THE BATTLE FOR THE RHINE

THE LAND WAR REACHES GERMANY IN THE WEST

Although the German armies had been conclusively beaten in the Ardennes, and began 1945 at great disadvantage both psychologically and logistically, Hitler did not see the German situation in that light. As always, he viewed any notion of strategic withdrawal as an admission of failure and defeat, and therefore, against all advice, ordered that Germany should stand and fight West of the Rhine rather than follow the course of withdrawal and regrouping to its East that common sense and most of his General Staff urged upon him.

Recognising that continued German resistance without withdrawal was to characterise the next part of the drive to crush Germany in the West, General Eisenhower planned the final phase of the Allied assault that had brought him from Normandy to Germany in three stages. Always in favour of the "broad front" approach to Allied planning, he ordered that, as phase one, the Allied armies must first destroy the German hold on all positions West of the Rhine, and then (and only then) launch phase two by crossing the river to establish bridgeheads. Phase three was to consist of two simultaneous thrusts. The first, by Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group, which now, it should be remembered, included the US 9th Army, would drive North from Duisberg to skirt North of the Ruhr industrial region and capture the North German plain. This was to be the principal assault, and would occupy 35 of the available 85 divisions. The second thrust, using the 25 divisions of Bradley's 12th Army Group, was to push South of the Ruhr from the Mainz/Frankfurt area North-East to Kassel. The overall objective was to effect "a massive double envelopment of the Ruhr to be followed by a great thrust to join up with the Russians". The remaining 25 divisions of the Allied western armies were to hold the Southern Karlsruhe/Basle and Bonn/Bingen areas of the Rhine which offered minimal opportunities for large scale assault crossings.

There was considerable British disagreement with this plan, despite the fact that it gave Montgomery and the British and Canadian Armies the major opportunity to shine, and relegated Bradley's command to that of supporting the success of a commander whom he had come to loathe. The British General Staff believed that Eisenhower did not have the strength to mount more than one successful and crushing attack across the Rhine, and contended that that assault should properly be in the North and against the Ruhr. Perhaps, when Brooke had floated this criticism at the end of 1944, it was justified, but by the time the dispute came to be decided, in January 1945, events had proved Eisenhower to be right. The Russians were about to advance to the River Oder; Hitler, believing that he had "regained the initiative" in the Ardennes, and could afford to relax a little in the West, had transferred the ten divisions of the 6th Panzerarmee to the Hungarian front; and the desperate fuel shortage that afflicted every aspect of German planning had virtually grounded the Luftwaffe . The defences on the Rhine were a pale shadow of what they had formerly been.

The Colmar Pocket

While this argument was being fought out, the 21st and 12th Army Groups were almost stationary, mopping up the last vestiges of the Ardennes offensive, counting the cost and preparing for the next stage of the battle. The 6th Army Group, made up of the 1st French Army and the US 7th Army, was far to the south and was fighting fiercely to eliminate a German push to recapture Strasbourg and the plain of Alsace. Overnight on New Year's Eve, Heinrich Himmler, as commander of Army Group "Oberrhein" had made his bid for military fame by launching Operation Nordwind with the objective of reaching the Saverne Gap and cutting General Patch's US 7th Army in two. Patch was in a difficult position, having been obliged in December to extend his line to cover the gap caused by General Patton having to head North for the Ardennes. When the German attack came, the 7th Army had only its seven divisions to defend a 90-mile front against eight German divisions including the 21st Panzer and an SS Panzergrenadier Division. SHAEF was inclined to order strategic withdrawal, abandoning Strasbourg and the Alsace plain until General Devers 6th Army Group could be adequately reinforced for a counterattack. But General Juin, and General de Lattre de Tassigny of the French 1st Army, thought otherwise. They refused to contemplate a French Army withdrawing under any conditions to surrender newly liberated French territory back to the Germans, and earned the support of General de Gaulle for their stand.

