I watched a movie about the battle...A long time ago...THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN...
I do remember Robert Vaughn as the German general...He lost his cigarette case near the bridge...An American soldier later found it...
Posted on 03/07/2021 10:59:55 PM PST by L.A.Justice
Over ten days in the spring of 1945, Army Engineers expedited the invasion of Germany and thus shortened the Second World War in Europe by daringly capturing one of the last bridges left standing across the River Rhine. It had been nine months since D-Day, and Allied forces had fought in several long, difficult campaigns across France and the highlands of the Ardennes forest and had just crossed the German border. The last natural barrier to driving deeper into German territory was the Rhine. Starting in March, Operation Lumberjack, led by the U.S. First Army, aimed to secure the west bank of the river and prepare for a massive crossing to be led by the British. In order to undermine German supply lines to the front, the Allies had systematically bombed bridges up and down the river for months, so the discovery of an intact WWI-era bridge across the Rhine at the town of Remagen (about 14 miles south of Bonn) was a big surprise.
Brig. Gen. William M. Hoge, an engineer soldier, was in charge of Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division, when its leading elements discovered the Ludendorff rail bridge still standing at Remagen. “I got up to the Rhine and stood there on the bank and looked down, and there it was,” Hoge recalled. “The bridge was there right above the town. I couldn’t believe it was true. I issued an order right away to go down and grab that bridge, go down through the town and put tanks on both sides of the bridge, firing parallel to it.” The risk was exceptional—what if the Germans destroyed the bridge while Hoge’s forces were crossing it or even allowed some to cross before cutting off their retreat?
(Excerpt) Read more at usace.army.mil ...
I watched a movie about the battle...A long time ago...THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN...
I do remember Robert Vaughn as the German general...He lost his cigarette case near the bridge...An American soldier later found it...
Ummm, capturing the bridge at Remagen didn't get the Soviets to Berlin any faster, and that's what ended the war in Europe.
Eisenhower allowed the Russians to get to Berlin first.
And he saved thousands of American lives by doing so. Russians paid dearly to capture the Reichstag.
Actually (& indirectly) the capture of the Remagen Bridge DID shorten the time that it took the Red Army to take Berlin.
Had the railroad bridge NOT been taken by 9th Armored Division’s forces & the US Army had NOT been able to roll into Germany “with dry feet”, the German Army could have concentrated their remaining armored/mechanized infantry forces to protect & hold Berlin against the USSR’s troops, rather than supinely waiting while the USA rolled across Germany, almost unopposed.
As LTG Patton said, “Losing the Remagen Bridge to the Allies was the FATAL BLOW that destroyed any chance that Germany could long avoid humiliating defeat.”
Yours, ex-cadet
That’s rather amateurish and naive analysis. The Soviets were well-aided by the allies in the west getting across the Rhine in March and running wild deep into Germany. In fact, Eisenhower pulled up just short of Berlin and left it to the Soviets to clear.
Getting across the Rhine made the Soviet task orders of magnitude easier.
Why would you act like that seriously brave act was nothing?
The Germans knew how badly that crossing would hurt them and they threw everything but the kitchen sink at that bridge. V-2 rockets, the few jet bombers they could find, and every soldier they could muster to that area.
They knew stopping that crossing was critical to giving them breathing room to stop the Russians.
THE LAST BATTLE, written by Cornelius Ryan, is a good book about battle for Berlin...He also wrote A BRIDGE TOO FAR...
Yeah, well, it wasn’t a General who found the bridge unprotected, but it’s the Generals who usually end up with the credit.
Worth remembering that Ike didn’t just do that because Ivan was more accepting of the horrific number of casualties that taking Berlin would possibly involve, but also because Ivan had recently repeatedly proven that he was the grand master of urban warfare bar none. The taking of Aachen in 1944 by the US had been Stalingrad Diet Lite and it left a bad taste in US commanders’ mouths.
