UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II 

The European Theater of Operations 

THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

By 

Charles B. MacDonald 

CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY 

UNITED STATES ARMY 

WASHINGTON, D. C., 1993 
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 71–183070 

First Printed 1973—CMH Pub 7–9–1 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office 

Washington, D.C. 20402 
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II 

Maurice Matloff, General Editor 

Advisory Committee 

(As of 1 February 1972) 

Walter C. Langsam 

University of Cincinnati 

Edward M. Coffman 

University of Wisconsin 

Louis Morton 

Dartmouth College 

Peter Paret 

Stanford University 

Forrest C. Pogue 

George C. Marshall 

Research Foundation 

Maj. Gen. Edward Bautz, Jr. 

United States Continental Army Command 

Brig. Gen. James M. Gibson 

United States Army Command and 

General Staff College 

Brig. Gen. Wallace C. Magathan, Jr. 

United States Army War College 

Col. Thomas E. Griess 

United States Military Academy 

Frank E. Vandiver 

Rice University 

Office of the Chief of Military History 

Brig. Gen. James L. Collins, Jr., Chief of Military History 

Chief Historian Maurice Matloff 

Chief, Historical Services Division Col. Robert H. Fechtman 

Chief, Histories Division Col. John E. Jessup, Jr. 

Editor in Chief Joseph R. Friedman 

iii 

... to Those Who Served 

Foreword 

Recovering rapidly from the shock of German counteroffensives in the 

Ardennes and Alsace, Allied armies early in January 1945 began an offensive that gradually spread all along the line from the North Sea to Switzerland and continued until the German armies and the German nation were 

prostrate in defeat. This volume tells the story of that offensive, one which 

eventually involved more than four and a half million troops, including ninetyone divisions, sixty-one of which were American. 

The focus of the volume is on the role of the American armies — First, 

Third, Seventh, Ninth, and, to a lesser extent, Fifteenth — which comprised 

the largest and most powerful military force the United States has ever put 

in the field. The role of Allied armies — First Canadian, First French, and 

Second British — is recounted in sufficient detail to put the role of American. 

armies in perspective, as is the story of tactical air forces in support of the 

ground troops. 

This is the ninth volume in a subseries of ten designed to record the history of the United States Army in the European Theater of Operations. One 

volume, The Riviera to the Rhine, remains to be published. 

Washington, D.C. 

5 June 1972 

JAMES L. COLLINS, JR. 

Brigadier General, USA 

Chief of Military History 

vii 
The Author 

Charles B. MacDonald is the author of The Siegfried Line Campaign 

and co-author of Three Battles: Arnaville, Altuzzo, and Schmidt, both in 

the official series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. He has 

supervised the preparation of other volumes in the European and Mediterranean theater subseries and is a contributor to Command Decisions and 

American Military History. He is also the author of Company Commander 

(Washington: 1947) , The Battle of the Huertgen Forest (Philadelphia: 

1963), The Mighty Endeavor (New York: 1969), and Airborne (New 

York: 1970). A graduate of Presbyterian College, he also holds the Litt.D. 

degree from that institution. In 1957 he received a Secretary of the Army 

Research and Study Fellowship and spent a year studying the interrelationship of terrain, weapons, and tactics on European battlefields. A colonel in 

the Army Reserve, he holds the Purple Heart and Silver Star. As Deputy 

Chief Historian for Southeast Asia, he is currently engaged in preparing 

the official history of the United States Army in Vietnam. 

viii 
Preface 

The American armies that absorbed the shock of the German counteroffensives in the Ardennes and Alsace in the winter of 1944–45 were the 

most powerful and professional that the United States had yet put in the 

field. That this was the case was abundantly demonstrated as the final campaign to reduce Nazi Germany to total defeat unfolded. 

The campaign was remarkably varied. As it gathered momentum in 

the snows of the Ardennes and the mud and pillboxes of the West Wall, 

the fighting was often as bitter as any that had gone before among the 

hedgerows of Normandy and the hills and forests of the German frontier. 

Yet the defense which the Germans were still able to muster following the 

futile expenditure of lives and means in the counteroffensives was brittle. 

The campaign soon evolved into massive sweeps by powerful Allied columns across the width and breadth of Germany. That the Germans could 

continue to resist for more than two months in the face of such overwhelming power was a testament to their pertinacity but it was a grim tragedy as 

well. To such an extent had they subjugated themselves to their Nazi leaders 

that they were incapable of surrender at a time when defeat was inevitable 

and surrender would have spared countless lives on both sides. 

It was a dramatic campaign: the sweep of four powerful U.S. armies to 

the Rhine; the exhilarating capture of a bridge at Remagen; assault crossings of the storied Rhine River, including a spectacular airborne assault; 

an ill-fated armored raid beyond Allied lines; the trapping of masses of 

Germans in a giant pocket in the Ruhr industrial region; the uncovering 

of incredible horror in German concentration camps; a dashing thrust to 

the Elbe River; juncture with the Russians; and a Wagnerian climax played 

to the accompaniment of Russian artillery fire in the Fuehrerbunker in 

Berlin. 

This volume is chronologically the final work in the European theater 

subseries of the UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. In point 

of time, it follows The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, previously published, 

and The Riviera to the Rhine, still in preparation. 

Even more than most of the volumes in the official history, this one is 

the work of many people. The author is particularly indebted to two historians who earlier worked on the project: Gordon A. Harrison, author of 

Cross-Channel Attack, whose felicity of phrase may still be apparent in 

some of the early chapters, and Fred J. Meyer, who prepared a preliminary 

ix 
draft of the entire work. The volume as it stands owes much to their contributions. Mrs. Magna E. Bauer prepared a number of detailed and valuable studies on the German side. As always, Mrs. Lois Aldridge of the World 

War II Records Division, National Archives and Records Service, displayed 

remarkable patience in assisting the author’s exploration of mountains of 

records. More than forty senior American officers, including Generals of the 

Army Dwight D. Eisenhower and Omar N. Bradley, Generals Jacob L. 

Devers and William H. Simpson, and four senior German officers, including General Hasso von Manteuffel, gave generously of their time in reading 

and commenting on all or parts of the manuscript. Assistance was also received from the Cabinet Office Historical Section, London; the Directorate 

of History, Canadian Forces Headquarters, Ottawa; and the Militaergeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Freiburg. 

Within the editorial staff, I am particularly grateful for the assistance 

of Mrs. Loretto C. Stevens: the copy editors were Mrs. Stephanie B. Demma, 

Mr. Alfred M. Beck, and Mrs. Joyce W. Hardyman. Mr. Elliot Dunay and 

his staff, Mr. Howell C. Brewer and Mr. Roger D. Clinton, prepared the 

maps. The cartographic staff was supplemented by men of the United States 

Army to whom I am especially grateful: Specialist 5 Arthur S. Hardyman, 

Specialist 5 Edward S. Custer, Specialist 4 Daryl L. DeFrance, and Specialist 

5 Mark C. Finnemann. Miss Margaret L. Emerson made the index. 

The author alone is responsible for interpretations and conclusions, as 

well as for any errors that may appear. 

Washington, D.C. 

5 June 1972 

CHARLES B. M.AcDONALD 
Contents 

Chapter Page 

I . PRELUDE TO VICTORY ............. 1 

Allied Strategy ................. 2 

Allied Versus German Strength ........... 5 

Weapons and Equipment ............. 10 

Organization and Command ............ 15 

Terrain and the Front Line ............. 18 

II . VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES ........... 22 

The First Army’s Attack ............. 26 

A Grim Struggle Around Bastogne .......... 33 

The Drive on St. Vith .............. 43 

Northward Across the Sûre ............. 48 

III. MAIN EFFORT IN THE EIFEL ........... 55 

General Bradley’s Proposal ............. 56 

The Eifel Highlands ............... 57 

The Enemy in the Eifel .............. 59 

A Try for Quick Success .............. 60 

A Shift to the North ............... 67 

An End to the Offensive .............. 68 

IV. THE ROER RIVER DAMS ............. 70 

Toward Schmidt ................. 73 

Toward the Dam ................ 80 

V . THE DRIVE ON PRUEM .............. 84 

Into the West Wall ................ 86 

German Countermeasures .............. 91 

The Final Phase ................. 96 

VI . BITBURG AND THE VIANDEN BULGE ........ 99 

Crossing the Sauer ................ 101 

The Vianden Bulge ................ 106 

Expanding the XII Corps Bridgehead ......... 112 

To Bitburg and the Kyll .............. 113 

xi 
Chapter Page 

VII. THE SAAR-MOSELLE TRIANGLE .......... 116 

Probing the Orscholz Switch ............ 117 

Expanding the Penetration ............. 123 

Broadening the Effort ............... 125 

Crossing the Saar ................ 129 

VIII. OPERATION GRENADE .............. 135 

The Terrain and the Enemy ............ 137 

Catch-as-Catch-Can ................ 140 

Objectives and Maneuvers ............. 142 

Challenging the Swollen River ............ 145 

The First Day on the East Bank ........... 153 

The VII Corps at Dueren ............. 156 

The First Day’s Results .............. 162 

IX. NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE .......... 163 

The Third and Fourth Days ............ 166 

Rundstedt’s Appeal ................ 170 

Pursuit ..................... 171 

Efforts To Seize a Bridge .............. 173 

The Wesel Pocket ................ 179 

The Beginning of the End ............. 183 

X . OPERATION LUMBERJACK ............ 185 

Toward Bonn and Remagen ............ 191 

Patton in the Eifel ................ 196 

XI . A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN .......... 208 

The Germans at Remagen ... .......... 209 

The Hope for a Bridge .... .......... 211 

Advance to the Rhine ..... .......... 212 

The Crisis at the Bridge .... .......... 213 

Reaction to the Coup ..... .......... 217 

On the German Side ..... .......... 220 

Build-up and Command Problems .......... 222 

The End of the Bridge .... .......... 229 

Expansion of the Bridgehead . . .......... 230 

XII. THE SAAR-PALATINATE ............. 236 

American Plans ................. 238 

The Defenders ................. 241 

Through the Hunsrueck .............. 244 

Across the Lower Moselle .............. 246 

Plunge to the Nahe and Fall of Koblenz ......... 249 

Seventh Army’s Deliberate Attack .......... 252 

xii 
Chapter Page 

Breakthrough .................. 256 

Thrust to the Rhine ............... 260 

XIII . THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH ....... 266 

The VIII Corps in the Rhine Gorge .......... 273 

To the Main River and Frankfurt .......... 279 

The Hammelburg Mission ............. 280 

The Seventh Army Crossing at Worms ......... 284 

The XX Corps in the Rhine-Main Arc ......... 289 

XIV . THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH ...... 294 

The Big Build-up ................ 296 

Interdiction From the Air ............. 300 

The View From the East Bank ............ 301 

“Two if by sea” ................. 302 

Operation Flashpoint ............... 303 

The Drive to the Railroads ............. 307 

Operation Varsity ................ 309 

At the End of D-Day ............... 314 

The Try for a Breakout .............. 315 

How To Bring the Ninth Army’s Power To Bear ..... 317 

XV . AT THE END OF MARCH ............. 321 

An Awesome Power ............... 322 

The Logistical Backbone .............. 324 

Decisions at the Top ............... 328 

The Plight of the Germans ............. 335 

A Decision on Berlin ............... 339 

XVI . REDUCING THE RUHR .............. 344 

The Breakout Offensive .............. 346 

Collapse of the LXXXIX Corps ........... 348 

A Turn to the North ............... 350 

The Thrust From Winterberg ............ 354 

Breakthrough North of the Ruhr ........... 357 

Making Motions at Breakout ............ 359 

The Ruhr Pocket ................ 362 

“The predominant color was white.” ......... 368 

XVII . SWEEP TO THE ELBE .............. 373 

A New Allied Main Effort ............. 379 

The Role of the Third Army ............ 381 

A Bridgehead to Nowhere ............. 384 

A Flak-Infested Route to the Mulde ........... 389 

A Short New War ................ 395 

xiii 
Chapter Page 

XVIII. THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT ... ....... 407 

The First Phase Beyond the Rhine ... ....... 409 

The Struggle for Heilbronn and Crailsheim ....... 415 

To the Hohe Rhoen and Schweinfurt . . ....... 418 

A Shift to South and Southeast .... ....... 420 

Nuremberg and the Drive to the Danube ........ 422 

The Drive on Stuttgart ....... ....... 427 

A French Incursion to Ulm ...... ....... 430 

The “Stuttgart Incident” ...... ....... 432 

From the Danube Into Austria .... ....... 433 

XIX. GOETTERDAEMMERUNG ............. 443 

The Meeting at Torgau .............. 445 

The End in Berlin ................ 458 

The Drive to the Baltic .............. 460 

Piecemeal Surrenders ............... 464 

Surrender at Reims ................ 474 

XX. EPILOGUE ................... 476 

Appendix 

A. TABLE OF EQUIVALENT RANKS .......... 483 

B. RECIPIENTS OF THE DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CROSS 484 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ............... 489 

GLOSSARY ...................... 492 

CODE NAMES ..................... 497 

BASIC MILITARY MAP SYMBOLS ............ 498 

INDEX ........................ 503 

Maps 

No. 

1. Main Effort in the Eifel. 27 January–3 February 1945 .... 61 

2. The Capture of Schmidt and the Schwammenauel Dam. 

5–9 February 1945 ................ 76 

3. The Remagen Bridgehead. 7–24 March 1945 ....... 218 

4. Foray to Hammelburg. 25–27 March 1945 ........ 282 

5. Reduction of the Ruhr Pocket. 4–14 April 1945 ...... 363 

6. The Harz Pocket. 11–17 April 1945 .......... 403 

7. The American-Russian Linkup. 25 April 1945 ...... 449 

8. Drive to the Baltic. 29 April–2 May 1945 ......... 462 

9. Action at Fern Pass. 44th Infantry Division. 1–4 May 1945 ... 470 

xiv 
Maps I–XVII are in accompanying map envelope 

No. 

I. The Western Front, 3 January 1945 

II. The Ardennes Counteroffensive, 3–28 January 1945 

III. The Drive on Pruem 

IV. Clearing of the Vianden Bulge and the Capture of Bitburg, 

6–28 February 1945 

V. The Saar-Moselle Triangle, 13 January–1 March 1945 

VI. Operation GRENADE, 22 February–11 March 1945 

VII. Eliminating the Wesel Pocket, 3–11 March 1945 

VIII. Operation LUMBERJACK, 1–7March 1945 

IX. The Saar-Palatinate Triangle, 12–21 March 1945 

X. The Rhine River Crossings in the South, 22–28 March 1945 

XI. Rhine Crossings in the North, 24–28 March 1945 

XII. Breakout From Remagen, 24–28 March 1945 

XIII. Encircling the Ruhr, 28 March–1 April 1945 

XIV. Drive to the Elbe, 424 April 1945 

XV. Sixth Army Group Offensive, 27 March–24 April 1945 

XVI. Into Austria and Czechoslovakia, 28 April–8 May 1945 

XVII. V–E Day, 8 May 1945 

Illustrations 

Page 

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, and Lt. Gen. 

George S. Patton, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . . 3 

Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt . . . . . . . . . . . 6 

M4 Sherman Tank in the Ardennes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 

M4A3 Sherman Tank With 76-mm. Gun . . . . . . . . . . . 12 

Lt. Gen. Courtney H. Hodges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 

Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 

General der Panzertruppen Hasso von Manteuffel . . . . . . . . . 30 

Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 

Wind-Swept Snow in the Ardennes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 

Patrols of the First and Third Armies Meet at Houffalize . . . . . . 42 

Maj. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 

Medics Use a “Litter-Jeep” To Evacuate Patients . . . . . . . . . 47 

Men of the 82d Airborne Division Pull Sleds Through the Ardennes Snow 62 

Traffic Jam on a Slick Ardennes Road . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 

Maj. Gen. C. Ralph Huebner . . , . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 

The Urft Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 

The Schwammenauel Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 

Damage to the Schwammenauel Dam Causes Flooding of the Roer River 82 

xv 
Page 

Maj . Gen . Troy H . Middleton ............... 85 

Men of the 4th Division Eating Inside Captured Pillbox ...... 87 

Dropping Supplies by Parachute to the 4th Division ....... 97 

Maj . Gen . Manton S . Eddy ................ 101 

Crossing Site on the Sauer River Near Echternach ........ 102 

Welcome to Germany From the 6th Armored Division ....... 110 

Crew of a 3-Inch Gun on the Watch for German Tanks ...... 119 

Removing German Dead After Fighting in Nennig ........ 121 

Maj . Gen . Walton H . Walker ............... 126 

Lt . Gen . William H . Simpson ................ 136 

General der Infanterie Gustav von Zangen ........... 142 

Bursts of White Phosphorus Shells Light Up the Roer River ..... 144 

Crossing Sites at Linnich ................. 146 

Derelict Assault Boats Near Linnich ............. 148 

Smoke Pots Along the Roer Near Dueren ........... 149 

Crossing Sites at Juelich ................. 150 

Footbridge Across the Roer Serves Men of the 30th Division ..... 152 

Crossing Sites at Dueren .................. 158 

Maj . Gen . Raymond S . McLain ............... 164 

Maj . Gen . John B . Anderson ............... 166 

Pershing Tank T26 With 90.mm . Gun ............ 170 

Maj . Gen . Alvan C . Gillem, Jr ............... 175 

Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz ............. 176 

The Demolished Hohenzollern Bridge at Cologne ........ 190 

Maj . Gen . John Millikin ................. 192 

2d Lt . Karl H . Timmerman. First Officer To Cross the Remagen Bridge . 215 

Sgt . Alexander Drabik. First American Across the Rhine ... ... 217 

Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring ............ 222 

Ludendorff Railroad Bridge at Remagen ........... 224 

Maj . Gen . James A . Van Fleet ............... 229 

The Rhine at the Remagen Bridge Site ........... 231 

Lt . Gen . Jacob L . Devers ................. 239 

Lt . Gen . Alexander M . Patch, Jr ............... 240 

Engineers of the 87th Division Ferry a Tank Across the Moselle .... 251 

Troops of the 63d Division Cross Dragon’s Teeth of the West Wall . . 255 

Reinforcements of the 5th Division Cross the Rhine in an LCVP ... 271 

Crossing the Rhine Under Enemy Fire at St . Goar ........ 277 

Raising the American Flag Atop the Lorelei .......... 278 

Maj . Gen . Wade H . Haislip ............... 284 

Infantry of the 3d Division Climb the East Bank of the Rhine .... 288 

Duplex-Drive Tank With Skirt Folded ............ 290 

Duplex-Drive Tank Enters the Water ............. 291 

Field Marshal Sir Bernard L . Montgomery ........... 296 

American Paratrooper Caught in a Tree ........... 310 

xvi 
Page 

Glider Troops After Landing Near Wesel ........... 312 

Maj. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow ............... 323 

The Rhine Railroad Bridge at Wesel ............. 326 

Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Bridge at Mainz ........ 327 

Ponton Bridge Across the Rhine .............. 328 

Liberated Prisoners of War ................ 329 

Destruction in the Heart of Wurzburg ............ 336 

Infantrymen of the 79th Division Cross the Rhein-Herne Canal .... 364 

Russian Prisoners Liberated by the Ninth Army ......... 368 

German Soldiers Make Their Way Unguarded to a Prisoner-of-War Camp 369 

Prisoners of War in the Ruhr Pocket ............. 371 

White Flags Hang Above a Deserted Street ........... 377 

German Prisoners Head for the Rear as American Armor Advances . . 382 

German Civilians Carry Victims of Concentration Camp for Reburial . 383 

Infantrymen Ride an Armored Car in the Race to the Elbe ..... 388 

Crossing of the Weser River ................ 390 

A 12.8-cm. “Flak” Gun .................. 394 

“Sixty-One Minute Roadblock’ ............... 411 

Maj. Gen. Frank W. Milburn ............... 412 

Lt. Gen. Edward H. Brooks ................ 414 

A Tank of the 14th Armored Division Enters Prison Camp at 

Hammelburg ..................... 419 

A Patrol of the 3d Division Makes Its Way Through the Rubble of 

Nuremberg ..................... 424 

General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny ............. 428 

Tanks of the 20th Armored Division Ford the Inn River ...... 440 

Paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division Approach Berchtesgaden . . 441 

2d Lt. William D. Robertson Shows General Eisenhower His Makeshift Flag 455 

General Hodges Meets the Russians at the Elbe .......... 457 

Men of the 103d Division Find Resistance in the Austrian Alps .... 463 

Austrian Civilians Greet American Troops in Innsbruck ...... 468 

Czechoslovakian Villagers Welcome Tank Crew ......... 469 

Illustrations are from Department of Defense files . 

xvii 
The U.S. Army Center of Military History 

The Center of Military History prepares and publishes histories as required by 

the U.S. Army. It coordinates Army historical matters, including historical properties, and supervises the Army museum system. It also maintains liaison with public 

and private agencies and individuals to stimulate interest and study in the field 

of military history. The Center is located at 1099 14th Street, N.W., Washington, 

D.C. 20005–3402. 

xviii 
THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

CHAPTER I 

Prelude to Victory 

By the third day of January 1945, the 

Germans in the snow-covered Ardennes 

region of Belgium and Luxembourg had 

shot their bolt. The winter counteroffensive, one of the more dramatic 

events of World War II in Europe, was 

not over in the sense that the original 

front lines had been restored, but the 

outcome could no longer be questioned. 

A week earlier the Third U.S. Army had 

established contact with an embattled 

American force at the road center of 

Bastogne, well within the southern 

shoulder of the German penetration. At 

this point it could be only a matter of 

time before the Third Army linked with 

the First U.S. Army driving down from 

the northern shoulder. Adolf Hitler, the 

German Fuehrer, himself admitted on 3 

January that the Ardennes operation, 

under its original concept, was “no 

longer promising of success.” 1 

On this third day of January the First 

Army began its attack to link with the 

Third Army, to push in what had become known as the “bulge,” and to reach 

the Rhine River. It was an attack destined to secure the tactical initiative that 

the Allied armies had lost temporarily 

in the December fighting but which, 

once regained, they would hold until 

after Hitler was dead and the German 

1 Magna E. Bauer, MS # R–15, Key Dates During the Ardennes Offensive 1944, Part 1, annotated 

copy in OCMH. 

armed forces and nation were prostrate. 

One day later on the fourth, the Third 

Army, which had been attacking in the 

Ardennes since 22 December, was to 

start a new phase in its campaign to push 

in the southern portion of the bulge. 

On these two days in early January, 

deep in the Ardennes, the Allies began, 

in effect, their last great offensive of the 

war in Europe. 

Not that the entire front-stretching 

some 450 airline miles from the North 

Sea to the Swiss border-burst immediately into flame. (Map I)* Indeed, the 

Germans no longer ago than New Year’s 

Eve had launched a second counteroffensive-Operation NORD WINDnear the southern end of the Allied line 

in Alsace. This would take more than a 

fortnight to subdue. 2 Yet the fighting in 

Alsace, no matter how real and trying to 

the men and units involved, was a secondary effort. The true turn the war was 

taking was more apparent in the north, 

where the last offensive materialized 

slowly, even gropingly, as the First and 

Third Armies sought to eradicate the 

last vestiges of the enemy’s thrust in the 

Ardennes. One by one the other Allied 

armies would join the fight. 

* Maps numbered in Roman are in accompanying map envelope. 

2 Robert Ross Smith, The Riviera to the Rhine, 

a volume in preparation for the series UNITED 

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. 
2 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Allied Strategy 

As soon as the Western Allies could 

repair their ruptured line, they could get 

back to what they had been about that 

cold, mist-clad morning of 16 December 

when the Germans had appeared without 

warning in the forests of the Ardennes. 3 

Not only could the attacks and preparations that had been in progress be resumed in somewhat altered form but 

also a lively debate could be renewed 

among Allied commanders as to the 

proper course for Allied strategy. The 

debate had begun in August after the 

extent of the enemy’s defeat in Normandy had become apparent. 

In planning which preceded the invasion of Europe, General Dwight D. 

Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, and his advisers had agreed to build up strength 

in a lodgment area in France, then to 

launch two major thrusts into Germany. 

One was to pass north of the Ardennes 

to seize the Ruhr industrial region, Germany’s primary arsenal, the other south 

of the Ardennes to assist the main drive 

and at the same time eliminate the lesser 

Saar industrial area. 4 

3 Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the 

Bulge, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD 

WAR II (Washington, 1965). 

4 SHAEF Planning Staff draft, Post-NEPTUNE 

Courses of Action After Capture of the Lodgment 

Area, Main Objectives and Axis of Advance, I, 3 

May 1944, SHAEF SGS 381, Post-OVERLORD Planning, I. The preinvasion plan and the debate are 

discussed in some detail in four volumes of the 

European theater subseries of the UNITED 

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II: Hugh M. 

Cole, The Lorraine Campaign (Washington, 1950); 

Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command (Washington, 1954); Martin Blumenson, Breakout and 

Pursuit (Washington, 1961); and Charles B. MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign (Washington, 1963). 

In the event, the extent of German 

defeat in Normandy had exceeded anything the preinvasion planners had foreseen; the Allies had gained the proposed 

limits of the lodgment area and had kept 

going in an uninterrupted drive against 

a fleeing enemy. When it appeared likely 

that failing to pause to allow the armies’ 

logistical tails to catch up soon would 

limit operations, the senior British field 

commander in the theater, Field Marshal 

Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, had asked 

Eisenhower to abandon the secondary 

thrust. Concentrate everything, Montgomery urged, on one bold, end-the-war 

offensive north of the Ardennes, to be 

conducted primarily by Montgomery’s 

command, the 21 Army Group. The 

commander of the 12th U.S. Army 

Group, Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, 

favored instead a thrust by his First and 

Third U.S. Armies generally south of 

the Ardennes along the shortest route 

into Germany. One of Bradley’s subordinates, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., had 

insisted that his command alone, the 

Third Army, could do the job. 

Unmoved by the arguments, General 

Eisenhower had continued to favor the 

preinvasion plan. While granting concessions to the main thrust in the north, 

including support from the First U.S. 

Army and the First Allied Airborne 

Army and a temporary halt in offensive 

operations by the Third Army, he had 

held to the design of advancing on a 

broad front. 

As operations developed, the 21 Army 

Group with the First Canadian and Second British Armies had advanced generally north of the Ardennes through 

the Belgian plain into the Netherlands, 

while the First U.S. Army had provided 
GENERALS EISEOWER (center) , BRADLEY (left), AND PATTON CONFER IN THE

ARDENNES 
4 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

support with a drive across eastern Belgium into what became known as the 

Aachen Gap. The Third Army, meanwhile, had moved across northern France 

into Lorraine. In the south a new Allied 

force, the 6th Army Group, commanded 

by Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers and composed of the Seventh U.S. and First 

French Armies, had come ashore in 

southern France and extended the Allied 

front into Alsace. 

At that point the Germans, strengthened along their frontier by inhospitable 

terrain and concrete fortifications (the 

West Wall, or, as Allied troops called it, 

the Siegfried Line) , and by proximity to 

their sources of supply as opposed to 

ever-lengthening Allied supply lines, had 

turned to fight back with surprising 

effect. Through the fall of 1944 they had 

limited Allied gains in the south to the 

German frontier along the Saar River 

and the upper Rhine. In the north, despite a spectacular airborne assault in the 

Netherlands by the First Allied Airborne 

Army, they had held the 21 Army Group 

generally south and west of the Maas 

River and the First Army west of the 

Roer River, less than 23 miles inside 

Germany. 

Through the fall campaign, debate 

over a concentrated thrust in the north 

as opposed to Eisenhower’s broad-front 

strategy had continued to arise from 

time to time in one form or another. 

Tied in with it was a long-standing tenet 

of Field Marshal Montgomery’s that 

Eisenhower should designate a single, 

over-all ground commander, presumably 

Montgomery himself To both arguments, Eisenhower had continued to say 

no. The front was too long, he said, for 

one man to control it all; that was the 

reason for having army groups and 

armies. As to advance on a broad front, 

he believed it would be “very important 

to us later on to have two strings to our 

bow.” 5 

Yet what persuasion could not effect, 

the enemy counteroffensive in part had 

wrought. With the German drive threatening to split the 12th Army Group, 

Eisenhower had given Montgomery temporary command of all forces north of 

the penetration. Not only was the First 

Army included but also the Ninth U.S. 

Army, which had entered the line in 

October north of Aachen between the 

First Army and the British. 

The debate had arisen again as the 

year 1944 came to a close. As soon as the 

Ardennes breach could be repaired, General Eisenhower revealed, he intended to 

return the First Army to General Bradley’s command and to resume operations 

within the framework of the broad-front 

strategy. The First and Third Armies 

were to drive from the Ardennes through 

the Eifel to reach the Rhine south of 

the Ruhr, while the 21 Army Group was 

to retain the Ninth Army and make a 

major drive to the Rhine north of the 

Ruhr. 6 

Even as the fighting to eliminate the 

enemy in the Ardennes developed momentum, the British Chiefs of Staff 

emerged in clear disagreement with 

Eisenhower’s views. On 10 January they 

asked formally for a strategy review by 

the Combined Chiefs of Staff (U.S. and 

British) , under whose direction General 

Eisenhower served. In reply to inquiry 

5 Ltrs, Eisenhower to Montgomery, 10 and 13 Oct 

44 and 1 Dec 44, as cited in Pogue, The Supreme 

Command, pp. 297, 314. 

Ltr, Eisenher to Montgy, 31 Dec 44, as 

cited in Pogue, The Supreme command, p. 409. 
PRELUDE TO VICTORY 5 

from General George C. Marshall, Chief 

of Staff of the U.S. Army and a member 

of the Combined Chiefs, Eisenhower insisted that in order to concentrate a 

powerful force north of the Ruhr for the 

invasion of Germany, he had to have a 

firm defensive line (the Rhine) that 

could be held with minimum forces. 

Once he had concentrated along the 

Rhine, the main thrust would be made 

in the north on the north German plain 

over terrain conducive to the mobile 

warfare in which the Allies excelled. A 

secondary thrust was to be made south 

of the Ruhr, not in the vicinity of Bonn 

and Cologne, as the British wanted, because the country east of the Rhine there 

is tactically unfavorable, but farther 

south near Frankfurt, where a terrain 

corridor that runs south of the Ardennes 

extends across the Rhine through Frankfurt to Kassel. 

Stopping off at Malta en route to toplevel discussions with the eastern ally, 

the Soviet Union, the Chiefs of Staff of 

the British and American services--

sitting as the Combined Chiefs of Staffwould on 2 February accept the Supreme 

Commander’s plan. They would do so 

with the assurance that the main effort 

would be made north of the Ruhr and 

that this main thrust would not necessarily await clearing the entire west bank 

of the Rhine. 7 

For all its aspects of finality, this decision was not to end the matter. As 

plans for broadening the last offensive 

progressed, various ramifications of the 

controversy would continue to arise. Yet 

for the moment, at least, the air was 

clear. 

7 For a full discussion of this subject, see Pogue, 

The Supreme Command, pp. 409–16. 

Allied Versus German Strength 

In returning to the offensive, General 

Eisenhower and his Allied command 

were dealing from overwhelming 

strength. By 3 January 3,724,927 Allied 

soldiers had come ashore in western 

Europe. 8 They were disposed tactically 

in 3 army groups, 9 armies (including 

one not yet assigned divisions), 20 corps, 

and 73 divisions. Of the divisions, 49 

were infantry, 20 armored, and 4 airborne. 9 Six tactical air commands and 

thousands of medium and heavy bombers 

backed up the armies. A highly complex, 

technical, and skilled logistical apparatus, recovered at last from the strain 

imposed by the pursuit to the German 

frontier, rendered support; behind the 

U.S. armies, this went by the name of 

the Communications Zone. The Allies 

would be striking with one of the strongest, unquestionably the best-balanced, 

military forces of all time. 

At first glance German ground 

strength available to the Commander in 

Chief West (Oberbefehlshaber West) , 10 

Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, appeared equal, even superior, to 

that of the Allies, for Rundstedt controlled, nominally, eighty divisions. In 

reality, many of these had been drastically reduced in the fighting. The 26th 

8 SHAEF G–3 War Room Daily Summaries, 214- 

18. Casualties through 3 January totaled 516,244, 

though many of these men had returned to duty. 

U.S. forces had incurred 335,090 casualties, including 55,184 killed. 

9 Twelve divisions were British, 3 Canadian, 1 

Polish, 8 French, and 49 American. There were, in 

addition, a Polish brigade and contingents of 

Dutch, Belgian, and Czechoslovakian troops. 

10 Oberbefehlshaber West means either the Commander in Chief West or his headquarters. In this 

volume, the abbreviated form, OB WEST, will be 

used to refer to the headquarters. 
6 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

FIELD MARSHAL VON RUNDSTEDT 

Volks Grenadier Division, for example, 

which had fought in the Ardennes, had 

a “present for duty” (Tagesstaerlze) 

strength of 5,202 but a “combat effective” (Kumpfstaerke) strength of only 

1,782; this against a table of organization 

calling for approximately 10,000 men. 

Nor did the Germans have the trained 

replacements to bring units back to full 

strength. 11 

By contrast, Allied units, despite losses 

in the Ardennes and despite a pinch in 

American infantry replacements, would 

11 OB WEST Wochenmeldungen, 1944–45, # H 

22/287. Volks Grenadier was an honorific, selected 

to appeal to the pride of the German people, das 

Volk, which Hitler accorded to certain infantry 

divisions. 

quickly be reconstituted. The 28th Infantry Division, for example, literally 

shattered by the opening blows of the 

enemy thrust in December, would be 

virtually at full strength again by the 

end of January, even though Allied 

tables of organization called for from two 

to four thousand more men per division 

than did German tables. Only the 106th 

Infantry Division, which had had two 

regiments captured early in the fighting, 

would not be returned to full strength. 

The German forces opposing the 

Western Allies were organized into four 

army groups. In the north, Army Group 

H (Generaloberst Kurt Student) held 

the line from the Dutch coast to Roermond with the Twenty-fifth and First 

Parachute Armies, its boundaries 

roughly coterminous with those of the 21 

Army Group’s First Canadian and Second British Armies. From Roermond 

south to the Moselle River near Trier, 

including the Ardennes bulge, stood 

Army Group B (Generalfeldmarschall 

Walter Model) , the strongest-by virture of having been beefed up for the 

Ardennes operation-of the German 

army groups. Army Group B controlled 

the Fifth and Sixth Panzer Armies and 

the Seventh and Fifteenth Armies, generally opposing the First, Third, and 

Ninth U.S. Armies. Extending the front 

to the northeast corner of France was 

Army Group G (Generaloberst Johannes 

Blaskowitz) with only one army, the 

First, opposite portions of the Third and 

Seventh U.S. Armies. Also controlling 

only one army, the Nineteenth, Army 

Group Oberrhein (Reichsfuehrer SS 

Heinrich Himmler) was responsible for 

holding the sector extending south to the 

Swiss border and for conducting the 

other winter counterblow, Operation 
PRELUDE TO VICTORY 7 

NORDWIND, For various reasons, 

among them the fact that an exalted 

personage of the Nazi party such as 

Himmler hardly could submit to the 

command of an army leader, Army 

Group Oberrhein was tactically independent, in effect, a separate theater 

command. 12 

Unusual command arrangements, 

which in this particular case would not 

last beyond mid-January, were nothing 

new on the German side. The Commander in Chief West himself, for example, never had been a supreme 

commander in the sense that General 

Eisenhower was. The real supreme 

commander was back in Berlin, Adolf 

Hitler. To reach Hitler, Rundstedt’s 

headquarters, OB WEST, had to go 

through a central headquarters in Berlin, 

the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht 

(OKW) , which was charged with operations in all theaters except the east. 

(Oberkommando des Heeres–OKH– 

watched over the Eastern Front.) Jealousies playing among the Army, Navy, 

Luftwaffe (air force), Waffen-SS (military arm of the Nazi party), and Nazi 

party political appointees further circumscribed OB WEST’S authority. 18 

There could be no question as to the 

overwhelming nature of Allied strength 

as compared with what the Germans, 

fighting a three-front war, could muster 

in the west. Allied superiority in the 

west was at least 21⁄2 to 1 in artillery, 

12 Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) 

Wehrmachtfuehrungsstab ( WFSt) situation maps 

for the period: Magna E. Bauer, MS # R-64, The 

Western Front in Mid-January 1945, prepared in 

OCMH to complement this volume, copy in 

OCMH. 

13 MSS # T–121, T–122, and T–123, OB WEST, 

A Study in Command (Generalleutnant Bodo Zimmerman, G–3, OB WEST, and other officers). 

roughly 10 to 1 in tanks, more than 3 to 

1 in aircraft, and 21⁄2 to 1 in troops. Nor 

could there be any question that longrange Allied capabilities also were immensely superior, since much of the great 

natural and industrial potential of the 

United States was untapped. German 

resources in January 1945 still were 

considerable nevertheless. If adroitly 

handled, some believed, these resources 

might enable the Germans to prolong 

the war and-should Hitler’s secret 

weapons materialize-might even reverse the course of the war. 

Despite the demands of five years of 

war and saturation attacks by Allied 

bombers, German production had 

reached a peak only in the fall of 1944. 

During September 1944, for example, 

Germany had produced 4,103 aircraft of 

all types. As late as November 1944, the 

Luftwaffe had more planes than ever 

before—8,103 (not counting transports) , 

of which 5,317 were operational. On 

New Year’s Day 1,035 planes had taken 

to the air over the Netherlands, Belgium, 

and northern France in support of the 

Ardennes fighting. Some 25 new submarines-most equipped with a snorkel 

underwater breathing device-had been 

completed each month through the fall. 

Tank and assault gun output would stay 

at a steady monthly level of about 1,600 

from November 1944 to February 1945. 14 

A few newly developed jet-propelled aircraft already had appeared over the 

Western Front. In light of V–1 flying 

bombs and V–2 supersonic missiles that 

had for months been bombarding British 

and Continental cities, a report that soon 

14 Magna E. Bauer, MS # R-61, Effects of the 

Ardennes Offensive: Germany‘s Remaining War 

Potential, prepared to complement this volume, 

annotated copy in OCMH. 
8 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the Germans would possess an intercontinental missile was not lightly dismissed. 15 

In manpower the Germans still had 

reserves on which to draw. Of a population within prewar boundaries of some 

80 million, close to 13 million had been 

inducted into the armed forces, of whom 

4 million had been killed, wounded, or 

captured in five years of war. Yet not 

until January 1945 would Hitler decree 

that older men up to forty-five years of 

age be shifted from industry to the 

armed forces. As late as February, eight 

new divisions would be created, primarily from youths just turned seventeen. As the roles of the Navy and 

Luftwaffe declined, substantial numbers 

of their men could be transferred to the 

Army. 16 

To these points on the credit side of 

the German ledger would have to be 

added the pertinacity of the German 

leader, Adolf Hitler. Although shaken by 

an attempt on his life in the summer of 

1944 and sick from overuse of sedatives, 

Hitler in January 1945 still was a man 

of dominant personality and undiluted 

devotion to the belief that even though 

a German military victory might be impossible, the war somehow could be 

brought to a favorable end. His distrust 

of nearly everybody around him had 

served to feed his conviction that he 

alone was capable of correctly estimating 

the future course of the war. He would 

tolerate no dissenting voices. 

To a varying degree, depending on in15 Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., 

“The Army Air Forces in World War II,” III, 

Europe: Argument to V-E Day (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951) (Hereafter cited as 

AAF III), 84. 545, and 659. 

1 6 MS # R-61 (Bauer). 

dividual insight, the German soldiers 

and their leaders accepted the promises 

and assurances of their Fuehrer that, 

given time, political démarches, dissent 

among the Allies, even continued conventional military efforts, Germany 

could anticipate some kind of salvation. 

Given time alone, the Third Reich could 

develop new miracle weapons and improve existing weapons so that the 

enemy, if he could not be beaten, still 

could be forced to compromise, or else 

the “Anglo-Saxons,” as Hitler called the 

Western Allies, might be persuaded to 

join with Germany in the war against 

bolshevism. The time to achieve all this 

could be gained only by stubborn combat. If some preferred to give up the 

fight and surrender, the great majority 

would continue the battle with determination. 17 

It is difficult, in retrospect, to comprehend how any thinking German could 

have believed genuinely in anything 

other than defeat as 1945 opened, despite 

the credits on the ledger, for entries on 

the debit side were almost overwhelming. 

North Africa, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Crete, Russia, much of the Balkans, much of Italy and Poland, parts of 

the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and even East Prussia–all had 

been lost, together with the Finnish and 

Italian allies. The nation’s three major 

industrial regions-the Ruhr, Saar, and 

Silesia–lay almost in the shadow of the 

guns of either the Western Allies or the 

Russians.. The failure in the Ardennes 

was all the more disheartening because 

so much had been expected of the campaign. The impressive numbers of aircraft were almost meaningless when 

17 Ibid. 
PRELUDE TO VICTORY 9 

measured against shortages in trained 

pilots and aviation fuel, the latter so 

lacking that few new pilots could be 

trained. Although Hitler time after time 

promised to introduce a fleet of jetpropelled fighters to set matters right in 

the skies, his insistence back in 1943 that 

the jet be developed not as a fighter but 

as a bomber in order to wreak revenge 

on the British had assured such a delay 

in jet fighter production that jets would 

play only a peripheral role in the war. 

Tank and assault gun production figures also had to be considered against 

the background of fuel shortages and a 

crippled transportation system that made 

it increasingly difficult to get the weapons 

from assembly line to front line. An 

Allied air offensive against oil and transportation, for example, begun during the 

summer of 1944, had had severe repercussions in more than one segment of the 

war economy. Shipment of coal by water 

and by rail (normally 40 percent of 

traffic) had fallen from 7.4 million tons 

in August to 2.7 million tons in December. Production in synthetic fuel plants, 

responsible for go percent of Germany’s 

aviation gasoline and 30 percent of the 

nation’s motor gasoline, had dropped 

from an average of 359,000 tons in the 

four months preceding the attacks to 

24,000 tons in September. 18 The atmosphere of impending doom was further 

heightened by knowledge that even if 

the Ardennes fighting did delay another 

major Allied offensive for a month or so, 

the Russians were readying an all-out 

strike that was sure to come, if not in 

days then in weeks. 

18 The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, 

Report 3, European War, The Effects of Strategic 

Bombing on the German War Economy, 31 October 1945, pp. 12–13. 

Nor was the German Army that stood 

in the east, in Italy, and in the west in 

any way comparable to the conquering 

legions of the early months of the war. 

The long, brutal campaign against the 

Russians had crippled the Army even before Allied troops had forced their way 

ashore in Normandy. Units that at one 

time had boasted of their all-German 

“racial purity” were now laced with 

Volksdeutsche (“racial Germans” from 

border areas of adjacent countries), and 

Hilfswillige (auxiliaries recruited from 

among Russian prisoners of war), and 

physical standards for front-line service 

had been sharply relaxed. Many of the 

German divisions had only two infantry 

regiments of two battalions each, and 

some had only two light artillery battalions of two batteries each and one 

medium battalion. 

The Army faced a further handicap in 

the stultifying effect of a long-standing 

order from Hitler forbidding any voluntary withdrawal. Having apparently 

forestalled a disastrous retreat before the 

Russian counteroffensive in front of Moscow in the winter of 1941-42 by ordering 

that positions be held even when bypassed or surrounded, Hitler saw a policy 

of “hold at all costs” as a panacea for 

every tactical situation. Not a single concrete pillbox or bunker of the western 

border fortifications, the West Wall, was 

to be relinquished voluntarily. Hitler 

also constantly delayed granting authority for preparing rear defensive positions 

lest these serve as a magnet pulling the 

troops back. 

For all these negative factors, many 

Germans continued to believe if not in 

victory, then in a kind of nihilistic syllogism which said: Quit now, and all is 

lost; hold on, and maybe something will 
10 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

happen to help-a process of inductive 

reasoning that Allied insistence on unconditional surrender may not have promoted but did nothing to dissuade. 

Already the Germans had demonstrated 

amply an ability to absorb punishment, 

to improvise, block, mend, feint, delay. 

Weapons and Equipment 

Making up approximately threefourths of the total Allied force engaged 

in the last offensive, the American soldier 

was perhaps the best-paid and best-fed 

soldier of any army up to that time. Except for a few items of winter clothing, 

he was also as well or better clothed than 

any of his allies or his enemy. In the 

matter of armament and combat equipment, American research and production 

had served him well. On the other hand, 

his adversary possessed, qualitatively at 

least, battle-worthy equipment and an 

impress ive 

The basic shoulder weapon of the 

U.S. soldier was the .30-caliber M1 

(Garand) rifle, a semiautomatic piece, 

while the German soldier employed a 

7.92-mm. (Mauser) bolt-action rifle. 

Two favorite weapons of the American 

were outgrowths of World War I, the 

.30-caliber Browning automatic rifle 

(BAR) and the .30-caliber Browning 

machine gun in both light (air-cooled) 

and heavy (water-cooled) models. The 

German soldier had no widely used 

equivalent of the BAR, depending instead on a machine pistol that the Ameri19 A comprehensive study and comparison of 

American and German weapons and equipment 

will be found in Lida Mayo, The Ordnance Department: On Beachhead and Battlefront, UNITED 

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1968). 

cans called, from an emetic sound 

attributable to a high cyclic rate of fire, 

a “burp gun.” The burp gun was similar, 

in some respects, to the U.S. Thompson 

submachine gun. The standard German 

machine gun was the M1942, which had 

a similarly high cyclic rate of fire. 

In the two arsenals of antitank weapons, the most effective close-range 

weapons were the German one-shot, 

shaped-charge piece called a Panzerfaust, 

and the American 2.36-inch rocket 

launcher, the bazooka. Late in the campaign the Americans would introduce a 

new antitank weapon, the recoilless rifle 

in 57- and 75-mm. models, but the war 

would end before more than a hundred 

reached the European theater. The conventional towed 57-mm. antitank gun 

most American units at this stage of the 

war had come to view as excess baggage; 

but in the defensive role in which the 

Germans would find themselves, towed 

pieces still would be used. In general, 

the basic antitank weapon was the tank 

itself or a self-propelled gun, called by 

the Americans a tank destroyer, by the 

Germans an assault gun. German assault 

guns usually were either 76- or 88-mm. 

Most American tank destroyers were 

M10’s with 3-inch guns, though by November substantial numbers of M36’s 

mounting a high-velocity 90-mm. piece 

had begun to arrive. Because the tank 

destroyer looked much like a tank, many 

commanders tried to employ it as a tank, 

but since it lacked heavy armor plate, the 

practice often was fatal. 

The standard American tank, the M4 

Sherman, a 33-ton medium, was relatively obsolescent. Most ‘of the Shermans 

still mounted a short-barreled 75-mm. 

gun, which repeatedly had proved inca- 
PRELUDE TO VICTORY 11 

M4 SHERMAN TANK IN THE ARDENNES 

pable of fighting German armor on 

equal terms. They plainly were outgunned, not necessarily by the enemy’s 

medium (Mark IV) tank but unquestionably by the 50-ton Mark V (Panther) and the 54-ton Mark VI (Tiger), 

the latter mounting a high-velocity 88- 

mm. gun. 20 The Panther and Tiger also 

surpassed the Sherman in thickness of 

armor and width of tracks. 

Although modifications of the M4 had 

begun to reach the theater in some quantity in late fall and early winter, most 

equipped with a 76-mm. gun, some with 

20 A souped-up version of the Tiger, called the 

King Tiger or Tiger Royal, appeared in small 

numbers. 

increased armor plate, the old Sherman 

remained the basic tank. As late as the 

last week of February 1945, for example, 

less than one-third of the mediums in the 

Ninth Army were equipped with a 76- 

mm. piece. The best of the modifications 

of the M4 to reach the theater in any 

quantity was the M4A3, 76-mm. gun, 

Wet Series, familiarly known as the 

“Jumbo.” Its high-velocity gun had a 

muzzle brake, and the tank had a new 

suspension system and 23-inch steel 

tracks in place of the old 16 9/16-inch rubber block tracks. Neither a radically 

designed medium tank (the M26, 

mounting a 90-mm. gun) nor a heavy 

tank would reach the theater before the 
12 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

end of hostilities in other than experimental numbers. 21 

The basic German mortars were of 50- 

and 81-mm. caliber, comparable to the 

American 60- and 81-mm., but the little 

50 had fallen into disfavor as too small 

to be effective. Unlike the Americans, 

the Germans also employed heavier mortars, some up to 380-mm. The Nebelwerfer, or “Screaming Meemie,” as the 

U.S. soldier called it, was a multiplebarrel 150-mm. mortar or rocket 

launcher mounted on wheels and fired 

electrically. The Americans had a similar weapon in the 4.5-inch rocket 

launcher. 

The most widely used artillery pieces 

of both combatants were light and 

medium howitzers, German and American models of which were roughly comparable in caliber and performance. The 

German pieces were gun-howitzers (105- 

mm. light and 150-mm. medium); the 

American pieces, howitzers (105- and 

155-mm.). The German infantry division, like the American, was supposed 

to have four artillery battalions, three 

light and one medium. As was standard 

practice in the U.S. Army, additional 

artillery, some of it of larger caliber, operated under corps and army control. 

German artillery doctrine and organization for the control and delivery of 

fire differed materially from the American only in that the German organic 

divisional artillery was less well equipped 

for communication. Excellent American 

communications facilities down to bat21 Cole, in The Lorraine Campaign, pages 603–04, 

and The Ardennes, pages 651–52, compares characteristics of German and U.S. tanks. See also Constance McLaughlin Green, Harry C. Thomson, and 

Peter C. Roots, The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War, UNITED STATES ARMY 

IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1955). ch. X. 

M4A3 SHERMAN TANK WITH 76–MM. GUN 

tery level and effective operation of fire 

direction centers permitted more accurate fire and greater concentration in a 

shorter time. Yet the shortcomings of the 

enemy in the matter of effective concentrations were attributable less to deficiencies of doctrine and organization than to 

shortages of ammunition and other ravages of war. Except that of the panzer 

and panzer grenadier divisions, almost 

all German artillery, for example, was at 

this stage horse-drawn. 22 

Controlling the air, the Americans 

could employ with tremendous effect artillery spotter planes which greatly extended the effective visual distance of 

artillery observers. A simple little monoplane (L–4 or L–5), known variously as 

22 Charles V. P. von Luttichau, Notes on German 

and U.S. Artillery, MS in OCMH; Gen. Hasso von 

Manteuffel, comments on draft MS for this volume. 
PRELUDE TO VICTORY 13 

a Piper Cub, cub, liaison plane, grasshopper, or observation plane, it had 

more than proved its worth-particularly 

in counterbattery fires-long before the 

last offensive began. Although the Germans had a similar plane-the Storck— 

overwhelming Allied air superiority had 

practically driven it from the skies. 

American artillery also gained a slight 

advantage from a supersecret fuze, called 

variously the VT (variable time), 

POZIT, or proximity fuze, by means of 

which artillery shells exploded from external influences in the air close to the 

target, an improvement on time fire. 

Long employed in antiaircraft fire but 

first used by ground artillery during the 

defensive phase of the Ardennes fighting, 

the fuze was undoubtedly effective, 

though the limited extent of its use 

could hardly justify extravagant claims 

made for it by enthusiastic scientists. 23 

Other than tanks, the German weapon 

which most impressed the American 

soldier was the “88,” an 88-mm. highvelocity, dual-purpose antiaircraft and 

antitank piece. So imbued with respect 

for the 88 had the American become 

from the fighting in North Africa onward that a shell from almost any highvelocity German weapon he attributed 

to the 88. 

In the vital field of signal communications, the Americans held an advantage 

at tactical levels because of the inroads 

battle losses and substitute materials had 

made in the German system and because 

of widespread American use of frequency 

modulation (FM) in radio communications. Both armies operated on the same 

theory of two networks of radio and two 

of telephone communications within the 

29 Cole, The Ardennes, pp. 655–56. 

division, one for infantry or armor, one 

for artillery; but at this stage of the war 

the German system often failed to reach 

as low as company level. By use of soundpowered telephone, the Americans 

gained telephonic communication down 

to platoons and even squads. They also 

had a good intracompany radio system 

with the use of an amplitude modulated 

(AM) set, the SCR–536, or handietalkie. 

In the offensive, radio usually served as 

the communications workhorse in forward areas. Here the Americans held 

advantages with the handie-talkie and 

with FM. One of the communications 

standbys of the war was the SCR–300, 

the walkie-talkie, an FM set of commendable performance, used primarily at company and battalion levels. German sets, 

all of which were AM, were subject to 

interference by the sheer volume of their 

own and Allied traffic. Perhaps because 

of the lack of intracompany wire or 

radio, the Germans used visual signals 

such as colored lights and pyrotechnics 

more often than did the Americans. 24 

The air support which stood behind 

the Allied armies was tremendously 

powerful. In close support of the 

ground troops were six tactical air 

commands, but also available for tactical support were eleven groups of 

medium and light bombers (B–26 

Marauders, A-20 Havocs, and A-26 

Invaders) of the IX U.S. Bomber Command and other mediums under British 

24 For detailed discussion of American and German communications, see two volumes in the series, 

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR 11: 

George R. Thompson, Dixie R. Harris, Pauline M. 

Oakes, and Dulany Terrett, The Signal Corps: The 

Test (Washington, 1957). and George R. Thompson and Dixie R. Harris, The Signal Corps: The 

Outcome (Washington, 1966). 
14 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

control. On occasion, the devastating 

heavy bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air 

Force and the Royal Air Force Bomber 

Command were called in. Not counting 

Allied aircraft based in Italy, the Allies 

could muster more than 17,500 firstline combat aircraft, including approximately 5,000 British aircraft of all types, 

6,881 U.S. bombers, and 5,002 U.S. 

fighters, plus hundreds of miscellaneous 

types for reconnaissance, liaison, and 

transport. 25 

The tactical air commands were the 

British Second Tactical Air Force, in 

support of the Second British and First 

Canadian Armies; the First French Air 

Corps, in support of the First French 

Army; and four American forces, the 

IX, XI, XIX, and XXIX Tactical Air 

Commands, in support, respectively, of 

the First, Seventh, Third, and Ninth 

Armies. All American tactical support 

aircraft–mediums and fighter-bombers 

-were a part of the Ninth Air Force 

(Maj. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg). 

Like divisions attached to ground 

corps and armies, the number of fighterbomber groups assigned to tactical air 

commands often varied, though the 

usual number was six. A group normally had three squadrons of twenty-five 

planes each: P–38’s (Lightnings), P47’s (Thunderbolts) , P–51’s (Mustangs), or, in the case of night fighter 

groups, P–61’s (Black Widows). The 

French used American planes, while the 

basic British tactical fighters were rocket-firing Hurricanes and Typhoons. 

Requests for air support passed from 

the air support officer at division head25 Army Air Forces Statistical Digest, World War 

II, with supplement, p. 156. 

quarters to the G–3 Air Section at army 

headquarters for transmission to the 

tactical air command, with an air support officer at corps merely monitoring 

the request. Usually set up close to the 

army headquarters, the air headquarters 

ruled on the feasibility of a mission and 

assigned the proper number of aircraft 

to it. Since air targets could not always 

be anticipated, most divisions had come 

to prefer a system of “armed reconnaissance flights” in which a group assigned 

to the division or corps for the day 

checked in by radio directly with the 

appropriate air support officer. Thus 

the planes could be called in as soon as 

a target appeared without the delay involved in forwarding a request through 

channels. Requests for support from 

mediums had to be approved by the G3 Air Section at army group headquarters and took appreciably longer. 26 

In the matter of logistics, the pendulum had swung heavily to the Allied 

side. Although logistical difficulties had 

contributed in large measure to the 

Allied bog-down along the German 

border in the fall of 1944, opening of 

the great port of Antwerp in late 

November, plus the use of major ports 

in southern France, had speeded recovery of the logistical apparatus. Supply losses in the early Ardennes fighting, 

while locally painful, were no problem 

in the long run. The Germans, for their 

part, had expended carefully hoarded 

reserves in the Ardennes. Although they 

still derived some benefit from proximity to their sources of supply, they 

would find that the traditional advan26 Craven and Cate, AAF III, pp. 107–37; The 

Ninth Air Force and Its Principal Commands in 

the ETO, vol. I, ch. VII, and vol. II, part I. 
PRELUDE TO VICTORY 15 

tage of inner lines had lost some of its 

effect in the air age. 27 

Organization and Command 

With the exception of a few new divisions, the American force participating 

in the last offensive was experienced in 

the ways of battle, a thoroughly professional force scarcely comparable to the 

unseasoned soldiery that had taken the 

field even such a short time before as 

D-day in Normandy. That the Americans had come fully of age had been 

amply demonstrated in the stalwart defense of the American soldier against 

the surprise onslaught in the Ardennes 

and in the swift reaction of the American command. 

Having moved three months before 

from England, General Eisenhower’s 

Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF Main) was 

established in Versailles with adequate 

radio and telephone communications to 

all major commands. A small tent and 

trailer camp at Gueux, near Reims, 

served the Supreme Commander as a 

forward headquarters. In addition to 

the three Allied army groups—6th, 12th, 

and 21—General Eisenhower exercised 

direct command over the First Allied 

Airborne Army (Lt. Gen. Lewis H. 

Brereton), U.S. and British tactical air 

forces, and the Communications Zone 

(Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee). Although 

the Allied strategic air forces operated 

directly under the Combined Chiefs of 

Staff rather than under Eisenhower, the 

27 A detailed account of logistics in the European 

theater may be found in Roland G. Ruppenthal, 

Logistical Support of the Armies I, UNITED 

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1955), and II (Washington, 1959) . 

Supreme Commander had first call 

upon them when he required their direct support for ground operations. 

The two American army groups represented, in effect, a new departure in 

American military experience in that 

the only previous U.S. army group had 

existed only briefly near the end of 

World War I when General John J. 

Pershing had grouped two American 

armies under his own command. With 

little precedent as a guide, the way the 

two army group commanders, Generals 

Bradley and Devers, organized their 

headquarters and exercised command 

reflected much of their own individual 

concepts. Although both retained the 

usual “G” and Special Staff organization, Devers ran his army group with a 

staff of only about 600 officers and men, 

while Bradley employed double that 

number. The numbers told much 

about the way each interpreted the role 

of the army group commander: Devers 

played it loosely, leaving planning mainly to his army commanders and authorizing his staff to seek information at 

lower levels and make changes on the 

spot. Much as when he had commanded 

the First Army, Bradley exercised much 

closer control over his army commanders 

and employed his staff in intricate, 

detailed planning. General Bradley 

after the war liked to point out that he 

had intimate foreknowledge of every 

move of his armies except in one case 

when General Patton set out on an 

operation that he came to rue. 28 

Under the American system, both 

army group and army exercised command and logistical functions, while at 

28 Interviews, author with Bradley, 30 Jun 67. and 

Devers, 7 Dec 67. 
16 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the level of corps the commander was 

free of the latter. This system afforded 

the corps commander time to concentrate on tactical matters and established 

the corps as a strong component in the 

command structure. Equipped with 

modern means of communication and 

transportation, the corps commander 

had regained a measure of the control 

and influence over the actions of his 

divisions that the advent of mass armies 

and rapid-fire weapons had originally 

taken away. 

The American division in World 

War II reflected an early decision to 

keep the army in the field lean, to avoid 

duplicating the powerful but ponderous 

28,000-man division that had fought in 

the trenches with Pershing. The theory 

was that if all the engineer, medical, 

transport, quartermaster, and other support troops that were needed to meet 

any contingency were an integral part 

of the division, not only would the 

division be difficult to control and maneuver but many of the troops would 

often be idle while awaiting a call on 

the specialties for which they were 

trained. Better to let infantrymen themselves double as drivers, radio operators, 

mechanics, and the like, while specialized units of heavy artillery, transport, 

construction engineers, signalmen, tank 

destroyers, tanks, and other support 

could be attached as required. The 

method had the added virtue of eliminating the need for a variety of specialized divisions since infantry divisions 

could be tailored by attachments to fit 

various requirements. 

Because the fighting in Europe posed 

an almost constant demand for closesupport firepower and antitank defense, 

attachment of a tank and a tank destroyer battalion to the infantry division 

became customary, bringing the size of 

the division to about 16,000 men. 

Similarly, a separate tank destroyer 

battalion was nearly always attached to 

the armored division. 

After a first rush to create a “heavy” 

armored division comparable to the 

early German panzer division, the U.S. 

Army had scaled down the medium 

tank strength of the armored division 

from 250 to 154 and added more infantry to provide staying power. The 

new organization had dispensed with 

armored and armored infantry regiments, providing instead battalions that 

could be grouped in various “mixes” 

under combat commands. While lacking some of the shock power of the old 

heavy division, the new formation had 

proven flexible, maneuverable, and 

fully capable of meeting the German 

panzer division of 1944–45 on at least 

equal terms. Three of the heavy armored divisions remained-the 1st in 

Italy and the 2d and 3d in Eisenhower’s 

command. 

The armored division usually operated in three combat commands, A, B, 

and R (Reserve), each built around a 

battalion of medium tanks and a battalion of armored infantry, with added 

increments of engineers, tank destroyers, medics, and other services plus artillery support commensurate with the 

combat command’s assignment. Thus 

each combat command was approximately equal in power and interchangeable in terms of combat mission, while 

in the old heavy division Combat Commands A and B almost always bore the 

major assignments since the reserve 

consisted usually of some contingent 

pulled from either or both of the larger 
PRELUDE TO VICTORY 17 

commands to afford the commander a 

maneuver or reinforcing element. In 

both type divisions combat commands 

usually operated under an arrangement 

of two or more “task forces.” 

Much like armor with its combat 

commands, infantry divisions almost 

always employed regimental combat 

teams. Each of the division’s three infantry regiments was supported by a 

105-mm. howitzer battalion and increments of divisional support troops 

while the division’s 155-mm. howitzer 

battalion was available for reinforcing 

fires as needed. 

The corps usually consisted of a 

minimum of three divisions-two infantry, one armored. Never did the U.S. 

Army employ an armored corps of the 

type the Germans used in early breakthroughs in Poland and on the Western 

Front, partly because of the antipathy 

toward specialization and partly because the American infantry division 

with a high mobility and with attached 

tanks and tank destroyers was essentially 

the equivalent to the German panzer grenadier division. Thus a regular corps was 

considerably heavier in armor than the 

presence of one armored and two infantry 

divisions might otherwise indicate. The 

only specialized U.S. corps was the XVIII 

Airborne Corps, which like U.S. airborne 

divisions was destined to spend more time 

in straight ground combat than in its specialized role. 

Heading this American force in 

Europe was a group of senior commanders who had come to know each 

other intimately during the lean years 

of the small peacetime Army and who 

all had absorbed the same doctrinal 

concepts from the service schools and 

the Command and General Staff College. General Eisenhower and two of 

his top American subordinates, Bradley 

and Patton, had been closely associated 

in battle since the campaign in North 

Africa, and Lt. Gen. Courtney H. 

Hodges of the First Army, who had 

come to France as Bradley’s deputy in 

the First Army, and Lt. Gen. William H. 

Simpson of the Ninth Army had developed a close command association with 

the others through the fighting of the 

fall and early winter. General Devers 

and his one American army commander, 

Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch of the 

Seventh Army, were less fully integrated 

in the command team, partly because 

they had entered the fight separately by 

way of southern France rather than Normandy, partly because they functioned 

in a supporting role on a flank and thus 

commanded less direct attention from 

the Supreme Commander, and partly because General Devers had not been 

Eisenhower’s selection but that of the 

Chief of Staff, General Marshall, and 

Patch had been Dever’s choice. Yet the 

military schooling and experience of 

these two was much the same as that of 

the others, and the fall and early winter 

campaigns had already produced a 

strong measure of understanding. 

A potentially divisive element was 

present in the American command in 

the person of the Third Army commander, General Patton. A charismatic 

leader, Patton was also impetuous and 

had come close on several occasions to 

summary relief. While General Eisenhower had in each case decided finally 

against that discipline, Patton had sorely 

tried his patience, and as a result of 

slapping incidents involving two hospitalized soldiers in Sicily, he had 
18 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

vowed never to elevate Patton above 

army command. Respecting Bradley, 

Patton had agreed without rancor to 

serve under Bradley, one who in North 

Africa and Sicily had been his subordinate. Aware that Patton was impetuous 

and that grim, slugging warfare tried his 

thin patience, Eisenhower and Bradley 

kept a close rein on the Third Army 

commander but so unobtrusively that 

Patton himself often thought he was 

putting things over on his superiors 

when actually they were fully informed. 

Aware also of Patton’s superior abilities 

in more fluid warfare, Eisenhower and 

Bradley consciously loosened their hold 

on the rein when breakthrough and pursuit were the order of the day. 29 

In the over-all command structure, 

two other potentially abrasive elements 

were present in the persons of the 21 

Army Group commander, Field Marshal Montgomery, and the First French 

Army commander, General Jean de 

Lattre de Tassigny. Although Montgomery and de Lattre commanded 

forces considerably smaller than those 

fielded by the Americans, each was a 

dominant personality and as the senior 

field representative of one of the major 

allies sought a strong voice in command 

deliberations. Nor was either reluctant 

in the face of controversy to call in the 

persuasive force of his head of state. 

Terrain and the Front Line 

At the closest point, the Allied front 

line in early January was some twentyfive miles from the Ruhr industrial 

area. Although Berlin, the political 

heart of Germany, might constitute the 

29 Interviews, author with Eisenhower, 23 Jun 67; 

Bradley, 30 Jun 67; and Devers, 7 Dec 67. 

final objective of the Allied armies, the 

Ruhr with its coal mines, blast furnaces, 

and factories, the muscle with which 

Germany waged war, was the more vital 

objective. Without the Ruhr, Germany’s case would fast become hopeless; 

taking Berlin and all other objectives 

then would be but a matter of time. 30 

No political or geographical entity, 

the Ruhr can be fairly accurately described as a triangle with its base along 

the east bank of the Rhine River from 

Cologne northward to Duisburg, a distance of some thirty-five miles. One 

side of the triangle extends eastward 

from Duisburg along the Lippe River 

to Dortmund, for thirty-five to forty 

miles; the other side about the same distance southwestward from Dortmund to 

the vicinity of Cologne along the Ruhr 

River. The region embraces major 

cities such as Essen, Duesseldorf, and 

Wuppertal. 

The trace of the front line in early 

January clearly reflected Allied preoccupation with the Ruhr as an objective 

and General Eisenhower’s broad-front 

strategy, plus the accident of the Ardennes counteroffensive. Starting at the 

Dutch islands of Noord Beveland and 

Tholen, the line followed the Maas and 

Waal Rivers eastward to Nijmegen, 

where the Allies maintained a small 

bridgehead north of the Waal, thence 

southward along the west bank of the 

Maas to Maeseyck. There the line 

turned southeastward across the Maas 

to reach the Roer River near Heinsberg, 

thence south and southwestward to the 

headwaters of the Roer at Monschau. 

The sector along the Roer–some forty 

30 SHAEF Planning Staff, Post-NEPTUNE Courses 

of Action After Capture of Lodgment Area, 

SHAEF SGS file, 381, I. 
PRELUDE TO VICTORY 19 

miles long-represented the only major 

breach of the West Wall fortifications. 

At Monschau began what was left 

of the Ardennes bulge. The line ran 

sharply southwest as far as Marche, 

some forty miles west of the German 

frontier, thence southeast to rejoin the 

frontier a few miles northwest of Trier. 

It then followed the Moselle River to 

the southern border of Luxembourg, 

there to swing east and parallel the 

Franco-German border to the vicinity 

of Sarreguemines. From there to Gambsheim on the west bank of the Rhine a 

few miles north of Strasbourg the front 

was in a state of flux as a result of the 

NORDWIND counteroffensive. A few 

miles south of Strasbourg, it again 

veered west to encompass a portion of 

Alsace still held by the Germans, called 

by Allied soldiers the Colmar pocket. 

The front line reached the Rhine again 

east of Mulhouse and followed the river 

to the Swiss border. 

The terrain immediately in front of 

the Allied positions could be divided 

into four general classifications: the 

flatlands of the Netherlands and the 

Cologne plain, crisscrossed by waterways 

and studded with towns and villages; 

the Ardennes-Eifel, a high plateau so 

deeply cut by erosion that it appears 

mountainous; the Saar-Palatinate, another plateau, sprinkled with coal mines 

and steel processing plants, separated 

from the Ardennes-Eifel by the trench 

of the Moselle; and the Vosges Mountains-Black Forest massif, two sharply 

defined mountain regions belonging to 

the same geological age but separated 

by the trench of the Rhine. 

The flatlands in the north were the 

responsibility of the First Canadian 

Army (Lt. Gen. Henry D. G. Crerar), 

the Second British Army (Lt. Gen. Sir 

Miles C. Dempsey) , and the Ninth U.S. 

Army (General Simpson) . Soon after 

the Germans had struck in the Ardennes, the Ninth Army had extended 

its boundary southward to encompass 

much of the area originally held by the 

First U.S. Army, so that the boundary 

ran in the vicinity of Monschau. With 

the exception of the western portion of 

the Netherlands, where canals, rivers, 

dikes, and deep drainage ditches sharply 

compartment the land, this region offered the best route to the primary Allied 

objective, the Ruhr. The Ninth Army 

might strike directly toward the western 

base of the Ruhr, while the British and 

Canadians crossed the Rhine and gained 

access to the north German plain, thereby outflanking the Ruhr and at the 

same time opening a way toward Berlin. 

The Ardennes-Eifel, with its high 

ridges, deep-cut, serpentine streams, 

and dense forests, had never been tested 

by an army moving against opposition 

from west to east except during September 1944, when an American corps had 

pushed as far as the German frontier. 

Even should the Allies elect to avoid the 

Eifel as a route of major advance, that 

portion of the high plateau known as 

the Ardennes still would have to be 

cleared of the enemy. The responsibility 

belonged to General Hodges’ First 

Army, operating temporarily under the 

21 Army Group, and the Third Army 

(General Patton). 

The Third Army’s sector, some of 

which upon the start of the Ardennes 

counteroffensive had been relinquished 

to the adjacent Seventh U.S. Army 

(General Patch), included, in addition 

to the Ardennes, a small portion of the 

line facing the Saar-Palatinate. This 
20 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

included the trough of the Moselle, a 

poor route of advance because it is 

narrow and meandering. That part of 

the Saar-Palatinate most open to attack 

lay opposite the Seventh Army from 

Saarlautern southeastward to the Rhine 

and encompassed two corridors leading 

northeast that have seen frequent use 

in wartime. Separated by a minor mountain chain called the Haardt, these are 

known usually as the Kaiserslautern and 

Wissembourg Gaps. Both lead to the 

Rhine near Mainz, where, after converging, they continue as one past 

Frankfurt to Kassel. 

That part of the Allied line touching 

the Rhine—from Gambsheim to a point 

above Strasbourg—was the responsibility of the First French Army (General 

de Lattre). From the vicinity of Strasbourg the French line swung southwest 

into the most rugged terrain on the 

Western Front, the high Vosges Mountains. Rising almost like a wall from the 

Alsatian Plain, the Vosges reach a height 

of almost 5,000 feet and in winter are 

covered with deep snows. In the Vosges 

and on the plain, the German-held 

Colmar pocket measured on its periphery about 130 miles. Even after clearing 

this pocket, the French would face terrain hardly less formidable; just across 

the Rhine stands the Schwarzwald, or 

Black Forest, which guards Germany 

much as the Vosges protect France. 

All along the front, with the exception of the Maas-Waal line in the 

Netherlands and the 40-mile gap along 

the Roer, the Germans drew strength 

from their concrete border fortifications, 

the West Wall. Construction of this 

fortified line had begun in 1936, first to 

counter France’s Maginot Line opposite 

the Saar, subsequently to protect almost 

the full length of Germany’s western 

frontier. No thin line of elaborate, selfcontained forts like the Maginot Line, 

the West Wall was a series of more than 

3,000 relatively small, mutually supporting pillboxes or blockhouses arranged in one or two bands, depending 

on the critical nature of the terrain. 

Either natural antitank obstacles such 

as rivers or monolithic concrete projections called dragon’s teeth ran in front 

of the pillboxes. The strongest sectors 

of the line were around Aachen—already breached—and in front of the 

Saar. Based on the principle of delaying 

an attacker, then ejecting him with mobile reserves, the West Wall by 1945 

had lost much of its effectiveness, both 

from a lack of reserves and from the fact 

that many of the emplacements could 

not accommodate contemporary weapons. Yet as many an Allied soldier already had learned, concrete in almost 

any form can lend real substance to a 

defense. 31 

Before the entire Allied front would 

rest on reasonably economical natural 

obstacles, and thus before the last offensive could develop in full force, four 

matters of unfinished business in addition to reconquest of the Ardennes remained to be dealt with. First, the 

enemy’s second winter counteroffensive, 

which had started on New Year’s Eve in 

Alsace, would have to be contained and 

any gains wiped out. Second, the enemy’s hold-out position around Colmar 

would have to be erased. Third, the 

Germans would have to be driven from 

an angle formed by confluence of the 

Saar and Moselle Rivers, known as the 

Saar-Moselle triangle. And fourth, an31 For a detailed description of the West Wall, 

see MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign. 
PRELUDE TO VICTORY 21 

other hold-out position in the north in 

an angle formed by juncture of the Roer 

and Maas Rivers, a so-called Heinsberg 

pocket, would have to be eliminated. 

Execution of the first two tasks, both 

in Alsace, would so occupy the Seventh 

U.S. and First French Armies, operating 

under General Devers’s 6th Army 

Group, all through January and February that only in March would these two 

armies be able to join the final drive. 32 

Elimination of the Saar-Moselle triangle, on the other hand, the Third 

Army would accomplish as a logical ex32 Smith, The Riviera to the Rhine. 

pansion of its developing role in the last 

offensive. Meanwhile, the British would 

eliminate the Heinsberg pocket before 

their assignment in the last offensive 

came due. 

Thus the birth of the last offensive 

occurred in January in the Ardennes. 

There the First Army at last could strike 

back at the forces that had hit without 

warning in December, and there the 

Third Army might reorient its operations away from the local objective of 

succoring Bastogne to the broader assignment of pushing in the bulge and 

driving to the Rhine. 
CHAPTER II 

Victory in the Ardennes 

“If you go into that death-trap of the 

Ardennes,” General Charles Louis Marie 

Lanzerac reputedly told a fellow French 

officer in 1914, “you will never come 

out.” 1 This remark for a long time 

typified the attitude of the French and 

their allies toward the Ardennes. It was 

a region to be avoided. 

For centuries before 1914, warfare, 

like commerce, had skirted the Ardennes to north or south; yet at the start 

of the Great War, Helmuth von Moltke, 

under influence of the Schlieffen Plan, 

had sent three armies totaling almost a 

million men directly through the Ardennes. Although not constituting the 

German main effort, these armies contributed to it by outflanking hasty Allied 

attempts to form a line against the main 

blow on the Belgian plain. In 1940, 

expecting a repetition of the 1914 

maneuver, the French had entrusted 

defense of the Ardennes to reserve divisions while concentrating their battleworthy forces across the gateway to the 

plain. That had led to breakthrough by 

panzer columns at Sedan and Dinant. 

Although made against scattered opposition consisting sometimes of nothing 

more imposing than horse cavalry, these 

speedy German conquests tended to 

1 For details on the military history and terrain 

of the Ardennes, see Charles B. MacDonald, “The 

Neglected Ardennes,” Military Review, Vol. 43, No. 

4 (April 1963) PP. 74–89. 

obscure the fact that the Ardennes is a 

major barrier presenting the most rugged face of any terrain from the Vosges 

Mountains to the North Sea. While the 

highest elevations are less than 2,500 

feet above sea level, deep and meandering defiles cut by myriad creeks and 

small rivers sharply restrict and canalize 

movement either along or across the 

grain of the land. (Map II) 

Properly a part of a vast, high plateau 

lying mostly inside Germany, the Ardennes and its contiguous region, the 

Eifel, are separated from the rest of the 

plateau by the accidents of the Moselle 

and Rhine Rivers. The Ardennes and 

Eifel are divided only by the artificial 

barrier of an international frontier. It 

was back across this frontier into the 

casemates of the West Wall and the forests cloaking them that the Allies had to 

drive the Germans before victory in the 

Ardennes might be consummated and 

the final offensive in Europe begun in 

earnest. 

The Ardennes encompasses all the 

grand duchy of Luxembourg, that part of 

southern and eastern Belgium bounded 

on the west and north by the gorge of 

the Meuse River, and a small portion 

of northern France. It can be divided 

into two unequal parts, the smaller Low 

Ardennes in the northwest, into which 

the winter counteroffensive had achieved 

only minor penetration, and the High 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 23 

or True Ardennes in the northeast, 

center, and south, covering some threefourths of the entire region. 

Stretching westward from the German 

frontier in something of the shape of an 

isosceles triangle, the High Ardennes 

encompasses in its northern angle a 

marshy ridgeline near Spa and Malmédy 

called the Hohe Venn or Hautes Fanges, 

meaning high marshland. The highest 

point in the Ardennes is here (2,276 

feet). Southwest of the Hohe Venn along 

the northwestern edge of the triangle is 

another stretch of high, marshy ground 

containing the headwaters of three picturesque rivers, the Plateau des Tailles. 

The central portion of the triangle, 

around Bastogne and Neufchâteau, is 

high but less sharply incised than other 

portions. In the southwestern corner 

stands the Forêt des Ardennes, or Ardennes Forest, a name which Americans 

with a penchant for generalized inaccuracy gave to the entire region of the 

Ardennes. Across the border in Luxembourg lies sharply convoluted terrain 

that the natives with an eye toward tourism call la Petite Suisse or Little Switzerland. 

A picture-postcard pastoral region 

marked by few towns with populations 

of more than a few thousand, the 

Ardennes nevertheless has an extensive 

network of improved roads knotted together at critical points such as Bastope and St. Vith, the latter in the 

northeast close to the German border. 

Like the general lay of the land, the 

major roads favor military movement 

from northeast to southwest, or the reverse. By holding fast in front of the 

Hohe Venn, American troops in December 1944 had denied the Germans 

roads in the north with more favorable 

orientation toward the German goal of 

Antwerp, forcing them into an all-out 

fight for Bastogne and roads emanating 

from that town to the northwest. As the 

Americans headed back toward the German frontier, the orientation of the 

roadnet would afford some advantage. 

In plunging out of the Eifel, the Germans had attained their deepest penetration on Christmas Eve when armored 

spearheads got within four miles of the 

Meuse River. The bulge in American 

lines reached a maximum depth of not 

quite sixty miles. At the base, the bulge 

extended from near Monschau in the 

north to the vicinity of Echternach in 

the south, just under fifty miles. It encompassed much of Little Switzerland, 

the Plateau des Tailles, and some of the 

more open highland around Bastogne; 

but it fell short of the two vital objectives, the Meuse and the Hohe Venn. 

American offensive reaction to the 

German blow had begun even before the 

penetration reached its high-water mark. 

As early as dawn of 22 December one 

division of the Third Army had opened 

limited objective attacks to stabilize the 

southern shoulder of the bulge near its 

base while an entire corps began a drive 

toward Bastogne. On Christmas Day an 

armored division of the First Army had 

wiped out the spearhead near the Meuse. 

As General Eisenhower on 19 December had met with his top subordinates to 

plan opening countermoves, the obvious 

method was to attack simultaneously 

from north and south to saw off the penetration at its base close along the German border; but several considerations 

denied this approach. Still heavily involved trying to prevent expansion of 

the bulge to north and northwest, the 

First Army was in no position yet to hit 
24 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the northern flank. Nor could the Third 

Army, which had to provide the troops 

for striking the southern flank, make 

available immediately enough divisions 

to do more than stabilize the southern 

flank and possibly relieve Bastogne. Because Bastogne was the key to the roadnet not only to the northwest but to 

southwest and south as well, and since 

nobody knew for sure at the time which 

way the Germans wanted to go, the need 

to hold Bastogne never came into question. 2 

This early commitment to relieving 

and reinforcing Bastogne in large measure dictated the way the Allied command 

would go about eliminating the penetration, a drive to squeeze the bulge at its 

waist rather than its base, then a turn to 

push in what was left. It was a conservative approach but one necessitated, at 

least in the opening moves, by the surprise, early success, and persisting 

strength of the German assault. 

Yet once Bastogne was relieved on the 

26th, the way was open for another solution, the classic though venturesome 

maneuver for eliminating a deep penetration, cutting it off at its base. This the 

Third Army commander, General Patton, proposed, a drive by his army north 

and northeast from Luxembourg City 

into a westward-protruding portion of 

the Eifel to link with a complementary 

thrust by the First Army in the vicinity 

of Pruem, a road center a little over ten 

miles inside Germany, southeast of St. 

Vith. 3 

Although Patton’s opposite on the 

2 For an account of early decisions, see Cole, The 

Ardennes, pp. 487–88, 509–10. 

3 Cole, The Ardennes, pp. 610–13, provides a detailed discussion of the deliberations. See also 

Pogue, The Supreme Command, pp. 383, 393. 

north flank, General Hodges of the First 

Army, agreed with this approach in principle, he advised against it because he 

deemed the roadnet close to the border 

in the north inadequate to sustain the 

large force, heavy in armor, that would 

be necessary for the cleaving blow essential to a successful amputation. Nor did 

the 12th Army Group commander, General Bradley, endorse it. Bradley was 

concerned about the effect of winter 

weather, both on the counterattack itself 

and on air support, and of the inhospitable terrain. He was worried too 

about a lack of reserves. Already the 6th 

Army Group had extended its lines dangerously to release the bulk of the Third 

Army for the fight in the Ardennes. 

Although the matter of reserves might 

have been remedied by greater commitment of British troops, the British commander who also controlled the First 

U.S. Army, Field Marshal Montgomery, 

wanted to avoid major realignment of 

British forces lest it unduly delay return 

to the scheduled main effort in the north 

against the Ruhr. 

On 28 December General Eisenhower 

met with Montgomery to plot the role 

of the First Army in the offensive. Already in hand was General Bradley’s 

view that the Third Army should strike 

not at the base of the bulge but from 

Bastogne generally northeast toward St. 

Vith. As formulated after earlier conversations with General Hodges and corps 

commanders of the First Army, Montgomery’s decision was for the First Army 

to link with the Third Army at Houffalize, nine miles northeast of Bastogne, 

then broaden the attack to drive generally east on St. Vith. Noting that he was 

moving British units against the tip of 

the bulge to assist the First Army to con- 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 25 

centrate, Montgomery indicated that the 

attack was to begin within a day or two 

of the New Year. 

As the old year neared an end and the 

two American armies prepared their offensives, this was the picture around the 

periphery of the German penetration: 

From a point north of Monschau 

marking the boundary between the First 

and Ninth Armies, the sector of the V 

Corps (Maj. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow) 

extended southward as far as Elsenborn, 

thereby encompassing high ground serving as an outpost for the Hohe Venn, 

then swung west along a deep-cut creek 

to Waimes, where V Corps responsibility 

yielded to the XVIII Airborne Corps 

(Maj. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway) . The 

line continued to follow the creek 

through Malmédy to Stavelot, thence 

along the Ambleve River for a mile or 

two to Trois Ponts. At that point, the 

forward trace extended cross-country to 

the southwest along no clearly defined 

feature. Where it cut across the Lienne 

River near Bra, the sector of the VII 

Corps (Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins) 

began. The VII Corps line extended 

southwest across the Bastogne-Liège 

highway to the Ourthe River near 

Hotton. 

The Ourthe was, temporarily, the 

First Army’s right boundary. On the 

other side Field Marshal Montgomery 

had inserted under his direct command 

contingents of the 30 British Corps. Running from the Meuse south of Dinant 

generally eastward to Houffalize, the 

boundary between the 21 and 12th Army 

Groups split the bulge roughly in half. 

From the army group boundary southeast to St. Hubert, fifteen miles west of 

Bastogne, no formal line existed. Patrols 

of an American regiment hard hit early 

in the fighting, a reconnaissance squadron, and a French parachute battalion 

covered the sector, while a fresh American airborne division backed it up from 

positions along the Meuse. The sector 

was part of the responsibility of the VIII 

Corps (Maj. Gen. Troy H. Middleton), 

the corps that had been hardest hit by 

the opening blows of the counteroffensive. Serving at this point under the 

Third Army, the main body of the VIII 

Corps was located between St. Hubert 

and Bastogne. 

In the sector of the VIII Corps, at 

Bastogne itself, and southeast of the 

town, the front was in a state of flux because here General Patton had begun 

opening moves in his part of the offensive two days before the New Year. 

Charged with reaching the First Army 

at Houffalize, the VIII Corps was to pass 

to the west of Bastogne, then swing 

northeast on Houffalize. East and southeast of Bastogne, the III Corps (Maj. 

Gen. John Millikin) was to broaden to 

the east the corridor its armor had forged 

into the town, then continue northeast 

toward St. Vith. Holding the south flank 

of the bulge generally along the Sûre 

River east to the German border, the 

XII Corps (Maj. Gen. Manton S. Eddy) 

was to join the offensive later. 4 

That these opening blows by the 

Third Army collided head on with a 

major German effort to sever the corridor into Bastogne, again encircle the 

town, and take it, contributed to the 

fluid situation prevailing there. Night 

was falling on the second day of the new 

year before the Americans around Bastogne could claim that they had parried 

4 A detailed account of the first four days of the 

Third Amy’s offensive is provided in Cole, The 

Ardennes, ch. XXIV. 
26 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

what would turn out to be the stronger 

of two final German blows aimed at 

seizing the town. 

German dispositions within the bulge 

reflected the broad pattern shaped by 

early stages of the counteroffensive, plus 

the recent emphasis on taking Bastogne. 

Three infantry divisions on the south 

wing of the Fifteenth Army (General der 

Infanterie Gustav von Zangen) opposed 

the V Corps in the angle at the northern 

base of the bulge. The Sixth Panzer 

Army (Generaloberst der Waffen-SS 

Josef “Sepp” Dietrich) , comprising six 

divisions, opposed the XVIII Airborne 

Corps and the VII Corps. Opposite the 

British in the tip of the bulge and part 

of the VIII Corps were contingents of 

three divisions of the Fifth Panzer Army 

(General der Panzertruppen Hasso von 

Manteuffel) , while as a result of the efforts to capture Bastogne the bulk of 

that army-nine other divisions and a 

special armored brigade-was concentrated around Bastogne and to the southeast of the town. The remainder of the 

southern flank was the responsibility of 

the Seventh Army (General der Panzertruppen Erich Brandenberger) , whose 

five divisions and several separate units 

of battalion or Kumpfgruppe (task 

force) size extended the line to the 

border near Echternach and southward 

along the frontier as far as the Moselle. 5 

The First Army’s Attack 

As finally determined by Field Marshal Montgomery, the First Army’s attack 

was to begin on 3 January. Since the 

troops around Bastogne had stopped a 

major German effort to take that town 

5 Situation Map, OKW/WFSt Op (H) West (3). 

4 Jan 45. 

late on 2 January, the Third Army might 

be able to renew its offensive in earnest 

on the same day. 

A veteran force that had come ashore 

on the beaches of Normandy, liberated 

Paris, and penetrated the West Wall 

around Aachen, the First Army on the 

eve of resuming the offensive contained 

thirteen divisions. Included were three 

armored divisions, one of which had 

been badly mauled in a heroic defense 

of St. Vith and two of which had given 

as good as they took in later stages of the 

Ardennes fight. These two were old-style 

heavy divisions, the 2d and 3d. A loan of 

200 British Shermans had helped replace 

tank losses incurred in the December 

fighting, and all except a few files had 

been filled in infantry ranks. 

A calm-almost taciturn-infantryman, General Hodges had assumed command of the First Army in Normandy 

when General Bradley had moved up to 

army group. Shaken in the early days of 

the counteroffensive by what had happened to his troops, Hodges had come 

back strong in a manner that drew praise 

from his British superior, Montgomery. 

Reflecting both Bradley’s interest and his 

own, Hodges’ staff was heavy on infantrymen, including the chief of staff, Maj. 

Gen. William G. Kean. Two of the three 

corps commanders then under the army, 

Generals Gerow and Collins, had long 

been members of the First Army’s team, 

and both enjoyed a close rapport with 

Hodges. 

The burden of the First Army’s attack 

was to fall on General Collins’s VII 

Corps, which Montgomery had been 

carefully hoarding since early in the 

counteroffensive for just such a role. 

General Hodges directed this corps to advance generally southeast between the 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 27 

Ourthe and Lienne Rivers to seize forward slopes of the high marshland of 

the Plateau des Tailles, which command 

the town of Houffalize. General Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne Corps meanwhile 

was to advance its right flank to conform 

with progress of the VII Corps while 

Gerow’s V Corps held in place. Parts of 

two British divisions were to push in the 

bulge from the west, eventually to be 

pinched out short of Houffalize by the 

converging First and Third Armies. 6 

Heavily reinforced, the VII Corps contained almost a hundred thousand men, 

including the two armored divisions, 

three infantry divisions, and twelve field 

artillery battalions in addition to divisional artillery. Each infantry division 

had the normal attachments of a medium tank battalion and a tank destroyer 

bat tal ion. 

Two of the infantry divisions, the 75th 

and 84th, held a 14-mile corps front extending from the vicinity of Bra southwestward to the Ourthe near Hotton. In 

an attempt to trap those German troops 

still in the tip of the bulge, General Collins planned to open the attack with his 

two powerful armored divisions in hope 

of a swift penetration across the high 

marshland to his objective twelve miles 

to the southeast. As the armor passed 

through the infantry line, the 84th Division was to follow the 2d Armored 

Division to mop up while the 83d Infantry Division did the same for the 3d 

Armored. The 75th Division was to pass 

into corps reserve.’ 

The estimate of the enemy situation 

6 FUSA Ltr of Instrs, 1 Jan 45, FUSA Ltrs of Instrs file, Jan 45; First Army Rpt of Opns, 1 Aug 

44–22 Feb 45, pp. 126–27. 

7 VII Corps FO 14, 2 Jan 45, VII Corps FO file, 

Jan 45. 

GENERAL HODGES 

by the VII Corps G–2, Col. Leslie D. 

Carter, was basically correct. First concern of the Germans, Colonel Carter 

believed, was Bastogne. Until the south 

flank could be stabilized there, the Germans to the west were liable to entrapment. A number of divisions that earlier 

had fought the VII Corps had moved 

south to help at Bastogne, their departure leaving Sixth Panzer Army a 

blunted residue of what had once been 

the steel skewer of the counteroffensive. 

Of the panzer army’s six remaining divisions, three under the II SS Panzer 

Corps (General der Waffen-SS Willi 

Bittrich) confronted the VII Corps: the 

12th Volks Grenadier Division opposite 

the left wing of the corps, the 560th 

Volks Grenadier Division in the center, 

and the 2d SS Panzer Division opposite 

the right wing. First-line German units, 
28 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

these divisions had taken sizable losses 

during the counteroffensive: strengths 

varied from 2,500 men in the 560th to 

6,000 in the panzer division. Preoccupation with the Bastogne sector and with 

the new counteroffensive (NORDWIND) in Alsace would restrict severely, Colonel Carter noted, the reserves 

that might oppose the American attack. 8 

What Colonel Carter could not know 

was that on the very eve of the First 

Army's attacks, German field commanders were conceding defeat, not only in 

terms of the broad objectives of the 

counteroffensive, which as early as 

Christmas Eve they had come to accept, 

but also of the limited objective of taking 

Bastogne. The failure to sever the 

American corridor to Bastogne had convinced the commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, General von Manteuffel, that 

the time had come to abandon all 

thought of continuing the offensive in 

the Ardennes. Lest the troops farthest 

west be trapped, Manteuffel appealed 

late on 2 January to Field Marshal 

Model, commander of Army Group B, 

for permission to pull back to a line anchored on Houffalize. 

Although Model apparently agreed 

professionally with Manteuffel, he was 

powerless to act because of Hitler's longprofessed decree that no commander give 

up ground voluntarily unless Hitler himself endorsed the move in advance, something that seldom happened. Since the 

unsuccessful attempt on his life the preceding July, the Fuehrer had come to 

accept any indication of withdrawal as 

8 VII Corps Annex 2 to FO 14 and Incl 1, VII 

Corps FO file, Jan 45; MS # A-924, Operation of 

Sixth Panzer Army, 1944–45 (Generalmajor der 

Waffen-SS Fritz Kraemer, CofS, Sixth Panzer 

Army). 

evidence of defeatism, even treason. 

Model and even the Commander in 

Chief West, Field Marshal von Rundstedt, had to live with the fiction that 

nobody ever withdrew. 

Even though Hitler himself the next 

day, 3 January, would issue his qualified 

admission of failure under the original 

concept in the Ardennes, he had arrived 

by this time at definite ideas of how the 

salient still might be turned to German 

advantage, and withdrawal had no part 

in the plan. Taking Bastogne did. Despite the failure of the latest attempt, 

Model and his staff at Army Group B 

were compelled to continue planning for 

yet another attack on Bastogne, this to 

begin on 4 January. 9 

As the hour for American attack 

neared, the weather augury was anything 

but encouraging. It was bitterly cold. 

The ground was frozen and covered with 

snow. Roads were icy. A low, foglike 

overcast so restricted visibility that 

planned support from fighter-bombers of 

the IX Tactical Air Command (Maj. 

Gen. Elwood R. Quesada) was hardly to 

be assured. Yet since hope of improvement in the weather was dim, the attack 

was to proceed. Top commanders in the 

First Army had for some time been 

chafing to shift to the offensive lest the 

Third Army be called upon to do it all, 

and delay would give the Germans in the 

tip of the bulge that much more time 

to escape. 10 

9 German material is from Cole, The Ardennes, 

pp. 647–48. See also MS # A-858, The Course of 

Events of the German Offensive in the Ardennes, 

16 Dec 1944–14 Jan 1945 (Maj. Percy E. Schramm, 

keeper of the OKW/WFSt War Diary). 

10 VII Corps AAR, Jan 45; Ltr, Bradley to 

Hodges, 26 Dec 44, 12th AGp 371.3, Military Objectives, vol. IV; Diary of Maj. William C. Sylvan, 

aide-de-camp to Gen Hodges (hereafter cited as 

Sylvan Diary), entry of 2 Jan 45, copy in OCMH. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 29 

Stretching all the way across the zone 

of attack of the VII Corps, the high 

marshes of the Plateau des Tailles added 

a third dimension to the obstacles of 

woods and deep-cut streambeds that are 

common in the Ardennes, thus making 

the roadnet the number one tactical objective. Only one major road, the LiègeHouffalize-Bastogne highway, led directly to any part of the objective. A web 

of secondary roads connecting the villages in the region would have to serve 

as main avenues of advance despite 

numerous bridges, defiles, and hairpin 

turns. 

Preoccupation with roads was apparent from the first objectives assigned the 

armored divisions. Both were to aim at 

high ground commanding roads leading 

approximately four miles to the southeast to the La Roche-Salmchâteau highway, a lateral route from which a number 

of local roads in addition to the LiègeBastogne highway provide access to the 

forward slopes of the Plateau des Tailles. 

On the left the 3d Armored Division 

(Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose) would have 

only one road at the start, while on the 

right the 2d Armored Division (Maj. 

Gen. Ernest N. Harmon) could employ 

both the main highway leading to Houffalize and a secondary route to the 

southwest. Cutting the lateral La RocheSalmchâteau highway would eliminate 

one of only two escape routes left in this 

sector to the Germans still standing to 

the west. Seizing the high ground overlooking Houffalize would eliminate the 

other. 11 

Hardly had the van of the armor 

passed through the infantry line early on 

11 Unless otherwise noted, the tactical story is 

based on the field orders, after action reports, and 

journals of the VII Corps and subordinate units. 

GENERAL COLLINS 

3 January when the hostile weather and 

terrain began to have effect. So foggy was 

the atmosphere that not a single tactical 

plane could support the attack at any 

time during the day. Observation by artillery planes was possible for no more 

than an hour. It was a pattern that would 

undergo little change for the next fortnight. On only one day in two weeks 

would visibility allow tactical aircraft to 

operate all day; on only two other days 

would fighter-bombers be able to take to 

the air at all. 

Much of the time infantry and armor 

advanced through snow flurries interspersed with light rain on a few occasions 

when temperatures rose above freezing. 

During late afternoon and evening of 7 

January, a heavy snowfall added several 

inches to the cover already on the 

ground. Drifts piled in some places to a 

depth of three to four feet. 

On the first day, the enemy from his 
30 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

GENERAL VON MANTEUFFEL 

outposts offered relatively light resistance, though antitank minefields hidden 

by the snow caused several delays and in 

late afternoon a force of infantry supported by from six to ten tanks of the 2d 

SS Panzer Division counterattacked forward units on the right wing. On the 

next and succeeding days, resistance 

stiffened. Artillery, antitank, mortar, and 

Nebelwerfer fire increased. Battalion-size 

counterattacks supported by a few tanks 

or self-propelled guns increased too, 

though seldom did they accomplish more 

than to delay local advances for a few 

hours. 

The terrain and the weather were the 

big obstacles. Whenever the tanks found 

fairly level terrain, they could move 

cross-country over the frozen ground 

with some facility, but more often than 

not the ground was hilly, wooded, or 

marshy, confining the tanks to the icy 

roads. In advancing up a steep hill on 5 

January, eight tanks of a task force of 

the 2d Armored Division stalled in a row 

on the ice. Two antitank guns of the 84th, 

Division and their prime movers skidded, 

jackknifed, collided, and effectively 

blocked a road for several hours. Two 

trucks towing 105-mm. howitzers skidded 

and plunged off a cliff. 

FIELD MARSHAL MODEL 

Deliberate roadblocks consisting of 

felled trees with antitank mines embedded on the approaches usually could 

be eliminated only by dismounted infantry making slow, sometimes costly 

flanking moves through adjacent woods. 

In other cases, blown bridges blocked the 

routes. Sometimes fords or bypasses to 

other roads were available, but usually 

infantrymen had to wade an icy stream 

and create a small bridgehead while 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 31 

tanks awaited construction of a new 

bridge. Because bridge sites seldom could 

be cleared immediately of enemy fire, 

engineers did most of their work after 

darkness blinded German gunners. 

Advances on the first day against the 

enemy’s outposts averaged about two 

miles, but progress slowed on succeeding 

days. Facing the bulk of the German 

armor in this sector, the 2d Armored 

Division on the right encountered particularly stubborn German stands on 

both its routes of advance. When the 

neighboring 3d Armored on the third 

day, 6 January, cut the lateral La RocheSalmchâteau highway, General Collins 

sent part of the division westward to seize 

the intersection with the main highway 

to Houffalize in an effort to loosen the 

opposition in front of the other division. 

It was late the next day before the 

Americans gained the intersection, which 

they knew as Parker’s Crossroads after 

the commander of a task force that had 

made an epic stand there during the 

winter counteroffensive. This did the 

job expected: late on the same day, the 

7th, a task force of the 2d Armored Division also cut the La Roche-Salmchâteau road. 

Artillery was hamstrung throughout 

by poor observation resulting from the 

weather, the woods, and the broken 

ground. Since weather denied air support 

on the opening day, General Collins canceled a preliminary artillery bombardment as well in hope of gaining some 

advantage from surprise. Artillery subsequently averaged about 19,000 rounds 

a day. Each armored division expended 

about 7,000 rounds daily, corps guns 

fired another 3,500 rounds, and infantry 

divisional artillery and British pieces 

west of the Ourthe provided additional 

support. 

While the role of the infantry divisions 

was nominally supporting, it turned out 

to be more than that. In the main the 

83d and 84th Divisions were to mop up 

bypassed resistance, but when the first 

shock of the armor failed to produce a 

penetration, the role of the infantry increased. Both divisions from the first 

contributed a regiment each for attachment to the armor, and before the fighting was over both would incur appreciably greater casualties than either of the 

armored divisions. 

For all the grudging nature of the 

defense, the enemy produced few surprises. Through the first week, full responsibility for defense lay with the 

three units of the Sixth Panzer Army 

previously identified, the 2d SS Panzer 

and 12th and 560th Volks Grenadier 

Divisions. At times, the panzer division 

loaned some of its tanks to neighboring 

infantry units, as on 5 January when four 

tanks reinforced a battalion of the 12th 

Volks Grenadier Division in an effort to 

retake a hill from the 3d Armored Division. The only outside help came from 

assorted engineer and low-grade replacement battalions. By the end of the week 

all three German divisions were reduced 

on occasion to using artillerymen and 

other supporting troops as infantry. 

Near the end of the first week, on 8 

January, Hitler at last authorized a withdrawal, not all the way back to a line 

anchored on Houffalize as General von 

Manteuffel had urged but only out of 

the extreme tip of the bulge to a line 

anchored on a great eastward loop of the 

Ourthe River some five miles west of 

Houffalize. Because of the point at 

which Hitler drew the withdrawal line, 
32 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

only a few troops of the Sixth Panzer 

Army, those on the extreme west wing 

near La Roche, were involved. Those 

authorized to withdraw were mainly contingents of the Fifth Panzer Army facing 

the British and the U.S. VIII Corps west 

of Bastogne. 

While the units of the Sixth Panzer 

Army were to continue to hold, Dietrich’s headquarters was to pull out, 

gradually relinquishing control to the 

Fifth Panzer Army. Thereupon, the two 

SS panzer corps headquarters and four 

SS panzer divisions that originally had 

belonged to the Sixth Panzer Army were 

to join Dietrich’s headquarters in the 

rear near St. Vith, there to form a reserve to guard against attacks near the 

base of the bulge. This was, in effect, 

tacit admission–Hitler’s first–that the 

Ardennes counteroffensive had failed 

utterly. 12 

Reflecting the withdrawal, resistance 

on the right wing of the VII Corps 

gradually slackened. Patrols on the 10th 

entered La Roche, while British troops 

on the opposite bank of the Ourthe reported no contact with the enemy. Although the British re-established contact 

on subsequent days, they met only light 

covering detachments and, in keeping 

with Montgomery’s desire to avoid major 

British commitment, pressed their advance only enough to spare the Americans flanking fire from Germans west of 

the Ourthe. 

The fight was as dogged as ever on the 

other wing, where in deference to marshy 

ground and an impoverished roadnet 

leading to the final objectives on the 

southeastern slopes of the Plateau des 

12 Magna E. Bauer, The German Withdrawal 

From the Ardennes, prepared to complement this 

volume, annotated copy in OCMH. 

Tailles, the 83d Division (Maj. Gen. 

Robert C. Macon) on 9 January assumed 

the assault role on the left wing of the 

VII Corps. It took the infantry two days 

to break into and clear a village south of 

the La Roche-Salmchateau highway and 

another day to beat off counterattacks. 

Not until forcibly rooted out would the 

Germans budge from any position. 

At the same time, the 82d Airborne 

Division (Maj. Gen. James M. Gavin) 

of General Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne 

Corps had the job of protecting the left 

flank of the VII Corps. To do this, the 

airborne division was to press forward 

to the line of the Salm River, which like 

the Lienne and the Ourthe has its source 

in the Plateau des Tailles. 13 

Assisted by an attached separate regiment, the 517th Parachute Infantry, the 

airborne division jumped off along with 

the VII Corps on 3 January. Like the 

armored divisions, the paratroopers and 

glidermen met resistance immediately 

from the weather, the terrain, and, to a 

lesser extent, the enemy. The roadnet 

was even more restricted than in front 

of the VII Corps, and a thick forest 

stretched across the center of the division’s zone. 

Possibly because the enemy relied too 

heavily on the forest as an obstacle, the 

82d’s 505th Parachute Infantry found 

relatively few defenders. In three days 

the paratroopers advanced four miles to 

reach the far edge of the forest overlooking the valley of the Salm. 

Close alongside the boundary with the 

VII Corps, the 517th Parachute Infantry 

made only limited progress until it 

turned abruptly on 7 January to take the 

enemy in flank. The next day the para12 The tactical story is from official records of the 

XVIII Airborne Corps and subordinate units. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 33 

troopers drove all Germans before them 

east of the Salm and sent patrols to 

range as far as two miles beyond the 

river. On the 9th they established a small 

bridgehead across the Salm to be used as 

a stepping stone when the offensive 

turned in the direction of St. Vith. 

Another division of the XVIII Airborne Corps, the 30th (Maj. Gen. Leland 

S. Hobbs) did much the same thing. 

On 6 January the division began limited 

objective attacks with an attached regiment, the 28th Division’s 112th Infantry, 

to forge a bridgehead two miles deep 

in an angle formed by the joining of the 

Salm and Ambleve Rivers. 

Resistance in the zone of the VII Corps 

continued stiffest opposite the left wing 

along a land bridge between headwaters 

of the Salm and the Ourthe. There the 

Germans occupied a forest mass in 

strength with contingents of the 9th SS 

Panzer Division moving in to support a 

faltering 12th Volks Grenadier Division. 

The infantry of the 83d Division still was 

finding the going slow when the 3d 

Armored Division’s Reconnaissance Battalion discovered a network of back roads 

and trails less staunchly defended. 

The reconnaissance troops having 

shown the way, the division commander, 

General Rose, early an 13 January sent 

a combat command to trace the route, 

break out of the woods, and cut the 

lateral highway that follows the forward 

slopes of the Plateau des Tailles en route 

from Houffalize toward St. Vith. Although the Germans still made a fight of 

it for towns along the highway, the cut 

by the armor effectively blocked this last 

major route of escape for German troops 

in the vicinity of Houffalize. 

As night fell on the 13th, men of the 

VII Corps could see to the south lightninglike flashes of artillery pieces supporting the Third Army. Patrols 

prepared to probe in that direction the 

next day, eager to end the separation the 

counteroffensive had imposed between 

the First and Third Armies. 

Getting this far had cost the VII Corps 

almost 5,000 casualties, a high but hardly 

alarming figure in view of the harsh 

weather and terrain. Although fighting 

a deliberate withdrawal action with determination and skill, the Germans had 

lost several hundred more than that in 

prisoners alone. 

A Grim Struggle Around Bastogne 

Having collided head on with another 

German effort to capture Bastogne, the 

Third Army’s four-day-old offensive had 

reached, on the eve of the First Army’s 

attack, positions that mirrored a combination of American and German intentions. Making a main effort against the 

corridor southeast of Bastogne, Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army with some help 

from the right wing of Brandenberger’s 

Seventh Army had managed to retain or 

establish positions that formed a salient 

four miles wide and four miles deep into 

lines of the Third Army’s III Corps. 

That the salient was no deeper represented a defensive triumph for the III 

Corps but at the same time marked a failure thus far of this phase of General 

Patton’s offensive. East and north of 

Bastogne, a line roughly three miles from 

the town that stalwart soldiers of the 

101st Airborne Division and assorted 

lesser units had established and held 

through the days of encirclement remained intact. Against a German attack 

west and southwest of Bastogne, troops 

of the VIII Corps had managed not only 
34 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

to contain the thrust but also to make 

gains of their own, so that by nightfall of 

2 January the front line ran generally 

west from Bastogne toward St. Hubert. 14 

As the Third Army prepared to continue its offensive, the original plan remained unchanged. While the III Corps 

advanced generally northeast, in the 

process eliminating the salient southeast 

of Bastogne, the VIII Corps was to pivot 

on the town and swing northeast to establish contact with the First Army’s VII 

Corps at Houffalize. 

Intending to return to the offensive on 

4 January, the Germans proposed a 

change in their approach. Although 

Rundstedt at OB WEST ordered another attempt to sever the corridor into 

Bastogne, Field Marshal Model at Army 

Group B pleaded that the Americans had 

become so strong around the salient 

southeast of the town and had confined 

it so tightly that no additional German 

units could be inserted. Model suggested 

instead an attack to push in the northern 

and northeastern periphery of the Bastogne defense. There the ground was 

more suited to tank warfare and General 

von Manteuffel might employ the I SS 

Panzer Corps (Generalleutnant der 

Waffen-SS Hermann Priess) with the 9th 

and 12th SS Panzer Divisions and the 

Fuehrer Grenadier Brigade, the last an 

elite unit originally drawn from Hitler’s 

household guard, consisting of a battalion each of tanks, panzer grenadiers, 

and foot soldiers. 15 

Possibly because Model was one of the 

Fuehrer’s more faithful disciples among 

top commanders, Hitler listened to this 

change. What mattered to the Fuehrer 

was not how Bastogne was taken but that 

14 See Cole, The Ardennes, ch. XXIV and Map X. 

15 MS # A-858 (Schramm). 

it be taken. As revealed on 3 January 

when he acknowledged that the counteroffensive would not gain Antwerp or 

even the Meuse, Hitler required Bastogne as a vital anchor for holding the 

bulge. Bastogne’s nexus of roads was 

essential for securing the southern flank 

and thus for helping the Sixth Panzer 

Army to resist the American offensive 

from the north that had begun that day. 

In creating the bulge in the Ardennes, 

Hitler reasoned, he had forced General 

Eisenhower to employ almost all his resources. The desperate commitment of 

elite airborne divisions to brutal defensive battles was in Hitler’s mind proof 

enough of that. By holding the bulge, 

the Germans might keep the Allies 

widely stretched while pulling out some 

of their own units to attack at weak 

points along the extended Western Front 

and thereby prevent the Allies from concentrating for a major drive. Operation 

NORDWIND in Alsace, Hitler rationalized, was the first of these intended 

strikes; yet only with Bastogne in hand 

was the new stratagem practical in the 

long run. 16 

As finally determined, the main effort 

of the new attack on Bastogne by the I 

SS Panzer Corps was to be made astride 

the Houffalize highway. Since some units 

would arrive too late to attack early on 

the 4th, only the 9th Panzer and 26th 

Volks Grenadier Divisions west of the 

highway were to attack at first, this in 

midmorning, while the 12th SS Panzer 

Division and a unit that only recently 

had been brought into the Ardennes 

from the Aachen sector, the 340th Volks 

Grenadier Division, attacked at noon 

along the east side of the highway. The 

16 Ibid. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 35 

Fuehrer Grenadier Brigade was to serve 

as a reserve. The XLVII Panzer Corps 

(General der Panzertruppen Heinrich 

Freiherr von Luettwitz) west of Bastogne 

and the divisions in the salient southeast 

of the town were to hold in place, counterattacking in strength where necessary 

to maintain their positions or assist the 

main attack. 17 

Having fought through early stages of 

the counteroffensive as part of the Sixth 

Panzer Army, all divisions of General 

Priess’s I SS Panzer Corps except the 

340th had taken heavy losses. Between 

them the two SS panzer divisions had 55 

tanks, only one more than normally supported every U.S. infantry division. Although one of the so-called Volks Artillery Corps that Hitler had created 

especially for the counteroffensive was 

to be moved in to strengthen existing 

artillery, a shortage of gasoline made it 

problematical when this force and even 

some of the subordinate units of the 

panzer and volks grenadier divisions 

would arrive. 

Top commanders hid their concern, 

but neither Manteuffel, who already had 

recommended stopping all attacks in the 

Ardennes, nor his superior, Model, held 

out much hope for the new attack. This 

state of mind was clearly indicated when 

they released without protest to OB 

WEST for transfer to Alsace the corps 

headquarters that had been controlling 

the divisions in the salient southeast of 

Bastogne. If the superior forces the Germans previously had employed at Bastogne against limited American strength 

17 MS # B-779, The Z SS Panzer Corps During 

the Ardennes Offensive, 15 December 1944–25 January 1945 (Col Rudolf Lehmann, CofS); MS # A939, The Assignment of the XLVII Panzer Corps 

in the Ardennes, 1944–45 (General der Panzertruppen Heinrich von Luettwitz). 

had failed, what hope with makeshift 

forces now that the Americans had 

sharply increased their commitment? 

For renewing the Third Army’s offensive around Bastogne, General Patton 

had eight divisions. East and southeast 

of the town, Millikin’s III Corps had 

three veteran units, the 6th Armored and 

26th and 35th Infantry Divisions. Holding part of Bastogne’s old perimeter defense to north and northwest, the 101st 

Airborne Division with an attached combat command of the 10th Armored Division was the only readily available 

experienced force in Middleton’s VIII 

Corps. Middleton had in addition the 

17th Airborne Division and two newcomers to the front, the 11th Armored 

and 87th Divisions, which General Bradley had specifically directed to be employed at Bastogne lest Patton stint the 

offensive there in favor of his cherished 

drive near the base of the bulge. 19 In the 

four days of fighting preceding renewal 

of the offensive on 3 January, the 87th 

and the armor had taken substantial 

losses, leaving the armored division 

“badly disorganized” after loss of a third 

of its tanks. 20 To enable the armor to 

catch its breath, the new airborne division was to enter the line on 3 January. 

Meanwhile, an eighth division, the veteran 4th Armored, had been pulled into 

18 MSS # B–779 (Lehmann); # B–151a, Fifth 

Panzer Army, Ardennes Offensive (General der 

Panzertruppen Hasso von Manteuffel); # A-940, 

XLVII Panzer Corps in the Ardennes Offensive 

(General der Panzertruppen Heinrich von Luettwitz). See also Charles von Luttichau, Key Dates 

During the Ardennes Offensive 1944, Part II, MS 

prepared to complement this volume, copy in 

OCMH. 

19 On this point, see Cole, The Ardennes, pp. 

612–13. 

20 Army Commander’s Notes on the Bastogne 

Operation, TUSA AAR, 1 Aug 44–8 May 45. 
36 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

reserve after its tank strength had fallen 

dangerously low as a result of heavy 

fighting through much of December. 

The remaining six of a total of fourteen divisions in the Third Army were 

split equally between Eddy’s XII Corps 

along the generally quiescent line of the 

Sûre River running eastward to the German frontier and Maj. Gen. Walton H. 

Walker’s XX Corps. The latter had not 

been drawn into the Ardennes fight and 

continued to hold positions in Lorraine. 21 

The Third Army and its veteran commander, George Patton, had entered the 

campaign in France in early August to 

exploit the breakout from Normandy 

engineered by Hodges’ First Army. 

While one corps turned westward against 

the ports of Brittany, the bulk of the 

army had driven swiftly eastward across 

northern France until a gasoline drought 

forced a halt at the border of Lorraine. 

Through the fall Patton’s troops had 

fought doggedly across water-logged terrain to gain a small foothold within the 

West Wall at Saarlautern just as the 

Ardennes counteroffensive began. While 

the XX Corps continued to hold that 

position, Patton had turned the rest of 

his army toward Bastogne. 

Despite General Patton’s affinity €or 

armor, most of his staff and his corps 

commanders were infantrymen, including Eddy of the XII Corps, an old-timer 

with the Third Army; Walker of the XX 

Corps, another old-timer; and Middleton 

of the VIII Corps, whose command had 

made the sweep into Brittany before 

joining the First Army for a rendezvous 

with fate in the Ardennes and then a 

21 The depleted 28th Division and a combat command of the 9th Armored Division were awaiting 

transfer from the Third Army. 

return to the Third Army. Only Patton’s 

chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Hobart R. Gay, 

and General Millikin of the III Corps, 

a relative newcomer to the Third Army, 

had been commissioned as cavalrymen. 

Bitterly cold, stung by biting winds 

and driving snow, American troops on 

the frozen ground around Bastogne saw 

little change on 3 January in a pattern 

too long familiar. Many of the German 

units had fought here since before Christmas, such respected names as the 3d and 

15th Panzer Grenadier Divisions, the 5th 

Parachute Division, the 1st SS Panzer 

Division, and the Panzer Lehr Division, 

the last so called because it originally bad 

been a training unit. The place names 

too, after more than a fortnight of grim 

combat, were accustomed: Marvie, 

Wardin, Mageret, Longvilly, Oubourcy, 

Noville, Longchamps. So was the tactic 

of almost every attack followed by an immediate German riposte, intense shelling 

preceding a seemingly inevitable tanksupported counterattack. 22 

Early on the 3d the Germans surrounded a company of the 87th Division 

(Brig. Gen. John M. Lentz) on the west 

flank of the VIII Corps, though a relief 

column broke through before the day 

was out. In the afternoon tanks and infantry hit the 101st Airborne Division 

(Maj. Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor) at Longchamps and south of Noville, achieving 

some penetration at both places before 

the paratroopers rallied to re-establish 

their lines. Only the 6th Armored Division (Maj. Gen. Robert W. Grow) on 

the left wing of the III Corps generally 

east of Bastogne made any appreciable 

gain, an advance of from one to two 

23 This account is from official unit records. German material is from manuscripts previously cited. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 37 

WIND-SWEPT SNOW IN THE ARDENNES 

miles that took the battered villages of 

Oubourcy, Mageret, and Wardin. 

The renewed German attempt to seize 

Bastogne began before dawn on the 4th 

when a regiment of the 15th Panzer 

Grenadier Division attacked Longchamps in a token assist by Leuttwitz’s 

XLVII Panzer Corps to a main assault 

that began a few hours later close by the 

road from Houffalize. Combat raged in 

this sector all morning, but at noon 

counterattacking paratroopers still maintained their hold on Longchamps, and 

intense artillery fire delivered in open, 

snow-covered fields had driven back 

tanks and assault guns of the 9th SS 

Panzer Division. The airborne troops 

and their armored support claimed to 

have destroyed during the day thirty-four 

German tanks. 

East of the Houffalize highway and 

east of Bastogne, the 12th SS Panzer 

and 340th Volks Grenadier Divisions 

achieved greater success in the main 

German assault. Tank against tank, the 

German armor forced the 6th Armored 

Division to relinquish all three villages 

taken the day before, but once the 

American tanks had pulled back to high 

ground west of the villages the Germans 
38 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

could make no more headway. Here and 

elsewhere artillery pieces of the III and 

VIII Corps shared their power in 

moments of crisis to deal telling blows 

whenever the Germans massed and 

moved into the open. 

From the moment the 6th Armored 

Division halted the panzers, the fighting 

around Bastogne again reverted to pattern. In combat as bitter as any during 

the counteroffensive, attack followed 

counterattack on both sides until it was 

scarcely possible to distinguish which was 

which. 

Handicapped by piecemeal commitment of tardily arriving subordinate 

units, the I SS Panzer Corps could do 

little more than maintain the minor 

gains achieved against American armor 

on the 4th. West of Bastogne the XLVII 

Panzer Corps reacted so strongly to 

American efforts to renew the attack on 

the 4th with the inexperienced 17th Airborne Division (Maj. Gen. William M. 

Miley) that the division had to spend 

the next two days reorganizing and adjusting its positions. (“God, how green 

we are,” said one regimental commander, 

“but we are learning fast and the next 

time we will beat them.”) 23 

Nor could the infantry divisions of 

General Millikin’s III Corps make any 

headway against the salient southeast of 

Bastogne. Late on the 5th Maj. Gen. 

23 Third Army Diary kept by Gen Gay, entry of 

5 Jan 45, quoting Col James R. Pierce, 194th Glider 

Infantry. As two German tanks counterattacked a 

company of the 513th Parachute Infantry on 4 

January, Staff Sgt. Isadore S. Jachman seized a 

bazooka from a fallen comrade, ran to a position 

close to the tanks, and opened fire. He damaged 

one and prompted both to retire but himself died 

of wounds incurred in the fight. A German-born 

U.S. citizen, Sergeant Jachman was awarded the 

Medal of Honor posthumously. 

Paul W. Baade reluctantly asked and 

received permission to call off the attack 

in the southern part of his 35th Division’s front; such a battle of attrition 

had it become that his men could hope to 

do no more for the moment than hold 

their own. 

As was the case with the First Army, 

the Third Army could count on little 

help from its supporting aircraft of the 

XIX Tactical Air Command (Brig. Gen. 

Otto P. Weyland). So dismal was the 

weather that only briefly on one day, 5 

January, were planes able to operate. In 

one way this was a blessing, since the 

weather also cut short a resurgence that 

had begun around Bastogne a few days 

earlier by a long-dormant Luftwaffe. 

For all the success in blunting the 

German thrust on the 4th, few Americans viewed the situation with any complacency. Visiting the front late on the 

4th during a German artillery bombardment, the army commander, General 

Patton, noted to himself glumly, “We 

can still lose this war.” 24 The commander of the VIII Corps, General Middleton, kept close personal rein on his 

division commanders and alerted the depleted 4th Armored and the 11th 

Armored Divisions to be prepared to 

move swiftly to the aid of either or both 

of the airborne divisions. 

Unknown to the American command, 

any crisis engendered by the German 

attack had passed by nightfall of 5 January. Late on that day Field Marshal 

Model tacitly admitted failure at Bastogne by ordering General von Manteuffel to release the 9th SS Panzer Division 

to go to the aid of the Sixth Panzer Army 

24 George S. Patton, Jr., War As I Knew It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1947), p. 213. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 39 

in its hour of trial against the American 

offensive from the north. The next day 

Manteuffel took it upon himself to order 

the 12th Panzer Division to pull out of 

the line the night of the 7th to constitute 

a reserve. 

Sensing as early as the 6th that the 

Germans soon might begin to withdraw, 

General Patton for all his concern about 

the bitterness of the fight deplored the 

possibility. Only the day before he had 

acquiesced in the artful persuasion of 

General Bradley to move a newly available division from the XX Corps to the 

salient southeast of Bastogne rather than 

to use it in a strike against the base of 

the bulge. Still hoping to mount an 

attack against the base, Patton worried 

now lest the Germans make good their 

escape before he could act. 25 

Despite the exodus of German armor, 

American troops found no evidence on 

7 and 8 January of German intent to 

withdraw. Although the U.S. divisions 

around the salient postponed further 

attacks to await arrival of the new division, patrols found the enemy as full 

of fight as ever. The 17th Airborne and 

87th Divisions meanwhile renewed their 

attacks on both days with the usual violent German reaction. 

For the 87th, trying to break into the 

crossroads settlement of Tillet, midway 

between Bastogne and St. Hubert, the 

fighting proved bitterly frustrating as 

every attempt met sharp riposte from the 

Fuehrer Begleit Brigade, another elite 

unit heavy in armor that also had been 

25 Ibid.; Army Commander’s Notes on the Bastogne Operation. 

created from Hitler’s household guard. 26 

Although a regiment of the 17th Airborne Division entered Flamierge along 

a major highway leading northwest from 

Bastogne, the 3d Panzer Grenadier Division counterattacked late on the 7th 

and again early on the 8th, trapping the 

bulk of a battalion in the town. Most of 

the able-bodied paratroopers eventually 

escaped by infiltrating to the rear, but 

they had to leave their wounded behind. 

As divisions of the III Corps rejoined 

the offensive on the 9th, any evidence of 

German withdrawal still was hard to 

come by, despite Hitler’s approval on the 

8th for troops in the tip of the bulge to 

pull back. Hitler’s authorization affected 

only units west of Bastogne in any case, 

since the new line he ordered to be held 

ran generally northwest from Longchamps toward the eastward bend of the 

Ourthe. Even the affected units made no 

precipitate exodus but instead executed 

the kind of gradual, grudging withdrawal 

that nobody did better than the Germans 

with their penchant for counterattack 

whenever and wherever a position approached the untenable. 

Not until the third day of the renewed 

offensive, 11 January, did any firm indications of withdrawal develop. On the 

west wing of the VIII Corps, the 87th 

Division after finally having entered 

Tillet the night before found the Germans pulling back, abandoning St. Hubert and several smaller towns but 

leaving behind rear guards, roadblocks, 

26 Near Tillet, Staff Sgt. Curtis F. Shoup of the 

87th Division’s 346th Infantry charged head on 

against a German machine gun, firing his automatic rifle as he went. Although German fire cut 

him down, he mustered strength as he died to hurl 

a hand grenade that knocked out the enemy gun. 

He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. 
40 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

and deadly quilts of mines. At the same 

time, southeast of Bastogne, men of the 

III Corps saw their enemy also beginning 

to give ground in the face of an enveloping movement against his salient that 

imposed a forced rather than intentional 

retreat. 

On 9 January a newly arrived but 

veteran 90th Infantry Division (Maj. 

Gen. James A. Van Fleet) attacked to the 

northeast through positions of the 26th 

Division (Maj. Gen. Willard S. Paul) 

along the southeastern fringe of the German salient, while the 6th Armored Division, later reinforced by a regiment of 

the 35th Division, tried a converging 

attack from the northwest. The axis of 

advance for both drives was a ridge road 

running southeast from Bastogne that 

served as a watershed for the little Wiltz 

River along the base of the salient. 

Having arrived under a heavy cloak 

of secrecy, the 90th Division on the first 

day took the enemy's 5th Parachute Division by surprise. Even though a snowstorm denied air support and turned 

roads into slick chutes, the attack on the 

9th carried just over a mile and the next 

day reached high ground commanding 

the only road leading out of the salient. 

The Germans, despite a stalwart stand 

denying progress in the converging attack from the northwest, had no choice 

but to abandon the salient. 

They began to retire the night of the 

10th. On the 11th and again on the 12th, 

as infantrymen of the 90th Division 

shook hands with colleagues of the 35th 

Division on the other side of the salient, 

the Americans took over a thousand 

prisoners. Pulling back to the Wiltz 

River where the cuts, fills, and tunnels 

of a railroad aided the defense along a 

natural extension of the line of the Sûre 

River, the survivors of the salient joined 

a hastily committed reserve, the Fuehrer 

Grenadier Brigade, to hold fast. 27 From 

the American viewpoint, this mattered 

little, since emphasis shifted at this point 

to the left wing of the III Corps where 

Millikin's troops were to aid the drive 

of the VIII Corps toward a linkup with 

the First Army at Houffalize. 28 

Despite German withdrawal on the extreme west wing of the VIII Corps, the 

going was slow. Disorganized in the bitter give-and-take west of Bastogne to the 

extent that the corps commander had 

asked Patton to delay renewed attack, the 

17th Airborne and 87th Divisions pushed 

forward with little verve. Yet their snaillike pace made small difference in the 

end, because the veteran 101st Airborne 

Division could make only measured 

progress astride the road to Houffalize, 

where advance had to be swift if any 

Germans were to be trapped farther west. 

A relatively fresh 340th Volks Grenadier 

Division, plus counterattacking contingents of the 3d Panzer Grenadier and 

12th SS Panzer Divisions, insured not 

only firm but often dogged resistance. 

The most encouraging progress on the 

direct route toward Houffalize appeared 

about to develop on 10 January east of 

the main highway as General Middleton 

inserted a combat command of the 4th 

27 MS # A-876, Ardennes Offensive of Seventh 

Army, 16 December 1944–25 January 1945 (General der Panzertruppen Erich Brandenberger). 

28 In an attack in this sector on 11 January, a 

squad leader in the 6th Armored Division's 9th 

Armored Infantry Battalion, Staff Sgt. Archer T. 

Gammon, charged ahead of his platoon to knock 

out two German machine guns and to close in 

with such daring on a German tank that the tank 

began to withdraw. Firing its 88-mm. gun as it retired, the tank killed the intrepid soldier with a 

direct hit. Sergeant Gammon was awarded the 

Medal of Honor posthumously. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 41 

Armored Division (Maj. Gen. Hugh J. 

Gaffey) along the corps boundary to 

seize Bourcy. Located on high ground 

commanding the highway to Houffalize 

where it passed through Noville, an 

enemy strongpoint, Bourcy in American 

hands might unhinge the defenses along 

the highway. Yet hardly had the armor 

begun to advance early on the 10th when 

General Patton called a halt. 

Having shared in the failure to guess 

the enemy's intent to launch a counteroffensive in the Ardennes, intelligence 

staffs at SHAEF and the 12th Army 

Group these days were seeing burglars 

under every bed. They were concerned 

lest the Germans spoil the American 

offensive by counterattacking from positions near the base of the bulge southward toward Luxembourg City or at 

some point to the southeast where 

American lines had been thinned to provide forces for the Ardennes. General 

Bradley ordered Patton to pull out an 

armored division to guard against this 

threat. Seeing no burglars himself, General Patton filled the requirement by 

selecting the 4th Armored Division, 

which needed a rest for refitting anyway. 29 

General Bradley directed further that 

Patton halt the attack of the VIII Corps 

immediately and that of the III Corps 

when it reached a logical stopping point. 

Only after the German threat (based, 

Patton believed, more on rumor than 

solid intelligence) failed to materialize 

did Bradley on the 12th give approval 

for the Third Army to resume the of29 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 217; Gay Diary, 

entry of 10 Jan 45; Leonard Rapport and Arthur 

Northwood, Jr., Rendezvous With Destiny-A History of the 101st Airborne Division (Washington: 

Infantry Journal Press, 1948), p. 643. The last is 

one of the better unofficial unit histories. 

fensive, this time with the 11th Armored 

Division (Brig. Gen. Charles S. Kilburn) 

inserted between the two airborne divisions of the VIII Corps. 30 

Progress of the renewed drive reflected 

less of American intent than of German. 

On the west, in the sector included in 

Hitler's authorization to German units 

to withdraw, patrols of the 87th Division 

reached the Ourthe River the first day, 

the 13th, those of the 17th Airborne Division the next. The armor, meanwhile, 

attacking generally astride the line Hitler had designated as stopping point for 

the withdrawal, had to fight hard for 

every objective and as late as the 15th 

beat off a counterattack by some twenty 

tanks supported by a covey of fighter 

aircraft. Concurrently, the 101st Airborne Division astride the road to Houffalize encountered the same determined 

stand as before. At Foy, south of Noville, 

for example, the Germans counterattacked three times, retaking the town 

at dawn on the 14th with a battalion of 

infantry supported by a company of 

tanks. 

Yet the airborne troops, too, were 

destined soon to experience softening resistance. On the 14th, the Commander 

in Chief West, Field Marshal von Rundstedt, appealed to Hitler to authorize a 

further withdrawal: the line Hitler 

earlier had specified west of Houffalize 

already had been compromised in the 

north and was being rolled up in the 

south. He asked approval to pull back 

farther to anchor a new line on high 

ground just east of Houffalize, extending 

it northward behind the Salm River and 

southward through” existing positions 

east of Bastogne. 

30 Gay Diary, entries of 10, 11, 12 Jan 45. 
42 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

PATROLS OF THE FIRST AND THIRD ARMIES MEET AT HOUFFALIZE 

Having accepted by this time the inevitability of losing the bulge, Hitler 

agreed, but he refused to listen to ardent 

pleas by both Rundstedt and the Army 

Group B commander, Field Marshal 

Model, that they be allowed to withdraw 

by stages all the way to the Rhine, the 

only line, they believed, that the Germans in the west still might hope with 

any assurance to hold. They could withdraw, Hitler said, but only under pressure and only as far as the West Wall. 

There they were to make their stand. 31 

31 Bauer, The German Withdrawal From the Ardennes; MS # A-858 (Schramm). 

On the 15th, men of the 101st Airborne Division entered Noville, five 

miles south of Houffalize. 32 Early the 

next morning, the 11th Armored Division seized high ground along the high32 In a complementary attack by the 6th Armored 

Division on this same day, a gunner in the attached 603d Tank Destroyer Battalion, Cpl. Arthur 

O. Beyer, dismounted from his vehicle to capture 

two Germans. When a German machine gun 

opened fire on him, he rushed forward to knock 

it out with a grenade, then worked his way along 

a German defense line, wiping out the occupants 

of one foxhole after another. In his one-man assault, he destroyed 2 machine guns, killed 8 Germans, and captured 18. For this feat, Corporal 

Beyer received the Medal of Honor. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 43 

way immediately south of Houffalize. 

Southwest of the town, a patrol commanded by Maj. Joseph M. L. Greene 

met a patrol from the 2d Armored Division of the First Army’s VII Corps. 

Rent by the counteroffensive, the First 

and Third Armies at last had linked at 

the waist of the bulge. In one way, it 

was an empty accomplishment; so measured had been the advance, such delays 

had the Germans imposed, that most of 

the troops in what might have been a 

sizable pocket had escaped. 

Juncture at Houffalize nevertheless 

marked completion of the first phase of 

the campaign to push in the bulge. It 

also meant that the break in communications between American armies, which 

had caused General Eisenhower to put 

the First Army under Montgomery’s 

command, no longer existed. At midnight the next day, 17 January, the 

First Army returned to Bradley’s 12th 

Army Group. 

The Drive on St. Vith 

From the viewpoint of the First Army, 

the juncture at Houffalize marked no 

interval in the offensive to erase the 

bulge, but it pointed up a shift in emphasis that had gradually been evolving 

as linkup neared. Having begun to attack 

early in January in support of the VII 

Corps, General Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne Corps took over the main assignment, a drive eastward on the road tenter of St. Vith. Collins’s VII Corps was 

to support this drive briefly by also turning east; but because of the northeastward orientation of Patton’s Third 

Army, the VII Corps soon would be 

pinched out of the line. 

A more important supporting role was 

to be performed by the V Corps. From 

the northern shoulder of the bulge close 

by its base, the V Corps was to seize a 

defile along upper reaches of the little 

Ambleve River, thereby springing loose 

an armored division for a direct thrust 

southward on St. Vith. The armor, once 

free, was to come under command of the 

airborne corps to constitute the northern 

arm of a two-pronged thrust on St. Vith. 33 

For the Third Army, the juncture at 

Houffalize did represent a distinct break 

in the offensive, since it gave Patton an 

opportunity he would embrace with 

relish-to return to his original concept 

of an attack close to the southern base of 

the bulge. Patton intended to launch-this 

thrust across the Sûre River with General 

Eddy’s XII Corps. 

It was too late at this point (if it had 

ever been feasible) to try seriously the 

maneuver Patton had talked about in 

December, a full-blooded attack northeastward across the German frontier to 

Pruem to cut off and destroy the Germans in the bulge. The rationale now for 

an attack from the south, directed almost 

due northward in the direction of St. 

Vith, was precisely the opposite of envelopment, a hope that threat from the 

south would prompt the Germans to 

shift enough strength from the vicinity 

of Houffalize and Bastogne to enable 

Millikin’s III Corps and Middleton’s 

VIII Corps to advance with relative ease 

toward the northeast. Yet against the 

slim possibility that the XII Corps might 

achieve a breakthrough, despite sharply 

compartmented terrain and heavy snow, 

General Eddy held an armored division 

in reserve. The 12th Army Group commander, General Bradley, also proposed 

33 FUSA Report of Operations, I Aug 44–22 Feb 

45. 
44 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

that once the First Army took St. Vith, 

General Hodges should send a corps 

south to link with the Third Army's 

XII Corps, a shallow envelopment that 

might trap any German forces still remaining farther west. 34 

Having at last gained Hitler's permission to withdraw from the bulge, German commanders faced the problem of 

how to get out before converging American attacks at the base cut them off. They 

had to make their withdrawal either on 

those days when weather cloaked them 

from the Jubo, as German troops called 

Allied fighter-bombers, or by night. A 

shortage of gasoline, that had developed 

early in the counteroffensive as the logistical pipeline over snow-drenched Eifel 

roads broke down, was at this point 

acute; and the prospects of bottlenecks 

at the few tactical bridges in the snowslick gorge of the Our River along the 

frontier filled many a commander with 

dread. 35 

German commanders now faced their 

number one task of holding the shoulders of their salient without the services 

of the two SS panzer corps headquarters 

and four SS panzer divisions that Hitler 

had directed to assemble near St. Vith 

under the Sixth Panzer Army. The 

Fuehrer was becoming increasingly 

piqued that field commanders had not 

taken these divisions immediately out of 

the line and were still using portions of 

them as fire brigades in threatened sectors. That the SS divisions soon would 

be totally out of reach of the western 

commanders became apparent on the 

34 Gay Diary, entry of 15 Jan 45; TUSA AAR, 

Jan 45. 

35 MS # B-151a (Manteuffel); MS # A-876 

(Brandenberger); Bauer, The German Withdrawal 

From the Ardennes. 

14th when Hitler ordered two volks artillery corps shifted hurriedly from the 

Ardennes to the east in response to the 

new Russian offensive and alerted the SS 

divisions for a similar move. All that 

would be left to hold in the Ardennes 

would be men who not only had seen the 

grandiose prospects of the counteroffensive dashed to bits but who also were 

embittered by Hitler's pulling out the 

SS divisions for what looked to the men 

in the foxhole like a rest. 36 

The new main effort by General 

Hodges' First Army had begun even before the linkup at Houffalize and a day 

before Hitler authorized withdrawal to 

a new line east of Houffalize. This line 

was already breached along its northward extension, for even while acting in 

a supporting role to the VII Corps General Ridgway's XVIII Airborne Corps 

had established a bridgehead across the 

Salm River and another over the Ambleve near where the two rivers come 

together. 

Beginning on 13 January, as a first step 

in the drive on St. Vith, the XVIII Airborne Corps attacked to flatten the 

corner formed by the meeting of the 

Ambleve and the Salm. At General Ridgway's insistence, this drive was to be no 

measured blunting of the angle all along 

the line; emphasis instead fell to the 30th 

Division from positions on the northern 

shoulder some three miles north of the 

meandering Ambleve River at Malmédy 

to drive southward, thereby posing threat 

of envelopment to Germans in the SalmAmbleve angle to the west. 37 Having replaced the 82d Airborne Division along 

the Salm on the right flank of the corps, 

36 MS # A-858 (Schramm); Bauer, The German 

Withdrawal From the Ardennes. 

37 Sylvan Diary, entries of 4, 9 Jan 45. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 45 

the 75th Division (Maj. Gen. Fay B. 

Prickett) attacked in an easterly direction toward St. Vith to form the second 

arm of a pincers threatening the Germans in the corner. The 106th Division 

(Brig. Gen. Herbert T. Perrin) pressed 

forward in the angle itself with the separate 517th Parachute Infantry and the 

division’s sole surviving regiment (the 

others had been destroyed early in the 

counteroffensive) . Nowhere was there a solid German 

line. Although defense was stubborn and 

included small counterattacks, it centered primarily in villages and on occasional key high ground. On the first 

day and again on the second, the 30th 

Infantry Division south of Malmédy 

made the most gains, advancing up to 

four miles to take high ground that 

guarded approach to the west shoulder 

of the defile through which armor of the 

V Corps later was to debouch. 

Part of the 30th Infantry Division’s 

success was attributable to hitting near a 

boundary between major German units 

-to the east the LXVII Corps (General 

der Infanterie Otto Hitzfeld) of Zangen’s 

Fifteenth Army and to the west the XIII 

Corps (General der Infanterie Hans Felber), which was still under control of 

Dietrich’s Sixth Panzer Army. Pushing 

back and occasionally overrunning portions of a depleted volks grenadier division of Felber’s XIII Corps, the 

infantrymen cut into the flank and rear 

of the 3d Parachute Division of Hitzfeld’s LX VII Corps, prompting Hitzfeld 

to bring up another understrength volks 

grenadier division in hope of filling the 

breach. 38 

38 German material is from Bauer, The German 

Withdrawal From the Ardennes. 

GENERAL RIDGWAY 

The big disappointment to the 

Americans was slow progress by the 75th 

Division, whose advance across the Salm 

toward St. Vith was so limited that it 

took much of the threat out of General 

Ridgway’s intended envelopment of the 

Germans in the Ambleve-Salm angle. 

While trying to make allowance for the 

fact that the division had seen its first 

combat only a day before Christmas, 

both Ridgway and the First Army commander, General Hodges, feared all offensive punch temporarily gone. On the 

19th, patrols of the 75th and 30th Divisions at last met to pinch out the 106th 

Division and seal off the corner, but so 

slow had been the 75th’s advance that 

two divisions of Felber’s XlII Corps had 

escaped with little difficulty. Seeing the 

problem as one of command, General 
46 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Hodges recommended the division commander’s relief . 39 

The main fight centered in the meantime on the defile through which armor 

under the V Corps was to drive in order 

to come upon St. Vith from the north. 

Named for a town on the northern approach, this was known as the Ondenval 

defile. 

As the V Corps began its drive early 

on 15 January, a new commander took 

over while General Gerow left to head an 

army headquarters newly arrived from 

the United States, the Fifteenth, destined 

to serve primarily as an occupation force 

as the Allies swept across Germany. 40 

The new corps commander was Maj. 

Gen. C. Ralph Huebner, who had guided 

the veteran 1st Infantry Division since 

the end of the campaign in Sicily. 

General Huebner’s former command, 

headed now by the former division artillery commander, Brig. Gen. Clift 

Andrus, drew the assignment of opening 

the Ondenval defile for the armor. While 

the regiments of the 1st Division took 

high ground east of the defile and contingents of the 30th Division wooded 

high ground to the west, the ad Division’s 23d Infantry, attached to the 1st 

Division, moved south through OndenVal directly against the defile. 

A five-day fight developed, primarily 

against the 3d Parachute Division. Sensing the full import of the attack as a 

threat to St. Vith and those German 

units still west of the town, Field Marshal 

Model at Army Group B on the 17th 

unified command in the sector by transferring Hitzfelds LXVII Corps to Die39 Sylvan Diary, entries of 16, 17, 20 Jan 45. 

40 History of the Fifteenth United States Army 

(no publisher, no date), an unofficial unit history. 

See also below, ch. XV. 

trich’s Sixth Panzer Army. Two days 

later, in an effort to shore up a faltering 

defense all along the line, General Dietrich risked Hitler’s wrath by recommitting artillery of the I SS Panzer Corps to 

reinforce fires at the Ondenval defile and 

small contingents of tanks from three of 

his four SS panzer divisions to reinforce 

local counterattacks. 

Dietrich might slow the advance but 

neither he nor cruel winter weather with 

waist-high drifts of snow could stop it. 

Sometimes the weather was more of a 

problem than the enemy. On one occasion two men stopping to rest dropped 

unconscious from exhaustion. “We are 

fighting the weather,” said General 

Hobbs, commanding the 30th Division, 

“and losing about one hundred a day. 

. . . It is a hell of a country. ” 41 

The state of the weather gave the little 

Ardennes towns an added dimension as 

prizes of war. Not only did the towns 

control the roads needed for tanks and 

trucks but they also afforded shelter, a 

chance for the men to thaw out and dry 

out, to get a night’s sleep under cover. 

The towns, unfortunately, were almost 

always in a draw or on a reverse slope, 

making it necessary to seize the high 

ground beyond and hold it from foxholes 

blasted out of frozen earth with small 

explosive charges. It became a matter of 

constant nagging concern to forward 

commanders to rotate their men and 

allow all at least brief respite from the 

cold. 

Partly because the German soldiers, 

41 30th Div G–3 Jnl, 22 Jan 45. This division’s 

journal contains valuable verbatim records of telephone conversations. See also Robert P. Hewitt, 

Workhorse of the Western Front (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1946), an excellent unit history. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 47 

MEDICS USE A “LITTER JEEP” TO EVACUATE PATIENTS 

too, wanted shelter, and partly because 

buildings made good strongpoints, the 

villages and small settlements at critical 

road junctions were hardest to get at. 

Although sometimes delayed by mines 

hidden by the deep snow, tanks and tank 

destroyers proved almost essential for 

blasting the Germans from the houses. 

Artillery could chase the defenders into 

the cellars, but it could not keep them 

there. As men of one battalion of the 

23d Infantry entered a village close behind an artillery preparation, Germans 

emerged in their midst to promote a 

fight so intimate that at one point an 

American soldier reputedly engaged a 

German with his fists. 42 

The enemy, fortunately, was not so 

consistently persistent as was the weather. 

Nearly all units had the experience of 

advancing for an hour or sometimes even 

half a day without a round fired at them; 

then, suddenly, at a stream bank, a farmhouse, the edge of a wood or a village, a 

flurry of fire from automatic weapons or 

shelling from artillery and mortars, or 

both, might erupt. Sometimes this signaled start of a counterattack, usually in 

42 1st Div G–3 Jnl, 19 Jan 45. 
48 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

no more than company strength, precipitating a sharp but usually short engagement. 

The 23d Infantry finally cleared the 

Ondenval defile on the 17th, held it with 

the help of massed artillery fires against 

a battalion-size counterattack supported 

by three tanks on the 18th, then passed 

on in a blinding snowstorm on the 19th 

to seize the first tier of towns beyond. 

Through the defile and along another 

road to the west in the 30th Division’s 

zone, tanks, tank destroyers, and halftracks of the 7th Armored Division (Maj. 

Gen. Robert W. Hasbrouck) began to 

pass early on the 20th, headed for the 

rubble that St. Vith had become after 

this same division had fought gallantly 

for the town in December. 

Northward Across the Sure 

Patton’s Third Army resumed its role 

in pushing the Germans back with surprise crossings of the Sûre River before 

daylight on 18 January. Close by the 

German frontier, a regiment of the 4th 

Infantry Division (Brig. Gen. Harold W. 

Blakeley) began to cross into an angle 

formed by confluence of the Sure and 

the Our, while two regiments of the 5th 

Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. S. LeRoy 

Irwin) crossed on either side of Diekirch, 

less than five miles west of the frontier. 

While the men of the 4th Division protected the 5th Division’s right flank and 

took out the enemy’s bridges across the 

Our below the Luxembourg frontier 

town of Vianden, four miles north of 

the Sure, the men of the 5th were to 

drive north along a highway that runs 

within several miles of the frontier. Because the highway follows the crest of a 

ridgeline through semimountainous 

countryside (la Petite Suisse) , American 

soldiers long ago had christened it the 

“Skyline Drive.” 

Even more than in the vicinity of St. 

Vith, it was imperative for the Germans 

to hold firm along the Sûre River, because the heaviest concentration of German force remaining in the bulge, that 

which had fought around Bastogne, was 

peculiarly susceptible to a thrust from 

the south. Four divisions of General 

Brandenberger’s Seventh Army, charged 

with defending the southern flank, and 

at least nine of General von Manteuffel’s 

Fifth Panzer Army in the vicinity of 

Bastogne had to withdraw through this 

southern portion of the bulge. The eastwest roads they had to use were markedly 

inferior to the north-south routes that 

beckoned an attacker from the south; 

and the Germans had only five tactical 

bridges over the Our River, three of 

which, at and south of Vianden, were 

dangerously close to the existing American line along the Sûre. The bridges in 

any case inevitably meant congestion, 

slowing the withdrawal and inviting attack from the air. 43 

Toward the end of December, the 

presence in reserve south of the Sûre of 

the 6th U.S. Armored Division had 

alarmed General Brandenberger lest the 

Americans strike while the bulk of his 

strength was trying to help the Fifth 

Panzer Army break Bastogne; but with 

the shift of the armor to Bastogne and 

the beginning of American attacks there, 

Brandenberger had begun to view his 

vulnerable positions along the Sûre with 

greater equanimity. If his Seventh Army 

was to be hit any time soon, Brandenberger deduced, the strike would come 

43 German material is from Bauer, The German 

Withdrawal From the Ardennes. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 49 

not along the Sûre close to the base of 

the bulge but farther west where his 

troops still held positions between Ettelbruck at the southern terminus of the 

Skyline Drive, and Wiltz, positions that 

were south and west of the Sûre in one 

place and between the Sûre and Wiltz 

Rivers in another. 

Brandenberger was seeing American 

intentions in terms of his own dispositions. He was stronger west and northwest of Ettelbruck, where three volks 

grenadier divisions under the LIII Corps 

(General der Kavallerie Edwin Graf 

Rothkirch und Trach) held the line. 

Along the Sûre between Ettelbruck and 

the frontier, he had only one volks 

grenadier division, which with another 

that was holding a 30-mile stretch of the 

West Wall along the frontier to the 

southeast, made up the LXXX Corps 

(General der Infanterie Franz Beyer) . Although the little Sûre River is fordabIe at many points, the weather was too 

cold for wading. Nor was American artillery to forewarn the enemy with a 

preparatory barrage. The night was 

black, cold, and silent as men of the 4th 

and 5th Divisions moved assault boats 

and three-man canvas rafts to the icecrusted edge of the stream. 44 

The troops gained the surprise they 

sought. Hardly a shot sounded along the 

Sûre that night before the first waves of 

infantrymen touched down on the north 

bank. Only at a place just west of Diekirch, where a machine gun opened up 

on an assault company of the 5th Di44 For an annotated account of this attack at a 

small-unit level, see Maj. Dello G. Dayton, The 

Attack by XII Corps 18–29 January 1945, unpublished MS in OCMH, prepared in the European 

Theater of Operations Historical Section soon after 

the war. See also combat interviews with men of 

the 5th Division. 

vision’s 2d Infantry, was there troublesome German fire: and there the 

infantrymen were able to pull back and 

cross in an adjacent sector. 

Just east of Diekirch, a battalion of 

the same division’s 10th Infantry turned 

the icy, snow-covered river bank to advantage by loading men into the assault 

boats at the top of the slope and shoving 

the boats downhill like toboggans. At 

another point engineers tied 150-foot 

ropes to either end of the boats so that, 

once the first wave had passed, they could 

pull the boats back and forth across the 

little river. In two places infantrymen 

crossed on footbridges that engineers had 

quietly shoved into place just before 

H-hour. 

The night was so dark and the early 

morning made so obscure by a combination of mist in the river bottom and 

American smoke pots that the Germans 

were hard put at first to determine the 

“extent of the threat posed against them. 

In many cases U.S. troops passed unseen 

by German machine gun and mortar 

crews. Already seriously weakened by 

loss of field pieces earlier in the Ardennes 

fighting and by ammunition shortages, 

German artillery was “as good as 

blinded.” 45 Some three hours passed before the first artillery shells struck along 

the river. 

By the end of the first day a vehicular 

ford and several treadway bridges were 

operating to enable supporting tanks and 

tank destroyers to cross the She. A 

bridgehead up to two miles deep was 

solidly established, in enough depth to 

bring the two German bridges over the 

Our downstream from Vianden under 

punishing artillery fire. German troubles 

45 MS # A-876 (Brandenberger). 
50 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

had been further compounded when in 

midmorning the 80th Infantry Division 

(Maj. Gen. Horace L. McBride) had 

begun to attack to the northeast to drive 

General Rothkirch’s LIII Corps behind 

the Wiltz and another stretch of the Sûre 

between Ettelbruck and the Wiltz River 

and to facilitate the 5th Division’s advance up the Skyline Drive. 46 

As surprised by the American thrust as 

were the volks grenadiers on the ground, 

the Seventh Army commander, General 

Brandenberger, ordered most of the supporting army artillery and engineer units 

that had been grouped behind the LIII 

Corps to shift to the more seriously 

menaced LXXX Corps. He also directed 

a volks grenadier division to fall back 

from the western tip of the LIII Corps 

to establish a blocking position astride 

the Skyline Drive along a cross-ridge 

northwest of Vianden, there to form a 

mask for the two tactical bridges upstream from Vianden. 

Field Marshal Model at Army Group 

B provided help by ordering first a 

Kampfgruppe, then all that was left of 

the Panzer Lehr Division, transferred 

from the Fifth Panzer Army. He followed this with an order for a severely 

depleted 2d Panzer Division also to turn 

south, then headquarters of the XL VII 

48 Ten days before, on 8 January, in the village 

of Dahl, near Wiltz, a 9-man squad of the 80th 

Division’s 319th Infantry commanded by Sgt. Day 

G. Turner fought savagely for four hours to hold 

a house on the fringe of the village against a local 

German attack. Turner himself bayoneted two 

Germans, threw a can of flaming oil at others, and, 

when his ammunition was exhausted, used enemy 

weapons to continue the fight. Only three of his 

men still were alive and unhurt when the Germans broke, leaving behind 11 dead and 25 captured. Sergeant Turner received the Medal of 

Honor. 

Panzer Corps to command the two panzer divisions. Behind the Fifth Panzer 

Army, engineers began building another 

bridge over the Our. 

It would have required long hours 

under ideal conditions for any of these 

expedients to have effect. In view of 

crippling gasoline shortages and the 

heavy snowstorm of 19 January, it would 

take not hours but days. 

The 5th Division in the meantime 

fought steadily up the Skyline Drive to 

reach a point almost due west of Vianden 

on the 21st; there the division paused 

amid rumors of impending armored 

counterattack. Several observers having 

reported heavy German troop movements around Vianden, the division commander, General Irwin, was disturbed 

that the 4th Division had been unable to 

keep pace on his division’s right. There 

the original defenders, their positions 

compressed and their backs to the Our, 

kept the 4th Division’s 12th Infantry at 

a respectable distance from Vianden and 

its vital bridge. 

The situation was less disturbing on 

the 5th Division’s other flank. There the 

advance up the Skyline Drive had posed 

such a threat of entrapment to the Germans of Rothkirch’s LIII Corps that on 

21 January they began to pull out, leaving only strong rear guards to oppose 

the 80th Division’s attack to the northeast. So precipitate was the exodus that 

much of it took place in full view of men 

of the 5th Division on the high ground. 

The infantrymen cheered to see the Germans run. They cheered, too, at the rich 

gunnery targets presented by long columns of trucks, tanks, and horse-drawn 

artillery. “Let her go, boys” one artillery 

observer radioed to his gunners; “you 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 51 

can’t miss a Jerry wherever you land 

them.” 47 

Other observers demanded to know, 

“Where is the air?” 48 Yet as on so many 

days of the foggy, snowbound January, 

there was no air. During the morning, ice 

and snow on runways prevented most 

squadrons of the XIX Tactical Air Command from taking off, and during the 

afternoon pilots of the few planes that 

got up found ground haze too thick for 

them to spot the targets. 

That changed dramatically the next 

day, the 22d. A brilliant sun came up, its 

rays glistening on the new snow cover. 

Four groups of fighter-bombers assigned to support the XII Corps began 

early to attack, then quickly called for 

help until eventually the entire XIX 

Tactical Air Command joined the hunt. 

The snow-drenched roads were thick 

with German traffic-much of Rothkirch’s LIII Corps pulling back to the 

northeast, rear elements of the Fifth 

Panzer Army seeking the east bank of the 

Our, and the XLVII Panzer Corps with 

the 2d Panzer and Panzer Lehr Divisions 

cutting across the grain of the withdrawal 

to go to the Seventh Army’s aid. Snarled 

by the snow and the deep canyon of the 

Our, vehicles at the Our bridges were 

stalled bumper-to-bumper. 

American pilots were jubilant, reminded of the days in August when so 

many of the Germans fleeing France had 

been squashed along the roads like insects. “For the first time [in the Ardennes],” noted General Brandenberger, 

“the situation in the air was similar to 

that which had prevailed in Normandy.” 49 When the day came to an 

47 5th Div G–3 Jnl, 21 Jan 45. 

48 Ibid. 

49 MS # A-876 (Brandenberger). 

end, 25 squadrons had flown 627 sorties. 

Although the pilots as usual made unrealistically high estimates of their accomplishments, the day’s strikes caused 

considerable damage and compounded 

the delays that terrain, weather, and gasoline shortages already had imposed on 

the German withdrawal. 50 

The day of 22 January was notable for 

another development as well. On that 

day Hitler ordered the Sixth Panzer 

Army to quit the Ardennes entirely and 

to transfer with all speed to the east to 

oppose a broadening Russian offensive, 

an unqualified admission not only that 

the counteroffensive had failed but also 

that the Eastern Front again had priority 

on resources. In addition to headquarters 

of the two SS panzer corps and the four 

SS panzer divisions, the shift included 

the Fuehrer Begleit and Fuehrer Grenadier Brigades and assorted supporting 

units. General von Manteuffel’s Fifth 

Panzer Army assumed control of the two 

corps in the north that General Dietrich 

had been directing in opposing the 

American drive on St. Vith. 

The next day, 23 January, was notable, 

too, not in the air, since the weather 

closed in again, but in three places on the 

ground. In the north, General Hasbrouck’s 7th Armored Division came 

back to St. Vith, signaling the approximate end of the First Army’s role in 

flattening the bulge. Along the Skyline 

Drive, General Brandenberger on the 

same day turned over defense of the 

50 For various reasons, claims of enemy losses 

from air action almost always were high. One study 

conducted by the British proved by ground check 

that air force claims of German tanks destroyed 

in the Ardennes were at least ten times too high. 

See Directorate of Tactical Investigation, War Office, The German Counter-Offensive in the Ardennes, MS in OCMH. 
52 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

blocking position northwest of Vianden 

to the XLVII Panzer Corps with assistance on the west from Rothkirch’s LIII 

Corps. There would be no armored 

counterattack, if indeed the depleted, 

gasoline-short panzer corps had ever seriously considered one, only a continuing 

passive defense to keep the Americans 

away from the Our bridges until the last 

of the Fifth Panzer Army could pull out. 

Also on the 23d, General Middleton’s 

VIII Corps and General Millikin’s III 

Corps got back into the fight even as the 

12th Army Group commander, General 

Bradley, came up with the genesis of a 

new plan destined to affect employment 

of these corps. 

As early as 19 January, General Patton 

had detected enough indications that the 

northward drive by Eddy’s XII Corps 

would prompt German withdrawal from 

the eastward-facing line of the bulge to 

justify ordering Middleton and Millikin 

to resume their advance. Although Patton specified 21 January for the push to 

begin, patrols all along the front made 

so little enemy contact during the afternoon of the 19th that both corps commanders feared delaying another day lest 

they collapse a bag filled only with air. 

They ordered their divisions to put out 

strong patrols and follow them up in 

strength if resistance failed to develop. 

It failed to develop for three days. A 

tank-supported ambush in a village 

mangled a company of the 90th Division 

in the center of the III Corps, but other 

than that, few units encountered any of 

the enemy except stragglers. Although 

some of these fired before surrendering, 

none represented a true rear guard. So 

heterogeneous was the mixture that the 

6th Armored Division alone took prisoners from ten different divisions. The 11th 

Armored Division on the north wing of 

the VIII Corps was pinched out of the 

line before ever catching up with the 

enemy. 

Yet for all the lack of resistance, the 

pursuit was slow. The deep snow and 

slick roads saw to that. Protecting the 

right flank of the III Corps, the 6th 

Cavalry Group most of the time had to 

advance dismounted. To find suitable 

roads, the 6th Armored Division often 

had to impinge on the zone of the neighboring 90th Division. 

When coupled with staunch defense 

against the attack of Eddy’s XII Corps 

from the south, the German withdrawal 

meant an end to any hopes General Patton still might have entertained for 

trapping his enemy with a drive close 

along the base of the bulge. Nor was 

there any point in implementing General 

Bradley’s earlier suggestion that the First 

Army send a corps southward from St. 

Vith. 

On the 23d Bradley called Patton to 

his headquarters, there to propose a plan 

that he had been contemplating for more 

than a fortnight, a plan designed to parlay the attack to flatten the bulge into a 

major drive through the Eifel to gain 

the Rhine. 51 Since Bradley’s plan involved use of a strong corps of the Third 

Army close along the flank of the First 

Army around St. Vith, Patton decided to 

employ Middleton’s VIII Corps. Like the 

First Army’s VIII Corps, which was 

pinched out of the fight after only one 

day of the renewed attack (22 January), 

the VIII Corps had been scheduled to be 

pinched out by the northeastward orientation of the III Corps: but because 

Middleton and his staff knew the terrain 

51 Gay Diary, entry of 23 Jan 45; ch. III, below. 
VICTORY IN THE ARDENNES 53 

around St. Vith from earlier fighting, 

Patton altered boundaries to change 

this. 52 Turning the III Corps eastward 

to pass directly across the front of Eddy’s 

XII Corps, he made room for Middleton’s command. 

While the VIII Corps with only one 

division still forward adjusted to the 

boundary change, the divisions of the 

III Corps ran into a shooting war again. 

After having fallen back approximately 

nine miles, the Germans paused to attempt a new stand behind the little Clerf 

River, just over two miles west of the 

Skyline Drive. Yet the resistance, though 

strong in places, was spotty and depended 

largely on infantry weapons. Both the 

6th Armored and 90th Divisions crossed 

the Clerf on the 23d, while the 26th 

Division jumped the stream the next 

day. By the 25th the hasty German line 

had ceased to exist, and the defense reverted to delaying action by isolated 

groups chiefly in a row of villages along 

the Skyline Drive. 

Although some fighting to clear the 

west bank of the Our continued through 

28 January, it was a mop-up operation 

occupying only a fraction of the Third 

Army’s troops. The focus shifted to 

shuffling units and boundaries in preparation for the new offensive General 

Bradley had outlined on the 23d. With 

the Germans at last driven back into the 

West Wall, the bulge created by the 

futile counteroffensive that had cost Germans and Americans alike so heavily 

was erased. 

The drive from 3 through 28 January 

to flatten the bulge in the Ardennes 

added 39,672 battle casualties to an 

American total of 41,315 incurred during 

52 Patton, War As I Knew It, pp. 224–25. 

that phase of the fighting when the Germans were on the offensive. Of the additional losses, 6,138 were killed or died of 

wounds and 6,272 were missing or known 

captured. 53 Just how many more losses 

the combat in January produced on the 

German side is difficult to say. Estimates 

of enemy losses for all the fighting in the 

Ardennes have ranged from 81,834 (lowest German estimate) to 103,900 (highest Allied estimate) .54 Possibly as many 

as 30 to 40 percent of these occurred 

during the January campaign. 

That the Germans were forced to retire to the positions whence they had 

emerged from the mists of the Eifel on 

16 December was testament enough to a 

victory for American arms. Yet a combination of an American drive to push 

in rather than cut off the bulge and an 

adroit German withdrawal had enabled 

the Germans to escape with losses no 

greater than might be considered normal 

in any deliberate delaying action under 

harsh conditions of weather and terrain. 

The Germans did it under the handicaps 

of an acute shortage of gasoline and a 

vastly superior, almost predominant, 

Allied air force. In the process, they 

saved most of their arms and equipment 

too, although large numbers of tanks and 

artillery pieces had to be destroyed near 

the end for lack of spare parts and gasoline. 

To the Germans, American tactics appeared to consist of a series of quickly 

shifting attacks that probed for weak 

spots to take individual divisions in 

flanks or rear. Noting that their adversary eschewed night attacks, stopping 

53 12th AGp, G–1 Daily Summary, master file, 1 

Jan–28 Feb 45. Figures for the earlier period are 

from Cole, The Ardennes, p. 674. 

54 Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 396. 
54 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

with almost clocklike regularity as darkness fell, the Germans deemed him slow 

in following up retrograde movements 

but doggedly determined. A constant 

nibbling away at German positions 

forced German commanders to weaken 

one spot to shore up another, only to see 

a new penetration develop elsewhere. 

What saved them in numbers of instances, the Germans believed, was an 

American tendency to stop at a given 

objective rather than to exploit an advantage fully and quickly. American 

fighter-bombers, the Germans also noted, 

failed to hit traffic bottlenecks such as 

road intersections and bridges as hard as 

the Germans thought they might. 55 

Against these observations would have 

to be weighed American difficulties. The 

same cruel weather, the same slick roads 

affected American operations, probably 

more than the Germans’, since the offensive force is normally the more exposed. 

Like the Germans, too, American units 

had problems with replacements. Even 

the manpower well in the United States 

was showing signs of going dry, and at 

55 See Bauer, The German Withdrawal From the 

Ardennes. 

the height of the Ardennes fighting General Eisenhower directed both a combout of rear echelon units and a program 

whereby Negro service troops might volunteer for the infantry. The Third Army 

was particularly short of infantry replacements until well along in the January 

campaign, and in all cases replacements 

in terms of experience hardly could 

equal the fallen. 

The question of whether the counteroffensive in the Ardennes had any 

chance, however slim, of succeeding and 

thus of whether Hitler was justified in 

gambling major resources on the Western Front would forever remain unanswered, one of those imponderables that 

each student of warfare is apt to decide 

only for himself. 56 As for the effect of 

the counteroffensive and the heavy losses 

it entailed on subsequent operations and 

the final quest for victory in Europe, that 

remained to be demonstrated as a last 

offensive born in the cold and snow of 

the Ardennes gradually expanded, eventually to encompass Allied armies all 

along the line. 

56 For a discussion of this point, see Cole, The 

Ardennes, pp. 673–76. 
CHAPTER III 

Main Effort in the Eifel 

In early December, before the Germans struck in the Ardennes, the Supreme Commander had intended to 

maintain unremitting pressure on the 

enemy through the winter in hope of 

forcing him back to the Rhine. Converging attacks by the 21 and 12th Army 

Groups across the Rhine were to be 

launched in early summer, 1945. To 

criticism that pressure all along the line, 

the broad-front strategy, was indecisive, 

General Eisenhower had replied: “It appears to me that wars are won in successive stages and until we get firmly 

established on the Rhine we are not in 

position to make the attack which we 

hope will be fatal to the other fellow.” 1 

That the Allies were not indeed in 

such a position seemed fully attested by 

the German counteroffensive. Studying 

possible courses of action to follow after 

eliminating the German gains, the planning staff at SHAEF drew a plan that 

one critic called “almost a painstaking, 

uninspired, plodding way through to 

Berlin.” 2 The plan actually did call for 

more methodical moves than before, 

but the timetable, as events were to 

prove, embodied considerable optimism. 

1 Msg, Eisenhower to the Prime Minister, CPA– 

90357, 26 Nov 44, SHAEF Msg File, Plans and 

Opns, A4g–70, Folder 27. 

2 Memo, G. H. Phillimore for Chief Plans Sec, 

GCT/370–47/, sub: Plans, Future Opns–1945, 2 

Jan 45, SHAEF G–3 file (Future Operations1945). 

Pointing out that even before the 

counteroffensive, Allied forces north and 

south of the Ardennes had been insufficient to insure reaching the Rhine, the 

planners advocated concentrating on one 

section of the front at a time, starting 

with elimination of the Colmar pocket 

in the French sector, and forming a 

SHAEF reserve of six divisions. The 

planners proposed then to turn to an 

offensive north of the Ardennes while 

assuming the defensive elsewhere. Not 

until the 21 and 12th Army Groups had 

reached the Rhine from Wesel south to 

Bonn were attacks to be resumed in the 

south. Not until March, after Allied 

forces had reached the Rhine all along 

the front, was anybody to cross the 

Rhine. 3 

Although never formally approved, 

this plan fairly represented the new emphasis on defeating the Germans west of 

the Rhine by stages. As General Eisenhower wrote to Field Marshal Montgomery: 

We must substantially defeat the German 

forces west of the Rhine if we are to make 

a truly successful invasion [of the interior 

of Germany] with all forces available.. . . As I see it, we simply cannot afford the 

large defensive forces that would be necessary if we allow the German to hold great 

3 Memo by Planning Staffs, sub: Future Opns— 

1945, 23 Dec 44, SHAEF G–3 file (Future Opns— 

1945). 
56 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

bastions sticking into our lines at the same 

time that we try to invade his country. 4 

Of eighty-five Allied divisions expected 

to be available in early summer, Eisenhower estimated that forty-five would be 

needed in defense and reserve if the 

Allies were at that time holding a line 

similar to the one actually held on 15 

January, but only twenty-five if the line 

followed the Rhine. 5 

It was the SHAEF plan for cleaning up 

the area west of the Rhine before beginning a decisive thrust deep into Germany that incited objections from the 

British Chiefs of Staff. The British Chiefs 

feared that the plan meant a dispersion 

of strength and considered that Eisenhower had only enough superiority on 

the ground to make a single powerful 

thrust, backed by enough fresh divisions 

to maintain momentum. This was the 

basic point at issue when the British 

Chiefs on 10 January asked formally for 

a review of strategy by the Combined 

Chiefs which led to the Supreme Commander’s plan being discussed at the end 

of January at Malta. 6 

Convinced of the soundness of the 

plan and assured of backing by the U.S. 

Chiefs of Staff, General Eisenhower continued to lay the groundwork for a renewed offensive even while waiting for 

the Combined Chiefs to rule, though an 

element of the provisional hung over all 

plans made during the period. The Supreme Commander directed specific at4 Ltr, Eisenhower to Montgomery, 17 Jan 45, in 

Pogue files. (These files consist of notes and extracts from documents in General Eisenhower’s 

personal files, assembled by Dr. Pogue when he 

was preparing his volume, The Supreme Command.) 

5 Msg, Eisenhower to Marshall, S–75090, 15 Jan 

45, War Dept Cable Log. 

6 See above, ch. I. 

tention to what he considered the main 

effort, a drive to reach the Rhine north 

of the Ardennes in preparation for an 

eventual attack north of the Ruhr industrial area. On 18 January he ordered 

the 21 Army Group commander, Montgomery, to prepare plans for such an 

offensive. 7 

General Bradley’s Proposal 

Through the course of the Ardennes 

fighting, the 12th Army Group commander, General Bradley, had been 

aware that General Eisenhower intended 

a return to a main effort in the north. 

Since the Ninth Army was to remain 

under Montgomery’s command and participate in that drive, Bradley eventually 

would have to relinquish divisions to 

bring the Ninth Army to a strength at 

least equal to that which had existed 

before General Simpson had released 

divisions to fight in the Ardennes. General Bradley nevertheless hoped to be 

able to continue to attack with his army 

group beyond the Ardennes to cut 

through northern reaches of the Eifel to 

the Rhine. 8 

Against the obvious difficulties of 

attacking in winter over countryside 

equally as inhospitable as that of the 

Ardennes and through the West Wall, 

Bradley could argue that an offensive in 

the Eifel fitted best as a continuation of 

the attack to reduce the bulge. It would 

avoid a pause to regroup; it would insure 

a constant and mounting pressure against 

the Germans; it would capitalize on 

probable German expectation of an Al7 Msg, SHAEF to CG’s AGp’s, 18 Jan 45, SHAEF 

SGS 381, Post-OVERLORD Planning file, vol. III. 

8 12th AGp Ltr of Instrs 12, 4 Jan 45, 12th AGp 

Rpt of Opns, vol. V. 
MAIN EFFORT IN THE EIFEL 57 

lied return to the offensive in the north: 

and it would put the 12th Army Group 

in a position to unhinge the Germans in 

front of the 21 Army Group. To at least 

some among the American command, 

rather delicate considerations of national 

prestige also were involved, making it 

advisable to give to American armies and 

an American command that had incurred a reverse in the Ardennes a leading part in the new offensive. 9 

Attacking through the Eifel also would 

avoid directly confronting an obstacle 

that had plagued Bradley and the First 

Army’s General Hodges all through the 

preceding autumn, a series of dams 

known collectively as the Roer River 

dams in rugged country along headwaters of the river near Monschau. So 

long as the Germans retained control of 

these dams, they might manipulate the 

waters impounded by the dams to jeopardize and even deny any Allied crossing 

of the normally placid Roer downstream 

to the north. 

By pursuing an offensive that the 12th 

Army Group’s planning staff had first 

suggested in November, General Bradley 

saw a way to bypass and outflank the 

dams and still retain his ability to support a main effort farther north. 10 Bradley intended to attack northeastward 

from a start line generally along the German frontier between Monschau and St. 

Vith and seize the road center of 

Euskirchen, not quite thirty miles away, 

where the Eifel highlands merge with the 

flatlands of the Cologne plain. This 

would put American forces behind the 

9 On the last point, see Gay Diary, entry of 24 

Jan 45. 

10 For the early planning, see 12th AGp, Estimate 

of the Situation, 29 Nov 4, 12th AGp G–3 file. 

Memo by Planning Staffs, sub: Future Opns—1945, 

23 Dec 44. 

enemy’s Roer River defenses in a position to unhinge them. 

To the Supreme Commander, General 

Eisenhower, Bradley’s proposal had the 

double virtue of being a logical follow-up 

to the job of reducing the bulge and of 

accomplishing part of the general buildup along the Rhine that he intended before launching a major offensive deep 

into Germany. Yet Eisenhower saw a 

12th Army Group offensive as no substitute for a main effort later by the 21 

Army Group. Since Montgomery had 

considerable regrouping to do before his 

offensive would be ready, Eisenhower 

agreed to let Bradley hold on temporarily to the divisions earmarked for the 

Ninth Army and take a stab at the Eifel. 

General Eisenhower nevertheless 

sharply qualified his approval. If the 

attack failed to show early promise of a 

“decisive success,” he intended halting it 

and shifting strength to the Ninth 

Army. 11 The definition of decisive success was apparently a quick, broad penetration of the West Wall. 12 Even beyond 

that the operation was to be subject to 

review at any time, and General Bradley 

was to be prepared to pass quickly to the 

defensive, relinquishing divisions to the 

Ninth Army. 13 

The Eifel Highlands 

Terrain would set even narrower limits on tactics in the Eifel than in the 

Ardennes. Streams in the Eifel have cut 

even deeper into the surface of the old 

plateau, and unlike the patchwork pat11 SHAEF to CG’s AGp’s, 18 Jan 45. 

12 Lt Col T. F. Foote, Staff Rpt. Visit to EAGLE 

(12th AGp) TAC, 18 Jan 45, in 12th AGp 371.3, 

Military Objectives, V. 

13 SHAEF to CG’s AGp’s, 18 Jan 45. 
58 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

terns in the Ardennes, the forests are 

vast. Although roads are fairly extensive, 

they twist and climb in and out of the 

stream valleys and through the narrow 

confines of farm villages. 

Well defined on the southeast by the 

convolutions of the Moselle River, the 

Eifel in the north and northeast merges 

irregularly into the Cologne plain, 

roughly on a line from Aachen through 

Euskirchen to the Rhine some fifteen 

miles south of Bonn. From the Belgian 

border to the Rhine the greatest depth 

of the Eifel is about forty-five miles. In 

width, the region extends along the 

frontiers of Belgium and Luxembourg 

from Aachen to Trier, a distance of some 

seventy-five miles. 

Close to the frontier, two hill masses 

or ridges stand out. Most prominent is 

the Schnee Eifel, a forested ridge some 

ten miles long, roughly parallel to the 

Belgian border east of St. Vith, rising 

abruptly from the surrounding countryside to a height of just over 2,000 feet. 

The other is an L-shaped ridgeline or 

hill mass forming a bridge between the 

Hohe Venn and the Schnee Eifel, which 

may be called from its highest point at 

the angle of the L, the Weisserstein. 

This ridgeline generally defines the Belgian-German border southeast of Monschau, then swings to the northeast. Part 

of the north-south watershed for the 

region, the Weisserstein in conjunction 

with the Hohe Venn and the Schnee 

Eifel also serves as the watershed between 

Eifel and Ardennes. 

Except for the Moselle the rivers of 

the Eifel are relatively minor streams, 

but they are important militarily because 

of their deep, twisting cuts. The main 

ones are the Our, running along the 

frontier and joining the Sauer before entering the Moselle; the Pruem, forming 

another north-south barrier a few miles 

beyond the Schnee Eifel; the Ahr, draining from the Hohe Eifel northeastward 

to the Rhine; and the Roer. Two of the 

more important towns within the generally pastoral region are Pruem and Bitburg, the latter in a relatively open 

stretch of countryside southeast of 

Pruem. 

The northernmost reaches of the Eifel, 

the region that General Bradley hoped to 

avoid by making his attack south of the 

Roer dams, has no general geographical 

name, but American soldiers who had 

fought there had come to know it as the 

Huertgen Forest. Although not so high 

as other parts of the Eifel, this is one of 

the more sharply compartmented sectors 

and at the time was almost completely 

covered with forest and the debris of the 

September to December battles. 

The route that General Bradley chose 

for his main attack cut across the narrow 

northwestern corner of the Eifel, avoiding the rugged Huertgen Forest. From 

the Weisserstein several radial ridges 

stretch northeastward toward Euskirchen 

and Bonn, and along two of these run 

good roads that converge at Euskirchen. 

Although the Roer reservoirs and the 

Schnee Eifel would confine the frontage 

of the main effort to a narrow ten to 

twelve miles, the advantages outweighed 

this factor. 

Athwart the selected route ran the belt 

of concrete pillboxes, minefields, concrete antitank obstacles (dragon’s teeth) , 

and entrenchments of the West Wall. 

From the Moselle to the northern tip of 

the Schnee Eifel, the fortified zone was 

relatively shallow, usually not as much 

as a mile, but it drew strength from the 

difficult terrain, including the gorges of 
MAIN EFFORT IN THE EIFEL 59 

the Our and the Sauer and the heights 

of the Schnee Eifel. Farther north the 

line split into two bands that diverged as 

much as eleven miles. Pillboxes in the 

second band were considerably fewer 

than in the first. 

The Enemy in the Eifel 

It was peculiarly difficult to guess in 

January how strongly the Germans might 

defend the West Wall, though the 12th 

Army Group’s intelligence staff assumed 

that the enemy would make as stalwart a 

stand as possible, both because of a need 

to hold the Allies at arm’s length from 

the Ruhr and because of Hitler’s seemingly fanatic refusal to yield ground 

voluntarily. The large-scale Russian offensive that had begun on 12 January 

increased the likelihood of a determined 

defense of the West Wall even though 

the means were slipping away into the 

eastern void. 14 

Still operating under the Fuehrer’s directive of 22 January to complete an 

orderly withdrawal from the Ardennes 

into the West Wall, German commanders were, as expected, pledged to defend 

the fortifications, but they were looking 

forward to at least temporary respite 

once they gained the fortified line. Detected shifts of some Allied units already 

had reinforced the generally accepted 

view that the Allies would return to a 

major thrust in the north in the direction of Cologne, so that the Germans 

naturally expected pressure to ease in the 

center. Because the V U.S. Corps appeared to be readying an attack from 

positions southeast of Monschau, the 

Fifth Panzer Army assumed that the 

14 FUSA G–2 Estimate No. 64, 21 Jan 45. 

Americans intended a limited attack to 

gain the Roer dams. Remarking relatively favorable terrain for armor around 

Bitburg, the Seventh Army believed that 

the Third U.S. Army might try to establish a bridgehead over the Our River 

pointing toward Bitburg but anticipated 

some delay before any attempt to exploit. 

No one at the time expected a major 

thrust through the Eifel. 15 

As January neared an end, the Germans would require another week to get 

the bulk of the Sixth Panzer Army 

loaded on trains and moving toward the 

east, but so occupied were the designated 

divisions with the move that no longer 

could they provide assistance in the line. 

Full responsibility for the defense lay 

with Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army on 

the north and Brandenberger’s Seventh 

Army on the south. 

Even as the Americans argued the 

merits of a thrust through the Eifel, the 

German command was making the first 

of three adjustments designed to counter 

the expected Allied return to a main 

effort in the north. The commander of 

Army Group B, Field Marshal Model, 

transferred the XIII Corps to the Seventh Army, in the process drawing a new 

interarmy boundary running eastward 

from a point south of St. Vith through 

Pruem, a northward extension of responsibility for the Seventh Army. Although the boundary with the Fifteenth 

Army remained for the moment about 

three miles south of Monschau, this 

boundary too was to be adjusted northward on 5 February to give the southernmost corps of the Fifteenth Army to 

Manteuffel’s command, again a side15 Material on the German side is from Bauer, 

The German Withdrawal From the Ardennes and 

the Western Front in Mid-January. 
60 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

slipping to the north. The third step, an 

exchange of sectors between headquarters of the Fifth Panzer and Fifteenth 

Armies in order to put a panzer command in the path of the expected Allied 

main effort, was destined to be delayed 

by the attack in the Eifel. 

As events developed, early stages of the 

American drive into the Eifel would 

pass north of the Seventh Army, striking 

primarily at the front of the Fifth Panzer 

Army, manned by the LXVI Corps 

(General der Artillerie Walter Lucht) 

and the LXVII Corps. It would later involve also the extreme south wing of the 

Fifteenth Army, a responsibility of the 

LXXIV Corps (General der Infanterie 

Karl Puechler) . Although the divisions committed in 

this sector still included such illustrious 

names as the 3d Parachute and 9th Panzer, these were in reality little more than 

remnants of true divisions; and while 

they still fought, the German command 

would make little effort to rebuild them. 

The Germans planned instead to pull 

these once-elite formations from the line 

for rehabilitation in keeping with the 

theory that some respite would follow 

withdrawal into the West Wall. The 

Eastern Front had priority on replacements at this point in any case, and such 

replacements as did reach the west went 

to the infantry and volks grenadier divisions that were to stay behind to hold 

the fortifications. 

In a general way, Allied intelligence 

anticipated this policy. It meant, in sum, 

that in an effort to create a reserve, the 

Germans would have to thin their ranks 

in the Eifel to a point where no coherent 

line would exist. Defense would have to 

be by strongpoints, relying of necessity 

on scraps and scratch outfits. The ragged 

ranks might be stiffened a little with 

concrete and barbed wire, their task 

eased by bad weather and rugged terrain, 

but the balance of forces remained hopelessly against them. Recognizing this 

situation, the First U.S. Army’s G–2, Col. 

Benjamin A. Dickson, expressed some 

optimism about the chances of swiftly 

cracking the West Wall and piercing the 

Eifel. 16 

In the last analysis, as the Third Army 

staff pointed out, quick success depended 

primarily on the enemy’s will to fight. 

Poorly trained and ill-equipped troops 

could give good accounts of themselves 

even in the fortifications of the West 

Wall and the snowbound compartments 

of the Eifel only if they wanted to. 17 As 

the drive toward Euskirchen got under 

way, just how much the individual German soldier still wanted to fight was the 

question. 

