Skip to main content
Loading Explore guides…
Western Allies' Final Campaign · Acedra
Home
Explore
History
Western Allies' Final Campaign
Sign in to save
Chat
If YouTube asks you to sign in, open the video on YouTube.
Watch on YouTube
Reload player
Transcript
170 segments
Copy
Hide video
0:06
In 1944, World War Two was reaching its dramatic climax. Rocket ships firing, aircraft flying overhead. As the Allies waged total war to liberate Occupied Europe… This was a war in which all sides were learning as they went. From the beaches of Normandy… The water was full of blood. The water was bright red. To the forests of Germany. I can still see all the dead lying there. Both sides deployed weapons of ever greater power and sophistication.
0:43
And this tank suddenly gives the Americans a real big advantage. It’s a very effective beast. This is the story of the Western Allies’ final campaign, told by the men on both sides who were there. You did what you did. You fire and maneuver.
1:02
He was my brother.
1:12
March 1945. Nine months on from D-Day, the Western Allies had reached the last great natural barrier between them and the German heartland: the Rhine River. Psychologically it was very important. The die is really cast. We’re now, we’re getting into the heartland of, of the 3rd Reich. This was where the Wehrmacht planned to make its last great stand in the West. Everything comes at once. It was a mixture of patriotism, loyalty, a sense of duty, persistence, call it what you will.
1:53
While Allied soldiers lived in desperate fear of being killed with the end in sight. You knew you had to still be prepared to lay down your life but you, you weren’t quite so keen to do it as you been earlier on ‘cause the war was going to be over. This is the story of the Battle for the Rhine.
2:21
In January 1945, Hitler’s last offensive in the west, known as the Battle of the Bulge, had ended in catastrophic defeat. In its wake, the Allies were able to fight their way through the Siegfried Line fortifications that defended Germany’s frontier from invasion. In the east, Stalin’s Red Army was just 50 miles from Berlin.
2:47
To most, Nazi Germany’s defeat seemed inevitable, merely a matter of time.
2:54
But not all Germans were ready to give up. They are now fighting on German soil so they’re defending their own homes, their families, their own territory against an invader. Another reason is fanaticism, particularly amongst the younger ones that are now getting drafted into the army, so the 16, 17 year olds, because these are people, young people, who have only known the Nazi State, who’ve only known Nazi propaganda, so to them slogans like ‘Germany must live even if we die’,
3:27
‘you are nothing your people is everything’, actually do mean something. So they are quite willing sacrifice themselves.
3:37
Adolf Hitler hoped that the River Rhine, the last great natural barrier between the Western Allies and the German heartland, could be used to inflict a crushing defeat on British and American forces transforming the strategic situation.
3:55
Hitler’s still fighting on out of a mixture of calculation and delusion. The calculation is that if the Germans can hold the Western Allies at the Rhine, they can potentially split apart this kind of awkward alliance between the western democracies and the Soviet Communists. But there’s also a strong sense of delusion in what Hitler’s thinking. He’s fantasizing about units that got destroyed months ago, he’s trying to organize things that simply aren’t going to work. He’s refusing any
4:27
kind of thought about surrender or about peace. The Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight D Eisenhower, knew full well that the Germans would mount fierce resistance along the Rhine not just a formidable natural barrier, but a hugely important symbolic frontier for the German people. The aura of the Rhine played a large part. Many people thought it would be a national disaster if the enemy managed to cross the Rhine because then people would ask “Where else can we stop the enemy if not here?”
5:10
In the spring of 1945, Eisenhower commanded one of the most powerful armies ever assembled.
5:17
By March, its three army groups had entered Germany and reached the banks of the Rhine all were now vying with each other to be the first across. In the North was 21st Army Group under British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, comprising First Canadian Army, British Second Army and US Ninth Army. In the centre US General Omar Bradley’s 12th Army Group, with US First and Third Armies. And further South, General Devers Sixth Army Group, with US Seventh and French First Army.