On the night of January 2nd/3rd, General de Lattre moved his redoubtable 3rd Algerian Division up to hold Strasbourg. On the 6th, the German 19th Army suddenly launched an offensive from the Colmar bridgehead that they had stubbornly held on the West bank of the Rhine, and pushed to within 13 miles of Strasbourg on the Erstein Heights. The battle around Strasbourg raged for two weeks in a series of largely fruitless attacks and counterattacks that served to prove only the determination of the French Army and the inability of Himmler to control operations from the far side of the Rhine. By January 26th, the German Army had accepted that it had failed to retake Strasbourg; General Wiese was relieved of his command, thereby "carrying the can" for the incompetence of his superior, who had earlier failed even as a chicken farmer, and Himmler's disaster was rewarded in true Hitlerian style with a promotion for the Reichsfuhrer SS to command the crucial Army Group "Vistula" .

In the latter days of the battle around Strasbourg, the French had set about the literal interpretation of General de Lattre's order of January 15th by which he had instructed his army to "Leave the Germans no chance of escape ".... Free Colmar undamaged .... strangle the pocket alongside the Rhine where it receives its supplies .... around Brisach.' Substantial reinforcements were provided by SHAEF for the French operation to strangle the Colmar pocket. In addition to the US 3rd Division, the French were given the US 28th Division and the US 12th Armoured Division, plus the French 2nd Armoured Division under General Leclerc which was also moved down from Strasbourg for the operation. All these reinforcements brought General de Lattre's command up to twelve strong, well-equipped divisions, of which the 3rd Algerian, being fully occupied around Strasbourg, was to take no part in the Colmar action. Thus the Allied forces at Colmar actually amounted to eleven divisions.

Facing them were seven German divisions of the 19th Army, stretched along a bridgehead of 100 miles West of the Rhine. But they were divisions in little more than name, with between 4,500 and 7,000 men per division, and a serious shortage of ammunition. The Germans did, however, have superior armour, and much greater artillery firepower, being blessed with the formidable 88mm anti-tank gun. The weather was also on the side of static defence - first it snowed, then it thawed, and the Allied forces were obliged to advance first in bitterly cold conditions, then through a quagmire of mud.

From January 20th, when the attack began, until January 27th, when the US 3rd Division finally reached the Colmar Canal, the offensive was one of the slowest and most bitterly fought of the European campaign. On the 27th, General Rasp, commanding the 19th Army, was authorised by OKW to pull his badly battered army back over the Rhine, but, newly reinforced again with the US 75th Division and US XXI Corps (whose commander, Major-General Milburn, now took command of all US troops engaged in the Colmar offensive) the French 1st Army set about occupying Colmar itself and encircling the German defenders in the pocket. On February 5th, the French and American troops joined up, and by so doing trapped approximately a quarter of the 19th Army. When, on February 9th, the 19th escaped back across the Rhine, they left behind over 22,000 prisoners, 80 guns and 70 tanks. Nonetheless, although more than a quarter of his manpower was left in Allied hands, General Rasp had managed to take back to the Fatherland 1,500 guns, 60 armoured troop carriers and tanks and 7,000 other motor vehicles, in itself a considerable military achieveent.

The February Offensive

With the Colmar pocket cleared, the political hot potato of Strasbourg safely removed from the German oven, and the Allied front as tidy as could be expected, even by Eisenhower, the stage was set for the great advance from the Westwall< - the Siegfried Line - to and beyond the Rhine. Although the German frontier had been crossed already by the Allies at several points, it remained broadly true that, at the beginning of February 1945 the Allied armies were ranged along the Reich's borders with (from North to South) Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. Only in the vicinity of Aachen (Aix-la-Chappelle) had the Westwall< been significantly and permanently breached.

