BATTLE OF GERMANY: To the Siegfried Line

The headlong pursuit by the Allied armies had all but wiped the Germans from the soil of France. They still held out desperately in the ports, determined to hamstring Allied supply to the bitter end. In tattered remnants of once-proud divisions they still fought bitter pocket skirmishes.

But by this week the Allies had smashed deep into the Low Countries and U.S. forces probed at the outer hedgehogs of the Siegfried Line. This week battles would boil on German soil.

Somewhere along the line the dazzling Allied advance might still have to...