Siegfried Line campaign
The Siegfried Line campaign was a phase in the Western European campaign of World War II, which involved actions near the German defensive Siegfried Line.
This phase spanned from the end of the Battle of Normandy, or Operation Overlord and the pursuit across northern France, which ended on 15 September 1944, and concluded with the opening of the German Ardennes counteroffensive, better known as the Battle of the Bulge.
The U.S. First Army aggressively pursued the disintegrating German troops, and on 7 March they . The 9th Armored Division quickly expanded the bridgehead into a full scale crossing.
unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge across the Rhine River at Remagen
Bradley told General —whose U.S. Third Army had been fighting through the Palatinate—to "take the Rhine on the run". The Third Army did just that on the night of 22/23 March, crossing the river with a hasty assault south of Mainz at Oppenheim.
George S. Patton
In the north, the Rhine is twice as wide, with a far higher volume of water than where the Americans crossed. Montgomery, commander of the 21st Army Group, decided it could be crossed safely only with a carefully prepared attack. In he crossed the Rhine at Rees and Wesel on the night of 23/24 March, including the largest single drop airborne operation in history, Operation Varsity.
Operation Plunder
In the Allied 6th Army Group area, the assaulted across the Rhine in the area between Mannheim and Worms on 26 March. A fifth crossing on a smaller scale was later achieved by the French First Army at Speyer.
U.S. Seventh Army
Liberation of France
Ballard, Ted (c. 1990). . CMH Online bookshelves: World War II Commemorative Brochures. Washington: United States Army Center of Military History. CMH Pub 72-25. Archived from the original on 13 December 2007. PDF and EPUB formats.
Rhineland 15 September 1944–21 March 1945
(1981). Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944–1945. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana Univ. Press. ISBN 0-253-20608-1.
Weigley, Russell F.
Zaloga, Steve; Dennis, Peter (2006). Remagen 1945: Endgame Against the Third Reich. Osprey Publishing. 1-84603-249-0.
ISBN
Ziemke, Earl F. (1990) [1975]. . The US Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944–1946. Army Historical Series. Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History. CMH Pub 30-6. Archived from the original on 23 February 2017. Retrieved 29 January 2008.
"Chapter X: The Rhineland Campaign"
MacDonald, Charles B. (1990) [1963]. . United States Army in World War II. Washington, D.C: United States Army Center of Military History. CMH Pub 7-7-1. Archived from the original on 15 June 2010. Full text.
The Siegfried Line Campaign
at Military.com—maps