A Try for Quick Success 

The first phase of the offensive was to 

be a frontal attack aimed at penetrating 

the West Wall on a 25-mile front from 

Monschau to Luetzkampen, near the 

northern tip of Luxembourg. (Map I) 

General Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne 

Corps on the right wing of the First 

Army was to make the main effort. Holding two infantry divisions in reserve for 

exploitation, Ridgway was to strike with 

two others to pierce the fortified line 

between the Schnee Eifel and the Weisserstein astride the Losheim Gap. Named 

after a town along the border, the gap is 

a narrow corridor that in 1914, 1940, and 

1944 had served German armies well as 

16 See, for example, FUSA G–3 Estimate No. 63, 

16 Jan 45. 

17 TUSA G–3 Periodic Rpt, 27 Jan 45. 
MAP 1 

J Smith 
62 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

MEN OF THE 82D AIRBORNE DIVISION pull sleds in advancing through the Ardennes snow. 

a débouché. Once through the gap, the 

airborne corps would have access to one 

of the main routes leading to Euskirchen. 

At the same time, General Huebner’s 

V Corps on the north was to penetrate 

the western spur of the West Wall in the 

Monschau Forest and protect the army’s 

left flank by crossing northern reaches of 

the Weisserstein and seizing Schleiden 

and Gemuend, both important road centers astride a more circuitous but usable 

route to Euskirchen. To exploit success 

by either Huebner or Ridgway, the First 

Army’s General Hodges held in reserve 

Collins’s VII Corps with two infantry 

and two armored divisions. 18 

The Third Army’s role in this first 

phase of the operation was to protect the 

First Army’s right flank. General Patton 

planned to attack at first only with Middleton’s VIII Corps, whose northernmost 

division, the 87th, was to advance abreast 

of the XVIII Airborne Corps to the 

vicinity of Losheim while the 4th and 

90th Divisions to the south broke 

18 12th AGp Ltr of Instrs 12, 4 Jan 45; SHAEF 

Liaison Rpt 432, Intentions, 28 Jan 45, in 12th 

AGp 371.3, Military Objectives, V. 
MAIN EFFORT IN THE EIFEL 63 

through the West Wall along and just 

south of the Schnee Eifel. These two 

divisions then were to block to the southeast, whereupon Patton intended to insert a fourth division on the right of the 

87th to advance northeast with the 87th. 

With protection of the First Army assured, Patton then might advance with 

three corps abreast northeast to the 

Rhine or turn southeast to take the West 

Wall in flank and roll it up southward 

to Trier. 19 

The line of departure for the attack 

was irregular. In the north, where units 

of the V Corps still held the positions on 

which they had stabilized the northern 

shoulder of the counteroffensive some 

weeks earlier, it ran from Monschau 

south to the ridgeline that served as an 

outpost of the Hohe Venn near Elsenborn. Below that point, the attack would 

begin from positions gained during the 

last few days of fighting. Those generally 

followed the highway leading into St. 

Vith from the north. Beyond St. Vith the 

line retracted to the southeast generally 

along the trace of the Our River and the 

German frontier. 

Thus the XVIII Airborne Corps still 

was from eight to twelve miles away 

from the forward pillboxes of the West 

Wall, which followed the eastwardbulging contour of the Belgian-German 

border. Since the countryside in this 

bulge is either heavily wooded or 

studded with villages, the troops making 

the main effort faced a difficult task even 

to reach the fortified line. 

The 1st Infantry and 82d Airborne 

Divisions of the XVIII Airborne Corps 

opened the attack on 28 January. The 

next day the VIII Corps attacked with 

19 TUSA Opnl Dir, 26 Jan 45. 

the 87th, 4th, and 90th Divisions. On the 

30th, the V Corps jumped off in the 

north. 

The story of all these first attacks could 

be told almost in a word: weather. By 

the end of January the month’s unusually heavy snowfall and low temperatures had left a snow cover one to two 

feet deep everywhere and in some places 

drifts up to a man’s waist. Snow glazed 

the hills, choked the valleys and the 

roads, and hid the enemy’s mines. On 

the first day, it snowed again all day and 

into the night. 20 

Plowing through the deep snow, the 

two divisions of the XVIII Airborne 

Corps encountered only sporadic opposition, often taking the form of occasional 

patrols or scattered rifle fire. Yet men 

marching all day through the snow even 

without sight or sound of the enemy were 

exhausted when night came from sheer 

physical exertion. It would take the two 

divisions four full days to traverse the 

eight to twelve miles from their jump-off 

positions to the high ground confronting 

the West Wall in the Losheim Gap. 

It was in some ways a curious twilight 

war. One night, for example, a patrol 

from the 82d Airborne Division, sent to 

investigate a report that the adjacent 

87 th Division had occupied a village near 

Losheim, found no soldiers, American or 

German. Behind blackout curtains the 

villagers had their lights on. Now and 

then a shell crashed nearby, and between 

times the paratroopers could hear babies 

crying. 

On the other hand, an enemy who was 

nowhere in particular might be any20 Unless otherwise noted, the tactical story is 

based on official unit records and combat interviews conducted soon after the action by historians 

of the European Theater Historical Section. 
64 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

TRAFFIC JAM ON A SLICK ARDENNES ROAD 

where. As happened at the village of 

Holzheim, where on 29 January a company of the 82d Airborne’s 508th Parachute Infantry seized 80 prisoners while 

overrunning the village. Leaving the 

prisoners under a 4-man guard, the bulk 

of the company had moved on when a 

German patrol sneaked back into the 

village, overpowered the guards, and 

freed the prisoners. Onto this scene 

stumbled the company’s first sergeant, 

Leonard A. Funk, Jr. Surprised, he pretended to surrender, but as the Germans 

moved to disarm him, he swung his submachine gun from his shoulder and 

opened fire. Seizing German weapons, 

the 4-man guard joined the fight. In the 

melee that ensued, 21 Germans were 

killed and the rest again surrendered. 21 

Or as happened one night early in the 

attack when a platoon of paratroopers 

advanced down a narrow road between 

three-foot banks of snow thrown up by 

German plows. Three tanks rumbled between the files of riflemen. Out of the 

darkness, dead ahead, suddenly appeared 

a German company, marching forward in 

close formation. The banks of hard snow 

21 Sergeant Funk was awarded the Medal of 

Honor. 
MAIN EFFORT IN THE EIFEL 65 

on either side of the road meant no 

escape for either force. The paratroopers 

opened fire first, their accompanying 

tanks pouring withering machine gun 

fire into the massed enemy. Surprised 

and without comparable fire support, unable to scatter or retreat, the Germans 

had no chance. Almost 200 were killed; 

a handful surrendered. Not an American 

was hurt. 

Foot troops moved slowly, but they 

could always move. Behind them artillery, supply, service, and armored vehicles jammed the few cleared roads. 

Especially congested was the zone of the 

1st Division where every few hundred 

yards a partially destroyed village 

knotted the roadnet. When leading riflemen of the 1st Division reached the West 

Wall, only one artillery battalion had 

managed to displace far enough forward 

to provide support. Trucks bringing 

food and ammunition often failed to get 

through. Had the opposition been determined, the traffic snarls could have 

proved serious; as it was, the only tactical 

result was to slow the advance. 

It was 1 February—the fifth day of the 

attack—before the two divisions of the 

XVIII Airborne Corps could begin to 

move against the West Wall itself. Close 

by on the right, reflecting the day’s delay in starting to attack, the Third 

Army’s 87th Division needed yet another 

day to reach the pillboxes. 

North and south of the main effort, 

the V Corps and the bulk of the VIII 

Corps hit the West Wall earlier. One 

division near Monschau, the 9th, northernmost unit of the V Corps, was already 

inside the fortified zone at the time of 

the jump-off on 30 January. 

The 9th Division (Maj. Gen. Louis A. 

Craig), moving southeast from Monschau, and the 2d Division (Maj. Gen. 

Walter M. Robertson), striking north 

through the twin border villages of 

Krinkelt-Rocherath, near Elsenborn, 

were to converge at a road junction 

within the Monschau Forest astride the 

northern end of the Weisserstein at a 

customs house called Wahlerscheid. Both 

divisions would have to pass through 

Wahlerscheid, a pillbox-studded strongpoint, before parting ways again to continue toward Schleiden and Gemuend. 

Contingents of the 99th Division meanwhile were to clear the Monschau Forest 

west of the converging thrusts, and the 

Ninth Army’s southernmost division was 

to make a limited objective attack to 

protect the left flank of the attacking 

corps. 

In the long run, the V Corps would 

benefit from the fact that its attack 

struck along the boundary between the 

Fifth Panzer and Fifteenth Armies, but 

in the early stages the presence of West 

Wall pillboxes would mean stiffer resistance than that against the main effort. 

Yet nowhere was the resistance genuinely 

determined. The Germans of General 

Puechler’s LXXIV Corps and General 

Hitzfeld’s LXVII Corps simply had not 

the means for that kind of defense. As 

elsewhere, deep snow was the bigger 

problem, while ground fog and low overcast restricted observation for artillery 

and denied participation by tactical aircraft altogether . Approaching within a few hundred 

yards of the Wahlerscheid road junction 

late on 31 January, the 9th Division 

repulsed a counterattack by an understrength German battalion. Soon thereafter patrols discovered that the pillboxes 

at Wahlerscheid were organized for defense only to the south, a response to the 
66 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

fact that the 2d Division in December 

had hit these same pillboxes from the 

south in the abortive attack toward the 

Roer dams. The 9th Division’s 39th Infantry moved in on the rear of the fortifications early on 1 February. The 2d 

Division in the meantime was fighting 

its way through Krinkelt-Rocherath, 

scene of an epic stand by the same division during the counteroffensive, and 

then moving into the Monschau Forest 

to come upon Wahlerscheid from the 

south. 

As night came on 1 February, both the 

2d and 9th Divisions were ready to file 

past Wahlerscheid. In three days the 

attack of the V Corps had begun to show 

genuine promise. 

On the south wing of the offensive, 

the 4th (General Blakeley) and 90th 

Divisions (Maj. Gen. Lowell W. Rooks) 

of the VIII Corps at the same time had 

run into the stiffest fighting of all, partly 

because of the obstacle of the Our River. 

The lines of departure of the two divisions lay close to the Our, and for the 

90th and the right regiment of the 4th, 

crossing the river was the first order of 

business. Narrow and shallow, the Our 

was frozen solid at some points and easily 

fordable at others, but steep, slippery 

banks were a barrier to wheeled traffic 

and, as it turned out, to tracked vehicles 

as well. Yet what made the river most 

difficult was that it was tied into the West 

Wall defenses. Although the main line 

lay two to three miles behind the river, 

the Germans had erected at every likely 

crossing point fortified outpost positions. 

Aiming at the southern end of the 

Schnee Eifel, one regiment of the 4th 

Division on the first day, 29 January, 

tried to cross the Our four miles southeast of St. Vith. As the leading battalion 

approached the crossing site, a fury of 

small arms fire erupted from the east 

bank. Although one rifle platoon got 

across before the worst of the firing began, the rest of the battalion backed off 

to look for another site. Casualties were 

relatively light—for the entire regiment 

for two days, 9 killed, 29 wounded—but 

it was noon the next day before all men 

of the leading battalion were across the 

Our. 

A few miles to the south two regiments 

of the 90th Division had much the same 

experience. The leading battalions of 

each regiment came under intense fire at 

the selected crossing sites opposite the 

German outposts, but individual companies managed to maneuver to the 

south to cross the river and come upon 

the opposition from the rear. 

Despite these successes, the 4th and 

90th Divisions advanced only slowly 

through deep snow against scattered but 

determined nests of resistance for the 

next three days. Partial explanation lay 

in that both divisions were facing the 9th 

Panzer Division, a shell of a unit but one 

still capable of steadfast defense at selected points. By 1 February the 90th 

Division was in sight of the West Wall 

around the villages of Heckhuscheid and 

Grosskampenberg, while the 4th Division still had several villages to clear 

before climbing the slopes of the Schnee 

Eifel. 22 

22 In advancing on Heckhuscheid just after nightfall on 1 February, Cpl. Edward A. Bennett’s 

company of the 90th Division’s 358th Infantry 

came under heavy machine gun fire from a house 

on the edge of the village. Bennett crawled forward alone, dispatched a guard outside the house 

with a trench knife, then charged into the house 

and killed three Germans with his rifle, eliminated 

three more with a .45-caliber pistol, and clubbed 

a seventh to death. He was awarded the Medal of 

Honor. 
MAIN EFFORT IN THE EIFEL 67 

These two divisions were destined to 

continue their attacks into the West Wall 

but as part of another operation. On 1 

February, the Damocles sword that had 

hung over the 12th Army Group’s offensive from its inception suddenly fell. 

A Shift to the North 

On 1 February General Eisenhower 

ordered General Bradley to cancel the 

12th Army Group’s drive on Euskirchen 

and shift troops north to the Ninth 

Army. 28 He made the decision even 

though Bradley’s thrust, while slowed by 

weather and terrain, was encountering 

no major opposition from the Germans. 

Only a complete breakthrough could 

have saved Bradley’s offensive, and that 

was yet to come. 

Several considerations prompted the 

Supreme Commander’s decision. Continuing pressure from Field Marshal 

Montgomery, some feeling of pressure 

emanating from the meeting of the Combined Chiefs at Malta, Eisenhower’s own 

unswerving conviction that the best way 

to victory was in the north against the 

Ruhr—all played a part. Also, Eisenhower in mid-January apparently had 

given Montgomery at least an implicit 

promise that he would make a decision 

on Bradley’s offensive by the first day of 

February. 24 

Eisenhower’s order halting the Eifel 

offensive was in its formal, written form 

clear-cut. “It is of paramount importance,” the directive said, “ . . . to close 

33 Msg, SHAEF to CG’s 12th and 21 AGp’s, S77434. 1 Feb 45, 12th AGp 371.3, Military Objectives, V. 

24 Ltr, Montgomery to Eisenhower, 12 Jan 45, 

Pogue files: Memo for Record, Bradley for G–3, 

17 Jan 45: 21 AGp Dir, M–548, 21 Jan 45. The last 

two in 12th AGp 371.3, Military Objectives, V. 

the Rhine north of Duesseldorf with all 

possible speed.” 25 To achieve this, the 

First Canadian Army was to attack not 

later than 8 February and the Ninth 

Army not later than 10 February. The 

Ninth Army was to receive the equivalent of the resources loaned the 12th 

Army Group at the start of the Ardennes 

counteroffensive, or at least five divisions. 

With thinned ranks, Bradley’s armies 

were to go on the defensive except in the 

north where the First Army was to seize 

the Roer River dams and, subsequently, 

to jump the Roer to protect the Ninth 

Army’s right flank. 

Informally, General Eisenhower modified these terms considerably. Even 

though Bradley was to relinquish troops 

immediately to the Ninth Army, the 

Supreme Commander would allow his 

offensive in the Eifel to continue until 10 

February with the declared objective of 

gaining a line from Gemuend to Pruem 

that would include the Weisserstein and 

the Schnee Eifel and thus afford control 

of the Losheim Gap for possible future 

operations. Yet no matter how far this 

attack had progressed by 10 February, 

the First Army from that time was to 

concentrate on a primary mission of 

attacking across the Roer to protect the 

Ninth Army’s flank. 26 

Disappointed with the Supreme Commander’s decision, General Bradley 

nevertheless took hope in the possibility 

that he later might turn the First Army’s 

attack across the Roer to the south, perhaps to join in a thrust by the Third 

Army to clear the entire Eifel region. In 

that General Eisenhower granted the 

Third Army permission to “continue the 

25 S–734, 1 Feb 45. 

26 Notes on Conference with Army Comdrs, 2 Feb 

45, in 12th AGp, 371.3, Military Objectives, V. 
68 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

probing attacks now in progress,” on the 

theory of preventing the enemy from 

shifting reinforcements to the north and 

with a view to taking advantage of any 

chance to improve the army’s position 

for future action, Bradley found real encouragement. At headquarters of the 

Third Army “probing attacks” were 

popularly known as the “defensiveoffensive,” which meant, in more widely 

understood terminology, a major attack. 

Bradley knew, too, that the Supreme 

Commander himself well understood 

General Patton’s special lexicon. 27 

Patton’s orders, issued on 3 February, 

scarcely mentioned defense. The Third 

Army, Patton directed, was to continue 

to attack on its left to seize Pruem, to 

drive northeast with its right from the 

vicinity of Echternach to take Bitburg, 

and to be prepared to continue to the 

Rhine. 28 

Since the job of taking Pruem fell 

naturally to the VIII Corps and thus 

constituted a continuation of the attack 

then in progress, though in a different 

context, the Third Army’s drive into the 

Eifel was barely troubled by the decision 

of 1 February. The First Army was more 

severely straitened. While General Patton gave up only two divisions to the 

Ninth Army, one of which was an inexperienced unit from the army reserve, 

General Hodges had to surrender the 

two reserve infantry divisions of the 

XVIII Airborne Corps and the three divisions of the VII Corps that had been 

standing by to exploit in the Eifel. Although headquarters of the VII Corps 

27 Ibid.; 12th AGp Ltr of Instrs, 7 Feb 45, confirming previous oral orders; Omar N. Bradley, 

A Soldier’s Story (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 

1951), P. 501. 

28 TUSA AAR, 1 Aug 44–9 May 45, vol. I, Opns, 

P. 255. 

was to remain under the First Army, 

General Collins was to assume responsibility for the southern portion of the 

Ninth Army’s Roer River line, the same 

front the corps had held before the 

counteroffensive, and prepare to attack 

to protect the Ninth Army’s flank. In 

addition, the V Corps had to mount an 

attack against the Roer dams. 

The First Army was to try again to 

penetrate the West Wall in the Eifel, but 

under the revised conditions chances of 

decisive success were meager. 

An End to the Offensive 

For four more days, through 4 February, the thrusts of the XVIII Airborne 

Corps and the V Corps continued much 

as before, particularly in the zone of the 

airborne corps where the 1st Infantry 

and 82d Airborne Divisions at last entered the West Wall. While not every 

pillbox was manned, the cold, the snow, 

the icy roads hindering support and supply, and the strength lent the defense by 

concrete shelters still imposed slow going. By 4 February the two divisions had 

advanced little more than a mile inside 

the German frontier, although a sufficient distance to insure control of the 

first tier of villages on a five-mile front 

within the Losheim Gap. The advance 

represented a penetration of the densest 

concentration of pillboxes in this part 

of the West Wall. 

The V Corps meanwhile made substantially greater progress. Indeed, had 

any authority still existed to turn the 

Eifel drive into a major offensive, the 

advances of the V Corps after clearing 

the Wahlerscheid road junction on 1 

February might have been sufficient to 

justify alerting the forces of exploitation. 
MAIN EFFORT IN THE EIFEL 69 

On 2 February both the 2d and 9th Divisions pushed almost four miles beyond 

Wahlerscheid, one in the direction of 

Schleiden, the other, Gemuend. 

Much of their success again could be 

attributed to the luck of striking astride 

the boundary between German units. As 

early as 29 January the northernmost 

unit of the LXVII Corps, the 277th 

Volks Grenadier Division around Krinkelt-Rocherath, had lost contact with the 

southernmost unit of the LXXIV Corps, 

the 62d Infantry Division, whose southern flank was at Wahlerscheid. Even after 

the 277th Volks Grenadiers began to 

withdraw into the West Wall on the last 

two days of January, no contact or even 

communication existed between the two 

units. 29 

In driving southeast from Monschau, 

the 9th Division had virtually wiped out 

the 62d Infantry Division. As units of 

both the 2d and 9th Divisions poured 

northeast through the resulting gap at 

Wahlerscheid on 2 February, outposts of 

the 277th Division on higher ground two 

miles to the southeast could observe the 

American columns, but the 277th’s commander, Generalmajor Wilhelm Viebig, 

had no way of determining what was 

going on. Although Viebig's artillery 

could have damaged the U.S. units, so 

seriously depleted were his ammunition 

stocks that he decided to fire only if the 

Americans turned in his direction. 

As darkness came on 2 February, 

Viebig's corps commander, General Hitzfeld, learned of the penetration. Ordering Viebig to extend his flank to the 

29 German material is from Magna E. Bauer, MS 

# R–65, The Breakthrough of the West Wall Between Ormont and Monschau. 

north, he also managed to put hands on 

small contingents of the 3d Panzer 

Grenadier Division, which had been 

withdrawn from the line for refitting. 

Yet despite these countermoves, the 9th 

Division by nightfall of 3 February stood 

less than two miles from Gemuend, the 

2d Division only a few hundred yards 

from Schleiden. 

Had the Americans been intent on exploiting their limited penetration, Hitzfeld would have been hard put to do 

anything about it, but the hope of major 

exploitation through the Eifel by the 

First Army was beyond recall. General 

Hodges on 4 February made it official 

with a letter of instructions spelling out 

various shifts of units for his newly assigned tasks. 30 Not only was the VII 

Corps to move northward to take over 

a portion of the Ninth Army's Roer 

River line but the XVIII Airborne Corps 

also was to shift to assume responsibility 

for a part of the Roer line adjoining the 

VII Corps. The V Corps was to extend 

its positions southeastward to relieve the 

airborne corps while at the same time 

attacking to seize the Roer dams. 

Occurring late on 6 February, relief 

of the airborne corps signaled an end to 

the offensive in this part of the Eifel. The 

line as finally established ran along high 

ground overlooking Gemuend and 

Schleiden from the west, thence southeastward across the northeastern arm of 

the Weisserstein to the boundary with 

the Third Army near Losheim. 

Blessed from the first with little more 

than ambition, the main effort in the 

Eifel had ground to a predictable halt. 

30 See First Army Report, 1 Aug 44–22 Feb. 45, 

pp. 154–55. 
CHAPTER IV 

The Roer River Dams 

In one of the more sharply etched sectors of the Eifel, a few miles northeast 

of Monschau, German civil engineers 

over the years had constructed seven 

dams to impound and regulate the flow 

of the waters of the Roer River and its 

tributaries. These were the dams the 

American soldier had come to know collectively as the Roer River dams, with 

particular reference to the two largest, 

the Urft and the Schwammenauel. 

Constructed just after the turn of the 

century on the Urft River downstream 

from Gemuend, near confluence of the 

Urft and the Roer, the Urft Dam creates 

a reservoir (the Urftstausee) capable of 

impounding approximately 42,000 acrefeet of water. Built in the mid-1930’s a 

few miles to the north on the Roer near 

Hasenfeld, the Schwammenauel Dam 

creates a reservoir (the Roerstausee) capable of impounding about 81,000 acrefeet. The Urft Dam is made of concrete; 

the Schwammenauel of earth with a concrete core. It was these two dams that the 

Germans might destroy or open the gates 

of to manipulate the waters of the Roer, 

flooding a low-lying valley downstream to 

the north in the vicinity of the towns of 

Dueren and Juelich, washing out tactical 

bridges, and isolating any Allied force 

that had crossed the river. 1 

1 A more detailed description of the dams is to 

be found in MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign. 

From September through mid-November, 1944, General Hodges’ First Army 

had launched three separate one-division 

attacks through an almost trackless 

Huertgen Forest in the general direction 

of the dams, though with other objectives in mind. A combination of difficult 

terrain and unexpectedly sharp German 

reaction had stopped all three attacks 

well short of the dams. Realizing at last 

the importance of the dams to German 

defense of the Roer River line, the 

American command had tried to breach 

them with air strikes, but these too 

failed. In December a ground attack 

aimed specifically at seizing the dams had 

been cut short by the counteroffensive in 

the Ardennes. 2 

Those attacks launched through the 

Huertgen Forest had been directed toward commanding ground at the town 

of Schmidt, two miles north of the 

Schwammenauel Dam. The short-lived 

December attack had been planned as a 

two-pronged thrust with two divisions 

coming upon the dams from the south 

while another pushed northeastward 

from the vicinity of Monschau along the 

north bank of the Roer to Schmidt. 

Although the deep cut of the Roer and 

2 MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign. 

Charles B. MacDonald and Sidney T. Mathews, 

Three Battles: Arnaville, Altuzzo and Schmidt, 

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II 

(Washington, 1952). “Objective Schmidt.” 
THE ROER RIVER DAMS 71 

the reservoirs themselves would have 

imposed a tactical divorce on the two 

thrusts, the best approach to the Urft 

Dam was from the south and the high 

ground at Schmidt was essential to gaining and holding the Schwammenauel 

Dam. 

As the new V Corps commander, 

General Huebner, planned the February attack on the dams, he apparently 

had the earlier planning in mind. 

Furthermore, attacks then under way 

as part of the fading drive into the Eifel 

fitted in with the two-pronged pattern 

of the earlier plan. The drives of the 2d 

and 9th Divisions through Wahlerscheid 

on Gemuend and Schleiden had the 

secondary effect of threatening the Roer 

dams from the south, while a limited 

objective attack staged by the southernmost division of the Ninth Army to 

protect the left flank of the First Army 

had the secondary effect of setting the 

stage for a thrust northeastward from 

Monschau toward the Schwammenauel 

Dam. 

This division of the Ninth Army was 

the 78th (Maj. Gen. Edwin P. Parker, 

Jr.) . Through the Ardennes fighting the 

division had continued to hold positions 

near Monschau that had been reached 

in the December attack toward the 

dams. It was a foregone conclusion that 

when the boundary between the First 

and Ninth Armies was adjusted northward, the 78th would pass to the First 

Army and become the logical choice for 

renewing the attack on the Schwammenauel Dam. Begun on 30 January, 

the division’s limited objective attack to 

protect the First Army’s left flank thus 

was a first step toward capturing the 

Schwammenauel Dam. 

The 78th Division occupied a small 

GENERAL HUEBNER 

salient about two miles deep into the 

forward band of the West Wall on a 

plateau northeast of Monschau. Containing sprawling villages as well as pillboxes, the plateau was one of the few 

large clearings along the German border 

between Aachen and St. Vith. As such, 

it represented a likely avenue for penetrating the West Wall and had been so 

used, though without signal success, in an 

attack in October. For want of a better 

name, the area has been called the Monschau corridor, though it is not a true 

terrain corridor, since entrance to it 

from the west is blocked by the high 

marshland of the Hohe Venn and farther 

east it is obstructed by dense forest and 

the cut of the Roer River. 

The enemy there was an old foe, having held the sector when the 78th made 

its first attack in mid-December and 
72 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

having tried in vain to penetrate the 

78th lines in early stages of the counteroffensive. This was the 272d Volks 

Grenadier Division with a strength of 

about 6,000 men. 3 The division was a 

part of Puechler’s LXXIV Corps of the 

Fifteenth Army, destined to be transferred on 5 February to control of the 

Fifth Panzer Army. 4 

The object of the limited attack was 

to extend the 78th Division’s holdings 

to the south and southeast to gain the 

north bank of the Roer River from 

Monschau to Einruhr, the latter guarding passage of the Roer along a highway 

leading southeast to Schleiden. The assignment was to be divided between the 

311th Infantry on the east and the 310th 

Infantry on the west, each responsible 

for taking two of five villages in the 

target area. Attached to the 78th Division, Combat Command A (CCA) of 

the 5th Armored Division was to take 

the fifth village in the center with the 

help of a battalion of the 311th Infantry. Because the 310th Infantry would 

be rolling up the West Wall as it advanced, a platoon of British flame-throwing tanks, called Crocodiles, was assigned 

in support. 5 

The attack began with a good break. 

Although the division commander, General Parker, had intended a half-hour 

artillery preparation, General Simpson, 

with an eye toward building a reserve 

for the Ninth Army’s coming offensive, 

cut the ammunition allocation so dras3 78th Div G–2 Estimate, 26 Jan 45. 

4 See above, ch. III. 

5 A good unit history, Lightning—The Story of 

the 78th Infantry Division (Washington: Infantry 

Journal Press, 1947). supplements official records. 

tically that Parker had to reduce the 

preparation to five minutes. Accustomed 

to longer shelling before an American 

attack, the Germans in the pillboxes in 

front of the 310th Infantry waited under 

cover for the fire to continue. They 

waited too long. In a matter of minutes, 

men of the 310th Infantry were all 

around them. In three hours they cleared 

thirty-two pillboxes and took the village 

of Konzen. Their final objective, the 

next village to the south, fell the next 

morning. So swift was the success that 

the flame-throwing tanks saw little use. 

In the center, the tanks of CCA had 

trouble with mines concealed by deep 

snow, but by late afternoon they managed to work their way in the wake of 

the infantry to the fringe of Eicherscheid. With infantrymen close behind 

them, they roared into the village and 

began a systematic mop-up just as darkness came. 

Only on the extreme left wing of the 

311th Infantry, at Kesternich on the 

road to Einruhr, was the story basically 

different. There the 2d Battalion already 

held a few of the westernmost houses, 

the sole lasting gain from a bitter fight 

for the village in December. Yet despite 

long familiarity with the terrain and the 

most minute planning, the first companies to enter the main part of the 

village found control almost impossible. 

Although the men had studied the location of the houses from a map, they were 

difficult to recognize. Many were destroyed, some were burning, and the 

snow hid landmarks. Communications 

with tankers of the supporting 736th 

Tank Battalion failed early. Mines ac- 
THE ROER RIVER DAMS 73 

counted for two tanks, antitank fire two 

more. 6 

With the Germans doggedly defending 

each building, it took two full days to 

clear the last resistance from Kesternich. 

Capturing the town might have taken 

even longer had it not been for a squad 

leader in Company E, S. Sgt. Jonah E. 

Kelley. Each time Kelley’s squad assaulted a building, he was the first to 

enter. Although wounded twice early in 

the fighting, he refused evacuation. His 

left hand useless, he continued to fire his 

rifle by resting it across his left forearm. 

Late on the second day, Kelley led an 

assault on a machine gun position. German fire cut him down as he expended 

the last three rounds from his rifle and 

knocked out the machine gun. 7 

In the two-day action, the 311th 

Infantry lost 224 men, the bulk of them 

from the 2d Battalion. Just why Kesternich cost so much became clear as artillery observers found they could direct 

observed fire from the village on all 

remaining German positions west of the 

Roerstausee. 

Toward Schmidt 

In advance of the pending shift of the 

First Army’s boundary to the north, the 

78th Division on 2 February passed to 

operational control of the V Corps. That 

evening the division commander, General Parker, traveled to headquarters of 

the V Corps to receive from General 

Huebner the order for the capture of 

6 Organized and trained to operate amphibious 

tanks in the invasion of Normandy, the 736th had 

been converted to a standard tank battalion in 

November but had received no medium tanks until January. See 736th Tank Bn Hist. 

7 Sergeant Kelley was awarded the Medal of 

Honor posthumously. 

Schmidt and the Schwammenauel Dam. 

The task, Huebner told Parker, was the 

most vital at that time on the entire 

Western Front; until the dam was in 

hand, the Ninth Army dared not cross 

the Roer. Added to this glare of the 

spotlight was the fact that the 78th 

Division had had only limited battle 

experience and the fact that the very 

name of the town of Schmidt had become a kind of bugaboo among American soldiers after the beating another 

division had taken there in November. 

All the ingredients for a bad case of the 

jitters were present at the start. 

As General Parker prepared his plan 

of attack, it was obvious that terrain 

would narrowly restrict the force that 

could be applied against Schmidt and 

the dam. Schmidt lies spread-eagled on 

the eastern slopes of a high hill mass, in 

general an east-west ridge with fingers 

poking out to north, northeast, and 

south. Adjacent high ground to the 

north beyond the little Kall River, which 

in German hands had contributed to 

failure at Schmidt in November, was 

controlled by the neighboring XIX 

Corps. 

It would be hard to get at Schmidt 

along the route from the southwest that 

the 78th Division had to take. Except 

for a narrow woods trail from Woffelsbach, close by the Roerstausee, the only 

feasible approach from this direction is 

along a lone main road following the 

crest of the Schmidt ridge. The road 

passes from the open ground of the 

Monschau corridor through more than 

a mile of dense evergreen forest before 

emerging again into broad fields several 

hundred yards west of Schmidt, where it 

climbs Hill 493 before descending into 

the town. A narrow but militarily im- 
74 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

THE URFT DAM 

portant feeder road parallels the main 

road on the north for a few miles before 

joining the main road at a point where 

the Germans had constructed a nest of 

wooden barracks, believed to be strongly 

fortified. 

In addition to normal attachments, the 

78th Division was to be reinforced by 

the reserve combat command of the 7th 

Armored Division, an engineer combat 

battalion, fires of V Corps and 7th Armored artillery, and planes of the XIX 

Tactical Air Command. Jump-off was 

scheduled for 0300, 5 February. 

General Parker intended first to clear 

the rest of the Monschau corridor and 

seize a line running inside the woods 

from the Kall River in the north through 

the nest of barracks to the Roerstausee. 

(Map 2) From there the attack was to 

proceed almost due east along the axis 

of the main road into Schmidt, thence, 

while subsidiary drives secured villages 

north and east of the town, southeast to 

the Schwammenauel Dam. The 309th 

Infantry, attacking with its 3d Battalion 

from within the Monschau corridor at 

Rollesbroich, was to make the main effort in the first phase, seizing the barracks at the juncture of the feeder road 
THE ROER RIVER DAMS 75 

SCHWAMMENAUEL DAM 

and the main highway. Thereupon the 

310th Infantry was to pass through and 

take Schmidt. 

The attack began on a bright note, 

for late in the afternoon of 4 February 

a company of the 9th Division reached 

the Urft Dam after little more than a 

cross-country march. Although American 

artillery fire had done some damage to 

outlet tunnels, the big dam still was intact. 

The beginning of the 78th Division’s 

attack went well—unexpectedly well. 

The 3d Battalion, 309th Infantry (Lt. 

Col. Floyd C. Call), got off on time at 

0300, 5 February, and in rain-drenched 

darkness moved cross-country through a 

web of pillboxes. The infantrymen slipped past at least 35 concrete pillboxes 

and bunkers from which 135 Germans 

later emerged; but not a shot disturbed 

them. 

As the battalion advanced through 

successive checkpoints and the word 

came back over the field telephones, “No 

enemy contact,” commanders prepared 

the next step. It looked like a penetration, but could it be exploited? Engineers and reconnaissance troops moved 

out to see if the roads were clear, particularly the feeder road north of the main 

highway, the main axis of the 309th’s 
76 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

MAP 2 

advance. Meanwhile, other troops of the 

division, including attached tanks of the 

7th Armored Division’s CCR, prepared 

to clear the remaining villages in the 

Monschau corridor. 

A little after daylight, General Parker 

alerted the 310th Infantry for an immediate move through the 309th. Fifteen 

minutes later Colonel Call reported his 

battalion “advancing toward the final 

objective” and meeting small arms fire 

for the first time.8 Shortly thereafter the 

infantrymen of the 309th overran the 

German barracks, catching some men 

sleeping, others eating breakfast. Movement orders for the 310th Infantry, 

8 310th Inf Jnl, 5 Feb 45, entry 0726. 

H. C. Brewer, Jr 
THE ROER RIVER DAMS 77 

meanwhile, had to await inspection of 

the road. Inevitably, that took time. 

During the wait the commanders 

considered other possibilities. General 

Parker thought of sending the 309th out 

farther than originally planned. General 

Huebner at V Corps contemplated more 

drastic changes. Before 0830 he ordered 

the 78th Division to form a task force 

built around the 311th Infantry to cross 

the Roer at Ruhrberg over the Paulushof regulating dam, one of the lesser 

dams in the Roer system, plow through 

rough, wooded country between the 

Urftstausee and the Roerstausee, and 

come upon the Schwammenauel Dam 

from the south. At the same time the 

9th Division was to send a force across 

the Urft Dam to block forest roads that 

the Germans might use to move against 

the 311th Infantry. 9 These maneuvers 

were to take place during the night of 

6 February. In the meantime the main 

effort by the 78th Division against 

Schmidt was to continue. 

Shortly before 0900 on the 5th it became clear that mines and craters for the 

present ruled out use of either the feeder 

road or the main highway toward 

Schmidt. The 3 10th Infantry, General 

Parker ordered, was to proceed crosscountry without supporting weapons. In 

two hours the infantrymen were on the 

march. 

Men of the 309th Infantry meanwhile 

had begun to run into resistance as the 

Germans awoke to their threat. A company on the right received what was 

reported to be a counterattack, though 

it apparently was no more than an aggressive defense by a few German squads. 

A fire fight took place nevertheless, and 

9 V Corps Ltr of Instrs 051030 Feb 45, as cited 

in V Corps Opns in ETO, p. 376. 

in the woods where control is difficult, it 

checked the advance. The attack, which 

had flamed so brilliantly, began to show 

signs of sputtering out. 

With so much at stake, commanders 

grew uneasy. General Parker an hour 

before noon ordered the 309th Infantry 

to go as far as possible beyond the barracks and at the same time directed the 

310th Infantry not to move into forward 

assembly areas as planned but to pass 

immediately through advance units of 

the 309th Infantry and press the attack. 

These orders stood less than fifteen 

minutes; the corps commander, General 

Huebner, intervened. It seemed to 

Huebner unsound in the face of seemingly slight resistance to halt the attack 

while waiting for a new regiment to 

take over. The 309th, moreover, was the 

freshest unit in the division. At his instigation, the 309th was to continue to 

Schmidt, reinforced by its 1st Battalion, 

heretofore attached to the 310th Infantry. All troops were to advance without 

supporting weapons until roads could 

be opened. 10 

The order was difficult to execute. 

The 1st Battalion of the 309th in order 

to rejoin its parent regiment had to pass 

through two battalions of the 310th that 

had already begun to move forward. It 

was two hours before men of this battalion began to pass through and late 

afternoon before they arrived at the 

forward positions. The 2d Battalion had 

been clearing pillboxes around the 

barracks and could not assemble 

immediately to move on to the east. The 

3rd Battalion still was mopping up the 

pillbox belt that had been negotiated so 

rapidly before dawn by the 2d Battalion. 

As night came, General Parker—ap10 78th Div AAR, Feb 45. 
78 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

parently with the concurrence of General Huebner—directed that all units 

resume their original missions. The 

310th Infantry was to pass through the 

309th at 0300 the next morning, 6 February. 

Both regiments were in low spirits, 

thoroughly confused by the day of 

changing orders . 11 Men of at least one 

battalion of the 309th learned that both 

division and corps commanders were 

displeased with their performance. The 

men of the 310th Infantry were tired, 

wet, and frustrated, and the regimental 

commander warned that they would be 

in poor condition for the next day’s 

attack. The day of 5 February closed on 

frayed nerves. 

While the 311th Infantry had escaped 

most of the confusion, that regiment’s 

progress, too, was slow. The order to 

cross the Roer at Ruhrberg General 

Huebner canceled in the afternoon when 

reconnaissance revealed that the Germans had blown a great gap in the roadway over the Paulushof Dam and that 

the swollen Roer was too deep and swift 

to ford. 

The order never had interrupted 

operations. One battalion continued to 

push across cruel terrain north of 

Ruhrberg, the back way to Schmidt. Although resistance was never resolute, the 

job of clambering through woods, up 

and down steep hills, and challenging a 

succession of pillboxes wore the men out. 

Yet they took the hamlet of Woffelsbach 

and thus, by nightfall, were roughly on a 

line with the 309th Infantry in the main 

attack. 

Since all attempts to speed the main 

attack had failed and one had backfired 

11 310th Inf Jnl, 5 Feb 45, entry 1849; Combat 

interviews with men of 3d Bn, 309th Inf. 

in added delays, pressure for quick 

success increased. General Huebner ordered that the attack on Schmidt itself be 

made at daylight on 6 February and 

that the Schwammenauel Dam be taken, 

if possible, the same day. The First Army 

commander, General Hodges, was to 

arrive at the division command post in 

the morning, which was a military euphemism for “Get cracking, or else!” 

At 0300 on 6 February, the 310th Infantry began passing through the lines 

of the 309th with two battalions in 

column, but hardly had the men crossed 

their line of departure when they came 

under intense grazing fire from automatic weapons. As the men went to 

ground, commanders temporarily lost 

control. At daylight, the men rallied, but 

commanders in the thick woods had no 

real idea where they were. The day was 

overcast, and dim light filtering through 

heavy fir branches scarcely brightened 

the gloom under the trees. Enemy artillery and mortar fire ranged in. One battalion counted about 200 rounds of 

mortar fire in half an hour. Apparently 

unobserved, the shelling caused few 

casualties, but it was enough to stymie 

advance. Tanks coming up the road to 

support the attack drew antitank fire 

and backed into hull defilade out of 

contact with the infantry. 

In early afternoon the infantry tried 

a new attack, but it had no punch. Since 

observers were unable to adjust artillery 

by sight in the thick woods, artillery 

preparation was worse than useless, serving only to fell trees and branches in the 

path of the infantry. Commanders still 

had only a vague idea of where the men 

were. 

Just before dusk, Company A on the 

extreme right walked into an ambush. 
THE ROER RIVER DAMS 79 

The Germans allowed the lead platoon 

to pass through their positions, then 

opened heavy small arms fire on the 

company headquarters and two platoons 

that followed. The incident disorganized 

the company and produced wild rumors 

in the rear. Artillery observers reported 

that the entire right flank was disintegrating; Company A was “cut to 

pieces.” 12 At division headquarters word 

was that a substantial counterattack was 

in progress and had achieved a considerable penetration. Seven men from 

Company A reported at regimental 

headquarters that they were the sole 

survivors. 

The truth was that there had been no 

counterattack and no penetration, but 

defensive fires from what may have been 

the enemy’s main line of resistance were 

heavy and damaging. The 310th Infantry commander, Col. Thomas H. Hayes, 

decided to call off the attack for the 

night, pulling his advance battalion back 

to consolidate with another in a nighttime defensive position. Seventy-five men 

of Company A filtered back to join the 

defense. 

As night came, men of the 310th Infantry had little to console them for the 

day’s sacrifices. Instead of attacking 

Schmidt, they had barely struggled past 

the line of departure. Paying the penalty 

for the confusion and haste of the day 

before, they had blundered under pressure from higher headquarters into an 

ill-prepared attack in the darkness 

through unknown woods against unknown positions and had suffered the 

consequences that basic training doctrine predicts. 

To give the stumbling attack a boost, 

12 S–2-S–3 Jnl, 310th Inf, 6 Feb 45. 

General Parker on 7 February committed all three of his regiments. The 310th 

Infantry was to continue along the axis 

of the main road and take the crest of 

the high ground, Hill 493 outside 

Schmidt. The 309th Infantry on the left 

was to drive northeast through the woods 

to Kommerscheidt, just north of 

Schmidt. The 311th Infantry on the 

right was to push northeast through the 

woods from Woffelsbach and take 

Schmidt itself. 

Although a half-hour artillery preparation preceded the new attack, it fell on 

German positions manned at that point 

only by a small rear guard. Having 

managed to use the dense woods and 

American errors to sufficient advantage 

to make a stiff fight of it for a while, 

the 272d Volks Grenadier Division, lacking depth, had fallen back during the 

night, The 309th Infantry met little 

opposition until it reached Kommerscheidt. There a heavy concentration of 

mortar fire sent the men diving into 

water-filled shellholes and foxholes, relics 

of the November fighting. Men of the 

310th Infantry, accompanied by tanks 

of the 744th Tank Battalion, walked 

and occasionally rode along the main 

road to occupy Hill 493 by midmorning. 

In the rough wooded terrain on the 

right, the 311th Infantry had slower 

going, but with considerable finesse men 

of the leading battalion surrounded and 

knocked out a succession of pillboxes. 

At small cost to themselves, they gathered in 117 prisoners during the day. 

Taking advantage of the 310th Infantry’s 

advance to Hill 493, another battalion 

of the 311th Infantry with the support 

of a company of tanks marched down 

the main road toward Schmidt and arrived at the woods line in time to launch 
80 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

an attack in early afternoon. With infantrymen riding the tanks, the column 

prepared to make a dash over the crest 

of Hill 493 and across a mile of open 

fields into the town. 

Hardly had the lead tank crossed the 

crest of the hill when armor-piercing 

shells struck it three times. As the tank 

burst into flames, the other tanks scurried back to the woods line. 

Reorganizing, the infantry set out to 

do the job alone. Covered by fire from 

light machine guns, one company 

plunged across the crest of the hill. 

Despite persistent German fire, most of 

the men had by late afternoon gained 

the westernmost houses in the northern 

part of the town. Another company tried 

to come in through a draw south of 

Schmidt but found the approach covered 

by fire from automatic weapons. Night 

was falling as the company gained the 

first houses. Only at this point did the 

tanks arrive to help in a house-to-house 

mop-up of the town. 

Toward the Dam 

On the same day that the first American troops entered Schmidt, 7 February, 

a regiment of the 82d Airborne Division 

began to attack southward across the 

corps boundary to cross the deep draw 

of the Kall River and move cross-country 

to cut the enemy’s escape route from 

Schmidt, the road from Schmidt northeast to the Roer at Nideggen. Terrain 

imposed such limits on the advance that 

by the time the 311th Infantry got to 

Schmidt, little hope remained for a sizable prisoner bag. The next day another 

regiment of the 82d Airborne crossed 

the Kall gorge and relieved the 309th 

Infantry in Kommerscheidt so that the 

309th could participate in the final thrust 

on the Schwammenauel Dam. 

General Parker’s plan for the final 

thrust called for the 310th Infantry to 

pass through Schmidt early on 8 February and drive east and southeast along 

the highway to Hasenfeld at the foot of 

the dam. As soon as the 310th had advanced far enough along this road to 

uncover a line of departure for an attack 

southward against the darn, the 309th 

Infantry was to follow and move crosscountry to take the dam. 

If this plan was to be executed swiftly, 

Schmidt had to be fully in hand, a condition General Parker believed already 

met. On 8 February the men of the 310th 

Infantry discovered otherwise. Many of 

the houses, particularly those along the 

road to Hasenfeld, remained to be 

cleared, and the Germans yielded none 

without a fight. Noontime came and 

went, and the 310th still was battling to 

get past the last houses and into the 

open. 

The First Army commander, General 

Hodges, made no effort to hide his dissatisfaction with the pace of the attack. 

The target date for the Ninth Army’s 

offensive across the lower reaches of the 

Roer, io February, was little more than 

a day away; but not until the 78th took 

the dam could the Ninth Army move. 

The First Army artillery commander, 

Brig. Gen. Charles E. Hart, had seen to 

it that 40 battalions of artillery (780 

guns) could be called upon to help the 

attack; General Hodges found it hard to 

understand why with this amount of 

artillery they could not “blast a road 

from our present front line positions 

straight to the dam.” 13 

13 Sylvan Diary, entries of 6 and 8 Feb 45. 
THE ROER RIVER DAMS 81 

Shortly before noon on 8 February, 

General Hodges telephoned the V Corps 

commander, General Huebner, to express again his dissatisfaction. A few 

minutes later the commander of the 9th 

Division, General Craig, walked into the 

V Corps headquarters on a routine visit. 

How long, Huebner asked Craig, would 

it take to shift a combat team of the 9th 

Division to Schmidt to attack the dam? 

Craig said he could do it “immediately.” 

Huebner told him to move not only a 

combat team but also the division headquarters. When Craig arrived in 

Schmidt, the 78th Division’s 309th and 

311th Regiments were to be attached to 

the 9th Division. 14 

Placing a telephone call to his division 

command post, General Craig urged such 

speed in the movement that first units 

of his division already were en route to 

Schmidt before he himself got back to 

his command post. Turning over its 

sector to the 2d Division, the 60th Infantry led the way. A second regiment 

followed as a reserve, while the third 

regiment remained behind under attachment to the 2d Division. By midnight men of the 9th were in Schmidt 

getting set to attack before daybreak the 

next morning. 

General Craig directed the 311th Infantry to clear wooded high ground 

along the north and northeast banks of 

the Roerstausee while the Goth Infantry took over the drive to Hasenfeld. The 

309th Infantry remained on alert to 

move against the dam itself. 

Despite the introduction of a new 

14 Capt. Joseph M. Mittelman, Eight Stars to 

Victory, A History of the Veteran Ninth U.S. Infantry Division (Washington: Ninth Division Association, 1948), p. 309: Sylvan Diary, entry of 8 

Feb 45. 

commander and a veteran unit, the going on g February again was slow. Not 

until late afternoon did either the Goth 

Infantry on the road to Hasenfeld or the 

311th Infantry along the northeast bank 

of the reservoir advance far enough to 

enable the 309th Infantry to begin its 

attack against the dam. It was 1800— 

after nightfall in this period of short 

winter days-when the leading 1st Battalion, 309th, passed through the 311th 

Infantry and headed for the dam. 

Groping through the darkness, the 1st 

Battalion upon approaching the dam 

split into two groups, one to gain the top 

of the dam and cross over, the other to 

reach the lower level and take the power 

house. Those men moving against the 

lower level were particularly apprehensive lest the Germans at any moment 

blow the dam, sending tons of concrete, 

earth, and water cascading down upon 

them. 

With the upper group was a team 

from the 303d Engineer Battalion, specially briefed on the nature of the big 

dam. The engineers pressed forward at 

2300 to begin a search for demolitions. 

German fire at first forced them back, 

but by midnight they were at last able to 

start. 

The engineers intended to cross the 

dam to the spillway and there descend 

into an inspection tunnel that intelligence reports stated ran through the 

dam. Crouched low against continuing 

German rifle fire, the men raced across 

but found a portion of the spillway 

blown and access to the tunnel denied. 

There was only one other way, to slide 

down the 200-foot face of the dam and 

gain the tunnel through its bottom exit. 

Although the task was slow and 

treacherous, the engineers accomplished 
82 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

DAMAGE TO THE SCHWAMMENAUEL DAM causes flooding of the Roer River. 

it. Entering the tunnel, they expected at 

any moment to be blown to kingdom 

come. The explosion never came. Subsequent investigation revealed that the 

Germans already had done all the damage intended. They had destroyed the 

machinery in the power room and had 

blown the discharge valves. They had 

also destroyed the discharge valves on a 

penstock that carried water from the 

upper reservoir on the Urft to a point 

of discharge below the Schwammenauel 

Dam, which explained why they had 

allowed the Urft Dam itself to fall into 

American hands intact. Together the 

two demolitions would release no major 

cascade of water but a steady flow calculated to create a long-lasting flood in the 

valley of the Roer. 15 

Allied commanders could breathe 

easily again. The reservoirs that directly 

and indirectly had cost so many lives at 

last were in hand. It would have been 

better, of course, had the Schwammenauel Dam been taken intact, thus 

15 Lightning, pp. 118–20, contains a vivid account 

of the engineer action. In comments on the draft 

MS for this volume, General von Manteuffel notes 

that Hitler had specifically ordered that the dams 

be destroyed but, Manteuffel says, he had forbidden it. 
THE ROER RIVER DAMS 83 

obviating any change in the Ninth 

Army's plan for crossing the Roer; but 

it was enough that the Germans had 

been forced to expend their weapon 

before any Allied troops had crossed the 

river downstream. 

In the end the success belonged basically to the 78th Division. For all the dissatisfaction with the pace of the attack, 

this relatively inexperienced division 

had driven through rugged terrain over 

a severely canalized approach. Dense 

forest had nullified much of the artillery's power, as weather did for air support. Too many cooks had appeared 

from time to time to meddle in the tactical broth, but once the pressure was off 

and the division's role could be assessed 

with some perspective, General Huebner 

could remark to General Hodges that he 

had "made him another good division." 16 

16 Sylvan Diary, entry of 10 Feb 45. 
CHAPTER V 

The Drive on Pruem 

Since General Eisenhower’s order of 

1 February ending the 12th Army 

Group’s main effort in the Eifel authorized the Third Army to “continue the 

probing attacks now in progress,” General Middleton’s VIII Corps was able to 

pursue its offensive almost without 

pause. The Third Army commander, 

General Patton, nevertheless altered the 

objective of the attack and provided 

additional strength. No longer was the 

Third Army affording flank protection 

for the First Army but instead was preparing the way for what Patton hoped 

could be developed eventually into a 

two-pronged drive to breach the West 

Wall on a wide front and drive on 

through the Eifel to the Rhine. 

General Patton told Middleton to go 

beyond the Schnee Eifel ridgeline and 

take the road center of Pruem. Even 

before this objective was in hand, he 

hoped to start General Eddy’s XII Corps 

on a drive northeastward from the 

vicinity of Echternach to take Bitburg, 

the other major road center in the western Eifel. Having thus carved out a deep 

foothold inside the Eifel, he would possess a fulcrum for persuading his superiors to support an offensive the rest 

of the way to the Rhine. 1 

The VIII Corps zone remained as 

1 TUSA AAR, 1 Aug 44–9 May 45, p. 255; TUSA 

Opnl Dir, 3 Feb 45; Gay Diary, entries of 3–5 

Feb 45. 

before, approximately sixteen miles wide 

from the Loshiem Gap in the north to 

Luetzkampen, near the northern tip of 

Luxembourg. Three divisions already 

were in line, the 87th on the north, the 

4th in the center, and the 90th on the 

south. (Map III) 

Commanded now by Brig. Gen. Frank 

L. Culin, Jr., the 87th Division was to 

protect the corps north flank, a task of 

considerable importance since the adjacent divisions of the First Army were no 

longer advancing abreast. The 87th was 

to accomplish its mission by penetrating 

the West Wall and seizing a crossroads 

astride northern reaches of the Schnee 

Eifel ridge. In corps reserve, General Kilburn’s 11th Armored Division was to be 

ready to use a part of its strength to protect the south flank of the corps, where 

the III Corps between Middleton’s and 

Eddy’s commands was to remain at first 

on the defensive. 

The 4th and 90th Divisions together 

were to make the main attack. The 4th 

was to advance through the West Wall 

astride the Schnee Eifel north of the 

West Wall strongpoint of Brandscheid, 

then wheel against Brandscheid. With 

the strongpoint taken, the 4th was to 

turn the town over to the 90th Division 

and continue eastward to Pruem. The 

90th Division was to widen the breach 

in the West Wall to include Habscheid, 

two and a half miles southwest of 
THE DRIVE ON PRUEM 85 

Brandscheid, then go on to take Pronsfeld, another road center on the Pruem 

River five miles south of Pruem. 2 

Since no unit of the VIII Corps had 

yet entered the main part of the West 

Wall, no one could say with any certainty how completely and effectively the 

Germans had manned the line. Although 

patrols had found some bunkers undefended, it was unreasonable to suppose 

that the Germans would abandon the 

whole belt of fortifications. 3 

On the basis of identifications made 

in the drive up to the West Wall, the 

Americans believed that the Germans in 

front of the VIII Corps possessed remnants of 7 divisions with a possible total 

strength of about 7,000 perhaps supported by as many as 15 artillery battalions. Another 4,500 men of 3 panzer-type 

divisions with possibly 70 tanks and 

assault guns might be in tactical reserve. 4 Thus in at least the first stages, 

the defenders would be pitting something like a reinforced company against 

each attacking regiment. 

This was, in reality, a generally correct 

estimate of the German situation. What 

intelligence officers failed to note was 

that again the Americans would achieve 

an advantage by attacking almost astride 

a German interarmy boundary, that 

2 Unless otherwise noted, the tactical story is 

based on official unit records and combat interviews. See also Hal D. Steward, Thunderbolt—The 

History of the Eleventh Armored Division (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1948); Gerden F. 

Johnson, History of the Twelfth Infantry Regiment in World War II (Boston: National Fourth 

Division Assoc., 1947); Joe I. Abrams, A History of 

the 90th Division in World War II (Baton Rouge: 

Army-Navy Publishing Co., 1946); A Historical 

and Pictorial Record of the 87th Infantry Division 

in World War II (Baton Rouge: Army-Navy Publishing Co., 1946). 

3 VIII Corps G–2 Estimate 19, 4 Feb 45. 

4 Ibid. 

GENERAL MIDDLETON 

between the LXVI Corps of the Fifth 

Panzer Army on the north and the XIII 

Corps of the Seventh Army on the south. 

As established near the end of January, 

the boundary ran generally southeastward between Pronsfeld and Pruem. 5 

In the two German corps, the task of 

trying to hold the West Wall had been 

detailed to volks grenadier divisions, 

none of which exceeded regimental 

strength even when reinforced by rear 

area security battalions that occupied 

some of the West Wall bunkers. All the 

more elite formations had left the line 

for rehabilitation or to assume reserve 

5 The German story is based on OKW situation 

maps for the period and the following manuscripts: MSS # B–041 (Generalmajor Hans-Kurt 

Hoecher, CG 167th Volks Grenadier Division); # 

B–123 (Generalmajor Rudolf Freiherr von Gersdorff, CofS, Seventh Army); # B–561 (Generalmajor Karl Wagener, CofS, Fifth Panzer Army); # 

C–020 (Schramm). 
86 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

roles. The last troops of the 9th Panzer 

Division, for example, had departed the 

LXVI Corps only two days earlier to be 

rebuilt before shifting to the north 

against the expected Allied main effort. 

What was left of the 5th Parachute Division-little more than a Kampfgruppe— 

still belonged to the XIII Corps but was 

out of the line in a backup position. 

Remnants of the 2d Panzer Division with 

a few tanks also were still around but in 

a reserve role for the Seventh Army. 

Artillery support averaged about two 

understrength battalions per front-line 

division, though additional support 

could be provided by a volks artillery 

corps located astride the interarmy 

boundary. The West Wall, on which 

German commanders counted strongly 

to offset the shift of troops to the north, 

was thinner astride the Schnee Eifel than 

anywhere else along the frontier. 

Furthermore, American troops occupying the Schnee Eifel from September 

until the beginning of the Ardennes 

counteroffensive had demolished many 

of the pillboxes. 

Into the West Wall 

The VIII Corps’ 4th Division knew 

the demolished pillboxes well; it was 

the same unit, that had attacked the 

Schnee Eifel in September. The division 

would get a rare opportunity to refight 

an earlier engagement over the same 

ground, under similar conditions of 

enemy strength, against at least one of 

the earlier opponents. Little would be 

changed except the weather and stronger 

support on the division’s flanks. 

In September two regiments of the 4th 

Division had caught the Germans unprepared atop the Schnee Eifel and had 

peeled off to left and right to clear the 

thin line of pillboxes, seize Brandscheid, 

and make room for the division’s third 

regiment in the center. Yet no sooner 

had the infantrymen emerged from the 

woods cover of the Schnee Eifel onto 

relatively open but sharply compartmented ground leading to Pruem than 

hastily culled German artillery and infantry reserves had appeared. Overextended, tired from a long drive across 

France and Belgium, lacking the strength 

to exploit, the 4th had come to a halt. 6 

As in September, the 4th Division’s 

plan in February was to pause one day 

in the shadow of the Schnee Eifel while 

patrols probed the West Wall. A delay 

also would afford time for engineers to 

clear and repair roads that were rapidly 

breaking down in an unseasonable thaw. 

In the very early hours of 4 February, 

however, a reinforced platoon of the 8th 

Infantry found the first belt of pillboxes 

unoccupied, the Germans milling about 

on foot and in horse-drawn wagons, 

obviously unprepared for a fight. Just as 

a previous commander had done in 

September, the division commander, 

General Blakeley, ordered immediate 

attack. 

By 0600, 4 February, the 8th Infantry’s 1st Battalion was toiling up the 

slopes of the Schnee Eifel in a snowstorm and utter darkness to lead the 

attack. An hour later the 22d Infantry’s 

1st Battalion, a few hundred yards to the 

south, joined the move. The first objective of both battalions was a road along 

the crest of the Schnee Eifel, a string 

beaded with pillboxes. Follow-up battalions of each regiment were to turn 

left and right to strip off the beads. 

6 The action is covered in MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign. 
THE DRIVE ON PRUEM 87 

MEN OF THE 4TH DIVISION EATING INSIDE CAPTURED PILLBOX 

As in September, success the first day 

was complete. Dazed, disorganized 

troops of the 326th Volks Grenadier 

Division were nowhere near a match for 

the assaulting force, even with the added 

strength of the pillboxes. The 8th Infantry took 128 prisoners and incurred only 

one casualty. After swinging southwest, 

the 22d Infantry reached a fortified 

crossroads at the woods line overlooking 

Brandscheid. Again as in September, 

seizing the crossroads and Brandscheid 

itself awaited the second day. 

Unfortunately for the Americans, the 

similarities between the late summer 

thrust and the winter attack were not to 

end there. As before, the Germans 

would be unable to muster sufficient 

strength to expel the invaders, but they 

could make every yard of advance increasingly costly. 

On the second day, 5 February, German artillery and mortar fire increased 

considerably. A battalion of the 22d Infantry toiled all morning to clear 11 

pillboxes in and around the crossroads 

above Brandscheid. Thereupon 2 companies poised for a final' assault out of 

the woods across five hundred yards of 

open ground into the village. With them 
88 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

were 10 medium tanks and 7 tank destroyers equipped with 90-mm. guns. 

Shortly after midday, tanks and tank 

destroyers opened fire against all visible 

pillboxes along the road into Brandscheid. Heavy machine guns from the 

woods line chattered support. Infantrymen burst from the forest cover, shooting their rifles and bazookas and tossing 

white phosphorus grenades as they ran. 

Although the Germans returned the fire 

at first, it diminished as the Americans 

closed in. Within three hours, the 22d 

Infantry held Brandscheid and a formidable ring of pillboxes. The cost was 

surprisingly light, a total of 43 casualties, 

of which 3 were fatalities. 

The 8th Infantry for its part continued to roll up the fortified line to the 

northeast. As the day wore on, the job 

became increasingly difficult as resistance stiffened like a coil spring under 

compression. 

A few hundred yards to the north, the 

87th Division began during the night of 

5 February to carry out its mission of 

cutting the road along the northern end 

of the Schnee Eifel to protect the corps 

left flank. Although men of the 87th had 

little trouble gaining the crest of the 

ridge, lateral movement the next day 

northeast and southwest was slowed, 

chiefly by the increased enemy artillery 

fire. The division nevertheless accomplished its limited mission in relatively 

short order. 

The 90th Division thus far had participated in the fighting only with a 

demonstration by fire on 5 February 

against Habscheid to distract German 

attention from the 4th Division’s attack; 

a more direct role was in the offing 

before daylight on the 6th. In performing it, the 90th too was destined to run 

into the same pattern of easy early success followed quickly by stiffening resistance. 

The 90th was to make a two-pronged 

attack. The 359th Infantry was to take 

Habscheid in a frontal assault from a 

starting point just over a mile from the 

town along the main highway from the 

Our River through Habscheid to Pronsfeld. Thereupon the 357th Infantry was 

to pass through for the attack on Pronsfeld itself, not quite five miles away. The 

358th Infantry in the meantime was to 

take over at Brandscheid and drive 

southeast to seize high ground along the 

Pruem River between Pronsfeld and 

Pruem. 

At 0400 on 6 February, without artillery preparation, all three battalions of 

the 359th Infantry jumped off abreast, 

guiding on the main highway into Habscheid. Despite the general alert occasioned by the previous day’s fighting, 

the regiments took the Germans by surprise. All but two rifle companies were 

inside Habscheid by daylight. Of about 

eighty Germans captured, some were 

taken asleep at their posts. 

Then the problems began. On the 

approach to Habscheid the highway 

passed through a band of dragon’s teeth, 

the road itself blocked by a heavy gate 

of logs anchored in concrete. As daylight neared, engineers blew the barrier, 

only to discover that the infantry passing in the dark had failed to take out 

enemy machine guns in nearby pillboxes 

that were sited to cover the gate. Alerted 

by the explosion, the Germans came to 

life, drenching the engineers with automatic weapons fire and calling down 

mortar and Nebelwerfer fire on the spot. 

Along with the engineers, the fires 

pinned down the two reserve rifle com- 
THE DRIVE ON PRUEM 89 

panies that had yet to reach Habscheid. 

As daylight came, maneuvers to get 

around the enemy proved impossible. 

While the engineers waited, unable 

to sweep the road ahead for mines, in 

and beyond Habscheid the bulk of the 

infantrymen, slowly clearing pillboxes, 

reported they had gone about as far as 

they could without tank support. The 

situation for a moment threatened to 

become a deadlock, but the Germans 

had not the numbers close at hand to 

exploit their temporary advantage. The 

moment passed. When at length a selfpropelled 155-mm. gun arrived to fire 

directly at the pillboxes covering the 

approach to Habscheid, the defenders 

ran. The engineers at last could start 

sweeping the road. Even so, it was after 

nightfall before they had cleared it and 

tanks could get forward. 

Meanwhile, it was at Brandscheid that 

the first of the enemy’s adjustments in 

reaction to the attack became apparent. 

In the village nobody on either side got 

much sleep through the night of 5 

February. 

From the German viewpoint, the 4th 

Division’s penetration at Brandscheid 

had virtually collapsed the south flank 

of the 326th Volks Grenadier Division. 

Constantly committed since 16 December, the division was a skeleton. Its two 

regiments had only about 140 men each. 

Only two 75-mm. guns were in the antitank battalion; only eight artillery pieces 

in support. The division’s north flank 

broken by the surprise penetration of 

the West Wall on the Schnee Eifel, the 

division lacked the men even to seal off 

the thrust at Brandscheid, much less to 

counterattack. The corps commander, 

General Lucht, ordered help from the 

neighboring unit to the south, the 276th 

Volks Grenadier Division. 7 

Before daylight on 6 February, an 

infantry battalion plucked from the vicinity of Habscheid and the 326th’s engineer battalion, a force totaling about 

450 men, counterattacked at Brandscheid. For the Americans, the counterattack could have come at no more 

inopportune time. A few hours earlier, 

around midnight, a battalion of the 90th 

Division’s 358th Infantry had moved 

toward Brandscheid to assume control 

from the 22d Infantry. It was a memorably miserable night—cold, black, halfraining, half-sleeting. After walking 

almost four miles, the men arrived in 

Brandscheid at 0430, thoroughly soaked. 

The relief of the 22d Infantry was in 

process when the Germans struck. 

Hitting from the south, the Germans 

quickly stove in the 22d Infantry’s line, 

shattered Company K, and penetrated 

into the village. While individual riflemen and the crews of the three tank 

destroyers fought on in the center of the 

village, Company L, the only unit whose 

relief had been completed, counterattacked. In a little over two hours the 

confused fight came to an end. More than 

150 Germans surrendered. 

Abortive as the Germans thrust 

proved, it caused substantial casualties. 

The relieving battalion of the 358th Infantry lost only 9 men, but the 3d Battalion, 22d Infantry, had 12 men killed, 

98 wounded, and 38 missing: some of the 

missing, who had been cut off in pillboxes outside the village, later rejoined 

their companies. 

7 In addition to German sources previously cited, 

see MS # B–561, 326th Volks Grenadier Division, 

26 January–17 April 1945 (Generalmajor Erwin 

Kaschner, CG). 
90 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

After waiting through the morning to 

make sure Brandscheid was secure, two 

battalions of the 22d Infantry resumed 

the attack at noon, moving east from the 

crossroads above Brandscheid to take the 

first row of villages beyond the Schnee 

Eifel. Here in September another battalion of the 4th Division had run into 

trouble after neglecting to take high 

ground while advancing down a valley 

to cross the little Mon Creek. This time 

strength was at hand to do both jobs at 

once, and what was left of the 326th 

Volks Grenadier Division could have 

little effect on the outcome. Except for 

artillery fire, the Germans fought back 

feebly. The same was true on the Schnee 

Eifel where the 8th Infantry continued 

to roll up the pillbox line to the northeast and established contact with the 87th 

Division. 

The 4th Division’s success on 6 February boded well for the future, particularly when considered in context 

with an event of early morning on the 

south flank of the corps where, southwest of Habscheid, contingents of the 

11th Armored Division had attacked the 

West Wall. 

Scheduled to begin before dawn on 

6 February, the 11th Armored Division 

barely struggled into position on time. 

The thaw and freeze, rain and snow, 

constant since 1 February, had turned 

roads into quagmires in some places and 

in others had glazed them with mud and 

ice. So great was the traffic congestion 

during the march that few of the division’s tanks could make it forward, thus 

leaving the first assignment to the armored infantry. The enemy fortunately 

had no planes in the air to take advantage of the long columns of vehicles 

stalled bumper to bumper. Nothing was 

lost but tempers and sleep. 

Even more than the attacks of the 

other divisions of the VIII Corps, that 

of the 11th Armored Division would 

benefit from striking along the enemy’s 

interarmy boundary. From a point just 

south of Habscheid, the front was the 

responsibility of the Seventh Army’s 

XIII Corps, but the volks grenadier division charged with the defense was so 

acutely short of men that a portion of 

the line close to the boundary could be 

defended only by outposts. 

Beginning at 0400, shortly before the 

German counterthrust at Brandscheid, 

two dismounted armored infantry battalions moved abreast from Heckhuscheid, southwest of Habscheid, toward 

Losenseifen Hill (Hill 568), an eminence 

bristling with pillboxes that had been a 

key objective of an American division 

in September. No artillery preparation 

preceded the move. In the darkness, the 

Germans in the few pillboxes that were 

manned hardly knew what hit them. By 

0830 the armored infantrymen completely controlled Losenseifen Hill in a 

penetration a mile and a half deep into 

the West Wall. 

The successes of 6 February meant 

that the VIII Corps had breached the 

West Wall on a front of approximately 

eleven miles, prompting the corps commander, General Middleton, to accelerate and broaden the attack. Urging the 

4th and 90th Divisions to increase the 

tempo of their thrusts, he told the 87th 

Division and the 11th Armored to disregard previously assigned objectives and 

“continue on through.” 8 The armor 

was to advance beyond the corps to high 

8 4th Div Jnl, 6 Feb 45. 
THE DRIVE ON PRUEM 91 

ground some four miles southwest of 

Losenseifen Hill, there to help the 

neighboring III Corps to get across the 

Our River and into its section of the 

West Wall. 

German Countermeasures 

General Middleton's directive actually 

would have little practical effect. On 7 

February the inevitable slowness of clearing pillboxes, combined with the local 

German countermeasures, provided the 

Germans an additional twenty-four 

hours to ready other steps to oppose the 

attack. Only on the left wing of the 4th 

Division was the defense still soft. There 

two battalions of the 8th Infantry descended the slopes of the Schnee Eifel 

and advanced almost unopposed as 

much as two miles, crossed the upper 

reaches of the Mon Creek, and reached 

the west bank of the Mehlen Creek. 

On the north the 87th Division spent 

the day clearing pillboxes. The 11th 

Armored Division on the south did the 

same, postponing any major effort to 

execute its new mission until the adjacent regiment of the 90th Division came 

abreast. 

It was in the center that the hard 

fighting took place as the 22d, 357th, and 

358th Regiments pushed attacks toward 

Pruem and Pronsfeld. None could gain 

more than a mile, and all had to fight 

off a number of small but determined 

counterattacks launched by conglomerate units, anything Generals Lucht and 

Felber could find-remnants of division 

engineer battalions, local security forces, 

and the like. In only one case would the 

counterattacks cause genuine concern, 

but they would materially delay the 

advance nonetheless. 

Attacking southeast along the Habscheid-Pronsfeld road, the 357th Infantry intended to slip one battalion in the 

darkness past Hill 510 to take a second 

height, Hill 511. Another battalion was 

to follow to seize the bypassed hill. 

It failed to work out that way. Control proved difficult in the dark, and the 

approach march was slow. Daylight and 

with it enemy fire caught the two battalions strung out along the highway, 

the point of the leading battalion still 

short of Hill 511. Fire from the first hill, 

thick with pillboxes, split the column. 

The fire isolated most of the leading 

battalion in an open saddle between the 

two hills for the entire day. The other 

battalion finally cleared the pillboxes on 

Hill 510 but was unable to cross open 

ground to come to the support of the 

leading battalion until after dark. Only 

then were the men able to occupy Hill 

511. 

The 358th Infantry meanwhile 

launched a three-pronged attack out of 

Brandscheid. Moving southeast early on 

7 February, the 3d Battalion had little 

trouble taking Hill 521, a wooded height 

on the west bank of the Mon Creek. On 

the other hand, both the ad Battalion, 

clearing pillboxes between the other two 

units, and the 1st came under considerable fire and counted their successes not 

in yards gained but in pillboxes reduced. 

The 1st Battalion proceeded methodically about its task, using tanks and tank 

destroyers as a base of fire to button up 

the pillboxes, and by dark had cleared 

ten and taken about eighty prisoners. 

The ad Battalion moved much more 

slowly, partly because the men found 

many camouflaged pillboxes not previously reported, partly because the Germans took cover in the concrete forts 
92 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

during preparatory artillery firing, then 

rushed outside as the shelling stopped 

to oppose the infantry from foxholes and 

trenches. 

At noon, with the 3d Battalion already 

on Hill 521 and the 2d still only a few 

yards out of Brandscheid, the regimental 

commander, Lt. Col. Jacob W. Bealke, 

Jr., ordered the 3d Battalion to send a 

force from Hill 521 westward against 

the flank of the defenders on Hill 519. 

Finding no covered route to the hills, 

the battalion commander asked for a 

delay until tanks could arrive and night 

provide concealment. 

At dusk Colonel Bealke sent a fiveman patrol to search for the best route 

to the hill, but mortar and small arms 

fire quickly killed three of the men, 

prompting the other two to return. A 

larger patrol from Company I followed 

with orders to take the hill, if possible, 

but shortly after emerging from the 

woods and starting up Hill 519, these 

men also drew fire and scattered. Not 

until daylight the next morning was the 

battalion to try a full-blooded attack. 

Through this same day, the 22d Infantry, already in rear of the West Wall, 

was having its problems too, not with 

pillboxes but with counterattacks. The 

2d Battalion of the 22d took Am Kopf 

(Hill 554), a piece of dominating 

ground just east of the Mon Creek, 

which had been the farthest point of advance in this sector in September. In 

early afternoon the Germans knocked 

the battalion off the hill, but the Americans recaptured it just before dark with 

a reserve company. Another company of 

the 2d Battalion entered Obermehlen, 

just over a half mile to the east, but 

before the end of the day was in “a hell 

of a fight” there with a company of 

Germans supported by three tanks. 9 

A few hundred yards to the southwest 

the 22d Infantry’s 1st Battalion also got 

across the Mon Creek and onto high 

ground just short of Niedermehlen, but 

persistent counterattacks denied further 

advance. The regimental commander 

sent the 3d Battalion to back up the 2d, 

prepared to counterattack if necessary to 

save the beleaguered company in Obermehlen. 

The regiment had 62 casualties during the day. Late in the afternoon the 

commander, Col. Charles T. Lanham, 

reported: “We are . . . [now] a very 

serious threat to Pruem. The Germans 

may be building up a very big thing 

against us.” 10 

The “big thing” was the 2d Panzer 

Division—which sounded more formidable than it actually was—plus a shift 

in boundary that would eliminate the 

problem of divided command that had 

plagued the Germans since the day the 

VIII Corps began its attack. Both measures were to take effect the next day, 

8 February. 

Impressed by the presence of the 

American Third Army across the Our 

in Luxembourg, higher German commanders had continued to be concerned 

lest an American attack hit the Eifel 

even as the Germans hurried resources 

northward to meet the expected Allied 

main effort on the Cologne plain. Yet 

when the VIII Corps did attack on 4 

February, immediate identification of 

only the 4th Division had led the Germans to ascribe “only local significance” 

to the strike . 11 By 6 February, when two 

9 22d Inf Jnl, 1 Feb 45, 

10 Ibid. 

11 MS # B–123 (Gersdorff). 
THE DRIVE ON PRUEM 93 

more infantry divisions and the 11th 

Armored had been identified, the danger 

became obvious. 

At this point the army group commander, Field Marshal Model, shifted 

the Seventh Army boundary northward 

to eliminate the nuisance of responsibility divided with the Fifth Panzer 

Army. He also permitted unrestricted 

use of the Seventh Army’s reserve, the 

2d Panzer Division. 

Given a free hand, the Seventh Army 

commander, General Brandenberger, 

elected to reinforce the threatened sector not only with the panzer division but 

also with two Kampfgruppen—all that 

that was left—of the two volks grenadier 

divisions, the 276th and 340th. These 

he shifted into the sector of the XIII 

Corps from the adjoining corps to the 

south, even though continued identification of a U.S. armored division in 

Luxembourg indicated that the Third 

U.S. Army soon might launch another 

thrust farther south. 

Brandenberger also directed northward from the Seventh Army’s left wing 

a Kampfgruppe of the 352d Volks 

Grenadier Division. Felber’s XIII Corps 

thus would contain Kampfgruppen of 

four volks grenadier divisions, the 5th 

Parachute Division, and the panzer division. The corps would have in addition a 

separate armored battalion equipped 

with Tiger tanks. Counting vehicles of 

this battalion, of the panzer division, 

and of occasional guns in the volks grenadier divisions, the XIII Corps would 

have approximately seventy serviceable 

tanks and assault guns. 

For the Americans, the added German strength was all too apparent on 8 

February. The only notable advance was 

in the north where the 87th Division’s 

345th Infantry, moving before daylight, 

seized a village on the upper reaches of 

the Pruem River. On the south flank 

the 359th Infantry cleared bypassed pillboxes in the 90th Division’s zone, but 

enough of a gap still existed between 

the 90th Division and the 11th Armored 

Division to discourage the reluctant 

armor again from starting its drive to 

the southeast. 

Hard fighting once more was the order of the day in the center where the 

arrival of the 2d Panzer Division made a 

clear impact. The 4th Division’s 8th Infantry, which had reached the Mon 

Creek the day before against little opposition, had to fight all through the 8th 

and into the 9th to clear the village of 

Gondenbrett. On the regiment’s right, 

two small counterattacks hit the company of the 22d Infantry in Obermehlen, 

while another struck Am Kopf Hill, west 

of the village. These delayed the 22d 

Infantry’s own attack until shortly past 

noon on the 8th. In the afternoon the 

2d and 3d Battalions set out to clear the 

last houses of Obermehlen and open 

slopes to the south, whereupon the 2d 

Battalion tried to cross the Mehlen Creek 

in order to take high ground between the 

creek and the settlement of Tafel, 

whence most of the counterattacks appeared to be coming. 

Swollen by the thaw to a width of 

fifteen feet in some places, the Mehlen 

Creek proved a major obstacle. A few 

men of the 2d Battalion found fords; 

others stepped into deep water and had 

to swim for it. Except for the weapons 

platoon, which was cut to pieces by machine gun fire during the crossing, most 

of Company G nevertheless made the far 

bank. The platoons advanced halfway up 

the high ground against a surprising lack 
94 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

of opposition and there prepared to defend in expectation of reinforcement 

after dark. The stage was unwittingly 

set for a repetition of a reverse that had 

happened to another company of the 

same division five months earlier only a 

few hundred yards away on the east bank 

of the Mon Creek. 

The men of Company G had no heavy 

weapons—only their M1’s and BAR’s. 

These and their radios as well were 

soaked. They had salvaged only one bazooka, for which they had only one 

rocket, and it misfired. Company F, 

which was to have followed, bogged 

down under enemy fire west of the creek. 

That was the situation when shortly 

before dark Germans of the 2d Panzer 

Division attacked in company strength 

with three to five tanks in support. The 

men of Company G had little alternative 

but to fall back across the creek in a 

sauve qui peut. 

The 8th of February was a costly day 

for the 22d Infantry. Losses exceeded a 

hundred. Seventeen were known dead. 

The story was much the same with the 

357th and 358th Regiments of the 90th 

Division. Although the 358th absorbed 

relatively little punishment from enemy 

fire, the regiment still could not solve 

the problem of the open approaches to 

Hill 519. The wind was in the wrong 

direction for using smoke, and artillery 

could not neutralize the enemy in concrete shelters. By the close of the day the 

2d Battalion had cleared a few more 

pillboxes and had maneuvered into position in the woods on Hill 521, ready to 

hit Hill 519 in conjunction with the 3d 

Battalion, but the attack would have to 

await another day. 

The 357th Infantry had no better luck 

at Hill 511 to the southwest. There, in 

early morning, a counterattack by contingents of the 352d Volks Grenadier Division hit Company K on the hill. 

Company I, mounted on tanks, hurried 

forward to help. Thus began a daylong 

fight in which the 3d Battalion in particular suffered. Driven off Hill 511, the 

battalion recaptured it before the day 

was out but was unable to advance beyond. Fire of all kinds beat in on the men 

from three sides. One supporting tank 

destroyer was knocked out by direct fire: 

two tanks were lost. 

For the next two days, 9 and 10 February, hard fighting would continue almost everywhere except on the extreme 

flanks, with the 22d Infantry, the focal 

unit in the drive, coming in for the 

bloodiest fighting. Yet for all the difficulties imposed, the Germans clearly 

would have to muster considerably more 

strength than that already committed if 

Pruem and the west bank of the Pruem 

River were to be denied much longer. 

Although what happened to the 4th 

Division continued to show striking similarities to the division’s earlier experience in this same sector, one noteworthy 

difference between the two engagements 

was apparent. In September, when a 

company had fallen back from the high 

ground just beyond the Mon Creek, the 

4th Division’s regiments had been spent, 

all reserves committed. When on 8 February Company G, 22d Infantry, retreated from beyond the Mehlen Creek, 

both the 8th and 22d Regiments still 

were strong, the 8th particularly, and 

the division commander still had a reserve in the uncommitted 12th Infantry. 

The day of 9 February opened auspiciously for the 8th Infantry when one 

battalion moved against only sporadic 

resistance into a village on the Pruem 
THE DRIVE ON PRUEM 95 

River a little over a mile east of Gondenbrett. Yet when another battalion attempted to turn south to take a village 

on the road to Pruem, the opposition 

suddenly stiffened. The explanation was 

to be found in that the regiment had 

shifted its attack from the relatively undefended left flank of the Fifth Panzer 

Army into the Seventh Army’s sector and 

the domain of the 2d Panzer Division. 

The immediate task still facing the 

22d Infantry on 9 February was to recapture the high ground between the 

Mehlen Creek and Tafel so that the 

village of Niedermehlen in turn might 

be taken and the main road to Pruem 

opened. The regiment’s plan was to 

attack with the 1st Battalion across the 

creek, then to converge on Niedermehlen 

from two sides with its other two battalions. 

Because road conditions precluded 

bringing up bridging equipment, the 4th 

Division’s engineers decided to get the 

1st Battalion across the creek on an improvised log bridge. By 0930 the bridge 

was in and two companies began to cross. 

Both these had made it when, within ten 

to fifteen minutes of the first man’s crossing, an enemy machine gun opened fire 

up the creek valley from the south. This 

forced the third company to cover. During the next five hours, fifteen men fell 

while trying to brave the machine gun 

fire. Every effort to knock out the German gunner failed. 

Companies A and C in the meantime 

made their way up the high ground and 

dug in to defend. Although more numerous than the three platoons of Company 

G the day before, they were little better 

off. Without tanks and with the only 

supply road—that through Niedermehlen—in enemy hands, they made no 

attempt to push farther. 

At 1300 the enemy again sought a decision on the high ground. With five 

tanks and two companies of infantry, 

the Germans struck. In an hour Company A had shot all its bazooka rockets 

but had two tanks to show for them. Still 

neither the 1st Battalion’s reserve company nor supporting tanks could get 

across the Mehlen Creek to help. Shells 

from German tanks plowed into the 2d 

Battalion in Obermehlen, disorganizing 

one company there. “Krauts,” the 2d 

Battalion reported, “[are] all over the 

place.” 12 Yet up on the hill Companies 

A and C with the help of intensive shelling by the 44th Field Artillery Battalion 

absorbed the shock of the enemy thrust, 

taking severe casualties but giving no 

ground. 

The 3d Battalion meanwhile had circled west of Niedermehlen, and even 

before the Germans struck at Companies 

A and C had attempted with the aid of 

a platoon of tanks and another of tank 

destroyers to push into the village. Fire 

from at least three German tanks or 

assault guns halted every attempt. 

An inconclusive fire fight continued 

through the afternoon until Companies 

A and C had defeated the counterattack 

beyond the creek. At that point, behind 

a TOT 13 fired by four battalions of artillery, companies of the 2d and 3d 

Battalions pressed into Niedermehlen. 

Resistance collapsed, and within two 

hours the village was clear, a hundred 

Germans captured. The day’s fighting 

cost the 22d Infantry 121 men, most of 

12 22d Inf Jnl, 9 Feb 45. 

13 TOT stands for time on target, a method of 

timing the fire of artillery pieces in various locations to fall on a target simultaneously. 
96 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

them lost on the high ground east of the 

Mehlen Creek. 

Even as these events occurred, the 4th 

Division commander, General Blakeley, 

committed his reserve, the 12th Infantry, 

to take a village off the 22d Infantry’s 

right flank. The regiment accomplished 

its task with little difficulty and the next 

day, 10 February, reached the west bank 

of the Pruem River southwest of Pruem. 

The Final Phase 

The 22d Infantry’s task also was near 

completion, though remnants of the 2d 

Panzer Division with their backs to the 

Pruem River still fought hard for at 

least every other yard of ground. On 10 

February the 1st Battalion engaged in a 

bitter house-to-house fight to clear Tafel 

and again had to repel a tank-supported 

counterattack. The 3d Battalion moved 

more easily to occupy high ground directly west of Pruem. During the day 

another seventy-three men were killed or 

wounded. Although the 22d Infantry 

was at the threshold of its objective, the 

town of Pruem, the regiment would 

arrive there nearly spent. Reluctant to 

commit individual replacements during 

the battle, the regimental commander 

doubted that his thinned and tired forces 

would have the strength for another 

house-to-house struggle the next day. 14 

On 9 and 10 February the 90th Division also advanced, slowly at first, but 

with a dash on the second day as the 

enemy in the north of the division’s zone 

fell back behind the Pruem River. When 

the Germans withdrew from Hill 519 on 

9 February, the 358th Infantry followed, 

then the next day broke free behind the 

14 22d Inf Jnl, 10 Feb 45. 

last of the West Wall pillboxes to take 

high ground along the west bank of the 

Pruem. The 357th Infantry at the same 

time pushed about a mile south of Hill 

511 in what was in effect flank protection 

for the 358th Infantry, while the third 

regiment, the 359th. cleared the last of 

the gap between the infantry and the 

armor on Losenseifen Hill. For the most 

part, during these two days the Germans 

were content to sting the attackers with 

mortar and artillery fire. 

Operations at this point entered a new 

phase, dictated by an uncompromising 

tyrant called logistics. Not built for 

heavy military traffic, the roads of Belgium and Luxembourg had literally disintegrated under a combination of 

alternate freeze and thaw, daily rains and 

floods, and the coming and going of big 

tanks, trucks, and guns. The entire engineer strength of the VIII Corps was 

barely sufficient to keep the most essential supply routes open. In a few days 

the 22d Infantry was to report that with 

all roads to the regiment’s rear impassable, nothing remained in the forward 

ammunition supply point. Some units of 

the VIII Corps had to be supplied by 

airdrops. 

As early as 8 February, General Middleton, as eager as anybody in the Third 

Army to get on with the attack, felt 

impelled to suggest to General Patton 

that he call off the offensive until the 

road situation improved. 15 The next day, 

9 February, Patton agreed that when the 

corps reached the Pruem River, the attackers might desist and all units dig in 

for defense. 

For the 4th Division this order was 

qualified by instructions to watch for 

15 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 239. 
THE DRIVE ON PRUEM 97 

DROPPING SUPPLIES BY PARACHUTE TO THE 4TH DIVISION 

any enemy withdrawal, and if one occurred to “jump on it.” 16 When prisoners on the 10th reported the Germans 

evacuating Pruem, General Blakeley 

took advantage of the qualification to 

continue the attack into the town. Despite its losses, the 22d Infantry fought 

into the fringes on the 11th and the next 

day occupied the rubble that Pruem had 

become. 

It was the condition of the roads that 

stopped the VIII Corps, but even had 

the roads held up the attack would have 

come to a halt on 10 February. The VIII 

16 22d Inf Jnl, 10 Feb 45. 

Corps had run out the period of grace 

granted with the general standfast orders of 1 February, and a new condition 

thwarted for the moment any subterfuge 

Patton might have attempted to change 

matters. On 10 February General Bradley ordered Patton to give up headquarters of the III Corps to the First 

Army, which meant that the VIII Corps 

would have to assume responsibility for 

General Millikin’s sector. Although General Middleton would inherit one of the 

two divisions of the III Corps, the new 

responsibility still would involve considerable adjustment and reorganization. 
98 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

The VIII Corps had achieved substantially the objectives set. The corps 

had made a clean penetration of the West 

Wall, and three out of four divisions had 

reached the Pruem River. Pruem itself 

was in hand. General Middleton thus 

would be free to turn his attention to 

the south where other events, under way 

since 6 February, invited participation 

by the VIII Corps. 

For to the south General Patton had 

launched another of the probing attacks 

authorized by the decision of 1 February. 

The objective of the attack was limited— 

Bitburg, the other major road center in 

the western Eifel, eighteen miles southwest of Pruem; but Patton had more in 

mind than Bitburg. He was, he hoped, 

kindling a flame that eventually would 

become a full-fledged fire carrying the 

Third Army all the way to the Rhine. 
CHAPTER VI 

Bitburg: and the Vianden Bulge 

When Patton’s Third Army drew up 

to the German frontier at the end of 

January, the army sector stretched for 

more than a hundred miles from the 

Losheim Gap in the north to the northwestern corner of the Saar industrial 

region, thence southeastward to a point 

on the Saar River midway between Saarlautern and Saarbruecken. From north 

to south, the Third Army’s order of battle was the VIII Corps (Middleton), III 

Corps (Millikin) , XII Corps (Eddy), 

and XX Corps (Walker) . Meandering northeastward from 

Trier, the Moselle River formed a natural division within the Third Army’s 

zone. North of the Moselle lay the Eifel, 

inhospitable from the standpoint of terrain but inviting nevertheless because it 

screened the Rhine city of Koblenz and 

several Rhine bridges. South of the 

Moselle, the XX Corps faced the considerable obstacle of the Saar River plus 

the strongest network of concrete fortifications along the entire length of the 

West Wall. Severely restricted in the 

forces that might be committed to an 

offensive, General Patton had chosen the 

Eifel, for all its drawbacks. 

Once the VIII Corps jumped off on 4 

February to take Pruem, Patton intended 

that the XII Corps begin its attack on 

Bitburg the night of 6 February. Apparently on the assumption that the Germans caught in the middle of these two 

drives would withdraw when threatened 

with outflanking on north and south, he 

directed the III Corps in the center, from 

Luetzkampen to Vianden, to participate 

at first only with a series of minor probing attacks designed to prevent the Germans from shifting strength to north and 

south. 

Like the attack of the VIII Corps on 

Pruem, the maneuver by the XII Corps 

against Bitburg had been tried once before-in September, by a single armored 

division, the 5th. At the end of the great 

pursuit across France and Belgium, the 

5th Armored had attempted to take Bitburg by utilizing a semblance of a terrain corridor extending northeast from 

the village of Wallendorf, about halfway 

between Vianden and Echternach; but 

lacking reserves, the armor eventually 

had fallen back into Luxembourg. 1 

For the February attack General Patton approved a strike along a front of 

some seven and a half miles from Wallendorf southeast to Echternach. (Map IV) 

Although the same semblance of a terrain corridor northeast of Wallendorf 

still would be used for the final drive to 

Bitburg, the advance would be attempted 

only after wooded high ground southeast 

of Wallendorf, lying between the Sauer 

and Pruem Rivers at their confluence 

1 MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign. 
100 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

near Echternach, had been taken and the 

corps south flank thus secured. 

Before General Eisenhower’s decision 

of 1 February, General Patton had intended that the XII Corps attack on 4 

February in order to tie in with the 

Euskirchen offensive. Having protested 

the target date on the basis that Patton 

had no appreciation of “time and space 

factors,” the XII Corps commander, General Eddy, was pleased when Eisenhower’s general standfast orders resulted 

in a two-day postponement. 2 Unfortunately, the postponement virtually coincided with the unseasonable thaw, and 

the XII Corps would find it difficult to 

be ready even by the night of 6 February. 

By the 2d many motor pools and supply 

depots already were under water, and 

rapidly rising rivers threatened tactical 

bridges. By the 4th the level of the 

Moselle had risen over thirteen feet and 

ripped away floating bridges uniting the 

XII and XX Corps. The river that the 

XII Corps had to cross, the Sauer, was a 

swollen torrent. 

From the German point of view, the 

raging river was about the strongest deterrent to American success that commanders in this sector could count on. 

The remnants of two panzer divisions, 

which the U.S. Third Army G–2, Col. 

Oscar W. Koch, believed still with the 

Seventh Army, already had moved north; 

the only remaining armored reserve, the 

2d Panzer Division, would be used to 

counter the attack on Pruem before the 

XII Corps operation got underway. The 

situation in the Seventh Army’s center 

and on its left wing was thus much the 

same as that confronting the XIII Corps 

2 Quotation is from Patton, War As I Knew It, 

p. 234. 

farther north—nothing left but weak 

volks grenadier divisions. The only exception was the 212th Volks Grenadier 

Division, located on the extreme left 

wing of the army near the confluence of 

the Sauer with the Moselle, protecting 

the city of Trier. The 212th had fallen 

back to the West Wall ahead of the others and thus had gained time to refit and 

reorganize. 3 

With the northern boundary just over 

a mile southeast of Vianden, the LXXX 

Corps under General Beyer was destined 

to come under attack first. From north to 

south, Beyer’s divisions, all volks grenadier units, were the 79th, 352d, and the 

relatively strong 212th. Before the new 

American attack began, the 352d would 

be lost to the effort to protect Pruem. 

Any weakening of the already thin line 

in the south worried the Germans. Rundstedt himself, the Commander in Chief 

West, remained for a long time seriously 

concerned over the possibility of an 

American advance up the general line of 

the Moselle on either side of Trier. 4 Yet 

the Germans there would have the advantage of the West Wall, which was 

particularly strong on either side of 

Trier, the early thaw with its rains and 

swollen rivers, and the terrain. The Our 

and Sauer Rivers in the sector faced by 

the XII Corps run through sharp gorges 

with clifflike sides sometimes 600 feet 

high. The four-mile stretch from Bollendorf to Echternach, where the U.S. XII 

Corps would assault, was further protected by large wooded stretches close up 

to the Sauer. 

3 The German story is based principally on MS 

# B–123 (Gersdorff), as confirmed by German 

situation maps for the period. 

4 MS # C–020 (Maj Percy E. Schramm). 
BITBURG AND THE VIANDEN BULGE 101 

Crossing the Sauer 

Available to General Eddy for the Bitburg attack were three infantry divisions 

(the veteran 5th and 80th, the inexperienced 76th) and a veteran armored division (the 4th). To make the main 

effort on the right, Eddy chose the 5th 

Division (General Irwin), veteran of 

many a river crossing. Aided by an 

attached regimental combat team (the 

417th) of the 76th Division to protect 

the right flank, the 5th was to cross between Bollendorf and Echternach to take 

the first hill mass, not quite a mile beyond the Sauer. The hill would afford 

control of the ground lying in an angle 

formed by confluence of the Sauer and 

the Pruem Rivers downstream from 

Echternach. With one flank secured by 

the Pruem River, the 5th Division then 

could turn north to gain more open 

ground southwest of Bitburg before 

jumping the Pruem and advancing on 

the main objective. The 80th Division 

(General McBride) meanwhile was to 

cross the Sauer from Wallendorf to Bollendorf and advance as far north as 

Mettendorf, five miles northeast of Wallendorf, to protect the left flank of the 

main effort. Each of the 80th’s assault 

regiments received an armored infantry 

battalion of the 4th Armored Division as 

reinforcement, and each of the five assault regiments in the corps drew the 

support of a full engineer battalion. 5 

As engineers and riflemen moved 

down to the Sauer on the night of 6 

5 XII Corps FO 14, 3 Feb 45; 5th Div FO 16 and 

80th Div FO 30, both dated 4 Feb 45. Detailed 

combat interviews supplement official records of 

both the 5th and 80th Divisions. See also Fifth 

Division Historical Section, The Fifth Infantry 

Division in the ETO (Atlanta: Albert Love Enterprises, 1945). 

GENERAL EDDY 

February, a fitful rain turned to light 

snow. Seeking surprise, supporting artillery provided only moderate fire, directed at known enemy positions. Even 

this light fire produced some German 

response, most of it directed close along 

the water line. 

From the first the main enemy was the 

river itself, swollen to double its normal 

90-foot width, its current a turbulent 

twelve miles an hour. Salvaged from a 

captured Luftwaffe depot, the little inflatable rubber boats in which most of 

the assault companies were to cross would 

fight an unequal battle against the 

churning water. 

When the first boats pushed out into 

the river some capsized almost immediately. Others rampaged out of control far 

down the stream or careened crazily back 

against the bank. Yet some survived. 

These had reached midstream when here 

and there lone rifle shots rang out. As if 
102 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

CROSSING SITE ON THE SAUER RIVER NEAR ECHTERNACH 

the shots were signals, the entire east 

bank of the river appeared to come to 

life. Brilliant flares lighted the scene. 

Even those men who survived the treacherous current could scarcely hope to 

escape the crisscross of fire from automatic weapons. 

Only eight men—one boatload—of 

each assault regiment of the 5th Division 

reached the far shore. Continuing German fire denied reinforcement. 

It was somewhat better at Echternach, 

where Companies A and B formed the 

assault wave of the 417th Infantry, protecting the 5th Division’s right flank. Yet 

there too, many of the boats met disaster. 

A round of mortar or artillery fire hit 

one boat broadside, sinking it in a flash 

and sending the occupants with their 

heavy equipment floundering helplessly 

downstream. Another boat began to drift 

directly toward a German machine gun 

spitting fire from the bank. Frantically, 

the men in the boat tried to change their 

course by grabbing at rushes along the 

water’s edge, but in the process, they 

swamped the frail craft. Shedding as 

much equipment as they could, the men 
BITBURG AND THE VIANDEN BULGE 103 

plunged into the icy water. Some made 

it to the bank. The current swept others 

downstream. 

In such a melee, squad, platoon, and 

company organization went for naught. 

Thrown helter-skelter against the German-held bank, the men tried to reorganize but with little success. A house set 

afire on the Luxembourg side of the river 

lit the landscape with an eerie flame that 

aided German gunners. In the end it 

would be determined that 56 men and 3 

officers of Company A had made it, 52 

men and 2 officers of Company B; but 

no one could have arrived at any figures 

during the early hours. Before daylight 

came, most of Company C also got across, 

but nobody else. Only after nightfall 

brought concealment were crossings resumed. 

In the 80th Division’s sector near Wallendorf the attack began at 0300 the 

morning of 1 February, two hours later 

than the main assault. With surprise 

hardly possible in view of the general 

alert occasioned by the earlier assaults, 

the men of the 80th smoked likely crossing sites with shells from attached chemical mortars, thereby drawing enemy fire 

to the smoke, then began to cross the 

river elsewhere. The stratagem helped 

considerably and casualties were “not exceptionally heavy”; 6 during the first 

twenty-four hours the bulk of at least six 

companies gained the far bank. 

Of the five attacking regiments, the 

two of the 5th Division had the worst of 

it. Although the two little separate eightman groups hardly represented even a 

toehold, the division commander, General Irwin, determined to treat them as 

such. With no further need to withhold 

6 80th Div AAR, Feb 45. 

artillery support, he directed all available 

artillery battalions to mass their fire beyond the crossing site. 7 Tanks and tank 

destroyers he told to move boldly forward to take German pillboxes under 

direct observed fire. The corps commander, General Eddy, personally ordered tank destroyers armed with 90-mm. 

pieces to go to the water’s edge. He also 

told General Irwin to cross his regiments 

in the 80th Division’s or 417th Infantry’s 

sectors should those units establish firm 

bridgeheads before the 5th Division 

could get across. 8 Yet as night came on 7 

February, the sixteen still were the only 

men of the 5th Division on the German 

side of the river. 

Contingents of both the 80th Division 

and the 417th Infantry meanwhile 

achieved some success against the high 

ground beyond the river. By nightfall of 

the first day (7 February), a battalion 

of the 80th Division held high ground 

northeast of Wallendorf, a mile and a 

half beyond the Sauer, and one company 

was in Wallendorf. With a verve and 

initiative often displayed by the inexperienced, Companies A and B of the 417th 

Infantry cleared pillbox after pillbox 

and occupied a portion of the high 

ground northeast of Echternach. There, 

in later afternoon, three German tanks 

and a small infantry force counterattacked, but Pfc. Lyle Corcoran knocked 

out one tank with a bozooka, another 

mired helpless in the mud, and a third 

withdrew. That ended the threat. 

The big problem still was the river. 

Although all units had plans to put in 

bridges once the first wave of riflemen 

7 Between 0130 and 0600 divisional and corps artillery in the XII Corps fired 29,000 rounds. See 

TUSA AAR. 

8 XII Corps msg file, 7 Feb 45. 
104 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

was across, every effort to span the stream 

failed. In the 417th Infantry’s sector, the 

160th Engineer Battalion tried three 

times to anchor a cable across the river 

for a footbridge, but the current severed 

the first two and enemy machine gun fire 

sank the boat carrying the third. Despairing of success by this method, the engineers constructed a bridge on the near 

bank and tried to float it into position, 

but the current soon made quick work 

of it too. 

Dependence on footbridges was one 

reason the 5th Division’s right regiment, 

the 11th Infantry, failed to get more than 

eight men across the river. The regiment’s assault plan was based on sending 

only patrols by boat, then constructing 

footbridges for the bulk of the infantry. 

Every effort to put in the bridges failed. 

The coming of night on 7 February 

changed the situation but little. A few 

more men of the 80th Division got across, 

either in assault boats or by swimming 

when the boats capsized, but frustration 

continued generally to be everybody’s 

lot. 

Giving up hope of crossing during the 

night and planning a new attempt the 

next day, the 5th Division’s 10th Infantry 

sent a boat to rescue its eight men from 

the far bank, while the eight of the 11th 

Infantry held fast. After a heavy machine 

gun section of the 11th Infantry’s Company K and six boatloads of Company F 

got across, contact was at last established 

with the eight men who still remained on 

the far bank. Still no one could claim 

that the 5th Division possessed any kind 

of workable holding beyond the Sauer. 

Some time in the early hours of the 

8th, three platoons of Company G, 417th 

Infantry, and a heavy machine gun platoon of Company H conquered the current at Echternach, and before daylight 

another fifteen boatloads of riflemen 

made it. Yet as had happened to their 

predecessors twenty-four hours earlier, 

German fire and the raging river quickly 

cut these men off from reinforcement 

and supply. 

The story would continue the same in 

the XII Corps for three more days, until 

11 February when engineers at last succeeded in bridging the river. That the 

weak and usually isolated units on the 

far shore could hold their own and even 

expand their positions was a testament to 

the courage and tenacity of the men and 

commanders concerned, plus the excellent support they got from their artillery; 

but it was a testament, too, to the general 

ineffectiveness of their enemy. Although 

the Germans might defend a position 

doggedly and impose severe casualties on 

the attacker before giving up, a passive 

defense augmented by mortar and Nebelwerfer fire was about all they could offer. 

They simply had no reserves for determined counterattacks. 

For the Americans it was an incredibly 

difficult operation. The cliffs on the east 

bank were no less precipitous whether a 

man was attacking up them or merely 

trying to manhandle a case of K rations 

to hungry comrades at the top. The mud 

was deep, the weather always wet and 

cold. Trench foot and respiratory diseases abounded, and evacuation across 

the swollen Sauer was virtually impossible. German fire and the river greedily 

consumed assault boats and bridging 

equipment, and bringing up more over 

the ruined roads of Luxembourg was a 

slow process. 

In the end it was sheer power mixed 

with determination and ingenuity that 

did the job. Although the corps lost at 
BITBURG AND THE VIANDEN BULGE 105 

least a dozen bridges to the river, others 

at last were put in to stay. When two or 

three engineers were unable to bring 

back assault boats, six men did the job, 

limiting the number of infantrymen who 

could be carried but nevertheless gradually increasing the strength on the far 

bank. The 5th Division used big searchlights to illuminate the night crossings. 

Pontons lashed together served as ferries 

for vital heavy equipment. Moving up 

close to the river, 155-mm. self-propelled 

guns poured direct fire on German pillboxes. One battery alone destroyed eight 

pillboxes in one 24-hour period. To resupply men of the 417th Infantry on 

the heights above Echternach, fighterbombers dropped specially loaded belly 

tanks. When these eluded the infantrymen, artillery liaison planes braved small 

arms fire to drop supplies with improvised parachutes. Whenever weather permitted, fighter-bombers of the XIX 

Tactical Air Command roamed far and 

wide, ready to strike at a moment’s notice 

at any indication that the Germans were 

reinforcing the sector. 

By 11 February, when the first tactical 

bridges were in, the 5th Division, including the attached 417th Infantry, had 

forged a bridgehead three miles wide and 

a mile deep; but several hundred yards 

of pillbox-studded terrain still separated 

the bridgehead from the closest regiment 

of the 80th Division. Nor had the two 

assault regiments of the 80th Division yet 

joined their holdings. On the other hand, 

within the two divisions, thirteen infantry battalions were across the river. 

Visiting the sector on 12 February, 

General Patton was so appalled by the 

condition of the roads and yet so convinced that the crossings were no longer 

in danger that he volunteered permission 

to halt the attack for a day. 9 General 

Eddy declined. The unremitting pressure of infantry and artillery was having 

a slow but inexorable effect; Eddy saw 

no reason to check the momentum. 

Had General Eddy been able to view 

the situation through his adversary’s 

eyes, he would have been even more 

convinced that he had chosen the right 

course. Once the Germans actually occupying the sector were rooted from 

their pillboxes, little else would stand in 

the way. Divining that the Echternach 

thrust was the southern arm of a pincers 

movement designed eventually to link 

with the attack of the VIII Corps on 

Pruem, the Germans gambled that no 

move would be made against Trier. They 

shifted the south regiment of the 212th 

Volks Grenadier Division from Trier to 

assist the rest of the division. Although 

Army Group B provided a weak Kampfgruppe of the 560th Volks Grenadier 

Division—all that was left of that unit— 

to replace the 212th’s southern regiment, 

so critical was the situation around 

Echternach that this Kampfgruppe too 

had to be committed there. Beyond these 

two units, no other reinforcements were 

in prospect. 10 

The only other step the Germans were 

able to take immediately to help Beyer’s 

LXXX Corps was to shift the right 

boundary of the corps to the south to a 

point just north of Wallendorf so that 

the adjacent LIII Corps (Rothkirch) 

could bear some of the burden. Thus 

once the 80th U.S. Division was across 

the river and turned north, the opposition came from units of the LIII Corps. 

Yet this corps had already been drained 

of resources in efforts to shore up the 

9 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 240. 

10 MS # B–123 (Gersdorff). 
106 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

faltering XIII Corps in the fight to save 

Pruem and could provide little more 

than conglomerate artillery and antitank 

units hastily converted to infantry roles. 11 

The Germans nevertheless continued 

to make a telling fight of it. So long as 

they were able, with the help of the West 

Wall, weather, terrain, and river, to restrict the size of the bridgehead, they 

would at the same time restrict the 

amount of power, including tanks, that 

the Americans might bring to bear. 

Six more days—12 through 17 February—were to pass before the XII Corps 

could carve a full-fledged bridgehead 

from the inhospitable terrain. On the 

morning of the 12th the two assault regiments of the 80th Division finally linked 

their bridgeheads, and that evening the 

two divisions also joined. After 11 February, when the 417th Infantry reverted 

to control of its parent division, units of 

the 76th Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. 

William R. Schmidt) began crossing the 

river to assume defensive positions along 

the Pruem as the 5th Division turned 

north, but this was a slow process simply 

because the 5th’s advance was slow. 

On 14 February the 5th Division's 

11th Infantry finally took Ernzen, southernmost of the villages on the high 

ground between the Sauer and the 

Pruem, but only after artillery lined up 

almost hub-to-hub on the other side of 

the Sauer joined with fighter-bombers to 

level the buildings. En route northward, 

a battalion of the 2d Infantry fought its 

way out of the woods as night came on 

the 16th and entered Schankweiler, 

thereby coming roughly abreast of the 

80th Division, but the village was not 

entirely in hand until the next day. 

11 Ibid.; XII Corps G–2 Periodic Rpts. 

Although the Germans in most places 

fought with determination, they could 

take credit for only part of the delay. The 

condition of supply roads west of the 

Sauer and continuing problems of getting men and heavy equipment across 

the swollen river accounted for much of 

it. Without the little M29 cargo carrier 

(Weasel) , a kind of full-tracked jeep, 

vehicular traffic in the mud of the bridgehead would have ground to a halt. Nor 

did the 80th Division, in particular, 

launch any large-scale attacks, concentrating instead on mopping up pockets 

of resistance, jockeying for position on 

high ground north and northeast of Wallendorf, and building up strength in 

supporting weapons and supplies before 

making a major effort to expand and 

break out of the bridgehead. 12 One unusual item of equipment introduced to 

both the 5th and 80th Divisions in the 

bridgehead was the T34 multiple rocket 

launcher, a 60-tube cluster of 4.5-inch 

rocket launchers mounted on a Sherman 

tank. 13 

The Vianden Bulge 

The 80th Division was to begin its new 

advance early on 18 February, but at first 

it would be directed less toward capture 

of Bitburg than toward helping eliminate an enemy hold-out position lying 

between the XII Corps bridgehead and 

the penetration of the VIII Corps at 

Pruem. While the VIII Corps drove 

south and southeast, the 80th Division 

12 80th Div AAR, Feb 45. 

13 For an evaluation of these weapons, see Constance McLaughlin Green, Harry C. Thomson, and 

Peter C. Roots, The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War, UNITED STATES ARMY 

IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1955). pp. 

329–30. 
BITBURG AND THE VIANDEN BULGE 107 

was to move north and northeast, the 

two to join at the village of Mauel, on 

the Pruem River equidistant from 

Pruem and Bitburg. 

The enemy’s hold-out position quickly 

came to be known on the American side 

as the Vianden bulge, after a town on the 

Our. The bulge was some twenty-two 

miles wide from north to south, from the 

90th Division’s forward lines near Habscheid to the 80th Division’s positions 

north of Wallendorf. It was eleven to 

thirteen miles deep, from the German 

frontier along the Our to the Pruem. It 

encompassed some of the most rugged 

terrain in the entire Eifel. A steep, 

heavily wooded bluff capped by limestone ledges marks the east bank of the 

Our. Behind the bluff and the pillboxes 

of the West Wall, the land alternately 

rises and plunges in a series of high, 

irregular ridges and deep ravines dotted 

with thick stands of fir trees and laced 

with twisting secondary roads. 

German commanders responsible for 

the Vianden bulge wanted to withdraw, 

to exchange the extended, meandering 

periphery of the bulge for a considerably 

shorter line behind the Pruem River. 

Since they lacked the strength to counterattack the American penetrations to 

north and south, the bulge had little 

tactical significance. Nor did the Germans have enough resources even to hold 

the bulge for any appreciable time. 

Once the boundary of the LIII Corps 

was shifted southward to give Rothkirch’s troops some of the burden of the 

bridgehead battle with the XII U.S. 

Corps, responsibility for the Vianden 

bulge was split almost in half. Reduced 

to two weak volks grenadier divisions 

and a few conglomerate units, the LIII 

Corps held the southern half; General 

Felber’s XIII Corps, severely straitened 

by the Pruem fighting, the northern half. 

For all the desire of the corps commanders to withdraw, “Hitler, like a 

small child, refused to part with even a 

small portion of his toy, the West 

Wall.” When General Felber broached 

the subject of withdrawal to the Seventh 

Army commander, General Brandenberger, the army commander had to refuse even though he personally favored 

it. 15 Brandenberger himself had recommended the same thing to Army Group 

B, but Field Marshal Model, severely 

piqued because Brandenberger had 

failed to repulse the American drives, 

was in no mood to agree even had Hitler’s standfast orders not blocked the 

way. Model already was contemplating 

relief of the Seventh Army commander. 

Strained relations between the army 

and the army group commander came to 

a head only two days after the Americans 

opened their drive to eliminate the 

bulge. At a meeting at the Seventh 

Army’s forward headquarters on 20 February, Model castigated Brandenberger 

before his staff and relieved him. He 

immediately elevated General Felber, 

who was present, to command of the 

Seventh Army. 

If the disgrace of relief hurt Brandenberger’s pride, it also may have saved his 

life. Hardly had he left when an American bomb landed on the headquarters 

building, killing or severely wounding 

several staff officers. The chief of staff, 

stripped of his clothing by the blast, incurred only a superficial head wound; 

the new commander, General Felber, 

who had just left the building for a fare14 MS # B–123 (Gersdorff). 

15 MS # B–494 (Felber). 
108 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

well tour of his XIII Corps, also incurred 

a slight wound. 16 

Upon Felber’s advancement, Generalleutnant Graf Ralph von Oriola assumed 

command of the XIII Corps. After studying the situation in his sector, Oriola 

made the same recommendation to Felber that Felber had made to Brandenberger—withdraw behind the Pruem. 

The new Seventh Army commander 

found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to refuse the very request 

he himself had made a few days before. 17 

Forced to deny a maneuver that he 

actually endorsed, Felber devised a simple plan that assured him at least a 

measure of operational control of his 

army. Working through his chief of staff, 

General Gersdorff, he told his subordinate commanders they would in the future receive two versions of all orders. 

One would direct continued defense and 

was to be filed in official records. The 

other would give the order Felber actually intended; it was to be destroyed 

after receipt. To justify withdrawals, operational reports to higher headquarters 

were to be falsified, all withdrawals officially to be made because of overwhelming American strength. 18 

On the American side, neither the 

bogging down of the VIII Corps attack 

because of crumbling supply roads nor 

General Bradley’s order of 10 February 

removing headquarters of the III Corps 

from the Third Army was to be allowed 

to thwart Patton’s offensive. Although 

one division was to depart with the headquarters, the 6th Armored Division and 

16 Interview, Maj Fred Meyer with Gersdorff, 

28 Jul 53; MS # B–123 (Gersdorff). 

17 MS # B–052, XIII Corps, 18 February–21 

March 1945 (Oriola). 

18 Interview, Meyer with Gersdorff, 26 Jul 53. 

the 6th Cavalry Group were to remain 

to be taken over by the VIII Corps. With 

two armored and three infantry divisions 

and a cavalry group, the VIII Corps 

would be strong enough to help eliminate the Vianden bulge, despite an 

elongated front. Time and almost superhuman engineer efforts eventually would 

correct the supply situation. The attack 

was to begin on 18 February at the same 

time the 80th Division of the XII Corps 

moved northeastward from Wallendorf. 

The VIII Corps commander, General 

Middleton, planned to use only three of 

his divisions, plus the cavalry group. 

Shifting the 90th Division and the 11th 

Armored westward to enable greater concentration within the 6th Armored Division’s sector along the Our, he directed 

the 90th to drive southeastward from 

Habscheid. The division was to gain the 

Pruem River from Pronsfeld all the way 

to the appointed contact point with the 

XII Corps at Mauel. Using only one 

combat command at first, the 11th 

Armored was to thrust due south to clear 

a pie-shaped sector between the 6th 

Armored and 90th Divisions, featured by 

high ground overlooking the village of 

Irrhausen on a relatively major east-west 

road. Two days after the first attacks, the 

6th Armored Division was to strike 

southeastward from a small bridgehead 

already established across the Our north 

of the village of Dahnen, west of Irrhausen. The 6th Cavalry Group (Col. Edward M. Fickett) meanwhile was to cross 

the Our on the right flank of the 6th 

Armored and clear the southwestern 

corner of the bulge. Both armored divisions were to be pinched out as the 

attacks of the cavalry and the 90th Division converged along the south boundary of the corps. 
BITBURG AND THE VIANDEN BULGE 109 

Moving before daylight on 18 February without artillery preparation, both 

the 90th Division and the 11th Armored 

caught the Germans unprepared. 

The more dramatic success was in the 

center, where the 90th Division's 359th 

Infantry struck through a thick belt of 

West Wall pillboxes toward Kesfeld, 

southwest of Losenseifen Hill, the dominating eminence taken during the Pruem 

offensive by contingents of the 11th 

Armored Division. Bypassing pillboxes 

in the darkness, Company I quickly 

moved into Kesfeld. It took only a short 

fire fight to secure the village. Meanwhile, the 2d Batalion and the rest of 

the 3d cleared forty-eight pillboxes on 

the approaches to Kesfeld. The regimental commanders and staffs of two 

regiments of the 167th Volks Grenadier 

Division and two battalion commanders 

and their staffs were captured in their 

bunks. Almost all of two companies also 

were captured, and by the end of the day 

more than 400 Germans were headed for 

prisoner-of-war cages. 19 

Carrying the burden of the attack for 

the 11th Armored Division, the reserve 

combat command had to fight harder but 

in the end gained more ground than did 

the 359th Infantry. In CCR’s sector just 

west of Kesfeld, no penetration of the 

West Wall had yet been made; the attack 

thus involved passing through concrete 

dragon's teeth as well as pillboxes. Covered by fire from tanks, armored engineers soon blasted a path through the 

antitank obstacle, and tanks and armored 

infantrymen poured through. The advance benefited considerably from the 

fact that only hours before the attack a 

regiment of the 276th Volks Grenadier 

19 90th Div AAR, Feb 45. 

Division had relieved contingents of the 

340th Volks Grenadier Division, and the 

newcomers were unfamiliar with the positions. By nightfall, some seventy-five 

prisoners were in hand and the 55th 

Armored Infantry Battalion held Leidenborn, more than one-fourth the distance 

to the final objective overlooking Irrhausen. The armor spent much of the next 

day consolidating its penetration. 

The going meanwhile had been less 

encouraging southeast of Habscheid 

where the 358th Infantry almost a fortnight earlier had learned respect for the 

kind of opposition the Germans could 

muster in the pillboxes and on the steep 

hills along the Habscheid-Pronsfeld highway. Neither the 2d Battalion astride the 

highway nor the 3d Battalion west of the 

road gained more than a thousand yards 

in the face of intense machine gun and 

artillery fire. 

Somewhat inexplicably, the bottom 

dropped out of the enemy's defense along 

that road early on the second day, 19 

February. Hardly an hour of attack had 

passed when the battalion west of the 

road took its objective, the village of 

Masthorn. An hour later the battalion 

astride the highway took the last dominating hill short of the Pruem River. 

Neither battalion incurred a single casualty. 

For all practical purposes, the 358th 

Infantry had reached the Pruem and 

might begin to pull out the bulk of its 

forces to participate in a wheeling maneuver that the division commander, 

General Rooks, set in motion during the 

afternoon of the 19th. When the 359th 

Infantry had advanced a mile and a half 

southeast of Kesfeld, then turned due 

east toward the Pruem, General Rooks 

sent his reserve regiment, the 357th In- 
110 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

WELCOME TO GERMANY FROM THE 6TH ARMOREDIVISION 

fantry, swinging southeast around the 

359th’s right flank. Later he would commit the 358th Infantry around the right 

flank of the 357th to make a broader, 

final swing southeast to the Pruem at 

Mauel. 

As this maneuver got underway on 20 

February, the 6th Armored Division near 

Dahnen began to break out of its little 

bridgehead across the Our. Established 

originally by CCB as a diversion for the 

attack of the XII Corps on 6 February, 

the bridgehead was about two miles wide 

but less than a mile deep. It nevertheless 

provided a basis for penetrating the West 

Wall without having to attack the pillboxes frontally across the swollen Our 

and up the east bank escarpment. 20 

CCB made the first assault to break out 

of the bridgehead, while CCA, west of 

the Our and farther south opposite Dasburg, staged a mock crossing of the river. 

Beginning at 0645, artillery laid an in20 The 6th Armored Division, under the supervision of its commander, General Grow, published 

an unusual history. Providing a day-by-day factual 

account of all units, without embellishment, it is 

an excellent source. See Combat Record of the 

Sixth Armored Division (Germany, 1945). Action 

in the 20 February attack also is covered by extensive combat interviews. 
BITBURG AND THE VIANDEN BULGE 111 

tensive preparation across CCB’s entire 

front for twenty minutes, then lifted for 

ten minutes in hope that the Germans 

would move from their pillboxes into 

field fortifications outside. Then for one 

minute all the artillery switched to a 

mammoth TOT on the first specific objective, a fortified hill a mile and a half 

due north of Dahnen. 

Close behind the artillery, dismounted 

armored infantrymen organized into 

special pillbox assault teams half a platoon strong started up the hill, while 

others organized as support fire teams 

took the embrasures of the pillboxes under small arms fire. As an assault team 

neared a pillbox, a prearranged signal— 

usually a colored smoke grenade—lifted 

the support team’s fire. Equipped with 

wire cutters, rocket launchers, and demolition charges, the infantrymen closed in. 

By 0835 the first pillbox had fallen, and 

by noon seventeen pillboxes and the 

crest of the hill were clear. So effective 

was the method of attack that only one 

man was lost during the day to small 

arms fire. Of a total of 5 killed and 66 

wounded during 20 February, almost all 

were lost to mines. 

Before daylight the next day, 21 February, CCB struck again. While one 

force expanded the bridgehead south to 

take Dahnen, another drove southeast to 

take the village of Daleiden and thereby 

cut the major Dasburg-Irrhausen highway. In midmorning at Dahnen, a rifle 

platoon of the 9th Armored Infantry 

Battalion mounted a platoon of medium 

tanks and raced south, bypassing pillboxes, to invest Dasburg and clear a 

crossing site over the Our for CCA. In a 

matter of minutes, the tank-mounted infantry gained the village while two infantry companies started south from 

Dahnen as reinforcement, clearing pillboxes as they marched. By nightfall Dasburg and the pillboxes standing sentinel 

over the Our west of the village were 

secure, but fire from German positions 

south of Dasburg continued to deny CCA 

passage over the river. 

During these two days, the 90th Division continued to push steadily east 

and southeast toward the Pruem River. 

While the 359th Infantry on 21 February 

approached the last two villages short of 

the river, the 357th Infantry in its wheeling maneuver overcame stanch resistance 

on open slopes of towering high ground 

around a crossroads settlement two miles 

from the Pruem. An opportune strike by 

fighter-bombers of the XIX Tactical Air 

Command provided an assist. In midafternoon, with the situation apparently 

opening up, General Rooks committed 

the 358th Infantry on its wider wheeling 

maneuver designed to reach the Pruem 

at the contact point with the XII Corps 

at Mauel. 

If any doubt remained that the enemy 

defense was cracking, it rapidly dissipated 

early the next morning, 22 February, 

fifth day of the offensive. The 11th 

Armored Division, for example, heretofore primarily concerned with consolidating its penetration of the West Wall, 

dashed suddenly southward three miles 

and occupied its final objective, the high 

ground overlooking Irrhausen. A battalion of the 358th Infantry on the outer 

rim of the 90th Division’s wheel raced 

southeast four miles to take a village only 

three and a half miles from Mauel. One 

squad of Company A alone took some 

100 prisoners, most of them artillerymen 

frantically trying to hitch their horses to 

their pieces and escape. Breakthrough 

everywhere, with the exception of the 
112 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

southwestern corner of the bulge where 

the light formation of the 6th Cavalry 

Group still found the going sticky. 

Reports of continued rapid advances 

were coming in the next day, 23 February, when the corps commander, General Middleton, sat down to lunch at his 

command post in Luxembourg with the 

commander of the 6th Armored Division, 

General Grow. “How long will it takeyou,” Middleton asked Grow, “to get a 

task force on the road to drive across 

the front of the 6th Cavalry Group and 

contact XII Corps?” 21 By 1630 a strong 

force composed of a company each of 

light and medium tanks, a cavalry troop, 

an infantry company, a platoon of tank 

destroyers, and two squads of engineers 

was on the way. The commander was 

Lt. Col. Harold C. Davall. 

Expanding the XII Corps Bridgehead 

The troops that Davall’s task force set 

out to contact had found the opposition 

stiffer than that facing the VIII Corps 

but nevertheless had made steady progress. With less ground to cover to reach 

the intercorps boundary, they would be 

on hand at the boundary when Davall 

arrived. These were men of the 80th 

Division, who on 18 February only a few 

hours after the VIII Corps jumped off 

had begun their assignment to help clear 

the Vianden bulge. At the same time they 

were expanding the XII Corps bridgehead and preparing the way for a final 

drive on Bitburg. 

Early on 18 February, the 80th Division commander, General McBride, 

sent two regiments north from the vicin21 Interview, Meyer with Grow, 6 Aug 53. 

ity of Wallendorf toward Mettendorf 

and Hill 408, the latter the most commanding ground in the second and third 

tier of hills beyond the German frontier. 

While protecting the left flank of the 5th 

Division in the corps main effort, the 

thrust also would uncover the West Wall 

pillboxes along the Our River. 22 

The 80th Division’s two regiments 

took three days to reach Hill 408, but 

before daylight on 21 February a battalion of the 3 18th Infantry slipped 

through the darkness to occupy the 

height after firing only a few shots. In 

the meantime, a battalion of the 317th 

Infantry took the enemy by surprise at 

Enzen, on the little Enz River southeast 

of Hill 408, seized a bridge intact, and 

gained a leg on the next fold of high 

ground lying between the Enz and the 

Pruem. 

The 319th Infantry meanwhile maneuvered against the pillboxes along the 

Our. Advancing along the west bank of 

the Gay Creek, the first stream line behind the river and the pillboxes, one 

battalion during the night of 18 February occupied high ground near Niedersgegen, nestled at the bottom of the 

creek valley, and soon after daylight took 

the village itself. The next day, 20 February, the same battalion turned west to 

the Our, cutting off the Germans in a 

two and a half mile stretch of the West 

Wall. 

The job of mopping up the pillboxes 

fell to the 53d Armored Infantry Battalion, attached from the 4th Armored 

Division. The weather helped. With the 

ground free of snow and more than a 

hint of spring in the air, it was no time 

22 80th Div FO 31, 14 Feb 45. 
BITBURG AND THE VIANDEN BULGE 113 

to die. By nightfall of the 21st, when the 

mop-up was complete, 337 Germans had 

emerged from the West Wall bunkers, 

hands high in surrender. 

With the West Wall eliminated and 

Hill 408 taken, time for exploitation appeared at hand. As a first step in commitment of the 4th Armored Division, the 

corps commander, General Eddy, attached Combat Command B to the 80th 

Division. On 23 February the armor 

drove northeast to take Sinspelt and its 

bridge over the Enz River on a main 

highway nine miles due west of Bitburg. 

It was no easy assignment, for in a lastditch effort to prevent breakout, the 

Germans rushed the remnants of the 2d 

Panzer Division down from Pruem. 23 

Nevertheless, as night fell Sinspelt and a 

serviceable bridge over the Enz were 

secure. 

Also taken was the settlement of 

Obergeckler, along the corps boundary 

just over a mile west and slightly north 

of Sinspelt. There a battalion of the 

319th Infantry kept pace with the armor 

and as night came was in position to welcome Colonel Davall's task force from 

the 6th Armored Division, approaching 

from the north. 

Task Force Davall had begun to move 

at 1630 from the village of Jucken, on a 

secondary road six miles northwest of 

Obergeckler. Brushing aside a show of 

resistance at a crossroads not quite two 

miles from the starting point, the task 

force continued southward through the 

night, gathering in surprised Germans 

along the way. At 0740 the next morning, 

24 February, Task Force Davall made 

23 MS # B–123 (Gersdorff). 

contact with contingents of the 80th Division just north of Obergeckler. 

Before the day was out, the 90th Division too had swept to the corps boundary. At a cost of some 600 casualties, of 

which approximately 125 were killed, 

three divisions and a cavalry group had 

pierced the West Wall in the rough terrain of the Eifel and established a solid 

front along the Pruem River. In the 

process, they took more than 3,000 

prisoners. 24 

To Bitburg and the Kyll 

The Vianden bulge cleared, the XII 

Corps on 24 February was free to turn 

full attention to seizing Bitburg. Having 

assumed command of the corps temporarily when on 22 February General 

Eddy left for a brief rest, the 4th 

Armored Division commander, General 

Gaffey, ordered CCB released from control of the 80th Division and directed the 

entire armored division to strike northeastward. The armor was to jump the 

Pruem and Nims Rivers, cut major roads 

leading north out of Bitburg, and build 

up along the Kyll River two miles beyond the town. The 5th Infantry Division was to take the town and reach the 

Kyll to the east and southeast. 

In the days since 18 February, while 

the 80th Division had been expanding 

the XII Corps bridgehead to north and 

northeast, the 5th Division had cleared 

the west bank of the Pruem to a point 

only six miles southwest of Bitburg. At 

the same time, the division had regrouped and turned over much of its 

Pruem River line in the south to the 

24 Div and cavalry group AAR’s, Feb 45. 
114 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

76th Division. 25 Once the 5th had crossed 

the Pruem, contingents of the 76th also 

were to cross and drive southeast to protect the 5th’s right flank. 

From the first it was apparent that 

crossing the Pruem River would be considerably easier than crossing the Sauer. 

There was nothing to equal the clifflike 

terrain along the Sauer, and the worst of 

the flood waters resulting from the early 

thaw had passed. Yet hardly anyone 

could have anticipated how “unquestionably easy” the crossing would be. 26 Starting at 2300 the night of the 24th, a 

battalion of the 2d Infantry crossed the 

river within an hour and took high 

ground just north of the village of 

Wettlingen. An hour later a battalion of 

the 10th Infantry crossed a few miles to 

the south on the heels of a patrol that 

found a serviceable vehicular ford. Only 

scattered mortar and small arms fire opposed either crossing. 

As the infantrymen fanned out to the 

north and northeast, the story was much 

the same everywhere. “Germans came 

forward bearing white flags and sickly 

smiles.” 27 By nightfall of 26 February, 

one battalion of the 2d Infantry stood on 

the Nims River less than a mile from the 

western edge of Bitburg. Another bat25 On 27 February, as Pfc. Herman C. Wallace 

of the 76th Division’s 301st Engineer Combat Battalion was helping clear mines from a road near 

the river, he stepped on an S-mine, an antipersonnel device that when activated normally leaps 

upward to explode in the air. Hearing the sound 

indicating that his step had activated the mine, 

Private Wallace spared those around him by holding his foot on the mine and placing his other 

firmly beside it. This confined the explosion to the 

ground but inevitably killed him in the process. 

He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. 

26 The Fifth Infantry Division in the ETO, 

“Across the Sauer Into the Siegfried Line.” 

27 Ibid. 

talion of the 2d and two of the 10th

Infantry were across the stream farther 

south and had cut the EchternachBitburg highway. The 2d Battalion, 2d 

Infantry, took a bridge over the Nims 

intact, and one of the 10th Infantry’s 

battalions crossed over the ruins of a 

demolished bridge. A regiment of the 

76th Division meanwhile crossed the 

Pruem through the 10th Infantry’s 

bridgehead and also jumped the Nims. 

The fate of Bitburg was sealed even 

had there been no 4th Armored Division 

racing northeastward along the left flank 

of the infantry. As early as the evening 

of 25 February, a day before the infantry 

crossed the Nims, a task force of the 4th 

Armored had a bridgehead over the second river a mile and a half northwest of 

Bitburg. With planes of the XIX Tactical Air Command almost constantly 

overhead, the bulk of two combat commands got across the Nims on 26 February and spread out to northeast and 

east. Part of the 80th Division’s infantry 

followed in the wake of the armor to 

bring in the prisoners, while one regiment moved north and established contact with the VIII Corps at Mauel. 

On the German side, the new Seventh 

Army commander, General Felber, appealed to his superiors time after time 

for help, but to little avail. In the end, 

Army Group B managed to detach a depleted infantry division, the 246th, from 

the Fifth Panzer Army to the north, but 

the division began to move toward Bitburg only on 27 February. That was far 

too late. 28 

As early as 26 February fighter-bomber 

pilots reported the Germans evacuating 

28 MS # B–831, Seventh Army, 20 February-26 

March 1945 (Felber). 
BITBURG AND THE VIANDEN BULGE 115 

Bitburg. Well they might, for by nightfall of the 26th a task force of the 4th 

Armored Division had reached the west 

bank of the Kyll two miles northeast of 

the town, and by nightfall of the 27th a 

battalion of the 5th Division’s 11th Infantry occupied a village a mile southeast 

of the town while another battalion 

poised in the southern fringe of Bitburg 

itself. Before midday on 28 February the 

11th Infantry delivered the coup de 

grâce to a town already severely battered 

by American planes and artillery. 

Beginning on 4 February with the 

start of the VIII Corps offensive aimed 

at Pruem, two corps of the Third Army 

in just over three weeks had penetrated 

the West Wall in some of the most forbidding terrain to be found along the 

Western Front. At its widest point, the 

penetration measured more than twentyfive miles. The VIII Corps at the end of 

February stood on the Pruem while the 

XII Corps bulged eastward to the Kyll. 

Although the Rhine still lay some fifty 

miles away and terrain still might constitute a major obstacle, the enemy’s 

prepared defenses lay behind, and only 

a miracle could enable the Germans to 

man another solid front in the Eifel. 

The Third Army commander, General 

Patton, meanwhile had been turning his 

attention to one more detail that had to 

be attended to before he could make a 

final thrust to the Rhine. Striding into 

the 76th Division’s command post early 

on 26 February, Patton placed a fist on 

the operations map at the ancient Roman 

city of Trier on the Moselle. 29 

Almost unnoticed in the bigger picture of the Western Front, an infantry 

division and an armored division of the 

Third Army’s XX Corps had been nibbling away at the German position south 

of Trier that had become known as the 

Saar-Moselle triangle. The XX Corps 

from the south and the 76th Division 

from the north, Patton directed, were to 

envelop Trier. 

29 1st Lt. Joseph J. Hutnik and Tech. 4 Leonard 

Kobrick, eds., We Ripened Fast-The Unofficial 

History of the Seventy-Sixth Infantry Division 

(Germany, n.d.), p. 102. 
CHAPTER VII 

The Saar-Moselle Triangle 

During September 1944, the great 

pursuit across France and Belgium had 

ended in the north along the German 

frontier and the West Wall, in the south 

generally along the line of the Moselle 

River. In the bitter fighting that followed 

through the autumn and early winter, 

the Third Army in the south had 

breached the Moselle line around Metz, 

pushed northeast across the German 

border, and broken the outer crust of 

the West Wall along the Saar River at 

Saarlautern, thirty-two miles south of 

Trier. Although a combination of Third 

and Seventh Army attacks compromised 

the Moselle line along most of its length, 

the Germans had continued to hold the 

east bank in a triangle formed by confluence of the Saar and the Moselle southwest of Trier. The Third Army had yet 

to clear the triangle when the call had 

come in December to move into the Ardennes. 

To American troops the uncleared sector was the “Saar-Moselle triangle.” 

From an apex at the meeting of the Saar 

and the Moselle in the north to a base 

along an east-west line roughly coterminous with the southern border of Luxembourg, the triangle measured some 

sixteen and a half miles. The base extended not quite thirteen miles. Although the West Wall in this sector lay 

behind the Saar, the Germans in 1939 

and 1940 had constructed a supplementary fortified line across the base of 

the triangle from Nennig in the west to 

Orscholz, at a great northwestward loop 

of the Saar. The Germans called the position the Orscholz Switch; the Americans 

knew it as the Siegfried Switch. Assuming the neutrality of Luxembourg, the 

switch position was designed to protect 

Trier and the Moselle corridor and to 

prevent outflanking of the strongest portion of the West Wall, that lying to the 

southeast across the face of the Saar industrial area. 

The Orscholz Switch was similar to the 

West Wall itself, a defensive position two 

miles deep, fronted by dragon’s teeth or 

antitank ditches and composed of pillboxes and concrete bunkers reinforced 

by field fortifications. It sat astride high 

ground forming a watershed for streams 

flowing generally northeast to the Saar 

and west and southwest to the Moselle. 

The terrain is rolling and sharply compartmented, in many places covered with 

dense woods. The major roads converge 

on the town of Saarburg, halfway up the 

east side of the triangle on the west bank 

of the Saar River. 

In November and December, while 

striking toward the Saar at Saarlautern, 

General Walker’s XX Corps on the left 

wing of the Third Army had been able 

to turn only a scant force against the 

Orscholz Switch and the triangle. In 

late November an armored combat com- 
THE SAAR-MOSELLE TRIANGLE 117 

mand and an infantry regiment had engineered a minor penetration of the left 

portion of the switch at the villages of 

Tettingen and Butzdorf; but the XX 

Corps had had to relinquish the ground 

in December in the general belt-tightening process to free units for the Ardennes. 1 When in early January a relatively inexperienced infantry division, 

the 94th under Maj. Gen. Harry J. Malony, arrived in this sector, the forward 

positions were south of the Orscholz 

line. 

As the 94th Division moved into position on 7 January, the levies imposed by 

the Ardennes fighting had so severely 

reduced General Walker’s XX Corps that 

all sectors were thinly manned. Beyond 

the corps left boundary at the Moselle, a 

cavalry group of the neighboring XII 

Corps held the west bank of the Moselle. 

The 94th Division faced the entire 13- 

mile stretch of the Orscholz Switch, from 

Moselle to Saar. The 3d Cavalry Group 

defended the XX Corps center, approximately nine miles along the Saar River 

to the confluence of the Saar and the 

Nied. The 95th Infantry Division held 

the remainder of the corps front, roughly 

equal to the distance covered by the 

cavalry but involving an added responsibility of defending a bridgehead over the 

Saar at Saarlautern. (The 95th subsequently was replaced by the 26th Division.) 

Before arriving in the Saar-Moselle 

triangle, the 94th Division had fought 

to contain Germans corralled in the 

Breton ports of Lorient and St. Nazaire. 

In part to provide the division offensive 

combat experience, in part to contain the 

Germans in the Orscholz Switch and 

1 Cole, The Lorraine Campaign, chs. XI, XIII. 

possibly to draw reserves from other sectors, and in part to gain a foothold in he 

line for later exploitation, the corps 

commander, General Walker, told General Malony on 12 January to begin a 

series of stabs into the line in strengths 

not to exceed one reinforced battalion. 2 

Probing the Orscholz Switch 

As had other units in November, the 

94th Division made its first thrusts into 

the left portion of the Orscholz Switch in 

an attack designed to hit a sensitive point 

that might evoke German counterattack, 

which the Americans might crush with 

heavy German losses. At dawn on 14 

January, the 1st Battalion, 376th Infantry, commanded by Lt. Col. Russell M. 

Miner, plowed through a foot of snow 

and in just over an hour overran surprised German outposts to take Tettingen, the first village behind the dragon’s 

teeth on the western slopes of a high 

hogback ridgeline marked by the trace 

of a major highway leading northeast to 

Saarburg. (Map V) So successful was 

the assault that the regimental commander ordered Colonel Miner to continue into the adjacent village of Butzdorf. Although fire from an alerted 

enemy in nearby pillboxes made this task 

more difficult, Butzdorf too was in hand 

before noon. The next day, when the 

3d Battalion of the 376th Infantry at2 In addition to official records of the 94th Division and a series of combat interviews, see an 

excellent unit history, Laurence G. Byrnes, ed., 

History of the 94th Infantry Division in World 

War II (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1948). 

See also XX Corps Association, The XX Corps: 

Its History and Service in World War II (Japan, 

n.d.) (Hereafter cited as XX Corps History), and 

detailed comments by General Malony on the draft 

manuscript for this volume. 
118 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

tacked toward Nennig and two other 

villages on the Moselle floodplain northwest of Tettingen and Butzdorf, the going was less easy, but as night came on 15 

January these three villages forming the 

western anchor of the Orscholz Switch 

also were in hand. 

The rapidity with which the two 

thrusts had broken into the switch position was attributable in large measure 

to the fact that the enemy’s 416th Infantry Division, responsible for the sector 

since November, was gravely overextended. Only two regiments held the 

entire Orscholz Switch, while the third 

defended in the West Wall beyond the 

Saar. Only the division replacement 

battalion was available as a reserve. 3 

Before dawn on 15 January, even as 

the 3d Battalion, 376th Infantry, moved 

toward Nennig and the other villages on 

the Moselle floodplain, the 416th Division’s replacement battalion counterattacked at Butzdorf and Tettingen. Although close-in fighting raged for a time 

in both villages, the Germans in the end 

had to fall back. Of some 400 who made 

the counterattack, scarcely more than a 

hundred escaped; some died from minor 

wounds after prolonged exposure in the 

subfreezing cold. 4 

As General Malony had hoped, the 

attacks had prompted German counterattack with attendant German losses. 

What he had not counted on was a coincidence that provided the Germans in 

8 MS # B-573, Battles of the 416th Infantry 

Division Between the Moselle and the Saar From 

5 October 1944 to 17 February 1945 (Oberleutnant 

Karl Redmer, after consultation with various officers of the 416th Div, LXXXII Corps, and adjacent units): MS # B-090, Rhineland Campaign 

(Generalleutnant Kurt Pflieger, CG 416th Diu). 

Ibid., Byrnes, History of the 94th Infantry Division in World War II, pp. 95–98. 

the Orscholz Switch a powerful force for 

another counterattack. While the 94th 

Division was preparing its two thrusts, 

the enemy’s 11th Panzer Division had 

‘been en route to the very sector General 

Malony had chosen for his first attacks. 

Having been scheduled for the Ardennes counteroffensive but not committed, 

the 11th Panzer Division early in January 

was shifted south across the army group 

boundary, which bisected the northern 

corner of the Saar-Moselle triangle. With 

the shift the panzer division became a 

reserve for Army Group G. 

The commander of Army Group G, 

General Blaskowitz, planned a variety of 

exercises in which he would use the 

panzer division in concert with other 

units to complement a faltering Operation NORDWIND in Alsace, but for 

lack of additional units, none of the 

plans had materialized. In the end, 

Blaskowitz assigned the panzer division 

to the LXXXII Corps (General der 

Infanterie Walther Hahm) , one of three 

corps operating directly under the army 

group without an intervening army 

headquarters. The LXXXII Corps was 

responsible for a long stretch of the Saar 

and for the Orscholz Switch. In order to 

relieve pressure on the embattled Seventh Army in the Ardennes, the 11th 

Panzer Division was to make a strong 

armored raid out of the Orscholz Switch, 

three and a half miles to the southwest to 

heights on the east bank of the Moselle 

overlooking the meeting point of the 

German and Luxembourg frontiers. 

Target date for the raid was mid-January. The axis of attack was to run directly 

through Butzdorf and Tettingen. 5 

5 MSS # B-417, The 11th Panzer Division in the 

Rhineland, 20 December 1944–10 February 1945 

(Generalleutnant Wend von Wietersheim, CG 11th 
THE SAAR-MOSELLE TRIANGLE 119 

CREW OF A 3-INCH GUN on the watch for German tanks in the Saar-Moselle 

triangle. 

For want of fuel and because capacity 

of bridges over the Saar was limited, 

some 50 Mark V (Panther) tanks of the 

11th Panzer Division had to remain east 

of the Saar. The raid would be entrusted 

to 30 Mark IV (medium) tanks, 20 to 

Panzer Division); # B–066, Engagements Fought 

by LXXXII Army Corps During the Period 2 

December 1944 to 27 March 1945 (Oberst Ludwig 

Graf von Ingelheim, CofS LXXXII Corps); # 

B–573 (Redmer). See also Magna Bauer, Army 

Group G, January 1945, MS prepared in OCMH 

to complement this volume. 

30 assault guns, and 2 relatively fullstrength panzer grenadier regiments. 6 

American pilots reported German 

armor crossing the Saar during the day of 

16 January, so that when night came the 

94th Division was fully alert. At Butzdorf, Tettingen, Nennig, and the other 

Unless otherwise noted, sources for 11th Panzer 

Division actions are as cited in the footnote above. 

Note that some of the German officers, having 

worked without benefit of contemporary records, 

sometimes erred on dates. Byrnes in his 94th Division history provides a detailed lower-level 

German account, apparently from prisoner interrogations. 
120 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

villages, the men worked through 17 

January to lay antitank mines and bring 

up tank destroyers and additional bazookas. (The 94th Division as yet had no 

attached tank battalion.) Through the 

night the sound of tracked vehicles 

emanated from woods and villages to the 

north and northeast. Then at 0300 on 18 

January a patrol returned with two 

prisoners who confirmed all suspicions: 

the prisoners were from 11th Panzer 

Division. 

At dawn on the 18th the storm broke. 

For twenty minutes German mortars 

and artillery worked over Butzdorf and 

Tettingen, then from the northeast from 

the nearby village of Sinz emerged a 

long column of tanks, assault guns, halftracks bulging with greatcoated Germans, and infantry on foot. Despite 

heavy concentrations of defensive artillery fire, the Germans kept coming. As 

half the force struck Butzdorf, the other 

half swung in a wide arc to hit Tettingen. 

For more than an hour confusion 

reigned in both villages as German tanks 

and assault guns shot up the landscape 

and infantrymen of both sides fought at 

close quarters among the damaged buildings. Mines disabled some of the German 

vehicles, and a 57-mm. antitank gun 

caught one tank broadside, but in the 

main it was a job for intrepid infantrymen stalking with bazookas. 

Shortly after 0900 the Germans fell 

back, but just before noon ten tanks 

again emerged from Sinz, took up hull 

defilade positions and persistently 

pounded the two villages. At 1430 three 

battalions of German infantry launched a 

fresh assault, this time directed primarily 

at Butzdorf. Again the Germans occupied many of the houses. Again closein fighting raged. 

Throughout the afternoon the lone 

American company in Butzdorf fought 

back, but as night approached the survivors controlled only a few buildings. 

So fire-swept was the open ground between Tettingen and Butzdorf that the 

Americans could bring neither reinforcements nor supplies forward. As darkness 

fell General Malony authorized the survivors in Butzdorf to fall back. 

The company commander in Butzdorf, 1st Lt. David F. Stafford, already 

had arrived independently at the conclusion that withdrawal was the only 

course left to him short of surrender or 

annihilation. Tearing doors off their 

hinges to serve as litters for the seriously 

wounded, what was left of the company 

slowly pulled back through Stygian darkness and a heavy snowfall while guns of 

the 284th and 919th Field Artillery 

Battalions fired covering concentrations. 

When the survivors reached Tettingen, they found a fresh battalion of the 

376th Infantry in position to defend that 

village. Although no one could have 

known it at the time, the high-water 

mark of the raid through the Orscholz 

Switch had come and gone. The Germans had taken Butzdorf, and three days 

later, during the night of 21 January, 

they succeeded in fighting their way into 

half the village of Nennig on the Moselle 

floodplain and into a castle northeast of 

Nennig, but that was the end. Handicapped by absence of heavy tanks, 

severely restricted by the snow-covered 

terrain (one thrust on Nennig bogged 

down when the tanks foundered in an 

antitank ditch concealed by snowdrifts) , 

and punished by artillery fire directed 

from an observation post on heights west 
THE SAAR-MOSELLE TRIANGLE 121 

REMOVING GERMAN DEAD AFTER FIGHTING IN NENNIG 

of the Moselle, the 11th Panzer Division 

could only slow the tempo of the 94th 

Division's thrusts. 7 

Hardly had the echoes of the fighting 

with the panzer division died down when 

General Malony aimed another limited 

objective attack into the German line. 

This time he chose to strike at the 

eastern anchor of the Orscholz Switch, at 

Orscholz itself, where a regiment of the 

overextended 416th Infantry Division 

still was responsible for the defense. A 

7 For a description of German difficulties, see 

MSS # B-417 (Wietersheim) and # B-066 (Ingelheim). 

penetration at Orscholz, combined with 

that at Tettingen, might be exploited 

later into a double envelopment of the 

center of the switch position. 

Orscholz perched atop a ridge with 

snow-covered open fields gently sloping 

to the south. The only logical covered 

approach to the village from the positions held by the 94th Division was 

through the Saarburg Forest, southwest 

and west of the village. Through this 

forest the 301st Infantry commander, 

Col. Roy N. Hagerty, planned to send 

his 1st Battalion in a surprise attack just 

before dawn on 20 January. The battal- 
122 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

ion was to reach the east-west Oberleuken-Orscholz highway running through 

the woods, then to turn eastward and 

strike at Orscholz. 

As the men of the 1st Battalion moved 

into position, the night was bitterly cold 

and a swirling snowstorm made nighttime control even more difficult than 

usual. Daylight had come before the two 

assault companies were ready to cross the 

line of departure, a stretch of dragon’s 

teeth in a clearing a few hundred yards 

south of the Oberleuken-Orscholz highway. Company B on the left moved silently forward, not a shot barring the 

way. Company A on the right was less 

fortunate. As the men passed among the 

projections of the concrete antitank 

obstacle a drumbeat of explosions filled 

the air. Mines. 

Company B meanwhile continued 

silently through the forest, reached the 

highway, and turned east toward Orscholz. The advance guard overran 

several German machine gun positions, 

but in general the move was unopposed. 

Reaching the edge of the woods overlooking Orscholz, the company commander, Capt. Herman C. Straub, halted 

his men to await the rest of the battalion. 

At the line of departure, the battalion 

commander, Lt. Col. George F. Miller, 

had tried to shift Company A to the left 

to follow in the footsteps of Company B, 

but too late. The explosions in the minefield had alerted the Germans in pillboxes and communications trenches 

overlooking the clearing. Company A 

came under a withering crossfire from 

automatic weapons. As the men fell to 

the ground for protection, mortars and 

artillery ploughed the clearing with 

deadly bursts. Among those killed was 

Colonel Miller. 

Although the regimental commander, 

Colonel Hagerty, sent a company from 

another battalion to reinforce the attack, 

every effort to get across the clearing 

merely increased the casualty toll. One 

company lost sixty men to antipersonnel 

mines alone. Tank destroyers tried to 

help, but the ground in the clearing was 

marshy and not frozen solidly enough to 

support the self-propelled guns. Patrols 

sent out after nightfall in search of a 

route past the German defenses found no 

solution. 

When daylight came again, the regimental executive officer, Lt. Col. Donald 

C. Hardin, sent to replace Colonel Miller 

as battalion commander, told Colonel 

Hagerty it would take an entire regiment 

to push the attack successfully. Although 

the corps commander, General Walker, 

earlier had modified the 1-battalion 

restriction imposed on the 94th Division’s attacks and had granted approval 

for using as much as a regiment to exploit a penetration,* General Malony saw 

no reason to reinforce what was in effect 

a failure at Orscholz. He gave his permission to abandon the effort. 

Captain Straub and Company B in the 

meantime had not long remained undetected at the woods line overlooking 

Orscholz. Learning by radio of the misfortune that had befallen the rest of the 

battalion, Captain Straub shifted his 

men south of the Oberleuken-Orscholz 

highway to a position adaptable to allround defense. With the aid of protective 

fires from the 301st field artillery, the 

company held, but not without serious 

losses aggravated by the bitter cold. 

With the attack abandoned, word went 

out to Captain Straub to fight his way 

8 94th Div G–3 Jnl, 18 Jan 45, 
THE SAAR-MOSELLE TRIANGLE 123 

out. Straub answered that he “could not 

comply.” Many of the men were seriously 

wounded; at least one already had 

frozen to death; and ammunition was 

almost gone. Although Colonel Hagerty 

himself talked with Straub by radio, 

outlining a plan to cover the company’s 

withdrawal with smoke, the captain 

again said withdrawal was impossible. 

Every attempt to move, he said, brought 

heavy enemy fire that pinned the men 

to their positions. 

Company B and attachments, a force 

of approximately 230 men, raised a white 

flag. 9 

Expanding the Penetration 

For another day after the misfortune 

at Orscholz, those units of the 94th 

Division that had penetrated the western 

end of the switch position at Tettingen 

and Nennig would be fully occupied 

fending off the 11th Panzer Division. 

Only on 23 January would the division 

be free to recoup the minor loss of 

ground incurred and return again to 

consolidating and expanding the penetration. 

Renewed limited objective attacks 

began early on 23 January when a battalion of the 376th Infantry moved to 

retake the northern half of Nennig, lost 

to the Germans the preceding night. It 

took all day to root a stubborn enemy 

from the damaged houses and at the 

same time eliminate five Mark IV tanks. 

Two men, T. Sgt. Nathaniel Isaacman, 

a platoon sergeant, and Pvt. John F. 

Pietrzah, alone accounted for two of the 

9 301st Inf and 94th Div AAR’s, Jan 45; 94th Div 

G–3 Jnl, 21–22 Jan 45; Byrnes, History of the 94th 

Infantry Division, p. 138; Combat interview with 

Hagerty. Direct quotation is from Hagerty. 

tanks and set up a third for the kill. 

Spotting three tanks advancing up a 

narrow street, the men climbed to the 

top of a house, then crept from one rooftop to another to gain a position above 

the tanks. The first rocket from Pietrzah’s 

bazooka missed, but a second sent the 

lead tank up in flames. Another rocket 

put a quick end to the tank in the rear. 

The third tank, trapped between the 

other two, fell ready prey to a rifle grenade fired by a man on the ground, Pvt. 

Albert J. Beardsley. 10 

In the attack at Nennig, the battalion 

of the 376th Infantry had the assistance 

of a company of armored infantrymen. 

This presaged introduction of a new 

force in the Orscholz Switch, a combat 

command of the 8th Armored Division. 

The armored division, yet to see combat, 

had rushed across France earlier in the 

month in reaction to Operation NORDWIND. Not used in that fight, the division had been attached temporarily to 

the Third Army for combat training. 

The army commander, General Patton, 

saw in the attachment an opportunity to 

give the division battle experience while 

at the same time remedying the 94th 

Division’s lack of attached tanks. He gave 

General Malony the 8th Armored’s Combat Command A (Brig. Gen. Charles F. 

Colson) , but stipulated that the armor 

10 On the same day, T. Sgt. Nicholas Oresko led 

his platoon of the 302d Infantry in an attack to 

clear German-held pillboxes near Tettingen. Sergeant Oresko singlehandedly knocked out a machine gun that was pinning down his men with 

fire from a bunker. Wounded in the hip, he refused evacuation and again advanced alone to 

knock out another machine gun firing from a field 

fortification. Still Oresko refused evacuation until 

his platoon’s mission had been accomplished. He 

subsequently received the Medal of Honor. 
124 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

was to be used for only forty-eight 

hours. 11 

Prodded by General Walker and his 

staff officers at XX Corps headquarters, 12 

Malony was determined to get as much 

help as possible from the combat command before the time limit expired. He 

intended to use the armor to help turn 

the limited penetration of the Orscholz 

Switch into a genuine breach that might 

be exploited quickly into breakout. 

Malony’s plan revolved around capture of Sinz, northeast of Butzdorf and 

Tettingen, and wooded high ground 

northwest of Sinz. From there, in a subsequent stage, he planned to take Munzingen, a mile and a half to the east, a 

village crowning the hogback ridge leading deep into the Saar-Moselle triangle. 

Holding the high ground northwest of 

Sinz and at Munzingen, the 94th Division would be all the way through the 

Orscholz Switch, in a favorable position 

for exploitation. 

The role of the armor in the Sinz 

attack was to advance northeast from the 

vicinity of Nennig, clear pillboxes along 

a road leading into Nennig from the 

west, then help infantry of the 94th 

Division take the village. Before committing the armor, General Malony intended his infantry to occupy high 

ground northeast of Nennig, including 

the castle occupied earlier by units of 

the 11th Panzer Division. That would set 

up more favorable conditions for using 

the armor. 

As events developed, the battalion of 

11 In addition to official 8th Armored Div records, 

see also 94th Div G–3 Jnl for the period; Capt. 

Charles R. Leach, In Tornado’s Wake—A History 

of the 8th Armored Division (8th Armored Division Association, 1956); Gay Diary, entry of 17 

Jan 45. 

12 94th Div G–3 Jnl, 23–26 Jan 45. 

the 376th Infantry assigned to take the 

castle was, by the early hours of 25 

January, so worn out from the fight at 

Nennig that the commander urged that 

some other unit be given the task. The 

CCA commander, General Colson, volunteered his unit. At dawn on 25 January, half the combat command, organized 

as a task force under Lt. Col. Arthur D. 

Poinier, commander of the 7th Armored 

Infantry Battalion, jumped off, only to 

discover quickly that the 11th Panzer 

Division still had a lot of fight left. So 

perturbed at the slow pace of the day’s 

advance was the corps commander, General Walker, that he removed all restrictions on the size of the forces the 94th 

Division might commit. “Go ahead,” he 

said, “and use them all.” 13 At the same 

time, he tacitly agreed to extending the 

time limit on use of the combat command an extra day—through 27 January. 

As finally decided, two regiments and 

the combat command were to make the 

attack. On the left, the 302d Infantry 

(Col. Earle A. Johnson) was to pave the 

way for the armor; on the right, the 

376th Infantry (Col. Harold H. McClune) was to move on Sinz. Avoiding 

open ground south of Sinz, the regiment 

was to attack through woods southwest 

and west of the village and link with the 

armor along the highway in the woods 

for the assault on the village itself. A 

battalion of the 302d, operating directly 

under division control, meanwhile was 

to recapture Butzdorf, lost on the first 

day of German counterattacks. 

The most encouraging success on 26 

January came on the right. There an 

antipersonnel minefield hidden by the 

deep snow stymied one battalion, but 

13 94th Div G–3 Jnl, 25 Jan 45. 
THE SAAR-MOSELLE TRIANGLE 125 

two companies of another battalion 

slipped past and gained the woods overlooking Sinz from the west. Although 

three German tanks supported by infantry counterattacked, bazookas accounted 

for two of the tanks and drove the other 

away. Artillery fire took care of the German infantry. The two companies dug 

in for the night, protecting their left and 

rear with the 376th Infantry’s reserve 

battalion, which got safely past the minefield and into the woods by following 

the route the two leading companies 

had taken. 

According to the plan, the armor was 

to have linked with this force along the 

highway bisecting the forest, but the 

armor and the 302d Infantry on the left 

ran into trouble. Intense machine gun 

fire from the north stopped the infantrymen, while the armor after getting into 

the western edge of the woods came to 

a halt before a deep antitank ditch. 

The next day, 27 January, as the corps 

commander, General Walker, warned 

that the armored combat command 

would be withdrawn that night, General 

Malony committed a battalion of his 

reserve, the 301st Infantry, to help clear 

a path for the tanks. Although armored 

engineers during the night had bridged 

the antitank ditch, the fresh infantry 

battalion had to spend all morning taking out machine guns and an antitank 

gun before the armor could cross. Soon 

after midday CCA’s tanks at last started 

forward and quickly linked with men of 

the 376th Infantry overlooking Sinz. 

Assault on the village itself was 

delayed, first by a counterattack against 

the left flank in the woods, then by accurate German tank fire from hills and 

woods north and east of Sinz. Darkness 

was falling when a platoon of tanks and 

two infantry companies at last gained a 

toehold in the village against stalwart defenders of the 11th Panzer Division. In 

the process, CCA’s 18th Tank Battalion 

knocked out eight German tanks but lost 

six of its own. 

When General Malony asked to keep 

the combat command to finish taking 

the village the next day, General Walker 

declined. The period of indoctrination 

was over. The 94th Division was to take 

a rest, then later to resume its limited 

objective attacks. 14 

Broadening the Effort 

Almost coincident with the arrival- of 

a new directive from General Walker 

to resume the attack but to employ no 

more than a regiment at a time, the 

February thaw and the rains came. Beginning on 2 February rain fell for eight 

days, turning foxholes into frigid dirty 

bathtubs and roads into oozing ribbons 

of mud. Yet the attacks began, concentrating on objectives designed to obtain 

eventual control of the hogback ridge 

leading into the depths of the SaarMoselle triangle. 

Malony first turned the 302d Infantry 

against Kampholz Woods, southeast of 

Tettingen on the western slopes of the 

ridge. Resistance was stubborn, particularly from a nest of pillboxes on approaches to the woods from the west. 

The last of the pillboxes held out until 

8 February. 

Meanwhile, Malony reverted to his 

original plan of gaining a hold on the 

hogback ridge at Munzingen by first 

taking Sinz. Moving just before daylight 

on 7 February, a battalion of the 301st 

14 94th Div G–3 Jnl, 27 Jan 45. 
126 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

GENERAL WALKER 

Infantry quickly took the first houses and 

went on to clear the rest of the village 

during the day; but another battalion, 

trying to clear Bannholz Woods, a dominating copse north of the village, ran into 

tanks and panzer grenadiers of the 11th 

Panzer Division and had to fall back. 

From the German viewpoint, a ready 

explanation for the differing resistance 

at Sinz and in the Bannholz Woods was 

available. Persistent protestations by the 

11th Panzer Division commander, General von Wietersheim, that his reconditioned panzer force was being needlessly 

bled to death on an inappropriate assignment had begun to pay off two days before. On the 5th the first contingents of 

the 256th Volks Grenadier Division had 

arrived to begin relieving the panzer 

division, although a small contingent still 

was present on the 7th in Bannholz 

Woods. 15 

Units of the 94th Division made three 

more tries to take Bannholz Woods during the next few days, but without success. Although the opposition continued 

to come from the panzer division, bit by 

bit intelligence information gathered 

from other parts of the line revealed the 

gradual withdrawal of the tanks and 

introduction of the 256th Division. In 

light of the condition of the volks 

grenadiers, badly mauled in Operation 

NORDWIND in Alsace, the shift could 

only weaken the enemy’s hold on the 

Orscholz Switch. The time clearly was 

approaching for a full-scale attack to 

reduce the switch position and open the 

entire Saar-Moselle triangle to swift reduction. Conferring with Malony on 15 

February, the corps commander, General 

Walker, gave the word to lift all restrictions and launch a major assault. 16 

General Malony developed his plan as 

a logical extension of the earlier probing 

attacks, this time aimed at a complete 

rupture of the Orscholz Switch and early 

capture of the hogback ridge. Colonel 

Hagerty’s 301st Infantry was to make the 

main effort from Sinz to reach the crest 

of the ridge and the highway leading 

northeast from Munzingen. Colonel McClune’s 376th Infantry was to protect the 

301st’s left flank, while Colonel Johnson’s 302d Infantry on the division’s 

right was to strike almost due east from 

the Kampholz Woods to the crest of the 

hogback ridge and then roll up the forward line of pillboxes farther east. An 

15 MSS # B–417 (Wietersheim) and # B–066 

(Ingelheim). 

16 Byrnes, History of the 94th Infantry Division, 

p. 239. 
THE SAAR-MOSELLE TRIANGLE 127 

elaborate program of corps and division 

artillery fire was designed to isolate the 

battlefield but to guard surprise by beginning only as the infantry moved to the 

attack. 17 

To exploit success, General Walker 

had no armored force immediately available. The 8th Armored Division early in 

February had passed to another command. Even though the 10th Armored 

Division (Maj. Gen. William H. H. 

Morris, Jr.) had been attached to the 

XX Corps on 11 February, General 

Eisenhower had specified that the division be employed only with his approval, 

a reflection of post-Ardennes insistence 

on a sturdy reserve. Walker asked Eisenhower, through General Patton, for permission to use the 10th Armored, but 

received only a promise that the armor 

would be released once the infantry 

achieved a clear breakthrough. 18 Walker 

took the reply as sufficient authority to 

direct General Morris to reconnoiter 

zones of advance and prepare for early 

commitment . Rain was falling when before daylight 

on 19 February men of the 301st Infantry 

moved east from Sinz up the slopes of the 

hogback ridge in the direction of Munzingen. In less than two hours the pattern 

the fighting would assume became apparent. An occasional group of Germans 

would fight back tenaciously, particularly 

when protected by pillboxes or bunkers, but in the main the opposition bore 

no comparison to that put up earlier by 

the panzer division. By daylight the 1st 

and 3d Battalions held the crest of the 

ridge, just short of Munzingen. 

Antipersonnel mines were the biggest 

17 94th Div FO 11, 16 Feb 45. 

18 Combat Interview with XX Corps G–3, 5 Mar 

45; Gay Diary, entry of 18 Feb 45. 

problem. Company B’s 1st Platoon, for 

example, lost all but sixteen men in a 

minefield before the platoon sergeant, T. 

Sgt. Henry E. Crandall, managed to blast 

a path through with primacord. The 

Germans in a nearby pillbox kept 

Crandall and his trapped men under 

vicious machine gun fire until the survivors got past the mines, then surrendered docilely. 

A battalion of the 376th Infantry had 

a similar experience in Bannholz Woods, 

north of Sinz, the scene of such bitter 

fighting in the earlier limited objective 

attacks. Before dawn, men of this battalion pushed past unwary German defenders to gain the far edge of the woods 

with little difficulty, then later rounded 

up the prisoners. Totally different from 

the panzer grenadiers, these Germans 

had no stomach for the fight. 

By this time, the 94th Division’s lack 

of tank support had been remedied with 

attachment of the 778th Tank Battalion, 

which participated in the 376th Infantry’s attack. Tanks also came to the 

rescue of men of the 302d Infantry in 

their drive from Kampholz Woods to 

the crest of the hogback ridge along the 

forward line of Orscholz Switch pillboxes. There the infantrymen were taking comparatively severe casualties from 

pillboxes manned by troops of the 416th 

Infantry Division until, with daylight, 

the tanks arrived. 

Only a few hours after dawn on 19 

February, the fact was clear that the 94th 

Division had penetrated the Orscholz 

Switch, whereupon General Malony 

urged General Walker to send the 10th 

Armored Division through. Walker in 

turn telephoned the Third Army commander, General Patton, for permission. 

Unable to reach General Bradley at 12th 
128 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Army Group headquarters, Patton telephoned directly to SHAEF, where the 

operations officer, Maj. Gen. Harold R. 

Bull, agreed but with the proviso that 

the armored division be returned to the 

SHAEF reserve as soon as the SaarMoselle triangle was clear. Since Patton 

already was thinking of going beyond 

the original objectives if all went 

smoothly, the restriction rankled. He 

had to accept it nevertheless and notified 

Walker to turn the armor loose. 19 

The delay in permission to use the 

armor held up the exploitation until the 

next day, 20 February, but once committed, the armor was not to be denied. 

Moving along the west side of the triangle close to the Moselle, the Reserve 

Combat Command (Col. Wade C. Gatchell), with the 94th Division’s 376th 

Infantry attached, was to advance almost 

thirteen miles to the northern tip of the 

triangle while CCA (Brig. Gen. Edwin 

W. Piburn) drove north up the center of 

the triangle. When CCR reached the tip, 

CCA was to swing northeast, hoping to 

take advantage of enemy confusion to 

seize bridges across the Saar at Kanzem 

and Wiltingen, and thereby point a dagger toward 

Except for the problem of herding 

prisoners, CCR’s advance on the 20th 

was almost a road march, even though 

the attack was delayed until midday 

while a battalion of the 376th Infantry 

19 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 244; Byrnes, 

History of the 94th Infantry Division, p. 254; Gay 

Diary, entry of 19 Feb 45. Intentions to go beyond 

the triangle are clear from XX Corps FO 16, 19 

Feb 45. 

20 An excellent account of the 10th Armored Division’s action is to be found in Maj. J. Cantey, 

et al., The 10th U.S. Armored Division in the SaarMoselle Triangle, a research report prepared at 

The Armored School, May, 1949. 

cleared two villages along the line of 

departure. Not long after midnight the 

combat command coiled for the night 

almost halfway up the triangle. 

CCA encountered greater difficulties 

at first. One column, attacking up the 

highway astride the hogback ridge, ran 

into mines and fire from assault guns in 

the first village beyond Munzingen and 

at each of two succeeding villages, but in 

all cases the result was more a question of 

delay than genuine opposition. At one 

point the column overran a regimental 

command post. 

CCA’s left column, hampered by a 

traffic jam and an unmapped American 

minefield at the line of departure near 

Sinz, got moving only after full daylight 

had come; but by midafternoon it was 

apparent the column would quickly 

make up the lost time. Although antitank 

minefields and craters blown in the roads 

forced the tanks to move cross-country at 

the beginning of the thrust, once high 

ground three miles northeast of Sinz was 

taken the column returned to the roads. 

Bypassing opposition, one task force 

streaked north and then northeast along 

secondary roads and as darkness came 

occupied high ground north of Tawern, 

almost at the tip of the triangle. 

The next day, 21 February, CCR renewed its advance and reached the extreme tip of the triangle, while the rest 

of CCA headed for Tawern, eliminating 

last remnants of opposition. The 94th 

Division meanwhile was clearing that 

part of the triangle southeast of the 

armored columns and taking the remaining pillboxes of the Orscholz Switch from 

the rear. 

After two days of exploitation the SaarMoselle triangle was clear at a cost to the 

Germans in dead and wounded of an 
THE SAAR-MOSELLE TRIANGLE 129 

estimated 3,000 and as many more captured. Only in the 94th Division, where 

the thick antipersonnel minefields encountered on 19 February raised the division’s casualties to over a thousand 

wounded, were U.S. losses severe. 

Crossing the Saar 

Despite the speed of the 10th Armored 

Division’s advance, the bridges over the 

Saar River at Kanzem and Wiltingen 

were blown before the tanks got there. 

Operating on the theory of using the 

armor until SHAEF said stop, General 

Walker in midafternoon of 21 February 

ordered General Morris to jump the 

river. During the night the armor was to 

cross northeast of Saarburg while the 

94th Division crossed southeast of the 

town. The bridgeheads then were to be 

joined, whereupon the 94th was to protect the armor’s south flank while Morris 

drove on Trier. The crossings of the 

Saar then could be linked with the longheld bridgehead to the southeast at 

Saarlautern. 21 

Influencing General Walker’s desire 

for a quick crossing before the enemy 

could recover from the debacle in the 

triangle was the nature of the terrain on 

the far bank, plus the fortifications of the 

West Wall. Almost everywhere the east 

bank dominates the approaches from the 

west, usually with great wooded, clifflike 

slopes. West Wall pillboxes arranged in 

the normal pattern of mutual support 

covered all the slopes but were in greatest depth, sometimes up to three miles, 

at those points where the terrain afforded 

any real possibility for an assault crossing. The river itself was from 120 to 

21 XX Corps FO 17, 21 Feb 45. 

150 feet wide, still swollen from the early 

February thaw. 

Through the night convoys carrying 

assault boats toiled toward the Saar, but 

dawn came in the 10th Armored Division’s sector with no sign of the boats. 

Alerted to make the crossing opposite 

the village of Ockfen, a mile and a half 

northeast of Saarburg, men of the attached 376th Infantry took cover in 

houses and cellars. 

Southeast of Saarburg, sixty 12-man 

assault boats and five motorboats were 

available for the assault battalions of the 

301st and the 302d Infantry; the first 

boat arrived an hour after the planned 

assault time of 0400 (22 February) . Concealed by the darkness and a dense fog, 

men of both battalions then prepared to 

cross, one battalion opposite the east 

bank village of Serrig, the other at the 

west bank village of Taben. 

Carrying a squad of Company C, 302d 

Infantry, under Staff Sgt. John F. Smith, 

the first boat pushed out into the river 

at Taben at 0650. The fog still held, and 

so difficult was the terrain that the Germans had positioned few defenders at 

the site. 

The road leading down the west bank 

was steep and winding. Along the far 

bank ran a in-foot retaining wall, backed 

by precipitous wooded slopes leading to 

Hoecker Hill, an eminence three-fourths 

of a mile from the river. Finding a ladder 

in place, Sergeant Smith and his men 

quickly scaled the retaining wall and 

captured the startled occupants of a pillbox. Other boatloads of men crossed with 

little enemy interference, pulled themselves up the clifflike sides of Hoecker 

Hill, and sent patrols upstream and 

down to broaden the base of the bridgehead. Before the morning was well along, 
130 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

all the 1st Battalion was across and heading north toward Serrig to link with men 

of the 301st Infantry, while another battalion crossed to defend Hoecker Hill 

and the south flank. 

The crossing went less smoothly opposite Serrig. There the assault boats for 

the 3d Battalion, 301st Infantry, were 

even later arriving, and the noise of manhandling them to the water's edge alerted 

troops of a local defense battalion in the 

east bank pillboxes. Although German 

fire was blind in the dark and the fog, it 

served to scatter the boats of the leading 

company so that the men touched down 

with little organization remaining. Since 

few of the boats survived the swift current on the return journey, through the 

morning only one company, operating 

in little isolated groups, was on the east 

bank. One group under the company 

commander, Capt. Charles W. Donovan, 

nevertheless took a few buildings on the 

northern edge of Serrig and held them 

until the afternoon when other men of 

the 3d Battalion crossed in a fresh batch 

of assault boats equipped with outboard 

motors. White phosphorus shells fired by 

the 81st Chemical Battalion and smoke 

pots emplaced at the crossing site helped 

make up for loss of the fog cover. As 

night fell on 22 February, Serrig was 

secure, the bridgeheads of the 301st and 

302d Infantry Regiments joined. 

At Ockfen, northeast of Saarburg, the 

10th Armored Division's assault boats 

finally arrived at midday. Under pressure 

from Patton, 22 General Morris ordered a 

crossing in late afternoon; but by this 

time the fog had dissipated and German 

machine gun fire from West Wall pillboxes so splattered the flats leading to 

22 Gay Diary, entry of 22 Feb 45. 

the crossing site that the 81st Chemical 

(Smoke Generator) Company could get 

no smoke generators into position to 

screen the site. Neither could the assault 

companies of the attached 376th Infantry 

get down to the river. 

In the brief time between daylight and 

late afternoon of 22 February, the Germans had managed to supplement the 

local defense battalions in this part of 

the West Wall with those remnants of 

the 256th Volks Grenadier Division that 

had escaped across the Saar ahead of the 

American armor. Although ill-prepared 

to counter such a quick thrust against 

the Saar line, the LXXXII Corps commander, General Hahm, was helped 

when his southern boundary was shifted 

northward to coincide roughly with the 

east end of the Orscholz Switch, thereby 

freeing one regiment of the 416th Infantry Division that had not been involved 

in the Orscholz fight. He also benefited 

from the fact that one of the panzer 

grenadier battalions of the 11th Panzer 

Division had yet to leave the area. These 

forces General- Hahm would-be able to 

bring to bear as the bridgehead fight 

continued. 23 

At Ockfen General Morris had no 

alternative but to postpone the 376th 

Infantry's assault again until after nightfall. Beginning an hour before midnight, 

two battalions, each in column of companies, at last began to cross. 

In the northernmost sector, that of the 

3d Battalion, the darkness was all that 

was required. The leading company 

reached the east side of the river without 

drawing a single round of enemy fire, 

quickly cleared the pillboxes guarding 

23 MS # B–066 (Ingelheim). 
THE SAAR-MOSELLE TRIANGLE 131 

the bank, and opened a way for the rest 

of the battalion. 

Not so at the 1st Battalion’s crossing 

site a few hundred yards upstream. As 

the boats of Company C touched down 

on the far bank, the Germans in the pillboxes brought down their final protective fires. Fortunately, visibility was too 

restricted by darkness and fog for the 

defenders to spot the attackers, even at 

distances of only a few feet. Discerning 

the pattern of enemy fires from tracer 

bullets, the men of Company C began to 

advance by small groups in short rushes, 

gradually forcing their way into the pillbox belt and beginning, one by one, to 

reduce the fortifications. 

German artillery and mortars meanwhile pounded the river itself and the 

west bank, sinking many of the assault 

boats and three times wounding the 

376th Infantry commander, Colonel McClune. The rest of the 1st Battalion 

nevertheless crossed to the east bank 

before daylight, though for lack of assault 

boats one company had to move downstream and use the 3d Battalion’s craft. 

There, in wake of the 3d Battalion, the 

2d Battalion already had crossed. In midafternoon the 2d Battalion moved behind a heavy artillery preparation to 

take Ockfen; and by nightfall, 23 February, units of the regiment outposted 

wooded high ground on three sides of 

the village. 

To the XX Corps commander, General Walker, it had occurred earlier in the 

day that expansion of both his Saar 

crossings might be speeded by early 

blocking of the main east-west highway 

into the sector, a road leading from the 

enemy’s main lateral route behind the 

Saar at the settlement of Zerf westward to 

the river at Beurig, across from Saarburg. 

Walker ordered a special force, the 5th 

Ranger Battalion (Lt. Col. Richard P. 

Sullivan), to cross into the 94th Division’s Serrig-Taben bridgehead, then to 

slip through the woods toward the northeast for some three and a half miles and 

establish a roadblock on the highway 

west of Zerf. 

Guiding on a compass bearing, the 

Rangers began to move at midnight, 23 

February. They reached their objective 

just before dawn. Quickly establishing a 

perimeter defense, they began to collect 

unwitting Germans as they passed along 

the road. 24 

Anticipating a determined German reaction against the Rangers’ roadblock, 

Walker arranged a maneuver designed 

both to relieve the Rangers and to cap 

ture the village of Beurig so that tactical 

bridges could be built across the river 

from Saarburg to take advantage of the 

roadnet around the town. As a first step, 

he ordered General Malony to drive 

north to Beurig. Since likely bridging 

sites in the 10th Armored Division’s 

zone still were under observed fire, 

Walker told General Morris to take his 

armor south and cross the Saar on a 94th 

Division bridge that would be ready at 

Taben in midafternoon on 24 February. 

The tanks then were to follow units of 

the 94th Division into Beurig. There 

they were to pick up their armored infantrymen, who were to cross into the 

Ockfen bridgehead in assault boats late 

on 24 February and push south to 

Beurig. Tanks and armored infantry 

together were to drive east along the 

main highway to relieve the Rangers. 

The maneuver failed to develop exactly as planned. Although the tanks and 

24 5th Ranger Bn AAR, Feb 45. 
132 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

half-tracks of Combat Command B (Col. 

William L. Roberts), leading the 10th 

Armored’s advance, crossed the Taben 

bridge early on 25 February, the 94th 

Division’s northward drive had been 

slowed by tenacious resistance from pillboxes and by heavy mortar fire. Held up 

on the fringe of Beurig, the infantrymen 

realized they would be unable to take 

the village before the armor arrived. 

They sent guides back down the road to 

intercept the tanks and lead them along 

a wooded trail that bypassed Beurig and 

led to the Beurig-Zerf highway. The only 

infantry available to assist the tanks were 

three officers and twenty-four men of the 

Ranger battalion who had become separated from their unit and had joined 

CCB’s column in Taben. 

By midafternoon the lead tank platoon 

of CCB had emerged from the woods 

onto the main highway and was headed 

east into the village of Irsch. Despite a 

roadblock in the center of the village, 

Irsch appeared deserted. Two of the 

platoon’s five tanks had passed the roadblock when a Tiger tank, a groundmount 88-mm. gun, and two Panzerfausts, all concealed behind nearby buildings, opened fire. In rapid succession they 

knocked out the last three U.S. tanks. 

Hurrying forward, the little group of 

Rangers helped the tankers put the Germans to flight, but CCB delayed clearing 

the village until after nightfall, when a 

company of armored infantrymen, moving southeast from the Ockfen bridgehead and also bypassing Beurig, arrived 

to help. The infantrymen took 290 

prisoners from the 416th Division. 25 

The next day, 26 February, while the 

301st Infantry cleared Beurig with little 

25 Cantey, The 10th U.S. Armored Division in 

the Saar-Moselle Triangle, pp. 90–91. 

difficulty now that the Germans’ escape 

route had been cut, CCB headed east on 

the last leg of the drive to relieve the 5th 

Ranger Battalion. By midmorning, despite long-range fire from the same Tiger 

tank that had caused trouble in Irsch, 

contingents of the combat command 

reached the Rangers. Hard-pressed by 

shelling and counterattacks during the 

second day and third morning in their 

isolated position, the Rangers had not 

only managed to survive but also had 

bagged about a hundred Germans. 26 

While these events were taking place 

beyond the Saar, General Patton had 

been fighting a rear guard action against 

return of the 10th Armored Division-to 

the SHAEF reserve. On 23 February all 

Patton could achieve was a 48-hour 

respite. When that period expired, he 

pleaded with the 12th Army Group commander, General Bradley, for help. Bradley himself took responsibility for letting 

Patton use the armor until nightfall of 

27 February for the express purpose of 

taking Trier. 27 

By dawn of 27 February conditions 

were good for a quick strike north to 

Trier. During the preceding afternoon, 

CCB had advanced beyond the Rangers’ 

roadblock, taking Zerf and gaining a hold 

on the highway leading north to Trier, 

eleven miles away. Light ponton bridges 

were operating both at Taben and Serrig 

and a heavy ponton bridge was at Saarburg. Only the disturbing fact that 

prisoner identifications on 26 February 

revealed the presence of a new German 

unit, the 2d Mountain Division, ap26 Combat Interview with Lt: Col. J. J. Richardson, CCB, 10th Armored Division. 

27 Patton, War As I Knew It, pp. 246–47; Gay 

Diary, entries of 24 and 25 Feb 45. 
THE SAAR-MOSELLE TRIANGLE 133 

peared to stand in the way of a rapid 

drive to Trier. 

Rushed forward by Army Group G to 

bolster the sagging LXXXII Corps, the 

2d Mountain Division, like so many 

other German units, was considerably 

less impressive than its name might indicate. Its two infantry regiments, for 

example, had only recently been reconstituted from supply and other noncombatant units, and most of the men were 

Austrians lacking fervor for a losing 

cause. Utilizing the sharp defiles, woods, 

and dense concentrations of pillboxes 

below Trier, the mountain division 

nevertheless might have proved an effective delaying force had sizable numbers 

of men been able to get into position to 

block a northward drive before CCA 

started it. As it was, the division, arriving 

from the southeast, got there too late and 

could be used only to block to the east 

and southeast. 28 

Defense of Trier itself remained a responsibility of Army Group B’s Seventh 

Army, already sorely pressed by the drive 

of the U.S. XII Corps on Bitburg. By 

this time most of the troops of the Seventh Army’s 212th Volks Grenadier Division, originally charged with defense 

of the city, already had gone north to 

oppose the XII Corps and about all that 

was left to defend Trier were two local 

defense battalions, the city’s police, and 

the crews of several stationary 88-mm. 

antiaircraft batter ies. 29 

At dawn on 27 February, while the 

94th Division and the Ranger battalion 

sought to expand the Saar bridgehead 

to east and southeast, General Morris 

28 MS # B–066 (Ingelheim). See also MS # 

B–238, Report, 10 February–24 March 1945 (Generalmajor Wolf Hauser, CofS First Army). 

