Top Photo: Infantry advance through the Reichswald during Operation 'Veritable', 8 February 1945. Imperial War Museum BU 1749

The Battle of the Bulge had a significant impact on Allied force structure and plans in the first few months of 1945. The German counteroffensive, which the American 12th Army Group, consisting of the First and Third Armies, was still engaged in repelling until late January, forced a reassignment of the US Ninth Army from General Omar Bradley’s American 12th Army Group to British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. With this new force, and the transfer of several divisions from Italy to the Canadian First Army, Montgomery now had both the means and the justification for taking the lead in the Allied offensive into Germany.

Montgomery had long argued that the British sector of the front, along the North Sea, offered both the most direct route to Berlin and the best terrain for mobile operations. Indeed, the failed Operation Market Garden the previous September had been an attempt to exploit these twin advantages by placing a British army across the lower Rhine to race across the relatively flat North German Plain toward Berlin. To the south, the Americans faced more significant obstacles, including more difficult terrain in the uplands of western and central Germany and the Black Forest, which barred their path into southern Germany. While the American 12th and 6th Army Groups were still busy repelling German offensives, including in the Ardennes in December and in Alsace in January, Montgomery’s forces were largely rested and occupied excellent jump-off positions for a continued attack into Germany. Accordingly, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, afforded Montgomery’s operations, culminating in the combined amphibious and airborne crossing of the Rhine in late March, top priority for Allied supplies and personnel. But before launching that operation, Montgomery’s forces first had to clear the western bank of the Rhine and secure jumping off positions for the twin operations, code-named Plunder and Varsity, respectively. To achieve this, his planners mapped out two simultaneous operations to pry the German defenders away from the Rhine and force either their retreat or destruction. 

The German forces remaining west of the Rhine still had considerable defensive capabilities but struggled to sustain themselves after any significant losses. Though not engaged in the Bulge battle, the German 1st Parachute Army, composed of several crack Fallschirmjaeger and Panzer divisions, relied heavily upon increasing numbers of Volksgrenadiers, troops scraped together from service units in the navy and air force and the older men and younger boys at the bottom of Germany’s manpower barrel. These units could hold fixed positions but were woefully understrength and underequipped. But the Germans did have one trump card: the dams upstream of Ninth Army’s current position on the Roer River. If the Germans opened the floodgates, the impounded water could wash out the pontoon bridges downstream, cutting off any forces that had already made the crossing.

After Operation Market Garden and subsequent efforts to protect and expand the salient it established, British forces had a foothold on the Lower Rhine in the Netherlands, where the river turned mostly west in its final run to the North Sea. By attacking east along the southern bank, Montgomery’s divisions could lever the Germans away from the Rhine and cut off their line of retreat, destabilizing the forces still defending along the Westwall farther south. The river would both protect the attackers’ left flank and, as it curved gently south, develop into one arm of a pincer pointed into the German rear. This attack southeastward through the Reichswald was given the code name Veritable. At the same time, Lieutenant General William H. Simpson’s Ninth US Army, reinforced with fresh divisions and units diverted for the Bulge emergency, held excellent positions along the Roer River just west of the vital Ruhr corridor, the heart of Germany’s defense industry. Simpson’s army had won these positions in Operation Queen the previous November but halted their advance when the Germans launched their offensive in the Ardennes. Operation Grenade, an attack across the Roer River to the Rhine, and then swinging north to meet the advancing Canadians would place a strong force in the rear of German defenders opposing either attack. Faced with being cut off from the river and surrounded, the Germans would either have to retreat across the Rhine or face destruction inside one of their famed cauldrons. The British Second Army, holding the Allied line between the two attacking armies, kept the German defenders from shifting any reinforcements to their threatened flanks and stood ready to exploit any weaknesses that developed if they did. With this plan, the opening phases of Veritable resembled a classic Montgomery set-piece battle, with his forces “crumbling” German defenders just as he had years earlier at El Alamein. But once through the German crust, his mobile armored forces had an opportunity for a quick breakthrough, racing to meet the Americans and cutting off the remaining German defenders. 

The Rhineland Campaign - Feb 8 - March 5, 1945. Hans Erren. Wikimedia Commons

Unfortunately, events conspired to prevent this rapid breakout, leading to a monthlong battle of attrition in some of the worst terrain imaginable. First, as the American First Army finally reached the Roer River dams high in the Hürtgen Forest, the Germans damaged the gates, allowing a steady flood to fill the Roer Valley. The steady release delayed Operation Grenade by almost two weeks, from a scheduled jump-off date of February 9 to February 23, forcing the Canadian army to face the Germans alone. Not content to redirect the flow of water in just the American sector, the Germans also breached the dikes along the Rhine, flooding the adjacent lowlands to a depth of up to five feet and reducing the frontage they had to defend. The British attack went in on a canalized front, in deep mud brought on by an early spring thaw, into an area the Germans had seeded with every type of mine available, from small antipersonnel mines to larger ones designed to disable vehicles. A massive artillery barrage reduced some German defenders, but there were still more than enough to bog down the attack. Poor weather kept the roads impassable and limited air support from the British Royal Air Force. Veritable jumped off as scheduled on February 8, but it took a week to reach the important road junctions at Goch and Cleve, which had been leveled in heavy air attacks by RAF Bomber Command. Airpower did make a significant contribution on February 22 in Operation Clarion, a theaterwide attack on German road, rail, and water transportation system intended to bring about paralysis. Clarion did not cause a collapse of the German economy, but it did contribute to Veritable/Grenade’s success by restricting the movement of men and supplies into the battlespace. 

Frustrated by the impassable river at his front, Simpson bided his time and checked with his engineers for their estimates of when the flood would subside. Hoping to steal a march, he ordered his forces across on February 23, while the river was subsiding but still out of its banks, catching the German defenders off guard. After two days of fighting, during which the aircraft of XXIX Tactical Air Command filled in for armored vehicles still stuck across the river, Simpson finally had enough forces through the German defenses to commit his armored reserve. On February 26, Montgomery launched Operation Blockbuster, and the British 11th Armored and Canadian 4th Armored Divisions passed through the exhausted British infantry in a race for the Rhine. With most of the German armor facing the First Canadian Army to the north, Simpson’s tanks also broke through and reached the Rhine on March 2. The next day, the Americans and Canadians joined forces near Geldern, leaving only the pocket at Wesel on the west bank. It took another week to clear the stubborn German resistance and force a retreat over the last remaining bridge over the Rhine, which the Germans dropped in the face of the Allies. But by March 10 Montgomery had his jumping off point, setting the stage for both Operations Plunder and Varsity. 

The victory had not been an easy one. Canadian forces, in combat two weeks longer than the Americans and facing the heaviest German resistance, suffered nearly 15,000 casualties, but advanced 40 miles in a month and captured 22,000 Germans. Simpson’s Ninth Army advanced 53 miles and uncovered 34 miles of Rhine River frontage from Düsseldorf to Wesel, capturing 30,000 Germans in the process, but suffered another 7,000 casualties. Most importantly, the ability of all members of the coalition to put aside petty differences and worked together for the good of the Allied cause. The combined effort in Operations Veritable and Grenade was bloody but necessary, setting the stage for the final victory over Nazi Germany.