THE MIRACLE OF HÜRTGENWALD

Günter Stüttgen was a captain and unit medical officer in the German army during the Battle of Hürtgenwald in the Second World War. What he did there would later be called the “Miracle of the Hürtgen Forest” by the Americans.

In November 1944, in the middle of heavy defensive fighting and bitter cold, Günter Stüttgen managed to negotiate a ceasefire to recover the wounded. Stüttgen and a medic, both wearing the Red Cross, walked unarmed toward the American lines and invited an American unit commander into their command post, where he was led blindfolded. Stüttgen pulled this off 3 times in total, each time buying a truce of several hours. Backed by his regimental commander, Colonel Rösler, he made it possible for hundreds of wounded men and prisoners to be exchanged across the lines and fed. German medics recovered Americans, Americans helped Germans. For a few days Stüttgen even ran his aid bunker together with American medical personnel. Hundreds of veterans on both sides owe their lives to his commitment. “We had respect for each other. The kind of respect only soldiers can have for each other when they know the horror of war,” Stüttgen said in an interview.

Toward the end of the war, Stüttgen handed an entire military hospital over to the advancing Allies without a fight, and he was sentenced to death in absentia for it.

For 50 years the “Miracle of the Hürtgen Forest” seemed to have been forgotten. In the early 1990s, accounts from American veterans caught the attention of military historians. They went looking and found the “German Doctor”.

Stüttgen was honored several times after that, above all on the American side. And on the Kall bridge, close to where those ceasefires were arranged, stands a sculpture by Michael Pohlmann that keeps alive this moment of humanity in the middle of the horror.

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