Countdown to Victory: March 1945

In this blog we’ll look at three allied assaults across the Rhine: one planned in excruciating detail and executed with, as they say, ‘all deliberate speed’; one planned on the back of an envelope and executed overnight; and one not planned at all, arising from an unexpected stroke of luck.

Crossing the Rhine—Context

The Allies invaded Normandy in June, 1944. After two months of fierce fighting, they were able to break out of Normandy in August and free France. Racing north, they freed Belgium and Luxembourg in September.

Then they made a mistake. General Montgomery, who was widely criticized for excessive caution, for never advancing until he had overwhelming strength, thus unnecessarily prolonging the campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy, decided on a high-risk airborne coup-de-main into Holland. Operation Market Garden, as it was called, led to an ignominious defeat and surrender of the British Airbourne Division at Arnhem in the campaign often referred to as ‘a bridge too far.’

As the Allies paused to recover, Hitler sensed weakness and launched a counterattack known as the Battle of the Bulge. It failed, but the cumulative effect of Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge was that the Allies had not advanced from September until March and were still on the wrong side of Germany’s great natural defense, the river Rhine.

Seven Allied armies were lined up on the west bank of the Rhine.

To the north, the 21^st Army Group under Montgomery consisted of the British 2^nd Army, the US 9^th Army, and the often overlooked but magnificent 1st Canadian Army. In the center, Omar Bradley’s 12^th US Army Group consisted of the US 1^st Army and the irrepressible George Patton’s 3^rd US Army. To the south, the US 6^th Army Group, which had invaded Vichy France from the Mediterranean and fought its way north, consisted of the US 7^th Army and the newly constituted 1^st French Army.

The French army, about 300,000 men strong, was a new creation. made up of French North African troops, the so-called pieds-noirs, and members of the FFI, former members of the French Resistance who were integrated into the army. (Many of the original 2-million-strong French army, defeated in 1940, had been taken to Germany as forced labor).

The Allied plan was that all 7 armies would attack across the Rhine in late March creating a 200-mile-long front the Germans could not possibly defend. The principal assault, involving three Allied armies and two airborne brigades, would be the 21^st AG’s Operation Plunder.

Crossing the Rhine—Remagen

The Ludendorff bridge at Remagen was a steel truss railroad bridge across the Rhine. Like all the Rhine bridges, it was scheduled for demolition by German engineers before it could be captured by the advancing Allies. On March 7^th, two weeks before the planned launch of Operation Plunder, the US 9^th Armored Division, part of Bradley’s US 1^st Army, unexpectedly broke through light enemy resistance to the western end of the bridge.

German engineers had prepared demolition charges but these failed when the engineers attempted to blow them.

Men of Company A, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion, ran across the bridge and captured the far end. In a furious firefight, the US soldiers tried to stop the German engineers from destroying the bridge while the engineers tried to get the charges to work. More American troops and tanks followed and pushed back the German defenders.

Both sides were in shock: the bridge was a key to unlock the German defense of the Rhine. Both sides had their forces concentrated to the north and south and had no plans to attack or defend in the Remagen area. No one knew how long the bridge would stand.

Bradley called Eisenhower who immediately ordered as many men as possible to cross the bridge, and the immediate construction of pontoon bridges and ferries in case the bridge collapsed. Troops and tanks crossed the bridge on a 24-hour nonstop basis while US engineers tried to keep it standing.

In the meantime the Germans tried everything in their arsenal to destroy the bridge, including bombing it with their new jet-engined Arado bombers, using frogmen to float mines down the river under cover of darkness, V2 ballistic missiles (11 fired, all missed,) and, most improbably of all, shelling it with their 600 mm Karl-Gerät super-heavy mortar.

Eventually, the bridge collapsed after 11 days on March 17^th, probably because of all the near misses. But by that time no less than three pontoon bridges had been constructed beside it and the American bridgehead across the Rhine was well supplied. The US 1^st Army had 5 divisions, amounting to over 125,000 men, across the Rhine.

