The fall of 1944 ranks among the most difficult months the United States Army experienced in the entire 20th Century, if not her entire history. Along the center of the Allied front, along the German border near the medieval city of Aachen, General Hodges VII and V Corps endured one shattered rifle division after another. Aachen was the first significant German city the allies captured in the war, with a population of 165,000 people. Though the city itself was secured on October 21st heavy fighting raged on regardless; in the primeval Huertgen Forest blanketing the hills surrounding Aachen.

The Second World War ended well over 60 million lives in six of the most horrific and brutal years in history. Today, we remember the war's beginning, exactly seventy years ago this September, mostly from the perspective of the German war machine's blitzkrieg across Poland. However, what is often forgotten is that even a tyrant such as Hitler still sought political cover for his war of expansion and extermination in Eastern Europe.