During the first two acts of the month-long drama before the Rhine, I required Devers’ army group, except for the reduction of the Colmar pocket, to remain essentially on the defensive. In the meantime we had built up his American Seventh Army, under General Patch, to the unusual strength of fourteen divisions, not including one French division, the 3d Algerian. The stage was set for the third act.
Bradley was poised to strike at the nose of the triangular salient and at its northern base; Devers was ready to crush in its southern side.
The plan called for the American Seventh Army to launch a powerful assault in the direction of Worms. It was to penetrate the Siegfried Line and seize a bridgehead over the Rhine. Bradley was to launch an attack across the lower reaches of the Moselle so as to thrust deep into the rear of the forces facing the Seventh Army. Thus we expected by converging attacks to cut off the German forces and prevent their retreat across the Rhine. At the same time that these two attacks were launched at the base of the salient the nose would be struck by the right flank of the Third Army.27
The attack began March 15. The southern and western attacks met stiff opposition in the enemy’s strong defenses but made good progress, so much so that the entire German attention seemed centered on these two great attacks. This made the assault of the XII Corps, across the lower Moselle, very effective. The corps began crossing the river March 14 and during the entire operation never met heavy and organized resistance. This may have been because the Germans expected the corps to push northward down the Rhine, to join the forces east of the river in the Remagen bridgehead. In any event the Germans were completely surprised when the XII Corps leaped straight southward in one of the war’s most dramatic advances, to strike deeply into the heart of the Saar defenses.28
The enemy position quickly became hopeless. All around the perimeter of the salient the Americans battered their way forward while Eddy’s XII Corps effectively blocked almost every possible avenue of escape. Patton did not even pause when his forces reached the Rhine, but threw Major General Stafford Irwin’s 5th Division across the river without formal preparation of any kind. Irwin’s losses were negligible and on March 23 his division was well established in this second Allied bridgehead.29
Mopping up in the Saar was speedily accomplished and by March 25 all organized resistance west of the Rhine had ended.
All these operations were carried out in the now familiar pattern of air-ground partnership. Our powerful air force ranged far and wide and attacked important targets en masse, almost paralyzing the German power to maneuver and destroying quantities of vital supplies and equipment. While the weather was not ideal for air operations, it was never sufficiently bad to ground the air force completely.
On Washington’s Birthday the Allied air forces had staged an operation on such a vast scale as to be almost unique, even in an area where battle-front sorties had sometimes run as high as well over 10,000 in a single day. The operation was called Clarion and its purpose was to deliver one gigantic blow against the transportation system of Germany, with specific targets specially selected so as to occasion the greatest possible damage and the maximum amount of delay in their repair. Nine thousand aircraft, coming from bases in England, France, Italy, Belgium, and Holland, took part in the attack, and the targets were located in almost every critical area of Germany. Reaction was weak; the Luftwaffe was apparently unable to present an effective defense because of the widespread nature of the blow. It was a most imaginative and successful operation and stood as one of the highlights in the long air campaign to destroy the German warmaking power.
One of the notable features of the late winter campaign was the extraordinary conformity of developments to plans. Normally, in a great operation involving such numbers of troops over such vast fronts, enemy reaction and unforeseen developments compel continuous adjustment of plan. This one was an exception. The precision was due primarily to the great Allied air and ground strength; secondly to the fighting qualities of the troops and the skill of their platoon, battalion, and divisional leaders; and thirdly to the growing discouragement, bewilderment, and confusion among the defenders. Part of the price of the Battle of the Bulge was paid off by Hitler in the crushing defeats he suffered in February and March 1945.
All troops went into battle with orders to seize a bridgehead over the Rhine whenever the slightest opportunity presented itself, and all were alerted to the remote possibility of seizing a standing bridge. Our good fortune at Remagen hastened the end of Germany but had no real effect upon the battles then raging west of the river.
One slight change in plans occurred during the Saar battle. The boundary between Bradley’s and Devers’ army groups ran directly through the battlefield. This was deliberately arranged so as to obtain the full converging power of the Seventh and Third Armies on that stronghold. As the battle developed it became possible for Patton’s Third Army to move against objectives in Patch’s Seventh Army zone that Devers found it impossible to engage. Happening to be on the spot at the moment, I authorized appropriate boundary adjustments, specifying particularly close interarmy liaison. This involved also the transfer of an armored division from the Seventh to the Third Army.30 The insignificance of this slight change illustrates the accuracy with which staffs had calculated the probabilities.
During the month-long campaign our captures of German prisoners averaged 10,000 per day. This meant that the equivalent of twenty full divisions had been subtracted from the German Army, entirely aside from normal casualties in killed and wounded. The enemy suffered great losses in equipment and supplies, and in important areas of manufacture and sources of raw materials.31
We had by this time a logistic and administrative organization capable of handling such numbers of prisoners and these captives interfered only temporarily with troop maneuvers and offensives. We had come a long way from the time in Tunisia when the sudden capture of 275,000 Axis prisoners caused me rather ruefully to remark to my operations officers, Rooks and Nevins: “Why didn’t some staff college ever tell us what to do with a quarter of a million prisoners so located at the end of a rickety railroad that it’s impossible to move them and where guarding and feeding them are so difficult?”