Towards the end of the war the Soviets were advancing behind a rolling artillery barrage; they weren’t intending to take Stalingrad-level casualties again. They weren’t masters of urban warfare; their commanders simply forced them forward under pain of death.
https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=134
[snip] George Patton’s US 5th Division crossed the Rhine River during the night of 22 Mar 1945, establishing a six-mile deep bridgehead after capturing 19,000 demoralized German troops. Patton, who actually did not have the orders to cross the river, did so under an extremely low profile: quietly, his troops crossed the river in boats without artillery barrage nor aerial bombardment. His commanding general Omar Bradley, who issued the order for him not to cross to avoid interfering with Bernard Montgomery’s operations, did not know of the crossing until the next morning. Bradley did not announce this crossing until the night of 23 Mar; Patton had wished the Americans to announce that they had crossed the Rhine River before the British. This was the first crossing of the Rhine River by boat by an invading army since Napoleon Bonaparte. Within three days Patton’s troops were rapidly approaching Frankfurt, Germany, capturing bridges in tact as the German defenses began to fall apart. [/snip]
[snip] 19 Mar 1945 — George Patton received permission from his superiors to take the US 3rd Army across the Rhine River.
22 Mar 1945 — The US 3rd Army crossed the Rhine River west of Mainz and near Oppenheim just before midnight; the Americans had beaten the British in crossing the river. Opposition was negligible and within 24 hours the entire US 5th Division had crossed the river. [/snip]
[snip] 25 Mar 1945 — US First Army finally broke out of Remagen bridgehead in Germany. 140 kilometers to the north, British Second Army captured Wesel, Germany. [/snip]
Eh, not so much for Berlin. And yes, they absolutely were the masters of urban warfare - they knew what defenders could do from Stalingrad, so if they took fire from a building that wasn’t as heavily built as the Reichstag, they often brought up artillery and fired on the building over iron sights at relative point blank with heavy HE. They weren’t even trying to preserve most of Berlin for later occupation.
The Fall of Berlin part 1 of 3 audiobook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVOLsI3t1vA
Worked with a fellow who lead his infantry company across the bridge before it fell.
U folks are pretty bright. I was told the US delayed the invasion of europe to give the Krauts and Ivan more time to carve each other up. Should we have not taken the bridge?
Germans need to be divided up. A united Germany is bad news even today.
True - but fortunately, they're trying to power their electric grid with unicorn farts.
Beevor, the author, has been criticized for cherry picking or even ignoring Russian sources in many of his works. Additionally, this was written in 2002 and many unofficial yet contemporary sources, including video, has been found in the intervening 19 years since he wrote the book. Felton, the author of the video I posted, wrote that recently and used some of those sources in that video and his books.
Bradley told Eisenhower trying to race the Soviets to Berlin, from farther away than where they sat on the Oder, could cost another 100k Western Allied casualties, for ground they had already agreed to cede to Soviet occupation.
What formations were sent from the Eastern Front to the Western Front after the Ludendorff bridge fell to the Americans? The Germans always had the bulk of their military facing East. They could have put the entirety of their forces in March '45 on the Eastern Front and been unable to stop the Red Army.
Why would you act like that seriously brave act was nothing?
It didn't change the outcome of the war. The Soviets were massing for their last offensive and getting to Berlin regardless of the bridge over the Rhine. It's not that the attackers were not brave, it's just that it was moot regarding the war's end.
The Western Allies liberation of Western Europe was fantastic for Western Europeans post war, but it wasn't determinative regarding the outcome of the war.
No, Berlin was fighting to the death. I believe Hitler was traumatized by the manner of Mussolini’s death (with his body being hung publicly in Milan), and he had some weird fear of the Soviets displaying him in a cage.
German units trying to break in to Berlin to save the city from the Soviets eventually resorted to remaining close by for as long as possible to help elements escape; their goal was to surrender to the US and British troops to the west (the Soviet payback for Axis treatment of Soviet civilians during Barbarossa was already well known).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.