YOU ENTER GERMANY: Bloody Huertgen and the Siegfried Line

The Battle of Huertgen Forest and along the Siegfried Line from 1944 to 1945 is one of the last great myths of World War II. It is known as the "longest battle on German soil", as well as the "Verdun in the Eifel", as the largest American defeat in Europe. Even the official US-military history speaks of Huertgen Forest as "a black-green ocean of forest, in which Hansel and Gretel had lost their way". Hemingway called the Eifel woods the "forest, where dragons live". Dragons' teeth, the Siegfried line, the Green Hell - terms that remind one of old German myths and fairy tales, of the Nibelungenlied, of the Nazi propaganda about the "eternal forest", of stories of ghosts and evil witches in the deep woods.