Hürtgen Forest

The Hürtgen forest (also: Huertgen Forest; German: Hürtgenwald) is located along the border between Belgium and Germany in the southwest corner of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Scarcely 50 square miles (130 km²) in area, the forest lies within a triangle outlined by the German towns of Aachen, Monschau, and Düren. The Rur River runs along the eastern edge of the forest.

The Hürtgen Forest lies at the northern edge of the Eifel mountains; its terrain is characterized by plunging valleys that carve through broad plateaus. Unlike many areas of Germany in which the valleys are farmed and hilltops are wooded, the Hürtgen Forest's deep valleys are thickly wooded and the hilltop plateaus have been cleared for agriculture. The forest's rough terrain starkly contrasts with that of the adjoining Rhine Valley. Roads in the forest are few, winding, and narrow.

The rugged terrain of this area was the scene of a long, bloody, drawn-out battle during World War II, often referred to as the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, which took place over three months during a very cold winter from 19 September 1944 to 10 February 1945. Along a road that rises from the Kall River Valley to the town of Schmidt, there is still a length of tank track that melted into the road after a U.S. armored vehicle was hit and burned there.

Battle of Hürtgen Forest

The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) was a series of fierce battles fought from 19 September 1944 to 10 February 1945 between U.S. and German forces during World War II in the Hürtgen Forest about 50 sq mi (130 km²) east of the Belgian–German border. It was the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and is the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought.

The U.S. commanders' initial goal was to pin down German forces in the area to keep them from reinforcing the front lines further north in the Battle of Aachen, where the Allies were fighting a trench war between a network of fortified industrial towns and villages speckled with pillboxes, tank traps and minefields. A secondary objective may have been to outflank the front line. The Americans' initial tactical objectives were to take Schmidt and clear Monschau. In a second phase the Allies wanted to advance to the Rur River as part of Operation Queen.

Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model intended to bring the Allied thrust to a standstill. While he interfered less in the day-to-day movements of units than at Arnhem, he still kept himself fully informed on the situation, slowing the Allies' progress, inflicting heavy casualties and taking full advantage of the fortifications the Germans called the Westwall, better known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line. The Hürtgen Forest cost the U.S. First Army at least 33,000 killed and wounded, including both combat and non-combat losses; German casualties were 28,000. The city of Aachen in the north eventually fell on 22 October at high cost to the U.S. Ninth Army, but they failed to cross the Rur or wrest control of its dams from the Germans. The battle was so costly that it has been described as an Allied "defeat of the first magnitude," with specific credit given to Model.

Battle (disambiguation)

Generally, a battle is a combat in warfare between two or more parties.

Battle or battles may also refer to:

Name

Fictional characters

In military

Places

In music

Men of War

Men of War (Russian: В тылу врага 2: Лис пустыни, or Behind Enemy Lines 2: Desert Fox) is a 2009 real-time tactics video game and the sequel to Faces of War. Players issue orders to and/or take direct control of soldiers on a simulation-driven battlefield.

The game takes place during World War II and its single-player campaign features battles set in Europe, the Soviet Union, Greece, and North Africa across three different campaigns for the Allies, Germans and Soviets. Japan was introduced as a multiplayer faction in a patch.

Features

Men of War is a real-time tactics game in which players complete military objectives. It focuses entirely on military tactics and special operations and does not feature base building, research, or resource gathering. Unit recruitment features in multiplayer, but is rarely enabled in single-player.

Simulation

The game's most notable feature is its simulation-driven world. Examples include:

Forest

A forest is a large area of land covered with trees or other woody vegetation. Hundreds of more precise definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing and ecological function. According to the widely used United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization definition, forests covered an area of four billion hectares (15 million square miles) or approximately 30 percent of the world's land area in 2006.

Forests are the dominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are distributed across the globe. Forests account for 75% of the gross primary productivity of the Earth's biosphere, and contain 80% of the Earth's plant biomass.

Forests at different latitudes form distinctly different ecozones: boreal forests near the poles tend to consist of evergreens, while tropical forests near the equator tend to be distinct from the temperate forests at mid-latitude. The amount of precipitation and the elevation of the forest also affects forest composition.