Images of War - Victory in Europe Rare photographs from wartime archive.pdf

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First published in Great Britain in 2005 by
PEN & SWORD MILITARY
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street, Barnsley,
South Yorkshire.
S70 2AS
Copyright © Andrew Rawson, 2005
ISBN 1-84415-274-X
eISBN 978-1-78303-864-0
The right of Andrew Rawson to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI UK
Many of the photographs in this book have been reproduced with kind permission of the United States
National Archives. Captions indicate the photograph reference number.
Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of
Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Mari time, Pen & Sword
Military,
Wharncliffe Local History, Pen & Sword Select,
Pen & Sword Military Classics and Leo Cooper.
For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact:
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED
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Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
Breaking the Siegfried Line
Chapter Two
The Drive to the Rhine
Chapter Three
Crossing the Rhine
Chapter Four
The Drive across Germany
Chapter Five
The Italian Front
Chapter Six
Clearing the final pockets of resistance
Chapter Seven
Victory in Europe
Introduction
By January 1945, Allied troops had been in northwest Europe for over six months.
After heavy fighting in Normandy, General Eisenhower’s Armies had broken out and
advanced rapidly to the German border, liberating Paris and Brussels. Another Allied
landing in southern France swept up the Rhone Valley, joining the main drive to the
German border. However, by the end of September, the advances started to falter, not
through enemy action but mounting difficulties in keeping the front line troops
supplied. As summer turned to autumn, an attempt to cross the Rhine at Arnhem using
airborne troops, codenamed Operation Market Garden, ended in failure and
Eisenhower was forced to reconsider his options.
Hard fighting followed as the Germans regrouped and bitter battles for Aachen,
the first German city to fall, and Hurtgen Forest consumed men and supplies alike. On
16 December 1944 the Germans struck back with two Panzer Armies in the Ardennes,
breaking through the American lines and threatening to reach the River Meuse. For
two weeks American reserves poured into Belgium as rearguards fought to hold vital
crossroads at St Vith and Bastogne to hold back the German onslaught and by the
beginning of January the tide was beginning to turn. The worst was over and as
American and British troops squeezed the Bulge out of the Allied line, Eisenhower was
planning to strike deep into Germany.
By the beginning of January the Allies had seventy-one divisions ready for action
and another fourteen were due to land on the continent over the weeks that followed.
Meanwhile, the attack in the Ardennes had consumed a large part of Hitler’s reserve.
With the Allies poised on the borders in the west and the Russians threatening to carve
across eastern Germany it was only a matter of time before Hitler’s thousand year
Reich came to an end.
Eisenhower had six Armies facing the Germans along a broad front with a vast
logistical organisation poised for the final push by the start of the New Year and would
start by clearing troops from the Siegfried Line and the west bank of the Rhine. Field
Marshal Montgomery’s 21 Army Group would then cross the river between Emmerich
and Wesel, north of the Ruhr, and drive into northern Germany while General Omar
Bradley’s 12 Army Group bridged the river between Mainz and Karlsruhe in the south.
Having broken Germany’s last barrier, the stage would be set for the final drive into
the heart of Germany, with the centres of industry, the Ruhr and the Saar basin, the
primary objectives.
The end of the war and Victory in Europe was in sight but there was hard fighting
ahead. Hitler and the Nazis had motivated the entire German population to fight the

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