Posted on 03/11/2015 2:53:12 PM PDT by Kaslin
The March 7, 1945, seizure the Rhine River's Remagen Bridge by a U.S. Army task force is an outstanding example of individual and organizational initiative and carefully assessed aggressiveness. A lesson in leader intuition, one with application to politics and business as well as battle, lies within the operation's deep history.
The moment of capture was a thriller. Ignoring span-rattling enemy demolition charges and German fire from the Rhine's east bank, approximately 60 young American soldiers raced across the damaged bridge that blundering German military engineers had not quite destroyed. By March 17, when it collapsed, six U.S. divisions had followed them, shattering the Nazi regime's last line of strategic defense on the Western front.
The wide, swift Rhine presented the attacking Allied armies with a major, easily defended obstacle. The German timetable for destroying the Rhine's 22 bridges, however, had two competing objectives: Let Germans retreat east but prevent the Allies from grabbing a span.
On March 7, a 9th Armored Division task force led by Lieutenant Colonel Leonard Engeman approached Remagen. At 10:30 a.m., a pilot in an artillery observation Piper Cub reported Remagen's Ludendorff Railroad Bridge (its official name) was still intact. The Germans had blown up the Rhine's other 21 spans. Brigadier Gen. William Hoge (commander, Combat Command B, 9th Armored) received the news. At 1 p.m., Engeman's armored scouts reported that German soldiers and vehicles were still streaming east. The bridge had two rail lines, one of them planked over for use by retreating vehicles.
Hoge arrived on the scene. Risk versus reward: He knew the risk in American blood was high. He had little information on German defenses in Remagen. If his men took the bridge and got across, what happened if German forces counter-attacked and cut them off?
Hoge believed he faced court-martial charges if the gamble he contemplated failed. U.S. commanders had been told their forces were not to cross the Rhine, though the prohibition had some maybes and a little murk. Alliance politics played a role. The British were to lead the Allied assault on central Germany. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's long-awaited Operation Plunder would begin in late March. Monty would star. U.S. forces were assigned a supporting role.
But Hoge also understood the enormous opportunity. Leap the Rhine now and U.S. armor would run loose behind still-fluid German defenses. British and American soldiers would not have to cross the Rhine in rubber boats and die by the thousands.
Hoge ordered infantry and tanks to attack into Remagen. At 3 p.m., a German prisoner told his American captors the bridge was going down at 4 p.m. Engeman took a cavalry troop (light armored vehicles) and a team of infantry and tanks, and struck for the bridge.
At 3:50 p.m., as a U.S. infantry squad stepped onto the bridge, a demolition charge exploded. But it did not collapse. U.S. tanks fired on German machine guns. Infantrymen and combat engineers raced across, ripping every wire that might link to a demolition. One sergeant, despite heavy fire, ran across the entire 117-meter span. His squad followed him. That is physical courage and leadership, in the toughest of circumstances.
The Allies had a bridge over the Rhine. For the first time since the Napoleonic wars, a German enemy had successfully attacked across the Rhine.
The individual and organizational initiative displayed at Remagen is self-evident. By March 1945, 9th Armored was a seasoned, veteran unit. Its soldiers had confidence in themselves and their leaders.
Hoge saw the opportunity to achieve extraordinary gains. His intuition and careful assessment lead him to take an aggressive risk.
Today, at least among media psychologists, aggressiveness has connotations of maladjusted, threatening social behavior. The business community's definition of aggressiveness in the marketplace more closely describes Hoge's decision to order his soldiers to seize the bridge: assessing the risk but acting on an opportunity that could produce enormously valuable gain.
With the bridge in hand, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower exhibited initiative at a higher level of command and changed his operational war plan. Now the U.S. would make the main effort. The battle for Germany was underway.
Long ponderous movie about this battle - but amazing story.
A couple of days later my late father-in-law, a field artilleryman in the 78th Infantry Division crossed the bridge to establish the northern flank of the penetration.
Ever wonder if the Germans knew the war was lost and wanted the Americans to advance as far east as possible rather than have the Russians occupy more German territory. Too bad those German engineers weren’t interviewed after the war. That is not to deny the heroism and courage of those young American soldiers.
Your father-in-law was a brave man. A few days after that, the bridge fell, but by then the bridgehead had been established. Under cover of Americans on both sides of the river, engineers were able to erect pontoon bridges to take the weight of traffic streaming across.
The Germans should have kissed our asses, for the alternative would have been a much larger East Germany. Maybe only a rump West German state west of the river.
It was mostly luck along with American initiative.
An American tank shell had cut the detonation cable to the main charge. From what I saw in an interview, it was not a little line but was as big around as your arm.
They set off an emergency charge but it was composed of nitrate explosives because the German Engineers did not have any military grade explosives.
The Ludendorf bridge is long gone, all that stands now are the two towers on the west and east side. The one on the West side has a small Museum, the one on the east side appears closed. There is a regular shopping center behind the west tower. Really not much there to see. Funny, the museum has us as the “America Liberators” I guess after the Battle of the Bulge we suddenly became “Liberators”?
Operation Plunder would have been another Market Garden casualty-fest. Monty was hugely overrated in the European theater.
One of the soldiers on that bridge — and who barely managed to get off it in time — was a young Warren Spahn, who would receive a battlefield commission and be honored for his bravery. Imagine how different the story of Major League Baseball would be if the winningest left-hander in its history (and the winningest pitcher in the game after 1920) hadn’t gotten off the bridge in time. The war cost Spahn three years of pitching, but he always said it made him a more mature pitcher — and enabled him to keep pitching until age 43, after going a mind-boggling 23-7 the year before.
Remember reading a book on the crossing of the Rhine at Remagen some 50 years ago. Don't remember the name of the soldier who made it across first but remember he was from Omaha, NE.
Great Story!
Thanks for posting!
If one steps back and looks at the multi-decade effects of Hoge’s actions, he even did Germany a favor. They are far better off now than they would have been under the monster Hitler.
American initiative...http://www.lonesentry.com/gi_stories_booklets/9tharmored/index.html
“Next, engineers raced across to the far side of the bridge to cut the main cable. Sgt. Dorland squeezed the cable with a pair of small pliers but couldn’t even dent it. Without hesitating, he fired three shots into the cable with his carbine, smashing the line completely.”
Note that the members of the patrol who made the dangerous run across the bridge to prevent demolition were a Lt, SSGT, and SGT- leaders have to lead.
Nice pin. And just two months before that the old guy with the busted nose in the photo, age 42, was part of the greatest pitching duel in baseball history: sixteen innings, one run, seven future Hall of Famers, more than 200 pitches by each pitcher . . .and Spahn lost to 25 year-old Juan Marichal thanks to a home run by Willy Mays. That was one tough guy.
Yup...I’m a big Spahnie fan. I got that pin at the ballpark.
(I was 12) :{)
Or under Stalin. The soviets would’ve continued westward and gobbled up more of what ended up being West Germany.
IIRC Hitler had them all executed.
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