Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II

By September 1944, the Allied advance across France and Belgium had turned into a war of attrition along the German frontier. Standing between the Allies and the Third Reich's industrial heartland was the city of Aachen, once the ancient seat of Charlemagne's empire-the First Reich in the Nazi version of history-and now firmly entrenched within Germany's Siegfried Line fortifications. The last time a major German city had been lost to the enemy was over a century earlier during the Napoleon...