At the end of 1944, the US Army was preparing its advance on Berlin. Because the army command expected a large number of casualties and they did not want to bury their soldiers in enemy soil, they started looking for a place in the Netherlands where they could create a war cemetery. They found a place in the municipality of Margraten, which had already been liberated on 13 September.
On 10 November 1944, the first casualties were buried there. Some days, as many as five hundred soldiers would be brought in. The local population helped digging the graves. German soldiers were buried in a separate section of the cemetery. By May 1945, almost 17,000 soldiers had been buried at Margraten.