By March 24 there was in the Remagen bridgehead an American army of three full corps, poised, ready to strike in any direction. Farther to the south the Third Army had made good a crossing of the Rhine and there was now in that region no hostile strength to prevent our establishing further bridgeheads almost at will.
Just to the north of the Remagen bridgehead ran the Sieg River, which flanked the Ruhr region on the south. So vital was the safety of the Ruhr to the German warmaking capacity that the enemy hastily assembled along the Sieg all of the remaining forces that he could spare from other threatened areas in the west, because the German assumed that we would strike directly against the Ruhr from Remagen.32
In this situation Hitler resorted to his old practice of changing senior commanders: Von Rundstedt was relieved from command, destined to take no further part in the war. Von Rundstedt, whom we always considered the ablest of the German generals, had been in command in the west when the landings were made June 6. Unable to drive the Allies back into the ocean, as ordered by Hitler, he had been relieved within three weeks after the landing and replaced by Von Kluge. When the latter fared no better than his predecessor Hitler again determined to make a change and called Von Rundstedt back into action. We understood at the time that the immediate cause of this second transfer was a belief that Von Kluge had participated in the July 20 plot against Hitler’s life.
Hitler now determined to bring Field Marshal von Kesselring up from Italy.
Chapter 20
ASSAULT AND
ENCIRCLEMENT
WHILE MONTGOMERY, ON THE NORTH, WAS waging the first of the February and March battles for the destruction of the German forces before the Rhine, additional Canadian and British strength began transferring from the Mediterranean to the Twenty-first Army Gro
up. The move was called Operation Goldflake, and involved a Canadian corps from Italy and a British division from the Middle East. A large proportion of these troops landed at Marseille and cut across the entire network of Allied communications to reach their position on the northern flank. The difficult move was handled smoothly and skillfully by the staffs. No interference with front-line supply and maintenance occurred. Thus while Bradley and Devers, farther south, were delivering the blows that freed the west bank of the Rhine, Montgomery, in the north, could count on early reinforcement as he completed his preparations for forcing a crossing of the river.
Montgomery was always a master in the methodical preparation of forces for a formal, set-piece attack. In this case he made the most meticulous preparations because we knew that along the front just north of the Ruhr the enemy had his best remaining troops, including portions of the First Paratroop Army.
His assault was planned on a front of four divisions, two in the Twenty-first Army Group and two in the attached Ninth Army. Supporting these divisions was an airborne attack by the American 17th Airborne Division and the British 6th Airborne Division. Normal use of airborne forces was to send them into battle prior to the beginning of ground attack so as to achieve maximum surprise and create confusion among defending forces before the beginning of the ground assault. In this instance Montgomery planned to reverse the usual sequence. He decided to make the river crossing under cover of darkness, to be followed the next morning by the airborne attack. It was also normal to drop airborne forces at a considerable distance in rear of the enemy’s front lines, where their landing would presumably meet little immediate opposition and so give them time to organize themselves to overrun headquarters, block movement of reserves, and create general havoc. But in this operation the two divisions were to drop close to the front lines, merely far enough back so that they would not be within the zone of our own artillery fire. From those positions they were to wreck the enemy’s artillery organization and participate directly in the tactical battle. Elaborate arrangements were made for the use of smoke to provide artificial concealment for the river crossing and a great array of guns was assembled to support it.1
The Rhine was a formidable military obstacle, particularly so in its northern stretches. It was not only wide but treacherous, and even the level of the river and the speed of its currents were subject to variation because the enemy could open dams along the great river’s eastern tributaries. Special reconnaissance and warning detachments were set up to guard against this threat. Because of the nature of the obstacle the crossing resembled an assault against a beach, except that the troops, instead of attacking from ship to shore, were carried into the battle from shore to shore.
Study of conditions indicated the great desirability of naval participation in the attack. We needed vessels of sufficient size to transport tanks with the leading assault waves, and so the Navy began the transfer to the front of landing boats known as LCMs and LCV(P)s. Part of these were brought up by waterways but many of them had to be hauled over the roads of northern Europe. Special trailers were constructed for the purpose and these small ships, some of them 45 feet in length and 14 feet wide, were successfully transported overland for participation in the attack.
The Twenty-first Army Group’s organic strength when the assault began was fifteen divisions. With the two airborne divisions and Simpson’s Ninth Army there were twenty-nine divisions and seven separate brigades under Montgomery’s operational command that day.2 Not all of these, however, could immediately be committed to the eastward thrust, since Montgomery had to protect his long left flank, stretching westward along the Rhine River to the North Sea. Additional Empire troops, from the Mediterranean, were on the way to join him.
