Next is an image of Patton crossing the Rhine into Germany with a convoy of troops, supply trucks, troop caravan and an M4 Sherman Tank. On March 24, 1945, Patton approached a newly constructed pontoon bridge over the Rhine that his troops had placed two nights before and a Third Army division had already crossed. The 9th Armored Division quickly expanded the bridgehead into a full scale crossing. Gen. Holmes Dagers Combat Command B (CCB) to assist the 35th Infantry Division south of Nancy, and Colonel Bruce Clarks Combat Command A (CCA) to be held in reserve to exploit whichever crossing offered the most promise for a rapid breakout. The news came as a hard blow to Patton, whose spirits had been riding high with the prospect of pushing through the West Wall to the Rhine. On September 2, Hitler issued orders for the creation of 25 new divisions, most of which were to be given the designation of Volksgrenadier. Meanwhile, the main attack that morning by the Germans against the 51st Armored Infantry Battalion of Dagers CCB occupying the camelback was broken up by the concentrated fire of six artillery battalions. Patton celebrated the victory by stopping on a treadway bridge his men had built and relieving himself into the river. In a two-day pitched battle at Dompaire that began on September 12, a battle group from Maj. Gen. Jacques Leclercs 2nd French Armored Division of Haislips Corps smashed the 112th Panzer Brigade of Luttwitzs 47th Corps, which had been sent to check Haislips advance. He is all through. As Third Army firmly established itself on the east bank of the Moselle at Nancy, capturing not only crossing points but also key crossroads on the east bank, the Germans had to postpone their counterattack several times and continually revise it to adjust to new events. It controlled the majority of American forces on the Western Front in 1944 and 1945: the U.S. First Army under Gen. Courtney H. Hodges, the Third Army under Gen. George S. Patton, the Ninth Army under Gen. William H. Simpson, and the Fifteenth Army under Gen. Leonard T. Gerow. Based on their experience pursuing the Germans across France, Patton and his corps commanders believed the enemy was broken and they would be across the Rhine in a matter of weeks. But the Americans stood their ground. Though Gen. Patton had the blessing of Twelfth Army Group head Gen. Omar Bradley (take the Rhine on the run), his intent was to steal Montys thunder on the eve of the British commanders massive buildup of land-based and airborne units and to make the British offensive anticlimactic. On March 22nd, 1945, elements of the United States Third Army, under the command of Lieutenant General George S. Patton, crossed the Rhine River at Oppenheim, south of Mainz. Still, the 137th Infantry Division that same day managed to establish several small bridgeheads on the eastern bank. March 22nd, 2020 - Palatinate Chapter member visits the commemorative site of Patton's historic crossing of the Rhine. North of Metz, Third Armys left flank lay exposed, and Knobelsdorff sent the 106th Panzer Brigade to attack the Americans in an effort to keep them off balance and slow their efforts to cross the Moselle. Third Army, which formed the right wing of Bradleys 12th Army Group, was composed of Maj. Gen. Walton Walkers XX Corps and Eddys XII Corps. I was convinced then there were no Germans ahead of us except those we were actually fighting. This operation to cross the northern Rhine River launched in the night of 23 Mar 1945. Hitler also reappointed General Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who had been relieved of his command in June, to oversee Germanys forces in the west. While waiting for fuel to arrive with which to resume his eastward advance, Patton received good news from Bradley on September 4 that he would soon receive reinforcements in the form of Maj. Gen. Wade Haislips XV Corps, which would guard his right flank against German forces retreating up the Rhone Valley. It might be impossible to complete the mission which we started out on, but we could kill a lot of Germans trying, he told Eddy. Under extremely tough and experienced Parachute and Panzer officers and NCOs new replacements (many dedicated Nazis) had been moulded into a formidable fighting force. Pattons notion that Third Army could cross the Moselle with ease and cover the 40 miles from the river to the West Wall in a matter of weeks had been shattered by Manteuffels determined, if futile, counterattack in September. By that evening, the Germans had discovered Pattons forces, and perhaps more important, Pattons British rival, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, was preparing to cross the Rhine as well. Pattons Third Army found itself mired in a morass as it struggled against fuel shortages, flooded rivers, and fresh German panzer units in September 1944. The day dawned with a thick blanket of fog shrouding the crest of the hill. Love him or hate him, Patton cuts a singular figure in military history, and left a long, complicated legacy for historians, soldiers, and history buffs to consider. By the time the Third Army had gained a firm foothold on the east bank of the Moselle in mid-September, the masterminds of the German high