The Last Campaign of General Patton

The Last Campaign of General Patton

This is my retrospective of General George S. Patton Jr.; and the last year of the European Campaign of World War II.
This was a very crucial time for the Allied Powers, with the impending fall of Nazi Germany; and with both the United States,
Britain, and Russian forces closing in on Berlin. Someone would have to be the messenger for the status of the free world:
that person was General Patton.

Beginning in October 1944, when many believed the Allies had all but won the war in Europe . At the time of the push toward
Germany's Western Front, Autumn 1944, 12th Army Group under General Omar Bradley, had the 1st Canadian Army, 2nd Army
(Britain), 1st US Army, 9th US Army, 7th US Army, 1st French Army, 3rd US Army; and elements of Jacob Devers 6th Army Group
to contend with the Germans.
Meanwhile, the Russians; the Baltic Army Group, the White Russian Army Group; and the Ukrainian Army Group had begun
their advance approaching Romania, Poland; and Lithonia which all borders on the Eastern Front of Germany.

Now onto the Battle of the Bulge; the relief of Bastogne. The 3rd US Army began preparations to end the siege by having
the 4th Armored Division, Seventh Tank Battalion under the command of Lt Col. Creighton Abrams; on and around December
22 1944. They moved by hidden German forces in the forest on the road to Assenois. The task force had plowed through Remonville, Remichampagne, Sibret, and Clochimont before heading toward Assenois. They would initially link up with the
327th Airborne as the American forces repelled the German forces into a retreat from the area. No counter-attack from the Germans
came; the German advance stalled on Christmas Eve 1944. Basically, the Germans overran their supply lines. And without ammunition and gasoline, they were unable to wage an offensive campaign. The continued progress of The 3rd US Army eventually spelled dome for Operation Watch on the Rhine. By January 25, 1945, the Germans had returned to the same positions they had
held at the start of the offensive six weeks earlier. Thus ended the last great German attack on the Western Front.

One such event, a not often mentioned stumbling block for the Germans was the location of the American Ninety-Ninth Division.
They held the northern shoulder of the Bulge assault, inflicting tremendous casualties on the Germans in the Battle of Elsenborn
Ridge. Despite the Wehrmacht offensive sputtering, the Germans did not give much ground until Patton was able
to relieve Bastogne. In fact, on January 1, the Germans launched Operation Baseplate (Unternehmen Bodenplatte) a last-gasp
aerial bombardment on Allied airfields by the Luftwaffe. It was a success, destroying 465 American and British
aircraft. However, the sorely depleted Luftwaffe also lost nearly 300 planes, which finished it as a fighting force.

Also, another point taken was that on February 10, Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe
ordered Patton and his Third Army to stop their drive east and go on the defensive, and selected British field marshal Bernard
Law Montgomery to lead the massive Allied invasion force to cross the strategically vital Rhine River.
Stretching eight hundred miles down the length of Germany from the North Sea to Switzerland, the Rhine is the last great
obstacle between the Allies and the German heartland. Whoever crosses it first might also soon know the glory of being the
first Allied general to reach Berlin.
The operation and campaign was a series of Allied offensive operations initially headed by the 21st Army Group commanded by Bernard Montgomery from 8 February 1945 to 25 March 1945, at the end of the Second World War.The operations aimed to occupy the Rhineland and secure a passage over the Rhine River. It was part of General Dwight D. Eisenhower's "broad front" strategy to occupy the entire west bank of the Rhine before its crossing. The Rhineland Offensive encompassed Operation Veritable, Operation Grenade, Operation Blockbuster, Operation Plunder and Operation Varsity. The 21st Army Group included the 9th US Army led
by General William H. Simpson; comprised of US XVI Corps, US XIII Corps; and US XIX Corps, which consisted of 12 divisions
all of which would be part of the overall force, including the US 12th Army Group headed by General Omar Bradley which would
be poised to commence offensive actions near the German defensive Siegfried Line.

By the middle of September 1944, the three Western Allied army groups; the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group (Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery) in the north, the United States U.S. 12th Army Group (Lieutenant General Omar Bradley) in the center, and the Franco-American 6th Army Group (Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers) in the south, formed a broad front under the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his headquarters SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force).

While Montgomery and Bradley each favored relatively direct thrusts into Germany (with Montgomery and Bradley each offering to be the spearhead of such an assault), General Eisenhower disagreed. Instead, he chose a "broad-front" strategy, which allowed the Allies to gain ground from the beaten Germans in all sectors, and allowed the advancing Allied forces to support each other.

The rapid advance through France had caused considerable logistical strain, made worse by the lack of any major port other than the relatively distant Cherbourg in western France. Although Antwerp was seen as the key to solving the Allied logistics problems, its port was not open to Allied shipping until the Scheldt estuary was clear of German forces. As the campaign progressed, all the belligerents, Allied as well as German, felt the effects of the lack of suitable replacements for front-line troops.
There were two major defensive obstacles to the Allies. The first was the natural barriers made by the rivers of eastern France. The second was the Siegfried Line, which fell under the command, along with all Wehrmacht forces in the west, of Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt.

