3,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Edition Zeitpunkte
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Deutsch
11 September 1944 - another 9/11, a symbolically important date in the Second World War: Allied soldiers crossed the border into Germany for the first time. From the Our Valley in Luxembourg, two reconnaissance patrols of the 5th US Armoured Division advanced onto German soil almost simultaneously and reconnoitred the deserted Siegfried Line positions. One patrol was led by US agent Warner Holzinger, who had emigrated from Germany, while the other was accompanied by 19-year-old French interpreter Olaf Tillette de Mautort. After the scouting parties had completed their mission, the news went around the world. The book tells the story of Holzinger and de Mautort during the final months of the war: the route of the liberation of France, Paris in August 1944, the scouting war on the West Wall in autumn 1944, the Battle of Wallendorf in the southern Eifel, and finally the end of the war. At the same time there is a surprising answer to the question: Who was actually the first to cross the ‘Siegfried Line’? To research this book, the author visited the battlefields on both the German and Luxembourg sides. - Illustrated eBook with numerous photos.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
Ähnliche
Across the River and into Germany
September 11, 1944. When the US Army Reached the Siegfried Line
By Kai Althoetmar
Edition Zeitpunkte
Imprint:
Title: Across the River and into Germany. September 11, 1944. When the US Army Reached the Siegfried Line.
Year of publication: 2025.
Publisher:
Edition Zeitpunkte
Kai Althoetmar
Am Heiden Weyher 2
53902 Bad Muenstereifel
Germany
e-mail: Althoetmar[at]aol.com
Text: © Kai Althoetmar.
Cover photo: line of dragon's teeth, Ardennes. Photo: Archangel 12, Creative Commons.
The research for this book was self-financed and without third-party funding.
Stolzembourg, municipality of Putscheid, is a village of one hundred and ninety people on the German-Luxembourg border, five kilometres north of Vianden, less than ten kilometres from Diekirch. The Our separates the Grand Duchy from the southern Eifel in the dense Ardennes valley, with Bitburg twenty kilometres to the east. Anyone looking for big cities has a long way to travel here.
Two flags hang languidly there, ‘Stars & Stripes’ and red-white-blue, that of the liberators and that of the liberated. The Our moves slowly southwards. In Wallendorf, ten kilometres south of Vianden, it flows into the Sauer, which joins the Moselle at Wasserbillig. The modern castle towers over the village and the parish church from a hill; only the bell tower from 1585 is old. The castle of Stolzembourg was destroyed in 1454. When it was rebuilt, Louis XIV's siege troops reduced it to rubble again in 1679.
The old school in Rue Principale 5A—Haaptstrooss in the idiom of the Luxembourgers—houses the ‘Musée Koffergrouf’, the copper mine museum, and a kilometre away from the village, a tunnel leads into the centuries-old history of copper ore mining. The mine was closed in 1944. The German occupying forces were the last to extract the ore.
A stone's throw from the bridge over the Our, three dragon teeths are embedded in the ground—anti-tank barriers, symbols of the Siegfried Line. The concrete is weathered, the floor is covered with stone slabs of Ardennes slate. At the centre dragon's tooth, a metal plaque reads in large letters in English: ‘ON SEPTEMBER 11 1944 THE FIRST ALLIED SOLDIERS BELONGING TO THE 5.TH US ARMORED DIVISION CROSSED HERE INTO GERMANY.’ According to the official version, it was from here that US soldiers from the 5th US Armoured Division first set foot on German soil on 11 September 1944.
The Our is barely thirty metres wide, with six houses scattered across on the German side of the river. The village is called Keppeshausen and a total of fifteen people live there. The village road winds its way out of the town. The view to the east follows the district road K 47. The road climbs hundred and fifty metres, with a spruce grove on the right-hand side of the slope and the rest of the mountain side is mixed forest in all shades of green. It is a windless June day, 15 June 2015. The dense forest stands motionless on guard by the river.
Stolzembourg border crossing. Photo: Kai Althoetmar.
It must have looked like this for Seargent Warner Willi Holzinger and his small scouting party when they set off to cross the border of the German Reich at around 4.30 p.m. on Friday, 11 September 1944. His platoon leader, Lieutenant Loren Lamont Vipond, had urged Holzinger to hurry if he wanted to be the first Allied soldier to set foot on German soil. The 28-year-old with German ancestors, who drove a milk lorry in civilian life, didn't need to be told twice. Holzinger, born in Germany on 31 March 1916 to German parents from Fulda who had emigrated to the USA in 1921, had been an American citizen since September 1940.
The soldiers around Seargent Holzinger belonged to the second platoon of B Company of the 85th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron of the 5th US Armoured Division. The 5th Armoured Division was part of the 1st US Army, which had succeeded in breaking out of the Normandy bridgehead at the end of July 1944—the prelude to the rapid advance of the western Allies towards Belgium and the German border. They had only taken Diekirch in the morning and were greeted frenetically by the population after the Wehrmacht had retreated behind the ‘Siegfried Line’ without a fight.
Omaha-Beach, Normandie, 9. Juni 1944. Foto: U.S. National Archives.
On 24 February 1944, twenty days after its departure from New York, the division had gone ashore in England. In France, it landed on 24 July 1944, seven weeks after D-Day, in the Utah beach sector of Normandy. On 8 August 1944, it recaptured Le Mans, turned north again and reached Argentan on 12 August 1944, eight days before the German troops were cut off in the Argentan-Falaise pocket—it was the final knockout of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Normandy and ultimately in the whole of France. 6,000 fallen soldiers and a further 50,000 men lost as prisoners of war were the devastating result on the German side.
The 5th US Armoured Division was then involved in fierce fighting in the Eure and Seine river corridor, passing through Paris, the forest of Compiègne, the rivers Oise, Aisne and Somme, reaching the Belgian border at Condé on 2 September 1944, then covered hundred miles eastwards within eight hours, crossed the Meuse at Charleville-Mézières, left Sedan behind and liberated Luxembourg City on 10 September 1944. Ninety-six days had passed since the Normandy landings on 11 September 1944.