command had hatched plans for a bold strike to regain the initiative. ww2dbaseTo cross the Rhine presented the Royal Engineer with many highly technical problems, but experiments and preparations for just such a task had been carried out on the River Ouse, near Goole, since 1943, and orders for specialised equipment needed had been placed with the Ministry of Supply in good time. By the end of 24 Mar 1945, the German airfields were so damaged that the Luftwaffe practically ceased to exist on this front. The Shermans then retreated behind the crest of the ridge and reappeared at another point to finish off the three remaining Panthers. Unlike Manteuffels forces, Knobelsdorffs had artillery with which to support an attack. But the main attacks were made by the bulk of the 80th Division north of Nancy, and by Maj. Gen. Paul Baades 35th Infantry Division south of the city. Ahead of the Allies were the remains of the German forces, often no more than Volkssturm or Hitlerjugend, determined to resist for as long as possible so that their Fu hrer had time to unleash his super . Manteuffels goal, as head of the 5th Panzer Army on the Western Front, was to transform Lunville into a base from which to roll up Third Armys flank on the east bank of the river. "My dear General", Winston Churchill said to the American general as they met the next morning, "the German is whipped. Maj. Gen. Leroy Irvins 5th Infantry Division pushed across the swollen waters of the flooded Metz River the following day to gain a precarious bridgehead at Dornot, five miles south of Metz. Crossing the Rhine 24 -31 March 1945: C-47 transport planes release hundreds of paratroops and their supplies over the Rees-Wesel area to the east of the Rhine. 1. The Hellcats bought precious time for Companies A and B of the 37th Tank Battalion to rumble north from Lezey toward the battlefront. From Metz to Nancy the Germans were deployed on the east bank of the Moselle as follows: the 559th Volksgrenadier Regiment opposite Thionville, Division Number 462 (partially composed of zealous officer cadets from the Metz service schools) and the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division at Metz, the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division opposite Pont-a-Mousson, the 92nd Luftwaffe Training Regiment opposite Marbache, the 3rd Parachute Replacement Regiment in front of Nancy in a westward loop of the river, and the 553rd Volksgrenadier Regiment inside Nancy. We began to cautiously filter down through the moonlit streets toward the shingled beach. Patton arrived in France exactly one month after the D-Day invasion to set up the operational command for Third Army. Did you enjoy this article or find this article helpful? ww2dbaseTo Eisenhower's surprise, the crossing of the Rhine River north of the Ruhr was not met with fierce resistance, and he attributed it to the beginning of the destruction of German morale. The Sherman crews could do little to deter the advancing Panthers because of the excellent sloped and thick frontal armor the enemy tanks possessed. Two days before, Bradley had called Patton and First Army Commander Maj. Gen. Courtney Hodge to his headquarters at Dreux and informed them that the supply situation was dire. Instead, he commented, They brought up a row of trucks filled with assault boats. I want the world to know Third Army made it before Monty starts across, he shouted. To learn more,click here for our comprehensive guide to General Patton. It began with the crossing of the River Rhine in March 1945, with forces fanning out and overrunning all of Western Germany until their final surrender on May 8, 1945. News of the crossing made it around the world. We hope that visitor conversations at WW2DB will be constructive and thought-provoking. 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. Brian Horrocks, Corps Commander (Magnum Books, 1977). Luttwitzs 47th Panzer Corps, constituting the left flank, consisted of the understrength 21st Panzer Division, the untested but intact 111th Panzer Brigade, and the remnants of the 112th Panzer Brigade. Control of the crest of Hill 318 shifted back and forth on September 28. The events on the French front in World War II during September 1944, specifically Patton's inability to progress beyond the Metz fortress complex and, most importantly, the failure of British General Bernard Montgomery's attempted Rhine crossing in Operation Market Garden, would appear as evidence that such hopes of lightning victories . However, Patton was aware that this would be obvious to the Germans, and therefore he and his staff made rapid plans for another site at Nierstein and Oppenheim, about 12 miles south of Mainz. Campaigns: Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central Europe. Patton might have been destined to oversee U.S. forces in the invasion of France the following year, but his inability to control his emotional outbursts and a personal sense of honor and duty that blocked him from sympathizing with the trials and tribulations of frontline troops caused him to stumble. Email Address Copyright 2023 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved. Once Third Army reached the West Wall, Patton intended to concentrate his