Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 155 - Battle of Hurtgen Forest Part 1: Courtney Hodges Hates His Own Soldiers

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

The US plans the battle of the Hurtgen Forest. The first step is actively hating your own soldiers. sources for both episodes https://www.historynet.com/the-hurtgen-forest-1944-the-worst-place-of-any.htm https://europeremembers.com/story/battle-of-huertgen-forest/ https://armyhistory.org/hell-in-the-forest-the-22d-infantry-regiment-in-the-battle-of-hurtgen-forest/ https://9thinfantrydivision.net/battle-of-the-hurtgen-forest/ https://www.wearethemighty.com/popular/longest-land-battle-hurtgen-forest/ https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2020/01/29/the-battle-of-hurtgen-forest-a-tactical-nightmare-for-allied-forces/ Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

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Legion of the Old Crow my Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, heavily caffeinated, and with me today is Nick, heavily hungover. Hell yeah. We are the ying and yang of podcasting uh so you sound like you're in pain nick absolutely it's awful you're you're in texas so like all the bars and stuff are open huh yeah i think some are open here. I don't know. I was never much of a bar person even before the world ended.

And I am fully vaccinated. And I still don't think I'm interested in going to a bar. You know, I'm more of a bar person than I am a, how do you say, club goer. No, clubs are terrible. Club people are awful. So I just stick with it. Yeah. I people are awful. So I just do it. Yeah. I don't know.

Clubs are only good if you want to get blackout drunk and you hate everyone around you so you can't hear what they're saying because the music's too loud. So I go to bars. Yeah. I'm trying to get on that level where I was back in Washington where the bartender just gave us the remote control and had a beer ready for us. I miss Washington. Mostly because I miss the breakfast burritos from the gas station near my house.

Now, I do have to touch on something before we start. Since our last episode that came out, we did questions from the Legion about our worst place to poop. have to touch on something before we start uh since our last episode that came out uh we did a uh uh questions from the legion about like our worst place to poop uh and my inbox has been flooded with people telling me their poop stories that's fucking awesome it is hilarious i thought about reading some of them because how good they are but i i was worried about like anonymity and

like maybe someone somewhere's like, I remember that. He's the ghost shitter in the urinal or whatever. Which was one entrance that I got. So I'm not going to read any of them. But man, of all of the things I've been sent, this is probably... Of all the weird things I've been sent, which... It's been a lot. This is probably my favorite.

Poop's funny to me i'm still a toddler at heart even though i'm in my 30s like it's it's hilarious yeah it is i'm jealous i will forward you some poop emails all right thank you you know you know it isn't hilarious the battle Battle of the Hurtgen Forest. I'm not good at transitions. There's no good way to go from poop to one of the worst battles in the Western Front of World War II. Yeah, I didn't see that coming. Nick, you're in the reenacting circles or were previously. And you certainly know a lot of the people who fetishize World War II leaders

and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Where does this battle fall on the mind palace of the reenactor? Well, I could say from my area, it wasn't too big. It was there there but it was mainly obscured by D-Day Market Garden

Bulge and a few other stuff here and there but other than that it wasn't heavily talked about or it wasn't in our spotlight I guess you could say as much as the other battles. It makes sense that the Battle of the Bulge would take it over

because they do overlap. And the Battle of the Bulge, the US unquestionably wins. The Germans lost after their initial successes. We're not going to get into it a lot because that will eventually be a series unto itself. And then, you know,

everybody not fucking hundred and first can jerk off over Bastogne. But, um, Oh yeah. Like Hurtgen is not a victory in any tactical sense. Um, the Germans certainly left the forest. So like, hooray, there, there's no there's no triumph triumphant battle

here there's no stand at bastone there's no storming the beaches it's just teenagers being turned into smuckers jelly in a snowy forest um meat grinding yeah that's exactly everything that you read about this is like the meat grinder of the hurricane forest and shit like that um and you know admittedly i had to look for something new like a lot of our series is uh the series that we've done are based end up like trending we talk about the soviet union a lot um because like obviously i'm darkly interested in them as my family is from there. But also low-hanging fruit, admittedly. Same with the Air Interact War.

It dawned on me, while we have talked about the Western Front of World War II, we have not done a series on it. We've talked about individuals. We've talked about fucking Leo Majors. We've talked about a few other people, but we've never zoned in

on this one giant fucked up donkey nightmare. And I think that's because, admittedly, I do have some biases. We're both Americans. We grew up watching the History Channel. It's one of the reasons why we make the show. So we are inundated with American heroics of World War

II. And Pawn Stars. And now definitely Pawn Stars. How come they're all named after puns about porn? Like you have Hardcore Pawn. Yeah. Oh God. I don't know if any of those shows are still on anymore but I know they were the last time I glanced at Goddamn Nightmare.

I don't think I've had TV in I don't know how many years. So I don't have nightmare. I don't think I've had TV in, I don't know how many years, so I don't have cable. I don't have cable. Um, and so like, you know, we get people like the Eisenhowers and the patents and stuff.

