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The Siegfried Line campaign was a phase in the Western European campaign of World War II, which involved engagments near the German defensive Siegfried Line.. This campaign spanned from the end of Operation Overlord and the push across northern France, which ended on 15 September 1944, and concluded with the opening of the German Ardennes counteroffensive, better known as the Battle of the Bulge.
The Siegfried Line, known in German as the Westwall (= western bulwark), was a German defensive line built during the late 1930s. Started in 1936, opposite the French Maginot Line, it stretched more than 630 km (390 mi) from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the western border of Nazi Germany, to the town of Weil am Rhein on the border with Switzerland.
Inadequate clothing and footwear, keeping troops in the front line for excessive periods, and poor foot care were all important factors. [61] Five weeks of fighting in November and early December cost the 12th Army Group about 64,000 battle casualties, and there were another 12,000 casualties from trench foot.
The Battle of Aachen was a battle of World War II, fought by American and German forces in and around Aachen, Germany, between 12 September and 21 October 1944. [4] [5] The city had been incorporated into the Siegfried Line, the main defensive network on Germany's western border; the Allies had hoped to capture it quickly and advance into the industrialized Ruhr Basin.
The Battle of Fort Driant was a constituent battle in the 1944 Battle of Metz, during the Lorraine Campaign and the greater Siegfried Line Campaign.The battle was on occupied French territory between the forces of the United States Third Army under the command of General George S. Patton and the forces of Nazi Germany under General Otto von Knobelsdorff and was given the code name Operation ...
German defenses along the Siegfried Line continued to strengthen, and the Wehrmacht was able to establish a defensive depth of an average of 4.8 kilometers (3.0 mi), with the strongest defenses built opposite of Patton's Third Army. [23] Despite Germany's reorganization, their manpower was still incomparable to that of the Western Allies.
This article lists those elements of the Siegfried Line (German: Westwall) that have survived or whose function is still clearly recognisable.The structures are listed roughly from north to south and grouped by the individual construction programmes involved in building the Siegfried Line.
The German strategy was to conduct a fighting withdrawal to the Siegfried Line (which they called the Westwall) while holding the ports as long as possible and conducting a scorched earth program to deny or destroy as much of the transportation infrastructure as possible. The hope was that these measures would restrict the Allies' operational ...