The assault, on the night of March 23–24, was preceded by a violent artillery bombardment. On the front of the two American divisions two thousand guns of all types participated. General Simpson and I found a vantage point in an old church tower from which to witness the gunfire. Because the batteries were distributed on the flat plains on the western bank of the Rhine every flash could be seen. The din was incessant. Meanwhile infantry assault troops were marching up to the water’s edge to get into the boats. We joined some of them and found the troops remarkably eager to finish the job. There is no substitute for a succession of great victories in building morale. Nevertheless, as we walked along I fell in with one young soldier who seemed silent and depressed.
“How are you feeling, son?” I asked.
“General,” he said, “I’m awful nervous. I was wounded two months ago and just got back from the hospital yesterday. I don’t feel so good!”
“Well,” I said to him, “you and I are a good pair then, because I’m nervous too. But we’ve planned this attack for a long time and we’ve got all the planes, the guns, and airborne troops we can use to smash the Germans. Maybe if we just walk along together to the river we’ll be good for each other.”
“Oh,” he said, “I meant I was nervous; I’m not any more. I guess it’s not so bad around here.” And I knew what he meant.
Our preparations for the crossing north of the Ruhr had been so deliberately and thoroughly made that the enemy knew what was coming. We anticipated strong resistance, since we would achieve surprise only by the timing and strength of the assault. In particular we thought that the enemy would have a great number of guns trained on the river and the eastern banks and would attempt to stop our troops at the water’s edge with gunfire.
This kind of resistance, however, was not encountered. The two American divisions making the assault on the Ninth Army front, the 30th and the 79th, suffered a total of only thirty-one casualties during the actual crossing. The divisions were under the command of General Anderson of the XVI Corps.3
Throughout the remainder of the night we received a series of encouraging reports. Everywhere the landings appeared completely successful. We were encouraged to believe that we could very quickly achieve such an eastward advance that the communications leading into the Ruhr would be cut.
With the arrival of daylight I went to a convenient hill from which to witness the arrival of the airborne units, which were scheduled to begin their drop at ten o’clock. The airborne troops were carried to the assault in a total of 1572 planes and 1326 gliders; 889 fighter planes escorted them during the flight, and 2153 other fighters provided cover over the target area and established a defensive screen to the eastward.4
Fog and the smoke of the battlefield prevented a complete view of the airborne operation but I was able to see some of the action. A number of our planes were hit by anti-aircraft, generally, however, only after they had dropped their loads of paratroopers. As they swung away from the battle area they seemed to come over a spot where anti-aircraft fire was particularly accurate. Those that were struck fell inside our own lines, and in nearly every case the crews succeeded in saving themselves by taking to their parachutes. Even so, our loss in planes was far lighter than we had calculated. Operation Varsity, the name given to the airborne phase of this attack, was the most successful airborne operation we carried out during the war.5
During the morning I met the Prime Minister with Field Marshal Brooke. Mr. Churchill always seemed to find it possible to be near the scene of action when any particularly important operation was to be launched. On that morning he was delighted, as indeed were all of us. He exclaimed over and over, “My dear General, the German is whipped. We’ve got him. He is all through.” The Prime Minister was merely voicing what all of us felt and were telling each other. It was on that morning also that Field Marshal Brooke expressed his own tremendous pleasure that the operations of February and March had been carried through as planned by SHAEF.6
About noon of March 24 it was necessary for me to rush down to Bradley’s headquarters to confer on important phases of his own operations. After I left, the Prime Minister persuaded the local commander to take him across the Rhine in an LCM. He undoubtedly derived an intense satisfaction from pu
tting his foot on the eastern bank of Germany’s traditional barrier. Possibly he felt the act was symbolic of the final defeat of an enemy who had forced Britain’s back to the wall five years before. However, had I been present he would never have been permitted to cross the Rhine that day.
As was normal with us, the air force participated intensively in the attack. For a number of days preceding March 23 we placed a continuous air bombardment upon a wide variety of targets in the area. Chief among these targets were enemy airfields, with particular attention given every field from which we believed the Germans could operate a jet plane. Starting on March 21, we constantly drenched all these fields with bombs. The runways were effectively cratered and planes were destroyed on the ground. These measures were decisive: on the day of the attack the Allied air force flew about 8000 sorties and saw fewer than 100 enemy planes in the air.7 During all this time we were favored with excellent weather; visibility was perfect.
During March 24 we also conducted diversionary air operations in order to prevent the concentration of enemy fighters at the point of attack. A hundred and fifty bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force, located in Italy, flew fifteen hundred miles to attack Berlin. Other air forces from Italy raided airfields in the south. Long before this time the RAF Bomber Command, originally designed for night bombing only, had begun to participate regularly in daylight attacks. With the protection provided by our great array of fighters, it could operate safely during hours of daylight and its accuracy was vastly increased. On the twenty-fourth it came over to attack rail centers and oil targets in and near the Ruhr.8
The March 24 operation sealed the fate of Germany. Already, of course, we had secured two bridgeheads farther to the south. But in each of those cases surprise and good fortune had favored us. The northern operation was made in the teeth of the greatest resistance the enemy could provide anywhere along the long river. Moreover, it was launched directly on the edge of the Ruhr and the successful landing on the eastern bank placed strong forces in position to deny the enemy use of significant portions of that great industrial area.
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