Western Front (World War II)
During
World War II, the
Western Front was the theater of fighting west of Germany, encompassing
France,
Britain,
Belgium, the
Netherlands,
Luxembourg, and
Denmark.
Fighting on the Western Front was preceded by the
Phony War. Fighting began with
Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of
Denmark and
Norway, in April,
1940. The next month, the Germans launched the
Battle of France. The Western Allies — primarily the French and British — soon collapsed under the onslaught of the German
blitzkrieg. The British escaped
at Dunkirk, while the majority of the French Army surrendered without firing a shot. Fighting along the Front ended, and the German army began preparations to
invade England.
Following the
Luftwaffe's defeat in the
Battle of Britain, the invasion of England was cancelled. While the majority of the German army was mustered for the
invasion of the Soviet Union, construction began on the
Atlantic Wall — a series of defensive
fortifications along the French coast of the
English channel. These were built in anticipation of a cross-channel English invasion of France.
Because of the massive logistical obstacles a cross-channel invasion would face, Allied high command decided to conduct a practice attack against the French coast. On
August 19,
1942, the Allies began the
Dieppe Raid, an attack on
Dieppe, France. Most of the troops were Canadian, with some British and an American contingent. The raid was a disaster, and almost two-thirds of the attacking force became casualties. However, much was learned as a result of the operation — these lessons would be put to good use later in subsequent invasions.
For almost two years, there was no land-fighting on the Western Front with the exception of
commando raids and the
guerrilla actions of the
resistance aided by the
SOE and
OSS. However, in the meantime, the Allies took the war to Germany, with a
strategic bombing campaign the American
Eighth Air Force bombing Germany by day and the
RAF Bomber Command bombing by night.
1944: Liberation of France and Belgium
 |
Routes taken by the D-day invasion |
On
June 6,
1944, the Allies began
Operation Overlord (also known as "D-day") — the long-awaited liberation of France. The deception Operation had the Germans convinced that the invasion would occur at the
Pas-de-Calais, while the real target was
Normandy. Following two months of slow fighting in
hedgerow country,
Operation Cobra allowed the Americans to break out at the western end of the bridge-head. Soon after, the Allies were racing across France. They circled around and trapped 250,000 Germans in the
Falaise pocket. As so often happened on the
Eastern Front Hitler refused to allow a strategic withdrawal until it was too late. 100,000 Germans managed to escape through the
Falaise Gap but they left behind most of their equipment with 150,000 who were taken prisoner. On
August 15, in an effort to aid their operations in Normandy, the Allies launched
Operation Dragoon — the invasion of Southern France between
Toulon and
Cannes.
The Germans were now faced by three powerful Allied army groups, In the North
British 21st Army Group commanded by Field Marshal Sir
Bernard Montgomery, In the middle the
American 12th Army Group commanded by General
Omar Bradley and in the South the
American 6th Army Group commanded by Lieutenant General
Jacob L. Devers. They were all under the command of the Supreme Allied Commander (American) General
Dwight D. Eisenhower at
SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces).
Under the onslaught in both the North and South of France, the German Army fell back. The
French Resistance organised a general uprising and the
liberated Paris took place on
August 25 when general
Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered ignoring orders from Hitler that Paris should be held to the last and to destroy the city.
The liberation of North France and
Benelux countries was of special significance for the inhabitants of London and the South East of England, because it denied the Germans launch zones for their mobile
V-1 and
V-2 Vergeltungswaffen (reprisal weapons).
Unfortunately for the Allies, the Germans took special care to thoroughly wreck all port facilities before the Allies could capture them. As the Allies advanced across France, their supply lines stretched to the breaking point. The
Red Ball Express, the allied trucking effort, was simply unable to transport enough supplies from the port facilities in Normandy all the way to the front lines, which by September, were close to the German border.
The Allies had been arguing about whether to advance on a broad-front or a narrow-front from before D-Day. If the British had broken out of the Normandy bridge-head around
Caen when they launched
Operation Goodwood and pushed along the coast, facts on the ground might have turned the argument in favour of a narrow front. But as the breakout took place during
Operation Cobra at the western end of the bridge-head and as the US armies swung east they rapidly fanned out into a broad front. As this was the strategy favoured by supreme Allied commander Eisenhower and most of the rest of the American high command this was the strategy which was adopted.
The British Montgomery persuaded Allied High Command to launch a bold attack,
Operation Market Garden which he hoped would get the Allies across the Rhine and create the narrow-front he favoured. Paratroopers would fly in from England and take
bridges over the main
rivers of the
German-occupied
Netherlands. A British and Canadian force would punch through the German lines and link up with the paratroopers. If all went well, the Allies would capture the port facilities in
Antwerp and advance into
Germany without any remaining major obstacles. The British and Canadian task force was able to link up with six of the seven paratrooper-held bridges, but was unable to link up with the troops holding the bridge over the
Rhine at
Arnhem. The result was the destruction of the
British 1st Airborne Division. It was "
a bridge too far".
Fighting on the Western front seemed to stabilize. Starting in early September, the Americans began slow and bloody fighting through the
Hurtgen Forest (
"Passchendaele with tree bursts" --
Hemingway) to breach the
Siegfried Line (
Westwall).