And we have talked about patent before, uh, in regards to the bonus March, the bonus army March. And I think it's because, you know, talking about like glowing victories is generally not something we do here right like not not unless it's like you know um uh some obscenely

lopsided military victory like the russo-japanese war right so like talking about d-day well i'm sure one day we will eventually do it just isn't high on my list. And by the time the United States landed in Europe, along with the UK and Canada, it was kind of just this slow march towards ultimate victory. There wasn't a lot of huge road bumps or speed bumps, rather. And that's kind of how we generally think about american world war ii uh now if you do uh talk about world war ii in the west and you talk about donkeys generally you know like bernard montgomery will come up admittedly rightfully so um but like you know

you everybody else generally gets a pass like nobody ever talks about omar bradley um the guy we're going to talk about here named court Hodges. These guys all get a pass. So we're not going to do that today, Nick. No passes. No pass. But before we get to the Battle of the Hurricane Forest, we do have to talk a little bit about what the war in Europe looked like by late 1944.

And at this point, just to start this off, the Hurricane Forest is weird that we don't talk about it so often because it is the longest battle the U.S. Army has ever been involved in to this day. Really? Yes.

It went on four months. So it's weird that it doesn't get the microscope. Yeah. We're going to focus a lot on the soldiers' misery of the Hurricane Forest. You're going to focus a lot on the soldier's misery of the Hurricane Forest. You're one of the most veteran soldiers we have here, Kasabian.

I've only been here for three days. Honestly, that's not too far off. Most units would get churned into hamburger meat within a week. It's just obscene. So by late 1944, the Nazis were suddenly

getting their shit kicked in. The Allies landed in Normandy in June of that year, in case nobody remembered that D-Day happens in 1944. One day, I swear to God, we'll do a June D-Day topic. But again, we suck at that.

And by we, I mean me. It'll probably end up in December. It will end up in December. I'll come out on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. I still haven't gone to the Arizona Museum here, which is ridiculous because I can literally see Pearl Harbor from my house.

Just look out your window and go, yep, turkey shit. It's still there. I assumed it was bigger. That's a conversation for a different day. I just don't know how the fuck they put so many battleships in there, Nick. I mean, yeah, you're right.

I have seen it. It's small as shit. Yeah, I would have attacked it too. Now, this is in 1944 in the West. It's just like a solid march towards a German heartland. In the East, the Germans have been

in what kind of amounts to the bloodiest rout in human history. I mean, obviously, they would put up hell of a battle in places like Kursk and a few other places, but they were losing all of those, right? Their army was being crushed in obscenely large numbers and being chased by the massive

Red Army. The Germans were on their last legs in every front of the war, and the only reason they continued fighting is that they were too stupid to realize they were defeated. But not really. I'm just saying that. Master race and things ended up believing some very stupid stuff. But just because an animal is cornered

does not mean they can't fuck you up. That's where I'm at the most dangerous. Yeah. It's like the last jump scare of a horror film. Like, he's not dead yet. This is the last one. And that's kind of the Battle of the Bald, really. But, you know, we're talking about something a little to the left if you're looking at a map

anyway i think it's the right but whatever um in the east the soviets would have to fight through these various satellite states they would eventually take over and force into the soviet union um and uh you know in the west they came up against the Western Wall, which was better known as the Siegfried Line. The Siegfried Line began life in the 1930s and it stretched from the Western borders of the old German Empire into eventually the Sudetenland Austria

and a few other places that the Nazis would take over. And it was generally forgotten about for a little bit uh it is germany did a whole lot of other things like anti-semitism and concentration camp construction right but by 1938 when they started annexing some places and uh taking over as others without using the term annexation uh you know, Nazis being Nazis, Nazi stuff happened. But they realized, like, hey, a war might happen. We should probably spend more money on this defensive line to the West.

Because remember, at the time, they don't think they're going to fight the Soviets. They will eventually. But like, because, you know, the non-aggression pact, even for Hitler, was temporary. He thought the beasts of human and communism and fascism were bound for combat at some point. But he saw his main enemies being the low countries, France and England. So he knew that he needed to build all these defenses to the West. So he started pouring money incredibly too late into the Siegfried line. Because it's fucking 1938, man.

You had several years to do this but you know whatever i'm not nobody's gonna argue that hitler was smart um and if they do it's us um i feel like we know somebody i would like to think that we don't um it's it's one of those people like you do not in fact have to hand it to the nazis like uh i don't know i hate people like that now work along the line began as tens of thousands of bunkers tunnels and probably the most ubiquitous thing that uh would be uh seen along the line dragon's teeth um oh yeah those bad boys yeah uh if if you're thinking that you've never seen what i'm talking about you probably have assuming you've played any world war ii video game or watch any world war ii movie um there are those little concrete pyramids uh that are meant to be tank traps or at least

obstacles um they're they're also to impede infantry uh and sometimes there's landmines in between them. It's just a bad day all around when you fuck with dragon's teeth. And they were built in such a way that made them incredibly hard to destroy or remove, which is one of the reasons why nearly 100 years later, they're still all over the fucking place in Europe. You can see just so many of them. But by September 1944, that is what the U.S military was staring at enter the hurtgen forest uh a place i've never been to uh i because when i was in europe i i was more focused on doing dumb things and like getting

the opportunity to like go see all these places you're getting trashed? Yeah, uh-huh. I was doing soldierly things. You could have gone to the forest and gotten trashed. I could have, yeah. I did get to see a few things, but if I ever get the chance to go back, I probably will for grad school, but I'll be looking at other things, significantly more depressing things.