29 MS # B–123 (Gersdorff). 

turned CCA north up the main highway 

to Trier. As directed by General Patton 

the preceding day, the 76th Division of 

the XII Corps turned away from the successful drive on Bitburg to head toward 

Trier from the north. 

For all the lack of solid defensive 

units, the Germans on 27 February managed to delay CCA’s column at several 

points, usually with isolated tanks or 

assault guns lying in ambush in terrain 

that restricted CCA’s tanks to one road. 

The most serious delay occurred in midafternoon south of the village of Pellingen where a minefield 300 yards deep 

disabled two tanks. Armored engineers 

had to spend painful hours under small 

arms fire clearing a path, and further 

advance for the day was stymied. 

Since Trier still lay some six miles 

away and the appointed hour for release 

of the 10th Armored Division had come, 

General Patton again had to appeal to 

General Bradley for continued use of 

the armor until Trier fell. Having had 

no word from SHAEF on keeping the 

division, Bradley told him to keep going 

until higher authority ordered a halt. 

And, the 12th Army Group commander 

added, he would make it a point to stay 

away from the telephone. 30 

The morning of 1 March, after CCA 

took Pellingen, General Morris sent the 

main body of the combat command 

northwest to the juncture of the Saar 

and the Moselle to prevent any Germans 

remaining in West Wall pillboxes along 

the Saar from falling back on Trier. A 

task force continued up the main road 

toward the city while CCB passed 

through Pellingen and swung to the 

northeast to come upon the objective 

30 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 249. 
134 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

from the east. In late afternoon, as both 

CCA’s task force and CCB continued 

to run into trouble on the fringes of the 

city from pillboxes and 88-mm. antiaircraft pieces, Colonel Roberts, CCB’s 

commander, ordered the commander of 

the 20th Armored Infantry Battalion, 

Lt. Col. Jack J. Richardson, to enter 

Trier along a secondary road between 

the other two attacking forces. Richardson was to head straight for the city’s 

two Moselle bridges. 31 

The night was clear, the moon full, 

and visibility excellent as Task Force 

Richardson in early evening started toward Trier. Entering the city before 

midnight, the task force encountered a 

German company with four antitank 

guns, but the surprised Germans surrendered without firing. One of the prisoners revealed that he had been detailed 

as a runner to notify a demolition team 

at one of the bridges when the Americans 

arrived. 

Splitting his force, Richardson sent 

half toward each of the bridges. The 

northern team found its bridge blown, 

but the team moving to the ancient 

Kaiserbruecke, which had stood since 

the Roman occupation of Trier in the 

earliest days of the Christian era, reported 

its bridge intact. Rushing to the bridge 

himself in a tank, Colonel Richardson 

found his men under small arms fire from 

the far bank. Directing .50-caliber machine gun fire from his tank onto the 

far end of the bridge, Richardson or31 The following account is based primarily on 

combat interviews with Richardson and Maj. C. R. 

King (10th Armored Division historian). 

dered a platoon of infantry and a platoon of tanks to dash across. As the 

infantrymen complied, a German major 

and five men ran toward the bridge from 

the far side with detonating caps and an 

exploder. 

They were too late. 

It mattered not whether the delay in 

blowing the bridge was attributable to 

concern for the historic monument or 

to the fact that the German officer was 

drunk. What mattered was that the 10th 

Armored Division had a bridge across 

the Moselle. 

By morning contingents of Combat 

Commands A and B had swept into all 

parts of the city, and the prisoner bag 

increased as sleepy-eyed Germans awoke 

to find American tanks all about them. 

Task Force Richardson alone took 800 

prisoners. A day later, early on 3 March, 

troops of the 76th Division arrived to 

establish contact with the armor on the 

north bank of the Moselle. 

The Orscholz Switch, the Saar-Moselle 

triangle, Trier, and the heavily fortified 

section of the West Wall around Trier 

—all were taken. With the success of the 

operation, the Third Army had torn a 

gaping hole in the West Wall from 

Pruem to a point below Saarburg. 

Studying the operations map, General 

Patton could see two new inviting prospects before him. Either he could turn 

to the southeast and envelop the Saar 

industrial area, or he could head through 

the Eifel and up the valley of the Moselle 

to the Rhine at Koblenz. 

In either case, the Germans appeared 

powerless to stop him. 
CHAPTER VIII 

Operation GRENADE 

While the First Army was focusing on 

the Roer River dams and the Third 

Army probing the Eifel and clearing the 

Saar-Moselle triangle, Field Marshal 

Montgomery’s 21 Army Group was 

launching the new Allied main effort. 

Under Montgomery’s plan, General 

Crerar’s First Canadian Army was to 

open the offensive with Operation VERITABLE, a drive southeastward up the 

left bank of the Rhine from positions 

gained by the big airborne attack the 

preceding fall in the vicinity of Nijmegen. A few days later General Simpson’s 

Ninth Army from positions along the 

Roer River generally northeast of 

Aachen was to launch Operation GRENADE, an assault crossing of the Roer 

followed by a northeastward drive to 

link with the First Canadian Army 

along the Rhine. From positions along 

the Maas River in between Americans 

and Canadians, the Second Army was to 

be prepared to make a complementary 

attack if required. 

Youngest Allied army then operational on the Continent, the Ninth 

Army nevertheless had seen considerable fighting-in the conquest of the 

Brittany peninsula in September and in 

the drive from the German border to 

the Roer River in November and early 

December. The Ninth Army’s commander, General Simpson, was an infantryman with a distinctive appearance; 

he stood over six feet tall and kept his 

head clean shaven. Most of his staff were 

infantrymen, too, including the chief of 

staff, Brig. Gen. James E. Moore, and 

had come to the theater from a training 

command Simpson earlier had held in 

the United States. The headquarters already had established a reputation for 

steady, workmanlike performance. As 

General Bradley was to put it later, the 

Ninth Army, “unlike the noisy and 

bumptious Third and the temperamental First,” was “uncommonly normal.” 

During the Ardennes counteroffensive, the Ninth Army had remained on 

the defensive, extending its lines north 

and south in order to free troops to reinforce the First Army. All through 

January the army had held a 40-mile 

front extending from the vicinity of 

Monschau near headwaters of the Roer 

downstream to Linnich, northeast of 

Aachen. The command included only 

five divisions under the XIII Corps 

(Maj. Gen. Alvan C. Gillem, Jr.) and 

the XIX Corps (Maj. Gen. Raymond 

S. McLain) . To prepare for Operation GRENADE, 

it was necessary both to narrow the 

army’s front and to build the army’s 

strength to at least ten divisions. Reduc1 Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 422. 
136 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

GENERAL SIMPSON 

ing the frontage by shifting the boundary between the First and Ninth Armies 

northward left the Ninth Army with 

only its two northernmost divisions, so 

that during the early days of February 

eight others were moved in. 2 

With seven of the army’s ten divisions 

in place, boundaries were adjusted on 5 

February. The First Army’s VII Corps 

relieved the XIX Corps in place from 

the vicinity of Monschau to an unfinished autobahn (express highway) running from Aachen to Cologne; General 

Collins assumed control of the 8th and 

104th Divisions and subsequently received the 3d Armored and 99th Divi2 A convenient summary of the moves may be 

found in Conquer—The Story of Ninth Army 

(Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1947), one 

of the most objective of the unofficial unit histories. 

sions. With a zone narrowed to about 

eight miles from the autobahn north to 

a point beyond Juelich, the XIX Corps 

retained the 29th Division on the corps 

left and received the 30th Division for 

commitment on the right, plus the 2d 

Armored and 83d Divisions as reserves. 

Although the zone of the XIII Corps 

remained unchanged (from midway between Juelich and Linnich to a point 

four miles downstream from Linnich) 

and General Gillem retained control of 

the 102d Division, the 84th Division 

moved in on 3 February to take over 

the northern half of the corps sector and 

the 5th Armored Division arrived as a 

reserve. 

Through the Ardennes fighting, the 

Ninth Army’s north flank had rested on 

the little Wurm River a few miles 

northwest of Linnich. On the other side 

of the Wurm, a corps of the Second British Army had been containing a German bridgehead west of the Roer, the 

Heinsberg pocket, which the British 

cleared during January. The Ninth 

Army on 6 February then assumed responsibility for eighteen miles of the 

British line as far as the confluence of 

the Roer and Maas Rivers at Roermond, 

thus enabling the British to release 

forces to the First Canadian Army for 

Operation VERITABLE. To occupy the 

new sector, General Simpson attached 

the 8th Armored and 35th Divisions to 

a previously uncommitted corps headquarters, the XVI Corps (Maj. Gen. 

John B. Anderson), and subsequently 

provided the 79th Division as a reserve. 

The Ninth Army thus had ten divisions along the Roer River with the 

greatest weight in the southernmost 

XIX Corps. In addition, the army held 

an infantry division, the 95th, in re- 
OPERATION GRENADE 137 

serve. 3 The total strength of the army 

was 303,243 men. Because the First Army’s VII Corps, which had four divisions, was to support the Ninth Army’s 

attack, the corps in effect added additional strength to the GRENADE force of 

approximately 75,000 men. 4 

In direct support of the Ninth Army 

was the XXIX Tactical Air Command 

(Brig. Gen. Richard E. Nugent), employing five groups of fighter-bombers 

(375 planes) and one tactical reconnaissance group. For ground fire support the GRENADE force (the Ninth 

Army and the VII Corps) had 130 battalions of field artillery and tank destroyers, totaling more than 2,000 guns, 

one of the heaviest concentrations to be 

employed on the Western Front. The 

two corps making the main effort (XIII 

and XIX) had one artillery piece for 

each ten yards of front, plus tanks, tank 

destroyers, antiaircraft guns, and infantry cannon. 5 In armor the GRENADE 

force had only what had come to be regarded as normal in the theater, but a 

powerful assembly nonetheless. Each 

corps had an armored division and each 

infantry division had an attached tank 

battalion, a total of 1,394 tanks. More 

than two-thirds of these were the old 

Sherman with the 75-mm. gun. 6 

As the target date for GRENADE ap3 A twelfth division, the 75th, while assigned to 

the Ninth Army effective 17 February, was placed 

under operational control of the British. NUSA 

Sitrep, 18 Feb 45. 

4 NUSA G–1 Daily Sum, 23 Feb 45; VII Corps 

Estimated Loss Report, 2400, 1 Mar 45, VII Corps 

G–1 Battle Casualties file. 

5 NUSA Artillery Sec AAR, Feb 45; NUSA FA 

and TD Info Sum 57, 26 Feb 45; 2d Revised Copy 

of Appendix 1 to Annex 3, VII Corps FO 15, 22 

Feb 45. 

6 NUSA Armored Sec AAR, Feb 45. One of the 

separate tank battalions had only light tanks. 

proached, the Ninth Army’s accumulated stocks of supplies rose to huge proportions. In one 5-day period (10–14 

February), for example, the army received well over 40,000 long tons, the 

biggest delivery to any army in the theater in a comparable period. Most of it 

arrived by rail in more than 6,000 

freight cars. 7 

Stocks of gasoline in the army’s depots 

rose to over 3 million gallons, representing over five days of supply with five 

days’ reserve. Augmenting ammunition 

deliveries with strict rationing, the army 

amassed 46,000 tons of ammunition, 

equivalent to at least twenty days’ supply at normal rates of expenditure, four 

times the normal army stockage in the 

theater. It enabled all artillery units of 

the XIX Corps to place two units of fire 

at battery positions in addition to basic 

loads. The XIII Corps provided two 

units of fire for artillery of two of its 

divisions and one unit for that of the 

other two. The weight of the artillery 

projectiles that the XIX Corps alone 

could throw at the enemy in six days 

of combat on a 2-division front was 

8,138 tons. 8 

The Terrain and the Enemy 

In attacking across the Roer River in 

the vicinity of Linnich and Juelich and 

advancing northeastward to the Rhine, 

7 NUSA G–4 Periodic Rpts and G–4 Jnl for the 

period. 

8 NUSA Quartermaster and Ordnance AAR’s, 

Feb 45; Annex 2 to XIX Corps FO 30, 6 Feb 45; 

and Annex 5 to XIII Corps FO 5, 8 Feb 45. Total 

ammunition allocation for the XIX Corps for the 

period D-day to D plus 5 included: 202,880 rounds 

for 105-mm. howitzers; 64,800 rounds for 155-mm. 

howitzers; 14,400 rounds for 155-mm. guns; 4,500 

rounds for 4.5-inch guns; and 9,000 rounds for 8- 

inch howitzers. XIX Corps G–4 Jnl, 7 Feb 45. 
138 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the Ninth Army was to drive diagonally 

across the Cologne plain. Generally flat, 

open country traversed by an extensive 

network of hard-surfaced roads, the 

Cologne plain stretches from the highlands of the Eifel to the lowlands of 

northern Germany and the Netherlands. 

The only high ground worthy of the 

name in that part of the plain to be 

crossed by the Ninth Army is an eggshaped plateau extending eastward from 

the vicinity of Linnich and rising no 

higher than 400 feet above sea level. Although this gently sloping plateau was 

not a critical feature, it drew attention 

from the Ninth Army’s planners because once it was taken, “the remainder 

of the attack was all downhill.” 9 The 

land throughout the plain is mostly arable and was planted predominantly in 

grain and stock beets. Observation and 

fields of fire were excellent. 

The only natural military obstacles 

were two big forests and two rivers, the 

Roer and the Erft. The larger of the forests was in the north. Beginning on the 

east bank of the Roer opposite Heinsberg, it extended northward some 

twenty miles to the Dutch border near 

Venlo and secreted a portion of the 

West Wall. Along with the presence of 

a number of small streams immediately 

west of the Roer, this obstacle prompted 

the Ninth Army’s planners to forgo 

Roer crossings in that sector. The other 

wooded area was the Hambach Forest, 

east and southeast of Juelich. Although 

planners originally assigned its capture 

to the First Army, on the theory that 

responsibility for a critical terrain feature should not be split, when it became 

apparent that the Ninth Army needed 

9 Conquer, p. 147. 

a broader base for attack, they assigned 

the northwestern third of the forest to 

the Ninth Army. 

As planning for the attack began, the 

Roer River dams were still under German control, making of the Roer River 

a disturbing question mark. While the 

Roer is normally a placid stream only 

some ninety feet wide, the Ninth Army’s 

engineers estimated that a combination 

of spring thaws and destruction of the 

Roer dams would convert it into a lake 

as much as a mile and a half wide. Even 

after the waters subsided, the Roer valley would be soft and marshy, impassable to vehicles operating off the roads. 10 

The planners chose crossing sites at the 

narrowest points of the river, mostly at 

the locations of destroyed bridges. 

As the Roer was critical in determining the line of departure, so the Erft 

guided the northeasterly direction of the 

main attack. Cutting diagonally across 

the Cologne plain, the Erft splits the 

25-mile. distance between the Roer and 

the Rhine almost in half. It enters the 

Rhine at Neuss, opposite Duesseldorf. 

Neither the Erft nor the Erft Canal, 

which parallels the river for much of its 

course, are major military obstacles, but 

a boggy valley floor up to a thousand 

yards wide helps turn the waterways 

into a good natural defense line. Conversely, the river-canal complex might 

be utilized as flank protection for northeastward advance to the Rhine in the 

vicinity of Neuss, the use that the Ninth 

Army intended to make of it. 

Although American intelligence officers assumed the enemy would achieve 

10 XIX Corps G–2, Terrain’ XIX Corps Front to 

Rhine, 30 Oct 44, 406th Inf Jnl, Feb 45; 1104th 

Engineer Combat Gp Rpt, 28 Feb 45, XIX Corps 

AAR, Sec III, Feb 45. 
OPERATION GRENADE 139 

some defensive advantage from these 

natural features, particularly the Roer, 

they looked to the villages, towns, and 

cities on the plain to provide the core 

of resistance. The assumption was natural in view of the Ninth Army’s experience in November and December in 

driving from the German border to the 

Roer, where the Germans had turned 

villages into mutually supporting strongpoints. 

The biggest city in the zone to be 

crossed by GRENADE forces was 

Muenchen-Gladbach, a textile center. 

With suburbs and a contiguous city of 

Rheydt, Muenchen-Gladbach had a prewar population of 310,000. Considerably 

smaller but vital as road centers were 

the towns of Dueren and Juelich on the 

Roer, both already almost obliterated by 

Allied bombs, and Elsdorf, Erkelenz, 

Viersen, Duelken, and Krefeld. 

The Germans had augmented the 

built-up sectors with extensive field 

fortifications that a large foreign labor 

force had been constructing since late 

fall. There were three lines. The first 

hugged the east bank of the Roer. The 

other two ran six and eleven miles behind the Roer, the third tying in with 

the Erft River. In the main these fortifications consisted of entrenchments in 

a sawtooth pattern with exits into the 

towns and villages. Antitank obstacles 

and emplacements for antitank, antiaircraft, and field pieces were located at irregular intervals within and between 

the lines. Mines and barbed wire were 

placed rather spottily along the east 

bank of the Roer. 11 

11 In addition to intelligence sources previously 

cited, see: Photo Defense Overprint maps of 30 Jan 

and 1 Feb 45 in XIII Corps G–2 Jnl, 3 Feb 45; VII 

Corps Estimate of the Situation, 22 Feb 45; and 

While American G—2’s deemed the 

defensive network well planned and organized, all indications were that the 

enemy had far too few troops to man the 

lines. This strengthened the belief that 

the defense would be based on strongpoints in towns and villages rather than 

on a continuous prepared position in 

depth. 12 

Along the entire Roer front from 

south of Dueren to Heinsberg, intelligence officers believed, the Germans had 

about 30,000 men supported by 70 

tanks. They estimated six divisions with 

23,500 men and 110 tanks to be in reserve near Cologne. Four miscellaneous 

divisions that had been out of contact 

for some time were presumed capable 

of intervention with 17,000 men and 55 

tanks. 13 

That was the view on 1 February 

when General Eisenhower gave the 

word to mount GRENADE, but from that 

day on, the Ninth Army noted a steady 

decrease in German strength. On 6 February, for example, General Simpson 

observed that the Fifth Panzer Army 

still was committed defensively in the 

Eifel. Simpson’s hopes rose for a speedy 

penetration of the Roer defenses. “We 

will have some tough fighting,” he said, 

“but I think we are going right 

through.” 14 

After 8 February, the First Canadian 

Army’s drive southward from the Nijmegen bridgehead (Operation VERI30th and 104th Div Estimates of the Situation, 5 

and 7 Feb 45, respectively, 

12 XIX Corps G–2 Estimate, 17 Feb, and G–2 

Periodic Rot. 19 Feb 45. 

13 NUSA G–2 Estimate, 2 Feb 45, in XIII Corps 

G–2 Jnl file, 4 Feb 45. 

14 NUSA Ltr of Instrs 13, 6 Feb 45; Notes on 

Conf with Officers of 115th Inf, Gen Gerhardt, and 

Others, 7 Feb 45, in 115th Inf AAR, Feb 45. 
140 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

TABLE) forced the Germans to commit 

in the north units from both the general reserve near Cologne and the line of 

the Maas River opposite the British. 

Yet in spite of mud and flood, the 

Canadian attack steadily crushed everything the Germans could throw in the 

way. 

By the end of the first week, the attack had drawn in parts of two parachute divisions, the bulk of an infantry 

division from the Maas line, and the 

15th Panzer Grenadier and 116th Panzer Divisions. Most intelligence officers 

then believed that the Panzer Lehr Division was the only armored reserve left 

to Army Groups B and H together. During the next week another parachute 

division also was drawn into the fight, 

and at the end of the week the Panzer 

Lehr too appeared opposite the Canadians. 15 

The rapid shuttling of German 

troops confused the intelligence picture. 

Although commitment of the Panzer 

Lehr Division removed the last known 

armored division from German reserves, 

it was hard to believe that the Germans 

would strip their defense of the Cologne 

plain completely. Various G–2’s tried to 

guess what divisions the Germans might 

be able to muster, but the facts remained elusive. The last-minute picture 

was of an enemy along the Roer totaling some 30,000 men supported by 

about 85 assault guns and 30 battalions 

of artillery. Two weak infantry divisions 

and possibly two armored divisions 

might be used to bolster the line. On 

the whole, even if the worst possibilities 

envisaged by the G–2’s materialized, the 

15 Intelligence Sums issued between 11 and 21 

Feb by the 12th AGp, 8 and 12 Corps, and XIII 

and XIX Corps. 

enemy probably would be outnumbered, 

by at least five to one. 

Catch-as-Catch-Can 

Having long anticipated that the Allies would strike again toward the Ruhr 

once they eliminated the Ardennes 

bulge, Hitler on 22 January, when ordering the Sixth Panzer Army to the 

east, had directed the Commander in 

Chief West, Field Marshal von Rundstedt, to regroup to the north. To meet 

the threat, Rundstedt proposed 

strengthening the southern wing of Army 

Group H opposite the British and Canadians with three divisions culled from 

various points. Once Army Group B 

had shortened its lines by withdrawing 

its southern wing from the Ardennes, 

the forces thus released—about three 

volks grenadier and three armored or 

motorized divisions, plus volks artillery 

and volks werfer brigades—were to be 

shifted to the army group’s northern 

wing along the Roer. 16 

A major step in readjusting the front 

involved the exchange of sectors between headquarters of the Fifth Panzer 

and Fifteenth Armies. Controlling most 

of the remaining armored units, Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army then would 

be on the north in the most threatened 

sector and on terrain suited to armor. 

The LVIII Panzer Corps (General der 

Panzertruppen Walter Krueger) was to 

be fitted with three armored or motorized divisions and positioned behind the 

Roer line as an army group reserve. 

No one—least of all Rundstedt— 

could have been sanguine about the 

situation. No one more than this old 

16 Unless otherwise noted, German material is 

based on MS # C-020 (Schramm). 
OPERATION GRENADE 141 

soldier appreciated the difficulties of 

making the various transfers and meeting the new drive once it began. Gasoline shortages, unseasonal February 

thaws that turned highways previously 

blocked by ice and snow into quagmires, 

bomb damage to the limited rail net in 

the Eifel, responsibility for shipping the 

Sixth Panzer Army to the east, the way 

Allied aircraft denied almost all daylight movement, personnel and materiel 

losses in the Ardennes—all combined to 

project a dismal picture. 

“I am not a pessimist,” Rundstedt reported on 12 February, “but in view of 

the decisive nature of the coming battles, I consider it my duty to give a clear 

report of the situation as I see it.” 17 

In all of Army Group B, Rundstedt 

said, infantry strength amounted to the 

equivalent of forty-five battalions or six 

and a half full divisions. Within the 

Fifth Panzer and Seventh Armies, each 

battalion faced two-thirds of an enemy 

division, and within the Fifteenth Army, 

most threatened of all until the shift 

with the Fifth Panzer Army could be 

made, an entire division. Nor could reserves to improve the balance in the 

Fifteenth Army be assembled and 

shifted as quickly as additional American forces could be expected to arrive. 

The proportion of forces on the Fifteenth Army’s front was destined to be 

at least two and a half times less favorable than during the prolonged fighting 

west of the Roer in November; available artillery ammunition would be less 

than a third that expended in the earlier 

fighting. 

As Allied intelligence had detected, 

the American drive from the Ardennes 

17 As quoted by Schramm. 

into the Eifel and the Canadian attack 

southeastward from Nijmegen seriously 

interfered with German efforts to 

strengthen the line behind the Roer. Of 

particular concern was the necessity to 

shift the 116th Panzer and Panzer Lehr 

Divisions to oppose the Canadians. The 

116th still would be engaged there when 

Operatn GRENADE jumped off, and the 

Panzer Lehr would be withdrawn into 

reserve only on the very eve of Operation GRENADE. General Krueger’s LVIII 

Panzer Corps could not be withheld as a 

reserve but had to be committed in the 

line in command not of armor but of 

infantry. Nor would the projected shift 

of headquarters of the Fifth Panzer and 

Fifteenth Armies be completed before 

the American attack began. Because of 

the continuing American drive in the 

Eifel, the exchange would be delayed 

until the Americans were well beyond 

the Roer. 18 

As D-day for Operation GRENADE approached, the German lineup in the 

threatened sector was as follows: From a 

boundary in the north near Roermond, 

corresponding to the boundary between 

British and Americans, Army Group B’s 

Fifteenth Army (General von Zangen) 

was responsible for a front some fifty 

miles long, extending south to include 

Dueren. The northern third was held 

by the XII SS Corps (Generalleutnant 

Eduard Crasemann) with two infantry 

divisions; the center around Linnich by 

the LXXXI Corps (General der Infanterie Friedrich Koechling) with two infantry divisions bolstered by a volks 

artillery corps; and the southern third 

around Dueren by the LVIII Panzer 

18 Magna E. Bauer, Reorganization of the Western Front, MS prepared in OCMH to complement 

this volume. 
142 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Corps (Krueger) with a volks grenadier 

division and an infantry division, also 

bolstered by a volks artillery corps. 

The Fifteenth Army had no reserves. 

Army Group B’s reserves consisted of 

the 9th Panzer Division, assembled 

along the Erft River east of Juelich, 

and the 11th Panzer Division, the latter 

in process of assembling near MuenchenGladbach after Hitler personally ordered the division pulled out of the 

Saar-Moselle triangle. Neither panzer 

division was anywhere near full strength. 

Tanks and assault guns in all of Army 

Group B totaled only 276. 19 

Operation GRENADE was destined to 

strike a front manned and equipped on 

a catch-as-catch-can basis. 

Objectives and Maneuvers 

Against this enemy whose numbers 

were small, whose arms were weak, 

whose spirit faltered, the GRENADE force 

planned to deliver a paralyzing blow. 

So obviously expected, the attack permitted no subtlety; success was staked 

on power. Although General Simpson 

decided against air bombardment in 

favor of starting by night, more than 

2,000 big guns were to pound the enemy 

for forty-five minutes before H-hour. 

Of the four American corps, three were 

to cross the river at H-hour, each with 

two infantry divisions to the fore, on a 

front from Linnich to Dueren, only 

seventeen miles long. The remaining 

corps was to move at H-hour to clear a 

few enemy nests remaining on the west 

bank of the Roer while simulating a 

19 MS # B–811, Fifteenth Army, 15 November 

1944–22 February 1945 (General der Infanterie 

Gustav von Zangen) and Operationskarte West, 

Chef WFSt, 22 and 23 Feb 45. 

GENERAL VON ZANGEN 

full-blooded crossing north of Heinsberg. 

The objective of the first phase of 

operations was to place the Ninth Army 

astride the egg-shaped plateau east of 

Linnich with the army’s right flank anchored on the Erft River. Since this involved a wheel to the north, General 

McLain’s XIX Corps on the outer rim 

would make the longest advance, while 

the First Army’s VII Corps protected the 

Ninth Army’s right flank by establishing 

a bridgehead around Dueren and then 

clearing the bulk of the Hambach Forest and gaining the Erft near Elsdorf. 

In the second phase, the Ninth Army 

was to extend its bridgehead north and 

northwest, with the main job falling to 
OPERATION GRENADE 143 

General Gillem’s XIII Corps. By taking 

the road center of Erkelenz and clearing 

the east bank of the Roer to a point west 

of Erkelenz, the XIII Corps was to open 

the way for an unopposed crossing of 

the river by General Anderson’s XVI 

Corps. 

What happened next depended on 

whether conditions favored rapid maneuver or forced a plodding infantry 

advance. Given slackening resistance 

and firm footing for tanks, General 

Simpson intended to push immediately 

with full strength to envelop MuenchenGladbach from south and east, then 

drive on to the Rhine. Should the armor be roadbound or the enemy stubborn, the two corps on the left were to 

make the main effort, rolling up the 

West Wall fortifications as far north as 

Venlo and clearing the big forest lying 

between Roermond and MuenchenGladbach. With supply routes then 

open from Heinsberg to Roermond, the 

army was to hit Muechen-Gladbach 

from west and south and push on to the 

Rhine. 

Both plans conservatively assumed organized resistance throughout the Cologne plain. On the other hand, General 

Simpson added, “If the violence of our 

attack should cause disruption of the 

enemy resistance, each corps will be prepared to conduct relentless pursuit in 

zone, and phases will be abandoned in 

favor of taking full advantage of our 

opportunity.” 20 

All plans were complete in expectation of a D-day on 10 February when, 

on the eve of the attack, the Germans 

destroyed the discharge valves on the 

20 NUSA Ltr of Instrs 10 28 Jan 45; Conquer, 

pp. 147–51. 

Roer dams. Not for about twelve days 

would the water in the reservoirs be exhausted. 21 

Upstream from Dueren, where the 

river’s banks are relatively high, the 

worst effect of the flood was to increase 

the current sharply, at some points to 

more than ten miles an hour. Downstream along most of its length, the Roer 

poured over its banks and inundated the 

valley floor. Just north of Linnich where 

the river is normally 25 to 30 yards wide, 

it spread into a lake more than a 

mile wide. More common were inundations of 300 to 400 yards. The ground 

on both sides of the flooded floor was 

soft and spongy. While engineers 

watched over the slowly receding river, 

GRENADE underwent successive postponements. 22 

Acting on advice of the engineers, 

General Simpson at last set D-day for 23 

February, one day before the reservoirs 

presumably would be drained. Although 

the river still was in flood, it had receded eight to fourteen inches below the 

peak, and the current at few places exceeded six miles an hour. By seizing the 

first practicable moment when the river 

might be crossed with reasonable chance 

of success instead of awaiting a return 

to normal, General Simpson hoped to 

achieve some measure of 

In making the attack, leading waves 

were to cross the river in assault boats, 

while follow-up troops were to use foot21 See above, ch. V. 

22 For analysis of the flood, see II Corps Engineers, Operations in the European Theater, VI; 

NUSA G–2 AAR, Feb 45; XIII Corps G–2 AAR, 

Feb 45; XIX Corps G–2 Spot Rpt, 14 Feb 45; 102d 

Div G–3 Jnl, 10 Feb 45. 

25 Conquer, pp. 165-66; 104th Div G–2 Periodic 

Rpt 119, 22 Feb 45; 30th Div G–3 Jul, 20 Feb 45; 

102d Div G–3 Jul, 22 Feb 45. 
144 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

BURSTS OFWHITE PHOSPHORUS SHELLS LIGHT UP THE ROER RIVER AT LINNICH 

bridges that engineers were to begin 

constructing at H-hour. In all divisions 

except the 84th, which was to cross on a 

one-battalion front, the number of assault boats was insufficient for the first 

wave, so that units had to plan to shuttle or find other means of crossing. Since 

shuttling in frail assault boats might 

break down in the face of a strong current, the 8th Division proposed to make 

motor-driven double-boat ferries of its 

assault boats. Some other units planned 

to rely on cable ferries or LVT’s (land 

vehicles, tracked), amphibious tractors 

nicknamed alligators. 

Each assault division in the Ninth 

Army planned to screen its crossing sites, 

either by smoke generators and pots 

placed on the west bank or by phosphorus shells fired across the river by 

chemical mortars. A smoke generator 

company and a chemical mortar battalion were in support of each corps. In the 

adjacent VII Corps, General Collins 

delegated the decision on using smoke 

to the assault division commanders. 24 

Within each division sector, attached 

corps engineers were to start at H-hour 

24 VII Corps Engineers, Operations in the European Theater, VI. 
OPERATION GRENADE 145 

to build at least three vehicular bridges. 

Although the threat posed by the Roer 

dams had passed, each division still was 

to carry five days’ supply of rations and 

gasoline against the possibility that 

bridging might be delayed or knocked 

out. To assure ammunition supply 

points beyond the Roer soon after the 

crossings, the XIX Corps attached two 

truck companies to each of its two assault divisions, while the XIII Corps 

planned to use three companies under 

corps control for the same purpose. 25 

In case bridges went out, LVT’s and 

dukws (21⁄2-ton amphibious trucks) 

were to ferry essential supplies. Although emergency airdrops probably 

would be unnecessary since the threat 

from the Roer dams had ended, 500 

C–47 transport planes loaded with 

enough supplies to maintain one division in combat for one day remained on 

call. 26 

Challenging the Swollen River 

On the night of 22 February, the 

GRENADE force stirred. No sooner was it 

dark than infantrymen began moving 

into cellars as close as possible to the river’s edge. Engineers started transporting 

boats and bridging equipment to within 

easy carrying distance of the water. Artillerymen were careful to fire no more 

than normal concentrations lest the enemy discern from increased fire what 

was afoot. 27 

25 XIX Corps Admin Order 15, 7 Feb 45; XIII 

Corps Flood Plan, 8 Feb 45; XIII Corps G–4 AAR, 

Feb 45. 

26 XIII Corps G–4 AAR and Engineer AAR, Feb 

45; XIX Corps AAR, Sec IV, Feb 45; NUSA G–4 

AAR, Feb 45. 

27 Unless specifically noted, sources for all combat actions are official records and combat interviews of units involved. 

The enemy thus far had given no sign 

that he knew the long-expected attack 

was at hand. Although an occasional 

German plane appeared over the flatlands west of the Roer before dark, all 

seemed to be on routine reconnaissance 

or bombing and strafing missions. Incoming artillery and mortar shells were 

few. 

In higher German headquarters, attention still was focused on the Third 

Army’s attacks on Bitburg and Trier 

and the First Canadian Army’s drive in 

the north. Employing a Canadian corps 

on the left and a British corps on the 

right, Operation VERITABLE had carried 

approximately seventeen miles from 

jump-off positions along the Dutch 

frontier near Nijmegen, more than a 

third of the distance to final objectives 

along the Rhine upstream from Wesel. 28 

Beginning at 0245 on the 23d, the 

massed artillery began its thunderous 

bombardment. Forty-five minutes later, 

infantrymen of six divisions lowered assault boats into the swollen Roer to do 

battle from the first with a treacherous 

current. 

Because the river spread into wide 

inundations both north and south of 

Linnich, the 84th Division (Maj. Gen. 

Alexander R. Bolling) of the XIII Corps 

had to cross at a destroyed highway 

bridge on a one-battalion front within 

the town, where, by contrast, the river 

was still in a narrow channel. (Map 

VI) The first wave got over with relative ease. “I really don’t know whether 

28 For operations of the First Canadian Army, see 

Col. C. P. Stacey, The Victory Campaign—Operation in Northwest Europe, 1944–1945, “Official 

History of the Canadian Army in the Second 

World War,” vol. III (Ottawa: The Queen’s 

Printer and Controller of Stationery, 1960), pp. 

460–526. 
CROSSING SITES AT LINNICH 
OPERATION GRENADE 147 

the enemy fired any shots at us or not,” 

said 1st Lt. Richard Hawkins of the 

334th Infantry’s Company A. “Our own 

guns going off all around us . . . 

drowned out all other sounds.” 29 Although the current hurled two boats far 

downstream, the bigger problem was a 

drift of almost all boats some seventyfive yards downstream, making it difficult in the darkness to get them back to 

the crossing site for the second wave. 

Engineers beginning at H-hour to 

build three footbridges ran into difficulties with all three. One was almost 

completed when bypassed Germans 

opened fire with automatic weapons, 

making it impossible to anchor the 

bridge on the east bank. Another had 

no sooner been completed when an assault boat plunged downstream from 

the neighboring division’s sector and 

knocked it out. A direct hit on a cable 

by an enemy shell knocked out a third 

just as it too was almost completed. 

The follow-up battalion had to cross 

by shuttle with the few assault boats 

that could be retrieved. When one footbridge finally completed just before 

noon stayed in, the engineers abandoned attempts to build others and concentrated on vehicular bridges. An infantry support bridge was ready for light 

vehicles by 1730, but a treadway bridge, 

finished three hours later, had to be 

closed when a German plane strafed and 

damaged it. Only after more than four 

hours were spent on repairs was the 

treadway again ready for traffic; men of 

the 84th Division thus spent all of Dday on the east bank without tank or 

tank destroyer support. 

29 Theodore Draper, The 84th Infantry Division 

in the Battle for Germany (New York: The Viking 

Press, 1946), p. 145. An excellent unit history. 

In the sector of the 102d Division 

(Maj. Gen. Frank A. Keating) on the 

right wing of the XIII Corps upstream 

from Linnich, two regiments made the 

assault. As in the 84th’s sector, fire from 

the east bank was meager, partly because 

a patrol had crossed thirty minutes 

before H-hour and knocked out four 

machine guns in front of the 407th Infantry. Near misses from mortar fire upset several craft carrying men of the 

405th Infantry, but rubber life vests 

saved the men from drowning. 

Again it was the second wave that ran 

into most difficulty, for the current carried many of the boats used by the first 

wave far downstream where they impotently sat out successive stages of the 

assault. When the follow-up battalion 

of the 405th Infantry reached the river, 

the men could find at first only two 

boats. After an intensive search turned 

up a few more, one company got across. 

Other men meanwhile tried LVT’s, but 

so muddy was the far bank that these 

craft could not get far enough up for the 

men to disembark. As in the 84th Division’s sector, an LVT went out of control, crashed into a partially completed 

infantry support bridge, and sent parts 

of the bridge careening downstream. 

The struggle to build bridges was for 

the 102d Division also a discouraging 

task. When engineers completed the first 

footbridge for the 405th Infantry just 

before daylight, German artillery 

promptly knocked it out. They put in 

another about the same time for the 

407th Infantry, but enemy shelling was 

too intense for the infantry to use it. 

Spattered by shell fragments, the bridge 

spanned the river for three hours before 

a tree fell on it, snapped a cable, and 

set the pontoons adrift. Shortly after 
148 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

DERELICT ASSAULT BOATS NEAR LINNICH 

midday the engineers at last opened a 

workable footbridge and a support 

bridge suitable for light vehicles. 

The infantry support bridge had a 

short life; no sooner had the 407th’s 

antitank company with its towed 57-mm. 

guns crossed than a shell knocked it out. 

Getting sufficient antitank support to 

the far bank became a major concern, 

for by noon signs of impending counterattack had begun to develop in front of 

the 102d Division. With the infantry 

support bridge finally operating again 

about 2100, General Keating ordered 

every 57-mm. gun in the division to be 

towed across immediately. 

Although other engineers opened a 

treadway bridge about the same time, 

just as a company of tank destroyers 

started to cross three low-flying German 

planes knocked out the bridge. Another 

treadway was completed before midnight, but before tank destroyers could 

use it trucks loaded with rubble had to 

cross and build up a soggy exit route on 

the far bank. 30 It was well after mid30 Maj Allan H Mick, ed., With the 102 d Infantry Division 

Through Germany (Washington Infantry Journal Press, 1947), 

p 129 
OPERATION GRENADE 149 

SMOKE POTS ALONG THE ROER NEAR DUEREN 

night before tank destroyers in appreciable numbers began to move beyond 

the river. 

Two miles upstream to the south in 

the sector of General McLain’s XIX 

Corps the swollen river proved as big an 

obstacle to successful assault as it had 

for the XIII Corps. There the 29th Division was to cross around Juelich, the 

30th Division three miles farther upstream. 

Both assault regiments of the 29th 

Division (Maj. Gen. Charles H. Gerhardt) faced special crossing problems. 

North of Juelich, no bridges were to be 

built for the 115th Infantry because the 

flooded Roer was more than 400 yards 

wide. Both the first wave and the followup units were to cross in assault boats 

and LVT’s, with additional forces crossing later over bridges to be built at Juelich for the 175th Infantry. 

The 175th, on the other hand, was to 

depend almost entirely on bridges, 

since the river alongside the east bank 

town of Juelich flows between high 

banks. Half an hour before the end of 

the artillery preparation, two 25-man 

patrols were to cross in assault boats to 

stake out small holdings where engi- 
CROSSING SITES AT JUELICH 
OPERATION GRENADE 151 

neers, working under a smoke screen, 

could anchor footbridges over which the 

assault battalions were to cross. 

Despite fire from German machine 

guns, one patrol got across the river. Of 

two boats carrying the other patrol, one 

capsized and the current washed the 

other far downstream. 

Working at the site of a destroyed 

highway bridge, engineers completed a 

footbridge in less than an hour. Although an assault boat loaded with men 

crashed into the bridge and knocked it 

out, engineers had it back in service by 

0600. The first infantrymen then crossed 

on a dead run. Within another hour, 

two more footbridges were in. 

Previously undetected mines on westbank approaches to the 115th Infantry’s 

crossing site meantime threatened to delay the other assault. A tank maneuvering into a supporting position struck a 

mine, blocking the road leading to the 

river, and a tankdozer trying to remove 

the disabled tank set off another mine. 

The leading LVT bringing troops to 

the site also hit a mine, blocking the 

column of LVT’s behind it. Officers on 

the scene directed the infantry to dismount and join other units crossing by 

assault boat. The mishap delayed the 

first wave by twenty minutes, but the 

LVT’s soon found a bypass around the 

disabled vehicles. 

From this point German fire added a 

new dimension to the problems facing 

the engineers. Long-range machine gun 

fire played on one footbridge for much 

of the morning. A mortar shell struck 

another while stretcher bearers were 

crossing with a wounded man. 31 Two 

31 Joseph H. Ewing, 29 Let’s Go! A History of 

the 29th Infantry Division in World War II 

artillery hits on a partially completed 

treadway bridge prompted engineers to 

shift the site a few hundred yards upstream where houses in Juelich provided 

a measure of concealment. Tanks and 

bulldozers began to cross in late afternoon, the bulldozers to clear paths 

through the rubble that air and artillery 

bombardment had made of the town. 

Upstream from Juelich, the 30th Division (General Hobbs) faced perhaps 

the most forbidding stretch of waterline 

along the entire front. At only two 

points, both on the division’s right wing, 

was the river considered at all narrow 

enough for crossings. 

Going the 29th Division one better, 

the 119th Infantry near the village of 

Schophoven sent a patrol of twenty-five 

riflemen to the east bank more than an 

hour before start of the artillery preparation. With the patrol providing a screen, 

engineers were to begin work on a footbridge at the same time the preliminary 

shelling began. 

At 0215 engineers followed the patrol 

across in assault boats, dragging behind 

them prefabricated duckboard bridges 

to be used to get the infantry across a 

canal that at this point parallels the 

Roer. (A patrol had discovered only 

forty-eight hours before the attack that 

the canal was too deep for fording.) As 

the big artillery bombardment began, a 

battalion of infantry started crossing in 

assault boats. By the time the last shells 

fell, a footbridge was in place and the 

rest of the regiment was racing across. 

The 120th Infantry a few hundred 

yards upstream had no such success. Although the original plan for crossing had 

(Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1948), p. 

233. This is an excellent unit history. 
152 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

FOOTBRIDGE ACROSS THE ROER SERVES MEN OF THE 30TH DIVISION 

been much the same, a patrol only the 

night before had discovered that the 

current was too swift at that point for 

assault boats. The engineers quickly 

made plans for two cable ferries, but 

they were able to fasten a rope on the 

far bank for only one. Almost two hours 

before the artillery preparation began, 

a company of infantrymen began to pull 

themselves across in rubber boats, but 

the current proved too swift even for 

that method. Only thirty men reached 

the east bank. 

Engineers succeeded finally in fastening an anchor cable for a footbridge just 

before the preparation fires began. Yet 

from that moment everything seemed to 

go wrong. German artillery fire cut the 

first cable. A second snagged in debris 

and snapped. A mortar shell cut a third. 

A fourth held long enough for engineers to construct about fifty feet of 

bridge before the current snapped the 

cable and the bridge buckled. Doggedly, 

the engineers tried again. This time the 

cable stayed, but the coming of daylight 

brought such increased German shelling 

that darkness had fallen on D-day before they got a footbridge in. 

The 120th Infantry had resorted to 
OPERATION GRENADE 153 

LVT’s to get the bulk of two companies 

across the Roer not long after the official 

H-hour of 0330, while the rest of the 

regiment later in the day crossed on the 

footbridge constructed for the 119th Infantry. The problem of getting the infantry across at last solved, all hands 

could turn to a treadway bridge that 

other engineers already had started. Not 

until midnight was this bridge completed; men of the 30th Division, like 

those of the 84th, had spent all of D-day 

without tank or tank destroyer support. 

As costly as German shelling proved 

to be in the 30th Division’s sector and 

elsewhere, it would have been considerably greater had it not been for the use 

of smoke. The 29th and 30th Divisions 

used both smoke pots and chemical 

smoke generators. The 30th Division began its screen before dawn and kept it 

up, not for twelve hours as planned, but 

for thirty-three, in itself testimony to 

the effectiveness of the screen. The 102D, 

Division discontinued its screen after 

less than two hours because it interfered 

with directing artillery fire. The other 

two divisions, the 84th and 102D, depended primarily on smoke pots emplaced along the west bank, although 

both used white phosphorus shells fired 

by chemical mortars to assist the first 

waves. The 102d, Division maintained 

one smoke screen as a feint at a point 

where no crossing was contemplated. 

The smoke drew enemy fire while at the 

true crossing site nearby, unscreened, 

scarcely any shells fell. 

The First Day on the East Bank 

The Roer was unquestionably difficult. In the face of a capable, determined 

enemy on the east bank, it could have 

proven far more costly. Fortunately for 

the eventual outcome of Operation 

GRENADE, the enemy in general was 

neither capable nor determined. 

Opposite Linnich, the 84th Division 

had the good fortune to strike almost 

astride a German corps boundary. The 

lone unit in the assault, the 334th Infantry’s 1st Battalion, hit the extreme 

north flank of the 59th Infantry Division of Koechling’s LXXXI Corps, taking the Germans by surprise and occupying the village of Koerrenzig before daylight. At that point the 1st Battalion 

turned north in keeping with the mission of clearing enough of the east bank 

of the Roer for the neighboring XVI 

Corps to cross unopposed. In the process the battalion began to roll up from 

the flank defenses of the 183d Infantry 

Division of Crasemann’s XII SS Corps. 

By nightfall the 1st Battalion was approaching the crossroads village of Baal, 

three miles from the crossing site, while 

the 335th Infantry came in to seal the 

334th’s flank to the east. 

Baal was one of only three places 

where the Germans on D-day mustered 

counterattacks. As night was approaching, a battalion of the 183d Division 

supported by several tanks or assault 

guns drove south out of Baal at the same 

time men of the 334th Infantry were 

trying to break into the village. American artillery and eager Thunderbolts of 

the XXIX Tactical Air Command broke 

up the enemy thrust before the opposing 

forces could actually clash on the 

ground. Occupying Baal proved relatively simple after that, though just before midnight three understrength German battalions struck with considerable 

verve. For a while the conflict was intense on the periphery of the village, 
154 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

but by morning small arms and artillery 

fire had driven the Germans off. 32 

The day’s strongest German counteraction developed to the south against 

the 102d Division. There the 407th Infantry on the north wing had taken the 

enemy in the village of Gevenich by 

surprise, seizing 160 prisoners, and in 

the afternoon occupied an adjacent village to the north. The 405th Infantry 

on the south wing entered Tetz, southernmost of the day’s objectives, against 

minor opposition; but because of difficulties at the crossing sites, it was 

midafternoon before the regimental 

commander, Col. Laurin L. Williams, 

could send a force northeastward against 

two other objectives, Boslar, two miles 

from the Roer, and Hompesch. 

Despite a no-minute artillery preparation fired by fourteen battalions, the 

men of the 405th Infantry had gotten 

no farther than Boslar when darkness 

came. Something had infused new spirit 

into the defending troops of the 59th 

Division, whose performance elsewhere 

on D-day had been, at best, lackluster. 

That something was an impending 

counterattack, signs of which the Americans had been detecting since just before noon. 

As the broad outlines of the Ninth 

Army’s attack emerged during the morning of 23 February, the Army Group B 

commander, Field Marshal Model, had 

acted swiftly to place his reserves, the 

9th and 11th Panzer Divisions, at the 

disposal of the Fifteenth Army. Although Model had intended to employ 

the two divisions together under an ad 

32 MS # B–812, Fifteenth Army, 23–28 February 

1945 (General der Infanterie Gustav von Zangen) ; 

Draper, The 84th Division in the Battle for Germany, pp. 151–54. 

hoc corps commanded by a tank specialist, Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein, not 

enough of the 11th Panzer Division had 

yet arrived from the Saar-Moselle triangle to justify that arrangement. The 

Fifteenth Army commander, General 

von Zangen, early decided to attach increments of the two divisions as they 

arrived to Koechling’s LXXXI Corps. 

Although Zangen had yet to determine 

the exact location of the American main 

effort, he deduced from analysis of crossing sites along the Roer that it probably 

was directed against the LXXXI 

Corps. 33 

While attachment of the panzer divisions augured well for the future, it 

would be at least the next day before 

any part of the divisions could arrive. 

For immediate counterattack, the 

LXXXI Corps commander, General 

Koechling, had to depend on his own 

slender resources. These were two infantry battalions, one each from his two 

divisions, plus remnants of two separate 

tank battalions and an understrength 

assault gun brigade. 

Returning the infantry battalions to 

division control, Koechling gave each 

division a company of the assault gun 

brigade with twelve to fourteen 75-mm. 

guns and smaller portions of the two 

tank battalions. The 59th Division 

then was to strike toward Gevenich, the 

363d Infantry Division toward Boslar 

and Tetz. 

The 102d Division commander, General Keating, meanwhile reacted to the 

indications of impending counterattack 

33 German material from MSS # C–020 

(Schramm); # B–812 (Zangen); # B–576, LXXXI 

Corps, 25 January–21 March 1945 (General der 

Infanterie Friedrich Koechling); # B–053, Corps 

Bayerlein, 11 February-5 March 1945 (Generalleutant Fritz Bayerlein). 
OPERATION GRENADE 155 

by ordering his reserve, the 406th Infantry, into position south and east of Tetz. 

The 405th and 406th Infantry Regiments then formed a defensive arc extending from high ground between 

Gevenich and Boslar, through Boslar, 

and back to the river south of Tetz. The 

407th Infantry on the north continued 

to hold Gevenich and the next village 

to the north. Confident of his strength 

in infantry, General Keating felt keenly 

his lack of antitank support on the east 

bank. It was this concern that through 

the afternoon and evening punctuated 

the engineers’ futile efforts to keep 

bridges functioning across the Roer in 

hope of getting tanks and tank destroyers across. 

As it turned out, the defenders at 

both Gevenich and Boslar had to rely 

primarily on artillery fire and bazookas. 

Although the German thrust at Gevenich proved relatively weak and caused 

little concern, the Germans at Boslar 

attacked at least seven times. The first 

thrust hit just before 2100, employing 

a mixed force of about 20 assault guns 

and tanks accompanied by about 150 

infantry. While American artillery fire 

was dispersing tanks and infantry before 

they reached Boslar, some of the infantry bypassed the village and penetrated 

the lines of a battalion of the 406th Infantry. A reserve rifle company sealed 

off that penetration. 

In subsequent thrusts, some infantry 

and tanks got into the streets of Boslar. 

It was a night, said the commander of 

the defending battalion, Lt. Col. Eric E. 

Bischoff, of “indescribable confusion.” 34 Infantrymen accounted for four 

34 Combat interview with Bischoff. 

Mark V tanks with bazookas. Still the 

Germans persisted. 

What the Americans reckoned as the 

fourth try brought the gravest crisis. 

Three hours before dawn on 24 February, tanks and infantry swarmed into 

the village. While the Americans huddled in cellars, forward observers called 

down artillery fire on their own positions. By daylight the Germans had 

fallen back, and a count revealed a surprisingly low total of thirty American 

casualties. 

In the sector of the XIX Corps, the 

Germans launched no counterattacks 

and in general proffered no stiffer passive resistance than against the XIII 

Corps. The defending troops were from 

the same 363d Division that gave the 

102d Division such a hard time at Boslar. 

The 115th Infantry, on the north wing 

of the 29th Division, had no trouble 

taking the village of Broich, but when 

the men moved out toward high ground 

to the northeast on which they intended 

to anchor the division’s bridgehead, they 

encountered grazing fire from automatic 

weapons emplaced in farm houses and 

entrenchments on the reverse slope. Not 

until darkness came and the men made 

a stealthy night attack was this position 

secured. 

The 175th Infantry in the meantime 

had run into less resistance in Juelich 

than expected, but clearing Germans 

from the debris of the destroyed town 

remained a slow process. By nightfall 

Juelich was in hand except for the Citadel, a medieval fortress surrounded by a 

moat. According to plan, the assault 

companies left the Citadel for follow-up 

troops to clear. 

In the adjacent 30th Division, the ad- 
156 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

vance proceeded apace, despite the problems inherent in crossing at a wide part 

of the flooded Roer. A battalion of the 

119th Infantry on the north was in the 

first village rooting Germans from cellars less than fifteen minutes after the 

artillery preparation lifted. Soon after 

dawn the same battalion cleared another 

village to the north. 

Leading companies of the 120th Infantry had harder going because of an 

extensive antipersonnel minefield in a 

patch of woods near the village of Krauthausen. The 2d Battalion took at least 

seventy-five casualties in the woods but 

still jumped off before dawn against 

Krauthausen and the neighboring village to the south. One company employing marching fire took the latter village 

at the cost of one killed and two 

wounded, while two companies enveloped Krauthausen from south and 

north. 

Both regiments then used follow-up 

units to push out to slightly higher 

ground to the east. The 119th Infantry 

also sent a battalion against a village at 

the edge of the Hambach Forest and 

took it by midafternoon. 

Since the 30th Division would be on 

the outside of the Ninth Army’s wheel 

to the north with the farthest to go of 

the four assault divisions, the commander, General Hobbs, decided to keep 

going through the night. Reserve battalions of both assault regiments moved 

northeastward before midnight against 

Hambach and Niederzier, the only villages remaining in the division’s sector 

short of the Hambach Forest. Distant 

American searchlights bouncing light off 

clouds made twilight of the darkness. 35 

35 Among American units, the Ninth Army had 

Five battalions of artillery fired at 

maximum rate to help men of the 119th 

Infantry into Hambach. They timed 

their concentrations to allow the infantry five minutes to cross on a dead run 

from the line of departure to the first 

houses. The village fell with only a few 

shots fired. Most of a 126-man German 

garrison had to be routed from cellars 

where they had retired to sit out the 

American shelling. 

The scheme of maneuver and results 

in the attack on Niederzier were similar. 

When shells armed with proximity fuzes 

exploded over open trenches west of the 

village the Germans “just got up and 

left.” 36 The 120th Infantry lost not a 

man. 

With some relatively unimportant exceptions, the XIX Corps as dawn came 

held all its planned D-day bridgehead; 

yet difficulties could still lie ahead in the 

Hambach Forest, where the Germans 

well might elect to stand, or might arise 

from an open corps right flank. The unprotected right flank had developed because the First Army’s VII Corps, 

charged with protecting the flank, had 

been having the hardest fight of all to 

get across the Roer and stay there. 

The VII Corps at Dueren 

As protection for the Ninth Army’s 

wheel, General Collins’s VII Corps of 

the First Army had to make the deepest 

penetration of all, to the Erft River beyond Elsdorf, thirteen miles from the 

Roer at Dueren, and do the job with its 

pioneered in use of battlefield illumination during 

the drive to the Roer in November. See MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign. 

36 Combat interview with Maj. Cris McCullough, 

ExecO, 1st Bn, 120 Inf. 
OPERATION GRENADE 157 

own right flank exposed for at least two 

days until another corps to the south 

joined the attack. The zone of the VII 

Corps further included two obstacles 

expected to be strongly contested: ruins 

of the town of Dueren and most of the 

Hambach Forest. 

As in the corps of the Ninth Army, the 

VII Corps was to employ two divisions 

to assault the river line, the 104th (Maj. 

Gen. Terry de la Mesa Allen) on the 

left, the 8th (Maj. Gen. William G. 

Weaver) on the right. 37 Because Dueren 

was the hub of communications to east 

and northeast, Collins divided the town 

between the two divisions. The infantrymen first were to establish a bridgehead anchored on high ground about 

four miles from the Roer, from the village of Oberzier in the north to Stockheim in the south. At that point Collins 

intended to send the 4th Cavalry Group 

to clear the Hamback Forest while the 

3d Armored Division passed through the 

infantry to gain the Erft. 

To even a greater degree than the 

rest of the GRENADE force, the VII 

Corps would find the swollen Roer the 

biggest obstacle to achieving D-day objectives. Because the current everywhere 

might prove too swift for footbridges, 

all the assault infantry were to cross by 

boat, each regiment with two battalions 

abreast. A platoon of engineers with fifteen or sixteen boats was assigned to 

each rifle company in the first wave, 

while corps engineers held sixty boats in 

37 Unofficial histories of these two divisions—Leo 

A. Hoegh and Howard J. Doyle, Timberwolf 

Trucks (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1946). 

and Lt. Marc F. Griesgach, Combat History of the 

Eighth Infantry Division in World War II (Baton 

Rouge: Army and Navy Publishing Co., 1945)—are 

useful more for color than for following the action 

in detail. 

reserve. At the last minute, both division commanders decided against using 

smoke lest it hinder artillery observation and confuse infantrymen moving 

through build-up urban areas on the 

east bank. 

The bulk of the first waves of the 

415th Infantry, on the north wing of the 

104th Division, got across with little 

difficulty, although the current and 

small arms fire turned one company 

back. Crossing opposite the northern 

fringe of Dueren, the 413th Infantry’s 

1st Battalion had more trouble. After 

the first company had crossed without 

opposition, German artillery and machine guns opened fire. Eight boats-of 

Company C stuck on the top of a check 

dam and then upset. The rest of the 1st 

Battalion shifted to the 415th Infantry’s 

sector to cross. 

By daylight German artillery fire began to make the engineers’ job all but 

impossible. Northwest of the Dueren 

suburb of Birkesdorf, work began on an 

infantry support bridge at 0415, but fifteen minutes later artillery and mortar 

shells destroyed much of the equipment 

and killed or wounded nineteen men. 

Although te engineers persisted, their 

first success came only after nightfall 

and at a new site. 

Upstream opposite Birkesdorf another 

group of engineers, working under 

seemingly constant fire, had completed 

about 160 feet of a support bridge by 

1300 when an enemy artillery piece, apparently by indirect fire using long base 

observation methods, got the range and 

scored several direct hits. The men hurriedly laid out smoke pots, but through 

the smoke the German. shells still came 

in on target. Much of the bridge was 

destroyed. 
TO MARIAWEILER ROER RIVER TO AAGHEN I 

CROSSING SITES AT DUEREN 
OPERATION GRENADE 159 

At three other sites artillery and often 

rifle and machine gun fire prevented 

engineers even from starting construction until after nightfall on D-day. All 

countermeasures failed; counterbattery 

fire, smoke, direct fire by tanks on machine gun positions, even gradual expansion of the bridgehead—none of these 

during 23 February checked the deadly 

accuracy of the enemy fire. The first 

bridge was not open to traffic until midnight. The 415th Infantry at the only 

feasible ferry site managed to get three 

57-mm. antitank guns across, but those 

remained during D-day the only supporting weapons east of the river. 

Fortunately, the enemy’s 12th Volks 

Grenadier Division of Krueger’s LVIII 

Panzer Corps failed to follow through 

with determined resistance once the infantry got across. The 415th Infantry 

took two villages en route to Oberzier 

without difficulty and by midafternoon 

had buttoned up along the DuerenJuelich railroad, the D-day objective 

line. The 413th Infantry met only light 

resistance at first in Birkesdorf and 

Dueren, although enemy machine guns 

and artillery were increasingly troublesome as the day wore on. The regiment 

nevertheless cleared most of the northern half of Dueren by dark. In Birkesdorf the men captured an entire battalion of the 27th Volks Grenadier Regiment, complete with staff. “In comparison with its earlier achievements,” the 

Fifteenth Army commander was to note 

later, “the 12th Volks Grenadier Division had very much disappointed the 

command during the initial defensive 

battle.” 38 

More precarious by far through the 

38 MS # B–814 (Zangen). 

day and into the night was the position 

of the 8th Division upstream to the 

south. Plagued by an open right flank 

and daylong observation from foothills 

of the Eifel highlands, the 8th had the 

roughest D-day experience of all. 

The leading 13th and 28th Infantry 

Regiments were to cross in assault boats 

and in double assault boats driven by 

outboard motors. Cable ferries and footbridges were to be put in as soon as possible for the reserve companies. 

Fifty minutes before the scheduled Hhour of 0330, only five minutes after the 

artillery preparation began, the 28th Infantry’s 3d Battalion was to open the 

assault with the mission of cutting enemy communications to the south and 

southeast by taking Stockheim. No enemy fire opposed the 3d Battalion’s crossing, but the swift river current caused 

trouble enough. While about three-fifths 

of the two leading companies got across, 

the current swept the rest downstream. 

Even many of those who made it lost 

their weapons in swamped or capsized 

boats. Fortunate it was that the crossing 

took the Germans by surprise; twentythree rose up from riverside trenches 

and surrendered. The prisoners’ rifles 

served the men who had lost their own 

weapons in good stead. Behind a rolling 

barrage of white phosphorus fired by a 

company of the 87th Chemical Battalion, 

the assault companies continued to the 

edge of woods overlooking Stockheim, 

there to await the rest of the battalion 

before seizing the village. 

The 3d Battalion’s crossing was the 

only real success the 8th Division could 

report. Almost without exception the 

units that began to cross at H-hour 

found one difficulty piled upon another. 

In the cold, damp night air, men of 
160 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the 28th Infantry’s other assault battalion, the 1st, could start none of the 

motors on their six power boats. The 

two lead companies then secured ten 

assault boats each and tried to paddle 

across. In the first company out, five 

boats made it, landing forty men on the 

east bank. The other five boats 

swamped. The next company lost all ten 

boats, sunk or destroyed by enemy fire. 

The remainder of the battalion pulled 

back to reorganize and wait for a footbridge. 

The reserve 2d Battalion had scarcely 

better luck. Company F in the lead was 

supposed to cross in the boats used by 

the 3d Battalion, but only half of those 

returned from the first crossing and they 

had to transport the 3d Battalion’s 

follow-up company. Eventually the men 

of Company F rounded up seventeen 

boats and paddled themselves across. Although most of the men reached the far 

side, all their boats swamped or overturned. Some 140 men who assembled 

on the east bank about 0630 had 30 rifles 

among them. Hardly had they begun 

moving southward toward their objective, a village close by the river, when 

heavy shelling from upriver and small 

arms fire from the village tumbled them 

into abandoned German trenches, 

where they remained under fire the rest 

of the day. They stood alone, for the 

rest of the 2d Battalion was stranded on 

the west bank without boats and would 

not get across until the next morning. 

The footbridge for which the 1st Battalion commander waited never got 

built. A combination of enemy shelling 

and the swift current compelled the engineers to abandon the project. In the 

middle of the afternoon the battalion 

began a shuttle system, ten men paddling over, five bringing the boat back. 

Two companies crossed in that manner. 

The rest of the battalion began crossing 

after dark by a cable ferry. By 2130 that 

night the 2d Battalion was at last assembled east of the river. 

For the 13th Infantry, in the meantime, almost everything went wrong 

from the first. The two leading battalions were supposed to cross in fourteen 

double assault boats powered by outboard motors. Near a destroyed highway bridge at Dueren, eighteen men of 

Company I actually landed in this fashion on the east bank. At the same time, 

Company K came under intense machine gun fire. One boat overturned.. On 

all the others the motors failed, although 

the men in one boat succeeded in paddling across. Only thirty-six men of the 

3d Battalion made it. Two platoons of 

Company I arrived by cable ferry later 

in the day. That was the sum total of 

the 3d Battalion’s assault. 

It was even worse for the 13th Infantry’s 2d Battalion farther south. Short 

rounds of white phosphorus shells fired 

by American artillery knocked out four 

of company E’s boats before the crossing 

began. Although ten boats were 

launched, all swamped. The mishaps 

reduced the three rifle platoons to fiftysix men and thoroughly disorganized 

the company. 

Company F put twelve men over the 

river under 1st Lt. E. W. Coleman, but 

when motors on other boats failed and 

the men found they could not handle assault boats in the current, the rest of the 

company stayed on the west bank. Lieutenant Coleman’s dozen men fought 

their way into a factory, capturing 

twelve Germans in the process, but 

other Germans promptly counterat- 
OPERATION GRENADE 161 

tacked and besieged the small force the 

rest of the day. Coleman lost the prisoners and half his own men; he and six 

others managed to hold out, even though 

all were wounded. 

As German fire became more and 

more intense, the 2d Battalion abandoned all efforts to cross. Although divisional artillery and the 4.2-inch mortars of the 87th Chemical Battalion 

smoked all known enemy observation 

points, neither the quantity nor accuracy 

of German artillery or mortar fire appreciably diminished. 

The 3d Battalion continued trying to 

cross throughout the day but without 

much success. Ferries, which proved to 

be the only feasible way of conquering 

the current, were in operation only a 

few minutes before artillery or mortar 

shells severed the cables. By noon all 

ferries had ceased to operate, and the 

supporting company of the 12th Engineer Combat Battalion was down to 

eight men. Only with the coming of 

darkness did the harassed engineers and 

infantrymen gain any respite, but by 

midnight the 13th Infantry still had only 

four complete companies and elements 

of two others east of the Roer. These 

succeeded in pushing only about 400 

yards beyond the river into the heaps of 

rubble that represented the southern 

half of Dueren. 

Thus it was that the 28th Infantry’s 

3d Battalion, which had reached the 

woods line overlooking Stockheim, was 

the only unit of the 8th Division that 

came near accomplishing its D-day mission. That even this battalion, considerably Landerstrength and inadequately 

armed, had made any progress had to be 

credited chiefly to the nature of German 

resistance. Having all but smashed the 

crossing with the aid of a rampaging 

current and the fire of a supporting 

volks artillery corps, neither the 12th 

Volks Grenadier Division at Dueren nor 

a weak 353d Infantry Division south of 

the town made any move to counterattack the disorganized bridgehead forces. 

Through it all, attached corps engineers struggling to construct five vehicular bridges across the Roer had run 

into the same problem of shelling and 

current that beset those engineers who 

tried to build footbridges or cable ferries. At most sites the men worked in 

vain even to get an anchor cable across. 

At a site selected for an infantry support 

bridge for the 13th Infantry, enemy 

shells came in at an estimated rate of 

125 an hour throughout D-day and into 

the night. The following day as the rate 

of fire increased to an estimated 200 

rounds an hour, the engineers abandoned the site. 

Although fire at that particular site 

was exceptionally severe, it was heavy 

enough at all bridge sites to deny any 

successful construction during D-day. 

The first bridge to be completed in the 

8th Division’s sector was a Bailey bridge 

put in on the masonry piers of the destroyed main highway bridge into Dueren. That span was open to traffic on 

the morning of 24 February. No others 

opened until the 25th. In constructing 

nine bridges for the 8th and 104th Divisions, engineers of the VII Corps incurred a total of 154 casualties, of which 

8 were killed and 1 was missing. 

The experience of the 8th Division 

revealed strikingly the extent to which 

the enemy depended on the flooded 

Roer covered by preregistered artillery 

and mortar fire to stop the attack. To 

that kind of opposition the 8th Division 
162 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

was particularly vulnerable. The division’s crossings were made at points 

where steep banks confined the river to 

its normal course and where the river 

emerged from a torrential descent 

through a twisting gorge from the highland reservoirs. The current in consequence was probably at least twice as 

swift as in the lower and broader reaches 

downstream from Dueren. The crossings 

also took place under the shadow of high 

ground from which the enemy could 

command the entire river valley around 

Dueren. 

The First Day’s Results 

Despite the 8th Division’s problems, 

the great hammerblow of GRENADE 

when viewed as a whole had effectively 

crushed the enemy. With contingents of 

six divisions on the east bank, there 

could be no real doubt henceforth of 

the outcome. The deep thrust of the 

84th Division in the north as far as Baal 

and the advance of the 30th Division in 

the center into Hambach and Niederzier, more than two miles east of the 

Roer, made it particularly evident that 

GRENADE had irreparably torn the enemy’s river line. 

On 24 February, barring unforeseen 

developments on the German side, all 

the Ninth Army’s divisions were to expand their footholds on the east bank 

and begin the wheel to the north, while 

the VII Corps strengthened its admittedly weak flank protection. The only 

major change in plan was made late on 

23 February upon the recommendation 

of General Gillem, commander of the 

XIII Corps, and General Anderson, 

commander of the uncommitted XVI 

Corps. Noting the quick success of the 

84th Division, the two commanders 

agreed that Anderson need not wait to 

cross the Roer until Gillem had cleared 

the east bank as far north as Erkelenz; 

instead the XVI Corps might begin 

crossing as early as the following day, as 

soon as the 84th Division had taken the 

next village downstream from 

If the Roer crossing had proven expensive in terms of bridging equipment 

and assault craft, it had been relatively 

economical in what mattered most— 

men’s lives. The entire Ninth Army lost 

92 killed, 61 missing, and 913 wounded, 

a total of just over a thousand. The VII 

Corps incurred comparatively heavier 

losses: 66 killed, 35 missing, and 280 

wounded, a total of 381. 40 

39 XIII Corps AAR, Feb 45. 

40 12th AGp, G–1 Daily Sum, Master File, 1 Jan28 Feb 45. 
CHAPTER IX 

Ninth Army to the Rhine 

On the planning sheets, D plus 1 in 

Operation GRENADE (24 February) was 

a day for consolidating the bridgeheads 

and adding strength beyond the Roer. 

Despite some interference at bridges by 

German artillery and ninety-seven futile 

sorties by German aircraft, including 

some by the new jets, the plans would 

be accomplished with relative ease. 

While antiaircraft gunners were taking 

advantage of the rare opportunity to do 

what they were trained for and were 

knocking down eighteen of the planes, 

bridgehead strength increased from sixteen to thirty-eight battalions of infantry, and armored support reached all 

divisions. 

In addition, D plus 1 was a day for 

maneuver. The Ninth Army’s General 

Simpson was anxious to get started on 

the pivot to the north. This meant that 

both the XIII and XIX Corps were to 

thrust forward their right wings. It 

meant also that in the process each corps 

would develop an open right flank. 

Odds still were that the XIX Corps 

on the south might have the most trouble both because of the delays experienced on D-day by the First Army’s VII 

Corps and because of the invitation to 

counterattack inherent in the existence 

of the Hambach Forest. Yet the concern 

proved chimerical; the Germans simply 

had nothing to counterattack with. 

Even though almost the entire 9th 

Panzer Division arrived in the Fifteenth 

Army’s sector during the day, the first 

unit of the division would be able to 

enter the line only after nightfall. Furthermore, so powerful was the American 

blow that General von Zangen would 

have to use the division piecemeal in a 

futile effort to hold the line rather than 

to counterattack. In any event, with only 

twenty-nine tanks and sixteen assault 

guns the 9th Panzer Division was something less than the formidable force its 

name implied. 1 

As events developed, the enemy mustered almost no opposition as the 30th 

Division drove through the northwestern portion of the Hambach Forest. 

While sharp local fights developed at two 

farmhouses and a roadblock along the 

highway leading from Niederzier to 

Steinstrass at the northern edge of the 

forest, they failed to delay the division 

as a whole. At dark Steinstrass remained 

in German hands, but the 30th Division’s line ran along the north edge of 

the forest, tying in to the west with the 

29th Division astride the JuelichCologne highway. 2 

In the 29th Division’s sector, only the 

175th Infantry advanced during the day, 

1 MS # B–812 (Zangen). Strength figures are 

from Map, Luge Frankreich; OKW-WFSt Op(H) 

West Pruef-Nr 1949, Stand: 14.2.45, 2. Luge. 

2 The tactical story is based primarily on official 

unit records and combat interviews. 
164 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

GENERAL MCLAIN 

and that a short distance to stay abreast 

of the 30th while a new division was 

entering the line to bolster the left wing 

of the XIX Corps. Commitment of another division was with an eye both toward broadening the attack and toward 

reducing the gap on the left as the XIII 

Corps swung north. The corps commander, General McLain, introduced a 

regiment of the 83d Division (General 

Macon) on the extreme left of the 

corps, attaching it temporarily to the 

29th Division. 

The only real difficulty with the pivot 

maneuver arose within the XIII Corps 

sector. There the rapid D-day advance 

of the 84th Division, plus the fact that 

the left wing of the XIX Corps failed to 

move, left the 102d Division’s right 

flank open. Expecting continued attack 

to the east, the Germans were in no position to halt the 102d’s northward move 

head on, but they could fire directly 

into the exposed flank. 

That fire dealt a crippling blow to 

two companies of the 701st Tank Battalion supporting the northward advance of the 405th Infantry on the village of Hottorf. Hardly had the tanks 

started to move when antitank guns to 

the east opened a deadly fire. They 

knocked out four tanks from one company, eight from the other. Eight other 

tanks foundered in German infantry 

trenches. Two failed mechanically. Only 

five joined the infantry on the objective. 

In the 84th Division, one regiment 

remained in Baal, the northernmost 

point reached on D-day, while the 335th 

Infantry passed through to try to make 

a swift conquest of the next village, Doveren, and prepare the way for the XVI 

Corps to cross the Roer unopposed. Yet 

as men of the 335th moved forward, they 

ran into one tenacious nest of resistance 

after another that the swift advance on 

D-day had failed to clear. Not until midafternoon, after tanks of the 771st Tank 

Battalion arrived to help, did the drive 

on Doveren pick up momentum, and 

darkness had fallen before the village 

was firmly in hand. Anderson’s XVI 

Corps remained on the west bank. 

For all the problems in taking Doveren, the hardest fighting on 24 February again fell the lot of the First 

Army’s VII Corps. Not involved in the 

pivot to the north, the VII Corps still 

had its work cut out, since the 8th Division had much to do before the division 

could be said to be firmly established on 

the east bank of the Roer. 

The 13th Infantry with all battalions 

in line spent 24 February fighting 

through Dueren. Opposition was intense 
NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE 165 

only at two nests of army barracks, but 

bomb craters and rubble posed serious 

obstacles. Not only were streets impassable for vehicles but commanders struggled in vain to relate maps to the field of 

ruins. The 28th Infantry in the meantime forced additional strength into 

woods to the south but as night came 

still was short of the objective of Stockheim, on which General Weaver intended to anchor the division’s south 

flank. Yet for all the limits of the day’s 

advances and continued German shelling of bridge sites, Weaver could 

breathe more easily as the second day 

came to an end—his reserve, the 121st 

Infantry, crossed into Dueren late in the 

day prepared to attack the next morning through the 13th Infantry, 

From the point of view of the corps 

commander, General Collins, the 8th 

Division’s slow progress was of minor 

concern so long as the bridgehead remained solid. The job of the VII Corps 

for the moment was flank protection for 

the Ninth Army, and continued advance 

by the 104th Division was what he 

needed to assure that. Collins was particularly anxious that the 104th gain 

Oberzier and two other villages facing 

the Hambach Forest, both to take out 

German guns that might harass the 

flank of the neighboring 30th Division 

and to open the way for the corps cavalry to clear the forest before the Germans could concentrate there for 

counterattack. 3 

3 General Collins normally issued oral orders to 

his division commanders, then had them transscribed as written letters of instruction. These are 

valuable for revealing the reasoning behind the 

orders. See VII Corps Ltrs of Instrs file, Feb 45. 

Because the 413th Infantry was occupied mopping up the northern half 

of Dueren, General Allen assigned all 

three villages to the 415th Infantry, The 

1st Battalion reached one village before 

daylight but had to fight all day and 

through the next night to clean out infantry supported by four self-propelled 

guns. Also making a predawn attack, 

the 2d Battalion reeled back from Oberzier in the face of heavy German shelling. To prepare the way for a second 

attack an hour before noon, five battalions of artillery pounded the village 

for three hours. When the 2d Battalion 

moved again, the men took Oberzier in 

the face of only light small arms fire. 

Because the approach to the third village was exposed to fire from the other 

two, the 3d Battalion delayed attacking 

until after dark. 

As night fell on the 24th, all conditions for committing the cavalry were 

yet to be met, nor was there room to 

commit armor south of the Hambach 

Forest. Anxious to get his mobile forces 

into action, Collins ordered both the 

8th and 104th Divisions to continue attacking through the night. 

Although German commanders had 

feared an Allied pincers movement west 

of the Rhine, during this second day 

they still had not fully fathomed American intentions. While noting with trepidation the northward orientation of 

the 84th Division, the Fifteenth Army 

commander, General von Zangen, continued to hope that the Ninth Army 

aimed its attack at the Rhine around 

Cologne and that the northward thrust 

was but a secondary effort to secure the 

road center of Erkelenz. To believe otherwise would be to admit that the entire 

south wing of Army Group H was about 
166 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

to be crushed in a vise between convergent Canadian and American drives. 4 

As the only hope for stopping the 

84th Division, Zangen sent to Erkelenz 

advance contingents of a woefully weak 

infantry division (the 338th), which 

had recently arrived from the Colmar 

pocket far to the south. Against what 

Zangen considered the main attack, the 

eastward thrust, he could do nothing 

but urge speed in piecemeal commitment of the 9th and 11th Panzer Divisions. A panzer grenadier regiment of 

the 9th would go into the line during 

the night of 24 February around Steinstrass in an effort to prevent advance 

beyond the Hambach Forest. Only the 

Reconnaissance Battalion of the 11th 

Panzer Division would be available for 

commitment during the night and 

would enter the line a few miles to the 

north. No matter the harm piecemeal 

commitments would do to any hope of 

mounting a major counterattack, Zangen deemed he had no choice. 5 

The Third and Fourth Days 

Sensing or at least guessing at German 

confusion, American commanders on 25 

February made every effort to capitalize on it and gain momentum. In a continuing build-up beyond the Roer, at 

least one combat command of armor arrived during the day to reinforce each 

corps. Lest the 84th Division be slowed 

by clearing a crossing site for the XVI 

4 MS # B–812 (Zangen). 

5 lbid. See also MSS # C–020 (Schramm); # B– 

080, 12th Volks Grenadier Division, 23 February 

–March 1945 (Generalmajor Rudolf Langhaeuser, 

CG); # B–152, 59th Infantry Division, 2 December 

1944–28 February 1945 (Generalleutnant Walter 

Poppe, CG) . 

GENERAL ANDERSON 

Corps, General Simpson told General 

Anderson to test the feasibility of crossing on his own. 6 

The position of Anderson’s corps was 

complicated by the existence of several 

German bridgeheads on the west bank 

of the Roer, one of which encompassed 

the town of Hilfarth in a loop of the 

river southwest of Doveren. If Anderson 

was to glean advantage from the advance already made on the east bank 

by the 84th Division, his troops would 

have to cross at or near Hilfarth, and 

that meant the town had to be cleared 

first. 

The scheme as General Anderson developed it was for the 79th Division 

6 In addition to official sources, see History of 

the XVI Corps (Washington: Infantry Journal 

Press, 1947). pp. 24–26. 
NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE 167 

(Maj. Gen. Ira T. Wyche) to stage a 

feint several miles downstream while 

the 35th Division took Hilfarth and 

actually crossed the river. To assist the 

crossing, the division commander, General Baade, sent his 137th Infantry into 

the bridgehead of the XIII Corps to 

take over the assignment of driving 

north down the east bank. In hope of 

keeping the Germans from demolishing 

a highway bridge they had left intact to 

serve their garrison in Hilfarth, the 

692d Field Artillery Battalion early on 

the 25th began to place harassing fire 

around the bridge. 

A battalion of the 35th Division’s 

134th Infantry hit Hilfarth before daylight on 26 February. Despite a vicious 

curtain of fire from automatic weapons, 

the infantrymen forced their way into 

the town, only to discover that the Germans had turned it into a lethal nest of 

mines and booby traps. The bulk of the 

battalion’s casualties came from those. 

By midmorning, with the town in 

hand, infantrymen provided covering 

fire with their machine guns while engineers erected two footbridges across 

a narrow stretch of the Roer. As some 

riflemen began to cross, others turned 

their attention a few hundred yards 

downstream. There either thirty-six 

hours of harassing fire by the 692d Field 

Artillery or faulty German demolitions 

had saved the coveted highway bridge. 

By noon tanks and other vehicles were 

rolling across. 

Giving the XVI Corps responsibility 

for seizing its own foothold over the 

Roer had in the meantime freed the 

84th Division to concentrate on driving 

some three miles beyond Baal to take 

the road center of Erkelenz. Inserting a 

combat command of the 5th Armored 

Division (Maj. Gen. Lunsford E. Oliver) on the right flank of the XIII 

Corps also released the 102d Division to 

help. Under General Gillem’s plan, the 

102d was to attack the town itself while 

the 84th cut roads to the west. 

Although first contingents of the enemy’s 338th Infantry Division had arrived 

during the night of 25 February at Erkelenz in an effort to bolster the faltering XII SS Corps, their efforts were so 

weak as to be hardly apparent. On the 

26th the 102d Division cut through almost without opposition to find Erkelenz practically deserted. After dodging 

enemy shelling to gain one village, the 

84th Division passed on to another to 

find not only no opposition but, in the 

village Gasthaus, beer on tap. 

The resistance had been more challenging to the XIX Corps because of 

General von Zangen’s hurried commitment of portions of the 9th and 11th 

Panzer Divisions, but the challenge was 

short-lived. Just before dark on the 25th 

the 30th Division’s 117th Infantry broke 

stubborn resistance by panzer grenadiers 

at Steinstrass, while the 119th Infantry 

at the same time bypassed the village to 

drive almost two miles beyond. Moving 

fast, shooting as they went, men of the 

119th ran a gantlet of heavy flanking 

fire that knocked out eight supporting 

tanks, but in the process the men took 

more than 200 prisoners, including all 

of a Nebelwerfer company that never 

got a chance to fire. At the end of the 

day the division commander, General 

Hobbs, could report to General McLain: “It looks like things are beginning 

to break a bit.” 

7 30th Div G–3 Jnl, 25–26 Feb 45. 
168 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Hobbs was right. Things were beginning to break. 

Between them, the 29th and 30th Divisions were rolling up from the flank 

the enemy’s second line of field fortifications and having surprisingly little 

trouble doing it. The 29th Division on 

25 February took five villages and 

marked up an average advance of about 

four miles, then the next day gained the 

southern rim of the egg-shaped plateau 

that extends from the Roer to the Erft. 

During those two days, the attached 

330th Infantry (83d Division) lost not 

a man killed and had only fifty-nine 

wounded. With some men riding attached tanks, a regiment of the 30th Division on the 26th advanced more than 

three miles. Another bound like that 

would put even the outside unit of the 

Ninth Army’s wheel onto the egg-shaped 

plateau. 

To the corps commander, General 

McLain, it was clear that the way to 

the Rhine was opening. Only antitank 

fire remained effective; the German infantry appeared confused and drained of 

all enthusiasm for the fight. 

Although the time for exploitation 

seemed at hand, General McLain was reluctant to turn the drive over to his 

armor lest the Germans had manned 

their third and final prepared defense 

line, which ran five miles to the north 

through the village of Garzweiler, 

roughly on an east-west line with Erkelenz. McLain told the 30th Division to 

continue as far as Garzweiler, whereupon the 2d Armored Division was to 

take over. 

Nor was all the success confined to 

units of the Ninth Army. While resistance still was stickier opposite the VII 

Corps, General Collins’s divisions had 

begun to break it by a simple process 

of continuous, unremitting attack all 

along the corps front for seventy-two 

hours. “Contrary to their former customary manner of fighting,” the commander of the 12th Volks Grenadier 

Division would note, the Americans 

“continued their fighting day and night. 

As the enemy could always bring new 

infantry into the conflict while on our 

side always the same soldiers had to 

continue fighting, the over-exertion of 

our own infantry was extreme.” 8 

The hardest fighting occurred on the 

approaches and within the southern 

reaches of the Hambach Forest along 

both sides of an uncompleted AachenCologne autobahn. The explanation became apparent with capture of prisoners 

from the 9th Panzer Division’s 10th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, but even that 

once-elite regiment could give only 

slight pause to a relentless American 

push. To break up a counterattack at 

one village, a battalion of the 415th Infantry got nine battalions of artillery to 

fire for fifteen minutes. Making a night 

attack along the axis of the DuerenCologne railroad, a lone company of the 

413th Infantry captured 200 men, all 

that remained of the 1st Battalion, 10th 

Panzer Grenadier Regiment. The bag 

included the battalion commander. 

At the same time, the 8th Division’s 

13th Infantry was wiping out the last 

resistance in Dueren with an attack preceded by a 10-minute artillery preparation in which four battalions fired more 

than 1,500 rounds. In an attack on a village two miles to the east, two battalions 

of the 121st Infantry fought all day on 

25 February without success but per8 M S #B–080 (Lan ghaeuser). 
NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE 169 

sisted through the night until at last the 

Germans had enough and pulled out. 

On the 25th, the 8th Division commander, General Weaver, suffered the 

fourth in a series of heart attacks and 

was evacuated. He was succeeded by 

Brig. Gen. Bryant E. Moore, former assistant division commander of the 104th 

Division. 

While the two infantry divisions continued to drive through the night, General Collins ordered his cavalry and 

armor across the Roer bridges. The maneuver he planned for 26 February was 

simple, flexible, and admirably designed 

to exploit the full shock of armor. 

With the 13th Infantry attached, the 

3d Armored Division (General Rose) 

split into six task forces, one built 

around the 83d Reconnaissance Battalion, the others each with a nucleus 

of one battalion of tanks and one of 

armored infantry, plus increments of 

engineers, tank destroyers, and artillery. 

With two task forces, Combat Command A on the right was to attack 

astride the Dueren-Cologne highway to 

gain the Erft River while CCB, also with 

two task forces, was to take the road 

center of Elsdorf, northeast of the Hambach Forest a few miles short of the 

Erft. One task force was to remain in 

division reserve and the 83d Reconnaissance Battalion was to serve as a bridge 

between the two combat commands. 

The 24th Cavalry Squadron was to protect the left flank inside the Hambach 

Forest . In striking northeastward, the American armor was turning away from the 

enemy's LVIII Panzer Corps into the 

sector of the LXXXI Corps, where the 

last of the 9th Panzer Division had arrived to assume a passive defensive role. 

Also present was a Kampfgruppe of the 

3d Panzer Grenadier Division, rushed 

northward from the Eifel. Yet neither 

could do more than impose minor 

wounds on the full-strength American 

division. In taking the first village 

astride the Dueren-Cologne highway, 

CCA lost eight tanks to concealed German antitank guns, but that was the 

worst that happened to any part of the 

3d Armored Division all day. As night 

came, contingents of CCB were drawn 

up before Elsdorf, ready to hit the town 

the next morning. 

For the better part of 27 February 

the 9th Panzer Division made a fight of 

it in Elsdorf, but with fire support from 

a company of tanks positioned in a 

neighboring village an infantry battalion broke into the town before noon 

and began a systematic mop-up. With 

the tank company was a T26 medium 

tank armed with a 90-mm. gun, one of 

the first twenty of this model (the Pershing) sent to the European theater for 

testing. The tank gave a good account of 

itself. At a range of a thousand yards, 

the Pershing hit and destroyed two Mark 

IV tanks, drilling holes through the 

thick side armor, and stopped a Mark 

VI Tiger with a hit at the vulnerable 

turret joint. 

By midafternoon Elsdorf was sufficiently cleared to enable General Rose 

to commit his division reserve northeastward toward the Erft alongside the 

83d Reconnaissance Battalion. As night 

came the armor held a 3-mile stretch of 

the Erft's west bank, and after dark infantrymen waded across to establish two 

small bridgeheads. 

On 27 February the VII Corps thus 

completed its role in Operation GRENADE. In two bounds the armor had cov- 
170 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

PERSHING TANK T26 WITH 90–MM. GUN 

ered ten and a half miles from the 

original Roer bridgehead line to the 

Erft to seal the Ninth Army’s south 

flank. Although General Collins would 

be quick to exploit the crossing of the 

Erft, the exploitation was logically not 

part of GRENADE but belonged to another operation General Bradley had 

been designing to carry his 12th Army 

Group to the Rhine. 9 

Rundstedt’s Appeal 

As these events had been occurring 

9 See below, ch. X. 

with such swiftness, German commanders who as late as 24 February could 

hope that the Ninth Army’s crushing 

drive was not designed to converge with 

the Canadian thrust southeast from 

Nijmegen were at last impelled to face 

reality. Operation GRENADE atthat point 

clearly was the hammer aimed at crushing the southern wing of Army Group 

H against the anvil of Operation VERITABLE. Success of the operations meant 

encirclement or crushing defeat both for 

Army Group H’s southern wing, the 

First Parachute Army, and that part of 
NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE 171 

the Fifteenth Army that was being 

forced back to the north. 10 

Admission of that hard fact came at 

every level of command, from Fifteenth 

Army to OB WEST. Although Field 

Marshal Model at Army Group B acknowledged the truth of a grim estimate 

of the situation made by the Fifteenth 

Army, he could do little to help, He 

did promise commitment of the Panzer 

Lehr Division, which OB WEST accorded him, but the Panzer Lehr still 

was severely bruised from its fight 

against Operation VERITABLE and in any 

event could make no appearance in 

strength for several days. 11 

The Commander in Chief West, Field 

Marshal von Rundstedt, appealed on 25 

February to Hitler for new directives 

designed to prevent disintegration of the 

entire Western Front. The situation was 

bad everywhere, he reported, not only 

in the north but in the south where 

attacks by the U.S. Third Army on either side of the Moselle River (Bitburg 

and Trier) worried Rundstedt most of 

all. When Hitler made no immediate 

response, Rundstedt on the 26th begged 

permission to make at least a minor 

withdrawal in the north, to pull back 

the extreme left wing of the First Parachute Army out of a salient at the juncture of the Roer and Maas Rivers near 

Roermond. The withdrawal was designed to ensure contact between the 

parachute army and the Fifteenth 

Army’s XII SS Corps as the latter fell 

back before the American drive. Yet 

even such a minor withdrawal Hitler 

refused to sanction. 12 

10 MS # B–812 (Zangen). 

11 Ibid. 

12 Magna E. Bauer, German Top Level Decisions 

Hitler’s response on 27 February 

sought to allay Rundstedt’s fears about 

an attack along the Moselle but offered 

no palliatives for any of the crises in 

the west. By redeploying units already 

present, Hitler directed, the endangered 

southern wing of Army Group H was to 

hold where it was. Withdrawal behind 

the Rhine still was unthinkable. 

Even as Hitler’s message arrived, the 

crisis along the boundary between Army 

Groups B and H was growing more serious. Again Rundstedt appealed for permission to make at least the short withdrawal from the Roermond salient. This 

time he had the support of the Deputy 

Chief of the Wehrmacht Operations 

Staff, who personally briefed Hitler on 

the crucial situation. Hitler at last 

agreed-“with a heavy heart.” 13 

Pursuit 

The Germans had ample reason to be 

concerned, for on 26 and 27 February 

both GRENADE and VERITABLE entered 

new, decisive stages. After a pause for 

regrouping, the First Canadian Army on 

the 26th renewed its drive. A British 

corps on the right (part of the First 

Canadian Army) aimed at Geldern, nine 

miles away, where the British intended 

to meet the Americans; a Canadian 

corps on the left aimed at sweeping the 

west bank of the Rhine with a 7-mile 

jump to Xanten as the first step. It was 

on the 26th also that the VII Corps began its successful 2-day sweep to the Erft 

to seal the Ninth Army’s right flank. 

and Plans, January 1945 to End of War, prepared 

in OCMH to complement this volume; MS # C– 

020 (Schramm). 

13 Quotation is from MS # C–020 (Schramm). 
172 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

The next day, the 27th, the Ninth Army 

commander, General Simpson, sanctioned commitment of the first of his 

armored divisions in a major shift to an 

exploitation phase. 

The question in Simpson’s mind, as 

it had been in General McLain’s, was 

whether infantry should continue to 

lead the way in the zone of the XIX 

Corps until the advance had passed the 

German trench system that cut across 

the front through Garzweiler. There 

was room already to insert a new unit 

between the 29th and 30th Divisions, 

but should this be another infantry division or should it be armor? Gambling 

that the enemy was no longer capable 

of an organized defense on any line, 

Simpson told General McLain to send 

the armor through to the Rhine at 

Neuss. As events developed, no real concern was necessary, for before the armor 

could get going on 28 February, the 

30th Division took Garzweiler with no 

particular trouble. 

Elsewhere on the Ninth Army’s front 

no one would even question the immediate use of armor. A combat command of General Oliver’s 5th Armored 

Division already had gone into action in 

the XIII Corps, originally as flank protection; General Gillem ordered the 

rest of the division to attack through 

the 102d Division on 28 February. The 

84th Division in the meantime motorized a task force of infantry and tanks. 

While the 35th Division continued 

northwestward to gain maneuver room 

for the XVI Corps, General Anderson 

alerted a combat command of the 8th 

Armored Division (Brig. Gen. John M. 

Devine) to cross the Roer on 27 February and take up the fight to the north. 

The weather remained favorable for 

tanks. Although rain on 26 and 27 February grounded tactical aircraft, it was 

too light to spoil the footing. 

On the last day of February and the 

first day of March, events proved conclusively that the battlefield belonged 

to armor. All along the front American 

units recorded advances of from seven 

to ten miles, and there was little the 

Germans could do about it. 

By the end of 28 February, the 2d 

Armored Division (commanded now by 

Brig. Gen. I. D. White) and an attached regiment of the 83d Division 

stood only seven miles from the Rhine. 

The next day, 1 March, a single regiment of the 29th Division took Muenchen-Gladbach almost without a fight. 

On the same day, a motorized task force 

of the 35th Division raced to Venlo on 

the Maas, more than twenty-five miles 

beyond the bridge at Hilfarth where 

the division had crossed the Roer. The 

task force was out of contact with the 

enemy most of the way, probably because of the German withdrawal from 

the Roermond salient. 

It was all along the front a typical 

pursuit operation, a return at last to 

the halcyon days of August and early 

September. For most of the troops most 

of the time the tenseness of battle gave 

way to dull fatigue. The setting no 

longer looked like a battlefield. In one 

town electric lights were on, trolleys 

running. Many a village bore no scar. 

Returning to the fight after two days of 

rain, tactical aircraft lent a kind of discordant note with their noisy attacks on 

fleeing German columns. Almost all firing seemed to have an air of unreality. 

Giving way to exhaustion, one lieutenant fell asleep in a ditch, later to be 

awakened by a German woman carry- 
NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE 173 

ing a child and fleeing from some senseless machine gun chatter down the road. 

Yet the battle had not ceased; it had 

only been shattered. The bits here and 

there, meaningless in the larger picture, 

were grim and bloody for the troops 

unlucky enough to run into them. The 

84th Division, for example, after lunging nine miles on 27 February, suddenly came upon a determined group 

of Germans of the 8th Parachute Division at a town west of MuenchenGladbach. With a skillfully organized 

defense that belied the haste with which 

the paratroopers had had to turn from 

their British foes in the north to their 

American enemies at their rear, the Germans brought war back to the 334th Infantry in a daylong fight as bitter as any 

in the campaign. 

Company G bore the brunt of the action. It finally required an advance over 

open ground with marching fire, hand 

grenades, and in the end bayonets to exterminate the enemy. Of an estimated 

50 paratroopers, only 2 surrendered. 

Company G incurred 40 casualties out 

of a force of about 125 riflemen who 

took part. 

The next day, 1 March, as the 84th 

Division broke away again, General 

Simpson shuffled his reserves to make 

fresh troops available in each attacking 

corps to maintain pressure. He transferred the 75th Division (commanded 

now by Maj. Gen. Ray E. Porter), 

which had been under operational control of the British, to the XVI Corps 

and shifted the 79th Division (General 

Wyche) from the XVI Corps to the 

XIII Corps. His army reserve, the 95th 

Division (Maj. Gen. Harry L. Twaddle), he attached to the XIX Corps. 

About the only thing of note the Germans accomplished during those two 

days was an exchange of General von 

Manteuffel, commander of the Fifth 

Panzer Army, for the Fifteenth Army 

commander, General von Zangen, a step 

in implementing the long-projected 

transfer of zones between the two armies. Yet not for another six days would 

the staffs complete the exchange. General von Manteuffel promptly ordered 

the Panzer Lehr Division to counterattack southeastward from MuenchenGladbach with the aim of linking with 

a northwestward strike by the 11th Panzer Division, but the Panzer Lehr still 

was assembling when the proposed base 

of Muenchen-Gladbach fell. The loss 

prompted Manteuffel to order the feeble 

11th Panzer to desist. The XII SS Corps 

continued to fall back to the north, out 

of contact with the rest of the army, 

while the LXXXI Corps and the 9th 

and 11th Panzer Divisions (the two operating at this point under Corps BayerZein) withdrew eastward behind the 

Erft. 14 

Efforts To Seize a Bridge 

On the American side, commanders 

began thinking seriously of the possibility of taking intact a bridge across 

the Rhine. Nobody really counted on 

succeeding, but all deemed it worth a 

try. Strong armored punches aimed at 

the bridges would at least cut up the 

enemy and possibly trap large numbers 

even if the armor failed to take a bridge. 

The Supreme Commander, General 

Eisenhower, indicated to General Simp14 MSS # B-812 (Zangen); B-053 (Bayerlein); # 

C-020 (Schramm); # B-202, Fifth Panzer Army, 

1-17 April 1945 (Generalmajor F. von Mellenthin, 

cofS). 
174 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

son his intense interest in the Ninth 

Army’s plans for taking a bridge. 15 

On 1 March General McLain of the 

XIX Corps inserted the 83d Division on 

the right of the 2d Armored with the 

mission of capturing Neuss and securing 

four bridges: a railroad and two highway bridges at Neuss and a highway 

bridge downstream at Oberkassel. Attacking with two regiments in early afternoon, the 83d continued through the 

night. One regiment cleared Neuss but 

found all three bridges there destroyed. 

The other regiment sent a task force 

circling wide to the west, bent on taking 

the bridge at Oberkassel by ruse. 

Composed of parts of the 736th Tank 

Battalion and the 643d Tank Destroyer 

Battalion, with riflemen from the 330th 

Infantry, the task force moved by night, 

its tanks disguised to resemble German 

tanks. Infantrymen walked beside and 

behind the tanks to make themselves as 

inconspicuous as possible while Germanspeaking soldiers riding on the fronts of 

the tanks were prepared to do any talking required. 

At one point marching down one side 

of the road while a German foot column 

moved in the opposite direction down 

the other, the column reached the outskirts of Oberkassel just at dawn. In the 

gathering light, a German soldier on a 

bicycle in a passing column suddenly 

shouted alarm. Their identity discovered, men of the task force turned their 

fire on the German column while the 

Oberkassel town siren blew a warning. 

Although the task force rushed toward 

the bridge and some tanks even got on 

the western end, the Germans demolished it. 

15 Conquer, p. 184 

North of Neuss at Krefeld-Uerdinger, 

a 1,640-foot bridge named for Adolf Hitler still stood. The bridge lay in the 

zone of the XIII Corps, with the likeliest candidate to rush it the 5th Armored Division. Another possibility had 

arisen late on 28 February when the 2d 

Armored Division of the XIX Corps 

made sudden gains, though at dark the 

2d Armored still was thirteen miles or 

so from the bridge and separated from it 

by what could prove a major obstacle, 

the Nord Canal. Deciding on a wait-andsee policy, General Simpson alerted the 

XIII Corps to be prepared to shift 

northward on short notice to make room 

for the 2d Armored Division should the 

armor be able to take the Nord Canal 

in stride. 

On 1 March a task force of the 2d Armored’s Combat Command A found a 

bridge intact over the canal and blasted 

a way across. Combat Command B, 

which had to put in its own bridges, 

crossed later in the day. By nightfall 

Combat Command A had reached the 

outskirts of Krefeld, only three miles 

from the Hitler bridge. 

Around noon of 1 March, when the 

Ninth Army’s G–3, Col. Armistead D. 

Mead, had arrived at headquarters of the 

XIX Corps to check on progress of the 

attack, he learned that the 2d Armored 

was rolling. It would be wrong, he believed, to stop the armor at the corps 

boundary south of Uerdingen. Since 

General Simpson was away from his 

command post, Mead issued the necessary orders in his commander’s name, 

changing the boundary between the 

XIII and XIX Corps. The change 

would enable the XIX Corps to continue along the west bank of the Rhine 

beyond Uerdingen while forcing the 
NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE 175 

XIII Corps to wrench its attack northward. 

The commander of the XIII Corps, 

General Gillem, promptly protested. 

The terrain near the bridge at Uerdingen, he said, was crisscrossed by canals and road and railway embankments, 

no fit ground for armor. His own 84th 

and 102d Infantry Divisions, he insisted, 

already were well on the way to the 

Rhine and should be allowed to continue. 

Faced with this opposition, Mead and 

General McLain of the XIX Corps went 

forward to take a close look at the situation. They learned by their reconnaissance that heavy fighting was holding up 

the 102d Division in the southern 

fringes of Krefeld. To Mead, the resistance looked to be stubborn; the best 

way to break it was to take advantage of 

the 2d Armored Division’s momentum. 

Although General Gillem continued to 

debate the issue, he finally gave in near 

midnight, and the change in boundary 

stood. 

While these discussions were underway, General Simpson and Field Marshal Montgomery were arranging another shift in boundary. Because resistance still was firm in front of the left 

wing of the First Canadian Army, Simpson proposed to extend his own advance 

to bring his troops up to the Rhine as 

far north as a point opposite Wesel, only 

a few miles short of the Canadian objective of Xanten. Although Montgomery rejected the proposal—possibly because plans he already was formulating 

for jumping the Rhine involved a British crossing at Wesel—he agreed to 

shift the boundary as far north as Rheinberg, ten miles short of Xanten. 

So late in the day were these changes 

GENERAL GILLEM 

in boundaries made that they had little 

effect on the fighting for much of another day. The XIII Corps continued to 

atack toward Uerdingen with the 5th 

Armored Division under orders from 

General Gillem to stop at the new corps 

boundary only if the 2d Armored Division had arrived. Still unaware of the 

boundary change, the 84th Division in 

the meantime was making its own plans. 

The division commander, General Bolling, ordered the 334th Infantry reinforced by the bulk of the 771st Tank 

Battalion to bypass Krefeld, rush the 

Hitler bridge, and, if possible, establish 

a bridgehead over the Rhine. Neither 

during the night of 1 March nor through 

the next morning did any word of the 

boundary change that would stifle this 

plan reach the staff of the 334th Infantry. 
176 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Men of the 5th Armored Division advanced on 2 March against no effective 

opposition until, shortly past noon, they 

met contingents of the 2d Armored just 

south of Krefeld. There they halted to 

await further orders. Backing down, 

General Gillem told his armor to assemble just inside the new corps boundary, 

These forward units of the 2d Armored Division belonged to CCA, which 

had managed only a short northward advance during the day. CCB was coming 

up on the right, handicapped—as General Gillem had predicted—by ground 

cut by numerous small streams. At the 

closest point CCB still was two miles 

short of the bridge at Uerdingen. 

The 84th Division’s 334th Infantry 

meanwhile launched its attack at 1400 

from a point almost eight miles from 

Krefeld, with the intention of veering 

around the north side of the city to 

reach the bridge. With attached tanks 

rolling at top speed, the head of the 

column got into the suburbs of Krefeld 

in less than two hours after jump-off, 

but then the leading tank took a wrong 

turn heading into the city which the 

column was supposed to bypass. The 

tanks quickly became involved in a fire 

fight with German antitank guns and 

could disengage only after nightfall. The 

attack left over from the old orders thus 

stalled as new orders at last reached the 

regiment, changing the objective from 

Uerdingen to a point on the Rhine several miles downstream. 

The task of capturing Uerdingen and 

the still-standing Hitler bridge passed 

wholly to the XIX Corps. The troops to 

accomplish it were from the 2d Armored 

Division’s CCB with two attached battalions of the 95th Division’s 379th Infantry. 

GENERAL BLASKOWITZ 

The Germans for their part were hard 

put to muster a defense on the approaches to the bridge at Uerdingen. 

The responsibility rested not with 

Army Group B, since in driving rapidly 

to north and northeast, all columns of 

the U.S. Ninth Army now had passed 

into the zone of Army Group H’s First 

Parachute Army. For just over a month 

Army Group H had been under General 

Blaskowitz, former commander of Army 

Group G, a result of command changes 

late in January when the Nazi party official, Himmler, had left Army Group 

Oberrhein in Alsace for new assignment on the Eastern Front. While Generaloberst der Waffen-SS Paul Hausser 

assumed command of Army Group G, 

General Blaskowitz had moved to Army 
NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE 177 

Group H to replace General Student, 

an officer in whom Hitler had little confidence . 16 

General Blaskowitz and the commander of the First Parachute Army, 

General der Fallschirmtruppen Alfred 

Schlemm, had been up against many of 

the same problems faced by their colleagues to the south: virtually no reserves and adamant refusal by Hitler to 

allow any withdrawal to the east bank 

of the Rhine. In an effort to salvage 

something in the face of continued pressure from the First Canadian Army and 

a new threat by U.S. troops from the 

rear, the German commanders had decided to try to fashion a bridgehead 

west of the Rhine extending from Uerdingen in the south to Geldern in the 

west and beyond Xanten in the north. 

To do the job at Uerdingen, General 

Schlemm ordered there what was left of 

the 2d Parachute Division, some three 

or four understrength battalions. The 

paratroopers arrived on 2 March, only a 

step ahead of the American armor. 17 

Unaware of the arrival of the paratroopers, the 2d Armored Division made 

plans to attack toward the bridge at 

0200, 3 March. In hope of keeping the 

Germans from demolishing the bridge, 

the 92d Armored Field Artillery Battalion kept up a continuous harassing fire. 

Beginning soon after nightfall on 2 

March and using shells fixed with proximity fuzes, the artillery fired for more 

than fifteen hours. 

The attack itself ran into trouble 

16 Bauer, Army Group G, January 1945. 

17 MSS # B–084, First Parachute Army, 20 

November 1944–21 March 1945 (General der Fallschirmtruppen Alfred Schlemm); # B–147, Army 

Group H, 10 November 1944–10 March 1945 

Oberst Rolf Geyer, Opns Officer, AGp H). 

from the start. Four tanks knocked out 

quickly at the head of the column 

blocked passage of the others. The infantry went on alone to try to clear a 

new route. When the tanks in early 

afternoon again attacked, they reached 

the vicinity of the bridge from the south 

but ground to a halt under heavy mortar fire punctuated now and then by 

the sharper sting of an antitank gun or 

Panzerfaust . The two attached battalions of the 

379th Infantry meanwhile fought their 

way to the highway connecting Krefeld 

and Uerdingen and tried to turn eastward to the bridge. The paratroopers 

fought back stubbornly. Tantalizingly 

close to the bridge, neither infantry nor 

tanks could push the few remaining 

yards. A 13-foot hole in the road at the 

west end of the bridge denied passage 

€or the tanks, and without their help 

the infantry was unable to pierce a thick 

curtain of small arms fire. 

After dark a six-man engineer patrol 

led by Capt. George L. Youngblood 

slipped past the defenders, gained the 

bridge, and crossed it, cutting all visible 

demolition wires in the process. The 

patrol went all the way to the east bank 

before turning back. Yet the engineers 

either missed the critical wires or the 

enemy put in others during the night, 

for at 0700 the next morning, before a 

new attack could gain the bridge, the 

Germans blew the center and west 

spans. 18 

Fighting to clear Uerdingen continued throughout 4 March and into the 

morning of the 5th. At the same time 

18 General Schlemm says: “At Uerdingen the 

demolition wires were shot out by artillery fire. 

Their replacement took hours.” MS # B–084 

(Schlernm). 
178 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the corps commander, General McLain, 

ordered the 95th Division to drive for 

road and rail bridges at Rheinhausen, 

not quite six miles downstream from 

the Adolf Hitler bridge, with the armor 

attacking northward on the 95th’s left. 

Resistance proved to be light. The reason seemed apparent when during the 

morning of 5 March pilots of artillery 

observation planes reported both bridges 

at Rheinhausen already down. By midafternoon the XIX Corps had completed 

its role in reaching the Rhine but had 

failed to get a bridge. 

There was another reason for the light 

resistance. In breaking through at Uerdingen, the XIX Corps had compromised the bridgehead line that General 

Schlemm, the First Parachute Army 

commander, had been trying to hold. 

With the approval of Blaskowitz at Army 

Group H, Schlemm authorized withdrawal to a second and smaller bridgehead line extending from the confluence of the Ruhr River with the Rhine 

at Duisburg in the south to the vicinity 

of Xanten in the north. This was a line 

of no retreat designated by Hitler personally to enable continued supply of 

coal by barge to the German Navy along 

major canals leading to the North Sea 

ports. 

Yet this line also quickly proved too 

ambitious. As the XIX Corps on 5 

March finished clearing its share of the 

Rhine’s west bank, the 5th Armored Division of the XIII Corps dashed into 

Orsoy, on the Rhine opposite one of the 

canals the Germans needed for their 

coal barges. With tanks and half-tracks 

in high gear and firing as they went, 

CCR swiftly covered the last two miles 

into Orsoy, cutting through German infantry and overrunning artillery pieces 

before they could fire. The 84th Division 

meanwhile cleared Moers and Homberg 

but found road and rail bridges leading 

across the Rhine into Duisburg already 

destroyed. 

Operation GRENADE asoriginally conceived was over; but if the Ninth Army’s 

General Simpson had his way, GRENADE 

would be extended to include a bridgehead over the Rhine and a drive to the 

northeastern corner of the Ruhr industrial region. Since 1 March Simpson’s 

staff had been considering this stratagem, based in the main on the theory 

of seizing a bridge intact but, failing 

that, on a quick surprise crossing. 19 

General Simpson settled on a plan to 

cross the Rhine between Duesseldorf 

and Uerdingen, then to turn north to 

clear the east bank for further crossings 

and to gain relatively open country 

along the northern fringe of the Ruhr. 

It was a stratagem that hardly could 

have failed, for Hitler’s refusal to agree 

to timely and orderly withdrawal behind 

the Rhine had left his field commanders 

little with which to defend the historic 

moat and in early March totally unprepared to counter a crossing. 

Yet Simpson’s superior, Field Marshal 

Montgomery, said no. To a bitter Ninth 

Army staff, his refusal rested, rightly or 

wrongly, on the effect an impromptu 

American crossing might have on the 

Field Marshal’s own plans for staging a 

grand set-piece assault to cross the Rhine 

on a broad front. 20 

19 Conquer, pp. 189–90. 

20 Conquer, p. 190. Speaking with some authority 

on the British viewpoint, Chester Wilmot in The 

Struggle for Europe (New York: Harper & Brothers, 

1952). page 677, wrote that Montgomery refused 

because a crossing near Duesseldorf would have 

involved the Ninth Army in the “industrial 

wilderness” of the Ruhr. In none of his published 
NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE 179 

The Wesel Pocket 

Operation GRENADE as originally conceived was over and would gain no new 

lease on life beyond the Rhine. Yet it 

would be extended northward along the 

west bank, for the Ninth Army still 

would have a hand in reducing those 

Germans remaining west of the river. 

Swinging northeastward after an initial 

thrust northward from the Roer crossing site, General Anderson’s XVI Corps 

would be thrown into a tough after-fight 

against remnants of the First Parachute 

Army. The resistance would be stubborn, for never would Hitler actually 

authorize withdrawal. 

From 28 February through 3 March 

the XVI Corps had been slicing through 

relatively undefended country. In driving first to Venlo and thence northeastward in the general direction of 

Rheinberg, midway between Wesel and 

Duisburg, a motorized task force of the 

35th Division and a lone combat command of the 8th Armored Division had 

led the way, each on a narrow front. For 

much of the time the armor had to stick 

to a single road, where its striking power 

at the head was seldom more than a platoon of tanks and a company of infantry; but neither this nor any other 

handicap really mattered. 

Indications that the road march might 

be nearing an end emerged on 3 March. 

The 35th Division’s Task Force Byrne 

(a reinforced 320th Infantry) reached 

works did Montgomery himself comment. German 

commanders almost to a man believed a surprise 

crossing would have met little resistance, a view 

reinforced by events in succeeding days elsewhere 

along the Rhine. See in particular MSS # B–084 

(Schlemm) ; # B–147 (Geyer) ; # A–965 (Generalmajor Karl Wagener) . 

Sevelen, five miles southeast of Geldern, 

but there had a stiff fight to take the 

town. (Map VII) A battalion of the 

134th Infantry made contact with the 1st 

British Corps at Geldern, but resistance 

there too was determined. Although the 

8th Armored Division still had met no 

real opposition, the armor was about to 

he pinched out by the change in boundary that sent the neighboring XIII 

Corps northward. CCB would be attached the next day to the 35th Division, while CCR on the extreme right 

had to be recalled to make room for 

units of the XIII Corps. 

Contact between the forces of Operations VERITABLE and GRENADE on 3 

March at Geldern created a continuous 

Allied perimeter around those Germans 

remaining west of the Rhine. Units of 

the 1st British Corps had reached positions generally on a north-south line 

between the Xanten Forest, west of 

Xanten, and Geldern, while the Canadians still were fighting to wrest a ridgeline within the Xanten Forest from 

German paratroopers. 

The perimeter for the moment corresponded roughly to the outer bridgehead line that General Schlemm of the 

First Parachute Army was trying to 

establish, but not for long. The advances at Geldern and Sevelen meant 

that in the center as in the south the 

Germans would have to fall back to the 

inner bridgehead line, which in this sector ran about six miles east of Geldern 

along the western edge of the Boenninghardt Forest. The southern edge of the 

bridgehead would be anchored on 

Orsoy. 

From the vicinity of Xanten to Orsoy, 

the German bridgehead was some sixteen miles wide. It encompassed the 
THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

only high ground in this generally flat 

portion of the Rhineland: a boomerangshaped ridge in the north covered by the 

Xanten Forest, the wooded Boenninghardt Ridge on a northwest-southeast 

axis that bisected the Geldern-Wesel 

highway, and a series of isolated hills 

south of the Boenninghardt Ridge. 

Within the bridgehead General 

Schlemm still had more than 50,000 

men, representing contingents of almost 

every division that had put up such a 

determined stand against Operation 

VERITABLE, including four parachute 

divisions, the Panzer Lehr and 116th 

Panzer Divisions, and a panzer grenadier division. 21 Only in the north opposite the Canadians was the bridgehead 

line solidly organized, for there the Germans had made a grudging withdrawal 

back to a natural line of defense. Elsewhere hasty withdrawal had left few 

German units with any real integrity. 

Within the bridgehead, two bridges 

still spanned the Rhine, a road bridge 

and a rail bridge, both leading to Wesel, 

the city on the east bank that would 

lend its name to the pocket of German 

troops. Those bridges obviously would 

be a key Allied objective, both because 

they stood almost exactly in the middle 

of the bridgehead and because they held 

out promise for crossing the Rhine with 

dry feet. 

Because of the sparse opposition the 

Americans had been meeting, Allied 

commanders believed the best chance of 

getting the Wesel bridges rested with 

the XVI Corps. The assignment went to 

the 35th Division and its attached combat command, which were to drive 

northeastward to Rheinberg, thence 

31 MS # B–084 (Schlemm). 

northward to take the bridges. Although 

the bridges lay outside the American 

boundary, the commanders informally 

eased boundary restrictions. 

General Baade's 35th Division attacked on 4 March with two regiments 

abreast. On the left two battalions of 

the 320th Infantry came under intense 

fire from small arms, mortars, and artillery as they approached the Hohe Busch, 

a small forest not quite half the distance 

to Rheinberg astride the SevelenRheinberg highway. Fire from neither 

artillery nor tank destroyers could neutralize the German positions. Although 

a platoon of rifllemen got into a village 

just west of the wood, the men withdrew when the enemy began closing 

around them. Under the impression that 

the platoon held the village, five medium and two light tanks of the 784th 

Tank Battalion moved in. With Panzerfausts the Germans knocked out one of 

the mediums and both the lights, and 

only the timely arrival of a reserve rifle 

company spared the others. Even after 

the infantry cleared the village, the Germans after dark came back, besieging 

one American platoon in a hotel with 

hand grenades thrown through the windows. 

It was a touch of the old war again, 

of the days before anyone talked of German collapse, not only here but to the 

south where two battalions of the 137th 

Infantry on the 35th Division's right 

wing also ran into trouble. 

Attacking from a point southeast of 

Sevelen, a leading company of one battalion encountered heavy fire at the base 

of one of the isolated hills that afforded 

a logical extension of any defensive line 

based to the north on the Boenninghardt Ridge and the Hohe Busch. Two 
NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE 181 

platoons found some shelter in ditches 

and behind hedges while the other two 

ducked into houses. Because the company’s artillery observer had lost his 

radio, the men had no artillery support. 

As two German tanks rolled down the 

road, one blast from their guns killed 

the company commander, Capt. Daniel 

Filburn, and a platoon leader, 2d Lt. 

John H. Hartment. With two key leaders lost and the tanks methodically 

blasting the houses and ditches in which 

the men sought shelter, all control vanished. The men fled. Reorganized before 

noon, they went back with tank destroyer support to hold the position, but 

not until the next day did this battalion 

mount another attack. 22 

Another battalion of the 137th Infantry also had a day of hard fighting, but 

with consistent tank and artillery support achieved a noteworthy success. 

When a patrol came under heavy fire 

from one of the isolated hills, the battalion commander, Maj. Harry F. Parker, 

borrowed six half-tracks and several 

light tanks from the 8th Armored Division’s 88th Reconnaissance Battalion, 

mounted Company G on them, and 

sent them racing into houses at the foot 

of the hill. While another company provided supporting fire from the edge of 

a nearby wood, Company G continued 

northward to take not only the offending hill but another a few hundred 

yards to the north. The latter yielded 

200 prisoners and prompted Germans 

on a remaining hill to the north to pull 

out during the night. 

Despite the sudden flare-up of fighting 

on 4 March, General Baade continued 

22 Extensive combat interviews are available on 

these actions of the 35th Division. 

to anticipate a speedy breakthrough to 

the Rhine and possibly even across the 

river by way of one of the bridges at 

Wesel. To gain a leg on the thrust to 

the bridges, he ordered Task Force 

Byrne (the 320th Infantry reinforced) 

to turn immediately northward to seize 

a key crossroads on the Geldern-Wesel 

highway behind the Boenninghardt 

Ridge. The attached CCB, 8th Armored 

Division, was to assume the assignment 

of taking Rheinberg, whereupon the armor and the 137th Infantry together 

were to turn north toward the bridges. 

Task Force Byrne started moving 

early on 5 March, the men fully expecting to make a rapid advance by bounds. 

Yet even though the Germans had evacuated most of the Hohe Busch during 

the night, rear guards held out through 

the morning. As the 1st Battalion at last 

passed to the north of the forest, the 

Germans cut off the leading platoon in 

a village at the base of the Boenninghardt Ridge. It took the rest of the day 

to rescue the platoon and clear the 

enemy from scattered houses nearby. Another battalion that had in the meantime attempted to advance along the 

main highway toward Rheinberg before 

turning north met intense fire from 

automatic weapons and antitank guns. 

The leading company lost two supporting tanks and its commander. 

Even heavier fighting erupted on the 

approaches to Rheinberg where, under 

the plan of CCB’s commander, Col. Edward A. Kimball, a task force composed 

largely of infantry was to take the town 

while another heavy in armor was to be 

ready to push on to the bridges at 

Wesel. The plan was based on a premise 

of negligible resistance; said the commander of the task force of armor, Maj. 
182 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

John H. Van Houten: “We thought it 

was to be a road march.” 23 

The operation started out pretty 

much that way as the infantry force under Lt. Col. Morgan G. Roseborough 

marched beyond the isolated hills south 

of the Hohe Busch and entered the 

town of Lintfort. The town was secured 

by 1100, but among the buildings Task 

Force Roseborough took a wrong turning to end up north instead of east 

of the town. As the column advanced 

along a road leading to the main highway into Rheinberg, German antitank 

guns opened fire, knocking out a halftrack and a medium tank. At the same 

time a rash of small arms fire erupted 

from nearby houses. The infantry dismounted, deployed, and gave battle. 

Anxious to avoid delay in seizing 

Rheinberg, the CCB commander, Colonel Kimball, called forward Task Force 

Van Houten. Major Van Houten and 

his armor, he ordered, were to drive 

alone on Rheinberg. The infantry of 

Task Force Roseborough was to follow 

later in half-tracks. 

Major Van Houten split his task force 

into three columns. One was to bypass 

the opposition holding up Task Force 

Roseborough and drive up the main 

highway into Rheinberg, a second to 

move along secondary roads to join the 

first on the main highway a thousand 

yards out of Rheinberg, and a third to 

drive east and come into Rheinberg by 

way of another main highway from the 

south. 

All three columns quickly ran into 

trouble. Composed mainly of light 

tanks, the left column on the Rheinberg 

highway soon lost four tanks to antitank 

23 Combat interview with Van Houten. 

guns, a Panzerfaust, and a mine, The 

center column never reached the highway as concealed German antitank guns 

knocked out twelve of fourteen medium 

tanks. The CCB commander himself, 

Colonel Kimball, got trapped in a house 

by mortar and machine gun fire and 

escaped only after darkness came. The 

third column meanwhile gained the 

highway leading into Rheinberg from 

the south but there encountered a 

swarm of German infantry and lost two 

tanks to Panzerfausts. 

Having no infantry support, the commander of this column, Capt. David B. 

Kelly, radioed for help; but before infantry could arrive, he decided to risk a 

quick rush against Rheinberg with tanks 

alone. While the bulk of his company 

provided covering fire, three tanks raced 

forward. German antitank fire got all 

three of them. 

Kelly himself then led a dash by his 

remaining tanks, but all except Kelly’s 

own tank lagged. Kelly raced into 

Rheinberg alone, circled the town 

square, machine-gunned a German who 

was about to fire a Panzerfaust, narrowly escaped hits from German antitank guns five times, then raced back 

out of the town. On the way back German gunners hit his tank twice but 

failed to stop it. 

Returning to his companions south 

of the town, Kelly found infantry support at last arriving: two companies of 

Task Force Roseborough that finally 

had eliminated the enemy north of Lintfort. In the hour of daylight remaining, 

the infantry and Kelly’s seven remaining 

tanks mounted a new attack. Kelly himself led it on foot. 

Advancing together, infantry and 

tanks took a hundred prisoners and 
NINTH ARMY TO THE RHINE 183 

knocked out three 88’s, five 20-mm. 

antiaircraft guns, and four machine 

guns. Reaching the southern fringe of 

Rheinberg as darkness fell, they waited 

for the 35th Division’s 137th Infantry 

to come up during the night and secure 

the rest of the town. 

The fight for Rheinberg had all but 

annihilated CCB’s armor; of 54 tanks, 

39 were lost. For both the 36th Tank Battalion and the 49th Armored Infantry, 

it had been the first real fight, strikingly 

sharp action when compared with the 

skirmishing that had marked the combat command’s brief previous experience 

in battle. Although the men had displayed considerable valor, they had paid 

dearly with a loss of 92 killed, 31 missing, 220 wounded. In official tones, the 

8th Armored Division’s staff summarized 

what had gone wrong: “The employment of the tank elements could have 

been improved through the provision of 

closer infantry support, and undoubtedly such support would have materially 

decreased the tank losses of the Combat 

Command.” 24 

A daylong spectator at the events 

around Orsoy was the First Parachute 

Army commander, General Schlemm. 25 

Fully expecting the Americans to send 

a column of tanks streaking northward 

immediately to cut off his remaining 

troops from the Wesel bridges, Schlemm 

nevertheless put into effect plans for a 

new defensive line. Ordering two of his 

three corps headquarters to retire east of 

the Rhine, he placed the remaining 

bridgehead under one corps. The 

bridgehead still encompassed the town 

of Xanten and most of the Boenninghardt Ridge. 

24 8th Armored Div AAR, Mar 45. 

25 MS # B–084 (Schlemm). 

While the Canadians plugged away at 

die-hard opposition in Xanten, General 

Anderson’s XVI Corps headed north 

with two task forces, Task Force Byrne 

still on the left, Task Force Murray 

(the 137th Infantry with what remained 

of the 8th Armored Division’s CCB) on 

the right. Both task forces soon discovered that the hard fighting for Rheinberg on 5 March had been a harbinger 

of what was to come. Although a British 

division on the left of Task Force Byrne 

provided help, the two task forces could 

do no more through the next three days 

than inch forward. 

Then as suddenly as the determined 

resistance had formed, it disintegrated. 

During the night of 9 March the Germans blew both the highway and railway bridges at Wesel, leaving only a few 

rear guards and stragglers on the west 

bank, Passing through Task Force Murray, the 134th Infantry the next morning swept to the demolished highway 

bridge almost unimpeded. 

The Beginning of the End 

In just over two weeks the Ninth 

Army had driven approximately 53 

miles, from the Roer at Juelich to the 

Rhine at Wesel, and had cleared some 

34 miles of the west bank of the Rhine 

from Duesseldorf to Wesel. In the process the army had captured about 30,000 

Germans and killed an estimated 6,000 

more while absorbing less than 7,300 

casualties. 26 In the companion drive, the 

First Canadian Army had driven approximately 40 miles from the DutchGerman border near Nijmegen to 

26 Conquer, p. 198. 
184 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Wl. The casualties in VERITABLE were 

15,600, prisoners, 22,200. 27 

The First Canadian Army’s task had 

been the more difficult of the two, for 

the fortune of the delay imposed on 

Operation GRENADE by the flooded Roer 

River had shoved the bulk of German 

strength to the north. The First Parachute Army clearly had been superior 

to the Fifteenth Army. In addition, 

flooded ground over the first few miles 

of the Canadians’ route of attack had 

imposed serious difficulties. 

Although Field Marshal Montgomery 

had not intended it so, the two operations had developed in a pattern already 

made familiar in Sicily and again in 

Normandy, where Montgomery’s troops 

attracted German reserves while American forces achieved a breakthrough and 

rapid exploitation. In Normandy more 

favorable terrain had lured the Germans 

to Montgomery’s front; here it was because the Canadian attack had started 

first. As in Normandy, the Americans 

with their immense transportation resources were admirably suited for the 

breakthrough role. 

For all the speed of execution, Operation GRENADE was complex, involving 

the crossing of a flooded, defended river, 

followed by two major changes in direction of attack and a minor adjustment 

at the end, A trace along the middle of 

the Ninth Army’s course would resemble a giant S. 

The operation also had introduced 

another complication that all Allied armies now would experience as they 

thrust deep into the interior of Ger27 Stacey, The Victory Campaign, p. 522. 

many. This was the presence of millions 

of noncombatants-native civilians, impressed workers from other countries, 

and liberated prisoners of war. 

In some measure the Allies had experienced the problem before in France, 

Belgium, and the Netherlands, but the 

populace in those countries had been 

friendly. In earlier fighting just within 

the German frontier, many of the civilians had fled the battle zone; but now, 

as the Allies thrust deeper, there was 

nowhere for them to go. Literally masses 

of humanity wandered about, cluttering 

roads, slowing traffic, sometimes clogging prisoner-of-war channels. Destroyed 

homes, damaged water, sanitary and 

electrical facilities, and a complete 

breakdown of civilian transportation 

added to the problem. To establish some 

semblance of order out of the chaos was 

a mammoth asignment that by 15 March 

already was occupying more than forty 

Military Government detachments in 

the Ninth Army’s zone. 28 

Meanwhile, the great build-up for 

crossing the Rhine began, underscoring 

the fact that Operations GRENADE and 

VERITABLE marked the beginning of the 

end. Not only had these operations put 

the Ninth Army, the Canadians, and the 

British into position to cross the Rhine 

but they had unleashed a flood of offensive operations elsewhere, designed to 

carry all Allied armies to the river. Indeed, a contingent of one American 

army already had stolen a march on all 

others and jumped the big obstacle without pause. 

28 An instructive essay on this subject may be 

found in Conquer, pp. 195–97, 
CHAPTER X 

Operation LUMBERJACK 

Although the American attacks in the 

Eifel and the Saar-Moselle triangle were 

unpopular with Field Marshal Montgomery, they were in reality of assistance 

to him, for they did, in fact, limit the 

units the Germans could disengage to 

send north. They also put General Bradley’s forces into better positions for gaining the Rhine whenever the signal came 

and denied hard-pressed German units 

the respite they desperately needed. 

In making plans for going beyond 

those limited objective attacks, General 

Bradley had to consider not only the responsibility for protecting the right flank 

of the Ninth Army as far as the Erft in 

Operation GRENADE but also an additional task that the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, assigned 

on 20 February. Before Bradley could 

turn full attention to gaining the west 

bank of the Rhine, he had to extend his 

protection of the Ninth Army’s right 

flank by clearing a triangle of land between the Erft and the Rhine extending 

northward from Cologne to the confluence of the two rivers near Duesseldorf. 1 

Bradley logically gave the assignment 

to the First Army’s General Hodges for 

execution by Collins’s VII Corps. Once 

the job was completed, the VII Corps 

was to take Cologne, then head south 

1 Ltr. Eisenhower to Bradley, 20 Feb 45, 12th 

AGp Military Objectives, 371.2, vol. VI. 

along the Rhine. As Collins turned 

south, other contingents of the First 

Army were to launch a narrow thrust 

from the vicinity of the road center of 

Euskirchen southeast to the Ahr River, 

there to converge with a thrust by the 

Third Army through the Eifel and create a pocket of trapped Germans in the 

northern reaches of the Eifel. 

Bradley’s plan went by the code name, 

LUMBERJACK. 2 

Despite having relinquished units to 

flesh out the Ninth Army, the 12th Army 

Group still was a powerful force. In the 

First Army, General Hodges had twelve 

divisions (three of them armored), plus 

another at reduced strength (the 106th) 

and two cavalry groups. In the Third 

Army, General Patton had ten divisions 

(including three armored) and two 

cavalry groups. While nondivisional artillery was in no such strength as that 

which had helped the Ninth Army over 

the Roer, it was impressive nevertheless. 

Each corps in the First Army, for example, retained its usual attachments of 

four battalions of 155-mm. howitzers, 

two battalions of 155-mm. guns, and a 

battalion each of 4.5-inch guns and 8- 

inch howitzers. In deference to the role 

GENADE, the VII Corps had two additional battalions-one light, one medium. The 32d Field Artillery Brigade 

Opeation LUMBERJACK, Outline Plan, 23 Feb 

45, Hq 12th AGp. 
186 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

with two 8-inch gun and two 240-mm. 

howitzer battalions, operating under the 

First Army’s control, assumed positions 

favoring the north wing. 3 

The breakdown of roads under the 

February thaw was of some concern to 

all but prompted few special measures 

except in the First Army where the two 

assault divisions of the VII Corps were 

authorized to accumulate five days’ supply of ammunition before jumping the 

Roer. Both armies were relatively close 

to major railheads—the Third Army to 

Luxembourg City and Thionville, the 

First Army to Liège—so that rail transport could handle much of the burden 

except for the last few miles to the front. 

Nor was either army so heavily engaged 

throughout February but that some supplies could be stockpiled. The First 

Army, for example, built up its Class 

III (gasoline) reserves from 1.8 days of 

supply to 6 days. Nevertheless, with the 

lesson of the 4th Division’s supply problems near Pruem in mind, General 

Bradley directed both armies to instruct 

division staffs in how to obtain emergency supply by air. He directed also 

prepackaging of vital supplies at various 

airfields for prompt loading if needed. 4 

Intelligence officers estimated approximately 40,000 Germans in front of the 

First Army and some 45,000 facing the 

Third Army. If the G–2’s erred at all, 

they erred on the side of caution; as 

noted during the first fortnight in February in the pessimistic report of Field 

Marshal von Rundstedt, the Germans 

in all of Army Group B amounted to the 

3 FUSA Rpt of Opns, 23 Feb–8 May 45, p. 5; 

TUSA AAR, Feb–Mar 45. 

4 Ibid. 

equivalent of only six and a half full 

divisions. 5 

During late February, no major 

changes occurred in the German order 

of battle opposite the First and Third 

Armies except those occasioned by Operation GRENADE and by the Third Army’s attacks in the Eifel and the SaarMoselle triangle. Hit by the U.S. VII 

Corps in GRENADE, the southernmost 

corps of Zangen’s Fifteenth Army, 

Krueger’s LVIII Panzer Corps (still minus the armor the corps name implied), 

had been pushed back, in some places 

behind the Erft River and Canal system. 

In continuing northeast after crossing 

the Erft, the VII Corps would strike the 

remnants of Koechling’s LXXXI Corps 

and of Corps Bayerlein, the latter composed of what was left of the 9th and 

11th Panzer Divisions after their piecemeal and futile commitment against 

GRENADE. From a boundary with the 

Fifteenth Army immediately south of 

Dueren, Manteuffel‘s Fifth Panzer Army 

stood with three corps behind the Roer 

River and its upper tributaries while 

awaiting the shift in zones with the 

Fifteenth Army that was to come around 

1 March beginning with exchange of 

the two army commanders, Manteuffel 

and Zangen. Commanded at this point 

by General Felber, the Seventh Army 

stood behind the Pruem and Kyll Rivers, impotently awaiting continued 

strikes by the American Third Army. 

In reaching the Erft River late on 27 

February, General Collins’s VII Corps 

had fulfilled its mission in Operation 

GRENADE. Yet because of the added assignment of guarding the Ninth Army’s 

flank all the way to the Rhine, the corps 

5 For details, see above, ch. VIII. 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 187 

would make no pause at the Erft except 

that necessary to expand the bridgeheads 

established on the 27th and to put in 

bridges. By the end of the first day of 

March, the corps was beyond the Erft 

complex astride the main highways leading from Juelich and Dueren to Cologne. (Map IX) Despite frantic efforts 

by German planes, usually operating 

singly, six class 40 bridges were in place 

across the Erft. 

Resistance was at most places light, 

mainly mortar fire and shells from roving self-propelled guns. Only at Moedrath, lying between the river and the 

canal, was the defense determined. 

There, a local defense force, reinforced 

by stragglers from units of the LVIII 

Panzer Corps, held contingents of the 

8th Division’s 121st Infantry at bay for 

two days until a battalion of the 28th 

Infantry crossed the Erft farther north 

and came in on the German flank. 6 

The conspicuous feature of the terrain 

immediately beyond the Erft, west and 

southwest of Cologne, is a low, plateaulike ridge some twenty-five miles long, 

the Vorgebirge. The slopes of the ridge 

are broken by numerous lignite (“brown 

coal”) surface mines with steep, clifflike 

sides. Abandoned mines have filled 

with water to create big lakes, often confining passage to the width of the roadways. Factories and heavily urbanized 

settlements abound. Northwest of Cologne, the country is generally flat and 

pastoral, dotted with villages and small 

towns, particularly along the major 

highways radiating from Cologne. 

Because of the basic requirement of 

protecting the Ninth Army’s flank, the 

VII Corps was to make its main effort 

6 8th Div AAR, Mar 45. 

north of Cologne, leaving the city to be 

taken later. General Collins split responsibility for the assignment between 

General Rose’s 3d Armored Division 

and the 99th Infantry Division (Maj. 

Gen. Walter E. Lauer) . The critical assignment went to the 

armor, beefed up during the opening 

phase of breaking out of the Erft bridgehead with attachment of the 99th Division’s 395th Infantry. Rose was to strike 

north from the bridgehead to cut the 

Cologne–Muenchen-Gladbach highway 

at the town of Stommeln, thereby severing a vital artery leading into the Ninth 

Army’s flank, then was to turn northeast 

to reach the Rhine at Worringen, eight 

miles downstream from Cologne. A 

clear intent was to split the enemy’s sector swiftly and forestall reassembly and 

counterattack by remnants of the panzer 

divisions of Corps Bayerlein. Meanwhile, General Lauer’s infantry was to 

clear the ground between Rose’s armor 

and the Erft with help from the 4th 

Cavalry Group, while the 8th and 104th 

Divisions on the corps right wing fought 

their way through the lignite mining 

district in the direction of Cologne. 7 

When the armor attacked before daylight on 2 March, all thrusts were successful, but they failed to precipitate 

immediate breakout. Conglomerate German units, mainly from the 9th Panzer 

Division, fought back stubbornly behind 

antitank ditches and obstacles that made 

up an extension of the third line of 

field fortifications the Germans had prepared behind the Roer. The gains here 

were insufficient to have any effect on 

the counterattack projected for that day 

by the 11th Panzer Division into the 

7 VII Corps Opns Memo 163, 25 Feb 45; VII 

Corps FO 16, 1 Mar 45. 
188 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Ninth Army’s flank; that failed to come 

off only because the Ninth Army’s capture of Muenchen-Gladbach prevented 

the Panzer Lehr Division from launching its converging thrust. 8 

As night fell on 2 March, the armor 

had expanded the Erft bridgehead to a 

depth of three miles, which carried it 

beyond the northern reaches of the 

Vorgebirge into open country. From 

that point the Germans would be capable only of delaying actions, almost always in towns and villages since the flat 

terrain afforded few military features. 

Although reinforced from time to time 

by stragglers spilling across the Erft before the steamroller of the Ninth Army, 

Corps Bayerlein had no depth. Conglomerate forces usually including a few 

tanks or self-propelled guns would have 

to gauge their defense carefully to keep 

from being overrun in one village lest 

there be nothing left to defend the next 

one. 

That fact was demonstrated early on 

3 March when two task forces of Combat Command Hickey moved before 

dawn to take the Germans by surprise 

in two villages southwest of Stommeln. 9 

So complete was the surprise in the first 

village. that the attacking armored infantrymen incurred not a single casualty. At both villages the Germans 

were annihilated, leaving nobody to a 

final village still remaining short of 

Stommeln, the division’s intermediate 

objective. 

Combat Command Howze moved 

against Stommeln from three sides. Despite an extensive antitank minefield 

covered by a relatively strong concen8 MS # B–202 (Mellenthin). See above, ch. IX. 

9 The 3d Armored Division usually labeled its 

combat commands after their commanders, 

tration of antitank guns, the columns 

converged on the town in late afternoon. 

Aided by P–47 air strikes against the 

antitank defenses, they cleared the last 

resistance by nightfall. General Rose 

meanwhile sent a column from his reserve, Combat Command Boudinot, beyond Stommeln to a village just four 

miles from the Rhine. Only one more 

town lay between the armor and the 

final objective of Worringen. 

The 99th Division had made comparable progress on the left, cutting the 

Cologne–Muenchen-Gladbach highway 

at several points late on 3 March. Nor 

was success confined to the left wing of 

the corps. Moving toward Cologne 

astride the Aachen-Cologne highway and 

the adjacent right-of-way of the uncompleted Aachen-Cologne autobahn, the 

104th Division made relatively short but 

nevertheless telling gains. 10 So did the 

8th Division, advancing astride the 

Dueren-Cologne highway. Bearing the 

additional responsibility of protecting 

the open right flank of the corps, the 8th 

Division had the slower going but still 

took the second row of towns beyond the 

Erft and gained a firm hold on western 

slopes of the Vorgebirge. The 104th 

Division cleared a big forest astride the 

Aachen-Cologne highway and crossed 

the crest of the Vorgebirge. 

Even though the 3d Armored Division 

still had several miles to go to reach the 

Rhine, the VII Corps commander, Gen10 As the 104th Division prepared to attack before 

daylight on March, a German shell struck the 

command post of the 2d Battalion, 414th Infantry, 

killing the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Joseph 

M. Cummins, Jr., and two visiting officers, Col. 

Anthony J. Touart, 414th Infantry commander, 

and Col. George A. Smith, Jr., assistant division 

commander. See Hoegh and Doyle, Timberwolf 

Tracks, p. 257. 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 189 

eral Collins, deemed it time to shift 

emphasis from the northward thrust to 

capturing Cologne. The armored division’s advance already had split Corps 

Bayerlein from Koechling’s LXXXI 

Corps, leaving the remnants of the latter force as the only obstacle to taking 

Cologne. For two days the Ninth Army’s right flank had been anchored on 

the Rhine at Neuss, so that any threat 

remaining from the 11th Panzer Division 

was minimal. Fighter pilots throughout 

the day had reported Germans scurrying 

across the Rhine on ferries and small 

craft, and more than 1,800 prisoners had 

entered VII Corps cages. 

Late on 3 March Collins told General 

Rose to continue to the Rhine at Worringen the next day but at the same time 

to divert a force southeast against Cologne. The attached 395th Infantry was 

to return to the 99th Division to enable 

the infantry division with the help of the 

4th Cavalry Group to clear all ground 

northwest of Worringen. 11 

Not waiting for a new day before continuing to the Rhine, patrols of the 3d 

Armored’s 83d Reconnaissance Battalion in early evening of 3 March determined that the one town remaining 

short of Worringen on the Rhine was 

stoutly defended. Declining to give battle, the reconnaissance battalion turned 

north over back roads, bypassed the 

town, and in the process captured an 

artillery battery and 300 surprised Germans. Before daylight a 4-man patrol 

led by 1st Lt. Charles E. Coates reached 

the Rhine north of Worringen. A task 

force of Combat Command Boudinot 

then moved up the main road at dawn, 

cleared the defended town, repulsed a 

11 VII Corps Opns Memo 167, 3 Mar 45. 

counterattack by 200 infantry supported 

by five tanks, and drove on to Worringen and the river. 

The 99th Division had continued to 

advance on the left in a manner indicating that the threat from what was left 

of Corps Bayerlein was empty. Unknown to the Americans, the splitting of 

Corps Bayerlein and the LXXXI Corps 

had resulted in the paper transfer of the 

tattered 9th Panzer Division to the 

LXXXl Corps, leaving only a Kampfgruppe of the 11th Panzer Division and 

stragglers of the 59th Infantry Division 

available to Bayerlein. These had prepared hasty defenses facing northwest 

toward the Ninth Army, so that the 99th 

Division was free to come in swiftly 

from flank and rear. In such a situation, 

Bayerlein, his staff, and the 11th Panzer 

Division were thinking less of fighting 

than of escaping across the Rhine. 12 

Despite Hitler’s refusal of every request to withdraw, most supporting 

units by evening of 3 March had already 

crossed the river, and the 11th Panzer 

Division held only a small bridgehead 

on the west bank north of Worringen. 

Lacking authority to withdraw, General 

Bayerlein saw the little bridgehead as 

“the end of the world.” 13 On 5 March 

approval finally came to pull back. 

Through the day rear guards fought 

hard to hold open two ferry sites; and 

as night came, the last contingents of 

Corps Bayerlein pushed out into the 

stream. 

On this same day, 5 March, the attack 

of the VII Corps against Cologne got 

going in earnest. The framework upon 

which the thin fabric of defense of Germany’s fourth largest city was hung was 

12 MS # B–053 (Bayerlein). 

13 Ibid. 
190 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

THE DEMOLISHED HOHENZOLLERN BRIDGE at Cologne with cathedral in the 

background. 

General Koechling’s LXXXI Corps, 

now heading the staffs and the few other 

remains of the 9th Panzer, 363d Volks 

Grenadier, and 3d Panzer Grenadier 

Divisions. Koechling was to use what was 

left of those three units—the equivalent 

of two weak regiments—to defend a socalled outer ring in the city’s suburbs, 

while policemen, firemen, and anybody 

else who could pull the trigger of a rifle 

fought from an inner ring deep within 

the city. Among the defenders of the 

inner ring were the Volkssturm, a levy 

of old men and youths Hitler had ordered to rally to the last-ditch defense 

of the Reich. 14 

As the 3rd Armored, 104th, and 8th 

Divisions drove toward Cologne on 5 

March, resistance was strongest in the 

north, where General Rose’s armor 

faced the seemingly ineradicable 9th 

Panzer Division, and in the south where 

the 8th Division at the end of the day 

still was two miles short of the city 

limits. The relatively slow progress of 

the 8th Division reflected not only the 

14 MS # B–202 (Mellenthin). 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 191 

difficulties of attacking through the coalmining district but also the fact that the 

division was striking the north flank of 

the LVIII Panzer Corps. 

The armor nevertheless broke into 

Cologne soon after daylight, to be followed two hours later by the 104th Division from the west. In a precursor of 

what was to come as Allied armies fanned 

out all across Germany, the stiffest fight 

developed around an airfield where the 

Germans turned sixteen stationary 88- 

mm. antiaircraft guns against the tanks 

of Combat Command Hickey. The 

tanks finally eliminated the guns in 

smoke-screened cavalrylike charge. Almost all resistance by the 9th Panzer Division collapsed a short while later when 

the division commander, Generalmajor 

Harald Freiherr von Elverfeldt, was 

killed. 15 

As evening approached, the First 

Army commander, General Hodges, 

shifted the southern boundary of the VII 

Corps to the southeast to provide room 

for the 8th Division to drive to the 

Rhine south of Cologne and cut the enemy’s last landward escape route. 16 The 

next day, 6 March, the 3d Armored 

drove quickly through the heart of the 

city, a wasteland from long years of 

aerial bombardment, and reached the 

Hohenzollern bridge, only to find a 

1200-foot gap blown in it. Close by amid 

the sea of ruins stood the stately Cologne 

cathedral, damaged but basically intact. 

By noon of 7 March almost all of 

Cologne had been cleared, despite 

curious crowds of civilians jamming the 

rubble-strewn streets. No road or rail 

crossing of the Rhine remained. A bat15 Ibid. 

16 VII Corps G–3 Jnl, 5 Mar 45, 

talion of the 8th Division’s 28th Infantry meanwhile reached the river south 

of Cologne. For the third time in less 

than a fortnight, the enemy’s forces were 

split. The remnants of the LVIII Panzer Corps, along with contingents of the 

3d Panzer Grenadier Division, which 

had fallen back southward away from 

Cologne, formed a last-ditch defense 

across an eastward bend of the Rhine 

but began to evacuate the position early 

the next morning. 17 

General Collins and his VII Corps 

had completed their assigned role in the 

drive to the Rhine in exactly two weeks, 

at once a spearhead for the First Army 

and protection for the flank of the Ninth 

Army. In operations begun on 25 February, only two days after the VII Corps 

had assaulted the Roer River line, other 

parts of the First Army meanwhile had 

joined the race to the Rhine. 

Toward Bonn and Remagen 

The operations had begun with limited goals, though with the certainty that 

they later would be expanded. The plan 

was to uncover the line of the upper 

Roer, protect Collins’s VII Corps during 

its added assignment beyond the Erft, 

and at the same time gain a leg on the 

drive to the Rhine. 

General Hodges directed General 

Millikin’s III Corps, which had joined 

the First Army in the reorganization 

that followed halting of the main effort 

in the Eifel, to cross the Roer south of 

Dueren and reach the Erft River northward from the road center of Euskirchen. 

When the VII Corps turned to take 

17 MSS # B–202 (Mellenthin); # B–080 (Langhaeuser); # B–098, 353d Infantry Division, 2–22 

March 1945 (Oberst Kurt Hummel, CG). 
192 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Cologne, the III Corps was to cross the 

Erft and drive southeast to converge with 

the Third Army “in the Ahrweiler 

area,” the first basic objective of Bradley’s Operation LUMBERJACK. The two 

corps then were to clear the west bank 

of the Rhine from the Ahr River to 

Cologne. General Huebner’s V Corps at 

the same time was to advance its left 

wing as far as Euskirchen to protect the 

south flank of the III Corps and to “prepare for further advance to the east.” 18 

Confronted with the swollen, closely 

confined waters of the Roer tumbling 

headlong through the gorge upstream 

from Dueren, General Hodges devised a 

crossing plan that avoided another 

frontal joust with the river. He directed 

a division of the III Corps to use bridges 

of the VII Corps at Dueren, then attack 

south to clear bridge sites upstream. Each 

division in the corps in turn was to use 

the neighboring division’s bridges, repeating the attack to the south to clear 

additional bridge sites. A division of the 

V Corps finally was to use bridges of the 

III Corps to get beyond the waters of 

the Roer reservoirs. 19 

Two battalions of the 1st Division 

started the maneuver in midmorning of 

25 February, a few hours after the 8th 

Division announced a footbridge and a 

Bailey bridge available at Dueren. (See 

Map VIII.) Crossing in the sector of the 

adjacent division not only avoided frontal 

attack across the Roer, it also enabled attached tanks and tank destroyers to cross 

with the infantry and lend weight to the 

drive upstream that took the Germans of the 

353d Infantry Division of Krueger’s LVIII 

18 FUSA Rpt of Opns, 23 Feb–8 May 45, p. 12. 

19 Sylvan Diary, entry of 24 Feb 45. 

GENERAL MILLIKIN 

Panzer Corps in flank. At noon one of the 

infantry battalions attacked the Roer town 

of Kreuzau and made such progress that 

forty minutes later engineer units that had 

been waiting impatiently in the wings west 

of the river began building a footbridge 

within the 1st Division’s sector. 

As night came on 25 February, the 

1st Division’s bridgehead already was 

firmly established without the loss of a 

man in the actual crossing of the river. 

The infantry battalions of two regiments 

were across, and forward positions were 

as much as a mile and a half beyond the 

river. 

The next day, 26 February, as the 1st 

Division expanded its bridgehead with 

emphasis on gaining more of the east 

bank of the Roer upstream to the south, 

engineers put in a Bailey bridge that 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 193 

enabled the 9th Division’s 39th Infantry 

to repeat the river crossing maneuver in 

late afternoon. Before daylight on 27 

February, men of the 9th Division attacked south to clear their own bridge 

sites at Nideggen, picturesquely located 

on the rim of the Cologne plain overlooking the gorge of the Roer and the 

road leading back to Schmidt and the 

Roer dams. Resistance was firmer than 

that faced by the 1st Division, mainly 

because the 9th Division had crossed 

into the sector of General Puechler’s 

LXXIV Corps and encountered a relatively battle-worthy unit, the 3d Parachute Division. Having undergone a 

hasty reorganization following the Ardennes counteroffensive, the division 

contained its full complement of three 

parachute regiments, though all were 

understrength. 20 

The 78th Division’s 311th Infantry 

crossed the Roer on the last day of February through the 9th Division’s sector 

and immediately attacked to the south, 

covering more than a mile against the 

272d Volks Grenadier Division. This 

completed the river-crossing maneuver 

in the III Corps, but as the 78th Division 

created its own bridgehead plans proceeded for the V Corps to follow a similar procedure for getting beyond the 

Roer reservoirs. 

The III Corps commander, General 

Millikin, had moved quickly to get his 

armor into the fight as soon as the inhospitable terrain of the Eifel lay behind. 

CCB of the 9th Armored Division (Maj. 

Gen. John W. Leonard) was to attack 

east between the 1st and 9th Divisions to 

reach the Erft several miles downstream 

20 III Corps AAR, Feb 45; MS # B–118, LXXIV 

Corps, 2 October 1944–28 March 1945 (General der 

Infanterie Karl Puechler). 

from Euskirchen, while CCA was to 

move south and enter the zone of the 

78th Division, then turn east, oriented 

generally toward Euskirchen. CCA was 

to be joined later by the rest of the 

armored division operating in a “zone of 

advance” within the sector of the laterunning 78th Division. The 14th Cavalry 

Group was to follow CCA and protect 

the south flank of the corps. 21 

Attacking in early afternoon of 28 

February, CCB before daylight the next 

morning came abreast of the most advanced battalions of the 1st Division 

along the Neffel Creek, half the 15-mile 

distance from Roer to Erft. Beginning 

its attack a day later on 1 March, CCA 

smacked almost immediately into a defensive position lying behind the upper 

reaches of the Neffel Creek and barring 

the way to the village of Wollersheim. 

Manned by troops of the 3d Parachute 

Division, the position was reinforced by 

several tanks and assault guns. 22 When 

an attack by dismounted armored infantrymen failed to carry it, CCA held up 

for the night to await arrival the next 

morning of an infantry battalion from 

the 78th Division. 

On the second day of March genuine 

exploitation developed all along the 

front of the III Corps. A double envelopment by CCA’s 52d Armored Infantry 

Battalion and an attached battalion of 

the 310th Infantry carried the sticky position at Wollersheim, while the 309th 

Infantry put the 78th Division into the 

eastward drive and came almost abreast 

of CCA. Those two advances brought an 

end to solid defense by the enemy’s 3d 

Parachute Division. Already the 353d 

21 III Corps Opnl Dir # 4, 28 Feb 45. 

22 III Corps AAR, Mar 45; MS # B–118 (Puechler). 
194 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Infantry Division in the north and the 

272d Volks Grenadier Division, the latter trying to prevent expansion of the 

78th Division’s bridgehead to the south, 

were reduced to executing isolated delaying actions. 

The commander of the LXXIV Corps, 

General Puechler, had. nothing left to 

use in the fight except a weak Kampfgruppe of the 62d Volks Grenadier Division, which had been reorganizing 

behind the line when the American 

attack began. He sent that force to the 

north to try to maintain contact with the 

faltering LVIII Panzer Corps, but so 

weak was the Kampfgruppe that the attacking American troops hardly noticed 

its presence. 23 

The 1st Division on the 2d got within 

three miles of the Erft, while in the 

center, the 9th Armored’s CCB crossed 

the river along the Euskirchen-Cologne 

highway. Following in the wake of CCB, 

one regiment of the 9th Division approached within two miles of the Erft. 

To many a soldier in the III Corps, 

this day and those immediately following could be summed up in two words: 

mud and fatigue. As light snow flurries 

ended in midmorning, a warm sun 

triggered a latent springtime in the soil 

and turned roads and fields into clinging 

mud. The mud and daytime attacks 

alone would have been enough to produce fatigue, but hardly was there a 

commander who did not continue to 

push his men through much of the night 

in order to overcome the advantage that 

flat, open fields afforded the enemy in 

observation. 

At command levels, 2 March and the 

23 III Corps AAR, Mar 45; MS # B–118 (Puech. 

ler) . 

three days following brought preoccupation with boundary changes and juggling 

of units as General Bradley’s original 

plan for clearing the west bank of the 

Khine underwent revision. Prompted by 

the relative ease with which Millikin’s 

III Corps was advancing, the change 

limited responsibility of Collins’s VII 

Corps to the city of Cologne while the 

III Corps was to clear the west bank of 

the Rhine throughout the rest of the 

First Army’s zone from Cologne to the 

Ahr River. At the same time the III 

Corps retained responsibility for crossing 

the Ahr and establishing contact with 

the Third Army. 24 

The first shift came on 2 March when 

General Millikin transferred the 14th 

Cavalry Group to his north flank for 

attachment to the 1st Division in anticipation of broadening the 1st Division’s 

sector. The boundary change became effective the next day, 3 March, as the 26th 

Infantry jumped the Erft and began to 

climb the Vorgebirge, southwest of Cologne, seven miles from the Rhine. 

While the 9th Armored’s CCB held in 

place on the Erft, awaiting relief by 

units of the 1st Division, CCA took the 

ancient walled town of Zuelpich against 

little more than a show of resistance. At 

the end of the day General Millikin 

assigned the armor a specific zone between the 9th and 78th Divisions. 

Despite the importance Bradley and 

the First Army’s General Hodges attached to gaining bridgeheads over the 

Ahr River for linkup with the Third 

Army, it was obvious from orders issued 

by Millikin and his division commanders 

that the fabled Rhine was the more ir24 12th AGp Ltr of Instrs 16, 3 Mar 45, 12th AGp 

Rpt of Opns, vol. V. 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 195 

resistible attraction. 25 The 1st Division 

was to reach the river north of Bonn, the 

9th Division to take Bonn, and one column of the 9th Armored to come up to 

the Rhine midway between Bonn and 

the Ahr. Only one column of the 

armored division, protected on the south 

flank by the 78th Division operating in 

a confined sector, was directed toward the 

Ahr. 

The emphasis on the Rhine around 

Bonn coincided with expectations of the 

German army group commander, Field 

Marshal Model. Believing the main effort of the III Corps to be directed at 

Bonn, Model began to make ambitious 

but futile plans to reinforce the city 

with the 11th Panzer Division once that 

division had withdrawn from the triangle between Erft and Rhine north of 

Cologne, and even to counterattack with 

the panzer division. 26 

The Fifteenth Army commander, General von Zangen, responsible now for 

this sector, saw it another way. In driving 

to the Erft, Zangen might note, the III 

Corps had cleared the cup of a funnel 

delineated on one side by the Eifel, on 

the other by the Vorgebirge. The obvious move at this point, Zangen believed, 

was a drive down the spout of the funnel 

from Euskirchen southeast of Rheinbach 

and the Ahr River, thence along the 

north bank of the Ahr to the Rhine at 

Sinzig and the nearby town of Remagen. 

The town of Remagen was of particular importance because of the location 

there of a railroad bridge that was being 

covered with a plank flooring for motor 

25 Even though the First Army G–3 had made it 

clear otherwise. See Memo, sub: Resume of Instructions From General Thorson, G–3 First U.S. 

Army, 28 Feb 45, III Corps G–3 Jnl file, 28 Feb– 

1 Mar 45. 

26 MS # B–828 (Zangen). 

traffic to provide a vital supply artery 

for the Fifteenth Army. To block the 

way to Remagen, Zangen asked permission to withdraw his LXVI and LXVII 

Corps from the Eifel, where they faced 

entrapment even if they succeeded in the 

apparently impossible task of holding 

their West Wall positions. To this Model 

said no. The two corps were to continue 

to hold in conformity with Hitler’s longstanding orders to relinquish no portion 

of the West Wall without a fight. If 

forced back, Puechler’s LXXIV Corps 

was to gravitate toward Bonn. 27 

To Zangen and any other German 

commander on the scene, probably including Model himself, the absurdity of 

further attempts to hold west of the 

Rhine was all too apparent. The only 

hope was quick withdrawal to save as 

much as possible to fight another day on 

the east bank. 28 

Puechler’s LXXIV Corps provided an 

obvious case in point. What was left 

of the corps was incapable of a real 

fight for even such an important objective as Euskirchen, a road center 

yielded after only “light resistance” 

to the 9th Armored Division’s CCA on 

4 March. Seldom could counterattacks 

be mounted in greater than company 

strength and usually they had no artillery support. Furthermore, the corps 

was split as continued advances by the 

78th Division on the south wing of the 

III Corps forced back the 272d Volks 

Grenadier Division onto the neighboring LXVII Corps. The split became irreparable when on 3 March the 2d 

27 Ibid. 

28 This theme runs through all German manuscripts for the period. Even allowing €or postwar 

extenuation, it can hardly be questioned except in 

degree. 
196 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Infantry Division of the V Corps crossed 

the 78th Division’s Roer bridges and 

headed south through the Eifel toward 

Gemuend at the head of the Roer reservoir system. 29 

The boundary adjustments on the 

American side continued on 5 March 

when General Hodges made the change 

that allowed the 8th Division of the VII 

Corps to drive to the Rhine south of 

Cologne. Late the same evening Hodges 

also adjusted the boundary between the 

III and V Corps, turning it distinctly 

southeast to a point on the Ahr upstream 

from Ahrweiler, thereby providing the 

III Corps over ten miles of frontage on 

the Ahr. 

Those two moves eliminated any lingering misconception about the importance Bradley and Hodges attached to 

crossing the Ahr River. Early the next 

day General Millikin shifted all his division objectives to the southeast—the 

1st Division to Bonn, the 9th Division 

to Bad Godesberg, the 9th Armored Division to Remagen and the Ahr from 

Sinzig to Bad Neuenahr, and the 78th 

Division to Ahrweiler. When the 9th 

Armored’s G–3, Lt. Col. John S. Growdon, telephoned to ask whether the 

armor should continue to make its main 

effort toward the Rhine, the III Corps 

G–3, Col. Harry C. Mewshaw, replied 

unequivocally that the Rhine was of 

secondary importance. The main goal, 

he said, was “to seize towns and crossings over the Ahr River.” 30 

Patton in the Eifel 

The force that was to link with troops 

of the First Army along the Ahr, Patton’s 

29 Quotation is from III Corps AAR, Mar 45. 

30 III Corps G–3 Jnl file, 6–7 Mar 45. 

Third Army, had made a start on the 

assignment in late February and the first 

days of March with the “probing attacks” 

that captured Trier and advanced the 

VIII Corps to the Pruem River and the 

XII Corps to the Kyll. The decision 

General Patton faced then—whether to 

turn southeast and envelop the Saar industrial area or to head through the 

Eifel to the Rhine—the army group 

commander, General Bradley, already 

had made for him. The goal was the 

Rhine. 

On the assumption that this job would 

be soon done, Patton planned a secondary attack to set the stage for clearing the 

Saar. To General Walker’s XX Corps, 

he assigned a narrow one-division zone 

north of the Moselle running from the 

Kyll to one of the big northward loops 

of the Moselle, some thirty-six miles 

downstream from Trier. The zone enclosed a shallow depression lying between the high ground of the Mosel 

Berge, which parallels the Moselle, and 

the main Eifel massif. Clearing it would 

provide access to the transverse valley 

leading to the Moselle at the picturesque 

wine center of Bernkastel and thence 

into the heart of the Saarland. 31 

To General Bradley’s protest that the 

Third Army was spreading its forces too 

thin and would be unable to make a 

‘‘power drive” to the Rhine, Patton replied that the terrain and the roadnet in 

the Eifel permitted a power drive by no 

more than two divisions in any case. 32 

The VIII and XII Corps faced the Hohe 

Eifel, the high or volcanic Eifel, a region 

even more rugged in places than the 

31 TUSA Opnl Dir, 3 Mar 45; XX Corps AAR, 

Mar 45. For further mention of this attack, see 

below, ch. XII. 

32 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 252. 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 197 

western reaches of the Eifel that the 

corps already had conquered. There, in 

an effort to overcome the weird convolutions of the land, the limited roads generally follow the low ground along the 

stream beds, somehow eventually ending 

up at the Ahr, the Rhine, or the Moselle. 

If the Third Army in this kind of terrain was to hope to keep pace with the 

First Army on the open Cologne plain, 

daring would have to be a major part of 

of the plan. 

When the Third Army's long-term 

ally, the XIX Tactical Air Command, 

reported that the enemy already showed 

evidence of withdrawing and probably 

would limit his stands to blocking positions along the roads, that was all Patton 

needed. He ordered that, once the VIII 

and XII Corps had established bridgeheads over the Kyll, an armored division 

of each corps was to thrust rapidly northeastward along the better roads without 

regard to the wooded heights in between. 

Artillery and fighter-bombers were to 

take care of the high ground until motorized infantry could follow to secure the 

gains. 33 

Since General Bradley's plan for Operation LUMBERJACK had put the burden 

of linking the First and Third Armies 

along the Ahr River on the First Army, 

General Patton was free to think primarily in terms of reaching the Rhine. 

He directed Middleton's VIII Corps to 

gain the river around Brohl, midway between the Ahr and the ancient Rhine 

town of Andernach, while the XII Corps 

(commanded again by General Eddy 

after return from a brief leave) came up 

to the river at Andernach. 

When Patton's order came, the VIII 

33 XIX TAC AAR, Mar 45. 

Corps stood generally along the Pruem 

River, still some ten miles short of the 

Kyll. As a corollary to successful clearing 

of the Vianden bulge, the 6th Cavalry 

Group and the 6th Armored Division 

had made substantial advances beyond 

the Pruem, but they were in the south 

of the corps zone, relatively far from 

the main roads leading to the Rhine at 

Brohl. Besides, the 6th Armored was earmarked for early transfer to the SHAEF 

reserve, that irritating outgrowth of the 

Ardennes counteroffensive that seemed 

constantly to be plaguing some unit of 

the Third Army. Thus Middleton ordered the 4th Division at the town of 

Pruem to enlarge its bridgehead over the 

Pruem River, whereupon the 11th Armored Division was to pass through and 

strike due east to jump the Kyll, then 

strike northeast to the Rhine. The 4th 

Division was to follow to mop up, the 

87th Division was to protect the north 

flank, and the 90th Division, taking the 

place of the 6th Armored, was to advance on the south wing. 34 

With units of the XII Corps already 

up to the Kyll, General Eddy gave the 

job of forging a bridgehead to an infantry division, the 5th; then the 4th 

Armored Division was to pass through to 

drive northeast to Andernach. The 5th 

Division and the 80th were to follow, 

while the 76th Division protected the 

right flank. 35 

On the enemy side, it was an understatement to say that German commanders viewed the pending Third 

Army offensive with anxiety, since the 

February attacks in the Eifel already had 

34 VIII Corps Opnl Memos 26 and 27, 1 and 2 

Mar 45; VIII Corps G–3 Jnl file, 1–3 Mar 45. 

35 XII Corps Opns Dirs 83 and 84, 1 and 2 Mar 

45. 
198 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

severely lacerated General Felber’s Seventh Army. How long the Seventh Army 

could hold in the Eifel depended entirely 

on how soon and how vigorously the 

Americans attacked. 

A breakthrough across the Kyll could 

prove fatal, not only to the Seventh Army 

itself but to the two corps (LXVI and 

LXVII) forming the center and south 

wing of the Fifteenth Army and to the 

entire First Army, the north wing of 

Hawser’s Army Group G. Should the 

First and Third U.S. Armies quickly 

join along the west bank of the Rhine, 

the two corps of the Fifteenth Army 

would be encircled. In the process, the 

Third Army’s clearing of the north bank 

of the Moselle would expose from the 

rear the West Wall pillboxes in the Saarland, still held by the First Army. 

A partial solution, as the Seventh 

Army’s General Felber saw it, was for the 

Seventh Army to withdraw from the 

Eifel and protect Army Group G’s rear 

by defending the line of the Moselle; but 

in view of Hitler’s continuing stand-fast 

orders, nobody higher up the ladder of 

command took the proposal seriously. 

The only change made was to transfer 

the faltering Seventh Army on 2 March 

from Model’s Army Group B to Hausser’s Army Group G. By vesting control 

in the army group headquarters that had 

most to lose should the Seventh Army 

collapse, the change inferred some 

strengthening of the Seventh Army by 

Army Group G. In reality, it merely 

shifted from one army group headquarters to another the dolorous task of presiding over the Seventh Army’s agony. 

From confluence of the Kyll and the 

Moselle near Trier to a point near 

Pruem, the Seventh Army’s zone covered 

some thirty-five miles. The most seriously 

threatened part, General Felber believed, 

was the center opposite Bitburg, for 

there stood the U.S. 4th Armored Division, a unit looked upon with considerable respect by German commanders. 

With this in mind, Felber shifted to 

the sector headquarters of the XIII 

Corps on the premise that the corps commander, General von Oriola, having only 

recently arrived at the front, would be 

steadier under the coming crisis than 

would General von Rothkirch, commander of the LIII Corps, who for weeks 

had been watching his command disintegrate. Thus the new lineup of corps from 

north to south was the LIII Corps (Rothkirch) near Pruem, the XIII Corps 

(Oriola) opposite Bitburg, and the 

LXXX Corps (Beyer) between Bitburg 

and the Moselle. 

The Seventh Army contained, nominally, ten divisions, but only two—remnants of the 2d Panzer Division east of 

Bitburg and the 246th Volks Grenadier 

Division, the latter hurried down from 

what was now the Fifteenth Army’s sector too late to save Bitburg—could 

muster much more than a small Kampfgruppe. Both divisions were to remain 

with the XIII Corps in keeping with the 

theory that Patton’s main thrust would 

be made there with the 4th Armored 

Division. Because the attack by the U.S. 

VIII Corps would spill over the Seventh 

Army’s northern boundary against the 

extreme south wing of the Fifteenth 

Army, another division with some creditable fighting power remaining, the 5th 

Parachute Division of the LXVI Corps 

(Lucht), also would be involved. Neither 

the Seventh Army nor the Fifteenth 

Army had any reserves, although the 

Seventh did possess a separate tank battalion with some ten to fifteen Tiger 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 199 

tanks. This battalion General Felber 

wanted to send to his center opposite 

Bitburg, but he would still be searching 

for sufficient gasoline to move the tanks 

from a field repair shop in the sector of 

the LIII Corps when the American attack began. 36 

Because of the requirement to get 

from the Pruem River to the Kyll, General Middleton’s VIII Corps began to 

attack first. Indeed, since the south wing 

of the corps had never stopped attacking 

after clearing the Vianden bulge and 

since the XX Corps and the 76th Division of the XII Corps still were giving 

the coup de grâce to Trier as the month 

of March opened, no real pause developed between the February probing attacks and the March offensive. 

For the 4th Infantry Division, enlarging its minuscule bridgehead over the 

Pruem to enable the 11th Armored Division to pass through, the task was no 

pushover, primarily because of the presence of the enemy’s 5th Parachute Division. Given some respite since the 

American drive on Pruem had bogged 

down on 10 February, the Germans defended from well-organized positions and 

employed unusually large numbers of 

machine guns. So determined was the 

resistance that General Middleton at one 

point postponed the target date for the 

armored exploitation twenty-four hours, 

although subsequent gains prompted 

him to reinstate it for the original date 

of 3 March. Nor was stanch resistance 

confined to the sector of the 4th Division. 

Protecting the corps left flank by re36 German material comes primarily from MSS 

# B–831 (Felber); # B–828 (Zangen); # B–123 

(Gersdorff): and # B–797, LIII Corps, 27 February 

—10 March 1945 (Oberst Werner Bodenstein, Opns 

Officer LIII Corps). 

ducing West Wall pillboxes on the 

Schnee Eifel ridge, the 87th Division 

found that the fortifications still put considerable starch into the defense. 

Passing through the infantry shortly 

after midday on 3 March, Combat Command B of the 11th Armored Division 

attacked to seize crossings of the Kyll in 

a big bend of the river north of Gerolstein, some eleven miles northeast of 

Pruem. Delayed by confusion in the 

passage of lines, the armor failed to advance the first afternoon as much as two 

miles. It was nevertheless apparent that 

the Germans could muster no real 

strength short of the Kyll once the tanks 

got rolling. By late afternoon the next 

day, 4 March, the combat command 

overlooked the Kyll from heights a mile 

southwest of Gerolstein, but patrols sent 

down to the river drew intense small 

arms fire from both the east bank and 

from high ground in the bend of the 

river. Antitank and artillery fire also 

rained from the east bank in disturbing 

volume. 

Having followed the path of least 

resistance, the armor had come up to 

the Kyll south of its intended crossing 

site at a point where troops trying to 

cross would be exposed to fire not only 

from dominating ground beyond the 

river but from the big bend as well. 

Impressed both by the terrain and the 

amount of German fire and apparently 

reluctant to risk involving the armor in 

what could be a time-consuming rivercrossing operation, the division commander, General Kilburn, asked for 

infantry help. While the 4th Division 

cleared the high ground in the bend of 

the Kyll, Kilburn suggested, CCB might 

swing to the north and cross the river 

north of the bend. 
200 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Although the corps commander, General Middleton, approved, the maneuver 

took time, particularly when determined 

Germans, again mainly from the 5th 

Parachute Division, kept a regiment of 

the 4th Division out of the bend in the 

river through much of 5 March. By 6 

March, the fourth day after passing 

through the 4th Division, CCB did get 

some troops across the Kyll, but only 

armored infantry supported by a smattering of tanks and tank destroyers that 

managed to cross at a ford before the 

river bed gave way. 

Even with a foothold already established on the east bank, General Kilburn 

remained reluctant to commit his armor 

to the river crossing operation. Again 

he prevailed on General Middleton for 

permission to use infantry of the 4th 

Division. Only after the infantrymen had 

expanded CCB’s foothold were the tanks 

and tank destroyers to renew the drive 

toward the Rhine. 

’While the armor dallied, less conservative forces elsewhere in the VIII 

Corps rapidly rewrote the entire script 

for crossing the Kyll. Assigned to protect 

the left flank of the corps, the 87th Division went a step further, overtook the 

armored spearhead, and jumped the Kyll 

just after midday of the 6th on a bridge 

captured intact. The 90th Division, commanded now by Brig. Gen. Herbert L. 

Earnest and committed on 2 March on 

the corps south wing to relieve the 6th 

Armored Division, scored an even more 

striking advance. At the point on the 

Kyll southwest of Gerolstein that General Kilburn earlier had spurned as a 

crossing site, a task force organized 

around the division reconnaissance troop 

and two attached medium tank companies jumped the river before daylight 

on 6 March. At the same time, men of 

the 359th Infantry crossed a few hundred 

yards to the south. By late afternoon 

contingents of the 90th Division had 

taken Gerolstein and established a 

bridgehead over a mile and a half deep 

and some two and a half miles wide. 

General Middleton in early evening 

ordered General Kilburn to alert a second combat command, CCA, to cross the 

Kyll through the 90th Division’s bridgehead. In the end, CCB also would backtrack and use the 90th Division’s crossing 

site. 

Just before daylight on 7 March, engineers of the 90th Division—having 

worked with the aid of searchlights— 

opened a Bailey bridge over the Kyll. In 

midmorning, CCA began to cross. The 

11th Armored Division at last might get 

started in earnest on an exploitation that 

was to have proceeded without interruption beginning five days earlier. Yet Kilburn’s men would have to hurry if again 

they were not to be overtaken by events 

precipitated by mare audacious units, for 

to the south, opposite Bitburg, General 

Eddy’s XII Corps had struck in a manner not to be denied. 

Veterans of many a river-crossing operation, infantrymen of the 5th Division 

sent patrols across the Kyll before daylight on 3 March, then threw in footbridges to allow the bulk of two 

battalions to cross near Metterich, due 

east of Bitburg. Fanning out to the high 

ground, the infantry cleared Metterich 

before nightfall, while engineers put in 

a vehicular bridge before daylight on the 

4th. Except against the crossings themselves, the Germans reacted strongly, at 

one point launching a determined 

counterattack supported by three tanks, 

apparently from the 2d Panzer Division, 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 201 

but to no avail. By dark on 4 March, the 

bridgehead was ready for exploitation. It 

was only a question of when General 

Patton chose to turn the 4th Armored 

Division loose. 

Patton, Eddy, and the armored division commander, General Gaffey, had 

only one real concern: weather. Days of 

alternating rain and rapidly melting 

snow, freeze and thaw, already had 

wreaked havoc on the generally poor 

roads of the Eifel, and continued precipitation could severely crimp the plan for 

the armor to drive boldly forward on the 

roads, leaving the ground in between to 

air and artillery. Yet weather alone was 

hardly sufficient reason to delay the exploitation. The armor got set to move at 

daylight the next day, 5 March. 

General Gaffey’s orders were explicit. 

Passing through the 5th Division’s 

bridgehead, two combat commands were 

to drive north for some eight miles over 

parallel roads in rear of the enemy’s Kyll 

River defenses. Having sliced the underpinnings from much of the XIII Corps 

and part of the LIII Corps, the armor 

was to swerve northeast near the village 

of Oberstadtfeld (five and a half miles 

southeast of Gerolstein) and head for the 

Rhine near Andernach, there to seize 

any bridges that might still stand. 37 

Combat Command B in the lead 

quickly began to roll. As the tanks approached the first village north of the 

5th Division’s forward line, artillery and 

rocket fire ranged near the column; but 

the tanks roared ahead. A contingent of 

Germans in the village threw hands high 

in surrender. Although rain, snow flurries, and overcast denied any tactical air 

37 XII Corps FO 15, 2 Mar 45; 4th Armored Div 

FO 12, 3 Mar 45. 

support, the armor quickly picked up 

speed. The combat command’s reports 

of the day’s advance soon began to read 

like a bus or railroad timetable—0845: 

Orsfeld; 1135: Steinborn; 1350: Meisburg; and at the end of the day: Weidenbach, twelve miles northeast of the 

bridge over which the armor had crossed 

the Kyll. 

In one day CCB’s tankers had broken 

through the north wing of Oriola’s XIII 

Corps, plunged deep into the south wing 

of Rothkirch’s LIII Corps, and sent over 

a thousand Germans straggling back to 

prisoner-of-war compounds. The fighting 

at day’s end at Weidenbach emerged 

from a desperate effort by General von. 

Rothkirch to delay the advance with the 

only reserve he could assemble, a Nebelwerfer brigade. Draining the last drops 

of fuel from command cars and other 

vehicles, Rothkirch managed also to send 

toward Weidenbach a few of the Tiger 

tanks that had been languishing in a 

repair shop, but they failed to arrive 

during the night and were destined to 

be shot up individually in the next day’s 

fighting. 

Rothkirch also ordered the 340th 

Volks Grenadier Division, continuing to 

hold positions along the Kyll west of the 

American penetration, to escape during 

the night along a secondary road still 

open north of Weidenbach. Counting on 

the Americans’ calling off the war during 

the night, Rothkirch intended the 340th 

to establish a blocking position at Oberstadtfeld, but hours before dawn on the 

6th, the American combat command was 

on the move again. The tanks entered 

Oberstadtfeld long before the men of 

the 340th arrived, forcing the Germans 

to abandon all vehicles and artillery and 

to try to escape by infiltrating northeast- 
202 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

ward across the tail of the American 

column. 38 

Unlike CCB, the 4th Armored’s CCA 

found the going slow on the first day, 5 

March, primarily because CCA had been 

relegated to secondary roads farther east. 

Boggy from alternate freeze and thaw, 

the roads and a demolished bridge over 

a creek at the village of Oberkail held 

the day’s advance to a few miles. Hardly 

had the tankers warmed their motors the 

next morning, 6 March, when continuing reports of rapid gains by CCB 

prompted General Gaffey to order CCA 

to follow in the other command’s wake 

on the main highway, leaving the secondary roads to the 5th Division. 

The infantry division now was experiencing real problems—not so much 

from the enemy as from the complexities 

of traffic on narrow, poorly surfaced, 

winding roads. Until all vehicles of the 

armored division could clear the bridgehead, the armor had priority; yet the 

infantrymen also were under orders to 

move swiftly lest the armor get too far 

beyond reach of infantry support. With 

great distances hampering radio communications and the roads too congested 

for motor messengers, orders to forward 

units of the 5th Division had to be 

dropped from liaison planes. 

The weather on 6 March again was so 

bad—rain and fog—that tactical aircraft 

for the second day could provide no 

help; but the armor scarcely needed it, 

for the Germans were in a state of confusion. Even though the tankers actually 

cleared the enemy from little more than 

the road and shoulders, preattack concern that the Germans might continue 

38 MS # E-797 (Bodenstein); XII Corps G–3 Jnl, 

5 Mar 45; 4th Armored Div Periodic Rpt, 6 Mar 

45. 

to defend from woods and adjacent high 

ground failed to materialize. Germans in 

great bunches, sometime numbering in 

the hundreds, streamed from hills, 

woods, and villages to surrender. 

At one point, so many surrendering 

Germans were clustered about a column 

of tanks of the 37th Tank Battalion that 

the LIII Corps commander, General von 

Rothkirch, driving past in his command 

car, assumed it was a German formation. 

Too late he saw what was actually happening. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” 

asked 1st Lt. Joe Liese of the 37th Tank 

Battalion’s Company B. 

“It looks like,” Rothkirch replied, not 

without a touch of irony, “I’m going to 

the American rear.” 39 

Monitoring the American radio net, 

German intelligence quickly picked up 

the news of Rothkirch’s capture and the 

extent of CCB’s penetration. Apparently 

with approval of OB WEST, Model at 

Army Group B tacitly acknowledged the 

fact that the LIII Corps had been cut off 

from the rest of the Seventh Army by 

subordinating the corps to Zangen’s Fifteenth Army, whose LXVI and LXVII 

Corps still held portions of the West 

Wall opposite the US. V Corps, Model 

also ordered forward a new commander 

for the LIII Corps, Generalmajor Walther Botsch, who earlier had been 

charged with preparing defenses for a 

bridgehead to be held at Bonn and 

Kemagen. Even though troops of the 

American First Army were fast bearing 

down on both those towns, so urgent did 

Model consider the need for a new commander of the LIII Corps that he refused 

39 George Dyer, XII Corps-Spearhead of Patton’s 

Third Army (XII Corps History Association, 1947) 

(hereafter cited as Dyer, XII Corps), p. 330. 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 203 

to allow General Botsch to wait long 

enough to brief his successor on the situation at Bonn and Remagen.40 

From that point, no commander on 

the German side could have entertained 

any genuine hope for continued defense 

west of the Rhine either by the LIII 

Corps or by the other two corps of the 

Fifteenth Army still in the Eifel, the 

LXVI (Lucht) and LXVII (Hitzfeld). 

The three corps obviously were in imminent danger of encirclement. It was 

without question now a matter of trying 

to save whoever and whatever to help 

defend the Rhine, but in view of the 

stranglehold the word of Hitler still exercised at every level, nobody would 

authorize withdrawal. Botsch, the other 

corps commanders, Zangen at Fifteenth 

Army, and Model at Army Group B— 

all focused their General Staff-trained 

minds on issuing defense, assembly, and 

counterattack orders that looked as pretty 

as a war game on paper but made no 

sense in the grim reality of the situation 

in the Eifel. In the process, each protested to his next higher commander the 

idiocy of it all. 

