Ruhr Pocket The Ruhr Pocket was a battle of encirclement that took place in late March and early April 1945 , near the end of World War II , in the Ruhr Area of Germany . It marked the end of major organized resistance on Nazi Germany ' s Western Front , as more than 300 , 000 troops were taken prisoner . Background . In March 1945 , Allied Forces crossed the Rhine river . South of the Ruhr , General Omar Bradley ' s U . S . 12th Army Group ' s pursuit of the disintegrating German army resulted in the capture of the Ludendorff Bridge across the Rhine at Remagen by the U . S . First Army . Bradley and his subordinates quickly exploited the crossing made on March 7 , 1945 , and expanded the bridge head until the bridge collapsed 10 days later . North of the Ruhr on March 23 , 1945 , Field Marshal Montgomery ' s British 21st Army Group launched Operation Plunder and crossed the Rhine at Rees and Wesel . The battle . Having crossed the Rhine , both Army Groups fanned out into the German hinterland . In the south , while Third Army headed east , the First Army headed northeast and formed the southern pincer of the Ruhr envelopment . In the north , the U . S . Ninth Army , which since the Battle of the Bulge had been assigned to Montgomery ' s British 21st Army Group , headed southeast forming the northern pincer , while the rest of 21st Army Group went east and northeast . Facing the Allied armies were the remnants of a shattered " Wehrmacht " , a few SS training units , and large numbers of " Volkssturm " ( militia units for aging men , including some World War I veterans ) and " Hitlerjugend " ( Hitler Youth ) units , composed of boys as young as 12 . Lead elements of the two Allied pincers met on April 1 , 1945 , near Lippstadt . By April 4 , the encirclement was completed and the Ninth Army reverted to the command of Bradley ' s 12th Army Group . Within the Ruhr Pocket about 430 , 000 German soldiers of Army Group B , which comprised 21 divisions of the Wehrmacht , and millions of civilians were trapped in cities heavily damaged by numerous bombing s . While the main operations headed further toward central and northern Germany , American forces concentrated on the pocket , taking it section by section . On April 12 , 1945 , the U . S . 1st and 9th Armies divided the area coming from the south ; the smaller , eastern part surrendered the next day . The western part continued a weak resistance until April 18 and April 21 , 1945 . Rather than surrender and violate his personal oath to Adolf Hitler that he would fight to the death , the commander , Field Marshal Walter Model , committed suicide in a forest south of the city of Duisburg . German anti - Nazi resistance groups in Düsseldorf attempted to surrender the city to the Allied armies in the so - called " Aktion Rheinland " in order to spare Düsseldorf from further destruction . However , SS units were able to crush the resistance , and executed a number of those involved . Executions of foreign labourers , political prisoners , etc . by the Gestapo had already been occurring since February . The act of resistance did accomplish a cancellation of further bombings on the city by another 800 bombers , through contact with the Americans . Düsseldorf was captured by Americans on 17 April without any notable fighting . The surviving 325 , 000 German soldiers from the Ruhr Pocket , and some civilians , were imprisoned in a complex of temporary prison enclosures known as " Rheinwiesenlager " ( in English , Rhein meadow camps ) .