The Rhine Rat Race
March 1945
On 4 May, the US Third Army under General George S. Patton entered Czechoslovakia. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the only political leader to advocate the liberation of Prague by the Western Allies. In a telegram to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Churchill said that "the liberation of Prague...by US troops might make the whole difference to the postwar situation of Czechoslovakia and might well influence that in nearby countries." Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, also wanted his forces to liberate the city and asked that the Americans stop at Plzeň, 50 miles (80 km) to the west. The Red Army was planning a major offensive into the Protectorate, starting on 7 May. Eisenhower, disinclined to accept American casualties or risk antagonizing the Soviet Union, acquiesced to the Soviet demands that the Red Army enter Prague.
This is an interesting footnote in history. The political aspect will be felt for decades to come.

The Allied forces consisted of the British 21st Army Group; the American 12th Army Group, including 9th US Army, 1st US
Army, 3rd US Army; and 7th US Army were all poised to head into the Siegfried Line; and so began the Rhine offensive.

Fighting on the Western Front seemed to stabilize, and the Allied advance stalled in front of the Siegfried Line (Westwall) and the southern reaches of the Rhine. The operation had started back in early September, the Americans began slow and bloody fighting through the Hurtgen Forest ("Passchendaele with tree bursts"—Hemingway) to breach the Line.

In late August, the U.S. Third Army started to run low on fuel. This situation was caused by the rapid Allied advance through France, and compounded by the shift of logistical priority to the northern forces to secure Antwerp. By 1 September 1944, with the last of its fuel, the Third Army managed one final push to capture key bridges over the Meuse River at Verdun and Commercy. Five days after that, however, the critical supply situation effectively caused the Third Army to grind to a halt, allowing previously routed German forces to regroup and the reinforcement of their strongholds in the area.

Soon after, the Third Army came up against Metz, part of the Maginot Line and one of the most heavily fortified cities in Western Europe. The city could not be bypassed, as several of its forts had guns directed at Moselle crossing sites and the main roads in the area. It could also be used as a stronghold to organize a German counter-attack to the Third Army's rear.
In the following Battle of Metz, the Third Army, while victorious, took heavy casualties.

Following Metz, the Third Army continued eastwards to the Saar River and soon began their assault on the Siegfried Line.

Hürtgen Forest was seen as a possible location for incursions into the American flank, and the river dams in the area were a threat to the Allied advance downstream, so an assault to clear the area was started on 19 September 1944. German defence was more stubborn than expected and the terrain was highly favourable to defence, largely negating the American advantages of numbers and quality of troops. The battle—expected to last a few weeks—continued until February 1945 and cost 33,000 casualties (from all causes).

The value of the battle has been disputed. Modern historians argue that the outcome was not worth the foreseeable losses, and in any case, the American tactics played into German hands. Operation Queen was a combined Allied air-ground offensive against the German forces at the Siegfried Line, which was conducted mainly by the combined effort of the U.S. Ninth and First Armies. The principal goal of the operation was to advance to the Roer River and to establish several bridgeheads over it, for a subsequent thrust into Germany to the Rhine River. Parts of this operation also included further fighting in the Hurtgen Forest. The offensive commenced on 16 November with one of the heaviest tactical air bombardments by the Western Allies of the war. Although the German forces were heavily outnumbered, the Allied advance was very slow. After four weeks of intensive fighting, the Allies reached the Roer but were not able to establish any bridgeheads over it. Fighting in the Hurtgen Forest also bogged down. The exhaustive fighting during Queen caused the Allied troops to suffer heavy casualties, and eventually, the Germans launched their own counteroffensive—Operation Wacht am Rhein—on 16 December, which would lead to the Battle of the Bulge.

Germany west of the Rhine
The pincer movement of the Canadian First Army, advancing from the Nijmegen area in Operation Veritable, and the U.S. Ninth Army, crossing the Roer in Operation Grenade, was planned to start on 8 February 1945, but it was delayed by two weeks when the Germans flooded the Roer valley by destroying the floodgates of two dams on the upper Roer (Rur Dam and Urft Dam). During the two weeks that the little river was flooded, Hitler did not allow Rundstedt to withdraw German forces behind the Rhine, arguing that it would only delay the inevitable fight. Hitler ordered him to fight where his forces stood.