But yeah, I definitely missed opportunity. If you were listening to this and you're an American station in Europe, don't be stupid. Take one of those long weekends. Look around. You're literally surrounded by history. Now, enter the hurricane forest. The forest is not that big, actually.

Like, I assumed it was going to be huge, right? Right. Because like hundreds of thousands of people would eventually become killed or wounded in this forest. But it's only about 50 square miles. Jesus. Yeah, it lines the German-Belgian border and is pretty well known and has a reputation in the

area for being dense with trees and just incredibly rugged. Very few roads because even the Germans and the Belgians that live in the area like no we're just gonna go around uh there there was there was a few trails that people would use um and like fire breaks and things like that uh but other than that it was uh also known for like

complete tree cover like if you were um on the forest floor it would like literally blot out the sun it was so thick. Now, if you're thinking of this as a hiker, that being creepy, it is. But also, think of this as a military standpoint. You are the United States military at this point. You have absolute air superiority. But congratulations, now you can't use it. Because aerial reconnaissance is pointless.

You can't see through the forest. Right. Yeah. And even on the ground, there's so many trees that just visibility of you standing there is reduced down to a couple of yards. I have never seen... I grew up in areas that's known for being heavily wooded

outside of the city I grew up in in Michigan. We both lived in Washington and and went outside a lot i have never seen forests this thick before the way it's described it's kind of incredible and of course the germans knew all of this they even planted more trees to make it even thicker and therefore harder to traverse they do this in a lot of places uh and also side note here they planted a lot of trees uh that were a different color and the trees around it so you could see swastikas from the air really yeah uh they're still finding them to this day what the fuck because like yeah they'd bloom in different colors or or like you know uh and fall the the leaves would

change colors and this happened in more than just the hurricane force this happened i believe in a couple forests in poland like anywhere nazis with they like had a thing for popping up swastika forests it's really weird and you can find pictures of them online uh but like it's weird they managed to go for so long without anybody noticing because, you know, at the time, air travel kind of rare for civilians. Not that many fucking fighter pilots flying over these areas that probably either A, were trying to blow up swastikas or B, were really big fan of swastikas. So nobody noticed for a really long time. And they're only visible for a couple weeks out of the year. Oh, okay.

So a small window, I see. Yeah. And as they find them, they're like, oh, we got to go take that whole bunch of fine trees now. But yeah. And I remember seeing a news article from not that long ago. They keep finding them. But what's important here,

there's only a total dipshit would decide, would take a look at this forest and be like, perfect. We need to assault through this objective. Yeah, like, what the fuck? And the Germans knew that as well. He's just going there going, yeah, I can see for feet. I like it.

I can see barely past the end of my rifle. I like my chances. And the Germans do this because, you know, it's theirs. But they also remember the Maginot Line and how they defeated it. There was a gap in it, right?

Amongst other things, but that's, you know, famously. The French simply did not build through forests that they think that they thought that people would not dare to cross, right? So the Germans did not do that.

They decided that they would make the forest even harder to traverse by defending it. They laced the forest with machine gun nests, bunkers, and trenches. All of them positioned in such a way that they could support one another with intersecting fields of fire. And they trimmed the trees just enough

so the positions could see one another and they could see any approaching individuals but they could not be seen and this is late in the war remember like the by by this point like they have built the sigfried line uh the uh western allies have invaded and now they're like oh shit we have to start reinforcing the hurricane forest right they're probably going to come right up right up into the forest so like concrete They're probably going to come right up into the forest. So concrete's kind of hard to come by, and good concrete is hard to come by.

So they did have some concrete bunkers, but they also built bunkers out of logs and reinforced them with dirt, which sounds weird, but that's just as strong as concrete when you reinforce big, thick fir or whatever kind of trees those are with mounds of dirt. It makes it as good or if not better than reinforced concrete. But it also had the added bonus of being camouflaged because it's built out of the wood. Yes.

And they also planted a ton of landmines an absolute fuckload um and some they like laced them between the trees and others they uh planted so many on the one or two trails that were available towards uh or in individual areas that like they could find a mine every eight paces for three miles. That's so many fucking landmines. Why did they put this much effort into the actual war? Yeah. At this point, I feel like they,

they just, it's one of those are like, yeah, we know we lost, but we're going to fuck up as many of y'all as possible on the way down. I'm not really sure. Well, a named walter modal was in charge of defending the forest and he was um you know as far as nazi commanders go he was okay um but he he was also not easily uh like tricked and didn't think that pulling away from the forest would be worth it.