Model, for his part, ordered the 11th 

Panzer Division—or what was left of it 

after withdrawal from the triangle between the Erft and the Rhine north of 

Cologne-to recross the Rhine at Bonn 

and counterattack southwest toward 

Rheinbach to cut off spearheads of the 

First U.S. Army’s III Corps. That was a 

patent impossibility. The remnants of 

the panzer division would be too late 

even to recross the Rhine, much less 

counterat tack. 

Still convinced the main objective of 

the III Corps was not Bonn but Remagen, General von Zangen ordered General Hitzfeld of the LXVII Corps to 

assume command of the 272d Volks 

Grenadier Division, already forced back 

onto this corps by the south wing of the 

attack of the U.S. III Corps. He was 

then to turn over his West Wall obligations to the LXVI Corps, and with the 

272d and his own divisions (89th and 

277th) to counterattack on 7 March into 

the flank of the III Corps southeast of 

Rheinbach to cut the “funnel” leading 

to the Ahr River and Remagen. 4I 

After making the usual protest that the 

project simply was not feasible, Hitzfeld 

went through the motions of readying 

the counterattack. Already the corps was 

in a somewhat better position to assemble 

than might have been expected, for as 

early as 3 March the 89th Infantry and 

277th Volks Grenadier Divisions had begun limited withdrawals from the West 

Wall positions in the vicinity of the 

Roer reservoirs. By 6 March the two divisions were some five miles behind their 

original lines, almost out of contact 

with the Americans except on the right 

wing where the 2d Division of the U.S. 

V Corps had joined the general offensive. 42 

Even so, assembling for counterattack 

in the face of continuing advances by 

the III Corps in the north and the northeastward thrusts of the VIII Corps still 

was impossible. About all Hitzfeld accomplished in that direction was further 

to clog roads already choked with withdrawing columns and to expose the north 

flank of the LX VI Corps. Continued bad 

flying weather was the only thing that 

prevented Allied aircraft from turning 

the entire situation to utter chaos. 

40 MS # B-828 (Zangen). 

41 MSS # B-101 (Hitzfeld); B-828 (Zangen). 

42 MS # B-828 (Zangen). 
204 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

The position of General Lucht’s LXVI 

Corps, still holding some West Wall positions astride the Weisserstein watershed, was most perilous of all. Already 

the south wing of the corps had been 

forced back by the drive of the U.S. 

VIII Corps to the Kyll River northeast 

of Pruem. With the north flank exposed 

also by Hitzfeld’s withdrawal, Lucht’s 

divisions now were in serious trouble, a 

fact underscored early on 6 March when 

the V Corps commander, General Huebner, began to broaden his thrust—heretofore confined to the 2d Division on his 

north wing—by sending the 69th Division (Maj. Gen. Emil F. Reinhardt) 

eastward in the center of his zone. It 

would be driven home with even greater 

emphasis the next day when the 28th 

and 106th Divisions also joined the 

attack. While a regiment of the 2d Division plunged forward ten miles and 

took a bridge intact across the Ahr River, 

a column of the 28th Division (Maj. 

Gen. Norman D. Cota) overran Lucht’s 

command post, bagging most of the corps 

headquarters, including the chief of staff. 

Lucht himself escaped because he was 

away at the time. 43 

When General Botsch arrived to join 

the LIII Corps with the unenviable assignment of assuming command, he 

learned he had scarcely any combat 

troops left. Such as there were—tiny remnants of the 326th and 340th Volks 

Grenadier Divisions —the corps chief of 

staff had organized into battle groups 

and given the only realistic mission possible, to harass American columns as best 

they could. 

During the day of 6 March, CCB of 

the 4th Armored Division gained another 

43 V Corps Operations in the ETO, p. 394. 

thirteen and a half miles, roughly half 

the distance between the jump-off on 

the Kyll and the Rhine near Andernach, 

then veered northeast off the main highway in the direction of the road center 

of Mayen. That added another five miles 

to the day’s total before the armor had 

to stop for the night because of crumbling roads. Other than a growing problem of handling hundreds of prisoners, 

the combat command had no real difficulty all day except for an undefended 

roadblock that took about an hour to 

remove and occasional fire from assault 

guns or isolated field pieces on the 

flanks. Although CCA attempted to diverge from CCB’s route to force a second 

passage a few miles to the south, demolished bridges eventually forced that 

combat command to tie in again on the 

tail of CCB. 

The infantry divisions of the XII 

Corps in the meantime still found the 

going slow because of boggy roads, demolished bridges, heavy traffic, and 

sometimes determined resistance. Having turned north immediately after crossing the Kyll, the armor had left the infantry to deal with the two divisions 

(246th Volk Grenadier and 2d Panzer) 

upon which the Seventh Army’s General 

Felber had based his unenthusiastic 

hopes of stopping the armor. As night 

came on the 6th, neither the 5th Division nor the 76th, the latter having 

crossed the Kyll southeast of Bitburg, 

held bridgeheads more than a few miles 

deep. 

Matters would improve only slightly 

for the infantry divisions the next day, 

7 March. A predawn counterattack, for 

exampIe, knocked a battalion of the 5th 

Division from a village on the northeastern periphery of the bridgehead. 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 205 

Although real and disturbing to the 

men and commanders who had to overcome it, this resistance when viewed 

against the backdrop of developments 

elsewhere in the Eifel on 7 March was 

negligible and futile. It was on this day 

that defenses of the LXVI and LXVII 

Corps in front of the U.S. V Corps began to fall apart. On 7 March also the 

11th Armored Division in Middleton’s 

VIII Corps at last got across the Kyll 

River in strength at Gerolstein and advanced eleven miles. As night fell, the 

armor took the important crossroads village of Kelberg, near a famous prewar 

automobile race course, the Nuerburg 

Ring. In the process, the tankers forced 

the newly arrived commander of the 

LIII Corps, General Botsch, and his 

headquarters troops to flee. 

Even more spectacular and—in the 

end—decisive was the advance on 7 

March of the 4th Armored Division’s 

front-running CCB. Backtracking several miles to get on a better highway and 

avoid the crumbling roads that had 

stalled advance the evening before, CCB 

attacked in early morning through rain 

and fog. Brushing aside halfhearted resistance in the first village, the column 

paused on the fringe of the second, Kaisersesch, while a German-speaking soldier, using an amplifier, demanded surrender. A heterogeneous collection of 

German troops meekly complied. Racing 

on, the tankers drew their next fire five 

miles farther along at Kehrig. This time 

a demand for surrender drew more fire 

from Panzerfausts and antitank guns, but 

an artillery concentration on the town 

brought a quick end to the defiance. 

From that point, the advance was little 

more than a road march with the tankers signaling German soldiers rearward 

to be taken prisoner by those who followed. Here and there along the road 

clusters of impressed laborers of almost 

every European nationality waved and 

cheered. 

At one point, 1st Lt. Edgar C. Smith, 

piloting an artillery observation plane, 

spotted a column of retreating Germans 

not far ahead, obscured from the tankers 

by the rolling countryside. At Smith’s 

urging, a company of Sherman tanks 

speeded up in pursuit. 

“They’re only 1,500 yards from you 

now, go faster,” radioed Lieutenant 

Smith. 

Later he reported they were only a 

thousand yards away, still screened by 

the terrain. 

After another pause, the radio crackled again. 

“They’re around the next curve,” 

Smith said. “Go get ’em!” 

The tanks burst upon the rear of the 

startled Germans and raked the column 

with 75’s and machine guns. 44 

As night fell, the head of CCB’s column coiled on the reverse slope of the 

last high ground before the Rhine, three 

miles from the river, across from Neuwied. The drive to the Rhine was all but 

finished in just over two and a half days. 

The 4th Armored Division had driven 

forty-four airline miles—much longer 

by road—from the Kyll to a spot overlooking the Rhine. The division took 

5,000 prisoners, captured or destroyed 

volumes of equipment, including 34 

tanks and assault guns, and killed or 

wounded 700 Germans. The division 

itself lost, 29 men killed, 80 wounded, 

2 missing. 

44 Dyer, XII Corps, pp. 330 and 334. 
206 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

In the process, the armor had spread 

havoc through whatever cohesion still 

remained in the German defense west 

of the Rhine and north of the Moselle. 

Everywhere irregular columns of foot 

troops interspersed with a confusion of 

motor and horse-drawn vehicles toiled 

toward the Rhine, hoping to find a 

barge, a ferry, perhaps a bridge still 

standing. Other Germans gave themselves up by the hundreds, particularly 

in front of the V and VIII Corps, while 

still others—some successfully, most not 

—tried to slip behind the armored spearheads to escape southward across the 

Moselle. Abandoned equipment, vehicles, antitank guns, and field pieces, 

many of them smoldering, dotted the 

Eifel in macabre disarray. 

Yet for all the striking success of the 

drive, a chance to cap it with an even 

more spectacular achievement remained. 

Unknown to commanders and men of 

the 4th Armored Division, a few miles 

upstream from CCB’s position, midway 

between Andernach and Koblenz, near 

the village of Urmitz, a bridge across the 

Rhine still stood, the Crown Prince Wilhelm Railroad Bridge. 

Although the 4th Armored Division 

was under orders to seize any bridge 

over the Rhine still standing, nobody 

entertained any real expectation that a 

bridge might be taken; and in line with 

General Eisenhower’s plan for a main 

effort across the Rhine by Montgomery’s 

21 Army Group, the thoughts of senior 

commanders in the Third Army were 

turning from the Rhine to the Moselle, 

which General Patton hoped to cross in 

order to trap the Germans in the West 

Wall in front of the U.S. Seventh Army. 

Aerial reconnaissance had already confirmed in any case that no bridge still 

stood across the Rhine in the Third 

Army’s zone. In keeping with that report and to avoid exposing tanks and 

other vehicles to antitank fire from the 

east bank of the Rhine and to the fire of 

stationary antiaircraft guns ringing nearby Koblenz, the men and vehicles of the 

4th Armored Division stopped short of 

the Rhine itself and remained under 

cover on the reverse slope of the last 

high ground short of the river. 

The coming of daylight on 8 March 

provoked something of a mystery. From 

the high ground observers could see Germans retreating individually and in ragged columns toward what maps showed 

to be a railroad bridge near Urmitz. Because of haze and generally poor visibility, they were unable to make out a 

bridge, but presumably the Germans 

were gravitating there in order somehow 

to get across the Rhine. As the day wore 

on, some prisoners and civilians said the 

Germans had already destroyed several 

spans of the railroad bridge while others 

reported that the bridge still stood. 

CCA had readied an attack to be 

launched before daylight on the 9th to 

drive to the bridge and seize it if it was 

still intact when word came that General 

Bradley had approved the Third Army’s 

turn southward across the Moselle. The 

4th Armored Division was to change direction and try to seize a bridge over 

that river. 

Soon after daylight on the 9th, after 

CCA had abandoned its plan to drive for 

the bridge at Urmitz, the Germans demolished it. Close investigation explained the conflicting reports the 

Americans had received. The Germans 

had earlier destroyed two spans of the 

railroad bridge, but beneath the rails 

they had hung a tier for vehicular traf- 
OPERATION LUMBERJACK 207 

fic. It was the makeshift bridge that they 

destroyed early on the 9th. 

Whether CCA could have taken the 

bridge before the Germans blew it was 

problematical, for by that time the Germans had become exceedingly wary of 

bridges falling into Allied hands. That 

was because of a happening a few miles 

to the north in the zone of the First 

Army's III Corps. There a 9th Armored 

Division only recently oriented to make 

its main effort to seize crossings of the 

Ahr River had found a Rhine bridge intact at Remagen. 
CHAPTER XI 

A Rhine Bridge at Remagen 

Fortuitous events have a way sometimes of altering the most meticulous of 

plans. That was what happened as the 

Allied armies neared the Rhine. 

In seeking at the end of January to 

allay British concern about the future 

course of Allied strategy, the Supreme 

Commander had assured the British 

Chiefs of Staff that a Rhine crossing in 

the north would not have to be delayed 

until the entire region west of the river 

was free of Germans. 1 Field Marshal 

Montgomery’s 21 Army Group, General 

Eisenhower reiterated in a letter to 

senior commanders on 20 February, was 

to launch a massive thrust across the 

Rhine north of the Ruhr even as the 6th 

and 12th Army Groups completed their 

operations to clear the west bank. Those 

two army groups were to make secondary 

thrusts across the Rhine later. 2 

While designating the area north of 

the Ruhr and the Frankfurt-Kassel corridor as the two main avenues of advance 

deep into Germany, Eisenhower left 

open the choice of specific Rhine crossing sites to his army group commanders. 

With an eye toward the Frankfurt-Kassel 

corridor, the 12th Army Group’s planning staff in turn noted, in what eventu1 See above, ch. I; Pogue, The Supreme Command, pp. 413–14. 

2 Ltr, Eisenhower to AGp CG’s, 20 Feb 45; SCAF 

180, 201500 Jan 45. Both in SHAEF SGS Post-OVERLORD Planning file, 381, III. 

ally was to be the First Army’s zone, 

two acceptable crossing sites. Both were 

at points where the Rhine valley is 

relatively broad; one in the north, between Cologne and Bonn, the other between Andernach and Koblenz. From 

either site access would be fairly rapid 

to the Ruhr-Frankfurt autobahn. and 

thence to the Lahn River valley leading 

into the Frankfurt-Kassel corridor. 

Both had drawbacks, for both led into 

the wooded hills and sharply compartmented terrain of a region known as the 

Westerwald; but both avoided the worst 

of that region. The most objectionable 

crossing sites of all were in the vicinity 

of Remagen; there the Westerwald is at 

its most rugged, the roadnet is severely 

limited, and the Rhine flows less through 

a valley than a gorge. 3 

As the First Army neared the Rhine, 

General Bradley, the army group commander, like Patton of the Third Army, 

was looking less toward an immediate 

Rhine crossing than toward the Third 

Army’s drive south to clear the SaarPalatinate. The role of Hodges’ First 

Army in the coming operation was to 

defend the line of the Rhine and mop 

up pockets of resistance. Hodges also was 

to be prepared to extend his units to 

the southernmost of the two acceptable 

3 12th AGp Opns Plan, 23 Feb 45; Rhineland 

Opns Plan (draft), 27 Feb 45. 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 209 

crossing sites, that between Andernach 

and Koblenz. 4 

The Germans at Remagen 

With Allied troops approaching the 

Rhine, the order and efficiency normally 

associated with things German had 

become submerged in a maelstrom of 

confused and contradictory command 

channels. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the railroad bridge on the 

southern fringe of Remagen. There a 

small miscellany of troops was operating 

under a variety of commands. An army 

officer, Capt. Willi Bratge, was the socalled combat commander of the entire 

Remagen area, ostensibly with the power 

of over-all command but only in event 

of emergency. Capt. Karl Friesenhahn, 

an engineer officer, was the technical or 

bridge commander. An antiaircraft officer, responsible to neither, commanded 

antiaircraft troops in the vicinity. Men 

of the Volkssturm were under Nazi party 

officials. Furthermore—though no one at 

Remagen yet knew it—another officer, a 

major, was destined soon to come to the 

town to supersede Bratge's command. 5 

This confusion and contradiction was 

repeated at almost every level of command all along the Rhine front. Much 

4 12th AGp Outline Opn UNDERTONE, 7 Mar 45. 

5 The German story is primarily from a study 

by Ken Hechler, Seizure of the Remagen Bridge, 

based on postwar German manuscripts and contemporary German records and prepared in OCMH 

to complement this volume. A U.S. Army historian 

in Europe during World War II. Mr. Hechler subsequently wrote a comprehensive and authoritative 

account of the Remagen action, The Bridge at 

Remagen (New York: Ballantine Books, 1957). The 

published work includes considerable material 

developed by Mr. Hechler through postwar interviews in the United States and Germany, and has 

also been used extensively in the preparation of 

the first half of this chapter. 

of it was attributable to the fact that 

prior to March, responsibility for protecting the Rhine bridges had rested 

entirely with the Wehrkreise (military 

districts). Troops of the Wehrkreise 

were responsible not to any army command but to the military arm of the 

Nazi party, the Waffen-SS, and jealous 

rivalry between the two services was 

more the rule than the exception. As the 

fighting front in early March fell back 

from Roer to Rhine, responsibility was 

supposed eo pass from Wehrkreis to army 

group and army, but in practice Wehrkreis commanders jealously held on to 

their command prerogatives. Furthermore, antiaircraft troops answered neither to army headquarters nor WaffenSS but instead to the Luftwaffe; and 

within the Army itself the Field Army 

(Feldheer) vied for authority with the 

Replacement Army (Ersatzheer) . To complicate matters further, a number of recent command changes had had 

an inevitable effect. On 1 February, 

Wehrkreis VI had relinquished authority for Remagen to Wehrkreis XII. 

Then, on 1 March, came the shift that 

took place at the height of Operation 

GRENADE, exchange of zones between the 

Fifth Panzer and Fifteenth Armies. A 

few days later, as German troops fell 

back from the Roer, General Puechler's 

LXXIV Corps, gravitating on Bonn, 

might have been expected to command 

any bridgehead retained in the vicinity 

of Bonn and Remagen; but instead, 

Field Marshal Model at Army Group B 

set up a separate command, the one under General Botsch, commander of a 

badly depleted volks grenadier division. 

Botsch was to be responsible directly to 

Zangen's Fifteenth Army. 

As General Botsch tried to appraise the 
210 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

situation, he ran head on into the differing views of his two superiors, Zangen 

and Model, as to the course the Americans presumably would follow—Model 

with his belief that the main thrust 

would be made on Bonn, Zangen with 

the idea that the Americans would exploit the “spout of the funnel” leading 

to Remagen. To be prepared for either 

eventuality, Botsch wanted to place his 

headquarters midway between the two 

towns, but Model insisted that he locate 

at or near Bonn. There Botsch ran afoul 

of Bonn’s local defense commander, 

Generalmajor Richard von Bothmer, 

who raised questions as to just who was 

in command at Bonn. Trying to resolve 

the conflicts, Botsch spent much of the 

first few days of March driving back and 

forth between command posts of the 

Fifteenth Army and Army Group B and 

between Bonn and Remagen. 

Although tiring and frustrating, these 

peregrinations probably established General Botsch as the one man who understood how the diverse command complex 

worked. Driving up the Ahr River Valley toward the Fifteenth Army’s headquarters early on 6 March, Botsch also 

got a firsthand view of pandemonium in 

the making as individuals and depleted 

units retreated pell-mell toward the 

Rhine. This personal knowledge of how 

serious matters really were well might 

have stood the Germans in good stead at 

Remagen, but General Botsch had no 

chance to use it. 

For it was General Botsch to whom 

Field Marshal Model turned in the afternoon of 6 March to replace the captured 

General von Rothkirch in command of 

the LIII Corps. 6 At 1700 Botsch left on 

6 See above, ch. X. 

the futile assignment of trying to resurrect the LIII Corps without even being 

accorded time to brief his successor, his 

erstwhile disputant at Bonn, General von 

Bothmer. Thus was lost to the BonnRemagen defense the one commander 

who, because of his knowledge of the 

complicated command setup and the true 

nature of German reverses west of the 

Rhine, might have forestalled what was 

about to happen at Remagen. 

When the Fifteenth Army commander, 

General von Zangen, learned of Botsch’s 

shift, he told General Hitzfeld, commander of the LXVII Corps, to send 

someone to Remagen to check personally 

on the situation there. A short while 

later, at 0100 on 7 March, at the same 

time Zangen ordered the LXVII Corps 

to counterattack the spout of the funnel 

leading to Remagen, he also told Hitzfeld the Remagen bridgehead was then 

the responsibility of the LXVII Corps. 

With the bulk of his troops still thirtyfive miles from the Rhine, sorely beset 

on all sides and under orders to launch 

a counterattack that on the face of it was 

impossible, and with American troops no 

more than ten miles from Remagen, 

Hitzfeld could do little. Summoning his 

adjutant, Major Hans Scheller, he told 

him to take eight men and a radio and 

proceed to Remagen, there to assume 

command, assemble as much strength as 

possible, and establish a small bridgehead. He specifically warned Scheller to 

check immediately upon arrival as to the 

technical features of the Remagen railroad bridge and to make sure the bridge 

was prepared for demolition. 

At approximately 0200 (7 March), 

Major Scheller and his eight men started 

for Remagen in two vehicles over winding, troop-choked, blacked-out Eifel 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 211 

roads. In the darkness, Scheller’s vehicle 

quickly became separated from the other, 

the one that carried the radio. Running 

low on fuel, Scheller ordered his driver 

to take a long detour to the south to seek 

out a supply installation where he might 

get gasoline. Shortly after 1100 on 7 

March Major Scheller, still without a 

radio, finally reached the Remagen 

bridge. Sounds of battle already were 

discernible in the distance. 

The Hope for a Bridge 

As the crucible neared for the Germans at Bonn and Remagen, probably 

none of the American troops or their 

commanders, who on 6 March began to 

make great strides toward the Rhine, 

entertained any genuine expectation of 

seizing a bridge across the river intact. 

(See Map IX.) Some units were under 

formal orders to seize and hold any 

bridge that still stood, but more as a 

routine precaution than anything else. 

Nobody had made any positive plans 

about what to do should such a windfall 

occur. 

Back in February, as the First Army 

drive began, some staff officers had toyed 

with the idea that a Rhine bridge might 

be taken. So remote appeared the chances 

nevertheless that they went ahead with 

a request to Allied air forces to continue 

to bomb the bridges. Inclement weather 

rather than plan had provided the 

bridges respite from air attack during 

the early days of March. 

In the Ninth Army, of course, a flurry 

of hope for a Rhine bridge had developed on the first day of March, inviting 

the attention of the Supreme Commander himself. 7 Yet that hope had 

7 Ibid. 

proved short-lived; and despite the fact 

that two attempts came heartbreakingly 

close to success, the failures appeared to 

confirm the general opinion that the 

methodical Germans would see to it that 

nobody got across the Rhine the easy 

way. 

The possibility still continued to intrigue commanders at every level. When 

General Hodges visited headquarters of 

the III Corps on 4 March, for example, 

he and the corps commander, General 

Millikin, spoke of the possibility of 

taking the bridge at Remagen; but with 

troops of the III Corps still a long way 

from the Rhine, the discussion was brief. 

The next day, with the 1st Division advancing on Bonn, the division commander asked General Millikin what to 

do in case the highway bridge at Bonn 

could be seized. On 6 March Millikin 

put the question to the First Army G–3, 

Brig. Gen. Truman C. Thorson. The 

bridges, Thorson ruled, should be captured wherever possible. 

The G–3 of the III Corps, Colonel 

Mewshaw, and an assistant had mused 

over the likelihood of taking the Remagen bridge with paratroops or a picked 

band of Rangers; but so slight appeared 

the chance that the discussion never 

went beyond the operations section. In 

the directive issued to the 9th Armored 

Division on 6 March, the order in regard 

to the bridge at Remagen was to “cut by 

fire”; the order also restricted artillery 

fire against the bridge to time and 

proximity fuze. Early in the evening of 

6 March the III Corps also asked the air 

officer at First Army to refrain from 

bombing both the Bonn and Remagen 

bridges. 

That same evening, 6 March, General 

Millikin talked by telephone with the 
212 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

9th Armored Division commander, General Leonard. Among other things, General Leonard recalled later, Millikin had 

something like this to say about the railroad bridge at Remagen: “Do you see 

that little black strip of bridge at Remagen? If you happen to get that, your 

name will go down in glory.” 8 

Yet despite all deliberation about the 

bridge on 6 March, this was the same day 

that Colonel Mewshaw confirmed for the 

9th Armored Division G–3 that the division’s main effort should be aimed not 

at the Rhine but at crossings of the Ahr. 

Furthermore, neither the 9th Armored 

Division nor that division’s Combat 

Command B, the unit headed toward 

Remagen, mentioned in its field order 

taking the bridge at Remagen, although 

General Leonard did note the possibility 

orally as a matter of course to the CCB 

commander. 

For all the talk about getting a bridge 

over the Rhine, the prospect remained 

little more than a fancy. 

Advance to the Rhine 

On 6 March, as General Millikin 

shifted the objectives of his divisions 

southeastward to conform with the First 

Army’s emphasis on crossings of the Ahr 

River, the advance of the III Corps 

picked up momentum. Despite time lost 

to a determined German delaying force 

at the road center of Rheinbach, the 9th 

Armored Division’s Combat Command 

A gained more than ten miles and 

stopped at midnight less than two miles 

from the Ahr. CCB reached Stadt Meckenheim, only eight miles from the Rhine. 

8 Combat interview with General Leonard; see 

also interview with General Millikin and his comments on the draft MS of this volume. 

A regiment of the 1st Division on the 

corps north wing got within four miles 

of the Rhine northwest of Bonn. 

The next morning, 7 March, as troops 

of the neighboring VII Corps eliminated 

the last resistance around Cologne, General Hodges transferred responsibility 

for clearing Bonn to General Collins’s 

corps, but with the responsibility went 

the means, the 1st Division. At the same 

time, infantry of the 9th Division continued to close in on Bad Godesberg, and 

the 9th Armored’s CCA jumped the Ahr 

at Bad Neuenahr, even though the Germans fought doggedly to hold open the 

Ahr valley highway, the main route of 

withdrawal for General Hitzfeld’s LXVII 

Corps. Combat Command B meanwhile 

sent one column southeastward to cross 

the Ahr near its confluence with the 

Rhine and another column toward Remagen. 

Built around the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion and the 14th Tank Battalion (minus one company), the task 

force heading for Remagen was under 

the tank battalion commander, Lt. Col. 

Leonard Engeman. To lead the column, 

Colonel Engeman designated an infantry 

platoon and a tank platoon, the latter 

equipped with the new, experimental 

T26 Pershing tank mounting a 90-mm. 

gun. 

Because bulldozers had to clear rubble 

from the roads leading out of Stadt Meckenheim before the armored vehicles 

could pass, Task Force Engeman got a 

fairly late start on 7 March. The column 

began to move only at 0820, but the Germans apparently gained nothing from 

the delay. The first opposition—desultory artillery and small arms fire—developed more than three miles from the 

starting point. Another mile and a half 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 213 

to the east the column turned south, and 

just before noon entered a big patch of 

woods west of Remagen. Here and there 

little clusters of Germans passed, hands 

behind their heads, anxious to give themselves up to the first Americans who 

would take the time to deal with them. 

A few minutes before 1300, the leading 

infantry platoon commander, 2d Lt. 

Emmet J. Burrows, emerged from the 

woods on a high bluff overlooking Remagen. Below him, the view of the Rhine 

gorge, even in the haze of 7 March, was 

spectacular. 

The railroad bridge just outside 

Remagen, Lieutenant Burrows took in 

at a glance, still stood. 

The Crisis at the Bridge 

Down at the bridge, confusion reigned, 

much as it had all morning. Since soon 

after daylight, frightened and disorganized groups of German troops had been 

fleeing across the bridge, bringing with 

them tales of the strength of American 

forces pouring down the Ahr valley. The 

wounded and the stragglers—tired, 

dispirited men with heads bowed— 

added stark punctuation to the accounts. 

Lumbering supply vehicles, horse-drawn 

artillery, quartermaster and other rear 

echelon service units created mammoth 

traffic jams. The jams would have been 

worse had not a 4-day rush job to lay 

planks across the railroad tracks at last 

been finished the night before. 

Built in 1916, the railroad bridge at 

Remagen was named for the World War 

I hero, Erich Ludendorff. Wide enough 

for two train tracks, plus footpaths on 

either side, the bridge had three symmetrical arches resting on four stone 

piers. The over-all length was 1,069 feet. 

At each end stood two stone towers, black 

with grime, giving the bridge a fortresslike appearance. Only a few yards from 

the east end of the bridge, the railroad 

tracks entered a tunnel through the 

black rock of a clifflike hill, the Erpeler 

Ley. 

A year before the start of World War 

II, the Germans had devised an elaborate 

demolition scheme for the bridge that 

included installing an electric fuze connected with explosives by a cable encased 

in thick steel pipe. Even if the electric 

fuze failed to work, a primer cord might 

be lit by hand to set off emergency 

charges. Later, at the end of 1944, engineers had made plans to blow a big ditch 

across the Remagen end of the bridge to 

forestall enemy tanks until the main 

demolitions could be set off. 

Long at his post, the engineer commander at Remagen, Captain Friesenhahn, knew the demolition plan well, 

but only a few days before 7 March an 

order had arrived that complicated the 

task. Because a bridge at Cologne had 

been destroyed prematurely when an 

American bomb set off the explosive 

charges, OKW had ordered that demolitions be put in place only when the 

fighting front had come within eight 

kilometers of a bridge; and igniters were 

not to be attached until “demolition 

seems to be unavoidable.” 9 In addition, 

both the order to prepare the explosives 

and the demolition order itself were to 

be issued in writing by the officer bearing tactical responsibility for the area. 

Until just before noon, 7 March, the 

officer bearing tactical responsibility at 

Remagen was Captain Bratge. In a growing lather of excitement at the hegira of 

9 A translation of this order appears as Annex 1 

to 99th Div G–2 Periodic Rpt, 7 Mar 45. 
214 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

German units and stragglers, Bratge early 

in the morning telephoned headquarters 

of Army Group B to ask for instructions, 

but he was able to get through only to a 

duty officer. The officer assured him that 

Army Group B was not particularly 

worried about the situation at Remagen; 

Bonn appeared to be the most threatened 

point. 

For actual defense of Remagen and 

the bridge, Captain Bratge had only 

thirty-six men in his own company, plus 

Friesenhahn’s handful of engineers and 

a smattering of unreliable Volkssturm, 

the latter technically not even under 

Bratge’s command. The antiaircraft 

troops that earlier had been set up on 

the west bank had left in midmorning, 

joining the retreating hordes crossing 

the bridge. 

General Botsch, Bratge knew, had 

asked Field Marshal Model at Army 

Group B for an entire division to defend 

at Bonn and a reinforced regiment at 

Remagen. That kind of strength, Model 

had replied, simply was not available. 

Although Model had promised some reinforcement, none had arrived. During 

the evening of 6 March, Bratge had tried 

to reach General Botsch’s headquarters 

to ask for help, but had been unable to 

get through. He had no way of knowing 

that Botsch’s headquarters had pulled 

out to go to Botsch’s new command, the 

LIII Corps. An officer sent from General 

von Bothmer’s headquarters at Bonn to 

give Bratge this information had wandered into American positions and been 

captured. 

At one point Captain Bratge managed 

to corral the remnants of a battalion from 

the 3d Parachute Division and persuaded 

the officers to set up a defense to the 

southwest to block an expected American 

advance from the Ahr valley, but a short 

while later these troops melted into the 

fleeing columns and disappeared. When 

an antiaircraft unit stationed atop the 

Erpeler Ley withdrew, ostensibly under 

orders to go to Koblenz, even that 

strategic observation point was left unmanned. 

At 1115, Bratge looked up from the 

unit orders he was checking at the bridge 

to see a red-eyed major approaching. His 

name, the major said, was Hans Scheller. 

General Hitzfeld of the LXVII Corps, 

he continued, had sent him to take command at Remagen. 

Once Captain Bratge had assured himself that the major was, in fact, from- the 

LXVII Corps and that his orders were 

legitimate, he was pleased to relinquish 

command. Together the two officers went 

to check with the engineers on progress 

of the demolitions, Although reports began to arrive that Americans had reached 

the bluffs overlooking Remagen, Scheller 

was reluctant to order the bridge destroyed. An artillery captain, arriving at 

the bridge, had insisted that his battalion 

and its guns were following to cross the 

bridge, and Major Scheller felt keenly 

that combat units should not be penalized by having the bridge blown in their 

faces, particularly when they were bringing with them precious items such as 

artillery pieces. 

On the hill above Remagen, Lieutenant Burrows’s excitement at discovering 

the bridge intact had brought his company commander, 1st Lt. Karl H. Timmerman, hurrying to the vantage point 

at the edge of the woods. Timmerman in 

turn called for the task force commander, Colonel Engeman. 

The task force commander’s first reac- 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 215 

LIEUTENANT TIMMERMAN, first officer 

to cross the Remagen Bridge. 

tion was much like that of Burrows and 

Timmerman, awe and surprise tempered 

by a sharp desire to get artillery time fire 

on the bridge immediately to hamper 

the German retreat. Supporting artillery 

nevertheless declined to fire, citing reports, actually erroneous, that friendly 

troops already were too close to the 

bridge. 

As Colonel Engeman directed Lieutenant Timmerman to start his infantry 

company moving cross-country into Remagen with the platoon of Pershing tanks 

to follow down the winding little road 

from the bluff, CCB’s operations officer, 

Maj. Ben Cothran, arrived on the scene. 

Like the others before him, he got a 

tingling shock of excitement as he 

emerged from the woods and saw the 

Rhine below him, the Remagen bridge 

still standing. 

“My God!” Cothran exclaimed. “I’ve 

got to get the Old Man.” 10 

He was referring to Brig. Gen. William M. Hoge, the CCB commander. In 

keeping with the theory that the other 

column of the combat command heading 

for the Ahr was making the main effort, 

Hoge had followed closely behind that 

thrust. In response to Cothran’s radio 

report, he tore cross-country to the 

scene. 

He might lose a battalion, General 

Hoge mused, if his men crossed the 

bridge before the Germans blew it. If 

they destroyed it while his men were in 

the act of crossing, he probably would 

lose a platoon. On the other hand . . . . Turning to Colonel Engeman, Hoge 

said, “I want you to get to that bridge 

as soon as possible.” 

A short while later, at 1515, a message 

arrived from CCB’s other column, which 

earlier had found a bridge across the Ahr 

River at Sinzig and had fought its way 

across. In Sinzig the men had discovered 

a civilian who insisted that the Germans 

at Remagen intended to blow the Ludendorff railroad bridge precisely at 1600. 

Although the Germans in fact had no 

specific time schedule, the civilian’s report nevertheless spurred General Hoge 

to urge Task Force Engeman to greater 

speed in seizing the bridge at Remagen. 

Having fought through the town of 

Remagen against an occasional die-hard 

German defender, Lieutenant Timmerman, his infantrymen, and the supporting platoon of tanks neared the bridge 

around 1600. As they approached, 

dodging occasional small arms and 20- 

10 Direct quotations in this section are from 

Hechler, The Bridge at Remagen. 
216 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

mm. fire from the towers, a volcano of 

rocks, dirt, and noise erupted. Captain 

Friesenhahn on his own initiative, when 

he saw the Americans appear, had exploded the charge designed to prevent 

tanks from reaching the bridge. Timmerman and his men could see the Germans 

on the other side of the river scurrying 

to and fro, apparently getting ready to 

blow the bridge itself. 

Major Scheller and Captain Bratge 

had already crossed the bridge to the 

railroad tunnel. Friesenhahn hurried to 

join them to get the order to destroy the 

bridge, but concussion from a tank shell 

knocked him to the floor of the bridge, 

unconscious. Fifteen precious minutes 

passed before he came to his senses. Still 

dazed, he resumed his trek toward the 

tunnel. 

In the railroad tunnel, pandemonium. 

Terrified civilians cowering against the 

walls, children wailing. Reluctant Volkssturm awaiting only a chance to surrender. Clusters of apprehensive soldiers, 

some foreign workers, even some animals. White phosphorus shells from the 

American tanks across the river creating 

a heavy, eye-stinging smoke screen. Some 

soldiers caught outside the tunnel 

screaming as the phosphorus burned into 

their flesh. 

As Captain Bratge rushed outside to 

survey the situation, he came upon Captain Friesenhahn and yelled at him to get 

the order from Major Scheller to blow 

the bridge. When Scheller gave his approval, Bratge insisted on waiting while 

a lieutenant wrote down the exact timing 

and wording of the order. Going ouside 

again, he shouted to Friesenhahn to blow 

the bridge. True to his instructions from 

OKW, Friesenhahn insisted at first on 

having the order in writing, then relented in the interest of time. 

Warning the civilians and soldiers to 

take cover, Captain Friesenhahn turned 

the key designed to activate the electric 

circuit and set off the explosives. Nothing 

happened. He turned it again. Still nothing happened. He turned it a third time. 

Again, no response. 

Realizing that the circuit probably 

was broken, Friesenhahn sought a repair 

team to move onto the bridge; but as 

machine gun and tank fire riddled the 

ground, he saw that not enough time 

remained to do the job that way. He 

called for a volunteer to go onto the 

bridge and ignite the primer cord by 

hand. When a sergeant responded, Friesenhahn himself went with him as far as 

the edge of the bridge and there waited 

anxiously while the sergeant, crouching 

to avoid shells and bullets, dashed onto 

the bridge. 

After what seemed an eternity, the 

sergeant started back toward the east 

bank at a run. Seemingly endless moments passed. Had the sergeant failed? 

Would the primer cord ignite the charge? 

At last, a sudden booming roar. Timbers flew wildly into the air. The bridge 

lifted as if to rise from its foundations. 

Cowering against the explosion, Friesenhahn breathed a sigh of relief. The job 

was done. 

Yet when he looked up again, the 

bridge was still there. 

Lieutenant Timmerman had barely 

finished the order to his men of Company A, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion, to storm across the railroad bridge 

when the explosion came. Some men 

flung themselves to the ground for protection. Others watched in awe as the 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 217 

SERGEANT DRABIK, first American across the 

Rhine. 

big span lifted and a giant cloud of dust 

and thick black smoke rose. Moments 

later, like Friesenhahn and the Germans 

on the east bank, they saw in incredible 

surprise that the bridge still stood. 

As the smoke and dust cleared, Timmerman could discern that even though 

the explosion had torn big holes in the 

planking over the railroad tracks, the 

footpaths on either side were intact. Signaling his platoon leaders, he again ordered attack. 

Bobbing and weaving, dashing from 

the cover of one metal girder to another, 

the men made their way onto the bridge. 

Machine gun fire from the towers near 

the east bank spattered among them, but 

return fire from the riflemen themselves 

and from the big tanks on the Remagen 

side kept the German fire down. With a 

few well-placed rounds, the Pershings 

silenced German riflemen firing from a 

half-submerged barge in the river. 

Close behind the first riflemen went 

two sergeants and a lieutenant from the 

engineer detachment operating with 

Task Force Engeman. Working swiftly, 

the engineers cut every wire they could 

find that might possibly lead to additional demolitions. They shot apart 

heavy cables with their carbines. 

Nearing the far end, several men digressed to clean out the machine gunners 

from the towers, while others continued 

to the east bank. The first man to set 

foot beyond the Rhine was an assistant 

squad leader, Sgt. Alex Drabik. (Map 

3) Others were only moments behind, 

including the first officer to cross, the 

Company A commander, Lieutenant 

Timmerman. 

As Timmerman’s men spread out on 

the east bank and one platoon began the 

onerous task of climbing the precipitous 

Erpeler Ley, Major Scheller in the railroad tunnel tried time after time to contact his higher headquarters to report 

that the bridge still stood. Failing that, 

he mounted a bicycle and rode off to report in person. As American troops appeared at both ends of the tunnel, Captain Bratge and the other Germans inside, including the engineer officer, Captain Friesenhahn, surrendered. 

Reaction to the Coup 

Hardly had the first of Timmerman’s 

men crossed the Rhine when Colonel 

Engeman radioed the news to the CCB 

commander, General Hoge. Because 

Hoge in the meantime. had received 

word to divert as much strength as possible from Remagen to reinforce the 
H. C. Brewer, Jr 

MAP 3 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 219 

bridgehead over the Ahr River at Sinzig, 

he would be acting contrary to an order 

still in effect if, instead, he reinforced 

the Rhine crossing. He hesitated only 

momentarily. Send the rest of the armored infantry battalion across immediately, he told Engeman; then he drove 

to his own command post for a meeting 

with his division commander, General 

Leonard. 

General Leonard’s first reaction to 

the news was mock concern against 

Hoge’s upset of the plans. “But let’s 

push it,” he added, “and then put it up 

to Corps.” 11 

At 1630 the 9th Armored Division 

chief of staff telephoned the command 

post of the III Corps. 

“Hot damn!” cried a little sergeant as 

he transferred the call to the chief of 

staff and threw down the telephone. 

“We got a bridge over the Rhine and 

we’re crossing over!” 12 

Although the corps commander, General Millikin, was away from the command post, his chief of staff, Col. James 

H. Phillips, believed he knew how his 

commander would react. Even before 

trying to contact Millikin, he told the 

9th Armored Division to exploit the 

crossing. 

When Phillips relayed the news to 

headquarters of the First Army, General 

Hodges ordered engineers and boats to 

Remagen even before calling General 

Bradley at 12th Army Group for approval. 

“Hot dog, Courtney”—General Bradley later recalled his own reaction— 

11 Hechler, The Bridge at Remagen, p. 155. 

12 Ibid., p. viii. 

“This will bust him wide open . . . . Shove everything you can across it.” 13 

General Eisenhower’s reaction was 

much the same. Only the planners appeared to question in any degree the 

advisability of exploiting the coup. The 

SHAEF G–3, General Bull, who happened to be at Bradley’s headquarters 

when the news arrived, remarked that a 

crossing at Remagen led no place and 

that a diversion of strength to Remagen 

would interfere with General Eisenhower’s plan to make the main effort north 

of the Ruhr. 14 Yet Bradley would have 

none of it, and Eisenhower confirmed 

that view. 

“Well, Brad,” Eisenhower said, “we 

expected to have . . . [four] divisions 

tied up around Cologne and now those 

are free. Go ahead and shove over at 

least five divisions instantly, and anything else that is necessary to make certain of our hold.” 15 

Confirmed approval to exploit the 

crossing reached the III Corps at 1845 

on 7 March, and an hour and a half later 

General Hodges relieved the corps of 

the assignment of driving south across 

the Ahr. General Millikin in the meantime had been making plans to motorize 

the reserve regiments of his two infantry 

divisions and rush them to the bridge. 

Engineers, artillery, antiaircraft–units 

of all types stirred in the early darkness 

and headed for Remagen. All roads lead13 Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 510. 

14 Ibid. For General Bull’s view of this event, see 

John Toland, The Last 100 Days (New York: 

Random House, 1966), pp. 214–15. 

15 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe 

(New York: Doubleday and Company, 1948), p. 

380; Capt. Harry C. Butcher, USNR, My Three 

Years with Eisenhower (New York: Simon and 

Schuster, 1946). p. 768. Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 

page 514, says four divisions. 
220 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

ing toward the little Rhine town soon 

were thick with traffic. Before midnight 

three heavy caliber artillery battalions 

already were in position to fire in support of the little band of infantrymen 

east of the Rhine. 

At the bridge, the handful of engineers from Task Force Engeman worked 

unceasingly to repair the damage the 

demolition had done to the flooring of 

the bridge. Although considerable work 

remained, the engineers shortly before 

midnight signaled that tanks might try 

to cross, 

Nine Sherman tanks of the 14th Tank 

Battalion crossed without incident, but 

the first tank destroyer to try it foundered in an unrepaired hole in the 

planking. The vehicle appeared to teeter 

precariously over the swirling waters far 

below, but for almost five hours every 

effort either to right the destroyer or to 

dump it into the river failed. At 0530 

(8 March) the vehicle was at last removed. 

In the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion’s minuscule bridgehead, the infantrymen and their limited tank support 

spent a troubled night fighting off 

platoon-size counterattacks along their 

undermanned perimeter and expecting 

the Germans at any moment to strike in 

force. At dawn, when the disabled tank 

destroyer was removed from the bridge, 

the arrival of a battalion of the 78th 

Division’s 310th Infantry relieved the 

pressure. As the first vestiges of daylight 

appeared, a battalion of the 9th Division’s 47th Infantry also crossed into the 

bridgehead. 

In the twenty-four hours following 

seizure of the bridge, almost 8,000 men 

crossed the Rhine, including two armored infantry battalions, a tank battalion, a tank destroyer company, and a 

platoon of armored engineers of the 9th 

Armored Division; a regiment and two 

additional battalions of the 78th Division; a regiment and one additional battalion of the 9th Division; and one and 

a half batteries of antiaircraft artillery. 

During that twenty-four hours and 

into the next day, 9 March, General 

Eisenhower’s initial jubilation over capture of the Ludendorff Bridge cooled 

under the impact of admonitions from 

his staff. Committed to a main effort 

north of the Ruhr with the 21 Army 

Group, he actually had few reserves to 

spare for Remagen. Late on g March his 

G–3, General Bull, informed General 

Bradley that while the Supreme Commander wanted the brideghead held 

firmly and developed for an early advance southeastward, he did not want it 

enlarged to a size greater than five divisions could defend. Bradley in turn told 

General Hodges to limit advances to a 

thousand yards a day, just enough to 

keep the enemy off balance and prevent 

him from mining extensively around the 

periphery. Once the troops reached the 

autobahn, seven miles beyond the 

Rhine, they were to hold in place until 

General Eisenhower ordered expansion. 

Thus, almost from the start, the forces 

in the Remagen bridgehead were to operate under wraps that would not be removed for more than a fortnight. 

On the German Side 

Like the Americans, the Germans had 

no plan ready to cope with the situation 

at Remagen. Indeed, the fact that the 

U.S. Ninth Army had made no immediate 

move to jump the Rhine had lulled 

many German commanders into the be- 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 221 

lief that the Allies would pause to mop 

up and regroup before trying to cross; 

and that had engendered a measure of 

apathy in regard to the possibility of 

losing a bridge. 

Nor did the Germans have any reserves 

close at hand to throw quickly against the 

little Remagen bridgehead. Most combat units near Remagen were still on the 

west bank, struggling to escape American pincers and get back somehow across 

the Rhine. Most of the service troops in 

the Remagen area were busy ferrying the 

depleted combat forces. 

As the news about the Ludendorff 

Bridge spread slowly through a disorganized German command, officers near 

Remagen assembled about a hundred 

engineers and antiaircraft troops and 

fought through the night of the 7th, but 

to little avail. One group of Germans did 

reach the bridge itself with explosives in 

hand, but men of the 78th Division captured them before they could do any 

damage. 

Because of the fluid tactical situation, 

many higher German commanders were 

on the move during the night of 7 March 

and failed for hours to learn about loss 

of the bridge. Field Marshal von Rundstedt’s headquarters got the word earlier 

than most through a chance conversation 

between the operations officer and local 

commanders. Nobody could find the 

Army Group B commander, Field Marshal Model, in whose sector the debacle 

had occurred. Model himself was at “the 

front,” his headquarters on the move. 

When OB WEST finally did establish 

contact with Army Group B, Model still 

was away. So preoccupied was the army 

group staff with trying to save divisions 

of the LXVI and LXVII Corps, threatened with entrapment by the 4th Armored Division’s sweep to the Rhine 

above Andernach, that the headquarters 

at first reacted apathetically. When 

Model returned during the morning of 

8 March, he ordered the 11th Panzer 

Division, which by that time was preparing to recross the Rhine at Bonn to make 

the projected counterattack southwest 

toward Rheinbach, to sweep the Americans into the river and blow the Ludendorff Bridge. 

The 11th Panzer Division had about 

4,000 men, 25 tanks, and 18 artillery 

pieces, a force that well might have 

struck a telling blow had it been available soon after the first Americans 

crossed the Rhine. Yet the panzer- division, assembled near Duesseldorf, had 

somehow to obtain gasoline for its vehicles and thread a way along roads already jammed with traffic and under 

attack from Allied planes. Not until two 

days later, 10 March, were even the first 

contingents of the division to get into 

action against the bridgehead. 16 Field 

Marshal Model meanwhile designated a 

single commander to co-ordinate all 

counteraction at Remagen, General Bayerlein, erstwhile commander of Corps 

Bayerlein, who had fallen back before 

the drive of the VII Corps on Cologne. 

Bayerlein on 9 March took command of 

a heterogeneous collection of service 

troops opposite Remagen with the promise of the incoming 11th Panzer Division, 

some 300 men and 15 tanks masquerading under the name of the once-great 

Panzer Lehr Division, another 600 men 

and 15 tanks under the seemingly imperishable 9th Panzer Division, and a 

company-size remnant of the 106th Panzer Brigade with 5 tanks. Once all troops 

16 MS # B–590, 11th Panzer Division, 6–21 March 

1945 (Generalleutnant Wend von Wietersheim). 
222 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

arrived, including relatively strong artillery units, Bayerlein was to have approximately 10,000 men grouped under 

the headquarters staff of the LIII Corps. 

When Model visited Bayerlein’s new 

headquarters on 9 March, Bayerlein outlined a plan to attack at dusk on 10 

March against the center of the bridgehead, then roll up the flanks. The main 

component was to be the Kampfgruppe 

of the Panzer Lehr Division; but when 

the bulk of that force failed to arrive on 

time, Model vetoed the entire plan. 17 

Model’s first concern was to draw some 

kind of cordon around the bridgehead, 

but in the process he let pass the possibility of counterattacking before the 

Americans became too strong to be 

evicted. As American attacks continued, 

the incoming 11th Panzer Division also 

became drawn into the defensive cordon 

and could launch only small, localized 

counterattacks. 

As for the Commander in Chief West, 

Field Marshal von Rundstedt, the loss of 

the Remagen bridge was the excuse Hitler needed to relieve the old soldier of 

his command. Already upset by Rundstedt’s failure to hold west of the Rhine, 

Hitler on 8 March summoned from Italy 

Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, 

longtime Commander in Chief South 

(OB SUED). The next day Hitler told 

Kesselring to take charge in the west. In 

the process he emphasized that the 

Remagen bridgehead had to be wiped 

out in order to gain time for refitting and 

reorganizing the exhausted German 

units behind the moat of the Rhine. Kesselring left Berlin for his unenviable 

17 MSS # A–970, Remagen Bridgehead— LIII 

Corps (Generalleutnant Frtiz Bayerlein) and # B– 

590 (Wietersheim). 

FIELD MARSHAL KESSELRING 

assignment the night of 9 March, the 

relief. to be effective the next day. 18 

Build-up and Command Problems 

The First Army commander, General 

Hodges, had made various organizational 

shifts to enable the III Corps to exploit 

the Rhine crossing. During the night of 

7 March, he attached a second armored 

division, the 7th, to Millikin’s corps, 

along with an antiaircraft battalion, an 

engineer treadway bridge company, and 

an amphibious truck company. He also 

relieved the 78th Division of its offensive mission with the V Corps south of 

the Ahr River and ordered the division 

to join its reserve regiment at Remagen. 

18 Kesselring’s personal account of his stewardship may be found in his memoirs, A Soldier‘s 

Record (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1954). pp. 283ff. 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 223 

Finding troops to send to Remagen 

was easier than expected because resistance west of the Rhine collapsed so rapidly. A final surge by the Third Army’s 

late-running 11th Armored Division to 

reach the Rhine at Brohl on 8 March 

took all semblance of organization out 

of the defense south of the Ahr, and the 

next day the 2d Division of the V Corps 

swept to the Rhine to link with the armor. On those two days and the next, 

resistance was so indifferent that the 

corps artillery could find no targets. It 

was much the same in the sector of the 

VII Corps, where on 9 March the 1st 

Division eliminated the last defenders 

from the university city of Bonn, there 

to discover the Rhine bridge destroyed. 

The German commander in Bonn, General von Bothmer, escaped to the east 

bank of the Rhine, only to be called before a court-martial that stripped him of 

his rank, whereupon Bothmer shot himself. 19 

For all the speed of the American 

thrusts, thousands of Germans made 

their way across the Rhine, mostly on 

ferries on in small river craft. In terms 

of prisoners taken, the pincers movement south of the Ahr was disappointing—the V Corps, for example, in its 

drive to the Rhine, captured just over 

5,000 Germans, while the VII Corps 

between the Erft and the Rhine had 

been taking over 13,000. 20 Yet those Germans who escaped did so in disarray, 

unit integrity in most cases gone; and 

behind them they left small mountains 

of equipment, ammunition, weapons, 

and vehicles. While most ranking commanders got across the Rhine, two— 

19 MS # C–020 (Schramm). 

20 V Corps Operations in the ETO, p. 401; VII 

Corps AAR, Mar 45. 

Generalleutnant Richard Schimpf, commander of the 3d Parachute Division, 

and Generalmajor Ludwig Heilmann, 

commander of the 5th Parachute Division —failed to make it. Both were captured, as was General Rothkirch earlier. 

At Remagen and on the roads leading 

to the town, congestion was a serious 

problem. The ancient wall-encircled 

town of Zuelpich and bomb-devastated 

Euskirchen particularly were bottlenecks, but the worst difficulty was at the 

Ludendorff Bridge itself. Although moderately heavy German artillery fire fell 

almost constantly around the bridge, it 

failed to halt traffic for any period 

longer than a quarter-hour. The slow 

pace imposed on vehicles by the condition of the bridge and by congestion on 

the east bank still served to back up 

traffic for several miles outside Remagen. 

Almost from the start, the First Army’s General Hodges was dissatisfied 

with the way his corps commander, General Millikin, handled the problems both 

at the bridge and in the bridgehead. 

Hodges and some members of his staff 

complained long and vocally that control was poor on both sides of the river 

and that accurate information on troop 

dispositions beyond the Rhine was lacking. Even after the order passed down 

from General Eisenhower on 9 March 

to limit advances within the bridgehead, 

Hodges continued to chafe at what he 

considered slow, uninspired attacks that 

failed to push far enough east to relieve 

the bridge site of observed artillery fire. 

General Millikin on 9 March placed 

the commander of the 9th Armored Division, General Leonard, in specific control of all activity in the vicinity of the 

bridge and put all troops east of the 
224 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

LUDENDORFF RAILROAD BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 

river under the 9th Infantry Division 

commander, General Craig; but Hodges 

continued to complain. Unaccustomed 

to working with Millikin, whose III 

Corps in months past had served under 

the Third Army, Hodges and his staff 

made no attempt “to hide the fact that 

everybody here wishes the bridgehead 

command had fallen to General Collins.” 21 

Millikin’s problems, on the other 

hand, were myriad. Although he himself 

21 Sylvan Diary, entry of 9 Mar 45; see also telephone messages in III Corps G–3 Jnl file, 8–9 Mar 

45. 

was frequently at the bridge, getting accurate, timely information from the east 

bank was a frustrating chore. In the 

first days of an impromptu operation of 

this sort, there were bound to be shortages of matériel and of specialized 

troops. One of these was in Signal Corps 

units. So frequently did vehicles and artillery cut telephone lines laid across 

the railroad bridge and so often did debris and a swift current break wires 

strung in the river that telephone communications with the east bank were 

out about as much as they were in. 

Neither liaison officers, who often were 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 225 

delayed in threading their way back 

across the congested bridge, nor radio 

communications could solve the problem entirely. 

Committing incoming infantry units 

on the far bank was a piecemeal proposition, geared both to when units arrived and to where the most pressing 

need existed at the time. Not even the 

various components of all regiments 

were able to stay together, and splitting 

the parts of divisions was the rule. This 

heightened problems of control that 

haste, improvisation, and the sharply 

compartmented terrain had already 

made bad enough. 

To General Millikin, the way to overcome his problems was not to make bold 

thrusts here and there but to expand the 

entire periphery of the bridgehead systematically. On 8 March he ordered a 

controlled advance to three successive 

phase lines: the first—two and a half 

miles north and south of the Ludendorff 

Bridge and about two miles deep—designed to free the bridge site from small 

arms fire; the second designed to eliminate observed artillery fire; and the 

third—extending as far north as Bonn, 

as far south as Andernach, and east well 

beyond the autobahn—designed to free 

the bridge site of all shelling. 22 

As night fell on 10 March, the 78th 

Division’s 311th Infantry had advanced 

beyond the first phase line and taken 

Honnef, almost five miles north of the 

bridge, Progress was marked too in the 

south, where the 27th Armored Infantry 

Battalion captured a village beyond the 

22 III Corps Opnl Dir 10, 8 Mar 45; General 

Millikin’s comments on the draft MS of this volume. 

town of Linz, not quite three miles 

southeast of the bridge. 

In the high wooded hills east of the 

bridge progress was slower. There the 

9th Division’s 60th Infantry had been 

able to go less than a mile from the 

river. German tenacity there could be 

explained in part by the rugged terrain 

but owed much also to relatively strong 

artillery support. Since artillery units 

had retreated across the Rhine ahead of 

the infantry and tanks, a number of 

them had reached the east bank in fair 

shape, particularly those a little farther 

north where advance of the VII Corps 

had shoved them across the Rhine before the III Corps came up to the river 

at Remagen. A volks artillery corps 

from the north was committed early to 

the fighting east of Remagen, and other 

artillery units were on the way. Soon 

the Germans would be employing 

against the bridgehead some fifty 105- 

mm. barrels, another fifty 150-mm. howitzers, and close to a dozen 210-mm. 

pieces. The shortage of ammunition 

rather than guns was the more serious 

problem. 23 

Although the extent of progress belied 

it, General Millikin intended the eastward and southeastward thrusts to be his 

main effort, in keeping with the theory 

—advanced by both Bradley and Eisenhower—that the troops in the bridgehead could best serve the over-all scheme 

by driving toward the Lahn River valley and the Frankfurt-Kassel corridor. 

At the same time, Millikin reasoned, 

such thrusts would also more quickly 

eliminate German observation on the 

bridge. General Hodges for his part 

wanted the III Corps first to push north23 MS # B–547 (Genegalleutnant Eduard Metz). 
226 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

ward in order to clear crossing sites for 

General Collins’s VII Corps. Yet he 

failed to make this clear to Millikin until the fourth day, 11 March, when for 

the first time he crossed the Rhine into 

the bridgehead. Even then he issued no 

specific order, although he did make 

several allusions to the north and 

strongly suggested that the main effort 

be made in that direction. 24 

The suggestion was enough for Millikin. He promptly put emphasis behind 

the 78th Division’s thrust by narrowing 

the division’s sector and shifting the bulk 

of the 9th Division to the northeast. On 

the following day, 12 March, with the 

arrival of most of the 99th Infantry Division in the bridgehead to take over the 

southern and southeastern portions of 

the periphery, he ordered all units 

shifted back to their parent divisions; but 

by that time, the chance for a really 

spectacular drive northward had passed. 

Indications that the going might become more difficult developed as early 

as 11 March, when contingents of the 

11th Panzer Division counterattacked at 

Honnef, temporarily regaining the 

town. 25 On the same day a second volks 

artillery corps reached the front. On 13 

March, as remnants of the 340th Volks 

Grenadier Division arrived, the German 

commander, General Bayerlein, put 

them into the line east of Honnef. Later 

in the day the 130th Infantry Regiment, 

a well-equipped and comparatively fresh 

separate unit of 2,000 men, arrived from 

the Netherlands. Although Bayerlein 

wanted to counterattack immediately 

24 Combat interview with Col Phillips, CofS IIII 

Corps; Sylvan Diary, entry of 11 Mar 45; Gen 

Millikin’s comments on the draft MS of this volume. 

25 MSS # A–970 (Bayerlein) and # B–590 

(Wietersheim). 

with the 130th Infantry reinforced by 

tanks, Field Marshal Model ordered that 

the regiment be used to bring the 340th 

Volks Grenadier Division back to reasonable strength. Thus, the 130th too 

went into the defensive line. 26 

Unlike Bayerlein, Model believed that 

no decisive counterattack could be 

launched until sufficient infantry reinforcement arrived to release the armored 

units from the line. In this he was supported by General von Zangen, under 

whose Fifteenth Army Bayerlein’s forces 

opposing the bridgehead operated. Yet 

in disagreement with Zangen, Model insisted that the strongest line be built in 

the north to thwart what he remained 

convinced would be the Americans’ major thrust. At a meeting on 11 March 

with Model and the new Commander in 

Chief West, Field Marshal Kesselring, 

Zangen protested this line of thought. 

Field Marshal Kesselring for his part 

apparently sanctioned it, for Model’s 

view prevailed. 27 

With disapproval of the plan to use 

the 130th Infantry offensively, General 

Bayerlein saw his last hope for an effective counterattack pass. To Bayerlein, 

there was no chance of assembling sufficient forces to drive the Americans into 

the Rhine once they had gained additional time to reinforce their bridgehead. 28 On the other hand, Model’s 

decision did serve to slow operations in 

the sector where the American commander, General Millikin, now planned, 

temporarily, his main effort. Thus General Hodges’ dissatisfaction with Milli26 See criticisms in MS # B–829 (General der 

Infanterie Gustav von Zangen). 

27 MSS # B–829 (Zangen) and # B–101 (General 

der Infanterie Otto Hitzfeld). 

28 MS # A–970 (Bayerlein). 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 227 

kin’s handling of the bridgehead fight 

continued. 

At the bridge site, concentrated efforts 

were made from the start toward supplementing the Ludendorff railroad bridge. 

One of the first units to arrive for the 

purpose was Naval Unit No. 1, a U.S. 

Navy force with twenty-four LCVP’s 

(landing craft, vehicle and personnel) 

that had been attached to the First Army 

for some months in anticipation of the 

Rhine crossings. 29 Also quick to arrive 

was an engineer unit of the III Corps, 

the 86th Engineer Heavy Ponton Battalion, with orders to operate three ferries, one well north of the Ludendorff 

Bridge, one close to the bridge at Remagen, and the third well south of the 

bridge. As assembled by the engineers, 

the rafts were made of five pontons covered with wooden flooring. Used as free 

ferries propelled by 22-hp. outboard 

motors, the craft began to operate as 

early as the morning of 9 March. The 

ferries and LCVP’s were augmented on 

14 March by dukws (21⁄2-ton amphibious 

trucks) of the 8 19th Amphibious Truck 

Company. 30 

Survey teams of the 1111th and 1159th 

Engineer Combat Groups, scheduled to 

build tactical bridges across the Rhine, 

reached Remagen during the morning 

of 8 March. Because of road priorities 

granted at first to infantry units and 

engineers who were to operate ferries, 

the bridging units themselves began to 

28 LCVP’s could carry thirty-six soldiers with full 

combat equipment, vehicles up to the size of 3⁄4-ton 

ambulances or trucks, or four tons of cargo. See 

Samuel Eliot Morison, The Invasion of France and 

Germany (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 

1957), pp. 317–23. 

30 For the engineer story, see AAR’s of the engi- neer units, III Corps Engineer War Diary, and 

combat interviews with engineer officers. 

move to the river only during the night 

of 9 March. Construction of the first 

bridge, a treadway from Remagen to 

Erpel, began early on 10 March. 

Although jammed roads leading to 

Remagen continued to hamper bridge 

construction, the most serious delays derived from German artillery fire and air 

attacks. During 8 and 9 March, the Germans maintained an average rate of one 

shell every two minutes in the vicinity 

of the bridge sites, but by 10 March, 

their fire had fallen off to four or five 

rounds per hour. 31 Artillery fire during 

the course of construction of the Remagen treadway bridge destroyed four 

cranes, two Brockway trucks, two air 

compressors, three dump trucks, and 

thirty-two floats. The treadway, nevertheless, was opened for limited traffic at 

0700, 11 March, and for full use in late 

afternoon. A heavy ponton upstream at 

Linz was opened at midnight on the 

11th. On the 13th engineers closed the 

Ludendorff Bridge in order to repair 

damage caused by Captain Friesenhahn’s 

emergency demolition. 

Unlike the artillery fire, German air 

attacks were more annoying than destructive. A strong cordon of defenses 

around the bridge manned by the 16th 

Antiaircraft Artillery Group, antiaircraft 

battalions borrowed from the divisions 

of the III Corps, and additional units 

transferred from the V Corps sharply 

interfered with German accuracy. On 12 

March, at the height of air attacks against 

the bridge, sixteen 90-mm. gun batteries 

were emplaced on the west bank of the 

Rhine and twenty-five batteries of automatic antiaircraft weapons were almost 

equally divided between the two banks, 

31 Sylvan Diary, entries of 8–10 Mar 45; III Corps 

AAR, Mar 45. 
228 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

probably the most intensive tactical 

grouping of antiaircraft weapons in the 

European theater during the course of 

the war. 32 

The Luftwaffe first struck at the railroad bridge on the morning after Lieutenant Timmerman and his intrepid 

little band had crossed. Although low 

overcast interfered with flight, the Germans made ten sweeps with a total of ten 

planes, most of them Stuka dive bombers. None inflicted any damage on the 

bridge, and antiaircraft units claimed 

eight destroyed. 33 

Exhortation to the Luftwaffe to strike 

and strike again was one of the few 

immediate steps Field Marshal Kesselring could take toward eliminating the 

Ludendorff Bridge after he assumed 

command in the west on 10 March. He 

conferred that day with senior Luftwaffe 

commanders, urging them to knock out 

the bridge and any auxiliary bridges the 

Americans might construct. 

From 8 through 16 March, the Luftwaffe tried. The German planes struck 

at the railroad bridge, at the ferries, and 

at the tactical bridges, but with no success. Whenever the weather allowed, 

American planes flying cover over the 

bridgehead interfered; even when the 

German pilots got through the fighter 

screen, they ran into a dense curtain of 

antiaircraft fire. When they tried a 

stratagem of sending slow bombers in 

the lead to draw the antiaircraft fire, 

then following with speedy jet fighters, 

the Americans countered by withholding 

part of their fire until the jets appeared. 

32 A convenient summary of the antiaircraft defense may be found in 16th AAA Gp AAR, Antiaircraft Artillery Defense of Rhine Bridges, 17 Mar 

45. 

33 III Corps AAR, Mar 45. 

American antiaircraft units estimated 

that during the nine days they destroyed 

109 planes and probably eliminated 36 

others out of a total of 367 that attacked. 

By three other means the Germans 

tried to destroy the railroad bridge. Soon 

after losing the bridge, they brought up a 

tank-mounted 540-mm. piece called the 

Karl Howitzer. The weapon itself 

weighed 132 tons and fired a projectile 

of 4,400 pounds, but after only a few 

rounds that did no damage except to 

random houses, the weapon had to be 

evacuated for repairs. From 12 through 

17 March a rocket unit with weapons 

emplaced in the Netherlands fired eleven 

supersonic V–2's in the direction of the 

bridge, the first and only tactical use of 

either of the so-called German V-weapons 

( Vergeltungswaffen, for vengeance) during World War II. One rocket hit a 

house 300 yards east of the bridge, killing 

three American soldiers and wounding 

fifteen. That was the only damage. Three 

landed in the river not far from the 

bridge, five others west of the bridge, 

and one near Cologne; one was never 

located. 34 

The night of 16 March, the Germans 

tried a third method—seven underwater 

swimmers in special rubber suits and 

carrying packages of plastic explosive 

compound—but from the first the 

Americans had anticipated such a gambit. During the first few days of the 

bridgehead, before nets could be strung 

across the river, they dropped demolition 

charges to discourage enemy swimmers 

34 SHAEF Air Defense Division, Summary of 

Casualties and Damage from V-Weapon Attack, 

Report for the Week Ending 19 March 1945; 

British War Office, The German Long-Range 

Rocket Programme, 1930–1945, MIA 4/14, 30 Oct 

45, copy in OCMH; Royce L. Thompson, Military 

Impact of the German V-Weapons, MS in OCMH. 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 229 

and stationed riflemen at intervals along 

the railroad bridge to fire at suspicious 

objects. Later, with nets in place, they 

stationed tanks equipped with searchlights along the river. 

When the German swimmers first tried 

to reach the bridge, American artillery 

fire discouraged them from entering the 

water. On the next night, the 17th, they 

moved not against the railroad bridge 

but against tactical ponton bridges, only 

to be spotted by the American searchlights. Blinded by the lights, the seven 

Germans, one by one, surrendered. 

While these events occurred along the 

Rhine, gains in the bridgehead continued to be steady but unspectacular, 

and General Hodges remained displeased 

with General Millikin’s conduct of the 

battle. On 15 March Hodges discussed 

with the 12th Army Group commander, 

General Bradley, the possibility of relieving Millikin. “Mind you,” Hodges 

remarked, “I have only the greatest admiration and respect for the GIs doing 

the fighting out there, but I think they 

have had bad leadership in this bridgehead battle.” 35 Bradley left Hodges’ 

headquarters agreeing to look for a replacement for the III Corps commander. 

Two days later General Van Fleet, 

former commander of the 90th Division, 

arrived at Hodges’ headquarters to take 

Millikin’s place. Shortly before 1500, 

Hodges telephoned Millikin. 

“I have some bad news for you,” 

Hodges said, then went on to inform him 

of his relief. 

The III Corps commander waited until Hodges had finished. 

“Sir,” he said finally, “I have some bad 

35 Sylvan Diary, entry of 15 Mar 45. 

GENERAL VAN FLEET. (Photograph 

taken in 1951.) 

news for you too. The railroad bridge 

has just collapsed.” 36 

The End of the Bridge 

It happened during a period of relative quiet. No German planes were 

around, and German artillery was silent. 

About 200 American engineers with 

their equipment were working on the 

bridge. 

The first indication that anything was 

wrong was a sharp report like the crack 

of a rifle. Then another. The deck of 

the bridge began to tremble. The entire 

deck vibrated and swayed. Dust rose 

from the planking. It was every man for 

himself. 

36 Ibid., entry of 17 Mar 45. 
230 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

With a grinding roar of tearing steel, 

the Ludendorff railroad bridge slipped, 

sagged, and with a convulsive twist 

plunged into the Rhine. Of those working on the bridge at the time, 93 were 

injured, 28 killed. 

The collapse of the bridge could be 

attributed to no one specific factor but 

rather to a combination of things, some 

even antedating the emergency demolition. As far back as 1940 Allied planes 

had launched sporadic attacks against the 

bridge, and in late 1944 had damaged it 

to such an extent that it was unserviceable for fifteen days. Then came the 

heavy planking to convert the bridge for 

vehicles; the assault by the 27th Armored 

Infantry Battalion’s Company A and the 

fire of the big Pershing tanks that accompanied it; Friesenhahn’s emergency 

demolition; the drumbeat of hundreds 

of infantry feet; the heavy tread of tanks 

and other vehicles; the pounding of German artillery; the vibrations from German bombs, from American antiaircraft 

pieces and big 8-inch howitzers emplaced 

nearby, from the near misses of the V– 

2’s; and then the weight of heavy engineer equipment as the Americans tried 

to repair the bridge. All had to be borne 

by the downstream truss alone after 

Friesenhahn’s demolition so damaged the 

upstream truss that it was useless. In the 

end, it was too much for one weakened 

truss. 37 

More speculative is the explanation of 

why the German demolitions failed, in 

the first place, to destroy the Ludendorff 

Bridge. Sabotage, for example, either by 

a German soldier or a foreign laborer, 

37 Combat interview with Lt Col Clayton A. Rust, 

CO 276th Engineer Combat Bn. 

hardly could be ruled out. 38 Since the 

electric circuit designed to set off the 

main demolitions had been tested shortly 

before it was to be used and was in order, 

something happened to the circuit 

shortly before Friesenhahn turned the 

key. Most Germans familiar with the 

events believed that a lucky hit from an 

American shell—probably fired by a 

tank—severed the main cable leading to 

the demolitions. The Americans themselves conducted no immediate postmortem, and once the bridge had fallen 

into the Rhine, the evidence was gone. 

Whether the reason could be ascertained or not, Hitler at the time was 

determined to find scapegoats to pay for 

the debacle. He convened a special 3-man 

military tribunal that acted with little 

regard for legal niceties. 39 The tribunal 

condemned to death two majors who had 

commanded engineer troops in the vicinity of the bridge, Herbert Strobe1 and 

August Kraft; a lieutenant of Flakartillerie, Karl Heinz Peters; the major sent 

by General Hitzfeld of the LXVII Corps 

to assume tactical command at the 

bridge, Hans Scheller; and the previous 

tactical commander, Captain Bratge. 

The engineer in charge of demolitions, 

Captain Friesenhahn, who had been captured by the Americans, was acquitted 

in absentia. Because Bratge too was an 

American prisoner, he survived. The 

other four died before firing squads. 

Expansion of the Bridgehead 

The loss of the Ludendorff Bridge had 

no effect on operations in the Remagen 

bridgehead. The bridge had been closed 

38 Hechler, in The Bridge at Remagen, pages 

212–20, analyzes the various speculations in detail. 

39 Ibid., pp. 192–212. 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 231 

THE RHINE AT THE REMAGEN BRIDGE SITE. (Photograph taken in 1948.) 

for repairs since 13 March, and the forces 

in the bridgehead already were accustomed to working without it. General 

Hodges nevertheless quickly authorized 

construction of a floating Bailey bridge 

about a mile downstream from Remagen. 

In a remarkable engineering feat, the 

Bailey bridge was completed in just under forty-eight hours and opened for 

traffic on 20 March. 40 

One reason for a new bridge was the 

presence of a new force in the Remagen 

40 III Corps Engineer War Diary, 120600 Mar 45. 

bridgehead. Beginning early on 15 

March, the 1st Division of General Collins's VII Corps had crossed the Rhine 

over the III Corps bridges and on ferries, 

and at noon the next day, Collins assumed responsibility for the northern 

portion of the bridgehead. In the process, 

Collins's corps absorbed the 78th Division. 

The specific role the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, intended 

the Remagen bridgehead to play in future operations meanwhile had been 

made clear on 13 March. The bridge- 
232 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

head, Eisenhower directed, was to be 

used to draw enemy units from the Ruhr 

area opposite the 21 Army Group and 

from the 6th Army Group’s Rhine crossing sites in the south. Although an exploitation eventually might be made in 

the direction of Frankfurt, a minimum 

of ten First Army divisions had to be 

reserved for the time being as a possible 

“follow-up force” for the 21 Army 

Group, still designated to make the Allied main effort . 41 

From this restriction, it was obvious 

that Eisenhower had no wish to see the 

bridgehead expanded appreciably. General Bradley in turn told the First Army 

to advance no farther than a line approximately twenty-five miles wide at the 

base along the Rhine and ten miles deep, 

in effect, a slight expansion of the third 

phase line that the III Corps commander, 

General Millikin, earlier had imposed. 42 

The First Army’s General Hodges disagreed, though to no avail. Like almost 

everybody at First Army headquarters, 

Hodges was piqued about the elaborate 

preparations Field Marshal Montgomery 

was making for his 21 Army Group’s 

crossing of the Rhine and the emphasis 

General Eisenhower continued to place 

on that crossing when, in Hodges’ view, 

a breakout from the Remagen bridgehead could have been staged at will. 

With evident amusement he listened to 

the story-probably apocryphal—of how 

the 21 Army Group on 7 March had 

asked Supreme Headquarters to stage a 

diversion before Montgomery jumped 

the Rhine and how, five minutes later, 

SHAEF passed the word that the First 

41 SCAF 232, SHAEF to Bradley, 13 Mar 45, in 

12th AGp Military Objectives, 371.3, vol. VI. Quote 

is from Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 517. 

42 12th AGp Ltr of Instrs No. 17, 13 Mar 45. 

Army had already staged a diversion; the 

First Army had crossed the Rhine. 43 

While advances in the Remagen 

bridgehead continued to average only 

about a thousand yards a day, Hodges 

was convinced this was less a reflection 

of German strength than of timidity in 

American attacks. By 17 March the German order of battle opposite the bridgehead sounded impressive on paper—in 

addition to those units early committed, 

the Germans had brought in contingents 

of the 26th, 62d, 272d, 277th, and 326th 

Volks Grenadier Divisions; the 3d and 

5th Parachute Divisions; and the 3d Panzer Grenadier Division—but in no case 

were these real divisions. All were -battalion-size Kampfgruppen or else had 

been fleshed out to something more than 

regimental strength with inexperienced 

replacements culled from various Wehrkreise up and down the Rhine. 44 In most 

cases the Americans characterized the resistance as “moderate to light.’’ Although 

the German defense appeared to be “orderly,” the more serious problem was 

difficult terrain. 45 

By 16 March, when troops of the 78th 

Division made the first cut of the RuhrFrankfurt autobahn northeast of Honnef, expansion of the bridgehead had 

proceeded to the point where artillery 

no longer was able to support the attacks 

properly from the west bank of the 

Rhine. As artillery units began to cross 

the river, engineers supporting the VII 

Corps began construction of three more 

tactical bridges to care for the increased 

logistical burden. Keyed to the northward advance of the infantry east of the 

43 Sylvan Diary, entry of 15 Mar 45, and passim. 

44 III Corps and VII Corps AAR’s Mar 45, and 

pertinent German MSS. 

46 III Corps AAR, Mar 45. 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 233 

Rhine, the first of the bridges was completed late on 17 March, another on 19 

March, and a third, located at the southern fringe of Bonn, on 21 March. 

Screened by smoke from chemical generators, the engineers incurred only one 

casualty during the course of construction. 46 

Of all the American attacks, those to 

the north and northeast by the 1st and 

78th Divisions continued to bother the 

German army group commander most. 

More than ever convinced that the 

Americans intended to make their main 

effort northward toward the Ruhr, Field 

Marshal Model recognized that a strong 

counterattack had to be staged soon or 

the Americans would breach the natural 

defensive line in the north, the Sieg 

River, which enters the Rhine just downstream from Bonn, and then be ready for 

exploitation. 

On 19 March Model began to strip all 

armored units from the eastern and 

southern portions of the line to assemble 

them in the north for counterattack. In 

the process, he introduced the LXXIV 

Corps to command the northern sector, 

then ordered the commander, General 

Puechler, to exchange places with the 

tank expert, General Bayerlein of the 

LIII Corps, thereby reversing the two 

corps headquarters. As finally constituted, the ring around the Remagen 

bridgehead involved the LIII Corps under Bayerlein in the north, the LXXlV 

Corps under Peuchler in the center, and 

the LXVII Corps under General Hitzfeld in the south. 47 

Unfortunately for Model’s plan, the 

46 VII Corps Engineer Office, Rhine Crossings of 

VII Corps; VII Corps AAR, Mar 45. 

47 MSS # A–970 (Bayerlein); # B–829 (Zangen); 

# B–101 (Hitzfeld). 

Americans afforded no pause in their 

attacks. Once relieved from the line, the 

depleted German armored units had to 

be committed piecemeal again to try to 

block the continuing thrusts. Although 

this produced occasional intense combat, 

particularly at towns or villages blocking 

main highways, nowhere was it sufficient 

to stall or throw back the infantry of 

the two American divisions. Operating 

with only normal tank and tank destroyer attachments, the 78th Division 

on 21 March gained the Sieg River, the 

northern limit of the bridgehead as authorized by General Bradley. At that 

point the corps commander, General Collins, attached to the 78th Division a 

combat command of the 3d Armored 

Division to attack east along the south 

bank of the Sieg. By 22 March the divisions of the VII Corps had reached the 

final bridgehead line, both at the Sieg 

River and along the west bank of the 

little Hanf Creek that empties into the 

Sieg just over nine miles east of the 

Rhine. 

The 9th and 99th Divisions of the III 

Corps, commanded now by General Van 

Fleet, profited from the shift of German 

armor to the north. On 18 March the 

9th Division at last cut the autobahn, 

while patrols from the 99th Division 

reached the meandering Wied River almost due east of Remagen. Other contingents of the 99th Division drove 

swiftly southward close along the Rhine 

almost to a point opposite Andernach. 

By 20 March the III Corps had reached 

the prescribed bridgehead line. 

As both corps neared the planned line, 

General Hodges at the First Army’s 

headquarters fretted at the restrictions 

still binding his troops. Watching with 

admiration far-reaching drives west of 
234 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the Rhine by the Third Army, Hodges 

was convinced the end for Germany was 

near. “The war is over, I tell you,” he 

kept repeating to his colleagues; “the 

war is over.” 48 

The next day, 19 March, as pleasant 

but unfounded rumors swept the First 

Army of an impending armistice, Hodges 

flew, at the 12th Army Group commander’s behest, to meet General Bradley in 

Luxembourg City. During the morning, 

Hodges learned, Bradley had conferred 

with General Eisenhower. In anticipation of an early attack by Montgomery’s 

21 Army Group to cross the Rhine, 

Hodges was authorized to send a maximum of nine divisions into the Remagen 

bridgehead. From 23 March on, he was 

to be prepared to break out to the southeast, the main objective to be Limburg 

and the Lahn River valley and linkup 

with Third Army troops once Patton’s 

forces crossed the Rhine. 49 

The wraps thus were about to be removed from the First Army, though the 

final unveiling was predicated on Montgomery’s crossing the Rhine. The date 

for the First Army’s big push later would 

be set for 25 March. 

In preparation for the attack, Hodges 

on the 21st sent General Huebner’s V 

Corps into the bridgehead to take over 

the southern periphery from the 99th 

Division. When the attack date came, 

nine divisions, including three armored 

divisions, would be ready for the exploitation. 

It remained for the Germans to write 

a final, futile postscript to the Remagen 

bridgehead fighting. On 24 March, still 

imbued with the idea that the Americans 

48 Sylvan Diary, entry of 18 Mar 45. 

49 Ibid., entries of 19–20 Mar 45. 

were aiming directly for the Ruhr, Field 

Marshal Model managed to assemble the 

bulk of the German armor for his longdelayed counterattack under the direction of General Bayerlein. Yet when the 

Germans struck the divisions of the VII 

Corps, their efforts were poorly co-ordinated and far too weak for the job. It 

was, in effect, not one counterattack but 

several small ones that brought intense 

fighting at various points but, in the end, 

gained nothing. The Germans merely 

frittered away irreplaceable troops that 

would be needed desperately the next 

day elsewhere along the periphery of the 

Remagen bridgehead and already were 

needed at other points on the elongated 

Rhine front, where on 23 March portentous events had begun to occur. 

The capture of the Ludendorff railroad bridge and its subsequent exploitation was one of those coups de théâtre 

that sometimes happen in warfare and 

never fail to capture the imagination. 

just how much it speeded the end of the 

war is another question. The bridgehead 

dealt a serious blow to German morale 

that may well have been partly responsible for lackluster resistance at other 

points, and it served as a magnet to draw 

a measure of fighting strength from other 

sites. On the other hand, the German 

Army clearly would have been beaten 

without it, perhaps just as quickly. 50 

From 7 through 24 March, the Remagen bridgehead fighting cost the III 

Corps approximately 5,500 casualties, including almost 700 killed and 600 

missing. The VII Corps, from 16 through 

24 March, incurred not quite 1,900 

casualties, including 163 killed and 240 

50 For a German view, see Wagener, MS # A965. 
A RHINE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 235 

missing. In the same time span, the Germans lost more than 11,700 men as 

prisoners alone. 

When the First Army attacked again 

on 25 March, a new war of movement 

even more spectacular than that displayed in the drive to the Rhine was to 

open. A precursor of what it would be 

like was to be seen in a drive already 

underway by the Third Army into the 

Saar-Palatinate. 
CHAPTER XII 

The Saar-Palatinate 

General Patton of the Third Army 

was “just a little envious” of the First 

Army’s Rhine crossing at Remagen. 1 

Yet there was little he could do immediately—once the 4th Armored Division 

had turned away from the Rhine—to 

emulate it. The Third Army was obligated to assist in a pending drive to 

eliminate the last German position west 

of the Rhine, and Patton himself was 

eager to expand his army’s part in that 

operation from support to major effort. 

The position to be erased had become 

known to American planners and commanders, after the political entity that 

made up the bulk of the area, as the 

Saar-Palatinate. Lying south of the Moselle, the area embraced more than 3,000 

square miles and included the Saar industrial region, the old Bavarian Palatinate, part of the provinces of Rhineland 

and Hessen, and a belt of French territory along the Franco-German border in 

the northeastern corner of Alsace. Near 

the southern base of the region stood 

the West Wall, there stronger than anywhere else. On the western edge, General Walker’s XX Corps, having cleared 

the Saar-Moselle triangle and captured 

Trier, had already pierced the West 

Wall; the rest of the Third Army, having conquered the Eifel, was in behind 

the German defenders. 

1 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 254. 

To the Allies, the Saar-Palatinate had 

been an important goal since preinvasion planning days. The Saar was second 

only to the Ruhr as a source of Germany’s war-making muscle, and the 

region screened feasible Rhine crossing 

sites lying between Mainz and Mannheim. Both the Third Army and General Devers’s 6th Army Group needed 

access to those crossing sites to assure 

their logical roles in the final broadfront advance into the heart of Germany. 

From the German viewpoint, the 

Saar-Palatinate was important both for 

its economic significance and for the 

military obstacle it posed to Allied armies. Based on the nearby iron ore of 

Lorraine and on extensive coal fields in 

the Saar River basin around Saarbruecken, the heavy industry of the 

Saar contributed 10 percent of Germany’s iron and steel capacity. Coal production totaled 7,000,000 tons annually. 

Despite the proximity of Allied troops 

and almost daily raids by Allied planes, 

the Germans in early March still were 

shipping twelve trainloads of coal daily 

to plants east of the Rhine, and the 

foundries of the Saar continued to 

operate. At Homburg, northeast of Saarbruecken, stood one of the comparatively 

few synthetic oil plants still producing 

in the Reich; and at Ludwigshafen, 

across the Rhine from Mannheim, some 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 237 

40 to 50 percent of the nation’s entire 

output of chemicals was centered in an 

I. G. Farben plant. The industry of 

small cities such as Kaiserslautern, 

Speyer, and Worms also was important. 2 

As a miiltary obstacle, the SaarPalatinate drew strength not only from 

the West Wall but also from the builtup industrial region, from deep stream 

valleys, and from mountainous terrain. 

Along the northern boundary twists the 

deep valley of the Moselle, backed by 

the Hunsrueck Mountains, higher than 

the Eifel. Along the western and southern boundaries, the Saar and the Lauter 

Rivers pose similar barriers, the former 

also backed by the Hunsrueck Mountains, the latter by the densely forested 

Haardt or Lower Vosges Mountains, rising as high as 2,300 feet. Between the 

Hunsrueck and the Haardt lies the 

Pfaelzer Bergland, or Palatinate Highland. 

The watershed between the Pfaelzer 

Bergland and the Haardt Mountains is 

high and narrow but also relatively flat 

and traversed by a good highway leading 

from Saarbruecken through Kaiserslautern to the Rhine in the vicinity of 

Worms, thus constituting a small corridor with considerable military utility. 

This corrider has become known as the 

Kaiserslautern Gap. A northeastward 

extension of the Metz Gap in Lorraine, 

it is one of only two logical passages 

through the Saar-Palatinate for sizable 

2 The Seventh United States Army Report of 

Operations, France and Germany, 1944–1945, vol. 

III, p. 695, a comprehensive three-volume work 

prepared with the assistance of historical officers 

attached to the Seventh Army (hereafter cited as 

Seventh Army Report). See also MS # B–600, 

Army Group G, Report of the Commander (Generaloberst Paul Hausser). 

military forces. The other, the Wissembourg Gap, whence the Prussians debouched against France in 1870, opens 

a way from the northeastern corner of 

France into the valley of the Rhine. 

The man responsible for defending 

the Saar-Palatinate was General Hausser, 

who had assumed command of Army 

Group G near the end of January after 

recovering from a wound incurred 

while commanding an army in France 

the preceding summer. In addition to 

the First Army, which long had held the 

Saar front, Hausser’s command at first 

had included the Nineteenth Army, 

formerly a part of that anomaly called 

Army Group Oberrhein; but as the 

Nineteenth Army in early February 

withdrew under pressure from the Colmar pocket to the east bank of the 

Rhine, one by one its combat divisions 

had been commandeered for more active 

fronts. In early March, as the drive by 

Patton’s Third Army threatened to riddle the Eifel and expose the long line 

of the Moselle, thereby prompting OB 

WEST to shift the Seventh Army in the 

Eifel to Hausser’s command, the Nineteenth Army passed to direct control of 

the Commander in Chief West. 

In most ways, the shift was a case of 

plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. 

Yet Hausser’s responsibility for the 

Seventh Army meant that his point of 

main danger shifted from the Kaiserslautern and Wissembourg Gaps to the 

winding trench of the Moselle facing the 

Eifel. 

Unless additional units could be sent 

to bolster the Seventh Army, Hausser 

notified OB WEST, successive withdrawals back to the Rhine was the best Army 

Group G could hope to accomplish. 

“Otherwise,” Hausser warned, “envelop- 
238 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

ment and annihilation of First Army 

will be imminent.” 3 

The answer from Field Marshal von 

Rundstedt, acting out his last days as 

Commander in Chief West, was succinct, uncompromising. 

Hold the Saar-Palatinate. 

American Plans 

For the Americans, clearing the SaarPalatinate would be a return to unfinished business that the Third and Seventh Armies had been conducting in 

December when forced to retrench to 

help defeat the Ardennes counteroffensive and Operation NORDWIND, 

the secondary counteroffensive in Alsace. Both armies had reached the West 

Wall guarding the Saar-Palatinate in 

December. The Third Army had forged 

two bridgeheads into the fortified line, 

one of which, at Saarlautern, remained 

intact. The Seventh Army had cleared 

northeastern Alsace and jumped the 

Lauter River at two points to confront 

the West Wall, but the necessity to 

spread out in order to free Third Army 

units for the Ardennes and to recoil before Operation NORDWIND had forced 

withdrawals, in some places as much as 

nineteen miles. Through most of February the Seventh Army had staged limited 

objective attacks to straighten lines and 

gain favorable ground for a major offensive against the Saar-Palatinate. Nevertheless, by the end of the first week in 

March, most of the northeastern corner 

of Alsace still was in German hands. The 

front departed from the Saar River near 

Sarreguemines and extended almost di3 MS # B–600 (Hawser). 

rectly southeast through Hagenau to the 

Rhine. 4 (Map IX) 

Anticipating early completion of operations to clear the west bank of the 

Rhine north of the Moselle, General 

Eisenhower on 13 February had told his 

two American army group commanders, 

Bradley and Devers, to begin planning 

for a joint drive to sweep the SaarPalatinate. Assigned a target date of 15 

March, the offensive was to begin only 

after the 21 Army Group had reached 

the Rhine. It was to be designed both to 

draw enemy units from the north and to 

provide an alternate line of attack across 

the Rhine should the principal Allied 

drive in the north fail. The main effort, 

SHAEF planners contemplated, was to 

be made by the 6th Army Group’s Seventh Army, which was to be augmented 

by transferring one armored and three 

infantry divisions from the Third 

Army. 5 

During the first week of March, General Devers at 6th Army Group approved 

a plan (Operation UNDERTONE) prepared by General Patch’s Seventh Army. 

Three corps were to attack abreast from 

Saarbruecken to a point southeast of 

Hagenau. A narrow strip along the 

Rhine leading to the extreme northeastern corner of Alsace at Lauterbourg was 

to be cleared by a division of the First 

French Army under operational control 

of the Seventh Army. The Seventh Army’s main effort was to be made in the 

center up the Kaiserslautern corridor. 6 

4 These actions are covered in Robert Ross Smith, 

The Riviera to the Rhine, a forthcoming volume 

in the UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD 

WAR II series. 

5 SHAEF GCT/37057/Plans, Note on Early Concentration for Saar Offensives, 14 Feb 45, SHAEF 

files. 

6 Seventh Army Report, pp. 698–99. 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 239 

GENERAL DEVERS. (Photograph taken 

in late 1945.) 

Approving the plan in turn, General 

Eisenhower noted that the objective was 

not only to clear the Saar-Palatinate but 

also to establish bridgeheads with forces 

of the 6th Army Group over the Rhine 

between Mainz and Mannheim. The 

12th Army Group (i.e., the Third 

Army), he also noted, was to be limited 

to diversionary attacks across the Moselle to protect the 6th Army Group’s 

left flank. 7 

Eisenhower approved on 8 March, the 

same day that General Patton obtained 

approval from General Bradley for the 

plan prepared by the Third Army staff 

for a major attack across the Moselle. 8 

7 FWD 17655, SHAEF to Devers and Bradley, 

081650 Mar 45, SHAEF SGS Post-OVERLORD Planning file, 381, III. 

8 See above, ch. X; Gay Diary, entry of 8 Mar 45. 

The 12th Army Group commander in 

turn promoted the plan with General 

Eisenhower. 9 Noting that the Germans 

had given no indication of withdrawing 

from the West Wall in front of the Seventh Army and that General Patch thus 

might be in for a long, costly campaign, 

Bradley suggested that the Third Army 

jump the Moselle near Koblenz, sweep 

south along the west bank of the Rhine 

to cut the enemy’s supply lines, and at 

the same time press from its previously 

established Saar-Moselle bridgehead 

near Trier to come at the West Wall fortifications from the rear. General Eisenhower approved the plan without qualification . 10 

While the proposal to employ the 

Third Army in the Saar-Palatinate was 

based on sound tactical considerations, 

Bradley and Patton both also saw it as a 

way of getting the Third Army involved, thereby obviating loss of divisions either to Montgomery’s 21 Army 

Group or to Devers’s 6th Army Group. 11 

Yet the stratagem proved unnecessary as 

far as the 21 Army Group was concerned, since General Eisenhower told 

Field Marshal Montgomery that if ten 

U.S. divisions went north to help the 21 

Army Group, Bradley’s 12th Army 

Group headquarters would also move 

north to command the First and Ninth 

Armies. That may have played a part in 

silencing Montgomery on the subject of 

9 Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 516. 

10 Ibid. A plan for a combined Third-Seventh 

Army thrust to clear the Saar-Palatinate had been 

prepared at 12th Army Group as early as February, 

when flooding of the Roer River appeared likely 

to delay Operation GRENADE indefinitely. See Col. 

Harrison H. D. Heiberg, Study of Future Operations, 12th AGp Miscellaneous Log 214. 

11 Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 255. 
240 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

additional American divisions to exploit 

his Rhine crossing. 12 

The stratagem only partially succeeded with the 6th Army Group; Bradley at last felt compelled to relinquish 

two divisions, the 4th Infantry and 6th 

Armored, the latter already designated 

as SHAEF reserve. Although he agreed 

to part with a third, impending arrival 

of the last serials of a new division from 

the United States made it unnecessary. 

As the target date for the Saar-Palatinate 

campaign neared, the 6th Army Group 

had eleven infantry and three armored 

divisions in the Seventh Army, plus the 

First French Army. The Third Army 

retained twelve divisions, four of them 

armored. 

Although General Devers was briefly 

reluctant to endorse Third Army operations south of the Moselle lest the two 

forces become entangled with their converging thrusts, he too in the end ap 

proved the plan. He and Bradley agreed 

on a new boundary that afforded the 

Third Army a good road leading northeast from Saarlautern to headwaters of 

the Nahe River, some thirty-five miles 

northeast of Saarlautern, thence along 

the valley of the Nahe to the Rhine at 

Bingen. This boundary gave the Third 

Army responsibility for clearing the 

northwestern third of the SaarPalatinate. Bradley and Devers also authorized the commanders of the two 

armies, Third and Seventh, to deal directly with each other rather than 

through their respective army group 

headquarters. Patton and the Seventh 

Army commander, General Patch, 

agreed in turn that once operations were 

12 Ibid., pp. 517–18. 

GENERAL PATCH 

under way, Patton’s right corps and 

Patch’s left might also deal directly. 13 

Facing the undented fortifications of 

the West Wall, the Seventh Army commander planned a set-piece attack, preceded by an extensive program of aerial 

bombardment. Before the attack could 

begin, supplies had to be accumulated, 

division and corps boundaries adjusted, 

some units shuffled, and new divisions 

joining the army fed into jump-off positions. 14 This meant to General Patch 

13 Msg, 6th AGp to SHAEF, 081708 Mar 45, 

SHAEF SGS file, 381, III; 12th AGp Ltr of Instrs 

17, 13 Mar 45. 

14 In a local attack on 13 March to better positions for start of the offensive, T. Sgt. Morris E. 

Crain of the 36th Division’s 141st Infantry provided exemplary leadership without regard for 

his own safety through much of the day, then 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 241 

that the Seventh Army could not attack 

before the target date, 15 March. 

General Patton, on the other hand, 

based his entire plan for participation 

in the Saar-Palatinate on exploiting disorganization in German ranks resulting 

from his Eifel drive. The sooner he 

could start the better his chances for farreaching results. He saw no point in 

waiting for the Seventh Army. 

That was part of the reasoning behind 

Patton’s preoccupation with bridges 

over the Moselle which resulted in shifting the 4th Armored Division away 

from the Rhine on 9 March. 15 When the 

attempt to capture a bridge intact across 

the Moselle failed, Patton turned to a 

deliberate attack to be opened with a 

strike by the XX Corps on 12 March. 

While the 76th Division, transferred 

from the XII Corps, took over an earlier 

assignment given the XX Corps to clear 

a narrow sector along the north bank 

of the Moselle, the rest of the XX Corps 

was to drive east from the Saar River 

bridgehead south of Trier, the bridgehead established as a corollary of the 

operations to clear the Saar-Moselle triangle. As soon as regrouping was complete, General Eddy’s XII Corps was to 

jump the lower Moselle near Koblenz 

and head for Bingen, at the juncture of 

the Nahe and the Rhine, and for Bad 

Kreuznach, a few miles upstream on the 

Nahe. Walker and Eddy thus were, in 

effect, to make converging attacks that, 

if unaltered later, would join along the 

stayed behind as a one-man covering force when 

a tank-supported counterattack forced his platoon 

to withdraw. Sergeant Crain died when German 

fire demolished the building from which he was 

fighting. He was awarded the Medal of Honor 

posthumously. 

15 See above, ch. X. 

Nahe River. General Middleton’s VIII 

Corps, meanwhile, was to hold the west 

bank of the Rhine above Koblenz, finish 

the mop-up in the Eifel, and eventually 

reduce Koblenz. If, in the process of its 

watch on the Rhine, the VIII Corps saw 

a chance to jump the river, Middleton 

was to allow it to do so. 16 

Those were the written orders. While 

they conformed to the established boundary with the Seventh Army along the 

Nahe River, General Patton from the 

first intended that the boundary impose 

no restrictions on his maneuver. Orally, 

he told his corps commanders that the 

objective was to establish bridgeheads 

over the Rhine in the vicinity of Mainz, 

Oppenheim, and Worms—the same sites 

he had picked the preceding summer, 

long before the detour to Bastogne and 

through the Eifel. 17 All three sites lay in 

what was then the Seventh Army zone. 

Patton clearly anticipated a swift breakthrough and rapid exploitation that 

would impel further boundary adjustment. 

The Defenders 

As indicated by the warnings of the 

Army Group G commander, General 

Hausser, that his forces could hope to 

accomplish no more than a fighting withdrawal from the Saar-Palatinate, the German situation conformed to Patton’s 

expectations. Even had the problem remained merely to defend the old First 

Army front from Trier to the Rhine, 

most of it bolstered by West Wall fortifications, Hausser’s units would have been 

hard put to hold. As it was, Hausser had 

to thin already dangerously stretched 

16 TUSA Opnl Dir, 10 Mar 45. 

17 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 254. 
242 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

First Army units in an effort to 

strengthen his new charge, the Seventh 

Army, along the Moselle. 18 

In the retreat from the Eifel, General 

Felber’s Seventh Army lost not only 

thousands of soldiers but a corps headquarters, the LIII Corps. Split away from 

the rest of the army by the U.S. 4th 

Armored Division’s plunge to the Rhine, 

the corps commander, General Botsch, 

and some of his staff had escaped across 

the Rhine, while the bulk of those in the 

Seventh Army who got away were falling 

back behind the Moselle. To take the 

place of this corps, the Army Group G 

commander, General Hausser, called on 

the LXXXIX Corps under General der 

Infanterie Gustav Hoehne from the extreme left wing of the First Army. Leaving behind its assigned divisions to be 

absorbed by the neighboring corps, the 

headquarters of the LXXXIX Corps 

arrived at the Moselle on 9 March. 

To General Hoehne went the task of 

defending some twenty-five miles of the 

Moselle from Koblenz to a point upstream from Cochem. As everywhere 

along the Moselle, the snakelike convolutions of the river added to the actual 

length of the front and created dangerous re-entrants. To defend such a serpentine obstacle with any real hope of 

success would have required either 

enough troops on the north bank to stop 

the re-entrants or sufficient reserves to 

hit any crossing quickly. The LXXXIX 

Corps and the Seventh Army had neither. 

As the LXXXIX Corps moved into 

position, General Hoehne assumed com18 Unless otherwise noted, the German story is 

based on the following MSS: # B–238 (Hauser); 

# B–123 (Gersdorff); # B–831 (Felber); # B–600 

(Hausser); and # C–020 (Schramm). 

mand of Kampfgruppe Koblenz, a 1,800- 

man local defense force whose only fire 

support was from stationary antiaircraft 

guns, mostly east of the Rhine, and the 

276th Infantry Division, which had escaped from the Eifel with the equivalent 

of two infantry, two engineer, and two 

light field artillery battalions. Withdrawn from the First Army as a first step 

in providing a reserve for the Seventh 

Army, a third unit, the 159th Infantry 

Division, had to be used instead to augment Hoehne’s corps. A force of fairly 

presentable strength, the 159th took 

over the left wing. 19 

By further stretching the First Army 

defenses, the Army Group G commander 

had freed another unit, also scheduled 

originally for the Seventh Army reserve 

—the 6th SS Mountain Division, perhaps the most combat-worthy division 

remaining in Army Group G. Yet on 5 

March, in a belated reaction to the U.S. 

10th Armored Division’s capture of 

Trier, OB WEST had ordered that division to counterattack across the Ruwer 

River south of Trier to sever the American armored division’s line of communications. Striking the U.S. 94th Division, 

the mountain division the next day had 

cut the main highway into Trier from 

the south. 20 

It was a Pyrrhic victory. In the attack 

and against the American counterattacks 

that followed, the flower of the 6th SS 

Mountain Division’s manpower fell. 

Two days later, as OB WEST finally 

gave in to Army Group G’s protestations, 

the remainder of the division began to 

withdraw, but for lack of gasoline one 

19 MSS # B–377, Fighting of the LXXXIX Corps 

From 10 to 16 March (General der Infanterie 

Gustav Hoehne); # B–831 (Felber). 

20 94th Div AAR, Mar 45. 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 243 

regiment had to stay behind. Although 

General Hausser decided, reluctantly, to 

give the division to the LXXXIX Corps 

rather than hold it in reserve, only the 

reconnaissance battalion would reach the 

corps before the Moselle front erupted. 

Hausser had only one other hope for a 

reserve. For more than a week he had 

sought to withdraw the 559th Volks 

Grenadier Division from a salient extending beyond the West Wall south of 

Saarbruecken; but since that would involve abandoning some West Wall positions, authority had to come from Hitler 

himself. The permission finally arrived 

but, as events were to prove, too late. 

The first contingents of the division became available to assist the Seventh Army 

only on 15 March. 

On the left of the LXXXIX Corps, 

responsible for another twenty-five miles 

of steep, rocky, vine-clad river bank, 

stood General von Oriola’s XIII Corps, 

consisting of remnants of three volks 

grenadier divisions and the 2d Panzer 

Division. None of the divisions could be 

classed as more than a Kumpfgrupee and 

the panzer division, though somewhat 

stronger in numbers than the others, 

had only a few tanks. The rest of the 

Moselle front to the vicinity of Trier, 

thence southeast along the Ruwer River 

to a point of contact with the First Army 

three miles south of the Moselle, belonged to General Beyer’s LXXX Corps. 

Beyer commanded remnants of three 

volks grenadier divisions. 21 

21 MSS # B–052, XIII Corps, 18 February–21 

March 1945 (Generalleutnant Ralph von Oriola); 

# B–082, The Final Fighting of the LXXX Army 

Corps From the Marne to the Danube (General 

der Infanterie Franz Beyer), p. 3. 

Despite the withdrawals to aid the 

Seventh Army, Army Group G’s other 

major component, the First Army under 

General der Infanterie Hermann 

Foertsch, remained the considerably 

stronger force. Having benefited by 

transfer of a number of the Nineteenth 

Army’s divisions following withdrawal 

from the Colmar pocket, the First Army 

had seen little major fighting in recent 

weeks except that in the Saar-Moselle 

triangle and the limited objective attacks in Alsace launched by the American Seventh Army in February. Yet the 

weakest point of the First Army front 

was at the same time the most threatened, and the necessity of giving up divisions to the Seventh Army meant that 

General Foertsch could do little about it. 

The point in question was the bridgehead beyond the Saar River and the 

West Wall south of Trier established by 

the U.S. XX Corps. There stood the 

LXXXII Corps under General Hahm, 

part of which earlier had been driven 

from the Saar-Moselle triangle. Until 10 

March, the corps still had only three divisions, two of which had been roughly 

treated in the triangle. The third, the 

2d Mountain Division, was also seriously 

understrength following its futile, piecemeal counterattacks against the bridgehead over the Saar. On 10 March command of the remnants of another division passed from the Seventh Army’s 

LXXX Corps to the LXXXII Corps, but 

with it came responsibility for defending 

an additional three miles of front close 

to Trier. With this addition, General 

Hahm’s line ran from a point east of 

Trier southeast to the other American 

bridgehead over the Saar at Saarlautern. 

Somewhat less than one-half of this line 
244 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

benefited from West Wall fortifications. 22 

Containing the Saarlautern bridgehead 

was one of the responsibilities of the 

LXXXV Corps, commanded by General 

der Infanterie Baptist Kniess. The corps 

had three divisions, all nearly at full 

strength; but one, the 559th Volks Grenadier, was destined for transfer to the 

Seventh Army. 23 Unlike the commander 

of the adjoining LXXXII Corps and 

those defending the Moselle, General 

Kniess was confident his troops could 

hold against frontal attack, for the West 

Wall in his sector was in considerable 

depth. It was concern about American 

breakthrough from the rear that plagued 

both Kniess and the commanders of two 

other corps that extended the First Army 

line southeast to the Rhine. Although 

these two corps, the XIII SS and the XC, 

would no doubt be driven back from 

their advanced positions in Alsace, they 

would gain strength by retiring into the 

West Wall. 

When the new Commander in Chief 

West, Field Marshal Kesselring, paid his 

first visit to First and Seventh Army 

headquarters on 13 March, the army 

group commander, General Hausser, and 

the two army commanders used the occasion to emphasize how sterile and potentially disastrous they considered the 

policy of all-out defense west of the 

Rhine. It could only result, they insisted, 

in wholesale losses, perhaps annihilation. 

The latter, General Felber of the Seventh 

Army pointed out, seemed highly likely, 

because the U.S. 4th Armored Division 

was apparently concentrating along the 

22 MS # B–066 (Ingelheim). 

23 MS # B–121, LXXXV Corps, 25 January–23 

March 1945, Operations in the Saar (General der 

Infanterie Baptist Kniess). 

lower Moselle near Cochem for a quick 

thrust that could cut the entire army 

group off from the Rhine. 

Yet Kesselring, true to his charge from 

his Fuehrer—whether he believed in it 

or not—refused to sanction either withdrawal or a deliberate delaying action. 

“The positions,” Kesselring said, “have 

to be held.” 24 

Through the Hunsrueck 

General Patton’s plan of attack was 

admirably designed to ,capitalize on German weaknesses. Striking first, Walker’s 

XX Corps might attract any available 

reserve, whereupon Eddy’s XII Corps 

was to jump the Moselle at one of the 

defenders’ weakest points, the sector of 

Hoehne’s LXXXIX Corps. Quick convergence of the two drives well might 

trap the other two corps of the Seventh 

Army, and a logical extension of Eddy’s 

thrust southward alongside the Rhine 

could, as the German General Felber 

feared, trap all of Army Group G. 

For the opening attack, General 

Walker had an outsize corps of four infantry divisions, two cavalry groups, and 

an armored division. One cavalry group, 

the 3d, started the fighting during the 

afternoon of 12 March with a diversionary attack in a loop of the Moselle near 

the confluence of the Moselle and the 

Ruwer. After nightfall, as a drizzling rain 

showed signs of diminishing, troops of 

three infantry divisions moved toward 

lines of departure along the periphery 

of the Saar bridgehead south of Trier. 

At 0245 on 13 March an impressive total 

of thirty-one divisional and corps field 

24 Quotation is from MS # B–600 (Paul Hausser). See also MSS # B–123 (Gersdorff); # B–831 

(Felber); # B–238 (Wolf Hauser). 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 245 

artillery battalions opened fire. Fifteen 

minutes later, the infantry moved 

through the darkness to the attack. 

The 94th Division (General Malony) 

on the left headed east toward the crossroads town of Hermeskeil, ten miles 

beyond the Ruwer; the 80th Division 

(General McBride) in the center drove 

southeast toward Weiskirchen and Losheim, approximately seven miles away. 

Capture of these objectives would put 

the XX Corps through the most densely 

wooded portions of the Hunsrueck and 

open the way for armor. The 26th Division (General Paul) meanwhile attacked 

almost due south in a narrow zone close 

to the Saar to roll up the West Wall. 

After daylight, a regiment of the 65th 

Division (Maj. Gen. Stanley E. Reinhart), new to combat, staged a diversionary, limited objective attack in the 

Saarlautern bridgehead. 25 

Nowhere was the going easy. The terrain—high, fir-covered hills, deep draws 

and ravines, and a secondary roadnet already churned into mud by German vehicles—was enough in itself to see to 

that; but the German regiments, seriously depleted in numbers, could take 

advantage of the difficult ground only at 

isolated points rather than along a continuous line. In the darkness, the attacking battalions stumbled onto some 

enemy positions, ran into minefields, and 

drew heavy small arms and mortar fire, 

but more often than not, a sideslipping 

to left or right brought quick relief and 

continued advance. The action was more 

an infiltration than an attack, with reserve companies and reserve battalions 

25 For assignments, see XX Corps FO 18, 10 Mar 

45. Unless otherwise noted, this account is based 

on official records of the XX Corps and its divisions. 

taking out the strongpoints after daylight 

came. 

By early evening of 13 March, the 94th 

and 80th Divisions both had firm holds 

on the first ridgeline beyond the original 

bridgehead, as much as two miles from 

the jump-off points, and bridges were in 

place across both the Ruwer and a feeder 

stream that cut the 80th Division’s zone. 26 

Unlike the other two units, the 26th Division in the pillbox belt near the Saar 

came in for frequent local counterattacks, but that division also advanced as 

much as two miles. 

The next day, 14 March, the drive 

slowed down. The Germans, wherever 

encountered, fought back defiantly, giving no indication of general withdrawal. 

This was particularly true among the pillboxes faced by the 26th Division, where 

a combination of concrete-reinforced resistance and rough terrain brought advances that had to be measured in yards 

rather than miles. A counterattack by 

the regiment of the 6th SS Mountain 

Division that had been left behind by 

its parent division for want of gasoline 

slowed the advance of the 80th Division. 27 When the weather cleared in the 

afternoon, planes of the XIX Tactical 

Air Command got into the fray in 

strength, but because it was hard to pinpoint advance positions in the thick fir 

26 Part of the success achieved by the 80th Division’s 318th Infantry was directly attributable to 

the actions of one officer, 2d Lt. Harry J. Michael. 

He singlehandedly captured two machine guns and 

their crews, then led his platoon in a charge that 

carried an artillery position and seized three guns. 

A few hours later he individually captured 13 

Germans, wounded 4, and killed 2, then again led 

a successful charge against German pillboxes. The 

next morning a shot from ambush cut Lieutenant 

Michael down. He was awarded the Medal of 

Honor posthumously. 

27 MS # B–066 (Ingelheim). 
246 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

forests, the strikes had to be confined to 

targets well in front of the infantry. 

Visiting all three division command 

posts during the day, the Third Army 

commander was disturbed at the slow 

pace. General Patch’s Seventh Army, 

General Patton knew, was to begin its 

offensive the next morning. Patton was 

concerned lest Patch beat him to the 

Rhine. 28 

Patton need not have worried. On the 

third day, 15 March, no general German 

collapse developed, but the signs were 

there. The 94th Division’s 302d Infantry 

plunged forward four miles and reached 

a point less than three miles from the 

division objective of Hermeskeil. A battallion of the 80th Division’s 318th Infantry fought its way into Weiskirchen, 

one of that division’s objectives, there 

encountering a veritable hornet’s nest of 

opposition. The battalion nonetheless 

achieved a sizable gain and was on the 

edge of more open country. Another 

battalion made an even deeper thrust 

farther south. Although the 26th Division had the usual hard time with pillboxes, the 26th’s attack was a subsidiary 

operation that nobody looked on as the 

bellwether of the drive. 

To the XX Corps commander, General Walker, the time for exploitation 

seemed at hand. Although air reconnaissance found no evidence of wholesale 

German withdrawal, this report merely 

reinforced Walker’s determination to 

commit his armor. A swift strike by tanks 

might trap the Germans before they had 

a chance to escape. 

Just after midnight Walker told the 

10th Armored Division, already on onehour alert, to jump off before daylight 

28 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 259. 

on the 16th to pass through the 94th and 

80th Divisions. The goal was the Nahe 

River, some twenty-five miles away. 

Across the Lower Moselle 

Playing a large part in Walker’s decision was the situation in the zone of 

General Eddy’s XII Corps on the lower 

Moselle. There, before dawn on 14 

March, two infantry divisions had set out 

to cross the river. 

The terrain along the lower Moselle 

is forbidding at the river line itself— 

precipitous, forested slopes rising to a 

thousand feet, with egress from the river 

bottom by steep twisting roads—but only 

a mile or two from the river most of the 

roads emerge onto open, relatively flatsurfaced ridgelines broad enough for military maneuver. Thus the XII Corps 

commander, General Eddy, anticipated 

that once his infantry had reached the 

crest of the ridgelines, armor could 

quickly take over and drive the remaining thirty miles to the Nahe River. Although he ordered his infantry divisions 

to attack toward the Nahe as soon as they 

had established bridgeheads over the 

Moselle, he alerted the 4th Armored 

Division for rapid commitment and 

urged corps engineers to begin building 

bridges capable of handling tanks even 

as the infantrymen were crossing the 

river in assault boats. 29 

Concealed by darkness and a heavy fog, 

two regiments of the 90th Division (General Earnest) and one of the 5th (General Irwin) began to cross the Moselle 

at 0200, 14 March, behind a 30-minute 

artillery preparation. A second regiment 

28 See XII Corps FO 16, 11 Mar 45. Unless otherwise noted, the tactical story is from official records 

of the corps and divisions. 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 247 

of the 5th Division—arrival of its assault 

boats delayed by traffic-jammed roads— 

crossed two hours later. Only an occasional inaccurate burst of fire from restless German machine gunners interfered 

with any of the crossings. 

On the far bank, the infantrymen 

found resistance centered almost exclusively in the towns and villages. In Treis, 

riverside nexus of several good roads 

leading southeast and six miles downstream from Cochem, contingents of the 

enemy’s 159th Division held a battalion 

of the 5th Division’s 2d Infantry at bay 

until after nightfall when opening of a 

treadway bridge across the Moselle enabled tanks to help mop up. It took a 

battalion of the 90th Division’s 357th 

Infantry until noon to clear other troops 

of the 159th Division from the town of 

Brodenbach, while in another town just 

over a mile downstream the 6th SS 

Mountain Division’s reconnaissance battalion held out until midafternoon. 

In the meantime, the other battalions 

of both the 5th and 90th Divisions had 

been occupying the high ground between 

and behind the villages. By nightfall 

some units had pushed more than two 

miles beyond the river; casualties in the 

two divisions together totaled less than 

a hundred. At first concealed by fog, then 

by smoke, and hampered only by a swift 

current and sporadic, ineffective German 

shelling, engineers soon after nightfall 

opened treadway bridges to serve both 

divisions. 

The comparative ease of the crossing 

early prompted the 5th Division commander, General Irwin, to alert a regiment for a fast motorized advance the 

next morning, 15 March, aimed at the 

corps objective along the Nahe River. 

The corps commander, General Eddy, 

was similarly impressed. When Irwin 

asked for trucks to transport his infantry, 

Eddy cautioned that he intended to commit the 4th Armored Division (General 

Gaffey) early the next day. To Irwin’s 

protest that his infantry could reach the 

objective while the armored division was 

sorting itself out after crossing the river, 

Eddy insisted that the exploitation was 

a job for armor. 30 

To the German LXXXIX Corps commander, General Hoehne, it was equally 

apparent that the American bridgehead 

was firmly established and soon would 

explode. While he knew that the main 

body of the 6th SS Mountain Division 

probably would arrive the next day, he 

also recognized that the division was too 

depleted from the futile counterattack 

south of Trier and the loss of a regiment 

to General Hahm’s LXXXII Corps even 

to postpone the inevitable. As the division began to arrive piecemeal early on 

the 15th, Hoehne committed it against 

the left flank of the U.S. 90th Division, 

hoping thereby at least to hold open an 

escape route eastward to the Rhine. 31 

General Hoehne’s preoccupation with 

the American left flank became manifest 

on 15 March in the pattern of American 

advance. On the left, in the relatively 

narrow triangle of land between the 

Moselle and the Rhine, the 90th Division’s 357th Infantry absorbed two sharp 

counterattacks, one supported by two 

tanks, another launched by newly arrived 

troops of the 6th SS Mountain Division. At the forest-cloaked village of Pfaffenheck, midway between the Moselle 

and the Rhine, a hundred SS troopers 

30 The 5th Division telephone journals are a 

valuable source for this period. 

31 MS # B–377 (Hoehne). See also MSS # B–123 

(Gersdorff; # B–831 (Felber). 
248 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

supported by a lone tank fought furiously and successfully against the 357th 

Infantry’s 2d Battalion to hold a road 

leading to the Rhine. Although a platoon of Company E forced its way into 

the village in early morning, the Germans cut off and captured the riflemen 

before reinforcements could arrive. 

Attacking down parallel roads to the 

southeast, the 90th Division’s other two 

regiments expanded the bridgehead line 

six miles beyond the Moselle before the 

4th Armored Division’s Combat Command A passed through in the afternoon. 

The armor almost immediately ran into 

stubborn resistance built around four 

antitank guns and extended the line only 

a little more than an additional mile 

before coiling for the night. 

On the right wing of the XII Corps, 

where the enemy corps commander soon 

lost all communications with his 159th 

Division and presumed the unit doomed, 

similar resistance failed to develop. 32 

The advance was spectacular. Passing 

through troops of the 5th Division at 

noon, the 4th Armored’s Combat Command B quickly picked up momentum. 

Roadblocks at the entrance of each town, 

usually defended by no more than a 

cluster of riflemen and machine gunners, 

were about all that stood in the way. 

White sheets fluttered from upper-story 

windows, a now familiar sign that German civilians had divined the approaching end. Enjoying a bright, sunlit day, 

fighter-bombers of the XIX Tactical Air 

Command worked in close co-ordination 

with the armor and before night fell had 

flown 643 sorties to claim a new record 

for five groups in one day. 33 In just over 

five hours, CCB moved sixteen miles be32 MS # B–377 (Hoehne). 

33 XII Corps Opnl Dir 88, 16 Mar 45. 

yond the Moselle, more than half the 

distance to the Nahe River. The tankers 

stopped for the night in Simmern, only 

a few miles from the Soonwald, the last 

big terrain obstacle short of the Nahe. 

Convinced beyond doubt that CCB’s 

deep thrust presaged a quick end to 

organized resistance, General Eddy attached motorized regimental combat 

teams from the 90th and 5th Divisions 

to CCA and CCB, respectively. In order 

to broaden the front and prevent other 

German units from turning against the 

penetration, he ordered the 89th Division (Maj. Gen. Thomas D. Finley) , experiencing its first combat, to cross the 

Moselle beside the 5th Division early 

the next morning, 15 March. Shifted by 

General Patton from the VIII Corps, the 

11th Armored Division was to follow 

on the 17th. 34 

With General Hoehne’s LXXXIX 

Corps split by Combat Command B’s 

thrust, the Seventh Army commander, 

General Felber, made the usual cry for 

help to his Army Group G superior, 

General Hausser. Noting that the first 

contingents (two infantry battalions) of 

the 559th Volks Grenadier Division had 

arrived in the army’s sector during the 

afternoon, Hausser promised to do what 

he could to speed the rest of the division. He also ordered the First Army to 

release another volks grenadier division, 

but in view of the canopy of American fighter planes that spanned the 

Saar-Palatinate during daylight, neither 

division probably would be able to arrive in time to help. 

For his own part, General Felber ordered General Hoehne to conduct a 

fighting withdrawal using those forces of 

34 Ibid. 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 249 

the LXXXIX Corps that were east of the 

American penetration, If compelled, 

Hoehne was to fall back across the Rhine. 

What was left of the 159th Division was 

to be attached to the XIII Corps (General von Oriola) and was to assume a 

bridgehead defense north of the Nahe 

River. The bridgehead was to be used as 

a reception station for the XIII Corps 

once approval for the corps to withdraw 

could be wrung from higher command. 35 

The German commanders had every 

reason to ask for withdrawal; two corps 

of the Seventh Army, the XIII and 

LXXX Corps, both still holding along 

the Moselle, were in danger of encirclement. The 4th Armored Division breakthrough was but one aspect of that 

danger. The German commanders also 

had to cast wary glances over their left 

shoulders at the attack of the U.S. XX 

Corps. 

Plunge to the Nahe and Fall of Koblenz 

In General Walker’s XX Corps, combat commands of the 10th Armored Division (General Morris) began passing 

through infantry of the 80th and 94th 

Divisions before daylight on 16 March. 

Although the Germans of General 

Hahm’s LXXXII Corps during the night 

had formed a new crust of resistance 

sufficient to deny genuine armored exploitation for another twenty-four hours, 

no doubt remained among either American or German commanders as the day 

ended that a deep armored thrust was in 

the offing. 

When it came, the exploitation would 

possess added power as a result of a visit 

the Supreme Commander paid the Third 

35 MSS # B–831 (Felber); # B–123 (Gersdorff). 

Army commander in late morning of the 

16th. Patton asked General Eisenhower 

for another armored division, the 12th, 

then in Seventh Army reserve, and Eisenhower agreed. Like General Eddy’s XII 

Corps, Walker’s XX Corps was to have 

six divisions. 36 

In the XII Corps, meanwhile, the exploitation involved no delay. Renewing 

the drive from Simmern, the 4th Armored’s CCB took the obstacle of the 

Soonwald in stride and plunged almost 

unimpeded another fourteen miles. The 

head of the column reached the Nahe 

River at noon near Bad Muenster, two 

miles upstream from the corps objective 

of Bad Kreuznach, seized a railroad 

bridge intact, and quickly established a 

bridgehead. 

Fighter-bombers of the XIX Tactical 

Air Command again were out in force, 

bombing and strafing anything German 

that moved on the roads. Ironically, it 

was the fighter-bombers that saved the 

German Seventh Army commander, General Felber, and his chief of staff, General von Gersdorff, from capture. In the 

process of moving their command post, 

the two officers had to take to the woods 

to escape strafing American planes. Minutes later tanks of the 4th Armored Division passed nearby, unaware of the prey 

the planes had forced into hiding. For 

an hour Felber and Gersdorff had to 

hide in the woods before they were able 

to escape over a back road. 

It was but a short-lived respite for the 

two German officers. Even as they rejoined the rest of the Seventh Army staff 

in Gensingen, midway between Bad 

Kreuznach and the Rhine, the 4th Armored’s other attacking combat com36 Patton, War As I Knew It, pp. 259–62. 
250 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

mand was fast bearing down on them. 

Having run into stanch resistance near 

the north edge of the Soonwald from the 

6th SS Mountain Division's reconnaissance battalion, Combat Command A 

again had found the going slower than 

had CCB; but once air and artillery support had helped overcome the opposition, CCA too began to roll. The head 

of CCA's column reached the Nahe opposite Gensingen before dark. Although 

all bridges over the river had been demolished, fire from the tankers’ guns 

forced the Seventh Army staff again to 

flee. 37 

At the Moselle River, German miseries 

were compounded on 16 March in two 

places. Upstream from Cochem and the 

5th Division crossing sites, General Finley's 89th Division before daylight sent 

two regiments across the river in assault 

boats against a modicum of resistance. 

As with the earlier crossings, fighting 

was restricted almost entirely to the riverside villages, and there the weak task 

forces of General von Oriola's XIII 

Corps could hope to hold only briefly. 

By the end of the day, the inexperienced 

89th Division held a substantial bridgehead and was ready to receive the tanks 

of the 11th Armored Division. 

German troubles also increased downstream near the confluence of the Moselle 

with the Rhine. There General Middleton, his VIII Corps reduced to but one 

division and cavalry group, sent his lone 

division, the 87th, across the Moselle to 

capture the city of Koblenz. 38 

The 87th Division commander, General Culin, planned to do the job with 

two regiments. The 347th Infantry was 

to cross the river before daylight on 16 

37 MSS # B–831 (Felber); # B–123 (Gersdorff). 

38 VIII Corps FO 15, 14 Mar 45. 

March about five miles upstream from 

Koblenz. Through a narrow clearing in 

the high woodlands that feature most of 

the narrow triangle between the Moselle 

and the Rhine, the regiment was to drive 

southeast about seven miles to the Rhine, 

thus cutting off the defenders of Koblenz 

from any possible aid from the south. A 

second regiment, crossing the Moselle 

opposite Koblenz itself, was to reduce 

the city. 

Aware from intelligence reports that 

the enemy's LXXXIX Corps had few 

troops for defending the little triangle 

other than weak contingents of the 276th 

Yolks Grenadier Division and local Koblenz defense forces, General Culin anticipitated no major fight. The utter ease 

of the 347th Infantry's crossing nonetheless came as a surprise. Not a shot, not a 

round of shellfire, indeed, not a sign of 

the enemy met the two assault battalions. 

Dawn was fast approaching when the first 

opposition developed, a scattering of 

small arms fire in a village several hundred yards from the river. 

The first really troublesome resistance 

came in the afternoon at Waldesch, midway between the Moselle and the Rhine. 

There recently arrived contingents of 

the 6th SS Mountain Division effectively 

blocked a little corridor of cleared land 

leading to the Rhine. 

Noting the ease of the 347th Infantry’s 

crossing, General Culin saw no need to 

repeat the process opposite Koblenz. Instead, he ordered a second regiment to 

cross in the 347th’s sector, then swing 

northeast against the city. By the end of 

the day, 16 March, two battalions were 

in the southern fringes of the city and 

had cleared a new Moselle crossing site 

for the rest of the regiment. 

To the German Seventh Army com- 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 251 

ENGINEERS OF THE 87TH DIVISION ferry a tank across the Moselle. 

mander, General Felber, advent of the 

new American force removed any rationalization that might have existed for the 

LXXXIX Corps to attempt to hold 

longer west of the Rhine. At noon on the 

16th he told the corps commander, General Hoehne, to begin his withdrawal, 

though in Koblenz itself Kampfgruppe 

Koblenz was to fight to the last. As night 

came, a heavy fog favored the evacuation. Some 1,700 men, all that remained 

of Hoehne’s LXXXIX Corps, made it to 

the east bank. 39 

39 MSS # B–377 (Hoehne); # B–123 (Gersdorff); 

# B–831 (Felber). See also MS # B–124, 276th 

Aided by deadly airbursts from highvelocity antiaircraft guns firing from beyond the Rhine, the 1,800-man Kampfgruppe Koblenz put up a stout defense 

the next day, 17 March, even though 

the outcome of the fight was inevitable. 

The last resistance was destined to fade 

early on 19 March with no more than 

half a hundred survivors escaping across 

the Rhine. 40 

Volks Grenadier Division (Col. Werner Wagner, 

Actg Comdr.) 

40 MS # B–377 (Hoehne). 
252 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Seventh Army’s Deliberate Attack 

All along the Moselle, from Koblenz 

to Trier, the German Seventh Army on 

17 March was in peril, if not from direct 

attack, then from the franking thrust 

against the right wing of the First Army 

by General Walker’s XX Corps. Collapse 

of the Seventh Army clearly was but a 

question of time. Soon the German First 

Army, too, would be in dire straits, for 

the American Seventh Army two days 

earlier, on 15 March, had launched a 

power drive against General Foertsch’s 

army along a 70-mile front from the 

vicinity of Saarlautern southeastward to 

the Rhhe. Even if that offensive failed 

to penetrate the West Wall, it might 

tie the First Army troops to‘ the fortifications while Patton’s forces took them 

from the rear. 

The U.S. Seventh Army traced its 

origin back to Sicily where General Patton had first led it into battle. An infantryman who had seen combat many 

months before on Guadalcanal, “Sandy” 

Patch, had assumed command for the 

invasion of southern France and a swift 

advance northward. Patch’s chief of staff 

was an artilleryman, Maj. Gen. Arthur 

A. White, who had held a similar post 

under Patch on Guadalcanal. 

The Seventh Army numbered among 

its ranks several relatively inexperienced 

units but retained a flavoring of longterm veterans. The VI Corps (Maj, Gen. 

Edward H. Brooks), for example, and 

three divisions—the 3d, 36th, and 45thhad fought at length in the Mediterranean theater, including the Anzio 

beachhead. The XV Corps (Maj. Gen. 

Wade H. Haislip) had joined the Seventh Army after fighting across France 

with the Third Army. A third corps, the 

XXI (Maj. Gen. Frank W. Milburn), 

was relatively new, having joined the 

army in January. 

As the Seventh Army offensive began, 

the basic question was how stubbornly 

the Germans would defend before falling 

back on the West Wall. Only General 

Milburn’s XXI Corps, on the Seventh 

Army left wing near Saarbruecken, was 

fairly close to the West Wall, while other 

units were as much as twenty miles away. 

Making the army’s main effort in the 

center, General Haislip’s XV Corps faced 

what looked like a particularly troublesome obstacle in the town of Bitche. Surrounded by fortresses of the French 

Maginot Line, Bitche had been taken 

from the Germans in December after a 

hard struggle, only to be relinquished in 

the withdrawal forced by the German 

counteroffensive. On the army’s right 

wing General Brooks’s VI Corps, farthest 

of all from the West Wall, had first to 

get across the Moder River, and one of 

Brooks’s divisions faced the added difficulty of attacking astride the rugged 

Lower Vosges Mountains. 

Two German corps and part of a third 

were in the path of the impending American drive. At Saarbruecken, the left 

wing of General Kniess’s LXXXV Corps 

would receive a glancing blow from Milburn’s XXI Corps. Having recently given 

up the 559th Volks Grenadier Division 

to the Seventh Army, Kniess had only 

two divisions, one of which was tied 

down holding West Wall positions 

northwest of Saarbruecken. Southeast of 

the town, with boundaries roughly coterminous with those of Haislip’s XV 

Corps, stood the XIII SS Corps (SS 

Gruppenfuehrer and Generalleutnant 

der Waffen-SS Max Simon) with three 

divisions. Extending the line to the 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 253 

Rhine was the XC Corps (General der 

Infanterie Erich Petersen) with two 

volks grenadier divisions and remnants 

of an infantry training division. 

Although the Germans worried most 

about a breakthrough in the sector of 

Petersen’s XC Corps into the Wissembourg Gap rather than through Simon’s 

XIII SS Corps into the Kaiserslautern 

corridor, the shifts and countershifts 

made in preceding weeks to salvage reinforcements for the Seventh Army actually had left the XIII SS Corps the 

stronger. In addition to two volks grenadier divisions, Simon’s corps had the 17th 

SS Panzer Grenadier Division, at this 

point not much more than a proud name, 

but a unit possessing considerably more 

tanks and other armored vehicles than 

were to be found in the entire adjacent 

corps. The American main effort thus 

aimed at the stronger German units, 

though at this stage of the war strength 

in regard to German divisions was but a 

relative term. 41 

As General Patch’s Seventh Army attacked before daylight on 15 March, the 

apparent answer on German intentions 

was quick to come. Only in two places 

could the resistance be called determined. One was on the left wing, where 

the 63d Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. 

Louis E. Hibbs) sought to bypass Saarbruecken on the east and cut German 

escape routes from the city. The fact that 

the 63d Division early hit the West Wall 

provided ready explanation for the 

41 For the German story, see MSS # B–071, XC 

Infantry Corps December 1944–23 March 1945 

(General der Infanterie Erich Petersen); # B–711, 

Engagements of the XIII SS AK West of the Rhine 

(Waffen-SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Ekkehard Albert, CofS, XIII SS Corps); # B–121 (Kniess); # 

B–238 (Wolf Hauser); and # B–600 (Paul Hausser). 

stanch opposition there. The other was 

on the extreme right wing where an attached 3d Algerian Infantry Division (3e 

Division d’Infanterie d’Algerie) was to 

clear the expanse of flatland between 

Hagenau and the Rhine. There an urban 

area closely backing the Moder River defensive line and flat ground affording 

superb fields of fire for dug-in automatic 

weapons accounted in large measure for 

the more difficult fighting. 42 

Elsewhere local engagements sometimes were vicious and costly but usually 

were short-lived. Antipersonnel and antitank mines abounded. German artillery 

fire seldom was more than moderate and 

in most cases could better be classified 

as light or sporadic. That was attributable in part to a campaign of interdiction 

for several days preceding the attack by 

planes of the XII Tactical Air Command 

(Brig. Gen. Glenn O. Barcus) and by 

D-day strikes by both the fighter-bombers 

and the mediums and heavies of the 

Eighth Air Force. The latter hit West 

Wall fortifications and industrial targets 

in cities such as Zweibruecken and Kaiserslautern. The weather was beautifully 

clear, enabling the aircraft to strike at a 

variety of targets, limited only by range 

and bomb-carrying capacity. Among the 

German casualties were the operations 

officers of two of the three XC Corps 

divisions. 43 

Of the units of the outsized (six divisions) XV Corps, only a regiment of 

the 45th Division (Maj. Gen. Robert T. 

Frederick) faced a water obstacle at the 

start. That regiment had to cross the 

Blies River at a site upstream from where 

42 Unless otherwise noted, the account of Seventh 

Army action is based on official records of Seventh 

Army and subordinate units. 

43 MS # B–071 (Petersen). 
 254T HE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the Blies turns northeast to meander up 

the Kaiserslautern corridor. Yet even 

before dawn men of the regiment had 

penetrated the enemy’s main line of defense beyond the river. Aided by searchlights, they bypassed strongpoints, leaving them for reserves to take out later. 

As night came the 45th Division had 

driven almost three miles beyond the 

Blies to match a rate of advance that was 

general everywhere except in the pillbox 

belt near Saarbruecken and on the flatlands near the Rhine. 

On the right wing of the XV Corps, 

men of the 100th Infantry Division (Maj. 

Gen. Withers A. Burress) drove quickly 

to the outskirts of the fortress town of 

Bitche. Perhaps aided by the fact that 

they had done the same job before in 

December, they gained dominating positions on the fortified hills around the 

town, leaving no doubt that they would 

clear the entire objective in short order 

the next day, 16 March. 

The only counterattack to cause ap 

preciable concern hit a battalion of the 

3d Division’s 7th Infantry. Veterans of 

combat from the North African campaign onward, the regiments of the 3d 

Division (Maj. Gen. John W. O’Daniel) 

were making the main effort in the center of the XV Corps in the direction of 

Zweibruecken and the Kaiserslautern 

corridor. Although a company of supporting tanks ran into a dense minefield, 

disabling four tanks and stopping the 

others, a battalion of the 7th Infantry 

fought its way into the village of 

Uttweiler, just across the German frontier. Then an infantry battalion from the 

17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, sup 

ported by nine assault guns, struck back. 

The Germans quickly isolated the 

American infantrymen but could not 

force them from the village. Supported 

by a platoon of tank destroyers and the 

regimental antitank company organized 

as a bazooka brigade, another of the 7th 

Infantry’s battalions counterattacked. 

The men knocked out four multiplebarrel 20-mm. flakwagons and seven assault guns and freed the besieged 

battalion. 

On the Seventh Army’s right wing, 

pointed toward the Wissembourg Gap, 

divisions of General Brooks’s VI Corps 

experienced, with the exception of the 

3d Algerian Division, much the same 

type of opposition. Although all four 

attacking divisions had to overcome the 

initial obstacle of a river, either the 

Moder or a tributary, they accomplished 

the job quickly with predawn assaults. 

The Germans were too thinly stretched 

to do more than man a series of strongpoints. On the corps left wing, the 42d 

Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. Harry J. 

Collins) overcame the added obstacle of 

attacking along the spine of the Lower 

Vosges by avoiding the roads and villages 

in the valleys and following the crests of 

the high ground. Pack mules, already 

proved in earlier fighting in the High 

Vosges, provided the means of supply. 

As with the 3d Division, a battalion 

of the 103d Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. 

Anthony C. McAuliffe) ran into a 

counterattack, but the reaction it 

prompted was more precautionary than 

forced. Having entered Uttenhofen, 

northwest of Hagenau, the battalion encountered such intense small arms fire 

and shelling from self-propelled guns 

that the regimental commander authorized withdrawal. When German infantry 

soon after nightfall counterattacked with 

support from four self-propelled pieces, 

the battalion pulled back another few 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 255 

TROOPS OF THE 63D DIVISION cross dragon’s teeth of the West Wall. 

hundred yards to better positions on the 

edge of a copse. 

In the sector of the 36th Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. John E. Dahlquist), 

the day’s fighting produced a heroic performance by a rifleman of the 142d 

Infantry, Pfc. Silvestre S. Herrera. After 

making a one-man charge that carried a 

German strongpoint and bagged eight 

prisoners, Herrera and his platoon were 

pinned down by fire from a second position protected by a minefield. Disregarding the mines, Herrera also charged this 

position but stepped on a mine and lost 

both feet. Even that failed to check him. 

He brought the enemy under such accurate rifle fire that others of his platoon 

were able to bypass the minefield and 

take the Germans in flank. 44 

The 3d Algerian Division meanwhile 

got across the Moder with little enough 

trouble but then encountered intense 

house-to-house fighting. Despite good artillery support made possible by the unlimited visibility of a clear day, grazing 

fire from automatic weapons prevented 

the Algerians from crossing a stretch of 

open ground facing the buildings of a 

44 Private Herrera was awarded the Medal of 

Honor. 
256 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

former French Army frontier post. A 

welter of mines and two counterattacks, 

the latter repulsed in both cases by artillery fire, added to the problems. As 

night fell, no Algerian unit had advanced 

more than a mile. 

On the second day, 16 March, indications that the Germans were fighting no 

more than a delaying action increased 

everywhere except, again, on the two 

flanks. It seemed particularly apparent 

in the zone of the XV Corps, where all 

three attacking divisions improved on 

their first day’s gains. Mines, demolitions, 

and strongpoints usually protected by a 

tank or an assault gun were the main 

obstacles. By nightfall both the 3d and 

45th Divisions were well across the German frontier, scarcely more than a 

stone’s throw from the outposts of the 

West Wall, and the 100th Division, relieved at Bitche by a follow-up infantry 

division, had begun to come abreast. 

Fighter-bombers of the XII Tactical Air 

Command again were out in force. 

Even though the Germans appeared 

to be falling back by design, in reality 

they intended a deliberate defense. Although corps commanders had begged 

to be allowed to withdraw into the West 

Wall even before the American offensive 

began, General Foertsch at First Army 

and General Hausser at Army Group G 

had been impelled to deny the entreaties. 

The new Commander in Chief West, 

Field Marshal Kesselring, remained as 

faithful as his predecessor to the Hitlerimposed maxim of no withdrawal anywhere unless forced. 45 

As events developed, no formal order 

to pull back into the fortifications ever 

emerged above corps level. Beginning the 

45 See, in particular, MS # B–711 (Albert). 

night of 16 March, commanders facing 

the U.S. XV Corps simply did the obvious, ordering their units to seek refuge 

in the West Wall whenever American 

pressure grew so great that withdrawal 

or annihilation became the only alternatives. The next day commanders facing the U.S. VI Corps adopted the same 

procedure. 

It became at that point as much a matter of logistics as of actual fighting before 

all divisions of the Seventh Army would 

be battling to break the concrete barrier 

into the Saar-Palatinate; but as more 

than one German commander noted with 

genuine concern, whether any real fight 

would develop for the West Wall was 

not necessarily his to determine. That 

responsibility fell to those units, decimated and increasingly demoralized, 

which were opposing the onrush of 

American Third Army troops from west 

and northwest into the German rear. 

Breakthrough 

Along the Nahe River units of the 

Seventh Army’s hard-pressed LXXXIX 

Corps got a measure of respite on 17 

March as General Gaffey’s front-running 

4th Armored Division paused to regroup. 

Having established a bridgehead over the 

Nahe late on 16 March, Gaffey wanted 

time to service his tanks and to enable 

his reserve combat command and the 

infantry divisions of the XII Corps to 

come up. The ensuing delay in American attacks aided the LXXXIX Corps in 

its withdrawal, authorized the day before, to the east bank of the Rhine. 46 

Elsewhere in the German Seventh 

Army and on the right wing of the First 

46 Msg, CG 4th Armored Div to CG 5th Inf Div, 

161820 Mar 45, 5th Div G–3 Jnl file, 16 Mar 45. 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 257 

Army, there was no respite. As the recently transferred 12th Armored Division moved to reinforce General 

Walker’s XX Corps early on 17 March, 

the 10th Armored Division drove eight 

miles and seized a bridge intact over the 

little Prims River, last water obstacle 

short of the Nahe. Bringing searchlights 

forward to provide illumination, the 

armor prepared to continue the drive 

through the night toward the Nahe itself at St. Wendel, eleven miles away. On 

the right wing of the XII Corps, the 89th 

Division expanded its Moselle bridgehead while the 11th Armored Division 

moved in behind the infantry as prelude 

to another thrust toward the Nahe at 

Kirn, twenty miles beyond the Moselle. 47 

Before daylight on the 17th, the 

Seventh Army commander, General Felber, sent two divisions of the XIII Corps 

to counterattack what appeared to be the 

most pressing of the converging American threats, the breakthrough of the 4th 

Armored Division. The effort proved 

futile. One division lacked sufficient 

transport even to assemble in time to 

counterattack, and the other, the 2d Panzer Division (reduced to 4 tanks, 3 assault 

guns, about 200 panzer grenadiers, and 2 

artillery battalions), found its route 

47 As an extension of an assignment to sweep the 

north bank of the Moselle downstream from Trier, 

the 76th Division the night of the 18th launched a limited objective attack across the Moselle alongside the 89th Division. In this attack, made by the 

304th Infantry without active German opposition, 

a medical aidman, Pvt. William D. McGee, entered an antipersonnel minefield to rescue two men 

wounded by exploding mines. He carried one to 

safety but in returning for the other, he himself 

set off a mine and was seriously wounded. Refusing 

to allow others to risk their lives by coming to his 

rescue, he died of his wounds. Private McGee was 

awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. 

blocked by antitank barriers prematurely 

closed by panicky German villagers. 48 

Both Felber and the Army Group G 

commander, General Hausser, had for 

several days been pleading with OB 

WEST for authority to withdraw the 

entire Seventh Army behind the Rhine. 

All requests drew the usual negative reply. With the collapse of Felber’s twodivision counterattack, it became obvious 

to those on the scene that in a few days, 

if not in hours, both the XIII Corps and 

the LXXX Corps would be encircled. 

That was the prospect when on 17 

March Field Marshal Kesselring issued 

an ambiguous order. While directing 

“the retention of present positions,” the 

new Commander in. Chief West added a 

qualification. “An encirclement and with 

it the annihilation of the main body of 

the troops,” the order stated, “is to be 

avoided.” Hausser seized on this as sufficient authority to pull back at least 

behind the Nahe. 49 

In the meantime, the swift Third 

Army advances had stirred higher commanders on the American side. Impressed by Patton’s gains, the Supreme 

Commander on 17 March met at Lunéville, in Lorraine, with the 6th Army 

Group commander, General Devers, and 

the two Army commanders concerned, 

Patton and Patch. Noting the Third 

Army’s gains and the obstacle of the 

West Wall still opposing the Seventh 

Army, General Eisenhower asked Patch 

if he objected to Patton’s attacking across 

the northern portion of the Seventh 

Army’s zone perpendicular to the Seventh Army’s axis of attack. General 

Patch said no; the objective was to de48 MS # B–052 (Oriola). 

49 Quotation is from MS # B–600 (Paul Hausser). See also MS # B–123 (Gersdorff). 
258 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

stroy the German forces. “We are all,” 

he added, “in the same army.” 50 

As worked out in detail by Patch and 

Patton, the two armies split the area between the Nahe River and the Rhine 

almost equally, with a new boundary 

running just north of Kaiserslautern and 

reaching the Rhine south of Worms. Patton nevertheless intended to take Kaiserslautern himself and then turn one 

infantry and one armored division southeast, deeper into Patch’s zone, to link 

with the Seventh Army’s VI Corps along 

the Rhine. Thereby he hoped to trap 

any Germans who might remain in front 

of the Seventh Army in the West Wall. 

That accomplished, Patton “would clear 

out of [Patch’s] area.” 51 The plan presumed, of course, that the Seventh Army 

at that point would still be involved in 

the West Wall, but in any event, Patch 

apparently accepted the agreement with 

the same good grace earlier accorded the 

Supreme Commander’s proposal. 

To General Patton’s subordinates, the 

authority gained at Lunéville meant 

pressure and more pressure. Why, Patton 

railed to his XII Corps commander, General Eddy, had the 11th Armored Division failed to push through the 89th 

Division’s Moselle bridgehead on the 

17th? Nor was there any excuse for the 

4th Armored Division to pause for any 

time at all at the Nahe River. “The heat 

is on,” General Eddy told his own subordinates, “like I never saw before.” 52 

It took another day before the effects 

50 Seventh Army Report, p. 720. See also General 

Devers’s personal diary, lent to OCMH (hereafter 

cited as Devers Diary); Patton, War As I Knew It, 

pp. 262 and 265. 

51 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 265. 

52 Msg, XIII Corps to 5th Div, and Telecon, CG 

XII Corps to CG 5th Div, both in 5th Div G–3 

Jnl, 17 Mar 45; Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 264. 

generated by the heat began to show up 

on headquarters situation maps, but by 

19 March a graphic representation of the 

Third Army’s gains looked, in the words 

of Patton’s colleague, General Hodges of 

the First Army, “like an intestinal 

tract.” 53 With the added weight of the 

12th Armored Division (Maj. Gen. Roderick R. Allen), General Walker’s XX 

Corps made the more spectacular gains. 

By midnight of the 19th, the 12th 

Armored was across the upper reaches 

of the Nahe and had gone on to jump a 

little tributary of the Nahe, more than 

twenty-three miles from the armor’s line 

of departure of the day before. The 10th 

Armored Division stood no more than 

six miles from Kaiserslautern. Two of 

the infantry divisions of the XX Corps, 

their regiments motorized on organic 

transport supplemented by trucks from 

supporting units, mopped up behind the 

armor, while the 26th Division completed its onerous task of rolling up West 

Wall fortifications, then turned eastward 

in a drive that converged with a northeastward thrust from Saarlautern by the 

65th Division. 54 

In the XII Corps, the 4th Armored 

Division on 18 and 19 March failed to 

regain its earlier momentum, partly because the division had to divert forces to 

clear Bad Kreuznach and partly because 

the Germans with their backs not far 

from the Rhine stiffened. In the two 

53 Sylvan Diary, entry of 9 Mar. 45. 

54 During the 65th Division’s attack on 18 March, 

an aidman in the 259th Infantry, Pfc. Frederick C. 

Murphy, continued to minister to his comarades 

although wounded in one shoulder. Even after 

setting off a mine that severed one of his feet, he 

crawled about to help other wounded around him 

until at last he set off a second mine that killed 

him. He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 259 

days, the 4th Armored advanced just over 

ten miles beyond the Nahe. 

It remained for the newly committed 

11th Armored Division on the XII Corps 

right wing to register the more spectacular gains. Following its disappointing 

showing in the Eifel, the 11th Armored 

had a new commander, Brig. Gen. 

Holmes E. Dager. Under Dager’s command, the division on 18 March raced 

twenty miles to the Nahe River at Kirn. 

The next day the armor streaked another 

nineteen miles to the southeast, reaching 

a point as far east as Kaiserslautern. 55 

When combined with the drive of the 

12th Armored Division on the north 

wing of the XX Corps, the 11th 

Armored’s rapid thrusts tied a noose 

around what remained of the enemy’s 

XIII and LXXX Corps. As the efforts of 

those two corps to withdraw across the 

Nahe and form a new defensive line went 

for naught, the infantry divisions following the American armor mopped up the 

remnants of the 2d Panzer Division and 

three volks grenadier divisions. Little 

more than the headquarters of the two 

corps escaped. 

From all indications, the Germans in 

the Seventh Army and on the right wing 

of the First Army (Hahm’s LXXXII 

Corps) were destined for annihilation. 

As American armored spearheads appeared without warning, seemingly over 

every hill and around every curve, and 

55 When a rocket from a Panzerfaust hit a tank 

of the 41st Tank Battalion, wounding the platoon 

sergeant and prompting others of the crew to 

abandon the vehicle, the bow gunner, Pfc. Herbert 

H. Burr, stayed inside and drove the tank into the 

town of Doermoschel. Rounding a turn, he encountered an enemy 88. Alone, unable to fire while 

driving, Burr headed directly toward the muzzle of 

the 88, forcing the crew to flee and overrunning 

the piece. He was awarded the Medal of Honor. 

as American planes wreaked havoc from 

the air, hardly any semblance of organization remained in German ranks. It was 

less withdrawal than it was sauve qui 

peut. Camouflage, antiaircraft security, 

dispersal—those were fancy terms from 

some other war, without meaning in this 

maelstrom of flight. Highways were littered with wrecked and burning vehicles 

and the corpses of men and animals. 

Roadblocks at defiles and on the edges 

of towns and villages might halt the inexorable onflow of tanks and half-tracks 

temporarily, but the pauses were brief 

and in the long run meaningless. Improvised white flags flying from almost every 

house and building along the way added 

a final note of dejection to the scene. 

Yet German commanders, still denied 

the authority they begged to withdraw 

behind the Rhine, continued to build up 

new lines and to shift units here and 

there—mainly on paper. As night came 

on the 19th, the Seventh Army’s General 

Felber might point to a new line running 

southwest from Mainz in front of the 

cities of Alzey and Kaiserslautern, but 

Felber himself would have been among 

the first to admit that it was less a line 

than a proliferation of improvisations. 56 

To the most optimistic German, the 

end was near. Events on 20 March underscored the fact. In late afternoon contingents of the 90th Division, on the left 

wing of the XII Corps, arrived on high 

ground overlooking Mainz and the 

Rhine. A short while later troops of the 

4th Armored Division fought their way 

into Worms and began to clear a path 

through the city to the Rhine. Both the 

10th and 12th Armored Divisions of the 

XX Corps still had to emerge from the 

56 See MS # B–082 (Beyer) and other manuscripts previously cited for this chapter. 
260 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

wooded hills of the Pfaelzer Bergland 

onto the Rhine plain, but they would be 

on the plain by nightfall of the 20th. 

Tacit admission from the Germans 

that the campaign for the Saar-Palatinate 

was almost over came late in the day 

with long-delayed approval for the Seventh Army withdrawal. That night on 

ferries, rafts, small boats, almost anything 

that floated, General Felber, his headquarters, and headquarters of Oriola’s 

XIII Corps began to make their way 

across the Rhine. General Beyer’s LXXX 

Corps stayed behind, taking over all combat troops and being transferred to the 

First Army in an effort to forestall further American advances directly into the 

rear of the First Army. 57 

Thrust to the Rhine 

As the breakthrough of General 

Walker’s XX Corps developed in the direction of Kaiserslautern, concern had 

mounted in the First Army lest those 

units in the West Wall around Saarbruecken and Zweibruecken be trapped. 

Once Kaiserslautern fell, the only routes 

of withdrawal left to those troops led 

through the Haardt Mountains south of 

Kaiserslautern. Covered by a dense wood, 

the Pfaelzer Forest, the region was 

crossed laterally by only one main highway, by a secondary highway close behind the West Wall, and by a few minor 

roads and trails. The natural difficulties 

posed by these twisting, poorly surfaced 

routes already had been heightened by a 

mass of wrecked vehicles as American 

fighter pilots relentlessly preyed on hapless targets. 

Using the authority granted by Kessel57 MSS # B–831 (Felber); # B–123 (Gersdorff); 

# B–600 (Paul Hausser). 

ring on 17 March to pull back units 

threatened with encirclement, the First 

Army’s General Foertsch authorized 

withdrawal by stages of his westernmost 

troops, those of General Kniess’s 

LXXXV Corps. Over a period of three 

days, units of the corps were to peel back 

from west to east, redeploying to block 

the main highway leading northeast 

through the Kaiserslautern Gap. 

Unfortunately for Foertsch’s plan, the 

principal threat to the Kaiserslautern 

Gap came not from west or southwest 

but from northwest where Walker’s XX 

Corps was pouring unchecked through 

General Hahm’s LXXXII Corps. The 

10th Armored Division’s arrival at 

Kaiserslautern itself on 20 March meant 

not only that the gap was compromised 

by a force well in the rear of Kniess’s 

formations but also that the only way out 

for both Kniess’s troops and those of the 

adjacent XIII SS Corps was through the 

Pfaelzer Forest. 

As Kniess’s withdrawal progressed, it 

had the effect of opening a path through 

the West Wall for the left wing of the 

American Seventh Army. Despite a 

stubborn rear guard, the 63d Division 

of General Milburn’s XXI Corps broke 

through the main belt of fortifications 

near St. Ingbert late on 19 March. Had 

events moved according to plan, Milburn 

then would have sent an armored column 

northward to link with Walker’s XX 

Corps near St. Wendel; but so swift had 

been the advance of Walker’s troops that 

all worthwhile objectives in Milburn’s 

sector beyond the West Wall already had 

fallen. Milburn and his XXI Corps had 

achieved a penetration but had no place 

to go. 

The Seventh Army commander, General Patch, seized on the situation to pro- 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 261 

vide a boost for his army’s main effort, 

the attack of the XV Corps through 

Zweibruecken toward the Kaiserslautern 

Gap. In two days of hammering at General Simon’s XIII SS Corps, the divisions 

of the XV Corps still had opened no hole 

through the West Wall for armored exploitation. 58 Send a combat command, 

Patch directed the XV Corps commander, General Haislip, to move 

through the 63d Division’s gap and come 

in on the rear of the West Wall defenders 

facing the XV Corps. 

That the Americans would exploit the 

withdrawal was too obvious to escape 

the First Army commander, General 

Foertsch. During the night of the 19th, 

he extended the authority to withdraw 

to the west wing of the XIII SS Corps. 

Thus, hardly had the American combat 

command begun to move early on 20 

March to exploit the 63d Division’s penetration when the 45th Division of the 

XV Corps also advanced past the last 

pillboxes of the West Wall near Zweibruecken. During the night of the 20th, 

the rest of the SS corps also began to pull 

back, and the momentum of the 3d 

58 For no lack of effort, as exemplified by heroic 

actions of two members of the 45th Division. On 

18 March when eight men of the 180th Infantry 

were wounded while attacking a troublesome pillbox, the company commander, Capt. Jack L. 

Treadwell, went forward alone. Armed with a 

submachine gun and hand grenades, he charged 

the pillbox, captured 4 Germans in it, and went 

on to reduce singlehandedly five other pillboxes 

and to capture 14 more prisoners. In three days, 

culminating on the 18th, Cpl. Edward G. Wilkin, 

157th Infantry, did much the same for his company. He too reduced six pillboxes singlehandedly, 

killed at least 9 Germans, wounded 13, and took 

13 prisoner. Captain Treadwell received the Medal 

of Honor. Corporal Wilkin was awarded the Medal 

of Honor posthumously; he was killed in a subsequent action before his special act of valor could 

be officially recognized. 

Division’s advance picked up accordingly. 59 

The German problem was to get the 

survivors of both the LXXXV Corps and 

the XIII SS Corps through the Pfaelzer 

Forest despite three dire threats: one 

from the closely following troops of the 

American Seventh Army; another from 

the 10th Armored Division of Walker’s 

XX Corps, which at Kaiserslautern was 

in a position to swing south and southeast through the Pfaelzer Forest and cut 

the escape routes; and a third from the 

Argus-eyed fighter bombers of the XII 

Tactical Air Command. 

It was the last that was most apparent 

to the rank and file of the retreating 

Germans. Since speed was imperative, the 

men had to move by day as well as by 

night, virtually inviting attack from the 

air. Since almost everybody, including 

the troops of the motorized 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, had to use either 

the main east-west highway through the 

forest or the secondary road close behind 

the West Wall, American fighter pilots 

had only to aim their bombs, their cannon, and their machine guns in the general direction of those roads to be assured 

of hitting some target. An acute gasoline 

shortage added to the German difficulties. Almost every foot of the two roads 

soon became clogged with abandoned, 

damaged, or wrecked vehicles, guns, and 

equipment. 60 

The destruction in the Pfaelzer Forest 

was in keeping with the pattern almost 

everywhere. So long a target of both artillery and aircraft, the drab towns and 

cities in and close to the West Wall were 

59 For the German story, see MS # B–238 (Wolf 

Hauser). 

60 MSS # B–507 (Petersen); # B–238 (Wolf 

Hauser). 
262 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

a shambles. “It is difficult to describe 

the destruction,’’ wrote the 45th Division commander, General Frederick. 

“Scarcely a man-made thing exists in our 

wake; it is even difficult to find buildings 

suitable for CP’s: this is the scorched 

earth.” 61 In Zweibruecken, with the entire business district razed, only about 

5,000 people of a normal population of 

37,000 remained, and they were hiding 

in cellars and caves. Fires burned uncontrolled, neither water nor fire-fighting 

equipment available to quench them. No 

local government existed. Thousands of 

released slave laborers and German soldiers who had changed into civilian 

clothes complicated the issue for military 

government officials. In more than one 

city, particularly Homburg, looting and 

pillage were rampant. 

Running the gantlet of American 

fighter aircraft through the Pfaelzer 

Forest, the amorphous mass of retreating 

Germans faced still a fourth American 

threat-General Brooks’s VI Corps, 

which had followed closely the German 

withdrawal from northeastern Alsace and 

on 19 March had begun to assault the 

West Wall on either side of Wissembourg. There General Petersen’s XC 

Corps was charged with holding the fortifications and denying access to the flatlands along the Rhine. 

In the Seventh Army’s original plan, 

the attached 3d Algerian Division on the 

right wing of the VI Corps along the 

Rhine was to have been pinched out 

after it reached the Lauter River at the 

German frontier. The planners had not 

reckoned with the aspirations of the 

French and their First Army commander, 

General de Lattre. Assured of support 

61 Seventh Army Report, p. 738. 

from the provisional head of the French 

state, General Charles de Gaulle, de 

Lattre was determined to acquire a zone 

along the Rhine north of the Lauter in 

order to assure a Rhine crossing site for 

the final drive into Germany. 62 

As the Algerians matched and sometimes exceeded the strides of the American units of the VI Corps and reached 

the Lauter along a ten-mile front, de 

Lattre had no difficulty pressing his ambition on the 6th Army Group commander, 

General Devers. Using the 3d Algerian 

Division and a combat group from the 

5th French Armored Division, again to 

be attached to the VI Corps, the French 

were to continue northward some twelve 

miles beyond the Lauter River, thereby 

gaining limited Rhine River frontage 

inside Germany. 63 

The adjustment meant that the West 

Wall assault by the four American divisions of the VI Corps was to be concentrated in a zone less than twenty miles 

wide. Since the German XC Corps had 

only: the remnants of two volks grenadier 

divisions and an infantry training division to defend against both Americans 

and French, a breakthrough of the fortifications was but a matter of time. Yet 

just as had been the case in the zones of 

the XXI Corps and the XV Corps, it was 

less the hard fighting of the VI Corps 

that would determine when the West 

Wall would be pierced than it was the 

62 De Lattre discussed the matter with de Caulle 

in Paris shortly before the Seventh Army’s offensive began. See Marshal Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, 

Histoire de la Première Armée Française (Paris: 

Librarie Plon, 1949). pp. 407–14. 

63 Ibid.; Devers Diary, entry of 18 Mar 45; Ltr, 

CG 6th AGp to CG’s SUSA and First French Army, 

sub: Creation of Groupement Monsabert and Modification of Letter of Instructions Number 11, 

SUSA Oral Instructions file, 19 Mar 45. 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 263 

rampaging thrusts of the Third Army’s 

XX Corps in the German rear. 

The divisions of the VI Corps had 

been probing the pillbox belt less than 

twenty-four hours when General Walker, 

leaving the task of gaining the Rhine to 

the 12th Armored Division and of actually capturing Kaiserslautern to an 

infantry unit, turned the 10th Armored 

Division south and southeast into the 

Pfaelzer Forest. By nightfall of 20 March, 

two of the 10th Armored’s columns stood 

only a few hundred yards from the main 

highway through the forest, one almost at 

the city of Pirmasens on the western 

edge, the other not far from the eastern 

edge. A third was nearing Neustadt, farther north beyond the fringe of the 

forest. The 12th Armored meanwhile 

was approaching the Rhine near Ludwigshafen. Not only were the withdrawal 

routes through the Pfaelzer Forest about 

to be compromised but a swift strike 

down the Rhine plain from Neustadt 

and Ludwigshafen against the last escape 

sites for crossing the Rhine appeared in 

the offing. 

In desperation the Luftwaffe during 

20 March sent approximately 300 planes 

of various types, including jet-propelled 

Messerschmitt 262’s, to attack the Third 

Army’s columns, but to little avail. Casualties on the American side were minor. 

Antiaircraft units, getting a rare opportunity to do the job for which they were 

trained, shot down twenty-five German 

planes. Pilots of the XIX Tactical Air 

Command claimed another eight. 64 

In the face of the 10th Armored Division’s drive, the word to the westernmost units of the XC Corps to begin 

falling back went out late on the 20th, 

64 Figures are from TUSA AAR. 

and when the 42d Division, in the mountains on the left wing of the VI Corps, 

launched a full-scale assault against the 

West Wall late the next day, the attack 

struck a vacuum. Soon after dawn the 

next morning, 22 March, a regiment of 

the 42d cut the secondary highway 

through the Pfaelzer Forest. A column of 

the 10th Armored had moved astride the 

main highway through the woods and 

emerged on the Rhine flatlands at Landau. Any Germans who got out of the 

forest would have to do so by threading 

a way off the roads individually or in 

small groups. 

By nightfall of 22 March the Germans 

west of the Rhine could measure the 

time left to them in hours. In the West 

Wall on either side of Wissembourg, 

Germans of Petersen’s XC Corps continued to fight in the pillboxes in a manner that belied the futility of their 

mission. A breakthrough by the 14th 

Armored Division (Maj. Gen. Albert C. 

Smith) would nevertheless come soon. 

Both at Neustadt and at Landau, remnants of two divisions of the XIII SS 

Corps, including the 17th Panzer Grenadier Division, had held through the day, 

but early in the evening the defense 

collapsed. General Beyer’s LXXX Corps, 

transferred from the Seventh Army to 

plug the hole from the north alongside 

the Rhine, had hardly anything left to 

prevent the 12th Armored Division from 

driving southward from Ludwigshafen 

toward Speyer. By nightfall of the 22d, a 

column of the 12th Armored stood only 

six miles from Speyer. 

To forestall a second Remagen, the 

Germans by 19 March had blown all 

Rhine bridges from Ludwigshafen northward. Of three that remained upstream, 

the southernmost, at Maximiliansau, was 
264 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

destroyed on 21 March when a round of 

American artillery fire struck a detonator, setting off prepared demolitions. 65 

A second, at Speyer, was too immediately 

threatened and too far removed from 

the main body of German troops to be 

of much use to any but the defenders 

of Speyer itself. It would be blown late 

on the 23d. 66 

Over the remaining bridge, at Germersheim, roughly east of Landau, as many 

vehicles and field pieces as could be 

salvaged began to pass during the night 

of the 22d. Still no orders for final withdrawal beyond the Rhine came from the 

Commander in Chief West. Headquarters of both the First Army and Army 

Group G still were west of the river. 67 

Some German officers were beginning 

to wonder if every last increment of the 

First Army was to be sacrificed when at 

last, on 23 March, authority came to cross 

the Rhine. 68 While the bridge at Germersheim continued to serve artillery and 

vehicles, foot troops began to evacuate 

the west bank at three ferry sites south of 

the town. A smattering of infantrymen, 

an occasional tank or assault gun, and a 

regiment of antiaircraft guns operating 

against ground targets formed rear guard 

perimeters west of the ferry sites. 

Although all divisions of the U.S. VI 

Corps achieved clear breakthroughs during 23 March, they came in contact only 

with rear guards and failed to affect the 

German evacuation materially. Because a 

German force in Speyer fought doggedly, 

contact between the 12th and 14th 

65 MSS # B–507 (Petersen); # B–711 (Albert). 

66 12th Armored Div AAR, Mar 45. 

67 See MSS # B–507 (Petersen); # B–238 (Wolf 

Hauser); # B–600 (Paul Hawser); # B–082 

(Beyer). 

68 MS # B–238 (Hauser). 

Armored Divisions was delayed. Both, 

armored divisions early on 24 March sent 

task forces in quest of the lone remaining Rhine bridge, the one at Germersheim, but neither had reached the 

fringes of the town when at 1020 the 

Germans blew up the prize. 69 Formal 

German evacuation of the west bank 

ended during the night of the 24th, while 

American units continued to mop up 

rear guards and stragglers through the 

25th. 

It is impossible to ascertain how many 

Germans escaped from the Saar-Palatinate to fight again on the Rhine’s east 

bank, or how much equipment and 

matériel they managed to take with 

them. Yet German losses clearly were 

severe. “Tremendous losses in both men 

and matériel,” noted the chief of staff of 

the First Army. 70 The staff of the American Seventh Army estimated that the 

two German armies had lost 75 to 80 

percent of their infantry in the SaarPalatinate fight. The Seventh Army and 

its attached French units captured 22,000 

Germans during the campaign, and the 

Third Army imprisoned more than 

68,000. 71 The Third Army estimated that 

the German units opposing its advance 

lost approximately 113,000 men, including prisoners, while the Third Army 

casualties totaled 5,220, including 681 

killed. The Seventh Army, much of its 

fighting centered in the West Wall, probably incurred about 12,000 casualties, including almost a thousand killed. 72 

For all the inevitability of German 

69 VI Corps AAR, Mar 45. 

70 MS # B–238 (Wolf Hauser). 

71 The Third Army’s figure is from 18 through 

22 March only. See TUSA AAR, p. 315. 

72 Seventh U.S. Army casualties are an estimate 

based on detailed figures found for the VI Corps 

only. 
THE SAAR-PALATINATE 265 

defeat, the Saar-Palatinate campaign had 

provided a remarkable example of offensive maneuver, particularly by the 

Third Army. It was also a striking demonstration of co-operation and coordination among units and their 

commanders at various levels, including 

air commands. There had been moments 

of confusion-in the XII Corps, for example, ambitious 5th Division units got 

astride the routes of attack of the 4th 

Armored Division, and on 21 March a 

column of the Seventh Army’s 6th Armored Division got entangled with the 

Third Army’s 26th Division—but in 

view of the number of units and the 

speed and extent of the maneuver, those 

moments were few. This was despite the 

fact that four of the American corps contained an unwieldy six divisions, which, 

in the words of the XII Corps commander, General Eddy, was “like driving six horses abreast while standing 

astraddle on the center pair.” 73 

In view of the success of the campaign, 

73 Dyer, XII Corps p. 344. 

criticism of it would be difficult to sustain. Yet it was a fact nonetheless that 

the German First Army —and to some extent the Seventh Army —for all the losses, 

conducted a skillful delaying action to 

the end in the face of overwhelming 

strength on the ground and in the air 

and never succumbed to wholesale encirclement, despite a higher command 

reluctant to sanction any withdrawal. In 

the process the Germans had withstood 

the clear threat of a rapid drive by some 

unit of the Third Army or the Seventh 

Army along the west bank of the Rhine 

to trap the German First Army. 

Those contingents of both German 

armies that did escape would have to be 

met again on the east bank of the Rhine. 

To assure that the Germans would be at 

the utmost disadvantage in that meeting, 

the commander of the Third Army and, 

to a somewhat lesser extent, the commander of the Seventh Army had been 

thinking for several days in terms of 

quick crossings of the Rhine. 

And already Patton had done something about it. 
CHAPTER XIII 

The Rhine Crossings in the South 

From the first, General Patton had 

hoped to exploit his Third Army’s part 

in the Saar-Palatinate campaign into a 

crossing of the Rhine. He wanted a 

quick, spectacular crossing that would 

produce newspaper headlines in the manner of the First Army’s seizure of the 

Remagen bridge. He wanted it for a 

variety of reasons, no doubt including 

the glory it would bring to American 

arms, to the Third Army, and possibly 

to himself, but most of all he wanted 

it in order to beat Field Marshal Montgomery across the river. Despite General 

Eisenhower’s earlier indications to the 

contrary, Patton remained concerned 

lest the Supreme Commander put the 

First and Third Armies on the defensive 

while farming out ten American divisions to the 21 Army Group. 1 

It was this concern, shared by Generals 

Bradley and Hodges, that hovered specterlike over the meeting of the three 

American commanders at Bradley’s headquarters in Luxembourg City on 19 

March. Having received Eisenhower’s 

permission earlier in the day to increase 

the First Army’s strength in the Remagen 

bridgehead and an alert to be ready to 

break out from 23 March onward, General Bradley told Patton to do the very 

thing the Third Army commander 

wanted to do—take the Rhine on the 

1 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 264. 

run. 2 Once the Third Army had jumped 

the river in the vicinity of Mainz, the 

First and Third Armies were to converge 

in the Lahn River valley, then continue 

close together to the northeast, generally 

up the Frankfurt-Kassel corridor. The 

object—in Patton’s mind, at least-was 

to get such a major force committed in a 

far-reaching campaign that the 12th 

Army Group rather than Montgomery’s 

21 Army Group “could carry the ball.” 3 

To avoid a second crossing operation 

at the Main River, which joins the Rhine 

at Mainz, the most logical Rhine crossing 

site for the Third Army was at some 

point downstream from Mainz. To General Patton and his staff, determined resistance in the outskirts of Mainz seemed 

to indicate that the Germans appreciated 

this fact and would be watching for a 

crossing near the city. Why not, Patton 

reasoned, accept the handicap of a crossing of the Main in exchange for surprise 

at the Rhine? Patton told General Eddy 

of the XII Corps to make a feint near 

Maim while actually crossing the Rhine 

ten miles upstream at Oppenheim. 4 

(Map X) 

As the troops of the XII Corps drew 

2 Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 519. 

3 Ibid. 

4 Dyer, XII Corps, p. 360; Patton, War As I Knew 

It, pp. 266–67. Patton later wrote that he considered it a “great mistake” not to have made this 

first crossing downstream from Mainz in order to 

avoid an assault crossing of the Main. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 267 

up to the Rhine, General Eddy had intended to put the 5th Division in corps 

reserve. With that in mind, the division 

commander, General Irwin, called a conference of his unit commanders, but before the meeting could begin early on 21 

March, Irwin himself received a summons to appear at corps headquarters. 

When he returned, his manner and 

opening remarks alerted his commanders 

to startling news. Conqueror of twentytwo rivers in France, Belgium, and Germany, the 5th Division was to challenge 

the mightiest of them all—the Rhine. 5 

While the 90th Division made a feint 

behind a smoke screen at Mainz, General 

Irwin explained, the 5th Division was to 

launch a surprise night crossing at Oppenheim. Perhaps the most startling 

news of all was the timing. Although 

Irwin personally believed Patton would 

not order the crossing before the 23d, 

the division was to be prepared to go 

within a few hours that same night, 21 

March. 

The magnitude of the task of bringing 

assault boats, bridging, and other engineer equipment from depots far in the 

rear was argument enough for delaying 

the crossing at least until the 23d. Yet 

hardly had General Bradley on the 19th 

told Patton to cross when convoys started 

forward with this equipment from stocks 

carefully maintained in Lorraine since 

the preceding fall. Although another day 

would pass before tactical advances in 

the Saar-Palatinate opened direct routes 

for the convoys, the Third Army commander would listen to no voices cautioning delay. Each day, even each hour, 

5 Irwin Diary, 20–21 Mar 45, as cited in Dyer, 

XII Corps, p. 364; Conf Notes, 5th Div G–3 Jnl 

file, 21 Mar 45; XII Corps AAR, Mar 45; XII Corps 

Opnl Dir 92, 21 Mar 45. 

gave the Germans additional time to 

recover from the debacle in the SaarPalatinate and prepare a Rhine defense. 

Furthermore, Field Marshal Montgomery’s Rhine crossing was scheduled 

to begin during the night of 23 March. 

If Patton was to beat Montgomery across, 

he had to move by the night of the 22d. 

When General Eddy in midmorning 

of 22 March told General Irwin that Patton insisted on a crossing that night, 

Irwin protested that it would be impossible to make a “well-planned and ordered 

crossing” by that time. On the other 

hand, Irwin added, he would be able “to 

get some sort of bridgehead.” 6 Some sort 

of bridgehead was all General Patton was. 

after. 

During late morning of the 22d the 

commander of the 5th Division’s 11th 

Infantry, Col. Paul J. Black, was at his 

3d Battalion’s command post in the town 

of Nierstein, a mile downstream from 

Oppenheim, when word came from General Irwin. The 11th Infantry was to 

cross the Rhine that night at 2200. 

Allotted about 500 boats manned by 

the 204th Engineer Battalion, the 11th 

Infantry was to employ two battalions 

in the assault wave, the 3d crossing at 

Nierstein, the 1st at Oppenheim. Although an impressive artillery groupment of thirteen battalions stood ready 

to fire on call, they were to eschew preparatory concentrations in quest of surprise. Observation for the artillery was 

excellent: hills on the west bank of the 

Rhine overlook an expanse of generally 

flat ground stretching more than ten 

miles beyond the river. The ground is 

crisscrossed by small canals and drainage 

6 Quotations are from Irwin Diary, as cited in 

Dyer, XII Corps, p. 364. 
268 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

ditches. The width of the Rhine at this 

point ranges from 800 to 1,200 feet. 

Once the 11th Infantry and its sister 

regiments had secured a bridgehead, the 

4th Armored Division was to exploit to 

the northeast, bypassing Frankfurt-amMain and gaining a bridgehead over the 

Main River east of Frankfurt at Hanau. 

From that point the XII Corps was to 

drive northward toward a juncture with 

the First Army in the Lahn River valley. 

The 6th Armored, 89th, and 90th Divisions also were available. 7 

Despite the haste involved in the 

timing of the assault, a force of 7,500 

engineers made elaborate preparations 

for supporting the infantry and bridging 

the Rhine. Early assault waves were to 

transport bulldozers and air compressors 

so that work could begin immediately on 

cutting ramps for dukws and preparing 

bridge and ferry sites. Although first 

waves were to paddle across in assault 

boats, reinforcements were to cross in 

dukws and—as at Remagen—LCVP’s 

manned by Naval Unit 2 of the U.S. 

Navy. With the aid of searchlights 

mounted on tanks, bridge building was 

to begin soon after the first infantrymen 

reached the far shore. 8 

As the troops prepared for the crossing, the Third Army commander entertained a suggestion from his chief of 

artillery, Brig. Gen. Edward T. Williams, 

to speed build-up of reinforcements by 

a novel method. Williams urged assembling approximately a hundred artillery liaison planes to carry one soldier 

each to landing fields on the east bank. 

7 TUSA Opnl Dir, 22 Mar 45; XX Corps FO 17, 

22 Mar 45. 

8 Conf Notes, 5th Div G–3 Jnl file, 21 Mar 45; 

P. H. Timothy, The Rhine Crossing, student 

thesis prepared at the Engineer School, Fort Belvoir, Va., 1946; AAR’s of engineer units. 

With each plane making two flights each 

half hour, a battalion could be airlifted 

every two hours. Although the 5th Division commander, General Irwin, protested, fearing heavy losses from 

antiaircraft fire, General Patton went so 

far as to order a practice flight. Appearance of German planes over the crossing 

sites eventually would prompt cancellation, but Patton remained convinced 

the idea was “extremely good.” 9 

Troops of the 11th Infantry could discern few indications that the Germans 

would seriously contest the assault. An 

occasional cluster of shells from artillery 

and mortars fell in the streets of Nierstein and Oppenheim, reminder enough 

that an enemy with the power to kill 

still peopled the far bank, but neither 

American artillery observers nor aircraft 

pilots could find lucrative targets. 

Only two days had passed since Field 

Marshal Kesselring had given his blessing to withdrawal of the Seventh Army 

behind the Rhine, and German commanders were as intent at the moment on 

re-establishing some semblance of organization in their fleeing remnants as on 

actually manning a defensive line. 

Charged with holding more than fifty 

miles of the Rhine from Wiesbaden, opposite Mainz, to Mannheim, the Seventh 

Army commander, General Felber, had 

only one regular corps headquarters, the 

XIII Corps (General von Oriola), and 

headquarters of the local military district, Wehrkreis XII. Heretofore engaged 

solely in recruiting, training, and rear 

area defense, the Wehrkreis headquarters 

was summarily upgraded to become the 

XII Corps, though Felber had no divisions to go w i t h t h e advancement. In 

8 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 267; XII Corps 

G–3 to 5th Div G–3, 5th Div G–3 Jnl, Mar 45. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 269 

the entire Seventh Army he possessed 

only four divisions still organized as 

such. 

Two of those divisions were little 

more than remnants grouped around 

their surviving staffs. A third, the 559th 

Volks Grenadier Division, still had about 

60 percent of its normal strength, since 

some battalions had arrived too late for 

active commitment in the counterattack 

role planned west of the Rhine. All three 

divisions were under the XIII Corps, the 

559th near Mannheim, the other two 

extending the line to the north. The 

fourth division, the 159th Volks Grenadier, though severely depleted and disorganized, Felber had earmarked as an 

army reserve. 

Thus the provisional XII Corps, 

charged with the Wiesbaden-Oppenheim 

sector, had no divisional unit, only rear 

echelon security detachments, hastily 

equipped students and cadres from nearby training schools, and convalescent 

companies. Neither headquarters of the 

XII Corps nor Felber himself knew 

much about the numerical strength of 

these conglomerate forces, but their 

fighting abilities clearly were limited. Although efforts were under way to rally 

the residue of other divisions, including 

the 2d Panzer, and organize them under 

division staffs as small task forces, it 

would be some days before those efforts 

produced results. 10 

While Felber and other German commanders might hope the Americans 

would pause for a systematic build-up 

before jumping the Rhine, the experi10 For the German story, see MSS # B–831 (Felber); # A-893, The Final Phase of the War, (Generalmajor Freiherr von Gersdorff); and # B–392, 

Historical Report on the Campaign “Central Germany” From 22 Until 31 March 1945 (Generalleutnant Graf Ralph von Oriola). 

ence at Remagen and all previous dealings with General Patton indicated 

otherwise. An immediate attack held particular concern for General Felber, since 

of three sites along the upper Rhine the 

Germans considered most suitable for 

crossing attempts, one was in the Seventh 

Army sector—at Oppenheim. Yet because of the accidental site where fleeing 

troops had reassembled after crossing the 

Rhine, the bulk of the Seventh Army’s 

formations, the three so-called divisions 

under the XIII Corps, were well south 

of Oppenheim. 

Despite a promise from the army 

group commander to bring up more 

trainees, convalescents, stragglers, anybody to swell the ranks, Felber knew that 

the only hope of thwarting an immediate 

crossing at Oppenheim lay with his own 

reserve, the 159th Volks Grenadier Division. A visit to that command revealed 

only two weak infantry regiments of two 

battalions each and two light artillery 

batteries, plus a few odds and ends. 

To complicate matters further, General Felber had lost all communication 

and contact with the First Army to the 

south, some of whose units still were 

fighting on the west bank. To the north 

contact existed with the LXXXIX Corps, 

which had withdrawn several days earlier 

behind the Rhine. On the theory that 

this corps, holding the sector opposite 

Koblenz, would be drawn into the fighting against American units breaking out 

of the Remagen bridgehead, OB WEST 

had transferred it to Army Group B. 

The chances of repelling a blow at 

Oppenheim, should it come right away, 

were pathetically meager. 

The moon shone with disturbing 

brightness as men of the 11th Infantry’s 
270 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

3d Battalion crept down to the Rhine 

at Nierstein a few minutes before 2200 

the night of 22 March. Half an hour behind schedule, the leading assault boats 

carrying men of Company K pushed out 

into the stream. Not a sign of protest 

arose from the opposite shore. 

First to touch down on the east bank 

was an assault boat carrying a platoon 

leader, eight men, and Company K’s 

commander, 1st Lt. Irven Jacobs. The 

rest of the company arrived safely moments later. Seven surprised Germans 

promptly surrendered and obligingly 

paddled themselves across the river without escort. 11 

Leading the 1st Battalion’s assault a 

few hundred years upstream at Oppenheim, men of Companies A and B were 

less fortunate. The assault boats were in 

midstream when German machine gunners opened fire. The infantrymen and 

their engineer colleagues had no choice 

but to paddle straight into the teeth of 

the fire. Most of them made it, but a 

fierce skirmish went on for half an hour 

before the last German defender gave in. 

For all the noise and apparent ferocity 

of the defense, the German gunners imposed few losses on the attackers. In the 

assault crossing of the Rhine, the entire 

11th Infantry incurred only twenty 

casualties. 

By midnight all troops of the 11th 

Infantry were across and ready to drive 

on the first tier of villages beyond the 

river, and men of a second regiment had 

begun their trek to the assault boats. 

