![]() Citizens of Hitler’s Third Reich also could not escape the horrors of war. In the east, decimated German units retreated in the face of Soviet assaults on a front that stretched from Yugoslavia to Lithuania. On March 7, units of the American 9th Armored Division captured the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen and established a bridgehead over the Rhine River, the largest remaining obstacle confronting American forces in their drive into Germany. In the west, US forces contained and repelled a German counteroffensive in the Battle of the Bulge. Allied casualties amounted to some 23,000 men.In the spring of 1945, German forces were reeling from a series of devastating defeats on the eastern and western fronts. German forces west of the Rhine during operations Veritable, Blockbuster and Grenade lost 90,000 men, of which more than 50,000 became prisoners of war (POW). By then, other Allied forces were also close to the Rhine. The Ninth Army was finally able to cross the river on 23 February. Those forces comprised the 15th Army, commanded by Gustav-Adolf von Zangen, and the 1st Parachute Army, commanded by Alfred Schlemm. He ordered him to fight where his forces stood. 12th Army Group could capture them in time to stop the flooding.ĭuring the two weeks that the river was flooded, Hitler would not allow Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt to withdraw behind the Rhine, arguing that it would only delay the inevitable fight. It had been anticipated that the Germans would try to do this, and that General Omar Bradley's U.S. This stopped the Americans from crossing as planned. However, once the Canadians had advanced, the Germans opened the sluice gates of upstream dams ( Rur Dam and Urft Dam). Ninth Army-operating under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group since the Battle of the Bulge-was to cross the Roer and link up with the Canadian First Army, under Lieutenant-General Harry Crerar, coming from the Nijmegen area of the Netherlands in Operation Veritable, which had started at 05:00 on 8 February. ![]() Ninth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General William Hood Simpson, in February 1945, which marked the beginning of the Allied invasion of Germany. During World War II, Operation Grenade was the crossing of the Roer river between Roermond and Düren by the U.S. ![]()
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