He, he knew that a small number of people stashed in this forest could fuck up an incredibly large number of people. Oh yeah. Um, so like it's efficiency, you know, common German efficiency.

Um, and to be fair though, to their credit, they didn't think anybody would be dumb enough to attack those. They're like, yeah, us being here, we'll make them go around and then maybe we can fuck them up in the flanks um or you know

maybe they'll have to contain the entire force and bomb it flat either way we're gonna be a thorn in the sides but nobody's actually gonna attack through here yeah who would do that enter the guy that would be just the dipshit that the germans planned for general courtney hodges now a small side note here reading this guy's history he sounds pretty fucking rad all the way up until world war ii oh so he sounds like a pretty good guy he is the definition of you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. And by that, I mean a general officer. I see. Yeah.

Now, he got into West Point, and he was not from a very rich family. Got into West Point anyway, and then immediately failed out because he was bad at math, which I love. Understandable. I totally identify. If for some reason I got into West Point, I would also fail out because I'm bad at math. No doubt. But that did not stop him from joining the military. He enlisted as a private in 1905

after working at a local grocery store and deciding it fucking sucked. I think we've all probably been there at some point. I've never worked at a grocery store in my life. Well, like sub out the grocery store. I had a shitty job at McDonald's and GameStop for a while making minimum wage. I'm like, man, fuck this. I'm going to go die in Iraq.

I mean, I did landscaping so that wasn't too bad. Man, I would fucking hate to do landscaping. And then jokes on me. I joined the military and you do landscaping. And he turned out he was very good at soldiering because after only three years he got promoted to second lieutenant anyway oh wow that's good

fast tracking yeah back when like you know you could make that jump and what's even funnier is he got promoted to second lieutenant only like three or four months after he would have graduated West Point so you didn't need that big fancy school promoted to second lieutenant only like three or four months after he would have graduated West Point. So you didn't need that big fancy school.

I don't need that goddamn schooling. It turns out maybe he did. I'm not saying West Point makes good officers, but it probably would have made a better one than him. Now after this, he got involved in pretty much every war that america found itself in this included world war one where he temporarily got blinded from a poison gas attack oh um he was

awarded a purple heart because you know he was blinded uh it came back but you know at the time they didn't know it would like sometimes it just didn't uh some people were permanently blinded by i believe it was fage gene that did that i don't remember um but when he got his purple heart and his eyesight came back he threw in the trash because he thought he didn't deserve it what the fuck he also got wounded like two or three other times too look it healed back up i don't need this yeah i can see bitch um after the war uh he was made a lieutenant colonel and he was posted as an instructor at west point the school that he failed out of about 10 years before so like all of this is incredible right like this guy is the ultimate like spite driven person that fails out of school

that ends up like for instance the reason why this speaks to me is i did not get into the university of michigan when I first attempted to. My high school grades weren't great because I was a dumbass. However, fast forward, I go to a different college, get a degree, become an author, and my book is now part of the curriculum at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, a school I could not get into. Nice. At this point, I'm like, you fucking go, Courtney. Fuck those people. in Ann Arbor, a school I could not get into. So like I have... I like at this point, I'm like, you fucking go, Courtney. Fuck those people, right? It would be great.

All right, Hodges, you're going to be instructing the math portion at the West Point. Fuck. All right, kids, I'm going to teach you how to count with your fingers. So by World War II, he was a general. But by now, that gleam of light in his eye so by World War II he was a general but by now that gleam of light in his eye

that we both love so much was gone he chain smoked and drank constantly and he was almost certainly suffering some very untreated PTSD oh absolutely he was known for not showing really any

emotion to anybody at all except if he went and visited his soldiers in the hospital after they got wounded, he would burst into tears almost every time. He also personally wrote letters home to soldiers that were killed under his command.

Oh, okay. He was unwell and since since you know this is the the 40s where mental health is i don't know getting beaten i guess uh he he just like drank his pain away um which is something a lot of people talk about and we'll do an episode about this eventually they're like oh you know the hero the greatest generation to deal with ptsd like yes they did you just didn't talk about it like it's the same reason why everybody knows like audie murphy for his heroics in world war ii and not the fact he was a violent alcoholic for the rest of his life oh yeah you know um but yeah like hodges is definitely dealing with some shit um one division commander called

him unexcitable a killer and a gentleman which sounds like he might be crazy uh uh he was also known for like flying off the the handle at a drop of a hat and then immediately apologizing for it so like here's some anger issues. Now, before the war, General Omar Bradley was actually his subordinate. But during the war, Bradley was put in charge of him. Some people have said that's because Bradley and Eisenhower were tight. Whatever.

