General Hodges reinforced the coup by rushing divisions of his III Corps under Major General John Millikin over the river. 9th Armored Division took advantage of a confusion in the German defense to seize the Ludendorff Railroad Bridge at Remagen. No American commander had really expected to capture an intact Rhine bridge, but on 7 March, a unit from the U. First Army secured the biggest prize of the campaign. By 24 March, German forces had been forced back across the Rhine. Only a relative handful escaped east across the river. Standing in place, the German defenders were destroyed in detail or cut off and forced to surrender. Adolf Hitler’s stubborn refusal to permit his armies to retreat or even maneuver contributed greatly to the subsequent German debacle. Patch’s Seventh Army, it began on 13 March. Mounted by Lieutenant General Alexander M. Operation UNDERTONE was the final stage of clearing the Rhineland, with the goal of removing German forces from the Saar and Palatinate. Ninth Army broke through the thinned defenses and advanced toward the Rhine. Launching Operation GRENADE on 23 February, after the Roer River flooding had receded, the U. First Army north of Patton likewise pressed the defenders ever closer to the Rhine. Steadily advancing through a heavily fortified German belt, the weary troops reached both objectives by the end of February. Middleton’s VIII Corps on to the Prum River. Patton, ignoring orders to halt his offensive, sent Major General Manton Eddy’s XII Corps toward Bitburg and Major General Troy H. However, having committed almost all their reserves against VERITABLE, the Germans could not hold back the Americans as the First and Third Armies involved in Operation LUMBERJACK began to penetrate the West Wall defenses. Ninth Army, and allowed the Germans to concentrate their reserves against the British and Canadians. When the Germans breached the Roer River dams before the Allies could seize them, the flooding of that river postponed Operation GRENADE, a supporting attack by the U. Despite the attackers’ greater numbers and air superiority, stubborn German resistance and poor weather slowed the advance. Infantry and tanks of the Canadian I and II Corps, reinforced by the British XXX Corps, assaulted the German West Wall (known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line)-entrenchments in and around the Reichswald State Forest. Montgomery’s attack in the north, Operation VERITABLE, began on 8 February. This latter attack began on 28 January, but the troops bogged down when confronted with poor weather and stiff German resistance. Bradley make an additional strike northeast from Saint Vith toward the Rhine. Hodges’s First Army to seize the Roer River dams in support of Montgomery’s northern thrust, he also let Lieutenant General Omar N. Ordering elements of Lieutenant General Courtney H. Patton Jr.’s Third Army to continue its drive toward the city of Trier and the Saar River basin. He also allowed Lieutenant General George S. Simpson’s Ninth Army under Montgomery’s command. Eisenhower, also wanted to occupy the Rhineland (the area of Germany west of the Rhine River) south of the Mosel River in order to protect Montgomery’s right flank and to provide territory for a secondary invasion of Germany through the Kassel-Frankfurt corridor.Įisenhower had pledged to Montgomery that his forces would make the primary thrust to the Rhine, and he left Lieutenant General William H. The supreme Allied commander in the west, General Dwight D. Montgomery’s 21st Army Group in the north, across the Rhine north of the Ruhr. Actually a series of offensives-Operations VERITABLE, GRENADE, LUMBERJACK, and UNDERTONE-the Rhineland Offensive was designed to drive the German army from the area north of the Mosel River in preparation for the main Allied invasion of Germany by Field Marshal Bernard L. Allied eastward campaign to reach and cross the Rhine River.
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