5:53
Since the breakout from Normandy, Eisenhower had wrestled with two competing strategic options. One of them was the narrow front, or the knife thrust approach which was to pour all the resources he had into a very narrow assault towards Germany and towards the Rhine river. The other was what was called the broad front strategy which was to parcel out his resources among men of all of his armies, and all of his units and advance in an extremely broad front
6:24
across the whole of Western Europe towards Germany. Eisenhower ended up choosing the broad front and having everybody advance at the same time. Sometimes not to the liking of his best generals. Both Patton & Montgomery were very strongly in favour of a knife thrust although they differed, unsurprisingly, about who should be the one to carry that out. Each Army Group was given the freedom to organize and pursue its own approach to crossing the Rhine and did so according to form.
6:56
Montgomery began planning a giant set piece operation to get 21st Army Group across the river involving airborne drops, and huge amounts of artillery and engineering support. Further south, Patton would rely on speed and initiative to get Third Army across wherever an opportunity arose. The Allied dream was to capture a major bridge over the Rhine intact. But it was thought to be a huge long-shot the Germans could be relied on to blow every bridge as soon as they’d retreated across the river.
7:34
The Germans were desperate to destroy the bridges over the Rhine because once the Allies had crossed the Rhine it would be very, very hard to stop them because the Allies would be able to use the still existing and still useable infrastructure that the Germans had including, for example, the motorways, the Autobahns. So, this really was the last line of defense that the Germans could expect to perhaps hold against the Allies in the West. But a bit of luck and American improvisation
8:05
was about to hand Bradley’s 12th Army Group one of the greatest opportunities of the war at a town called Remagen.
8:14
On 7th March, scouts of the US 9th Armoured Division arrived on a hill overlooking Remagen. They were stunned to see the 350-metre-long Ludendorff bridge still intact.
8:28
Here was a chance for the Allies to leap the Rhine in a single bound.
8:34
But the town of Remagen and the bridge itself was crowded with retreating German soldiers, refugees and vehicles.
8:43
And I can remember seeing people running, soldiers and civilians going across the bridge, German soldiers and German civilians crossing the bridge. And at the other side of it, it went, it was a high hill and the railroad track went through a tunnel, and so it was a good view that from where we were over there. General William Hoge, commander of Combat Command B of 9th Armored Division arrived on the scene. An experienced engineer officer, veteran of D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge,
9:15
he quickly took charge of the operation to seize Remagen and rush the Ludendorff bridge before the Germans could destroy it.
9:25
Fortunately, his division could call on the newest model of American tank a much-needed replacement for the iconic, but vulnerable M4 Sherman.
9:37
The M26 Pershing tank is one of those ‘what might have been’ stories of World War Two. As soon as the Sherman tank went into production, the American military starts designing a replacement vehicle. But the Americans fighting in Europe have a major set of issues. If they start importing different tanks to Europe, bigger tanks, there’s going to be transport and logistics issues. So, the Pershing actually only gets into production in later in 1944. 20 of them
10:11
are rushed across to Europe as something called the Zebra mission. They are almost being tested out in combat. And this tank suddenly gives the American a real big advantage. It’s got this massive 90mm gun on it. The firepower of this is better even than that on the King Tiger. It’s got a powerful new engine. It’s got wider tracks, and thicker armour at the front so the crews feel safer when they’re going into combat. With Pershing tanks quickly silencing enemy opposition,
10:42
Remagen was soon taken, and the Americans turned their attention to the bridge.
10:49
Unknown to the Americans, the Germans had already tried to blow the bridge once, but the explosives had failed to detonate.
10:58
A second attempt had only damaged it, due to a lack of the right explosives
11:04
They asked for 600 Kilograms of explosives, but they were only given 300 and they do find out that these 300 are actually of lower quality than the normal explosives they would have expected. These were from mines so were used to blow blow mines rather than blow up bridges. That’s the only bit that explodes and it leaves the bridge intact. In the aftermath of the explosion an American infantry company was ordered forward to take the bridge. An American soldier suddenly
11:38
appeared out of the last street in Remagen and made for the bridge. He was alone and walked with his gun at the ready, past a wall, step by step,
11:52
securing the area for about 250 meters. And nothing happened. I was watching all this and then an American tank appeared next to the bridge on the Remagen side.
12:06
Then I knew it was time for me to leave. A Pershing tank helped to clear a path for the infantry. The infantry come under fire from machine gun nests that are positioned in the towers either side of the bridge. The Pershing tank fired back at those towers knocking out the machine gun positions. US soldiers venturing on to the bridge knew the Germans might try and blow it again at any minute, and this time, succeed. They were joined by three army engineers led by Lieutenant Hugh Mott.