Either way, Bradley ended up in charge of him, but still deeply respected him to the point that he still called Hodges sir yeah so Bradley was in charge of the 12th army group and Hodges was in command of the first army under him

and yeah like people noted that like Bradley was differential towards anything that Hodges said. If Hodges had a plan that was very obviously bad that other people didn't agree with, Bradley wouldn't tell him no, things like that. Which makes a whole lot more sense of why something so stupid is about to happen. He was an out-of-date general. By 1944, all of the badassery that made Hodges' career was gone.

Historian Rick Atkinson notes that while Hodges was perfectly fine as a commander for the drive towards Germany, the months had worn on him. He was sick, though nobody was quite sure from what. He didn't sleep. He paced and spoke to himself. And he was constantly drinking and smoking. All of those sound like coping mechanisms for untreated ptsd to me absolutely i know i've seen me do all of those while not invading germany um now he also failed to learn the lessons from the war that he was fighting in remember he was a World War I guy.

It's where he made his whole career, mostly. And he was still 100% stuck with World War I brain. Whereas one War Department observer said, quote, an old man playing the game by the rules of the book. And a little confused as to what all that was about. By this point, the First Army Command was in Spa, Belgium, which is kind of a funny name because it was also known for having a very nice hotel people call it like the spa spa um and that was the hotel that hodges would do his best to never leave under any circumstances i mean can you blame him no but this brings into another problem. He was a terrible micromanager.

Now, we've talked about terrible micromanagers before, like my good friend Napoleon, who was a historically bad micromanager. Remember, all the way down to soldiers' buttons on their jackets? Yeah. At one point, he also toured his armies and nearly got murdered by a Russian patrol. And as weird as that was for him,

it almost wasn't a detriment. There's a hundred other detriments going on in that campaign that doesn't really, you know, rate. But for Hodges, he micromanaged from a hotel room. So unlike Napoleon,

who was completely obsessed with logistics, remember like his commissariat wagon train and shit? Oh, yeah. That failed. But he was obsessed with it, and it failed. He was obsessed with the paper aspect of it. And obviously, when you're commanding half a million people, you can't really deal with the ins and outs.

Hodges just didn't care. I mean, at least he understood that logistics were important. Yeah, yeah. He understood it was important, but then he tried to do it all himself. While Hodges just did not give a shit. Like that special kind of idiot who doesn't quite understand something and makes no attempt at learning it. Which is like the worst kind. Especially when it has to do with your job.

Right. One of his commanders said that he was, quote, the least disposed to make any attempt to understand logistical problems which not good and so while uh the officers in the hotel had hot meals and daily supplies of various kinds of booze like i actually find like a list of their daily rations of booze which was a lot really it was a fucking lot yeah it was like bottles a day um so like i think what happened is and it seemed like some people were saying is if he didn't see problems he assumed they didn't exist so like well we all have hot food and booze i assume everybody up front's taken care of too like i'm not cold this fucking fire is warm and

nice and great. And I have a comfortable bed. Everybody should have this. No, it's not that everybody should have this. It's that everybody obviously does. So he just looked around and assumed it was fine. But when in reality

American supply lines had been stretched badly due to the rapid advance west, leaving most of his soldiers without cold weather gear uh which i don't know if you've ever been to germany in september absolutely not um you need to start getting some cold weather gear no more why are you wearing that yeah um now normally when you make battle plans as an army commander you focus on the macro ideas because you have core and division commanders to carry out whatever your intent is right like if you're a fire team leader or you're a squad leader you're not going to dictate what

every single fire team does you're going to tell your subordinate commanders what you plan on doing and then they will come up with the best way to solve that. That's how that's supposed to work. And as a person that's in command of tens of thousands of soldiers he obviously has to pass those orders down. He can't

do all that himself. But instead, he tried to do just that, going all the way down to a platoon level. Really? An army commander cozying up to a platoon sergeant like, All right, listen up, man. This is what you're going to do.

It's like, sir, I think we got this, man. Fuck that. As you can imagine, this led to an incredibly slow, overcomplicated command structure that just absolutely could not work like a general is not going to command an army down to a platoon it's fucking impossible and if you're wondering why the corps and division commanders didn't point this out to their army commander like hey man like let us do our jobs they did um he just didn't care uh and if you rose the problem further like no man like i

am in charge of this that or the other thing you just get fired like on the spot without like any warning or replacement just gone that sounds awful what it's a little bit of luigi codorna right like could could could or not either executes or fires everyone who he doesn't like um and of the 13 corps or division commanders relieved in the entire 12th army group during the entirety of the western theater of war 10 were fired by hodges holy fuck which is incredible one time he fired a guy because he learned his son, the other officer's son, had been killed in combat. And that officer's like,

hey man, I just need a couple days off to gather myself. It makes sense. My kid just got fucking killed. Immediately got fired. What? Yeah. He got fired for asking time off to grieve.

Wow. Here, you can go take all the time you want now you need some fucking time off i'll give you time off motherfucker yeah um and it's the military so you can't even do that you can't fire me i quit situation um and this is even worse so like you know obviously you're billeted to like a tent or a hotel or whatever based on your rank, your status as a division commander or whatever, right? So once you got fired, like normally you assume you have time to pack up your shit. Instead, Hodges would make you wait outside, send his like enlisted staff to go throw all your shit in bags and then like dump it on the side of the road and then you just have to stand there and wait for a ride. Like a bad breakup. Yeah, it kind of is. Now here's the thing.

