44-8-25 Siegfried Line Campaign 45-3-7

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Siegfried Line Campaign (Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine), was a phase in the Western European Campaign of World War II.

This phase spans from the end of the Battle of Normandy, or Operation Overlord, (25 August 1944; close 30 August 1944) incorporating the German winter counter-offensive through the Ardennes (commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge) and Operation Nordwind (in Alsace and Lorraine) up to the Allies preparing to cross the Rhine in March of 1945. This roughly corresponds with the official United States military European Theater of Operations Rhineland and Ardennes-Alsace Campaigns.

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The Allies crossed the Rhine at four points. One crossing was an opportunity taken by U.S. forces when the Germans failed to blow up the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen; another was a hasty assault; and two crossings were planned:

• The U.S. First Army aggressively pursued the disintegrating German troops, and on 7 March they unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge across the Rhine River at Remagen. The 9th Armored Division quickly expanded the bridgehead into a full scale crossing.
• Bradley told General George S. 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 22/23 March, crossing the river with a hasty assault south of Mainz at Oppenheim.
• In the north, the Rhine is twice as wide, with a far higher volume of water than where the Americans crossed. Montgomery, commander of the 21st Army Group, decided it could be crossed safely only with a carefully prepared attack. In Operation Plunder he crossed the Rhine at Rees and Wesel on the night of 23/24 March, including the largest single drop airborne operation in history, Operation Varsity.
• In the Allied 6th Army Group area, the U.S. Seventh Army assaulted across the Rhine in the area between Mannheim and Worms on 26 March. A fifth crossing on a smaller scale was later achieved by the French First Army at Speyer.

After crossing the Rhine, the Allies rapidly advanced into Germany's heartland. The end of World War II in Europe followed soon after. 

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