Early on the morning of February 8th 1945, before first light, the offensive opened in the North of the line with a bombardment by 1,400 guns of the Canadian 1st Army. On the receiving end of this crippling fire was the German 84th Division, which had been reassured repeatedly by General von Blaskowitz, the commander of Army Group H, that the Allies in general, and the reputedly cautious Montgomery in particular, would not be foolhardy enough to attack in this sector. Both von Blaskowitz and OKH, reputedly all the way up to Hitler himself, had decided that Montgomery would decline a fight across marshy ground, between a flood on one side and the Reichswald Forest on the other. Just how wrong they were was proved at 10.30am, when, on a front of only seven miles between the Maas and the Waal, near the Dutch/German border, the augmented British XXX Corps attacked. Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks put five divisions into the first wave of the attack and retained two, including the Guards Armoured Division, in reserve. By the end of the first day, the Germans had lost 1,300 men captured and were collapsing.

By February 13th, after days of fierce and bloody fighting, the Canadian 1st Army had moved on to Kleve, on the German side of the border, having finished the mopping up of the Reichswald. At Gennep, as reinforcements for the Canadians arrived in the form of the British 52nd Division and the 11th Armoured Division, General Schlemm, the commander of the German 1st Parachute Army, stepped up German resistance to the developing Allied pressure. He moved two infantry divisions and a Panzer division from further South, thereby balancing the Allied reinforcements. The advance came almost to a stop, some 15 miles from its jumping-off point.

It would, however, be quite wrong to assume that it had in any way failed. For Montgomery had once again played the card that had been so successful in Normandy, when the British 2nd Army at Caen had drawn the enemy's reinforcements in advance of the American attack on the western side of the beach-head. By forcing Schlemm to concentrate the German forces against the Canadians, he had reduced the resistance to Operation `Grenade', the attack by which the US 9th Army would cross the Roer and advance to the Rhine at Dusseldorf. `Grenade' was now due for February 23rd after being postponed from February 10th because of the massive flooding of the Eifel area caused by the German engineers opening the valves on the Roer dams as they retreated. On February 22nd, as a prelude to the American attack, one of the largest air bombing offensives ever mounted was launched against Germany's communications network to reduce the German army's ability to bring up supplies and reinforcements, and to increase the confusion that was already evident in the German command structure.

Operation "Grenade"

Next day, in the small hours of the morning, the US artillery opened its bombardment of the German positions on the Roer, defended by the German 15th Army. Quickly, the Americans took Duren and Julich, and, despite frantic German movement of the reinforcements just sent to Schlemm back southwards, the US push continued indomitably to positions near Erkolenz on February 27th, and to Rheydt on March 1st. On the US 9th Army's left, Major-General Anderson's XVI Corps made similarly rapid advances towards Roermond and Venlo, and on the right XIX Corps approached Neuss, just across the Rhine from Dusseldorf. The pressure on General Schlemm was tremendous, and he was ordered by OKH to pull back across the Rhine - itself no mean feat in the circumstances. It is a tribute to his skill and generalship that he managed successfully to set up rearguard actions at Xanten and Rheinberg which caused sufficient delay to enable his engineers to demolish the bridges after most of his army had crossed the river.

Now the US 9th Army and the Canadian 1st Army were able to turn North and South respectively, to link up at Wesel and form a continuous front along the Rhine. The whole operation since February 8th in the 21st Army Group sector had lost the Germans 53,000 prisoners, but the Canadians and British alone had in the same time suffered losses of over 15,500 killed and wounded. The Americans fared rather better.

On March 6th came another major landmark in the defeat of Hitler's Germany as the US VII Corps entered Cologne, thereby completing the Allied chain from Nijmegen in Holland to Cologne, some 100 miles further upstream. South of Cologne, the German 5th Panzerarmee was facing both the US 1st and the US 3rd Armies, and was losing ground fast. General Patton's presence in the battle had not been intended by SHAEF, and was due entirely to Patton's own hotheaded and impetuous way of defeating enemies before he had been told to - he had pushed forward contrary to orders during January and February. Nonetheless, his presence hastened the defeat of Colonel-General Harpe's Panzerarmee significantly.

