• ... shows the photo of a man from Aachen with a goat, taken on October 17, 1944.

• Aachen was the first major German city to be conquered by the Allied forces during the Second World War. The fighting on the US side was accompanied by military photographers from the Signal Corps.

• The city of Aachen is commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of the war with a ceremony on October 13 and a series of events entitled "Aachen 1944 and the road to democracy". As a contribution to this commemoration, the city archive is publishing a source book with 80 pictures of the Signal Corps.

The Aachen City Archive regularly presents interesting items from its stacks as Archive of the Month. The item with a short accompanying text is presented in a display case in the foyer of the city archive on Reichsweg and digitally on the archive's homepage. In October 2024, the archival item of the month is a photo of an Aachen man with a goat, taken on October 17, 1944.

Aachen was the first major German city to be captured by the Allied forces during the Second World War. The battles for Aachen lasted intermittently from September 12 to October 21, 1944, the day the trapped German troops surrendered.

Attack on the city center

The US forces that had surrounded and besieged Aachen began their attack on the city center on October 13, 1944. The main axes of the attack were initially Adalbertsteinweg and Jülicher Straße. Air raids by the US Air Force and heavy artillery fire prepared the ground attack with tanks and infantry. There was fighting for streets and individual houses, with many casualties on both sides.

The fighting on the US side was accompanied by military photographers from the Signal Corps; this intelligence corps of the US Army had its own branch responsible for filming and photography. The footage was used for evaluation by the military command, but it was also processed into training material and used for public relations work. Many of the photos taken by US photographers in the fall of 1944 have shaped Aachen's image of the fall of 1944, as these photos were repeatedly used in Aachen after the end of the Second World War to illustrate the end of the war. In the 1950s, the city archive, among others, purchased photographs directly from the USA.

Aachener with goat

One of the pictures shows a man from Aachen with a goat. The photo was taken on October 17, 1944. The US caption reads in German translation: "These two were the only German civilians seen in the part of Aachen taken by the Americans." The statement is certainly not to be taken literally, but is intended to emphasize the seemingly bizarre character of the picture.

The picture was taken on the corner of Adalbertsteinweg and Goerdelerstraße. The destroyed corner house on the left in the background was not completely rebuilt; today there is a striking single-storey and glazed building there, which has been used as advertising space by various companies in recent years. On the right in the background, at the end of the streetcar tracks, the tower of St. Joseph's can be seen without the spire cap. The signet of the US Signal Corps is inserted at the bottom left of the picture.

The man is wearing a kind of service cap and a work jacket, with high lace-up boots, and in his left hand he has a lead with a white goat. The goat may have come from one of the many small cattle stables that existed in the backyards of Aachen's inner city houses at the time. Unfortunately, nothing more is known about this photo.

Hints wanted

Anyone with information about who the man in the photo might be is welcome to contact the Aachen City Archive at the email address stadtarchiv@mail.aachen.de and/or the telephone number 0241 432 4972.

The city of Aachen is commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of the war with a ceremony on October 13 and a series of events entitled "Aachen 1944 and the road to democracy". As a contribution to this commemoration, the city archive is publishing a source volume with 80 of the above-mentioned images. The seventh source volume in the series "From the Sources of the City Archive" will be published on October 14.

Thomas Müller, René Rohrkamp (eds.): The end of the Second World War in Aachen 1944/45. Images by American military photographers, Aachen 2024.

Academic introduction, source section with 80 pictures by US military photographers (with date and place of shooting and explanations); black and white, 144 pages, 20 euros. The book is available directly from the city archive and in bookshops.