12:39
He was later interviewed for Allied newsreels.
12:43
After the infantry had taken the town of Remagen, the task force commander Lieutenant Colonel Engeman called me up and ordered me out on the bridge to do some reconnaissance. I was to find out what demolitions were on the bridge and if the bridge would take traffic and, if not, how long it would take to repair the bridge for traffic. Later in life, Mott recalled his feelings, walking onto a bridge that might be blown to sky high at any minute. There wasn’t a whole lot of firefighting really that
13:18
first afternoon there. In fact, the firing was a little firing here and there. And you was asking about a feeling you had,
13:29
when I went out on that bridge: I felt as I just laying back in the shelter saying, “Come on, come on baby, come on across here and we’ll get you and the bridge both at the same time.” That’s the kind of feeling that you had.
13:44
Under nothing more than sporadic sniper fire, the first American squad reached the end of the bridge without a single casualty.
13:53
Along the way they and engineers disabled as many charges as possible.
14:00
Some of our friendly engineers from the 9th Armored Division, running along the bridge and when they see a wire they reach down and pull it out.
14:09
9th Armored Division had crossed the Rhine.
14:14
Reinforcements were soon on their way. I received orders to cross the bridge as rapidly as possible. We had some of our infantry across before us, but I was the first complete Allied or friendly company across because I had my cooks with me. The infantry who were with us had their cooks back with the battalion trains behind us, so my company cooked the first hot meal on the far side of the Rhine.
14:44
Just 24 hours after the capture of the bridge, local commanders, with Einsehower’s support, had got 8,000 troops across the river.
14:54
But engineer Frank Camm had concerns about how long the bridge would stay up.
15:01
The bridge was, obviously damaged. As we went across there were holes in the bridge and we dodged, dodged around them driving across. And also, as we crossed, I looked up on the right and I saw on the truss there was a big break in the truss that the Germans had exploded. And I could tell if that truss were to go all the way the bridge would collapse. So as soon as we got across the river I went up to the Colonel of the regiment I I was supporting, I said, “sir, that bridge
15:33
needs engineer work on it, do you want me to have my Company stay back and work on that bridge or do you want me to support our Infantry that are forward up here.” He said, “stay with us.” And I said that was good. I felt safer that way. While American troops fought to enlarge their bridgehead across the Rhine. Behind them, engineers worked round the clock to shore up the damaged Ludendorff bridge. They also set up more crossing points, using landing craft, boats and pontoon bridges,
16:04
to get more troops across the Rhine as quickly as possible.
16:11
Hitler was furious when he heard that the Allies had captured a Rhine bridge intact. He immediately ordered reinforcements be sent to wipe out the American bridgehead, and the bridge be destroyed at all costs. He also demanded that the officer responsible or it falling into Allied hands was shot. You have to realise that Hitler had someone who would pass the guilty verdict on a person of his choosing. Therefore, you could assume from the start
16:46
that there would be one guilty person, if not two, three, four, five guilty people. The man held responsible for the loss of the bridge was Major Hans Scheller. His wife remembers the moment she learned his fate. Lunchtime at 2 o’clock, it came on the news, the military news.
17:08
They said that
17:12
he had been arrested and sentenced to
17:18
execution for cowardice in the face of the enemy and refusing to carry out orders. The sentence had already been carried out.
17:30
The Germans were much more aggressive about punishing their own soldiers very harshly. They shot tens of thousands of their own men during the course of World War Two. The majority on the Eastern front but thousands on the western front as well for offenses ranging from desertion, to stealing, to rape, to cowardice, for all sorts of things. But in comparison to the Allied armies where only a few, if any, soldiers were executed for crimes of any sort
18:05
the Germans were quite willing to shoot their own men and did it tens of thousands of times. One officer who was not shot but only sacked was the German commander in the West, Field Marshal von Rundstedt, a convenient scapegoat for the blunder at Remagen.
18:23
He was replaced by a defensive specialist with a brilliant record in Italy.
