Hatten, Bas-Rhin

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (December 2008) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the French article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Hatten]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Hatten}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Commune in Grand Est, France

Hatten Hàtte
Commune
The town hall in Hatten
Coat of arms
Location of Hatten
(2020–2026)		Serge Kraemer^[1]
Area ¹	18.91 km² (7.30 sq mi)
Population (2021)^[2]	1,904
• Density	100/km² (260/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
INSEE/Postal code	67184 /67690
Elevation	120–172 m (394–564 ft)
¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.

Hatten (French pronunciation: [atən]; Alsatian: Hàtte) is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Grand Est in north-eastern France,^[3] some fifteen kilometres (nine miles) to the south of Wissembourg.

Geography

Positioned at the northern edge of the Forest of Hagenau, the village is on the edge of the Alsace Plain, although the agricultural landscape surrounding this village and its immediate neighbors is one of rolling hills.

History

Second World War

In 1939, because Hatten was on the Maginot Line, the authorities had arranged for the town's 1,500 inhabitants to be evacuated to Châteauponsac in the Limousin region, six hundred kilometers to the southwest. Evacuees had been restricted to one suitcase per person, and so were obliged to leave behind most of their possessions. However, after July 1940, the village had survived the invasion of France undamaged; therefore, the residents were able to return to Hatten, since the whole of Alsace had then reverted to its pre-1919 status as a part of Germany. On December 13, 1944, after four years of occupation, the village had been liberated without any fighting by the Americans and the residents looked forward to the resumption of peace.

However, in January 1945, the Germans had launched one of their final counter-offensives under the name of Operation North Wind, with the intention of retaking Strasbourg. Hatten was on the route of the German columns and thus, the village had found itself at the heart of the battle. During the fierce tank battles between the Germans and the Americans that had taken place over the course of twelve days in the middle of January, 350 of the 365 houses which had inhabited the village had been destroyed. Along with 2,500 military deaths, 83 civilians in Hatten had perished. Many US or other allied troops were stationed there and counterattacked the Germans. Many call this part of Battle Of The Bulge. Many of the Allied troops stationed there were not prepared for war. They thought that the front lines would be in Strasbourg and they were just peacekeeping.

The village was rebuilt after the war.

References

^ "Répertoire national des élus: les maires" (in French). data.gouv.fr, Plateforme ouverte des données publiques françaises. 13 September 2022.
^ "Populations légales 2021". The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. 28 December 2023.
^ INSEE commune file