 183rd and 49th Divisions; the 246th Division, which had responsibility for the city itself; and the 12th Division, which defended west of the city in the vicinity of Stolberg. The corps had a number of separate panzer and assault gun units in reserve, notably the 506th Heavy Tank Battalion, equipped with King Tiger tanks. The mission of these mobile forces was to counterattack against any penetration of the infantry division defensive lines. Available, but not released to the corps, was the Army Group B reserve of the 116th Panzer Division and the 3rd Panzer Grenadier Division, both organized under I SS Panzer Corps. Field Marshal von Rundstedt had control of the mobile reserve and would only release it under extreme circumstances.
Enveloping the City
In early September the German Seventh Army was in disarray and the West Wall defenses were largely unmanned. As the German army retreated, the German command assigned the defense of Aachen to the 116th Panzer Division. This unit, however, was only a shadow of itself after the losses of August. The German commander decided to give up Aachen without a fight. The American VII Corps, however, determined not to attack directly into the city and the 3rd Armored Division leading the corps advance bypassed Aachen to the south and advanced east and northeast beyond the city into the outskirts of the town of Stolberg. Elements of the 3rd Armored were positioned on the western edge of Stolberg when offensive operations ceased to permit priority of supplies to Market Garden in September. As September ended, the US First Army sat immobilized on the German frontier. The VII Corps’ 3rd Armored Division was positioned east of Aachen near Stolberg. The Corps’ 1st Infantry Division was positioned east and south of the city. The boundary between VII Corps and XIX Corps ran roughly through the western portion of the city. North of the city was the area of operations of the 30th Infantry Division whose front generally followed the Wurm River which flowed northwest from northern Aachen.
The battle for Aachen began on October 2, 1944, with the attack of the 30th Infantry Division across the Wurm River, north of Aachen. The American plan was simple, tactically sound, and reflected a solid understanding of urban warfare. The attack involved three divisions and supporting troops. In phase one of the attack, the 30th Division attacked north of the city to drive east and then southeast to secure the town of Wurselen, about 9 miles northeast of the city proper. The 2nd Armored Division supported the attack of the 30th and protected the 30th’s northern flank from counterattack. In the second phase of the attack, the 1st Infantry Division attacked from the south to the north to secure Aachen’s eastern suburbs and to link up with the 30th Division in Wurselen. Phase two’s objective was the complete isolation of the city. The final phase of the attack was an attack by two battalions of the
1st Division’s 26th Infantry Regiment. This attack was from east to west to capture the city center itself. Phase three was timed to occur after the completion of phase two.