Jokes aside, which are funny. Having such an overbearing, micromanaging dickhead in charge, bad plans were sure to happen. Which brings us to the battle in the first place and here's one of the weirdest things and every battle that we've talked about um no matter how stupid they are right we at least know why it happened uh what the what their goals were no matter if they were unrealistic or stupid they had goals right to this day we are recording this in 2021 this happened in 1944 nobody is entirely sure why the battle of the hurricane forest actually occurred

oh so no significant values what you're saying absolutely none and there has been a marathon's worth of fucking footwork to do historical revisionism to make this look like it makes sense because a whole bunch of like white dudes in their early 50s who watched way too much History Channel at the time who consider themselves armchair generals of the greatest

generation cannot accept that we just fucked up so they're doing everything they can. And to their credit, Bradley and Hodges did the same thing. Everybody in the aftermath of this battle, which we will talk about for well over an hour,

did everything they can, they could, and even later on in their life and after the war, to try to reanalyze this and come up with different goals years after they happened, or in some cases, months after they happened, because they realize, I look really bad. See, the Germans were there, and yep. That's about it. That's all I got, is that Germans were there,

we have to go fight the Germans. But it actually gets dumber than that because there's a lot of places Germans were stationed that we did not attack. We simply maneuvered around because it's a war of movement. Whatever. Maybe they just wanted a fucking

forest battle. I don't know. We haven't fought around trees in a while. Yeah. You know, we haven't been slaughtered in a while. Courtney Hodge is just an arborist. He's like, ah, yes,

finally something I'm good at. Now I'm going to address all of these things right up front. Cause we will touch on them later when we actually get to the episode about the battle. I'm not going to spend as much time on them, but let's talk about, put on your revisionist glasses sponsored by prager you and figure out why the this battle happened so the entire u.s push this is one excuse into the forest was to secure the rurer dam there is a lot of dams in the area and this actually makes sense the dam could

very well be a possible threat to any u.s. advance in the area if the Germans would have opened the gates and sent thousands and thousands and thousands of tons of water into the countryside and made huge sections of the Siegfried Line impassable. That did not happen. But there's also a few problems with this. One is the Germans could have done this already. They could have just done this when they realized that Americans were coming into the forest. Right. They didn't. So it's reasonable to think they probably were not going to do that.

And if they would do that anyway, you're not in the forest. It doesn't really matter. Maybe they just didn't have the keys. They didn't. Fuck, we lost the keys to the dam. Or they washed them. I've done that before. They had one of those new keys that's actually

keyless and if it gets wet it doesn't work what yeah like i have a prius it doesn't actually have a key oh okay i see what you're saying yeah yeah uh the germans had that before a dam this this nasty dam was built by toyota obviously um i don't like to uh try to negotiate battles and how they happen due to like things that could have or should have happened so i don't like to try to negotiate battles and how they happen due to like things that could have or should have happened so I don't want to like push that first one too hard but the second battle would not kick off until September

however it was not until December that same year that the dam was made an official strategic target of the offensive the original plan instead was to cross the Rur river and capture the city of Durin. Now, the idea, of course, was to capture every decent-sized city along the way so the U.S. could

bypass some if they weren't worth the time. And Durin would feasibly be seen as one of these that was largely unimportant, especially because Cologne and Aachen were either captured or in the process of being captured and were much more useful city, strategically valuable and not in the other side of a fucking death forest.

The other idea was that if they just left the forest alone, it's garrison could pose a threat to the flanks of anybody who tried to bypass it. However, to do that, the Germans inside the forest would have to leave the forest and attack, despite the fact that they were specifically put in the forest in their size because a small formation could hold the forest. So it's not a very threatening force that's in there.

It's significantly smaller than everything around it. When the Americans started attacking, they would be outnumbered by tens of thousands what yeah so like the idea that this like smaller force which is specifically put in place to hold these defenses would suddenly attempt to break out is kind of stupid right um uh and it probably wouldn't have happened and and also it could be very easily contained because the thing is when a much smaller force leaves its defensive structures they're much easier to defeat right the only the only reason for it yeah they're not dug in into the death forest they would have been badly outnumbered in every direction the simplest answer that i can come up with is by punching straight through the forest the shortest route to the rur valley which brings

us directly back into the bad habits of our commander courtney hodges why not just skirt the edges flank around it maneuver likeaneuver. It's 1944. The era of I don't know, assaulting an enemy simply because they're there makes no fucking sense. It's the era of Home by Christmas. A couple Christmases ago, yeah.

Yeah. So, because Courtney Hodges, for lack of a better term, thought flanking was for pussies. So he complained in his war diary that was released after he died. Quote, too many of these battalions and regiments of ours have tried to flank and skirt their way around and never meet the enemy straight on.