The great port of
Antwerp was liberated on
September 4 by
British 11th Armoured Division. However, it lay at the end of a long river estuary, and so it could not be used until its approaches were clear of heavily fortified German positions. The
Breskens pocket on the southern bank of the
Scheldt was cleared with heavy casualties by Canadian and Polish forces in
Operation Switchback, during the
Battle of the Scheldt. The battle was a decisive victory for the
Canadian First Army and the Allies, as it allowed unfettered supplies directly from the port of Antwerp, which was far closer to the front than the beaches of Normandy.
In October the Americans decided that they could not just invest
Aachen and let it fall in a slow siege, because it threatened the flanks of the
U.S. Ninth Army. As it was the first major German city to face invasion, Hitler ordered that the city be held at all costs. In the resulting
battle of Aachen, after a very hard fight, the city was taken, at a cost of 5,000 casualties on both sides, with an additional 5,600 prisoners on the German side.
German winter counter-attack through the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge)
|
American soldiers taking up defensive positions in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge. |
The Germans had been preparing a massive counter-attack in the West since the Allied breakout from Normandy. The plan called
Wacht am Rhein ("Watch on the Rhine") was to attack through the
Ardennes and swing North. The attack started on
December 16 in what became known as the
Battle of the Bulge. After initial successes in bad weather, which gave them cover from the Allied air forces, the Germans were eventually pushed back to their starting points by
January 15, 1945.
1945: Invasion of Germany and Allied victory in Europe
The pincer movement of the
Canadian First Army in
Operation Veritable advancing from
Nijmegen area of the
Netherlands and the
US Ninth Army crossing the
Rur in
Operation Grenade was planned to start on
February 8 1945, but it was delayed by two weeks when the Germans flooded the river valley by destroying the dam gates upstream. During the two weeks that the river was flooded Hitler would not allow the Field Marshal
Gerd von Rundstedt to withdraw East behind the Rhine arguing that it would only delay the inevitable fight. He ordered him to fight where his forces stood.
By the time the water had subsided and the Ninth Army was able to cross the Roer on
February 23, other Allied forces were also close to the Rhine's west bank. Rundstedt's divisions which had remained on the west bank of the Rhine were cut to pieces in the
battle of the Rhineland and 290,000 men were taken prisoner.
The crossing of the
Rhine was achieved at three points: One was an opportunity taken by U.S. forces when the Gemans failed to blow up the
Ludendorff bridge at
Remagen, one was taken "on the run", and one was planned.
*General Omar Bradley's U.S. forces aggressive pursuit of the disintegrating German troops resulted in the capture of the Ludendorff bridge across the Rhine River at
Remagen by the
U.S. First Army. Bradley and his subordinates quickly exploited the crossing made on
March 7 and expanded the bridge head into a full scale crossing.
*Bradley told General Patton whose
U.S. Third Army had been fighting through the
Palatinate, to "take the Rhine on the run". The Third Army did just that on the night of
March 22 crossing the river just south of
Mainz.
* In the North
Operation Plunder was the crossing of the Rhine river at
Rees and
Wesel by the British Twenty-first Army Group on the night of
March 23. It included the largest airborne operation in history codenamed
Operation Varsity. At the point the British crossed the Rhine, it is twice as wide, with a far higher volume of water, than the points where the American crossed and Montgomery decided it could only be crossed safely with a carefully planned operation.
Once the Allies had crossed the Rhine, the British fanned out Northeast towards
Hamburg crossing the river Elbe and on towards Denmark and the Baltic. The
U.S. Ninth Army, which had remained under British command since the battle of the Bulge went south as the northern pincer of the
Ruhr encirclement.
The U.S. 12th Army group fanned out, the First Army went north as the southern pincer of the Ruhr encirclement. On April 4 the encirclement was completed and the Ninth Army reverted to the command of Bradley's 12th Army Group. The German
Army Group B commanded by Field Marshal
Walther Model was trapped in the
Ruhr Pocket and 300,000 soldiers became POWs. The Ninth and First American armies then turned east and met up with the Soviet forces near the River
Elbe in mid-April. The first units to make contact were from the
U.S. 69th Infantry Division of the First Army and the
Soviet 58th Guards Division of the
5th Guards Army near
Torgau, on the
Elbe River on
April 25. The rest of the American 12th Army group had fanned out to the East into western
Czechoslovakia and Southeast into Northeast
Bavaria. By V-E Day, the U.S. 12th Army Group was a force of four armies (1st,
3rd, 9th, and
15th) that numbered over 1.3 million men.
The American 6th Army group fanned out to the Southwest passing to the east of Switzerland through Bavaria into
Austria and North Italy. Elements of the
U.S. 3rd Infantry Division were the first allied troops to arrive at
Berchtesgaden, which they secured along with the
Berghof (Hitler's Alpine residence).
Field Marshal Montgomery took the German military surrender of all German forces in Holland, Northwest Germany and Denmark on
Lüneburg Heath an area between the cities of
Hamburg,
Hanover and
Bremen, on the
May 4 1945. As the operational commander of some of these forces was Grand Admiral
Karl Dönitz, the new
Reichspräsident (head of state) of the
Third Reich this signaled that the
European war was over.
On
May 7 at his headquarters in
Rheims, Eisenhower took the unconditional surrender of all German forces to the western allies and Russia, from the German Chief-of-Staff, General Jodl, who signed the surrender document at 0241 hours. General
Franz Böhme announced the unconditional surrender of German troops in Norway. Operations ceased at 2301 hours Central European time (CET) on
May 8.
