Battle of the Rhineland

The Rhineland battle was intended to be a prelude to a set-piece crossing of the Rhine by the 21st Army Group. While this operation did proceed in late Mar 1945, American forces managed to cross the river in other locations with less preparation, including the capture of an intact bridge at Remagen on 7 Mar 1945 by the US 1st Army, and a crossing by the US 3rd Army the day before the British crossing, Operation PLUNDER. PLUNDER was supported by Operation VARSITY, a large airborne drop on the far side of the Rhine in which the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion played an active part. The Rhine crossings and battles afterward comprised the Final Phase of the war in Europe. The Battle Honour "The Rhineland" refers only to actions fought west of the river, while the Battle Honour "The Rhine" was awarded to units fighting in the crossing itself as well as on the east bank during the Final Phase.

Awaiting the final clearing of the Rhineland on 4 Mar 1945 at Kranenburg, Germany. From left to right General H.D.G. Crerar GOC-i-C First Canadian Army, Lieutenant General G.G. Simonds GOC II Canadian Corps, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke (CiGS), Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and at far right Field Marshal B.L. Montgomery GOC-i-C 21st Army Group

The Battle

The terrain in the Rhineland was marked by clear boundaries, bordered on one side by the Rhine and the other by the Maas, measuring about 50 kilometres long by from 20 to 30 kilometres wide, widening as one moved further from the Allied start line. The first third, from the Allied viewpoint, was flooded and the other two were covered in thick mud due to winter rains. Much of the ground was marked by thick forests, and there were no noticably high or low features. Engagement ranges were short. Defences were well prepared, as the enemy had four months to improve positions, including some of the pre-war Siegfried Line obstacles. The Germans built strong points and hedgehogs - positions for all-around defence against attack from any direction. All these factors "made for a very complex battle, extremely difficult for higher headquarters to 'read' on an hour-by-hour basis, and the brunt of the decision-making seems to have fallen on the two corps commanders, Sir Brian Horrocks (British XXX Corps) and (Lieutenant General Guy) Simonds (II Canadian Corps)."³

The initial attack on 8 Feb 1945 (Operation VERITABLE) was launched by three British divisions and the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division on the flooded left flank over the Waal Flats. The ancient city of Cleve was bombed flat, and the heaviest artillery bombardment of the entire war was laid on. The Materborn Gap was considered the key to the advance; 3,000 metres of open ground stretching between Cleve and the trees of The Reichswald to the south. The British made it through on 11 Feb after three costly days of fighting through the woods. The 3rd Division, making use of amphibious vehicles, had a slightly easier time and many opted to withdraw as the British advances threatened to cut them off.

As the British advance slackened, the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division moved up, and both divisions now had as their objective the Goch-Calcar Road, which would be the Start Line for the second phase of the Rhineland fighting, Operation BLOCKBUSTER. The line was cleared at great cost; one of the fallen, Sergeant Aubrey Cosens of The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada, was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

The Germans practised their traditional tactics of giving ground under pressure but then immediately launching counter-attacks to recover the lost ground before the Canadians could consolidate their successes. When that happened, infantry companies which had been badly weakened in the initial assault were often cut off and assailed from all sides. The ultimate response was to call down artillery fire on their own positions...Veritable...(cost) the British nearly seven thousand casualties and the Canadians nearly two thousand - a ratio roughly proportionate to their respective commitments - while the Germans lost about twelve thousand killed, the same number taken prisoner, and perhaps another twenty thousand wounded.⁴

For the second phase, BLOCKBUSTER, the 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division replaced the 3rd in the line. To the south, the American 9th Army was also advancing to the Rhine in Operation GRENADE, delayed until 23 Feb due to the German destruction of two key dams on the Roer River and consequent heavy flooding making the area impassable. They found, once they were moving north towards the British and Canadians, that most of the Germans had been moved away to oppose VERITABLE. The Germans were desperate to hold out at long as possible west of the Rhine as at least 17 divisions were streaming to the bridges at Wesel, now only 15 kilometres from the Canadians and 20 from the Americans.

The 2nd and 4th Canadian Divisions now advanced roughly abreast into more heavy forest; The Hochwald, Tüschenwald and Bambergerwald, running along a low ridge and with positions improved by the Germans for the previous two weeks. The 2nd Division went straight into the Hochwald while the 4th Division aimed for a narrow gap in the woods. Two attacks went in, and it was made apparent an armoured division was not able to simply blast through; the Germans had a wide variety of close-range anti-tank weaponry, the tanks had trouble negotiating the mud, and the Canadians didn't have enough infantry to clear a path for the tanks. The battle for the Hochwald Gap lasted from 27 Feb to 3 Mar and advances were measured in hundreds of yards. The 3rd Division returned to the line and the 2nd Division sent a brigade to assist in opening the gap. The other two brigades of the 2nd Division kept pressure on the Germans elsewhere on the line. Captain Frederick Tilston of The Essex Scottish was awarded a Victoria Cross for his actions in one of the many small unit actions.

By the second week of Mar, the Germans had fallen back to the Wesel Pocket, and final actions at Veen and Xanten had cleared the final defenders away by the 10th. A hastily organized operation to "bounce" the Rhine was scrubbed when the sound of German demolitions announced that the last bridges over the River had been blown up.

Casualties

The fight to advance 20 miles into the Rhineland and clear the remaining German units west of the great river took as long - one month - as the 200 mile advance that would follow it. The cost in terms of casualties was also higher; 9,284 American soldiers and 17,685 British and Canadian soldiers became casualties.⁵ First Canadian Army took 22,000 German prisoners and killed or seriously wounded 22,000 more. Including the losses inflicted by the US 9th Army (which lost 7,300 men, took 29,000 prisoners, and killed or seriously wounded 16,000 Germans during the Rhineland fighting) the Germans all told lost 90,000 men while inflicting 23,000 Allied casualties.⁶

Battle Honours

The following Battle Honours were awarded to Canadian units participating in the Battle of the Rhineland:

• The Rhineland
• The Reichswald
• Waal Flats
• Cleve
• Moyland Wood
• Goch-Calcar Road
• The Hochwald
• Veen
• Xanten

Notes

1. Stacey, C.P., The Canadian Army 1939-1945: An Official Historical Summary (Queen's Printer, Ottawa, ON, 1948), p.236
2. Quoted in Stacey, Ibid, p.236
3. Marteinson, John. We Stand on Guard: An Illustrated History of the Canadian Army (Ovale Publications, Montreal, PQ, 1992) ISBN 2894290438 p.317
4. Ibid, pp.318-319
5. Whitaker, Denis & Shelagh Rhineland: The Battle to End the War (Stoddart Publishing Company, Ltd., Toronto, ON, 1989) ISBN 0773753907 p.347. Williams (see below for reference) gives a fiture of 15,634, broken down as 10,300 British and 5,655 Canadian.
6. Williams, Jeffery The Long Left Flank: The Hard Fought Way to the Reich, 1944-45 (Stoddart Publishing Company, Ltd., Toronto, ON, 1988) ISBN 0773721940 p.251

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