18:31
Albert Kesselring was a Luftwaffe general who’d won a reputation as a skilled commander of both air and ground troops. His masterful defence of Italy against two Allied armies prompted Hitler to bring him back to Germany to organise its defence against the Western Allies.
18:50
Able though he was, Kesselring now faced an impossible strategic situation.
18:59
To try to hold the Allies at the Rhine, Kesselring had at his disposal: Army Group H in the Netherlands under General Blaskowitz, Field Marshall Model’s Army Group B, And Army Group G in the South West: under General Hausser.
19:18
There was a fundamental issue because a lot of the the troops that they were fighting on the Western Front were either very old men who hadn’t been drafted into the Army beforehand, or extremely young people who had just now been drafted out of the Hitler Youth.
19:32
The core of the German army, the very experienced and non-commissioned officers and also officers, most of them had by that stage disappeared, so the army as a fighting organization is actually is not performing particularly well because they don’t have the right manpower, don’t have the right training, and also they don’t have enough of the needed material and the equipment. Kesselring’s first priority was to eradicate the American toehold across the Rhine, at Remagen.
20:03
The Americans had moved thousands of reinforcements into the bridgehead, using the Ludendorff bridge itself, as well as pontoon bridges their engineers had built alongside it. The Germans now mounted a series of increasingly daring attempts to destroy them.
20:21
Everything they had they threw at it trying to bring the bridge down. To use air power and they used some of the very latest planes that they have. These included the world’s first operational jet-bomber the Arado-234 Blitz. With a top speed around 460 miles per hour, the Blitz could outrun Allied fighters, and ground fire to deliver its 1.5 ton payload. The jets flew nine sorties over six days but never hit their target.
20:56
To protect their prized crossings, US First Army assembled the greatest concentration of anti-aircraft guns seen in the entire war, nearly 700, as well as fighter cover.
21:10
US forces claimed to shoot down more than 200 of the 367 aircraft sent to attack the bridge.
21:19
With the Luftwaffe unable to get through, the Germans brought up a Karl Gerat 540mm mortar, of a type seen here, to shell the bridge.
21:32
It missed its target 14 times before breaking down. So, it was time to unleash one of Hitler’s terrifying new wonder weapons.
21:48
Hitler then orders the rocket V2 to be launched and fired at the bridge which really concerns and surprises a lot of the German military because they know that the accuracy is quite low, so they fire 11 of them in total. Now they all miss, the only thing they do hit is a number of German towns killing German civilians but again the bridge remains intact. Finally, Otto Skorzeny, the legendary head of a shadowy SS special forces unit, despatched seven Waffen-SS frogmen down river with explosives,
22:22
to blow up one of the pontoon bridges.
22:26
But the Allies had a secret weapon of their own.
22:30
This is the canal defense light. It was given that name because it was a secret project. The idea was that in a barbette or like a turret on the top there, there would be a carbon-arc light in there which puts out about 13 million candle power. And they could actually set off a shutter that would flash across the light once or twice every second, and that would lead to almost blinding the person who was looking back at it.
23:01
The Canal Defense Light on the American side did play a very important role in preventing the bridge from being blown up because they spotted the frogmen as they were approaching. Having said that it’s a combination of factors that really that so resulted in the frogmen not being successful. And in addition to the search light it’s also the simple fact that these frogmen were exhausted and extremely cold so not really able to react particularly rapidly to new situations and to being
23:29
caught in the search light. The SS frogmen never stood a chance in the freezing river. All were either killed or captured.
23:39
Ten days after its capture, in the middle of the afternoon on 17th March, Lundendorff Bridge collapsed.
23:48
The German demolition charges, the strain of constant use by troops and heavy vehicles, and near misses from German bombs and shells, had finally taken their toll. 28 US Army engineers were killed in the collapse, men who had been working on the bridge to make it safe until the last minute.
24:08
Dozens more had to be pulled from the river, many with serious injuries.
24:16
By the time the bridge collapsed, the Americans had got 25,000 men over the Rhine at Remagen using the Ludendorff bridge, pontoon bridges, ferries and landing craft.
