Siegfried Line (Westwall): "Dragon's Teeth" 1963 US Army; WWII; The Big Picture TV-566

more at http://quickfound.net/

GENERAL J. LAWTON COLLINS TELLS OF THE FIGHT TO TAKE THE SIEGFRIED LINE IN WORLD WAR II, AND OF THE CAMPAIGN TO CROSS ONTO THE SOIL OF GERMANY.

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Line

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The Siegfried Line, known in German as the Westwall, was a German defensive line built during the 1930s 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 the old German Empire, to the town of Weil am Rhein on the border to Switzerland – and featured more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels and tank traps.

From September 1944 to March 1945 the Siegfried Line was subjected to a large-scale Allied offensive...

In August 1944, the first clashes took place on the Siegfried Line; the section of the line where most fighting took place was the Hürtgenwald (Hürtgen Forest) area in the Eifel, 20 km (12 mi) southeast of Aachen. The Aachen Gap was the logical route into Germany's Rhineland and a main industrial area, and was therefore where the Germans concentrated their defence. The Americans committed an estimated 120,000 troops plus reinforcements to the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. The battle in this heavily forested area claimed the lives of 24,000 American soldiers plus 9,000 of so-called nonbattle casualties—those evacuated because of fatigue, exposure, accidents, and disease. The German death toll is not documented.

After the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge began, starting in the area south of the Hürtgenwald, between Monschau and the Luxembourgish town of Echternach. This offensive was a last-ditch attempt by the Germans to reverse the course of the war in the West. German loss of life and material was severe and the effort failed.

There were serious clashes along other parts of the Siegfried Line and soldiers in many bunkers refused to surrender, often fighting to the death. By early 1945 the last Siegfried Line bunkers had fallen at the Saar and Hunsrück.

American units serving under British and Canadian command during the campaign incurred thousands more casualties, bringing total American losses to approximately 68,000. To this figure should be added the number of nonbattle casualties. The First Army incurred over 50,000 nonbattle casualties; the Ninth Army over 20,000. Thus the overall cost of the Siegfried Line Campaign in American personnel was close to 140,000...