Crossing of the Rhine—Oppenheim

The surprise capture of the bridge at Remagen did not alter the overall Allied plan for crossing the Rhine. The 21^st Army Group would execute Operation Plunder, drawing most German defenses, creating an opportunity for George Patton’s US 3^rd Army to slip across the Rhine to the south.

Montgomery’s plan called for a month of massive bombing attacks on towns and defenses to the east of the Rhine. Final preparations on the western side of the river were covered by a smoke screen lasting for days, and the assault itself was to be preceded by a 4,000-gun artillery bombardment.  Paratroops would land ahead of the assault forces crossing the river to interrupt German defenses.

The assault was planned for March 23^rd. Winston Churchill was scheduled to arrive to witness Montgomery’s triumph. Then, with the Germans focused on repelling the attack, Patton’s 3^rd Army would be able to cross to light resistance.

But George Patton sensed enemy weakness to the south, 200 miles from where Plunder was planned. On March 22^nd the 5^th Infantry Division of the 3^rd Army loaded into Mike boats and DUKWs (‘ducks’) without any preliminary bombardment, bombing, or smokescreen, and crossed the Rhine. Within 24 hours 6 battalions were across with the loss of only 28 men.

The Germans had been caught completely off guard—and so had Montgomery, who found he had been beaten across the Rhine by Patton.

This, I think, was the third time since D Day that Patton’s audacity reshaped the battlefield; first when he raced out of the Cherbourg peninsular and caught the Germans defending Normandy in the Falaise Pocket; second when he pivoted and relieved the 101^st Airborne in Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge; and now here at Oppenheim.

In my new book, Triumph and Tragedy, which is available on VE Day in May, I imagine a scene at SHAEF when the news of Patton’s crossing is reported.

Crossing of the Rhine—Plunder

Finally, you might well say, Montgomery launched Operation Plunder on March 23^rd. In fairness, it must be said that Montgomery’s meticulous planning, and his insistence on overwhelming force, proved to be very effective. The plan was executed exactly as intended.

German resistance was fierce but by this stage of the war the Wehrmacht was in tatters. The Allies faced no more than 200,000 enemy combatants of whom many were ‘Volkssturm’ draftees between the ages of 16 and 60, and Hitler Youth units. The Germans had at most 100 working tanks in the area.

Montgomery’s belief in superior force can be illustrated by the preparatory bombing of Wesel, a town of 25,000 people on the east bank of the Rhine. A cumulative total of over 3,000 tons of bombs were dropped by the RAF in six different raids. In addition, the town was bombarded by 3,000 guns immediately before the attack. As we can see in the image, the town had ceased to exist.

Perhaps remembering that there would be an election as soon as the war was over, and that favorable publicity always helps, Churchill decided to cross the Rhine himself. It is interesting to note in this image that he has crossed in an American Mike boat and is leading 9^th US Army troops rather than the British 2^nd Army.

Lest we forget

We think of the Rhine crossings as army assaults, supported by air operations, but let us not forget the contributions of the US Navy Construction Battalion (Sea Bee) units, the US Coast Guards, and Engineer Combat Companies, who built the pontoon bridges and the ferries and provided the assault craft, from troop-carrying ‘Mike boats’ to heavy 80-ton Rhino pontoon ferries.

To me, the logistics of bringing bridges 500 miles from Normandy by truck and then successfully deploying them across the treacherous currents of the Rhine—often under fire—in two days or less, is among the greatest accomplishments of the European campaign.

Meanwhile…

With the western Allies across the Rhine, and the Russian armies on the Oder, it was clearly just a question of time before Nazi Germany would collapse.

Unfortunately, on the other side of the world the war with Japan was far from over. In our next blog we will consider Operation Meeting House, which took place on March 9^th, two days after the Lunendorff Bridge fell so unexpectedly into Allied hands.