24:29
And on the far shore, they’d carved out a bridgehead 25 miles wide, and 8 miles deep. But to bring their full might to bear on Germany’s defenses, the Allies would have to find more places to cross the Rhine. It was one bridge, and the Allies couldn’t get all of their forces across a single span over the Rhine. With the broad front strategy that Eisenhower was following, the allies didn’t need just one bridge they needed lots of bridges and lots of ways across the Rhine
25:01
to get all of their forces over. About 80 miles north of Remagen, the British 21st Army Group under Field Marshal Montgomery was preparing its own Rhine crossing near Wesel.
25:14
But here the Germans had successfully blown up rail and road bridges in time.
25:21
So, Monty had come up with Operation Plunder the largest British-led operation since D-Day, involving more than 1.2 million men.
25:32
While Monty didn’t have a bridge, he did have a very powerful and experienced force. The Rhine crossing would be led by the British Second Army, the strongest army Britain had ever put in the field… alongside First Canadian Army, US Ninth Army, and the US Eighteenth Airborne Corps.
25:55
This was very much a Montgomery style battle in that he provided as much fire power to cover the assault as possible, and in addition, a further airborne drop. The lesson of Market Garden, which perhaps hadn’t needed to be learnt was that airborne forces functioned best when they could link up with ground forces as rapidly as possible.
26:21
Operation Plunder, and its airborne element, Operation Varsity, was a vast undertaking, requiring 60,000 tons of ammunition, 59,000 engineers and 30,000 tons of engineering supplies as well as the transport of hundreds of landing craft and amphibious vehicles to get the assault troops across the Rhine. To Monty’s great irritation, a few hours before Plunder was launched, he got news that his arch-rival, General Patton, had beaten him across the Rhine.
26:56
In the south, near Mainz, his 5th Infantry Division had made an improvised crossing in a mix of assault boats, landing craft and amphibious vehicles. They’d required no assistance from artillery, bombers or airborne troops all of which Patton’s boss, General Bradley, was keen to point out in his communiqué.
27:19
But Monty was not to be distracted. Not even by a visit from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was determined to witness the historic crossing of the Rhine in person.
27:33
At dusk on 23rd March, 3,500 Allied guns began blasting German positions on the far bank of the Rhine.
27:44
Three hours later, Operation Plunder got underway, as troops of the 51st Highland Division plunged into the river aboard their Buffalo amphibious armoured transports.
27:58
The idea is that this Buffalo would be capable of carrying, as I say, 36 infantry or a load of supplies, with a 3-man crew we were able to use these quite effectively. The idea being that if you’re on a river with a fast-flowing current, you have to aim for the opposite bank at an angle of about 45 degrees so that when the current catches you it takes the rear end down with the flow of water and you are then at right angles to the bank.
28:29
One of these pioneering amphibious vehicles is today housed at the UK’s Tank Museum.
28:37
The Buffalo could take thirty soldiers under some form of protection, down the steep banks of the Rhine, into that fast-flowing river that’s sweeping off towards the sea. It powers them across and on the far side of the bank, it can release its ramp at the rear, and let those soldiers off into the attack.
28:58
So, the attack went in first thing in the morning, 600 Buffaloes were used to take about thirty soldiers per trip across the Rhine, up the other side, and some of them sat there and gave covering fire with their polsten cannons. As we approached the river in these buffaloes, we were all very cheerful. And as we got near to the river,
29:24
the buffalo was bumping us about a little bit, but it was all prepared and everything was organized, everything was under control.
29:34
We got to the river and then the Buffalo reared up in the air, nose-dived down into the river, and, deep into the river with the small draft
29:49
separating us. And all of a sudden, everything went quiet. And then David Reed, started to play his mouth organ.
29:58
And then the next thing, the boys in the Buffalo started to sing. And the cheerful atmosphere feeling returned, and we went across the Rhine to the accompaniment of the mouth organ and everybody singing, in good heart, in good spirits. As British and American infantry crossed the Rhine in the early morning of 24th March, Allied tracer fire and shells streamed overhead, to keep German heads down, and to mark out landing spots. Trooper Peter Davies was driving one of the Buffalos across the Rhine.
30:35
Monty had put down such a tremendous barrage with artillery, as he did with most major attacks. And the barrage over the Rhine was tremendous, and then of course, well the smoke screen was put down and we were were given the order to go, and we were loaded up with infantry, we got to the other side, we took the first load straight in and got them out of the bank.