forces to achieve a breach. To their surprise, they were not opposed by enemy forces. site is two fold. click here for our comprehensive guide to General Patton. By mid-September 1944, the U.S. Third Army was poised to strike at the soft underbelly of Adolf Hitlers Third Reich along a fabled corridor in northeastern France used for centuries by armies tramping across Europe. Whats more, a series of determined counterattacks by the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division kept the U.S. infantry from expanding the bridgehead. Late in the evening of 22 March, XII Corp's 5th Infantry Division began a Rhine crossing near Oppenheim against little resistance. We figured we had a perfectly good boat. But its fortune ended there. Meanwhile, US Third Army reached Siegen, Germany. He announced that the Third Army would shortly capture its 230,000th prisoner of war. A severe shortage of fuel in the early days of September slowed Third Armys advance to a crawl, giving the Germans time to rush reinforcements from as far away as Italy to cover thinly defended sectors. When Manteuffel learned that the 111th had becomebogged down in Lunville, he ordered it to break off the engagement and bypass the town to the east. All visitor submitted comments are opinions of those making the submissions and do not reflect views of WW2DB. I think, everybody here know the photo as Patton urinated into the Rhine. To their surprise, they were not opposed by enemy forces. This had elements of the 6th and 7th Parachute Divisions on their flanks and, to their rear in reserve, the 15th and 116th Panzer Divisions. But his cajoling paid off, as Bradley had been working hard to ensure that Haislips XV Corps, which had been helping to clear the lower Seine of German forces, would join Third Army on its southern flank. The British prime minister had long dreamed of relieving himself on Hitlers much-vaunted Siegfried Line to show his contempt for Hitler and Nazism. To protect the fatherland, Hitler ordered all German forces on the Western Front to hold their positions on the Moselle to allow engineers to make much-needed improvements to the West Wall fortifications. Meanwhile, US Third Army captured Ludwigshafen and Speyer, Germany. After the completion of the Battle in The Ardennes, Patton and his Army turned to the south and east attacking toward the Rhine. As the Americans prepared to resume their push east, the vanguard of CCA shifted north toward Chateau-Salins. Pattons troops beat Montgomery across the Rhine by one day. But there were simply too many crossing points for the Germans to contest every one with such promptness as they had shown at Dornot, Arnaville, and Pont-a-Mousson. He received the Bronze Star and was shot on or about 28 September, 1944. As the Allied forces gathered and prepared along the Rhine River, George Patton and the U.S. 5 th Division were quietly carrying . Hitler also made preparations for the creation of a new Fifth Army to be led by Manteuffel. Tom Tucker was one of the first men from Pattons Third Army to cross the Rhine River, the last natural barrier to the heart of Germany. Although a bridge had been captured some weeks before at Remagen, and a bridge-head tenuously held, this was to be the first river assault crossing of this famous stream since . With the vise tightening on Nancy, Blaskowitz ordered the 553rd Volksgrenadier Division to pull out of the Nancy pocket before it was cut off. On Pattons left wing, Walkers XX Corps began probing the Metz defenses on September 7. The light losses suffered by Abramss battalion were a result of his crews using their mobility to offset the advantage enjoyed by the Panthers long, high-velocity 75mm gun over the Shermans short 75mm gun. Wietersheim ordered the battle group to break off its attack until the following day so that reinforcements could be sent to Bures. Upon arriving at a dock area, Tucker and his comrades saw a group of sailors lowering a Landing Ship Tank (LST) into the water with a large crane. After two days of hard fighting, the two sides braced for more of the same. Following the disaster at the Falaise Gap in August, where the Germans suffered 300,000 casualties, resistance had been light as the surviving German units raced east toward better defensive ground in the Ardennes and Alsace-Lorraine regions. Meanwhile the construction of an even larger Class 40 bridge "London Bridge" continued and was completed by midnight. Patton celebrated the victory by stopping on a treadway bridge his men had built and relieving himself into the river. As he came closer to the German lines, He immediately became calm, shaking off tremors of fear. As a result, Eisenhower ordered him to make a personal apology to the soldier and also to everyone present at the time of the incident. Join historians and history buffs alike with our Unlimited Digital Access pass to every military history article ever published (over 3,000 articles) in Sovereigns military history magazines. ", ww2dbaseAdditional Contribution by Alan Chanter. All of these units suffered serious armored and antitank deficiencies. Behind the lines, Dwight Eisenhower transferred US 9th Army from Bernard Montgomery's army group to Omar Bradley's army group as