He believed it, quote, safer, sounder, and in the end quicker to keep smashing ahead. Like I said, World War I brain. Fuck my men. Yeah. I'll cry every single time one of you dies, but goddammit I'm going to kill every single one of you.

I like a good cry. It's good for the soul. So like, that's what it comes down to. Sir, the spa water's cold. Excuse me, I'm going to go have a cry. And if you read about it, it seems like people are more open now that like, no, we just fucked up.

But like Omar Bradley, Eisenhower, and certainly Hodges, rapidly attempted to change their story as the battle started to go to shit, and then afterwards, everybody realized how horrible the battle was. Who approved of this assault? Who did that?

That would be Omar Bradley. Yep. This fucking guy. Other commanders would come in over time as more units were flexed into the battle as entire battalions

vanished. Fuck, could you imagine a whole battalion just... We go into it more in the second episode, but it's a fucking nightmare. Very rarely do you hear of battles like this that did not take place during World War I. So a lot of people,

especially World War II nerds, are going to be like, well, there's other generals that were involved. Yes, you're right. There's a lot of them. It's a shit ton. I'm focusing on two of them because they're ultimately the ones in charge.

And unlike a lot of stuff we talked about, we are going to talk about individual units because a lot of their firsthand accounts and actual memos exist. And I was able to read them. I know 442 is there. Is that one of the units that you reenacted in? No.

Is that the unit that you're in? No. 442. Fucking go for broke. I'm surprised you don't know about them i got nothing man it was the all uh uh japanese americans oh shit yeah okay yeah man that sucks i think they were they were tasked to go save a battalion. Oh, I wonder how that went. Now, so on September 14th, the first test of the force would begin. And despite everything I just said, it goes shockingly well. Really? The 9th Infantry Division, which had been fighting almost nonstop since D-Day

and was operating at only about 40% strength, would be the first fed into the woods. The men were told to expect constant heavy fighting as soon as they stepped off and instead found virtually none. That's not something I want to hear. No. Don't worry, man.

It's going to suck. You're going to step into a slaughter field. Now, they calmly, and it was almost like a walk through the woods, advanced six miles, which did take a couple days due to the horrible terrain. American soldiers found to become used to armor and air support, very, very close and constant armor and air support, found themselves completely on their own, as even the Shermans found going into the woods way too hard.

Um, so did they just, where, where, where did the tanks go? Did they just chill? So some tank units held back while others were like, okay,

we'll, uh, infantry will move ahead. We're going to have engineers take down these trees one by one to create a trail. Oh God. So it's super, it's slow going for infantry.

It's barely moving at all for armor. I think you as a tanker, they'd be like, you know what? Hey, you go ahead and step out there and go be dismount with my luck. Yes. Um,

and the, at the time, uh, I, I have seen some people like, why didn't they just run the, why didn't they just run the trees over? They just couldn't.

There's too many of them. Yeah. Remember, they can only see for feet. Yeah. During all of this, expecting heavy fighting, soldiers were on edge but saw nothing. They had not seen a single German for two days and found themselves right outside the village of Zweifel, so close that they could hear like air raid sirens going off

inside the town. So by the third day, they're overlooking the town of Scheivenhut who I'm sure I am pronouncing terribly wrong. Despite the fact they didn't know that there was Americans in the woods

and the war was raging all around them. Only, you know, a few hours down the road. If without the Americans, the woods life in the town looked completely normal. People were just going about their daily lives out of care in the world. Because I bet they know those forces are like, and nobody would fucking attack that. Who's dumb enough to come in here? Yeah. would fucking attack that who's dumb enough to come in here yeah one american named lieutenant uh jordan was standing around waiting to see what would happen or like what he should do next

when a german officer all alone and looking uh down at a map ran right into a formation of american soldiers the german who ended up being a colonel was a surprise to the Americans and simply surrendered. He's like, god damn it. Oh, what the fuck are you guys doing here? Or he could have been like, thank god, take me. Take me out of these god damn woods.

A few seconds later, a German on a motorcycle, who they assumed was probably like the courier for that colonel, ran into a different group of Americans. And this time they opened fire and killed the german uh and like the the first uh americans who captured the colonel noted that they simply robbed him and then sent him back like they took his map all of his intel but also like his cigarettes watch and shit and it's like all right back to the line with you give us your underwear that has to be the worst like oh man

I would be taking POW but at least I'm not gonna die right and you know when you get taken POW almost certainly these soldiers are going to steal everything from you because that is what it's a war crime yes it's looting but everybody does it but instead they just like

loot you and then like kick you back towards the line so you could die later but now you also don't have your stuff now you don't know what time it is when you die that's my dad's watch weird it's mine now yeah thanks yeah it's probably by that one private that has like 10 watches yeah like in every every movie, there's one private with like 18 different German dog tags and 40 fucking watches up his arm. Yeah. What a scum. Hey, they came from Nazis. It's fine.