Having taken Cologne, the US Army did not rest on its laurels, for the successes against the German 15th Army made it possible for some more rapid advances to be snatched before the German army regrouped, insofar as it was now able to do so. From Cologne on March 7th, VII Corps set off to take Bonn, and III Corps set out to capture the crossings over the Ahr. At noon on that day, the intrepid Brigadier-General Hoge, commanding Combat Group B of the US 9th Armoured Division within III Corps, heard the remarkable news that the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen had not been blown. Recognising the enormous opportunity that capturing this bridge intact would present to the Allies, he went against his orders, and raced to Remagen. At 4pm that day, as his US troops attempted to cross the bridge, the German defenders attempted to explode the charges that were set along it, but failed. The Americans were across the Rhine, and Sergeant Alex Drabik became the first US serviceman to set foot East of the river. The German Major who had been supposed to blow the bridge, and two of his subordinates, were shot on Hitler's personal orders.

The Americans were more forgiving of General Hoge's temporary insubordination, and within twenty-four hours had capitalised on his magnificent stroke by putting 8,000 US troops into the bridge-head East of the Rhine. Hitler vented his wrath by launching air attacks, sending the 11th Panzer Division from Bonn, ordering artillery bombardments and even by commanding that a V2 rocket strike be launched against the bridge, but did not manage to knock it down until March 17th, by which time the Americans had not only built another bridge nearby, but had also got four divisions including one armoured division dug in on the eastern side. The 11th Panzer had been unable to rectify the situation mainly because it had only 60 tanks, 5,000 men, 30 guns and almost no gasoline.

Further South, General Patton's 3rd Army, having lost III Corps by its transfer to the US 1st Army, was still made up of 12 divisions (three of them armoured) organised as three Corps. By the end of February, these forces had eliminated most of the centre of the Siegfried line, and had moved forward to take Saarburg against the extremely determined resistance of the German 7th Army of General Brandenberger, which, on March 1st, collapsed for lack of supplies. Two days later on the 3rd, the 5th Division reached Kyllburg and crossed the River Kyll. This enabled the 4th Division, on March 4th, to rush forward to Daun, and finding the route relatively lightly defended, to push on to reach the Rhine near Koblenz on March 6th. On March 11th, the US 11th Armoured Division became the first unit of the US 3rd Army to join up with the US 1st Army on the Rhine. Patton's 3rd Army had once more reinforced its reputation for speed, and had achieved its additional kudos with losses of only 3,650 killed and 1,374 missing between January 29th and March 12th.

During the following week the action shifted to the US XII Corps under Major-General Eddy and to XX Corps commanded by Major-General Walker. On March 14th, the 4th and 11th Armoured Divisions of XII Corps were set on their way from Treis towards the Rhine, the 4th advancing 32 miles in its first 48 hours and becoming involved in a major pitched battle with the 2nd Panzer Division. After some reinforcement, Major-General Gaffey overcame that problem, and by March 19th was between Mainz and Worms. On the 21st, the 4th occupied Worms, the 90th Division had taken Mainz and XX Corps was pushing headlong for Ludwigshafen.

Further South, the US 7th Army faced an uphill struggle against the German 1st Army. Between March 15th when their assault began, and March 19th, progress was slow, and Major-General Brooks, commanding VI Corps had great difficulty in breaking through a remorselessly defended part of the Westwall . On March 18th the French General de Monsabert was given command of a task force to head for and take Speyer. By March 24th he had reached Maximiliansau, across the Rhine from Karlsruhe, and General Patch had taken Landau.

Two nights previously, General Patton, this time with General Bradley's full approval, had crossed the Rhine near Oppenheim during the night of March 22/23rd, and by daybreak had almost 5,000 men on the East bank of the Rhine for the loss of only eight men killed. To Bradley's immense satisfaction, the Americans were, after all, across the Rhine before Montgomery's British and Canadian troops, but Montgomery was not to be far behind, and, when he crossed, he crossed in style.

That great crossing of the Rhine, under the eye of Winston Churchill, will in this book be the prologue to the last act of the German tragedy. Until then, we must leave the Rhine and return to the Eastern Front.