Only at that point did the first hostile 

artillery fire—a smattering of what might 

11 Unless otherwise noted, the tactical story is 

from official unit records, combat interviews, and 

the unofficial 5th Division history. Although few, 

the combat interviews are particularly valuable. 

have been expected—begin to fall. Some 

fifty rounds, for example, including occasional shells from self-propelled guns, 

fell before daylight on Oppenheim. 

Soon after dawn twelve German planes 

strafed and bombed the crossing sites, the 

first of a series of aerial raids, usually 

by only one or two planes, that were to 

persist throughout the day of 23 March. 

Damage was negligible. Two men in a 

battalion command post in Oppenheim 

were wounded and an ammunition truck 

was set ablaze, but otherwise the only 

casualty of the German strikes was General Patton’s scheme to transport infantry 

reinforcements across the river in artillery liaison planes. American pilots who 

flew cover most of the day claimed nineteen German planes destroyed. 

Success of the assault crossing assured, 

American commanders concentrated on 

quick and heavy reinforcement and on 

putting as much distance as possible 

between the forward troops and the river. 

A deep bridgehead was important because of a lack of dominating high 

ground on which to anchor defense of 

the bridgehead and because of the absence of a reasonably good road network 

short of the town of Grossgerau, six and 

a half miles beyond the river. 12 

By daylight (23 March) the second 

of the 5th Division’s regiments was 

across, and by early afternoon the third. 

A fourth regiment attached from the 

90th Division then followed. During the 

morning attached tanks and tank destroyers began to move across by ferry 

and LCVP. A class 40 treadway bridge 

opened in late afternoon. Engineers 

speeded traffic to the crossing sites by 

tearing down fences bordering the main 

12 Combat interview with Lt Col Randolph C. 

Dickens, 5th Div G–3. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 271 

REINFORCEMENTS OF THE 5TH DIVISION cross the Rhine in an LCVP. 

highway and widening the road to accommodate three lanes of one-way traffic. 

The leading infantry battalions fanned 

out from the crossing sites against varying degrees of resistance. Advancing 

northeast along the main road toward 

Grossgerau, the 11th Infantry’s 1st Battalion was pinned down in flare-illuminated open fields short of the first village 

until platoon leaders and squad sergeants 

rallied the men and led them forward, 

employing intense marching fire. “Walking death,” the men called it. At the 

same time the 3d Battalion, attacking 

more directly north, raised scarcely a 

shot until it reached a small airstrip 

There almost a hundred Germans counterattacked with fury, but when the 

coming of daylight exposed their positions to American riflemen and machine 

gunners, they began surrendering en 

masse. 

Seldom did the Germans employ weapons heavier than rifles, machine guns, 

machine pistols, and Panzerfausts, except 

for occasional mortars and one or two 

self-propelled guns. With those they 

staged demonstrations sometimes disturbingly noisy but seldom inflicting 

casualties. A battalion of the 10th In- 
272 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

fantry, for example, engaged in an almost 

continuous fire fight while advancing 

southeast from the crossing sites, took no 

casualties, and found it unnecessary to 

call for supporting artillery fire until 

after midday. 

The German units were a veritable 

hodgepodge: here an engineer replacement battalion, there a Landesschuetzen 

replacement battalion, elsewhere a 

Kampfgruppe of SS troops. 13 Most were 

youths or old men. Having once exhibited a furious spurt of resistance or 

delivered a reckless counterattack, they 

were quick to capitulate. The Volkssturm among them often hid out in 

cellars, awaiting an opportunity to surrender. 

By the end of the first full twenty-four 

hours of attack beyond the Rhine, the 

radius of the 5th Division’s bridgehead 

measured more than five miles, and 

Grossgerau and its essential network of 

roads lay little more than a mile away. 

So obvious was the success of the surprise 

crossing that in late afternoon of 23 

March the corps commander, General 

Eddy, ordered the 4th Armored Division 

to start across early on the 24th, the first 

step toward exploitation. 

Anticipating quick commitment of 

American armor and with it loss of any 

hope, however faint, of annihilating the 

bridgehead, the Seventh Army’s General 

Felber struggled through the day of the 

23d to mount a counterattack. Although 

Felber believed the Americans intended 

to drive east against Darmstadt rather 

than northeast toward Frankfurt, he 

chose to make his main effort against the 

northern shoulder of the bridgehead 

where he believed the Americans to be 

13 Unit identifications are from 5th Division G–2 

records. 

weakest. Also, a regimental-size unit 

formed from students of an officer candidate school in Wiesbaden had become 

available for commitment there. Augmented by a few tanks and assault guns, 

this force was potentially stronger than 

the army reserve, the depleted 139th 

Volks Grenadier Division. 

Still disorganized from the flight across 

the Rhine and harassed all day by American fighter-bombers, the volks grenadiers 

were far from ready to launch a projected subsidiary thrust against the eastern tip of the bridgehead when at 

midnight, 23 March, General Felber decided he could delay no longer. Not only 

did the thought of the pending advent of 

American armor disturb him, but Felber 

also had to endure the critical eyes of his 

superiors, the Commander in Chief, 

Field Marshal Kesselring, and the Army 

Group G commander, General Hausser, 

both of whom watched the preparations 

anxiously from the XII Corps command 

post in Grossgerau. The officer candidates, Felber directed, would have to go 

it alone. 

Only moments after midnight the student officers struck three villages along 

the northern and northeastern periphery 

of the bridgehead. Although the Germans displayed a creditable elan, the 

presence of two battalions of American 

infantry in each village made the outcome in all three inevitable. Infiltrating 

Germans caused considerable confusion 

through the hours of darkness, particularly when they took three of the battalion command posts under fire; but 

the coming of day enabled 5th Division 

infantrymen to ferret them out quickly. 

Although other Germans outside the villages remained close, fire from some of 

the seventeen artillery battalions that al- 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 273 

ready had moved into the bridgehead 

and from sharpshooting riflemen and 

machine gunners soon either dispersed 

the enemy or induced surrender. 

The 159th Volks Grenadier Division 

apparently never got into the fight in 

strength. A subsidiary thrust against a 

village on the southeast edge of the 

bridgehead caused some concern when 

it struck moments after a battalion of the 

90th Division had relieved a battalion of 

the 10th Infantry, but nothing more developed. A battalion of the 10th Infantry, 

moving up for a dawn attack, bumped 

into a German column moving down a 

road and may have been responsible. 

The Germans fled in disorder. 

Even before the defeat of the counterattacks put a final seal on success of the 

Rhine crossing, the 12th Army Group 

commander, General Bradley, released 

news of the feat to the press and radio. 

American forces, Bradley announced, 

were capable of crossing the Rhine at 

practically any point without aerial 

bombardment and without airborne 

troops. In fact, he went on, the Third 

Army had crossed the night of 22 March 

without even so much as an artillery 

preparation. 14 

Both the nature and the timing of 

Bradley’s announcement were aimed at 

needling Field Marshal Montgomery, 

whose 21 Army Group was then crossing 

the Rhine after an extensive aerial and 

artillery bombardment and with the help 

of two airborne divisions. Although General Patton had informed Bradley of his 

coup at the Rhine early on the 23d, he 

had asked him to keep the news secret; 

shortly before midnight he telephoned 

again, this time enjoining Bradley to re14 Gay Diary, entry of 23 Mar 45. 

veal the event to the world. Thus the 

announcement came at a time calculated 

to take some of the luster from news of 

Montgomery’s crossing. 

Some officers of the Third Army’s staff 

drew added delight from the fact that the 

British Broadcasting Corporation the 

next day played without change a prerecorded speech by Prime Minister 

Churchill, praising the British for the 

first assault crossing of the Rhine in modern history. That distinction everybody 

knew by this time belonged not to the 

21 Army Group but to the Third 

Army. 15 

The VIII Corps in the Rhine Gorge 

As if to furnish incontrovertible proof 

for General Bradley’s boast that American troops could cross the Rhine at will, 

the Third Army was readying two more 

assault crossings of the river even as 

Montgomery’s 21 Army Group jumped 

the lower Rhine. Ordered on 21 March, 

shortly after Patton approved plans of 

the XII Corps for crossing at Oppenheim, the new crossings actually reflected 

a concern for success of the Oppenheim 

maneuver and of the subsequent crossing 

of the Main River that was intrinsic in 

the original decision to go at Oppenheim. 16 

Responsibility for both new Rhine 

crossings fell to General Middleton’s 

VIII Corps, its boundaries adjusted and 

its forces augmented following capture 

of Koblenz. Before daylight on 25 March, 

the 87th Division was to cross near Bop15 Gay Diary, entry of 24 Mar 45; Bradley, A 

Soldier’s Story, pp. 521–22; Patton, War As I Knew 

It, p. 273. 

16 For date of the order, see Gay Diary, entry of 

21 Mar 45. 
274 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

pard, a few miles upstream from 

Koblenz. Slightly more than twenty-four 

hours later, in the early hours of 26 

March, the 89th Division—transferred 

from the XII Corps—was to cross near 

St. Goar, eight miles farther upstream. 17 

After establishing a firm hold on the 

east bank in the angle formed by confluence of the Lahn River with the 

Rhine, the 87th Division on the left was 

to be prepared to exploit to the east, 

northeast (toward juncture with First 

Army troops from the Remagen bridgehead), or southeast (toward the rear of 

any enemy that might be defending the 

Main River), The 89th Division was 

earmarked for driving in only one direction, southeast. The two divisions were, 

in effect, to begin clearing a pocket that 

was expected to develop between the 

First Army and the XII Corps. 

Terrain, everybody recognized, posed 

a special challenge. The sector assigned 

to the VIII Corps, from Koblenz upstream to Bingen, embraced the storied 

Rhine gorge. There the river has sheared 

a deep canyon between the Hunsrueck 

Mountains on the west and the Taunus 

on the east. Rising 300 to 400 feet, the 

sides of the canyon are clifflike, sometimes with rock face exposed, other times 

with terraced vineyards clinging to the 

slopes. Between river and cliff there usually is room only for a highway and 

railroad, though here and there industrious German hands through the years 

have foraged enough space to erect pic17 Unless otherwise noted, the story of these 

crossings is from official unit records and combat 

interviews. The interviews for both divisions are 

sketchy. The unofficial history of the 87th Division 

is noted in Chapter V; for the 89th, see the 89th 

Infantry Division Historical Board, The 89th Division 1942–1945 (Washington: Infantry Journal 

Press, 1947). 

turesque towns and villages. These usually stand at the mouths of sinuous 

cross-valleys where narrow, twisting 

roads provide the only way out of the 

gorge for vehicles. 

So sharply constricted, the Rhine itself 

is swift and treacherous, its banks in 

many places revetted aginst erosion with 

stone walls fifteen feet high. Here, just 

upstream from St. Goar, stands the 

Lorelei, the big rock atop which sits the 

legendary siren who lures river pilots to 

their deaths on outcroppings below. 

Here in feudal times lived the river 

barons who exacted toll from shippers 

forced to pass beneath their castles on the 

heights. Here still stood the fabled castles 

on the Rhine. 

A more unlikely spot for an assault 

crossing no one could have chosen. This 

very fact, General Patton claimed later, 

aided the crossings. 18 Whether infantrymen who braved the tricky currents and 

the precipitous cliffs would agree is another matter. 

Certainly General Hoehne's LXXXIX 

Corps, defending the Rhine gorge, was 

relatively better prepared for its job 

than were those Germans on the low 

ground opposite Oppenheim; that preparation was attributable less to expected 

attack than to the simple fact that the 

LXXXIX Corps had had almost a week 

behind the Rhine. Hoehne's corps would 

have been considerably better prepared 

had not Field Marshal Kesselring ordered transfer on the eve of the American assault of the 6th SS Mountain 

Division, still a fairly creditable unit 

with the equivalent of two infantry regiments and two light artillery battalions. 

Kesselring sent the divisions to the south18 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 275. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 275 

east toward Wiesbaden, probably in reaction to the Oppenheim crossing, not 

from any sense of complacency about the 

Rhine gorge. 

Transfer of the SS mountain division 

left General Hoehne with what remained 

of the 276th Volks Grenadier Division 

(some 400 infantrymen and 10 light 

howitzers), a few corps headquarters 

troops, a conglomerate collection of 

Volkssturm, two companies of police, 

and an antiaircraft brigade. The antiaircraft troops were armed mainly with 

multiple-barrel 20-mm. pieces, most of 

them lacking prime movers 19 . 

On the 87th Division’s left (north) 

wing, it would have been hard to convince anybody in the 347th Infantry that 

the Rhine gorge afforded advantages of 

any kind for an assault crossing. At one 

battalion’s crossing site at Rhens, “all 

hell broke loose” from the German-held 

east bank at five minutes before midnight, 24 March, six minutes before the 

first wave of assault boats was to have 

pushed into the stream. 20 Fire from machine guns, mortars, 20-mm. antiaircraft 

guns, and some artillery punished the 

launching site. Almost an hour passed 

before the companies could reorganize 

sufficiently for a second try. Possibly because few of the defenders had the 

stomach for a sustained fight, the second 

try at an assault proceeded with little 

reaction from the Germans. Once on the 

19 MS # B–584, Defensive Actions Fought by the 

LXXXIX Infantry Corps on the Rhine Front Between 18 March 1945 and 29 March 1945 (General 

der Infanterie Gustav Hoehne). Hoehne’s recollection of dates should be reconciled with dates and 

events as established from American records. 

20 This and subsequent quotations are from combat interview with Maj H. J. Withors, ExecO 1st 

Bn, 347th Inf, et al. 

east bank, the men “let loose a little hell 

of their own.” 

A few hundred yards downstream leading companies of another battalion 

moved out on time, apparently undetected, but hardly had they touched 

down when German flares flooded the 

river with light. Men of the follow-up 

company drew heavy fire, and at both 

this site and the one at Rhens the swift 

current snatched assault boats downstream before they could return for subsequent waves. Reluctance of engineers 

to leave cover on the east bank to paddle 

another load of infantrymen across the 

exposed river added to the problem. All 

attempts at organized crossing by waves 

broke down: men simply crossed whenever they found an empty boat. After 

daylight an attempt to obscure German 

observation by smoke failed when damp 

air in the gorge prevented the smoke 

from rising much above the surface of 

the water. In early afternoon the 347th 

Infantry’s reserve battalion still had been 

unable to cross when the assistant division Commander, Brig. Gen. John L. 

McKee, acting in the temporary absence 

of the division commander, ordered further attempts at the site abandoned. 

Upstream at Boppard, two battalions 

of the 345th Infantry had experiences 

more in keeping with Patton’s theory 

that crossing in the inhospitable Rhine 

gorge eased the burden of the assault. 

Although patrols sent in advance of the 

main crossings to take out enemy strongpoints drew heavy fire, the assault itself 

provoked little reaction. The leading 

companies made it in twelve minutes, 

and engineers were back with most of 

the assault boats in eight more. In contrast to 7 men killed and 110 wounded 

in the battalion of the 347th Infantry 
276 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

that crossed at Rhens, one of the battalions at Boppard lost 1 man killed and 

17 wounded. In midafternoon General 

McKee made up for the lack of a reserve 

with the 347th Infantry opposite Rhens 

by sending a battalion of his reserve regiment to cross at Boppard and advance 

downstream to help the other regiment. 

For neither assault regiment was the 

going easy once the men got ashore, but 

both made steady progress nevertheless. 

Machine guns and 20-mm. antiaircraft 

guns were the main obstacles, particularly the antiaircraft pieces, which were 

strikingly effective against ground troops. 

Although plunging fire is seldom so 

deadly as grazing fire, the spewing of 

these guns was painful even when it came 

from positions high up the cliffs. 

By late afternoon the 345th Infantry 

had a firm hold on high ground lying 

inside a deep curve of the Rhine opposite 

Boppard, and the 347th had a similar 

grasp on high ground and the town of 

Oberlahnstein at the juncture of the 

Lahn and the Rhine. Probably reflecting 

the presence of the 276th Infantry Division around Oberlahnstein, the only 

counterattack of the day—and that of 

little concern—struck a battalion of the 

347th Infantry. The worst obviously 

over with the assault crossing itself, General McKee readied his reserve regiment 

to extend the attack to the east early the 

next morning. 

Throughout the morning of 25 March 

the 89th Division commander, General 

Finley, watched progress of the 87th’s 

attack with the hope that part of his 

division might use the Boppard crossing 

site and sideslip back into its own zone, 

thereby obviating another direct amphibious assault. As the day wore on, he 

reluctantly concluded that congestion 

and continued enemy fire at Boppard 

meant he had to go it alone. 

The experiences of both assault regiments of the 89th Division turned out to 

be similar to those of the 347th Infantry. 

Time and places were different (0200, 

26 March, at St. Goar and Oberwesel), 

and the details varied, but early discovery by the Germans, the flares, erratic 

smoke screens, and the seemingly omnipresent 20-mm. antiaircraft guns were 

the same, 

As at Rhens, for example, a battalion 

of the 354th Infantry at St. Goar came 

under intense German fire even before 

launching its assault boats. Flares and 

flame from a gasoline-soaked barge set 

afire in midstream by German tracers lit 

the entire gorge. Into the very maw of 

the resistance men of the leading companies paddled their frail craft. Many 

boats sank, sometimes carrying men to 

their deaths. Others, their occupants 

wounded, careened downstream, helpless 

in the swift current. A round from an 

antiaircraft gun exploded in Company 

E’s command boat, killing both the company commander, Capt. Paul O. Wofford, and his first sergeant. 

Although their ranks were riddled, the 

two leading companies reached the east 

bank and systematically set about clearing the town of St. Goarshausen. Most 

of the 89th Division’s casualties (29 

killed, 146 missing, 102 wounded) were 

sustained by the 354th Infantry. 

Perhaps the most unusual feature of 

the 353d Infantry’s crossing upstream at 

Oberwesel was the use of dukws for 

ferrying reinforcements even before the 

crossing sites were free of small arms fire. 

Word had it that an anxious, determined, division commander, General 

Finley, personally prevailed upon engi- 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 277 

CROSSING THE RHINE UNDER ENEMY FIRE AT ST. GOAR 

neers at the river to put the “ducks” of 

the 453d Amphibious Truck Company 

to early use. Capable of carrying eighteen 

infantrymen at once, the dukws speeded 

reinforcement. They also made less noise 

than power-propelled assault boats, and 

when noise more often than not invited 

enemy shelling, that made a difference. 

Having organized two light task forces 

for exploiting the crossings, General Finley was eager to get them into the fight. 

When by noon he determined that both 

regimental bridgeheads still were too 

confined for exploitation, he arranged to 

fall back on his earlier hope of using 

the 87th Division’s site at Boppard. 

There a bridge was already in place. 

In midafternoon the first of the two 

task forces began to cross at Boppard. 

Almost coincidentally, resistance opposite both St. Goar and Oberwesel beban to crumble, revealing how brittle 

and shallow was the defense. In late afternoon, following a strike by a squadron 

of P–51 Mustangs, riflemen of the 354th 

Infantry carried rocky heights near the 

Lorelei, eliminating the last direct fire 

from the St. Goar crossing site. A few 

minutes later they raised an American 

flag atop the Lorelei. 
RAISING THE AMERICAN FLAG ATOP THE LORELEI overlooking the Rhine gorge. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 279 

As night fell on 26 March, report after 

report reaching the VIII Corps commander, General Middleton, indicated 

that the enemy’s Rhine defense everywhere was collapsing. Fighter pilots told 

of German vehicles trying to withdraw 

bumper-to-bumper down roads clogged 

with soldiers retreating on foot. Shortly 

before dark the 87th Division’s 345th Infantry broke away from the Rhine cliffs 

for a five-mile gain. Even more encouraging news came from other units to the 

north and south. From the north an 

armored column emerging from the First 

Army’s Remagen bridgehead down the 

Ruhr-Frankfurt autobahn seized Limburg on the Lahn River and was pointed 

across the VIII Corps front toward Wiesbaden. To the south the Oppenheim 

bridgehead too exploded. Reacting to 

the obvious implications of these developments but lacking an armored division 

to exploit them, General Middleton told 

the 6th Cavalry Group to divide into 

light armored task forces and head east 

the next day. 

What might well become the last big 

pursuit of the war appeared to be 

starting. 

To the Main River and Frankfurt 

The first explosion from the Oppenheim bridgehead came during the afternoon of 24 March soon after Combat 

Command A arrived as vanguard of the 

4th Armored Division. The armor 

headed southeast to swing around the 

city of Darmstadt before setting out on 

the main axis of attack to the northeast. 

Once started, CCA’s tankers and armored 

infantrymen appeared loath to halt. 

Taking advantage of a bright moonlit 

night, the combat command finally 

stopped after midnight only after half 

encircling Darmstadt and reaching a 

point more than fifteen miles from the 

Oppenheim crossing site. 21 

The spectacular start of the armor 

prompted the German Seventh Army’s 

General Felber to abandon defense of 

Darmstadt. “In order to avoid the unnecessary annihilation of the few forces 

committed for the defense of the city,” 

Felber rationalized later. 22 Felber’s action enabled the 4th Armored Division’s 

reserve combat command to move in 

with little difficulty the next day. 

On 25 March the explosion became a 

general eruption. Leaving the jobs of 

mopping up and expanding the base of 

the bridgehead to infantry divisions, the 

XII Corps commander, General Eddy, 

ordered the 6th Armored Division into 

the bridgehead to strike directly northeast for a crossing of the Main River between Frankfurt and Hanau. Combat 

Commands A and B of the 4th Armored 

Division also headed for the Main, one 

at Hanau, the other fifteen miles upstream at Aschaffenburg. 

Having earlier missed an opportunity 

at the Moselle, men and commanders in 

both combat commands seemed obsessed 

with one thought: get a bridge. In both 

cases the obsession paid off. Held up 

along a main highway by 20-mm. flak 

guns, CCA left a platoon each of tanks 

and infantry to deal with the opposition, 

then continued the advance over back 

roads and trails. A mile upstream from 

Hanau, the combat command found a 

railway bridge to which an appendage 

had been added for vehicular traffic. At 

21 In addition to official records, see a series of 

helpful combat interviews on the 4th Armored 

Division. 

22 MS # B–381 (Felber). 
280 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the last moment the Germans set off 

demolitions. Although they effectively 

blocked the railway portion of the 

bridge, the appendage, though damaged, 

still hung in place. While supporting 

artillery placed time fire over the bridge 

to deny the Germans a second chance, a 

company of armored infantry got ready 

to cross. Despite mines and booby traps 

that killed six men and wounded more 

than ten, the infantry made it. About the 

same time, Combat Command B at 

Aschaffenburg took a railway bridge 

intact . German efforts to dislodge the attackers were relatively feeble at Aschaffenburg but caused considerable concern 

near Hanau, where only two companies 

of armored infantry were yet across the 

river and where the damaged bridge had 

so deteriorated that neither tanks nor 

additional foot troops could cross. Not 

long before dark a train bearing German 

troops and four 150-mm. railway guns 

arrived in the town opposite the bridge. 

Although the troops apparently were 

surprised to find Americans in the town, 

they quickly set out to drive them into 

the river. Men of both sides soon were 

so intermingled that for a while American artillery dared not risk firing on the 

German guns. Fighting raged at close 

quarters until well after dark when 

American engineers completed a treadway bridge and a third company of 

armored infantrymen joined the fray. By 

midnight the Americans were in firm 

control of the town. 

Early the next morning, 26 March, the 

6th Armored Division’s Combat Command A dashed through a large forest 

south of Frankfurt, bypassing the sprawling Rhine-Main Airport, which infantry 

of the 5th Division would clear later in 

the day. In early afternoon the combat 

command reached the Main at Frankfurt’s southern suburb of Sachsenhausen. 

There General Grow’s armor also found 

a bridge still standing, although too damaged by demolitions for vehicles to use. 

A company of armored infantry crossed 

quickly to secure a few buildings at the 

north end of the bridge. 

What the demolitions had failed to 

accomplish, German self-propelled guns 

inside Frankfurt and big stationary antiaircraft pieces on the periphery of the 

city tried to redeem. Almost any movement in the vicinity of the bridge was 

sufficient to bring down a rain of deadly 

shelling, much of it airbursts from the 

antiaircraft pieces. A battalion of the 5th 

Division’s 11th Infantry nevertheless 

dashed across the bridge soon after nightfall and began to expand the slim holdings of the armored infantrymen on the 

north bank. 

All through the next day the German 

shelling continued to be so intense that 

engineers had no success trying to repair 

the bridge to enable tanks and tank destroyers to cross. During lulls in the 

enemy fire, more infantrymen of the 5th 

Division nevertheless managed to reach 

the north bank and get on with the task 

of clearing the rubble-strewn city, where 

police and some civilians along with a 

hodgepodge of military defenders tried 

in vain to deny the inevitable. 

The Hammelburg Mission 

News of the crossing of the Main at 

Aschaffenburg had in the meantime excited the Third Army commander. General Patton saw in it an opportunity for 

a foray deep into German territory to 

liberate hundreds of American prisoners 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 281 

of war from an enclosure near Hammelburg, some thirty-five miles to the northeast. A successful thrust to Hammelburg 

would outdo a similar raid executed a 

month earlier by General Douglas MacArthur’s forces in the Philippine Islands, 

while possibly concealing from the Germans the Third Army’s pending change 

of direction to the north. 

The man whose troops would have to 

carry out the foray was the 4th Armored 

Division commander, General Hoge, one 

of the heroes of Remagen who only a 

few days earlier had assumed command 

of the division when General Gaffey 

moved up to a corps. Both Hoge and the 

XII Corps commander, General Eddy, 

deplored Patton’s scheme. When they 

failed to talk him out of it, General Eddy 

insisted on sending a small armored task 

force instead of diverting an entire combat command as Patton suggested. The 

change further upset Hoge, as it did the 

commander of CCB, Lt. Col. Creighton 

W. Abrams, whose command received 

the assignment. Both Hoge and Abrams 

believed a small task force would be 

destroyed, but they failed to convince 

Eddy. 

To make the thrust, Colonel Abrams 

created a task force built around a company each of CCB’s 10th Armored Infantry and 37th Tank Battalions. Because 

of the illness of the infantry battalion 

commander, the infantry S–3, Capt. 

Abraham J. Baum, took command. Basic 

armament consisted of 10 medium and 6 

light tanks, 27 half-tracks, and 3 selfpropelled 105-mm. assault guns. 

Strength totaled 293 officers and men, 

and Maj. Alexander Stiller, one of Patton’s aides, as well. Although Stiller outranked Baum, the understanding was 

clear that Baum was in full command. 

Stiller told both General Hoge and Colonel Abrams that he wanted to go along 

“only because General Patton’s son-inlaw [Lt.] Colonel Wohn K.] Waters, was 

in the prison camp.” 23 

Captain Baum’s mission was to proceed as rapidly as possible to the prisonerof-war camp two miles south of 

Hammelburg. (Map 4) He was to load 

all vehicles to capacity with liberated 

prisoners for the return trip and to give 

the remaining prisoners a choice either 

of accompanying the task force on foot 

or making their way on their own to 

American lines. 

As Baum’s little task force began to 

move shortly after midnight, 25 March, 

small arms fire in the first few towns inflicted a number of casualties; but in 

general the Germans along the route 

were too surprised to fight back. It was 

still dark when at Lohr, just past the 

midpoint of the journey, the task force 

stumbled on a column of German ve23 Quotation is from a letter from Abrams to 

OCMH, 13 Sep 67; see also comments by General 

Hoge on the draft MS for this volume. General 

Patton later denied to newsmen that he had known 

his son-in-law was at Hammelburg and told Waters 

the same thing. See letter, Waters to Editor, Army 

Magazine, 25 June 1965, commenting on an article 

in the magazine by Martin Blumenson, “The Hammelburg Affair.” See also letter, Waters to OCMH, 

9 June 1967. Patton unquestionably knew that 

Waters had been shifted westward from a prisonerof-war camp in Poland just over a month before, 

for the word had come to him from Moscow by 

way of SHAEF. (See Gay Diary, entry of 9 February 1945.) Other sources for this account of the 

Hammelburg action are as follows: Combat interview with Baum; 4th Armored Division, Notes on 

Task Force Baum, 10 April 1945 (loaned by Brig. 

Gen. Hal C. Pattison, formerly Executive Officer, 

Combat Command A); Patton, War As I Knew It, 

pages 275, 280–81: Capt. Kenneth Koyen, The 

Fourth Armored Division from the Beach to Bavaria (Munich, Germany, 1946). pages 117–42 in 

the first edition, pages 181–206 in the second; Dyer, 

XII Corps, page 388; the article by Blumenson: and 

Toland, The Lust 100 days, pages 287–99. 
282 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

M. Finnemann 

MAP 4 

hicles heading west. Not even pausing in 

the advance, the American tankers 

opened fire, destroying twelve German 

vehicles with a loss of one medium tank. 

Outside Lohr they destroyed a German 

locomotive, and just before dawn at 

Gemuenden, three-fourths of the way to 

Hammelburg, they shot up seven more. 

On the outskirts of Gemuenden, defending Germans destroyed two more of 

Baum’s tanks and blew up a bridge over 

a small stream, forcing a detour to the 

north. It was well into the day of 26 

March when, a few miles from Hammelburg, the task force liberated about 700 

Russian soldiers, to whom they entrusted 

some 200 Germans captured in the 

course of the journey. A short while later 

the men spotted a German liaison plane 

hovering near the column. 

To Baum and his men the plane 

spelled trouble-an airborne Paul Revere alerting the German command 

against the thrust—but it actually mattered little, for the alarm already had 

been sounded. In advancing toward 

Lohr, Task Force Baum had passed 

within two miles of headquarters of the 

Seventh Army, which had escaped from 

Darmstadt and Aschaffenburg only steps 

ahead of the 4th Armored Division columns. For want of anything better, the 

staff quickly alerted headquarters of the 

local Wehrkreis . 24 

24 MS # A-893 (Gersdorff). 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 283 

It was not this alert but mere chance 

that actually was responsible for the 

troubles that began to beset Task Force 

Baum. In midafternoon, as the task force 

sought to bypass the town of Hammelburg, a German assault gun battalion 

that had arrived only minutes before 

opened fire. 25 It took two hours of hard 

fighting and the loss of three more medium tanks, three jeeps, and seven halftracks, including one loaded with 

precious gasoline, for the American column to force a way through. The Germans’ loss of three assault guns and three 

ammunition carriers was small consolation for the American losses and the 

delay. 

When at last Task Force Baum approached the prisoner-of-war enclosure, 

the tankers mistook Yugoslav prisoners 

for Germans and opened fire. At the request of the camp commandant, three 

U.S. officers volunteered to go with a 

German officer under a makeshift American flag to have the fire lifted. One of 

the Americans was Colonel Waters, Patton’s son-in-law, captured two years 

earlier in North Africa. As the group 

marched beyond the enclosure, a German soldier in a nearby barnyard fired 

one round from a rifle, wounding 

Colonel Waters. 

While the other officers were taking 

Colonel Waters back to the compound, 

the tanks of Task Force Baum broke the 

wire enclosure. The pandemonium of 

liberation took over. The number of 

prisoners far exceeded any previous estimate: 4,700, of whom 1,400 were American officers. While as many as possible 

climbed aboard the remaining tanks and 

25 Ibid. 

half-tracks, others formed to march 

alongside. 

Well after dark Task Force Baum— 

reduced to about 110 men and only four 

of its medium tanks—started the return 

journey. By that time Germans rallied 

by an unidentified major home on leave 

in Hammelburg were ready. A round 

from a Panzerfaust knocked out Baum’s 

leading tank a scant fifty yards from the 

prisoner-of-war enclosure. All hope of 

the physically unfit’s accompanying the 

task force faded. They returned under a 

white flag to the enclosure. 

Seeking to avoid the apparent German 

strength near Hammelburg, Captain 

Baum turned the task force to the southwest; but at the village of Hessdorf, five 

miles away, another contingent of Germans equipped with Panzerfausts lay in 

wait. There Baum lost two light tanks 

and one more medium. 26 

Retiring to a nearby hill to reorganize, 

Baum found the gasoline in his remaining vehicles dangerously low. He directed the men to siphon the fuel from 

eight of the half-tracks, then to destroy 

them. He placed the seriously wounded 

men in a building marked with a red 

cross, then readied the rest of the force, 

which included some sixty-five of the 

liberated prisoners, for another try at 

the return journey. 

They had yet to move out when, just 

before daylight (27 March), a dozen 

German tanks supplemented by assault 

guns opened fire. Under cover of this 

fire, two companies of German infantry 

attacked. In rapid succession, one after 

another of Baum’s tanks and other ve26 One of the American prisoners who started the 

return journey with Task Force Baum, Lyle J. 

Bouck, Jr., has provided considerable detail on 

these events in a letter to OCMH, 8 March 1968. 
284 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

GENERAL HAISLIP 

hicles went up in flames. His position 

apparently hopeless, Baum called a council of war. His instructions were brief. 

The survivors were to form in groups of 

three or four and attempt to infiltrate 

through the converging Germans and 

make their way to American lines. 

Baum himself tried to escape in company with an unidentified lieutenant and 

Major Stiller. For most of the day they 

successfully kept under cover, while in 

the distance they could hear the baying 

of bloodhounds as the Germans methodically tracked down the survivors. 

Just before dark a German sergeant 

spotted the three officers. He fired, striking Captain Baum in a leg (his third 

wound of the operation). There seemed 

little choice but to surrender. 

Over the next few days, fifteen men 

from Task Force Baum made their way 

back to American lines. Nine were established as killed, 16 missing, 32 wounded, 

the others captured. There remained 

only for the Germans to make propaganda of the ill-starred raid. An entire 

American armored division attacking 

Hammelburg, the Germans claimed, had 

been destroyed. 27 

The Seventh Army Crossing at Worms 

As disappointing and tragic as was the 

outcome of the raid on Hammelburg, it 

was a relatively minor incident in an 

otherwise uninterrupted surge of Allied 

power against and beyond the Rhine 

defenses. General Patch’s Seventh Army, 

its West Wall breakthrough and mop-up 

in the Saar-Palatinate completed, added 

its strength to that surge before daylight 

on 26 March, even as Task Force Baum 

began its ill-fated drive. 

Before the ease and extent of the victory in the Saar-Palatinate had become 

apparent, the Supreme Commander, 

General Eisenhower, had offered an airborne division (the 13th) to help the 

Seventh Army across the Rhine. Primarily because of the advantages the hills 

and forests of the Odenwald, east of 

Worms, would afford as a barrier to hostile movement against an airhead, General Eisenhower’s planners focused their 

attention on a crossing near Worms. 

From the viewpoint of advance beyond 

the bridgehead, the Seventh Army would 

have preferred a crossing about twenty 

miles to the south near Speyer, for there 

a plateau between the Odenwald and the 

Black Forest provides egress to the east. 

On the other hand, the help inherent in 

27 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 279; MS # 

C–020 (Schramm). Casualty figures are from Koyen, 

The Fourth Armored Division (first edition) p. 

142. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 285 

an airborne attack was a compelling 

argument. 28 

After the unexpectedly rapid and deep 

intrusion of the Third Army into the 

Saar-Palatinate sharply narrowed the 

Seventh Army’s Rhine frontage, Worms 

lost some of its attraction as a crossing 

site because it then lay on the extreme 

left of the Seventh Army’s zone. News 

that preparations for the airborne assault 

could be completed only near the end of 

March took away still more of the lure. 

Then the Third Army’s successful crossing of the Rhine at Oppenheim made 

Worms attractive again, even while 

making it obvious that an airborne assist 

would be unnecessary. The advantages 

of making the assault close to the Third 

Army’s already established bridgehead, 

General Patch decided, outweighed 

other factors. Ordering his VI and XXI 

Corps to make contingent plans for subsidiary crossings near Speyer, he told 

General Haislip’s XV Corps to make the 

main thrust at Worms. 29 

Mop-up of German pockets on the 

west bank, relief of Third Army divisions that had violated the interarmy 

boundary, and the time-consuming trek 

of convoys bearing boats and bridging 

equipment from far in the rear imposed 

inevitable delay on the assault. Not for 

the Seventh Army a running broad-jump 

like that of the Third Army’s 5th Division. General Haislip’s XV Corps was 

to make a deliberate two-division assault, 

the 45th Division just north of Worms, 

the 3d Division just south of town, with 

two more infantry divisions and a cavalry 

group scheduled for quick follow-up. 

28 Seventh Army Report, III, 741. 

29 SUSA Opns Instrs 103, 104, and 107, dated 22, 

23, and 24 Mar 45. 

The attack was to begin at 0230, 26 

March. 30 

The mechanics of getting ready rather 

than concern for enemy strength dictated 

the timing of the Seventh Army assault. 

Although intelligence officers estimated 

that remnants of twenty-two divisions 

had escaped across the Rhine in the general area, they could not believe, in view 

of the confusion accompanying their 

flight, that the German units represented 

any formidable strength. The Third 

Army’s experience at Oppenheim corroborated the view, as did the experience 

of several reconnaissance patrols. One 

patrol, led by a battalion commander of 

the 45th Division’s 180th Infantry, -reconnoitering on the east bank for half 

an hour the night of 24 March, found no 

mines, barbed wire, or emplacements. 

Although the men saw a few Germans 

and believed the Germans saw them, they 

drew no fire. 31 

Based on the actual German situation, 

General Patch’s reasoning in deciding to 

cross the Rhine near Worms was justified. Those Germans manning the east 

bank were part of the same Seventh 

Army that had already been rent asunder 

by the Third Army crossing. The sector 

came under General von Oriola’s XIII 

Corps, already affected by the American 

attack at Oppenheim. 

This was the corps that had one fairly 

respectable divisional unit, the 559th 

Volks Grenadier Division, located at 

30 XV Corps FO 23, 2400 24 Mar 45; SUSA Opns 

Instrs 111, 25 Mar 45. 

31 Seventh Army Report, III, 747. Unless otherwise indicated, the account that follows is based on 

this source, on official records of the Seventh Army, 

its corps and divisions, and on Donald G. Taggart, 

ed., History of the Third Infantry Division in 

World War II (Washington: Infantry Journal 

Press, 1947). 
286 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Mannheim. Two other units that went 

by the names of the 246th and 352d 

Volks Grenadier Divisions, extending 

the line northward, were Kampfgruppen 

of about 400 men each. When the U.S. 

4th Armored Division had broken out 

from the Oppenheim bridgehead on 24 

March, the northernmost 352d Division 

had had to fall back. 32 

Like almost all German commanders 

in the vicinity, General von Oriola expected the American armor to turn 

southeast to cut in behind the Odenwald 

and trap the adjacent First Army or at 

least to expand the Oppenheim bridgehead southward as far as Mannheim and 

the Neckar River. Two major northsouth highways, the Darmstadt-Mannheim autobahn on the Rhine flats and 

the Bergstrasse, the latter forming a dividing line between the Odenwald hills 

and the Rhine lowlands, invited a turn 

to the south. In a feeble effort to forestall 

such a move. Oriola turned the retreating remnants of the 352d Division to 

face northward astride the highways. 

Defense of the Rhine itself north and 

south of Worms was left to the 246th and 

559th Volks Grenadier Divisions, whose 

numbers permitted only “very sparse’’ 

occupation of the east bank and no depth 

at all. 33 The lack of depth was particularly disturbing because of the exposed 

nature of the defensive positions on the 

Rhine flats. The only corps reserve of 

any kind was an assault gun brigade that 

still had five guns. Artillery consisted of 

six understrength battalions, plus some 

32 The German account is drawn primarily from 

MS # B–392 (Oriola). See also MSS # A–893 

(Gersdorff) and # B–348, Report on the Combat 

Engagements Within the Framework of the First 

Army During the Period from 24 March to 8 May 

1945 (Generalmajor Wolf Hauser). 

33 MS # B–392 (Oriola). 

ninety stationary antiaircraft pieces 

around Mannheim. 

The new American assault against the 

Rhine would begin before any major 

realignment of German forces in response to the Oppenheim breakout occurred; but before the first day of the 

new attack came to an end, Oriola’s XIII 

Corps was destined to be transferred to 

the First Army. That was a logical move 

since the American breakout had effectively split the Seventh Army and since 

the First Army appeared seriously threatened should the Americans turn southeast or south. 

General Foertsch’s First Army had escaped across the Rhine in slightly better 

shape than had the Seventh Army, but 

still was in no condition to pose any real 

challenge. It had three corps headquarters and the skeletons of. twelve 

divisions, though two of the latter were 

en route to the Seventh Army the night 

of 25 March and three others were in 

such a condition that General Foertsch 

had sent them to the rear in hope somehow of reconstituting them. That left 

seven, few of which were anything more 

than regimental-size Kampfgruppen. To 

provide an army reserve, Foertsch 

counted on the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, whose troops got behind 

the Rhine only late on the 25th and 

would require at least a day or two to 

reorganize. 34 

To know the status and locations of 

the major units in the German XIII 

Corps is to possess the basic ingredients 

of the story of the Rhine crossing by the 

Seventh Army XV Corps. In the zone of 

the 45th Division, north of Worms, 

where the weak Kampfgruppe called 

34 The First Army story is from MS # B–348 

(Hauser). 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 287 

246th Volks Grenadier Division barred 

the way, it was a case of fierce initial 

opposition from small arms, machine 

guns, mortars, and small caliber antiaircraft pieces, then a collapse. In the zone 

of the 3d Division, where the 559th Volks 

Grenadier Division had 60 percent of 

normal strength and where the big (up 

to 128-mm.) antiaircraft guns protecting 

Mannheim were in effective range, it was 

different . Vigilant German pickets opposite the 

3d Division, perhaps alerted by feigned 

crossing attempts to the south near 

Speyer, detected movement on the 

American-held west bank well before the 

H-hour of 0230. The Germans opened 

fire, primarily with mortars and antiaircraft guns, seriously hampering American engineers who were trying to move 

assault boats to the water’s edge and to 

shave the steep revetted banks for the 

amphibious vehicles that were to come 

later. Surprise compromised, American 

artillery opened a drumbeat of fire. In 

thirty-eight minutes the artillery expended more than 10,000 rounds, “painting the skyline a lurid red.” 35 

Despite the light from a burning barn 

that illuminated the crossing site, little 

German fire fell as the first wave of 

infantrymen pushed into the stream. 

The artillery support had done its job 

well. The first wave of “storm boats” 

(metal pontons propelled by 50-hp. outboard motors) took less than a minute 

to cross the thousand feet of water. Only 

then, as the artillery desisted, did enemy 

fire begin to fall in disturbing volume. 

In the 45th Division sector, supporting 

artillery held its fire, for the hope was 

that the crossing preparations had gone 

35 Taggart, ed., History of the Third Division, 

p. 339. 

undetected. The hope proved vain. Although the first wave got almost across 

before the Germans came to life, the far 

bank at that point seemed to erupt with 

fire. The infantrymen had to come 

ashore with rifles and submachine guns 

blazing. For the better part of an hour a 

fight raged, while succeeding waves of 

boats took a fierce pounding. In the 

180th Infantry’s sector more than half 

the assault boats in the second and third 

waves were lost, but once the first flush 

of resistance was over, men of the 45th 

Division began to push rapidly eastward. 

About the only opposition that developed from then on came in the villages. 

Planes that kept a constant vigil over 

the battlefield all day helped eliminate 

this resistance, by nightfall contact had 

been established with contingents of the 

Third Army on the left, and forward 

troops were across the Darmstadt-Mannheim autobahn, a good eight miles beyond the Rhine. 

The 3d Division, the effect of its artillery preparation dissipated, lagged behind. One problem was an incessant 

chatter of machine gun and antiaircraft 

fire from an island in an offshoot of the 

Rhine southeast of Worms. Despite a 

smoke screen laid at the crossing sites, 

the fire hampered follow-up operations 

until well after midday when a battalion 

of the 15th Infantry cleared the island 

after an amphibious assault against the 

enemy’s rear. Elsewhere the main resistance centered in the villages and in 

every cluster of houses. At two of the 

villages the Germans of the 559th Volks 

Grenadier Division crowned their opposition with counterattacks supported 

by self-propelled guns and mobile 20- 

mm. flakwagons. 
288 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

INFANTRY OF THE 3D DIVISION climb the east bunk of the Rhine. 

Here and in the 45th Division sector 

amphibious tanks that crossed the Rhine 

close behind the infantry assault waves 

were put to good use. These were, “DD” 

(duplex drive) tanks, M4 mediums 

equipped with twin propellers for propulsion in the water and with a normal 

track drive for overland. An accordionlike canvas skirt enabled the tank to 

float. Of twenty-one DD tanks supporting 

the 3d Division, fifteen made it across 

the river. Of the six that failed, one was 

destroyed by shellfire before crossing, 

one stuck in the mud at the water’s edge, 

the canvas on two was badly torn by shell 

fragments before the crossing, and two 

others sank after fragments punctured 

their canvas during the crossing. All 

fourteen DD tanks assigned to the 45th 

Division crossed safely. 

As night came, troops of the 3d Division still had to pick their way through 

some two miles of thick forest before 

reaching the autobahn, and on the south 

flank heavy fire from the antiaircraft 

guns ringing Mannheim still proved 

troublesome. Indications nevertheless 

were developing that the 559th Yolks 

Grenadier Division at last was giving up 

and that the XV Corps would be ready 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 289 

early the next morning, 27 March, to 

make the most of it. Already both a 

treadway bridge and a heavy ponton 

bridge were supplementing dukws, rafts, 

and ferries serving the 3d Division, and 

bridges were nearing completion behind 

the 45th Division. All artillery normally 

supporting the four assault regiments 

was across, and the Seventh Army commander, General Patch, had ordered 

transfer of the 12th Armored Division 

to the XV Corps for exploitation. During the crossing operations more than 

2,500 Germans had surrendered, while 

XV Corps casualties reflected more noise 

than effect in the day’s German fire. 

Losses totaled 42 killed and 151 

wounded. 36 

The XX Corps in the Rhine-Main Arc 

By nightfall of 26 March General 

Bradley’s 12th Army Group had established four solid bridgeheads across the 

Rhine—the First Army’s at Remagen, 

the Third Army’s VIII Corps along the 

Rhine gorge and XII Corps at Oppenheim, and the Seventh Army’s XV Corps 

at Worms. A fifth was pending, for the 

Third Army’s General Patton still had 

one corps on the Rhine’s west bank that 

he chose to send across by assault rather 

than by staging through either of his 

already established bridgeheads. He 

wanted General Walker’s XX Corps to 

cross between his other two corps at 

Mainz. 

Just why Patton chose to make another 

36 The 3d Division lost 29 killed, 131 wounded; 

the 45th, 13 killed, 20 wounded. Casualty figures 

are from XV Corps G–1 Report, 26 March 1945. 

Some of the day’s casualties, particularly men 

listed as missing, may not have been reflected until 

the next day’s report, but in any case XV Corps 

losses probably were less than 250. 

assault crossing at this stage is mainly 

conjectural. He probably disdained any 

thought that the Germans could seriously interfere with a new crossing. Patton also wanted to get on with the task 

of building permanent rail and highway 

bridges across the Rhine to speed his 

army’s advance. Mainz with its network 

of roads and railways and its central location in relation to the army boundaries was the logical spot for the 

bridges; and an assault crossing appeared 

the quickest way to free the east bank 

of Germans. 37 

Patton’s original plan was to send a 

regiment from the already established 

VIII Corps bridgehead southeastward 

along the Rhine’s east bank to support 

the new assault crossing by seizing high 

ground overlooking the crossing site. 

The 80th Division of the XX Corps then 

was to cross at Mainz. Eddy’s XII Corps 

was to continue its drive to cross the 

Main River east of Frankfurt, whereupon all three corps were to head for 

the same objective, the town of Giessen 

and juncture with the First Army. “I 

told each Corps Commander that I expected him to get there first,” Patton 

recalled later, “so as to produce a proper 

feeling of rivalry.” 38 

Somewhere along the line, Patton did 

away with the preliminary thrust to take 

the high ground overlooking the 80th 

Division crossing site. The reason went 

unrecorded, but it may have been because of the explosive dash of an armored 

37 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 274; Gay Diary, 

entry of 26 Mar 45. See also XX Corps, The Assault Crossing of the Rhine and Into Germany 

(a printed operational report), p. 3, and The XX 

Corps Association, XX Corps—Its History and 

Service in World War II (no date), an unofficial 

unit history. 

38 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 274. 
290 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

DUPLEX-DRIVE TANK WITH SKIRT FOLDED 

division from the First Army bridgehead 

that looked for awhile as if it would 

carry to Wiesbaden, across the Rhine 

from Mainz. In late afternoon of 26 

March, the 12th Army Group chief of 

staff, Maj. Gen. Leven C. Allen, telephoned the news that the armor had 

seized a bridge intact over the Lahn 

River at Limburg, less than twenty miles 

from Wiesbaden. If the Third Army approved, a combat command was prepared 

to cut across the front of the VIII Corps 

and capture Wiesbaden. 39 

39 Gay Diary, entry of 26 Mar 45; Patton, War 

As I Knew It, pp. 276–77. 

Patton did approve, but it was well 

into the next day, 27 March, before the 

armored force could start its drive; although a bridge had been captured, the 

Germans had blown it after only four 

tanks had crossed. When units of Middleton’s VIII Corps broke out of their 

bridgehead early on the 27th, their columns quickly became entangled in those 

of the combat command. The objective 

soon ceased to be getting the armor to 

Wiesbaden; it became instead getting it 

out of Middleton’s way.’ With the XX 

Corps scheduled to launch its crossing of 

the Rhine before daylight the next morn- 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 291 

DUPLEX-DRIVE TANK ENTERS THE WATER 

ing, chances were the attackers would 

find no friendly forces either in Wiesbaden or along the Rhine opposite 

Mainz. 

Details of the XX Corps plan were 

worked out not by Patton but by his 

chief of staff, General Gay, while Patton 

was in the XII Corps bridgehead setting 

up Task Force Baum. 40 The 80th Division (General McBride) was to send 

one regiment across the Rhine at Mainz 

40 Gay Diary, entry of 26 Mar 45. 

while another regiment, having crossed 

into the XII Corps bridgehead, was to 

jump the Main River three miles upstream from the Rhine opposite Hochheim. Forces from the two bridgeheads 

then were to converge to clear the angle 

or arc formed by the confluence of the 

Main and the Rhine. Aside from the 

obvious advantages of dividing the opposition with two crossings, the decision 

to jump the Main as well as the Rhine 

hinged on a desire to make full use of 

existing stocks of bridging equipment; 

the stocks were insufficient for two Rhine 

bridges but would suffice for one over 
292 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the Rhine and another over the narrower 

Main. 41 

The Germans remaining in the RhineMain arc would give the XX Corps commander, General Walker, and his staff 

little pause. Even a cautious G–2 could 

find reason to believe that but one divisional unit and a hodgepodge of lesser 

forces defended there, and the estimate 

of even one divisional unit was actually 

in error. To the Germans it was quite 

apparent that Wiesbaden and the surrounding sector were soon to be either 

captured or encircled; the Americans in 

the bridgeheads both north and south 

of the city would see to that. With this 

in prospect, no one on the scene would 

have been willing to leave sizable forces 

in the threatened arc—even had they 

been available. 

The same provisional XII Corps that 

had come to grief in the Oppenheim 

bridgehead had borne responsibility for 

this part of the front as well until midday 25 March, when General Kniess and 

the staff of his LXXXV Corps arrived. 

Theirs was a thankless, hopeless task; 

indeed, part of the staff had trouble even 

getting to the scene. Having been sent 

northward by Army Group G, the staff 

found American armor pouring out of 

the Oppenheim bridgehead and had to 

make a long detour to the east to avoid 

it, not to mention having the usual difficulty with ubiquitous American fighterbombers that circumscribed almost all 

movement in daylight. 42 

When General Kniess took over from 

41 XX Corps, The Assault Crossing of the Rhine, 

p. 3. 

42 For the German story, see MSS # A-893 

(Gersdorff). # B–831 (Felber), and # B–324, 

Rhine-Main (Maj. Hans H. Krueger of the 

LXXXV Corps staff, with comments by Gen 

Kniess). 

the provisional XII Corps on 25 March, 

he inherited only one divisional unit, the 

weak, almost ineffectual 159th Infantry 

Division, which was still south of the 

Main River. He had promise of three 

others, of which only one, the skeleton 

of an infantry division sent from the 

First Army, actually arrived. The other 

two were the 11th Panzer Division, fast 

becoming the fire horse of the front now 

that the 9th Panzer Division had virtually expired at Cologne, and the 6th 

SS Mountain Division, the latter ordered 

out of the lines of the LXXXIX Corps 

just before the U.S. VIII Corps established a bridgehead across the Rhine 

gorge; but both would become involved 

with units breaking out of the VIII 

Corps bridgehead before they could 

reach General Kniess’s sector. 

Responsible for defending the Main 

River around Frankfurt and Hanau as 

well as the Rhine opposite Mainz, General Kniess had to focus his attention on 

the Main River cities, since American 

armor was already racing toward them 

from the Oppenheim bridgehead. When 

a request to OB WEST for permission 

to withdraw from the Rhine-Main arc 

drew the usual blunt refusal, Kniess and 

the Seventh Army commander, General 

Felber, resorted to what Felber’s chief of 

staff termed “the well tested method” of 

withdrawing most of the troops from the 

arc, leaving a weak shell in place to maintain a semblance of defense. 43 

By that move Felber and Kniess wrote 

off the Rhine-Main arc and laid plans 

for a new defensive line extending north 

from Frankfurt. Just what troops were 

left in the arc by nightfall of 27 March 

neither of them probably knew for sure; 

43 MS # A-893 (Gersdorff). 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE SOUTH 293 

but as of two days before, there had been 

available to defend almost twenty-five 

miles of Rhine-Main frontage only three 

infantry replacement battalions with 

some engineer support, two artillery battalions, and scattered antiaircraft detachments. 

The connivance with Kniess to abandon the Rhine-Main arc was one of 

General Felber’s last acts as commander 

of the Seventh Army. Somebody had to 

pay for the failure—however inevitable 

—to prevent the American crossing of 

the Rhine at Oppenheim. That somebody was the army commander. Late on 

26 March, Felber relinquished his command to General der Infanterie Hans 

von Obstfelder, a former interim commander of the First Army. General 

Kneiss, the LXXXV Corps commander, 

unable to do anything about either the 

armored spearheads spreading from Oppenheim or American crossings into the 

Rhine-Main arc, would follow Felber 

into Hitler’s doghouse only three days 

later. 

It was a noisy little war the 80th Division staged at Mainz and a few miles 

away on the Main River before daylight 

on 28 March, but few, on the American 

side at least, were hurt. Following a halfhour artillery preparation, men of the 

317th Infantry pushed out in assault 

boats at 0100 from slips and docks of the 

Mainz waterfront, despite a blaze of German fireworks, mainly small arms and 

20-mm. antiaircraft fire. Once the troops 

were ashore, the Germans mounted two 

small counterattacks, which like the fire 

on the river produced more tumult than 

effect. By the end of the day contingents 

of a follow-up regiment had cleared 

Wiesbaden and more than 900 Germans 

had thrown up their hands; the 317th 

Infantry had lost not a man killed and 

only five wounded. One of the more 

noteworthy events of the day was capture 

of a warehouse with 4,000 cases of champagne. The 319th Infantry meanwhile encountered less clamor along the Main 

opposite Hochheim but took a few more 

losses—3 men killed, 3 missing, 16 

wounded; there too it looked more like 

theatrics staged by condottierei than 

genuine battle. By early afternoon the 

319th had linked its bridgehead solidly 

with that of the 317th, and bridge construction was proceeding apace with 

scarcely a round of German shellfire to 

interfere . 44 

The Third Army’s third major Rhine 

bridgehead came easy. Even those who 

believed their audacious army commander might have spared his troops a 

third assault crossing by using one of the 

bridgeheads previously established could 

find little quarrel with the outcome. 

44 This account is based primarily on official records of the 80th Division and its regiments. 
CHAPTER XIV 

The Rhine Crossings in the North 

Source of weird and romantic legends, 

the Rhine River has long held a peculiar 

fascination for the German people, a historic moat guarding them against the 

traditional enemies to the west. As the 

German armies in the summer of 1944 

fell back from defeat in France, their 

commanders appealed for authority to 

withdraw behind that moat, the only 

hope, they believed, for stopping the 

Allied armies and recovering from the 

debacle in France. Yet Hitler said no 

and continued to say no all through the 

fall and winter, so that with the coming 

of spring the military force that might 

have hoped to defend successfully at the 

Rhine had ceased to exist, destroyed in 

the fighting west of the river. 

That American armies had already 

jumped the Rhine before Field Marshal 

Montgomery was ready for an assault had 

no effect on General Eisenhower’s plan 

to make the main Allied effort with the 

21 Army Group in the north, for the 

prize at which the main effort was aimed 

remained to be taken. This was the vast 

complex, fifty miles wide at its base along 

the Rhine, sixty miles deep, prewar producer of 65 percent of Germany’s crude 

steel, 56 percent of its coal, the only 

major source of power left to the Germans after the Russians had overrun 

Silesia and the Americans the Saar: the 

Ruhrgebiet, or Ruhr industrial area. 

In the planning days that preceded the 

invasion, the Allies had held that the 

Ruhr was the vital economic objective 

whose capture would precipitate German 

collapse. Since before D-day the Supreme 

Allied Commander and the senior British commander, Montgomery, had held 

with single-minded determination to the 

view that the way to get the Ruhr was 

to make the main effort in the north. 

Long an exponent of the deliberate, 

set-piece attack, Field Marshal Montgomery had been looking ahead to the 

crossing of the Rhine since September 

of the preceding year when a daring 

coup de main involving three airborne 

divisions had failed to get the British 

across a downstream branch of the Rhine 

in the Netherlands. 1 So had the planners 

at SHAEF and at the First Canadian, 

Second British, and Ninth U.S. Armies. 

Planning conferences, particularly 

among engineer and ordnance specialists, 

had begun as early as October 1944. 2 By 

November a broad outline sufficiently 

detailed for general planning was at 

hand. A number of engineer units behind the lines were designated to train 

1For background on Operation MARKET-GARDEN, 

see MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign. 

2 For Ninth Army planning, see Conquer: The 

Story of Ninth Army, pp. 199–242; for British planning, Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, Normandy to the Baltic (Germany: Printing and Stationery Service, British Army of the Rhine, 1946), 

pp. 247–54; and for Canadian, Stacey, The Victory 

Campaign, pp. 527–34. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 295 

and experiment with amphibious equipment and river-crossing techniques. To 

an engineer group given that mission in 

the Ninth Army was attached Naval 

Unit Number 3, largest of three naval 

contingents supporting U.S. armies, 

equipped with twenty-four LCVP’s and 

twenty-four LCM’s (landing craft, medium). A harbor craft company of the 

Transportation Corps later was attached 

to the engineer group to instruct in operating Seamules, 38-foot tugs powered 

by two 143-hp. engines. 3 A contingent of 

the Royal Navy also equipped with 

LCVP’s and LCM’s provided amphibious support for the British. 4 

When planning resumed early in 1945 

after a lapse during the Ardennes counteroffensive, the question of adequate 

numbers of assault and landing craft and 

of sufficient bridging equipment came 

into consideration. Since the plan was 

that the other two Allied army groups 

were to cross the Rhine soon after the 

major effort in the north, there had to 

be enough for all three. Following a 

theaterwide survey, including Great 

Britain, General Eisenhower asked for 

hurry-up shipments from the United 

States. Also in January the Supreme 

Commander called a three-day meeting 

at SHAEF where river-crossing specialists 

from all three army groups pooled their 

knowledge. The SHAEF G–4 meanwhile 

estimated supply requirements for a 

Rhine bridgehead at 540 tons per day 

per division, and Field Marshal Montgomery made plans to forestall a supply 

bottleneck behind the lines by ordering 

3 The Seamules could be disassembled into four 

sections for transport overland. LCM’s were 50-foot 

tank lighters, able to carry one medium tank, sixty 

men, or comparable cargo. For a description of 

LCVP’s see above, Chapter XI. 

4 Stacey, The Victory Campaign, p. 535. 

construction of eight more bridges to 

supplement existing tactical bridges over 

the Maas River. 5 

In late January when the Ninth Army 

chief of staff, General Moore, attended a 

planning conference at headquarters of 

the 21 Army Group, it became apparent 

that little additional work could be done 

without at least a preliminary assignment 

of zones. Both the Second Army and the 

Ninth Army, for example, had been 

counting on using bridge sites at Wesel. 

In a directive issued on 21 January, Field 

Marshal Montgomery moved to clarify 

the situation, only to create, in the process, considerable concern among the 

Ninth Army staff. 

The Second Army, Montgomery directed, was to prepare to cross the Rhine 

at three places, near Rees (twenty-five 

miles upstream from Arnhem), east of 

Xanten (another seven miles upstream 

near Wesel), and in the vicinity of 

Rheinberg (some ten miles farther upstream at the northwestern corner of-the 

Ruhr) . Although an American corps of 

two infantry divisions was to be attached 

to the British for the crossing, the Ninth 

Army was not to participate in the assault. The American army was to be 

committed only for the exploitation 

phase. 6 

The Ninth Army, its historian has 

noted, was “flabbergasted!” 7 That only 

an American corps, submerged within a 

British army, was to participate in the 

great assault was to the Ninth Army staff 

inconceivable; but aside from that appar5 21 AGp, Planning Dir for Opn PLUNDER, 17 

Feb 45, 12th AGp file, 37.13, V; Min, conf held at 

SHAEF to discuss problems connected with the 

crossing of the Rhine, SHAEF file, 370–47. I. 

6 OM-548, Opnl Dir, 21 AGp, 21 Jan 45, SHAEF 

SGS file, 381, III. 

7 Conquer: The Story of Ninth Army, p. 209. 
296 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

FIELD MARSHAL MONTGOMERY 

ent affront, what of the supply and 

evacuation problems arising from employment of American units with the 

British? What of the mass of assault and 

bridging equipment already accumulated in the Ninth Army? Why waste in 

inaction the Ninth Army’s formidable 

strength of twelve divisions? And what 

of the logistical problems of passing the 

entire Ninth Army through the British 

bridgehead? 

Fortunately, staffs and commanders of 

the Second British and Ninth U.S. 

Armies had through long experience in 

operating side by side achieved considerable rapport. After several discussions 

the Ninth Army commander, General 

Simpson, and his British opposite, General Dempsey, submitted a revised plan 

calling for fuller American participation. 

They proposed narrowing the British 

sector, splitting the area around Xanten 

between the two armies, and making 

room for a two-corps assault by the Ninth 

Army from Xanten to Rheinberg. They 

proposed further that the assault be extended to the northwest to make room 

for the First Canadian Army on the left 

of the British. 

Although Montgomery turned down 

the proposal, he appeared to comprehend 

the American position. On 4 February 

he issued new instructions assigning the 

Rheinberg area to a one-corps assault 

under the Ninth Army. Acknowledging 

the Ninth Army’s requirements for additional bridge sites near Xanten at 

Wesel, he registered his intent to transfer Wesel to American use once the 

bridgehead was secure. Because of floodplains, poor approaches, and high ground 

commanding likely crossing sites downstream from Rees, he vetoed a Canadian 

assault but planned to attach a Canadian 

brigade to the British and subsequently 

commit additional Canadian forces in 

the bridgehead at Rees to drive downstream and clear a crossing site for the 

First Canadian Army. Although this plan 

was little different from the first one, it 

assuaged American feelings by giving the 

Ninth Army control of the participating 

U.S. corps. 8 

The Big Build-up 

It was a staggering force of more than 

a million and a quarter men that Montgomery summoned to the assault in his 

final order issued on 9 March, two days 

after Remagen and the same day that the 

last Germans abandoned the west bank 

8 lbid., p. 210; Stacey, The Victory Campaign, 

pp. 529–31. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 297 

of the Rhine in the 21 Army Group zone. 

The Second Army had 11 divisions (3 of 

them armored, 2 airborne) and 6 

brigades (including 4 armored and 1 

Commando). The Ninth Army also had 

11 divisions (3 of them armored). The 

First Canadian Army had 8 divisions 9 . 

Given a target date of 24 March and 

the code name PLUNDER, the 21 Army 

Group’s crossing of the Rhine was to 

rival D-day in Normandy in terms not 

only of number of troops involved but 

also in build-up of supplies, transport, 

and special equipment, in amount of 

supporting firepower, in complexity of 

deception plans, and in general elaboration. A sampling of statistics provides a 

ready index to the immensity of what 

probably was the most elaborate assault 

river crossing operation of all time. The 

British alone marshaled 60,000 tons of 

ammunition, 30,000 tons of engineer 

stores, and 28,000 tons of other commodities, all in addition to normal daily 

requirements. The Ninth Army built 

up another 138,000 tons of supplies. 

More than 37,000 British engineers were 

to participate, and 22,000 American. Including attached Canadian units, the 

British had 3,411 artillery pieces, antitank and antiaircraft guns, and rocket 

projectors; the American, 2,070. The 

Ninth Army alone issued over 800,000 

maps. 

Both armies made extensive efforts to 

conceal their build-up, devising elaborate schemes of camouflage, creating 

dummy installations and equipment, intensifying patrolling and artillery fire in 

sectors not scheduled for assault, and 

9 The 21 Army Group in mid-March contained 

1,703 Dutch, 5,982 Czechs, 6,696 Belgians, 14,915 

Poles, 182,136 Canadians, 328,919 Americans, and 

744,361 British, for a total strength of 1,284,712. 

maintaining a chemical smoke screen for 

ten days along a no-mile front. Hardly 

any detail went unnoticed. To make 

room for mammoth trucks bringing the 

big landing craft to the water, bulldozers 

shoved buildings aside. Railheads were 

pushed forward, new roads constructed. 

Civilians for several miles west of the 

Rhine were evacuated. In the Ninth 

Army, engineers went so far as to borrow 

chemical heating pads from hospital 

units to wrap around outboard motors 

of assault craft to assure a ready start 

in the early spring chill. 10 

Along the 21 Army Group’s front, the 

width of the Rhine varied from 900 to 

1,500 feet. In March, the current seldom 

exceeds five miles per hour and the 

depth is never less than nine feet, thus 

meeting conditions for employing both 

small and medium-size assault and landing craft. Banks of mixed sand and 

gravel are suitable for launching assault 

craft, but dikes rising twelve to fifteen 

feet above the surrounding ground and 

standing as much as two miles from the 

main channel of the river pose an engineering obstacle and provide a ready 

line of defense. 

The land on both sides of the Rhine 

is low and flat, creased by numerous 

creeks, canals, and drainage ditches. Running on an east-west course and emptying 

into the Rhine just south of Wesel, the 

Lippe River and the generally parallel 

Lippe-Seiten Canal split the zone that 

Montgomery had chosen for the assault. 

The river would serve along part of its 

course as a boundary between American 

and British forces. One to four miles 

beyond the Rhine runs the Ruhr-Wesel10 Conquer: The Story of Ninth Army, pp. 199– 

245; Montgomery, Normandy to the Baltic, pp. 

248-55; Stacey, The Victory Campaign, p. 533. 
298 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Arnhem rail line, along the most of its 

length built on fill, with highways passing through culverts underneath. In the 

sector assigned the Ninth Army, the 

railroad becomes two lines, not quite a 

mile apart. Like the dikes, the railroads 

might serve a defender well, as might 

numerous towns, hamlets, settlements, 

and scattered buildings dotting the landscape. This is not the urban complex 

that is the Ruhr a few miles away—indeed, extensive fields and hundreds of 

patches of deciduous woods ranging from 

small woodlots to forests four to seven 

miles across provide a rural atmosphere 

—but the man-made structures are sufficient to afford a determined defender 

many a solid strongpoint. In winter and 

at the beginning of spring it was a drab, 

dull landscape, a study in shades of grey 

in which the technicolor of exploding 

shells looked out of place. 

Extending eleven miles south from the 

Lippe River, the Ninth Army’s assault 

zone contained good roads leading east 

and northeast only on either flank, but 

that of the British afforded a spider web 

of highways leading northwest, north, 

and northeast. The concentration of 

roads made readily apparent why the 

Second Army’s attack constituted Field 

Marshal Montgomery’s main effort. 

While the Ninth Army with its assault 

corps blocked to the southeast to seal off 

the Ruhr, the British were to expand the 

center of the bridgehead and prepare for 

a deep strike northeastward across the 

north German plain. Once crossing sites 

were available downstream from Rees, 

the Canadians were to drive swiftly 

northward to trap any German forces 

remaining in the Netherlands., The 

Ninth Army was to send a corps through 

the British sector, taking advantage of 

the roadnet there to get into position for 

a thrust eastward to come in behind the 

Ruhr from the north. The Ninth Army 

was to move once Montgomery deemed 

the bridgehead secure enough for bridges 

at Wesel and for a main road north of 

the Lippe to be turned over permanently 

to the Ninth Army. 11 

As of 9 March, when Montgomery issued his basic order, plans for using the 

two airborne divisions that were attached 

to the Second Army and headquarters of 

the XVIII Airborne Corps that controlled them still were indefinite. Montgomery directed only that they make an 

airborne attack in support of the Second 

Army’s assault, that they be called on to 

conduct independent operations for no 

longer than ten days, and that as soon as 

possible one of the airborne divisions— 

British-was to pass to control of the 

Second Army, the other—American—to 

the Ninth Army. 12 

Despite the vagueness, Allied commanders had long planned to augment 

the major crossing of the Rhine with an 

airborne attack designed to eliminate 

enemy artillery and to block movement 

against the bridgehead. The Supreme 

Commander himself had expressed personal interest in it. Since August of the 

preceding year planning had proceeded 

off and on, and in February the First 

Allied Airborne Army (General Brereton) had published a broad outline plan. 

Called Operation VARSITY, the plan involved participation by three airborne 

divisions, but when a survey revealed 

insufficient airport facilities and transport aircraft for such a force, it was 

scaled down to a two-division effort. It 

11 21 AGp, M–579, 9 Mar 45, Orders for the Battle 

of the Rhine, SHAEF SGS file, 381—PLUNDER, I. 

12 Ibid. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 299 

was to be made by the XVIII Airborne 

Corps under General Ridgway, employing the British 6th Airborne Division 

and the U.S. 17th. 13 

The job of transporting the airborne 

troops went to the U.S. IX Troop Carrier Command (Maj. Gen. Paul L. Williams), with the 38 and 46 Groups of 

the Royal Air Force attached, all old 

hands at that sort of task. The Royal Air 

Force 2d Tactical Air Force (Air Chief 

Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham) was to 

provide air cover, escort, and tactical 

support. 

As with the ground assault, preparation for the airborne attack involved a 

prodigious amount of planning and 

work. While detailed planning proceeded, hundreds of construction engineers and civilian workers began 

expanding runways of Continental airfields that normally accommodated only 

tactical aircraft. Having seen no combat 

since the Normandy invasion, the British 

6th Airborne Division was at full 

strength, while the U.S. 17th Airborne 

Division had fought hard in the Ar13 Unless otherwise noted, material on airborne 

planning is from Lewis H. Brereton, The Brereton 

Diaries (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1946), Part VI; Matthew B. Ridgway, Summary of Ground Forces Participation in Operation 

VARSITY, 25 April 1945, XVIII Corps Operation 

VARSITY Report; First Allied Airborne Army, Operation VARSITY, 19 May 1945; “Mission Accomplished,” A Summary of Military Operations of the 

XVIII Corps (Airborne) in the European Theatre 

of Operations, 1944–1945. published in Schwerin, 

Germany (no date) by the XVIII Corps (Airborne); Operation VARSITY, the Historical Report 

of the 17th Airborne Division; and other official 

records of the First Allied Airborne Army and the 

XVIII Airborne Corps. See also Historical Division, 

Research Studies Institute, Air University, USAF 

Historical Study No. 97, Dr. John C. Warren, Airborne Operations in World War II, European 

Theater, published at Maxwell Air Force Base, 

Alabama, September 1956. 

dennes and required intensive training 

to integrate individual replacements. A 

new table of organization and equipment 

for airborne divisions, which the U.S. 

War Department had ordered to go into 

effect on 1 March, complicated the task. 

Since the new table allowed only one 

glider infantry regiment, the division 

had to inactivate one regiment and absorb the men from it in other units. 

Converting the glider field artillery battalions from two firing batteries to three 

left the division short one battalion, for 

which a replacement was to arrive only 

ten days before the target date. 

Men of the 17th Airborne Division 

also had to learn to operate two previously untried weapons-the 57-mm. and 

75-mm. recoilless rifles. Only recently 

brought to the European theater by ordnance specialists from Washington, a 

hundred of the rifles were distributed 

among the four U.S. airborne divisions 

in the theater. Not only in lack of recoil 

were the weapons revolutionary but also 

in weight. The 57-mm. rifle weighed only 

45 pounds and could be fired from the 

shoulder. The 75-mm. rifle weighed 114 

pounds (as compared to 3,400 pounds 

for the standard 75-mm. gun and carriage) and was fired from a machine gun 

tripod. In the 17th Airborne Division, 

the 57-mm. rifles were distributed directly to the parachute battalions, with 

special crews trained to man them, while 

the 75-mm. pieces went to the antitank 

battalion. 14 

Even a hasty glance at a map of the 21 

Army Group’s zone would reveal that the 

focus for any major attempt to cross the 

14 For technical data on recoilless rifles, see TM 

9–314; for development, see Green, Thomson, and 

Roots, The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War, pp. 330–31. 
300 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Rhine would be the city of Wesel (population, 24,000) with its roads and rail 

network. Thus the assignment given to 

the XVIII Airborne Corps was logical: 

to seize high ground crowned by the 

Diersfordter Forst northwest of Wesel, 

thereby denying the enemy dominant observation on both the Wesel and Xanten 

crossing sites and blocking major highways leading both north and northwest 

from Wesel. 

The objective was concentrated, admirably suited to capture and retention 

by two airborne divisions. At the same 

time, it was little over a mile from the 

projected Rhine crossing sites. Although 

the distance augured well for early 

linkup with the ground forces, it also 

dictated that if the airborne troops 

dropped before or coincident with the 

ground assault, which was normal practice, the ground troops would have to 

forgo all but the shallowest artillery 

support. Further, the ground troops 

needed to begin their attack in darkness, 

whereas experience had shown daylight 

best for an airborne attack. 

The Second British Army commander, 

General Dempsey, suggested the solution. The paratroopers and glidermen 

were to delay their assault until British 

infantry had gained a footing beyond the 

river. It seemed a simple solution, but 

nobody had ever done it that way before. 

Interdiction From the Air 

Not as an integral part of Operation 

PLUNDER but as a general preliminary 

to assault across the Rhine, Allied air 

forces since mid-February had been conducting a heavy bombing program called 

“Interdiction of Northwest Germany.” 15 

16 Craven and Cate, AAF III, 771–73. 

The object was to seal off the Ruhr from 

the rest of Germany by destroying rail 

bridges and viaducts and attacking canal 

traffic along a broad arc extending from 

Bremen near the North Sea south and 

southwest around the periphery of the 

Ruhr to the Rhine south of the industrial region. West of this line attacks 

were directed at communications centers, 

rail yards, industry, and similar targets. 

From mid-February to 21 March Allied air forces concentrated on this task 

whenever any planes could be spared 

from other operations. Against the transportation system within the Ruhr alone, 

Allied bombardiers directed 31,635 tons 

of bombs. Heavy and medium bombers 

made 1,792 sorties against 17 rail bridges 

and viaducts along the arc encompassing 

the Ruhr. By 21 March, according to 

aerial reports, 10 of the bridges were 

destroyed and 5 others too damaged to 

use. After completing the job of helping 

the Canadian First Army and the U.S. 

Ninth Army to reach the Rhine, fighters 

and fighter-bombers of the British 2d 

Tactical Air Force and the U.S. XXIX 

Tactical Air Command (General Nugent) joined the Ruhr campaign. Most 

of the 7,311 sorties flown by these pilots 

between 11 and 21 March were directed 

against the rail and road systems of the 

Ruhr. 

In the last three days before the 21 

Army Group’s assault, the heavy bombers of the Eighth Air Force concentrated 

on enemy airfields and barracks, with 

particular attention to fields known to 

harbor jet aircraft. The heavies flew 

3,859 sorties. During the same period 

2,000 medium bombers of the U.S. 9th 

Bombardment Division hit communications centers, rail yards, and flak positions. Heavies of the Royal Air Force 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 301 

Bomber Command carried out a similar 

program, while the Allied tactical aircraft hit a variety of targets—airfields, 

flak positions, and troop concentrations. 

The total air effort during those three 

days, which the airmen called “processing of the terrain,” amounted to some 

11,000 sorties. For such a restricted area 

and against targets that already had been 

blasted from time to time over at least 

the preceding three years, the blow was 

devastating. 

The View From the East Bank 

Already mortally wounded in the late 

winter fighting west of the Rhine, 

stabbed anew at Remagen, the Germans 

dutifully went about preparing to defend 

the lower reaches of the river against a 

major attack that was but a question of 

time and specific location. This “shadow 

of an army,” one German army group 

chief of staff called it; morale of the 

troops varying “from suspicion to callous 

resignation,” an officer corps that “lacked 

confidence and wondered just what were 

she demands of duty”; this army, he said, 

“could only pretend to resist.” 16 

Given not quite two weeks’ respite 

following the last withdrawal of troops 

to the east bank, German commanders 

deployed their surviving formations in 

accord with their estimate that the main 

Allied attack would hit between Emmerich and Dinslaken (the latter seven 

miles southeast of Wesel). The commander of Army Group H, General 

Blaskowitz, thus gave this sector to the 

stronger of his two weak forces, General 

Schlemm’s First Parachute Army, while 

assigning the sector downstream from 

16 MS # A-965 (Wagener). 

Emmerich to the Twenty-fifth Army 

(General der Infanterie Guenther Blumentritt) . Blaskowitz and other German 

commanders also anticipated an airborne 

operation in conjunction with the river 

crossing, expecting that it would be 

launched ten miles or so northeast of 

Wesel to facilitate exploitation of the 

Allied bridgehead in that direction. 17 

Field Marshal Montgomery’s intelligence staff estimated total German 

strength, including Volkssturm troops, 

opposite the entire 22-mile zone of assault at approximately 85,000, or some 

35,000 less than the strength of the one 

American corps involved in the assault. 

Yet even that figure probably was high. 

The First Parachute Army, whose positions were basically contiguous to the 

zone of assault, had three corps, two of 

which had three makeshift divisions each 

and the third, two divisional formations. 

The strongest of the three, the II Parachute Corps, located opposite the British 

near Rees, had only about 12,000 men, 

less than the normal strength of an Allied 

division. The parachute army’s only reserve was a replacement training division. Army Group H’s reserve was the 

XLVII Panzer Corps, which had remnants of a panzer grenadier division and 

a panzer division; between them, the two 

divisions had only 35 tanks. In all the 

army group there were no more than 200 

tanks and assault guns. 18 

On the plus side, Army Group H still 

17 MSS # B–414, Army Group H (OB NORDWEST), 10 March–9 May 1945 (Col. Rolf Geyer, 

G–3, AGp H and later of OB NORDWEST); # 

B–593, The Battles of Army Group B on the Rhine 

up to Its Dissolution, 22 March–17 April 1945 

(Generalmajor Karl Wagener). 

18 MSS # B–414 (Geyer); # B–198, XLVII Panzer 

Corps, 8 March-16 April 1945 (General der Panzertruppen Heinrich von Luettwitz) . 
302 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

contained a reasonable complement of 

artillery, including a volks artillery corps 

and a volks werfer brigade to support the 

army group reserve. Firepower was increased by withdrawing almost all 

mobile antiaircraft units from the Netherlands and using them to supplement 

the fixed batteries in the vicinity of 

Wesel with an eye toward possible Allied 

airborne attack. (Allied commanders 

reckoned the Germans had 81 heavy and 

252 light antiaircraft pieces in this sector.) Although all fortifications were of 

the hasty field variety, during the fortnight after the withdrawal behind the 

Rhine the Germans had prepared a fairly 

solid forward line along the river and 

the railroad that parallels the river, 

though there was little time for creating 

positions in depth. The new Commander 

in Chief West, Field Marshal Kesselring, 

reviewed and approved the defensive 

measures on 14 March. 19 

Despite the approval, Kesselring could 

have entertained no genuine optimism 

that his forces could hold successfully, 

for he had no reserves to send to Army 

Group H’s assistance. Such optimism as 

there was received a sharp blow a week 

later, on 21 March, as Allied aircraft 

stepped up their bombardment. On that 

date, a bomb demolished a building 

housing headquarters of the First Parachute Army. The commander, General 

Schlemm, was seriously wounded. Although Schlemm would remain on the 

scene until General Blumentritt could 

be released from the Twenty-fifth Army 

to assume command on the 28th, he ran 

a high fever and was in no condition to 

exert real influence on the battle. 20 

19 MS # B–414 (Geyer). 

20 Ibid.; MS # B–674 (General der Infanterie 

“Two if by sea” 

To the British and Americans it was 

clear that the Germans knew the assault 

was coming soon. Even if the spectacular 

smoke screen maintained on the west 

bank actually concealed all the preparations, which it did not, the very presence 

of the screen would indicate impending 

assault. On 20 March the Army Group H 

commander, General Blaskowitz, ordered 

“an increased state of alert.” 21 

Nervousness betrayed German concern to the waiting assault force. As the 

target date of 24 March neared, harrassing artillery fire from the east bank 

increased markedly; patrol after patrol 

probed the west bank in quest of information, as often as not ending up in 

Allied prison camps. Taking advantage 

of periods when Allied aircraft were absent, German planes individually or in 

small groups strafed the Allied concentrations of men and equipment, though 

without appreciable effect. Some German 

pilots concentrated on knocking American artillery observation planes from the 

skies and succeeded in destroying eight. 22 

Almost every Allied patrol that sought 

to cross the river triggered nervous German fire. 

By midafternoon of 23 March, all on 

the Allied side was ready. In deference 

to the projected airborne assault, there 

remained only a last-minute consultation 

with the weather prophets before Field 

Marshal Montgomery at 1530 made the 

decision that set the vast machine the 21 

Army Group had become into motion. 

Guenther Blumentritt); Stacey, The Victory Campaign, p. 535n. 

21 MS # B–414 (Geyer). 

22 Conquer: The Story of Ninth Army, pp. 235– 

36. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 303 

To hundreds of waiting units went the 

code words, “Two if by sea,” which 

meant the British were coming. 

Around 1800 on the same day, normal 

British harassing artillery fires against 

German positions near Rees began to 

build in intensity. By 2100 the shelling 

had reached a crescendo as assault waves 

of a division of the Second British Army’s 

30 Corps (Lt. Gen. Brian G. Horrocks) 

entered the river southeast of Rees. 

(Map XI) In less than seven minutes 

the British assault craft touched down 

on the far bank against no more than 

sporadic opposition. Paratroopers of the 

II Parachute Corps (General der Fallschirmtruppen Eugen Meindl) were on 

hand, but the artillery had kept them 

down. In a matter of a few hours a column of British infantry had reached the 

outskirts of Rees. 

While recognizing that this probably 

was not the main assault, the German 

army group commander, General Blaskowitz, directed the 15th Panzer Grenadier 

Division from his reserve to counterattack at Rees in hope of throwing back 

the first group before the main assault 

could begin. 23 Since the British attack 

was designed primarily to draw German 

attention away from the Wesel sector, 

the German reaction demonstrated that 

the first phase of the Rhine crossing was 

a success. 

An hour after the first troops began 

to cross, a British Commando brigade 

paddled stealthily across the river at a 

point about two miles west of Wesel. 

23 German material is from MSS # B–414 (Geyer) 

and # E198 (Luettwitz). Unless otherwise noted, 

the account of British and Canadian operations is 

from Montgomery, Normandy to the Baltic; Stacey, 

The Victory Campaign; and Headquarters, British 

Army of the Rhine, Battlefield Tour, Operation 

PLUNDER. 

The commandos had little trouble touching down, then moving quietly overland 

toward the city. Halting less than a mile 

outside, they waited while some 200 

planes of the Royal Air Force Bomber 

Command pounded their objective for 

fifteen minutes with more than a thousand tons of bombs. When the commandos moved in after midnight, the 

city was a mound of rubble, though German defenders were still much in evidence. Here stood a conglomerate force, 

the Wesel Division, organized around 

a nucleus of antiaircraft artillery units. 

The tenacity of the resistance belied the 

division’s heterogeneity and loose organization. It would be well into the day of 

24 March before the commandos could 

deem Wesel secure and dawn the next 

day before all resistance collapsed. 

Among the German casualties was the 

division commander, Generalmajor 

Friedrich Deutsch, killed in the fighting. 

At 0100 (24 March) a mammoth artillery preparation for the main assault 

had begun. A division of the British 12 

Corps (Lt. Gen. Sir Neil M. Ritchie) 

prepared to cross the river an hour later 

northwest of Xanten. A division of the 

U.S. Ninth Army was to make a simultaneous assault across the Rhine north of 

Rheinberg, to be followed an hour later 

by another division east and southeast of 

Rheinberg. 

Operation Flashpoint 

To General Anderson’s XVI Corps, a 

fledgling among American corps with 

combat experience only in the drive 

from the Roer to the Rhine, fell the assignment of directing the. Ninth Army’s 

assault crossing, called Operation FLASHPOINT. The two divisions selected to 
304 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

make the crossing were, on the other 

hand, veterans of combat in the European theater since the preceding June— 

the 30th and 79th Divisions. Backing 

them up were the 8th Armored and the 

35th and 75th Divisions. The Ninth 

Army in addition still contained the 

XIII and XIX Corps with a total of six 

divisions. The army commander, General Simpson, directed the XIII Corps to 

continue to defend along the Rhine 

south of the crossing sites while the XIX 

Corps assembled for early commitment 

in the bridgehead. 

With five divisions, Anderson’s XVI 

Corps already was considerably larger 

than a normal corps and was beefed up 

further with supporting units, In addition to regular XVI Corps artillery 

(Brig. Gen. Charles C. Brown), attached 

in general support were the 34th Field 

Artillery Brigade (Brig. Gen. John F. 

Uncles) with 13 battalions of medium, 

heavy, and superheavy pieces and the 

XIX Corps artillery headquarters (Brig. 

Gen. George D. Shea) with 11 battalions. 

Also attached were a tank destroyer 

group with 6 battalions, 6 separate tank 

battalions, 3 engineer combat groups, 2 

antiaircraft artillery groups, a smoke 

generator battalion, a chemical (4.2-inch 

mortar) battalion, and a host of smaller 

units, including the assigned naval 

contingent. These raised the strength of 

the corps to 120,000 men, more an army 

than a corps, supported by an impressive 

54 field artillery battalions. Artillery 

units of the XIII Corps and of one 

infantry division of that corps were to 

participate in the preparation fires and 

to answer calls for supporting fire as 

needed. 24 

24 Unless otherwise noted, the Ninth Army’s story 

The Ninth Army’s usual ally in the 

sky, General Nugent’s XXIX Tactical 

Air Command, joined other Allied air 

units in the pre-D-day interdiction program and was to expend part of its effort 

on 24 March in support of the big airborne attack, Operation VARSITY. Yet 

enough planes were left over to provide 

armed reconnaissance in support of the 

Ninth Army and to assign a fighterbomber group to work directly with each 

of the two assault infantry divisions. 

East of the Rhine, German defense of 

the approximately eight miles of front 

destined for assault by the XVI Corps 

was split between two corps of the First 

Parachute Army. The LXXXVI Corps 

under General der Infanterie Erich 

Straube had a primary task of holding 

Wesel but was also responsible for the 

sector from the Lippe River to a point 

on the Rhine southwest of Dinslaken. 

The 180th Division of this corps would 

face the American 30th Division and 

part of the 79th. The parachute army’s 

weakest command, the LXIII Corps, 

under General der Infanterie Erich 

Abraham, bore responsibility for the remaining two miles plus additional frontage as far south as the army group 

boundary in line with the Ruhr River 

south of Duisburg. The northernmost 

unit of Abraham’s corps, a makeshift 

formation called the Hamburg Division, would face part of the 79th Division, while the 2d Parachute Division 

held the southern portion of the corps 

zone . 25 

is from official records of the XVI Corps and its 

divisions, from extensive combat interviews, and 

from three unofficial unit histories: Hewitt. Workhorse of the Western Front; History of the XVI 

Corps; and Conquer: The Story of the Ninth Army. 

25 MS # B–414 (Geyer); XVI Corps intelligence 

reports. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 305 

A three-quarter moon dimly lit the 

landscape and a providential west wind 

was blowing the long-maintained smoke 

screen toward the enemy as engineers 

and infantrymen began to move storm 

and assault boats to the river’s edge soon 

after midnight on 24 March. Accompanied by General Simpson, the Supreme Commander himself mingled and 

talked with the troops. The men were, 

General Eisenhower wrote later, “remarkably eager to finish the job.” 26 

At 0100 as General Eisenhower and 

General Simpson moved to an observation post in a church tower, the 2,070 

artillery pieces supporting the XVI 

Corps opened fire in a thunderstorm of 

sound. The earth trembled as one 

deafening explosion after another 

merged into a constant, ear-pounding 

cacophony. Every minute for sixty minutes, more than a thousand shells ranging 

in weight from 25 to 325 pounds crashed 

to earth beyond the Rhine. During the 

hour-long preparation, the artillerymen 

fired a total of 65,261 rounds. 27 At the 

same time 1,500 heavy bombers were 

attacking a dozen airfields within range 

of the crossing sites. Against the backdrop of violence, infantrymen and engineers took their places in storm and 

double assault boats, while other engineers hoisted big pontons close to the 

water to begin their job of building 

bridges the moment the west bank was 

free of the first assault waves. 

All three regiments of the 30th Division participated in the assault—the 

119th Infantry on the left, just southeast 

26 Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 389; History 

of the XVI Corps, p. 40. 

27 In the next four hours, they doubled this figure 

for a total of 131,450 rounds. See Conquer: The 

Story of the Ninth Army, p. 243. 

of the village of Buederich, near the 

confluence of the Lippe with the Rhine; 

the 117th Infantry in the center at the 

village of Wallach; and the 120th Infantry two miles to the southeast near a 

big bend in the river just northeast of 

Rheinberg. Each regiment used one battalion in the assault. Each assault battalion was organized into four waves with 

two-minute intervals between waves. 

Each battalion had 54 storm boats (7 

men and a crew of 2) powered by 55-hp. 

motors and 30 double assault boats (14 

men and a crew of 3) driven by 22-hp. 

motors. Machine guns firing tracer bullets guided the first wave, while colored 

aircraft landing lights would show the 

way for those who followed. 

As the men awaited the signal to push 

into the stream, occasional German 

mortar fire fell, though with little effect. 

Only after the boats raced out onto the 

water and disappeared in swirls of gray 

smoke did any German shells find a 

target. They knocked out two of the 

119th Infantry’s storm boats, killing one 

man and wounding three. That was all. 

In a matter of minutes, the bottoms of 

the boats in the first wave were scraping 

on the far bank, the men leaping from 

the craft and running toward the big 

dike. Only at one point, where men of 

Company G, 120th Infantry, landed a 

few hundred yards from their planned 

crossing site, was there fire from dug-in 

Germans on the dike, and Company G 

quickly silenced that without loss. Everywhere else the Germans were mute. Although the artillery had scored few hits 

on the dike, the German defenders were 

blinded by the smoke and thoroughly 

cowed by the shelling. 

“There was no real fight to it,” noted 

1st Lt. Whitney O. Refvem, commander 
306 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

of the 117th Infantry’s Company B. “The 

artillery had done the job for us.” 28 

The artillery was timed perfectly, the 

lieutenant observed, lifting only moments before the assault boats reached 

the east bank. Two rounds of white 

phosphorus served as the signal that the 

artillery was passing on to more distant 

targets. 

Nor was there appreciable opposition 

to the crossing of succeeding waves, 

which normally could have been expected to attract heavier shelling, The 

answer again was to be found in the 

mammoth artillery preparation, which 

had silenced at least some German guns 

and apparently had cut all telephone 

wires: since few forward observers had 

radios, they had no way to call for fire. 

Daylight was at hand before the first 

German shelling in appreciable amounts 

struck the crossing sites. 

There could be no question from the 

first that the 30th Division had staged 

a strikingly successful crossing of the 

sprawling Rhine. Within two hours of 

the jump-off, the first line of settlements 

east of the river was in hand, all three 

regiments had at least two battalions 

across, and a platoon of DD tanks had 

arrived to help the center regiment. In 

the assault crossing total casualties among 

all three regiments were even less than 

for the one regiment that had made the 

Third Army’s surprise crossing twentyeight hours earlier at Oppenheim. 

The British had crossed with similar 

ease near Xanten and had quickly 

pushed a thousand yards beyond the 

Rhine. It remained for the 79th Division 

to execute the last amphibious phase of 

the big assault, to cross the Rhine at 

28 Combat interview with Lieutenant Refvem. 

0300 at points east and southeast of 

Rheinberg. 

It was because of the southeastward 

curvature of the Rhine that the 79th 

Division’s attack came an hour later than 

that of the 30th Division, thus affording 

men of the 30th a chance to overcome the 

handicap and also avoiding the risk of 

exposed inner flanks for both divisions. 29 

For the Germans opposite the 79th Division, it meant two hours of artillery 

punishment instead of one. 

The 79th Division commander, General Wyche, chose to make his crossing 

with two regiments side-by-side, each 

regiment using one battalion in the assault. Unlike the 30th Division, which 

used only storm boats for the first wave, 

reserving the slower assault boats for 

subsequent crossings, the assault units of 

the 79th Division mixed the two. They 

overcame the difference in speed by 

giving the assault boats a head start. 30 

Although the hour’s delay afforded the 

79th Division additional artillery preparation, it also added an element of confusion, for by 0300 the west wind had 

decreased, allowing nature’s fog and 

man’s smoke to cling closely to the water 

and to both banks of the river. Except 

for a smattering of small arms fire, the 

Germans opposed the crossing no more 

effectively than they had that of the 30th 

Division; but the difficulty of holding 

course in the fog and smoke scattered and 

intermingled the units on the east bank. 

The men in some boats lost direction 

altogether and returned to the west bank. 

Thinking they had landed on the enemy 

29 Combat interview with General Wyche, CG 

79th Division. 

30 In addition to the usual records and combat 

interviews, the 79th Division prepared a special 

report, Rhine Crossing by the 79th Infantry Division. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 307 

side of the river, men in one boat raced 

ashore in a skirmish line, only to meet 

other Americans coming down to the 

water to load. 

Yet in the absence of serious enemy 

reaction, the confusion was short-lived. 

Within forty-five minutes both assault 

battalions had assembled and begun their 

drives to the east. Like the men of the 

30th Division, those of the 79th attributed much of their easy success to 

the artillery preparation. The fire lifted 

only after the first boats were threefourths of the way across the river. 

Prisoners said “they had never encountered anything like it, and it completely 

stunned, scared, and shook them.” 31 

Well before daylight, two battalions 

were ashore in each regimental sector, 

and again there could be no question of 

the extent of the success. For both divisions of the XVI Corps, detailed planning, rehearsal on sand tables and on 

rear area rivers; careful attention to deception, and intimate co-ordination with 

a powerful artillery arm had produced 

remarkable results. Together the two divisions had crossed one of the most imposing water obstacles in western Europe 

at a cost of thirty-one casualties. 

The Drive to the Railroads 

Success continued to crown the attack 

as the men drove eastward. Even before 

the second battalion of the 79th Division’s 315th Infantry had begun to 

cross the river, the leading battalion 

swept past the first railroad to the outskirts of Dinslaken, a city of 25,000 almost two miles from the crossing site. 

The leading battalion of the 313th In31 Combat interview with Lt Col Norman King, 

Asst G–2, XVI Corps. 

fantry, on the south, also reached the 

first rail line quickly, then swung southeast to build up a flank defense along a 

canal that leads eastward from a manmade inlet forming the harbor of the 

Rhine town of Walsum. 

Seldom did the Germans offer more 

than perfunctory defense. One explanation was that the 79th Division had 

struck on the seam between the 180th 

Division and the Hamburg Division, 

which was also the boundary between 

Straube’s LXXXVI Corps and Abraham’s LXIIl Corps. Another was the 

limited number of trained men available 

to the Germans. Still another, obviously, 

was the weight of the Allied artillery 

bombardment. In those cases where the 

Germans did stand to fight, the American regiments brought to bear a weapon 

they had borrowed from their enemy— 

the Panzerfaust. Both regiments had 

equipped their assault battalions with 

200 of these one-shot German antitank 

rockets. The blast effect of the weapons 

against buildings more often than not 

convinced even die-hard occupants to 

surrender. 

So irresolute and spotty was resistance 

in front of the 79th Division that not 

once during the day of 24 March did 

the division call on the fighter-bomber 

group that was assigned in support. Nor 

was the weight of armor—often crucial 

in a bridgehead battle—necessary; the 

fact that medium tanks and tank destroyers did not arrive in the bridgehead 

until midafternoon mattered little. By 

nightfall the 79th Division held a bridgehead more than three miles wide and 

deep, securely anchored on canal lines 

on both north and south, embracing 

Dinslaken, and in the north extending 

well beyond the second railroad. The di- 
308 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

vision reserve, the 314th Infantry, was 

on hand, along with supporting tank and 

tank destroyer battalions. More than 700 

prisoners were on their way to the rear, 

and American casualties were few. The 

313th Infantry, for example, lost 1 man 

killed and 11 wounded. 32 

For the 30th Division, striking into 

the center of the enemy’s 180th Division, 

most gains were harder to come by, but 

they came nevertheless. The 119th Infantry, on the north, ran into its first 

real trouble in midmorning at a highway 

underpass at the first railroad. It took the 

help of light tanks, ferried across the 

Rhine in LCM’s, to force a way past. The 

117th Infantry had similar trouble at 

another underpass farther to the south, 

where an antitank piece blocked efforts 

to fill a crater that barred the road; supporting artillery eventually eliminated 

the German gun. By the end of the day 

both regiments had passed beyond the 

second railroad, while a two-company 

task force had cleared troublesome antiaircraft pieces from a spit of land north 

of the Lippe-Seiten Canal and had 

reached the Lippe River across from 

Wesel. 

In the zone of the third regiment, the 

120th Infantry, on the south, the most 

exciting development occurred. There, 

when the 3d Battalion under Maj. Chris 

McCullough soon after midday took the 

village of Moellen, astride the first railroad, patrols ranging eastward reported 

they found almost no Germans. Although the battalion already was considerably ahead of the rest of the regiment, 

the regimental commander, Col. Branner 

32 No total figure is available for the 315th Infantry, though losses were considerably higher, 

since one battalion incurred 38 casualties and 

another 30. 

P. Purdue, determined to attempt a deep 

probe past the second railroad into open 

farm country beyond. By midafternoon 

a company of medium tanks, brought 

across the Rhine on Bailey rafts, and a 

platoon of tank destroyers, transported 

to the east bank by LCM’s, were on their 

way to join the battalion. 

One rifle company was loading on the 

tanks to start the drive when, without 

warning, a heavy concentration of 

artillery fire began to fall. The men 

scrambled for cover, then realized in 

consternation that the fire had come from 

the west. It was “friendly” fire. A quick 

check revealed no error on the part of 

artillery units supporting the 30th. Division. The fault lay with the neighboring 79th whose troops had spotted the 

3d Battalion’s assembly and thought it a 

German force preparing to counterattack. 

The 30th Division commander, General Hobbs, was quick on the telephone 

to his counterpart in the 79th Division, 

General Wyche. Since the interdivision 

boundary was a readily recognizable 

canal line, Hobbs could see no excuse 

for the error. He needed no artillery 

assistance, he said caustically. “We have 

battalions to spare to fire into anything 

in our zone.” 33 

The fire fortunately caused only minor 

casualties. Quickly re-forming, Major 

McCullough’s battalion and his attached 

tanks and tank destroyers soon found 

the patrol reports were accurate. The 

column swept swiftly eastward, picking 

up forty docile Germans on the way, 

and halted for the night in open country 

a mile beyond the Dinslaken-Wesel highway. Although this position was only 

33 Telecon, Hobbs to Wyche, Both Div G–8 Jnl 

file, 23–25 Mar 45. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 309 

three miles beyond the easternmost curve 

of the Rhine and generally on line with 

advance contingents of the 79th Division, 

it was well forward of other units of the 

30th Division and six miles beyond the 

Rhine as it ran through the division’s 

sector. McCullough’s battalion thus had 

reached the limit of effective direct support artillery fire. 

Although thus forced to halt, Major 

McCullough and his superiors were convinced they had achieved a breakthrough 

of the German positions. A 105-mm. artillery battalion, General Hobbs promised, would be on hand to support a 

swift advance the next day. 

As a result of ingenious advance prep 

arations by supporting engineers and of 

a continuing smoke screen that hampered German observation, a treadway 

bridge was opened to traffic at 1600. The 

bridge later was damaged when a Bailey 

raft loaded with a tank crashed into it, 

but not before the 118th Field Artillery 

Battalion had crossed. The bridge was 

back in service soon after midnight. 

This bridge and the quick advance of 

Major McCullough’s battalion made the 

30th Division’s position as night fell on 

the first day even more promising than 

that of the 79th Division. In the latter’s 

sector, artillery fire and airbursts from 

big antiaircraft pieces delayed bridge 

construction and, though resistance was 

light, no indication of a clear breakthrough had developed. The 30th Division had taken 1,500 prisoners, more 

than double the number taken by the 

79th. 

Operation Varsity 

Troops of the 30th Division were 

fighting at the first railroad and those 

of the 79th were clearing Dinslaken 

when shortly before 1000 on 24 March 

the steady drone of hundreds of aircraft 

motors began to emerge from the west. 

For two hours and thirty-two minutes 

the deep, throbbing hum of the motors 

was to continue. Since no pathfinder 

planes came in advance, even the first 

glimpse of planes gave the impression of 

the coming of a vast air armada. The 

great train was composed of 889 escorting 

fighters, 1,696 transport planes, and 1,348 

gliders, bringing to the battlefield 2 1,680 

paratroopers and glidermen, followed 

closely by 240 four-engine Liberator 

bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force 

dropping 582 tons of supplies. 34 Another 

2,153 fighter aircraft either maintained 

a protective umbrella over the target area 

or ranged far over Germany in quest of 

any German plane that might seek to 

interfere. None did. In addition, 2,596 

heavy bombers (660 of them from the 

Fifteenth Air Force in Italy) and 821 

medium bombers attacked airfields, 

bridges, marshaling areas, and other targets throughout Germany. 

34 Statistics from Report by the Supreme Commander to the Combined Chiefs of Staff on the 

Operations in Europe of the Allied Expeditionary 

Force, 6 June 1944 to 8 May 1945 (Washington, 

1946) (hereafter cited as Eisenhower, Report), p. 

100, and John C. Warren, Airborne Operations in 

World War II, European Theater, pp. 228–29. The 

total number of troops, aircraft, and gliders exceeded the total for the first day in Operation 

MARKET (about 20,000 troops, 1,545 transport 

planes, and 478 gliders), though additional troops 

landing after D-day made MARKET the larger operation. Unless otherwise noted, the account of 

VARSITY is based on the two sources cited and on 

the following: First Allied Airborne Army, Operation VARSITY; 17th Airborne Division, Operation 

VARSITY; journals and other official records of the 

division: XVIII Airborne Corps, Operation VARSITY; 

and two combat interviews with officers of the division. The unit history of the XVIII Airborne 

Corps, “Mission Accomplished,” is sketchy. 
310 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

The men of the U.S. 17th Airborne 

Division (General Miley) had risen 

from twelve airfields north and south of 

Paris, those of the British 6th Airborne 

Division from airfields in England. In an 

intricately timed maneuver, they had 

rendezvoused near Brussels. Tails of both 

divisions, including 2,005 motor vehicles 

belonging to the American unit, had 

earlier headed for the target area by 

land. In anticipation of early linkup of 

airborne and ground troops, the commander, General Ridgway, and staff of 

the XVIII Airborne Corps did not participate in the airborne assault but were 

already in position on the west bank of 

the Rhine. The commander of the First 

Allied Airborne Army, General Brereton, also took up post on the west bank. 

The Supreme Commander and British 

Prime Minister Churchill, the latter in 

company with the Chief of the Imperial 

General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Alan 

Brooke, watched the airborne attack 

from vantage points on separate 

There was much to see even before 

the aerial train approached. Executing 

the climax to operations begun three 

days earlier, medium bombers and 

fighter-bombers of the Ninth Air Force 

and British Second Tactical Air Force, 

for half an hour preceding arrival of the 

first transports, rained fragmentation 

bombs on antiaircraft batteries in the 

vicinity of the drop and landing zones. 36 

36 Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 390; Winston 

S. Churchill, “The Second World War,” vol. VI, 

Triumph and Tragedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 

Company, 1953), p. 413. The next day, D plus 1, 

Churchill, Brooke, Montgomery, and Generals 

Simpson and Anderson made a round trip across 

the Rhine in an LCM in the sector of the XVI 

Corps. 

36 Craven and Cate, AAF III, 774. 

AMERICAN PARATROOPER CAUGHT IN A 

TREE 

At the same time, artillery of the British 

Second Army pounded antiaircraft gun 

positions short of a predesignated bomb 

line. 

The sky was clear and bright in midmorning of 24 March, but a ground haze 

aggravated by drifting smoke from the 

screen along the Rhine lowered visibility 

close to the ground. Slightly ahead of 

schedule, the first flight of transport 

planes appeared over the target area at 

0953. Carrying a battalion of the 507th 

Parachute Infantry, the planes missed the 

designated drop zone, a spot of cleared 

land just northwest of Wesel on the 

southern skirt of the Diersfordter Forst, 

the closest planned drop zone to the 

Rhine. The paratroopers came to earth 

instead a mile and three-quarters to the 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 311 

northwest on the other side of the wood 

in a field near the town of Diersfordt. 37 

Because this flight arrived close behind 

the air and artillery antiflak program, it 

received little antiaircraft fire, but the 

drop pattern was widely dispersed nonetheless. The paratroopers coalesced into 

two relatively equal groups, one under 

the regimental commander, Col. Edson 

D. Raff, the other under the battalion 

commander, Maj. Paul F. Smith. 

While Major Smith's group was destroying several antiaircraft positions, 

Colonel Raff's men disposed of a nest of 

machine guns and dug-in infantry and 

began to work southward through the 

forest toward the assigned regimental objective, relatively high ground along the 

fringe of the wood near Diersfordt. 

Spotting a battery of five 150-mm. artillery pieces firing from a clearing, Raff 

and his force detoured to eliminate it. 

They captured both the German artillerymen and the guns and spiked the 

guns with thermite grenades. By the time 

Raff's paratroopers reached the vicinity 

of Diersfordt, they had killed about 55 

Germans, wounded 40, and captured 

300, including a colonel. 

The other two battalions of the 507th 

Parachute Infantry had in the meantime 

landed successfully on the assigned drop 

zone. As one of these, the 3d, got ready 

to attack Diersfordt and a castle that 

37 A stick of paratroopers landing together in a 

field came under sharp fire from German riflemen 

and a machine gunner even as the paratroopers 

struggled to free themselves from their harnesses. 

One man, Pvt. George J. Peters, charged the machine gun, seventy-five yards away. Halfway to the 

gun, German fire knocked him down, but he 

struggled to his feet to continue the charge. 

Knocked down again, he crawled close enough to 

the gun to eliminate it with hand grenades before 

dying from his wounds. Private Peters was awarded 

the Medal of Honor posthumously, 

dominates it, two German tanks emerged 

from the castle and headed down a narrow forest road toward the waiting paratroopers. An aptly placed antitank 

grenade induced the crew of the lead 

tank to surrender, whereupon a tank 

hunter team armed with a 57-mm. recoilless rifle set the second afire with a 

direct hit, the first instance of successful 

combat use of the new weapon. 

Resistance in Diersfordt, it soon developed, meant the castle. While two 

companies laid down a base of fire from 

the edge of the forest against turrets and 

upper windows, Company G entered and 

began to clean out the castle, room by 

room. Two hours later, at 1500, those 

Germans who remained capitulated. 

Among the 300 prisoners were several 

senior officers of General Straube's 

LXXXVI Corps and of the 84th Infantry 

Division. 

By nightfall the 507th Parachute Infantry had consolidated along the woods 

line near Diersfordt and patrols had 

established contact with the 1st Commando Brigade in Wesel. Ten 75-mm. 

pack howitzers of the 464th Parachute 

Field Artillery Battalion were tied in to 

the position. 

Second of the 17th Airborne Division's 

regiments to drop, the 513th Parachute 

Infantry incurred intense antiaircraft fire 

from an enemy no longer deterred by the 

Allied bombardment. All three battalions of the regiment landed more than 

a mile from their assigned drop zones 

inside the sector of the 6th Airborne 

Division north of Wesel near the town 

of Hamminkeln. Heavy small arms fire 

followed the paratroopers to the ground. 

After a short but sharp fire fight, they 

were able to assemble by battalions and 

fight their way southward to their as- 
312 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

GLIDER TROOPS AFTER LANDING NEAR WESEL 

signed zones. In the process the paratroopers destroyed two German tanks, a 

self-propelled gun, and two batteries of 

88's. While one battalion dug in on the 

landing zone, another cleared the woods 

north of Diersfordt and a third moved to 

the little Issel River, which marked the 

eastern extremity of the planned D-day 

objective line. 38 

38 As Company E was advancing, Germans in a 

complex of buildings opened fire with automatic 

weapons, rifles, and four field pieces. The lead 

platoon was pinned to the ground until a runner, 

Pfc. Stuart S. Stryker, rose in full view of the 

enemy, rallied the men, and led a charge on the 

buildings. German fire cut Stryker down as he 

Although the 513th’supporting artillery, the 466th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, landed on the correct 

drop zone southwest of Hamminkeln, 

enemy fire there was even heavier than 

that encountered by the infantry. A number of key men, including all the officers 

of one battery, were killed or wounded 

on the drop zone. The artillerymen 

nevertheless managed to assemble some 

neared the buildings, but the others went on to 

overrun the position. They captured more than 

zoo Germans and rescued three captive American 

airmen. Private Stryker was awarded the Medal of 

Honor posthumously. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 313 

of their howitzers within half an hour, 

enabling them to place direct fire on the 

Germans and gradually to eliminate the 

opposition. By noon they had captured 

ten German 76-mm. pieces and were in 

position to provide supporting fire for 

the 513th Parachute Infantry. 

It remained for the glider echelons, 

including service elements of the division, to better the record for accuracy 

in landing. At least go percent of the 

gliders descended on the proper landing 

zones north and northeast of Wesel in an 

eastward-oriented angle formed by the 

Issel River and the Issel Canal. Although 

German fire was in some cases intense, 

destroying some of the gliders even after 

they had landed safely, men of the 194th 

Glider Infantry within two hours of 

landing had swept to the river and the 

canal and most of the howitzers of the 

division’s two glider field artillery battalions were in position to support them. 

One of the infantry battalions knocked 

out two German tanks en route to its 

objective along the river, then accounted 

for two more in repulsing small counterattacks after the men had dug in. 

The British 6th Airborne Division 

encountered similar difficulty with flak 

and enemy ground fire but also moved 

swiftly to seize D-day objectives. By 1300 

the town of Hamminkeln was in British 

hands along with several bridges over the 

Issel River east and northeast of the 

town. 

Operation VARSITY, the airborne phase 

of the big Rhine assault, was an impressive success. All airborne troops were 

on the ground by 1230, along with 109 

tons of ammunition, 695 vehicles, and 

113 artillery pieces; and in a matter of 

hours, both Americans and British had 

seized all objectives assigned for the first 

day. In the process they had virtually 

eliminated the artillery and service elements of the enemy’s 84th Infantry Division. Except for a surrounded pocket 

north of Diersfordt made up mainly of 

remnants of the 1053d Infantry, the 

enemy division had ceased to function as 

a tactical organization. 89 The 17th Airborne Division claimed 2,000 prisoners, 

the 6th Airborne Division, another 

1,500. 

Linkup with British ground troops 

was firm by nightfall, and as early as 

midafternoon the XVIII Airborne Corps 

commander, General Ridgway, joined 

the 17th Airborne Division commander, 

General Miley, beyond the Rhine. By 

late afternoon supplies were moving 

across the Rhine in dukws in such volume as to eliminate the need for additional supply by air. 

Yet for all the success of Operation 

VARSITY, the question remained whether 

under the prevailing circumstances an 

airborne attack had been necessary or 

was even justified. It unquestionably 

aided British ground troops, but at a cost 

to the 17th Airborne Division alone during the first day’s operations of 159 men 

killed, 522 wounded, and 840 missing 

(though 600 of the missing subsequently 

turned up to fight again) . The IX Troop 

Carrier Command alone lost 41 killed, 

153 wounded, 163 missing. 40 The airborne assault also cost over 50 gliders 

and 44 transport aircraft destroyed, 332 

39 Intelligence Sum for period 241800 to 242359, 

XVIII Airborne Corps, and Sitrep 4, 24 Mar 45, 

XVIII Airborne Corps. 

40 Figures are from 17th Airborne Division History, 15 April 1943–16 September 1945, and Warren, 

Airborne Operations in World War II, p. 229. Firstday losses of the two US. infantry divisions that 

crossed the Rhine on 24 March by amphibious 

assault were 41 killed, 450 wounded, 7 missing. See 

Conquer: The Story of the Ninth Army, p. 247. 
314 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

damaged. In the low-level supply mission 

flown directly after the assault by 240 

Liberators of the Eighth Air Force, 15 

aircraft were lost. 41 

In view of the weak condition of German units east of the Rhine and the 

particular vulnerability of airborne 

troops in and immediately following the 

descent, some overbearing need for the 

special capability of airborne divisions 

would be required to justify their use. 

Although the objectives assigned the divisions were legitimate, they were objectives that ground troops alone under 

existing circumstances should have been 

able to take without undue difficulty and 

probably with considerably fewer casualties. Participation by paratroopers and 

glidermen gave appreciably no more 

depth to the bridgehead at Wesel than 

that achieved by infantrymen of the 30th 

Division. Nor did the airborne attack 

speed bridge construction (as the XVIII 

Airborne Corps commander subsequently claimed) , 42 for not until 0915 

the next day, 25 March, did engineers 

start work on bridges at Wesel. A treadway bridge had been opened to traffic 

behind the 30th Division seventeen 

hours before that. 

At the End of D-Day 

As night fell on 24 March, only on 

the extreme left of the forces involved in 

the 21 Army Group’s Rhine crossing was 

there concern for Allied success. There, 

near Rees, twelve British and Canadian 

battalions supported by thirty DD tanks 

41 Statistics on glider and aircraft losses vary 

slightly. See Eisenhower, Report, p. 100; Montgomery, Normandy to the Baltic, p. 257; Brereton, 

The Brereton Diaries, pp. 406–07; and Warren, Airborne Operations in World War II, pp. 228–29. 

42 XVIII Airborne Corps, Operation VARSITY. 

had crossed the river. Contingents of the 

7th Parachute Division of General 

Meindl’s II Parachute Corps still held 

onto high ground commanding the crossing sites, thereby preventing bridge 

construction and hindering all reinforcement. German paratroopers also clung 

tenaciously to a town northwest of Rees, 

cutting off and surrounding small groups 

of British troops that had gotten into 

the buildings. It would be well into the 

morning of the 25th before a relief force 

of Canadian infantry could set the situation right. 

Despite this tenacity, the condition of 

the II Parachute Corps at nightfall on 24 

March actually was precarious. The collapse of the 84th Division of the neighboring LXXXVI Corps under the 

impact of the Allied airborne attack exposed the left flank of the corps. When 

the counterattack by the 15th Panzer 

Grenadier Division failed to shake the 

British around Rees, General Meindl 

would have no choice but to pull back 

the paratroopers forming his left wing 

along the Rhine and face them to the 

east. The German situation at Rees, 

Meindl concluded, was “hopeless.” 43 

The Germans thus faced likely disaster at three points: Rees, Wesel, and 

south of the Lippe River where the U.S. 

XVI Corps was close to a clean breakthrough. All that was available to ward 

off all three threats was the XLVII Panzer Corps with its lone remaining unit, 

the 116th Panzer Division. Although the 

Army Group H commander, General 

Blaskowitz, earlier had considered using 

the panzer corps to oppose any Allied 

airborne attack, he believed now that 

the greatest danger, despite the psycho43 MS # B–674 (Meindl); MS # B–198 (Leuttwitz); Stacey, The Victory Campaign, pp. 537–38. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 315 

logical impact of the airborne assault, 

was posed by the Americans south of the 

Lippe. Already, early in the day, in a 

local measure the commander of the 

LXIII Corps, General Abraham, had ordered his 2d Parachute Division on his 

south wing, untouched by the American 

crossings, to move against the U.S. 79th 

Division. At 1400, Blaskowitz released 

the XLVII Panzer Corps from army 

group reserve and ordered the commander, General von Luettwitz, to send 

the 116th Panzer Division south of the 

Lippe to halt the U.S. 30th Division. 44 

Located near the Dutch-German 

border, the 116th Panzer Division would 

have to make a long, circuitous march to 

avoid the area of Allied airborne landings. This meant that additional fuel 

would have to be found before the division could depart; it meant also, in 

view of Allied fighter-bombers, a move 

by night. To General Luettwitz it was 

apparent that the main body of the panzer division could get started only after 

nightfall the next day, 25 March. Would 

this be in time to stop a breakout from 

the American bridgehead? 

The Try for a Breakout 

On 25 March the idea of breakout was 

strong in the mind of the 30th Division 

commander, General Hobbs. Delaying 

the morning’s attack to allow the last of 

his divisional artillery to take position 

east of the Rhine, Hobbs at 0900 sent 

two regiments two miles to the east to 

seize high ground marked by an incomplete section of autobahn. When little 

opposition developed except dispirited 

remnants of the 180th Infantry Division, 

44 MS # B–198 (Luettwitz); 79th Division combat 

interviews. 

he ordered both regiments to form mobile task forces built around an attached 

tank destroyer battalion and two tank 

battalions and strike for deep objectives. 

A task force from the 117th Infantry on 

the left was to drive nine miles to 

Dorsten, a road and rail center on the 

south bank of the Lippe-Seiten Canal; 

another from the 120th Infantry was to 

seize Kirchhellen, six miles to the east 

on a main highway leading from Dorsten 

into the Ruhr. 

Although General Hobbs had in mind 

sharp, rapid thrusts designed to shake 

loose from the opposition and break into 

the clear, he was reckoning without the 

problems of terrain and limited roadnet 

the two task forces would encounter. For 

approximately five miles the attacking 

columns would have to pass through 

dense stretches of woods crossed only by 

narrow dirt roads and trails. In that kind 

of country a few strategically placed roadblocks manned by a handful of resolute 

defenders could impose telling delays. 

Slowed by the inevitable problems of 

assembling diverse units, the first of the 

task forces, that of the 120th Infantry, 

began to attack only at 1600. Almost 

from the outset the tankers and infantrymen had to fight for every little gain. 

The Germans suffered—they lost four 

half-tracks armed with multiple-barrel 

20-mm. antiaircraft guns, two 75-mm. 

guns, three 105-mm. pieces, and several 

motor vehicles, including an ammunition truck that caught fire and set a patch 

of the forest ablaze—but they imposed 

the delay they wanted. Night was falling 

when interrogation of prisoners revealed 

the story: the task force was no longer 

fighting Volkssturm nor even disconsolate survivors of the 180th Division; the 

prisoners were from the 60th Panzer 
316 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Grenadier Regiment, 116th Panzer Division. 

The 117th Infantry’s task force, delayed when trucks hauling the infantry 

bogged down on trails churned to mud 

by tank treads, had not even reached 

its line of departure when word came of 

the portentous prisoner identifications. 

The news was not to be taken lightly, for 

men of the 30th Division had learned 

respect for the 116th Panzer Division 

long ago in the hedgerows of Normandy. 

Not until well after dark did the division 

commander, General Hobbs, decide to 

proceed with the attack; and the objective he assigned for the night was designed merely to bring the second task 

force abreast of the positions gained by 

the first. When the men dug in shortly 

after midnight, they were still seven 

miles short of Dorsten, those of the other 

task force still more than four miles from 

Kirchhellen. Furthermore, before daylight another battalion of the 117th Infantry, providing flank protection for the 

task forces by attacking the town of 

Huenxe on the Lippe-Seiten Canal, 

brought in a new batch of prisoners. 

These, it turned out, were from the panzer division’s second grenadier regiment. 

Although the evidence pointed to impending commitment of the entire 116th 

Panzer Division, General Hobbs determined to try again for his breakout before the enemy armor could make its 

full weight felt. Since the mission of the 

79th Division was to wheel south and 

southeast to the Rhein-Herne Canal to 

block toward the Ruhr industrial area, 

all hope of early breakout rested with 

the 30th Division. Merely to accomplish 

the relatively limited flank protection 

mission was causing the 79th some difficulty; during the day, arrival of reinforcements from the 2d Parachute Division, albeit a depleted force, had 

introduced a touch of serious combat. 

Although a regiment of the 35th Division 

(General Baade) had entered the line 

during the day between the 79th and 

30th Divisions, presaging arrival of the 

rest of the division the next day, the 35th 

Division too was scheduled to peel off to 

the southeast to block toward the Ruhr. 

The 30th Division on the third day, 

26 March, made some impressive gains, 

despite continuing problems with narrow, muddy forest trails and despite an 

enemy bearing no resemblance to the 

one who first had opposed the Rhine 

crossing. One battalion of the 119th Infantry reached Gahlen, another canal 

town midway between Huenxe and 

Dorsten, but there became so involved in 

a fight that a second battalion had to 

come to its aid. The 117th Infantry 

reached open ground just over three and 

and a half miles from Dorsten but had 

trouble holding the position because of 

fire from tanks in a nearby town and 

woodlot and from 128-mm. antiaircraft 

guns emplaced in concrete near an airfield. 

The 120th Infantry had the roughest 

going of all at first, but in the end 

crowned the day with a strikingly successful maneuver. Continuing through 

the woods toward Kirchhellen, the regiment’s 2d Battalion first had to disperse 

a counterattack by a company of the 

116th Panzer Division’s grenadiers supported by five tanks. From that point it 

was a slow, yard-by-yard advance until 

just before nightfall when the men 

reached the edge of the woods to look 

down on the airfield from which antiaircraft guns were harassing the neighboring 117th Infantry. Waiting for darkness, 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 317 

the regimental commander, Colonel Purdue, committed a fresh battalion. As 

soon as preliminary artillery fire began 

to fall the assault companies rushed forward, vacating the foxholes at the line of 

departure, while the reserve company 

remained well back of the line. When the 

enemy’s counterbarrage began, it fell on 

empty foxholes. The assault companies 

dashed downhill to clear the airfield in 

less than an hour. Not a man was lost. 

These were impressive gains, but they 

were not breakout. By nightfall of 26 

March the enemy’s 116th Panzer Division had clearly thwarted immediate 

breakout and, though incapable of decisive counterattack, was strong enough 

to hold an attacker to limited gains. Only 

a small advance guard of the panzer division had been on hand to cause trouble 

for the 120th Infantry the night of 25 

March, but the bulk of the division’s 

infantry and some tanks had arrived by 

daylight of the 26th. The remainder of 

the division entered the line that evening, whereupon responsibility for the 

sector south of the Lippe passed to the 

XLVII Panzer Corps. With the responsibility came a second divisional unit, the 

190th Infantry Division, rushed from the 

Netherlands to take up positions south of 

the panzer division. It was a makeshift 

division equipped with little heavy fire 

support, including only one artillery battalion and few antitank weapons . 45 

Faced with this situation, the 30th Division’s General Hobbs would have been 

content with more leisurely attacks that 

would afford his tired infantry battalions 

a chance to rest, but pressure for breakout had begun to build from the Ninth 

45 MS # B–198 (Luettwitz). 

Army commander, General Simpson. Behind the lines, Simpson held not only 

two more divisions belonging to General 

Anderson’s XVI Corps but also the entire XIX Corps and, potentially, the 

XIII Corps, with no place to commit 

them. Late on the 26th General Anderson ordered the 8th Armored Division to 

move through Hobbs’s infantry in search 

of the maneuver room the Ninth Army 

needed. 46 

How To Bring the Ninth Army’s Power 

To Bear 

The inability of the 30th Division to 

break into the open was but one aspect 

of the problem facing the Ninth Army, 

the decision to commit the 8th Armored 

Division but one possibility for solving 

it. The core of the problem lay in the 

way operations had developed in the 

British bridgehead and its effect on use 

of bridges at Wesel and on maneuver 

room to be made available to the Ninth 

Army north of the Lippe River and canal 

complex. 

Pressed back to the north and the 

northwest, the paratroopers of Meindl’s 

II Parachute Corps, reinforced by the 

15th Panzer Grenadier Division, sharply 

restricted British and Canadian gains 

and by their opposition also slowed 

bridge construction near Xanten and 

Rees. In the British sector, by nightfall 

of 26 March, only the XVIII Airborne 

Corps, driving eastward along the north 

bank of the Lippe, had made progress 

comparable to that of the American 

troops to the south. 

Lacking adequate bridges downstream, 

46 30th Div G–3 Jnl file, 26–28 Mar 45. 
318 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the British transferred the bulk of their 

cross-river traffic to Wesel, where a treadway bridge and a 25-ton ponton bridge 

had been completed by Ninth Army engineers and where a floating Bailey 

bridge was nearing completion. Although the Ninth Army had running 

rights on these bridges for five out of 

each twenty-four hours, the time was 

insufficient for a major build-up; and 

once beyond the Rhine at Wesel, there 

was no place to go. Under Field Marshal 

Montgomery’s plan of operations, the 

XVIII Airborne Corps was to sideslip 

to the north to make room for the Ninth 

Army’s XIX Corps, but because of lack 

of progress by British units to the northeast, the airborne troops could not yet 

make the shift. 

To the Ninth Army’s General Simpson 

it was frustrating to have to fight 

doggedly forward in frontal attacks 

against opposition that could be dealt 

with summarily if only he could bring 

additional power to bear. Ninth Army 

engineers had by this time put in enough 

bridges-one 25-ton ponton and three 

treadway bridges were carrying traffic 

and two floating Bailey bridges were almost finished-to support considerably 

larger forces than the three infantry divisions already in the XVI Corps bridgehead, but so constricted was the 

bridgehead-eleven miles wide and nowhere more than thirteen miles deep— 

that to commit even the 8th Armored 

Division was to invite congestion. Nor 

was there any possibility for maneuver 

unless the armored division could 

achieve a really deep penetration. 

The makeshift solution General Simpson proposed, as revealed to his assembled corps commanders during the 

afternoon of 27 March, was to take the 

risk of overcrowding and concentrate the 

XIX Corps in the bridgehead. Once 

bridges could be built over the Lippe 

the XIX Corps was to cross, thereby bypassing the bottleneck of Wesel, and 

launch a drive alongside the XVIII Airborne Corps to cut in behind those Germans holding up the 30th Division. 

Attending the meeting at Simpson’s 

request, the XVIII Airborne Corps commander, General Ridgway, promptly discouraged the plan. While acknowledging 

that to avoid Wesel would be helpful, 

Ridgway still doubted that the crowded 

roads north of the Lippe could yet support any contingent of the Ninth Army. 

He held out hope nevertheless that if the 

XVIII Airborne Corps continued to advance at its current pace for about two 

more days, there then might be room for 

some portion of the Ninth Army. 

In the end, General Simpson deferred 

a decision while couching an appeal in 

strong terms to the Second British Army 

commander, General Dempsey, and to 

Field Marshal Montgomery for exclusive use at the earliest possible date of 

the Wesel bridges and the main highway 

leading east out of Wesel along the north 

bank of the Lippe. If he could have these 

facilities, Simpson said, he could utilize 

both the XIX Corps and the XIII 

Corps. 47 

That commitment of the 8th Armored 

Division (General Devine) in quest of a 

breakthrough south of the Lippe was no 

solution to Simpson’s problem was demonstrated early on 28 March. Although 

the fatigued infantrymen of the 30th Division had fought through the night of 

the 26th and the day of the 27th to open 

47 The account of the meeting is from Conquer: 

The Story of the Ninth Army, pp. 260–61. 
THE RHINE CROSSINGS IN THE NORTH 319 

a route for the armor, they failed to do 

more than dent the positions of the 

enemy’s 116th Panzer Division. Dense 

forest and poor roads, when combined 

with determined resistance from German 

tanks and antiaircraft guns, prevented 

the armor from gaining more than three 

miles. When the fighting died down with 

the coming of night on 28 March, the 

Germans still held Dorsten. Prospects of 

a breakout faded. 

It was a different story north of the 

Lippe. There, in fulfillment of the 

promise foreseen by General Ridgway, 

paratroopers of the 17th Airborne Division’s 513th Parachute Infantry in midafternoon of 28 March mounted 

Churchill tanks of the British 6th Guards 

Armoured Brigade. 48 With scarcely a 

pause, they raced seventeen miles beyond 

Dorsten. As the commander of the 

enemy’s XLVII Panzer Corps, General 

Luettwitz, was quick to note, the spectacular advance outflanked the positions of 

his corps, including those of the 116th 

Panzer Division. 49 

On this same date, 28 March, Field 

Marshal Montgomery issued a new directive to govern operations across the north 

German plain to the Elbe River, deep 

inside Germany. In the process, he 

spelled out a new policy for use of the 

Rhine bridges at Wesel and provided an 

48 Culminating a series of gallant acts, T. Sgt. 

Clinton M. Hedrick, 194th Glider Infantry, entered 

a castle at Lembeck, seven miles north of Dorsten, 

on 28 March to accept surrender of the German 

garrison. The Germans instead opened fire with a 

self-propelled gun. Mortally wounded, Sergeant 

Hedrick rained such a fire on the Germans that 

his colleagues were able to escape. He was awarded 

the Medal of Honor posthumously. 

49 MS # B–198 (Luettwitz). 

expanding corridor for employment of 

portions of the Ninth Army north of the 

Lippe River. Beginning early on the 

morning of 30 March, the routes leading 

east from Wesel were to pass to the Ninth 

Army, thus enabling General Simpson to 

begin moving forces north of the Lippe 

even before gaining full control of the 

Wesel bridges. Those bridges were to 

pass to the Ninth Army early the next 

morning, 31 March, though with running rights to the British for five hours 

out of each twenty-four. 

Operation PLUNDER was over. Four 

Allied armies were across the last great 

barrier to the heartland of Germany and 

had either begun to exploit or were 

poised to begin the last deep thrusts. 

Only the First Canadian Army on the 

north flank and the First French Army 

on the south had yet to establish their 

own bridgeheads. The Canadians already 

were building up through the British 

bridgehead, and the French were preparing to cross in their own right before 

the month of March was out. 

Whether at this stage of the war elaborate preparation and support on the 

scale marshaled by the 21 Army Group 

was necessary or even justified for forcing 

the Rhine would forever remain conjecture. The entire production might have 

been avoided, for example, had Montgomery allowed Simpson’s Ninth Army 

to jump the Rhine in a surprise assault 

back in the first week of March. Yet in 

the jubilation of the success that accompanied Operation PLUNDER, few but 

the most carping critics would continue 

to belabor the point. 

“My dear General,” Prime Minister 

Churchill had said to the Supreme Commander as he watched Allied power unleashed against the Rhine on 24 March, 
320 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

“the German is whipped. We’ve got him. 

He is all through.” 50 

To a man and to a nation that almost 

50 Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 390. 

five long years before had known the 

nadir of Dunkerque, the pyrotechnics of 

23 and 24 March were sweet and just and 

good and right. 
CHAPTER XV 

At the End of March 

“My dear General,” telegraphed 

Charles de Gaulle to the commander of 

the First French Army on 29 March, 

“you must cross the Rhine, even if the 

Americans do not agree and even if you 

have to cross it in rowboats. It is a matter 

of the greatest national interest.” 1 

To de Gaulle, the Allied governments’ 

failure yet to designate any portion of 

Germany for occupation by France indicated an unwillingness to recognize 

French claims. To circumvent any attempt to freeze out the French, he was 

determined to seize a sector beyond the 

Rhine. 2 

The French field commander, General 

de Lattre, actually was a step ahead of 

his chief of state. Conscious that the 

French had been assigned no frontage 

along the Rhine not covered from the 

east bank by West Wall fortifications 

(the twelve miles obtained earlier north 

of the Lauter River faced an east-bank 

spur of the West Wall designed to protect the city of Karlsruhe), de Lattre two 

days before, on 27 March, had visited 

General Devers at headquarters of the 

6th Army Group. Having noted that the 

American Seventh Army’s Rhine crossing 

before daylight on the 26th had occurred 

1 De Lattre, Histoire de la Première Armée 

Française, pp. 487–90. Unless otherwise noted, the 

story of the French crossings of the Rhine is from 

this source, pp. 485–99. 

2 Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 432. 

at Worms, on the extreme northern edge 

of the Seventh Army’s zone, de Lattre 

believed that the Americans would happily relinquish part of their zone in order 

to free units for the attack in the north. 

His talk with Devers confirmed it. 

De Lattre left Devers’s headquarters 

not only with expanded frontage along 

the Rhine—all the way north to Speyer, 

more than half the distance from Karlsruhe to Mannheim and well beyond the 

spur of the West Wall—but also with 

orders to prepare to cross the Rhine, seize 

Karlsruhe, and drive deep to the southeast to take Stuttgart. 3 Yet Devers gave 

him no target date for the crossing. Concerned lest American columns driving 

south from the Worms bridgehead might 

overrun the French sites before Devers 

approved a crossing date, de Lattre told 

the commander of his II Corps, Maj. 

Gen. A. J. de Monsabert, to begin crossing before daylight on 31 March. 

After receiving de Gaulle’s telegram, 

de Lattre reiterated his order to de 

Monsabert. It was not a question, he said, 

of whether de Monsabert could be ready 

to cross on the 31st, it was a question of 

beating the Americans into the new sector beyond the Rhine. French national 

honor was at stake. 

When General Devers on the 30th 

asked when the French could start cross3 6th AGp Ltr of Instrs 12, 27 Mar 45, 6th AGp 

AAR, Mar 45. 
322 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

ing, de Latere proudly answered that he 

would begin before daylight the next 

morning. Devers promptly approved. 

By 0230 on 31 March, infantrymen of 

the 3d Algerian Division at Speyer had 

found only a single rubber assault boat. 

Undaunted, the Algerians began to 

shuttle silently across the Rhine, ten men 

at a time. Shortly before daybreak when 

they had located four more rubber boats 

to speed the shuttle, the Germans awoke 

to the crossing and began to shell the 

site. The enemy was too late; already an 

entire infantry company was across. Having made even Patton's surprise crossing 

at Oppenheim look like a deliberate, setpiece assault, the French were on the east 

bank to stay. 

A few miles upstream at Germersheim, 

a more conventional crossing fared less 

well. Because of confusion at hastily 

chosen embarkation points, the first wave 

of the 2d Moroccan Division pushed into 

the river only after daylight had come 

and the first impact of an artillery prep 

aration had dissipated. In that wave, only 

three of some twenty storm boats 

equipped with outboard motors survived 

German small arms and mortar fire and 

made it to the east bank. While thirty 

men from the three boats hung on 

grimly, French artillery encased the 

minuscule bridgehead in fire until subsequent waves, still taking heavy losses, 

could build up. By nightfall the bulk of 

two battalions was across and a foothold 

assured. 

The next day, 1 April-Easter Sunday 

—General Brooks of the neighboring VI 

Corps gave permission for French vehicles to cross an American bridge at 

Mannheim. Before the day was out, 

French reconnaissance units had pushed 

eighteen miles beyond the Rhine, in the 

process coming upon a column of the 

10th U.S. Armored Division deep within 

the assigned French zone. It was an error 

on the part of the American armor— 

American commanders had entertained 

no idea of depriving the French of their 

opportunity for an assault crossing of 

the Rhine—but to General de Lattre the 

presence of the U.S. unit justified the 

haste of the French crossing. A 24-hour 

delay, he reckoned, would have condemned the French to a passive role in 

the invasion of Germany. 4 

To speed the taking of Karlsruhe, de 

Lattre would make a third Rhine crossing on 2 April midway between Germersheim and Karlsruhe and even' a 

fourth some days later, 5 but the main 

crossings at Germersheim and Speyer in 

effect marked the end of the passage of 

all three Allied army groups to the east 

bank of the Rhine. 

An Awesome Power 

By the end of March the great river 

barrier was a challenge only to bridgebuilding engineers. A tatterdemalion 

German Army on the brink of total defeat lay exposed to a mighty Allied force 

of almost four and a half million men, 

including ninety divisions, twenty-five of 

which were armored, five airborne. 6 As 

4 De Lattre, Histoire de la Premiére Armée 

Française, p. 449. See also below, ch. XVIII. 

5 The third crossing was at Leimersheim, the 

fourth at Strasbourg. For details of the fourth 

crossing, see below, ch. XVIII. 

6 Of the divisions, 61 were American, 12 British, 

11 French, 5 Canadian, and 1 Polish. One British 

division would arrive from Italy before V–E Day 

to bring the total force under .General Eisenhower 

to 91 divisions, plus several independent brigades. 

See SHAEF G–3 War Room Daily Sums, 2 Apr 

and 9 May 45. 
AT THE END OF MARCH 323 

the multiple drives beyond the Rhine 

began, Montgomery’s 21 Army Group 

controlled thirty divisions. Included 

were twelve U.S. divisions in the Ninth 

Army and a new Canadian corps with 

two Canadian divisions and an armored 

brigade. The Canadian corps had arrived 

during the month of March from Italy as 

a result of a decision made at the Malta 

Conference to reinforce British forces 

for the final thrust into Germany. 7 

Bradley’s 12th Army Group had thirtyfour divisions, including six in its new 

army, the Fifteenth, under General 

Gerow. Although the Fifteenth Army 

had become operational in early January, the headquarters heretofore had 

handled only rear echelon assignments, 

including control of the 66th Infantry 

Division, which was containing German 

holdouts in Brittany ports. The Fifteenth 

Army now was to move forward to assume a holding mission along the Rhine, 

facing the Ruhr, then later was to relieve 

the other armies of the 12th Army Group 

of occupation duties as they drove deep 

into Germany. 

Devers’s 6th Army Group had twelve 

U.S. and eleven French divisions, although two of the latter were unavailable for the drive beyond the Rhine, 

since one was holding the Alpine front 

facing Italy and another was containing 

Germans along the Gironde estuary in 

southwestern France. The remaining 

three divisions of the total of ninety were 

U.S. airborne divisions under control of 

the First Allied Airborne Army. 

Allied air power, its declining losses 

readily replaceable, remained everywhere overwhelmingly dominant, men7 Stacey, The Victory Campaign, p. 529; Montgomery, Normandy to the Baltic, p. 247. 

GENERAL GEROW 

aced only occasionally by the sporadic 

activity of German jet fighters. Antiaircraft fire from the flak-heavy Ruhr 

noticeably decreased, apparently indicating German ammunition shortages. 

Continuing a long-range program against 

oil supplies, American strategic bombers 

of the Eighth Air Force during March 

directed 36,000 tons of bombs against 

refineries and storage depots. Communications centers, railroads, factories, jet 

aircraft plants, and submarine pens also 

continued to take a pounding. Raids almost always involved more than a thousand bombers, with losses seldom 

exceeding five aircraft, though on 18 

March, in one of the largest daylight 

raids of the war on Berlin, German jet 

planes shot down 24 bombers and 5 

fighters, while flak damaged more than 
324 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

half the 1,200 bombers, 16 of which had 

to crash-land behind Russian lines. 

Heavies of the Royal Air Force also 

continued their destructive campaign; at 

one point, on 12 March, they established 

a new record for tonnage in a single 

strategic attack by dropping 4,899 tons 

from 1,107 aircraft on Dortmund. Close 

co-ordination was often achieved with 

heavy bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force 

in Italy. Despite occasional bad weather, 

the campaign in the air was so successful 

that by the end of March the strategic 

air forces were almost out of targets. 8 

The big raid on Berlin on 18 March 

was part of a program begun the preceding month after the Combined Chiefs of 

Staff at Malta decided to send the strategic air forces of Britain and the United 

States against major transportation centers in eastern Germany through which 

the Germans might funnel reinforcements for the Russian front. “There was 

also a hope that heavy air raids would 

increase the panic and confusion already 

prevalent in those cities, which were 

thoroughly frightened by the sudden 

Russian advance and full of refugees.” 9 

The raids quickly produced charges, 

particularly in the American press, of 

terror bombing. Although American air 

officers pointed out that they were not 

bombing cities indiscriminately but attacking transportation facilities inside 

the cities, severe criticism would persist 

even into the postwar period. Of particular horror was a Royal Air Force raid on 

Dresden the night of 13 February, followed on the next two days by U.S. 

attacks. These raids created a firestorm 

like that which had gutted Hamburg in 

8 Craven and Cate, AAF III, 736–55. 

9 lbid., p. 725. 

1943, and may have caused as many as 

135,000 civilian deaths. 10 

During the first two weeks of April, 

the Luftwaffe would make feeble efforts 

with thin remnants of conventional and 

jet fighter forces but would succeed in 

bringing down only eighteen American 

bombers. At the same time Allied air 

commanders would consider the strategic 

air war at an end. As early as 7 April the 

British would discontinue area strikes 

against German cities, and on 16 April 

the chief of the United States Strategic 

Air Forces in Europe, General Carl 

Spaatz, would declare the strategic air 

war won. The big bombers would still 

make a few raids aimed at rail junctions, 

marshaling yards, or other targets of direct concern to the ground armies. 11 

The Logistical Backbone 

On the ground, as the prospect of unqualified pursuit warfare loomed, there 

stood behind the awesome power of Allied armies a logistical establishment 

geared to demands that, had they been 

made during the pursuit across France 

the preceding summer, would have been 

preposterous. For example, no longer did 

the Allied armies have to depend on 

makeshift facilities at the invasion 

beaches or on minor ports far behind the 

fighting lines. Antwerp, one of Europe’s 

great ports, lying only a little over a 

hundred miles behind the front, alone 

handled 558,000 tons of supplies in 

March. In the south, Marseille and sub10 This figure is higher than that of the combined 

total of deaths (110,000) in the atomic bombings 

of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Craven and Cate, 

AAF III, 724–31; David Irving, The Destruction of 

Dresden (London: William Kimber, 1963). 

11 Craven and Cate, AAF III, 753–54. 
AT THE END OF MARCH 325 

sidiary ports handled 575,500 tons in 

March, making the 6th Army Group 

virtually independent of the lines of communication serving the other Allied 

forces. 12 

While there were occasional delays in 

discharging ships in all the ports, moving 

the supplies to inland depots was the 

major problem, attributable in part to a 

perennial shortage of transportation but 

in the main to an inadequate system of 

depots echeloned in depth. The problem 

would be intensified as the pursuit east 

of the Rhine increased demands for 

transport close behind the front. 

An extensive program of pipeline construction helped ease the burden on 

transport. By the end of March a line 

from Antwerp was operating as far as 

Wesel on the Rhine, another from Cherbourg as far as Thionville in Lorraine, 

and a third from Marseille almost to the 

Saar River. To relieve congestion on the 

Rhine bridges, pipelines were laid across 

the river at four points soon after the 

crossings, and gasoline delivered by railway tank cars was pumped across. Three 

of the pipelines were later tied in with 

the main arteries from the ports. At the 

time of the Rhine crossings, gasoline 

stocks in both the Communications Zone 

and the armies themselves were the highest they had ever been. Only in the last 

days of April would deliveries fall short 

of daily consumption, and never would 

gasoline exercise the tyranny over operations that it had in France and Belgium 

in 1944. 

Rail reconstruction also proceeded 

swiftly. By the end of March a line was 

open to the Rhine at Wesel and another 

12 The section on logistics is based on Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies II . 

at Koblenz, while on the 1st of April 

engineers opened another as far as Mainz. 

On 7 April the 1056th Port Construction 

and Repair Group, having worked 

around the clock for ten days, would 

open a 1,753-foot rail bridge over the 

Rhine near Wesel. A second rail bridge 

over the Rhine at Mainz was opened six 

days later and others, at Mannheim and 

Karlsruhe, before the month of April 

was out. All single-tracked, the bridges 

were inevitable bottlenecks; their existence nevertheless would enable the railways by mid-April to equal the tonnage 

carried beyond the Rhine by truck transport and by the end of the war to handle 

three-fourths of the total tonnage. This 

record was accomplished despite shortages of locomotives and rolling stock and 

frustrating delays in unloading freight 

cars at their destinations. 

Taking a cue from the Red Ball Express truck route that had sped highway 

traffic behind the armies the preceding 

year, the Transportation Corps in January had inaugurated an express rail service for high priority freight. A train of 

twenty cars, labeled the “Toot Sweet 

Express” (a play on the French phrase 

tout de suite), left Cherbourg each day, 

picked up additional cars and split into 

two sections at Paris, then ran to Verdun 

and Namur and later as far as Bad Kreuznach and Liège. Beginning in March a 

similar service, originating in Liège, delivered perishable foods to railheads close 

behind the First and Ninth Armies—the 

“Meat Ball Express.” 

Motor transport meanwhile increased 

to an unprecedented tempo. In contrast 

to the improvisation of the Red Ball and 

other express routes the preceding summer, the Communications Zone had prepared detailed plans to marshal three- 
326 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

THE RHINE RAILROAD BRIDGE AT WESEL 

fourths of the motor transport under its 

control for direct support of the pursuit 

beyond the Rhine. Under a three-phase 

plan called “XYZ,” more than 4,000 

trucks, most of them either 10-ton tractor-semitrailer combinations or 10-ton 

diesels, eventually were to deliver up to 

15,000 tons a day to forward depots. 

Trucks received detailed maintenance 

before every run, and some of the convoys carried their own mechanics and 

packets of most commonly needed spare 

parts. On one route serving the Seventh 

Army, drivers could pause at rest stops 

called “GI Diners,” where they might exchange cold rations for hot. In addition 

to these trucks, the armies themselves 

had about forty truck companies each, 

supplemented by provisional companies 

made up of the organic transportation 

from field artillery and antiaircraft units. 

Building roads and bridges occupied 

thousands of engineers, whose numbers 

were augmented by civilians and prisoners of war and sometimes by men from 

uncommitted combat units. Engineers 

assigned to the armies did most of the 

work, constructing, for example, 52 of 

the 57 highway bridges built over the 

Rhine. Just over half of the bridges were 
AT THE END OF MARCH 327 

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL BRIDGE AT MAINZ. Construction proceeded 

day and night. 

fixed wooden pile; of 26 treadway and 

heavy ponton bridges, most would be 

phased out by early May. 

Air transport also contributed far 

more than it had the preceding summer, 

both because airfields were plentiful and 

because few planes were withdrawn for 

airborne training or operations. During 

the second week of April, more than 

6,200 sorties were flown—a peak—and 

more than 15,000 tons of supplies (mostly gasoline) set down on forward fields. 

On return flights the big transport craft 

evacuated casualties or liberated prisoners of war. During April approximately 

40,000 casualties were removed from the 

combat zone by air, and in the closing 

days of the war one sky train after another carried Recovered Allied Military 

Personnel (RAMPS) westward. The 

Third Army alone evacuated 135,000 

men in the last month by air. 

All these efforts added up to a sup 

ply situation in which the Communications Zone and the support services in 

the armies could take justifiable pride, 

and this done with a theaterwide division 

slice of only about 26,000 men, a figure 
328 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

PONTON BRIDGE ACROSS THE RHINE SERVING SEVENTH ARMY 

usually considered minimal, Some shortages persisted, particularly in spare parts 

for vehicles and weapons, and forward 

supply officers were sometimes reduced 

to nervous fretting and fuming, but 

minor shortages were fairly characteristic 

of supply in a highly mobile situation 

and rarely affected operations. Although 

fewer combat losses of tanks, vehicles, 

and equipment and reduced expenditure 

of ammunition—both features of pursuit 

warfare-helped, the credit in general 

belonged to a sound logistical apparatus 

expertly administered. The infantryman 

or the tanker might complain of a monotonous diet of emergency rations, but 

so fast was he moving that he would 

have had little time for more substantia1 

fare in any case. What was more important, he always ate, and many a time he 

could relieve the monotony with “liberated” eggs or other produce from a farmyard. 

Decisions at the Top 

Meanwhile, a variety of decisions had 

been or were being made at both theater 

and intergovernmental levels that, while 

not affecting the actual conduct of tactical operations, nevertheless produced an 
AT THE END OF MARCH 329 

LIBERATED PRISONERS OF WAR waiting to board C–47 transport planes. 

impact on the armies and the fighting 

men in them. These decisions ranged 

from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 

“unconditional surrender” formula, 

enunciated long months before at the 

Casablanca Conference, to a so-called 

nonfraternization policy and SHAEF’s 

definition of the difference between loot 

and legitimate booty, almost as difficult 

as the nonfraternization policy to administer. 

The policy of unconditional surrender, some thought at the time and after, 

prolonged the war because it afforded 

the Germans no out. In view of the control over the armed forces and the populace exercised by the Nazi apparatus and 

of clarifying statements issued from time 

to time by the Allied governments, the 

opinion would appear to be more speculative than conclusive. It clearly was no 

barrier to the surrender of German 

soldiers, individually or sometimes en 

masse, nor to the nation as a whole when 

the Hitler mystique ceased to exist. More 

likely it was, as Winston Churchill, 

among others, once put it, that the German people continued to fight not out 
330 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

of fear of Allied victory but out of fear 

of conquest by the Soviet Army. 13 

Imposed at the intergovernmental 

level, the nonfraternization policy had 

been proclaimed the previous September, the day after the first American 

patrols crossed the German frontier, but 

only with the rapid sweep through the 

Rhineland had it come to affect more 

than a few U.S. units. Under the terms 

of General Eisenhower’s directive, all 

fraternization with the German population was forbidden. There was to be no 

“mingling with Germans upon terms of 

friendliness, familiarity, or intimacy, individually or in groups in official or unofficial dealings.” 14 It was, in the words 

of an official British historian, an attempt 

“to send the whole German people to 

Coventry largely in order to express disgust for the bestialities of Nazism.” 15 

The policy soon broke down, perhaps 

inevitably, though it would remain officially in force for several months after 

the fighting ended. Given the generally 

friendly disposition of the young, healthy 

American—and Allied—soldier, strict 

enforcement of such a rule, particularly 

in regard to children and women, proved 

impossible. 16 Nor was it practical when 

13 For a detailed discussion of the subject as it 

related to SHAEF, see Pogue, The Supreme Command, pp. 339–43. 

14 Ltr, SHAEF, 12 Sep 44, sub: Policy, Relationship Between Allied Occupation Troops and Inhabitants of Germany. 

15 F. S. V. Donnison, C.B.E., Civil Affairs and 

Military Government, North- West Europe 1944– 

1946 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 

1961), p. 374. 

16 Oliver J. Fredericksen, The American Military 

Occupation of Germany 1945–1953 (Germany: The 

Stars and Stripes, 1953). for the Historical Division, 

Headquarters, U.S. Army, Europe: Historical Division, European Command, Fraternization with 

the Germans in World War II, in a multivolume 

MS series, Occupation Forces in Europe, 1945–46. 

seeking to govern a conquered population by indirect means to carry out prohibitions against soldiers accompanying 

Germans in the street, conversing with 

them in public, or even shaking hands 

with them. Few Germans could have 

been unaware of the policy, but when it 

was enforced it probably caused more resentment than remorse. 

The nonfraternization program may 

have served other objectives—security 

and protecting the lives of individual Allied soldiers, though the German population in any case provoked few major 

incidents. While some civilians on occasion took up arms beside their soldiers 

and in isolated instances sniped or engaged in other acts of violence against 

individual soldiers, the people for the 

most part were “passive, lethargic, negative, disciplined, docile, deferential, cooperative, obedient.” 17 They hung out 

white sheets from upper windows of their 

homes as the troops approached, then in 

general conformed to the dictates of the 

tactical commanders and later of the military government officials. German children quickly learned the trade that had 

long been an art in the liberated countries of begging for chewing gum and 

candy, and “frauleins” reacted to the 

shouts from passing columns —“schlafen 

mit?” either with haughty disdain or with 

a European woman’s sly appreciation at 

masculine approval. There was one notable exception. The night of 24 March 

Nazis or Nazi sympathizers murdered the 

man appointed by the Allies to be burgomaster of Aachen. 

On the first of April, Hitler issued a 

17 Historical Division, European Command, Operations From Late March to Mid-July 1945, in a 

multivolume MS series, United States Military Government in Germany, p. 20. 
AT THE END OF MARCH 331 

proclamation calling on all Germans to 

become “werewolves” to prey on Allied 

troops, Jews, and those Germans who cooperated with Allied forces. 18 Some incidents involving German youth could be 

traced to this appeal, but it attracted no 

broad support. The mass of the people 

continued to react with resigned relief 

that the war was nearing an end. 

More a problem to security and discipline was the presence in Germany of 

several million displaced persons, usually impressed workers from countries 

earlier conquered by the Germans. Only 

some 50,000 of these were encountered in 

the Rhineland; but before the sweep 

across Germany was over, the American 

armies alone had liberated more than 

2,300,000 displaced persons. 19 The exuberance of these people upon liberation 

and sometimes their desire to wreak immediate vengeance on their oppressors 

led on occasion to violent, tragic excesses, 

which the soldiers were reluctant to deal 

with. 20 That they did not fall under the 

nonfraternization policy contributed to 

the problem. Many a case of venereal disease incurred by an Allied soldier could 

be traced to a cantonment for displaced 

persons. Looting by these people, sometimes in organized bands, continued to 

be a problem until well after the German surrender when repatriation at last 

reduced their numbers to more manageable proportions. All armies had to detail at least small service and tactical 

units to assist military government officials with displaced persons, and the 

18 For a summary of the proclamation, see XIII 

Corps G–2 Periodic Rpt 146, 3 Apr 45. 

19 Fredericksen, The American Military Occupation, p. 73. 

20 See, for example, Toland, The Last 100 Days, 

pp. 443–46. 

Ninth Army in mid-April assigned one 

division and later the entire XVI Corps 

to military government duties. 

Looting by American soldiers was also 

a problem. To many a soldier this nation 

that had plunged the world into war 

seemed fair game. The plundering 

ranged from simple pilferage—appropriating china or glassware as a substitute 

for mess kits or taking some trinket as a 

souvenir (as likely as not to be discarded 

another day when something more appealing caught the eye) —to outright 

theft of objects of genuine value. Entire 

sets of silver and fine china, typewriters, 

cameras, or valuable objets d’art were 

packaged and sent home by way of theArmy postal service. How much of this 

went on depended in large measure at 

first on the attitude of company, battalion, and regimental commanders; but 

the practice became so widespread that 

General Eisenhower‘s headquarters attempted to set up strict rules as to what 

constituted legitimate booty. 

Under terms of Eisenhower’s directive, issued in April, the only booty that 

might be mailed home consisted of objects that were Nazi in origin—Nazi 

flags, armbands with swastika emblems, 

batons encrested with Nazi symbols—or 

those belonging to the German armed 

forces—uniforms, rifles, or other items 

found in military installations. A set of 

china, for example, might be legitimate 

booty if found in a German officers’ 

mess. Before a package could be mailed, 

it had to bear an affidavit from an officer 

of the soldier’s unit attesting to its legitimacy. 

While the system sharply curtailed 

looting, it did nothing to ameliorate an 

old dispute over booty that long had 

raged between men in combat units and 
332 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

those in support and service echelons. 

Combat soldiers complained that they 

moved too fast and had to travel too light 

to have any opportunity for mailing 

booty home, while soldiers behind the 

front protested that the combat troops 

had purloined the valuable prizes before 

others could get to them. Except for 

pistols (Lugers and P-38 Walthers, particularly, were premium prizes) , which 

were more readily come upon by the infantryman or tank crewman, one argument probably canceled out the other. 

Wine and schnapps in reasonable 

amounts continued to be ready prizes 

for anybody wherever found. They could 

be made to disappear, with not unpleasant results, before any overly conscientious investigating officer could check to 

see where they came from. German vehicles also continued to find their way 

into American hands, though some division commanders prohibited them or 

else insisted on rigid inspection of their 

serviceability lest they delay the columns. And there were few platoons that 

did not soon have a handsome civilian 

radio set, one that might be “traded up” 

as new towns were taken. 

To locate and then prevent looting 

and destruction of important industrial 

facilities, research establishments, banks, 

museums, galleries, and German records, each Allied army carried special 

intelligence teams. In American armies, 

these included teams from the technical 

services, plus special groups known as 

“T-forces” designated to search for items 

of scientific value. The latter were especially alert for materials related to German research in rockets, which had led 

to the second of Hitler’s V-weapons, the 

V–2 supersonic rocket that had begun to 

bombard England the preceding September. Another special force known as 

the ALSOS mission, seeking information 

on German developments in nuclear fission, had determined the preceding November from German scientists and 

documents taken in Strasbourg that the 

Germans still were a long way from producing an atomic bomb. 21 

As with looting, some American soldiers achieved personal gain in black 

market currency. Although the official 

exchange for all Allied troops was the 

Allied military mark, soldiers presumably could get regular German marks in 

legitimate dealings as change (though 

how this was possible under the nonfraternization policy, no one bothered 

to explain), and finance officers even 

made some official disbursements in 

German marks. Thus there was at first 

no regulation prohibiting a soldier from 

exchanging German marks for military 

marks of or below the 100-mark denomination (the largest bill disbursed in 

military marks) or from transmitting 

these or large amounts of military marks 

to his credit back home. 

Only after it became obvious that 

black market dealings were imposing a 

heavy drain both on Army funds and on 

goods-food, cigarettes, PX rations, and 

other items—did the European theater’s 

fiscal director, in April, order finance 

officers neither to receive nor to disburse 

German marks. By that time substantial 

amounts of Allied military marks had 

found their way into the economy, and 

this move alone would be insufficient to 

eliminate the black market. 

21 Boris T. Pash, The Alsos Mission (New York: 

Award House, 1969); Samuel A. Goudsmit, ALSOS 

(New York: William Morrow & Co., 1964); Conquer: The Story of the Ninth Army, pp. 284–85. 
AT THE END OF MARCH 333 

Although another regulation prohibited a soldier from transmitting to the 

United States more than his normal pay 

and allowances unless the excess was certified by his personnel officer as legitimately obtained, that too would not halt 

all dealings. Since gambling was allowed, what personnel officer could 

question, unless the sum to be transmitted were extraordinarily high, that 

it came from lucky dice? The problem 

remained to be settled after the end of 

the fighting, and then only after the 

Russians had flooded the economy with 

Allied military marks, making the situation worse. 22 

The more serious crimes—desertion, 

misbehavior before the enemy, murder, 

rape, and assault with intent to commit 

rape—sharply increased in March and 

would continue to do so through the 

rapid drive across Germany. The upswing in cases of rape was particularly 

marked; 32 men were brought to trial 

in January and February, 128 in March, 

and 259 in April. The pattern duplicated the experience of the previous 

year during the race across France. In 

great measure it could be attributed to 

the larger number of troops in Germany, to lessened control and supervision by officers in mobile warfare, and 

possibly to the soldier’s knowledge that 

he would be moving on rapidly and thus 

was less likely to be apprehended for 

the crime. Then too, the soldiers came 

as arms-bearing conquerors of a population that long had been propagandized 

to believe that Allied troops would rape, 

22 Walter Rundell, Jr., Black Market Money 

(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 

1964), provides an authoritative account of these 

activities, based on official Army records. 

pillage, and kill. Although many Americans suspected that crying rape was a 

German woman’s way of getting back at 

the conqueror and although some soldiers undoubtedly interpreted lack of 

resistance as seduction, the military 

courts generally held that even where 

physical force was not proved, the victim had submitted through fear. 23 

Although any incidence of crimes of 

violence or misbehavior before the enemy was serious, the total for the entire 

war in Europe represented only .53 of 1 

percent of the total number of Americans who served in the theater. Seventy 

soldiers were executed, one for desertion, the others for murder, rape, or 

rape associated with murder. 24 

As March came to an end, the war 

was in many ways unrecognizable as the 

same war of those grim days of frozen, 

snow-drenched foxholes and yard-byyard advances along the German frontier. Spring was finally more than a 

promise, while more often than not, the 

war revolved about villages, towns, or 

cities, so that most men had a roof over 

their heads at night. Companies vied 

with battalion and regimental headquarters for a town’s choicest villa for a command post, whereupon interpreters 

might dispatch the inhabitants with an 

unceremonious “Alle Einwohner, 

‘raus!” Sometimes electricity and water 

still functioned, and many a grimy infantryman luxuriated in a tub of hot, 

soapy water while his comrades impa23 Fraternization with the Germans in World War 

II, pp. 80–82. 

24 Office of the Judge Advocate General, U.S. 

Forces, European Theater, History Branch Office 

of the Judge Advocate General With the United 

States Forces European Theater 18 July 1942–1 

November 1945, MS in OCMH. 
334 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

tiently awaited their turn. Farther to 

the rear, units had time to renovate 

shower facilities in clubs, schools, or factories. Short passes to Paris or the Riviera, begun the preceding fall, continued 

for a fortunate few, while for a magic 

smattering, those longest in combat, 

there was leave in the United States that 

would not end before the war did. 

As in the old days, copies of the soldier newspaper, Stars & Stripes, and the 

weekly magazine, Yank, continued to 

reach the front, though often several 

days late, along with pocket-sized editions of U.S. magazines and paperback 

books. Blue-uniformed American girls 

who had smiled their way indefatigably 

through Britain, France, and Belgium, 

continued to dispense doughnuts and 

coffee from Red Cross clubmobiles. Reflecting the improvement in the logistical situation over the preceding summer, the supply of cigarettes—still issued free to front-line soldiers—was 

usually ample, though other post exchange rations reaching the combat 

troops were meager. The combat soldier 

would continue to complain, not without considerable justification, that successive echelons to the rear shortstopped 

the choicer items. 

Some higher staff levels were already 

planning for redeployment to the United 

States or to the Pacific theater, while 

others continued to work on plans to be 

used in the event of German surrender. 

Begun before D-day in France and originally given the code name TALISMAN, 

these plans now were known, following 

a presumed compromise of security, as 

Operation ECLIPSE. Constantly altered 

and adjusted, the plans at first had been 

oriented toward the possibility of sudden German collapse, but more and 

more as the final campaign unfolded, 

they evolved primarily into guidelines 

for the occupation. While some dramatic 

features, such as a possible air-landing 

in Berlin, remained to the end, ECLIPSE 

dealt mainly with more prosaic matters 

such as armistice terms, disarmament, 

displaced persons, prisoners of war, and 

German courts. 25 In conformity with 

the nature of the advance into Germany 

and the likelihood that final surrender 

would come only after the entire country was occupied, SHAEF decreed in April that no formal transition to ECLIPSE 

was to take place, but that ECLIPSE conditions were presumed to be in effect in 

those areas progressively overrun. 

Another factor no longer disturbing 

the staffs and commanders was a formerly 

critical shortage of infantry replacements, or reinforcements, as by decree 

for morale purposes they had come to be 

known. Various methods adopted during the preceding winter when the problem had become acute during the 

Ardennes fighting had by March produced creditable results, including an 

extensive retraining program for troops 

culled from U.S. Army Air Forces and 

service units, though the Air Forces, in 

particular, was accused of channeling 

into this program only its misfits. 

One aspect of the program was the 

appearance in March of fifty-three platoons of Negro troops, men who had 

volunteered, often taking reductions in 

grade in the process, to leave their service 

units for the front. In the 12th Army 

Group the platoons were attached to a 

number of veteran divisions, usually one 

to a regiment, to serve under a white 

25 For details, see the SHAEF file on Operation 

ECLIPSE. For a convenient summary see Fredericksen, The American Military Occupation, pp. 2–5. 
AT THE END OF MARCH 335 

lieutenant and platoon sergeant as a fifth 

platoon in a rifle company. In the 6th 

Army Group they were employed as 

provisional companies. In both cases, 

particularly when used as platoons, the 

men performed so creditably that eventually the experience had an impact on 

the Army’s traditional policy of employing Negroes only in segregated units. 26 

This and the other retraining measures, 

as well as the sharp decline in casualties 

in mobile warfare against a disintegrating foe, had by mid-March spelled 

an end to the replacement problem. 27 

The matter of occupation zones in 

Germany, still troubling France’s provisional head of state in late March, had 

already been fairly well settled before 

the Yalta Conference in February. Except for Berlin, which was to be administered on a tripartite basis, the Russians 

were to occupy the region from the Oder 

River westward to the Weser, the British 

that part of northern Germany west of 

the Weser and north of a line from 

Koblenz through Kassel, and the Americans the rest of the Rhineland and southern Germany. It was at Yalta that the 

question of French participation had 

arisen. Although the conferees had 

agreed to create a French zone from parts 

of the British and U.S. zones, the actual 

boundaries would not be finally assigned 

until 2 May. Drawn mostly from the 

U.S. zone, the French zone resembled an 

hourglass, the top encompassing the SaarPalatinate and the bottom a portion of 

southern Germany next to the Rhine. 28 

26 Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops, 

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II 

(Washington, 1966). ch. XXI. 

27 Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies 

II, ch. XVII. 

28 Pogue, The Supreme Command, pp. 463–65. 

The Plight of the Germans 

By the end of March, Germany was 

as nearly prostrate as any nation in history had ever been while still continuing 

to fight. As early as the end of January, 

the Reich Minister for Armament and 

War Production, Albert Speer, had 

reached the conclusion that the war was 

lost; at that time he could supply only 

a quarter of the coal and a sixth of the 

steel that Germany had been using in 

1944. 29 By the 1st of April some small 

cities were as much as 90 percent destroyed, the capital 75 percent; the 

housing situation was nearly desperate, 

the food supply only relatively less so. 

As Russian armies drove deep into eastern Germany, an already acute refugee 

problem became ever more serious with 

ten million refugees on the move. In 

the west the Rhineland was completely 

lost and the Rhine as a line of defense 

irretrievably compromised. In the east 

Russian armies had overrun almost all of 

East Prussia and Poland, had reached the 

Baltic coast east of Danzig, had conquered part of Czechoslovakia, all of 

Rumania and Bulgaria, and much of 

Yugoslavia and Hungary, and had 

crossed the Oder River to reach a point 

some thirty miles from Berlin. 

Yet the war went on. 

There were many Germans, some in 

high places, who, like Speer, accepted the 

futility of fighting longer, yet in their 

ideas of how to end the war persisted 

in trying to bargain at a time when 

Germany had nothing left to barter. As 

early as mid-January the Reich Foreign 

Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, with29 William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the 

Third Reich (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960), 

p. 1097. 
336 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

DESTRUCTION IN THE HEART OF WUERZBURG 

out Hitler’s knowledge had sent emissaries to Sweden and Switzerland to make 

contact with Allied representatives and 

discuss a negotiated peace, but neither 

had been able to establish fruitful connections. On 25 January the Chief of the 

Army General Staff, Generaloberst Heinz 

Guderian, had urged peace in the west 

so that what was left of the German 

armies could be concentrated against the 

Russians; it earned him only an accusation of “high treason” from his 

Fuehrer. 30 In early April representatives 

30 Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (New York: 

E. P. Dutton & Co.. Inc. 1952). pp. 401–02, 404–05. 

of the German command in Italy made 

contact with Allied agents in Switzerland, but negotiations led nowhere until 

the last week of the war. 31 

Either in the bomb-damaged Reich 

Chancellery or, increasingly, in the 

Fuehrerbunker fifty feet under the garden of the chancellery, Adolf Hitler trod 

a narrow path between acknowledging 

defeat and believing in a miracle, between sanity and insanity. In February 

only with difficulty had subordinates 

31 For this story, see Ernest F. Fisher, Cassino to 

the Alps, a volume in preparation for the series 

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. 
AT THE END OF MARCH 337 

talked him out of denouncing the 

Geneva Convention, ordering all captured airmen shot, and resorting to gas 

warfare. While his nation fell apart, he 

spent long, tedious hours arguing trivial 

details (promotion policy for officers, 

whether to cut down trees in the Tiergarten to make an aircraft landing strip) 

or, without regard for realities, lecturing 

and raging at the presumed perversities 

of his underlings (“I am lied to on all 

sides. I can rely on no one. They all 

betray me.”) On 19 March, seeming at 

last to accept the inevitability of defeat 

and having determined to bring the entire temple crashing down with him, he 

directed a scorched earth policy designed 

to turn Germany into a wasteland, an 

order circumvented only by the subterfuge of Albert Speer. Yet in the curious 

little world of delusion he had constructed about himself, the Fuehrer only 

a few days later could share the enthusiastic belief of his propaganda chief, 

Josef Goebbels, that in the same way the 

death of the Czarina had saved Frederick 

the Great in 1762, some miracle would 

happen to set the tenpins of the Third 

Reich upright again. Somehow the 

Grand Alliance between east and west 

was going to fall apart and the Western 

Allies would come obsequiously begging 

to long-suffering Germany to be allowed 

to join the holy war against bolshevism. 32 

The fighting in the west was now al32 Hitler’s last days have been adequately documented in a number of works, all of which have 

drawn on the surviving fragments of the Fuehrer 

Conferences. See, for example, Pogue, The Supreme 

Command; Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third 

Reich; Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny 

(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947); and 

Felix Gilbert, Hitler Directs His War (New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1950). See also Toland, 

The Last 100 Days, and Cornelius Ryan, The Last 

Battle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966). 

most devoid of central direction from 

Berlin. The old order to stand fast, nowhere to give any ground even in quest 

of reinforcements for other sectors, was 

still in effect—the only “strategy.” Such 

decisions as Hitler did make were usually based on colored daily briefings by 

Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, chief of the 

Armed Forces Operations Staff (Wehrmachtfuehrungsstab) , who by this time 

had learned how to phrase his remarks 

to avoid inciting the Fuehrer to rage. 

In any case, the once powerful high command was reduced to the spectacle of 

pondering tactical and administrative 

trivialities—when, for example, five tank 

destroyers, the only available reserve, 

might be readied for commitment against 

the Oppenheim bridgehead, or whether 

to send liaison officers to some part of 

the front or another to get the facts on 

the situation. 

Nor was there much more direction at 

the level of the Commander in Chief 

West, Field Marshal Kesselring, for what 

could he do? New to his post, the fieId 

marshal “felt like a concert pianist who is 

asked to play a Beethoven sonata . . . on an ancient, rickety, and out-of-tune 

instrument.” 33 Kesselring, who four 

times during the first six weeks of his 

command spoke frankly with Hitler 

about the situation in the west, apparently was one of the few military men 

who retained the Fuehrer’s trust. Each 

time he found Hitler “understanding,” 

appreciative of the fact “that the situation in the west had deteriorated too far 

to be effectively remedied.” At a meeting 

on 15 March Hitler promised an infantry 

division to be transferred from Denmark, 

but that was all except for a nebulous 

33 Kesselring, A Soldier’s Record, p. 305. 
338 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

plan to find enough men somehow to 

create new units. Kesselring’s lasting impression was that Hitler “was literally 

obsessed with the idea of some miraculous salvation, that he clung to it like a 

drowning man to a straw.’’ 34 

Probably not even Kesselring knew 

the true strength of the German forces 

remaining in the west, but something of 

their condition could be gleaned from 

the fact that the Allied armies, since the 

February beginning of the battle for the 

Rhineland, had taken more than 250,000 

prisoners. These, together with killed 

and wounded, the SHAEF intelligence 

staff estimated, amounted to the strength 

of more than 20 full divisions. Although 

the German order of battle showed over 

60 divisions in the west, some were little 

more than divisional staffs, others only 

Kumpfgruppen, and probably none at 

anywhere near full strength. They represented, according to Allied estimates, the 

equivalent of only 26 complete divisions, 

in marked contrast to Eisenhower’s go 

full-strength divisions. 35 

Partly because German units in the 

north had been afforded a brief respite 

behind the Rhine before the Allies 

crossed and partly because the Twentyfifth Army in the Netherlands had yet 

to be directly engaged, Army Group H 

under General Blaskowitz was in better 

shape than the other two army groups. 

Yet Blaskowitz saw no hope of stemming 

the 21 Army Group’s drive from the 

bridgeheads. Noting developments op 

posite Remagen in the adjacent sector of 

Field Marshal Model’s Army Group B, 

Blaskowitz thought it only a matter of a 

day or so before American forces from 

34 Ibid., pp. 311–12. 

35 SHAEF Intelligence Sum 53, week ending 25 

Mar 45. 

that bridgehead would be east of the 

Ruhr, in a position to swing against his 

rear. Goaded by General Blumentritt, 

who on 28 March arrived from the 

Twenty-fifth Army to take the badly 

wounded General Schlemm’s place in 

command of the First Parachute Army, 

Blaskowitz went over Field Marshal 

Kesselring’s head with what the Commander in Chief West called a “supererogatory account” of the situation. 

As a result of Army Group B’s problems, Blaskowitz indicated, the situation 

in Army Group H would soon become 

critical. He wanted authority to withdraw his entire force behind the Weser 

River, some 125 miles east of the Rhine. 

Abandoning his two southernmost corps 

(Luettwitz’s XLVII Panzer Corps and 

Abraham’s LXIII Corps) to fight on in 

the Ruhr with Army Group B, Blumentritt would withdraw the rest of the First 

Parachute Army across some fifty miles 

of generally flat terrain to the first logical 

delaying position, the Teutoburger 

Wald, a range of low hills extending 

northwest from the eastern fringe of the 

Ruhr, there to cover withdrawal of the 

Twenty-fifth Army from the Netherlands. 36 

This report and request angered both 

Hitler and Kesselring, the former not 

only because of its inherent defeatism 

but because it contained none of the 

psychological niceties to which he had 

become accustomed. Although Kesselring wanted Blaskowitz replaced, Hitler 

settled instead for sending a former commander of Army Group H, General 

36 Kesselring A Soldier’s Record, pp. 302–03; 

MSS # B–414 (Geyer); # B–354, Battles Fought 

by the First Parachute Army Between 28 March 

and 9 April 1945 (General der Infanterie Guenther 

Blumentritt). 
AT THE END OF MARCH 339 

Student, to “assist” Blaskowitz, a calculated rebuke to an officer of Blaskowitz’s 

high standing in the command structure. 

Blaskowitz was to hold firm while giving 

Student command of a provisional army 

to counterattack southward into the developing British-American breakthrough 

in the sector of the First Parachute Army. 

As Kesselring himself recognized, that 

assignment was impossible. Under the 

continuing attacks of the British Second 

and U.S. Ninth Armies, the degeneration 

in Army Group H had progressed too far 

to be reversed with the means at hand. 

Disapproved or not, the withdrawal to 

the Teutoburger Wald was soon to get 

under way. 37 

Field Marshal Model’s Army Group B 

was, as Blaskowitz noted, in grievous 

trouble. Its Fifth Panzer Army, commanded now by Generaloberst Josef 

Harpe (General von Manteuffel left on 

8 March for an emergency assignment 

on the Eastern Front), was tied down 

with the task of defending the east bank 

of the Rhine along the face of the Ruhr; 

the stronger elements of Zangen’s Fifteenth Army had been grouped along 

the northern periphery of the Remagen 

bridgehead to counter an anticipated 

American drive north from the bridgehead. Thus Field Marshal Model would 

have little with which to oppose the actual American breakout when it came, 

not to the north but to the east and 

southeast. Nor did he have any forces 

with which to strengthen the connection 

between his Army Group B and General 

Hausser’s Army Group G to the south, a 

tenuous link that would be quickly 

severed by a combination of the U.S. 

37 Ibid. 

First Army’s breakout from Remagen 

and a rapid expansion of the U.S. Third 

Army’s Rhine bridgeheads. Army Group 

G was in the worst condition of all. Rent 

asunder by the U.S. Third Army’s 

multiple Rhine crossings, the German 

Seventh Army had been hurt anew by 

the American Seventh Army’s crossing, 

which also virtually isolated the German 

First Army on the army group’s south 

wing. 

It was a somber picture, one in which 

few other than a megalomaniac like 

Adolf Hitler could have seen any hint 

of light. Yet see it Hitler did—or so he 

professed. The battle then developing in 

the east against the Russians along the 

line of the Oder and Neisse Rivers, the 

Germans would win, Hitler insisted, if 

only the Allied armies from the west 

could be held at arm’s length for a few 

more weeks. If Kesselring’s forces could 

delay long enough, Hitler could form a 

reserve, mustered from all able-bodied 

manpower still uncommitted to the fight, 

to be assembled in the Harz Mountains 

of central Germany. That force, to be 

known as the Twelfth Army, then was 

to come to Kesselring’s rescue by counterattacking through Army Group B’s 

sector to split the Allied armies. 38 

A Decision on Berlin 

In the Allied camp, a number of events 

occurring during the month of March 

prompted the Supreme Commander, 

General Eisenhower, to revise his plan 

38 Kesselring, A Soldier’s Record, p. 314; MS # 

B–606, The Last Rally-Battles Fought by the 

German Twelfth Army in the Heart of Germany, 

Between East and West, 13 April–7 May 1945 

(0 berst Guen t her Reichhelm). 
340 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

for the coup de grâce against Germany. 

For the more immediate task, encircling 

the Ruhr, the long-approved stratagem 

of cutting off the industrial region by 

converging thrusts of the First and Ninth 

Armies remained unchanged; but for the 

final thrust beyond the Ruhr, Eisenhower signaled a major change in plan 

that for a time ruffled British-American 

command relations and raised the issue 

of the extent that military decision 

should be influenced by political considerations. 39 

As early as September 1944, General 

Eisenhower had outlined his intention to 

proceed from the Ruhr to the German 

capital, Berlin, long considered—perhaps 

theoretically or symbolically—the final 

objective in the war against Germany. 

The 21 Army Group, assisted by an 

American army, was to make the main 

effort. Yet at the same time, General 

Eisenhower introduced a reservation. 

Recognizing that the Russians might already have taken Berlin by the time 

Allied armies fanned out across Germany, he suggested that the 21 Army 

Group might take Hannover and the 

north German ports, the 12th Army 

Group the Leipzig-Dresden industrial 

complex of central Germany, and the 

6th Army Group the industrial cities of 

southern Germany. 

By late March 1945 the Red Army 

had yet to reach Berlin. In the bridgehead across the Oder River some thirty 

miles from the capital, the Russians had 

paused, presumably to regroup and bring 

up supplies. There seemed little doubt 

that they would renew the drive momen39 This section is based on the annotated account 

of these events in Pogue, The Supreme Command, 

pp. 434–36, 441–47. 

tarily and take the city. Since the closest 

Allied troops were still 275 miles from 

Berlin, the Red Army apparently would 

get there first. 

Once Berlin ceased to be an objective, 

it was relatively easy to find justification 

for shifting the Allied main effort from 

the north to the center, from Montgomery’s 21 Army Group to Bradley’s 

12th. With the addition of the Fifteenth 

Army to handle mop-up and occupation 

duties, the 12th Army Group was the 

stronger force and could be strengthened 

even more by transferring the Ninth 

Army back to Bradley’s command once 

the Ruhr was encircled. The 12th Army 

Group was also in a position to capitalize 

quickly on the surprise bonus of the 

Rhine crossings at Remagen and Oppenheim, and, by its location in the center, 

was the logical candidate both for linking with the Russians to split Germany 

in two and for seizing the LeipzigDresden area, one of the last major industrial complexes that would be left to 

the Germans after loss of the Ruhr and 

Silesia. 

As further justification for a shift in 

main effort, some members of the 

SHAEF staff pointed to the possibility 

of a last-ditch Nazi hold-out position rumored to be under construction in the 

Alps-a National Redoubt. The rumors 

had gained substance the preceding fall 

and of late had been fed by planted information from the Nazi propaganda 

chief, Dr. Goebbels. Although some influential Germans had earnestly espoused 

the idea of a redoubt, it did not, in fact, 

exist; and although many in Allied—particularly British—command and intelligence circles discounted it entirely, the 

possibility of some form of last-ditch resistance in the Alps was a factor—though 
AT THE END OF MARCH 341 

in no sense decisive—in Eisenhower’s 

decision to shift his main effort. 40 

General Eisenhower announced his 

new plan on 28 March. Once the Ruhr 

was encircled, Eisenhower stipulated, the 

Ninth Army was to revert to the 12th 

Army Group, whereupon Bradley’s 

armies were to make the main offensive 

eastward to link with the Russians. If he 

needed it, Montgomery might have the 

Ninth Army once Bradley reached the 

Elbe; but until that time Montgomery’s 

basic assignment was to protect Bradley’s 

northern flank while Devers’s 6th Army 

Group guarded the southern flank. 

Undoubtedly disappointed, Field Marshal Montgomery asked permission to 

use the Ninth Army up to the Elbe 

rather than beyond. Eisenhower refused, 

pointing out that Bradley needed control 

of the Ninth Army to complete operations in the Ruhr and accomplish relief 

by the Fifteenth Army. There the matter 

might have rested had the issue been 

nothing more than a shift in main effort, 

but it was more. The real issue was 

Berlin. 

