Kitabı oxu: «The American Operations in WW2: Central Europe»

U.S. Army Center of Military History , Edward N. Bedessem

Şrift:

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Central Europe
22 March-11 May 1945

By the early spring of 1945 events favored the Allied forces in Europe. The Anglo-Americans had by January turned back the Germans' December counterattack in the Ardennes, in the famous Battle of the Bulge. The failure of this last great German offensive exhausted much of the Third Reich's remaining combat strength, leaving it ill-prepared to resist the final Allied campaigns in Europe. Additional losses in the Rhineland further weakened the German Army, leaving shattered remnants of units to defend the east bank of the Rhine. By mid-March the western Allies had pushed to the Rhine along most of the front, had seized an intact bridge at Remagen, and had even established a small bridgehead on the river's east bank.

In the east the Soviets had overrun most of Poland, pushed into Hungary and eastern Czechoslovakia, and temporarily halted at the German border on the Oder-Neisse line. These rapid advances on the Eastern Front destroyed additional veteran German combat units and severely limited Hitler's ability to reinforce his Rhine defenses. Thus, as the western Allies completed their preparations for the final drive into the heart of Germany, victory seemed within sight.

Strategic Setting

The Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, had 90 full-strength divisions under his command, including 25 armored and 5 airborne, thus controlling one of the largest and most potent forces ever committed to the field of battle. The Allied front along the Rhine stretched 450 air miles from the river's mouth at the North Sea in the Netherlands to the Swiss border in the south.

The forces along this line were organized into three army groups. In the north, from the North Sea to a point about 10 miles north of Cologne, was the British 21 Army Group commanded by Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, victor at El Alamein and one of the main planners of the Normandy invasion. Under Montgomery, the First Canadian Army held the left flank of the Allied line, with the Second British Army in the center and the Ninth U.S. Army to the south. Holding the middle of the Allied line from the Ninth Army's right flank to a point about 15 miles south of Mainz was the 12th

Army Group under the command of Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley. Bradley had two American armies, the First Army on the left (north) and the Third Army on the right (south). Completing the Allied line to the Swiss border was the 6th Army Group commanded by Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, with the Seventh U.S. Army in the north and the First French Army on the Allied right, or southern, flank.

As these three army groups cleared out the Wehrmacht west of the Rhine, Eisenhower began to rethink his plans for the final drive across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany. Originally the Supreme Commander had planned to draw all his forces up to the west bank of the Rhine, using the river as a natural barrier to help cover the inactive sections of his line. The main thrust beyond the river was to be made in the north by Montgomery's 21 Army Group, elements of which were to proceed east to a juncture with the First Army as it made a secondary advance northeast from below the Ruhr River. If successful, this pincer movement would envelop the Ruhr industrial area, neutralizing the largest concentration of German industrial capacity left to Nazi Germany.

After capturing the Ruhr, Eisenhower planned to have 21 Army Group continue its drive east across the plains of northern Germany to Berlin. The 12th and 6th Army Groups were to mount a subsidiary offensive to keep the Germans off balance and diminish their ability to stop the northern thrust. This secondary drive would also give Eisenhower a degree of flexibility in case the northern attack ran into difficulties.

For several reasons Eisenhower began to readjust these plans toward the end of March. First, his headquarters received reports that Soviet forces held a bridgehead over the Oder River, a mere 30 miles from Berlin. Since the Allied armies on the Rhine were more than 300 miles from Berlin, with the Elbe River still to be crossed 200 miles ahead, it seemed clear that the Soviets would capture Berlin long before the western Allies could reach it. Eisenhower thus turned his attention to other objectives, most notably a rapid junction with the Soviets to cut the German Army in two and prevent any possibility of a unified Nazi defense effort. Once this was accomplished the remaining German forces could be defeated in detail.

In addition, there was the matter of the Ruhr. Although the Ruhr area still contained a significant number of enemy troops and enough industry to retain its importance as a major objective, Allied intelligence reported that much of the region's armament industry was moving southeast, deeper into Germany. This increased the importance of the southern offensives across the Rhine.

Also focusing Eisenhower's attention on the southern drive was concern over the "National Redoubt." According to rumor, Hitler's most fanatically loyal troops were preparing to make a lengthy, last-ditch stand in the natural fortresses formed by the rugged alpine mountains of southern Germany and western Austria. If they held out for a year or more, dissension between the Soviet Union and the western Allies might give them political leverage for some kind of favorable peace settlement. In reality, by the time of the Allied Rhine crossings the Wehrmacht had suffered such severe defeats on both the Eastern and Western Fronts that it could barely manage to mount effective delaying actions, much less muster enough troops to establish a well organized alpine resistance force. Still, Allied intelligence could not entirely discount the possibility that remnants of the German Army would attempt a suicidal last stand in the Alps. Denying Hitler's forces this opportunity became another argument for rethinking the role of the southern drive through Germany.

Perhaps the most compelling reason, though, for increasing the emphasis on this southern drive had more to do with the actions of Americans than those of Germans. While Montgomery was carefully and cautiously planning for the main thrust in the north, complete with massive artillery preparation and an airborne assault, American forces in the south were displaying the kind of basic aggressiveness that Eisenhower wanted to see. On 7 March elements of Lt. Gen. Courtney H. Hodges' First Army had captured a bridge over the Rhine at Remagen and had been steadily expanding the bridgehead.

To the south in the Saar-Palatinate region, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army had dealt a devastating blow to the German Seventh Army and, in conjunction with the U.S. Seventh Army, had nearly destroyed the German First Army. In five days of battle, from 18-22 March, Patton's forces captured over 68,000 Germans. These bold actions eliminated the last German positions west of the Rhine. Although Montgomery's drive was still planned as the main effort, Eisenhower believed that the momentum of the American forces to the south should not be squandered by having them merely hold the line at the Rhine or make only limited diversionary attacks beyond it. By the end of March the Supreme Commander thus leaned toward a decision to place more responsibility on his southern forces. The events of the first few days of the final campaign would be enough to convince him that this was the proper course of action.