31:00
German defenders were outnumbered and outgunned and put up only sporadic resistance in the face of the Allied onslaught.
31:13
The man responsible for co-ordinating German defences along this stretch of the Rhine was General Johannes Blaskowitz, commander of Army Group H. He initially had a promising career but after speaking out against SS atrocities in Poland he was sidelined for 4 years, finally being given command of German forces in southern France in 1944. An experienced and capable commander, he knew full well that he faced a nearly hopeless task in defending the Rhine frontier.
31:49
Blaksowitz’ Army Group H looked impressive on paper, but most of its divisions were only 3 to 4,000 strong compared to a typical Allied divisional strength of 16,000 men.
32:04
What’s more, his troops were desperately short of artillery and tank support. The entire Army Group could muster barely 200 tanks and assault guns against the might of five Allied armored divisions, with more than a thousand tanks.
32:21
Most of them had very little in the way of equipment, or tanks or vehicles left. German industry had been destroyed for the large part by occupation or by the strategic bombing, and so the German army in 1945 is really a shadow of its former self, fighting more out of habit, more out of loyalty, more of a lack of anything else useful to do and in the desperate hope that maybe Hitler would come up with a wonder weapon that would transform the war.
32:53
That maybe they could preserve their families and their home societies. But with no real strong hope for the future. Few German soldiers wanted to die, when the end of the war was clearly in sight.
33:10
We fought but no longer had any hope, put it that way. Each of us hoped that he would be able to go home again,
33:20
that nothing would happen to him
33:23
anymore and we acted accordingly. We weren’t fighters anymore.
33:29
With German industry in ruins, priority was given to a cheap, easy-to-produce weapon for taking on Allied tanks. At the same time as Germany was developing massive tanks like Jagdtiger, they also developed and produced a number of simpler weapons, one of which is this Panzerfaust. The idea of this Panzerfaust is that it’s this hollow charged weapon, that they could mass produce. And the idea of a hollow charge weapon, there is a cone of explosive in this head lined with copper,
34:04
by having a blast charge inside this tube, you aim at an enemy tank about maybe 60 meters away. You press down the ignition charge.
34:16
That forces this projectile towards the enemy tank. It’s a very simple principle. When it hits armour, it explodes and it melts a copper lining that will jet through metal. Tends to leave on an armour plate just about 2 ¼ inch hole, and that copper jet goes inside the vehicle, and quite often ignites a fire inside. So as a simple weapon they could mass produce this. By later 1944 they were making 300,000 of these a month and the simplicity of it meant they could issue it to home guard units,
34:55
Hitler youth. All sorts of people could use something as simple as a panzerfaust.
35:03
But despite its crude effectiveness, the panzerfaust wasn’t enough to halt the overwhelming might of the Allied attack.
35:12
You should have seen the Americans, how many resources they had. It was like a rich man fighting someone who had been in prison for six years and was almost an invalid. Against scattered, demoralized defenses, 21st Army Group’s crossings went like clockwork. Casualties were light. Some units lost more men to friendly fire than to the enemy.
35:48
As the morning progressed, the Allies launched more amphibious vehicles and landing craft across the Rhine.
35:55
By 10am, it was clear to Monty that the landings were going better than anyone could have dared to hope.
36:04
NARRATOR But the next stage of his plan was the most risky, the massive airborne drop behind German lines, codenamed Operation Varsity.
36:15
It would be the last and largest airborne operation of the war bigger than D-Day or Market Garden.
36:26
The aerial armada would consist of nearly 4,000 transports and gliders, escorted by nearly 900 fighters, and carrying almost 22,000 airborne infantry.
36:46
At 9.45 Allied artillery fell silent, to avoid hitting their own aircraft, and all eyes strained skyward.
36:59
It was daytime, ten o’clock in the morning, that was the H hour I was a Company Commander by that time, I had been given command of B Company in the First Battalion and the ride was again, pretty much like the Normandy ride, people were probably even more confident than they were on the Normandy shore.
37:25
At first ground fire from the Germans was light. But as they realized what was happening, more and more guns opened fire.
37:35
The approaching Allied aircraft were easy targets: slow-moving, flying low, unable to take evasive action during their drop run.