Learning of Eisenhower’s decision and 

the fact that the Supreme Commander 

had asked the Allied military missions in 

Moscow to tell the Soviet head of state, 

Marshal Josef Stalin, of the change in 

plan, the British Chiefs of Staff protested 

both the decision and Eisenhower’s communicating directly with the Soviet chief. 

They asked that Eisenhower’s message 

be withheld from Stalin until the Combined Chiefs of Staff could discuss the 

matter. 

The U.S. Chiefs replied that to hold 

40 On this subject, see a detailed survey by Rodney 

G. Minott, The Fortress That Never Was (New 

York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964) See also 

below, ch. XVIII. 

up General Eisenhower’s message would 

be to discredit or at least to lower the 

prestige of a highly successful field commander. The Supreme Commander was, 

after all, they would rationalize later, 

within his rights in communicating with 

Stalin since the Soviet head of state was 

also the head of the Soviet armed forces. 

As for the decision on Berlin, they would 

be willing to ask General Eisenhower for 

amplification of his plan, but the battle 

for Germany, they believed, had reached 

a point “where the commander in the 

field is the best judge of the measures 

which offer the earliest prospects of destroying the German armies or their 

power to resist.” 41 

Dismayed at this reaction, Prime Minister Churchill appealed to both Eisenhower and President Roosevelt to 

reconsider. Aside from what he felt was 

an affront to the British forces, he deplored the decision not to go to Berlin: 

I say quite frankly that Berlin remains 

of high strategic importance. Nothing will 

exert a psychological effect of despair upon 

all German forces of resistance equal to 

that of the fall of Berlin. It will be the 

supreme signal of defeat to the German 

people. 

The Russians, Churchill continued, were 

about to overrun the capital of Austria; 

if they also could claim credit for capturing Berlin, might they not gain an 

undue impression of the extent of their 

contribution to victory, leading them 

into a mood that would raise “grave and 

formidable difficulties” for the future? 42 

Both Mr. Roosevelt and General 

Eisenhower assured Mr. Churchill that 

41 Memo by JCS, CCS 805/2, 30 Mar 45, cited in 

Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 442. 

42 Msg, Churchill to Roosevelt, 931, 1 Apr 45, 

cited in Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 443. 
342 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

they had no intent to disparage British 

contributions to the campaign against 

Germany. Eisenhower went on to explain that once Allied forces reached the 

Elbe, he thought it probable that U.S. 

forces would be shifted to the 21 Army 

Group for a drive beyond the Elbe at 

least far enough to seal off the Jutland 

peninsula; but until the nature of the 

opposition in central Germany fully unfolded, he deemed it important to keep 

his forces concentrated near the center. 

As for Berlin, if it could be captured, he 

intended to share honors equally between British and U.S. forces; but to him 

Berlin had lost too much of its importance as a strictly military objective to 

warrant mounting a major effort to seize 

it. 

Disturbed by the alacrity with which 

Marshal Stalin agreed to General Eisenhower’s decision to drive for Leipzig instead of Berlin, the British Chiefs of 

Staff a few days later again asked that the 

decision on Berlin be reconsidered. 

Again the U.S. Chiefs declined. At a 

time when it appeared that Allied troops 

could not possibly beat the Russians to 

the capital, when it was known that any 

ground taken beyond the Elbe would 

have to be relinquished to the Russians 

for the occupation, and when the Allies 

still apparently faced a strong fight in 

the Pacific for which they desired Russian assistance, the U.S. Chiefs showed 

no disposition to insist on taking Berlin. 

Clearly brushing aside the political implications, they noted that “Only Eisenhower is in a position to know how to 

fight this battle, and to exploit to the 

full the changing situation.” 43 

43 Memo by JCS, CCS 805/5, 6 Apr 45, cited in 

Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 444. 

To the Combined Chiefs of Staff 

Eisenhower explained that he considered 

it much more important to divide the 

Germans by a thrust to Leipzig than to 

concentrate against an objective like Berlin, which had lost so much of its military importance. “But,” he added, 

. . . I am the first to admit that a war is 

waged in pursuance of political aims, and 

if the Combined Chiefs of Staff should decide that the Allied effort to take Berlin 

outweighs purely military considerations in 

this theater, I would cheerfully readjust 

my plans and my thinking so as to carry 

out such an operation. 44 

Although seemingly settled, the issue 

arose again. On 8 April Field Marshal 

Montgomery asked to borrow ten U.S. 

divisions for a major thrust by the 21 

Army Group to cut off the Jutland 

peninsula by driving to the Baltic coast 

near Luebeck and to take Berlin. In one 

of his sharper ripostes as Supreme Commander, Eisenhower responded: “You 

must not lose sight of the fact that during 

the advance to Leipzig you have the role 

of protecting Bradley’s northern flank. 

It is not his role to protect your southern 

flank.” As for Berlin, he went on, “I am 

quite ready to admit that it has political 

and psychological significance but of far 

greater importance will be the location 

of the remaining German forces in relation to Berlin. It is on them that I am 

going to concentrate my attention. Naturally, if I get an opportunity to capture 

Berlin cheaply, I will take it.” 45 

The change in plan, as enunciated on 

28 March, would stand. It was under this 

plan—to encircle the Ruhr and then 

44 Eisenhower to Marshall, FWD 18710, 7 Apr 45, 

cited in Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 446. 

45 Eisenhower to Montgomery, 8 Apr 45, cited in 

Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 446. 
AT THE END OF MARCH 343 

make a main effort with the 12th Army 

Group through central Germany to link 

with the Russians—that the Allied 

armies, in the meantime, had launched 

the breakout drives from their bridgeheads over the Rhine. 
CHAPTER XVI 

Reducing the Ruhr 

In the Remagen bridgehead, commanders and troops of the First U.S. 

Army had known since 19 March that 

they would be permitted to break out of 

their bridgehead soon after the 21 Army 

Group had staged its Rhine crossing. 

Since 22 March they had known that the 

breakout attack was to be made on the 

25th. 1 While tolerating accusations of 

timidity from news correspondents, the 

First Army commander, General Hodges, 

used the wait to advantage by launching 

limited objective attacks to secure key 

roads and terrain designed to speed the 

breakout when the time came. 

The 12th Army Group’s orders for the 

breakout reflected the employment both 

General Bradley and General Eisenhower had planned almost from the first 

for the forces in the Remagen bridgehead. Between them, Hodges’ First Army 

and Patton’s Third were to create a 

bridgehead ninety-two miles wide, extending from the Sieg River in the north 

to the Main in the south. From that 

lodgment the two armies were to drive 

astride the Lahn River northeast up the 

Frankfurt-Kassel corridor to Kassel; the 

First Army was then to turn northward 

to form the right pincers of a double 

envelopment of the Ruhr. Since the plan 

was originally formulated before Patton 

had achieved any crossing of the Rhine, 

1 See above, ch. XI. 

the orders included provision for part 

of the First Army to cross the Lahn to 

help clear the Third Army’s half of the 

bridgehead. 2 

Holding the northern rim of the Remagen bridgehead, where the Germans had 

concentrated their greatest strength in 

the belief a breakout would be aimed 

northward toward the Ruhr, General 

Collins’s VII Corps was occupied 

through the 24th in turning back the 

piecemeal armored counterattacks that 

represented the best that the German 

tank expert, General Bayerlein, could 

muster. The corps nevertheless had 

gained the scheduled line of departure 

beyond the Ruhr-Frankfurt autobahn 

whence General Collins was to send his 

own armor eastward, with the Sieg River 

affording left flank protection. General 

Van Fleet’s III Corps in the center of the 

bridgehead meanwhile juggled its units 

after relinquishing the southern periphery of the bridgehead to the incoming 

V Corps, then secured its line of departure east of the autobahn with a night 

attack that met only crumbling opposition. 

General Huebner’s V Corps began its 

limited objective attacks on 22 March. 

Aware that the bulk of German armor 

had shifted to the north, nobody expected resistance in the south to be reso2 12th AGp Ltr of Instrs 18, 25 Mar 45. 
REDUCING THE RUHR 345 

lute; neither was anybody prepared for 

an impending German collapse. Close by 

the Rhine a combat command of the 9th 

Armored Division crossed the Wied 

River with little difficulty and advanced 

four miles, while the 2d Division’s 38th 

Infantry, alongside the armor, covered 

more than eight miles in three days to 

establish a second bridgehead over the 

Wied four miles deep. Both armor and 

infantry could readily have advanced 

even farther with little more effort. 

Huebner’s V Corps quite clearly could 

break out at will. 

Having anticipated fairly firm resistance at the start of the breakout, General 

Hodges had planned the First Army’s 

main effort to be made by Van Fleet’s 

III Corps, directed southeastward toward 

the Lahn at Limburg; the V Corps would 

mop up the east bank of the Rhine 

down to the Lahn, and there be pinched 

out by Van Fleet’s advance and shifted 

into army reserve. The experience of 

the V Corps in its limited objective 

attacks changed the plan. To take advantage of the apparent soft spot, Hodges 

shifted the intercorps boundary to swing 

the III Corps northeastward short of 

Limburg, aim Huebner’s V Corps at 

Limburg, and provide General Huebner 

with a zone of advance to the northeast 

for what seemed to be a fast-developing 

breakout operation. 3 

The soft spot represented all that was 

left of General Hitzfeld’s LXVII Corps, 

southernmost of the three corps under 

General von Zangen’s Fifteenth Army. 

That Hitzfeld was down to tattered remains of some five or six infantry divisions and had no armor was known to 

3 See FUSA Report of Operations, 23 February8 March 1945, pp. 38–41. 

his superiors, but they could provide no 

reinforcement without stripping General 

Bayerlein’s LIII Corps in the north. This 

Field Marshal Model at Army Group B 

refused to sanction because of his persisting belief that the breakout attack 

would be directed northward. Nor would 

the Fifteenth Army commander approve 

a shift to the south. Even though Zangen 

disagreed with Model’s estimate of the 

direction the breakout would take, he 

thought it would be directed not to the 

southeast but east-northeast generally 

from the center of the bridgehead. Furthermore, as of 24 March, the north wing 

had already been weakened by orders 

from Field Marshal Kesselring at OB 

WEST. In response to General Patton’s 

surprise crossing of the Rhine at Oppenheim, Kesselring had ordered Army 

Group B to release the Fifteenth Army’s 

strongest unit, the 11th Panzer Division, 

to go to the aid of Army Group G at 

Oppenheim. 4 

With the loss of the 11th Panzer Division, there were few reinforcements 

that either Zangen or Model might have 

sent in any case. Already Model had 

drained the Fifth Panzer Army, which 

was holding the east bank of the Rhine 

along the face of the Ruhr, to a dangerously low level, and in all of Army Group 

B there remained only some sixty-five 

tanks, fifty of which already were fighting 

along the northern periphery of the 

bridgehead. Otherwise there was available behind the front only “a confused 

army of stragglers,” and even though 

commanders constantly gathered and 

4 The German story is based primarily on MS 

# B–593 (Wagener) and MS # B–848, Fifteenth 

Army, 23 November 1944–30 March 1945 (Zangen). 

See also MS # B–409, LIII Infantry Corps 23–29 

March 1945 (Bayerlein). 
346 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

committed these men, they did so only 

to see them “slip away again.” 5 

Obsessed with the idea that the Americans would strike north, Field Marshal 

Model based his only hope of preventing 

a breakout on a strong defense along the 

natural barrier of the Sieg River and 

subsequent counterattack into the flank 

of any northward penetration. General 

von Zangen counted instead on a hope 

that when the Americans struck eastward, as he expected, against Puechler’s 

LXXIV Corps in the center, Bayerlein’s 

LIII Corps and Hitzfeld’s LXVII Corps 

could maintain contact with Puechler’s 

flanks to present a cohesive front long 

enough to enable Bayerlein’s armor to 

mount a counterattack from the north. 

Somehow managing to ignore bigger 

American gains southward across the 

Wied River, Zangen took the limited 

objective attacks of the U.S. VII and III 

Corps as proof of his theory that the 

breakout would be directed east-northeast. When he pressed Army Group B 

with that presumed evidence, he detected 

a weakening in Model’s position. The 

army group commander nevertheless 

continued to believe that the location of 

his greatest strength in the north was 

advisable, since he might counterattack 

from the north into the flank of either 

a northward or an eastward drive. 

The Breakout Offensive 

Even if Model and Zangen were not 

actually aware of it at the time, they were 

soon to realize that they were balancing 

one vain hope against another. Indeed, 

so weak were the Germans everywhere 

and so powerful all three corps of the 

5 Quotations are from MS # B–593 (Wagener). 

American First Army that neither commander would discern, even after the 

assault began, that the Allied main thrust 

was directed not to the east or even 

northeast but to the southeast toward 

the Lahn. 6 

Five infantry and two armored divisions opened the First Army breakout 

drive before daylight on 25 March. Aiming first for the road center of Altenkirchen, then for crossings of the Dill 

River more than forty-five miles east of 

the Rhine, General Collins’s VII Corps 

used an infantry division, the 78th, to 

hold that part of the Sieg River line 

already captured while another, the 1st, 

protected the corps north flank by attacking eastward along the river. (Map XII) 

At the same time, the 3d Armored Division attacked through positions of a 

third infantry division, the 104th, due 

east toward Altenkirchen, while the infantry mopped up bypassed resistance. 

The Germans at many points made a 

real fight of it that morning. Reflecting 

the German concentration near the 

northern periphery of the bridgehead, 

the 1st Division and the two northern 

columns of the armor had the worst of it. 

There a newly arrived Kampfgruppe of 

the Panzer Lehr Division—all that was 

left of the division—and contingents of 

the 11th Panzer Division that had not 

yet departed for the Army Group G sector fought with old-time fury: German 

artillery fire from north of the Sieg was 

so heavy at some places that it reminded 

veterans of hectic days in the Siegfried 

Line. Steep, wooded hills and gorgelike 

draws and valleys added to the difficulty, 

but in the end, American power was 

6 In MS # B–858, Zangen justifies his prediction 

of a threat to east-northeast on his reading of how 

the American attack actually developed. 
REDUCING THE RUHR 347 

simply too overwhelming. In sparkling 

clear skies, fighter-bombers of the XIX 

Tactical Air Command time after time 

struck German formations with particular attention to tanks and assault guns. 

Supporting artillery fired 632 missions. 

One Tiger tank and a self-propelled gun 

fell victim to an American T26 (Pershing) , one of the experimental tanks in 

the 3d Armored Division. By midday 

the armor was through the enemy’s main 

line, and when night came stood twelve 

miles beyond its line of departure, half 

the distance to Altenkirchen. 7 

General Van Fleet’s III Corps in the 

center, also driving toward eventual 

crossings of the Dill River but with a 

southeastward orientation at first in order to help the advance of the V Corps, 

withheld its armor on the first day. 

There too resistance was strongest in the 

north, where the 9th Division brushed 

against the remnants of the resurrected 

9th Panzer Division, the only force of 

any appreciable power left to General 

Puechler’s LXXIV Corps. The 9th 

gained almost four miles through densely 

wooded, sharply convoluted terrain, 

while the 99th Division on the right 

picked up more than five miles. An 

order from the army commander, General Hodges, to get the 7th Armored 

Division into the fore the next day arrived moments after General Van Fleet 

himself had made the same decision and 

alerted the armor for the move. 

In the V Corps, headed for Limburg 

on the Lahn, the 9th Armored Division 

continued its thrust down the east bank 

of the Rhine, coming to a halt only after 

an advance of over eight miles to the 

Rhine town of Vallendar, a few miles 

7 Unless otherwise noted, the tactical story is 

from official unit records and combat interviews. 

short of Koblenz. From there good roads 

led almost due east to Limburg. The 2d 

Division’s 23d Infantry meanwhile carried the advance on the armor’s left, 

losing two men killed and fifteen 

wounded in exchange for gains of more 

than five miles. The promise of the 

earlier limited objective attacks in this 

sector clearly was to be fulfilled. 

During the course of this advance, 

soon after midday, the 23d Infantry’s 

Company G gained a crossing of the 

little Sayn River, only to face a clifflike 

stretch of wooded high ground beyond. 

Tired from the morning’s fight, hot in a 

wool uniform baked by a brilliant spring 

sun, the company Commander deplored 

the thought of walking with heavy equipment up the winding road ahead. “Climb 

on the tanks,” he ordered his men. They 

responded by enthusiastically clambering 

aboard two platoons of attached medium 

tanks. You did not ride, the men knew, 

until the resistance had begun to collapse. 

Events the next morning, 26 March, 

proved the men and their company commander right, to the immense pleasure 

of the army commander, General 

Hodges, and his guests of the day, Generals Eisenhower and Bradley. 8 The day 

before, the Third Army’s 4th Armored 

Division had broken out of the Oppenheim bridgehead and seized bridges over 

the Main River at Hanau and Aschaffenburg, and the VIII Corps had begun 

jumping the Rhine gorge at Boppard. 

Before daylight on the 26th, the Seventh 

Army had begun to cross the Rhine near 

Worms, and British and American units 

north of the Ruhr were straining to 

achieve a breakout. With those develop8 Sylvan Diary, entry of 26 Mar 45. 
348 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

ments as a backdrop, Hodges was elated 

when news of his three-pronged armored 

advance began to come in. 

Despite an early morning counterattack by infantry supported by assault 

guns, apparently designed to allow remnants of the Panzer Lehr Division to pull 

back behind the Sieg River, the 3d 

Armored Division in General Collins’s 

VII Corps raced eastward in great 

bounds. With a motorized combat team 

of the 104th Division attached, the armor 

bypassed Altenkirchen, leaving that road 

center for reserves to clear. After taking 

high ground outside Hachenburg, half 

the distance from the original bridgehead to the objectives on the Dill River, 

it coiled for the night. At those points 

where the Germans elected to make a 

stand, mainly along the north flank, 

planes of the 48th Fighter-Bomber 

Group in close co-ordination with the 

armor swooped down to take out tanks 

and self-propelled guns. In late afternoon 

such organized units as still opposed the 

advance began to peel back across the 

Sieg. 

In the III Corps the time proved fully 

propitious for committing armor. After 

an early delay caused by craters blown 

in the roads and by mines, demolished 

bridges, and a mix-up with the V Corps 

over running rights on the autobahn, the 

7th Armored Division broke loose to 

roam almost at will southeastward toward Weilburg on the Lahn River. By 

road measurement some units of the division advanced over thirty miles. When 

night came the 7th Armored Division 

held high ground overlooking Weilburg, 

while infantry of the 9th and 99th Divisions, advancing on attached tanks and 

tank destroyers and by shuttle in trucks 

borrowed from artillery antiaircraft 

units, struggled to keep up. The III 

Corps on 26 March captured 17,482 Germans, more than 12,500 taken by the 

armored division. Several hundred of 

these prisoners represented the rear 

echelon of the 11th Panzer Division, 

caught as they moved diagonally across 

the front en route to commitment with 

Army Group G. 

The story was much the same with 

the 9th Armored Division of the V 

Corps. Once calls to higher headquarters 

straightened out the brief run-in with 

the 7th Armored Division on the autobahn, the 9th Armored drove eastward 

toward Limburg against almost no opposition. Although remnants of General 

Hitzfeld’s LXV I I Corps fled ahead of the 

armor, in most cases their flight served 

merely to augment the prisoners of the 

adjacent III Corps. 

In midafternoon Combat Command 

B found a bridge intact over the Lahn 

River and got four tanks across before 

the Germans could ignite the prepared 

demolition and blow the span. Dismounted armored infantrymen then 

made their way across on the rubble and 

systematically began to clear Limburg of 

scattered small arms resistance, augmented occasionally by fire from Panzerfausts. Although most of the town was 

in hand soon after dark, the division 

commander, General Leonard, postponed a continuation of the drive beyond the river to cut in behind those 

Germans opposing the Third Army’s 

VIII Corps until he could get a treadway 

bridge built across the Lahn. 

Collapse of the LXXXIX Corps 

On 27 March, as General Leonard 

prepared to send his reserve combat com- 
REDUCING THE RUHR 349 

mand southeastward along the autobahn, 

the German LXXXIX Corps, having 

fought vainly to prevent crossings of the 

Rhine gorge, had fallen back from the 

Rhine to a line not quite midway between the river and the autobahn. This 

was the corps, commanded by General 

Hoehne, that only shortly before the 

American VIII Corps attacked had been 

transferred to Army Group B’s Fifteenth 

Army; in the confusion of events, no 

contact had ever been established with 

the army headquarters and little with 

headquarters of the army group. This 

was the corps, too, that had lost the 6th 

SS Mountain Division at the order of 

Field Marshal Kesselring only hours before the VIII Corps attacked. Like the 

incoming 11th Panzer Division, the 

mountain division, its 6,000 men representing a still creditable fighting unit, 

was supposed to be used to counterattack 

Patton’s crossing at Oppenheim. 9 

Receiving the news of American armor 

racing toward the Lahn, Kesselring had 

quickly reconsidered and reassigned the 

mountain division to the LXXXIX 

Corps to be committed to hold the line 

of the Lahn around Limburg. Because 

the division had no gasoline, the men 

had to march on foot, arriving at the 

southern edge of Limburg late on the 

26th only after American armor had 

already entered. With additional units 

of the division that arrived during the 

night, the commander, Generalmajor 

Karl Brenner, built up a line facing 

north astride the autobahn. 10 

9 See above, ch. XIII. 

10 MSS # B–584 (Hoehne) and # B–715, 6 SS 

Geb Div “Nord,” During the Defensive Combat in 

the Area Koblenz-Eltville and Limburg-Diez, East 

of the Rhine, 19 March–3 April 1945 (General der 

Waffen SS Karl Brenner). 

It was too little too late. In an attack 

that started shortly after midday on 27 

March, the 9th Armored Division’s CCR 

sliced quickly through the hasty defenses 

on the autobahn and reached its objective of Idstein, fifteen miles to the southeast, before dark. 

Pressed hard from the west by the oncoming VIII Corps and faced with this 

sizable American force to his rear, the 

commander of the LXXXIX Corps, General Hoehne, finally managed in late 

afternoon to establish radio contact with 

Field Marshal Kesselring at OB WEST. 

To Hoehne’s request that he be allowed 

to withdraw east of the autobahn, Kesselring gave a decisive no. 

It made little difference. Having already lost communications with whatever remained of the 6th SS Mountain 

Division, Hoehne during the morning 

learned from his one surviving division, 

the 276th Infantry Division, that collapse 

was imminent. Hoehne took it upon 

himself to order withdrawal. His own 

headquarters was under hostile fire from 

reconnaissance cars and infantry when, 

with a group of some thirty of his staff, 

he headed east. “Corps HQ” he was to 

note later in something of an understatement, “was no longer in a position to 

exercise effective command.” 11 

What was left of General Brenner’s 

6th SS Mountain Division —some 2,000 

men—meanwhile continued to hold out 

west of the autobahn and from time to 

time during the next two days set up 

roadblocks on the autobahn, even after 

forward units of the VIII Corps had 

moved well to the east and the 9th 

Armored’s CCR had gone back north of 

the Lahn. During the night of 30 March 

11 MS # B–584 (Hoehne). 
350 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Brenner and his force would begin an 

attempt to infiltrate back to German 

lines, an odyssey destined to end three 

days later, on 2 April, when the remnants, including General Brenner, were 

finally rounded up. 

During the course of their peregrinations, the SS troops captured an American field hospital, where they obtained 

critically needed gasoline and transportation. Although they treated the hospital personnel correctly, a rumor that 

they had murdered the staff and raped 

the nurses accounted, General Patton reported later, for the fervor with which 

American troops hunted them down. 

Some 500 were killed before a last 800 

surrendered. 12 

The collapse of the LXXXIX Corps 

severed the last tenuous link between 

Army Groups B and G, and there was 

nothing the Germans could do about it. 

The only reserve even remotely available, the remains of the 11th Panzer 

Division, would be swept up in the general American advance and ripped to 

pieces with no chance of mounting a 

counterattack. Only the division commander and the reconnaissance battalion 

even reached their destination with 

Army Group G. 13 

A Turn to the North 

Even without that collapse, the two 

army groups soon would have been separated, for the American First Army’s 

breakthrough of the positions of the 

Fifteenth Army opposite the Remagen 

bridgehead on 26 March was total. In 

12 Patton, War As I Knew It, p. 282. Patton errs 

in naming the unit as the 2d Mountain Division. 

13 MS # A-893 (Gersdorff). 

the process the army commander, General von Zangen, lost contact with almost 

everybody but his own staff and the 

headquarters of one of his corps, General Puechler’s LXXIV Corps, which had 

been utterly crushed by the breakout 

offensive. Unable to reach the Fifteenth 

Army headquarters by radio or telephone, Field Marshal Model at Army 

Group B was fast coming to the conclusion that Zangen had been captured. 14 

Since he was unable to contact Zangen, 

Model dealt directly with the commander of the LIII Corps, General Bayerlein, ordering him to pull back behind 

the Sieg, relinquish the line of the Sieg 

to contingents of the Fifth Panzer Army, 

and prepare for a counterattack into the 

American flank in the direction of Limburg. To Bayerlein, knowing how weak 

were the remnants of his corps, a counterattack seemed “impossible and entireIy hopeless . . . insane,” but he 

dutifully began preparations. 15 

The pace of the American drive on 

this same day, 27 March, supplied any 

affirmation Bayerlein might have needed 

that counterattack would be in vain. 

While occupied with the thrust south of 

the Lahn River, the 9th Armored Division of the V Corps made no further 

eastward advance. In the VII Corps, on 

the north wing of the First Army, the 3d 

Armored Division gained an impressive 

twenty-two miles to jump the Dill River 

in two places. At the same time, the 7th 

Armored Division of the III Corps also 

crossed the Dill, seizing four bridges intact. Fog in morning and afternoon and 

a low overcast the rest of the day pre14 See MSS # B–848 (Zangen); # B–593 (Wag 

ener); # B–409, LIII Corps, 23–29 March 1945 

(Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein). 

15 MS # B–409 (Bayerlein). 
REDUCING THE RUHR 351 

vented air support, but the armored 

columns had little need of it. They were 

roaming the enemy’s rear areas, everywhere catching the Germans by surprise, 

and finding them unprepared to defend 

with more than an occasional roadblock 

covered by a smattering of small arms 

fire or perhaps a Panzerfaust or a lone 

self-propelled gun that could be quickly 

put to flight. Only on the First Army 

left flank, where the 1st Division continued to sweep up to the south bank 

of the Sieg, was there any real resistance, 

and it was more a reminder that there 

were sizable German forces beyond the 

Sieg covering the Ruhr than it was an 

immediate problem. 

The next day, 28 March, the armor 

of the VII Corps again set the pace, 

driving another twenty-one miles and 

seizing the little cultural center of Marburg on the upper reaches of the Lahn. 

The town’s thirteenth century cathedral 

and its university, founded in 1527, 

showed no scar from twentieth century 

battle. En route, the 3d Armored Division overran several German hospitals 

with more than 5,600 soldier patients, 

took another 10,000 prisoners, so many 

they could not all be processed during 

the day, and sent scores of liberated foreign laborers coursing happily toward 

the west. The V Corps meanwhile took 

a day to reorganize, while the armor of 

the III Corps kept almost abreast, advancing thirteen miles, capturing Giessen, and dispersing a fairly persistent 

delaying force before seizing crossings 

over the Lahn. 

To the 12th Army Group commander, 

General Bradley, the time had arrived to 

begin the great wheel to the north designed to join with the Ninth Army to 

encircle the Ruhr. Redrawing army 

boundaries, Bradley turned the First 

Army northward toward Paderborn, 

leaving the Third Army oriented northeast on Kassel to protect the First Army 

right flank; anticipating a rapid drive, he 

rejected a proposal from the First Allied 

Airborne Army for an airborne attack to 

sieze Kassel. (Map XIII) The new Fifteenth Army was to take over defense of 

the Rhine’s west bank so that all the 

First Army divisions could cross the 

river to man the ever-lengthening front 

facing the Ruhr. 16 

Within the First Army, General Collins’s VII Corps from its position on the 

inside of the wheel was the obvious 

choice for making the main thrust to 

Paderborn, despite the continuing sensitive reaction of the Germans on the left 

flank. The other two corps were to continue northeastward to protect Collins’s 

right flank. 

A task force, commanded by Lt. Col. 

Walter B. Richardson and built around 

a medium tank battalion that included 

three of the new Pershing tanks, led the 

3d Armored Division advance on 29 

March. The orders: “Just go like hell!” 17 

Although the objective—Paderborn— 

lay more than sixty miles away, Richardson was determined to make it before 

calling a halt. 

Crashing through some roadblocks, bypassing others, occasionally shooting up 

the landscape, everywhere encountering 

dismayed Germans who obviously had no 

inkling that American troops were near, 

Task Force Richardson plunged rapidly 

forward, hardly missing the tactical air 

support that a hazy, overcast day denied. 

Follow-up units, supply troops, liaison 

16 12th AGp Ltr of Instrs 19, 28 Mar 45. 

17 Toland in The Last 100 Days, pages 309–11, 

provides a vivid account of this day’s action. 

 
352 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

officers, and messengers probably did 

more actual fighting than did the leading 

force, since German stragglers and bypassed groups often recovered from their 

first bewilderment to fight back. The 

longest delay for Richardson’s column 

developed in Brilon, twenty-five miles 

short of Paderborn, where, as Richardson and an advance guard pushed on, 

someone among the tank crews discovered a warehouse filled with champagne. 

When the tanks finally caught up with 

their commander, the actions of many of 

of the crewmen provided disconcerting 

evidence of their find. 

Task Force Richardson at last halted 

around midnight fifteen miles short of 

Paderborn. The decision to stop was 

based on about equal parts of concern 

for exhausted troops and a report that 

tanks from an SS panzer replacement 

training center were in the Sennelager 

maneuver area near Paderborn. Although still short of the objective, Richardson and his men had covered forty-five 

miles at a cost of no casualty more severe 

than the headaches some men suffered 

from too much champagne. 

The next day, 30 March, the complexion of the battle abruptly changed. 

Hardly had Task Force Richardson resumed the advance when the point 

bumped into a defensive line hastily 

manned during the night by students 

from an SS panzer reconnaissance training battalion and an SS tank training 

and replacement regiment, banded together with support from an SS tank 

replacement battalion of approximately 

sixty Tiger and Panther tanks into a 

unit named SS Ersatzbrigade Westfalen. 

By midafternoon Richardson’s men had 

forced their way into a town only six 

miles short of Paderborn. There they 

fought the rest of the day and much of 

the night against at least two tanks and 

more than 200 Germans, most of whom 

employed Panzerfaust antitank weapons 

with suicidal fervor. 

Coming up on Richardson’s right, another task force commanded by Col. 

John C. Welborn tried to bypass the 

town by a secondary road. Dusk was ap 

proaching when small arms fire from 

either side of the road and round after 

round from tanks and self-propelled guns 

cut the column. One of those who dived 

for cover in a ditch was the 3d Armored 

Division commander, General Rose, on 

his way forward to supervise the final 

assault on Paderborn with his aide and a 

small party traveling in jeeps and an 

armored car. 

Hardly had Rose finished sending a 

radio message to his command post to 

dispatch another task force to take out 

this nest of opposition when four German tanks appeared, coming up the road 

from the rear. In the early evening darkness, Rose and his party tried to escape 

by racing past the tanks, but one of the 

tanks suddenly swerved, pinning Rose’s 

jeep against a tree. A German standing in the turret motioned with a burp 

gun. Rose, his aide, Maj. Robert Bellinger, and his driver, Tech. 5 Glen H. 

Shaunce, dismounted. They had no 

choice but to surrender. 

Standing in front of the tank, Bellinger and Shaunce unbuckled their pistol belts and let them drop. Rose started 

either to do the same or to remove his 

pistol from its holster. The German in 

the turret quickly swung his burp gun, 

and a spout of flame split the darkness. 

Rose pitched forward. Bellinger and 

Shaunce dived for a ditch and, in the 
REDUCING THE RUHR 353 

confusion, got away. Maurice Rose, 

esteemed by his superiors as one of the 

best division commanders in the theater, 

was dead. 18 

As the cordon designed to encircle all 

of Army Group B rapidly took shape, the 

army group commander, Field Marshal 

Model, had no stomach for a last-ditch 

stand among the bomb-shattered factories, mines, and cities of the Ruhr. 

Summarizing the situation for OB 

WEST on the 29th, Model noted that 

he had lost contact with headquarters of 

the Fifteenth Army and that his only 

reserve consisted of headquarters of the 

LIII Corps (Bayerlein) , two mobile 

Kampfgruppen (the Panzer Lehr and 3d 

Panzer Grenadier Divisions), and a partially rebuilt infantry division, the 176th. 

With the forces and supplies remaining, 

Model reckoned, he might be able to 

hold out in the Ruhr, even though encircled, until mid-April at the latest; but 

if a decisive attack were not mounted 

from the outside by that time, the army 

group likely would be destroyed 19 . 

Model clearly wanted to withdraw immediately from the Ruhr, saving his 

army group to fight again in central 

Germany. To assist a withdrawal, he 

urged an immediate attack by Bayerlein's 

LIII Corps from the vicinity of Winterberg, in densely wooded hill country 

fourteen miles south of Brilon, eastward 

to the Eder-See, a reservoir approximately midway between Winterberg and 

Kassel. To complement the thrust, he 

hoped for a converging attack from 

18 Accounts of this episode vary in details. The 

author has relied primarily on the 3d Armored 

Division after action report for March 1945 and 

on the unit history, Spearhead in the West. 

19 The German story is based primarily on MS 

# B–593 (Wagener) and MS # B–396, LIII Corps, 

29 March-7 April 1945 (Bayerlein). 

Kassel to be launched by troops of the 

Fifteenth Army, which he presumed had 

fallen back on Kassel. The two attacks, 

Model hoped, might cut off the American armored columns even then closing 

in on Paderborn and prevent encirclement long enough for Army Group B 

Kesselring's reply came that night. 

Attack, yes; withdraw, no. Only the day 

before, Hitler had reiterated his longstanding order to authorize no withdrawal on pain of death. Army Group B 

would have to stand in the Ruhr and— 

Model well might have predicted—die 

there as well. 

Having already alerted General Bayerlein and subordinate units to the possibility of an attack east from Winterberg, 

Model dutifully continued with the 

arguments. In the absence of the Fifteenth Army commander, he designated 

the army group artillery commander, 

General der Artillerie Karl Thoholte, to 

command the attack and to create a defensive line from Siegen to Brilon, the 

line to be manned by Luftwaffe units, 

alarm and construction troops, and 

Volkssturm. Recognizing that the only 

chance of success lay in striking before 

the Americans could consolidate behind 

their armor, Model ordered that the attack begin with whatever units had 

arrived by the evening of 30 March. 

The Fifteenth Army commander, General von Zangen, though out of contact 

with headquarters of the army group, 

had in the meantime been trying to erect 

some kind of defensive barrier across the 

Frankfurt-Kassel corridor. He still had 

communications with remnants of 

Puechler's LXXIV Corps and had established liaison with a corps headquarters 

that had been attached to the Fifteenth 

to pull out. 
354 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Army sans combat troops soon after the 

American breakthrough, the LXVI 

Corps under Generalleutnant Hermann 

Floerke. 20 

Zangen ordered both corps to collect 

stragglers (the roads were jammed with 

them), security troops, ambulatory hospital patients, whatever, to build a line 

across the corridor near Giessen; when 

American armor overran that position 

before any barrier could be raised, he 

ordered the line built south of Marburg. 

Again the American columns overran 

the position. 

Hardly had Zangen dutifully designated a third line, this time along the 

Lahn River north of Marburg, when 

word reached him that American armor 

already had jumped the Lahn and bypassed his headquarters town of Biedenkopf on both east and west. (This was 

on 29 March, the day of the 3d Armored 

Division’s explosive advance toward 

Paderborn behind Task Force Richardson.) The third line obviously had been 

compromised even before Zangen designated it, and his headquarters was cut 

off not only from the army group but 

also from the two remaining corps commands. 

Only a step ahead of American tanks, 

Zangen herded his headquarters staff and 

attached units out of Biedenkopf into a 

nearby forest. There, as night came, he 

and his men hid, warily eyeing tanks 

and vehicles of the 3d Armored Division 

driving past. 

When sentries reported large gaps in 

the American column, Zangen seized 

20 The Fifteenth Army story is from MSS # B848 (Zangen) and # B–382, Report Covering the 

Activities of the Staff of the LXVI Armeekorps 

During March and April 1945 (Generalleutnant 

Hermann Floerke). 

upon a daring scheme to escape and 

make his way back into the Ruhr. Organizing his men and more than a hundred remaining vehicles into small 

groups, he ordered them to thread their 

way in the darkness into the gaps, march 

with the Americans for several miles to 

a road junction, then turn to the west as 

the Americans continued northward. 

Zangen and almost his entire force escaped. Only one truckload of troops and 

a motorcyclist failed. They made the mistake of calling out in their native tongue 

to the lead vehicle in an American serial 

that came up behind them. 

The Thrust From Winterberg 

In pinning much of their hope for a 

successful attack from Winterberg on 

striking before American infantry could 

consolidate behind the armored spearheads, German commanders failed to 

give proper consideration to the speed of 

the infantry units. Conscious of insufficient infantry strength in the old-style 

“heavy” armored divisions, of which the 

3d Armored was one, General Rose and 

the VII Corps commander, General Collins, had long practiced attaching an 

entire infantry regiment to the armor in 

breakthrough situations. As the 3d 

Armored had rolled toward Paderborn, 

the 104th Division’s 414th Infantry had 

gone along, some men mounted on the 

armored division’s tanks, tank destroyers, 

and half-tracks, others in the regiment’s 

own vehicles. These “doughs” (short for 

doughboys), as the tank crewmen called 

them, were not to mop up resistance but 

to help the tankers if the going got 

sticky. 

Close behind the armor and its attached infantry came the rest of the 
REDUCING THE RUHR 355 

104th Division, mounted on its own vehicles, those of its artillery and attached 

antiaircraft battalion, trucks furnished 

by the First Army quartermaster, and 

the battalions of tanks and tank destroyers that by that stage of the war had for 

so long been constantly attached that the 

division looked upon them almost as 

permanent fixtures. Motorized and supported in this manner, an infantry division could move almost with the speed 

of an armored division, particularly 

when following in the wake of armor. 

Thus the infantry was quickly available 

to mop up and to provide depth to the 

armored spearheads. 

To the Germans at Winterberg, 

chances of success appeared brighter because a distance of only about fifteen 

miles separated Winterberg from their 

objective, the elongated Eder-See, a narrow corridor through which apparently 

only forward elements of one armored 

division had passed. They were reckoning without the 104th Division. They 

were reckoning, too, without the speed 

of the other two corps of the First Army. 

By nightfall of 30 March, the 7th 

Armored Division of General Van Fleet’s 

III Corps had come up close along the 

right flank of the VII Corps to seize a 

dam at the east end of the Eder-See and 

several bridges over lower reaches of the 

reservoir and of the river downstream 

from the dam. 21 This the troops of the 

III Corps had accomplished despite 

meeting a fresh German unit, the 166th 

21 In the course of the 7th Armored Division’s 

advance on 29 March, S. Sgt. Robert H. Dietz, 38th 

Armored Infantry Battalion, charged alone against 

defenders of two bridges at the town of Kirchhain. 

He had secured one bridge and disconnected 

demolition charges from the second when German 

fire cut him down. He was awarded the Medal of 

Honor posthumously. 

Infantry Division, moved from Denmark 

in accord with Hitler’s earlier promise. 

Meanwhile, the 9th Armored Division 

of General Huebner’s V Corps also 

reached the Eder River downstream from 

the dam and forced a crossing. Infantry 

divisions followed the armor closely in 

both corps, providing strength close at 

hand either to knife into the flank of any 

complementing German thrust that 

might be launched toward the Eder-See 

from Kassel or to furnish reinforcement 

for the VII Corps. 

In their hope for a complementary 

thrust from Kassel, the Germans were 

doomed to disappointment. There 

simply was no German unit at Kassel 

strong enough to launch an attack. For 

lack of co-ordination, the incoming 166th 

Infantry Division, which might have 

formed the nucleus for an attack, had 

already been committed futilely two days 

earlier and cut up in an engagement with 

the U.S. III Corps. Although Field Marshal Model had counted on the SS 

Ersatzbrigade Westfalen to assist a drive 

from Kassel, he had not known how 

locked in combat this makeshift force was 

with the 3d Armored Division spearheads just outside Paderborn. 

For the Americans, rumor after rumor 

passed on by German stragglers and 

civilians during the 30th had pointed to 

a concentration of German tanks and 

infantry at Winterberg, massing for a 

breakout attempt that night. To guard 

against it, the 104th Division commander, General Allen, ordered his regiments to occupy key towns and road 

junctions along the corps left flank facing 

Winterberg. He also sent a mobile task 

force racing through the night over roads 

bypassing Winterberg to defend Brilon, 

which, aside from having provided 
356 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

champagne for Task Force Richardson, 

afforded a blocking position astride a 

major highway leading from the Ruhr 

across the 3d Armored Division’s rear to 

Kassel. The First Army commander, 

General Hodges, ordered Van Fleet’s III 

Corps to release its leading infantry division, the 9th, to go to the VII Corps 

the next day. 

For the start of the attack from Winterberg on the night of 30 March, only 

two Kampfgruppen had yet arrived, each 

representing a mixed battalion of infantry and combat engineers, plus twelve 

tanks of the Panzer Lehr Division, a few 

assault guns, but no artillery. The LIII 

Corps commander, General Bayerlein, 

sent these battalions with guides from 

the local forestry service down forest 

trails leading southeast to cut a highway 

connecting the towns of Hallenberg and 

Medebach. From this highway, westernmost of three routes serving the 3d 

Armored Division, Bayerlein intended to 

continue the attack to the Eder-See once 

the rest of his troops, including the 176th 

Infantry Division, arrived. 22 

The columns on the forest trails got 

moving at midnight. As dawn approached, both columns cut the Hallenberg–Medebach highway with no 

difficulty, but a battalion of the 415th 

Infantry posted in each of the two towns 

rapidly restored the route. The hottest 

fight, meanwhile, developed at a village 

midway between the two towns, where 

sixteen men from Company A, 414th Infantry, had bedded down for the night 

while crews of two 3d Armored Division 

tanks they had been riding awaited a 

22 See MSS # B–396 (Bayerlein); # B–593 

(Wagener); # B–849, Fifteenth Army in the Ruhr 

Pocket 31 March to 15 April 1945 (General der 

Infanterie Gustav von Zangen). 

maintenance vehicle. Also on hand, 

awaiting maintenance, was a crippled 

self-propelled artillery piece. 

One of the infantrymen, S. Sgt. Cris 

Cullen, recalled the start of the fight: 

The first thing I heard that morning was 

one of the Polish slave laborers running 

around yelling, ‘Panzer! Panzer!’ Then as I 

started to go back to sleep, mumbling to 

myself about that ‘damn crazy Polack,’ I 

heard the unmistakable sound of a German 

machine gun. That fixed the sleep. 

While I was cramming on my boots, one 

of our men came in for ammo and I asked 

him what was going on. ‘Plenty,’ he said. 

‘There’s a Kraut tank coming down the 

street.’ People exaggerate when they are 

excited. I would go look for myself before 

I got excited. 

I got excited. About forty yards away and 

coming slowly forward was a German tank 

with a gun on it that looked as large as a 

telephone pole. 23 

Before Sergeant Cullen and the others 

could bring rifle and bazooka fire to bear 

from the houses, the German tank 

knocked out the unmanned artillery 

piece; but as the tank commander raised 

his head from his turret to survey his 

victim, one of the riflemen cut him 

down. A fusillade of small arms fire from 

the houses drove the accompanying German infantry to flight. The tank followed. 

Through the rest of the day, the Germans made occasional forays against 

some points along the highway, but they 

had not the strength to take the 415th 

Infantry’s sally ports of Hallenberg and 

Medebach, which would have to be occupied if any cut of the highway was to 

be sustained. The Fifteenth Army commander, General von Zangen, who assumed over-all command following his 

23 Hoegh and Doyle, Timberwolf Tracks, p. 307. 
REDUCING THE RUHR 357 

escape from encirclement, opted to delay 

hitting the two towns until additional 

troops arrived. 

The thrust from Winterberg had thus 

far been little more than a nuisance raid. 

Breakthrough North of the Ruhr 

Even as the Germans in the Ruhr first 

prepared to launch the weak beginning 

of their attempt to force a corridor to 

the outside, their plight was about to be 

compounded by developments along the 

northern edge of the Ruhr. There, on 28 

March, troops of the XVIII Airborne 

Corps had scored a rapid gain to Haltern, 

on the north bank of the Lippe River 

more than twenty-five miles east of the 

Rhine, opening the way for the breakthrough that the 30th Division and the 

8th Armored Division of General Anderson’s XVI Corps had sought in vain 

south of the Lippe. On the same date 

Field Marshal Montgomery had announced his new policy, to be put into 

effect on the 31st, for use of the Rhine 

bridges at Wesel and the roadnet north 

of the Lippe that insured a way for General Simpson to bring more of his powerful Ninth Army to bear. 

On the 29th Simpson published his 

plan for the breakout drive to the east. 

While Anderson’s XVI Corps swung 

southeastward to build up along the 

Rhein–Herne Canal on the northern 

fringe of the Ruhr, General McLain’s 

XIX Corps, moving north of the Lippe 

River, was to take over the main effort. 

With two armored and three infantry divisions, McLain’s corps was to drive first 

to Hamm, at the northeastern tip of the 

Ruhr, then go on to link with the First 

Army at Paderborn. General Gillem’s 

XIII Corps, meanwhile, as maneuver 

room developed and as the Wesel bridges 

passed to the Ninth Army, also was to 

move north of the Lippe and drive northeastward on Muenster, twenty miles 

north of Hamm. In the process, the 

XVIII Airborne Corps was to be relieved, British units within the corps 

passing to the British Second Army and 

General Gillem assuming control of the 

U.S. 17th Airborne Division. 24 

Alerted in advance to the orders, a 

combat command of the 2d Armored Division, reinforced by an attached infantry regiment, began to cross the Rhine 

into the crowded rear areas of the XVI 

Corps early on 28 March. From there 

the armor was to cross the Lippe, bypassing the bottleneck of Wesel, and 

start its eastward thrust even before the 

Wesel bridges passed to the Ninth 

Army’s control. 

Although the rapid advance of the 

XVIII Airborne Corps and pending commitment of’ the XIX Corps north of the 

Lippe at this point obviated the necessity 

of a breakthrough south of the river, the 

division that earlier had, been assigned 

the goal, the 8th Armored, continued to 

attack. The armor was to take the longsought objective alongside the Lippe, the 

town of Dorsten, needed as a bridge site 

to serve the XIX Corps, then was to continue eastward to cross upper reaches of 

the Lippe. Both the 8th Armored and 

the 30th Divisions then were to pass 

from control of the XVI Corps to that 

of the XIX Corps. 

Renewing the attack on 29 March, the 

8th Armored Division found the enemy’s 

116th Panzer Division, which as part of 

General Luettwitz’s XLVII Panzer Corps 

24 Conquer: The Story of the Ninth Army, pages 

264–66, provides a convenient summary of these 

orders. 
358 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

had thwarted a breakout from the Rhine 

bridgehead, still making a fight of it. By 

nightfall the American armor claimed 

Dorsten, but it had been a plodding fight 

against an enemy helped by marshy 

ground, woods, and deadly nests of big 

antiaircraft guns in concrete emplacements. Given the wooded nature of the 

terrain east of Dorsten, there was no 

evidence but that the same kind of slow, 

dogged advance might be in the offing 

for days. 

The story was far different north of 

the Lippe. There reconnaissance forces 

of the 2d Armored Division had moved 

out of Haltern before midnight on the 

29th with every indication of a swift 

sweep eastward. Not long after daylight 

the next morning, 30 March, the main 

columns reached the Dortmund–Ems 

Canal, paused while engineers built 

bridges, then resumed the advance in 

late afternoon. All through the night 

of the 30th and the next day the armor 

rolled, while the 83d Division, mounted 

on trucks belonging to the corps artillery, followed closely. In the process the 

tanks cut two major rail lines leading 

north and northeast from Hamm, leaving only one railroad open to the Germans in the Ruhr. In late afternoon of 

the 31st the armor also cut the RuhrBerlin autobahn near Beckum, northeast of Hamm, just under forty miles 

beyond the original line of departure. 

To the top German commanders 

north of the Ruhr–Blaskowitz of Army 

Group H and Blumentritt, the new 

commander of the First Parachute Army 

—the American breakthrough north of 

the Lippe mocked the standfast orders 

that Hitler and Kesselring had so recently issued when denying Blaskowitz’s 

appeal to withdraw, first to the Teutoburger Wald, then behind the Weser 

River. 25 So swift and deep was the American thrust, irreparably splitting the 

First Parachute Army down the middle, 

that the end result was bound to be 

much the same as the withdrawal 

Blaskowitz and Blumentritt had recommended. 

With the means at hand, no hope 

existed of counterattacking southward 

into the American flank, as Hitler’s 

emissary, General Student, would himself discover upon his arrival. Those 

contingents of the parachute army north 

of the breakthrough had no choice but 

to fall back toward the Teutoburger 

Wald—indeed, they would be hard put 

to keep ahead of American and British 

troops. All communications with the 

First Parachute Army and Army Group 

H having been severed, Luettwitz’s 

XLVII Panzer Corps and Abraham’s 

LXIII Corps south of the breakthrough 

appealed for orders to Field Marshal 

Model at Army Group B. Just as Blaskowitz earlier had urged, Model told 

both corps to form a new line facing 

north behind the Rhein–Herne Canal 

and, farther east, behind the Lippe 

River. These two corps, brigaded under 

Luettwitz’s headquarters as Gruppe von 

Luettwitz, then would comprise the defense for the northern face of the Ruhr. 26 

For a day or so Field Marshal Kesselring would fuss and fret over Model’s 

presumption in absorbing the two 

corps, though he would inevitably be 

forced to accept it. Thus, by the first day 

of April, the lineup of units around the 

25 See above, ch. XV. 

26 MS # B–354 (Blumentritt); MS # B–593 

(Wagener). 
REDUCING THE RUHR 359 

perimeter of the Ruhr was basically 

complete: in the north and turning the 

northeastern corner short of Lippstadt, 

some twenty miles up the Lippe from 

Hamm, Gruppe von Luettwitz; beginning at the Moehne Reservoir on the 

upper reaches of the Ruhr River, Zangen’s Fifteenth Army, which faced east 

and southeast, to a point on the Sieg 

River near Siegen; facing south along 

the Sieg and west along the Rhine, 

Harpe’s Fifth Panzer Army. As this lineup took shape, the time left before the 

Germans in the Ruhr would be fully 

encircled could be measured in hours. 

Late on 31 March, as the Ninth Army’s 2d Armored Division was cutting 

the autobahn near Beckum, the army 

commander, General Simpson, received 

a troubled telephone call. It was from 

Joe Collins, commander of the First 

Army’s VII Corps. His 3d Armored Division, Collins said, had stirred up a fury 

of opposition from fanatic SS troops near 

Paderborn. It might take days to eliminate the resistance and continue north 

to the army group boundary to establish contact with the Ninth Army, thereby sealing the circle around the Ruhr. 

Furthermore, he went on, the Germans 

inside the pocket already had begun to 

strike at the rear of the 3d Armored Division in what prisoners reported was the 

beginning of a major effort to break out 

of the Ruhr. 

Collins asked Simpson to turn a combat command of his 2d Armored Division southeast toward Lippstadt, midway 

between Beckum and Paderborn. Collins, for his part, would divert a force 

from the 3d Armored to meet the combat command halfway. 

General Simpson promptly ordered a 

combat command of the 2d Armored Division to turn southeast toward Lippstadt. Before daylight the next morning, 

1 April—Easter Sunday—a task force 

commanded by Lt. Col. Matthew W. 

Kane, including a battalion of 3d Armored tanks transporting “doughs” 

from the 414th Infantry, turned from 

the fight at Paderborn toward Lippstadt. 

Neither force encountered serious opposition; fire came mainly from small arms, 

though there were a few rounds from 

flak guns, whose dispirited crews quickly 

fled or surrendered. By noon pilots of 

artillery liaison planes from the 2d and 

3d Armored Divisions could see leading 

ground troops of both divisions. About 

1300 the two columns came together, 

amid cheers and ribald jokes, on the 

eastern fringe of Lippstadt. 

The Ruhr industrial area was encompassed. Trapped in a pocket measuring 

some 30 miles by 75 miles were the 

headquarters and supporting troops of 

Army Group B, all of the Fifth Panzer 

Army, the bulk of the Fifteenth Army, 

and two corps of the First Parachute 

Army, a total of 7 corps and 19 divisions. American intelligence officers estimated that the force consisted of some 

150,000 men. They were, events soon 

would disclose, far too conservative. 

Making Motions at Breakout 

Although the trap was closed the German command, with commendable bravado but little else, was making bellicose 

but empty motions and issuing pretty 

but illusory orders aimed at opening a 

corridor into the Ruhr Pocket. While 

General von Zangen’s Fifteenth Army, 

using Bayerlein’s LIII Corps, renewed its 

attack from Winterberg, Field Marshal 

Kesselring tried to mobilize a force near 
360 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Kassel strong enough to push a way 

through from the east. 27 

To command the attack, Hitler sanctioned using headquarters of the Eleventh Army, a staff that in happier times 

had compiled a good record on the Russian front. Only recently reconstituted, 

the staff was to be subordinated directly 

to OB WEST. The commander was to 

be General Hitzfeld, heretofore commander of the Fifteenth Army’s LXVII 

Corps, which had escaped entrapment 

in the Ruhr. 

General Hitzfeld was to have his own 

LXVII Corps, General Floerke’s LXVI 

Corps, and a provisional corps headquarters created from the staff of the 

local Wehrkreis. This force looked solid 

enough on paper; in reality, it signified 

little. Its strongest component was to be 

the SS Ersatzbrigade Westfalen, which 

late on 1 April finally relinquished Paderborn to the American 3d Armored Division and fell back with possibly as many 

as forty tanks and assault guns still fit to 

fight. There were in addition two surviving battalions of the ill-starred 166th 

Infantry Division, stragglers, Volkssturm, hospital returnees, and about 

twenty tanks from a factory at Kassel. 

With those odds and ends Hitzfeld was 

not only to break into the Ruhr but was 

also to build a solid line against further 

eastward advance along the Weser River. 

Hitzfeld’s force was only beginning to 

assemble when, before daylight on 1 

April, the Germans at Winterberg renewed their heretofore feeble attempts 

to push eastward to the Eder-See. 28 Although the 176th Infantry Division still 

27 See MS # B–581, Eleventh Army, 1–23 April 

1945 (Oberst Fritz Estor). 

28 MS # B–593 (Wagener); MS # B–396 (Bayerlein). 

had not arrived, enough troops and artillery and a few tanks of the 3d Panzer 

Grenadier and Panzer Lehr Divisions 

were on hand to send a column against 

each of the two key towns, Medebach 

and Hallenberg. 

About 150 panzer grenadiers with four 

tanks struck Medebach before dawn on 

1 April. In the first flush of the attack, 

they gained a toehold in the western 

fringes of the town, but a battalion of 

the 104th Division’s 415th Infantry held 

fast. Organic 57-mm. antitank guns 

knocked out one German tank; a bazooka accounted for another. The other 

two and those panzer grenadiers not 

killed or captured hastily retreated. 

At Hallenberg the Panzer Lehr attack 

never got going; it ran head on into an 

attack by the 9th Division, hurriedly 

transferred from the adjacent III Corps 

to strike the supected base of the German breakout offensive. Men of the 39th 

Infantry, attacking up the road from 

Hallenberg toward Winterberg, never 

even knew a German attack was in progress. The drive, the regiment reported, 

encountered “moderate resistance.” 

“Here,” the LIII Corps commander, 

Bayerlein, was to note later, “the enemy 

seemed to form a point of main effort.” 29 

With arrival of part of the 176th Division later in the day, the Germans at 

Winterberg launched another thrust 

early on 2 April. While the Panzer Lehr 

to the southeast and the 176th to the 

northeast held the shoulders, the 3d 

Panzer Grenadier Division was to make 

the main effort, again through Medebach. 

Medebach was not to be had. Although the panzer grenadiers this time 

28 Quotations are from VII Corps AAR, Apr 45; 

MS # B–396 (Bayerlein). 
REDUCING THE RUHR 361 

infiltrated around the town in the darkness to hit from both east and west, the 

men of the 415th Infantry again held 

fast, killing 30 Germans and capturing 

61. The defending battalion itself lost 2 

dead and e wounded. Part of the force 

infiltrating around the town machine 

gunned an artillery battery supporting 

the 415th but melted away when the 

artillerymen hastily formed a skirmish 

line and returned the fire. 

The German attack beaten back by 

midmorning, the 104th Division commander, General Allen, ordered the 

415th Infantry to make a counterthrust, 

driving from Medebach and along another road from the northeast toward 

Winterberg. When night came, men of 

the 415th were locked in close combat 

with remnants of the German force in 

woods several miles west of Medebach. 

The Panzer Lehr Division, meanwhile, had failed to do its job of holding 

the southern shoulder of the German attack. Despite steep hillsides and dense 

woods, a battalion of the 9th Division’s 

39th Infantry pushed into Winterberg 

just as day was breaking. In the town 

itself, the Germans offered no fight in 

deference to several hospitals in the 

town and to hordes of refugees seeking 

cover there. 30 The most severe fighting 

occurred in midmorning at a village 

southwest of Winterberg where infantry 

of the Panzer Lehr supported by a few 

self-propelled guns launched what men 

of the 9th Division’s 60th Infantry took 

to be a counterattack. The Germans held 

the village briefly until a battalion of 

the 39th Infantry came in on their rear 

from Winterberg. 

Farther north, General Collins had 

30 MS # B–396 (Bayerlein). 

moved the 1st Division to clean out 

woods and villages close behind the 

positions of the 3d Armored Division. 31 

With three infantry divisions thus in 

place to hold that part of the corps left 

flank, any danger that a thrust in no 

greater strength than that launched by 

Bayerlein’s LIII Corps might succeed 

had passed. Bayerlein’s weak force 

would be hard put even to hold defensive positions on wooded hills west of 

Winterberg. 

As for the Eleventh Army and the 

proposed strike from the vicinity of Kassel, it had become apparent early to the 

army commander, General Hitzfeld, 

that the entire scheme had been from the 

first no more than a fantasy. The Americans were already exerting pressure toward the east and obviously soon would 

break into the open and jump the 

Weser. Hitzfeld had scarcely enough 

men to irritate such a thrust when it 

came, let alone launch an 

By radio Hitzfeld appealed on 3 April 

to Field Marshal Kesselring to cancel 

the attack. Kesselring waited to reply 

until the next day when he could visit 

Hitzfeld’s headquarters. A firsthand 

look then made the situation all too 

clear. Kesselring canceled the order but, 

probably for the record, directed a sub31 In an attack on 30 March near the town of 

Eisern, S. Sgt. George Peterson and 1st Lt. Walter 

J. Will, both of Company K of the 1st Division’s 

18th Infantry, displayed extraordinary heroism. 

Although wounded, Sergeant Peterson singlehandedly knocked out three German machine gun 

positions, then fell before enemy fire as he tried to 

rescue a wounded comrade. Lieutenant Will 

rescued three of his wounded men from exposed 

positions, incurring a painful wound himself in 

the process, then led his platoon in an attack in 

which he personally eliminated three machine gun 

positions before receiving mortal wounds. Both 

were awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. 

32 MS # B–581 (Estor). 
362 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

stitute thrust southward into spearheads 

of the U.S. Third Army. Like the thrust 

to relieve the Ruhr Pocket, that one too, 

Kesselring and Hitzfeld both must have 

known, would never come off in any appreciable strength. 

The Ruhr Pocket 

Upon the collapse of Bayerlein’s 

counterattack from Winterberg, Field 

Marshal Model and his staff inside the 

Ruhr Pocket retained little hope of assistance from the outside. 33 The Eleventh Army they deemed too weak to 

break through. Because the Twelfth 

Army was not even to be activated until 

2 April, they saw no chance of help from 

that quarter, no matter what faith Hitler still might have in it. Their only 

possibility of escape, most believed, was 

to break out southward, where the 

Americans seemed to be weakest. Even 

that depended on gaining a respite from 

the fighting, which would come only if 

the Americans, while concentrating their 

power in the continuing drive to the 

east, should try to contain the pocket 

rather than to erase it. 

Under this condition, plans for another try at breakout never passed the 

talking stage. Even while completing the 

encirclement of the Ruhr, American 

commanders, rich in resources, had been 

adjusting their units in order to move 

on to the east and at the same time reduce the Ruhr. 

By 1 April when the pincers around 

the pocket snapped shut, Simpson’s 

Ninth Army had one corps already engaged, in effect, in reducing the pocket. 

Having wheeled southeastward against 

33 MS # B–593 (Wagener). 

the Ruhr after establishing a Rhine 

bridgehead for the Ninth Army, Anderson’s XVI Corps had three infantry divisions in the line. Two were fighting 

among the houses, apartments, shops, 

and factories on the fringe of the Ruhr 

along the north bank of the RheinHerne Canal. 

On 2 April, after representatives of 

the First and Ninth Armies established 

the Ruhr River as the dividing line between them, General Simpson also gave 

General McLain’s XIX Corps a role in 

the reduction of the Ruhr, but coupled 

it with a continuing drive to the east. 

Along with General Gillem’s XIII Corps, 

a portion of the XIX Corps was to drive 

east, while two divisions attacked southwest from the vicinity of Hamm and 

Lippstadt toward the Ruhr River. 

In the First Army, General Hodges 

gave the job of renewing the drive east 

to Collins’s VII Corps and Huebner’s V 

Corps. Van Fleet’s III Corps, pinched 

out of a lineup at the Eder reservoir, was 

to take over from Collins along that part 

of the periphery of the Ruhr Pocket 

facing generally west, while headquarters 

of Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne Corps, its 

job in Operation VARSITY over, shifted 

to the First Army and assumed command of those units facing northward 

along the Sieg River. The attack to 

clear the pocket thus was to be, in essence, a converging attack by the equivalent of four corps. 34 

Splitting the pocket at the Ruhr 

River gave almost all the heavily built 

up industrial district to the Ninth 

Army. There the landscape is so urbanized that one city, grimy from the smoke 

of steel mill and blast furnace, blends 

34 For General Bradley’s orders, see 12th AGp 

Ltr of Instrs 20, 4 Apr 45. 
REDUCING THE RUHR 363 

R. Clinton 

MAP 5 

almost imperceptibly into another— 

Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Bochum, Dortmund. If the Germans had 

had sufficient strength, the fighting 

there could have become a plodding, 

block-by-block campaign. 

South of the Ruhr River, the First 

Army sector had no such concentration 

of industrial districts, though there 

were major cities—Duesseldorf, Wuppertal, the eastern suburbs of Cologne— 

but it was about three times the size of 

that of the Ninth Army. It was a sector 

of rugged terrain—steep hills and gorgelike valleys—at least 80 percent forested 

—a region known as the Sauerland. 

The two corps of the Ninth Army began to attack in earnest on 4 April, the 

day the Ninth Army passed to control 

of the 12th Army Group. (Map 5) As 

the drive to clear the pocket began, no 

pattern emerged in the German defense 

north of the Ruhr River. As might have 

been expected the Germans made a con- 
364 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

INFANTRYMEN OF THE 79TH DIVISION CROSS THE RHEIN-HERNE CANAL 

test of it behind the water obstacle of 

the Rhein–Herne Canal, but once that 

established position was broken, one 

city or town might be stoutly defended, 

another abandoned without a fight. 

It took a regiment of the 95th Division four days to clear Hamm, while 

contingents of the 17th Airborne Division, given a sector alongside the Rhine, 

walked into Duisburg almost without 

firing a shot. The 79th Division and 

other units of the 17th Airborne found 

no resistance in Essen, site of the great 

Krupp steel works, while at Dortmund, 

for no apparent reason, the Germans opposed the 75th and 95th Divisions stiffly, 

sometimes counterattacking with a fervor belying their lost cause. A combat 

command of the 8th Armored Division 

forestalled a sharp fight for Soest by 

making a quick 25-mile end run around 

the city, so threatening contingents of 

the 116th Panzer Division with encirclement that the Germans withdrew. At 

many small towns the burgomaster came 

out with a white flag; at others, the Germans fought until overwhelmed. The 

presence of SS troops more often than 

not made the difference. 

South of the Ruhr River, where the 
REDUCING THE RUHR 365 

inhospitable terrain—laced by a limited 

roadnet passing through dense woods 

and narrow defiles and dotted with 

seemingly countless bridges over deepcut streams-lent itself admirably to defense, resistance followed more conventional delaying tactics. The III Corps 

began to attack on 5 April, the XVIII 

Airborne Corps the next day. During 

the first few days, the Germans defended 

in some degree almost every town and 

village and most ridge and stream lines, 

particularly in the vicinity of Siegen, 

where several tank-supported counterattacks were apparently designed to keep 

the 8th Division from breaking into a 

fairly open corridor leading through the 

Sauerland, and near Winterberg, where 

the Germans had concentrated for their 

attempt at breakout; but as they were 

pushed back some four to six miles each 

day, their numbers and their resolution 

decreased. 35 

By 11 April the Germans were seldom defending ridges or wooded areas; 

resistance centered only in towns and 

villages along main roads. Sometimes 

bridges were left intact even when prepared for demolition. At Wuppertal, an 

S–2 of the 78th Division used the civilian 

telephone system to try to talk the mayor 

into surrender, but in vain. At other 

places both the 78th and 99th Divisions 

had greater success by using tankmounted public address systems to demand surrender. In those later days op35 Helping a platoon of the 8th Division’s 13th 

Infantry defend a house in the town of Birken 

against a local German spoiling attack on 3 April, 

Pfc. Walter C. Wetzel threw himself on two 

grenades that the Germans heaved through a 

window. Taking the full force of the explosions, 

he died while saving his comrades from injury. 

He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. 

position almost always centered around 

a roadblock covered by infantry supported either by a few tanks and assault 

guns or by antiaircraft pieces, usually 

20-mm. “flakwagons.” At one point the 

Germans delayed the 7th Armored Division by blanketing a valley with a 

dense smoke screen. 36 

Beginning on 7 April days of overcast 

and light rain gave way to warm sunny 

weather, enabling planes of the IX and 

XXIX Tactical Air Commands to aid 

the mop-up. North of the Ruhr River, 

the aircraft could make few contributions other than those against isolated 

strongpoints, both because that part of 

the pocket shrank fairly rapidly and because pilots now were forbidden to hit 

a usual primary target, railroad rolling 

stock (the Allies soon would need all 

boxcars they could get). Although the 

ban also applied to planes of the IX 

Tactical Air Command south of the 

Ruhr River, the area there was vast 

enough to provide other targets, particularly columns of foot troops and 

horse-drawn and motor vehicles retreating or shifting positions. 

In the Ninth Army’s sector, notably 

in the zone of the XVI Corps, artillery 

operating for the first time with unrationed ammunition supplies more than 

made up for the restrictions on aircraft. 

Artillery in support of the XVI Corps 

alone fired 259,061 rounds in fourteen 

days. Both artillery and air units had to 

observe the Ruhr River scrupulously as 

36 On the first day of the 7th Armored Division’s 

attack, 5 April, Cpl. Thomas J. Kelly, a medical 

aidman in the 48th Armored Infantry Battalion, 

made ten trips across ground exposed to heavy 

German fire to rescue and evacuate casualties of 

the company to which he was attached. Corporal 

Kelly was awarded the Medal of Honor. 
366 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

a “no fire” line lest, in the converging 

attack, they hit friendly troops. 

In the course of the advance almost 

every division overran a number of military hospitals, and several units liberated 

prisoner-of-war camps. At Waldbroel, 

not far north of the Sieg River, the 78th 

Division freed 71 hospitalized American 

soldiers, only 2 of whom were able to 

walk. At Hemer the 7th Armored Division rescued 23,302 prisoners of war, 

most of them Russians, living under appalling conditions of filth, disease, and 

hunger. The only Americans, a group 

of 99, were in fair condition, having 

been assigned to the camp only a few 

days. Among the others, deaths were 

averaging more than a hundred a day. 37 

The advance also freed thousands of 

forced laborers. In Hagen alone, 16,000; 

in Wuppertal, 30,000. Almost everywhere the sudden release of these people 

on the countryside produced incidents 

of looting and terrorizing. In the III 

Corps liberated slave laborers so congested the roads that the corps commander ordered them restricted to their 

compounds. Finding food and transportation for them and for thousands of 

German prisoners harried quartermasters and transportation officers alike. 

In the cities, block after block of rubble attested to the destructive proficiency of Allied bombers, although the 

effect on German production had been 

less real than apparent. Machines and 

facilities were in many cases intact or 

could be put into operation after relatively minor repairs. Many plants had 

been moved to protected locations or 

their operations decentralized into 

37 See 7th Armd and 78th Div AAR’s, Apr 45. 

scores of small, isolated buildings often 

untouched by bombs. 

During the course of the attack, command adjustments took place in both 

the First and Ninth Armies. The 5th 

Division joined the attack of the III 

Corps on 9 April, releasing the 9th Division for a rest; arrival of the 13th Armored Division (Maj. Gen. John B. Wogan) on 9 April provided an armored 

component for the XVIII Airborne 

Corps. North of the Ruhr, the 194th 

Glider Infantry Regiment of the 17th 

Airborne Division reinforced the XIX 

Corps, while the remainder of the division went to the XVI Corps. To control 

the glider infantry, the 15th Cavalry 

Group, the 8th Armored Division, and 

the 95th Division, while the rest of the 

XIX Corps participated in the Ninth 

Army’s continuing drive to the east, the 

corps commander, General McLain, 

grouped them on 7 April into a task 

force under the 95th Division commander, General Twaddle. As the two 

divergent attacks put the two contingents of the XIX Corps ever farther 

apart— 180 miles by 8 April—General 

Simpson transferred operational control 

of Task Force Twaddle to Anderson’s 

XVI Corps. 38 

In the First Army, the commanders 

of both corps tried hard to speed the 

advance by shaking loose their armored 

divisions, but it was 12 April before the 

7th Armored Division of the III Corps 

could move out in front of neighboring 

infantry divisions, and the 13th Armored 

Division of the XVIII Airborne Corps 

never did achieve a lightning advance. 

Committed on 10 April to pass through 

troops of the 97th Division (Brig. Gen. 

38 See NUSA Ltr of Instrs, 8 Apr 45. 
REDUCING THE RUHR 367 

Milton B. Halsey), the 13th Armored 

was to drive rapidly along relatively flat 

terrain close by the Rhine to a point 

east of Cologne, then turn northeast to 

get in behind those Germans fighting 

against the 8th, 78th, and 86th (Maj. 

Gen. Harris M. Melasky) Divisions, 

deep in the Sauerland. This was the armored division’s baptism of fire; only 

two of its combat commands and little 

of the division trains had arrived by 

jump-off time early on 10 April, and 

both men and equipment were worn 

out from two road marches totaling 

more than 260 miles with no time between for rest or servicing equipment. 

One combat command was down to 50 

percent of normal strength in medium 

tanks. 

Pressed by General Hodges to speed 

the mop-up in order to release units 

to reinforce the drive to the east, the 

corps commander, General Ridgway, 

would approve no pause before the attack; but Ridgway himself, in effect, 

slowed the attack in advance by ordering the division to “destroy” German 

forces encountered. 39 Although the order ran contrary to armored doctrine, 

the division commander, General Wogan, and his subordinates took it literally. 

Hardly had the advance begun when 

communications among various components of the division broke down and 

some units lost their way. A stream held 

up the columns as tanks and infantry 

deployed to “destroy” the enemy. (General Ridgway specifically changed the 

order on the 12th.) Not until late on 13 

April did leading troops reach the point 

39 XVIII Airborne Corps Opnl Instrs 7, 091600 

Apr 45, found in 8th Div G–3 Jnl file, 9–11 Apr 45. 

east of Cologne where the division was 

to change direction to the northeast. By 

that time the infantry divisions that the 

armor was to have assisted by trapping 

the enemy in front of them were already practically on top of the armor’s 

final objectives. 40 

Early on the 14th General Ridgway 

changed his instructions, telling the armor to continue north generally along 

the Rhine. Even then bad luck continued to plague the division as the commander, General Wogan, having gone 

forward to speed removal of a roadblock, was seriously wounded by rifle 

fire. The former commander of the III 

Corps, General Millikin, took his place. 

Driving past what had been the armored division’s objectives and going 

another ten miles to the north, a battalion of the 8th Division’s 13th Infantry 

late on 14 April reached the Ruhr River 

at Hattingen, southeast of Essen. Jubilantly, the men shouted across the river 

to men of the 79th Division’s 313th Infantry. On the north bank the last of 

the Ninth Army’s forces had closed to 

the river, signaling elimination of that 

part of the Ruhr Pocket. The 13th Infantry’s thrust meant that the pocket 

south of the river was split into two enclaves, the larger to the west embracing 

the cities of Duesseldorf and Wuppertal. 

For the next two days there would 

still be an occasional sharp engagement 

in the Ruhr Pocket. but for the most 

40 In an attack by the 97th Division’s 386th Infantry on 12 April, Pfc. Joe R. Hastings time after 

time braved heavy German fire to put his light 

machine gun in a position to support his company’s riflemen. At one point he advanced directly 

against an enemy position, firing his machine gun 

from the hip. Killed four days later, Private 

Hastings was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. 
368 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

RUSSIAN PRISONERS LIBERATED BY THE NINTH ARMY 

part a new phase of the battle had begun. It was a time for mass surrenders, 

a full and final collapse. 

“The predominant color was white.’’ 

The question of when and how to 

surrender had been before German 

staffs and commanders in the Ruhr since 

the American pincers closed on Easter 

Sunday, particularly so since failure of 

the breakout attempts at Winterberg. 

Yet the belief among most of the staff 

of Army Group B was that the fight was 

worthwhile because it was holding up the 

drive to the east by pinning down eighteen American divisions (four were west 

of the Rhine). 41 

When news of continuing American 

advances to the east came on 7 April, 

this rationale was no longer valid. Field 

Marshal Model’s chief of staff, Generalmajor Karl Wagener, urged Model to 

spare his troops and the civilians in the 

Ruhr further fighting by asking Hitler’s 

approval to surrender. This Model declined to do. In the first place, permission hardly would be granted. Further41 MS # B–593 (Wagener). For this period, see 

also MS # B–614 (Zangen). 
REDUCING THE RUHR 369 

GERMAN SOLDIERS ON THE WAY TO A PRISONER-OF-WAR CAMP WITHOUT GUARD 

more, Model himself could not reconcile surrender with the demands he had 

put on his officers and troops through 

the years. Yet news both within and 

without the Ruhr Pocket was so utterly 

devoid of hope that Model continued 

to struggle with his conscience for a 

solution. Every life saved was another 

life capable of taking up the struggle to 

rebuild Germany. He at last decided, in 

effect, simply to dissolve Army Group 

B by order. There could be no formal 

surrender of a command that had ceased 

to exist. 

All youths and older men, Model decreed on 15 April, were to be discharged 

from the army immediately, provided 

with discharge papers, and allowed to go 

home (the order, thousands were to discover, lacked American concurrence) . As of two days later, 17 April, when ammunition and supplies presumably 

would be exhausted, all remaining noncombatant troops were to be free to surrender, while combat soldiers were to be 

afforded a choice either of fighting in 

organized goups in an attempt to get out 

of the pocket or of trying to make their 

way, either in uniform or civilian clothes 

but in any case without arms, back to 
370 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

their homes. The latter was a veiled authority to surrender. 

Even before this order was issued, 

sharply increasing numbers of German 

troops had begun to capitulate. American divisions that in the first few days 

of April were taking 300, 500, or even 

1,000 prisoners a day, by 11 April and 

the days following were capturing in almost all cases 2,000 and sometimes as 

many as 5,000. Many a German walked 

mile after mile before finding an American not too occupied with other duties 

to bother to accept his surrender. A man 

from the 78th Division’s 310th Infantry 

started out of Wuppertal with 68 prisoners and discovered, upon arrival at the 

regimental stockade, that he had 1,200. 

The most famous individual to 

emerge from the Ruhr was taken early. 

On 10 April, a patrol from the 194th 

Glider Infantry found Franz von Papen, 

the German chancellor before Hitler’s 

rise to power, at his estate near Hirschberg, not far from the eastern periphery 

of the Ruhr Pocket. 

On the 13th, having lost all control 

over subordinate units, the commander 

of the Fifteenth Army, General von 

Zangen, surrendered along with his staff 

to the 7th Armored Division, as did 

General Koechling of the LXXXI 

Corps. The commander and all that remained of the once mighty Panzer Lehr 

Division surrendered on 15 April to the 

99th Division. 

On 16 April an all-out rush to give up 

began. People displayed handkerchiefs, 

bed sheets, table linen, shirts, anything 

to show intent to surrender. “The predominant color,” noted the 78th Division’s historian, “was white.” 42 While 

42 Lightning, p. 227. 

liberated slave laborers milled about, 

cheering, laughing, and shouting, glum 

German civilians, incredulity stamped 

on their faces, watched silently or 

sought to ingratiate themselves with the 

conquerors by insisting that they had 

never been Nazis, that they were happy 

the Americans had come. There were 

no Nazis, no ex-Nazis, not even any Nazi 

sympathizers any more. 

The prisoner-of-war list read like an 

order of battle, and with the commanders usually came their staffs and remaining troops: Bayerlein of the LIII Corps, 

Luettwitz of the XLVII Panzer Corps, 

Waldenburg of the 116th Panzer Division, Denkert of the 3d Panzer Grenadier, Lange of the 183d Volks Grenadier, 

commanders of the 180th, 190th, and 

338th Infantry Divisions, and the final 

remnants of the 9th Panzer Division. 

Paratroopers of the 17th Airborne Division apprehended the commander of the 

Fifth Panzer Army, General Harpe, as 

he tried to cross a bridge over the Ruhr 

River in an effort to make his way to 

German positions in the Netherlands. 

The commander of the XVIII Airborne 

Corps, General Ridgway, sent his aide 

under a white flag to headquarters of 

Army Group B to try to persuade Field 

Marshal Model to surrender himself and 

the entire command. Model refused. 

The flow of prisoners continued on 

the 17th—young men, old men, arrogant SS troops, dejected infantrymen, 

paunchy reservists, female nurses and 

technicians, teen-age members of the 

Hitler Youth, stiffly correct, monocled 

Prussians, enough to gladden the heart 

of a Hollywood casting director. In every conceivable manner, too, they presented themselves to their captors: most 

plodding wearily on foot; some in civil- 
REDUCING THE RUHR 371 

PRISONERS OF WAR IN THE RUHR POCKET 

ian automobiles, assorted military vehicles, or on horseback; some pushing 

perambulators; one group riding bicycles 

in precise military formation; a horsedrawn artillery unit with reins taut, 

horses under faultless control; some 

carrying black bread and wine; others 

with musical instruments—accordions, 

guitars; a few bringing along wives or 

girl friends in a mistaken hope they 

might share their captivity. With tears 

streaming down his face, the officer in 

charge of a garrison in one town surrendered his command in a formal, 

parade-ground ceremony. 

Prisoner-of-war cages were nothing 

more than open fields hurriedly fenced 

with a few strands of barbed wire. Here 

teeming masses of humanity lolled in 

the sun, sang sad soldier songs, stared 

at their captors, picked at lice. Those 

among them who spoke English offered 

their services profusely as translators. 

Some were in high spirits, others bedraggled, downcast. There was nothing triumphant about it; it was instead a gigantic wake watching over the pitiable 

demise of a once-proud military force. 

“Have we done everything to justify 

our actions in the light of history?” 
372 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Field Marshal Model asked his chief of 

staff on one of those last days. “What is 

there left to a commander in defeat?” 

Model paused, then answered his own 

question. 

“In ancient times,” he said, “they took 

poison.” 43 

On 18 April all but a few stragglers 

gave up, all resistance at an end. Some 

317,000 Germans were captured-more 

than the Russians took at Stalingrad, 

more even than the total of Germans 

and Italians taken at the end of the campaign in North Africa. Thousands more, 

of whom there was no record, had perished in the fighting. 

The mop-up cost units of the Ninth 

Army 341 killed, 121 missing, and not 

quite 2,000 wounded. The First Army 

losses probably were about three times 

as high. 44 

43 MS # B–593 (Wagener). 

44 Ninth Army casualty statistics are from Conquer: The Story of the Ninth Army, p. 283. The 

First Army records provide 110 breakdown of 

casualties for this particular phase, but a tabulation from various after action reports reveals that 

the divisions of the III Corps alone had 291 killed, 

88 missing, and 1,356 wounded, while a single 

division of the XVIII Airborne Corps, the 8th, lost 

198 killed, 101 missing, and 1,238 wounded. 

As the battle ended, one of the stragglers was the commanding general of 

Army Group B, Field Marshal Model. 

Having ordered his staff to disperse, 

Model himself repaired with his aide 

and two other officers to a forest north 

of Duesseldorf. 

To those who knew the field marshal 

intimately, it was a certainty that he 

would never surrender. He had long 

been critical of Field Marshal Friedrich 

Paulus for capitulating at Stalingrad. 

“A field marshal,” he had said then, 

“does not become a prisoner. Such a 

thing is just not possible.” 

During the afternoon of 21 April, 

Model asked his aide to accompany him 

and walked deeper into the forest, away 

from the other two officers. There he 

shot himself. 45 

45 Ltr, Maj Hansgeorg Model to U.S. Army 

Historical Office, Europe, 29 Mar 66, filed in 

OCMH. Model’s aide buried the field marshal, 

marked the grave, and after the war identified it 

for the field marshal’s son, who later had the body 

reinterred in a soldier’s cemetery in the Huertgen 

Forest, among the graves of men the field marshal 

had commanded. 
CHAPTER XVII 

Sweep to the Elbe 

As the First Army had swung northward to close the pincers around the 

Ruhr, General Hodges was secure in 

the knowledge that his right flank and 

rear would be adequately screened by 

Patton’s Third Army. Having sent the 

XX Corps across the Rhine at Mainz on 

28 March in the last of three major 

Rhine crossings, Patton by nightfall of 

the same day had already gained a leg 

on the assignment of protecting the First 

Army by driving on Kassel. 

Through 28 March, the Third Army’s success story could be told pretty 

much in terms of General Eddy’s outsized XII Corps. At the same time, the 

sudden swing of that corps from the 

Oppenheim bridgehead almost due 

north across the Main River had created 

one of those situations seemingly peculiar to the Third Army that would require some legerdemain to straighten 

out. 

Even as Task Force Baum was fighting for its life at Hammelburg, the rest 

of the 4th Armored Division on 26 

March had begun to exploit the little 

bridgehead over the Main near Hanau 

and by nightfall of the 28th had 

plunged more than thirty miles northward to a point near Giessen. Also under the XII Corps, the 6th Armored Division on the 28th had crossed the Main 

into a bridgehead won by the 90th Division west of Hanau and by nightfall was 

fifteen miles north of the river. Continued advances along these lines by the 

two armored divisions soon would pinch 

out both Walker’s XX Corps and Middleton’s VIII Corps. 

As General Bradley adjusted army 

boundaries on the 28th to turn the First 

Army north on Paderborn, General Patton solved his problem by juggling 

units. The 6th Armored Division and 

the 5th Division, the latter having finished the job of clearing Frankfurt, 

went to the XX Corps. That move had 

the effect of splitting the zone that the 

XII Corps had taken over, giving the 

left half and the divisions there to the 

XX Corps. The two corps now could 

drive side by side on Kassel. Although 

Middleton’s VIII Corps still would be 

pinched out, Patton could deal with that 

situation later. 

The swift advance by the two U.S. 

armored divisions reflected the general 

disruption of the north wing of the 

enemy’s Seventh Army that the Third 

Army’s multiple Rhine crossings had 

produced. By driving north, the armor 

had cut in behind the LXXXV Corps 

(Kniess) , only recently committed to 

hold the Rhine-Main arc, and the 

LXXXIX Corps (Hoehne), which had 

turned too late to flee before the Rhine 

crossings of the VIII Corps and the 

drive down the autobahn from Limburg by a combat command of the First 
374 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Army. The LXXXIX Corps, headquarters included, simply disintegrated. Although the staff of the LXXXV Corps 

eventually would make its way to safety, 

neither the headquarters nor any of its 

subordinate units would be able to do 

anything to stop the American armor's 

headlong dash toward Kassel. As did 

Hodges' First Army, Patton’s Third 

Army would profit from the great gap 

created between Army Groups B and 

G. 1 

Under terms of the shift to the northeast, the 6th Armored Division of the 

XX Corps was to head for Kassel while 

the 4th Armored Division of the XII 

Corps passed through the northern 

reaches of the Fulda Gap, a narrow 

divide between two clusters of wooded 

hills known as the Vogels Berg and the 

Hohe Rhoen, and then turned eastward. 

The 11th Armored Division, committed 

29 March on the right wing of the XII 

Corps, headed directly for the Fulda 

Gap. In all three cases infantry divisions 

were to follow closely for the usual 

mop-up. 

For both the 4th and 6th Armored 

Divisions, the attacks on the next two 

days, 29 and 30 March, were little more 

than road marches. For the 11th Armored Division, committed through the 

Main bridgehead at Hanau, it was much 

the same, but not until the armor, with 

the help of infantrymen of the 26th 

Division, had expanded the bridgehead 

through great stretches of woods to the 

east and northeast. This newly created 

wing of the XII Corps was brushing 

1 See MSS # A–893 (GersdorK) and # B–703, 

The Fighting of Heeresgruppe G in the WestThe Final Battle in Central and Southern Germany Until Capitulation, 22 March 1945–6 May 

1945 (Oberst Horst Wilutzky, Opns Officer, Army 

Group G). 

against the northern flank of the one 

fairly cohesive defensive force left to the 

new commander of the Seventh Army, 

General von Obstfelder. There stood 

the LXXXII Corps (Hahm) with remnants of three divisional formations, 

charged with holding the line of the 

Main and containing the bridgeheads 

at Hanau and Aschaffenburg. 2 

During those two days, General von 

Obstfelder was trying to piece together 

an armored force to counterattack into 

the 4th Armored Division flank. As a 

nucleus he had a new unit, Panzer Brigade Thueringen, a training group with 

a tank battalion, an assault gun battalion, and a panzer grenadier regiment. 

He hoped to join that force with the 

reconnaissance battalion of the 11th 

Panzer Division, the only part of the 

division to reach the Seventh Army 

after leaving Army Group B. He counted 

too on some forty new tanks scheduled 

to arrive momentarily by rail. 

He would never see the tanks. On 

the 29th they reached an unloading 

point near Bad Hersfeld, some thirty 

miles south of Kassel, at about the same 

time as a column of the 4th Armored 

Division. The American tanks opened 

fire. Less than a dozen of the German 

tanks got away. 3 

When news of this debacle reached 

Obstfelder, he used it as an excuse to 

call off his embryonic plan for counterattack. It would be futile in any case, 

he reasoned, now that the 4th Armored 

Division flank was protected by an infantry and another armored division. 

Besides, Obstfelder was sharply conscious of the necessity for sending some 

force northward to build a line behind 

2 MS # A–893 (Gersdorff). 

3 Ibid. See also 4th Armd Div AAR, Mar 45. 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 375 

the Werra River, a tributary of the Weser, and making some effort, as the high 

command in Berlin insisted, to establish 

contact with the Eleventh Army, thereby sealing the great gap that had opened 

between Army Groups B and G. 

Relieving General Kniess from command of the LXXXV Corps for his failure to hold the Rhine-Main arc, Obstfelder gave the command—for what it 

was worth—to General der Panzertruppen Smilo Freiherr von Luettwitz and 

sent the corps to positions behind the 

Werra in front of the city of Eisenach. 4 

The only appreciable strength available 

to the new commander was the reconnaissance battalion of the 11th Panzer 

Division, beefed up with odd collections 

of artillery, troops with five tanks from 

an armored training center, and stragglers. General von Luettwitz did succeed 

in establishing tenuous contact with 

contingents of the Eleventh Army at 

Kassel, but it lasted only briefly. 

In the center of the Seventh Army’s 

zone, Obstfelder had to use the XII 

Corps, the upgraded Wehrkreis headquarters that had been called to oppose 

the Oppenheim crossing. Led by Generaloberst Herbert Osterkamp, the 

corps had little other than Panzer Brigade Thueringen, which was to absorb 

stragglers from the 2d Panzer Division 

and assume that once-proud division’s 

name. Recognizing that Osterkamp had 

insufficient strength to do more along 

his 35-mile front than delay the Americans temporarily, Obstfelder designated 

a “combat commander” (Kampfkom4 Not to be confused with the commander of the 

XLVII Panzer Corps. For the LXXXV Corps, see 

MS # B–617, Combat Report of the LXXXV 

Corps (General der Panzertruppen Smilo Freiherr 

von Luettwitz). 

mandant) for the city of Fulda, a growing practice when a city was about to 

be bypassed or surrounded. All these 

combat commanders usually had for a 

city’s defense were stragglers, Volkssturm, and any fixed antiaircraft installations that might exist. 

To the south of the zone was General 

Hahm’s LXXXII Corps with its three 

makeshift divisions. General Hahm 

would face not only the right wing of 

the Third Army but also the left wing 

of General Patch’s U.S. Seventh Army. 

Throughout the Seventh Army zone, 

signal and supply services had broken 

down. For communications, commanders frequently used the civilian telephone network; for supplies, they 

scrounged from army, Luftwaffe, or SS 

installations. The troops were sometimes 

shocked at what they found in those 

depots—in one, 95,000 pairs of fur-lined 

boots, something the men had been begging for the preceding winter in the 

mud and snow of the West Wall. To 

meet gasoline needs, the units appropriated the hoarded stocks of Nazi party 

officials. “Flight fuel,” the troops bitterly 

called it. 

As German commanders made their 

arrangements, dutifully drawing tidy 

boundary lines and spotting units on 

operations maps as if it all had some 

meaning, the armor of the XX Corps 

and the XII Corps drove relentlessly 

toward the northeast. So heavy was the 

collection of American armor that General von Obstfelder reckoned the drive 

to be either a race to beat the Russians 

to Berlin or an Allied main effort to 

link with the Russians and split Germany in two. 5 

5 MS # A-893 (Gersdorff). 
376 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

During midafternoon of 30 March, in 

a roadside meeting, the XX Corps commander, General Walker, told the 6th 

Armored Division’s General Grow to 

make a dash for Kassel. If resistance 

proved firm, Walker said, Grow was to 

leave the city to the infantry, jump the 

Fulda River, and continue to the east. 

By nightfall of that day Grow’s division was only six miles short of Kassel, 

holding a bridge captured intact across 

the Eder River. The next day, the 31st, 

the leading combat command began to 

meet organized resistance. It came from 

part of the 166th Infantry Division, the 

unit Hitler had sent from Denmark, 

and various makeshift units available to 

the combat commander of Kassel. While 

continuing the attack through the day 

and into the night, General Grow prepared for a shift to the east by sending 

another combat command toward the 

Fulda River. Armored infantrymen 

after nightfall forced a crossing of the 

river under machine gun fire. 

The 4th Armored Division of the XII 

Corps by nightfall of the 31st. was only 

a few miles from the Werra River southwest of Eisenach. The 11th Armored 

Division meanwhile gained high ground 

overlooking the city of Fulda. 

Leading units having reached those 

positions, the Third Army had come 

abreast of the easternmost positions held 

by the First Army. If Patton’s columns 

continued eastward with the same momentum, they soon would outdistance 

a First Army that would have to regroup after encircling the Ruhr before 

turning part of its strength to the east. 

Although General Bradley saw a need 

to halt the Third Army until the First 

was ready to drive alongside, he had received vague but enticing information 

from a German officer deserter, apprehended west of the Rhine by the 4th 

Armored Division, that a high-level German headquarters or communications 

center was to be found some thirty miles 

beyond the Werra River in the town of 

Ohrdruf, a few miles south of Gotha. 

Told by planners of the First Allied 

Airborne Army that they would be unable to mount an airborne assault on 

the town on short notice, both Bradley 

and General Eisenhower agreed to give 

Patton free rein for another twenty-four 

hours in hope of seizing Ohrdruf. 6 

The next day, Easter Sunday, the urge 

for Ohrdruf and whatever mystery its 

capture might reveal proved stronger 

than the urge to hold back the Third 

Army to await a new drive by the First. 

Although the 4th Armored Division 

seized a bridgehead across the Werra 

River and the 11th Armored Division 

came almost abreast farther south, both 

divisions still were about twenty miles 

from Ohrdruf when in late afternoon 

General Bradley telephoned the news 

that the armor could keep going until 

Ohrdruf was in hand. 

Against resistance that now could be 

considered normal—roadblocks manned 

by motley contingents of infantrymen, 

an tiaircraft artillerymen, Volkssturm, 

whatever; an occasional tank or selfpropelled gun; sometimes a quick strafing run by one or two Me 109’s; blown 

bridges—one combat command of the 

4th Armored Division headed for Gotha, 

the other for Ohrdruf. The head of 

CAA’s column at one point ran into an 

ambush; in rapid succession two bat6 Gay Diary, entry of 31 Mar 45. See also Dyer, 

XII Corps, p. 398; Koyen, The Fourth Armored 

Division, p. 115; and combat interview with Lt 

Col Hal C. Pattison, Exec0 CCA, 4th Armd Div. 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 377 

WHITE FLAGS HANG ABOVE ADESERTED STREET 

teries of 88’s knocked out seven tanks 

and four half-tracks. Yet civilian authorities surrendered Gotha without a fight 

on the morning of 4 April (men of a 

small military garrison were discovered 

later masquerading as patients in the city 

hospitals), and CCA moved on in the 

afternoon to take Ohrdruf. (Map XIV) 

They found at least part of what they 

had been expecting in Ohrdruf—an 

immense underground communications 

center set in deep concrete tunnels, with 

radio facilities, cables, and telephone 

switchboards large enough to serve a 

small city. 7 It had been constructed as 

a headquarters for the Armed Forces 

High Command (OKW) during tense 

days preceding the Czechoslovakian 

crisis in 1938, but never used. In recent 

weeks the Reichsfuehrer SS, Heinrich 

Himmler, had ordered the facilities expanded as a possible retreat for Hitler 

and his entire entourage, to be presented 

to the Fuehrer for his birthday on 20 

7 Koyen, The Fourth Armored Division, p. 115; CCA, 4th Armd 

Div, AAR, Apr 45. 
378 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

April; but work had hardly begun before the Americans arrived. 8 

The men of the 4th Armored Division unknowingly had missed by hours 

a chance to capture important live prey 

at Ohrdruf. Less than twenty-four hours 

earlier, Field Marshal Kesselring and 

headquarters of OB WEST had fled 

the town. 9 

The 4th Armored found something 

else at Ohrdruf. On the fringe of the 

town, the soldiers came upon the first 

of the notorious concentration camps to 

be uncovered by the advancing Allied 

armies. Small by the standards of others 

to be discovered later, the camp nevertheless contained enough horror to 

make the American soldier and even his 

Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, pale. Patton, when he saw it, 

vomited. Forced by the XX Corps commander, General Walker, to tour the 

camp, the burgomaster of Ohrdruf and 

his wife went home and hanged themselves. 10 

Elsewhere in the Third Army during 

those first days of April there were sometimes fierce engagements with die-hard 

defenders, other times unopposed advances sweeping up docile Germans left 

behind in the rapid thrusts of the armor. 

In most cases the nature of the defense 

depended not so much on the number 

of troops available as on the character 

of the local commander. If a true Nazi, 

thoroughly indoctrinated, he saw to it 

8 General Bruce C. Clarke (USA, Ret.), The 

Command, Control and Communications National 

System of Germany During World War II (Menlo 

Park, Calif.: Stanford Research Institute, 1963), pp. 

11, 18. 

9 MS # C–020 (Schramm). 

10 See Koyen, pp. 115–16; Patton, War As I 

Knew It, pp. 292–94; see also Toland, The Last 

100 Days, p. 371. 

that the men under him fought back; 

otherwise there might be only token 

opposition or none at all, a weary acceptance of the inevitable. 

During the last day of March and the 

first two of April, General Brenner and 

the survivors of his 6th SS Mountain 

Division, bypassed in the swift American 

drive, tried to fight their way out to the 

east, in the process capturing an American field hospital. 11 On 2 April one battalion of the 26th Division was sufficient 

to clear Fulda; at Kassel, the entire 80th 

Division had to fight fiercely for the 

better part of four days before a defiant 

German garrison surrendered on 4 

April. On several occasions at Kassel the 

Germans counterattacked sharply with 

infantry supported by as many as ten 

tanks, apparently drawn from the big 

Henschel tank works in the city. As at 

other industrial cities, fixed antiaircraft 

batteries firing deadly flak bolstered the 

defense. 

On the south flank of the XII Corps, 

the 2d Cavalry Group on 2 April entered Bad Orb, liberating 6,500 Allied 

prisoners of war, half of them Americans. Farther east, a battalion of the 

11th Armored Division overran a Walther small arms factory, finding enough 

pistols-including many of one of the 

war’s most prized souvenirs, the P38— 

to equip almost every man in the division. 

As the Third Army paused, General 

Patton inserted Middleton’s VIII Corps 

back into the lineup between the XX 

Corps on the left and the XII Corps on 

the right, again juggling divisions in 

the process. While some units completed 

mop-up of rear areas, others made local 

11 See above, ch. XVI. 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 379 

advances to secure better positions for 

the new jump-off once the order came. 

In one of these local operations, a battalion of the 90th Division’s 358th Infantry occupied the village of Merkers, 

west of the Werra River, southwest of 

Eisenach, and made one of the war’s 

more sensational finds. By chance the 

men discovered that in a nearby salt 

mine the Germans had hidden almost 

all the nation’s gold reserve, great stores 

of German and foreign currency, and 

hundreds of priceless works of art. At 

Meiningen on the Werra, other troops 

of the XII Corps captured the central 

records depository for all prisoners of 

war in Germany. Far to the rear, a 

Quartermaster detachment accepted the 

surrender of the commander of the 

LXXXIX Corps, General Hoehne, 

whose command had disintegrated before the Rhine crossing of the VIII 

Corps. 12 

A New Allied Main Effort 

The pause in the Third Army’s operations coincided with the Supreme Commander’s return of General Simpson’s 

Ninth Army to the 12th Army Group. 

With this transfer on 4 April, General 

Bradley had under his command 4 field 

armies, 12 corps, and 48 divisionsmore than 1,300,000 troops, the largest 

exclusively American field command in 

U.S. history. 13 Using this powerful force, 

Bradley was, while reducing the Ruhr, 

to cut a wide swath across the center of 

12 Dyer, XII Corps, p. 406; Patton, War As I 

Knew It, pp. 287, 291–92; Eisenhower, Crusade in 

Europe, pp. 407–08. See also Toland, The Last 100 

Days, p. 364. 

13 Bradley’s command included the Fifteenth 

Army west of the Rhine with two corps and six 

divisions. 

Germany in the general direction of 

Leipzig and Dresden in a new Allied 

main effort aimed at splitting Germany 

in two by linking with the Russians. 

The main role in the new drive fell 

to Hodges’ First Army in the center, a 

thrust directly east on Leipzig, to be followed by a crossing of the Elbe east of 

Leipzig. The Third Army also was to 

drive eastward, aiming for Chemnitz, 

but was to be prepared to turn later to 

the southeast. Unaware of General Eisenhower’s decision to forgo a drive on 

Berlin, the Ninth Army commander, 

Simpson, and many of his subordinates 

deduced that the Ninth Army had drawn 

the choice objective, the grand prize, 

Berlin. General Bradley’s formal order, 

issued on 4 April, inferred as much. 

Once the Ninth Army had seized a 

bridgehead over the Elbe, Simpson was 

to “be prepared to continue the advance 

on Berlin or to the northeast.” 14 

In conjunction with the new main 

effort, the Second British Army on the 

Ninth Army’s left was to strike for that 

part of the Elbe extending from the 

coast to Wittenberge, eighty miles upstream from the great port of Hamburg. 

The First Canadian Army meanwhile 

was to aim for the coast from the mouth 

of the Weser westward. With its left 

wing, the Canadian army was to drive 

north from the vicinity of Arnhem some 

thirty miles to the IJsselmeer (Zuider 

Zee) , thereby cutting off any Germans 

left in the western part of the Netherlands. 15 

As the Ninth Army passed to the 12th 

Army Group’s control before daylight 

on 4 April, both the 5th Armored and 

14 12th AGp Ltr of Instrs 20, 4 Apr 45. 

15 Montgomery, Normandy to the Baltic, pp. 261– 

63; Stacey, The Victory Campaign, pp. 539, 546. 
380 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

84th Divisions of General Gillem’s XIII 

Corps, forming the army’s left wing, 

reached a great westward loop of the 

Weser River near Minden, almost due 

west of the metropolis of Hannover. The 

2d Armored Division of General McLain’s XIX Corps, having run into delaying action by remnants of the First 

Parachute Army in the Teutoburger 

Wald, would arrive at the Weser later in 

the day near Hameln (Hamelin), the 

town which the Pied Piper reputedly rid 

of rats and children. Mopping up resistance in the Teutoburger Wald, the 30th 

Division was soon to press forward behind the armor. Even though part of the 

Ninth Army was helping to reduce the 

Ruhr Pocket, General Simpson still 

could provide for the eastward drive 

these four divisions plus the 102d, which 

had begun to cross the Rhine, and the 

83d, recently relieved from the fight for 

the Ruhr. 

The forces of General Hodges’ First 

Army that would be available for the 

eastward thrust once regrouping had 

been completed consisted of the 3d 

Armored, 1st, and 104th Divisions in 

Collins’s VII Corps on the left and the 

9th Armored, 2d, and 69th Divisions 

in Huebner’s V Corps on the right. 

The First Army was to take over Kassel 

from the Third Army once the city was 

clear, broadening the frontage for the 

First Army’s main effort to approximately thirty miles. 

As the Third Army paused, its forward line formed an east-facing arc from 

Muehlhausen in the north, through 

Gotha and Ohrdruf, back to Meiningen 

in the south. Following the shuffle of 

divisions to bring headquarters of the 

VIII Corps back into action, Walker’s 

XX Corps on the left had both the 4th 

and 6th Armored Divisions, plus the 

76th and 80th Infantry Divisions; Middleton’s VIII Corps in the center, the 

65th, 87th, and 89th Divisions; and 

Eddy’s XII Corps, the 11th Armored, 

26th, and 90th Divisions, plus a newcomer to the front, the 71st (Maj. Gen. 

Willard G. Wyman). Another new division, the 70th (Maj. Gen. Allison J. 

Barnett), was mopping up rear areas 

and providing security for bridges over 

the Rhine. 

That portion of central Germany facing the 12th Army Group provided two 

ready avenues leading eastward, one on 

either side of the storied Harz Mountains. Once a stronghold of paganism, 

in more modern times a tourist retreat, 

the Harz, rising higher than 3,000 feet, 

served as anchor for the boundary between the First and Ninth Armies. The 

Ninth Army on the north could advance 

across low, rolling country providing 

ready access to Magdeburg on the Elbe, 

while south of the Harz the First Army 

and the north wing of the Third could 

utilize the wide Thueringen Plain for 

their drives on Leipzig and Chemnitz. 

The Third Army’s right wing would 

find the terrain less hospitable; here, 

extending southeastward from the vicinity of Eisenach, stands the Thueringer Wald, a spinelike range of forested 

mountains with many heights above 

3,000 feet. 

Having already jumped the Fulda and 

Werra Rivers, the Third Army faced no 

more formidable water obstacles. Both 

the First and Ninth Armies still had to 

get across the Weser, which, like the 

Rhine and Elbe, is a sprawling waterway, and the First Army’s right wing 

would have to cross lower reaches of 

the Werra River as well, 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 381 

Except for Leipzig—then Germany’s 

fifth city—and an intermediate objective, Halle, the bigger cities lay in the 

zone of the Ninth Army—Hannover, 

ancient seat of the Hannoverian kings, 

Braunschweig (Brunswick) , and Magdeburg. The Third Army faced smaller 

cities—Erfurt, Weimar, Jena. 

From the standpoint of German units 

available for the defense, the shift of 

Allied main effort from the north wing 

to the center was unquestionably well 

advised. Almost all of Army Group B, 

plus the south wing of the First Parachute Army, having been encircled in 

the Ruhr, and the north wing of Army 

Group G having been pushed back 

rudely by the Third Army’s swift crossings of the Rhine, the armies of the 12th 

Army Group faced a vast gap with 

nothing but the hastily constituted Eleventh Army (Hitzfield) to plug it. Although Hitler had issued his fanciful 

order to form a new army, the Twelfth, 

to assemble in the Harz Mountains and 

drive to the relief of Army Group B, 

most of the troops designated to fill the 

new divisions were in officer training 

schools and replacement training centers 

east of the Elbe and had yet to head for 

the Harz. Not until 6 April would Hitler even settle on a commander for the 

new army, General der Panzertruppen 

Walter Wenck, who was recuperating 

in a Bavarian resort from injuries incurred in an automobile accident. 16 

The Role of the Third Army 

As the Third Army paused, General 

Patton shifted his infantry divisions to 

16 MSS # B–606 (Reichhelm); # B–581 (Estor). 

Ryan in The Last Battle, pages 274–76, tells of 

Wenck’s appointment. 

the fore to be prepared if a new crust 

of resistance should form. He also sent 

the 11th Armored Division of the XII 

Corps in a one-day advance to the southeast to get out of the worst of the mountainous terrain of the Thueringer Wald 

into the southwestern foothills whence 

the division would later continue the 

drive to the southeast. This shift was in 

keeping with the plan to turn the entire 

Third Army eventually to the southeast. 

On the Third Army’s north wing, the 

76th and 80th Divisions, as well as the 

6th Armored, which had paused at 

Muehlhausen, absorbed a series of small 

counterattacks, in one case involving 

close to a thousand infantry supported 

by more than a dozen tanks. The stabs 

represented a feeble attempt by General 

Hitzfeld’s Eleventh Army to carry out 

Field Marshal Kesselring’s dictum to 

counterattack into the north flank of 

the Third Army in exchange for permission to abandon the drive from Kassel to reach Army Group B in the 

Ruhr. 17 Although the Americans had to 

relinquish one village temporarily, the 

darting thrusts required no realignment 

of forces. 

At last free on 10 April to get on with 

the offensive, Patton turned the 11th 

Armored Division loose for its drive 

along the southwestern slopes of the 

Thueringer Wald and gave the infantry 

divisions a day to break a band of resistance protecting the city of Erfurt. 

On the 11th as the 80th Division drove 

into Erfurt, the 4th Armored Division 

pushed eight miles beyond the infantry’s 

lines along the autobahn south of Erfurt, while the 6th Armored Division 

exploited the gap between the enemy’s 

17 See above, ch. XVI; MS # B–581 (Estor). 
382 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

GERMAN PRISONERS HEAD FOR THE REAR as American armor advances. 

Eleventh Army and Army Group G’s 

Seventh Army for the day’s most noteworthy advance. In rapid strides, General Grow’s armor drove fifty miles, 

halting for the night only after seizing 

bridges intact across the Saale River 

north of Jena. 

The next day the 6th Armored Division advanced another fifteen miles 

and crossed the Weisse Elster River near 

the city of Zeitz. This time the advance 

was markedly difficult; the armor was 

brushing against the southern end of a 

broad belt of fixed antiaircraft defenses 

forming a semicircle before Leipzig. 

At the same time the 4th Armored 

Division, bypassing Jena and the battlefield where Napoleon had defeated the 

Prussians in 1806, picked up momentum 

to reach points flanking the autobahn 

more than five miles beyond Jena. While 

the 80th Division’s 318th Infantry cleared 

stubborn defenders from Erfurt, the city of 

Weimar capitulated as a flight of fighterbombers hovered overhead to give weight 

to a surrender ultimatum. The defenders of 

Jena, other men of the 80th Division discovered as night fell, would elect to fight. 

The city would be in hand nevertheless before another day had passed. 
GERMAN CIVILIANS, forced to disinter victims of a concentration camp from a 

mass grave, carry them through the streets for reburial. 
384 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

In the course of the day’s advance, 

the 4th Armored Division’s CCB uncovered one of Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camps northwest of Weimar 

at Buchenwald. Aside from the horror 

that was common to all the camps, this 

one merited special notoriety because 

the commandant’s wife, Ilse Koch, collected the tattooed skin of prisoners to 

make ornaments and lamp shades. 

Also on 12 April Patton’s superiors, 

Eisenhower and Bradley, visited the 

Third Army commander. After touring 

the treasure cave at Merkers and the 

concentration camp at Ohrdruf, they 

retired in the evening to Patton’s command trailer, where General Eisenhower 

confided that Patton was to stop his 

victorious armor short of the objective 

of Chemnitz. Pending detailed arrangements for meeting the Russians, the 

Third Army was to halt at the Mulde 

River, ten miles west of Chemnitz, 

roughly on a north-south line with that 

part of the Elbe River to be reached by 

the Ninth Army. The First Army, too, 

was to halt at the Mulde. Eisenhower 

had made up his mind to make no 

attempt to take Berlin. 18 

Before the three commanders went to 

sleep, they learned the news that during 

the day had shocked their nation and 

the world. The Commander in Chief, 

Mr. Roosevelt, was dead. 19 

It took General Walker’s XX Corps, 

with the 4th Armored Division moving 

18 See Toland, The Last 100 Days, p. 371. 

19 Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 409; Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 541; Patton, War As I 

Knew It, pp. 294–95. 

into the lead, only one more day to reach 

the Mulde. By nightfall of the 13th 

General Hoge’s combat commands had 

seized four bridges intact across the 

river and carved out holdings large 

enough to protect the bridges. Middleton’s VIII Corps, with no armor to 

spearhead the advance, would make it 

to the Mulde on the 17th. Eddy’s XII 

Corps meanwhile had taken the city of 

Coburg on the 11th after a night of 

unceasing artillery fire and a hovering 

aerial threat similar to that at Weimar, 

and on the 14th entered Bayreuth at the 

southeastern tip of the Thueringer 

Wald. There the XII Corps too paused 

to await a new order turning the entire 

Third Army to the southeast. 

A Bridgehead to Nowhere 

On the other flank of the 12th Army 

Group’s new drive, in the meantime, 

General Simpson’s Ninth Army was under no obligation to pause until its divisions had crossed the Weser River and 

reached a point as far to the east as the 

Third Army’s starting line east of Ohrdruf. Imbued with a sense of urgency 

because the army group’s orders indicated that the eventual goal was Berlin, 

units of both the XIII Corps on the left 

and the XIX Corps attacked with a 

special fervor. 20 

Despite unusual efforts to seize a 

bridge intact across the 255-foot width 

of the Weser, nobody succeeded. With 

the assistance of the attached 119th Infantry of the 30th Division, a combat 

command of the 2d Armored Divi20 This attitude is clearly evident in official 

records of the period. 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 385 

sion nevertheless quickly established a 

bridgehead near Hameln early on 5 

April against only a smattering of small 

arms fire. The rest of the 30th Division 

followed quickly to clear knots of suicidal resistance from the picturesque 

river town. 21 

The adjacent 84th Division of the 

XIII Corps also tried a crossing on the 

5th but abandoned it in the face of 

shelling directed on exposed approach 

routes to the river from a high east-west 

ridgeline, the Wesergebirge, that split 

the division’s sector. Moving before 

dawn on the 6th to another site, a battalion of 84th Division infantrymen 

paddled across without a sound from the 

enemy other than erratic firing by a 

20-mm. antiaircraft gunner apparently 

trying to calm his own nerves with 

noise. A second battalion crossing a few 

minutes later drew fire in the fading 

dark, but not a man was hit. 

Like most of the 12th Army Group, 

the men of the Ninth Army were striking into a vacuum. The XLVII Panzer 

Corps that might have been expected 

to defend the Weser in this sector had 

been trapped with Army Group B in the 

Ruhr. The rest of General Blumentritt’s 

First Parachute Army was falling back 

to the northeast in front of the British. 

The only troops immediately available 

to hold the Weser’s east bank were 

in makeshift formations belonging to 

Wehrkreis VI, which technically was 

21 In the advance on Hameln, a platoon leader 

in the 30th Division’s 119th Infantry, 1st Lt. Raymond O. Beaudoin, was killed while making a 

one-man charge to eliminate German fire that was 

raking his platoon. Lieutenant Beaudoin was 

awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. 

under command of Hitzfeld’s feeble 

Eleventh Army . 22 

Seeing that the American thrust had 

virtually severed communications between General Blaskowitz’s Army Group 

H, which included the First Parachute 

Army, and Field Marshal Kesselring at 

OB WEST, OKW on the same day that 

the 84th Division crossed the Weser, 6 

April, removed the northern army group 

from Kesselring’s control. Henceforth, 

Army Group H was to be known as Oberbefehlshaber Nordwest (OB NORDWEST), directly subordinate to OKW. 

The commander was to be Field Marshal 

Ernst Busch, a veteran of the Russian 

front who most recently had handled 

defense of Germany’s north coast. 

Blaskowitz was shifted to become Oberbefehlshaber of the Netherlands, subordinate to Field Marshal Busch, an 

indication of Hitler’s continuing disenchantment with Blaskowitz, which had 

been demonstrated earlier when he sent 

General Student to lead a counterattack 

by Blaskowitz’s troops. 23 

While Kesselring retained authority 

over the rest of the Western Front, 

Busch was to command everything in 

the north, including men of the Navy 

and the Luftwaffe, an unusual procedure. For defending the Weser from 

Hameln to the coast (a line already 

breached), Busch was to have a hastily 

created special force called Army Blumentritt. The commander, General Blumentritt, was to assume control of units 

22 MS # B–354 (Blumentritt); MS # B–217, 

Central Germany From 22.3.1944 to 11.5.1945 

(General der Infanterie Mattenklott, Comdr, 

Wehrkreis VI). 

23 See above, ch. XV; MS # B–354 (Blumentritt); 

MS # B–414 A GP H (OB NW), 10 Mar–9 May 

45 (Oberst Rolf Geyer); Kesselring, A Soldier’s 

Record, p. 315. 
386 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

and staffs of Wehkreise VI and XI, plus 

some naval troops in the downstream 

sector near Bremen. 24 

While the Germans thus played at 

shuffling essentially paper commands, 

the 2d Armored Division of the XIX 

Corps dealt in tangibles called power 

and speed. Long anxious to be turned 

loose toward Berlin, the division commander, General White, had directed 

his operations officer to prepare a plan 

even before the division crossed the 

Rhine. His army commander, General 

Simpson, was equally enthusiastic. Judging from the eager way the men in the 

tanks and the half-tracks took off from 

the Weser, the zeal of their commanders 

had passed down the line without 

diminution. 

It took the armor just one day (6 

April) to traverse the eighteen miles 

from the Weser to the little Leine River. 

The Leine was a phase line established 

by General Bradley as a means of control to release his three horses—the 

First, Third, and Ninth Armies—from 

the starting gate at the same time. Although obligated to pause along the 

Leine until given the starting signal, the 

eager 2d Armored made a point of seizing bridges intact across both the Leine 

and another river ten miles farther east 

before coming to a full halt the next 

day, 7 April. 

The two infantry divisions of the 

XIX Corps—the 30th and 83d—meanwhile made their way to the Leine. To 

the north the 84th Division of the XIII 

Corps, having completed a bridge over 

24 This force was first commanded by General 

Student and called Army Student, but four days 

later Student and Blumentritt exchanged commands. MSS # B–354 (Blumentritt) and # B–414 

(Geyer). 

the Weser late on the 7th, reached the 

Leine on the 8th. There the infantry 

crossed on a bridge seized intact by the 

11th Cavalry Group northwest of Hannover. In the process the division captured a German soldier who was carrying 

a map of Hannover’s defenses. These, 

the map revealed, were concentrated in 

the southwest and south. Before daylight 

on 10 April, the men of the 84th moved 

against the city from the northwest and 

north, clearing it by midafternoon. Acres 

of rubble from Allied bombing and 

thousands of foreign laborers made 

overly exuberant by looted liquor posed 

more problems than did the Germans. 

As with the Third Army, the word to 

resume the eastward drive reached units 

of the Ninth Army on the 9th. General 

White’s armor in the center of the XIX 

Corps the next day made about twenty 

miles, despite a brief but violent encounter with sixty-seven big antiaircraft 

guns arrayed to protect the Hermann 

Goering Steel Works southwest of 

Braunschweig. While the 83d Division 

continued eastward on the right wing 

of the corps, dropping off a regiment to 

deal with that part of the Harz Mountains in the Ninth Army’s zone, the 2d 

Armored Division’s Combat Command 

B on 11 April broke free. 

The men of CCB and their commander, Brig. Gen. Sidney R. Hinds, 

were imbued with one thought: get a 

bridge across the Elbe. Overtaking fleeing German columns, sweeping aside 

the defenders of roadblocks with blasts 

from the cannon of their tanks, surprising Volkssturm defenders who could but 

gape in bewilderment and then throw 

down their newly acquired arms, the 

tanks and half-tracks of CCB drove relentlessly eastward. 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 387 

In late afternoon an attached contingent of the division’s reconnaissance 

squadron raced into a western suburb 

of Magdeburg, startling civilian shoppers. After dark a column of tanks 

commanded by Maj. James F. Hollingsworth made a run for a bridge across 

the Elbe southeast of Magdeburg at 

Schoenebeck, but the Germans who had 

been fleeing suddenly turned to fight. 

Although Hollingsworth’s tanks got 

within a few feet of the bridge, they at 

last had to fall back in the face of 

determined German fire. Before a new 

attack with infantry could reach the 

bridge, the Germans demolished it. 

The first news of CCB’s exploits to 

reach headquarters in the rear arrived 

shortly after 2000 the evening of 11 

April. The message was laconic, but it 

said all that needed to be said: “We’re 

on the Elbe.” During the day, CCB had 

traveled fifty-seven airline miles, seventythree when measured by road. 

Making such extensive use of captured German vehicles, military and 

civilian, that news correspondents nicknamed them the “Rag Tag Circus,” 

men of General Macon’s 83d Division 

were only a step behind the armor. Late 

on the 12th, men who themselves preferred another nickname, the “83d Armored Division,” reached the Elbe a 

few miles upstream from Schoenebeck at 

Barby. About the same time, the armor 

of the XIII Corps, General Oliver's 5th 

Armored Division, having pushed past 

the 84th Division at Hannover, rolled 

up to the Elbe fifty miles downstream 

from Magdeburg at Tangermuende, 

only fifty-three miles from Berlin. As 

tankers and armored infantrymen 

swarmed toward a bridge that still stood, 

the Germans destroyed it. 

The 30th Division meanwhile cleared 

Braunschweig after a fight with flak 

guns on the western approaches, and 

the 84th and 102d Divisions advanced 

in the wake of the armor of the XIII 

Corps. But the most important news 

after night fell on the 12th again came 

from the 2d Armored Division. Using 

dukws hastily brought forward, two battalions of armored infantry slipped 

quietly across the sprawling Elbe at 

Westerhausen, just south of Magdeburg. 

Not a shot sounded from the far shore. 

Not to be outdone, men of the 83d 

Division, the Rag Tag Circus, fought 

hard through the 12th to clear a stubborn contingent of Germans from Barby 

on the Elbe (the 329th Infantry lost 24 

men killed, 5 missing, 35 wounded), 

then in early afternoon of 13 April sent 

two battalions of infantrymen across the 

river in assault boats behind a heavy 

smoke screen. It was “just like a Sunday 

afternoon picnic with no fire of any 

kind.” 25 The regimental commander, 

Col. Edwin B. Crabill, went up and 

down the west bank, exhorting the men 

to get going. “Don’t waste the opportunity of a lifetime,” he shouted. “You are 

on your way to Berlin.” 26 

Colonel Crabill did not know it, nor 

did even the Ninth Army commander, 

General Simpson, but he and his men 

were not on their way to Berlin. Their 

Supreme Commander had already made 

and would soon reaffirm the decision 

that was to turn their holdings into a 

bridgehead to nowhere. 

25 Combat interview with 1st Lt William Stout. 

Several interviews deal with this action. 

26 Combat interview with Crabill. 
INFANTRYMEN RIDE AN ARMORED CAR IN THE RACE TO THE ELBE 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 389 

A Flak-Infested Route to the Mulde 

The role of the First Army in the 

12th Army Group’s eastward drive 

meanwhile had developed according to 

the location of the divisions of the V 

and VII Corps when the attack to seal 

off the Ruhr came to an end. In General 

Collins’s VII Corps on the left, the 3d 

Armored Division took the lead. Starting to drive eastward on 5 April, the 

division encountered stubborn resistance 

at numerous roadblocks the next day 

from remnants of the Ersatzbrigade 

Westfalen, which had proved such a persistent foe near Paderborn, and reached 

the Weser on 7 April only to find all 

bridges destroyed. 

In General Huebner’s V Corps, the 

2d and 69th Infantry Divisions headed 

the advance. Ordered first to relieve 

troops of the Third Army in Kassel, the 

69th Division began its eastward drive as 

darkness was approaching on the 5th. 

In a region of wooded hills in an angle 

formed by confluence of the Fulda and 

Werra Rivers, which meet at the town 

of Hann-Muenden to form the Weser, 

the division almost immediately ran into 

those Germans that constituted the best 

of General Hitzfeld’s Eleventh Army, 

the LXVII Corps. Nowhere did they give 

in without a fight. Not until late on the 

7th was Hann-Muenden cleared and 

were crossings gained over the Werra 

there and upstream. 

It was the happy chance of the 2d 

Division in the meantime to strike the 

weakest part of the Eleventh Army defense before the Weser. Little more 

than the garrison of a training center 

at Hofgeismar, ten miles from the river, 

barred the way. There the Germans on 

5 April fought tenaciously, but the next 

day the division’s 23d Infantry reached 

the Weser. Crossing unopposed in assault boats moments after darkness fell, 

rifle companies pushed quickly to a 

towering wooded ridgeline a mile to the 

east. The First Army had gained a 

bridgehead only a day behind the Ninth 

Army. 

On the 7th, a battalion of the 104th 

Division used the 2d Division’s bridge to 

provide a first crossing of the Weser for 

the VII Corps, followed later by assault 

crossings by other contingents of the 

104th and by units of the 1st Division 

on the north wing of the corps. Only intermittent and generally ineffective machine gun fire posed any threat to the 

crossings. The 2d Division meanwhile 

extended its bridgehead to a depth of 

six miles against resistance no more formidable than that posed by a hastily 

formed battalion including men impressed from mental hospitals. By nightfall of the 7th, concern that the enemy 

might have formed a solid position anywhere along the Weser had been dispelled. 

The fact was just as apparent to the 

German commander, General Hitzfeld, 

as to his adversaries. Without bothering 

to seek approval from OB WEST, Hitzfeld told his units to begin a step-by-step 

withdrawal to the Leine River, thirteen 

miles east of the Weser, there to try 

again to make a stand. He then compromised that position immediately by declaring the east-bank university town of 

Goettingen an open city because of 

thousands of hospitalized soldiers there. 

Hardly were his orders disseminated 

when Hitzfeld relinquished command of 

the Eleventh Army to General Lucht, 

who as commander of the LXVI Corps 

had narrowly escaped capture in March 
390 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

CROSSING OF THE WESER RIVER BY MEN OF THE 1ST INFANTRY DIVISION 

when his command post west of the 

Rhine had been overrun. 27 This was no 

prejudicial relief of Hitzfeld; Lucht had 

been earmarked all along to command 

the Eleventh Army but had been unavailable earlier. General Hitzfeld returned to command of the LXVIl 

C orps. 28 

General Lucht had been in his post 

only a few hours on 8 April when new 

orders arrived from his commander in 

chief, Field Marshal Kesselring. In keep27 See above, ch. X. 

28 MS # B–581 (Estor). 

ing with Hitler’s grandiose scheme for 

a counteroffensive from the Harz 

Mountains to relieve Army Group B in 

the Ruhr, all available troops were to 

withdraw into the Harz, where they 

were to turn the wooded region into a 

fortress to be held until General 

Wenck’s hastily forming Twelfth Army 

could arrive to start the counteroffensive. To gain time to prepare the Harz 

for defense, the Eleventh Army was to 

defend the Leine River “under all circumstances .” 29 

29 Ibid. See also MS # B–606 (Reichhelm). 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 391 

How impossible to execute was the 

latter, if not the first, part of the order 

was amply demonstrated within the day 

as men of the 2d Division seized a 

bridge intact across the Leine outside 

Goettingen and pushed rapidly beyond 

the undefended university town. The 

69th Division too crossed the Leine, 

though without benefit of a bridge. On 

the 9th both divisions drove more than 

ten miles to the east. The 2d Division 

occupied Duderstadt, east of Goettingen, liberating 600 Allied prisoners of 

war, including a hundred Americans 

(another 44 had died within the last 

month from malnutrition) ; the 69th 

captured Heiligenstadt, a few miles to 

the southwest. 

A day behind the V Corps in crossing 

the Weser, General Collins of the VII 

Corps made up the time by committing 

his armor early on 9 April. Resistance 

in rolling wooded country along the left 

wing was occasionally strong; at one 

point a dozen Mark V and Tiger Royal 

tanks knocked out five of the 3d Armored Division’s Shermans, but as night 

came the armor held a bridgehead over 

the Leine at Northeim. 

For the First Army, there was to be 

no pause at the Leine, because the arrival of its divisions there coincided with 

General Bradley’s release of all restrictions on eastward movement, effective 

on the 10th. In the VII Corps, the 3d 

Armored Division continued to pace the 

drive, while General Huebner committed the 9th Armored Division to take 

the lead in the V Corps. 

For the Germans, the object was to 

try to get as many men as possible into 

the Harz Mountains, to hold there in 

keeping with the myth that the Twelfth 

Army soon would arrive to set everything right again. All contingents of 

Lucht’s Eleventh Army except Hitzfeld’s LXVII Corps tried to reach the 

mountains on the 10th. Hitzfeld’s corps 

drew an equally impossible assignment 

of building a line from the Harz eastward to Halle, in order to keep the 

American forces from turning northeastward behind the Harz and thereby 

denying the Twelfth Army its destination. Although the German generals involved admitted to themselves the futility of it all, they somehow were able to 

close their minds to reality and try to 

bring it 

As General Collins set the 1st Division to sweeping the mountains systematically from the west, to be joined a 

few days later by the 9th Division, the 

3d Armored Division and infantrymen 

of the 104th continued eastward. Seldom was there more opposition than occasional delaying actions except when 

some column turned north toward the 

Harz. In those instances, the Germans 

reacted with determination, sometimes 

employing small coveys of tanks or selfpropelled guns. 

On the 11th the armor swept into 

Nordhausen, uncovering more grisly, almost unbelievable evidence of Nazi 

bestiality in another concentration 

camp. Here is how a sergeant from the 

329th Medical Battalion saw it: 

Rows upon rows of skin-covered skeletons 

met our eyes. Men lay as they had starved, 

discolored, and lying in indescribable human filth. Their striped coats and prison 

numbers hung to their frames as a last 

token or symbol of those who enslaved and 

killed them . . . One girl in particular I 

noticed; I would say she was about seventeen years old. She lay there where she had 

30 MS # B–581 (Estor). 
392 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

fallen, gangrened and naked. In my own 

thoughts I choked up—couldn’t quite understand how and why war could do these 

things . . . We went downstairs into a filth 

indescribable, accompanied by a horrible 

dead-rot stench. There in beds of crude 

wood I saw men too weak to move dead 

comrades from their side. One huncheddown French boy was huddled up against 

a dead comrade, as if to keep warm . . . 

There were others, in dark cellar rooms, 

lying in disease and filth, being eaten away 

by diarrhea and malnutrition. It was like 

stepping into the Dark Ages to walk into 

one of these cellar-cells and seek out the 

living. 31 

Outside Nordhausen men of the 

104th Division found large underground factories, one for manufacturing 

V–2 rockets. Scientific teams later 

shipped a hundred of the rockets to the 

United States for study, along with scientific data found buried in an abandoned mine a few miles away. 32 

Near the V-weapon factory was a 

slave labor camp with a capacity of 

30,000. Indisputable evidence showed 

that no workers ever left camp and factory alive; if they became too weak to 

work, they were simply left to die and 

their remains disposed of in crematory 

ovens. Suvivors testified that 150 bodies 

a day were cremated. 33 

Pausing briefly at Nordhausen to 

await arrival of gasoline and oil, the 

tankers of the 3d Armored Division resumed their advance early on 12 April, 

entering Sangerhausen, twenty-two 

miles to the east, by midday. From that 

31 Sgt. Ragene Farris, as quoted in Hoegh and 

Doyle, Timberwolf Tracks, pp. 330–31. 

32 See McGovern, CROSSBOW and OVERCAST. 

33 104th Div AAR, Apr 45. 

point the armor turned northeast, heading for the Elbe at Dessau, while the 

104th Division began a march on Halle. 

Although the men in the tanks noted 

increased resistance on 13 April, particularly in volume of antitank fire, 

they advanced another twenty-three 

miles and established bridgeheads over 

the Saale River a few miles northwest 

of Halle. Another day would pass before 

the portent of the increased resistance 

would be revealed. 

During the first two days after the 9th 

Armored Division was committed on 10

April, the V Corps made similar progress. On the third day, 12 April, the armor got a rude shock. Just over five 

miles from the Saale River, a task force 

forming the division’s north column 

suddenly came under heavy fire from 

fixed antiaircraft guns. The guns were 

as deadly against tanks as against the airplanes they had been designed to combat. Only after losing nine tanks did the 

task force succeed in knocking out the 

big pieces. 

Like the Third Army’s 6th Armored 

Division, which on this same day at 

Zeitz had bumped into a nest of the 

fixed antiaircraft pieces, the 9th Armored Division had come up against 

one of the most concentrated belts of 

flak guns in all Germany. The belt 

formed a great arc extending from Bitterfeld, northeast of Halle, southwestward to encompass Halle, Merseburg, 

and Weissenfels on the Saale River, then 

southeastward to Zeitz. Although Leipzig stood behind the center of the arc, 

the Germans had not created the ring of 

steel to protect the city but to defend a 

number of synthetic oil refineries and 

industrial plants related to them: nitrogen, explosives, hydrogen, and synthetic 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 393 

rubber. 34 Near Merseburg, for example, 

was Germany’s largest synthetic rubber 

plant, second largest synthetic oil refinery, and a big hydrogen plant. 35 

The build-up in antiaircraft defenses 

had begun in May 1944, with assignment to the area of a flak division with 

headquarters in Leipzig. Beginning with 

374 guns ranging in caliber from 75- 

mm. to 128-mm., the defenses had been 

increased by the spring of 1945 to possibly a thousand pieces. 36 Grouped in 

batteries varying from 12 to 36 guns, 

the weapons were particularly effective 

against ground targets in the Leipzig 

area because relatively flat terrain afforded excellent observation and fields 

of fire. 

Although the concentrated belt of 

flak was well known to Allied airmen 

as a notorious “flak alley,” nobody had 

reported the concentration to the 

ground troops that now had to face the 

guns. Allied air forces had detailed plottings of the locations of the batteries, 

but it took three days for the 9th Armored Division’s urgent requests for 

information to produce results. Slave 

laborers and occasionally a German civilian sometimes helped the troops to spot 

the guns before they opened fire, but too 

often the first warning was the sharp 

crack of shells exploding in a rain of 

deadly fragments. 

Since the flak guns appeared to rep34 British Air Ministry, The Rise and Fall of the 

German Air Force (1933 to 1945) (London, 1948), 

p. 355. 

35 V Corps Operations in the ETO, p. 430. 

36 This figure is an estimate based on reports of 

American units involved and on a letter from Dr. 

Arenz, Militaergeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Freiburg, Germany, to USAREUR Historical Division, 

31 October 1966, in response to a query by the 

author. Copy in OCMH. 

resent the outer defenses of Leipzig, the 

V Corps commander, General Huebner, 

directed the 9th Armored Division to 

shift southeast to bypass Leipzig and 

gain the Mulde River, thirteen miles 

beyond the city. While the 2d Division 

took over the drive on Leipzig from the 

west, the 69th was to follow the armor, 

then come in on the city from south 

and southeast. 

Having stirred up a fury of resistance 

at Weissenfels on the Saale, the armor 

on 13 April backed away, crossed the 

river on a bridge taken intact southwest 

of the town, then before the day was out 

crossed the Weisse Elster River near 

Zeitz. Two days later CCR on the south 

wing broke free of the flak belt and 

dashed all the way to the Mulde, twenty 

miles southeast of Leipzig. Having 

seized two bridges intact, CCR the next 

day, 16 April, crossed, captured Colditz, 

and released 1,800 Allied prisoners of 

war, including several ranking British 

officers. 

The 69th Division’s 271st Infantry 

meanwhile cleared a determined garrison of 1,500 from Weissenfels on the 

13th and 14th, in the process crossing 

the Saale in assault boats. The 2d Division on the 15th took Merseburg and 

neighboring industrial towns with their 

large synthetic oil and rubber plants. To 

avoid observed fire from antiaircraft 

batteries, one regiment that night crossed 

the Sale over a damaged railroad 

bridge, the start of a series of night attacks designed to circumvent the big 

flak guns. Advancing by night, the men 

could get close enough to the guns to 

bring accurate artillery fire On them. 

Since the gun crews were unaccustomed 

to ground combat, the stratagem was 

usually sufficient to prompt them to flee, 
394 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

A 12.8–CM. “FLAX” GUN, as deadly against American ground troops as against 

planes. 

Within Leipzig itself as American 

troops closed in, a contest of will had 

developed between the head of the 

city’s 3,400-man police force, Generalmajor der Polizei Wilhelm von Grolman, and the “combat commander” of 

the city, Col. Hans von Poncet. Poncet 

expected the Hitler Youth, Volkssturm, 

odds and ends of regular troops, and the 

police to wage a fight to the death. To 

General von Grolman, that plan was 

folly, assuring nothing but destruction 

of the city. Imploring Colonel von Poncet not to fight, Grolman asked particularly that he avoid demolishing the 

bridges over the Weisse Elster River in 

order to save water, gas, and electric 

lines running under the bridges to western sectors of the city. When Poncet insisted on fighting, Grolman determined 

to maintain control of the police himself and withhold them from the struggle. 37 

Hoping to keep casualties to a minimum in view of the impending end of 

37 MS # B–478, The Collapse of the German 

Reich as Seen From Leipzig (Generalmajor der 

Polizei Wilhelm von Grolman) . 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 395 

the war, both the 2d and 69th Divisions 

made measured advances toward Leipzig. Only on the 18th did the two divisions break into the city. In the south 

and southeast, the 69th Division found 

resistance at times determined, particularly around the city hall and Napoleon Platz, the site of a monument 

(Voelkerschlachtsdenkmal—Battle of the 

Nations Memorial) commemorating Napoleon’s defeat in 1813 in the Battle 

of Leipzig. Approaching from the west, 

men of the 2d Division encountered 

their first real fight at the bridges over 

the Weisse Elster, which were defended 

by Volkssturm and a sprinkling of regulars who were behind overturned trolley cars filled with stones. Whether on 

order of Poncet, Grolman, or otherwise, 

the bridges stood. 

As men of the 2d Division settled 

down for the night on the east bank of 

the Weisse Elster, a police major approached with word that General von 

Grolman wanted to surrender the city. 

A rifle company commander accompanied him to police headquarters, but 

there discovered that Grolman, still begging Poncet in vain by telephone to surrender, controlled only the police. 38 

Although General von Grolman returned with the U.S. officer to American 

lines to confer further with higher commanders, the negotiations had no effect 

on Colonel von Poncet and the Germans at Napoleon Platz. As resistance 

in the city hall collapsed early on the 

19th (inside, the mayor, his deputy, and 

their families were suicides), Colonel 

von Poncet and about 150 men holed up 

38 Details of this episode are in Charles B. MacDonald, Company Commander (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1947). pp. 241–55. See also 

MS # B–478 (Grolman). 

in a sturdy stone base of the Battle of 

the Nations monument. Through much 

of 19 April, tanks, tank destroyers, and 

artillery employing direct fire pounded 

Poncet’s position. Because the Germans 

held seventeen American prisoners, the 

69th Division commander, General 

Reinhardt, declined to use flame throwers. 

In midafternoon, a German-born 

American captain went under a white 

flag to the monument where for nine 

hours he argued to convince Poncet to 

surrender. At long last, past midnight, 

Poncet finally agreed. 39 

By this time a special control force 

formed from artillery battalions of the 

V Corps already was arriving to administer Leipzig, and first contingents of 

the 2d and 69th Divisions were on their 

way to join the corps armor at the Mulde 

River. In keeping with General Eisenhower’s decision not to go to Berlin, the 

pending assignment for these troops was 

to await contact with the Russians. 

A Short New War 

While this kind of fairly typical pursuit warfare took place in the First Army’s V Corps and throughout the Third 

Army, what seemed by contrast to be almost a new war had suddenly erupted a 

few miles to the north. In the Harz 

Mountains, at Halle, on the roads to 

Dessau, and in the bridgeheads over the 

Elbe, men of the First and Ninth Armies who had been engaged in what appeared to be an end-the-war pursuit 

suddenly found themselves fighting a 

determined though ill-equipped foe. 

The combat was as senseless as it was 

39 Toland, The Last 100 Days, pages 394–96, 

provides details. 
396 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

unexpected. The Germans could hope 

to accomplish nothing other than to insure a warrior’s death for more men on 

both sides and, by slowing the American drive, expose more of their people 

and their land to the mercy of the Russians, whom they all feared. 

The new war in all cases could be laid 

directly or indirectly to a new force, the 

inchoate Twelfth Army, which Hitler 

absurdly counted on to sweep to the 

Harz, then to the Ruhr, thus gaining 

time in the west while some nebulous 

something happened to wrench victory 

from defeat in the east. The Twelfth 

Army made its presence felt first against 

the 2d Armored Division’s little bridgehead on the east bank of the Elbe. 

Hardly had the army commanderdesignate, General Wenck, reached his 

command post on 12 April in a panzer 

training school at Rosslau, across the 

Elbe from Dessau, when word arrived 

from the combat commander of Magdeburg that Americans had crossed the 

river nearby. While the artillery under 

the combat commander, including Magdeburg’s fixed antiaircraft pieces, opened 

fire on the American crossing site, 

Wenck tried to discover what force he 

could send to attack the bridgehead. 

His new command, Wenck found, 

was to consist of four corps headquarters, to be withdrawn from the east, and 

nine divisions. In most cases named after heroic figures from German history, 

the divisions were formed primarily of 

young men from army schools, particularly officer training schools, and from 

the Reich labor service. They were in 

varying stages of mobilization. Although 

food and ammunition were ample, most 

of the divisions would have no tanks; 

all would have little transport, only a 

few assault guns per division, and little 

artillery, Filled with spirited young men 

led by experienced officers who had been 

instructors at the schools, the divisions 

would make up in esprit something of 

what they lacked in training and equipment. 40 

One unit, Division Potsdam, was lost 

to General Wenck from the first. While 

being formed from army schools in the 

vicinity of the Harz Mountains, it had 

been trapped by the rapid American 

drive. Three other divisions would be 

insufficiently organized for commitment 

for more than a week. Two more, along 

with one of the corps headquarters, 

were under orders from OKW to assemble west of the Elbe north of the American zone of attack with the aim of driving south by way of Braunschweig to 

the Harz while the main body of the 

Twelfth Army drove west. General 

Wenck thus had immediately available 

at the Elbe only three divisions plus 

some small miscellaneous units. 

Under orders from OKW before 

Wenck’s arival, the commanders of two 

divisions, Scharnhorst and Ulrich von 

Hutten, had committed their units as 

they became available to hold a bridgehead west of the Elbe around Dessau 

whence the Twelfth Army might start 

its drive to the Harz. The third division 

was holding the east bank of the Elbe 

far to the north of Magdeburg. 

To counter the 2d Armored Division’s bridgehead south of Magdeburg, 

Wenck had to depend for the moment 

on Volkssturm and a miscellany with40 Information on the Twelfth Army is from MS 

# B–606 (Reichhelm) and MS # B–394, Report 

on the 12th Army, compiled for Historical Division, U.S. Army (General der Panzertruppen Walter Wenck). 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 397 

drawn from the local defense force of 

Magdeburg. To supplement these, he 

ordered Division Schmnhorst to ready 

one battalion to counterattack the 

bridgehead in conjunction with a mixed 

force of assault guns drawn from an assault gun training school, and a few 

tanks. 41 

Before daylight on 13 April, a battalion of the 30th Division’s 119th Infantry 

crossed into the 2d Armored Division’s 

bridgehead, bringing the strength there 

to three battalions; but no antitank guns, 

tanks, or tank destroyers made it across. 

(See Map XV, inset.) So shallow was the 

water near both banks of the river that 

supporting engineers despaired of operating vehicular ferries and concentrated 

instead on bridging the river. Construction was slow in the dark, and sporadic 

German shelling interfered. With the 

coming of daylight the shelling increased, 

much of it deadly air bursts from big 

antiaircraft pieces at Magdeburg. Although supporting artillery tried constantly to neutralize the fire and engineers laid out smoke pots to screen the 

site, neither effort had apparent effect. 

Call after call went back for fighterbombers to strike the artillery positions, 

but so far behind had airfields fallen in 

the race across Germany that the Elbe 

was almost beyond range of tactical aircraft. None showed up. 

Despite the shelling, engineers by midday of the 13th had advanced their pontons and treadway tracking to within 

twenty-five yards of the far shore. Then 

41 The German sources make no mention of 

tanks but in the extensive combat interviews 

available on the ensuing action, so many American 

witnesses speak of tanks that their presence can 

hardly be doubted. 

came a deluge of shells that wrecked 

everything. 

Giving up on that site, the 2d Armored 

Division commander, General White, directed the three infantry battalions to 

move after nightfall—in effect, to attack 

-upstream approximately three miles to 

a point opposite the bridge earlier demolished by the Germans at Schoenebeck. As daylight approached, Company 

L, 119th Infantry, and portions of a 

battalion of the 41st Armored Infantry 

were inside Elbenau, not quite two miles 

from the river, while the other battalion 

of armored infantry had cleared some 

250 Germans from the riverside village 

of Gruenewalde. Other units were digging in on open ground to form the 

wings of a bridgehead. That was the 

situation when, in the dissipating darkness, a battalion of Division Scharnhorst 

supported by Assault Gun Training School 

Burg with approximately eight tanks and assault guns began to attack. 

Catching the American infantrymen 

in the process of establishing their 

bridgehead and still without antitank defense other than bazookas, the Germans 

rapidly cut off the 119th Infantry’s Company L in Elbenau and began systematically to reduce the defenders in the open, 

foxhole by foxhole. In the confusion, a 

score of Americans surrendered. The 

Germans put them in front of their 

tanks, forcing them at gunpoint to shield 

their continuing advance. The bridgehead began to go to pieces. 

Five miles upstream, out of range of 

the enemy’s artillery and antiaircraft 

guns at Magdeburg, men of the 83d Division were having little difficulty in 

their bridgehead opposite Barby. No 

sooner had two battalions of the 329th 

Infantry crossed in midafternoon of the 
398 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

13th than engineers began to ferry supporting vehicles across, while other engineers went to work on a treadway bridge 

that was completed by nightfall. They 

named the bridge after their new Commander in Chief, President Harry S. 

Truman, and called it the “Gateway to 

Berlin.” Although four small counterattacks struck the bridgehead during the 

day of the 14th, the presence of attached 

tanks and tank destroyers enabled the 

infantrymen to disperse them readily. 

Remarking the contrast between the 

fortunes of the two bridgeheads, General 

White early on the 14th ordered his reserve combat command into the 83d’s 

bridgehead to attack down the river’s 

right bank and relieve the beleaguered 

men at Gruenewalde and Elbenau. CCR 

moved out early in the afternoon, but 

hardly had the attack begun when word 

came to call it off. 

So desperate had matters become in 

CCB’s little bridgehead that one of the 

armored infantry battalion commanders 

in midmorning returned to the west 

bank to report his battalion lost. He had 

seen his companies overrun, many men 

surrendering. The CCB commander, 

General Hinds, himself went into the 

bridgehead to survey the situation. 

Engineers at the river had in the meantime been constructing a ferry and anchoring a guide cable for it to the east 

bank. Although the water at this site 

also was shallow close to the west bank, 

they coped with it by hauling rubble into 

the river to create a loading ramp. At 

noon a ferry carrying a bulldozer to be 

used to shave the east bank began to 

cross, but as the ferry neared the far 

shore a concentration of German antiaircraft artillery fire severed the cable. 

Set free in a swift current, the ferry 

careened downstream. 

To General Hinds, this was the end. 

Aware of the 83d Division’s successful 

crossing and the plan to send CCR into 

that bridgehead and acutely conscious of 

the crisis in his own bridgehead, the failure to get tanks across, and the lack of 

air support, General Hinds gave the order to withdraw. 

Returning to the west bank, Hinds 

reported his decision to his division 

headquarters where, in the absence of 

General White, he talked with the chief 

of staff. General White later concurred 

in the order, as did the corps commander, 

General McLain. 

By late afternoon, most of the surviving infantrymen had made their way 

back to safety except for the men of 

Company L, cut off and hiding in cellars 

in Elbenau. These men finally learned 

of the withdrawal when their artillery 

forward observer established radio contact with an artillery observation plane. 

The forward observer called for a 

blanket of artillery fire on Elbenau to 

catch the Germans in the open. When 

the fire lifted, some sixty men made a 

break for the river. As tanks and tank 

destroyers fired from the west bank to 

cover their withdrawal, fighter-bombers 

of the XXIX Tactical Air Command 

with auxiliary fuel tanks in place of 

bombs finally arrived to strafe German 

positions. Most of the sixty men returned 

safely. 

Through the night and the next day 

other survivors trickled back from the 

east bank, including one group of 30. 

Final losses totaled 330; of those only 4 

were known dead and 20 wounded, an 

indication that many had been captured. 

Although the fighting in the bridgehead 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 399 

obviously had been severe, reports of 

eyewitnesses revealed that the confusion 

caused when the Germans struck before 

the defenders were organized had as 

much to do with the loss of the bridgehead as did anything else. 

Word of the 83d Division’s success at 

the Elbe had in the meantime flashed up 

the chain of command to General Eisenhower. When General Bradley gave him 

the news by telephone, the Supreme 

Commander was moved by the turn of 

events to reconsider his decision not to 

go to Berlin. How many casualties, he 

asked Bradley, might it cost to drive 

through and capture Berlin? Bradley estimated 100,000. 42 

The men inside the Elbe bridgehead 

were confident the drive on Berlin would 

be resumed momentarily. While the infantry with help of the 2d Armored’s 

CCR extended the bridgehead to a depth 

of about five miles, the 320th Infantry 

(attached from the 35th Division to 

make up for a regiment of the 83d left 

behind in the Harz) attacked southeast 

across the Saale River to clear Germans 

from the angle formed by confluence 

of the Saale and the Elbe so that a second 

bridge could be constructed over the 

Elbe nearby. Although an occasional 

German plane harassed the bridgehead, 

American fighter-bombers extending 

their range with auxiliary fuel tanks in 

place of bombs were active much of the 

day, artillery and armored support were 

plentiful, and nobody doubted the 83d 

Division’s ability to break out of the 

bridgehead at will. 

The Ninth Army staff already had a 

plan for driving to Berlin, couched behind the euphemistic phrase, “to enlarge 

42 Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 535. 

the Elbe River bridgehead to include 

Potsdam [a suburb of Berlin].” On the 

15th General Simpson flew to General 

Bradley’s headquarters to present it. Although Bradley listened closely as General Simpson’s G–3, Colonel Mead, 

disclosed the plan, he said he would have 

to telephone General Eisenhower for a 

decision. Overhearing Bradley’s end of 

the conversation, Simpson soon had his 

answer. 

“All right, Ike,” Bradley said, “that’s 

what I thought. I’ll tell him. Goodbye.” 

There was to be no drive on Berlin. 43 

TWO more combat assignments remained for the Ninth Army. One was 

to reduce Magdeburg, where the combat 

commander refused an ultimatum to surrender. After a strike by 350 medium 

bombers of the 9th Bombardment Division during the afternoon of 17 April, 

the 30th Division and parts of the 2d 

Armored began a systematic reduction 

of the city. The next day, as the last 

resistance faded, at least one American 

commander, General Bradley, was 

pleased that the Germans demolished the 

last bridge over the Elbe, for it spared 

him from putting men across to create 

another bridgehead to nowhere. 44 

The second assignment was to defeat 

an incursion into the zone of the XIII 

Corps from the north and to clear a 

newly assigned sector along the Elbe that 

originally had been a British responsibility, a two-faceted task which the XIII 

Corps aptly named Operation KAPUT. 

According to orders of OKW, two of 

the newly formed divisions of Wenck’s 

Twelfth Army were to have attacked 

43 Quotations are from comments on the draft 

MS of this volume by Mead. 

44 Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 539. 
400 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

southward into the Ninth Army’s flank 

to gain the Harz Mountains, but because 

one division got tied down in a fight with 

the British, only the other showed up. 

That was Panzer Division von Clausewitz, formed from staff and students of 

a panzer training school off the Ninth 

Army’s flank near Uelzen. At full 

strength in men, the division had at least 

fifty tanks and additional armor that included experimental and antiquated 

equipment found at the school. 45 

Conditions favoring employment of 

German forces against the Ninth Army’s 

flank had begun to develop around 15 

April when the S Corps of the adjacent 

British Second Army swung north at 

Uelzen in keeping with a British main 

effort toward Hamburg. A 60-mile 

stretch of the Ninth Army’s north flank 

from Uelzen to the Elbe was thus left 

exposed except for British cavalry patrols and a screen maintained by the 

11th Cavalry Group. 

The XIII Corps already had been having trouble in its rear areas as a result 

of bypassed Germans who holed up in 

some of the vast expanses of woodland 

in the corps zone and refused to give up. 

Astride the Wesergebirge on the east 

bank of the Weser, the 102d Division 

fought for two days against more than 

2,000 Germans who had coalesced in the 

wooded highland. Farther east on 13 and 

14 April contingents of both the 84th 

and 102d Divisions fought to eliminate 

two other pockets of resistance, one of 

which encompassed eight tanks. 

The first indication of the presence of 

Panzer Division von Clausewitz emerged 

45 MS # B–606 (Reichhelm). Tank strength is 

based on prisoner-of-war statements in XIII Corps 

G–2 Periodic Reports and on numbers destroyed 

in ensuing actions. 

on 15 April when the British identified 

a portion of the division in a counterattack at Uelzen. Before daylight the 

next day, a force estimated at a thousand 

men and thirty tanks cut the main supply 

route of the XIII Corps near General 

Gillem’s command post at Kloetze, 36 

miles southeast of Uelzen. For four more 

days, contingents of the new panzer division turned up at various points in the 

rear of the corps, involving at one time 

or another in the fight to erase them 

contingents of all three divisions in the 

corps, including the 5th Armored Division and a newly assigned division, the 

29th. Telephone communications and 

motor messenger service between the 

XIII Corps and the Ninth Army were 

disrupted for two days. Half in jest, half 

in earnest, service troops complained that 

it was safer on the front line at the Elbe 

than in the rear echelon. 

In most cases the German thrusts were 

stopped well short of the corps south 

boundary, although portions of one column did get into the zone of the XIX 

Corps, where contingents of the 2d 

Armored Division wiped them out. The 

most persistent of all the enemy groups 

hid in a forest near Kloetze. A chemical 

mortar battalion tried in vain to burn 

the Germans out with white phosphorus 

shells. A regiment of the 29th Division 

supported by 155-mm. and 8-inch pieces 

was required to “give Kloetze Forest a 

real hair cut” and eliminate the force. 46 

Although more troublesome than serious, the German forays delayed for a day 

a start on a new assignment handed the 

XIII Corps to assume responsibility for 

the vast triangle of uncleared territory 

north of the Ninth Army’s boundary 

46 Quotation is from XIII Corps G–2 Periodic 

Rpt, 20 Apr 45. 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 401 

between Uelzen and the Elbe. When the 

attack finally began on the 21st, the 5th 

Armored Division encountered and destroyed the last of Panzer Division von 

Clausewitz. All together, American 

forces had knocked out forty-seven tanks 

and more than a dozen assault guns. 

The sweep north of the former army 

boundary gained rapidly on the 22d. By 

24 April the new assignment was completed, with the Ninth Army holding the 

line of the Elbe to a point near Dannenberg, thirty miles downstream from 

Wittenberge. 

The brush of the First Army’s VII 

Corps with General Wenck’s Twelfth 

Army began in earnest on 14 April, the 

day after the 3d Armored Division had 

seized bridgeheads over the Saale River 

northwest of Halle. Heading for Dessau, 

where the Mulde River flows into the 

Elbe, the 3d Armored hit positions of 

Division Scharnhorst and Division Ulrich von Hutten, which were striving to 

hold a bridgehead west of the Elbe as a 

base for the Twelfth Army drive to the 

Harz. 

Roadblocks now were more numerous, 

more stoutly defended, and the larger 

towns, such as Koethen, eleven miles 

from Dessau, could be taken only after 

slow house-to-house fighting. One combat command reached Koethen at nightfall on the 14th; it was nightfall the next 

day before tanks and half-tracks could 

move on. Although planes of the IX 

Tactical Air Command were overhead 

much of the time, their help generally 

was limited to strafing because, like 

planes of the XXIX Tactical Air Command in support of the Ninth Army, they 

had to carry auxiliary fuel tanks in place 

of bombs. 

Except for a task force on the extreme 

south wing of the division, which came 

within range of fixed antiaircraft guns 

near Bitterfeld at the northeastern tip 

of the flak belt encompassing Leipzig, 

seldom did the columns encounter enemy 

shelling. The main obstacles were towed 

antitank guns and Panzerfausts. Sometimes the Germans turned Panzerfausts 

against deployed armored infantrymen, 

firing them in batteries like mortars. The 

going posed problems for rear echelons 

of the division too; no infantry division 

of the VII Corps was available for mopup, and these youthful Germans revealed 

no inclination to surrender simply because armored columns had passed them 

by. After Koethen was cleared in a fight 

that lasted twenty-four hours, so many 

Germans infiltrated back into the city 

that another twelve hours of fighting ensued before Koethen was finally secure. 

As the armor drew up to Dessau, a wide 

swath of forest south of the city served 

as a base for German raids and counterattacks. 

Bypassing defended towns, one task 

force fought through a portion of the 

forest to reach the Mulde River at a 

demolished autobahn bridge just two 

miles southeast of Dessau on 15 April. 

Although infantrymen scrambled across 

the wreckage to form a small bridgehead, 

difficult approaches and occasional shelling delayed building a bridge until, on 

16 April, the same stop order that had 

halted the Ninth Army the day before 

at the Elbe prompted the division commander, General Hickey, to pull back 

the bridgehead. 

As part of the armored division swept 

the west bank of the Mulde southward 

in the direction of the First Army’s V 

Corps, the attack on Dessau began early 
402 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

on 21 April. It took two days of houseto-house fighting to clear the city and 

another day to erase a hold-out position 

along a railroad leading across the Elbe 

to Rosslau. Although the ultimate fate of 

two divisions, Scharnhorst and Ulrich 

von Hutten, had been inevitable from 

the first, the two hastily formed units 

had forced upon the armor of the VII 

Corps ten days of unpleasant anticlimax 

to the war. 

The 104th Division, in the meantime, 

also had a hard fight. At Halle a die-hard 

combat commander, Generalleutnant 

Anton Rathke, was determined to hold 

out as long as possible with about 4,000 

men, including troops from a communications school, a sprinkling of SS, and 

antiaircraft gunners who were part of 

the Leipzig defense belt. 47 An aerial 

bombardment of leaflets demanding surrender and urging civilians to convince 

the troops to spare the city brought no 

immediate response. 

All bridges over the Saale on the city’s 

western boundary having been destroyed, 

General Allen sent his units to cross the 

3d Armored Division’s tactical bridges 

and strike the city from the north. A 

house-to-house fight was well under way 

when on 16 April Count Felix von 

Luckner, who had gained renown as a 

sea-raider in World War I, came into 

American lines to negotiate. While General Rathke refused to surrender, Luckner said, he did agree, in order to spare 

civilians and Allied and German patients 

47 MS # B–219. Activity of the German XLVIII 

Panzerkorps in the American Campaign Against 

Central Germany (General der Panzertruppen 

Max Freiherr von Edelsheim). Halle came under 

Edelsheim’s command as his headquarters moved 

from the Eastern Front to become part of the 

Twelfth Army only a few days before the 104th 

Division’s attack. 

in the city’s hospitals, to confine his defense to the southern third of the city. 

For three more days, through the 19th, 

the 104th Division’s 414th Infantry 

fought for Halle, killing or capturing 

unorganized three- to five-man groups in 

almost every building, while the division’s other regiments turned east to 

conquer Bitterfeld and reach the Mulde 

River. 

The other German holdout was in 

the Harz Mountains, unattainable goal 

of General Wenck’s Twelfth Army. As 

many as 70,000 Germans had congregated there for a last stand under the 

aegis of General Lucht’s Eleventh Army. 

It was with some surprise that those 

Germans found themselves under immediate attack, since they had hoped the 

Americans might merely contain them 

and drive on to the east. The Germans 

were reckoning without the plethora of 

power available to American commanders. 48 

The 1st Division pierced the western 

fringe of the Harz as early as 11 April. 

(Map 6) On the same day the 330th 

Infantry, left behind when the 83d Division drove for the Elbe as part of the 

Ninth Army, began to attack along the 

northern fringe, and later was supported 

by a combat command of the 8th Armored Division. On 13 April the 9th 

Division joined the VII Corps to sweep 

the eastern end of the Harz from a 

starting position northeast of Nordhausen. 

Many of the ingredients for a grim 

stuggle to the death were present in the 

Harz—a trapped enemy, harsh, sharply 

etched terrain cloaked by dense woods, 

48 Kesselring, in A Soldier’s Record, pages 314– 

15, gives undue credit to the holdout in the Harz 

for delaying American advance eastward. 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 403 

R Clinton 

MAP 6 

caves, mines, and winding roads that 

could be readily blocked at defiles, 

stream crossings, and almost anywhere 

else within the woods. Some of the fighting conformed to the inhospitable setting, but most of it failed to follow the 

form. Since the Germans lacked appreciable strength in mortars and artillery, 

the lethal tree bursts that often characterize forest fighting were missing. Nor 

was there the steadfast determination to 

fight to the end usually associated with 

a trapped foe. Theirs was a lost cause; 

the end of the war was at hand; the men 

represented less an army than a conglomeration; and few other than the young 

newcomers of Division Potsdam saw 

much point in dying at that stage of the 

denouement. 

Further, the Eleventh Army com- 
404 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

mander, General Lucht, doubted his assignment. The Harz had no prepared 

defenses, no stockpiled supplies, and he 

had no faith in the fancy that the hastily 

created Twelfth Army could break 

through the powerful American units 

that had flowed around the Harz. Lucht 

refused to consider a scorched earth 

policy to prolong a hopeless defense. As 

a soldier, he deemed it a matter of honor 

to follow his orders and fight, but he 

determined in the process to spare his 

troops and the civilian population as 

much as he could. 49 

The Harz was above all a network of 

roadblocks, the barriers limited in size 

only by the energy of those who constructed them, for on every hand there 

were trees enough and more. On the 

most logical routes for American advance 

—those from the west taken by the 1st 

Division—the Germans backed up the 

roadblocks with the few tanks they 

possessed (judging from the numbers 

ultimately knocked out, probably fewer 

than twenty-five). So long as a chance 

to hold the position existed, the tanks 

remained, but when American infantrymen flanked the defenses through the 

woods or advanced under cover of artillery fire or of their own tanks, the Germans at the last moment usually 

withdrew. It was 15 April, fifth day of 

the fight, before men of the 1st Division 

caught up with more than one or two 

German tanks. On that date they 

knocked out four, plus three self-propelled guns. Two days later they accounted for ten more. In a small 

counterattack at the town of Altenau, the 

Germans employed a captured U.S. light 

tank. 

49 MS # B–581 (Estor). 

During the first few days German infantrymen sometimes used the concealment of the woods to infiltrate back into 

towns and villages. In some cases they 

laid mines or erected log barriers behind 

American columns, and occasionally they 

counterattacked with perhaps as many as 

a hundred men; but in general they carried on a delaying action on a large scale. 

When pressed, the Germans either withdrew or surrendered. 

Some 200 men holding the Brocken, 

at 3,747 feet the highest point in the 

Harz, proved an exception. Here stood 

a radio station, the Eleventh Army’s only 

means of communication with OB 

WEST. Here the Germans held on 18 

April against an assault by the 330th 

Infantry that followed a bombardment 

by planes of the IX Tactical Air Command’s 365th and 404th Groups, but the 

resistance collapsed the next day when 

pressed from the other side of the hill by 

a company of the 1st Division’s 26th 

Infantry, 

Reflecting the nature of the fighting, 

the 1st Division during the first few days 

took about 200 prisoners a day, while 

the 9th Division, which was in effect 

cutting across the enemy’s rear, averaged 

a thousand. On the 16th, the 1st Division’s prisoner total rose to a thousand; 

the 9th Division took 2,000. Those figures almost doubled on the 18th as many 

Germans took to the mountain roads for 

a flight to nowhere and as American 

fighter planes made one strafing run after 

another. 

Some idea of the quandary of German 

units seeking to avoid capture was apparent in the peregrinations of the 

Eleventh Army command post: one day 

in the town of Braunlage, the next in a 

limestone quarry, another in a forester’s 
SWEEP TO THE ELBE 405 

cottage, then a cave, a monastery, and, 

at last, a wooded hill just beyond the 

northern fringe of the Harz near Blankenburg. 

On 20 April the end drew near as 

German units began to surrender en 

masse. Some drove their vehicles under 

a white flag into American lines. By the 

close of the day, the 9th Division had 

taken over 8,000 prisoners, the 1st Division, 10,000. In the mop-up that followed, stragglers surrendered passively. 

Finally, on 23 April, a patrol found the 

Eleventh Army command post near 

Blankenburg and captured the staff, including General Lucht. 

The fight was over in the Harz, at 

Halle, Dessau, and Magdeburg, the infiltrators north of the Ninth Army’s old 

boundary had been cleared, and the Germans of Wenck’s Twelfth Army were 

wondering why the Americans made no 

move toward Berlin from the 83d Division’s successful bridgehead at Barby 

when, on 23 April, the Twelfth Army 

began to turn its back on the Americans. 

Seven days earlier, on 16 April, the 

Russians had begun their attack across 

the Oder River toward Berlin, thirty 

miles away. By the 22d, two Russian 

army groups were closing on the city. 

Tank spearheads had bypassed the city 

on the north, forces approaching the 

city from the east had at one point penetrated the inner defense ring, and others 

approaching from the southeast were 

close to surrounding the German army 

defending there. All else having failed, 

Hitler decreed that the Twelfth Army 

turn and come to the rescue of Berlin. 50 

50 For the Russian offensive, see Earl F. Ziemke, 

Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the 

East, in the ARMY HISTORICAL SERIES (Washington, 1968), &. XXI. 

Having learned on 31 March through 

General Eisenhower’s message that the 

new Allied plan was to drive to the 

Leipzig-Dresden area rather than to Berlin, Marshal Stalin had moved swiftly to 

speed a Soviet thrust on the German 

capital. While professing to agree with 

Eisenhower that Berlin had lost strategic 

significance and indicating that a new 

Russian offensive would begin only in 

the second half of May, Stalin on the first 

day of April had called in the commanders of the two army groups closest 

to Berlin to determine how quickly they 

might attack. The Allies, said Stalin, 

were trying to beat the Red Army to 

Berlin. 51 

Whether Stalin believed Eisenhower’s 

message a ruse designed to lull the Russians while the Allies captured the capital or whether he merely used it to spur 

his field commanders, the effect was the 

same. In the first two weeks of April, 

the Soviet armies executed “their fastest 

major redeployment of the war.” 52 

In approximately nine of the fifteen 

days when the Russians were making 

their preparations, roughly from 5 

through 13 April, the First, Third, and 

Ninth U.S. Armies had driven some 150 

miles across central Germany, not, as 

Marshal Stalin accused in a letter to 

President Roosevelt on 3 April, through 

some deal with the Germans to open 

the front to the Allies, but because the 

51 Ziemke, Stalingrad to Berlin, pp. 467-69; Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin (Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 604ff and 

John Ehrman, Grand Strategy (London, 1957). vol. 

VI in the official British history of World War II, 

pp. 132, 142. Ryan, The Last Battle, pages 243–52, 

provides an account of the Stalin conference based 

on interviews conducted in the Soviet Union well 

after the war. 

52 Ziemke, Stalingrad to Berlin, p. 470. 
406 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Germans who might have defended central Germany were trapped in the Ruhr. 

Although American supply lines at the 

conclusion of the drive were taut, they 

were nowhere near a breaking point. 

The essentials—food, gasoline, ammunition-were ample. Only forward airfields 

were lacking, and captured German 

fields could have been put into shape 

quickly had close air support been essential. While the Twelfth Army had given 

a new complexion to the fighting for a 

few days, Wenck’s troops in the long run 

were no more than a nuisance. Even 

though the Twelfth Army imposed some 

hurt (having averaged 80 casualties a 

day in early stages of the drive, the VII 

Corps in five days of increased resistance 

averaged 260 casualties a day) its commitment in no sense threatened to halt 

or even seriously delay the offensive. Nor 

did the Germans have other than 

Wenck’s troops to pit against the American drive. 

The American armies, the Ninth in 

particular, could have continued their 

offensive some fifty more miles at least 

to the fringe of Berlin. The decision of 

the Supreme Allied Commander and 

nothing else halted the Americans at the 

Elbe and the Mulde. 53 

What taking Berlin might have accomplished to speed the end of a war 

already tumbling to a conclusion or to 

insure a postwar world more favorable 

for Allied policies was another matter; 

but it would probably have been little, 

since prestige was about all that was at 

stake. A question remained, too, of what 

the Russians might have done upon arriving at the prize of the German capital 

to find an American force already there, 

contrary to Eisenhower’s word to Stalin. 

That General Eisenhower halted his 

troops at a time when they were capable 

of continuing, in the process sparing 

them casualties not worth additional 

prestige which the powerful Allied force 

had no need of, made his decision to halt 

all the more judicious. 54 

53 On this point, see General Simpson’s letter to 

the editor in The New York Times Book Review, 

12 June 1966. 

54 In addition to sources previously cited dealing 

with this decision, see General Walter Bedell 

Smith, Eisenhower’s Six Great Decisions (New 

York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1956), pp. 181– 

86, and Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower and 

Berlin, 1945-The Decision to Halt at the Elbe 

(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1967). 
CHAPTER XVIII 

The Myth of the Redoubt 

Under General Eisenhower’s plan to 

break out of the Rhine bridgeheads and 

encircle the Ruhr—the plan that had 

served as blueprint for the spectacular 

dash to the Elbe—the role assigned General Devers’s 6th Army Group was to 

protect the 12th Army Group’s right 

flank. With the Third Army swinging almost due north toward Kassel, General 

Patch’s Seventh Army from its Rhine 

bridgehead near Worms would have to 

drive northeast with a left boundary 

anchored on the Hohe Rhoen, the 

wooded hills forming the southeastern 

wall of the Fulda Gap. 

Despite the northeastward orientation, 

General Devers was aware that as the 

southernmost Allied force, his 6th Army 

Group also would be responsible eventually for clearing southern Germany 

and dealing with an alleged last-ditch 

hold-out position the Nazis might be 

planning in the Alpine region of southern Germany and western Austria. It 

was called variously the Alpine Redoubt 

or National Redoubt. 

Most Allied intelligence officers discounted the likelihood of any formidable, self-contained fortress in the Alps, 

mainly because of limited agricultural 

and industrial resources in the region. 

Yet they did see the possibility of remnants of the German Army retiring to 

the Alps for a final suicidal stand. Future generations then might claim, 

noted General Eisenhower’s chief of intelligence, Maj. Gen. Kenneth W. D. 

Strong, that National Socialism and the 

German nation had never surrendered. 1 

In late March the Seventh Army G–2, 

Col. William W. Quinn, gave some substance to various reports of German defense preparations in the Alps. Although 

Colonel Quinn thought many of the reports fanciful and exaggerated, enough 

hard evidence existed, he concluded, to 

indicate that Hitler was consciously 

planning a final stand there. 2 

Only six days later, on the last day of 

March, so rapidly did the Western Front 

crumble that the 6th Army Group G–2, 

Brig. Gen. Eugene L. Harrison, foresaw 

an end to any German hopes of a genuine redoubt. Denied any respite after 

falling back behind the Rhine in the 

wake of the staggering defeat in the 

Saar-Palatinate, General Hawser’s Army 

Group G had proved incapable of containing any Allied bridgehead and had 

failed to close the corridor leading 

northeast to Kassel, thereby sealing the 

fate of neighboring Army Group B in 

the Ruhr. Since the greatest threat to 

German integrity was the thrust to en1 JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) Report, 

Ability of the German Army in the West to Continue the War, 10 Mar 45, SHAEF JIC Rpts. 

2 SUSA G–2 Rpt, Study of the German National 

Redoubt, 25 Mar 45. 
408 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

circle the Ruhr, Army Group G could 

count on no priority for reinforcement. 

Army Group G’s foundering Seventh 

Army, General Harrison noted, had not 

enough strength to re-establish contact 

with Army Group B. In dire need of a 

thorough rebuilding, a First Army already threatened by Rhine crossings of 

the Seventh U.S. Army and First French 

Army had to take on the job of preventing further expansion of the Oppenheim bridgehead. Reduced almost to a 

training command after withdrawing 

from the Colmar pocket, the Nineteenth Army (responsible directly to 

OB WEST rather than to Army Group 

G) was holding some 100 miles of front 

along the Rhine covering the Black Forest and could only withdraw or await 

envelopment from flank or rear. The 

present commander of the Nineteenth 

Army was a former head of the Seventh 

Army, General Brandenberger, who had 

been summarily relieved in February 

for failing to hold in the Eifel. 3 

“The turn of military events,” General Harrison concluded, “is effectively 

destroying the ‘National Redoubt’ for 

want of both territory and personnel. 

Any retreat into the mountains of southeastern Germany will hardly be voluntary on the part of the German leaders.” 4 

Even though a formal National Redoubt might not exist, the Alps represented such a natural fortress that it 

would be well to launch an attack as 

soon as possible to prevent major German forces from retiring into the region. 

General Eisenhower held that view, 

though he accorded no immediate pri3 See above, ch. VI. 

4 6th AGp Weekly Intell Sum No. 28, 31 Mar 45. 

ority to the operation. Once the Ruhr 

was encircled, the 12th Army Group’s 

drive toward Leipzig was to have full 

priority, and any operations of the 6th 

Army Group toward the southeast would 

be mounted only if they were possible 

without jeopardizing protection of the 

12th Army Group’s south flank. On the 

other hand, so near an end was the enemy’s ability to resist that the Supreme 

Commander intended soon to expand 

operations everywhere, perhaps to include reinforcing the 6th Army Group 

with a southeastward drive by the Third 

Army “to prevent Nazi occupation of a 

mountain citadel.” 5 

Looking ahead to the day when approval would be granted, General Devers contemplated a preliminary attack 

by the Seventh Army’s right wing generally to the south and southeast to cut 

behind the bulk of the enemy’s First 

Army and the entire Nineteenth Army 

in the Black Forest. Once the First 

French Army had enough troops on the 

east bank of the Rhine, the French were 

to drive south to eliminate the trapped 

enemy. Most of the Germans facing the 

army group thus dispatched, Devers presumed he could drive swiftly to the 

southeast to link with the Russians, possibly somewhere along the northwest 

frontier of Austria. 6 

Sending his G–3, Brig. Gen. Reuben 

E. Jenkins, to confer with SHAEF planners on 31 March, Devers learned that 

5 Eisenhower to AGp CG’s, SCAF 224, 8 Mar 45, 

and SCAF 247, 25 Mar 45, in SHAEF SGS PostOVERLORD Planning file, III; Ltr, SHAEF to AGp 

CG’s in GCT/370-62/Plans, 18 Mar 45; Eisenhower 

to CCS, SCAF 224, 24 Mar 45, and SCAF 260, 31 

Mar 45, in SHAEF SCAF Cable files. Quotation 

from last source. 

6 See Hq, 6th AGp, History, ch IX. 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 409 

SHAEF was thinking instead of a broad 

arclike sweep by the Seventh Army’s 

left wing deep inside Germany to the 

vicinity of Nuremberg and Bayreuth, 

thereby continuing to protect the 12th 

Army Group’s flank, thence southeast 

down the valley of the Danube to Linz 

in Austria. Two days later General Eisenhower directed General Devers to begin the thrust as soon as troops and supplies were available. 7 

The next day, 3 April, the SHAEF 

G–3, General Bull, read the special report on the redoubt prepared by the 

Seventh Army’s Colonel Quinn. While 

referring it to the SHAEF G–2 for comment, Bull suggested expanding the 6th 

Army Group operations into the Alps of 

western Austria. When the commander 

of Allied forces approaching the Alps 

from the Italian side, Field Marshal Sir 

Harold R.L.G. Alexander, indicated he 

would welcome such a drive, General 

Eisenhower approved it. 8 

Although SHAEF intelligence a few 

days later concluded that no positive 

evidence existed of German strategy 

based on a National Redoubt, the possibility that the German armed forces 

would continue to resist unless Hitler 

died or was overthrown was real, in 

which case the Alps appeared the logical 

place for a final stand. Since troops from 

the Eastern, Western, and Italian fronts 

might converge there, the contemplated 

7 Ibid. See also, Eisenhower to AGp CG’s, SCAF 

261, 2 Apr 45, in SHAEF SCAF Cable files. 

8 Memo, Operations in Austria, 4 Apr 45, GCT/ 

370-68/Plans, SHAEF SGS Post-OVERLORD Planning, IV; Memo re Evaluation of SUSA Study of 

German National Redoubt, 3 Apr 45, SHAEF G–3, 

Ops file 175; Eisenhower to SACMED, SCAF 267, 

6 Apr 45. in SHAEF SCAF Cahle files; SACMED 

to Eisenhower, NAF 915, 9 Apr 45, OPD IN files, 

1–30 Apr 45. 

thrust into the Alps still might be 

needed. 9 

The First Phase Beyond the Rhine 

As these plans gradually took shape, 

General Patch’s Seventh Army was continuing the assignment of protecting the 

12th Army Group flank. Having crossed 

the Rhine at Worms and established 

breakout conditions in the bridgehead 

by nightfall of 27 March, General Haislip’s XV Corps was the logical choice 

for the main role on the left. (Map 

XV) The corps was to drive some fifty 

miles from the Main River northeast 

through the Spessart Mountains to the 

Hohe Rhoen. To protect Haislip’s flank 

and to prepare a way for the expected 

turn to the southeast, General Patch 

planned to commit General Milburn’s 

XXI Corps in the center to drive east 

through the Odenwald, General 

Brooks’s VI Corps on the right to attack 

southeast across a plateau known as the 

Kraichgau Gate between the Odenwald 

and the Black Forest. With ten infantry 

and three armored divisions, the Seventh Army had enough strength for all 

three thrusts. 

While the 3d and 45th Divisions 

passed through rear elements of the 

Third Army in the Oppenheim bridgehead to reach jump-off positions being 

vacated by Third Army units along the 

Main near Aschaffenburg, the 12th Armored Division on 28 March pushed 

into the OdenwaId as a vanguard of the 

XXI Corps. To open a route for the VI 

Corps, the 44th Division drove south 

from the Worms bridgehead to reduce 

Mannheim. Although surrender negotia9 See JIC SHAEF (45) 13 (Final), The National 

Redoubt, 10 Apr 45, in SHAEF JIC Rpts. 
410 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

tions conducted with the city’s acting 

burgomaster went awry when German 

troops shelled American parliamentaries 

with mortars, the Germans pulled out 

during the night of 28 March, and men 

of the 44th Division moved in the next 

day. Since Mannheim lies on both banks 

of the Neckar River, occupying the city 

provided a bonus of a bridgehead over 

the Neckar. 

In the main thrust by the XV Corps, 

the 45th Division crossed the Main 

River on 28 March on the railroad 

bridge, just south of Aschaffenburg, that 

had been taken earlier by the 4th Armored Division—the place where Task 

Force Baum had begun its ill-fated 

foray to Hammelburg. In the three days 

since Task Force Baum had passed, General Hahm had sent one of the three 

divisions constituting his LXXXII 

Corps to contain the little bridgehead. 

The 45th Division thus had to fight 

hard to break out. 

The firmest resistance was on the left, 

from the fringes of Aschaffenburg, 

where a combat commander took seriously orders from OKW to fight to the 

end. There occurred one of the few instances in Germany where civilians in 

large numbers joined actively in the 

fighting, sometimes lining rooftops to 

drop grenades on U.S. troops below. 

German ranks also were heavy with Hitler Youth, boys who had hardly begun 

to shave. 

To spare his own men, the 45th Division commander, General Frederick, directed his 157th Infantry to clear Aschaffenburg systematically, making maximum use of artillery and aerial bombardment. For six days men of the 157th 

fought from house to house until at last, 

on the morning of 3 April, the combat 

commander, who had hanged several 

German soldiers and civilians for advocating surrender, gave himself up. 

The rest of the 45th Division meanwhile had advanced twenty-five miles to 

the northeast of Aschaffenburg. The 3d 

Division, having crossed the Main upstream from Aschaffenburg early on 30 

March without opposition, traversed the 

wooded ground lying in a great southward loop of the Main to reach the river 

a second time twenty miles to the northeast. Against neither division was resistance determined. Most delays were 

attributable to the densely wooded hill 

country and its winding roads, sometimes a defended town, and occasionally a roadblock. “Sixty-one minute 

roadblocks,” some German civilians 

called them derisively—the American 

soldiers would laugh at them for sixty 

minutes, then tear them down in one. 10 

Committed on the 2d of April, generally along the boundary between the 

two infantry divisions, the 14th Armored Division also reached the Main 

for the second time, and on the 3d 

seized Lohr, where Task Force Baum 

earlier had shot up a column of German vehicles. The Germans fought all 

night in Lohr, but as elsewhere, it was 

no more than a last-ditch stand by conglomerate units often lacking communications with higher command. 

As the gap between Army Group B 

and Army Group G facilitated the Third 

Army’s drive on Kassel and the subsequent thrust across central Germany by 

the First and Third Armies, so it also 

markedly influenced the campaign of 

the American Seventh Army. Constant 

efforts to close the gap to the north had 

10 Taggert, History of the Third Infantry Division, p. 346. 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 411 

“SIXTY-ONE MINUTE ROADBLOCK,” typical of obstacles erected before many 

German towns. 

the effect of pulling Army Group G’s 

Seventh Army, including Hahm’s 

LXXXIl Corps on the south wing, 

gradually northward, in the process creating a gap within Army Group G between the First and Seventh Armies. 11 

To OKW’s continuing insistence that 

the Seventh Army close the gap to the 

north, the army group commander, General Hausser, replied with a counterpro11 See MS # B–703, The Final Battle in Central 

and Southern Germany Until Capitulation, 22 Mar 

45–6 May 45 (Oberst Horst Wilutzky, CofS, AGP 

G). 

posal. The only hope for establishing a 

cohesive defense, Hausser believed, was 

to relinquish control of the area north 

of the Main River, turning the Seventh 

Army over to direct control of the Commander in Chief West, with whom 

Hausser himself had lost communications; Army Group G with the First and 

Nineteenth Armies might then withdraw into southern Germany. For his 

trouble in arriving at this solution, 

Hausser paid with his job. On 2 April 

his replacement, General der Infanterie 

Friedrich Schulz, reported from the 
412 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Eastern Front to the Reich Chancellery 

for a personal briefing by Hitler. 

It was imperative, Hitler told Schulz, 

to hold out another three or four weeks 

in the west, whereupon so many new 

jet-propelled aircraft would join the 

fight that the Germans would obtain 

“equilibrium, if not superiority” in the 

air. “This would at the same time,” Hitler said, “entirely change the situation 

on the ground as well.” 12 

The impact that German efforts to 

close the gap to Army Group B was 

having on the First and Seventh Armies 

had become strikingly apparent in the 

Odenwald, thickly wooded hill country 

lying between the great southward loop 

of the Main River and a northward hook 

of the Neckar River twenty miles to the 

south. Obviously gambling that the Germans had little for defending the Odenwald, General Patch had sent armor 

rather than infantry to lead the way 

through the rugged terrain. 