By the time the water had subsided and the U.S. Ninth Army was able to cross the Roer on 23 February, other Allied forces were also close to the Rhine's west bank. The German divisions that had remained on the west bank of the Rhine were cut to pieces, and 280,000 men were taken prisoner. The stubborn German resistance had been costly; their total losses reached an estimated 400,000 men. The Allies crossed the Rhine at four points. One crossing was an opportunity taken by U.S. forces when the Germans failed to blow up the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen; another was a hasty assault; and two crossings were planned:

0- The U.S. First Army aggressively pursued the disintegrating German troops, and on 7 March they unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge across the Rhine River at Remagen. The 9th Armored Division quickly expanded the bridgehead into a full-scale crossing.
0- Bradley told General George S. Patton—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.
0- 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 Operation Plunder 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.
0- In the Allied 6th Army Group area, the U.S. Seventh Army 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.

Back in October, the Americans decided that they could not just sit and let it fall in a slow siege, because it threatened the flanks of the. As it was the first major German city to face capture, Hitler ordered that the city be held at all costs. As a result, the city was taken, at a cost of 5,000 casualties on both sides, with an additional 5,600 German prisoners.invesAachenU.S. Ninth Armybattle

South of the American forces fought from September until mid-December to push the Germans out of Lorraine and from behind the Siegfried Line. The crossing of the and the capture of the fortress of proved difficult for the American troops in the face of German reinforcements, supply shortages, and unfavorable weather. During September and October, the Allied 6th Army Group fought a difficult campaign through the Vosges Mountains that was marked by dogged German resistance and slow advances. In November, however, the German front snapped under the pressure, resulting in sudden Allied advances that liberated, and, and placed Allied forces along the. The Germans managed to hold a large bridgehead (the ), on the western bank of the Rhine and centered around the city of. On 16 November the Allies started a large-scale autumn offensive called. With its main thrust again through the canal and link up with the airborne troops of the U.S. 101st.
If all went well XXX Corps would advance into Germany without any remaining major obstacles. XXX Corps was able to advance beyond six of the seven airborne-held bridges but was unable to link up with the troops near the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem

The Battle of the Rhine was crucial for the advancement of the Allied advance into Germany and was planned by Monty (the king of set-piece operations) as a three-army assault, including an airborne assault, a five-thousand-gun artillery barrage, and Anglo-American bombers. Thousands of tons of supplies were brought forward including huge amounts of bridging equipment

The First Allied Airborne Army conducted Operation Varsity on the east bank of the Rhine in support of Operation Plunder, consisting of the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps, the British 6th and the U.S. 17th Airborne Divisions.

Operation Grenade in February by Simpson's Ninth Army and Crerar's Canadians was also expected to prepare the ground.

From the onset of the campaign in the Rhine, the US 3rd Army under the leadership of General George Patton had hoped their
push toward Mannheim would get them further into the other vital German towns and on to Czechoslovakia once they engaged and defeated the German 1st Army. So Patton would initially convince Eisenhower to let him attack, two hundred miles to the south.
General Patton made this request because the normally cautious; and finicky Field Marshall of the British 21st Army Group
was still undecided about launching Operation Plunder, as the Rhine Offensive is known. The plan was to invade southern Germany's
Palatine region.
Patton's military ambitions for the assault are many, among them the devastation of all Wehrmacht forces guarding the heavily
fortified Siegfried Line. The Siegfried Line was a four-hundred-mile-long defensive array of eighteen thousand bunkers and inter-
locking rows of pyramid-shaped concrete antitank obstacles nicknamed "dragon's teeth". The Germans referred to it as the Westwall,
while the Americans continued to use "Siegfried", after similar systems of forts dating back to the First World War. Hitler built the
Westwall between 1936 and 1938, anticipating by almost a decade the day when some great army-in this case, that of George S.
Patton would attempt to invade the Fatherland.
In recent time, elements of the 3rd US Army headed to the cities of Koblenz, Nierstein, and Mannheim; both crossing the Mosel, and Rhine Rivers, respectively. Meanwhile, the US 9th Army crossed the Roer River, and headed to the cities of Wesel, Cologne,
and met elements of the 8th Panzer Army, and 7th Army after crossing the Remagen Bridge, which was captured on March 7.

At Patton's command, the Third Army romps through the Palatinate of which Col. Abe Abrams of the Fourth Armored Division
calls the "Rhine Rat Race". They travel with ample supplies of metal decking and pontoons, allowing them to build temporary
bridges across the Rhine- it is hoped, well ahead of Montgomery and his 21st Army Group. American armored divisions have already
succeeded in crossing the Rhine, in the city of Remagen, eighty-six miles of Trier.

The incredulous Americans could not believe that the bridge remained intact, and crossed immediately. And while they were not
able to advance beyond a small toehold on the Rhine's eastern shore, the symbolism of the Allied achievement struck fear into
the minds of the Nazi high command that Adolph Hitler ordered the firing squad executions of the four officers he considered
responsible for not having destroyed the bridge.
The Allies still held the bridge but could not advance farther without the assistance of a greater fighting force.
"Ninth Armored Division of the Third Corps got a bridge intact over the Rhine at Remagen," General Patton writes in his journal
on March 7th.