Anglo-American objective shifted toward southern Germany and Czechoslovakia. In little more than a months time, Patton, together with his archrival British General Bernard L. Montgomery, commanding the British Eighth Army, liberated the strategic island from Axis control. Old Blood and Gutss fixation with supply problems and haggling with his superiors over reinforcements had distracted him from the detailed planning necessary to get Third Armys divisions across the Moselle as quickly as possible. "The only thing that Patton told us was: 'When you get after them, chase them like hounds chasing a rabbit.' Then he said: 'Go to the Rhine and capture a bridge.' We did everything but capture. Weeks ahead of his rival, British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Patton fought his own higher command structure nearly as hard as he did the Germans, making impolitic comments in public, moving farther and more aggressively than ordered, and even having his troops pose as First Army soldiers in order to steal fuel from that units stores in order to maintain their own advance to the east. ww2dbaseAs the Allied forces gathered on the west banks of the Rhine River, it was no longer a matter of surprise. Thank you. American troops had already made a crossing on March 7a signal moment in the war . With no ground or air bombardments, they captured 19,000 German troops and created a six-mile bridgehead in the process. Einheiten des 3. In the first day alone, CCAs vanguard had advanced nearly 20 miles and destroyed a dozen enemy tanks and 85 half-tracks and captured 350 prisoners. In 1943 he commanded the U.S. Irwins 5th Infantry Division made another effort to secure a bridgehead across the Moselle at Arnaville, a short march south of Dornot, on September 10. By August 30, Pattons army was receiving only about 32,000 of the 400,000 gallons of fuel it required to run all of its tanks and vehicles. Patton drove to the XII Corps front on September 19, where he met first with Eddy and later with Wood. The Germans attacked along the entire line on September 29, and Wietersheim committed his final reserve of 40 tanks to the fight for Hill 318. . McLain issued orders for the nearest infantry regiments to converge on the enemy column. A week before the Rhine crossing, Patton had held a press conference in which he delivered a classic performance, mixing the humorous, provocative, and the profane. Walkers corps consisted of the 5th and 90th Infantry Divisions and the 7th Armored Division, while Eddys corps, at that time, consisted of the 35th and 80th Infantry Divisions and the 4th and 6th Armored Divisions. To cover CCBs former position in the line, Baades 35th Infantry Division advanced to a new position west of Chateau-Salins. Not content to wait for the infantry, the vanguard of Dagers CCB managed to ford the Moselle at Bayon, where the rivers height was substantially lower because water was diverted to fill canals on each side. Most of the forces opposite Pattons Third Army belonged to the German First Army, which was part of General-Colonel Johannes Blaskowitzs Army Group G. Hitler planned to increase the forces opposite Patton to the point that they would be capable of launching a strong counterattack that would rock Third Army back on its heels. Yet Abramss 35th Tank Battalion counterattacked in the afternoon and recaptured the town in a fight that inflicted substantial casualties on the Germans. Although the day was cloudy and wet, two squadrons of P-47s from the 405th Fighter Squadron were able to navigate to the area using their cockpit instruments and instructions from ground spotters. Great article cannot wait for the rest of the battle, I am trying to find out more about where and in what battle my Dad, Donald Mansfield was shot. The next morning, elements of the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division overran the bridgehead, killing 300 Americans. The Shermans popped over the crest of the ridge and opened fire on the enemy tank column at a range of 900 yards, destroying five enemy tanks by striking them in the side. For Gods sake send some gasoline. Neither a patient nor defensive-minded commander, Patton seems not to have hindered his promotion to the temporary rank of four-star general in April by acting or remarking as he did. To succeed in Lorraine, Patton would have to exercise careful planning, make quick tactical adjustments, and adjust his goals and expectations when the weather failed to cooperate. The media and public back home were outraged that a general would treat an enlisted man in such a manner. Some of the hardest fighting was done by the 704th Tank Destroyer (TD) Battalion. Eisenhower (18901969) was chosen in July 1942 to head Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1943. By September 10, Baades 35th Infantry Division was in force along the western bank of the Moselle south of Nancy. Balck expanded the fight by committing units from Knobelsdorffs First Army to the battle on September 24. 2. Desperate to achieve their objective, the Germans toiled throughout the day to construct strongpoints and establish camouflaged positions on the southern slope to support their attack. 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