37:46
The Americans were also about to discover a deadly flaw in the design of their new transport aircraft. During the actual drop, not in my regiment but, the sister regiment, jump regiment 513th,
38:03
lost quite a few flamers and they were jumping the C46 that had two doors, one on each side. They were jumping both doors out of it. It had fuel systems in it that were much more vulnerable than the C47.
38:22
When punctured, the fuel tanks leaked back into the fuselage, turning some into fireballs.
38:31
After the paratroopers came the gliders slower lower and even more vulnerable on their approach. In all, nearly one hundred Allied transport and glider aircraft were destroyed.
38:47
Airborne soldiers who made it to the ground scrambled to untangle themselves from parachutes or wrecked gliders, often under fire.
38:58
The elite airborne units quickly got organised and started to fight back. Within hours they had seized most of their objectives and were linking up with ground forces who’d crossed the river that morning. The 6th Airborne Division, they’d landed deep on the gun lines and I remember joining up with them at about 10 in the morning, but they’re glider borne people had terrible casualties. I mean I don’t know how many gliders were shot down in that operation, and an enormous number of men killed.
39:32
But the rest of the operation went pretty well.
39:37
For all its horrors, the airborne drop had been less costly than anticipated, while the river crossings had proved a stunning success. Monty had parts of 4 infantry divisions, as well as swimming tanks and 2 airborne divisions across the Rhine.
39:56
General Blaskowitz, now alert to the scale of the Allied operation, committed his only reserves in a desperate battle to save the Reich.
40:06
The 15th Panzergrenadier Division counterattacked at Rees. While the 116th Panzer Division was ordered to seize back control of the Issel river crossings from Allied paratroopers.
40:22
But with roving Allied fighter-bombers hitting the German build up at Issel, as well as fire support from Allied guns on the west bank of the Rhine, the German counterattacks were over almost as soon as they’d begun.
40:38
Blaskowitz had played his last hand, and all it had achieved was to hold up the Allies for a few hours.
40:47
Meanwhile Allied engineers got to work building bridges over the Rhine.
40:54
The engineers would build first a bridge that could take individual infantry men across it and then they would slowly build it out from there, using pontoons, using steel segments, using all sorts of different equipment to put the bridge together. And so, this quite remarkable engineering achievement has kind of been left in the historical shadow, but it was just as critical as the capture of Remagen to how the Allies got across the Rhine river.
41:24
When Churchill met Eisenhower on the 25th March, there was plenty of cause for optimism.
41:33
The British Prime Minister even crossed the Rhine himself at a quiet sector, spending 30 minutes on the far shore before returning. By the following day, 21st Army Group had 12 bridges in place over the Rhine, and Allied units were beginning to make serious inroads into German territory.
41:55
German divisions facing the Allied crossing had either been destroyed or were now abandoning their positions to escape the Allied onslaught.
42:05
We just went through Germany that was going, like going on a coach trip really ‘cause there weren’t no one there. They were just gone They knew they’d lost the war. And they just retreated. Their fighting spirit broken at last, German soldiers began to surrender in ever increasing numbers. We started advancing about eight to ten miles a day,
42:31
capturing hundreds of Germans every day. In fact, there were so many of them that our soldiers were would just wave them on the roads and have them go back to the roads without guards sometimes.
42:46
I remember one time when we were over the Rhine and I saw this group of prisoners here the same as everybody else did I’d expect. 200 of them coming down and they were running, running like hell and I thought ‘Cor that’s good.’ Now when they got passed us, we realised the person driving them on was our little Sergeant Major and he was going ‘Come on you buggers, come on you buggers.’ But there were also still many die-hards, willing to fight to the end for Hitler’s Germany. Some were only boys.
43:20
There was one young boy, 14 year old, he held us up. And when they found him, well they couldn’t do nothing to him, he was only 14. But he was holding, he held a whole battalion up that boy. He got some machine gun, or something. He was firing all over the place. We daren’t go through. In the end they found him. And he’d got this machine gun and he was just firing it anywhere. In just 3 weeks, a mix of American improvisation, and Monty’s cautious, methodical approach,
43:55
had allowed the Allies to break through Germany’s last great natural barrier on a 200-mile front. More crossings of the Rhine quickly followed, from Strasbourg to the Netherlands. Soon some Allied units were advancing 50 miles a day, infantry catching rides on tanks, German towns decked out in white linen to signify surrender.
