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. 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. Although most of Aachen's civilian population was evacuated before the battle began, much of the city was destroyed and both sides suffered heavy losses.
The Siegfried Line, known in German as the Westwall, 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. The line featured more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels and tank traps.
The Mannerheim Line was a defensive fortification line on the Karelian Isthmus built by Finland against the Soviet Union. While this was never an officially designated name, during the Winter War it became known as the Mannerheim Line, after Finnish Army's then commander-in-chief Field Marshal Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. The line was constructed in two phases: 1920–1924 and 1932–1939. By November 1939, when the Winter War began, the line was by no means complete.
A defensive fighting position (DFP) is a type of earthwork constructed in a military context, generally large enough to accommodate anything from one soldier to a fire team.
Courseulles-sur-Mer, commonly known as Courseulles, is a commune in the Calvados department, Normandy, northwestern France. Until 1957, the town's name was simply Courseulles. It lies 3 km west of Bernières-sur-Mer and 18 km north of Caen.
The Char B1 was a French heavy tank manufactured before World War II.
Dragon's teeth are pyramidal anti-tank obstacles of reinforced concrete first used during the Second World War to impede the movement of tanks and mechanised infantry. The idea was to slow down and channel tanks into killing zones where they could easily be disposed of by anti-tank weapons.
Merzig is a town in Saarland, Germany. It is the capital of the district Merzig-Wadern, with about 30,000 inhabitants in 17 municipalities on 108 km². It is situated on the river Saar, approx. 35 km south of Trier, and 35 km northwest of Saarbrücken.
The Battle of Crucifix Hill was a World War II battle that took place on 8 October 1944, on Crucifix Hill, next to the village of Haaren in Germany and was a part of the U.S. 1st Division's campaign to seize Aachen, Germany. The Battle of Aachen was part of the Drive to the Siegfried Line. The hill was named after a large crucifix mounted on the top of the hill. The objective of the battle was to gain control of the hill, which was laced with a maze of pillboxes and bunkers, so that the main objective of encircling Aachen could be completed. The hill was held by units of the German 246. Volksgrenadierdivision.
Fort Henry is a Grade II listed World War Two observation bunker overlooking Studland Bay, in Dorset. It was built in 1943 to defend the bay from possible German invasion along with other beach defences such as gun emplacements, Type 25 pill boxes and concrete Dragon’s Teeth anti-tank obstacles.
The Atlantic Wall Open Air Museum is a military museum near Ostend in Belgium which preserves fortifications of the Atlantic Wall dating to the First and Second World Wars. The section of fortifications owned by the museum - over 60 bunkers and two miles of trenches - is among the best preserved sections of the defensive line in Europe. The fortifications survive because they were built on land belonging to Prince Charles, Count of Flanders who decided that they should not be destroyed after the war, but be kept as a national monument.
Battery Moltke is an uncompleted World War II former coastal artillery battery in St Ouen in north-west Jersey. It was constructed by Organisation Todt for the Wehrmacht during the occupation of the Channel Islands.
Sechsschartenturm, heavy MG bunker, La Mare Mill, or 4-S WaKoFest, Wn La Mare Mill, consists of a sechsschartenturm and a personnel bunker. The Organisation Todt built it to an Atlantic Wall standard on a commanding position near the demolished La Mare Mill during the Occupation of Jersey.
The Siegfried Line Museum at Pirmasens is a museum in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate that is housed in a former subterranean fortification on the edge of the village of Niedersimten in southwest Palatinate (region). Its theme is war, but it also views itself as a memorial to peace. It was founded by the Gerstfeldhöhe Society and is run in cooperation with the town of Pirmasens.
The Regelbau were a series of standardised bunker designs built in large numbers by the Germans in the Siegfried Line and the Atlantic Wall as part of their defensive fortifications prior to and during the Second World War.
The B-Werk near Besseringen is the only completely preserved fortification built to construction standard "B" in the Siegfried Line. It is part of the so-called Saar position and lies within the borough of the German town of Merzig.
The Orscholz Switch, or Siegfried Switch, was a military defensive "switch" position and part of the Siegfried Line (Westwall) located in the triangle between the rivers Saar and Moselle. It was built in 1939 and 1940 and incorporated 75 bunkers as well as 10.2 km of tank obstacles in the form of dragon's teeth. This defensive line ran from Trier to Nennig along the Moselle and from Nennig in an easterly direction to Orscholz on the loop in the Saar river at Mettlach.
Although the West Wall in this sector lay behind the Saar, the Germans in 1939 and 1940 had constructed a supplementary fortified line across the base of the triangle from Nennig in the west to Orscholz, at a great northwestward loop of the Saar. The Germans called the position the Orscholz Switch; the Americans knew it as the Siegfried Switch. Assuming the neutrality of Luxembourg, the switch position was designed to protect Trier and the Moselle corridor and to prevent outflanking of the strongest portion of the West Wall, that lying to the southeast across the face of the Saar industrial area.
The Árpád Line was a line of fortifications built in 1941-44 in the north-eastern and eastern Carpathian Mountains, along the border of Kingdom of Hungary. It was named after Árpád, the head of the Hungarian tribes. The main function of the Line was to protect Northern Transylvania and Carpathian Ruthenia from the east.
After the Wehrmacht occupied the Channel Islands on 30 June 1940, they assessed the existing defences to determine if they would be of use. The Germans found the Islands' fortifications antiquated and woefully inadequate for modern warfare.
The flexible defense is a military theory about the design of modern fortifications. The examples of "flexible" defense-lines are not based on dense lines of heavily armed, large and expensive concrete fortifications as the systems such as the Maginot Line were. Their protective capacity hinges on multiple lines of obstacles and small shelters fitting into the environment. They are "flexible" because soldiers are not locked in pillboxes, but fight instead in easily replaceable open earth-wood made positions, while bunkers serve only as shelters during bombardments. As a result, they are able to adapt to the opponent's movements, and there are no easily targeted large buildings in these lines.