Defending the Odenwald was the responsibility of General von Oriola’s XIII 

Corps, which had absorbed a one-two 

punch from the Third Army’s crossing 

of the Rhine at Oppenheim and the 

Seventh Army’s crossing at Worms. Separated from its parent Seventh Army by 

the Third Army thrust, the XIII Corps 

had passed to control of the First Army 

even as U.S. troops began to exploit the 

bridgehead opposite Worms. Two divisions having been nearly annihilated 

in opposing the Rhine crossing and a 

third still committed farther south, General von Oriola had only a hodgepodge 

for holding the Odenwald and little 

12 MS # B–583, Report on the Position, Mission, 

and General Measures of Heeresgruppe ‘G’ in 

April 1945 (General der Infanterie Friedrich 

Schulz). 

GENERAL MILBURN 

enough of that. To his knowledge he 

had not a single antitank gun, assault 

gun, or tank. Compounding an already 

desperate situation, Oriola’s right flank 

was anchored on air. 13 

As a vanguard of General Milburn’s 

XXI Corps, the 12th Armored Division 

went through the briar patch of the 

Odenwald as if its tanks were rabbits. An 

effort by Oriola’s XIII Corps to build a 

new position along creek beds in the 

twenty-mile gap between the loops of the 

Main and the Neckar attracted scarcely 

any notice. Although the First Army 

commander, General Foertsch, committed the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier 

Division, which he had hoped to rehabilitate to form an army reserve, the 

panzer grenadiers hardly managed to get 

north of the Neckar before U.S. infantry 

13 For German operations in this period, see MSS 

# B–173, XIII Corps, 21 March-a May 1945 

(Major W. Gaebelin); # B–392 (Oriola); # B–348 

(Wolf Hauser). 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 413 

following close behind the armor forced 

them onto the defensive. By 30 March 

the armor had emerged from the Odenwald into relatively open country. 

The next day, as General von Oriola 

visited the command post of one of his 

makeshift divisions, a staff officer rushed 

in with news that American tanks were 

approaching. They closed in before 

Oriola could get away. The general surrendered. 

By nightfall of the 31st, the 12th 

Armored Division had reached the 

Tauber River, a tributary of the Main 

almost sixty miles beyond the Rhine and 

little more than a day’s run at the pace 

the tanks had been traveling from the 

corps objective of Wuerzburg on a second big southward loop of the Main. 

Although some indications of stiffening 

redstance were apparent along the Tauber, they were nothing to excite concern. 

The resistance reflected efforts by 

Army Group G to bring the headlong 

retreat of the First Army’s right wing to 

an end, peg the front on fairly defensible 

river lines, and shore up the widening 

gap between the First and Seventh 

Armies. Assuming command of Wehrkreis XIII and its replacement and training troops, General Hausser in one of 

his last acts before his relief put them 

under command of headquarters of the 

XIII SS Corps, pulled that headquarters 

from the First Army’s south wing, and 

charged the commander, General Simon, 

with building a new line along the 

Tauber and across a narrow land bridge 

between the Tauber and the Jagst River. 

Commanded now by Generalleutnant 

Max Bork, the troops that had comprised 

the south wing of the XIII Corps and 

thus had escaped the thrust of the 12th 

Armored Division were to extend the 

line southwest along the Jagst and south 

along the Neckar River to Heilbronn. 14 

With American armor on the east bank 

of the Tauber by nightfall of 31 March, 

the northern part of the new line was 

under immediate threat. Indeed, except 

at Koenigshofen, where 400 years earlier 

the Peasants’ War had come to a bloody 

end, both the 12th Armored Division 

and the infantry of the XXI Corps (the 

4th and 42d Divisions) took the Tauber 

in stride. At Koenigshofen an SS antiaircraft replacement regiment that included a battalion of mobile 88-mm. guns 

fought for the better part of two days 

against a contingent of the 12th Armored 

Division and two battalions of the 4th 

Division’s 22d Infantry, but late on 2 

April the town was cleared. 

On the same day the bulk of all three 

divisions of the XXI Corps drew up to 

the Main River along the big loop embracing Wuerzburg, and a battalion of 

the 4th Division’s 8th Infantry crossed 

the river nine miles southeast of Wuerzburg at the southern end of the loop. 

General Simon and the XIII SS Corps 

now tried desperately to establish a new 

line from Koenigshofen to the Main, but 

the odds against building a firm position 

were high. In addition to the shortages 

of troops and transport, so numerous and 

persistent were American planes that no 

German unit could move with impunity 

during daylight. 

General Simon had, too, that continually nagging problem of an open flank. 

Although responsibility for defending 

the Main River lay with the Seventh 

14 In addition to sources previously cited, see 

MS # B–737, Employment of the XIII SS Army 

Corps Between the Rhine and the Alps (SS 

Obersturmbannfuehrer Ekkehard Albert, CofS. 

XIII SS Corps). 
414 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

GENERAL BROOKS. (Photograph taken 

in 1949.) 

Army to the north, so wide was the gap 

between the First and Seventh Armies 

that Simon had to figure on defending 

the river at least as far north as Wuerzburg. The next day, 3 April, as the 42d 

Division began to cross the Main at 

Wuerzburg, Army Group G formally 

handed responsibility for the city and the 

river line south of it to the First Army. 

By 3 April both the south wing of the 

Seventh Army and the north wing of the 

First were in unmitigated trouble from 

the rampaging divisions of the U.S. XV 

and XXI Corps. At the same time similar 

problems had been building up for the 

other wing of the First Army as the U.S. 

VI Corps pressed its role in the breakout. 

As with the XXI Corps, armor took 

the lead in General Brooks’s VI Corps, 

in this case, the 10th Armored Division, 

while the 63d and 100th Infantry Divisions followed to mop up. Charged 

with maintaining contact with the XXI 

Corps to the north, one column of the 

armor had to advance through the southern reaches of the Odenwald, generally 

astride the snakelike Neckar River; but 

the main body of the armored division 

attacked southeastward toward Heilbronn over relatively open ground of the 

Kraichgau Gate. 

Had it not been for the presence of 

the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, 

which had remained in the southern 

fringe of the Odenwald following .the 

unsuccessful effort to halt the XXI Corps, 

the men of the VI Corps probably would 

have advanced with the same ease as their 

neighbors to the north. Facing makeshift formations of the LXXX Corps 

(Beyer) , the center and right columns 

of the 10th Armored Division roamed 

almost at will in the Kraichgau Gate. 

One overeager task force on 2 April penetrated several miles across the army 

boundary, an event that convinced General de Lattre that he had been wise to 

hurry his Rhine crossings lest the Americans deny the French the honor of a 

crossing. 15 

On the first day, 1 April, the American 

armor on the left also moved swiftly, 

more than two-thirds the distance from 

Heidelberg to confluence of the Jagst 

with the Neckar, but on the second day 

the panzer grenadiers barred the way. 

Conducting a fighting withdrawal, these 

troops on several occasions provoked 

sharp skirmishes. As the armor neared 

the Jagst River, the Germans called down 

occasionally heavy fire from assault guns 

15 See above, ch. XV. 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 415 

on the heights to the east. The center 

column too had to push back determined 

delaying detachments of panzer grenadiers when on 3 April its tanks drew up 

to the Neckar north of Heilbronn. 

By nightfall of 3 April the Neckar 

from Heilbronn back to the Rhine nevertheless was clear, and just above the 

confluence with the Jagst armored infantrymen of the 10th Armored’s left column forged a small bridgehead across 

the Jagst. Although the bridgehead appeared to afford a ready opportunity for 

getting on with the pursuit the next day, 

the Germans’ failure to melt away before 

it and the volume of shelling emanating 

from various points along the crescent 

formed by the Jagst and the Neckar gave 

many in the VI Corps pause. 

The Americans could not yet know 

that they had come up against the new 

line planned by General Foertsch’s First 

Army. The panzer grenadiers now were 

a part of that line under the XIII Corps, 

while all that remained of the LXXX 

Corps extended the line behind the 

Neckar south beyond Heilbronn. Pushed 

southward by the French, the First 

Army’s southernmost force, the XC 

Corps (Petersen), would be unable to 

extend the line farther, and would relinquish its units instead to the Nineteenth Army in the Black Forest; but by 

one stratagem or another, frantic German efforts had produced enough 

strength along the Jagst-Neckar crescent 

to give the war a brief, troublesome 

turn. 16 

16 German material is from MS # B–320, The 

Final Combat of the LXXX Army Corps From the 

Marne to the Danube (General der Infanterie Dr. 

Franz Beyer), and MS # B–507, The Fighting 

From 20 March–6 May 1945 (General der Infanterie Erich Petersen). 

The Struggle for Heilbronn and 

Crailsheim 

Presence of the First Army’s only remaining battleworthy division, the 17th 

SS Panzer Grenadier, plus imposing river 

obstacles, gave real substance to that part 

of the new German line along the JagstNeckar crescent. In addition, General 

Foertsch had managed through prodigious efforts to accumulate a sizable conglomeration of other troops—two 

battalions of an engineer school, several 

regular engineer battalions, replacement 

artillery and antiaircraft units, Volkssturm, a few tanks and assault guns, and 

a miscellany, including several hundred 

Hitler Youth, belonging to the combat 

commander of Heilbronn. These troops 

and remnants of four divisions, plus the 

panzer grenadiers, were all subordinated 

to General Bork’s XIII Corps. Loose 

ends of two other divisions, including 

the 2d Mountain Division, were positioned on the north wing of Beyer’s 

LXXX Corps and thus might be used to 

help defend Heilbronn. 

Before daylight on 4 April, a battalion 

of the 100th Division’s 398th Infantry 

slipped silently across the Neckar in assault boats a mile or so north of Heilbronn. As the men turned south toward 

the city after daybreak, a German battalion counterattacked sharply. The 

ensuing fight forced the American infantrymen back to within a few hundred 

feet of the river. There they held, but 

not until another battalion crossed under fire in late afternoon were they able 

to resume their advance. Even then they 

could penetrate no deeper than a thousand yards, scarcely enough to rid the 

crossing site of small arms fire. Until the 
416 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

bridgehead could be expanded, engineers 

had no hope of building a bridge. 

Impressed by the resistance there and 

against the minuscule bridgehead established the day before over the Jagst by 

armored infantrymen of the 10th Armored Division, the commander of the VI 

Corps, General Brooks, decided to employ a wide enveloping maneuver to 

erase the enemy’s new position. Sending 

Combat Command B south along the 

Neckar in search of an intact bridge, he 

directed the rest of the armored division 

to move northeast to the land bridge 

between the Jagst and Tauber Rivers. 

While CCR blocked there to the east, 

CCA was to drive southeast twenty-five 

miles to the road center of Crailsheim. 

Leaving a task force behind to hold 

Crailsheim, the rest of CCA was to drive 

west and northwest and in conjunction 

with CCB, which was to cross the Neckar 

south of Heilbronn, take the enemy 

along the Jagst-Neckar crescent in rear. 

It was a daring, imaginative maneuver, 

one apparently justified by the grand 

sweeps underway elsewhere in the U.S. 

Seventh Army. While CCB sought a way 

across the Neckar, the rest of the armored 

division moved swiftly across the JagstTauber land bridge (already pierced by 

a regiment of the 63d Division) . As darkness fell on 5 April, CCA had a leg on 

the drive to Crailsheim. Resistance was 

no more than that normally encountered 

in a breakthrough operation—demolished bridges, occasional roadblocks, 

small arms fire, antitank rockets. Before 

dark on the second day, 6 April, CCA 

had plunged all the way into Crailsheim. 

On the third day, 7 April, trouble 

started. Although the bulk of CCA advanced twelve miles westward from Crailsheim to begin the second phase of 

enveloping the Jagst-Neckar crescent, resistance occasionally included fire from 

88-mm. pieces and dug-in, determined infantry. At the same time a small task 

force of CCR, driving southeast toward 

Crailsheim to keep open CCA’s line of 

communications, encountered stubborn 

clumps of German infantry supported by 

antitank guns. On occasion through the 

day German planes strafed the armored 

column and at Crailsheim subjected 

American troops to a rare bombing raid. 

The task force of CCR laagered for the 

night without getting through to Crailsheim. 

To the Germans, CCA’s deep penetration threatened to erase all hope of Army 

Group G’s preventing an American drive 

into southern Germany to roll up the 

First and Nineteenth Armies. Almost in 

desperation, the First Army commander, 

General Foertsch, strove to accumulate 

troops to throw against it. He directed 

small contingents pulled from the line of 

the Jagst to move against CCA’s communications while a battalion from an 

SS training school counterattacked at 

Crailsheim. As luck would have it, a 

so-called Alpine regiment, recently 

formed by a neighboring Wehrkreis, was 

on the way northward for commitment 

against the U.S. XXI Corps and had 

reached a point north of Crailsheim. 

Foertsch committed the Alpine regiment 

too against CCA’s communications. 

At Crailsheim the SS troops penetrated 

deep into thinly held American positions 

on 8 April, while northwest of the little 

city the Alpine regiment blocked roads 

so effectively that the task force of CCR 

got no place in its efforts to break 

through. Before the day was out, the 10th 

Armored Division commander, General 

Morris, called on CCB, which had failed 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 417 

to find a bridge over the Neckar, to trace 

CCA’s path to Crailsheim, while the 

Seventh Army commander, General 

Patch, released a regiment of the 44th 

Division (Maj. Gen. William F. Dean) 

from his reserve to help. The commander 

of the VI Corps, General Brooks, canceled the plan to drive west on Heilbronn, substituting a shallower envelopment to the northwest against the Jagst 

line. 

A contingent of CCB finally got 

through with a few supply trucks early 

on the 9th, but to travel the road to 

Crailsheim remained a task for the fearless and the strong. Before night fell on 

the 9th, sixty C–47’s of the IX Troop 

Carrier Command flew to a captured airfield just outside the city to deliver supplies and remove a growing number of 

wounded. While the C–47’s were on the 

field, German planes bombed and strafed 

them, though with little effect. The 

strikes were part of some 100 sorties 

flown against the VI Corps on 9 April, 

most in the vicinity of Crailsheim. Only 

those few veterans of the corps who had 

fought long months ago in Italy could 

recall a day when German air had been 

so active. 

On the 10th, as C–47’s flew another 

resupply mission to Crailsheim, that part 

of CCA defending the city repulsed one 

more counterattack by a second Alpine 

regiment. Demolished bridges meanwhile frustrated the bulk of CCA in the 

effort to make a limited envelopment of 

the enemy’s Jagst line. The armor had 

to settle for a route northwestward that 

before the end of the day provided contact with the 63d Division along upper 

reaches of the Jagst but no envelopment 

of enemy positions. 

To American commanders. the embattled salient at Crailsheim was not 

worth the effort to hold it. As night fell 

on 11 April and as German commanders 

watched in relieved incredulity, the last 

of the armor pulled back. 

Bitter from the first, the fighting for 

Heilbronn had continued heavy. Although three of the 100th Division’s battalions eventually crossed into the little 

bridgehead north of the city to push 

south into a melange of factories on the 

northern outskirts, the going always was 

slow. Since the crossing site remained 

under German fire, engineers still had 

no hope of putting in a bridge. Without 

close fire support, the infantrymen depended upon artillery on the west bank 

of the Neckar, but fire was difficult to adjust in the confined factory district. Protected from shelling by sturdy buildings, 

the Germans seldom surrendered except 

at the point of a rifle, though many of 

the Hitler Youth had had enough after 

only a brief flurry of fanatic resistance. 

At one. point, in response to intense 

mortar fire, a platoon of Hitler Youth 

soldiers ran screaming into American 

lines to surrender while their officers 

shot at them to make them stop. 

During the night of 5 April, a battalion of the 397th Infantry crossed the 

Neckar south of Heilbronn and found 

resistance at that point just as determined. There engineers had nearly 

completed a bridge during the afternoon 

of the 7th when German artillery found 

the range. Although the engineers at last 

succeeded early the next morning, less 

than a company of tanks and two platoons of tank destroyers had crossed before German shells again knocked out 

the bridge. Two days later much the 

same thing. happened to a heavy ponton 
418 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

ferry after it had transported only a few 

more tanks and destroyers across. 

Not until 12 April was the rubble of 

Heilbronn cleared of Germans and a 

bridge built across the Neckar. In nine 

days of fighting, the 100th Division lost 

85 men killed and probably three times 

that number wounded. In the process, 

men of the 100th captured 1,500 Germans. 17 

The 63d Division, aided in later stages 

by tanks of the 10th Armored Division, 

had in the meantime kept up constant 

pressure against the enemy’s line along 

the Jagst River, driving southwestward 

from the vicinity of the Jagst-Tauber 

land bridge in hope of trapping the 17th 

SS Panzer Grenadier Division near the 

confluence of the Jagst and the Neckar. 18 

17 Within a company of the 100th Division’s 

398th Infantry, sent north to reinforce the little 

bridgehead established by contingents of the 10th

Armored Division near the juncture of the Jagst 

and Neckar, Pfc. Mike Colalillo on 7 April displayed extraordinary courage in the face of heavy 

German fire. His company pinned down, Colalillo 

climbed on a supporting tank and opened fire 

with a machine gun mounted on the turret; when 

ammunition was exhausted, he grabbed a submachine gun and continued forward on foot. He 

alone killed or wounded twenty-five Germans. He 

was awarded the Medal of Honor. 

18 In fighting along the Jagst River on 6 April, 

a forward observer of the 63d Division’s 861st 

Field Artillery Battalion, 1st Lt. James E. Robinson, Jr., took charge when the commander of the 

infantry company he was supporting was killed. 

Despite a serious wound in the throat from a 

shell fragment, he led twenty-three surviving members of the company to capture a defended town. 

Only then, when the wound had so weakened him 

that he could no longer speak, did Lieutenant 

Robinson turn from the attack and walk almost 

two miles to an aid station; there he collapsed and 

died from his wound. On the same day, S. Sgt. 

John R. Crews of the same division’s 253d Infantry 

charged alone against a German machine gun that 

poured flanking fire on his company. In hand-tohand fighting, he eliminated the machine gun and 

a supporting automatic rifle. Both Sergeant Crews 

Although a contingent of armor at last 

established contact with the 100th Division near Heilbronn on 14 April, the 

panzer grenadiers had left. 

General Foertsch’s hasty but surprisingly strong position along the JagstNeckar crescent had required eleven days 

of often heavy fighting to reduce. In view 

of the determined resistance, American 

casualties were relatively light, a daily 

average for the VI Corps of approximately 230. Yet that number was almost 

double the number of casualties the corps 

suffered in the pursuit up to the two 

rivers. 

To the Hohe Rhoen and Schweinfurt 

On the right wing of the First Army 

and the left of the Seventh Army, the 

Germans had been able to achieve no 

such reprieve from slashing strokes of 

other portions of the U.S. Seventh Army. 

General Hahm’s LXXXIl Corps was 

powerless to do more than delay General Haislip’s XV Corps briefly at occasional towns and roadblocks as Haislip’s 

armor and infantry marched side by side 

to clear the Hohe Rhoen and protect 

the 12th Army Group’s south flank. 

Having come too late on the scene to 

build a firm position behind the Tauber 

River, General Simon’s XIII SS Corps 

was also powerless to stop General Milburn’s XXI Corps at the Main River 

near Wuerzburg. 

In the XV Corps, CCB experienced 

the 14th Armored Division’s only major 

fight, at Gemuenden, at the confluence of 

the Fraenkische Saale River and the 

Main. With the help of fighter-bombers 

and Lieutenant Robinson were awarded the Medal 

of Honor, the latter posthumously. 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 419 

A TANK OF THE 14TH ARMORED DIVISION enters the prisoner-of-war camp at 

Hammelburg. 

of the XII Tactical Air Command, which 

set many of the houses aflame, the armor 

cleared the town in an overnight attack. 

The next day, 6 April, CCB’s tanks liberated some 4,000 Allied prisoners of 

war at Hammelburg. Only 75 Americans, 

most of them wounded—including General Patton’s son-in-law, Colonel Waters 

—remained in the camp, the rest having 

been marched to the east as an aftermath 

of the raid by Task Force Baum. 

“I have this?” asked an ecstatic Serb, 

clutching a shoulder patch of the armored division; “I frame it, for my children and grandchildren.” 19 

On 7 April, the 14th Armored’s CCA 

in conjunction with a regiment of the 

3d Division took Bad Neustadt on the 

Fraenkische Saale only a few miles from 

the Thueringer Wald and the boundary 

with the Third Army, while the rest of 

the 3d Division and the 45th advanced 

almost unimpeded over narrow, winding 

19 Capt. Joseph Carter, The History of the 14th 

Armored Division (privately printed, no pagination). 
420 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

mountain roads to sweep the Hohe 

Rhoen. The next day the armor established contact with the Third Army. 

In the XXI Corps, brief delays occurred. Although a battalion of the 4th 

Division on 2 April crossed into the last 

big southward loop of the Main River, a 

counterattack and then a stubborn defense by a Kampfgruppe built around a 

company of tanks of the XIII SS Corps 

delayed clearing the southern end of the 

Main loop. Only on 5 April did infantry 

of the 4th Division and tanks of the 12th 

Armored cross the ground lying within 

the loop and make another crossing of 

the meandering Main at Kitzingen, 

southeast of Wuerzburg. 

At Wuerzburg men of the 42d Division 

gained their first foothold over the Main 

by using two canoes found along the 

bank. By the 4th, two regiments were 

inside the city. Because engineers quickly 

spanned a 100-foot gap in a highway 

bridge, no problems developed in getting 

tanks and tank destroyers into the fight, 

but clearing the city, which had been 

heavily bombed, was slow. A heterogeneous force under a combat commander, 

including police and firemen and some 

civilians, holed up in the rubble, and it 

took most of three days to root them out. 

The climax came on the 5th with defeat 

of a last-gasp company-size counterattack 

aimed at the bridge over the Main. 

With the 42d Division delayed at 

Wuerzburg, the XXI Corps commander, 

General Milburn, sent the 12th Armored 

Division’s CCA on toward the next objective, Schweinfurt, twenty-two miles to 

the northeast, oft-bombed hub of the 

German ball-bearing industry. Hardly 

had the armor begun to advance on 5 

April when the tanks ran into a defensive 

position erected across the main highway 

to Schweinfurt by a regiment formed 

from students and staff of an infantry 

school. Attached to General Hahm’s 

LXXXII Corps, these troops had hurriedly gone into position only the night 

before as impending collapse of the defense at Wuerzburg threatened to expose 

further Hahm’s south flank. 20 

The German infantry was still holding 

CCA’s tanks at bay when on 7 April men 

of the 42d Division arrived to help. As 

the Germans at last fell back, the 42d 

Division commander, General Collins, 

sent one regiment to seize high ground 

north of Schweinfurt, cutting escape 

routes in that direction, while CCA 

crossed the Main River and on 10 April 

cut a remaining major road to the southeast of the city. Medium bombers of the 

9th Bombardment Division at the same 

time were giving the city a final working 

over. Infantry in one day, 11 April, 

cleared the bulk of resistance from the 

rubble that Schweinfurt had become. 

A Shift to South and Southeast 

These drives of the XV and XXI 

Corps to the northeast and the Third 

Army’s change of direction to the east 

and southeast as it approached Kassel had 

created a converging attack. Both the 

XV Corps and the north wing of the XXI 

Corps were only a few miles from positions of the 11th Armored Division, right 

wing unit of the Third Army, which was 

driving along the southwestern slopes of 

the Thueringer Wald. Caught in the 

squeeze was Hahm’s LXXXII Corps. 

Soon after the new Army Group G 

commander, General Schulz, had reached 

the front, he had come to the same con20 MS # B–183 (Ingelheim). 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 421 

clusion for which his predecessor had 

been relieved—the army group should 

relinquish the Seventh Army to direct 

control of the Commander in Chief West 

and fall back to the south and southeast. 

Devoid of communications to Field Marshal Kesselring, Schulz recommended this 

step directly to OKW but received no 

reaction until 9 April, after the U.S. XV 

Corps had established contact with the 

Third Army, thus cutting off the 

LXXXII Corps from the rest of the Seventh Army. Ordering Schulz to make 

Hahm’s corps a part of Foertsch’s First 

Army, OKW tacitly approved Army 

Group G’s relinquishing the Seventh 

Army. 

Although OKW still granted no authority for Army Group G to withdraw 

to the south and southeast, the American 

thrusts already had forced the bulk of 

the First Army in those directions. Only 

Hahm’s LXXXII Corps had a choice, 

and that was either to conform or be 

trapped against the Thueringer Wald. 

Both General Haislip’s XV Corps and 

General Milburn’s XXI Corps had to 

turn south and southeast at this point or 

be pinched out at the Thueringer Wald 

by the Third Army’s southeastward 

drive. They began their turns on 11 

April, the XV Corps aiming toward Bamberg and Nuremberg, the XXI Corps 

toward Ansbach, southwest of Nuremberg. Two days later, the enemy’s defense 

at Heilbronn and along the Jagst River 

having been broken, General Brooks’s 

VI Corps turned south into the Loewenstein Hills southeast of Heilbronn. 

Although these moves marked the end 

of the Seventh Army’s northeastward 

thrust to protect the flank of the 12th 

Army Group, they represented no unrestricted shift to the drive into southern 

Germany. As early as 4 April, General 

Devers had placed broad though definite 

restrictions on any advances except for 

the northeastward drive of the XV and 

XXI Corps. Faced with increasing responsibilities for securing rear areas and 

performing occupation functions, Devers 

considered his strength too limited for 

an all-out thrust. The First French Army 

was particularly weak, still having to 

keep some troops on the west bank of 

the Rhine facing the Black Forest and 

others to contain the enemy along the 

French-Italian frontier and in ports 

along the French coast. This left to 

Patch’s Seventh Army a disproportionate 

share of the 6th Army Group front, 

some 120 miles, more than double the 

width of army sectors in the 12th Army 

Group. The scattered but nonetheless 

troublesome resistance the Germans continued to muster, in contrast to a virtual 

collapse in front of parts of the 12th 

Army Group, gave substance to Devers’s 

concern. 21 

Only with arrival of the Ninth Army 

at the Elbe and unqualified success of 

the 12th Army Group’s drive assured did 

General Eisenhower act to bolster the 

6th Army Group and reduce the width 

of its zone. On 15 April he issued a 

directive to govern remaining operations 

for the defeat of Germany. While Montgomery’s 21 Army Group drove northeast to the Baltic Sea near Luebeck and 

cleared the German littoral and the 

Netherlands, the 12th Army Group was 

to hold with two armies along the ElbeMulde line and send the Third Army 

southeast down the valley of the Danube 

River into Austria to Salzburg for 

eventual linkup with the Russians. The 

21 See entries in Devers and Seventh Army Diaries 

for this period. 
422 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

6th Army Group was to drive south and 

southeast into western Austria, making 

its main effort at first on the right wing 

of the Seventh Army to trap the enemy 

Nineteenth Army in the Black Forest. 22 

For the offensive into southern Germany and Austria, General Eisenhower 

shifted the boundary between the 6th 

and 12th Army Groups west to Wuerzburg. From there the boundary ran 

southeast, splitting the Austrian frontier 

midway between Munich and Salzburg 

and reducing by about fifty miles the 

width of the 6th Army Group zone. 

While the Third Army was to be brought 

up to 15 divisions, the 6th Army Group 

was to be afforded unrestricted use of 2 

divisions that had been assigned for 

some weeks but had been earmarked as 

a SHAEF reserve. French and American 

divisions to be employed in southern 

Germany were to total 34. In addition 

Eisenhower offered use of the First Allied 

Airborne Army should Devers want it, 

and specifically reserved a new airborne 

division, the 13th, for a possible airborne 

assault to speed the main effort south of 

Stuttgart. 

Flying to headquarters of the 12th 

Army Group on 16 April, General Devers conferred with Generals Bradley and 

Patton. Rather than effect a time-consuming relief of those Seventh Army 

divisions already engaged in what was to 

become the Third Army zone, Devers 

and Patton agreed that they should continue to attack but should shift their 

axes of advance to the southeast. The 

shift would carry them in time into the 

Seventh Army’s altered zone. They later 

agreed that the 14th Armored Division, 

which was committed close to the former 

22 SCAF 281, FWD 19226, in SHAEF SGS PostOVERLORD Planning file, 381, IV. 

Third Army boundary, should become a 

part of the Third Army and that General 

Patch should receive a new armored division. 

The Supreme Commander’s instructions for the offensive were in line with 

General Devers’s original plan, which the 

6th Army Group commander had had to 

forgo in order to protect the 12th Army 

Group flank. The right wing of the 

Seventh Army (General Brooks’s VI 

Corps) was to make the main effort up 

the valley of the Neckar River past Stuttgart to Huebingen, thence south to Lake 

Constance (Bodensee) and the Swiss 

frontier. The German Nineteenth Army 

thus trapped in the Black Forest, the VI 

Corps was to assist the First French 

Army in clearing the forest while the 

other two corps of the Seventh Army continued south and southeast across the 

Danube and into Austria. 23 

Nuremberg and the Drive to the Danube 

Even as these plans and orders were 

being formulated, General Haislip’s XV 

Corps had been making its turn from 

northeast to southeast, heading first for 

Bamberg at the meeting of the Main and 

Regnitz Rivers, then for Nuremberg, 

scene of annual rallies of the Nazi party 

and thus a shrine of National Socialism. 

Because what remained of General 

Hahm’s LXXXII Corps was retreating 

precipitately to avoid entrapment, the 

first of the objectives, Bamberg, fell on 

13 April to contingents of the 3d and 

45th Divisions after only a day of fighting 

against local defense forces. 

German commanders were acutely 

conscious of their lack of troops in this 

23 6th AGp Ltr of Instrs 14, 16 Apr 45, in 

SHAEF SGS Post-OVERLORD Planning file, 381, IV. 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 423 

sector. 24 What was in effect a transfer of 

little more than a corps headquarters 

from Seventh Army to First would hardly 

eliminate a gap that the U.S. Third 

Army's right wing astride the Thueringer Wald and now the U.S. Seventh 

Army's left wing marching alongside 

were constantly recreating. Although 

Field Marshal Kesselring with headquarters of OB WEST arrived in the 

south on 10 April and ordered General 

Schulz to bring the German Seventh 

Army back under the aegis of Army 

Group G, that by itself would accomplish 

little more than to pin the onus for the 

whole problem on one man, Schulz. 

General Schulz tried a desperate solution. Since an Allied breakthrough on 

the right soon would sever all communications, however roundabout, with German forces east of the Elbe River and 

with Berlin, Schulz decided to bolster 

his right even at the expense of a breakthrough on his left on the seam between 

the First and Nineteenth Armies, since 

those armies could withdraw in the face 

of heavy attack without dire results. Although aware that strong Allied attacks 

soon would hit that seam, Schulz pulled 

out the remains of the 2d Mountain and 

17th SS Panzer Grenadier Divisions for 

transfer to the gap between the First and 

Seventh Armies. He would rob Peter to 

pay Paul, then face the consequences of 

the theft as best he could when the day 

of reckoning came. 

Lack of gasoline delayed the transfer. 

After making a strong case for his needs, 

General Schulz finally obtained some 

gasoline from a Luftwaffe depot, but 

before he could bring much of it forward, the head of OKW, Field Marshal 

24 See MS # B–703 (Wilutzky). 

Wilhelm Keitel, forbade its use. Such 

was the dream world in which Hitler and 

OKW were living that Keitel was saving 

the fuel for the future strategic employment of jet fighters that presumably were 

to save the dying Third Reich. 25 

Because of this delay, the remnants of 

the two divisions arrived too late for 

fighting at Bamberg. They contributed 

instead to a stanch defense of Nuremberg, already almost obliterated by Allied 

bombs. 

Like all major German cities, Nuremberg had a ring of fixed antiaircraft guns. 

These and their crews constituted the 

core of the defense. The commander and 

staff of an otherwise defunct 9th Volks 

Grenadier Division, operating under 

General Simon's XIII SS Corps, were in 

charge. To the northwest, blocking the 

U.S. XXI Corps, whence the Germans 

expected the main blow on Nuremberg 

to come, was the 2d Mountain Division. 

To the east of the city, trying to shore 

up the faltering LXXXII Corps, went 

the 17th SS Panzer Grenadiers, minus 

one regiment, which was committed inside the city. Within Nuremberg in 

addition were several Luftwaffe and 

Volkssturm battalions and a regiment 

provided by Wehrkreis XIII. Available 

a few miles northeast of the city was 

Gruppe Grufenwoehr, composed of two 

battalions of infantry and thirty-five 

tanks of various types gleaned from factories in Nuremberg and from a panzer 

training center whence the force drew 

its name. 26 

Under a buzzing canopy of aircraft of 

the XII Tactical Air Command, the 3d 

25 MS # B–703 (Wilutzky). 

26 German material is from MSS # B–703 

(Wilutzky); # B–348 (Wolf Hauser) and # B–737 

(Albert). 
424 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

A PATROL OF THE 3D DIVISION MAKES ITS WAY THROUGH THE RUBBLE OF NUREMBERG 

and 45th Divisions in two days spanned 

the thirty miles from Bamberg to the 

outskirts of Nuremberg and began an 

assault on the city on 16 April. The 3d 

Division moved in from the north, the 

45th from east and southeast. The 106th 

Cavalry Group at the same time swept 

around the city to block exits to the 

south, while the 42d Division of the 

neighboring XXI Corps advanced on the 

western suburb of Fuerth. 

The Germans wasted their few available tanks on the 14th Armored Division 

northeast of Nuremberg. In a counterattack on the 15th, Gruppe Grafenwoehr 

struck the 94th Cavalry Reconnaissance 

Squadron, but reinforcements rushed 

from the reserve combat command 

helped bring the strike to a standstill. 

Within two days Gruppe Grafenwoehr 

had ceased to exit. 

It was a grueling fight for Nuremberg, 

made all the more difficult by deadly 

antiaircraft fire directed against the men 

on the ground. Once the ring of flak 

guns was broken, the fight developed into 

the slow, often costly, business of clearing one crumbling building after an- 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 425 

other, one more heap of rubble, one 

more cellar, defeating one more 

futile though dangerous counterattack 

launched by a few men, a squad, a platoon. 27 All the while fighter-bombers and 

artillery kept pounding an already 

ruined metropolis. 

Late on 19 April the 3d Division’s 

30th Infantry penetrated medieval walls 

to enter the old town in the heart of the 

city. Before daylight the next morning, 

the Nazi gauleiter, who had vowed in a 

message to Hitler to fight to the death, 

directed a final, fanatic counterattack. 

Except for a few Germans who had to 

be rooted from the rubble, that ended 

the fight. The gauleiter himself was 

found dead in a cellar. The shrine of 

nazism fell, ironically, on 20 April, Hitler’s birthday. 

With the collapse of the defenses at 

Nuremberg, the First Army right wing 

gave way. In the same manner that one 

pushing against a closed door hurtles 

forward when the door suddenly opens, 

both Haislip’s XV Corps and Milburn’s 

XXI Corps plunged some fifty miles to 

the Danube. Launching a drive from 

Feuchtwangen, southwest of Nuremberg, 

on 20 April, the 12th Armored Division 

of the XXI Corps got there first, crossing 

37 For gallantry in singlehandedly defeating one 

of these counterattacks on 17 April, 1st Lt. Frank 

Burke of the 3d Division’s 15th Infantry received 

the Medal of Honor. The next day, 18 April, 

Capt. Michael J. Daly of the same regiment fought 

alone in four separate engagements, killing fifteen 

Germans, knocking out three machine guns, and 

inspiring his company to advance. He also was 

awarded the Medal of Honor. On the same day, 

Pvt. Joseph F. Merrell of the same regiment 

launched a one-man assault against two German 

machine gun positions, eliminated them despite 

a serious wound in the stomach, then fell before 

a burst from a German machine pistol. Private 

Merrell was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. 

the river two days later on a bridge 

seized intact at Dillingen. General Milburn’s infantry divisions, the 4th and 

63d, made it on the 25th. Relinquishing 

the 14th Armored Division to the Third 

Army, Haislip’s XV Corps used two infantry divisions, the 42d (transferred 

from the XXI Corps during the fight 

for Nuremberg) and the 45th, also to 

reach the Danube on the 25th. In the 

process the two divisions moved southwestward from Nuremberg to get out of 

the zone that was to be transferred to 

the Third Army. 

The Third Army too benefited from 

the collapse of the German First Army 

right wing; the collapse reopened a gap 

between the First and Seventh Armies 

into which the Third Army in its new 

drive to the southeast could plunge. Because of the regrouping maneuver that 

left the VIII Corps and five divisions in 

place along the Mulde River for transfer 

to the First Army and brought the III 

Corps and six divisions from completed 

assignments in the Ruhr, the Third 

Army was ready to exploit the gap with 

full force on 23 April, though the drive 

actually began as early as the 19th. 

Before the new drive started the XII 

Corps commander, General Eddy, because of high blood pressure, relinquished command to the former 

commander of the 5th Division, General 

Irwin. Under the new leader, the XII 

Corps began on 19 April to edge southeastward from an earlier stopping point 

at Bayreuth, while the III and XX Corps 

continued shifting zones. Contingents of 

General Walker’s XX Corps from new 

positions in the center of the Third 

Army began to advance the next day. 

Although General Van Fleet’s III Corps 

was not to assume control of the 14th 
426 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Armored Division until 23 April, the 

fact that the division was continuing to 

attack as a part of the Seventh Army 

meant that the front on what would 

become the Third Army’s right wing was 

also moving forward. 

By the time the III Corps officially 

took over on the right wing the night of 

22 April, forward troops of the III and 

XX Corps were south and southeast of 

Nuremberg, only forty miles from the 

Danube, while contingents of the XII 

Corps were well south of a highway that 

leads east from Nuremberg to Pilsen, 

Czechoslovakia. Although resistance to 

the heretofore measured advance had 

at some points been stanch, no question 

existed that all three corps could advance 

almost at will as they threw full strength 

into the fight. 

When the attack began in earnest on 

24 April, many of the units General Patton had received in exchange for the 

VIII Corps were relative newcomers to 

battle—the 13th Armored, 65th, 71st, 

86th, and 97th Divisions—but in the 

pursuit warfare that the times demanded, 

their inexperience scarcely showed. As in 

the battle-tested divisions, infantrymen 

clung precariously to anything that 

moved by motor—tanks, tank destroyers, 

trailers, ready at the first sound of enemy 

fire to jump from their perches and assume the age-old mode of infantry attack. 

Corps artillery often was left far behind, 

its trucks mobilized to shuttle infantrymen forward. Everywhere captured German vehicles dotted the columns. 

The countryside of the Fraenkische 

Highland was strikingly beautiful with 

spring. Here a cluster of daffodils, there 

a farmer turning a damp furrow, cows 

grazing in green fields. Only in the towns 

and cities did war seem to have any place. 

There the streets were dead, sometimes 

block after block of rubble, or else owed 

their survival to great white flags of 

surrender hanging from every building. 

Almost everywhere during late April, 

front lines had ceased to exist, so that 

nobody knew when or where the fighting 

might erupt—at the next hill, ridge, 

village, stream, wherever a group of 

Germans with a will to fight took a stand. 

Sometimes the Germans would let infantry and tanks pass unmolested, then turn 

sudden, unanticipated wrath on artillery 

and supply units bringing up the rear. 

Other times men who had dug in to 

fight would for some inexplicable reason 

throw away their weapons to raise hands 

high in surrender. Everybody knew that 

the war was over, yet somehow, at one 

isolated spot or another, the war still 

went on, real enough for the moment 

and sometimes deadly for those involved. 

While awaiting arrival of an assigned 

armored division, General Walker’s XX 

Corps in the Third Army center used 

the 3d Cavalry Group to reach the 

Danube first. Gaining the river southwest 

of Regensburg early in the afternoon of 

24 April, the cavalry opened the way for 

assault crossings by the 65th and 71st 

Divisions the following night. On the 

army’s right wing around Ingolstadt, 

three divisions of the III Corps—14th 

Armored, 86th, and 99th—reached the 

Danube in early afternoon on 26 April. 

Paced by the 11th Armored Division, 

the XII Corps meanwhile advanced 

down a narrow corridor between the 

Danube and the Czechoslovakian frontier. Guarding the corps right flank, the 

26th Division reached the Danube on 

the 26th. 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 427 

The Drive on Stuttgart 

For the Allied main effort—a sweep 

by the VI Corps up the valley of the 

Neckar River, thence across the Danube 

to the Austrian frontier—General Patch 

in the meantime had been employing 

three infantry divisions and the 10th 

Armored Division in an attack that was 

supposed to be co-ordinated closely with 

a subsidiary thrust by the First French 

Army against Stuttgart. Under the 6th 

Army Group’s plan, the French attack 

had to be timed carefully lest a premature advance prompt the German 

Nineteenth Army to pull out before the 

VI Corps could bypass Stuttgart and 

block major highways south of the city 

leading out of the Black Forest. Although 

the French were to capture Stuttgart, 

they were then to afford Seventh Army 

troops running rights on the main highways through the city to help speed the 

Seventh Army’s continuing advance 

across the Danube into Austria. The 13th 

Airborne Division (Maj. Gen. Elbridge 

G. Chapman) was tentatively scheduled 

for an airdrop thirty miles south of 

Stuttgart to seize an airfield and create 

an airhead to block German escape 

routes. 28 

Another reason Devers wanted to put 

American forces east and south of 

Stuttgart before the French attacked 

was the presence in the 6th Army Group 

at the time of the special ALSOS intelligence mission, which sought data on 

German developments in nuclear fission. 

The ALSOS group was to accompany the 

VI Corps in the drive to cut roads south 

of Stuttgart and then make a dash for 

28 See 6th AGp Ltr of Instrs 14, 16 Apr 45, and 

Warren, Airborne Operations in World War II, 

European Theater, p. 201. 

the town of Hechingen, fifty miles 

southwest of the city, where German 

scientists reportedly were conducting 

nuclear experiments. The ALSOS mission 

wanted to capture the scientists and their 

research data before they fell into French 

hands. 29 

As General Devers issued his instructions formally on 16 April, the VI Corps 

had completed a reorientation to the 

south following the unexpectedly sharp 

fight for Heilbronn and the Jagst-Neckar 

crescent. Although the Germans had 

pulled out the 2d Mountain and 17th 

SS Panzer Grenadier Divisions from this 

sector, a general collapse of remaining 

troops in Beyer’s LXXX Corps and 

Bork’s XIII Corps was yet to develop. 

The French meanwhile had been 

making gains that to their commander, 

General de Lattre, appeared to warrant unilaterally superseding General 

Devers’s instructions. Having quickly 

captured Karlsruhe (4 April) and 

Pforzheim (8 April) and having cleared 

a crescent formed by confluence of the 

Enz River with the Neckar just over 10 

miles from Stuttgart, de Lattre had 

staged a dramatic maneuver. Once an 

armored division had swept quickly up 

the east bank of the Rhine to a point 

opposite Strasbourg, de Lattre on 15 

April sent a corps across the Rhine there 

and launched an advance eastward along 

a highway splitting the Black Forest. 

Other French troops were at the same 

time driving south along roads in the 

eastern fringe of the forest. As General 

Devers issued his directive on 16 April, 

the citizens of Strasbourg were ringing 

their church bells to celebrate the city’s 

relief from German artillery fire, and 

29 Pash, The ALSOS Mission, ch. XXI. 
428 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the two French forces were within a few 

miles of linking up, thus writing off the 

northern half of the Black Forest and 

gaining the upper reaches of the Neckar 

close to the network of roads south of 

Stuttgart that constituted the Seventh 

Army’s first objective. 

To conform to General Devers’s 

orders in the wake of these developments 

was, to de Lattre, to abandon all benefits 

accruing from the maneuvers. To delay 

further French advances while the 

Americans still were some twenty to 

twenty-five miles north and northwest 

of Stuttgart was to invite the Germans 

to escape from the city and the southern 

half of the Black Forest. Despite an 

explicit explanation of General Devers's 

plan, presented on 17 April, de Lattre 

ignored Devers's directive and ordered 

one corps to launch a double envelopment of the southern half of the Black 

Forest, the other to begin immediately 

to envelop Stuttgart from the south and 

east. 30 

The maneuver to envelop Stuttgart 

opened with signal success on 18 April. 

Crossing the interarmy boundary into 

the zone assigned the Seventh Army, the 

French seized the road center of 

Tuebingen, on the Neckar almost due 

south of Stuttgart. If they could repeat 

that success as they turned north toward 

Stuttgart the next day, they sood a chance 

of trapping sizable German forces. Although the thrust to Tuebingen had 

split the enemy’s LXIV Corps (General 

der Artillerie Max Grimmeiss) , the bulk 

of the corps, including commander and 

staff, were north of the penetration. In 

30 De Lattre, Histoire de la Première Armée Française, pp. 529–31; for French operations in early 

April, pp. 506–28. See also Hq, 6th AGp, History, 

p. 273. 

GENERAL DE LATTRE. (Photograph 

taken in 1951.) 

addition, the LXXX Corps (Beyer), 

recently transferred to the Nineteenth 

Army, was defending astride the Neckar 

north of Stuttgart and also might be 

trapped should the French envelop the 

city. 31 

Faced with encirclement, the Germans 

on 19 April stiffened, while the remnants 

of two divisions of the LXIV Corps tried 

to muster a counterattack southward to 

cut off the French penetration to 

Tuebingen. Although the counterattack 

never got under way, the Germans held 

their French adversaries to relatively 

minor gains all through the 19th and 

20th. 

31 See MS # B–598, The Combat Actions of the 

LXIV Corps East of the Rhine, Part II, 4–22 Apr 

45 (General der Artillerie Max Grimmeiss) and 

MS # B–320, The Final Combat of the LXXX 

Army Corps From the Marne to the Danube, Part 

III, 8 Feb–30 Apr 45 (Beyer). 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 429 

A greater threat to the two German 

corps then arose from the Americans. 

After three days of short advances by 

the 63d and 100th Divisions through 

minefields and roadblocks in the Loewenstein Hills southeast of Heilbronn 

and at Schwaebisch Hall to the east, the 

10th Armored Division on the 19th 

suddenly broke free. In rapid strides the 

armor swept southward more than thirty 

miles, passing to the east of Stuttgart, 

while men of the 44th Division followed 

closely to mop up and protect the flanks 

of the penetration. The next day the 

tank columns continued to Kirchheim, 

in the hill country of the Swabian Highland fourteen miles southeast of Stuttgart, there cutting the autobahn leading 

from Stuttgart to Ulm. Because of that 

thrust and the earlier drive by the 

French, the projected airborne assault 

south of Stuttgart was canceled. 32 

By this time the French had reached 

a point only ten miles southwest of 

Kirchheim, leaving to the Germans in 

and around Stuttgart only one main 

road as a route of escape. Although the 

commander of the LXXX Corps, General Beyer, tried to arrange with his 

opposite in the LXIV Corps, General 

Grimmeiss, for a combined breakout 

attempt, Grirnmeiss’s troops were too 

closely engaged. The bulk of Beyer’s 

LXXX Corps the night of the 20th 

pulled out alone through the narrow 

gap, while General Grimmeiss and 

remnants of his LXIV Corps the next 

day tried to infiltrate southward through 

French positions. Few made it. After 

wandering for twelve days and nights, 

32 SUSA Diary, entry of 20 Apr 45; Warren, Airborne Operations in World War II, p. 201. 

Grimmeiss himself at last fell captive to 

the French near the Swiss border. 33 

Faced with a fait accompli, General 

Devers on the 20th legitimatized the 

French foray into the Seventh Army’s 

zone by a change in the interarmy boundary, whereupon a French column the 

next day pushed down the valley of the 

Neckar by way of Esslingen, enveloped 

Stuttgart, and broke into the northeastern fringe of the city early in the afternoon. Other columns entered a few 

hours later from south, west, and northwest. The following day, 22 April, 

Stuttgart was clear. 

In an imaginative, aggressive maneuver, de Lattre’s First French Army in 

twelve days had swept the northern half 

of the Black Forest, trapped the bulk of 

the LXlV Corps, and seized Stuttgart, in 

the process taking some 28,000 prisoners 

at a cost of 175 French troops killed, 510 

wounded. Whether more Germans might 

have been captured had de Lattre conformed to General Dever’s plan could 

only be surmised. Devers and his staff 

believed the bag would have been bigger. 34 

At the same time the French had seriously jeopardized the ALSOS mission’s 

intended foray to seize German scientists 

and nuclear research data at Hechingen, 

southwest of Stuttgart. This the Americans had circumvented by directing the 

ALSOS group and an escort of motorized 

combat engineers to circle back to the 

northwest of Stuttgart and drive south 

into the French sector to Freudenstadt in 

order to come on Hechingen from the 

33 MS # B–598 (Grimmeiss); MS # B–320 

(Beyer). See also de Lattre, Histoire de la Première 

Armée Française, p. 557n. 

34 De Lattre, Histoire de la Première Armée Française, p. 539; Hq, 6th AGp, Hisotry, p. 273. 
430 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

west. With the ALSOS military commander, Col. Boris T. Pash, employing 

considerable bluff, the group made its 

way successfully through the French sector, then on 22 April pushed beyond 

forward French positions and moved 

swiftly to Hechingen, where it found the 

German research center hidden in a cave 

and captured the scientists in the town. 35 

A French Incursion to Ulm 

Aside from Stuttgart, two other specific 

objectives in that part of Germany held 

special attraction for General de Lattre 

and the French. One was the town of 

Sigmaringen, on the Danube River not 

quite fifty miles south of Stuttgart. There 

Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, Pierre 

Laval, and others of the collaborationist 

Vichy government had come after fleeing 

France the preceding August and had 

set up a government-in-exile. The other 

was the imperial city of Ulm, also on the 

Danube roughly the same distance southeast of Stuttgart, scene of Napoleon’s 

triumph over the Austrians in 1805. 

As General Devers had drawn the interarmy boundary in his original instructions for the offensive, neither of those 

objectives had fallen in the French zone. 

Running southwestward from the vicinity of Stuttgart to Rottweil on upper 

reaches of the Neckar, thence almost due 

south to the Swiss frontier west of Lake 

Constance, the boundary reflected Devers’s view that the first task for the 

French was to dispense with the German 

Nineteenth Army in Stuttgart and the 

Black Forest. That accomplished, Devers’s order made clear, the boundary was 

to be adjusted to swing to the southeast 

35 Pash, The ALSOS Mission, ch. XXI. 

and give the French a role in entering 

General de Lattre also saw Stuttgart 

and the Black Forest as primary goals, 

as demonstrated on 17 April when he 

sent half his force against Stuttgart, half 

to clear the southern part of the Black 

Forest. Yet all along de Lattre had his 

eyes on a third goal: Ulm, and, in the 

process, Sigmaringen. 

“The true maneuver,” de Lattre had 

told one of his subordinates as early as 

15 April, “is to march at full speed [tambour battant] in order to be in Ulm by 

25 April,” 37 

In terms of the original interarmy 

boundary, Ulm lay forty-four miles east 

of the French zone. While the 10th Armored Division bypassed the city to the 

west, the 44th Division was to capture it. 

Although the change in boundary ordered on the 20th extended the French 

zone southeastward from Rottweil to Sigmaringen, and by any logical extension 

provided the French some forty miles 

of the Austrian frontier east of Lake 

Constance, the adjustment still left Ulm 

fully forty miles outside the French zone. 

De Lattre refused to be deterred. Late 

on 20 April he directed the commander 

of the corps that was attacking Stuttgart 

to divert an armored division southeastward toward Rottweil and the Danube 

with the aim of eventually swinging back 

to the northeast astride the Danube 

through Sigmaringen to Ulm. 

General de Lattre would note later 

that there were other reasons for the 

French to drive on Ulm than reawakening the memory of past glory. The 

drive was, he would argue, a logical ex36 See 6th AGp Ltr of Instrs No. 14, 16 Apr 45. 

37 De Lattre, Histoire de la Première Armée Française, p. 544. 

Austria. 36 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 431 

tension of the envelopment of Stuttgart 

to trap those Germans who had escaped 

the encirclement there and thus deny 

them access to the National Redoubt. 

He also looked on the drive as a step 

in establishing French forces along the 

length of the Iller River, extending generally south from Ulm to the Austrian 

frontier, a line lying almost entirely 

within the Seventh Army’s zone. That 

move, he believed, would force the 

American command to provide the 

French a zone for entering Austria rather 

than leave them impotently facing the 

Swiss border. 38 

These were less reasons than rationalizations. By the night of 20 April when 

de Lattre ordered the start of the thrust 

on Ulm, the U.S. 10th Armored Division 

was at Kirchheim, less than thirty miles 

from the Danube, and was fully capable 

of handling any German force that had 

escaped from Stuttgart. Similarly, the 

boundary adjustment that General Devers ordered on the 20th already had 

assured the French a forty-mile zone of 

entry into Austria. 

On 21 April the French drive southward to clear the southern half of the 

Black Forest picked up momentum. 

French forces advancing along the eastern fringe of the forest crossed the Danube and gained the northwestern tip of 

Lake Constance, thereby sealing off the 

Nineteenth Army’s XVIII SS Panzer 

Corps in the Black Forest. Another column attacking up the east bank of the 

Rhine turned to seize the city of Freiburg. An armored division achieved the 

first goal in the roundabout thrust on 

Ulm, reaching the Danube a few miles 

upstream from Sigmaringen. 

38 Ibid., pp. 558–60. 

De Lattre was ecstatic. “Bravo!” he 

cheered, then ordered the division to 

push “pleins gaz” via Sigmaringen to 

Ulm. “The Americans will perhaps dislodge us from it,” he continued. “But the 

French flag will have flown there.” 39 

Too late to catch Pétain and Laval at 

Sigmaringen, the French armor nevertheless made rapid strides along the 

Danube. So did the U.S. 10th Armored 

Division in its drive to the Danube. By 

nightfall of the 22d the Americans had 

reached the river at Ehingen and had 

seized a bridgehead. The French would 

thus have to pass directly through the 

American positions, raising the specter 

of a clash with American troops who 

were unaware of the French presence. 

Fortunately, when the French armor 

encountered outposts of the 10th Armored Division near Ehingen early on 

23 April, the Americans for all their surprise quickly identified the intruders. As 

de Lattre recalled it, the 10th Armored 

Division commander, General Morris, 

raised no objections, remarking that, 

“Among tankers, we always understand 

each other.” 40 

When word of the incident reached 

General Devers at the 6th Army Group 

that afternoon, he was considerably less 

amenable. He sent a liaison officer to 

de Lattre’s headquarters with orders to 

withdraw immediately. 41 De Lattre paid 

him no heed. 

The leading French platoon drew up 

outside Ulm at dusk on 23 April. Soon 

after the 44th Division’s 324th Infantry 

arrived at dawn the next day, that regiment, the 10th Armored Division’s 

CCR, and two French battalions attacked 

39 Ibid., p. 560. 

40 Ibid., p. 563. 

41 Hq, 6th AGp, History, pp. 281–82. 
432 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the city from the southwest along the 

north bank of the Danube. By nightfall 

most resistance was at an end, and the 

French were free to unfurl their tricolor, 

as Napoleon had done, above the city’s 

old fort. 

Mission accomplished, General de Lattre at last promised to take his troops 

inside the French boundary. 42 

The “Stuttgart Incident” 

In Stuttgart, in the meantime, General Devers’s patience with the French 

had been undergoing an even more severe test. While according the French the 

honor of capturing Stuttgart, General 

Devers had planned from the first to use 

main roads through the city to support 

the Seventh Army. Disturbed by the 

presence of thousands of liberated, deliriously happy foreign laborers in Stuttgart, including 20,000 French deportees, 

he decided on 22 April that the Seventh 

Army’s needs could be better served by 

placing the city in the U.S. zone. This 

he ordered, effective the next day. 43 

To a sensitive General de Lattre, removing his troops after their achievement in capturing Stuttgart was an 

affront. While protesting to General Devers, he reported the situation to the chief 

of the French Provisional Government, 

General de Gaulle. De Gaulle replied 

promptly and firmly. De Lattre was to 

42 SUSA Diary, entry of 24 Apr 45. See also Brief 

of Events Having to Do With the Advance on Ulm 

by First French Army, 26 Apr 45, in SHAEF SGS 

Post-OVERLORD Planning file, 381, IV, and comments by General Morris on the draft MS for this 

volume. 

43 6th AGp Msg BX 13260, 22 Apr 45, as found 

in Hq, 6th AGp, History, p. 269; 6th AGp TWX, 

23 Apr 45, in SHAEF SGS POST-OVERLORD Planning 

file, 381, IV; Seventh Army Report, pp. 803–04. 

maintain a French garrison in Stuttgart, 

institute a military government, and tell 

the Americans that the French intended 

to hold and administer all territory conquered by French troops until the interested governments had fixed a French 

zone of occupation. 44 

In passing the word to General Devers, 

de Lattre added that Stuttgart was available nonetheless to all needs of the 6th 

Army Group. To Devers, use of Stuttgart 

was no longer the issue: the issue was a 

direct violation of orders by a subordinate, a situation he found “intolerable.” 45 Tales emanating from the city 

of wanton rape and looting further 

strengthened his resolve. After reporting the matter to General Eisenhower 

on 26 April, Devers reiterated his order 

to relinquish the city and told the 100th 

Division to move in. 

As American troops began to arrive, 

the local French commander treated 

them amicably but declined to evacuate 

the city. While informing de Gaulle of 

this development, de Lattre again notified General Devers that because of contrary instructions from his government, 

he was unable to comply with the 6th 

Army Group’s order. 46 

General Devers himself went into 

Stuttgart on the 27th to check the tales 

of rape and looting. The reports, he 

found, had been exaggerated. Rather 

than 50,000 rape cases, as rumored, there 

had been fewer than 2,000: and most of 

those, as well as considerable looting and 

“misbehavior,” were attributable to for44 De Lattre, Histoire de la Premiére Armée Française, pp. 569–70. 

45 Devers to Eisenhower, B–13494, 26 Apr 45, in 

SHAEF SGS Post-OVERLORD Planning file, 381, IV. 

46 De Lattre, Histoire de la Première Armée Française, p. 570. 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 433 

eign laborers and Germans themselves. 

Conditions were, in any event, markedly 

improved. Deciding that the city was 

too badly damaged to be of use to the 

6th Army Group, Devers readjusted the 

interarmy boundary, giving Stuttgart— 

“and the conditions there,” he noted 

wryly—back to the French. 47 

The Supreme Commander, for his 

part, protested officially to General de 

Gaulle. “Under the circumstances,” General Eisenhower wrote, “I must of course 

accept the situation, as I myself am unwilling to take any action which would 

reduce the effectiveness of the military 

effort against Germany . . . .” He protested nevertheless that the issuance of 

direct orders to the First French Army 

counter to operational orders given 

through the military chain of command 

violated the understanding with the 

United States Government under which 

the United States had armed and 

equipped French divisions to serve under 

the Combined Chiefs of Staff. He had 

no choice, he concluded, but to refer the 

matter to the Combined Chiefs. 48 

In reply General de Gaulle put the 

blame on a lack of agreement and liaison 

between France and the Allied governments relating to war policy in general 

and the postwar occupation in particular. 

As for arms for French troops, he noted, 

those had been furnished under lendlease, for which French services had been 

given in return. 

When news of the incident reached 

Washington, President Truman was 

shocked. If the time had come, he wrote 

47 Devers Diary, 27 Apr 45. See also SUSA Diary, 

entry of 25 Apr 45. 

48 Aspects of the incident at higher levels are discussed and annotated in Pope, The Supreme 

Command, pp, 459–61. 

General de Gaulle, when the French 

Army was to carry out only the political 

wishes of the French Government, then 

the command structure would have to be 

rearranged. De Gaulle in reply expressed 

the wish that situations of this nature 

would not arise and suggested that they 

could be avoided if the Allies would consult the French on matters involving 

French interests. 

There the matter rested. It would be 

finally settled early in May when the 

Allies at last agreed on a French zone of 

occupation and a French role in the control machinery for Germany. 

From the Danube Into Austria 

In reaching Lake Constance on 21 

April, the First French Army had failed 

to snare the commander of the Nineteenth Army, General Brandenberger, 

and his staff. The French had nevertheless trapped most of Brandenberger’s remaining troops, the entire XVIII SS 

Panzer Corps, in the southern half of 

the Black Forest. (Map XVI) Beginning 

the night of the 24th, the Germans tried 

to break out to the southeast, giving rise 

to violent combat, but when French air 

and artillery pummeled them mercilessly 

by day, the Germans quickly weakened. 

Only individuals and small groups escaped, leaving some 27,000 to wend their 

way into prisoner-of-war enclosures. By 

27 April the Black Forest was calm. 49 

The demise of the XVIII SS Panzer 

Corps left the Nineteenth Army with the 

remnants of two corps, that part of the 

LXIV Corps that had avoided the French 

near Stuttgart (OB WEST assigned a new 

corps commander) and General Beyer’s 

49 See de Lattre, Histoire de la Première Armée 

Française, pp. 561–67. 
434 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

LXXX Corps, the latter minus some 

2,000 men trapped in the Swabian Highland by the 10th Armored Division’s 

crossing of the Danube and left to the 

103d Division to mop up. Also under 

the Nineteenth Army was a force of little 

more than division size deceptively called 

the “Twenty-fourth Army.” These were 

mainly headquarters troops fleshed out 

with Volkssturm and frontier battalions 

that had manned posts along the Swiss 

border to discourage any Allied plan to 

enter Germany by way of neutral Switzerland. The Twenty-fourth Army had 

escaped the French trap by crossing Lake 

Constance by boat. 50 

As for General Foertsch’s First Army, 

all corps headquarters and most divisional formations—such as they were— 

got across the Danube a step ahead of 

their pursuers, but all inevitably lost 

large numbers of men in the process. 

During the week ending 26 April, each 

of the U.S. Seventh Army’s three corps 

averaged well over a thousand prisoners 

a day. 

The Third Army’s southeastward turn 

had created an unremediable rupture 

between the German First and Seventh 

Armies, throwing the Seventh Army back 

against the Czechoslovakian frontier 

where General von Obstfelder and his 

staff could do little but await eventual 

capitulation. 51 Although Kesselring at 

OB WEST ordered a counterattack into 

the Third Army’s eastern flank, the meager forces available for commitment had 

no fuel. When on the 26th Kesselring 

ordered the LXXXV Corps, which con50 MSS # B–102 and # B–103, Twenty-fourth 

Army, 17 Oct 1944–5 May 1945 (General der Infanterie Hans Schmidt). See also MS # B–191, The 

LXIV Army Corps in the Time from 21.IV.45 to 

5.V.45 (Generalleutnant Helmuth Friebe). 

51 MS # A-893 (Gersdorff). 

tained remains of the 11th Panzer Division, to move to the First Army to cover 

the gap by defending the Danube along 

the Austrian frontier near Passau, lack 

of gasoline again prevented compliance. 

Two days later Kesselring formally recognized the split between the First and 

Seventh Armies by removing the Seventh 

Army from Army Group G’s control 

and placing it directly under his own 

command. 52 So disorganized were the 

German defenders along the seam between the armies that the U.S. XII 

Corps in a week took from the sector 

more than 25,000 prisoners. 

Forced behind the Danube and patently incapable of preventing Allied 

troops from crossing wherever they 

chose, the Germans in the south at last 

were as disorganized and impotent as 

those who had tried to stem the eastward 

surge of the 12th Army Group. They 

still might muster an occasional counterattack, sometimes in as much as battalion 

strength, and they might yet delay Allied 

advance at strategic points, particularly 

in cities, but the end was near. As someone at General Eisenhower’s headquarters put it, the Allied forces now 

were engaged in “the disarming, by 

battle, of the German armies.” 53 

One American crossing of the Danube 

after another quickly eliminated that 

river as a factor in the operation. The 

12th Armored Division (XXI Corps) 

crossed over a captured bridge at Dillingen on the 22d; the 10th Armored and 

44th Divisions (VI Corps) over three 

captured bridges near Ehingen on the 

23d. After the 42d Division had captured 

Donauwoerth on the 25th both the 42d 

and 45th Divisions (XV Corps) made 

52 MS # B–703 (Wilutzky). 

53 As quoted in Seventh Army Report, p. 805. 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 435 

assault crossings near that old city before 

daylight on the 26th. At the same time, 

the 65th and 71st Divisions (XX Corps) 

crossed on either side of Regensburg, in 

the process prompting the combat commander of the old south-bank fortress 

city (Napoleon had known it as Ratisbon) to flee, leaving to a retired general 

the ignominy of surrender without fight. 

The 103d Division (VI Corps) crossed 

northeast of Ulm at daylight on the 

26th; and finally, the 86th Division (III 

Corps) , after capturing Ingolstadt, made 

an assault crossing the night of the 26th. 

(Advancing southeast between the Danube and the Czechoslovakian border, the 

XII Corps would face a crossing of the 

river only after reaching the Austrian 

frontier.) 

Only one new component of appreciable size joined the German order of 

battle, a Division Nibelungen, originally 

intended but readied too late for General 

Wenck’s Twelfth Army on the Elbe. 

Committed on 27 April in the path of 

the U.S. III Corps southeast of Ingolstadt, the division was almost at full 

strength in men, but some 40 percent 

lacked weapons. Aside from a few preWorld War II tanks, the heaviest weapon 

on hand was the Panzerfaust. In a matter 

of only three days, the division ceased 

to exist. 54 

As the drive toward the Austrian border began, the now familiar pattern of 

an armored division out front, followed 

by infantry divisions for the mop-up, 

quickly developed everywhere except in 

General Haislip’s XV Corps. Having relinquished his armor to the incoming III 

Corps, Haislip would be able to commit 

the replacement, the inexperienced 20th 

54 MS # B–348 (Wolf Hauser): III Corps AAR, 

Apr 45. 

Armored Division (Maj. Gen. Orlando 

Ward), only on 28 April. 

The assault spread rapidly through 

the picturesque Bavarian villages and 

countryside, If the villagers displayed 

white flags and no one fired, the columns 

raced rapidly on. If the Germans made 

a stand, tanks, artillery, and planes tore 

the houses to bits. The message apparently got through, for time after time 

civilians prevailed upon the German soldiery to leave. 

A pattern of no resistance in cities, 

too, began to emerge. Before attacking 

Memmingen, just east of the Iller River 

midway between Ulm and the Austrian 

frontier, the 10th Armored Division sent 

ahead burgomasters of towns already 

captured to warn that only white flags 

and absence of resistance could spare the 

city from destruction. The stratagem 

worked; on 26 April, nobody fought 

back in Memmingen. 

At Landsberg, site of another of the 

incredibly bestial Nazi concentration 

camps, a garrison of almost a hundred 

Hungarian troops lined up in paradeground formation to surrender. Men of 

the 103d Division, occupying the town 

in the wake of the tanks of the 10th Armored Division, claimed as a souvenir 

a bronze plaque on a building commemorating the spot where Hitler had been 

imprisoned following the abortive Munich Putsch in 1923 and where he had 

dictated the bible of the National Socialist movement, Mein Kampf. 

In Augsburg, on the Lech River midway between Ulm and Munich, arose 

the first tangible evidence of an active 

German underground resistance organization. As the 3d Division approached 

the city on 27 April, word came from an 

adjacent unit that two civilians had ar- 
436 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

rived to arrange surrender and avoid 

destruction. Despite shelling from antiaircraft batteries ringing the city, the 

division commander, General O’Daniel, 

put a moratorium on artillery fire pending further developments. 

Within Augsburg the combat commander, Generalmajor Franz Fehn, intended to fight, but he refused to 

sanction demolishing bridges and overpasses. He also early began to evacuate 

German soldiers from the city’s hospitals 

and distributed several hundred tons of 

military rations to the civilian population. 

Small underground groups, none yet 

aware of the existence of others, meanwhile prepared to stage a coup. Members 

of one group calling itself the “Freedom 

Party of Augsburg” reached one of the 

American regiments by telephone with 

word that the city wanted to surrender. 

Others who counseled surrender spread 

the word that the authorities had already 

capitulated and that everybody should 

display white flags. A civilian patrol 

reached one of the American columns 

to lead a battalion commander and a 

small group to a bunker shared by General Fehn and civilian functionaries of 

the city. Given five minutes to surrender, 

General Fehn marched dutifully out to 

view a city already fluttering with white 

flags. 55 

Munich, capital of Bavaria, Germany’s 

third city and another shrine of nazism, 

was next. En route, contingents of the 

42d and 45th Divisions overpowered 

some 300 SS guards and unveiled another 

of Germany’s most notorious concentra55 Seventh Army Report, pp. 828–30; MS # B– 

186, Report by 407 Replacement Division About 

the Construction and Organization of the DonauIller Defense (Generalmajor Franz Fehn). 

tion camps, Dachau. Delirious with joy, 

some of the pitiful survivors of the camp 

rushed the electrically charged wire 

enclosure and died in their moment of 

liberation. Others hunted down their 

wardens, many of whom had changed 

into prison garb to hide among the inmates, and beat them to death with 

stones, clubs, fists. More than 30,000 

prisoners clinging precariously to life, 

and great piles of grotesque, starved 

cadavers crammed the camp. At the crematorium was the usual grim evidence 

of the efficiency of Nazi extermination 

methods. 

Leaving to medics the task of trying 

to save the typhus-infested inmates, the 

42d and 45th Divisions pushed on to join 

a four-division assault against Munich 

stage-managed by General Haislip’s XV 

Corps. With the 20th Armored and 42d 

and 45th Divisions approaching the city 

from the northwest and north, the Seventh Army’s General Patch altered corps 

boundaries to put the 3d Division, which 

was approaching from Augsburg in a 

position to swing to the south of Munich, 

temporarily under Haislip’s command. 

Anxious to have a hand in seizing the 

prize, the 12th Armored Division of the 

neighboring XXI Corps sent its reconnaissance troops on an unauthorized 

foray toward the city from the southwest. 

As at Augsburg, a delegation of civilians bought word that residents of Munich were trying to prevail on military 

leaders to spare the city. During the 

night of 27 April, a variety of groups 

ranging from sincere anti-Nazi underground workers to war-weary burghers 

and common opportunists rose in a series 

of unconnected revolts. At the center of 

the uprising were three platoons of 

troops from Wehrkreis VII, reinforced 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 437 

by contingents from a panzer replacement battalion stationed in a nearby 

town and little groups of dissident infantrymen. As street fighting broke out, 

the insurgents captured the Nazi gauleiter of Bavaria and the Munich radio station, but they failed to seize military 

and Nazi party headquarters. 

Bolstered by SS troops from a caserne 

in the northern fringe of the city, troops 

loyal to the Nazis fought back. They 

failed to squelch the rebellion in Munich 

entirely, for the insurgents managed to 

save the city’s bridges and to provide 

considerable assistance when the Americans arrived forty-eight hours later. Neither could the insurgents claim victory. 

Although some units of the 3d and 42d 

Divisions reached the center of the city 

before midday on 30 April to the welcome of small groups of civilians waving 

both white flags of surrender and Bavarian flags of celebration, other contingents had to clear stubborn nests of 

resistance, and the 45th Division faced 

a determined fight for the SS caserne. 

For most of the day it was a question of 

pouring in heavy artillery fire, attacking 

behind smoke screens across city streets, 

dodging deadly fire from antiaircraft 

guns or persistent machine guns—all the 

usual accouterments the men had come 

to expect in clearing rubble-strewn German cities. Even as a big white streamer 

flew from the highest building in Munich, troops of the 45th Division were 

fighting from room to room in the SS 

caserne to dislodge die-hard defenders. 

By nightfall of 30 April, it was finally 

over. 

Those two corps of the Third Army 

that had crossed the Danube meanwhile 

were running a day or so behind the 

Seventh Army, primarily because of the 

late commitment of the III Corps. Before armor could begin to exploit from 

the bridgeheads, heavy rains set in. The 

13th Armored Division of the XX Corps 

nevertheless crossed the Isar River near 

Landau on the 29th, then two days later 

reached the Inn River where it forms 

the Austrian border around Braunau. 

The 14th Armored Division of the III 

Corps took Landshut on the Isar on 30 

April, then caught up with its neighbor 

to reach the Inn the next day. Advancing down the corridor between the Danube and Czechoslovakia, the 11th Armored Division of the XII Corps put 

patrols across the Austrian frontier near 

Passau as early as the 26th. 

Both here and in the zone of the Seventh Army a feature of the advance was 

the liberation of thousands of American 

and Allied prisoners of war. At long last 

the Germans had abandoned all efforts 

to march the prisoners out of reach of 

the rampaging Allied columns. 

While these thrusts were getting under 

way, the Supreme Commander, General 

Eisenhower, reaffirmed final objectives 

for the Third Army and the 6th Army 

Group. 56 As before, the goal of the Third 

Army was to link with the Russians inside Austria, in the process seizing Salzburg and thus blocking passes leading 

from Salzburg into the Austrian Tirol. 

The 6th Army Group was to capture all 

other routes into the Alps-that at Bregenz at the eastern end of Lake Constance leading into the Vorarlberg, 

others in the vicinity of Fuessen and 

Garmisch-Partenkirchen leading to Landeck and Innsbruck, and that at Kufstein, in the valley of the Inn River, 

56 See SCAF 316, 27 Apr 45, as reproduced in Hq, 

6th AGp, History, pp. 286–87. The 6th Army Group 

received the instructions orally on the 25th. 
438 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

leading to Kitzbuehel—then to push on 

to the passes on the Italian frontier. 

As General Devers transmitted these 

instructions to his army commanders, 

it appeared likely that the French would 

beat the Seventh Army to the Austrian 

border and thus might advance not only 

beyond Bregenz but also to Landeck. 

Although Bevers did not yet assign 

Landeck to the French, he did alert de 

Lattre to “be prepared to continue the 

advance to capture Landeck.” 57 This 

was clearly but a warning order, for the 

interarmy boundary remained at the 

town of Hoefen, south of Fuessen, according the main Alpine highway leading via the Fern Pass to Landeck to the 

Seventh Army. While the nearby Oberjoch Pass fell within the French zone, it 

afforded, without recourse to the main 

road that belonged to the Seventh Army, 

only roundabout passage to Landeck. 

To de Lattre the warning order was 

license enough; he directed one of his 

armored divisions to head immediately 

for Landeck. De Lattre was anxious to 

have the town in order “to seal the vicotry at the Italian frontier” with a linkup with Allied forces in Italy. Only 

through Landeck to the Resia Pass was 

there any route by which the French 

might reach the Italian border. 58 

The desperate attempt by the German 

XVIII SS Panzer Corps to break its entrapment in the Black Forest interfered 

with de Lattre’s plan. By the time he 

could spare troops to head for Landeck, 

the U.S. VI Corps had broken free, on 

27 April dashing into Kempten, a little 

over twenty miles from Fuessen and less 

57 6th AGp Msg, BX 13351, 24 Apr 45, in Hq, 

6th AGp, History, p. 270. 

58 De Lattre, Histoire de la Première Armée Française, pp. 572–73; Quotation is from page 575. 

than that from the Austrian frontier. 

The next day, as de Lattre urged his 

troops to advance with “vigor and 

speed,” the U.S. 10th Armored Division 

with help from the 44th Division cap 

tured Fuessen and crossed into Austria. 

On the 29th the armor got almost to the 

Fern Pass before German-induced landslides blocking a precipitous Alpine 

highway forced a halt. 

With the XVIII SS Panzer Corps contained, the French on the 30th cleared 

Immenstadt and got within eight miles 

of the Oberjoch Pass. Then came what 

was to de Lattre distressing news. American troops, word had it, were already 

beyond the Fern Pass, little more than a 

stone’s throw from Landeck. 

General de Lattre promptly fired off 

a message to the Seventh Army’s General 

Patch: 

“. . . I expect to reach Landeck, my objective, the evening of 30 April and there make 

contact with your elements. In the event 

your troops arrive first in the area of Landeck, I request that just as I withdrew from 

Ulm to leave you free passage in your sector.. ., so you in return take necessary 

measures to leave in my control the Road 

Junction at Landeck and the road leading 

to the Resia Pass.” 59 

Although de Lattre’s information on 

the location of American troops was erroneous—they had yet to clear the Fern 

Pass—a message from headquarters of 

the 6th Army Group, received by General Patch only two hours before de 

Lattre’s, just as effectively denied what 

de Lattre wanted. By that message, General Devers extended the interarmy 

boundary beyond Hoefen to the Resia 

59 SUSA Diary, entry of 30 Sep 45. Italics supplied. 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 439 

Pass and specifically assigned Landeck 

and the pass to the Seventh Army. In an 

ill-disguised artifice not lost on General 

de Lattre, the 6th Army Group directed 

a change in the map co-ordinates given 

in earlier communications to designate 

the town of Hoefen. The new co-ordinates referred not to the town called 

Hoefen that was located south of Fuessen 

but instead to another, smaller town by 

the same name not quite seven miles to 

the northwest. The effect was to deny the 

French not only the Fern Pass but the 

Oberjoch Pass as well. 60 

Since American troops already blocked 

the limited roadnet, General de Lattre 

had no choice but to accede to Devers’s 

order and abandon the cherished goal of 

linking with the Allied troops in Italy. 

He had begun to reconcile himself to the 

inevitable when word came that the 

Americans were having trouble getting 

through the Fern Pass. At the suggestion 

of the corps commander, de Lattre seized 

upon the idea of a raid south from Immenstadt over a snow-blocked back road 

leading up the imposing massif of the 

Arlberg to the Arlberg Pass and the town 

of St. Anton. If the Americans still had 

not made is to Landeck, he intended to 

beat them to it by the back door, going 

from St. Anton to Landeck and the Resia 

Pass. 

Hastily equipped with skis, a reinforced platoon began an arduous twentymile trek through the snow on 5 May. 

Reaching the Arlberg Pass during the 

afternoon of the 6th, the commander 

placed a telephone call over the civilian 

network to Landeck. To the French 

officer’s chagrin, an American voice an60 Hq, 6th AGp, History, p. 272; de Lattre, Histoire de la Première Armée Française, p, 576. 

swered. Men of the 44th Division had 

reached the town late the day before. 61 

Unconcerned with this kind of internecine rivalry, tanks of the 10th Armored 

Division on the left wing of the VI Corps 

during the last days of April had cleared 

Oberammergau, site in less troubled 

days of the world-renowned Passion Play, 

and entered the twin resort towns of 

Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Heading up 

winding roads dominated by towering 

white peaks, one column of armor on 

the 30th crossed the Austrian border to 

the southwest and established contact 

with troops of the 44th Division. Aiming 

for the Isar River and the Mittenwald 

Pass leading to Innsbruck, another column could make no such headway because of one obstacle after another—a 

deep crater in the road, a demolished 

bridge over a gorge, two minefields, 250 

officer candidates defending a defile with 

machine guns and Panzerfausts, another 

blown bridge over a cascading mountain 

stream. The job of the final drive into 

Austria at this point would pass to infantry of the 103d Division as it did at 

the Fern Pass to the 44th Division. 

The Seventh Army’s other two corps 

meanwhile ran several days behind in 

their drive to reach the frontier because 

they had to make wider swings to the 

southeast than did the VI Corps. The 

presence of towering mountains short of 

the border between the Isar and Inn 

Rivers, denying the XXI Corps ready 

access to the objective of the Inn valley, 

further complicated the thrust. 

Seeking a natural approach into the 

Inn valley, the XXI Corps commander, 

61 De Lattre, Histoire de la Première Armée Française, pp. 580–81; 44th Div AAR, 1–10 May 45. The 

44th Division’s action is covered in Chapter XIX 

below. 
440 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

TANKS OFTHE 20TH ARMORED DIVISION FORD THE INN RIVER en route to Salzburg. 

General Milburn, sent his 12th Armored 

Division down the Munich-Salzburg 

autobahn toward the Inn near Rosenheim, thirty miles southeast of Munich. 

That threw Milburn’s armor into the 

natural line of advance of General Haislip’s XV Corps, conqueror of Munich. 

Without some adjustment in boundaries 

and objectives, converging drives of the 

XXI Corps into the southeastern tip of 

Germany and of the right wing of the 

Third Army on Salzburg soon would 

pinch out the XV Corps. 

At the same time, from General Eisenhower’s headquarters came pressure 

to speed the closing of all Alpine passes 

to eliminate even a remote possibility 

of the Germans’ forming a National Redoubt. With concurrence of the Third 

Army’s General Patton, who needed to 

bring more infantry divisions forward 

before he could begin a push on Salzburg, General Devers on the first day of 

May asked General Eisenhower to alter 

the interarmy group boundary to give 

Salzburg to the 6th Army Group. Displaying a measure of disdain for normal 

security precautions, Devers negotiated 

the change by radio, telephone, and liaison plane in a day, then ordered Hais- 
THE MYTH OF THE REDOUBT 441 

PARATROOPERS OF THE 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION APPROACH BERCHTESGADEN 

lip’s XV Corps to drive swiftly for Salzburg. 62 

If any chance still existed for the Germans remaining in southeastern Germany to enter the Alps for a final stand, 

Eisenhower’s decision killed it, so swiftly 

did both the XV and XXI Corps advance. Bavaria seemed to be one endless 

array of white flags, and those towns and 

villages that failed to conform usually 

fell in line after only a few bursts of 

machine gun fire. In many cases, so rapid 

62 Hq, 6th AGp, History, p. 318; Seventh Army 

Report, p. 852. 

was the advance that artillery and even 

tanks were left behind. Rubber-tired 

reconnaissance cars and jeeps, capable of 

greater speed than tanks, often took the 

lead. 

It was not even pursuit warfare any 

more; it was more a motor march under 

tactical conditions. Unseasonable cold 

and heavy rain, often mixed with snow, 

gave more concern than did the enemy. 

Even had the weather made tactical air 

support possible, nobody needed it any 

more. The main roads were clogged with 

Germans—entire units—trying to surrender. The 106th Cavalry Group in a 
442 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

hasty ceremony accepted surrender of an 

entire Hungarian division, 8,000 strong. 

At the music shrine of Salzburg, a 

delegation of military and civilian functionaries offered surrender to the same 

cavalry group. No sooner had that happened early on 4 May than General Patch 

authorized General Haislip’s XV Corps 

to turn to the southwest and come on 

Hider’s mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden from the rear. The order failed 

to halt units of the XXI Corps, in whose 

sector the town lay; and while the 3d 

Division of the XV Corps approached 

from the rear, grounded paratroopers of 

the 101st Airborne Division and recently 

attached men of the 2d French Armored 

Division, old allies of the Seventh Army, 

sped toward the objective from the 

northwest. 

It was congestion, not resistance, that 

slowed entry into Berchtesgaden. “Everybody and his brother,” said one message, 

“are trying to get into the town.” 63 

Motorized troops of the 3d Division got 

there first, in late afternoon of 4 May. 

The last temple of nazism still standing 

in an area of American responsibility 

had fallen. 

Capture of Salzburg and Berchtesgaden, sealing the last passes leading into 

the Austrian Alps, spelled an absolute 

end to any possibility of a National Redoubt. To the men of the 6th Army 

Group and the Third Army, the feat 

was hardly necessary to convince them 

that the end of the war was near. Even 

if there was to be no formal surrender 

of the German nation, or even if the 

forces of Army Group G made no formal 

surrender, the time was at hand when 

every square inch of territory in which 

the remains of the Wehrmacht might 

hide would be overrun in a matter of 

days, perhaps even in hours. 

63 Seventh Army Report, p. 855. 
CHAPTER XIX 

Goetterdaemmerung 

Although the Germans had no formal 

plans for a National Redoubt, Adolf 

Hitler had intended leaving Berlin on 

20 April, his fifty-sixth birthday, to continue the fight from southern Germany. 

By mid-April the bulk of the ministerial 

staffs already had abandoned the capital 

in a frantic exodus to the south, though 

Hitler himself began to procrastinate. 

While conscious of the difficulty of holding Berlin indefinitely, he persisted in 

the self-delusion that time remained, and 

even that his armies might achieve a 

spectacular victory before Berlin. 

The atmosphere in the Fuehrerbunker 

beneath the ruined city ranged alternately from despair to blind hope. One 

moment Hitler railed that the German 

people had failed him; they deserved the 

cruel fate they would suffer at the hands 

of the conqueror from the east. The next 

moment it was his generals—incompetent, negligent, spineless; they were fools, 

fatheads. Yet when a general occasionally 

dared to speak the truth, to reveal that 

the end was near, Hitler seized on some 

new scheme designed to set everything 

right again—previously uncommitted 

(and untrained) Luftwaffe and naval 

troops thrown into the line, a counterattack here, a shift of forces there. 

The early moments of 13 April 

brought news that elated many of Hitler’s coterie, if not the Fuehrer himself. 

Goebbels, the propagandist, reported it 

to Hitler by telephone while an air attack raged over the city. As it had been 

written in the stars, the miracle Goebbels 

had been awaiting to save the Third 

Reich, as in an earlier day another had 

saved Frederick the Great, had come to 

pass. 

“My Fuehrer!” Goebbels exclaimed. 

“I congratulate you! Roosevelt is dead.” 1 

The events that followed-among 

other reverses, Vienna fell that day to the 

Russians-hardly confirmed Goebbels’s 

expectations of deliverance from the 

enemies of the Reich. Hitler nevertheless 

used the President’s death to exhort his 

troops to supreme effort. In an order of 

the day on 15 April, he proclaimed: “At 

the moment when fate has removed the 

greatest war criminal of all time from the 

earth, the turning point of this war shall 

be decided.” 

As the military high command and the 

party hierarchy gathered in the bunker 

to pay obeisance to the leader on his 

birthday, Hitler repeatedly professed 

faith that the Russians were about to 

incur their worst defeat in front of Berlin. Even though the generals warned 

that Russians and Western Allies soon 

would link to cut all escape routes to the 

south, he declined to leave the capital. 

Should the linkup occur, he decreed, the 

1 Toland, The Last 100 Days, p. 377. For details 

and documentation of events during the last days 

of Berlin, see sources cited in ch. XV. 
444 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

front was to be divided into two commands, to be headed in the north by 

Grossadmiral Karl Doenitz, the naval 

chief; in the south by someone else, perhaps Kesselring or the Luftwaffe’s Hermann Goering. 

Hitler then sanctioned the departure 

of various commanders and party leaders 

from Berlin. which most were happy to 

leave in desperate hope of saving their 

skins or at least postponing the end. The 

SS chief, Himmler, scurried north to continue peace negotiations he had recently 

opened in secret with Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross. 

Doenitz too moved north. In a truck 

caravan loaded with luxuries, Goering 

turned south. Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop also got out, as did most of the 

staff officers and clerks of OKW and 

OKH, though Keitel and Jodl remained 

with a small staff in a western suburb 

to keep OKW functioning. The faithful 

Goebbels was invited to move with his 

wife and children into the bunker, to 

which Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, already had repaired. 

The next day, 21 April, Hitler hit on 

a new scheme to set everything right. 

From the north an SS corps was to counterattack to break through Russian 

columns and relieve the city. Yet twentyfour hours later even Hitler had to admit that this offered no hope. At the 

daily situation conference, he exploded 

in what may have been the greatest of 

many notable rages. This was the end. 

Everybody had deserted him; lies, corruption, cowardice, treason. They had 

left him no choice but to remain in Berlin to direct the defense of the capital 

himself and die. 

Then hope stirred again as General 

Jodl proposed that Wenck’s Tweflth 

Army turn its back on the Allies at the 

Elbe and come to the relief of Berlin. 

That Hitler ordered, along with a drive 

on Berlin from the south by the Ninth 

Army, already threatened by Russian encirclement. Keitel and Jodl were to direct 

the converging attack. When the stratagem inevitably failed, continued Russian 

advances forced the remnants of OKW 

to displace farther and farther to the 

north. 

Learning on the 23d of Hitler’s decision to stay in Berlin, Reichsmarshal 

Goering, whom Hitler long ago had 

designated to be his successor, believed 

the time had come for him to take over 

and try to salvage something by peace 

negotiations. From Berchtesgaden, he 

radioed Hitler for instructions, noting 

that if he received no answer by late 

evening, he would assume that Hitler 

had lost freedom of action, whereupon 

he would take control. 

That same evening, in the north, Heinrich Himmler was usurping the powers 

of dictatorship without even asking. Concluding his negotiations with Count 

Bernadotte, Himmler signed a letter to 

General Eisenhower. Germany, he wrote, 

was willing to surrender to the Western 

Powers while continuing to fight the 

Russians until the Allies themselves were 

ready to assume responsibility for the 

campaign against bolshevism. 

Goering’s message threw Hitler into 

another rage, as would the news of 

Himmler’s act when it reached the 

bunker several days later by way of a 

monitored broadcast of the BBC. Accusing Goering of “high treason,” Hitler 

demanded his resignation from command 

of the Luftwaffe and from the Nazi party. 

Before dawn the next day, the heir- 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 445 

apparent of the Third Reich found himself under arrest by the SS. 

By that time, 23 April, the Russians 

had completed encircling Berlin. Although linkup between Russians and 

Allies was yet to come, the encirclement, 

in effect, split the German command. As 

Jodl notified all senior commanders that 

the fight against bolshevism was the only 

thing that mattered and that loss of 

territory to the Western Allies was secondary, Hitler on 24 and 25 April approved a new command structure for the 

Wehrmacht. Abolishing OKH, Hitler 

made OKW responsible, subject to his 

authority, for operations everywhere. As 

head of OKW, Keitel reserved for himself control of all army units in the north 

until such time as communications with 

Hitler might be severed, whereupon he 

would submit to the authority of Admiral Doenitz. He designated another 

commander for those forces opposing the 

Russians south of Berlin, General der 

Gebirgstruppen August Winter, and directed Field Marshal Kesselring to assume command of German forces in 

Italy, Austria, and the Balkans in addition to his command of Army Group G 

and the Nineteenth Army. 

OKW’s primary mission, Hitler directed, was to re-establish contact with 

Berlin and defeat the Soviet forces there. 

Making his first specific reference to 

creating a redoubt, he issued a halfhearted directive to units in the south 

to prepare a defense of the Alps “envisioned as the final bulwark of fanatical 

resistance and so prepared.” Just how 

either of those assignments was to be 

accomplished, he did not say. 2 

2 Ziemke, Stalingrad to Berlin, ch. XXI. Quotation is from page 481. 

The Meeting at Torgau 

As these futile efforts to keep up a pretense of hope persisted on the German 

side, a fever of expectation that contact 

with the Russians was imminent had 

begun to grip Allied troops and commanders, particularly those of the First 

and Ninth U.S. Armies holding the line 

of the Elbe and Mulde Rivers. Eager to 

go down in history as the unit that first 

established contact, divisions vied with 

each other in devising stratagems to assure the honor for themselves. Which 

unit was the leading contender at any 

given time might have been judged from 

the size of the press corps that flitted from 

one headquarters to another in an impatient wait to report the event. 

What would happen when Allied and 

Russian troops came together had been 

on many minds on the Allied side for a 

long time. Because the Russians throughout the war had treated the Western 

Powers with suspicion and distrust, 

creating a workable liaison machinery 

had proved impossible; even where 

makeshift arrangements had been established, the Russians had disrupted them 

constantly by procrastination and delay. 3 

While the disruption was merely exasperating in early stages of the war, it 

became as the war neared an end potentially dangerous. Misunderstandings, 

even collisions resulting in casualties, 

were possible among U.S. units fighting 

side by side; as Allied and Russian troops 

devoid of liaison approached each other 

in fluid warfare where even division commanders were not always sure within 

3 Detailed discussion and annotation of arrangements with the Russians, including decisions on 

zones of occupation, are to be found in Pogue, 

The Supreme Command, pp. 461–69. 
446 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

twenty to forty miles where their forward 

troops were located, serious clashes might 

ensue, resulting not only in casualties 

but possibly in postwar recrimination. 

The problem for the air forces had 

long been acute. As early as the preceding November, U.S. fighters attacking 

what they identified as a German column 

in Yugoslavia had killed, the Soviets 

charged, several Russian soldiers, including a lieutenant general. Despite the incident, efforts to establish effective 

co-ordination with the Russians by means 

of a flexible bomb line had been basically 

unproductive until March 1945, when 

the Russians at last agreed to a bomb 

line 200 miles short of forward Russian 

positions. The line was not to be violated 

by Allied planes except on 24-hour 

notice, which the Russians might veto. 

Although the Western Allies and the 

Russians had sealed an agreement on 

zones of occupation at the Yalta Conference, no one pretended that the demarcation lines corresponded with military 

requirements, though the Russians from 

time to time expressed concern about 

Allied intentions to withdraw from the 

Soviet zone once hostilities ceased. In a 

series of exchanges lasting past midApril, the Combined Chiefs of Staff, 

General Eisenhower, and the Red Army’s 

Chief of Staff finally agreed that the 

armies from east and west were to continue to advance until contact was imminent or linkup achieved. At that point 

adjustments might be made at the level 

of army group to deal with any remaining opposition while establishing a common boundary along some well-defined 

geographical feature, 

Since the arrangement did little to 

forestall the possibility of Allied-Soviet 

clashes, General Eisenhower began, even 

as the exchanges proceeded, to negotiate 

on recognition signals. At Eisenhower’s 

request, the Red Army’s Chief of Staff 

suggested as an over-all recognition signal, red rockets for Soviet troops, green 

rockets for Allied. Eisenhower concurred. To a Russian proposal that Soviet tanks be identified by a white stripe 

encircling the turret, Allied tanks by two 

white stripes, and that both place a white 

cross atop the turret, General Eisenhower suggested instead that to avoid a 

delay in operations while putting on new 

markings, the Soviet troops be acquainted with existing Allied markings. 

The Russians agreed, and by 21 April 

identification arrangements were complete. 4 

General Eisenhower also proposed exchanging liaison officers, which the Russians neither refused nor encouraged, 

and asked the Russians for details of 

their operational plan while expanding 

on his own, which, to the chagrin of the 

British, he had revealed broadly not 

quite a month before. Repeating the 

intent stated earlier to stop his central 

forces on the Elbe-Mulde line, Eisenhower noted that the line could be 

changed to embrace upper reaches of the 

Elbe should the Russians want him to go 

as far as Dresden. His northern forces, 

he made clear, were to cross lower reaches 

of the Elbe and advance to the Baltic 

Sea at the base of the Jutland peninsula, 

while forces in the south drove down the 

valley of the Danube into Austria. 

The Russians responded with unusual 

alacrity. Agreeing to the line of the Elbe4 U.S. Military Mission to War Dept, 14 Apr; 

Eisenhower to U.S. Military Mission, 17 Apr; and 

U.S. Military Mission to SHAEF, 21 Apr; all in 

OPD IN file 1–30 Apr 45. 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 447 

Mulde as a common stopping place, they 

noted that the Soviet armies, in addition 

to taking Berlin, intended to clear the 

east bank of the Elbe north and south of 

Berlin and most of Czechoslovakia, at 

least as far as the Vltava (Moldau) 

River, which runs through Prague. 

Co-ordination with the Russians 

would come none too soon for commanders of units that were hourly anticipating contact. General Hodges of the 

First Army, for example, spent much of 

the morning of 21 April trying to get 

instructions from SHAEF on procedures 

to be followed, only to obtain little guidance other than to “treat them nicely.” 5 

It was past midday when confirmation 

from the Russians on recognition signals 

arrived and word went out to subordinate units. 6 

As finally determined, whoever made 

the first contact was to pass word up the 

chain of command immediately to 

SHAEF, meanwhile making arrangements for a meeting of senior American 

and Russian field commanders. To the 

vexation of the small army of excited 

war correspondents, no news story was to 

be cleared until after simultaneous announcement of the event by the governments in Washington, London, and 

Moscow. 7 

First word was that bridgeheads already established over the Elbe (the 83d 

Division’s at Barby) and the Mulde 

5 Sylvan Diary, entry of 21 Apr 45. See also Gay 

Diary for the same day. 

6 Eisenhower to AGp Comdrs, FWD 19604, 21 Apr 

45, in SHAEF SGS 322.01–1, Liaison with the Russians. 

7 Eisenhower to AGp Comdrs, FWD 19624, 21 

Apr 45, and Eisenhower to CCS, FWD 19737, 23 

Apr 45, both in SHAEF SGS 322.01–1, Liaison with 

the Russians. 

(those of the 69th Division east of Leipzig; the 2d Division southeast of Leipzig; 

the 6th Armored and 76th Divisions near 

Rochlitz, northwest of Chemnitz; and 

the 87th and 89th Divisions west of 

Chemnitz) might be retained; but another message from the Russians early 

on the 24th changed that. 8 

Beginning at noon that day, the Russians revealed, they were to start an advance on Chemnitz by way of Dresden. 

During the advance, their air force would 

refrain from bombing or strafing west of 

the line of the Mulde as far south as 

Rochlitz, thence along a railroad from 

Rochlitz to Chemnitz, then to Prague. 

General Eisenhower promptly ordered 

all bridgeheads across the Mulde withdrawn as far south as Rochlitz with only 

outposts to protect bridges and small 

patrols to make contact with the Russians 

remaining on the east bank. Patrols were 

to venture no more than five miles beyond the Mulde. 

Excitement among First and Ninth 

Army units was mounting all along the 

line. Rumor piled upon rumor; one false 

report followed another. Russian radio 

traffic cutting in on American channels 

convinced almost everybody that contact 

was near. Word was on the 23d that a 

staff sergeant in the 6th Armored Division actually had talked by radio with 

the Russians. Unit after unit reported 

flares to the east, attaching to them varying interpretations. A battalion of the 

69th Division on 23 April reported sighting a Russian tank with a white stripe 

around the turret, then had to admit 

8 U.S. Military Mission to Eisenhower, MX 24032, 

24 Apr 45, in SHAEF SGS 373.5, Bomb-line, Liaison, and Co-ordination of Fronts. I. 
448 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

that it was actually a grassy hummock 

with a clothesline stretched across it. 9 

Men of the 84th Division painted signs 

of welcome in Russian. The division canceled all artillery fire beyond the Elbe 

lest it hit Russian troops, but rescinded 

the order when German soldiers on the 

east bank began blatantly to sunbathe. 

At General Hodges’ command post, a 

specially outfitted jeep was ready by the 

23d for presentation to the army commander of the first Russian troops encountered. 10 

After pilots of tactical aircraft reported 

numerous (but erroneous) sightings of 

Russian columns east of the Elbe, almost 

all divisions sent their frail little artillery 

observation planes aloft for a look. The 

pilot of a plane belonging to the 104th 

Division was convinced of success late on 

the 23d when far beyond the Mulde he 

spotted a column of troops. Landing, he 

found only Germans with a few British 

prisoners heading west in hope of surrendering. Another pilot from the 104th 

Division flew fifteen miles east of the 

Elbe beyond the town of Torgau on 24 

April, where he observed what appeared 

to be an artillery duel between Russians 

and Germans. Although he tried to land 

behind Russian lines, antiaircraft fire 

turned him back. Other units on the 24th 

reported seeing Russian planes over 

American positions. 

Although the 83d Division in its 

bridgehead over the Elbe readied a task 

force that included tanks, tank destroyers, and a company of infantry to probe 

eastward to find the Russians, the force 

9 Unless otherwise noted, events during this period are from official unit records and from Capt. 

William J. Fox, The Russian-American Linkup, a 

historical narrative supported by combat interviews 

with members of the 69th Division. 

10 Sylvan Diary, entry of 23 Apr 45. 

dutifully awaited approval from higher 

command before setting out. There were 

few other units that did not, in the meantime, violate the order on depth of patrols. Some patrols of the 2d Division 

probed in vain up to seven miles beyond 

the Mulde. One from the 104th Division’s reconnaissance troop, composed 

of three men under 1st Lt. Harlan W. 

Shank, roamed more than twenty miles 

and reached the Elbe at Torgau late on 

April 23d, spent the night in the town 

under occasional Russian artillery fire, 

and finally departed at noon on the 24th 

after seeing no Russian troops. 

Through it all, the men along the line 

of the Mulde still had a war to fightafter a fashion. As late as the 22d, part of 

the 69th Division’s 271st Infantry was 

fighting hard to clear the town of Eilenberg, astride the Mulde, and after night 

fell had to repulse a determined counterattack by as many as 200 Germans. 

Company-size counterattacks also hit 

some units of the 2d Division. Meanwhile, other German soldiers in small 

groups and in large poured into American lines, eager to surrender. Every division handled thousands each day, as 

well as hundreds of American and Allied 

prisoners released by their captors. At 

the same time hordes of civilians 

gathered at bridges over the Mulde, terrified of the Russians, tearfully hopeful of 

refuge within American lines. Although 

the official word was to turn back German civilians, many an American soldier 

looked the other way as the refugees tried 

to pass, or liberally interpreted the 

proviso that foreign laborers might cross. 

Unwittingly setting the stage for momentous events to follow, the burgomaster of Wurzen, on the Mulde’s east bank 

east of Leipzig, begged permission late 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 449 

M. Finnemann 

MAP 7 

on the 23d to surrender his town to the 

69th Division’s 273d Infantry. Since the 

burgomaster’s purpose was to release 

thousands of American and Allied prisoners and to surrender hundreds of German troops in the town, and since a 

restraining order on bridgeheads over 

the Mulde was yet to come, commanders up the chain of command sanctioned 

the move. The bulk of a battalion 

crossed the Mulde in early evening into 

Wurzen to participate in a chaotic night 

of processing both the liberated and the 

newly captured. 

By the afternoon of 24 April nobody 

yet had any definite word of the Russians. Nor could anyone know that contrary to the agreement with General 

Eisenhower, Russian troops approaching 

that part of the Elbe which runs some 

eighteen to twenty miles east of the 

Mulde were under orders to halt, not at 

the Mulde but at the Elbe. Word on the 

Mulde as a demarcation line had yet to 
450 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

pass down the Russian chain of command. 11 

Frustrated by the prolonged wait, the 

commander of the 273d Infantry, Col. 

Charles M. Adams, in midafternoon of 

24 April directed 1st Lt. Albert L. Kotzebue of Company G to lead a jeepmounted patrol of thirty-five men “to 

contact the Russians.” Lieutenant Kotzebue was to go only as far as Kuehren, a 

village four miles beyond the Mulde; but 

when he reached Kuehren after encountering only a few hospitalized Allied 

prisoners and hundreds of docile Germans anxious to surrender, he gained 

permission to proceed another three 

miles, technically two miles beyond the 

five-mile limit. (Map 7) That Kotzebue 

did, encountering only the usual German groups trying to escape the Russians, then returned to Kuehren to bed 

down for the night. Although he received 

two messages ordering his patrol to return before dark, Lieutenant Kotzebue 

ignored them because it was already well 

after dark. 

With no further word from Kotzebue, 

Colonel Adams that night ordered two 

more patrols to depart the next morning, 

25 April. The orders were the same, “to 

contact the Russians,” again within the 

five-mile limit. Members of one patrol 

made up of the regiment’s intelligence 

and reconnaissance platoon apparently 

accepted the limitation without question. Those of another commanded by a 

platoon leader of Company E but accompanied by the 2d Battalion’s executive officer, Maj. Frederick W. Craig, 

11 The Russians had acknowledged it to General 

Eisenhower only on 24 April. See U.S. Military 

Mission to Eisenhower, MX 24032, 24 Apr 45, op. 

cit. 

took the restriction less seriously. To a 

man they entered into a kind of humorous conspiracy to meet the Russians, regardless. As the two patrols left in jeeps 

mounting machine guns early on the 

25th, no one yet had heard anything 

more from Lieutenant Kotzebue in 

Kue hr en. 

Later in the morning, at Wurzen, the 

1st Battalion’s S–2, 2d Et. William D. 

Robertson, awoke from a deep sleep occasioned by staying up the previous night 

to help process the surrendering Germans and liberated Allied prisoners in 

the town. With three men, Lieutenant 

Robertson left by jeep in midmorning to 

scout neighboring towns and villages for 

other Allied prisoners and other Germans wanting to surrender. Having no 

radio with him, Lieutenant Robertson 

had no intention of contacting the Russians as he headed eastward. 

In Kuehren, in the meantime, Lieutenant Kotzebue and his men had 

awakened to a breakfast prepared by villagers eager to please in fear that if the 

Americans left, the Russians would come 

with the reign of terror that rumor promised would follow. Caught up in the 

general expectation that the Russians 

were on their way, Lieutenant Kotzebue 

saw no reason why he should not be the 

one to meet them first. His orders, “to 

contact the Russians,” he deemed sufficiently broad to warrant continuing toward the east. Leaving his radio jeep in 

Kuehren to serve as a relay point for 

messages, he headed east with the bulk of 

his patrol. 

Thus, in midmorning of 25 April, four 

separate groups of the 69th Division’s 

273d Infantry were moving eastward. 

Only one, the intelligence and reconnaissance platoon, was concerned enough 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 451 

with the five-mile restriction to comply 

with it. 12 

Encountering dispirited German soldiers, jubilant American and Allied 

prisoners, apprehensive German civilians, and exuberant, sometimes intoxicated foreign laborers, Lieutenant 

Kotzebue and his men advanced almost 

due east through the town of Dahlen 

toward the Elbe in the vicinity of Strehla, 

a few miles northwest of Riesa, some 

seventeen miles southeast of Torgau. It 

was almost noon as the jeeps slowed to 

enter the farming village of Leckwitz, 

less than two miles from the Elbe. 

Far down the main street, the men 

spotted a horseman just as he turned his 

mount into a courtyard and passed from 

view. At a glance, the man’s costume 

seemed unusual. Could it be? Was this 

it? 

Spinning forward, the jeeps came to a 

halt at the entrance to the courtyard. 

Inside, among a crowd of foreign laborers, was the horseman. There could be 

no doubt. He was a Russian soldier. 

The time was 1130 on 25 April, the 

setting inauspicious, but the moment 

historic: the first contact between Allied 

armies from the west, Soviet armies from 

the east. 

Through Russian-speaking Tech. 5 

Stephen A. Kowalski, Lieutenant Kotzebue asked directions to the soldier’s commander; but the Russian was suspicious 

and reserved. Waving his arm to the east, 

he suggested that one of the foreign 

laborers, a Pole, could lead them better 

than he. With that, he galloped away. 

Taking the Pole as a guide the patrol 

continued to the Elbe, a few hundred 

12 The story of all patrols is based on detailed 

combat interviews in Fox, The Russian-American 

Linkup. 

yards north of Strehla. Seeing uniformed 

figures on the east bank milling about 

the wreckage of a column of vehicles 

close to the remains of a tactical bridge, 

Lieutenant Kotzebue raised his binoculars. Again there could be no doubt. 

They were Russians. The rays of the sun 

reflecting off medals on their chests convinced him. 

At the lieutenant’s direction, his 

driver fired two green signal flares. Although the figures on the far bank gave 

no answering signal, they began to walk 

toward the edge of the river. As Kotzebue’s driver fired another flare for good 

measure, the Polish laborer shouted 

identity across the water. 

Using a hand grenade, Lieutenant 

Kotzebue blasted the moorings of a sailboat and with five of his men rowed 

across the Elbe. A major and two other 

Russians, one a photographer, met them. 

The meeting was at first restrained, but 

as Kotzebue explained who he was, the 

Kussians relaxed. 

Minutes later, Lt. Col. Alexander T. 

Gardiev, commander of the 175th Rifle 

Regiment, arrived. Making clear that he 

intended to take the Americans to meet 

his division commander, he suggested 

that the men return to the west bank of 

the Elbe and proceed northward to a 

hand-operated cable ferry opposite the 

village of Kreinitz. There the Russians 

would meet them again, presumably at 

the pleasure of two motion-picture 

cameramen who by that time also had 

arrived on the scene. 

Returning to the west bank, Kotzebue 

sent one of his jeeps accompanied by his 

second-in-command back to Kuehren 

with a message to be transmitted by radio 

to headquarters of the 273d Infantry. 

Making a mistake he would come to rue, 
452 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the lieutenant gave the wrong map coordinates for his location. 

Lieutenant Kotzebue signed his message at 1330. His regimental commander, 

Colonel Adams, received it not quite 

two hours later: “Mission accomplished. 

Making arrangements for meeting be. 

tween CO’s. Present location (8717). No 

casualties.” 

Hardly had Colonel Adams telephoned that information to the division’s 

chief of staff when the division commander, General Reinhardt, picked up 

the phone. Reinhardt was irate. As late 

as that morning he had been at Adams’s 

command post where he had reiterated 

the order that patrols were to go no more 

than five miles beyond the Mulde. If 

Kotzebue was where the map co-ordinates indicated, he was far beyond the 

Mulde at the Elbe itself on the fringe of 

the town of Riesa. 

General Reinhardt’s first reaction was 

to clamp a blackout on the news until 

Colonel Adams could verify it by a 

meeting with the Russians himself. On 

second thought he telephoned the V 

Corps commander, General Huebner, 

who reacted much as had Reinhardt but 

passed the word to General Hodges at 

First Army. Hodges passed it on to General Bradley at 12th Army Group, who 

took it calmly. 

Mollified by this reaction near the 

top and rationalizing that Lieutenant 

Kotzebue might not have known of the 

five-mile restriction, General Reinhardt 

still was reluctant to publicize the contact without some confirmation. Time 

for proof was short, for despite all efforts 

to contain the news, rumors of a meeting with the Russians were rife throughout the division, and correspondents 

already were deserting neighboring divisions to rush to the 69th’s command 

post. To speed confirmation, Reinhardt 

directed Adams to cancel arrangements 

for a personal meeting with the Russians pending a flight by the division G– 

3 in an artillery spotter plane to the site 

Lieutenant Kotzebue had specified. 

The results of the flight further confused the issue. Taking along an interpreter in a second plane, the G–3 flew 

to Riesa, which marked the co-ordinates 

Kotzebue had mistakenly given. Antiaircraft fire at Riesa turned both planes 

back. 

On two occasions, in late morning and 

early afternoon of 25 April, Colonel 

Adams ordered Major Craig and the 47- 

man patrol from the 273d Infantry’s 2d 

Battalion to advance no farther. Both 

times he qualified the order with authority “to scout out the area” near 

where the patrol was located. Both times 

Major Craig used this authority to justify 

continuing toward the east. 

Craig and the men with him, like 

Lieutenant Kotzebue and his men, were 

caught up in the elation of the moment. 

Abroad in what was technically enemy 

territory, they were welcomed by jubilant foreign laborers and Allied prisoners as liberators, by the German populace 

and soldiers as saviors from some ephemeral dread called “the Russians are 

coming.” Only occasionally did a German soldier display any inclination to 

fight. One word and white flags appeared 

in the villages as if by magic. 

Craig had another incentive to continue. With him was a historian, Capt. 

William J. Fox, operating out of headquarters of the V Corps. Rationalizing 

that he was not subject to the five-mile 

restriction, Fox insisted that if Craig felt 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 453 

obligated to turn back, he personally 

would continue to contact the Russians. 

Two hours after the second stop order 

from Colonel Adams, Major Craig and 

his patrol still were traveling eastward. 

The patrol’s radio was delightfully void 

of any more orders, and Craig sent no 

further reports on his position lest they 

generate a new directive to halt. 

By midafternoon the patrol had 

reached a point less than three miles 

from the Elbe when two jeeps overtook 

the column. They carried men from 

Lieutenant Kotzebue’s patrol on their 

way forward from Kuehren after having 

relayed the message telling of Kotzebue’s 

meeting with the Russians. 

All doubts about continuing to the 

Elbe erased by this news, Craig’s patrol 

was heading for Leckwitz, the village 

where Kotzebue had first encountered 

the lone Russian, when a cloud of dust 

revealed the approach of horsemen. 

Craig halted his jeeps and the men piled 

out, eager and excited at the prospect of 

meeting what obviously was Russian 

cavalry interspersed with a few men on 

motorcycles and bicycles. 

“I thought the first guy would never 

get there,” one soldier recalled. “My 

eyes glued on his bicycle, and he seemed 

to get bigger and bigger as he came 

slower and slower towards us. He reached 

a point a few yards away, tumbled off 

his bike, saluted, grinned, and stuck out 

his hand.” 13 

The time was 1645, 25 April. 

After a few self-conscious speeches 

om both sides extolling the historic 

moment, the Russians went on their way 

south toward Dresden, while Craig and 

his patrol hurried on to the Elbe to join 

13 Combat interview with men of Craig’s patrol. 

Lieutenant Kotzebue on the east bank. 

There the commander of the 58th 

Guards Infantry Division, Maj. Gen. 

Vladimir Rusakov, whose 175th Regiment had made the first contact with 

Kotzebue, saw it his duty for the second 

time in the same afternoon to welcome 

an American force with toasts in vodka 

to Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill, Stalin, 

the Red Army, the American Army, 

and, it seemed to some Americans present, to every commander and private 

soldier in each army. 

Back at headquarters of the 273d Infantry on the Mulde, a radio message 

from Major Craig arrived shortly before 

1800: “Have contacted Lieutenant Kotzebue who is in contact with Russians.” 

To Colonel Adams, that confused the 

issue more than ever. 

Having left Wurzen in midmorning of 

25 April in a jeep with three men in 

search of Allied prisoners and surrendering Germans, Lieutenant Robertson, 

the 1st Battalion S–2, experienced much 

the same reactions to the arrival of 

Americans in the German towns and 

villages as did the patrols of Kotzebue 

and Craig. Although Robertson had no 

intention at first of trying to find the 

Russians, he kept moving from one town 

to the next until at Sitzenroda, a little 

past the midpoint between Mulde and 

Elbe, a group of released British prisoners told him there were many American 

prisoners, some of them wounded, in 

Torgau on the Elbe. Already exhilarated 

by the ease with which he was moving 

across the no man’s land between the 

two rivers, Robertson used the information to justify his continuing to Torgau, 

rescuing the prisoners, and if possible, 

meeting the Russians. 
454 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Entering Torgau in midafternoon, 

Lieutenant Robertson searched for the 

reported American prisoners to no avail, 

though he did find a group of released 

prisoners of various nationalities that included two Americans, a naval ensign 

and a soldier. The two joined Robertson’s little band. The few German troops 

encountered appeared to be preparing 

to leave the town and readily gave up 

their weapons. 

Hearing small arms fire from the direction of the Elbe, Robertson and his 

men headed through the center of the 

town toward a castle on the river’s west 

bank. Assuming that the fire came from 

Russians east of the Elbe, Robertson 

yearned for an American flag to establish 

his identity. As he passed an apothecary 

shop, the idea came to him that he could 

make a flag. Inside the shop, he found 

red and blue water paint with which he 

and his men fashioned a crude flag from 

a white sheet. 

With the flag in hand, Robertson 

climbed into a tower of the castle. Although the firing had stopped, he could 

see figures moving about on the east 

bank of the Elbe. Displaying the flag 

outside the tower produced no fire, but 

when one of Robertson’s men showed 

himself, the figures on the east bank 

began again to shoot. 

At long last the firing stopped, and a 

green signal flare went up from the other 

side of the river. Robertson was elated. 

That, as he remembered it, was the 

agreed recognition signal to be fired by 

the Russians. (The Russians should have 

fired a red signal.) Certain that the 

figures on the east bank were Russians 

and not having a flare with which to 

answer, Robertson sent his jeep back to 

the Allied prisoners found earlier to 

bring up a Russian who had been among 

the lot. 

Climbing the tower, the Russian 

shouted across to the east bank. Almost 

immediately the figures beyond the Elbe 

began to mill about. They understood, 

the freed prisoner shouted from the 

tower, that Robertson and his men were 

Americans. 

With that, Robertson and his little 

group rushed to a destroyed highway 

bridge and slowly began to climb across 

the river on twisted girders. A Russian 

soldier from the far bank began to climb 

toward them. The soldier and the released prisoner met first, then Robertson reached the soldier. The lieutenant 

could think of nothing to say. He merely 

grinned and pounded the Russian exuberantly. 

The time was 1600. Although word of 

Major Craig’s contact reached the 273d 

Infantry command post before that of 

Robertson’s, the meeting on a girder 

above the swirling waters of the Elbe 

was by some forty-five minutes the 

second contact between the armies from 

east and west. 

Once on the east bank, Americans and 

Russians pounded each other on the 

back, everybody wearing a perpetual 

grin, then drank a series of toasts in 

wine and brandy provided by the Russians. They had fired on Robertson’s 

flag, the Russians explained, because a 

few days earlier a group of Germans had 

displayed an American flag to halt Russian fire and make good their escape. 

The impromptu celebration went on for 

an hour. When Robertson at last announced a return to his own headquarters, a Russian major, two lesser 

officers, and a sergeant volunteered to go 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 455 

LIEUTENANT ROBERTSON (extreme left) shows General Eisenhower the makeshift flag displayed at the Elbe. 

with him. They were from the 173d 

Rifle Regiment. 

Shortly after 1800, Lieutenant Robertson and his overloaded jeep arrived 

at the 1st Battalion command post in 

Wurzen. As soon as he could convince 

his battalion commander that the Russians were genuine soldiers, not released 

prisoners, word passed up the line to 

regiment . To Colonel Adams this development 

was more startling than the others. He 

had ordered no patrol from the 1st Battalion, yet the battalion had four Russians as living proof of contact. He 

ordered them brought to his headquarters, where they successfully ran a 

gantlet of war correspondents and photographers who had almost inundated 

the 273d Infantry command post. 

When the division commander, General Reinhardt, learned of the new development, he was more irate than ever. 

The corps commander obviously was 

getting the impression that nobody in 

the 69th Division followed orders, and 

Reinhardt could hardly blame him. 

Reinhardt even toyed briefly with the 
456 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

idea of a court-martial for Robertson. 

(Someone noted in the 273d Infantry 

journal: “Something wrong with an 

officer who cannot tell 5 miles from 25 

miles.”) 

The fact that Robertson’s exploit had 

produced tangible evidence entitling 

the 69th Division to the acclaim of first 

contact with the Russians apparently had 

something to do with Reinhardt’s decision to play it straight. Once he himself had talked with the Russians at his 

command post, he interrupted the inevitable toasts and photographs to report 

the news to the V Corps commander. 

General Huebner in turn told Reinhardt to proceed with arrangements for 

a formal meeting of division commanders the next day, 26 April, and of corps 

commanders on the 27th. Since nobody 

yet had any specific information on the 

site of Lieutenant Kotzebue’s meeting, 

the formal linkup celebrations would 

be held at Torgau. 

General Reinhardt met General Rusakov, the man of many welcomes, on the 

east bank opposite Torgau at 1600 on 

the 26th. Camaraderie, photographs, 

toasts, dancing in the street, and a hastily 

assembled feast with a main dish of fried 

eggs were the order of the day. General 

Huebner conducted a second ceremony 

on the 27th with his opposite, the commander of the 34th Russian Corps, and 

General Hodges a third on the 30th with 

the commander of the First Ukrainian 

Army. The American, British, and Soviet 

governments officially announced to the 

world at 1800 on the 27th that east and 

west had met on the Elbe at Torgau. 

In the meantime, somebody at last 

had remembered to do something about 

Lieutenant Kotzebue, Major Craig, and 

their men waiting on the east bank upstream near Kreinitz. Late on the 26th, 

a patrol brought them the news that history had passed them by. On the same 

day, Lieutenant Shank of the 104th Division, who also had had a close brush 

with history, returned to Torgau, this 

time actually to meet the Russians he 

had failed to wait for long enough two 

days before. 

A few problems of co-ordination with 

the Russians remained on the northern 

and southern portions of the front. The 

British Chiefs of Staff were particularly 

concerned lest the Russians intended the 

Elbe as a stopping point in the north as 

well as the center of the front. A Russian 

drive to the Elbe would jeopardize the 

British drive to the Baltic. Urging General Eisenhower to make the distinction 

clear, the British Chiefs also pointed out 

that by seeking to halt on a well-defined 

geographical line, Eisenhower might be 

forgoing remarkable political advantages 

to be gained by liberating Prague and 

much of the rest of Czechoslovakia. If 

possible without detracting from the 

main drives to the Baltic and into Austria, they believed the Allies should exploit any opportunity to drive deep into 

Czechoslovakia. 

In the course of passing that view to 

General Eisenhower, General Marshall 

remarked: “Personally and aside from 

all logistic, tactical or strategical implications I would be loath to hazard 

American lives for purely political purposes.” 14 Right or wrong from a political standpoint, the decision was in 

keeping with the U.S. military policy 

followed generally throughout the 

14 Marshall toEisenhower, W–74256, 28 Apr 45, 

and Eisenhower to Marshall, FWD 20225, 29 Apr 

45, both in SHAEF cable log. 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 457 

GENERAL HODGES MEETS THE RUSSIANS AT THE ELBE 

war—to concentrate everything on 

achieving military victory over the 

armed forces of the enemy. 15 

First priority, Eisenhower told Marshall, was to be accorded the drives to 

the Baltic and into Austria. The thrust 

to the Baltic, he said, was to forestall 

Russian entry into Denmark (a departure from the stated military policy 

which no one officially remarked); the 

15 For a detailed discussion of the point, see 

Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 468, 

thrust into Austria to deny a National 

Redoubt. If additional means should be 

available, he intended to attack enemy 

forces that still might be holding out in 

Czechoslovakia, Denmark, and Norway. 

Both the latter, he believed, should be 

the province of the Allies; but the Red 

Army was in perfect position to clean 

out Czechoslovakia and certainly to 

reach Prague in advance of U.S. troops. 

“I shall not. attempt any move I deem 

militarily unwise,” he assured Marshall, 

“merely to gain a political prize unless I 

receive specific orders from the Com- 
458 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

bined Chiefs of Staff.” 16 As in the case 

of going to Berlin, such orders never 

came. 

In an even fuller explanation of plans 

to the Russians, General Eisenhower on 

the last day of April allayed British fears 

about lower reaches of the Elbe. In the 

north, the Supreme Commander noted, 

he intended to clear the Baltic coast as 

far east as Wismar and build a line south 

to Schwerin, thence southwest to Doemitz on the Elbe, 23 miles downstream 

from Wittenberge. From headwaters of 

the Mulde River southward, he intended 

to hold a line approximately along the 

1937 frontier of Czechoslovakia, though 

he might advance as far into Czechoslovakia as Karlsbad, Pilsen, and Ceské 

Budcjovice. Farther south he planned to 

halt in the general area of Linz. 

The Russians accepted these proposals, but four days later, on 4 May, 

when General Eisenhower said he was 

willing not only to advance to the Elbe 

in the vicinity of Dresden but also to 

clear the west bank of the Vltava within 

Czechoslovakia, which would bring his 

forces in the center as far east as Prague, 

generally on a line with those in the 

south at Linz, the Red Army Chief of 

Staff strongly objected. To avoid “a possible confusion of forces,” he asked that 

the Allies confine their advance in 

Czechoslovakia to the Karlsbad-Pilsen 

line as earlier stated. He added pointedly 

that the Russians had stopped their advance toward the lower Elbe in accordance with Allied wishes. 

16 Eisenhower to Marshall, FWD 20225, 29 Apr 

45, SHAEF cable log, as cited by Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 468. 

General Eisenhower promptly agreed 

to the Russian request. 17 

The End in Berlin 

Linkup by the enemies of the Third 

Reich was but one more thorn in a 

bristling crown of troubles pressing hard 

on Adolf Hitler’s brow. Indeed, amid the 

welter of sad tidings pouring into the 

Fuehrerbunker, the meeting on the Elbe 

may have passed unremarked. 

Since Hitler’s decision on the 22d to 

stand and die in Berlin, an air of aimless 

resignation had hung over the bunker, 

relieved more and more rarely by some 

vain flurry of hope. It was common 

knowledge among the sycophants in the 

bunker that Hitler intended suicide, as 

did Eva Braun. Late on the 26th, Russian artillery fire began to fall in the 

garden of the Reich Chancellery above 

the bunker, reminder enough for any 

who still might have doubted that the 

end was near. Yet the Fuehrer’s military 

chiefs, Keitel and Jodl, even though now 

removed from Hitler’s presence, persisted either in coloring their reports on 

the military situation or in refusing to 

face the facts themselves. 

General von Manteuffel, who earlier 

had been transferred from the west for 

the twilight of the campaign in the east, 

told Jodl late on the 27th that anyone 

who wanted a true picture had but to 

stand at any crossroads north of Berlin 

and observe the steady stream of refugees and disheartened troops clogging 

the roads to the rear. What the soldier 

could do had been done, Manteuffel 

insisted; now the time had come for 

17 For details and documentation, see Pogue, The 

Supreme Command, p. 469. 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 459 

political action, for negotiations with 

the Western Powers. 18 

Yet both Keitel and Jodl could persist 

in their belief that more still might be 

done. Relieving the army group commander north of Berlin, they ordered 

General Student, commander of the 

First Parachute Army, to fly from the 

Netherlands to assume command. 

On the 28th, grim news poured into 

the bunker in a torrent. Italian partisans, Hitler learned, had arrested his 

erstwhile partner, Mussolini, and there 

were distressing rumors of army leaders 

in Italy negotiating surrender. He 

learned too of the uprising in Munich. 

On that day also, telephone communications with OKW failed. 

The 29th was grimmer still. Hitler 

himself would not be notified until the 

next day, but on the 29th the last thin 

hope of relieving Berlin evaporated 

when the turnabout attack of General 

Wenck’s Twelfth Army stalled near 

Potsdam, seventeen miles southwest of 

the capital. Only some 30,000 men of 

the Ninth Army south of Berlin had 

escaped Russian encirclement; so exhausted were they, so depleted their 

arms and ammunition, that they would 

be of no help to Wenck. 

Mussolini and his mistress, Hitler 

learned, had been executed the day before and strung up by their heels. Yet 

the most crushing blow was the word 

that Heinrich Himmler had turned traitor. As with Goering, Hitler expelled 

Himmler from the party and stripped 

him of all claim to the succession. When 

18 In addition to sources previously cited for events 

in Berlin, see Magna E. Bauer, MS # B–69, The 

End of Army Group Weichsel and Twelfth Army, 

27 April–7 May 1945, prepared in OCMH to complement this volume. 

his fury had passed, he drew a will and 

testament appointing Admiral Doenitz 

as head of the German state and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. 

Then, before daylight the next morning, 

he married Eva Braun. 

Field Marshal Keitel finally sent a 

message by radio early on the 30th telling of the failure of Wenck’s Twelfth 

Army, in effect admitting that all hope 

was gone. Although the message may 

never have reached the bunker, Hitler 

apparently already had concluded that 

it was time to die. He spent much of the 

morning saying farewells to his staff, 

seemingly unmoved by the news that 

Russian troops were little more than a 

block away, then in midafternoon retired with Eva Braun to his suite. 

Eva Braun killed herself by biting on 

a cyanide capsule. Hitler shot himself 

with a pistol. In accordance with prior 

instructions, members of the household 

staff burned the bodies outside the 

bunker. 19 

News of the Fuehrer’s death was slow 

to emerge. Most likely those in the 

bunker delayed in order to await the 

outcome of a Goebbels-inspired attempt 

to negotiate the surrender of Berlin in 

exchange for safe passage of those in the 

bunker. When the Russians predictably 

declined any accommodation, word went 

out at last—more than twenty-four hours 

after the suicide–that Hitler was dead. 

Admiral Doenitz announced it publicly 

by radio that evening, 1 May, in the 

process giving the impression that Hitler 

had died a hero’s death. 

19 The evidence that Hitler shot himself appears 

to be conclusive, despite a report by a former Soviet intelligence officer that Hitler too bit on a 

cyanide capsule. See Lev Aleksandrovich Bezymensky, The Death of Adolf Hitler (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968). 
460 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

That same day Goebbels and his wife, 

after poisoning their six children, arranged their own deaths at the hands of 

an SS guard. Three of Hitler’s military 

entourage also killed themselves. The 

others tried to escape. Few made it. 

The Drive to the Baltic 

As these melodramatic events occured, 

two major Allied offensives were continuing, one by Montgomery’s 21 Army 

Group to clear northern Germany and 

the Netherlands, the other by Devers’s 

6th Army Group and the Third Army 

into Austria. 

The 21 Army Group’s offensive 

evolved from the bridgehead established 

over the Rhine near Wesel. While the 

First Canadian Army on the left drove 

generally north to reach the I Jsselmeer 

and the North Sea, the Second British 

Army attacked northeast to seize the line 

of the Elbe from Wittenberge to the sea. 

Those goals achieved, the Canadians 

were to turn west to clear the Netherlands and east to sweep the littoral from 

the Dutch border to the estuary of the 

Weser River. The British were to attack across the Elbe to capture Hamburg 

and make a 45-mile drive to the Baltic 

in the vicinity of Luebeck. 20 

Benefiting much as had the First and 

Ninth U.S. Armies from the great gap 

created in the German line by encirclement of Army Group B in the Ruhr, the 

British south wing alongside the Ninth 

Army made the most rapid gains. There 

the 8 Corps had a four-day brush with 

contingents of Wenck’s Twelfth Army 

near Uelzen but reached the Elbe the 

20 Montgomery, Normandy to the Baltic. For 

plans, see pages 261–63; for operations, pages 264– 

66. 

next day, 19 April, opposite Lauenberg, 

some thirty miles upstream from Hamburg. Another corps in the center 

reached the Elbe opposite Hamburg 

four days later on the 23d. Both this 

corps and another on the left that was 

advancing on the great port of Bremen 

fought against the essentially makeshift 

force, Army Blumentritt, formed in 

early April as a component of OB 

NORDWEST, the new command under 

Field Marshal Busch which had been 

created as the Allied armies threatened 

to split the Western Front. 21 Strengthened by sailors fighting as infantry, the 

Germans made a stand for a week in 

front of Bremen, but by nightfall of 26 

April the British were in full control of 

the city. 

The First Canadian Army at the same 

time was facing the remains of General 

Student’s First Parachute Army and the 

Twenty-fifth Army, which was subordinate to OB NEDERLANDER, the new 

command under General Blaskowitz 

who formerly had headed Army Group 

H. Comprising two of the more cohesive 

forces remaining to the German Army 

in the west, the troops drew added 

strength from readily defensible positions along one canal or river after another. Contingents of one Canadian 

corps nevertheless reached the North 

Sea near the northeastern tip of the 

Netherlands on 16 April, thereby splitting the German front. Another corps 

on the 14th took Arnhem on the Neder 

Rijn, an objective that had eluded British troops in the preceding September’s 

big airborne attack, and on the 18th 

ended a 40-mile trek to the IJsselmeer. 

One corps turned east to clear the 

21 See above, ch. XVIII. 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 461 

coast between the Dutch border and the 

Weser, but little reason remained for the 

other to make the planned assault to 

erase the Germans trapped in the western portion of the Netherlands. If the 

Canadians attacked, the Germans in all 

probability would flood the low-lying 

countryside, increasing the suffering of 

a Dutch population already facing a food 

shortage that was close to famine. Even 

the Nazi high commisssioner in the 

Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, had 

by early April become concerned that a 

catastrophe was in the making. Word 

that Seyss-Inquart might be amenable to 

a relief operation reached the Canadians 

in mid-April, resulting in conferences 

with the Germans that led to an agreement for the Allies to provide food for 

the Dutch by land, sea, and air. Airdrops 

began on 28 April while negotiations 

were still going on. 22 

During the conferences, General Eisenhower’s representative tried to persuade Seyss-Inquart to agree either to a 

truce or to unconditional surrender. 

Seyss-Inquart refused on the grounds 

that it was the duty of the Germans in 

the Netherlands to fight until ordered 

to do otherwise by the German government. As Dutch relief operations got 

underway, a lull not unlike a truce 

nevertheless settled over the front. 23 

For the British attack across the Elbe 

to reach the Baltic, General Eisenhower 

provided assistance by General Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne Corps with three 

U.S. divisions. Although the corps was 

attached to the Second British Army for 

23 For details and annotation, see Stacey, The 

Victory Campaign, pp. 581–87, 606–09, and Pogue, 

The Supreme Command, pp. 457–58. 

23 Pogue, The Supreme Command, pp. 458-59; 

Stacey, The Victory Campaign, pp. 607–08. 

the operation, the Ninth Army provided 

administrative and support services. 

Under the British plan, the 8 Corps was 

to make an assault crossing of the Elbe, 

whereupon the 12 Corps and the XVIII 

Airborne Corps were to cross into the 

bridgehead, the former to mask and 

later capture Hamburg, the latter to 

clear additional bridging sites upstream 

and protect the right flank of the 8 Corps 

in a northward drive to the Baltic. 24 

The rapid deterioration of German 

forces everywhere on the Western Front 

prompted Field Marshal Montgomery to 

advance the date of the river crossing 

two days, to 29 April. It also prompted 

General Ridgway to propose that instead of waiting six or seven days to 

cross British bridges, the XVIII Airborne Corps make its own assault crossing before daylight on 30 April. The 

commander of the Second Army, General Dempsey, approved. 

General Ridgway’s problem was to 

get an assault force ready in time. 

Although one division, the 8th, had arrived by nightfall of the 28th from mopup operations in the Ruhr, its regiments 

were concentrated near the British crossing site in keeping with the original 

plan. Of the 82d Airborne Division, assembling near the bridge sites reserved 

for the U.S. corps, only a battalion had 

arrived by dawn of the 29th, and a full 

regimental combat team was not scheduled to arrive until late afternoon of the 

same day, a few hours before the time for 

the assault. A third division, the 7th 

Armored, was not to complete its move 

until the 30th. 

In the interest of speed and in a belief 

24 This account is based on official records of the 

XVIII Airborne Corps and its divisions. See also 

Montgomery, Normandy to the Baltic, pp. 269–73. 
462 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

M. Finnemann 

MAP 8 

that resistance would be light, Ridgway 

named the airborne division for the assault even though at the start only one 

battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry 

would be available. To provide a ready 

follow-up force, he attached four battalions of the 8th Division to the 82d. 

Following an almost unopposed crossing by British commandos near Lauenburg before daylight on the 29th, the 

battalion of the 505th’s paratroopers 

moved silently in assault boats across the 

sprawling Elbe at Bleckede, six miles 

upstream from Lauenburg, at 0100, 30 

April. (Map 8) As rain mixed with snow 

prompted the Germans on the far bank 

to seek cover, only an occasional flurry 

of small arms fire swept the river. 

The paratroopers fanned out against 

sporadic resistance, though artillery fire 

began to fall in heavy volume at the 

crossing site. The shelling harassed succeeding waves and hampered engineers 

constructing a heavy ponton bridge, but 

a 1,110-foot bridge was nevertheless 

ready for traffic before dark on the first 

day, fifteen hours after work had begun. 

The next day, 1 May, the bridgehead 

expanded rapidly. Having crossed a 

British bridge at Lauenburg, the 6th 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 463 

IN THE AUSTRIAN ALPS a nest of resistance confronts men of the 103d Division. 

British Airborne Division was attached 

to General Ridgway’s command to form 

the left wing of the corps. Four battalions 

of the 8th Division and an additional 

parachute infantry regiment of the 82d 

participated in the day’s attacks amid 

increasing indications that all resistance 

was about to collapse. By the end of this 

second day, the American bridgehead was 

six miles deep, contact was firm with the 

British on the left, and a second bridge 

was in operation eight miles upstream 

from Bleckede. Contingents of British 

armor to assist the British airborne division and a combat command of the 7th 

Armored Division to help the 82d were 

crossing the river. 

On 2 May, as news of Hitler’s death 

spread, the enemy’s will to fight disap 

peared. In rare instances was a shot fired. 

The problem became instead how to 

advance without running down hordes of 

German soldiers and civilians who appeared to have only one goal: to get out 

of the way of the Russians. 

With attached armor, the 82d Airborne Division moved east to Ludwigslust and southeast along the Elbe to 

Doemitz to anchor the 21 Army Group’s 

right flank on the line General Eisen- 
464 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

hower had specified to the Russians, The 

8th Division drove forty-five miles to 

the northeast to occupy Schwerin. While 

British troops before Hamburg began 

negotiations for the fire-gutted city’s surrender and while a British armored division entered Luebeck without a fight, 

the 6th British Airborne Division dashed 

all the way to Wismar on the Baltic. The 

drive sealed off the Jutland peninsula, 

trapping German forces in the nation’s 

northernmost province and barring the 

way to Denmark. Two hours later the 

first Russian troops arrived. 

Piecemeal Surrenders 

The second of the continuing Allied 

offensives, a prolongation into Austria of 

the drive through southern Germany by 

the 6th Army Group and the Third 

Army, also became closely involved in 

the growing German dissolution. Hardly 

were the first troops across the Austrian 

frontier when the news broke that on 29 

April the German command in Italy had 

surrendered. The capitulation was eff ective at noon on 2 May and included the 

Austrian provinces of Vorarlberg, Tirol, 

Salzburg, and part of Carinthia (Kaernten), the areas into which troops of the 

6th Army Group were moving. 25 

On the same day, 2 May, Admiral 

Doenitz, new head of the Third Reich, 

convened his advisers in a headquarters 

established in the extreme north of Germany. Anxious to end the bloodshed, 

Doenitz just as fervently wanted to save 

25 See Ernest F. Fisher, Cassino to the Alps, in 

preparation for the series UNITED STATES 

ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. Unless otherwise 

noted, the surrender story is based on Pogue, The 

Supreme Command, pp. 478-94; Ziemke, Stalingrad 

to Berlin, ch. XXI; and Royce L. Thompson, Military Surrender in the ETO, MS in OCMH. 

as many German soldiers and civilians as 

possible from the grasp of the Russians. 

Aware that agreements between the 

Western Powers and the Soviet Union 

precluded his surrendering all to the 

Western Allies alone, he believed that 

the only chance of saving more Germans 

lay in opening the front in the west while 

continuing to fight in the east, meanwhile trying to arrange piecemeal surrenders to the Allies at the level of army 

group and below. 

As Doenitz surmised, the way was open 

for such surrenders. Basing their conclusions on indications reaching General 

Eisenhower’s headquarters in mid-April 

that German commanders in Norway, 

Denmark, and the larger north German 

cities might be induced to surrender, the 

Combined Chiefs of Staff on 21 April had 

notified the Russians that surrender of 

large formations was a growing possibility. They suggested that Britain, the 

Soviet Union, and the U.S. be represented on each front in order to observe 

negotiations for surrender. The Soviets 

had promptly agreed. 

Word went out from Doenitz’s headquarters during 2 May to commanders 

facing the Russians in the north to move 

as many men as possible behind the 

line Wismar-Schwerin-Ludwigslust-Doemitz and to exploit any opportunity to 

negotiate local surrenders to the Allies. 26 

General der Infanterie Kurt von Tippelskirch, commander of the Twentyfirst Army, complied that afternoon, contacting General Gavin, commander of 

the 82d Airborne Division, in Ludwigslust. Tippelskirch surrendered his 

command unconditionally, though in 

deference to the Russians, Gavin speci26 See Bauer, The End of Army Group Weichsel 

and Twelfth Army. 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 465 

fied that the capitulation was valid only 

for those troops who passed through 

Allied lines. 27 

A formal surrender was hardly necessary in any case. By the afternoon of 2 

May the bulk of the German troops and 

their commanders were falling over 

themselves to get into Allied prisoner-ofwar enclosures. That the Germans in 

the area north of Berlin were squeezed 

into a corridor only some twenty miles 

wide between Russian and Allied troops 

hardly could have eluded anybody. Great 

columns of motor vehicles, horse-drawn 

carts, foot troops, even tanks, moved in 

formation to surrender. Other soldiers 

straggled in individually, many with 

their women and children and pitiful 

collections of personal belongings. To 

the 8th Division alone at Schwerin more 

that 55,000 Germans surrendered that 

day. 

The next day, 3 May, Tippelskirch 

himself entered an enclosure of the 82d 

Airborne Division along with some 

140,000 other Germans of the Twentyfirst Army, while farther north, at 

Schwerin, some 155,000, mainly of the 

Third Panzer Army, including the commander, General von Manteuffel, surrendered to the 8th Division. The 

headquarters of the army group controlling these two armies apparently disintegrated. Having narrowly escaped 

capture when men of the 8th Division 

entered Schwerin, the newly assigned 

commander, General Student, went into 

hiding but would be apprehended later 

in the month. 

As Tippelskirch surrendered on 2 

May, Admiral Doenitz was sending emissaries to Field Marshal Montgomery with 

27 82d Abn Div AAR, Apr-May 45. 

a view to surrendering all German forces 

remaining in northern Germany. Under 

instructions from General Eisenhower, 

Montgomery on 4 May accepted the unconditional surrender effective the next 

day of all Germans in the Netherlands, 

the Frisian Islands, Helgoland, and all 

other islands, north Germany, and Denmark. (Norway, Eisenhower ruled, would 

constitute a political rather than a tactical surrender and thus would have to 

await negotiations at which Russian representatives would be present.) Although 

Montgomery refused to accept withdrawal into his zone of German civilians 

or military formations still opposing the 

Russians, he agreed to accept individual 

soldiers. Since the bulk of those opposing the Russians already had entered 

Allied lines in any case, the restriction 

made little difference. 

General Wenck’s Twelfth Army and 

the 30,000 survivors of the Ninth Army 

meanwhile entered negotiations with the 

Ninth U.S. Army on 4 May in hope of 

gaining approval for troops and a mass 

of civilians accompanying them to cross 

the Elbe and surrender. The Ninth 

Army’s representatives agreed to accept 

the troops so long as they brought their 

own food, kitchens, and medical facilities, but forbade the civilians to cross. 

Actually, the Ninth Army’s troops imposed no ban on civilians. On a catwalk 

spanning the ruins of a railroad bridge, 

on ferries, boats, and rafts, or by swimming, some 70,000 to 100,000 men of the 

Ninth and Twelfth Armies got to the 

west bank of the Elbe. 28 

28 Details of the negotiations. for the surrender 

may be found in Maj. Gen. James E. Moore (Chief 

of Staff, Ninth Army), Memorandum for the Commanding General, 7 May 1945, copy in OCHM 

through courtesy of General Moore. 
466 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

In Austria, first indications that Field 

Marshal Kesselring might be ready to 

surrender his Army Group G and the 

Nineteenth Army developed on 3 May 

when General Devers learned through 

SHAEF that Kesselring had asked the 

German command in Italy to whom he 

should surrender.29 On the same day 

Kesselring asked Admiral Doenitz for authority to surrender, which Doenitz 

granted. 

As Kesselring began his overtures, the 

war in Austria went on amid an aura of 

unreality-not really war, yet not quite 

peace. There were three main drives, that 

of the French into the Vorarlberg, that 

of General Patch’s Seventh Army toward 

Landeck and Innsbruck, and that of 

General Patton’s Third Army toward 

Linz. 

The 13th Armored Division of General Walker’s XX Corps in the Third 

Army’s center was the fiirst of Patton’s 

troops to reach the Austrian frontier in 

strength, doing so on the first day of May 

along the Inn River opposite Braunau 

(Hitler’s birthplace). The next day, as 

divisions of the XX Corps bridged the 

Inn at three places, in the process capturing both Braunau and Passau, the 

latter at the juncture of the Inn with the 

Danube, a new order and another that 

was pending forced General Patton to 

alter and broaden his plan of attack. 

The first order was the boundary 

change according Salzburg to the Seventh 

Army. The change pinched out the III 

Corps along that part of the Inn River 

that flows inside Germany, ending participation of General Van Fleet’s command in the fighting. The second was 

based on a plan to withdraw headquarters and special troops of the First Army 

from the line, a first step in projected 

deployment of General Hodges’ command to the Pacific. As part of the plan, 

General Huebner’s V Corps on 2 May 

began relieving northernmost units of 

General Irwin’s XII Corps along the 

Czechoslovakian frontier, a preliminary 

to transfer of the V Corps two days later 

to the Third Army. Irwin’s corps was 

thus freed to join the drive on Linz 

down the north bank of the Danube. 

The scene was also prepared for an operation to which General Eisenhower 

had alerted the Russians a few days 

earlier, an advance of up to forty miles 

inside Czechoslovakia to Karlsbad, Pilsen, and Ceské Budejovice. 30 

Under the new arrangement, Walker’s 

XX Corps was to press from its bridgehead over the Inn to the line of the Enns 

River southeast of Linz while the right 

wing of Irwin’s XII Corps moved along 

the north bank of the Danube to capture 

Linz. Irwin’s left wing meanwhile was 

to attack into the southwestern corner of 

Czechoslovakia toward Klatovy and 

Ceské Budejovice, while Huebner’s V 

Corps advanced eastward to take Karlsbad and Pilsen. 

The divisions of the XX Corps drew 

only occasional enemy fire as they moved 

swiftly to reach the Enns River on 4 May 

and there awaited the Russians. The 1 1 th 

Armored Division of the XII Corps at 

the same time reached a point only a few 

miles north of Linz, where an official of 

the city offered to surrender on condition 

that the German garrison be allowed to 

march east against the Russians. The 

armor refused that priviso, and a column 

advanced swiftly the next morning to 

29 Hq, 6th AGp, History, p. 320. 30 See 12th AGp Ltr of Instrs 22, 4 May 45. 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 467 

find a bridge across the Danube intact, 

the city almost devoid of Germans. Another column uncovered more evidence 

of German atrocities in concentration 

camps near Mauthausen and Gusen. The 

armor then moved to the Linz-Ceské 

Budejovice highway to join neighbors 

of the XX Corps in a watch for the 

Russians. 

For the rest of the XII Corps and for 

the V Corps, the drive into Czechoslovakia was at first an anticlimax. The 

fighting was unreal, a comic opera war 

carried on by men who wanted to surrender but seemingly had to fire a shot 

or two in the process. The land, too, was 

strange, neither German nor Czech. The 

little towns near the border, with their 

houses linked by fences and their decorated arches over the gates, had the look 

of Slavic villages, but the population was 

unquestionably hostile. This country was 

the disputed Sudetenland. 

The monotony—an occasional burst of 

small arms fire along roads, a rocket 

from a Panzerfaust at a roadblock, a stray 

round of artillery fire in fields—was 

broken for the 90th Division on 4 May 

when out of the wooded hills emerged 

an old foe of the Third Army, the 11th 

Panzer Division. This time the panzers 

were bent not on attack but on surrender. With an odd conglomeration of 

tanks and other vehicles, the remnants 

of the division marched with their commander, General von Wietersheim, to 

prisoner-of-war cages. 

Two days later General Patton sent the 

4th Armored Division through the 90th 

in the hope that General Eisenhower 

would agree to an advance down the 

valley of the Vltava River to Prague, but 

approval never came. Patrols had advanced as far as Pisek on a tributary of 

the Vltava northwest of Ceské Budejovice when the armor came to a halt. 

On 6 May men of the 2d and 97th 

Divisions and a new unit, the 16th 

Armored Division (Brig. Gen. John L. 

Pierce), came upon an entirely new 

scene. Early in the day the armor began 

unsuspectingly to pass through the infantry along the highway leading to Pilsen. Past silent, undefended forts of 

Czechoslovakia’s western fortifications, 

the “Little Maginot Line,” again untested in battle as it was after the Munich 

Pact, the troops burst suddenly from the 

Sudetenland with its apathetic, sometimes sullen German sympathizers into a 

riotous land of colorful flags and cheering citizenry. 

As if they had stepped across some 

unseen barrier, the men found themselves in a new land of frenzy and delight. War and nonfraternization lay 

behind. It was Paris all over again, on a 

lesser scale and with different flags, but 

with the same jubilant faces, the same 

delirium of liberation. Past abandoned 

antiaircraft guns that had protected the 

big Skoda industrial complex on the outskirts of the city, the armor raced into 

Pilsen. “Nazdar! Nazdar!” the people 

shouted. 

Except for the 1st Division, advancing 

on Karlsbad, the V Corps had joined the 

growing list of American units for which 

the shooting war was over. It was almost 

over for the 1st Division as well. Karlsbad surrendered by telephone early the 

next afternoon, the staff of the opposing 

Seventh Army the day after that. 

In the Tirol, in the meantime, the 

Alpine terrain restricted the forces the 

Seventh Army could employ in drives on 

Innsbruck and Landeck to two divisions. 

Although only a few Germans resisted, 
468 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

AUSTRIAN CIVILIANS line a street in Innsbruck to welcome American troops. 

they drew added strength from their positions in the precipitous, narrow Alpine 

passes. Snow mixed with freezing rain 

and great drifts of the preceding winter’s 

snow also slowed the advance. Nor were 

the men and their commanders eager, in 

view of the approaching end of the war, 

to take undue chances. 

Relieving the armor of the VI Corps 

before the Mittenwald Pass leading to 

Innsbruck, the 103d Division during 1 

May established telephone contact with 

the German garrison in the Tirolean 

capital, but the lines went out before 

surrender negotiations could be completed. Further negotiations were underway when, during the afternoon and 

evening of 2 May, Austrian partisans 

seized control of Innsbruck. Although 

the partisans begged for American entry 

lest SS troops counterattack, the 103d 

Division still had to fight through occasional German delaying groups to get 

to the city. During midmorning of 4 

May, in a driving snowstorm, the Americans entered. 

From Innsbruck, General McAuliffe 

sent his 411th Infantry hurrying southward in trucks to gain the Brenner Pass. 

In hope of speeding the advance over a 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 469 

CZECHOSLOVAKIAN VILLAGERS WELCOME TANK CREW of the 16th Armored Division. 

treacherous Alpine road, McAuliffe sent 

the convoy forward the night of 3 May 

with headlights blazing. Without firing 

a shot, the 411th Infantry took the town 

of Brenner just before 0200, 4 May, 

while a mounted patrol continued 

through the pass and across the Italian 

frontier to Vipiteno, there making contact at 1051 with reconnaissance troops 

of the 88th Infantry Division. A Seventh 

Army that had invaded Sicily long 

months before, then had left the fighting 

in the Mediterranean to the Fifth Army 

while detouring by way of southern 

France to Germany, joined hands with 

those men who had fought up the long, 

mountainous spine of Italy. That the 

troops belonged to the VI Corps was 

appropriate, for long ago the VI Corps 

had fought in Italy in a besieged beachhead at Anzio. 

At the Fern Pass, where men of the 

44th Division relieved other contingents 

of the armor of the VI Corps, a 300-man 

German detachment stanchly defended 

a serpentine highway blocked by deep 

craters and a landslide. A battalion of 

the 71st Infantry began to attack the 
470 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

J.F. Smith 

MAP 9 

position early on 1 May. (Map 9) Anticipating difficulty getting through the 

pass, the division commander, General 

Dean, at the same time sent a reinforced 

company on a circuitous 40-mile outflanking maneuver, back almost to the 

Oberjoch Pass, then southwestward up 

the valley of the Lech River to another 

route—more a trail than a road—leading 

across a high mountain range to the 

vicinity of Imst, some eight miles behind 

the Fern Pass. 

The company was still bucking fresh 

snow and old drifts when around midday 

on 2 May the commander of the 71st 

Infantry sent a second battalion to help 

in reducing the defenses at the Fern 

Pass. As the battalion was moving up, 

five Austrian partisans appeared with an 

offer to guide the men along a littleknown secondary road that would put 

them in rear of the pass. Led by the 

Austrians, the battalion moved swiftly 

along a road that cut through forests and 

over a steep crest south of the Fern Pass. 

The men seized the town of Fernstein 

behind the pass, then before dark, came 

upon the Germans at the pass from the 

rear. Resistance collapsed. 

The next day men of the 44th Division pushed on foot toward Imst, to 

make contact there with the reinforced 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 471 

company that two days before had begun 

the wide outflanking maneuver; but resumption of a full-scale advance to Landeck and the Resia Pass beyond had to 

await repair of the road through the 

Fern Pass and the coming of tanks and 

other vehicles. It was this delay that 

prompted the commander of the First 

French Army, General de Lattre, to try 

to beat the Americans into Landeck by 

way of the Arlberg Pass. 31 

Unaware that de Lattre had begun a 

race for Landeck, the 44th Division was 

in no rush, particularly not in view of 

other developments on 4 May. Through 

the division’s lines at Imst that day 

passed emissaries of General Brandenberger’s Nineteenth Army on their way 

to open negotiations for surrender. Not 

far away, other emissaries on the night of 

4 May approached troops of the 3d Division of the XV Corps to begin arrangements for capitulation of General 

Schulz’s Army Group G. 

The Nineteenth Army surrendered in 

keeping with a detailed scenario worked 

out at headquarters of the VI Corps. The 

enemy commander, Brandenberger, was 

to present himself at the Landsrat in 

Innsbruck at a specified time on 5 May. 

The scenario spelled out how Brandenberger was to be met, that no salutes or 

handshakes were to be exchanged, even 

the times when conferees would stand 

and when they would be seated. 

Except that Brandenberger reached 

the scene some minutes late, all went 

according to plan. Shortly before 1500 

the VI Corps commander, General 

Brooks, afforded Brandenberger and his 

staff a brief period in which to confer 

privately upon condition that they return 

31 See above, ch. XVIII. 

to the conference room at 1500. At that 

time the Ninteenth Army surrendered 

unconditionally, effective at 1800 the 

same day. 32 

A regiment of the 44th Division meanwhile had resumed the advance on 

Landeck when in midmorning of the 5th, 

the German commander in the region 

suggested a truce pending the outcome 

of Brandenberger’s negotiations. On the 

condition that the arrangement include 

evacuation of Landeck, General Dean 

agreed, and a battalion of the 44th Division occupied the town that afternoon, 

in the process unwittingly thwarting 

General de Lattre’s effort to reach Landeck first. Not until two days later, on 

the 7th, would anyone bother to proceed 

to the Resia Pass, which de Lattre so 

earnestly wanted to attain. At 1900, 7 

May, the 44th Division established contact there with contingents of the 10th 

Mountain Division. 

In the broader surrender of Army 

Group G, an element of surprise was 

present in that General Devers had anticipated, on the basis of Field Marshal 

Kesselring’s query as to whom he should 

surrender, that Kesselring would be surrendering his entire command. Kesselring had intended to do that, but the 

new German government had granted 

authority only for Army Group G, not 

for those troops oppasing the Russians 

in Austria and the Balkans, which by 

Hitler’s order of 24 April were at that 

point under Kesselring’s command. 33 

Thus it was that the commander of 

the First Army, General Foertsch, representing the commander of Army Group 

G, General Schulz, appeared the night of 

32 See AAR’s of VI Corps, 44th and 103d Divs, 

May 45, and Seventh Army Report, pp. 848–49. 

33 Kesselring, A Soldier’s Record, p. 342. 
472 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

4 May before troops of the XV Corps. 

The 3d Division commander, General 

O’Daniel, accompanied the delegation to 

an estate at Haar, near Munich, where 

negotiations began on the rainy fifth day 

of May. Among those present, in addition 

to Devers, were Patch of the Seventh 

Army and Haislip of the XV Corps. No 

representative of the First French Army 

was included. 

Although General Foertsch made no 

objection to terms, he felt impelled to 

point out that even with the best of 

intentions, it would be difficult for the 

Germans to comply with some provisions 

in the time allowed. Such was the state 

of German communications, for example, that many hours might pass before 

all German troops received word of the 

surrender. He also asked if the Allies 

would hand over prisoners to the Russians. 

With these points answered, usually 

noncommittally, General Devers stated 

firmly that General Foertsch’s action was 

no armistice; it was unconditional surrender. 

“Do you understand that?” he asked. 

Foertsch stiffened. After nearly a minute, he responded. 

“I can assure you, sir,” he said, “that 

no power is left at my disposal to prevent it.” 

At approximately 1430, representatives 

of both sides signed the terms to become 

effective at noon the next day, 6 May. 34 

The surrender affected all German 

troops between Army Group G’s eastern 

boundary near the Austro-Czech border 

and the western border of Switzerland, 

thus excluding General von Obstfelder’s 

34 Hq, 6th AGp, History, pp. 321–33. See also XV 

Corps AAR, May 45, and Seventh Army Report, 

pp. 856–60. 

Seventh Army in Czechoslovakia, which 

a week earlier had been subordinated 

directly to OB WEST, but including 

Brandenberger’s Nineteenth Army and 

its shadow appendage, the Twenty-fourth 

Army, even though Brandenberger, apparently without the knowledge of General Foertsch, had begun negotiations 

ahead of Foertsch. The duplication probably resulted from Kesselring’s authorizing both army group and army commanders to enter negotiations, from a 

breakdown in communications within 

Army Group G, or from the on-again, 

off-again nature of the Nineteenth 

Army’s subordination to Army Group G 

during the preceding month, this last 

apparently having depended either on 

the whim of Kesselring or on the state of 

communications among the three headquarters. Troops of the Nineteenth 

Army, in any event, generally observed 

the earlier effective hour of surrender 

specified in Brandenberger’s negotiations 

with the VI Corps. 

The same was not true of the shadow 

force, the Twenty-fourth Army, though 

only partially through the fault of the 

Germans. Representatives of the commander of the- force, General der Infanterie Hans Schmidt, had approached 

the French at noon on 4 May with a 

request for terms of surrender, but before word could reach General de Lattre, 

the French commander received a request from the 6th Army Group to send 

a parliamentary to the VI Corps to treat 

with the Nineteenth Army. When General Schmidt’s delegation reached de 

Lattre’s headquarters with word that 

Schmidt had authority, to treat independently, de Lattre theorized that the 

French had been invited to participate 

in the Nineteenth Army’s surrender be- 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 473 

cause soldiers of that army faced both 

French and Americans but that he was 

free to treat alone with Schmidt since 

only French troops faced the Twentyfourth Army. 35 

By the time General Schmidt’s emissaries returned from contacting the 

French, Schmidt had learned that Army 

Group G was surrendering to the 6th 

Army Group. Deciding against presenting himself to de Lattre, Schmidt sent 

instead a letter noting the broader surrender and suggesting that the French 

get in touch on the matter with the 6th 

Army Group. 

Shocked by the “insolence” of 

Schmidt’s letter, General de Lattre demanded that General Devers send on to 

him any plenipotentiaries from the 

Twenty-fourth Army who might approach American forces. He intended to 

continue hostilities, he said, until the 

moment German representatives presented themselves at his headquarters. 

General Devers’s chief of staff replied 

that Army Group G had surrendered in 

entirety effective at noon on 6 May, including the troops opposing the French. 

Devers’s orders were that all troops of 

the 6th Army Group stop in place and 

cease fighting immediately, the word to 

be transmitted without delay to both 

Germans and French. 

De Lattre was not satisfied. If the 

Nineteenth Army as a part of Army 

Group G had surrendered individually 

with an effective hour different from that 

for the entire army group, then the same 

conditions should be applied, he rea35 The account of this incident is based on de 

Lattre, Histoire de la Première Armée Francaise, 

pp. 583-93; Seventh Army Report, pp. 850–51; and 

Devers Diary, entry of 13 May 45. 

soned, to the Twenty-fourth Army. Failing to take cognizance of the fact that 

Schmidt’s command was attached as a 

subordinate unit to Brandenberger’s, he 

rationalized that if the Twenty-fourth 

Army had been included in the surrender, it would have been mentioned by 

name. Defying the directive from Devers, 

de Lattre sent a courier to General Brandenberger to demand that he send 

Schmidt to surrender to the French. In 

the meantime, he said, the French would 

continue to fight. 

Hostilities ostensibly were continuing 

in the French sector when late on 6 May 

General Devers sent a liaison officer to 

explain to de Lattre how, even as negotiations had been underway with 

Brandenberger, a delegation from Army 

Group G had arrived to surrender the 

entire command. De Lattre was still not 

to be placated. Ignoring the fact that the 

Twenty-fourth Army bore the name of 

an army command purely for purposes 

of deception, he pointed out that neither 

in the surrender of Army Group G nor 

of the Nineteenth Army had the Twentyfourth Army been specifically mentioned. Besides, he maintained, not 

without logic, if the Germans on his 

front were included in Army Group G’s 

surrender, then the First French Army 

should have been represented at the 

ceremony. 

When the liaison officer asked him at 

this point to sign his name to the surrender document, de Lattre refused on 

the grounds that General de Gaulle had 

named him as an official representative 

of the French government to accept the 

over-all German surrender and that a 

governmental representative should not 

affix his signature to an operational 

document originating in the field. In de- 
474 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

clining, he again demanded that General 

Schmidt be turned over to the French. 

General Devers refused. There the matter rested, with hostilities on the French 

front coming to an end from a combination of a lack of anybody to fight back 

and of general German surrender. 

Elsewhere on the 6th Army Group’s 

front, some fanaticism on the part of 

lower echelon German units and individuals lingered at various points, SS troops, 

who as members of the Waffen-SS constituted an arm of the Nazi party not 

subject to army command except for 

operational orders when attached to 

army units in the field, caused particular 

trouble. As General Foertsch was returning to German lines following the surrender ceremony, for example, SS troops 

blew craters in the road in front of the 

delegation and allowed only Foertsch 

himself to pass. After dark on 6 May, SS 

troops seized three men of the 101st Airborne Division, then released them the 

next morning with word to send officer 

representatives to accept surrender of an 

SS command. After German Army 

guards surrendered a castle near Woergl, 

northeast of Innsbruck, in which prominent Frenchmen were imprisoned 

(former Premiers Edouard Daladier and 

Paul Reynaud and Generals Maurice 

Gamelin and Maxime Weygand) , SS troops 

attacked but were beaten off by a combined 

effort of the German guards and men of the 

36th Division’s 142d Infantry. As late as 8 

May arrangements were being completed 

for separate surrenders of the XIII SS and 

the LXXXII Corps. 36 

36 Seventh Army Report, pp. 860–61; 142d Inf 

AAR, May 45. 

Surrender at Reims 

As the piecemeal surrenders occurred, 

the new head of the Third Reich, Admiral Doenitz, was exploring the possibilities of over-all surrender while 

striving somehow to continue the exodus 

of German troops from in front of the 

Russians. 37 As a first step, he instructed 

the officer heading the delegation to 

Field Marshal Montgomery to establish 

contact with General Eisenhower to explain why surrender was not yet possible 

and to explore the chances of further 

partial capitulations. 

That the Germans were trying to gain 

time to save their troops facing the Russians could hardly be lost on General 

Eisenhower. nor would the stratagem receive any more encouragement than had 

Himmler’s presumptive effort to surrender only to the Western Powers. Eisenhower promptly cabled Moscow that he 

intended to inform the Germans that 

they would have to surrender all forces 

facing the Red Army to the Russians and 

that he wanted the surrender on both 

Eastern and Western Fronts to be made 

simultaneously. The Russians in turn 

authorized Maj. Gen. Ivan Susloparoff, 

long their liaison officer at SHAEF, to 

represent Soviet interests in any negotiations with the Doenitz government. 

The German party arrived at General 

Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims in 

late afternoon on 5 May. There the Germans learned quickly that the Allies 

would sanction no separate surrender for 

the Western Front. The head of the 

delegation cabled this information to 

37 This account is based on Pogue, The Supreme 

Command, pages 483–492, which provides details 

and annotation. 
GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 475 

Doenitz, requesting permission either to 

sign an unconditional surrender for all 

fronts or to have someone else come to 

Reims for that purpose. 

Shocked by Eisenhower’s stand, Admiral Doenitz the next day sent General 

Jodl, strong opponent of surrender in the 

east, to continue the negotiations. When 

Allied conferees quickly discerned during conversations the night of 6 May that 

Jodl was merely dragging out the talks 

to gain time, they put the problem directly to the Supreme Commander. If 

the Germans did not speedily agree to 

terms, Eisenhower responded, “he would 

break off all negotiations and seal the 

Western Front, preventing by force any 

further westward movement of German 

soldiers and civilians.” 

Impressed with Eisenhower’s determination, Jodl telegraphed Doenitz for 

authority to make a final and complete 

surrender on all fronts. Although Doenitz deemed the Supreme Commander’s 

demand “sheer extortion,” he felt impelled to accede since it was Jodl, only 

the day before strongly opposed to surrender in the east, who insisted that overall surrender was the only way out. In 

the early minutes of 7 May, he granted 

Jodl authority to sign. 

In the War Room of General Eisenhower’s headquarters in a red brick boy’s 

school at Reims, Jodl signed the surrender at 0241, 7 May, to become effective at 2301, 8 May. (Map XVII) For 

the benefit of the Russians, the Germans 

did it again on the 8th in Berlin with 

Keitel substituting for Jodl. 
CHAPTER XX 

Epilogue 

With the lights going on again all over 

Europe, the United States and its allies 

on 8 May celebrated V–E (Victory in 

Europe) Day. To the troops in the field, 

the end brought a flush of relief but with 

it a dulling sense of anticlimax. 

A myriad of taxing jobs remained before Allied troops everywhere could turn 

full attention to occupation duties. The 

Allies had to disarm and control all German forces, many of them sizable, as in 

Denmark, Norway, and Czechoslovakia, 

and discharge them as quickly as possible 

in order to reduce the strain on food 

stocks and facilities. They had to continue to evacuate Allied prisoners of 

war; control, feed, and eventually evacuate foreign laborers and other displaced 

persons: assert authority over the Doenitz 

government and OKW, then disband 

them along with the headquarters of the 

Luftwaffe and the Navy. They had also 

to collect German records and documents: arrest ranking German officers 

and others who might be charged with 

war crimes; begin redeploying some units 

through the Suez Canal to the Pacific, 

others to the United States, both for 

projected commitment in the war against 

Japan; weed out individuals with long 

overseas and combat service for early 

return to the United States: prepare for 

disbanding SHAEF and shifting to military government in four national zones 

of occupation; withdraw American and 

British forces from the Russian zone; 

arrange for four-power occupation of 

Berlin and Vienna—these and more. 1 

The thorniest of all problems with 

German forces still under arms was in 

Czechoslovakia where large German 

units continued to fight against the Red 

Army in hope of withdrawing into 

American lines. Yet once the general surrender became effective at 2301 on 8 

May, haven in American lines was denied 

by stipulation of the terms of surrender 

signed at Reims. As German troops, 

many with their families in tow, continued to flock toward American positions, U.S. divisions assembled them in 

“concentration areas” immediately in 

front of their defensive line, there eventually to turn them over to the Russians. 

At Russian insistence, SHAEF also directed that higher commanders of those 

forces presumed to have been responsible 

for continued defense and thus for violation of the surrender agreement, also be 

turned over to the Russians even though 

they might have entered American lines 

before the deadline. Many was the pitiable scene enacted, for most of the Germans were desperately fearful of what 

the Russians would do to them. 2 For 

1 Greater detail on post-D-day activities may be 

found in Pogue, The Supreme Command, ch. 

XXVI. 

2 See AAR’s of 4th Armd and 26th Divs, May 

45; V Corps Operations in the ETO, p. 465; Gay 
EPILOGUE 477 

some million and a quarter German officers and men who became prisoners of 

the Russians after the surrender, the way 

home would be long and toilsome, 3 

The last days of the war in Czechoslovakia also brought appeals from Czech 

partisans and the Czech government-inexile for Allied units to march to relief 

of partisans in Prague. Although the 

partisans liberated their capital on 5 

May, German armor promptly converged 

on the city. On the basis of the prior 

Soviet request that Allied troops advance 

no farther than the line Karlsbad-PilsenCeské Budejovice, Eisenhower declined 

to send troops but passed the appeals on 

to the Russians. 4 

Other than in Czechoslovakia, the surrender of German forces produced few 

problems except those of an administrative and logistical nature. With assistance from small U.S. units, British 

forces undertook the surrender and evacuation of German troops from Denmark 

and Norway; the Canadians, those Germans in the Netherlands. A garrison that 

held out on the French coast at Dunkerque surrendered on g May to the 

Czech Independent Armored Brigade 

Group that had been containing them. 

The British accepted surrender of German forces in the Channel Islands, also 

on 9 May, and the last Germans holding 

out along the southwestern coast of 

France capitulated to the French on the 

same day. The garrisons of Lorient and 

St. Nazaire on the coast of Brittany surrendered on 10 May to troops of the 

Diary, entries of 10 and 11 May 45; SHAEF SGS 

322.01–1, Liaison with the Russians, passim; and 

Koyen, The Fourth Armored Division (first edition), p. 151. 

3 Ziemke, Stalingrad to Berlin, ch. XXI. 

4 See Pogue, The Supreme Command, pp. 504–05. 

U.S. 66th Division (Maj. Gen. Herman 

F. Kramer). Having earlier assumed the 

assignment of containing these garrisons 

from the 94th Division, the 66th was one 

of only two U.S. divisions in the European theater that failed to enter the 

enemy’s country before hostilities 

ended. 5 The other, the 13th Airborne 

Division, was the only division to see 

no combat. 

Although General Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, continued to function until 

14 July, the combat phase of World War 

II in Europe ended with the final German capitulations. The campaign from 

the D-day landings in Normandy on 6 

June through the surrenders had taken 

just over eleven months. 

In those eleven months Allied armies 

had driven some 475 to 700 miles from 

the beaches of Normandy and those of 

the Côte d’Azur to the Baltic, the Elbe, 

and into Czechoslovakia and Austria. 

From the Dutch coast near the mouth of 

the Rhine to the Baltic near Luebeck, 

thence south to the Brenner Pass and 

westward to the Swiss frontier, the final 

Allied positions encompassed some goo 

miles. As of V–E Day General Eisenhower had under his command more 

than four and a half million troops, 

which included 91 divisions and several independent brigades and cavalry 

groups (61 of the divisions were American), 6 tactical air commands, and 2 

strategic air forces. At peak strength in 

5 In one of the few instances of the sinking of a 

loaded U.S. troopship during World War II, the 

66th Division had lost 800 men on Christmas Eve 

1944. when a German submarine sank the Belgian 

ship Léopoldville in the English Channel. See Jacquin Sanders, A Night Before Christmas-The 

Sinking of the Troopship Léopoldville (New York: 

MacFadden Books, 1964). 
478 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

April, the Allies had 28,000 combat aircraft, of which 14,845 were American, 

including 5,559 heavy bombers and 

6,003 fighters. Between D-day and V–E 

Day, a total of 5,412,219 Allied troops 

had entered western Europe along with 

970,044 vehicles and 18,292,310 tons of 

supplies. 6 

Allied casualties from D-day to V–E 

Day totaled 766,294. American losses 

were 586,628, including 135,576 dead. 

The British, Canadians, French, and 

other allies in the west lost approximately 60,000 dead. 7 How many of the 

three million Germans that were killed 

during the entire war died on the Western Front is impossible to determine, but 

exclusive of prisoners of war, all German 

casualties in the west from D-day to V–E 

Day probably equaled or slightly exceeded Allied losses. More than two million Germans were captured in the 

west. 8 

6 SHAEF G–3 War Room Daily Sum, 11 May 45, 

and AAF Statistical Digest, World War II, p. 156. 

7 Department of the Army, Army Battle Casualties 

and Nonbattle Deaths in World War II: Final 

Report, 7 December 1941–31 December 1946, and 

SHAEF’s final cumulative casualty report in the 

G–3 War Room Daily Summary, 29 May 1945. 

8 The only specific figures available are from OB 

WEST for the period 2 June 1941–10 April 1945 as 

follows: Dead, 80,819; wounded, 265,526; missing, 

490,624; total, 836,969. (Of the total, 4,548 casualties 

were incurred prior to D-day.) See Rpts, Der 

Heeresarzt im Oberkommando des Heeres Gen St 

d H/Gen Qu, Az.: 1335 c/d (IIb) Nr.: H.A./263/45 

g. Kdos. of 14 Apr 45 and 1335 c/d (Ilb) (no date, 

but before 1945). The former is in OCMH X 313, 

a photostat of a document contained in German 

armament folder H 17/207; the latter in folder 

0KW/1561 (OKW Wehrniacht Verluste). These 

figures are for the field army only, and do not include the Luftwaffe and Waffen-SS. Since the 

Germans seldom remained in control of the battlefield in a position to verify the status of those 

missing, a considerable percentage of the missing 

probably were killed. Time lag in reporting probably precludes these figures’ reflecting the heavy 

losses during the Allied drive to the Rhine in 

In many respects the last offensive had 

been a replay on a grander scale of the 

Allied victory in France. Following the 

difficult close-in fighting during the fall 

of 1944 in the Netherlands, along the 

West Wall, and in Alsace and Lorraine, 

which could be likened to the early 

weeks in Normandy, the Germans had 

counterattacked in the Ardennes as they 

had in Normandy at Mortain, and in the 

process so weakened themselves that 

great slashing Allied drives across their 

homeland were as inevitable as had been 

the swift Allied thrusts across France and 

Belgium. Nor was there anything new in 

Hitler’s adamant refusal to authorize 

withdrawals; he had done the same in 

France. 

Being, in effect, a replay, the campaign 

had produced little that was new in 

American tactics, doctrine, or techniques. The efficacy of the American 

tank-infantry-artillery team, of methods 

of air-ground co-operation, of the regimental combat team and combat command concepts, and of the “lean” 

division with attachments provided as 

needed, the role of the tank as an antitank weapon, the general excellence of 

American arms and equipment, the 

ability to motorize infantry divisions on 

short notice—all these had been demonstrated and proved long before. The 

campaign merely emphasized the general 

efficacy and professionalism of the American forces. The same shortcomings that 

had been evident before also were again 

March, and the cut-off date precludes inclusion of 

the losses in the Ruhr Pocket and in other stages 

of the fight in central Germany, SHAEF records 

list 2,057,138 Germans as “prisoners of war” and 

another four million as “disarmed enemy personnel,” the former presumably taken before formal 

capitulation began, the latter afterward. SHAEF 

G–3 War Room Daily Sum, 23 Jun 45. 
EPILOGUE 479 

apparent: the basic obsolescence of the 

Sherman tank, the relative uselessness of 

the towed 57-mm. antitank gun, the 

relative ineffectiveness of the tank destroyer as compared with the tank as an 

antitank weapon, the redundance of a 

regimental cannon company in view of 

the close relationship existing between 

infantry and supporting artillery, the 

need for combat experience before a division functioned smoothly. 

In view of the length of time and the 

tremendous power on the ground that 

was required to bring the foe finally to 

his knees, it was apparent that the new 

air arm for all its staggering blows against 

the enemy’s production, economy, and 

morale had failed to achieve decision. It 

was not until December 1944 that German production of essential military 

items dropped off sharply, and not until 

late January and early February 1945 

were indications of eventual collapse 

present in the German economy. Had 

Allied airmen known from the start what 

they learned later—that persistent blasting of a select group of targets critical 

to the entire economy may be more effective in less time than occasional strikes 

against a host of targets—the aerial campaign well might have critically influenced an earlier decision. As it was the 

Western Allied armies in league with the 

ally from the east, and with essential air 

and naval power in support, had broken 

the back of the German armies in the 

field before the aerial bombardment 

could build to an intensity capable of 

decision in its own right. Indeed, that air 

power alone can bring decision has yet to 

be demonstrated. 9 

9 The United States Strategic Bombing Survey— 

Summary Report (European War), 30 September 

1945, pages 15–16, appears to have overstated the 

Despite the overwhelming nature of 

the victory on the ground, many a provocative event had emerged. The First and 

Third Armies in the Ardennes, for example, might have trapped large numbers of the enemy had the main effort 

shifted after relief of Bastogne to the 

drive Patton wanted along the base of 

the bulge. The drive would have speeded 

German withdrawal if nothing else. Had 

General Bradley been allowed to continue a full-blooded attack from the 

Ardennes into the Eifel, the First and 

Third Armies probably would have 

gained the Rhine in short order, thus 

unhinging German defense west of the 

Rhine without the direct confrontation 

of the First Canadian Army with German strength in the flooded Rhine lowlands to the north. Perhaps the most 

striking result of the enemy’s Ardennes 

offensive was the general apprehension 

and concern for German capabilities that 

it engendered in the Allied command, 

whereas once the counteroffensive was 

over, the Germans in reality had little 

but defensive capability left. 

In several cases Allied commanders 

seemingly passed up opportunities that 

might have speeded the end: Field Marshal Montgomery’s decision, for example, 

to deny Simpson’s Ninth Army a quick 

jump of the Rhine early in March; or 

the failure to trap all German forces in 

the Saar-Palatinate, despite superb tactical strokes by the Third Army. 

Yet there were moments, too, that 

seemed inspired: not only Remagen but 

also Oppenheim; the campaign to encircle the Ruhr, particularly that part 

staged by the First Army; the dashes by 

case in saying, “Allied air power was decisive in the 

war in Western Europe. . . .” 
480 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

the Ninth Army’s 2d Armored and 83d 

Divisions to the Elbe. 

There were others to be regretted, 

particularly Patton’s ill-starred foray to 

Hammelburg, which was too ambitious 

for the force assigned and was unfortunate regardless of whether Patton knew 

his son-in-law was a captive there, The 

10th Armored Division was overextended 

at Crailsheim, even for the type of loosereined warfare that was the order of the 

day. Given the nature of the opposition, 

it was unnecessary to go through with the 

plan to employ airborne divisions in 

conjunction with Montgomery’s Rhine 

crossing, since the risks and losses attendant on airborne operations hardly could 

be justified under the circumstances. 

The last offensive was nevertheless a 

brilliant exercise in controlling masses 

of men and units and in co-ordinating 

the air and all the ground arms-a 

demonstration of power never before 

seen, even in the early German campaigns of World War II or in the 

offensives of the Red Army. It was, for 

all the crumbling nature of the opposition, a logistical tour de force by the most 

highly motorized and mechanized armies 

the world had ever known. No part of 

General Eisenhower’s vast force had to 

pause at any point for purely logistical 

reasons, even while driving in slightly 

more than six weeks over such great 

distances as the 250 miles from the Roer 

to the Elbe. It was a campaign to be told 

in superlatives. 

Despite the presence of potentially 

abrasive personalities in the Allied command—Montgomery, de Lattre, Patton 

—no serious interference with the conduct of the campaign developed. Montgomery’s insistence on keeping the 

Ninth Army and driving on Berlin was 

a disagreement that took place behind 

the scenes and did nothing to delay the 

advancing divisions. De Lattre’s digressions at Stuttgart, Ulm, and St. Anton 

took on in the end a character of nothing 

more serious than an opéru buffe. Patton’s lamented detour to Hammelburg 

was painful and costly to the men 

involved but had little lasting effect on 

the campaign. 

On the matters of major controversy 

with the British-Berlin and Praguethe Supreme Commander could hardly 

be faulted. On Berlin, there seemed 

little point in driving deeper into territory already allocated for Russian 

occupation merely for the sake of 

prestige, and since arrangements for 

Allied access to Berlin during the occupation had already been made at 

governmental level, dashing to the 

capital would have had no effect on 

them. As for Prague, the Supreme Commander might have relented on humanitarian grounds, but since the Western 

Allies had no intention of staying long 

in Czechoslovakia, the effect on postwar 

developments could hardly have been 

lasting. 

The German attempt to stem the last 

offensive was an exercise in futility. 

Once the Germans had failed in the 

Ardennes, there could be no longer any 

doubt that they had lost the war. Had 

Hitler acquiesced in an early withdrawal 

behind the Rhine, as his field cornmanders apparently urged, they might 

have prolonged the end; but so empty 

was the threat of miracle weapons, so 

unlikely a démarche between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, that 

prolongation would have been the sole 

result. 

The only basic matter to be decided 
EPILOGUE 481 

by the last offensive was not whether the 

Germans would be reduced to total 

defeat, but when. Given the stranglehold 

and almost mystic fascination that Hitler 

and his coterie exercised over the German people and the incredible loyalty 

of German military commanders to a 

regime that long had been discredited, 

perhaps it was inevitable that the end 

would come only when the nation was 

prostrate, almost every square inch of 

territory under the control of the victors. 

In those circumstances, whether the invaders insisted on unconditional surrender or came shouting mercy and 

forgiveness probably would have had 

little effect on the outcome. 

As the last offensive came to an end, 

few if any who fought in it could have 

entertained any doubts as to the right of 

their cause-they had seen at Buchenwald, Belsen, Dachau, and at a dozen 

other places, including little Ohrdruf, 

what awful tyranny man can practice on 

his fellow man. To erase those cruel 

monuments to evil was reason enough 

for it all, from bloody OMAHA Beach to 

that bridgehead to nowhere over the 

Elbe. 

Appendix A 

Table of Equivalent Ranks 

U.S. Army 

None 

General of the Army 

General 

Lieutenant General 

Major General 

Brigadier General 

None 

Colonel 

Lieutenant Colonel 

Major 

Captain 

Captain (Cavalry) 

First Lieutenant 

Second Lieutenant 

German Army and 

Air Force 

Reichsmarschall 

Generalfeldmarschall 

Generaloberst 

General der Infanterie 

Artillerie 

Gebirgstruppen 

Kavallerie 

Nachrichten truppen 

Panzertruppen 

Pioniere 

Luftwaffe 

Flieger 

Fallschirmtruppen 

Flakartillerie 

Luftnachrichtentruppen 

Generalleutnaiit 

Generalmajor 

None 

Oberst 

Oberstleutnant 

Major 

Hauptmann 

Rittmeister 

Oberleutnant 

Leutnant 

German Waffen-SS 

None 

Reichsfuehrer-SS 

Oberstgruppenfuehrer 

Obergruppenfuehrer 

Gruppenfuehrer 

Brigadefuehrer 

Oberfuehrer 

Standartenfuehrer 

Obersturmbannfuehrer 

Sturmbannfuehrer 

Haupsturmfuehrer 

Obersturmfuehrer 

Untersturmfuehrer 
Appendix B 

Recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross 

All who were awarded the Medal of Honor for individual actions during 

operations described in this volume have been mentioned either in text or footnotes. Space limitations precluded similar mention of all who were awarded the 

Distinguished Service Cross. The following list of recipients of the DSC is as 

complete as possible in view of the fact that no single Army file listing DSC 

awards was maintained. Ranks are as of the date of the action cited. (P) indicates a posthumous award; * indicates DSC with Oak Leaf Cluster. 