44:25
Eisenhower, to Monty’s fury, decided to leave Berlin to the Soviets.
44:32
But the Nazi empire was fast crumbling.
44:39
As Allied units made massive inroads into the German heartland, they uncovered the horrifying crimes committed by the Nazi regime.
44:49
British troops liberating the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen found scenes of unimaginable suffering.
45:02
We didn’t know anything about concentration camps, never heard of them. Nobody had ever heard of them.
45:10
What we didn’t realise that on one side was the male concentration camp; on the left was the female. That there were a total of 60,000 there that what we could smell and see
45:27
were rags all over the place, rags, they weren’t rags – they were dead bodies or dying bodies. And the smell was appalling and if you concentrated on anything, you see that tree there at the bottom of it something occasionally there would be a little twitch that person might not actually be dead.
45:51
As Allied soldiers fanned out across Germany, they sometimes came across the palatial homes of Nazi leaders.
46:00
Mönchengladbach turned out to house the home of Paul Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister under Adolf Hitler. We captured this area and didn’t really know whose it was or, except there was a lot of wine and cameras, Goebbels was apparently a big camera and wine collector.
46:23
For Jewish soldiers of the 29th Division, an opportunity to celebrate Passover at Goebbel’s mansion with survivors of the camps, became an act of defiance.
46:35
They wanted to go back to that service because that Passover service in the Jewish faith is the story of the Israelites’ freedom from Egyptian slavery 3,000 years ago. They were just liberated from their own slavery in modern times, under Nazi Germany.
46:55
During the Passover service, the chaplain, Poliakoff, was moved by the presence of what he saw in his congregation there, not just American soldiers and, but the, folks who were in concentration camps who had survived and they were there in pitiful condition, and many of whom actually, when we taking, trying to take them back afterwards, they, several died on the way, we didn’t, didn’t have a chance to do anything except let them do what they begged to have done,
47:34
to be there at the Passover service.
47:38
Six weeks after the Rhine crossings, the Soviets were masters of Berlin, and Hitler was dead.
47:46
Eight days later, on 8th May 1945, the war in Europe ended following the unconditional surrender of Germany. I had been defeated. I had been defeated, and it took a year, or a year and a half until we heard about everything that had happened, the Holocaust and so on. And then a radical change followed in people’s opinion, how wrong all of it had been and how horrific it was. But initially I didn’t feel liberated. I didn’t. I’m sure many did, but I didn’t.
48:28
It was a great anti-climax. It was like a drug. You are on a high of fairly controlled excitement. And my God it was exciting. And then suddenly it stopped. It all, Germans all quit. For the young men who’d risked life and limb, it would soon be time to leave their comrades, and return home, taking memories and experiences that would stay with them forever. When it was over, well what now? Kind of a flat feeling. I’m gonna miss the comradeship of all those guys. And
49:10
how they got the job done? I don’t know. I don’t know. But I’m very proud,
49:24
to have served with those guys.
49:28
We knew each other better than most people know their own family.
49:34
Because we went through hardships together and we helped each other survive.
49:39
The war is over. We have survived. That was the underlying feeling. When, I look back on 11th March when the Americans marched into Leubsdorf, the underlying feeling was the war’s over, thank God.
49:59
The question of whether we’d been defeated or liberated wasn’t something we thought about until later. I opened the front door because my mother always left the front door open and I walked in and I said, “hi mom”. And she blew up. She just you know. I was home.
50:20
That’s my story. There was one of my sisters that was on the front porch and she saw me top that rise and recognized me immediately.
50:33
And she let out a scream that I can hear all the way back in Virginia even now, that ‘Harley’s home!’
50:51
Getting off that train and all these people were cheering and hollering and clapping and so glad to see me. I didn’t know half of them, I knew a lot of them but
51:03
and my mother was crying, I think I was crying. I knew how short life was and to live through something like that, shows you that life is important. Now that’s I’ve been in it and through it for 5 years and 3 months,
51:24
I’m happy that the Lord let me live through this.
Here to help you learn
Sign in to keep a private conversation with your course tutor.
Ask me anything about the material…
Sign in to chat