World Battlefronts, WESTERN FRONT: The Big River

General Eisenhower had hoped to crush Nazi resistance in the west in front of the Rhine. Field Marshal von Rundstedt, however, observing the Allied power arrayed against him, ordered a withdrawal behind the big river. It was a choice of two evils. Rundstedt's decision meant that the vital industries of the Ruhr would be brought into the front lines—the forward areas exposed to immediate shellfire, and the whole valley to eventual cross-river attack.

Feint & Wheel. Lieut. General William Simpson's Ninth Army feinted at Cologne, which lies on the Rhine's west bank and around which the Nazis had organized their strongest perimeter defense. Then, instead of crossing the Erft, the Ninth (six infantry and three armored divisions) wheeled north. The move appeared to achieve some tactical surprise. Big industrial towns fell like ripe fruit: München-Gladbach, Krefeld, Rheydt (birthplace of Propagandist Paul Joseph Goebbels). Krefeld, with a peacetime population of 170,000, surpassed Aachen as the biggest prize yet in the west.

The Germans' foothold on the Maas River was torn violently loose. They scuttled out of the Maas strongholds of Venlo and Roermond. When the Ninth and the Canadian First Army (which includes some English, Scottish and Welsh units) joined forces near Geldern (see map), the pocket was empty except for a few stragglers. Berlin said that the British Second Army had moved forward into the vacuum.

Ten or eleven good German divisions had been fighting the Canadians tooth & nail. On the Roer, only six bottom-of-the-barrel divisions, backed up by two armored outfits, had faced the U.S. armies. These hapless rearguards provided most of the 50,000 prisoners which the Allies took in little more than a week.

Battle of Bridges. First to reach the Rhine, the Ninth Army's 83rd Division seized Neuss, opposite Düsseldorf. The 2nd Armored Division took Urdingen, four miles from Krefeld, and the 84th Division grabbed Homberg, across from Duisburg. Soon the Yanks had a 20-mile stretch of the river's west bank.

Three bridges were still standing at Düsseldorf. When the Yanks captured their western ends, the Germans promptly set off the long-prepared demolition charges — huge quantities of dynamite —and blew them up. At Duisburg they blew up the three bridges still standing. Under cover of darkness at Ürdingen, 19 U.S. volunteers ventured out on the Adolf Hitler Autobahn bridge — fully aware that the Germans might blow it at any moment — to find and cut the demolition wires. They were silhouetted in the light of burning tar and chased back off the bridge by enemy gunfire; minutes later the bridge was blown.

After these demolitions, the Nazis had only two bridges at Wesel and one or two ferries or temporary bridges near by. The Germans still west of the river were getting across as fast as possible. The enemy was certain to blow any bridge the Allies threatened to cross. A possible Allied countermove was a series of air borne operations launched at the eastern bridgeheads — but it seemed unlikely "that Allied paratroopers, in that thickly set tled territory, could achieve sufficient sur prise to stay the Nazi hand.