By autumn of 1944 some Allied commanders began to realize that the situation on the battlefield had changed. They did not fully understand exactly how it had changed, nor were they really quite sure what to do about it. Following the American breakout at St. Lô, the crushing defeat of the German Seventh Army in the Falaise pocket and the race across France, it seemed that the mighty German Wehrmacht was in a state of final collapse. There was even talk of the war being over by Christmas.

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U.S. Army

Unfortunately for the members of the 893rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, the narrow, muddy trails through the Hürtgen made their mission of supporting the 112th Infantry Regiment's attack on the town of Schmidt a nightmare.

But as Allied forces closed on Germany's western border, the tyranny of logistics started to impose the weight of its inflexible laws on operations. The German army, too, now acted differently. Instead of fighting in occupied France, the Landseren were now defending their home soil. The headlong drive of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.'s Third Army started to bog down in the Lorraine region of western France. To his north, Lt. Gen. Courtney H. Hodges' First Army hit the West Wall defenses, which the Allies (but not the Germans) called the Siegfried Line. South of Aachen, Hodges' VII and V corps ran up against the toughest section of the West Wall as they entered the dark and foreboding Hürtgen Forest.

Through August and into September 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his principal subordinates debated among themselves the relative merits of a broad-front versus a narrow-front strategy. Eisenhower favored the broad front, placing steady pressure against the Germans all along the Reich's western frontier and exploiting breaks wherever they occurred. Eisenhower's two most flamboyant subordinates, Patton and Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, both favored the narrow front–a dagger thrust into Germany's vital regions. The only difference was that each of those Allied commanders thought he was the one who should lead such an attack. After much wrangling, Eisenhower finally approved Montgomery's plan for what became Operation Market-Garden, the combined airborne and ground attack to seize the Rhine River bridge at Arnhem. When that operation ended in disaster in late September, the broad front seemed the only logistically supportable alternative left to Allied commanders seeking a quick end to the war.

Throughout most of October, Hodges' forces battered away at Aachen, finally capturing the city on the 21st. After punching through the West Wall at Aachen, Hodges intended to break out of the high ground east of the city, cross the Rhine River plain and advance to the river itself at the city of Cologne. As part of this plan, Hodges wanted his forces to clear the Hürtgen to secure his southern flank.

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