Pfc. Patsy A. Aiezza, Jr. (P) 

1st Lt. Marshall Alexander 

Pfc. Rex Anderson (P) 

Pfc. Thomas E. Ankesheiln, Jr. 

1st Lt. Ray F. Axford 

S. Sgt. Everett E. Baker (P) 

S. Sgt. James F. Baker 

1st Sgt. Charles A. Baldari 

S. Sgt. Ernest L. Barber 

1st Lt. Lee J. Barstow 

Pfc. Virgil E. Barton (P) 

Capt. Abraham J. Baum 

Sgt. William T. Baxter 

S. Sgt. Paul Beck (P) 

Cpl. Leslie M. Belden 

Pfc. Edward M. Bell, Jr. 

Pfc. Sherle E. Bellard 

2d Lt. John L. Beranek 

Capt. Robert H. Bertsch (P) 

1st Lt. Lawrence P. Bischoff, Jr. 

Tech. 4 Clarence E. Bowman (P) 

2d Lt. Dale E. Bowyer 

Tech. 5 Eli M. Bozickovich (P) 

2d Lt. Archer L. Bradshaw (P) 

1st Lt. Neil F. Brennan 

Lt. Col. John P. Brewster (P) 

Pfc. Raymond J. Brisson (P) 

2d Lt. Raymond E. Broadbent (P) 

Pfc. William J. Brooks (P) 

S. Sgt. Fred H. Brown (P) 

S. Sgt. Henry C. Brown 

Capt. Ralph T. Brown 

Sgt. Wallace E. Brown 

Capt. Peter P. Buescher 

T. Sgt. Woodrow Bugg (P) 

Pfc. Gene P. Burks 

2d Lt. Virgil S. Burks 

Pfc. Edward C. Burnshaw 

Pfc. Herbert H. Burr 

Pvt. Raymond O. Butts 

Pvt. Everett M. Callaway 

1st Lt. William H. Callaway 

S. Sgt. Harry W. Caminiti (P) 

Pvt. Sam Capri 

2d Lt. William M. Capron 

1st Lt. James R. Carpenter (P) 

S. Sgt. Clair R. Carr (P) 

S. Sgt. Edward J. Carroll (P) 

Pfc. James R. Carroll 

Pfc. Vernon E. Cassady 

T. Sgt. James T. Chapman 

Lt. Col. Henry T. Cherry, Jr. 

T. Sgt. Michael Chinchar 

Capt. Paul Chmar 

Cpl. Angelus M. Christiana (P) 

1st Lt. Edward C. Christl (P) 

Pfc. Thomas E. Churchill 

Lt. Col. Wadsworth P. Clapp (P) 

Pfc. John T. Clements (P) 

Lt. Col. Robert B. Cobb 
APPENDIX B 485 

S. Sgt. Raymond O. Cocannouer 

S. Sgt. Travis P. Collins 

Tech. 5 Almon N. Conger, Jr. 

2d Lt. Alwyn D. Conger 

Pvt. James F. Cousineau 

Pfc. John J. Coyle 

Pvt. Jack C. Cunningham 

S. Sgt. Francis J. Daddario 

2d Lt. George Dail (P) 

Tech. 5 Wilman T. Daley (P) 

1st Lt. Thomas A. Daly (P) 

Tech. 5 Donald K. Davis 

Pfc. Ted R. Davis 

Capt. Robert S. Dayton 

Pfc. Frederick S. DeBenedetto (P) 

S. Sgt. Joseph A. Delisio 

Pfc. Joseph A. Demay 

Cpl. Harold Denham (P) 

Lt. Col. William E. Depuy 

Capt. Billy J. DeVault 

Capt. Robert B. Dexter 

Pfc. Warner S. Deyoe 

Lt. Col. Francis H. Dohs (P) 

2d Lt. Glenn J. Doman 

Sgt. Eugene Dorland 

1st Sgt. Jack J. Dorsey 

S. Sgt. Harold D. Douglas (P) 

2d Lt. James B. Dozier 

Sgt. Alexander A. Drabik 

Pfc. Robert C. Driscoe 

Pfc. Allen D. Druckenboard 

2d Lt. William A. Dunlap 

1st Lt. Frederick Eastman 

Pfc. Henry T. Ebersole 

1st Lt. Clyde W. Ehrhardt 

2d Lt. Archibald A. Farrar 

Capt. William H. Feery 

S. Sgt. Joseph G. Feiley (P) 

S. Sgt. William A. Flesch 

T. Sgt. Peter H. Fleury 

Pvt. Michael J. Fortuna (P) 

Lt. Col. Leroy E. Frazier 

Pfc. Russel M. Frederick 

1st Lt. Robert L. French (P) 

Sgt. Kenneth L. Gaines 

Maj. Charles F. Gaking 

Sgt. Wallace M. Gallant 

1st Lt. Glenn H. Gass (P) 

2d Lt. Emmette F. Gathright 

S. Sgt. George Gaydush (P) 

Capt. Albert C. Geist 

1st Lt. Frank T. Gerard, Jr. (P) 

Sgt. John Gilman 

S. Sgt. William J. Glynn 

Sgt. William J. Goodson 

2d Lt. Malcolm B. Gott 

S. Sgt. William E. Graves (P) 

1st Lt. John Grimball 

S. Sgt. Fred Grossi 

Pfc. Harry Gubino 

Pfc. Green D. Hadley 

2d Lt. Claude J. Hafner 

2d Lt. Frank J. Hagney 

T. Sgt. Joseph W. Hairston 

Pfc. Christy A. Hampe, Jr. 

T. Sgt. James L. Hansen 

1st Lt. Glen W. Harman 

Chaplain (Capt.) Edward H. Harrison 

T. Sgt. William B. Hawk, Jr. (P) 

Sgt. Leonard B. Haymaker (P) 

Pfc. Earl Hensel (P) 

S. Sgt. William Hess 

Pfc. Ralph H. Higby (P) 

Cpl. Robert H. Hill (P) 

Lt. Col. Clarence K. Hollingsworth (P) 

2d Lt. William J. Honan 

Pfc. Henry T. Hopper 

Sgt. James I. Hoppes 

1st Lt. Marion L. Howard 

1st Lt. Norman R. Hughes 

1st Lt. Galen C. Hughett 

Sgt. Charles M. Huntington 

T. Sgt. Alvin A. Hyman 

Pfc. Robert L. Ifland (P) 

S. Sgt. Wiley J. Ingram 

1st Lt. Ned T. Irish 

Capt. Orval D. Irvin (P) 

Lt. Col. Albin F. Irzyk 

1st Lt. William N. Jackson 

Pvt. Jackson J. James 

S. Sgt. Maynard M. Jerome (P) 

1st Lt. Clark E. Johnson 

Sgt. Glenn N. Johnson 

Capt. Neil O. Johnson 

Capt. Lennis Jones 

1st Lt. Vernon C. Jordan 
486 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Pfc. Wilbur A. Jurries 

T. Sgt. Francis E. Kelley 

Sgt. James R. Kellogg 

Lt. Col. John E. Kelly 

Pfc. William H. Kendall (P) 

Pfc. Carl J. Kistel 

Pfc. Leonard F. Krause (P) 

Lt. Col. Robert L. Kriz 

T. Sgt. Chester E. Kroll 

Pfc. Jerome L. Kucinski (P) 

S. Sgt. Abe M. Kuzminsky (P) 

S. Sgt. Maurice R. Kyne 

1st Lt. John E. Lance, Jr. 

S. Sgt. Oscar M. Langenkamp 

Pfc. William G. Lanseadel (P) 

S. Sgt. John F. Larson 

Pfc. Leroy S. Law (P) 

Sgt. Delbert D. Lee (P) 

Lt. Col. Lewis W. Leeney 

Capt. Victor C. Leiker 

Pfc. Edward J. Lesinski 

Capt. Jerry H. Lewis (P) 

1st Lt. Richard S. Lewis 

Sgt. Hugh P. Lockhart 

Col. Jay B. Loveless 

1st Lt. Henry F. Luehring 

S. Sgt. Melvin N. Lund 

Col. Carl E. Lundquist 

2d Lt. Willard H. Maas (P) 

S. Sgt. Ova I. Madsen (P) 

Pfc. Alexander Maluchnik (P) 

1st Lt. Thomas J. Mann 

Sgt. John R. Mantville (P) 

Pfc. Raymond Manz (P) 

Pfc. Anthony L. Markovich (P) 

S. Sgt. Thomas E. Martin 

1st Sgt. Lawrence Marzella 

T. Sgt. William W. Masters (P) 

Cpl. Robert L. Mathis 

Cpl. Walter W. Mathis 

Pfc. Abraham Matza (P) 

Lt. Col. Robert C. McCabe 

Pfc. Charles W. McCartney 

S. Sgt. Hal H. McColl 

Capt. Boyd H. McCune 

1st Lt. William E. McInerney 

T. Sgt. Charles W. McKeever 

Pfc. John F. McKeon, Jr. 

S. Sgt. Charles S. McMillian 

Cpl. William P. McPherson 

2d Lt. Myron A. Mears 

1st Lt. Norman J. Mecklem, Jr. 

1st Lt. Charles W. Miller 

Pvt. Harvey L. Miller, Jr. (P) 

Capt. Barber C. Mills 

1st Lt. Charles C. Misner 

Capt. John Mitchell 

S. Sgt. Henry A. Moen (P) 

Pfc. George R. Mohn (P) 

Pfc. Stevenson W. Moomaw (P) 

Lt. Col. Robert B. Moran 

Pvt. Patrick H. Moreschi 

1st Lt. George H. Morgan 

Pfc. William H. Moriarity 

1st Lt. Hugh B. Mott 

Tech. 4 Charles E. Mueller 

2d Lt. Milton J. Munch 

Capt. Patrick F. Murphy (P) 

1st Lt. Samuel J. Murray 

2d Lt. William L. Nelson 

2d Lt, George P. Nestor 

1st Lt. Eugene M. Nettles (P) 

S. Sgt. Clemens G. Noldau (P) 

1st Lt. Andrew G. Nufer, Jr. 

1st Lt. Henry O. Odegard 

Lt. Col. Delk M. Oden 

S. Sgt. Alvin G. Olson 

Pfc. Halbert E. Olson (P) 

Sgt. Leo E. O’Mara 

2d Lt. Albert I. Orr, Jr. 

Sgt. Thomas E. Oxford 

Sgt. Alfred B. Padilla 

Tech. 4 Frank E. Palco, Jr. 

Pfc. Max Y. Parker (P) 

T. Sgt. Rowdy W. Parker 

Pvt. Donald L. Parta 

Brig. Gen. Herbert T. Perrin 

Tech. 5 Leslie R. Perry (P) 

S. Sgt. Jacob M. Peter (P) 

Pfc. Dale J. Peterson (P) 

S. Sgt. Joseph S. Petrencsik 

2d Lt. Charles M. Phillips, Jr. 

Col. James H. Phillips 

Capt. Carl E. Pister 

Pvt. Anthony F. Pistilli (P) 

Pvt. Ronald G. Pomerleau 
APPENDIX B 487 

Capt. Frank M. Pool 

Pfc. Harlan J. Porter 

1st Lt. Raymond A. Porter 

1st Lt. Marvin H. Prinds (P) 

Sgt. Vito C. Pumilia 

2d Lt. Walter J. Pustelnik (P) 

Pfc. Srecko F. Radich (P) 

S. Sgt. Donald N. Radtke 

Capt. Edward R. Radzwich 

S. Sgt. John T. Ramer (P) 

Sgt. Paul E. Ramsey 

Pfc. Robert G. Randall (P) 

Tech. 5 Calvin J. Randolph (P) 

Pfc. William H. Ratliff 

2d Lt. William S. Read 

Maj. Edward J. Regan 

Pfc. Patsy Retort 

S. Sgt. John A. Reynolds 

Tech. 3 John F. Riskey 

Pfc. Johnny C. Rodriquez 

Brig. Gen. James S. Rodwell 

Sgt. Francis N. Rogowicz 

Pfc. Guillermo Rosas 

Pfc. Loren E. Rowland (P) 

S. Sgt. Samuel A. Rowland 

2d Lt. Stanley S. Sadaj (P) 

T. Sgt. Charles D. St. John 

S. Sgt. Anthony L. Samele 

Pfc. Leo W. Satterfield (P) 

2d Lt. Allon Sawin, Jr. 

S. Sgt. Frederick 0. Sawyer (P) 

Pfc. Roy D. Sawyer, Jr. (P) 

T. Sgt. Charles E. Scabery 

1st Lt. Jerome E. Scanlon (P) 

S. Sgt. Harold F. Schaefer 

Pvt. Charles H. Schroder (P) 

Tech. 5 Florn W. Schutt (P) 

Capt. Reed L. Seely (P) 

S. Sgt. Dale H. Seggerman (P) 

T. Sgt. Osborne F. Sellars* 

Sgt. Robert L. Sellers 

Sgt. James T. Semradek 

Pfc. Edward F. Servis, Jr. 

1st Lt. Julian R. Sheehy 

Cpl. Russell W. Shoff 

Pfc. Warren H. Shorey (P) 

1st Lt. John G. Sinclair, Jr. 

S. Sgt. Frank L. Sirovica 

1st Lt. Earle R. Smedes 

Lt. Col. John F. Smith 

T. Sgt. Joseph J. Smyth 

Pfc. Eugene Soto (P) 

Capt. George P. Soumas 

Cpl. Thomas M. Spaulding 

Pfc. William H. Steen 

Pvt. Ernest J. Steineker 

Capt. John M. Stephens, Jr. 

Pvt. Sampson J. Stephens (P) 

Maj. Alexander C. Stiller 

2d Lt. August A. Storkman, Jr. 

1st Lt. Harold D. Swan (P) 

T. Sgt. Deesie H. Talley 

Sgt. Albert B. Taylor (P) 

S. Sgt. Elmer D. Tener 

Lt. Col. Evert S. Thomas, Jr. 

S. Sgt. George D. Thomas (P) 

Pfc. Jack Thomas 

Maj. Claire A. Thurston 

Capt. John P. Tice 

2d Lt. Karl H. Timmermann 

S. Sgt. Edward M. Transue 

T. Sgt. Clifford C. Turner (P) 

Pfc. Roy B. Turner 

1st Lt. Frederick L. Tyler 

Maj. Gen. James A. Van Fleet 

S. Sgt. James A. VanHooser (P) 

Capt. Keith G. Van Nesle (P) 

S. Sgt. Daniel B. Vannice 

Pfc. Romanus Wagner (P) 

Capt. Howard J. Wall (P) 

Pfc. Jimmie D. Walton (P) 

1st Lt. Horace K. Ward 

1st Lt. Sammie L. Warren 

S. Sgt. Ivan B. Waterbury 

Capt. James M. Watkins (P) 

Pvt. Harlen W. Way (P) 

T. Sgt. Frank L. Wease (P) 

Tech. 5 Forrest L. Webb (P) 

S. Sgt. Arthur D. Webber (P) 

2d Lt. Herbert J. Welch, Jr. (P) 

Pfc. Henry V. White (P) 

Pfc. Theodore White (P) 

S. Sgt. Hassell C. Whitefield (P) 

S. Sgt. Charles F. Whitlow 

Capt. David H. Wiggs* 

Lt. Col. Leonard S. Wilhelm (P) 
488 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Cpl. Carl Wilson (P) 

Capt. Weldon W. Wilson 

Capt. Charles A. Wirt 

S. Sgt. Edward J. Wisniewski (P) 

Tech. 5 George R. Wolff 

Pfc. Harold L. Wood 

2d Lt. Leon M. Wood 

Col. Sidney C. Wooten 

1st Lt. Wilbur F. Worthing 

S. Sgt. Willis D. Wyatt 

Pfc. Manuel R. Zabala 

Pfc. Paul A. Zaring 

Sgt. William E. Zarnfaller 
Bibliographical Note 

As with all campaign volumes in the 

series UNITED STATES ARMY IN 

WORLD WAR II, the most important 

documentary sources for The Last 

Offensive are the official records of U.S. 

Army units. Each headquarters in the 

European theater, from army through 

regiment and separate battalion, submitted a monthly after action report, 

accompanied by supporting daily journals, periodic reports, messages, staff 

section reports, and overlays. Although 

the records vary in quantity and quality, 

they are essential to any detailed study 

of operations. Those most valuable to the 

historian of combat operations are 

housed’ in the historical reports files in 

the World War II Records Division, 

National Archives. Almost all are without security classification. 

The after action reports are in effect 

monthly compendiums of all the other 

documents, but the chance of error or 

the introduction of a commander’s 

hindsight makes it imperative that these 

reports be checked against the supporting documents. Journals, when carefully 

prepared, are invaluable. In the manner 

of a ship’s log, they of all the documents 

most nearly reflect the events and thinking in the headquarters at the time. 

Much the same pattern of official 

records was followed at headquarters of 

the 6th and 12th Army Groups. The 6th 

Army Group also kept a command diary 

and the 12th Army Group a planning 

file labeled 12th Army Group, Military 

Objectives, 371.3. 

The basic SHAEF files used for this 

volume are the richest of the official 

SHAEF collection, that of the SHAEF 

G–3, labeled Future Operations, and 

that of the Secretary of the General Staff 

(SHAEF SGS 381, Volumes I through 

IV) . In addition, the author has drawn 

on the definitive experience with the 

SHAEF records of Dr. Forrest C. Pogue, 

author of The Supreme Command. 

While preparing his volume, Dr. Pogue 

collected transcripts or photostats of 

documents from General Eisenhower’s 

wartime personal file. This material, 

cited as the Pogue files, is located in 

OCMH. Also falling under the category 

of SHAEF records are those of the airborne units, which are housed in the 

World War II Records Division under 

the heading SHAEF FAAA files. 

Four of the tactical headquarters 

published official consolidated versions 

of their after action reports for limited 

distribution. Two of these—the 12th 

Army Group Report of Operations and 

V Corps Operations in the ETO— 

provide in addition to the narrative 

report a convenient assimilation of 

pertinent orders, periodic reports, and 

other documents. The First Army 

Report of Operations, 1 August 1944– 

22 February 1945 and 22 February–8 

May 1945, and the Seventh Army Report 

of Operations are more strictly narrative. 

Unofficial Records 

Most records falling in the category 

of unofficial records are combat inter- 
490 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

views conducted by teams of historical 

officers working under the European 

Theater Historical Section. In addition, 

there are narratives written by the field 

historians to accompany the interviews 

and occasionally field notes and important documents collected by the historical officers. The footnotes in this volume 

should provide an adequate guide to the 

available combat interview material, 

which is housed in the historical reports 

files in the World War II Records 

Division. 

Unit Histories 

Soon after the war, almost every division, some corps, and some regiments 

published unofficial unit histories. Many 

of these works are heavy on the side of 

unit pride, but some are genuinely 

useful. A brief analysis of each is usually 

included in this volume in the footnote 

where the work is first cited. In a special 

class is Conquer: The Story of Ninth 

Army (Washington: Infantry Journal 

Press, 1945), a sober and valuable volume. 

German Sources 

The account of German operations 

has been based primarily on monographs prepared in OCMH by Mrs. 

Magna Bauer specifically to complement 

this volume and on a series of manuscripts prepared after the war by former 

German commanders working under the 

auspices of the U.S. Army. Mrs. Bauer’s 

monographs are based on these manuscripts and on official German records 

captured or seized by the U.S. Army. 

Most of the comtemporary German 

records have been returned to Germany, 

but microfilm copies are available in the 

World War II Records Division. The 

German manuscripts, numbering more 

than two thousand, are filed in the 

World War II Records Division and 

have been adequately catalogued and 

indexed in Guide to Foreign Military 

Studies 1945–54, published in 1954. The 

quality of the manuscripts varies, reflecting the fact that almost all are based only 

on the memories of the writers, yet they 

are invaluable in supplementing the 

official records, particularly for latter 

stages of the war, when many records 

were destroyed and many were sparse 

and often inaccurate because of the fluid 

and usually retrograde nature of the 

German operations. 

Published Works 

Two previously published volumes in 

the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN 

WORLD WAR II were of particular 

value: Dr. Pogue's The Supreme Command and Roland G. Ruppenthal, 

Logistical Support of the Armies, Vol. 

II. In addition to those and unofficial 

unit histories, published works of special 

value in preparation of this volume are 

as follows: 

Ambrose, Stephen E. Eisenhower and 

Berlin, 1945–The Decision to Halt at 

the Elbe. New York: W. W. Norton and 

Co., 1967. 

Bradley, Omar N. A Soldier's Story. 

New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1951. 

Brereton, Lt. Gen. Lewis H. The 

Brereton Diaries. New York: William 

Morrow and Co., 1946. 

Bullock, Alan. Hitler: A Study in 

Tyranny. New York: The Macmillan 

Co., 1947. 

Butcher, Capt. Harry C. My Three 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 491 

Years with Eisenhower. New York: 

Simon and Schuster, 1946. 

Churchill, Winston S. Triumph and 

Tragedy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 

1953. 

Donnison, F. S. V. Civil Affairs and 

Military Government, North-West Europe 1944–1946. London: Her Majesty's 

Stationery Office, 1961. 

Ehrman, John. Grand Strategy. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 

1957. 

Eisenhower, Dwight D. Crusade in 

Europe. New York: Doubleday and Co., 

1948. 

Feis, Herbert. Churchill, Roosevelt, 

and Stalin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. 

Gilbert, Felix. Hitler Directs His War. 

New York: Oxford University Press, 

1950. 

Goudsmet, Samuel T. ALSOS. New 

York: William Morrow and Co., 1964. 

Guderian, Heinz. Panzer Leader. 

New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1952. 

Hechler, Ken. The Bridge at Remagen. New York: Ballantine Books, 1957. 

Irving, David. The Destruction of 

Dresden. London: William Kimber, 

1963. 

Kesselring, Field Marshal Albert. A 

Soldier's Record. New York: William 

Morrow and Co., 1954. 

Lattre de Tassigny, Marshal Jean de. 

Histoire de la Premiére Armée Française. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1947. 

McGovern, James. CROSSBOW and 

OVERCAST. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1964. 

Minott, Rodney G. The Fortress That 

Never Was. New York: Holt, Rinehart 

and Winston, 1964. 

Montgomery, Field Marshal the Viscount of Alamein. Normandy to the 

Baltic. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 

1947. 

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Invasion 

of France and Germany. Boston: Little, 

Brown and Co., 1957. 

Pash, Boris T., The ALSOS Mission. 

New York: Award House, 1966. 

Patton, George S. War As I Knew It. 

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1947. 

Rundell, Walter, Jr. Black Market 

Money. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State 

University Press, 1964. 

Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960. 

Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall 

of the Third Reich. New York: Simon 

and Schuster, 1960. 

Smith, Walter Bedell. Eisenhower's 

Six Great Decisions. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1956. 

Stacey, Charles P. The Victory Campaign. Ottawa: W. Cloutier, Queen's 

Printer, 1960. 

Toland, John. The Last 100 Days. 

New York: Random House, 1966. 

Wilmot, Chester. The Struggle for 

Europe. New York: Harper and Bros., 

1952. 

Ziemke, Earl F. Stalingrad to Berlin: 

The German Defeat in the East. Washington: Government Printing Office, 

1968. 
Glossary 

AAA Antiaircraft artillery 

AAF Army Air Forces 

AAR After action report 

Abn Airborne 

Actg Acting 

Admin Administrative, administrator 

AGp Army group 

AM Amplitude modulated 

Armd Armored 

Asst Assistant 

Bailey bridge Portable steel bridge of the “through” type. The roadway is supported by two main trusses composed of 

10-foot sections called “panels” pinned together to 

form a continuous truss. Capacity may be increased 

by adding extra trusses alongside the first, by adding 

an extra truss on top of the first to make a second 

story, or by both means. 

BAR Browning automatic rifle 

Bazooka 2.36-inch rocket launcher 

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation 

Bn Battalion 

Burp gun German submachine gun 

C–47 American transport plane 

CCA Combat Command A 

CCB Combat Command B 

CCR Combat Command Reserve 

CCS Combined Chiefs of Staff 

CG Commanding general 

CO Commanding officer 

Co Company 

CofS Chief of Staff 

Comdr Commander 

Conf Conference 

CP Command post 

DD Duplex drive (tank) 

D-day Day on which an operation commences or is to commence 

Dept Department 

Dir Directive, director 

Div Division 

Dragon’s teeth Concrete pillars or iron posts erected as tank barriers 

Dukw 2 1⁄2-ton amphibious truck 
GLOSSARY 493 

“88” German 88–mm. high-velocity dual-purpose antiaircraft and antitank piece 

Ersatzheer German Replacement Army 

ETO European Theater of Operations 

ExecO Executive officer 

FA Field artillery 

Feldheer German Field Army 

Flak Antiaircraft 

FM Frequency modulation 

FO Field order 

Fuesilier battalion Separate infantry battalion performing both reconnaissance and support in German division 

FUSA First United States Army 

FWD Forward headquarters 

G–1 Personnel officer or section of divisional or higher 

staff 

G–2 Intelligence officer or section 

G–3 Operations officer or section 

G–4 Supply officer or section 

Grazing fire Fire which is approximately parallel to the ground 

and does not rise above the height of a man, 

standing 

Half-track Combination wheeled and tracked armored personnel 

carrier 

H-hour Exact time on D-day at which a specific operation 

commences 

Hilfswillige Volunteer auxiliaries (non-German) 

Hist History 

Hp Horsepower 

Hq Headquarters 

Incl Inclosure 

Inf Infantry 

Info Information 

Intell Intelligence 

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff 

JIC Joint Intelligence Committee 

Jnl Journal 

Jump-off Start of a planned ground attack 

Kamfgruppe German task force 

Kampfkommandant German combat commander 

Kampfstaerke Combat effective strength 

Landesschuetzen Home Guard battalion sometimes employed outside 

Germany 

LCM Landing craft, medium 

LCVP Landing craft, vehicle and personnel 

Ltr Letter 

Luftwaffe German Air Force 

LVT Landing vehicle, tracked 
494 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

M1 (Garand) American semiautomatic rifle 

M4 (Sherman) American medium tank 

M10 American tank destroyer with 3–inch gun 

M26 (Pershing) American medium tank mounting a 90–mm. gun 

M36 American tank destroyer mounting a high-velocity 

90–mm. piece 

Marching fire Firing by troops while erect and advancing 

Mark IV German medium tank 

Mark V (Panther) German medium tank with heavy armor and highvelocity gun 

Mark VI (Tiger) German heavy tank 

Min Minutes 

Mm Millimeter 

MS (S) Manuscript (s) 

Msg Message 

NAF Symbol for messages from the Combined Chiefs of 

Staff to the Commander in Chief, Allied Expeditionary Force 

Nebelwerfer Multiple-barrel 150–mm. mortar or rocket launcher 

mounted on wheels and fired electrically 

NUSA Ninth United States Army 

OB NEDERLANDER Oberbefehlshaber Nederlander (Headquarters, Commander in Chief Netherlands) 

OB NORDWEST Oberbefehlshaber Nordwest (Headquarters, Commander in Chief Northwest [northwest Germany, 

Denmark, and the Netherlands]) 

OB NW See OB NORDWEST. 

OB SUED Oberbefehlshaber Sued (Headquarters, Commander 

in Chief South [southern Germany and several army 

groups on the Eastern Front]) 

OB WEST Oberbefehlshaber West (Headquarters, Commander 

in Chief West [France, Belgium, and the Netherlands]) 

OCMH Office, Chief of Military History 

OKH Oberkommando des Heeres (Army High Command) 

OKW Oberkommando der Wehrrnacht (High Command of 

the Armed Forces) 

OPD Operations Division 

OPn (s) Operation(s) 

Opnl Operational 

Panzerfaust One-shot, shaped-charge antitank weapon 

Plunging fire Gunfire that strikes the earths surface at a high angle 

POZIT Proximity fuze 

PX Post Exchange 

RAMPS Recovered Allied Military Personnel 

Ranger Soldier specially trained to make surprise attacks on 

enemy territory 

Ret Retired 
GLOSSARY 495 

Rpt Report 

S–2 Intelligence officer or section of regimental or lower 

staff 

S–3 Operations officer or section 

SACMED Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theater 

SCAF Designates cables from Supreme Headquarters, Allied 

Expeditionary Force, to the Combined Chiefs of 

Staff 

SCR Set complete radio 

Seamule 38-foot tug powered by two 143-hp. engines 

Sec Section 

SGS Secretary, General Staff 

SHAEF Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force 

Sitrep Situation report 

S-mine German antipersonnel mine 

SS Schutzstaffel (Elite Guard) 

Storm boat Metal ponton propelled by 50-hp. outboard motor 

Sub Subject 

Sum Summary 

SUSA Seventh United States Army 

T26 See M26. 

TAC Tactical Air Command 

Tagesstaerke Present for duty strength 

TD Tank destroyer 

Telecon Telephone conversation 

T-forces Special forces designated to search for items of scientific value 

TM Technical manual 

TOT Time on target, a method of timing artillery fire from 

various points to fall on a given target simultaneously 

Tree burst Explosion of shells against trees, designed to destroy 

troops underneath 

TUSA Third United States Army 

TWX Teletypewriter exchange 

USA United States Army 

USAF United States Air Force 

USAREUR United States Army, Europe 

USNR United States Naval Reserve 

V–2 German supersonic rocket 

Volksdeutsche “Racial Germans” from border areas of adjacent countries 

Volks Grenadier Honorific accorded by Hitler to certain infantry divisions 

Volkssturm A people’s militia, partially organized in one of the 

last steps of German mobilization for total war 

VT Variable time (fuze) 

Waffen-SS Military arm of the Nazi party 
496 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Wehrkreis German Army administrative area, for the most part 

inside greater Germany 

Wehrmacht German Armed Forces 

WFSt Wehrmachtfuehrungsstab (Armed Forces Operations 

Staff) 
Code Names 

ALSOS Allied mission made up of special intelligence forces 

which sought information on German developments 

in nuclear fission 

ECLIPSE Name given Operation TALISMAN after a presumed 

compromise of security 

FLASHPOINT Ninth U.S. Army assault crossing of the Rhine in 

March 1945 (part of Operation PLUNDER) 

GRENADE Ninth U.S. Army assault crossing of the Roer followed 

by a northeastward drive to link with the First Canadian Army along the Rhine, February 1945 

KAPUT Ninth U.S. Army assignment of defeating an incursion 

into the zone of the XIII Corps and of clearing a 

sector along the Elbe, April 1945 

LUMBER JACK Converging thrust by U.S. First and Third Armies to 

create a pocket of trapped Germans in the Eifel, 

February and March 1945 

MARKET Phase of Operation MARKET-GARDEN that involved 

seizure of bridges in the Nijmegen-Arnhem area 

MARKET-GARDEN Combined ground-airborne operation intended to 

establish a bridgehead across the Rhine in the Netherlands, September 1944 

NEPTUNE Actual operations within Operation OVERLORD; used 

for security reasons after September 1943 on all 

OVERLORD planning papers that referred to target 

area and date 

NOR D WIND German counteroffensive launched on New Year’s Eve 

1944 near the southern end of the Allied line in 

Alsace 

OMAHA Normandy beach assaulted by troops of U.S. V Corps, 

6 June 1944 

OVERLORD Plan for invasion of northwest Europe, spring 1944 

PLUNDER Assault crossing of the Rhine by the 21 Army Group, 

March 1945 

TALISMAN Early name for post hostilities plans for Germany 

UNDERTONE Seventh U.S. Army operation to breach the West Wall 

and establish a bridgehead over the Rhine in the 

Worms area, March-April 1945 

VARSITY First Allied Airborne Army operation in support of 

Operation PLUNDER 

VERITABLE 21 Army Group plan for a Canadian attack between 

the Maas and the Rhine, January-February 1945 
Basic Military Map Symbols* 

Symbols within a rectangle indicate a military unit, within 

a triangle an observation post, and within a circle a supply 

point. 

Military Units—Identification 

Airborne units are designated by combining a gull wing 

symbol with the arm or service symbol: 

*For complete listing of symbols in use during the World War II period. see 

FM 21–30, dated October 1943, from which these are taken. 
BASIC MILITARY MAP SYMBOLS 499 

Size Symbols 

The following symbols placed either in boundary lines or 

above the rectangle, triangle, or circle inclosing the identifying 

arm or service symbol indicate the size of military organization: 

EXAMPLES 

The letter or number to the left of the symbol indicates the 

unit designation; that to the right, the designation of the parent 

unit to which it belongs. Letters or numbers above or below 

boundary lines designate the units separated by the lines: 

Weapons 

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II 

The following volumes have been published or are in press: 

The War Department 

Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations 

Washington Command Post: The Operations Division 

Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1941–1942 

Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1943–1944 

Global Logstics and Strategy: 1940–1943 

Global Logstics and Strategy: 1943–1945 

The Army and Economic Mobilization 

The Army and Industrial Manpower 

The Army Ground Forces 

The Organization of Ground Combat Troops 

The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops 

The Army Service Forces 

The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces 

The Western Hemisphere 

The Framework of Hemisphere Defense 

Guarding the United States and Its Outposts 

The War in the Pacific 

The Fall of the Philippines 

Guadalcanal: The First Offensive 

Victory in Papua 

CARTWHEEL: The Reduction of Rabaul 

Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls 

Campaign in the Marianas 

The Approach to the Philippines 

Leyte: The Return to the Philippines 

Triumph in the Philippines 

Okinawa: The Last Battle 

Strategy and Command: The First Two Years 

The Mediterranean Theater of Operations 

Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West 

Sicily and the Surrender of Italy 

Salerno to Cassino 

Cassino to the Alps 

The European Theater of Operations 

Cross-Channel Attack 

Breakout and Pursuit 

The Lorraine Campaign 

The Siegfried Line Campaign 

The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge 

The Last Offensive 

The Supreme Command 
502 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume I 

Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume II 

The Middle East Theater 

The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia 

The China-Burma-India Theater 

Stilwell’s Mission to China 

Stilwell’s Command Problems 

Time Runs Out in CBI 

The Technical Services 

The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War 

The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field 

The Chemical Warfare Service: Chemicals in Combat 

The Corps of Engineers: Troops and Equipment 

The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Japan 

The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Germany 

The Corps of Engineers: Military Construction in the United States 

The Medical Department: Hospitalization and Evacuation; Zone of Interior 

The Medical Department: Medical Service in the Mediterranean and Minor 

Theaters 

The Medical Department: Medical Service in the European Theater of Operations 

The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War 

The Ordnance Department: Procurement and Supply 

The Ordnance Department: On Beachhead and Battlefront 

The Quartermaster Corps: Organization, Supply, and Services, Volume I 

The Quartermaster Corps: Organization, Supply, and Services, Volume II 

The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Japan 

The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Germany 

The Signal Corps: The Emergency 

The Signal Corps: The Test 

The Signal Corps: The Outcome 

The Transportation Corps: Responsibilities, Organization, and Operations 

The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply 

The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas 

Special Studies 

Chronology: 1941–1945 

Military Relations Between the United States and Canada: 1939–1945 

Rearming the French 

Three Battles: Arnaville, Altuzzo, and Schmidt 

The Women’s Army Corps 

Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors 

Buying Aircraft: Materiel Procurement for the Army Air Forces 

The Employment of Negro Troops 

Manhattan: The U.S. Army and the Atomic Bomb 

Pictorial Record 

The War Against Germany and Italy Mediterranean and Adjacent Areas 

The War Against Germany: Europe and Adjacent Areas 

The War Against Japan 
Index 

Aachen: 20, 58, 71, 330 

Aachen-Cologne autobahn: 168, 188 

Aachen-Cologne highway: 168, 188 

Abraham, General der Infanterie Erich: 304, 307, 

315, 338, 358 

Abrams, Lt. Col. Creighton W.: 281 

Adams, Col. Charles M.: 450, 452-53, 455 

Ahr River and valley: 58, 185, 194-97, 203-04, 207, 

210, 212, 214-15, 219, 222-23 

Ahrweiler: 192, 196 

Air evacuation: 327, 417 

Air Force, Eighth: 14, 253, 300, 309, 314, 323 

Air Force, Ninth: 14, 310 

Air Force, Fifteenth: 309, 324 

Air force troops: 334 

Air forces, Allied: 15, 211, 323-24 

Air operations 

against German oil production: 9, 323 

against German transportation: 9, 300, 323-24, 

365 

extended range for fighter-bombers: 397, 399, 401 

Russian-Allied bomb line agreement: 446-47 

strategic bombing lessons learned: 324, 366, 479 

Air supply. See Supply. 

Air support: 13-15, 478. See also Tactical air commands: Weather. 

Ardennes operations: 51, 54 

Harz Mountains operations: 404 

for Operations GRENADE and LUMBERJACK: 137, 

142, 153, 188 

Remagen bridgehead operations: 221, 228, 348, 

351 

Rhine bridges bombing: 211 

Ruhr Pocket operations: 348, 365 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 248-49, 253, 256, 260- 

62, 265 

of Seventh Army drive to Austria: 413, 418-20, 

423, 425, 441 

of Third Army Rhine crossings: 270, 272, 277 

of 21 Army Group Rhine crossing: 273, 300-05, 

307, 309-10, 315 

Air support, German: 7, 163, 187, 227-28, 230, 263, 

270, 302, 416-17 

Airborne Division, table of organization and equipment of 1 March 1945: 299 

Airborne Division, 13th: 284, 422, 427, 477 

Airborne Division, 17th 

Ardennes offensive operations: 35, 38-41, 299 

casualties: 312-13 

command and organization: 38, 357, 366 

in Operation VARSITY: 298-99, 310-14, 319 

prisoners captured: 311, 312n, 313 

Ruhr Pocket operations: 364, 366, 370 

Airborne Division, 82d 

command and organization: 32, 44 

Elbe River crossing: 461-63, 464-65 

Row River dams operations: 80 

West Wall operations: 63-64, 68 

Airborne Division, 101st: 33, 35-36, 40-42, 442, 474 

Airborne operations: 17, 135, 273, 285, 294, 298, 

300-02, 313-14, 334, 351, 422, 427, 429, 480. See 

also MARKET operation; VARSITY operation. 

Aircraft. See also Artillery liaison planes. 

Allied strength: 7, 13-14, 478 

C-47 (transport) : 145, 309-10, 417 

fighter-bombers: 14, 137, 309-10, 478 

heavy bombers: 14, 309, 478 

Liberator bombers: 309, 314 

medium bombers: 13-14, 309-10, 399, 420 

P-47 (Thunderbolt): 14, 153, 188 

P-51 (Mustang): 14, 277 

Aircraft, German 

jet-propelled: 7, 9, 163, 228, 263, 300, 323-24, 

412, 423 

Messerschmitt 262’s: 263 

Storck: 13 

strength in January 1945: 7-8 

Alexander, Field Marshal Sir Harold R. L. G.: 409 

Allen, Maj. Gen. Leven C.: 290 

Allen, Maj. Gen. Roderick R.: 258. See also Armored Division, 12th. 

Allen, Maj. Gen. Terry de la Mesa: 157, 165, 355, 

361, 402. See also Infantry Division, 104th. 

Allied Airborne Army, First: 2, 4, 15, 298, 310, 

323, 351, 422 

Allied military mission (Moscow) : 341 

Alligators. See LVT’s 

Alpine Redoubt. See National Redoubt. 

Alsace: 1, 4, 19-21, 34, 238, 243-44, 478 

Alsatian Plain: 20 

ALSOS mission: 332, 427, 429-30 

Altenau: 404 

Altenkirchen: 346-48 

Alzey: 259 

Am Kopf Hill (554): 92-93 

Ambleve River: 25, 33, 43-44 

Amphibious tanks (DD): 288, 306, 314 

Amphibious Truck Company, 453d: 277 

Amphibious Truck Company, 819th: 227 

Andernach: 197, 201, 204, 206, 208-09, 221, 225, 233 

Anderson, Maj. Gen. John B.: 136, 143, 162, 164, 

166, 172, 179, 303, 310n, 317. See also Corps, 

XVI. 

Andrus, Brig. Gen. Clift: 46. See also Infantry 

Division, 1st. 

Ansbach: 421 
504 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Antiaircraft: 163, 227-28, 230, 263 

Antiaircraft Artillery Group, 16th: 227 

Antiaircraft, German defense use: 133-34, 191, 206, 

242, 251, 280, 286-88, 303, 308-09, 323, 358, 

375, 378, 382, 386, 392-93, 396-97, 401-02, 423- 

34, 436 

Antitank weapons: 10, 478. See also Bazookas; 

Guns; Recoilless rifles. 

Antitank weapons, German: 10. See also Guns, 

German; Panzerfausts. 

Antwerp: 14, 23, 34, 324-25 

Ardennes counteroffensive: 1-4, 8, 18-19, 21, 23- 

26, 28, 32-34, 36, 41, 44, 54, 479-80 

Ardennes-Eifel region: 19, 22-23, 57-58 

Arlberg: 439 

Arlberg Pass: 439, 471 

Armor. See also Tanks: Weather. 

Allied strength: 7 

exploitation role of: 246-47, 249, 258-59, 261, 

263, 272, 279, 347, 354, 367, 412-14, 416, 435 

Operation GRENADE strength: 137 

organization of armored divisions: 16-17, 354 

Armored Division, 1st: 16 

Armored Division, 2d 

Ardennes offensive operations: 27, 30-31, 43 

casualties: 398 

command and organization: 16, 29, 136, 172 

Elbe drive and bridgehead operations: 380, 384, 

386-87, 396-400, 480 

Rhine River drive and crossing: 168, 172, 174-77, 

357-59 

Armored Division, 3d 

Ardennes offensive operations: 27, 29-30, 33 

command and organization: 16, 29, 136, 169, 

188n, 233, 353 

drive to the Mulde: 389, 391-92, 401-02 

prisoners captured: 351 

Remagen bridgehead breakout: 346-48, 350-52, 

354-56, 359-61 

Rhine drive: 187-91 

Roer River crossing: 157 

Armored Division, 4th 

advance into Czechoslovakia: 467 

Ardennes operations: 35-36, 38, 40-41 

casualties: 205 

command and organization: 41, 112-13, 241, 281 

Kyll to Rhine advance: 197-98, 201-02, 204-07, 

242, 244 

Main River crossing and Mulde drive: 373-74, 

376, 378, 380-82, 384, 410 

Moselle River crossing: 206, 246-49, 279 

Rhine River crossing and bridgehead operations: 

236, 268, 272, 279, 282, 286, 347 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 256-60, 265 

Sauer and Nims River crossings: 101, 114-15 

Armored Division, 5th 

Bitburg attack in September 1944: 99 

command and organization: 72, 136, 167 

drive to the Elbe: 379, 387, 400 

Armored Division, 5th—Continued 

Rhine drive: 174-76, 178 

Roer dams attack: 72 

Roer River crossing: 167, 172 

Armored Division, 6th 

Ardennes offensive operations: 35-38, 40, 42n, 

48, 52-53 

casualties: 111 

command and organization: 36, 108, 197, 200, 240 

Main River crossing: 279, 373 

Mulde River advance: 374, 376, 380-82, 392, 447 

Rhine River crossing: 265, 268, 280 

Vianden bulge operations: 108, 110, 113, 197 

Armored Division, 7th 

Ardennes offensive operations: 48, 51 

command and organization: 48, 74, 222 

Elbe River crossing: 461, 463 

prisoners captured: 348 

Remagen bridgehead operations: 222, 347-48, 

355, 355n 

Ruhr Pocket reduction: 365, 365n, 366, 370. 

Armored Division, 8th 

capture of Dorsten: 357-58 

casualties: 183 

command and organization: 136, 172, 357 

Harz Mountains operations: 402 

Rhine River bridgehead operations: 304, 317- 

18, 357 

Roer River crossing: 172, 179, 181, 183 

Ruhr Pocket reduction: 364, 366 

in Saar-Moselle triangle: 123, 127 

Armored Division, 9th 

advance to the Mulde: 380, 391-93 

capture of Remagen bridge: 207, 211-12, 219, 

223 

Remagen bridgehead breakout: 345, 348, 355 

Roer River crossing and Rhine advance: 36n, 

193, 195-96 

Armored Division, 10th 

advance into Austria: 438-39 

Ardennes offensive operations: 35 

attack on Stuttgart: 427 

capture of Trier: 132-34, 242 

Danube drive and crossing: 429-31, 434-35 

Jagst-Neckar operations: 414-16, 418, 480 

Rhine bridgehead operations: 322 

Saar-Moselle triangle operations: 127-29, 131-34 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 249, 257-61, 263 

Armored Division, 11th 

advance through Bavaria into Austria: 374, 376, 

378, 380-81, 426, 437, 466-67 

Ardennes offensive operations: 35, 38, 41-43, 52 

casualties: 35 

command and organization: 41, 248, 259 

Kyll River crossing and Rhine advance: 197, 

199-200, 205, 223 

Moselle River crossing: 248, 250, 257-59 

Vianden bulge operations: 108-09, 111 

West Wall penetration: 84, 90-91, 93, 259 
INDEX 505 

Armored Division, 12th 

advance into Austria: 440 

capture of Munich: 436 

Danube advance and crossing: 425, 434 

Main River advance and crossing: 409, 412-13, 

420 

Rhine River crossing: 289 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 249, 257-59, 263-64 

Armored Division, 13th: 366-67, 426, 437 

Armored Division, 14th 

advance to Austria: 410, 418-20, 422, 424-26, 437 

command and organization: 422, 425-26 

West Wall penetration: 263-64 

Armored Division, 16th: 467 

Armored Division, 20th: 435-36 

Armored Field Artillery Battalion, 92d: 177 

Armored Infantry Battalions 

7th: 124 

9th: 40n, 111 

10th: 281 

20th: 134 

27th: 212, 216, 220, 225, 230 

38th: 355n 

41st: 397 

48th: 365n 

49th: 183 

52d: 193 

53d: 112 

55th: 109 

Army, command and logistical functions: 15 

Army, First: 2, 36, 70, 135. See also Hodges, Lt. 

Gen. Courtney H. 

Ahr River drive: 185, 194, 197-98, 207, 212 

Ardennes counteroffensive operations: 1, 4, 21, 

23-24, 43, 135 

Ardennes offensive operations: 24, 26-28, 33, 40, 

43-46, 52 

artillery support for Roer River crossing: 185-86 

boundary changes: 19, 136, 138, 191, 196, 345 

casualties in Ruhr envelopment: 372, 372n 

clearing the Erft-Rhine triangle: 84, 156, 185, 

191, 194 

command and organization: 4, 15, 17, 19, 26, 43, 

68-69, 97, 136, 185-86, 196, 212, 356, 362, 366, 

380, 425 

Eifel attack: 60, 62, 68-69, 71 

Elbe River drive: 373-74, 376, 379-80, 384, 386, 

389, 391, 395, 399, 401, 405 

flank support of Ninth Army in GRENADE: 137, 

142, 156, 165, 186, 191 

German forces opposing: 6, 186 

linkup with Russian troops: 445, 447, 452 

logistics: 186, 325 

projected deployment to Pacific theater: 466 

Remagen bridge capture: 207, 236, 266 

Remagen bridgehead breakout: 234, 274, 279, 

290, 339, 344, 346-47, 350 

Remagen bridgehead consolidation: 220, 222-23, 

232, 266, 289 

Army, First—Continued 

Rhine crossing plans: 208-11, 227, 239 

Roer River crossings: 67, 156, 163 

Roer River dams attack: 67, 80 

Roer to Rhine attack: 191, 202, 479 

Ruhr encirclement and reduction: 340, 351, 355, 

357, 362-63, 366-67, 373, 460, 479 

tactical air support of: 14, 38 

Army, Third. See also Patton, Lt. Gen. George S., 

Jr. 

advance to the Pruem River: 96, 115, 196 

Ahr River linkup with First Army: 192, 196-98, 

223 

Ardennes counteroffensive operations: 1, 4, 21, 

23-25, 238 

Ardennes offensive operations: 25-28, 33, 35, 43, 

48, 52-54 

attack on Bitburg: 59, 68, 84, 98-100, 171, 198 

boundary changes: 19, 53 

casualties: 264 

command and organization: 17, 35-36, 68, 97, 

99, 108, 123, 185, 224, 238, 240, 248, 373, 

378, 422, 425, 466 

drive into Austria: 434, 437, 440, 442, 460, 464, 

466 

Eifel area probing attacks: 67-68, 84, 93, 98, 196 

Eifel drive: 62-63, 68, 185-86, 194, 196-97, 201, 

236-37, 241 

final drive across Germany: 379-81, 384, 386, 

389, 392, 395, 405, 407-08, 419-23, 425-26 

German forces opposing: 6, 186 

Main River crossings: 291, 373 

Moselle crossing plans: 206, 239, 241 

Ohrdruf communications center capture: 376 

Our River operations: 59, 92 

prisoners captured by: 264 

Rhine bridgeheads breakout: 339, 344, 348, 362, 

373-76, 378, 409-10 

Rhine crossing operations: 273, 285, 287, 289, 

291, 293, 306, 322, 345, 373, 381, 412, 479 

Rhine crossing plans: 209, 234, 236, 241, 265-66 

Rhine drive orders: 68, 197 

Saar-Moselle triangle operations: 21, 116, 134, 

186, 239 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 208, 235-36, 238-39, 

239n, 240, 252, 256-57, 263-65, 285, 479 

shortage of infantry replacements: 54 

tactical air support of: 14, 38 

Trier envelopment: 134, 145, 171, 196 

Army, Seventh. See also Patch, Lt. Gen. Alexander 

M. 

Alsace operations: 243 

boundary changes: 19, 429, 436 

casualties: 264 

command and organization: 4, 240, 249, 252, 

409, 422 

German forces opposing: 6, 206, 375 

intelligence report of National Redoubt: 407, 409 

linkup with Allied forces in Italy: 469 
506 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Army, Seventh-Continued 

prisoners captured by: 264, 434 

Rhine crossing plans and operations: 241, 265, 

284-86, 289, 321, 339, 347, 407-08, 412 

Saar-Moselle triangle operations: 116 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 20-21, 206, 238-39, 

239n, 240-41, 246, 252-53, 256-58, 260-62, 264, 

284 

sweep through southern Germany into Austria: 

408-10, 412, 416, 418, 421-23, 426, 428, 431-32, 

436-39, 466-67 

tactical air support of: 14 

Army, Ninth. See also GRENADE operation; Simpson, Lt. Gen. William H. 

Ardennes operations: 25, 135-36 

boundary changes: 19, 136, 174, 175 

casualties: 162, 183, 372 

command and organization: 4, 56-57, 67-69, 

135-37, 137n, 173, 185, 296-97, 303-04, 323, 

340-41, 363, 366, 379, 461, 480 

Elbe River drive: 380-81, 384-87, 389, 395, 399- 

402, 405-06, 421, 479 

German forces opposing: 6 

intelligence for Operation GRENADE: 139-40 

linkup with Russian forces: 445, 447 

logistics: 135-37, 185, 325 

military government operations: 184, 331 

plan for Berlin drive: 379, 386-87, 399 

prisoners captured by: 183 

Rhine assault crossings: 303 

Rhine bridgehead operations: 317-19, 339, 357 

Rhine crossing plans and buildup: 67, 138-39, 

143, 173-74, 178, 178n, 179n, 211, 220, 239, 

294-98, 319 

Rhine west bank mop-up operations: 179, 183 

Roer River crossing plans: 73, 80, 83, 138-39, 

142-44 

Roer River crossings: 154, 157, 162, 166 

Roer to Rhine advance: 156, 163, 168, 170-76, 

178, 183-85, 187-89, 191 

Ruhr encirclement and reduction: 340-41, 351, 

359, 362-67, 380, 460 

support of Eifel advance: 65, 71 

and surrender operations: 465 

tactical air support of: 14, 300, 304 

use of battlefield illumination: 156n 

Army, Fifteenth: 46, 323, 340-41, 351, 379n 

Army Group, command and logistical functions: 15 

Army Group, 6th. See also Devers, Lt. Gen. Jacob 

L. 

Ardennes counteroffensive support: 24 

clearing Rhine west bank: 208, 236, 238, 240 

command and organization: 4, 15, 21, 240, 323, 

422 

employment of Negro troops: 335 

lines of communication: 325 

and National Redoubt: 407-08 

Rhine crossing plans: 232, 239 

Army Group, 6th—Continued 

southern Germany and Austria sweep: 340-41, 

407-09, 422, 427-28, 430, 432-33, 437-39, 442, 

460, 464, 474 

Army Group, 12th. See also Bradley, Lt. Gen. 

Omar N. 

Ardennes operations: 4, 41 

command and organization: 4, 15, 26, 43, 67, 

108, 185, 239, 323, 340-41, 363, 379 

Eifel drive plans: 57, 59 

Eifel offensive halted by Eisenhower: 67, 84 

employment of Negro troops: 334-35 

Leipzig-Dresden drive: 340, 343, 379, 381, 384-86, 

389, 399, 407-08, 418, 421-22, 434 

plan to clear the Saar-Palatinate: 239, 239n, 240 

plans and Rhine crossing operations: 55, 170, 

208, 289-90 

Remagen breakout and Ruhr encirclement: 344, 

351, 379 

Army Group, 21. See also Montgomery, Field 

Marshal Sir Bernard L.; VARSITY operation. 

command and organization: 4, 15, 19, 43, 135, 

175, 297, 297n, 323 

drive beyond the Elbe: 340-42, 421 

German defenses against: 184-85, 301, 304 

northern Germany and Netherlands clearing 

operations: 460-61 

Rhine assault crossing: 273, 297, 300, 303-04, 

314, 319, 344, 479 

Rhine-Ruhr “main effort” plans: 2, 55, 57, 135, 

206, 208, 220, 232, 234, 238-39, 239n, 267, 294, 

340 

Arnhem: 295, 379, 460 

Artillery 

Allied strength: 7 

control and organization doctrine: 12 

fire called on own positions: 155 

fire on friendly positions: 308 

harassing fire: 167, 177 

massed fire: 48 

TOT fires: 95, 95n, 111 

withheld to effect surprise: 31, 49, 109, 267 

Artillery, German: 12, 157, 161, 225, 227, 346 

Artillery liaison planes: 12-13, 105, 202, 205, 268, 

270, 302, 448 

Artillery observation: 29, 31, 65, 73, 157, 267 

Artillery support 

Ardennes offensive: 31 

concentration for Operation GRENADE: 137, 142, 

145, 154-56, 168, 185 

of Moselle River crossing: 244-46 

for Operation LUMBERJACK: 185-86 

of Remagen bridge and bridgehead operations: 

211, 215, 220, 232 

of Roer dams attack: 72, 74, 79-80 

of Ruhr Pocket operations: 365 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 255 

of Sauer-Our crossings: 103, 103n, 110-11 

of Seventh Army Rhine crossing: 287, 289 
INDEX 507 

Artillery Support—Continued 

of Third Army Rhine crossings: 267, 272-73, 280 

of 21 Army Group Rhine crossing: 273, 297, 

303-08 

Aschaffenburg: 279-80, 282, 347, 374, 409-10 

Assault guns. See Guns, German, self-propelled. 

Augsburg: 435-36 

Austria: 409, 421-22, 427, 430-31, 434-35, 437-39, 

446, 456-57, 460, 464, 466, 477 

Austrian Alps and Alpine passes: 340, 407, 409, 

437-40, 442, 445, 467-71 

Baade, Maj. Gen. Paul W.: 38, 167, 180-81, 316. 

See also Infantry Division, 35th. 

Baal: 153, 162, 164, 167 

Bad Godesberg: 196, 212 

Bad Hersfeld: 374 

Bad Kreuznach: 241, 249, 258, 325 

Bad Muenster: 249 

Bad Neuenahr: 196, 212 

Bad Neustadt: 419 

Bad Orb: 378 

Baltic coast: 421, 446, 456-58, 460-61, 464, 477 

Bamberg: 421-24 

Bannholz Woods: 126-27 

Barby: 387, 397, 405, 447 

Barcus, Brig. Gen. Glenn O.: 253 

Barnett, Maj. Gen. Allison J.: 380 

Bastogne: 1, 21, 23-28, 32-41, 43, 48, 479 

Bastogne-Liège highway: 25, 29 

Battlefield illumination: 156, 156n, 229, 257, 268, 

271, 275-76 

Baum, Capt. Abraham J.: 281-84. See also Task 

Force Baum. 

Bayerlein, Generalleutnant Fritz: 154, 189, 221-22, 

226, 233-34, 344-46, 350, 353, 356, 359-62, 370 

Bayreuth: 384, 409, 425 

Bazookas: 10, 120, 155, 254 

Bealke, Lt. Col. Jacob W., Jr.: 92 

Beardsley, Pvt. Albert J.: 123 

Beaudoin, 1st Lt. Raymond 0.: 385n 

Beckum: 358-59 

Belgian units: 5n, 297n 

Bellinger, Maj. Robert: 352 

Belsen concentration camp: 481 

Bennett, Cpl. Edward A,: 66n 

Berchtesgaden: 442, 444 

Bergstrasse: 286 

Berlin: 337, 423, 443, 475-76 

air attacks on: 323-24 

Eisenhower decision against drive to: 379, 384, 

387, 395, 399, 405-06, 480 

as final objective: 18-19, 334, 340-42, 384, 386-87, 

399, 406, 480 

occupation plans for: 335, 480 

Russian drive to: 335, 340, 375, 405, 443-45, 447, 

459 

Bernadotte, Count Folke: 444 

Bernkastel: 196 

Beurig: 131-32 

Beurig-Zerf highway: 132 

Beyer, Cpl. Arthur 0.: 42n 

Beyer, General der Infanterie Franz: 49, 100, 105, 

198, 243, 260, 263, 414-15, 427-29, 433 

Biedenkopf: 354 

Bingen: 240, 274 

Birken: 365 

Birkesdorf: 157, 159 

Bischoff, Lt. Col. Eric E.: 155 

Bitburg: 58-59, 68, 84, 98-99, 101, 106-07, 112-15, 

133, 145, 171, 198-99, 200, 204 

Bitche: 252, 254, 256 

Bitterfeld: 392, 401-02 

Bittrich, General der Waffen-SS Willi: 27 

Black, Col. Paul J.: 267 

Black Forest: 19-20, 284, 408-09, 415, 421-22, 427- 

31, 433, 438 

Black market operations: 332-33 

Blakeley, Brig. Gen. Harold W.: 48, 66, 86, 96-97. 

See also Infantry Division, 4th. 

Blankenburg: 405 

Blaskowitz, Generaloberst Johannes: 6, 118, 176- 

78, 301-03, 314-15, 338-39, 358, 385, 460 

Bleckede: 462-63 

Blies River: 253-54 

Blumentritt, General der Infanterie Guenther: 

301-02, 338, 358, 385-86, 386n 

Boats 

assault: 49, 129-30, 143-45, 147, 149, 151, 153, 

157, 159-60, 246-47, 250, 267-68, 270, 275-76, 

287, 303, 305-06, 387, 389, 393, 462 

double assault: 305 

double-boat ferries: 144 

inflatable rubber: 101, 152, 322 

motorboats and motor ferries: 129-30, 159-60, 

227, 297 

storm boats: 287, 305-06, 322 

Bochum: 363 

Boenninghardt Forest: 179-81, 183 

Bollendorf: 100-101 

Bolling, Maj. Gen. Alexander R.: 145, 175. See also 

Infantry Division, 84th. 

Bombardment Division, 9th: 300, 399, 420 

Bomber Command, IX: 13 

Bonn: 5, 55, 58, 195-96, 202-03, 208-12, 214, 221, 

223, 225, 233 

Booty: 329, 331-32, 378 

Boppard: 273, 275-77, 347 

Bork, Generalleutnant Max: 413, 415, 427 

Boslar: 154-55 

Bothmer, Generalmajor Richard von: 210, 214-15 

Botsch, Generalmajor Walther: 202-05, 209-10, 214, 

242 

Bouck, Lyle J., Jr.: 283n 

Bourcy: 41 

Bra: 25, 27 

Bradley, Lt. Gen. Omar N. See also Army Group, 

12th. 
508 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Bradley, Lt. Gen. Omar N.—Continued 

and Ahr River linkup of First and Third 

Armies: 194, 196 

and Allied strategy: 2 

and Ardennes offensive operations: 24, 35, 39, 

41, 43-44, 52 

and Berlin as objective: 399 

and capture of Remagen bridge: 219-20 

command and control concepts: 15 

command relationship with Eisenhower: 17 

command relationship with Patton: 15, 18, 35, 

39, 384 

and drive through southern Germany: 422 

and Eifel drive plan: 52-53, 56-59, 67-68, 97, 479 

and employment of 10th Armored Division: 127, 

132-33 

and First Army linkup with Russians: 452 

Mulde River halt rescinded: 391 

and Ninth Army Berlin drive plan: 379, 399 

and Ohrdruf communications center attack: 376 

and Operation GRENADE: 185 

and Operation LUMBERJACK: 185-86, 192, 196-97 

and relief of General Millikin: 229 

and Remagen bridgehead operations and breakout: 225, 229, 232-34, 347 

and Rhine west bank operations: 194 

and Roer River dams: 57 

and Ruhr encirclement operations: 351 

and Saar-Palatinate operations: 208, 238, 240 

and Third Army Moselle plans: 206, 239 

and Third Army Rhine drive and crossings: 196, 

239, 266-67, 273 

Brandenberger, General der Panzertruppen Erich: 

26, 48-51, 93, 107-08, 408, 433, 471-73 

Brandscheid: 84-92 

Bratge, Capt. Willi: 209, 213-14, 216-17, 230 

Braun, Eva: 444, 458-59 

Braunau: 437, 466 

Braunlage: 404 

Braunschweig: 381, 386-87, 396 

Bregenz: 437-38 

Bremen: 300, 386, 460 

Brenner: 469 

Brenner, Generalmajor Karl: 349-50, 378 

Brenner Pass: 468, 477 

Brereton, Lt. Gen. Lewis H.: 15, 298, 310. See also 

Allied Airborne Army, First. 

Bridges. See also Engineers; Remagen bridge. 

Bailey: 161, 192, 200, 231 

class 40 treadway: 187, 270 

destroyed: 134, 145, 151, 161, 174, 177, 183, 191, 

204, 206, 250, 263-64, 290, 348, 387, 389, 399, 

401-02, 417 

floating: 100, 231, 318 

footbridges: 49, 104, 143, 147, 151-53, 157, 159, 

160-61, 192, 200 

German failure to demolish: 134, 167, 210, 214, 

216, 249. 279-80, 365, 393, 425, 436 

improvised log: 95 

Bridges—Continued 

infantry support: 147-48, 157, 161 

ponton: 132, 227, 289, 305, 318, 327, 397, 462 

prefabricated duckboard: 151 

rail bridge construction: 325 

treadway: 49, 147-48, 151, 153, 227, 247, 280, 289, 

309, 314, 318, 327, 348, 397-98 

Brilon: 352-53, 355 

British-American command relations 

and Berlin drive: 340-42, 446, 458, 480 

and Prague: 456, 477, 480 

and Rhine crossing planning: 295-96 

British Broadcasting Corporation: 273, 444 

British units: 5n, 21, 24, 32, 297n, 322n, 323, 477. 

See also Army Group, 21. 

Army, Second: 2, 6, 14, 19, 135-36, 294-98, 303, 

310, 314, 318, 339, 357, 379, 400, 460-61 

Corps, 1: 179 

Corps, 8: 400, 460-61 

Corps, 12: 303, 461 

Corps, 30: 25, 303 

Airborne Division, 6th: 298-99, 310-11, 313, 463- 

64 

Armoured Brigade, 6th Guards: 319 

Commando Brigade, 1: 303, 311, 462 

Brocken (mountain) : 404 

Brodenbach: 247 

Brohl: 197, 223 

Broich: 155 

Brooke, Field Marshal Sir Alan: 310, 310n 

Brooks, Maj. Gen. Edward H.: 252, 322, 416-17, 

471, See also Corps, VI. 

Brown, Brig. Gen. Charles C.: 304 

Browning automatic rifle (BAR): 10 

Browning machine gun. See Machine guns. 

Brunswick. See Braunschweig. 

Brussels: 310 

Buchenwald concentration camp: 384, 481 

Buederich: 305 

Bull, Maj. Gen. Harold R.: 128, 219-20, 409 

Burke, 1st Lt. Frank: 425n 

“Burp gun”: 10 

Burr, Pfc. Herbert H.: 259n 

Burress, Maj. Gen. Withers A.: 254. See also Infantry Division, 100th. 

Burrows, 2d Lt. Emmet J.: 213-15 

Busch, Field Marshal Ernst: 385, 460 

Butzdorf: 117-20, 124 

Call, Lt. Col. Floyd C.: 75-76 

Camouflage: 297 

Canadian Army, First: 2, 6, 14, 19, 67, 135-36, 139- 

41, 145, 166, 170-71, 175, 177, 179-80, 183-84, 

294, 296-98, 300, 314, 319, 379, 460, 479 

Canadian units: 5n, 297n, 322n, 323, 477 

Cannon company: 479 

Cargo carrier, M29: 106 

Carinthia Province (Austria) : 464 

Carter, Col. Leslie D.: 27-28 
INDEX 509 

Casablanca Conference: 329 

Casualties. See also Losses, summary of. 

air evacuation: 327 

Bradley's estimate for Berlin drive: 399, 406 

in Dresden firestorm: 324, 324n 

Cavalry Groups 

2d: 378 

3d: 117, 244, 426 

4th: 157, 187, 189 

6th: 52, 108, 112, 197, 279 

11th: 386, 400 

14th: 193-94 

15th: 366 

106th: 424, 441 

Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, 24th: 169 

Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, 94th: 424 

Ceské Budejovice: 458, 466-67, 477 

Channel Islands: 477 

Chapman, Maj. Gen. Elbridge G.: 427. See also 

Airborne Division, 13th. 

Chemical Battalion, 81st: 130 

Chemical Battalion, 87th: 159, 161 

Chemnitz: 379L80, 384, 447 

Cherbourg: 325 

Chief of Staff, U.S. Army. See Marshall, General 

George C. 

Chiefs of Staff, British: 4-5, 56, 208, 341-42, 456 

Chiefs of Staff, U.S.: 4-5, 56, 341-42 

Churchill, Winston S.: 273, 310, 310n, 319-20, 329, 

341, 453 

Citadel (Juelich) : 155 

Civilians: 330-31, 334-35, 361, 465 

in active fighting: 410 

Dresden firestorm casualties: 324 

foreign laborers: 184, 205, 262, 351, 366, 370, 386, 

392, 432, 448, 451-52 

problems with in military advance operations: 

184, 262, 366, 386, 432 

relief operations in Netherlands: 461 

revolt against military authority: 436-37 

Clerf River: 53 

Clothing and equipment: 10, 375, 478 

Coates, 1st Lt. Charles E.: 189 

Coburg: 384 

Cochem: 242, 244, 250 

Colalillo, Pfc. Mike: 418n 

Colditz: 393 

Coleman, 1st Lt. E. W.: 160-61 

Collins, Maj. Gen. Harry J.: 254, 420. See also Infantry Division, 42d. 

Collins, Maj. Gen. J. Lawton: 25-26, 31, 136, 144, 

157, 165, 165n, 169-70, 187-89, 191, 224, 231, 

354, 359, 391. See also Corps, VII. 

Colmar pocket: 19-20, 55, 166, 237, 243, 408 

Cologne: 5, 18, 59, 139-40, 165, 185, 187-92, 194-96, 

203, 208, 212-13, 219, 221, 228, 292, 363, 367 

Cologne-Muenchen-Gladbach highway: 187-88 

Cologne plain: 19, 57-58. 92. 138. 143. 193 

Colson, Brig. Gen. Charles F.: 123-24 

Combat Commands of Armored Divisions 

CCA, 2d: 174, 176 

CCB, 2d: 174, 176, 386 

CCR, 2d: 398-99 

CCA, 3d: 169, 188 

CCB, 3d: 169, 188 

CCR, 3d: 188 

CCA, 4th: 202, 204-07, 248-50, 279-80, 376 

CCB, 4th: 113, 201-02, 204-06, 248-50, 279-81, 

384 

CCR, 4th: 256, 279 

CCA, 5th: 72 

CCR, 5th: 178 

CCA, 6th: 110-11, 280 

CCB, 6th: 110-11 

CCR, 7th: 74, 76 

CCA, 8th: 123-25 

CCB, 8th: 179-83 

CCR, 8th: 179 

CCA, 9th: 193-95, 212 

CCB, 9th: 193-94, 212, 215, 348 

CCR, 9th: 348, 393 

CCA, 10th: 128, 132-34, 416-17 

CCB, 10th: 132-34, 416-17 

CCR, 10th: 128, 416, 431 

CCA, 11th: 200 

CCB, 11th: 199-200 

CCR, 11th: 109 

CCA, 12th: 420 

CCA, 14th: 419 

CCB, 14th: 418-19 

Combined Chiefs of Staff: 4-5, 15, 56, 67, 324, 

341-42, 433, 446, 457-58, 464 

Command and control: 7, 15-18, 57 

Command and General Staff College: 17 

Communications: 13, 202, 224-25, 306, 375-77, 400, 

402, 423, 459, 472 

Communications Zone: 5, 15, 325, 327 

Concentration camps: 378, 384, 391-92, 435-36, 467, 

481 

Coningham, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur: 299 

Corcoran, Pfc. Lyle: 103 

Corps, command and control structure: 16-17, 137 

Corps, III 

Ardennes offensive operations: 25, 33-36, 38-41, 

43, 52-53 

casualties: 234, 372n 

command and organization: 25, 35-36, 97, 99, 

108, 194, 196, 222, 229, 233, 356, 366-67, 425 

Danube and Austria drive: 426-27, 435, 437, 466 

prisoners captured: 348 

Remagen bridge capture: 207, 211-12, 219 

Remagen bridgehead operations: 222-29, 231-35, 

344-48, 350-51, 355 

Rhine River advance: 194-96, 203 

Roer River crossings: 191-93 

Ruhr reduction operations: 360, 362, 365-66 

West Wall offensive: 84, 91 
510 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Corps, v 

advance into Czechoslovakia: 466-67 

Ardennes offensive operations: 25-27, 43-46 

command and organization: 25, 46, 71, 73-74, 

227, 466 

drive to the Mulde: 362, 380, 389, 391-93, 395, 

401 

Eifel offensive: 62-66, 68, 71 

Eifel pocket operations: 192-93, 196, 202-03, 205 

linkup with Russian troops: 452, 455-56 

prisoners captured: 206, 223 

Rhine advance: 222-23 

Rhine bridgehead breakout: 234, 344-45, 347-48, 

350-51, 355 

Roer River dams operations: 59, 68-69, 71, 73-74, 

77, 81 

Corps, VI 

casualties: 264n, 418 

command and organization: 252 

drive to Austria: 421-22, 427, 43435, 438-39, 468 

linkup with Italian Campaign forces: 469 

Rhine bridgehead breakout and Jagst-Neckar 

operations: 409, 414-18, 421, 427 

Rhine River crossings: 285, 322 

Surrender negotiations: 471-72 

West Wall operations and Rhine drive: 252, 254, 

256, 258, 262-64 

Corps, VII 

Ardennes offensive operations: 25-29, 31-34, 43- 

44, 52, 62 

casualties: 33, 161-62, 234, 406 

command and organization: 25, 27, 68-69, 136- 

37, 157, 231, 356 

drive to the Mulde: 362, 380, 389, 391, 401-402 

Erft River crossing: 186-87 

flank support for Ninth Army Rhine drive: 137, 

142, 144, 156-57, 161-65, 168-71, 185-89, 191 

Harz Mountains operations: 402 

prisoners captured: 189, 223 

Remagen bridgehead operations: 231, 233-34, 

344, 346, 348, 350-51, 354-55 

Rhine drive and capture of Cologne: 185, 189, 

194, 196, 212, 221, 223, 224, 226 

Roer River operations: 68-69, 186 

Ruhr reduction operations: 359, 361 

Corps, VIII 

Ardennes offensive operations: 25-26, 32-36, 38- 

41, 43, 52-53 

capture of Koblenz: 250, 273 

command and organization: 25, 35, 41, 97, 248, 

250, 273-74, 279, 380, 425-26 

drive to the Mulde: 373, 378, 380, 384, 425 

Eifel and West Wall operations to Pruem: 52-53, 

62-63, 65, 68, 84, 86, 90-92, 96-98, 99, 105-06, 

115, 204 

Kyll River crossing and Rhine advance: 196-200, 

203, 205, 241 

prisoners captured: 109, 111, 206 

Corps, VIII—Continued 

Rhine gorge bridgehead and breakout operations: 289-90, 292, 347-49 

Rhine River crossings: 273-74, 279, 379 

Vianden bulge operations: 106, 108, 112, 114-15 

Corps, XII 

Ardennes offensive operations: 25, 43-44, 51-52 

artillery: 103n 

casualties: 113 

command and organization: 25, 36, 101, 113, 197, 

241, 248-49, 274, 373, 380, 425 

drive to Austria and Czechoslovakia: 381, 384, 

425, 435, 437, 466 

Hammelburg prison camp raid: 281, 291 

Main River crossing and Fulda Gap drive: 289, 

373-76, 378 

and Merkers "treasure" cave: 379 

Moselle and Saar-Palatinate operations: 117, 244, 

246, 248-49, 256-59, 265 

prisoners captured: 113, 434 

Rhine crossing at Oppenheim: 266-68, 272-74, 

279, 281, 289, 291 

Rhine River advance: 196-97, 199, 201, 204 

Sauer crossings and Bitburg attack: 84, 99-100, 

103-08, 110-13, 115, 133, 200 

Corps, XIII 

artillery support for GRENADE: 137 

command and organization: 135-36, 173 

drive to the Elbe: 362, 380, 384-87, 399-400 

Rhine drive: 174-76, 179, 357 

Rhine line defense: 304, 317-18 

Roer River crossing: 143, 145, 147, 149, 155, 

162-64, 167, 172 

Corps, XV 

attack to Nuremberg: 421-22, 425 

casualties: 289, 289n 

clearing the Hohe Rhoen: 409-10, 414, 418, 420 

command and organization: 252-53, 289, 425, 

435-36 

Munich, Salzburg, and Berchtesgaden: 434, 436, 

440-42 

Rhine crossing at Worms: 285-86, 289 

surrender negotiations: 471-72 

West Wall and Saar-Palatinate operations: 252- 

54, 256, 261-63 

Corps, XVI 

command and organization: 136, 173, 304, 357, 

366 

drive for Rhine bridges: 180, 183 

mop-up operations against First Parachute Army: 

179 

occupation duties: 331 

Rhine assault crossing: 303-307, 310n, 317-18 

Roer River crossing: 143, 153, 162, 164, 166-67, 

172 

Ruhr reduction operations: 357, 362, 365 

Corps, XVIII (Airborne) 

Ardennes offensive operations: 25-27, 32-33, 43- 

45 
INDEX 511 

Corps, XVIII (Airborne) —Continued 

casualties: 372n 

command and organization: 17, 25, 68-69, 299, 

357, 362, 366, 461, 463 

Elbe crossing and Baltic drive: 461-63 

Rhine airborne assault: 298-99, 300, 310, 313- 

14, 317-19 

Rhine bridgehead breakout: 357 

Ruhr Pocket operations: 362, 365-66 

West Wall offensive: 60-63, 65, 68 

Corps, XIX 

artillery support for GRENADE: 137 

command and organization: 135-36, 173, 357, 366 

drive to the Elbe: 362, 366, 380, 384, 386, 400 

Rhine crossing and bridgehead operations: 304, 

317-18 

Rhine drive: 172, 174-78 

Roer River crossing: 73, 142, 145, 149, 155-56, 

163-64, 167 

Ruhr reduction operations: 357, 362 

corps, XX 

artillery support of: 244-45 

capture of Trier: 199 

command and organization: 36, 39, 99, 127, 241, 

244, 249, 257-58, 380 

drive to the Danube and Austria: 426, 435, 437, 

466-67 

drive to the Mulde: 384, 425 

Lorraine operations: 36 

Moselle crossings: 241 

Rhine crossing and Kassel drive: 289-92, 373, 

375-76, 378 

Saar-Moselle triangle operations: 99-100, 115-17, 

124, 127, 131, 196, 236, 252 

West Wall and Saar-Palatinate operations: 241, 

243-46, 249, 257-61, 263 

Corps, XXI 

command and organization: 252, 425 

Danube and Austria advance: 416, 421, 423-25, 

434, 436, 439-42 

drive to the Main: 409, 412-14, 418, 420 

Rhine crossings: 285 

West Wall and Saar-Palatinate operations: 252, 

260, 262 

Cota Maj. Gen. Norman D.: 204. See also Infantry 

Division, 28th. 

Cothran, Maj. Ben: 215 

Crabill, Col. Edwin B.: 387 

Craig, Maj. Frederick W.: 450, 452-54, 456 

Craig, Maj. Gen. Louis A.: 65, 81, 224. See also 

Infantry Division, 9th. 

Crailsheim: 416-17, 480 

Crain, T. Sgt. Morris E.: 240-41n 

Crandall, T. Sgt. Henry E.: 127 

Crasemann, Generalleutnant Eduard: 141, 153 

Crerar, Lt. Gen. Henry D. G.: 19, 135 

Crews, S. Sgt. John R.: 418n 

Crown Prince Wilhelm Railroad Bridge: 206-07 

Culin, Brig. Gen. Frank L., Jr.: 84, 250. See also 

Infantry Division, 87th. 

Cullen, S. Sgt. Cris: 356 

Cummins, Lt. Col. Joseph M., Jr.: 188n 

Czechoslovakia: 426, 434-35, 447, 456-58, 466-67, 

476-77, 480 

Czechoslovakian units: 5n, 297n, 477 

Dachau concentration camp: 436, 481 

Dager, Brig. Gen. Holmes E.: 259. See also Armored 

Division, 11th. 

Dahl: 50n 

Dahlen: 451 

Dahlquist, Maj. Gen. John E.: 255. See also Infantry Division, 36th. 

Dahnen: 108, 110-11 

Daladier, Edouard: 474 

Daleiden: 111 

Daly, Capt. Michael J.: 425n 

Dannenberg: 401 

Danube River and valley: 409, 421, 430-31, 446, 466 

Danube River crossings: 422, 425-27, 431, 434-35, 

437, 467 

Darmstadt: 272, 279, 282 

Darmstadt-Mannheim autobahn: 286-87 

Dasburg: 110-11 

Dasburg-Irrhausen highway: 111 

Davall, Lt. Col. Harold C.: 112 

DD tanks: 288, 306, 314 

Dean, Maj. Gen. William F.: 417, 470-71. See also 

Infantry Division, 44th. 

Deception: 153, 167, 174, 266-67, 297, 307 

Dempsey, Lt. Gen. Sir Miles C.: 19, 296, 300, 318, 

461 

Denkert, Generalmajor Walter: 370 

Denmark: 457, 464-65, 476-77 

Dessau: 392, 395-96, 401, 405 

Deutsch, Generalmajor Friedrich: 303 

Devers, Lt. Gen. Jacob L. See also Army Group, 

6th. 

and ALSOS mission: 427 

command and control concepts: 15 

command relationship with Eisenhower: 17 

command relationships with de Lattre and French 

commanders: 262, 321, 427-29, 431-33, 438-39 

and French Rhine crossings: 321-22 

planning for sweep through southern Germany: 

408-09, 421-22 

and Saar-Palatinate operations: 238, 240, 257, 262 

and Salzburg: 440, 466 

and surrender negotiations: 466, 472-73 

Devine, Brig. Gen. John M.: 172, 318. See also 

Armored Division, 8th. 

Dickson, Col. Benjamin A.: 60 

Diekirch: 48-49 

Diersfordt: 311-13 

Diersfordter Forst: 300, 310 

Dietrich, Generaloberst der Waffen-SS Josef: 26, 32, 

45-46, 51 
512 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Dietz, S. Sgt. Robert H.: 355n 

Dill River: 346-48, 350 

Dillingen: 425, 434 

Dinant: 22 

Dinslaken: 301, 304, 307, 309 

Dinslaken-Wesel highway: 308 

Doemitz: 458, 463-64 

Doenitz, Grossadmiral Karl: 444-45, 459, 464-66, 

474-76 

Doermoschel: 259n 

Donauwoerth: 434 

Donovan, Capt. Charles W.: 130 

Dorsten: 315-16, 319, 357-58 

Dortmund: 18, 324, 363-64 

Dortmund-Ems Canal: 358 

Doveren: 164, 166 

Drabik, Sgt. Alex: 217 

Dragon's teeth: 20, 88, 116 

Dresden: 324, 340, 446-47, 453, 458 

Duderstadt: 391 

Duelken: 139 

Dueren: 70, 139, 141-43, 156-57, 159-62, 164-65, 

168, 186, 191-92 

Dueren-Cologne railroad and highway: 168-69, 188 

Dueren-Juelich railroad: 159 

Duesseldorf: 18, 67, 138, 178, 178n, 183, 185, 221, 

363, 367, 372 

Duisburg: 18, 178-79, 304, 363-64 

Dukws: 145, 227, 268, 276-77, 289, 313 

Dummy installations and equipment: 297 

Dunquerque: 477 

Dutch units: 5n, 297n 

Earnest, Brig. Gen. Herbert L.: 200, 246. See also 

Infantry Division, 90th. 

Echternach: 23, 26, 68, 84, 99-103, 105 

Echternach-Bitburg highway: 114 

ECLIPSE operation: 334 

Eddy, Maj. Gen. Manton S.: 25, 36, 43, 99-100, 103, 

105, 113, 197, 201, 246-49, 258-59, 265-67, 272, 

279, 281, 425. See also Corps, XII. 

Edelsheim, General der Panzertruppen Max Freiherr von: 402n 

Eder River: 355, 376 

Eder See: 353, 355-56, 360, 362 

Ehingen: 431, 434 

Eicherscheid: 72 

Eifel operations: 186, 195-96, 236-37, 241-42, 408, 

479 

Eifel region: 4, 19, 22-24, 44, 57-60, 70, 99, 107, 

196-97, 201 

Eilenberg: 448 

Einruhr: 72 

Eisenach: 375-76, 379-80 

Eisenhower, Gen. Dwight D. See also Supreme 

Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force 

(SHAEF) . and advance into Czechoslovakia: 458, 466-67, 

477, 480 

Eisenhower, Gen. Dwight D.—Continued 

and Ardennes countermoves: 23-24, 43 

and broad-front strategy: 2, 4-5, 18, 55-56 

and capture of Remagen bridge: 219-20 

command authority: 7 

command relationship with Montgomery: 4, 43, 

67, 342 

command relationship with Patton: 17-18, 384 

command relationship with subordinates: 17, 68 

and decision against Berlin as main objective: 

339-42, 379, 384, 387, 395, 399, 405-06, 480 

directive on legitimate booty: 329, 331 

and drive into Austrian Alps: 408, 437 

and drive to the Baltic: 457-58, 461 

and Elbe-Mulde line boundaries: 384, 406, 421, 

446, 456, 463 

and employment of the SHAEF reserve: 34, 127- 

28 

and Himmler surrender offer: 444 

and main effort in the north against the Ruhr: 

67, 206, 208, 219-20, 232, 239n, 266, 294, 340, 

407 

and Netherlands relief operations: 461 

and nonfraternization policy: 330 

and offensive in the Eifel: 57, 59, 67, 84, 100 

and Operation GRENADE: 139 

and Operation LUMBERJACK: 185 

pressure to close Alpine passes: 440-41, 457 

problems with French commanders: 432-33 

reaction to concentration camps: 378 

and Remagen bridgehead breakout: 347 

and Remagen bridgehead consolidation: 220, 

223, 225, 231-32, 234 

and replacement shortages: 54 

and Rhine bridge seizure plans: 173, 211 

and Rhine crossings in the north: 295, 305, 310, 

319 

and Russian-Allied linkup: 421, 446-47, 449, 450n 

and Russian reaction to Berlin drive decision: 

341-42, 405 

and Saar-Palatinate plans and operations: 238- 

39, 249, 257-58 

and Seventh Army Rhine crossing: 284 

and 6th Army Group final objectives: 421, 437, 

440 

and surrender negotiations: 464-65, 474-75 

Eisern: 361n 

Elbe River: 319, 341-42, 379-80, 384, 386-87, 392, 

396, 400-02, 406-07, 421, 435, 444-56, 458, 460, 

477, 480-81 

Elbe River crossings: 387, 395-99, 461-63, 480 

Elbenau: 397-98 

Elsdorf: 139, 142, 156, 169 

Elsenborn: 25, 63, 65 

Elverfeldt, Generalmajor Harald Freiherr von: 191 

Emmerich: 301 

Engeman, Lt. Col. Leonard: 212, 214-15, 217, 219 

Engineer Combat Battalions 

12th: 161 
INDEX 513 

Engineer Combat Battalions-Continued 

160th: 104 

204th: 267 

276th: 230n 

301st: 114n 

303d: 81 

Engineer Combat Group, 1111th: 227 

Engineer Combat Group, 1159th: 227 

Engineer Heavy Ponton Battalion, 86th: 227 

Engineers 

bridging operations: 31, 49, 104-05, 144, 147-48, 

151-53, 155, 157, 159-62, 232-33, 246, 268, 

326-27, 358, 397, 417, 420, 462-63 

casualties in Roer crossings: 157, 161 

Remagen bridge capture and repair: 220, 227, 

229-31 

Roer River dams operations: 81 

support of Seventh Army Rhine crossings: 287 

support of Third Army Rhine crossings: 267- 

68, 270, 275-77, 280, 291, 293 

support of 21 Army Group Rhine crossing: 294- 

97, 299, 305, 309, 314, 318 

Enns River: 466 

Enz River: 112-13, 427 

Enzen: 112 

Erft River and Canal: 138-39, 142, 156-57, 169-71, 

173, 185-88, 191-95, 203 

Erfurt: 381-82 

Erkelenz: 139, 143, 162, 165-68 

Ernzen: 106 

Erpel: 227 

Erpeler Ley: 213-14, 217 

Essen: 18, 363-64, 367 

Esslingen: 429 

Ettelbruck: 49-50 

Euskirchen: 57-58, 60, 62, 67, 100, 185, 191-93, 

195, 223 

Euskirchen-Cologne highway: 194 

Fehn, Generalmajor Franz: 436 

Felber, General der Infanterie Hans: 45, 91, 93, 

107-08, 114, 186, 198-99, 204, 242, 244, 248-49, 

251, 257, 259-60, 268-69, 212, 279, 292-93 

Fern Pass: 438-39, 469-71 

Fernstein: 470 

Ferries: 144, 152, 159-61, 231, 268, 270, 289, 397-98, 

417-18. See also Boats; Rafts. 

Feuchtwangen: 425 

Fickett, Col. Edward M.: 108 

Field Artillery Battalions 

44th: 95 

118th: 309 

284th: 120 

692d: 167 

861st: 418n 

919th: 120 

Field Artillery Brigade, 32d: 185-86 

Field Artillery Brigade, 34th: 304 

Fighter Group, 48th: 348 

Fighter Group, 365th: 404 

Fighter Group, 404th: 404 

Filburn, Capt. Daniel: 181 

Finley, Maj. Gen. Thomas D.: 248, 250, 276-77. 

See also Infantry Division, 89th. 

Firestorms: 324 

Flamierge: 39 

FLASHPOINT operation: 303. See also Army, Ninth. 

Floerke, Generalleutuant Hermann: 354, 360 

Floods, tactical use of: 70, 82, 100, 143, 461 

Foertsch, General der Infanterie Hermann: 243, 

252, 256, 260-61, 286, 412, 415-16, 418, 421, 

434, 471-72, 474 

Fords: 49, 114. See also River crossings. 

Fox, Capt. William J.: 452-53 

Foy: 41 

Fraenkische Highland: 426 

Fraenkische Saale River: 418-19 

Frankfurt: 5, 20, 232, 268, 272, 279-80, 289, 292, 373 

Frankfurt-Kassel corridor: 208, 225, 266, 344, 353 

Fraternization. See Nonfraternization policy. 

Frederick, Maj. Gen. Robert T.: 253, 262, 410. See 

also Infantry Division, 45th. 

Frederick the Great: 337, 443 

“Freedom Party of Augsburg”: 436 

Freiburg: 431 

French-American command relations: 18, 262, 321- 

22, 335, 414, 427-33, 438-39, 471-74, 480 

French units: 5n, 322n, 323 

Air Corps, First: 14 

Algerian Division, 3d: 253-56, 262, 322 

Armored Division, 2d: 442 

Armored Division, 5th: 262 

Army, First: 4, 14, 20-21, 238, 240, 262, 319, 321, 

408, 421-22, 427-29, 431, 433, 438, 472-73 

casualties: 478 

Corps, II: 321 

Moroccan Division, 2d: 322 

Freudenstadt: 429 

Friesenhahn, Capt. Karl: 209, 213-14, 216-17, 227, 

230 

Frisian Islands: 465 

Fuehrerbunker (Berlin): 336, 443-44, 458-59 

Fuerth: 424 

Fuessen: 437-38 

Fulda: 375-76, 378 

Fulda Gap: 374, 407 

Fulda River: 376, 380, 389 

Funk, Sgt. Leonard A., Jr., 64, 64n 

Gaffey, Maj. Gen. Hugh J.: 41, 113, 201-02, 247, 

256, 281. See also Armored Division, 4th; 

Corps, XII. 

Gahlen: 316 

Gambling: 333 

Gambsheim: 19-20 

Gamelin, Marshal Maurice: 474 

Gammon, S. Sgt. Archer T.: 40n 

Gardiev, Lt. Col. Alexander T.: 451 
514 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Garmisch-Partenkirchen: 437, 439 

Garzweiler: 168, 172 

Gas warfare: 337 

Gatchell, Col. Wade C.: 128 

“Gateway to Berlin” bridge: 398 

Gaulle, General Charles de 

determination to cross Rhine: 262, 262n, 321 

and Eisenhower protest re de Lattre: 433 

instructions to de Lattre re Stuttgart: 432 

and President Truman: 433 

and surrender negotiations: 473 

Gavin, Maj. Gen. James M.: 32. 464. See also 

Airborne Division, 82d. 

Gay, Maj. Gen. Hobart R.: 36, 291 

Gay Creek: 112 

Geldern: 171, 177, 179 

Geldern-Wesel highway: 180-81 

Gelsenkirchen: 363 

Gemuend: 62, 65, 67, 69-71, 196 

Gemuenden: 282, 418 

Geneva Convention: 337 

Gensingen: 249-50 

Gerhardt, Maj. Gen. Charles H.: 149. See also 

Infantry Division, 29th. 

German Air Force. See Luftwaffe. 

German Army: 7-9, 385, 445. See also German units. 

German Army divisions: 6, 16-17, 85. See also 

German units. 

German Navy: 7-8, 178, 385, 443, 460, 476 

German units 

Army Groups 

B: 6, 28, 46, 50, 59, 93, 105, 107, 114, 133, 

140-42, 154, 171, 176, 186, 198, 202, 209- 

10, 269, 338-39, 345-46, 349-50, 353, 359, 

368-70, 374-75, 381, 385, 390, 407-08, 410, 

412, 460. See also Model, Generalfeldmarschall Walter. 

G: 6, 118, 133, 176, 198, 237, 241-42, 244, 

248, 256-57, 264, 272, 292, 339, 345-46, 

348, 350, 374-75, 381-82, 407-08, 410-14, 

416, 420-21, 423, 434, 442, 445, 466, 471- 

73. See also Blaskowitz, Generaloberst Johannes; Hawser, Generaloberst der Waffen-SS Paul; Schulz, General der Infanterie 

Friedrich. 

H: 6, 140, 165, 170-71, 176-78, 301-02, 314, 

338-39, 358, 385, 460. See also Blaskowitz, 

Generaloberst Johannes; Student, Generaloberst Kurt. 

Oberrhein: C7, 176, 237 

Armies 

Blumentritt: 385-86, 460 

Ersatzheer (Replacement Army) : 209 

Feldheer (Field Army) : 209 

Student: 38611 

First: 6, 198, 237-38, 241-44, 248, 252, 256, 

259-61, 264-65, 269, 286, 292-93, 339, 408, 

411-16, 418, 421, 423, 425, 434, 471 

First Parachute: 6, 170-71, 176-79, 183-84, 

German units—Continued 

Armies—Continued 

301-02, 304, 338-39, 358-59, 380-81, 385, 

459-60 

Third Panzer: 465 

Fifth Panzer: 6, 26, 28, 32-33, 48, 50-53, 59- 

60, 65, 72, 85, 93, 95, 114, 139-41, 173, 

186, 209, 339, 345, 350, 359, 370 

Sixth Panzer: 6, 26-27, 31-32, 34-35, 38, 

44-46, 51, 59, 140-41 

Seventh: 6, 26, 33, 48, 50-51, 59-60, 85-86, 

90, 93, 95, 100, 107-08, 114, 132, 141, 186, 

198, 202, 204, 237, 242-44, 248-50, 252, 

256-57, 259-60, 263, 265, 268-69, 272, 279, 

282, 285-86, 292-93, 339, 373-75, 382, 408, 

411-14, 418, 421, 423, 425, 434, 467, 472 

Ninth: 444, 459, 465 

Eleventh: 360-62, 375, 381-82, 385, 389-91, 

402-05 

Twelfth: 339, 362, 381, 390-91, 396, 399, 

401-02, 404-06, 435, 444, 459-60, 465 

Fifteenth: 6, 26, 45, 59-60, 65, 72, 140-42, 

154, 163, 165, 171, 173, 184, 186, 195, 198, 

202, 209-10, 226, 339, 345, 349-50, 353-54, 

356, 359-60, 370 

Nineteenth: 6, 237, 243, 408, 411, 415-16, 

422-23, 427-28, 430-31, 433-34, 445, 466, 

471-73 

Twenty-first: 464-65 

Twenty-fourth: 434, 472-73 

Twenty-fifth: 6, 301-02, 338, 460 

Corps 

Bayerlein: 173, 186-89, 221 

Volks Artillery: 35, 44 

I SS Panzer: 34-35, 38, 46 

II Parachute: 301, 303, 314, 317 

II SS Panzer: 27 

XII (Provisional): 268-69, 272, 292, 375 

XII SS: 141, 153, 167, 171, 173 

XIII: 45, 59, 85-86, 90, 93, 100, 107-08, 198, 

201, 243-44, 249-50, 257, 259-60, 268-69, 

285-86, 412, 415, 427 

XIII SS: 252, 261, 263, 413, 418, 420, 423, 474 

XVIII SS Panzer: 431, 433, 438 

XLVII Panzer: 35, 37-38, 50-52, 301, 314- 

15, 317, 319, 338, 357-58, 370, 375n, 385 

LIII: 49-51, 105-07, 198-99, 201-02, 204-05, 

210, 214, 222, 233, 242, 345-46, 350, 353, 

356, 359-61, 370 

LVIII Panzer: 140-42, 159, 186-87, 191-92, 

194 

LXIII: 304, 307, 315, 338, 358 

LXIV: 428-29, 433 

LXVI: 60, 85-86, 195, 198, 202-05, 221, 354, 

360, 389 

LXVZI: 45-46, 60, 65, 69, 169, 195, 198, 202- 

03, 205, 210, 212, 214, 221, 230, 345-46, 

348, 360, 389-91 

LXXIV: 60, 65, 69, 72, 193-95, 209, 233, 346- 

47, 350, 353 
INDEX 515 

German units—Continued 

Corps—Continued 

LXXX: 49-50, 100, 105, 243, 249, 257, 259- 

60, 263, 414-15, 427-29, 433 

LXXXI: 141, 153-54, 169, 173, 186, 189-90, 

370 

LXXXII: 118, 130, 133, 243-44, 247, 249, 

259-60, 374-75, 410-11, 418, 420-23, 474 

LXXXV: 244, 252, 260-61, 292-93, 373-75, 434 

LXXXVI: 304, 307, 311, 314 

LXXXIX: 242-44, 247-51, 256, 269, 274, 292, 

349-50, 373-74, 379 

XC: 244, 253, 262-63, 415 

Divisions 

Clausewitz Panzer: 400-01 

Hamburg: 304, 307 

Nibelungen: 435 

Panzer Lehr: 36, 50-51, 140-41, 171, 173, 180, 

188, 221-22, 346, 348, 353, 356, 360-61, 370 

Potsdam: 396, 403 

Scharnhorst: 396-97, 401-02 

Ulrich von Hutten: 396, 401-02 

Wesel: 303 

1st SS Panzer: 36 

2d Mountain: 132-33, 243, 415, 423, 427 

2d Parachute: 177, 304, 315-16 

2d SS Panzer: 27-28, 30-31, 50-51, 86, 92- 

96, 100, 113, 198, 200, 204, 243, 257, 259, 

269, 375 

3d Panzer Grenadier: 36, 39-40, 69, 169, 190- 

91, 232, 353, 360, 370 

3d Parachute: 45-46, 60, 193, 214, 223, 232 

5th Parachute: 36, 40, 86, 93, 198-200, 223, 

232 

6th SS Mountain: 242, 245, 247, 250, 274-75, 

292, 349, 378 

7th Parachute: 314 

8th Parachute: 173 

9th SS Panzer: 33-34, 37-38, 60, 66, 86, 142, 

154, 163, 166-69, 173, 186-87, 189-91, 221, 

292, 347, 370 

9th VG: 423 

11th Panzer: 118-21, 123-26, 130, 142, 154, 

167, 173, 186-87, 189, 195, 203, 221-22, 

226, 292, 345-46, 348-50, 374-75, 434, 467 

12th SS Panzer: 34, 37, 39-40 

12th VG: 27, 31, 33, 159, 161, 168 

15th Panzer Grenadier: 36-37, 140, 303, 314, 

317 

17th SS Panzer Grenadier: 253-54, 261, 263, 

286, 412, 414-15, 418, 423, 427 

26th VG: 5-6, 34, 232 

59th Infantry: 153-54, 189 

62d VG: 69, 194, 232 

79th VG: 100 

84th Infantry: 311, 313-14 

89th Infantry: 203 

116th Panzer: 140-41, 180, 314-17, 319, 357, 

364, 370 

159th Infantry: 242, 247-49, 269, 272-73, 292 

German units-Continued 

Divisions-Continued 

166th Infantry: 355, 360, 376 

167th VG: 109 

176th Infantry: 353, 356, 360 

180th Infantry: 304, 307-08, 315, 370 

183d Infantry: 153, 370 

190th Infantry: 317, 370 

212th VG: 100, 105, 133 

246th VG: 114, 198, 204, 286-87 

256th VG: 126, 130 

272d VG: 72, 79, 193-95, 203, 232 

276th VG: 89, 93, 109, 242, 250, 275-76, 349 

277th VG: 69, 203, 232 

326th VG: 87, 89-90, 204, 232 

338th Infantry: 166-67, 370 

340th VG: 34-35, 37, 40, 93, 109, 201, 204, 226 

352d VG: 93-94, 100, 286 

353d Infantry: 161, 192-94 

363d VG: 154-55, 190 

416th Infantry: 118, 121, 127, 130, 132 

559th VG: 243-44, 248, 252, 269, 285-88 

560th VG: 27-28, 31, 105 

Brigades 

Fuehrer Begleit: 39, 51 

Fuehrer Grenadier: 34-35, 40, 51 

Thueringen Panzer: 374-75 

Westfalen SS Ersatzbrigade: 352, 355, 360, 389 

106th Panzer: 221 

Gruppen and Kampfgruppen 

Grafenwoehr: 423-24 

Koblenz: 242, 251 

Luettwitz: 358-59 

Regiments 

Alpine: 416-17 

10th Panzer Grenadier: 168 

27th VG: 159 

60th Panzer Grenadier: 315-16 

130th Infantry: 226 

1053d Infantry: 313 

Miscellaneous 

Assault Gun Training School Burg: 397 

Hilfswillige troops: 9 

Hitler Youth troops: 394, 410, 415, 417 

Landesschuetzen replacement battalion: 272 

Luftwaffe units: 209, 353, 423, 443 

Training school divisions: 398, 416 

Volksdeutsche troops: 9 

Volkssturm: 190, 209, 214, 216, 272, 275, 301, 

315, 353, 360, 375-76, 386, 394-95, 415, 

423, 434 

Wafien-SS: 7, 209, 272, 350, 352, 359, 364, 

413, 416, 436-37, 474, 478n 

Wehrkreis VI: 209, 385-86 

Wehrkreis VII: 436-37 

Wehrkreis XI: 386 

Wehrkreis XII: 209, 268, 375. See also Corps, 

XII (Provisional). 

Wehrkreis XIII: 413, 423 

Wehrkreis troops: 209, 232, 282, 360, 416 
516 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Germersheim: 264, 322 

Gerolstein: 199-201, 205 

Gerow, Maj. Gen. Leonard T.: 25-26, 46, 323. See 

also Army, Fifteenth; Corps, V. 

Gersdorff, General von: 108, 249 

Gevenich: 154-55 

“GI Diners”: 326 

Giessen: 289, 351, 354, 373 

Gillem, Maj. Gen. Alvan C.: 135, 143, 162, 167, 172, 

175-76, 357. See also Airborne Division, 17th; 

Corps, XIII. 

Glider Infantry Regiment, 194th: 38n, 313, 319n, 

366, 370 

Gliders: 309, 313-14 

Goebbels, Josef: 337, 340, 443-44, 459-60 

Goering, Reichsmarschall Hermann: 444-45, 459 

Goettingen: 389, 391 

Gondenbrett: 93, 95 

Gotha: 376-77, 380 

Greene, Maj. Joseph M. L.: 43 

GRENADE operation: 178-79, 185. See also Roer 

River crossings. 

build-up and support for: 137, 145 

German strength opposing: 139-42, 153, 209 

importance of: 162, 170-71, 184 

planning: 135-38, 142-45, 163, 169 

postponed by Roer floods: 143, 184, 239n 

Grimmeiss, General der Artillerie Max: 428-29 

Grolman, Generalmajor der Polizei Wilhelm von: 

394-95 

Grossgerau: 270-72 

Grosskampenberg: 66 

Grow, Maj. Gen. Robert W.: 36, 112, 376, 382. 

See also Armored Division, 6th. 

Growdon, Lt. Col. John S.: 196, 212 

Gruenewalde: 397-98 

Guderian, Generaloherst Heinz: 336 

Gueux: 15 

Guns. See also Weapons. 

8-inch: 400 

57-mm. (towed), antitank: 10, 120, 148, 159, 479 

155-mm.: 400 

Guns, German. See also Antiaircraft; Weapons. 

20-mm. flakwagons: 254, 275-76, 279, 287, 365 

88-mm.: 13, 133-34, 191, 377 

128-mm. antiaircraft: 287, 316 

150-mm. railway: 280 

Machine gun M1942: 10 

Self-propelled (assault) : 7, 9-10, 119, 254, 280, 

287 

Gusen: 467 

Haar: 472 

Haardt Mountains: 20, 237, 260 

Habscheid: 84, 88-90, 108-09 

Hahscheid-Pronsfeld road: 91, 109 

Hachenburg: 348 

Hagen: 366 

Hagenau: 238, 253-54 

Hagerty, Col. Roy N.: 121-23, 126 

Hahm, General der Infanterie Walther: 118, 130, 

243, 247, 249, 259-60, 374-75, 410-11, 418, 

420-22 

Haislip, Maj. Gen. Wade H.: 252, 472. See also 

Corps, XV. 

Halle: 381, 391-92, 395, 401-02, 405 

Hallenherg: 356, 360 

Hallenberg-Medebach highway: 356 

Halsey, Brig. Gen. Milton B.: 367-68. See also 

Infantry Division, 97th. 

Haltern: 357-58 

Harnbach: 156, 162 

Hamhach Forest: 138, 142, 156-57, 163, 165-66, 

168-69 

Hamburg: 324, 379, 400, 460-61, 464 

Hameln: 380, 385, 385n 

Hamm: 357-59, 362, 364 

Hammelburg prison camp: 281-84, 373, 419, 480 

Hamminkeln: 311-13 

Hanau: 268, 279-80, 292, 347, 373-74 

Hanf Creek: 233 

Hann-Muenden: 389 

Hannover: 340, 380-81, 386-87 

Harbor craft company: 295 

Hardin, Lt. Col. Donald C.: 122 

Harmon, Maj. Gen. Ernest N.: 29. See also Armored Division, 2d. 

Harpe, Generaloherst Josef: 339, 359, 370 

Harrison, Brig. Gen. Eugene L.: 407-08 

Hart, Brig. Gen. Charles E.: 80 

Hartment, 2d Lt. John H.: 181 

Harz Mountains: 339, 380-81, 386, 390-91, 395-96, 

399-400, 402-05 

Hasbrouck, Maj. Gen. Robert W.: 48, 51. See also 

Armored Division, 7th. 

Hasenfeld: 70, 80-81 

Hastings, Pfc. Joe R.: 367n 

Hattingen: 367 

Hausser, Generaloherst der Waffen-SS Paul: 176, 

237, 241-44, 248, 256-57, 272, 339, 407, 411, 413 

Hautes Fanges: 23 

Hawkins, 1st Lt. Richard: 147 

Hayes, Col. Thomas H.: 79 

Hechingen: 427, 429-30 

Hechler, Ken: 209n 

Heckhuscheid: 66, 66n, 90 

Hedrick, T. Sgt. Clinton M.: 319n 

Heidelberg: 414 

Heilbronn: 413-15, 417-18, 421, 427, 429 

Heiligenstadt: 391 

Heilmann, Generalmajor Ludwig: 223 

Heinsberg: 18, 138-39, 142-43 

Heinsberg pocket: 21, 136 

Helgoland: 465 

Hemer: 366 

Henschel tank works (Kassel) : 378 

Hermann Goering Steel Works: 386 

Hermeskeil: 24546 
INDEX 517 

Herrera, Pfc. Silvestre S.: 255, 255n 

Hessdorf: 283 

Hibbs, Maj. Gen. Louis E.: 253. See also Infantry 

Division, 63d. 

Hickey, Brig. Gen. Doyle: 188, 191, 401 

Hilfarth: 166-67, 172 

Hills 

408: 112-13 

493: 73, 79-80 

510: 91 

511: 91, 94, 96 

519: 92, 94, 96 

521: 91-92, 94 

554 (Am Kopf): 92-93 

568 (Losenseifen): 90-91, 96, 109 

Himmler, Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich: 6-7, 176, 

377, 444, 459, 474 

Hinds, Brig. Gen. Sidney R.: 386, 398 

Hirschberg: 370 

Hitler, Adolf: 142, 174, 329, 338, 409, 425, 435, 466 

and Allied Ruhr drive: 140, 355, 360, 376 

appoints Doenitz as head of German state: 444- 

45, 459 

appoints Kesselring to southern command: 444- 

45, 471 

and Ardennes operations: 34-35, 39, 44, 46 

and Ardennes withdrawal: 31, 39, 41-42. 44, 51,59 

and capture of Bastogne: 28, 34 

decision to stay in Berlin: 443-44, 458 

delusions in his last days: 336-39, 443 

and destruction of Roer River dams: 82n 

and Eva Braun: 444, 458-59 

and failure of Ardennes offensive: 1, 28, 32, 34, 

42, 54 

and formation of Twelfth Army: 339, 362, 381, 

390, 396, 405, 444, 459 

and the German general staff: 

44, 171, 177, 198, 203, 222, 244, 256, 294, 336- 

39, 353, 358, 368, 385, 443-45, 458-59, 471, 

480-81 

and Goering and Himmler peace negotiations: 

444, 459 

and jet aircraft development: 9, 412, 423 

and military manpower: 8 

mood in January 1945: 8 

and the National Redoubt: 407, 443, 445 

and “no withdrawal” policy: 9, 28, 107, 171, 177- 

79, 189, 195, 198, 203, 243-44, 256, 294, 353, 

358, 368, 478, 480 

Ohrdruf communications center as possible retreat: 377 

reaction to death of Roosevelt: 443 

and relief of German commanders: 176-77, 222, 

385, 411-12, 444, 459 

replaces Rundstedt with Kesselring at OB WEST: 

222 

and reprisals for Rhine crossings: 230, 293 

and Russian front “victory”: 339 

and secret weapons: 7, 332, 480 

Hilter, Adolf—Continued 

shifts troops to Russian front: 44, 51, 59, 140 

suicide, and German reaction to his death: 458- 

59, 459n, 463 

as supreme commander: 7 

and Volkssturm troops: 190 

and Wehrmacht organization changes: 385, 445 

“werewolves” proclamation: 330-31 

Hitler bridge (Krefeld-Uerdingen): 174-78 

Hitler Youth troops. See German units. 

Hitzfeld, General der Infanterie Otto: 45-46, 65, 

69, 203-04, 210, 212, 214, 230, 233, 345-46, 

348, 360-62, 381, 385, 389-91 

Hobbs, Maj. Gen. Leland S.: 33, 46, 151, 156, 167- 

68, 308-09, 315-17. See also Infantry Division, 

30th. 

Hochheim: 291, 293 

Hodges, Lt. Gen. Courtney H.: 234, 258. See also 

Army, First. 

and Ahr River linkup with Third Army: 196 

and Ardennes offensive operations: 24, 45 

and capture of Remagen bridge: 211, 219, 224 

command relationships: 17, 26, 232 

and linkup with Russian troops: 447-48, 452, 456 

and relief of subordinate commanders: 45-46, 229 

and Remagen bridgehead operations and breakout: 223-26, 229, 231-35, 266, 344-45, 347-48 

and Roer River crossings: 192 

and Roer River dams attack: 57, 78, 80-81, 83 

Hoecker Hill: 129-30 

Hoefen (south of Fuessen): 438-39 

Hoefen (northwest of Fuessen) : 439 

Hoehne, General der Infanterie Gustav: 242, 244, 

247-49, 251, 274-75, 349, 373, 379 

Hofgeismar: 389 

Hoge, Brig. Gen. William M.: 215, 217-19, 281, 

384. See also Armored Division, 4th. 

Hohe Busch: 180-82 

Hohe Eifel: 58, 196 

Hohe Rhoen: 374, 407, 409, 418, 420 

Hohe Venn: 23, 25, 58, 63, 71 

Hohenzollern bridge (Cologne): 191 

Hollingsworth, Maj. James F.: 387 

Holzheim: 64 

Homberg: 178 

Homburg: 236, 262 

Hompesch: 154 

Honnef: 225-26, 232 

Horrocks, Lt. Gen. Brian G.: 303 

Hotton: 25, 27 

Hottorf: 164 

Houffalize: 24-25, 27-29, 31, 33-34, 37, 40-44 

House-to-house fighting: 47, 120, 123, 401-02, 410, 

425, 437 

Howitzers 

75-mm. pack: 311 

105-mm.: 12, 17 

155-mm.: 12, 17 

German: 12, 228 

7, 28, 34, 41-42, 
518 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Howze, Col. Robert L., Jr.: 188 

Huebingen: 422 

Huebner, Maj. Gen. C. Ralph: 46, 71, 73, 77-78, 

81, 83, 204, 391, 452, 455-56. See also Corps, V. 

Huenxe: 316 

Huertgen Forest: 58, 70 

Hungarian troops: 442 

Hunsrueck Mountains: 237, 245, 274 

I. G. Farben plant (Mannheim): 237 

Idstein: 349 

IJsselmeer: 379, 460 

Iller River: 431, 435 

Immenstadt: 438-39 

Imst: 470-71 

Infantry division, table of organization: 6, 16-17, 

137, 355, 478 

Infantry Division, 1st 

Ardennes offensive operations: 46 

command and organization: 46 

drive into Czechoslovakia: 467 

drive to the Mulde: 380, 389 

Eifel attack: 63, 65, 68 

Harz Mountains operations: 391, 402, 404 

prisoners captured: 404-05 

Remagen bridgehead operations: 231, 233, 346 

Roer River operations and Rhine advance: 192- 

96, 211-12, 223 

Ruhr Pocket operations: 361, 361n 

Infantry Division, 2d 

Ardennes offensive operations: 26, 29, 46 

attack toward Pilsen: 467 

capture of Gemuend: 195-96 

capture of Leipzig: 395 

command and organization: 65, 81 

drive to the Mulde: 380, 389, 391, 393, 447-48 

Remagen bridgehead breakout: 345, 347 

Rhine River advance: 203-04, 223 

West Wall operations: 65-66, 69, 71 

Infantry Division, 3d 

Ardennes offensive operations: 26 

capture of Berchtesgaden: 442 

casualties: 289n 

command and organization: 254, 436, 472 

drive to Augsburg and Munich: 435-37 

drive to Nuremberg: 409-10, 419, 422-25 

Italian campaign: 252 

Rhine River crossing: 285-89, 289n 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 254, 256, 261 

and surrender of Army Group G: 471-72 

Infantry Division, 4th 

advance across Bavaria: 425 

Ardennes offensive operations: 48-50 

capture of Pruem and Rhine advance: 97, 186, 

197, 199, 221 

casualties: 66, 87-89, 92, 94-95 

command and organization: 48, 240 

Kyll River crossing: 199-200 

Infantry Division, 4th—Continued 

Main River crossing and bridgehead operations: 

413, 420 

West Wall attack: 62-63, 66, 84, 86, 88-92, 94, 

96-97 

Infantry Division, 5th 

capture of Frankfurt: 280, 373 

command and organization: 48, 101, 425 

Kyll River crossing and Rhine advance: 197, 

200-02, 204 

Moselle River crossing: 246-48, 250, 265 

Pruem River crossing and capture of Bitburg: 

113-15 

Rhine River crossing: 267-68, 272, 285 

Ruhr Pocket operations: 366 

Sauer River crossing: 101-04, 106 

Skyline Drive advance: 49-50 

Infantry Division, 8th 

advance to Rhine River: 187-88, 190-92, 196 

casualties: 372n 

command and organization: 136, 157, 169 

Elbe River crossing: 461-65 

Roer River crossing: 157, 159-62, 164-65, 168-69 

Ruhr Pocket clearing: 365, 367 

Infantry Division, 9th 

command and organization: 65, 81 

Harz Mountains operations: 391, 404 

prisoners captured: 404-05 

Remagen bridgehead operations: 224-26, 233, 

347-48, 350 

Rhine River crossing: 220 

Roer River crossing and Rhine advance: 193- 

96, 212 

Roer River dams operations: 77, 81 

Ruhr Pocket operations: 360-61, 366 

West Wall operations: 65-66, 69, 71 

Infantry Division, 26th 

advance into Austria: 426 

Ardennes offensive operations: 35, 40, 53 

command and organization: 40 

drive through Fulda: 374, 378, 380 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 117, 245-46, 258, 265 

Infantry Division, 28th 

Ardennes offensive operations: 33 

attack toward Ahr River: 204 

command and organization: 6, 36n, 204 

Infantry Division, 29th 

advance to the Elbe: 400 

capture of Muenchen-Gladbach: 172 

command and organization: 136, 149 

Roer River crossing: 149, 151, 153, 155, 163-64, 

168 

Infantry Division, 30th 

Ardennes offensive operations: 44-48 

casualties: 156, 306, 313n 

command and organization: 33, 136, 357 

drive to the Elbe: 380, 384-85, 385n, 386-87, 397 

prisoners captured: 309 

Rhine River crossing: 304-09, 314-19, 357 
INDEX 519 

Infantry Division, 30th—Continued 

Roer River crossing: 149, 151, 153, 155-56, 162- 

65, 167-68, 172 

Infantry Division, 35th 

Ardennes offensive operations: 35, 38, 40 

casualties: 167 

command and organization: 38, 136, 399 

Rhine River crossing: 304, 316 

Roer River crossing: 167, 172 

Wesel pocket operations: 179-81 

Infantry Division, 36th: 240–41n, 252, 255, 474 

Infantry Division, 42d 

capture of Munich: 436-37 

Dachau prison liberation: 436 

Danube advance and crossing: 424, 434 

Main River advance and crossing: 413-14, 420 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 254, 263 

Infantry Division, 44th 

advance into Austria: 438-39, 469-71 

capture of Mannheim: 409-10 

Danube River advance and crossing: 429-31, 434 

Neckar River operations: 417 

Infantry Division, 45th 

capture of Munich: 436-37 

Dachau prison liberation: 436 

Danube crossing: 425, 434 

drive to Nuremberg: 409-10, 419, 422, 424 

Italian campaign, 252 

Rhine crossing: 285-89 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 253-54, 256, 261 

Infantry Division, 63d 

advance to the Danube: 425, 429 

Jagst-Neckar operations: 414, 416-18 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 253, 260-61 

Infantry Division, 65th: 245, 258, 380, 426, 435 

Infantry Division, 66th: 323, 477, 477n 

Infantry Division, 69th 

capture of Leipzig: 395 

command and organization: 204 

drive to the Mulde: 380, 389, 391, 393, 395, 

447-49 

first to link up with Russians: 450-56 

Rhine River drive: 204 

Infantry Division, 70th: 380 

Infantry Division, 71st: 380, 426, 435 

Infantry Division, 75th: 

Ardennes offensive operations: 27, 45 

clears approaches to Dortmund: 364 

command and organization: 45-46, 137n, 173 

Rhine River crossing: 304 

Infantry Division, 76th 

command and organization: 101, 106, 241 

drive to the Mulde: 380-81, 447 

Eifel operations: 197 

envelopment of Trier: 115, 133-34, 199 

Kyll River crossing: 204 

Moselle River crossing: 241, 257n 

Sauer River and Pruem River crossings: 101, 

106, 114 

Infantry Division, 78th 

casualties: 73 

command and organization: 71-74, 81, 231, 233 

prisoners captured: 370 

Remagen bridgehead operations: 221-22, 225- 

26, 231-33, 346 

Rhine River crossing, 220 

Roer River crossing and Rhine advance: 193-96 

Roer River dams offensive: 71-83 

Ruhr Pocket reduction: 365-67, 370 

Infantry Division, 79th 

casualties: 308, 308n, 313n 

command and organization: 136, 166-67, 173 

prisoners captured: 309 

Rhine River crossing: 304, 306-09, 315-16 

Roer River crossing: 166-67 

Ruhr Pocket operations: 364, 367 

Infantry Division, 80th 

capture of Kassel and southern drive: 378, 380-82 

command and organization: 50, 101, 112-13 

Rhine River crossing: 197, 289, 291, 293 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 245-46, 249 

Sauer River operations: 50, 101, 103-06 

Vianden bulge operations: 106-08, 112-13 

Infantry Division, 83d 

Ardennes offensive operations: 27, 31-33 

casualties: 387 

command and organization: 32, 136, 164 

Elbe drive and crossing: 380, 386-87, 397-99, 

402-05, 447-48, 480 

Rhine River drive and crossing: 172, 174, 358 

Roer River crossing: 164, 168 

Infantry Division, 84th 

advance to Elbe River: 387, 400 

Ardennes offensive operations: 27, 30-31 

capture of Hannover: 386-87 

casualties: 173 

command and organization: 136, 145 

linkup with Russian forces: 448 

Rhine River drive and crossing: 175-76, 178 

Roer River crossing: 144-47, 153, 162, 164-67, 

172, 174 

Weser River crossing: 380, 385-86 

Infantry Division, 86th: 367, 426, 435 

Infantry Division, 87th 

advance to the Mulde: 380, 447 

Ardennes offensive operations: 35-36, 39-41 

casualties: 35, 89, 275-76 

clears Koblenz: 250 

command and organization: 36, 84 

Eifel attack: 62-63, 65, 84, 88, 90-91, 199 

Kyll River crossing: 200 

Moselle River crossing: 250 

Rhine River advance and crossing: 197, 273-76, 

279 

Infantry Division, 88th: 469 

Infantry Division, 89th 

advance to the Mulde: 380, 447 

casualties: 276 
520 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Infantry Division, 89th—Continued 

command and organization: 248 

Moselle River crossing: 248, 250, 257-58 

Rhine River crossing: 268, 274, 276-77 

Infantry Division, 90th 

advance into Czechoslovakia: 379-80, 467 

Ardennes offensive operations: 40, 52-53 

command and organization: 40, 200, 229 

Main River crossing: 373 

Moselle River crossing and advance: 246-49, 259 

Rhine River crossing operations: 267-68, 270, 

273 

Vianden bulge operations: 107-11, 113 

West Wall operations: 62-63, 66, 84, 88, 90-91, 

93, 96, 197 

Infantry Division, 94th 

Brittany operations: 477 

casualties: 122-23, 129 

command and organization: 117, 120, 123 

Saar-Moselle triangle operations: 117-33, 242, 

245-46 

Infantry Division, 95th 

command and organization: 173, 366 

Ruhr Pocket operations: 364, 366 

Saar River operations: 117 

Uerdingen pocket operations: 176, 178 

Infantry Division, 97th: 366, 367n, 426, 467 

Infantry Division, 99th 

command and organization: 136, 187, 189 

Danube advance: 426 

Erft Canal crossing and Rhine drive: 187-89 

Monschau Forest operations: 65 

Remagen bridgehead operations: 226, 233-34, 

347-48 

Ruhr Packet operations: 365, 370 

Infantry Division, 100th 

advance to Stuttgart: 429, 432 

casualties: 418 

Neckar River operations: 414-15, 417 

prisoners captured: 418 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 254, 256 

Infantry Division, 102d 

advance to the Elbe: 387, 400 

casualties: 155 

command and organization: 136, 147 

Rhine drive and crossing: 175, 380 

Roer River crossing: 147-48, 153-55, 164, 167, 

172 

Infantry Division, 103d: 254, 434-35, 439, 468-69 

Infantry Division, 104th 

capture of Cologne: 187-88, 190-91 

command and organization: 136, 157, 169 

drive to the Mulde: 380, 389, 391-92, 402 

linkup with Russians: 448, 456 

Remagen bridgehead breakout: 346, 348, 354- 

55, 360-61 

Roer River crossing: 157, 161, 165, 169 

Infantry Division, 106th: 6, 45, 204 

Infantry Regiments 

2d: 49, 106, 114, 247, 270 

7th: 254 

8th: 86-95, 413 

10th: 49, 104, 114, 270-73 

11th: 104, 106, 115, 267-71, 280 

12th: 50, 94, 96 

13th: 159-61, 164-65, 168-69, 365, 367 

15th: 287, 425n 

18th: 361n 

22d: 86-97, 413 

23d: 46-48, 347, 389 

26th: 194, 404 

28th: 159-61, 165, 187, 191 

30th: 425 

38th: 345 

39th: 66, 193, 360-61 

47th: 220 

60th: 81, 225, 361 

71st: 469-70 

112th: 33 

115th: 149, 151, 155 

117th: 167, 305-06, 308, 315-16 

119th: 151, 153, 156, 167, 305, 308, 316, 384, 

385n, 397 

120th: 151-53, 156, 305, 308-09, 315-17 

121st: 165, 168, 187 

134th: 167, 179, 183 

137th: 167, 180-81, 183 

141st: 240n-241n 

142d: 255, 474 

157th: 261n, 410 

175th: 149, 151, 155, 163 

180th: 261n, 285, 287 

253d: 418n 

259th: 258n 

271st: 393, 448 

273d: 449-55 

301st: 121-23, 125-27, 129-30, 132 

302d: 123n, 124-27, 129-30, 246 

304th: 257n 

309th: 74-81, 193 

310th: 72, 75-80, 193, 220, 370 

311th: 72-73, 77-81, 193, 225 

313th: 307, 367 

314th: 308 

315th: 307, 307n 

317th: 112, 293 

318th: 112, 245n, 246, 382 

319th: 50n, 112-13, 293 

320th: 179-81, 399 

324th: 431 

329th: 387, 397 

330th: 168, 174, 402, 404 

334th: 147, 153, 173, 175-76 

335th: 153, 164 

345th: 93, 275-76, 279 

346th: 39n 

347th: 250, 275-76 
INDEX 521 

Infantry Regiments-Continued 

353d: 276 

354th: 276-77 

357th: 88, 91, 94, 96, 109-11, 247-48 

358th: 66n, 88-89, 91-92, 94, 96, 109-11, 248, 379 

359th: 88-89, 93, 96, 109-11, 200, 248 

376th: 117-18, 120, 123-31 

379th: 176-77 

386th: 367n 

395th: 187, 189 

397th: 417 

398th: 415, 418n 

405th: 147, 154-55, 164 

406th: 155 

407th: 147-48, 154-55 

411th: 468-69 

413th: 157, 159, 165, 168 

414th: 188n, 354, 356, 359, 361, 402 

415th: 157, 159, 165, 168, 356, 360-61 

417th: 101-04, 106 

Ingolstadt: 426, 435 

Inn River: 437, 439, 466 

Inn River valley: 437, 439 

Innsbruck: 437, 439, 466-68, 471, 474 

Intelligence. See also ALSOS mission. 

failure in Ardennes counteroffensive: 41 

German: 92-93, 202, 301-02 

sources of: 215, 315, 355, 376, 386 

Intelligence estimates 

of German defenses of the Roer: 138-41 

of German strength in the Ardennes: 27-28 

of German strength in Ruhr encirclement: 359 

of German strength in Seventh Army Rhine 

crossings: 285 

of German strength in the West Wall: 60, 85 

of German strength opposing LUMBERJACK operation: 186 

of German strength opposing 21 Army Group: 

301 

of National Redoubt plan: 340, 407, 409 

Irrhausen: 108, 111 

Irsch: 132 

Irwin, Maj. Gen. S. LeRoy: 48, 50, 100, 103, 

246-47, 267-68, 425. See also Corps, XII; Infantry Division, 5th. 

Isaacman, T. Sgt. Nathaniel: 123 

Isar River: 437, 439 

Issel Canal: 313 

Issel River: 312-13 

Italian frontier: 438-39, 469 

Jabo: 44 

Jachman, S. Sgt. Isadore S.: 38n 

Jacobs, 1st Lt. Irven: 270 

Jagst River: 413, 416-18, 421 

Jagst-Neckar crescent: 414-15, 418, 427 

Jagst-Tauber land bridge: 41 8 

Jena: 381-82 

Jenkins, Brig. Gen. Reuben E.: 408 

Jodl, Generaloberst Alfred: 337, 444-45, 458-59, 

475 

Johnson, Col. Earle A.: 124, 126 

Jucken: 113 

Juelich: 70, 136-37, 139, 142, 149, 151, 155, 183 

Juelich-Cologne highway: 163, 187 

Jutland peninsula: 342, 446, 464 

Kaiserbruecke (Trier) : 134 

Kaisersesch: 205 

Kaiserslautern: 237, 253, 258-61, 263 

Kaiserslautern Gap: 20, 237-38, 253-54, 260-61 

Kall River: 73-74, 80 

Kampholz Woods: 125-27 

Kane, Lt. Col. Matthew W.: 359 

Kanzem: 128-29 

KAPUT operation: 399 

Karlsbad. 458, 466-67, 477 

Karlsruhe: 321-22, 325, 427 

Kassel: 5, 20, 335, 344, 351, 353, 355-56, 360-61, 

373-74, 376, 378, 380, 389, 407, 410, 420 

Kean, Maj. Gen. William G.: 26 

Keating, Maj. Gen. Frank A.: 147-48, 154-55. See 

also Infantry Division, 102d. 

Kehrig: 205 

Keitel, Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm: 423, 444- 

45, 458-59, 475 

Kelberg: 205 

Kelley, S. Sgt. Jonah E.: 73, 73n 

Kelly, Capt. David B.: 182 

Kelly, Cpl. Thomas J.: 365n 

Kempten: 438 

Kesfeld: 109 

Kesselring, Generalfeldmarschall Albert. See also 

OB WEST. 

command of Italy-Balkans-Austria forces: 444- 

45, 471-72 

and Danube defenses: 434 

and Harz Mountain operations: 402n 

and “no-withdrawal” policy: 244, 256-57, 292, 

338, 349, 353, 358, 389 

and relationship with Hitler: 337-38 

and Remagen bridgehead operations: 226, 228 

and Rhine-Ruhr defense: 302, 337, 339, 345, 

358-62, 381, 404, 408, 411, 423 

and Saar-Palatinate withdrawal: 244, 257, 260, 

264, 268 

succeeds Rundstedt at OB WEST: 222 

and surrender negotiations: 466, 471 

and Third Army Rhine crossing: 272, 274 

Kesternich: 72-73 

Kilburn, Brig. Gen. Charles S.: 41, 84, 199-200. 

See also Armored Division, 11th. 

Kimball, Col. Edward A.: 181-82 

Kirchhain: 355n 

Kirchheim: 429, 431 

Kirchhellen: 315-16 

Kirn: 257, 259 

Kitzbuehel: 438 
522 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Kitzingen: 420 

Klatovy: 466 

Kloetze: 400 

Kniess, General der Infanterie Baptist: 244, 252, 

260, 292-93, 373, 375 

Koblenz: 99, 134, 206, 208-09, 214, 239, 241-42, 

250-52, 269, 273-74, 325, 335, 347 

Koch, Ilse: 384 

Koch, Col. Oscar W.: 100 

Koechling, General der Infanterie Friedrich, 141, 

153-54, 186, 189-90, 370 

Koenigshofen: 413 

Koerrenzig: 153 

Koethen: 401 

Kommerscheidt: 79-80 

Konzen: 72 

Kotzebue, 1st Lt. Albert L.: 450-53, 456 

Kowalski, Tech. 5 Stephen A.: 451 

Kraft, August: 230 

Kraichgau Gate plateau: 409, 414 

Kramer, Maj. Gen. Herman F.: 477 

Krauthausen: 156 

Krefeld: 139, 174-77 

Krefeld-Uerdingen bridge (Hitler bridge) : 174-78 

Kreinitz: 451, 456 

Kreuzau: 192 

Krinkelt: 65-66, 69 

Kruger, General der Panzertruppen Walter: 140, 

142, 159, 186, 192 

Krupp steel works: 364 

Kuehren: 450-51, 453 

Kufstein: 437 

Kyll River: 113, 115, 186, 196-99 

Kyll River crossings: 199-205 

La Roche: 32 

La Roche-Salmchâteau highway: 29, 31-32 

Lahn River and valley: 208, 225, 234, 266, 268, 

274, 290, 344-51, 354 

Lake Constance (Bodensee) : 422, 430-31, 433-34, 

431 

Landau: 263, 437 

Landeck: 437-39, 366-67, 471 

Landsberg: 435 

Landshut: 437 

Lange, Generalleutnant Wolfgang: 370 

Lanham, Col. Charles T.: 92 

Lanzerac, General Charles Louis Marie: 22 

Lattre de Tassigny, General Jean de: 18, 20. See 

also French units. 

denied linkup with Allied troops in Italy: 438- 

39, 471 

and Devers operations orders: 427-33, 438-39, 

473, 480 

and drive on Ulm: 430-32, 439, 480 

and Rhine crossing: 262, 262n, 321-22, 414, 427 

and surrender negotiations: 472-73 

Lauenburg: 460, 462 

Lauer, Maj. Gen. Walter E.: 187. See also Infantry 

Division, 99th. 

Lauter River: 237-38, 262, 321 

Lauterbourg: 238 

Laval, Pierre: 430-31 

LCM’s: 295, 295n, 308 

LCVP’s: 227, 227n, 268, 270, 295 

Leaflets: 402 

Lech River: 435, 470 

Leckwitz: 451, 453 

Lee, Lt. Gen. John C. H.: 15 

Legitimate booty. See Booty. 

Leidenborn: 109 

Leimersheim: 322n 

Leine River: 386, 389-91 

Leipzig: 379-82, 392-95, 401-02, 408, 447-48 

Leipzig-Dresden industrial complex: 340, 342, 405 

Lembeck: 319n 

Lentz, Brig. Gen. John M.: 36. See also Infantry 

Division, 87th. 

Leonard, Maj. Gen. John W.: 193, 212, 219, 223, 

348. See also Armored Division, 9th. 

Léopoldville (troopship) : 477n 

Liège: 325 

Liège-Houffalize-Bastogne highway: 29 

Lienne River: 25, 27, 32 

Liese, 1st Lt. Joe: 202 

Limburg: 234, 279, 290, 345, 347-50, 373 

Linnich: 135-38, 142-43, 145, 147, 153 

Lintfort: 182 

Linz: 225, 227, 409, 458, 466 

Linz-Ceské Budejovice highway: 467 

Lippe River: 18, 297-98, 304-05, 308, 315, 317-19, 

357-59 

Lippe-Seiten Canal: 297, 308, 315-17 

Lippstadt: 359, 362 

“Little Maginot Line”: 467 

Little Switzerland: 23, 48 

Loewenstein Hills: 421, 429 

Logistics: 4, 14, 186, 324-28, 406, 476, 478, 480. 

See also Motor transport; Shortages; Supply; 

Transportation; War production. 

Lohr: 281-82, 410 

Longchamps: 36-37, 39 

Longvilly: 36 

Loot, definition of: 329, 331-32 

Looting: 262, 331-32, 366, 432 

Lorelei: 274, 277 

Lorient: 117, 477 

Lorraine: 4, 36, 478 

Losenseifen Hill (Hill 568): 90-91, 96, 109 

Losheim: 62-63, 69, 245 

Losheim Gap: 60, 63, 67-68, 84, 99 

Losses, summary of. See also Casualties; Prisoners. 

Allied and German D-day to V–E Day: 478, 478n 

Ardennes operations: 53 

as of 3 January 1945: 5n 

clearing the Saar-Moselle triangle: 128-29 

German, February-March 1945: 338 
INDEX 523 

Losses, summary of—Continued 

Ninth Army Roer to Rhine drive: 183 

Operation VERITABLE: 184 

Remagen bridgehead fighting: 234-35 

Roer River crossings: 162 

Ruhr encirclement: 359, 372, 372n 

Saar-Palatinate fighting: 264 

VARSITY operation: 313-14, 314n 

Lower Vosges Mountains: 237, 252, 254 

Lucht, General der Artillerie Walter: 60, 89, 91, 

203-04, 389-91, 402, 404-05 

Luckner, Felix, Count von: 402 

Ludendorff bridge. See Remagen bridge. 

Ludwigshafen: 236, 263 

Ludwigslust: 463-64 

Luebeck: 342, 421, 460, 464, 477 

Luettwitz, General der Panzertruppen Heinrich 

Freiherr von: 35, 315, 319, 338, 357-58, 370, 

375n 

Luettwitz, General der Panzertruppen Smilo Freiherr von: 375 

Luetzkampen: 60, 84, 99 

Luftwaffe: 7-8, 38, 324, 385, 444, 476, 47th. See 

also Air support, German; German units. 

LUMBERJACK operation: 185-86, 192, 194 

Lunéville: 257-58 

Luxembourg: 19, 22-23, 116 

Luxembourg City: 24, 41, 234, 266 

LVT’S: 144-45, 147, 149, 151, 153 

Maas River: 4, 18, 20-21, 135-36, 140, 172, 295 

MacArthur, General Douglas: 281 

McAuliffe, Maj. Gen. Anthony C.: 254, 468-69. See 

also Infantry Division, 103d. 

McBride, Maj. Gen. Horace L.: 50, 101, 112, 291. 

See also Infantry Division, 80th. 

McClune, Col. Harold H.: 124, 126, 131 

McCullough, Maj. Chris: 308-09 

McGee, Pvt. William D.: 257n 

Machine gun, .30-cal. Browning: 10 

McKee, Brig. Gen. John L.: 275-76 

McLain, Maj. Gen. Raymond S.: 135, 164, 167-68, 

172, 114-15, 178, 398. See also Corps, XIX. 

Macon, Maj. Gen. Robert C.: 32, 164, 387. See also 

Infantry Division, 83d. 

Maeseyck: 18 

Magdeburg: 380-81, 387, 396-97, 399, 405 

Mageret: 36-37 

Maginot Line: 20, 252 

Main River: 344, 373, 409, 411-13, 418, 422 

Main River crossings: 266, 266n, 268, 273-74, 279- 

80, 289, 291-93, 347, 373-74, 410, 413-14, 420 

Mainz: 20, 236, 241, 259, 266, 266n, 267, 289-93, 

325. 373 

Malmédy: 23, 25, 44-45 

Malony, Maj. Gen. Harry J.: 117-18, 120-22, ‘124- 

27, 131. See also Infantry Division, 94th. 

Malta Conference: 5, 56, 67, 323-24, 

Mannheim: 236, 268-69, 286-88, 321-22, 325, 409-10 

Manpower, German: 8. See also Reinforcements. 

Manteuffel, General der Panzertruppen Hasso von: 

26, 28, 31, 35, 38-39, 48, 51, 82n, 173, 186, 339, 

458, 465. 

Maps: 297 

Marburg: 351, 354 

Marche: 19 

MARKET operation: 309n, 460 

Marseille: 324 

Marshall, General George C.: 5, 17, 456-57 

Marvie: 36 

Masthorn: 109 

Mauel: 107-08, 110-11, 114 

Mauthausen: 467 

Maximiliansau: 263 

Mayen: 204 

Mead, Col. Armistead D.: 174-75 

“Meat Ball Express”: 325 

Medal of Honor: 38n, 39n, 40n, 42n, 50n, 64n, 66n, 

73n, 114n, 123n, 241n, 245n, 255n, 257n, 258n, 

259n, 261n, 311n, 312n, 319n, 355n, 361n, 

365n, 367n, 385n, 418n, 425n 

Medebach: 356, 360-61 

Medical Battalion, 329th: 391-92, 392n 

Medical problems: 104 

Mehlen Creek: 91, 93, 95-96 

Meindl, General der Fallschirmtruppen Eugen: 

303, 314, 317 

Meiningen: 379-80 

Meisburg: 201 

Melasky, Maj. Gen. Harris M.: 367. See also Infantry Division, 86th. 

Memmingen: 453 

Merkers “treasure” cave: 379, 384 

Merrell, Pvt. Joseph E.: 425n 

Merseburg: 392-93 

Mettendorf: 101, 112 

Metterich: 200 

Metz: 116 

Metz Gap: 237 

Meuse River: 22-23, 34 

Mewshaw, Col. Harry C.: 196, 211-12 

Michael, 2d Lt. Harry J.: 245n 

Middleton, Maj. Gen. Troy H.: 25, 36, 38, 40, 52, 

84, 90-91, 96-98, 112, 197, 199-200, 241, 279. 

See also Corps, VIII. 

Milburn, Maj. Gen. Frank W.: 252. See also Corps, 

XXI. 

Miley, Maj. Gen. William M.: 38, 310, 313. See also 

Airborne Division, 17th. 

Military control and government operations: 262, 

323, 331, 395, 421, 476-77. 

Miller, Lt. Col. George F.: 122 

Milliken, Maj. Gen. John: 25, 36, 194, 196, 211-12, 

219, 223-26, 229, 367. See also Armored Division, 13th; Corps, III. 

Minden: 380 

Miner, Lt. Col. Russell M.: 117 

Missile, intercontinental: 8 
524 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Mittenwald Pass: 439, 468 

Model, Major Hansgeorg: 372n 

Model, Generalfeldmarschall Walter: 6, 28, 50, 59, 

93 

and Ardennes operations: 34-35, 38, 46 

and capture of Remagen bridge: 221-22, 226 

commits suicide: 372, 372n 

dissolves Army Group B: 369, 372 

and relief of General Brandenberger: 107 

and Roer River defense: 154, 171 

and Ruhr drive defense: 195, 202-03, 210, 214, 

233-34, 339, 345-46, 350, 353, 355, 358, 362, 368, 

370 

and withdrawal to the Rhine: 42, 107, 195 

Moder River: 252-55 

Moedrath: 187 

Moehne Reservoir: 359 

Moellen: 308 

Moers: 178 

Moltke, General Helmuth von: 22 

Mon Creek: 90-94 

Monsabert, Maj. Gen. A. J. de: 321 

Monschau: 18-19, 23, 25, 57, 59-60, 63, 65, 69-72, 

135 

Monschau corridor: 71, 73-74, 76 

Monschau Forest: 62, 65-66 

Montgomery, Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. See 

also Army Group, 21. 

command relationships with Allied commanders: 

4, 26, 178 

and decision against Berlin as objective: 341-42, 

480 

and main effort against the Ruhr: 2, 24-26, 32, 

55-56, 67, 294 

personality as a commander: 18, 480 

and Rhine assault operations: 302, 310n 

and Rhine bridgehead operations: 239-40, 266, 

318-19, 341, 357, 480 

Rhine crossing eclipsed by U.S. armies: 246, 

266-67. 273. 294 

and Rhine crossing plans and buildup: 175, 

294-98 

and Rhine crossing plans of Ninth Army: 175, 

178, 178n, 179n, 295, 319, 479 

and Rhine to Elbe drive: 319, 461, 463 

and surrender of northern German forces: 465, 

474 

Moore, Brig. Gen. Bryant E.: 169. See also Infantry 

Division, 8th. 

Moore, Brig. Gen. James E.: 135, 295 

Morale, German: 60, 256, 301, 331, 426, 463, 479 

Morris, Maj. Gen. William H. H., Jr.: 127, 129-31, 

133, 249, 416, 431. See also Armored Division, 

10th. 

Mortain: 478 

Mortars: 12, 144, 153 

Mosel Berge: 196 

Moselle River: 19-20, 22, 26, 58, 99-100, 116, 171, 

196, 198, 237, 242, 246 

Moselle River crossings: 134, 206, 239, 241, 246-52, 

257 

Motor transport: 325-26 

Mountain Division, 10th: 471 

Muehlhausen: 380-81 

Muenchen-Gladbach: 139, 142-43, 172-73, 188 

Muenster: 357 

Mulde River: 384, 393, 401-02, 406, 421, 425, 445- 

49, 458 

Mulhouse: 19 

Munich: 422, 435-36, 440, 459, 472 

Munich Pact: 467 

Munich-Salsburg autobahn: 440 

Munzingen: 124-28 

Murphy, Pfc. Frederick C.: 258n 

Mussolini: 459 

Nahe River: 240-41, 246-50, 256-59 

Namur: 325 

Napoleon Platz (Leipzig) : 395 

National Dedoubt: 340, 407-09, 431, 440, 442-43, 

445, 457 

Naval Unit No. 1: 227 

Naval Unit No. 2: 268 

Naval Unit No. 3: 295 

Nazi party: 7, 176, 209, 331, 370, 375, 378, 407, 422, 

425, 437, 444, 459, 474 

Nebelwerfers: 12 

Neckar River and valley: 286, 410, 412-18, 422, 

427-30 

Neder Rijn: 460 

Neffel Creek: 193 

Negro troops: 54, 334-35 

Neisse River: 339 

Nennig: 116, 118-20, 123-24 

Netherlands: 4, 19 

military operations: 338, 379, 385, 421, 459-61, 

465, 477-78 

relief operations: 461 

Neufchâteau: 23 

Neuss: 138, 172, 174, 189 

Neustadt: 263 

Neuwied: 205 

News correspondents: 344, 387, 445, 447, 452, 455 

Nideggen: 80, 193 

Nied River: 117 

Niedermehlen: 92, 95 

Niedersgegen: 112 

Niederzier: 156, 162-63 

Nierstein: 267-68, 270 

Night operations: 53, 142, 168, 201, 267, 344. See 

also Battlefield illumination. 

Nijmegen: 18, 135, 139, 141, 145, 170, 183 

Nims River: 113-14 

Nonfraternization policy: 329-31, 467 

Noord Beveland: 18 

Nord Canal: 174 

Nordhausen: 391-92, 402 
INDEX 525 

NORDWIND operation: 1, 6-7, 19-20, 28, 34, 118, 

123, 126, 238 

Normandy: 478 

North Sea: 460 

Northeim: 391 

Norway: 457, 464-65, 476-77 

Noville: 36, 41-42 

Nuclear fission resarch, German: 352, 427, 429 

Nuerburg Ring race course: 205 

Nugent, Brig. Gen. Richard E.: 137, 300, 304 

Nuremberg: 409, 421-26 

OB NEDERLANDER: 460 

OB NORDWEST: 385, 460 

OB SUED: 222 

OB WEST. See also Kesselring, Generalfeldmarschall Albert; Rundstedt, Generalfeldmarschall 

Gerd von. 

abandons Ohrdruf headquarters: 378 

command and control: 5, 5n, 7, 237, 385, 421, 

433 

and Remagen bridgehead breakout: 269 

troop strength on 3 January 1945: 5-6 

Oberammergau: 439 

Obergeckler: 113 

Oberjoch Pass: 438-39, 470 

Oberkail: 202 

Oberkassel: 174 

Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) : 7, 213, 

216, 377, 385, 396, 399, 410-11, 421, 423, 444-45, 

459, 476 

Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH): 7, 444-45 

Oberlahnstein: 276 

Oberleuken-Orscholz highway: 122 

Obermehlen: 92-93 

Oberstadtfeld: 201 

Oberwesel: 276-77 

Oberzier: 157, 159, 165 

Obstacles: 20, 30, 88, 111, 128, 257, 348-49, 401, 

404, 410, 438-39, 469. See also West Wall. 

Obstfelder, General der Infanterie Hans von: 293, 

374-75, 434, 472 

Occupation plans: 46, 321, 323, 334-35, 340, 342, 

432-33, 480 

Ockfen: 129-32 

O’Daniel, Maj. Gen. John W.: 254, 436, 472. See 

also Infantry Division, 3d. 

Odenwald: 284, 286, 409, 412-14 

Oder River: 335, 339-40, 405 

Ohrdruf: 376-78, 380, 384 

Ohrdruf communications center: 376-77 

Ohrdruf concentration camp: 378, 384, 481 

Oil refineries: 236, 392-93 

Oliver, Maj. Gen. Lunsford E.: 167, 172. See also 

Armored Division, 5th. 

Ondenval defile: 46-48 

Oppenheim: 241, 266-75, 285, 306, 322 

Oppenheim bridgehead operations: 279, 286, 289, 

292-93, 337, 340, 345, 347, 349, 373, 375, 408- 

09, 412, 479 

Oresko, T. Sgt. Nicholas: 123n 

Oriola, Generalleutnant Ralph Graf von: 108, 198, 

201, 243, 249-50, 260, 268, 285-86, 412-13 

Orscholz: 116, 121-23 

Orscholz Switch: 116-18, 120, 123-24, 126-27, 130, 

134 

Orsfeld: 201 

Orsoy: 178-79, 183 

Osterkamp, Generaloberst Herbert: 375 

Oubourcy: 36-37 

Our River: 44, 48-53, 58-59, 63, 100, 107 

Our River crossings: 66, 91, 108, 110-11 

Ourthe River: 25, 27, 31-33, 39, 41 

Paderborn: 351-55, 357, 359-60, 373, 389 

Palatinate Highland: 237 

Panzerfausts: 10, 307, 352, 401, 435 

Papen, Franz von: 370 

Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, 464th: 311 

Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, 466th: 312-13 

Parachute Infantry Regiments 

505th: 32, 462 

507th: 310 

508th: 64 

513th: 38n, 311-13, 319 

517th: 32, 45 

Paratroops: 211. See also Airborne operations. 

Paris: 325 

Parker, Maj. Gen. Edwin P., Jr.: 71-74, 76-80. See 

also Infantry Division, 78th. 

Parker, Maj. Harry F.: 181 

Parker’s Crossroads: 31 

Pash, Col. Boris T.: 430 

Passau: 434, 437, 466 

Patch, Lt. Gen. Alexander M.: 252. See also Army, 

Seventh. 

and capture of Berchtesgaden: 442 

command relationships with U.S. and French 

commanders: 17, 438, 473-74 

and Rhine crossing: 246 

and Saar-Palatinate operations: 240-41, 246, 257, 

258, 260-61 

and southern Germany operations: 417, 427 

and surrender operations: 472 

Patton, Lt. Gen. George S., Jr.: 38, 252. See also 

Army, Third. 

and advance to Prague: 467 

and attack against the base of the bulge: 39, 41, 

43, 52, 479 

beats Montgomery across the Rhine: 246, 266-67, 

273 

and broad-front strategy: 2, 35 

command relationship with Bradley: 15 

command relationship with Eisenhower: 17-18 

and Eifel attacks: 52, 98-100, 134-35, 197 

and Eisenhower order for Mulde River halt: 384 
526 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Patton, Lt. Gen. George S., Jr.—Continued 

and employment of armor: 123 

and employment of 10th Armored Division: 127- 

28, 132-33 

and envelopment of Trier: 115 

and liaison plane reinforcement of Rhine crossing: 268, 270 

and liberation of Hammelburg prisoner-of-war 

camp: 280-81, 283, 291, 479 

ordered to take Rhine on the run: 266, 266n 

personality as a commander: 17-18, 36, 269, 480 

post-Ardennes plans: 24, 35, 43 

and probing attacks: 68, 84, 98, 135 

and Pruem River advance: 96-97, 105 

reaction to concentration camps: 378 

reaction to First Army Rhine crossing: 236, 266 

and Rhine River drive: 98, 115, 134, 196-97, 206, 

246 

and Saar-Moselle triangle operations: 130, 133, 

135, 241 

and Saar-Palatinate operations: 236, 240-41, 244, 

246, 249, 257-58, 266 

and son-in-law, Col. Waters: 281, 281n, 283, 419 

on SS troops: 350 

and Third Army Rhine crossings: 241, 246, 266- 

67, 269, 273-75, 289-90 

Paul, Maj. Gen. Willard S.: 40. See also Infantry 

Division, 26th. 

Paulus, Field Marshal Friedrich: 372 

Paulushof Dam: 77, 79 

Pellingen: 133 

Perrin, Brig. Gen. Herbert T.: 45. See also Infantry 

Division, 106th. 

Pershing, Gen. John J.: 15-16 

Pétain, Marshal Henri Philippe: 430-31 

Peters, Pvt. George J.: 311n 

Peters, Lt. Karl Heinz: 230 

Petersen, General der Infanterie Erich: 253, 262- 

63, 415 

Peterson, S. Sgt. George: 361n 

la Petite Suisse: 23, 48 

Pfaelzer Bergland: 237, 260-63 

Pfaffenheck: 247 

Pforzheim: 427 

Phillips, Col. James H.: 219 

Piburn, Brig. Gen. Edwin W.: 128 

Pierce, Col. James R.: 38n 

Pierce, Brig. Gen. John L.: 467 

Pietrzah, Pvt. John F.: 123 

Pilsen: 426, 458, 466-67, 477 

Pirmasens: 263 

Pisek: 467 

Pistols, German: 10, 332, 378 

Plateau des Tailles: 23, 27, 29, 32-33 

PLUNDER operation: 297, 300, 319. See also Army 

Group, 21 

Poinier, Lt. Col. Arthur D.: 124 

POL (petroleum, oil, and lubricants) : 9, 137, 186, 

323, 325, 327. See also Shortages. 

Polish units: 5n, 297n, 322n 

Poncet, Col. Hans von: 394-95 

Port Construction and Repair Group, 1056th: 325 

Porter, Maj. Gen. Ray E.: 173. See also Infantry 

Division, 75th. 

Potsdam: 399, 459 

POZIT fuze. See Proximity fuze. 

Prague: 447, 456-58, 467, 477, 480 

Prickett, Maj. Gen. Fay B.: 45-46. See also Infantry 

Division, 75th. 

Priess, Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS Hermann: 

34-35 

Prims River: 257 

Prisoners of war: 334, 379 

captured German: 33, 40, 52, 129, 132, 134, 167- 

68, 189, 201, 204-06, 223, 234, 264, 282, 309, 

313, 351, 370, 372, 404-05, 418, 429, 433-34, 

442, 465, 477-78, 478n 

captured Hungarian: 435 

captured Russian: 9, 282, 366 

captured Yugoslav: 283 

liberation of prisoner-of-war tamps: 283, 366, 

378, 391, 393, 419, 437, 448-53, 476 

Pronsfeld: 85, 88, 91, 108 

Proximity fuze: 13, 156, 177, 211 

Pruem: 24, 43, 58-59, 67-68, 84-86, 88, 91-98, 100, 

105-06, 134, 186, 198-99, 204 

Pruem River: 58, 85, 93-94, 96, 98-99, 101, 107-15, 

186, 196-97, 199 

Puechler, General der Infanterie Karl: 60, 65, 72, 

193, 195, 209, 233, 346-47, 350, 353 

Purdue, Col. Branner P.: 308, 317 

Pursuit warfare: 184, 426. See also Armor. 

Pyrotechnics: 13, 305 

Quesada, Maj. Gen. Elwood R.: 28 

Quinn, Col. William W.: 407, 409 

Raff, Col. Edson D.: 311 

Rafts: 49, 227, 308-09 

Ranger Battalion, 5th: 131-33 

Rangers: 211 

Rape: 333, 350, 432 

Rathke, Generalleutnant Anton: 402 

Rations: 328, 334 

Recoilless rifles: 10, 299, 299n, 311 

Reconnaissance Battalion, 83d: 169, 189 

Reconnaissance Battalion, 88th: 181 

Recovered Allied Military Personnel (RAMPS) : 

327 

Red Ball Express: 325 

Red Cross: 334 

Redeployment plans: 334, 466, 476 

Rees: 295-96, 298, 301, 303, 314, 317 

Refugees. See Civilians. 

Refvem, 1st Lt. Whitney O.: 305-06 

Regensburg: 426, 435 

Regimental combat teams: 17, 478 

Regnitz River: 422 
INDEX 527 

Reims: 15, 474-76 

Reinforcements: 6, 54, 60, 334-35, 413 

Reinhardt, Maj. Gen. Emil F.: 204, 395, 452, 455- 

56. See also Infantry Division, 69th. 

Reinhart, Maj. Gen. Stanley E.: 245. See also Infantry Division, 65th. 

Remagen: 195-96, 202-03, 208-15, 223, 227 

Remagen bridge: 195, 207, 211-12 

capture of: 216-20, 222, 234, 266, 479 

collapse of: 229-30 

German defense of: 209, 213-17, 221, 223 

German demolition operations: 210, 213-17, 221, 

227-28, 230 

Hitler reprisals for capture: 230 

underwater swimmer attack on: 228-29 

Remagen bridgehead operations: 220-35, 269, 274, 

279, 289, 338-39, 340, 344, 350 

Replacements. See Reinforcements. 

Reserves: 24, 34, 55, 127-29, 132-33, 197, 240, 422 

Resia Pass: 438-39, 471 

Rest and rehabilitation: 334 

Retraining: 334 

Reynaud, Paul: 474 

Rhein-Herne Canal: 316, 357-58, 362, 364 

Rheinbach: 195, 203, 212, 221 

Rheinberg: 175, 179-83, 295-96, 303, 305-06 

Rheinhausen: 178 

Rhens: 275-76 

Rheydt: 139 

Rhine-Main Airport: 280 

Rhine River: 4-5, 18-22, 67, 184, 209, 237, 267-68, 

274, 294, 297, 479. See also Withdrawal operations, German. 

Rhine River bridges: 99, 178, 180-81, 183, 206, 209, 

211, 214, 223, 263-64, 279-80, 325-26, 357. See 

also Hitler bridge; Remagen bridge. 

Rhine River crossings 

crossing sites: 208-09, 241, 266, 269, 274, 284-85, 

295, 299-300, 317-19 

First French Army: 321-22, 322n, 408, 414-15, 427 

Montgomery’s 21 Army Group: 273, 294-320, 344, 

460 

Ninth Army plans for crossing: 173-74, 178, 211, 

479 

Seventh Army: 284, 286-89, 339, 347, 407-09, 412 

Third Army: 266-73, 275-77, 285, 289-93, 306, 

339, 344, 373, 381, 412, 479 

Rhine River gorge: 274-75, 289, 347, 349 

Ribbentrop, Joachim von: 335-36, 444 

Richardson, Lt. Col. Jack J.: 134 

Richardson, Lt. Col. Walter B.: 351 

Ridgway, Maj. Gen. Matthew B.: 25, 44-45, 299, 

310, 313-14, 318-19, 367, 370, 461-62. See also 

Corps, XVIII Airborne. 

Riesa: 451-52 

Rifle, 7.92-mm. (Mauser) : 10 

Rifle, .30-cal. M1 (Garand): 10 

Rifle, recoilless. See Recoilless rifles. 

Ritchie, Lt. Gen. Sir Neil M.: 303 

River crossing operations: 49, 66, 101-06, 129-31, 

275-77, 287-88, 303, 305-07, 322, 385, 389, 397- 

98, 417, 462. See also Bridges: Engineers; 

rivers by name; Smoke, tactical use of. 

Roads and roadnets 

in the Ardennes: 24, 29, 32, 34, 46, 48 

in the Eifel: 62, 65, 96, 196, 201-02 

for Remagen bridgehead breakout: 344 

in the Saar-Palatinate: 260-61 

for Seventh Army southern Germany operations: 

428, 432 

for Third Army Rhine crossings: 270, 272, 289 

for 21 Army Group Rhine crossing; 298, 300, 

315, 318, 357 

Roberts, Col. William L.: 132, 134 

Robertson, Maj. Gen. Walter M.: 65. See also Infantry Division, 2d. 

Robertson, 2d Lt. William D.: 450, 453-56 

Robinson, 1st Lt. James E., Jr.: 418n 

Rocherath: 65-66, 69 

Rochlitz: 447 

Rocket launchers. See also Bazookas. 

2.36-inch: 10 

4.5-inch: 12 

4.5-inch, multiple (T34) : 106 

Rocket research, German: 332 

Roer River: 18, 20-21, 58, 70-71, 136, 138, 143, 

145, 151, 157, 162 

Roer River crossings: 57, 137-62, 164-67, 169, 172, 

192, 196, 480. See also GRENADE operation; 

LUMBERJACK operation, 

Roer River dams: 57-59, 66-68, 70, 138, 143, 192- 

93, 196, 203 

Roer River fortifications: 139, 187 

Roermond: 6, 136, 141, 143, 171-72 

Roerstausee: 70, 73-74, 77, 81 

Rollesbroich: 74 

Rooks, Maj. Gen. Lowell W.: 66, 109, 111. See also 

Infantry Division, 90th. 

Roosevelt, Franklin D.: 329, 341, 384, 405, 443, 453 

Rose, Maj. Gen. Maurice: 29, 33, 169, 187-88, 352- 

54. See also Armored Division, 3d. 

Roseborough, Lt. Col. Morgan G.: 182 

Rosenheim: 440 

Rosslau: 396, 402 

Rothkirch und Trach, General der Kavallerie Edwin Graf: 49-51, 105, 107, 198, 201-02, 210, 223 

Rottweil: 430 

Royal Air Force 

Bomber Command: 14, 300-01, 303, 324 

Group, 38: 299 

Group, 46: 299 

Tactical Air Force, 2d: 14-15, 299-300, 310 

Royal Navy: 295 

Ruhr-Berlin autobahn: 358 

Ruhr encirclement operations: 341-42, 344, 351, 

353, 359-62, 368, 373, 381, 389, 406-08, 425, 

460, 479 

Ruhr-Frankfurt autobahn: 208, 232, 279, 344 
528 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Ruhr Pocket operations: 359, 362-69 

Ruhr region: 2, 4-5, 8, 18-19, 24, 67, 140, 163, 

209, 233-34, 294, 298, 300, 340, 362-63, 365 

Ruhr River: 304, 359, 362-63, 365, 367 

Ruhr-Wesel-Arnhem railroad: 297-98 

Ruhrberg: 77, 79 

Rundstedt, Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von: 5, 28, 

100, 202. See also OB WEST. 

and the Ardennes offensive: 34 

and capture of Remagen bridge: 221 

command authority: 7 

and pessimism before Roer attack: 140-41, 186 

relieved at OB WEST: 222 

withdrawal appeals to Hitler: 4-42, 171, 238, 242 

Rusakov, Maj. Gen. Vladimir: 453, 456 

Russian-Allied linkup: 341, 343, 375, 379, 384. 395, 

408, 421, 437, 445-56, 458, 466 

Russian-Allied relations 

and advance into Czechoslovakia: 458, 466 

and Berlin as objective: 341-42, 446, 480 

bomb line agreement: 446-47 

and Elbe-Mulde demarcation lines: 449-50, 450n, 

456, 458, 463-64 

and surrender negotiations: 464-65, 474, 477 

zones of occupation: 446, 480 

Russian Army 

drive to Berlin: 335, 340, 375, 405, 443-45, 447, 

459 

German fear of: 330, 396, 448, 450, 452, 463-64, 

472, 476 

Russian front operations: 9, 44, 51, 59-60, 140, 324, 

339-40, 464, 474, 476 

Russian units 

Army, First Ukranian: 456 

Corps, 34th: 456 

Division, 58th Guards Infantry: 453 

Rifle Regiment, 173d: 455 

Rifle Regiment, 175th: 451, 453 

Rust, Lt. Col. Clayton A.: 230n 

Ruwer River: 242-45 

Saale River: 382, 392-93, 399, 401-02 

Saar-Moselle triangle: 20-21, 116, 126, 128, 133-34, 

185-86, 236, 239, 241, 243 

Saar-Palatinate operations: 238-67, 284-85, 407, 479 

Saar-Palatinate region: 19-20, 236-37, 260, 335 

Saar region: 2, 8, 134, 196, 294 

Saar River: 4, 20, 99, 116, 119, 237-38, 241, 325 

Saar River crossings: 128-33, 243 

Saarbruecken: 99, 237-38, 252, 254, 260 

Saarburg: 116-17, 121, 129, 131-32, 134 

Saarlautern: 20, 36, 99, 116, 129, 238, 240, 243-45, 

258 

Sachsenhausen: 280 

St. Anton: 439, 480 

St. Goar: 274, 276-77 

St. Goarshausen: 276 

St. Hubert: 25, 34, 39 

St. Ingbert: 260 

St. Nazaire: 117, 477 

St. Vith: 23-24, 26, 32-33, 43-48, 51-53, 57, 63, 71 

St. Wendel: 257, 260 

Salm River: 32-33, 41, 44-45 

Salt mine “treasure” capture: 379, 384 

Salzburg: 421-22, 437, 440-42, 466 

Salzburg Province (Austria) : 464 

Sand table planning: 307 

Sangerhausen: 392 

Sarreguemines: 19, 238 

Sauer River: 58-59 

Sauer River crossings: 99-106, 114 

Sauerland: 363, 365, 367 

Sayn River: 347 

Schankweiler: 106 

Scheller, Maj. Hans: 210-11, 214, 216-17, 230 

Schimpf, Generalleutnant Richard: 223 

Schleiden: 62, 65, 69, 71-72 

Schlemm, General der Fallschirmtruppen Alfred: 

177, 177n, 178-80, 183, 301-02, 338 

Schlieffen Plan: 22 

Schmidt: 70-71, 73-75, 77-81, 193 

Schmidt, General der Infanterie Hans: 472-74 

Schmidt, Maj. Gen. William R.: 106. See also Infantry Division, 76th. 

Schnee Eifel: 58-60, 66-67, 84, 86, 88-91, 199 

Schoenebeck: 387, 397 

Schophoven: 151 

Schulz, General der Infanterie Friedrich: 411-12, 

420-21, 423, 471 

Schwaebisch Hall: 429 

Schwammenauel Dam: 70-74, 77-78, 80, 82. See 

also Roer River dams. 

Schwarzwald. See Black Forest. 

Schweinfurt: 420 

Schwerin: 458, 464 

Scientific research, German: 332, 392, 427, 429-30 

Scorched earth policy: 337, 404 

Seamules: 295, 295n 

Searchlights: 105, 155, 200, 229, 257, 268 

Secret weapons: 7-8, 332, 480 

Sedan: 22 

Sennelager: 352 

Serrig: 129-31 

Sevelen: 179-80 

Sevelen-Rheinberg highway: 180 

Seyss-Inquart, Arthur: 461 

Shank, 1st Lt. Harlan W.: 448, 456 

Shaunce, Tech. 5 Glen H.: 352 

Shea, Brig. Gen. George D.: 304 

Shortages 

reserves: 24 

Signal Corps units: 224 

spare parts: 328 

transportation: 325 

Shortages, German 

ammunition: 49, 69, 225, 323 

coal and steel: 335 

food and housing: 335 
INDEX 529 

Shortages, German—Continued 

gasoline: 9, 35, 44, 50, 53, 199, 201, 221, 242, 

245, 261, 315, 349, 375, 423, 434 

spare parts: 53 

trained pilots: 9 

transport: 413 

weapons: 435 

Shoup, S. Sgt. Curtis F.: 39n 

Sieg River: 233, 344, 346, 348, 350-51, 359, 362, 366 

Siegen: 353, 359, 365 

Siegfried Line. See West Wall. 

Siegfried Switch: 116 

Sigmaringen: 430-31 

Silesia: 8, 294, 340 

Simmern: 248-49 

Simon, SS Gruppenfuehrer und Generalleutnant 

der Waffen-SS Max: 252, 261, 413-14, 418, 423 

Simpson, Lt. Gen. William H.: 19, 135. See also 

Army, Ninth. 

and Berlin as objective: 379, 386-87, 399 

command relationships with Allied commanders: 

17, 178, 296 

and employment of armor: 172 

and Rhine assault crossing: 72, 305, 310n 

and Rhine bridgehead operations: 317-19 

and Rhine crossing plans: 173-74, 178, 296 

and Roer crossing plans: 139, 142-43 

and Ruhr encirclement: 359 

Sinspelt: 113 

Sinz: 120, 124-28 

Sinzig: 195-96, 215, 219 

Sitzenroda: 453 

Ski troops: 439 

Skoda industrial complex: 467 

“Skyline Drive”: 48-51 

Slave laborers. See Civilians. 

Smith, Maj. Gen. Albert C.: 263. See also Armored 

Division, 14th. 

Smith, 1st Lt. Edgar C.: 205 

Smith, Col. George A., Jr.: 188n 

Smith, S. Sgt. John F.: 129 

Smith, Maj. Paul F.: 311 

Smoke, tactical use of: 49, 103, 130, 144, 151, 153, 

157, 159, 161, 233, 247, 267, 275-76, 287, 297, 

302, 305, 307, 309-10, 365, 387, 397 

Soest: 364 

Soonwald: 248-50 

Spa: 23 

Spaatz, General Carl: 324 

Spees, Albert: 335, 337 

Spessart Mountains: 409 

Speyer: 237, 263-64, 284-85, 287, 321-22 

Stadt Meckenheim: 212 

Stafford, 1st Lt. David F.: 120 

Stalin, Marshal Josef: 341-42, 405-06, 453 

Stalingrad: 372 

Stars & Stripes: 334 

Stavelot: 25 

Steinborn: 201 

Steinstrass: 163, 166-67 

Stiller, Maj. Alexander: 281, 284 

Stockheim: 157, 159, 161, 165 

Stommeln: 187-88 

Strasbourg: 19-20, 322n, 332, 427 

Strategic air forces. See Air forces, Allied. 

Strategic bombing. See Air operations. 

Strategy, Allied: 2, 4-5, 18, 55-56 

Straub, Capt. Herman C.: 122-23 

Straube, General der Infanterie Erich: 304, 307, 311 

Strehla: 451 

Strobel, Herbert: 230 

Strong, Maj. Gen. Kenneth W. D.: 407 

Stryker, Pfc. Stuart S.: 312n 

Student, Generaloberst Kurt: 6, 177, 339, 358, 385, 

386n, 459-60, 465 

Stuttgart: 321, 422, 427-33, 480 

Submachine gun, Thompson: 10 

Submarines, German: 7 

Sudetenland: 467 

Sullivan, Lt. Col. Richard P.: 131 

Supply. See also Logistics. 

by air transport: 327, 417 

by airdrop: 96, 105, 145, 186, 309, 313-14, 461 

build-up for 21 Army Group Rhine crossing: 

295-97 

depots: 325-26 

by pack mules: 254 

prepackaged: 186 

stockpiling: 186 

tonnage for Operation GRENADE: 137 

total tonnage in European, theater: 478 

Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force 

(SHAEF). See also Eisenhower, General Dwight 

D. 

intelligence estimate of German strength, Mar 

45: 338 

intelligence estimate of National Redoubt: 340, 

407, 409 

intelligence failure in Ardennes: 41 

and Operation ECLIPSE: 334 

organization of: 15 

plans for southern Germany-Austria drive: 408- 

09, 422, 434 

post-surrender operations: 476-77 

Rhine drive planning: 55-56, 67, 238, 294-95 

the SHAEF reserve: 34, 55, 127-29, 132-33, 197, 

240, 422 

strength at end of March 1945: 322-23, 322n 

strength on 3 January 1945: 5 

strength on V–E Day: 477-78 

and surrender negotiations: 474 

Sûre River: 25, 36, 40, 43, 48-50 

Surprise (tactical) : 31, 49, 103, 143, 145, 267, 272 

Surrender negotiations and final signing: 334-36, 

444, 458-59, 461, 464-65, 468, 471-77 

Surrender operations, American: 123, 397-98 

Surrender operations, German: 114, 205, 248, 259, 

364-65, 368-72, 379, 382, 395, 399, 402, 404-05, 
530 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

Surrender Operations, German—Continued 

409-10, 413, 417, 426, 435-37, 44142, 448-50, 

464-67, 476 

Susloparoff, Maj. Gen. Ivan: 474 

Swabian Highland: 429, 434 

“T-forces”: 332 

Taben: 129, 131-32 

Tactical Air Commands 

IX: 14, 28, 365, 401, 404 

XI: 14 

XII: 253, 256, 261, 419, 423 

XIX: 14, 38, 51, 74, 105, 111, 114, 197, 245, 248- 

49, 263, 347 

XXIX: 14, 137, 153, 300, 304, 365, 398, 401 

Tafel: 93, 95-96 

TALISMAN operation: 334 

Tangermuende: 387 

Tank Battalions 

14th: 212, 220 

18th: 125 

36th: 183 

37th: 202, 281 

41st: 259n 

701st: 164 

736th: 72-73, 73n, 174 

744th: 79 

771st: 164, 175 

778th: 127 

784th: 180 

Tank Destroyer Battalion, 603d: 42n 

Tank Destroyer Battalion, 643d: 174 

Tank destroyers: 10, 16, 254, 479 

Tank-infantry-artillery team: 183, 354-55, 478-79 

Tanks, Allied. See also Amphibious tanks; Armor. 

Churchill, 319 

Crocodile: 72 

heavy: 11 

light: 137n 

losses: 26, 35, 132, 164, 182-83, 254, 391-92 

M4 (DD): 288, 306, 314 

M4 (Sherman): 10-11, 26, 106, 137, 391, 479 

M4A3 (Jumbo): 11 

M26: 11 

searchlight: 229, 268 

T26 medium (Pershing) : 169, 212, 215, 217, 230, 

347, 351 

Tanks, German: 7, 9 

King Tiger: 11n 

losses: 45, 51n, 155, 401 

Mark IV: 11, 119, 169 

Mark V (Panther): 11, 119, 155, 352, 391 

Mark VI (Tiger): 11, 93, 132, 169, 347, 352 

Tiger Royal: 11n, 391 

Task force, organization of: 17 

Task Forces 

Baum: 281-84, 291, 373, 410, 419 

Boudinot: 188-89 

Byrne: 179, 181, 183 

Task Forces—Continued 

Davall: 112-13 

Engeman: 212-15, 217, 220 

Hickey: 188, 191, 401 

Howze: 188 

Kane: 359 

Murray: 183 

Poinier: 124 

Richardson (Lt. Col. Jack J.)) : 134 

Richardson (Lt. Col. Walter B.): 351-52, 354, 

356 

Roseborough: 182 

Twaddle: 366 

Van Houten: 182 

Welborn: 352 

Tauber River: 413, 416, 418 

Taunus Mountains: 274 

Tawern: 128 

Taylor, Maj. Gen. Maxwell D.: 36. See also Airborne Division, 101st. 

Tettingen: 117-21, 123-25 

Tetz: 154-55 

Teutoburger Wald: 338-39, 358, 380 

Thionville: 325 

Thoholte, General der Artillerie Karl: 353 

Tholen: 18 

Thorson, Brig. Gen. Truman C.: 211 

Thueringen Plain: 380 

Thueringer Wald: 380-81, 384, 419-21, 423 

Tillet: 39, 39n 

Timmerman, 1st Lt. Karl H.: 214-17, 228 

Tippelskirch, General der Infanterie Kurt von: 

464-65 

Tirol Province (Austria) : 464 

“Toot Sweet Express”: 325 

Torgau: 448, 451, 453-54, 456 

Touart, Col. Anthony J.: 188n 

Transportation, German: 9, 300, 323-24, 358, 365 

Treadwell, Cap. Jack L.: 261n 

Trek 247 

Trier: 6, 19, 58, 63, 99-100, 105, 115-16, 128, 132- 

34, 145, 171, 196, 198-99, 236, 239, 241-43 

Trois Ponts: 25 

Troop Carrier Command, IX: 299, 313, 417 

Troop strength, Allied 

on 3 January 1945: 5, 7 

on V–E Day: 477-78 

for Operation GRENADE: 137 

for Operations VARSITY and MARKET: 309, 309n 

peak strength in April 1945: 322-23 

12th Army Group on 4 April 1945: 379 

for 21 Army Group Rhine crossing: 296-97, 297n 

Troop strength, German 

end of March 1945: 338 

on 3 January 1945: 5-6 

opposing Operation LUMBERJACK: 186 

opposing 21 Army Group: 301-02 

Roer River before Operation GRENADE: 139-42 

in West Wall: 60, 85 
INDEX 531 

Trucks. See Motor transport. 

Truman, Harry S.: 398, 433, 453 

Tuebingen: 428 

Turner, Sgt. Day G.: 50n 

Twaddle, Maj. Gen. Harry L.: 173, 366. See also 

Infantry Division, 95th. 

Uelzen: 400-01, 460 

Uerdingen: 174-78 

Ulm: 429-32, 435, 438, 480 

Uncles, Brig. Gen. John F.: 304 

Unconditional surrender policy: 10, 329 

Underground resistance: 435-36, 459, 468, 470 

UNDERTONE operation: 238, 240 

Urft Dam: 70-71, 75, 77, 82. See also Roer River 

dams. 

Urft River: 70 

Urftstausee: 70, 77 

Urmitz: 206 

U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe. See Air forces, 

Allied. 

Uttenhofen: 254 

Uttweiler: 254 

V-weapons: 7, 228, 230, 332, 392 

Vallendar: 347 

Van Fleet, Maj. Gen. James A,: 40, 229, 233, 347. 

See also Corps, III; Infantry Division, 90th. 

Van Houten, Maj. John H.: 182 

Vandenberg, Maj. Gen. Hoyt: 14. See also Air 

Force, Ninth 

VARSITY operation: 298-99, 304, 309-15, 362, 480 

Venlo: 138, 143, 172, 179 

Verdun: 325 

VERITABLE operation: 135-36, 139, 145, 170-71, 179- 

80, 183-84 

Versailles: 15 

Vianden: 48-50, 52, 99-100 

Vianden bulge operations: 106-15, 197, 199 

Vichy government: 430 

Viebig, Generalmajor Wilhelm: 69 

Vienna: 341, 443, 476 

Viersen: 139 

Vipiteno: 469 

Vltava (Moldau) River: 447, 458, 467 

Vogels Berg: 374 

Vorarlberg: 437, 466 

Vorarlberg Province (Austria): 464 

Vorgebirge ridge: 187-88, 194-95 

Vosges Mountains: 19-20, 254 

VT fuze. See Proximity fuze. 

Waal River: 18, 20 

Wagener, Generalmajor Karl: 368 

Wahlerscheid: 65-66, 68-69, 71 

Waimes: 25 

Waldbroel: 366 

Waldenburg, Generalmajor Siegfried von: 370 

Waldeseh: 250 

Walker, Maj. Gen. Walton H.: 36, 117, 122, 126 

29, 131, 196, 246, 249, 263. See also Corps, XX. 

Wallace, Pfc. Herman C.: 114n 

Wallach: 305 

Wallendorf: 99, 101, 103, 105-08, 112 

Walsum: 307 

Walther small arms factory: 378 

War economy, Allied: 7 

War economy, German: 7, 9, 479 

War production, German: 7, 9, 236-37, 294, 335, 

366, 392-93, 479 

Ward, Maj. Gen. Orlando: 435 

Wardin: 36-37 

Waters, Lt. Col. John K.: 281, 281n, 283, 419, 480 

Weapons, comparison of U.S. and German: 10-13, 

478-79. See also entries by weapon type. 

Weasel (cargo carrier M29) : 106 

Weather 

effect on air support operations: 24, 28-29, 31, 

38, 40, 44, 51, 65, 201-03, 253 

effect on armor operations: 30, 120, 201-02 

effect on ground operations: 29-32, 46, 50, 54, 

63, 125, 441, 468 

Weaver, Maj. Gen. William G.: 157, 165, 169. See 

also Infantry Division, 8th. 

Wehrmacht: 337, 385, 460. See also OB WEST; 

Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) ; 

Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) . Weidenbach: 201 

Weilburg: 348 

Weimar: 381-82, 384 

Weiskirchen: 245-46 

Weisse Elster River: 382, 393-95 

Weissenfels: 392-93 

Weisserstein: 58, 60, 62, 65, 67, 69, 204 

Welborn, Col. John C.: 352 

Wenck, General der Panzertruppen Walter: 381, 

390, 396, 399, 401-02, 405-06, 435, 444, 459- 

60, 465 

Werra River: 375-76, 379-80, 389 

Wesel: 55, 145, 175, 179-81, 183, 295-98, 300-04, 

308, 310-11, 313-14, 317-19, 325, 357, 460 

Weser River: 335, 338, 358, 375, 379, 400, 461 

Weser River crossings: 361, 380, 384-86, 389, 391 

Wesergebirge: 385, 400 

West Wall: 4, 19, 22, 36, 42, 57, 59-60, 478 

West Wall fortifications: 20, 58-59, 66, 68, 85-86, 

88, 99-100, 116, 129, 134, 199, 236-41, 243-45, 

252-53, 256, 258, 260, 262-63, 284, 321 

Westerhausen: 387 

Westerwald: 208 

Wettlingen: 114 

Wetzel, Pfc. Walter C.: 365n 

Weygand, Marshal Maxime: 474 

Weyland, Brig. Gen. Otto P.: 38 

White, Maj. Gen. Arthur A.: 252 

White, Brig. Gen. I. D.: 172, 386, 397-98. See also 

Armored Division, 2d. 
532 THE LAST OFFENSIVE 

White phosphorus: 130, 144, 153, 159-60, 216, 306, 

400 

Wied River: 233, 345-46 

Wiesbaden: 268-69, 272, 279, 290-93 

Wietersheim, Generalleutnant Wend von: 126, 467 

Wilkin, Cpl. Edward G.: 261n 

Will, 1st Lt. Walter J.: 361n 

Williams, Brig. Gen. Edward T.: 268 

Williams, Col. Laurin L.: 154 

Williams, Maj. Gen. Paul L.: 299 

Wiltingen: 128-29 

Wiltz River: 40, 49-50 

Winter, General der Gebirgstruppen August: 445 

Winterberg: 353-57, 359-62, 365, 368 

Wismar: 458, 464 

Wissembourg: 262-63 

Wissembourg Gap: 20, 237, 253-54 

Withdrawal operations, American: 120, 122-23, 

398-99, 417 

Withdrawal operations, German, See also Hitler, 

Adolf. 

Ardennes: 31-32, 39-41, 44, 50-54, 59 

Eifel and West Wall positions: 108, 239, 242-44, 

252, 256, 261 

Harz Mountains: 390, 404 

Netherlands: 339 

Rhine River: 189, 195, 195n, 203, 206, 210, 213- 

14, 221, 223, 237, 244, 248-49, 251, 257, 259-60, 

262-65, 268-69, 272, 279, 285-86, 292, 294, 302, 

349-50, 480 

Ruhr: 353-54 

southern Germany: 206, 411, 434 

Weser River: 338-39, 358 

Wittenberge: 379, 401, 458, 460 

Woergl: 474 

Woffelsbach: 73, 78-79 

Wofford, Capt. Paul O.: 276 

Wogan, Maj. Gen. John B.: 366-67. See also 

Armored Division, 13th. 

Wollersheim : 193 

World War I: 15-16, 22 

Worms: 237, 241, 258-59, 284-87, 289, 321, 347, 

407, 409, 412 

Worringen: 187-89 

Wuerzburg: 413-14, 418, 420, 422 

Wuppertal: 18, 363, 365-67, 370 

Wurm River: 136 

Wurzen: 448-50, 453, 455 

Wyche, Maj. Gen. Ira T.: 167, 173, 306, 308. See 

also Infantry Division, 79th. 

Wyman, Maj. Gen. Willard G.: 380. See also Infantry Division, 71st. 

Xanten: 171, 175, 177-79, 183, 295-96, 300, 303, 

306, 317 

Xanten Forest: 179-80 

“XYZ” supply plan: 326 

Yalta Conference: 335, 446 

Yank magazine: 334 

Youngblood, Capt. George L.: 177 

Zangen, General der Infanterie Gustav von: 26, 45, 

141-42, 154, 159, 163, 165-66, 173, 186, 195, 

202-03, 209-10, 226, 339, 345-46, 350, 353-54, 

356, 359, 370 

Zeitz: 382, 392-93 

Zerf: 131 

Zones of occupation: 321, 335, 342, 432-33, 446, 

476 

Zuelpich: 194, 223 

Zweibruecken: 253-54, 260-62 

I 
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