Why 14 U.S. Rangers Charged 300 Germans — And Won in 4 Minutes

Video Description

Discover the unbelievable true story of how fourteen exhausted U.S. Army Rangers—frozen, outnumbered twenty-one to one, and armed with nothing but M1 Garands, grenades, and sheer will—charged three hundred entrenched German soldiers on Hill 402 and captured the entire position in just four minutes. On December 19th, 1944, at the height of the brutal Hürtgen Forest fighting, First Sergeant Leonard Lomell of the 2nd Ranger Battalion made a decision no tactical manual could justify: instead of probing flanks or calling for support they didn’t have, he ordered his men to sprint straight across three hundred yards of open snow under the guns of the 9th Panzergrenadier Division—counting on shock, speed, and aggression to overwhelm a fortified hilltop that had already repelled whole infantry companies. What followed was one of the most tactically improbable assaults of World War II: Rangers firing on the run like a moving wall of steel, grenades detonating inside bunkers before German machine-gunners even understood what was happening, mortar crews wiped out mid-reload, and a command post overrun in the opening seconds of the fight. Drawing from Ranger testimonies, German after-action reports, and battlefield analysis, this documentary breaks down exactly how Lomell exploited darkness, terrain dead-zones, suppressive volume of fire, and pure audacity to collapse a defensive network designed to withstand battalions—not fourteen men. And when three hundred stunned Germans tried five separate counterattacks, those same Rangers turned captured MG-42s and bunkers back on their former owners and held the hill alone until reinforcements arrived. This film uncovers how leadership, psychology, and the uncompromising Ranger ethos transformed mathematical impossibility into historic victory—and why the charge up Hill 402 remains one of the greatest small-unit actions ever recorded.