You don't need to... Look, Nazis don't need to tell time where they're going. All right? It's true. So after this, the Americans decided they'd need to take the town and rather than dramatize this in my own words i will quote a guy named sergeant myers who in a dispatch wrote his experience as the first one the first people into the town is it a super enlisted type like i will say yes sweet uh quote we did a left face and raced down the hill to the village our speed was the product of the steep hill rather than combat zeal as we ran through the back, I looked for the handiest back door.

The one I opened led to a small commercial kitchen and then directly into the tap room of a small hotel. The only inhabitant was a dignified old man with a large mustache who was wearing a frocked coat and shirt with a winged collar. I motioned for him to go behind the bar and draw a beer for the three of us as we entered the room.

That's fucking awesome. Sir, are we, like, Sergeant, are we assaulting the village or getting a beer? Let's do both. Yeah. Yeah. You were just the one fucking, like, IPA guy or the fucking salary. Have you got, like got a nice stout back there?

What do you got? Sergeant turns around and shoots him in the stomach. Just absolute priorities. That's men who have been involved in so much combat, I literally don't register it anymore. Like, ooh, beer. It's like homer simpson yeah like it's that homer simpson saying like beer the cause of and solution to all of the problems in the world uh so if that sounds

dumb it actually gets dumber the town was taken without a fight the only uh shots that were fired were fired on accident i assume because they were drunk. Obviously. It's because the Germans had no idea what was going on. At one point, a truck loaded with four Germans loaded into it, pulled into the town, waving at the Americans

thinking that they were Germans. The Americans then waved back until someone realized, wait a minute, those guys are Nazis. It's because they're drunk. It's because they're drunk. And then they shot at them, missed, and then the Germans turned around and drove out of the village. Holy fuck.

And that wasn't the only time that happened. Over the next three fucking days, random groups of German soldiers would just wander into the town and then be grabbed by Americans, robbed, and then kicked out of the town back towards their lines. Now bring some more of your friends. I think it's because they were planning to continue to assault, so they didn't want to be burdened with too many prisoners. And unlike D-Day, they didn't just shoot them. Right. So congrats on the progress, I guess. Yeah, they just stepped down to fucking looting.

Yeah, I mean, you get plus three for not executing POWs. Minus two for looting. You're still up one. Yeah. And then because the Germans... So, the reason why the Germans had no idea things were about to go sideways is because they didn't even bother to blow up the radio equipment before the town was taken and that town happened to be a communication hub so like what yeah the people

that would have been telling the germans that the americans were coming would have been stationed in that town where the fuck were they? They got captured. They just didn't know they were coming. It was a huge fuck-up of German intelligence. All right. This gave the Americans an endless supply of German radio communications to listen to, which was made easier by the fact that one of the sergeants spoke German

and was sitting in there listening to it. Oh, nice. At this point, the Germans knew some shit was going down and finally ordered all their forces to assemble and to their normal defensive points, which the Americans actually did figure out where they were because while listening to the radio, they could hear them give

out coordinates and stuff. Nice. That's solid. They used the locations of those points, helpfully given to them over the radio, to call in artillery. Now... Thanks for doing the legwork. This is really helpfully given them over the radio to call in artillery. Now, thanks for doing the legwork. This is really an alley-oop,

but also an own goal at the same time. Now, this is about the only slam dunk victory that the Americans would get during this entire battle. It sounds like a good one. And it would get much, much worse from here.

And that is where we will pick up next week. They probably did run out of beer. Yeah. So like, it's weird. Cause like you think that the artillery on target would be like, ha ha battles over. Not quite.

I imagine the bunkers probably helped them out. Yeah. All the entrenched positions. It turns out the bunkers were very, very good at absorbing pretty much everything. But that is where we'll pick up next week. Nick, how are you feeling about Hurricane Forest? So far, so good.

So far, I didn't have to get any combat i got a beer yeah pretty rad yeah it sounds pretty good that e5 is on the level of myself i'm sorry it's not e5 back then it was like tech 20 or some shit i thought the techs were like a separate rank structure like this special or no i don't i don't fucking know like tech sergeant and shit like that just bring back spec ranks for specialists so you'd be like a spec 25 and not actually have to get the promotion board

my career would have gotten so much better if that was the case I mean could you imagine yourself as like a fucking spec 7 as long as you pay me I don't give a fuck what you call me how high did it go spec 6 Could you imagine yourself as like a fucking Spec 7? As long as you pay me, I don't give a fuck what you call me. How high did it go? Spec 6? I think so?

This is how we'll close out the episode. I was looking up old specialist rings. I'm actually okay with that because those are fucking cool to me. I think I had an old uniform that had some cool fucking rank on it. It was some old World War II rank. Let's see. So it went private, private first class, technician fifth grade,

corporal technician fourth grade, sergeant technician third grade, staff sergeant. There we go. Technical sergeant, first sergeant, master sergeant. I guess. I don't know so this is the fine people at Wikipedia say Nick thank you for joining me everybody else thank you for joining us

in this wonderful snowy nightmare and I don't know how to end this one except until next time invade German villages and take beer