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| Battle of Cologne | |||||||
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| Part of Western Front and Western Allied Invasion of Germany of World War II | |||||||
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 United States |  Germany | ||||||
The Battle of Cologne was part of Operation Lumberjack and refers to the Allied advance that took place from 5 to 7 March 1945, which led to the capture of the western German city of Cologne. [1]
Before the outbreak of the Second World War Cologne was the fourth largest city in Germany and the largest city on the river Rhine, with a population of approximately 800,000 people. The city of Cologne was bombed by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 262 separate air raids during World War II, this in response to the bombing of London at the start of the war. Cologne was an important military target, being a heavily industrialized city with many factories producing war supplies and the city also had a large railway network, used for the transportation of troops and weapons. A total of 34,711 long tons of bombs were dropped on the city, the last air raid was carried out on 2 March 1945. [2] By the beginning of March 1945 most of the city was destroyed, with roughly 20,000 people remaining in the city.
During the night of 3 March, Allied aircraft dropped propaganda leaflets over the city, telling its citizens to disobey the directives of the Nazi leadership, asking the inhabitants not to evacuate the city since they had nothing to fear from the advancing troops. The Allied columns approached Cologne from three directions, the 3rd Armored Division striking from the northwest, 104th Infantry Division coming from the west and 9th Armored Division clearing sections south of the city in conjunction with the 9th Infantry Division. On 5 March, the 3rd Armored Division launched a final advance on Cologne. On 6 March the American columns moved out of their positions toward the heart of the city. [3]
Near the city centre there was an engagement with a German Panther tank; this skirmish was captured on film by US cameramen from the 165th Photo Signal Company. [4] The German Panther was lying in ambush near the train station; two advancing Sherman tanks were slowed down by a pile of rubble. The Shermans got stuck in a narrow street, which made them an easy target for the German tank. Two of the Panther's 75mm shells hit the turret of the leading Sherman, a third shell hit the tracks of the second Sherman tank behind it. A nearby Pershing tank, informally known as Eagle 7, was sent to take out the Panther. The two tanks were in each other's sights, but the German tank commander believed it to be a German tank and told his gunner to hold fire, as he had never seen a Pershing. Finally the Panther tank was taken out by the advancing Pershing.
As the Americans moved towards the Rhine, the Wehrmacht (Panzer-Brigade 106th Feldherrnhalle) demolished the Hohenzollern Bridge, the last link between the east and west of the city. Although the Allies had failed to capture a bridge over the Rhine near Cologne, further south the 9th Armored Division of the U.S. First Army had advanced unexpectedly quickly towards the Rhine. They were very surprised to see that the Ludendorff bridge, one of the last bridges across the Rhine, was still standing, and they captured and defended this crucial asset during the Battle of Remagen. By 7 March all of Cologne west of the Rhine was captured by the Allies, the boroughs on the right bank remained under German control until mid-April 1945. [5]
Operation Market Garden was an Allied military operation during the Second World War fought in the German-occupied Netherlands from 17 to 25 September 1944. Its objective was to create a 64 mi (103 km) salient into German territory with a bridgehead over the Nederrijn, creating an Allied invasion route into northern Germany. This was to be achieved by two sub-operations: seizing nine bridges with combined US and British airborne forces ("Market") followed by British land forces swiftly following over the bridges ("Garden").
The M26 Pershing is a heavy tank/medium tank formerly used by the United States Army. It was used in the last months of World War II during the Invasion of Germany and extensively during the Korean War. The tank was named after General of the Armies John J. Pershing, who led the American Expeditionary Force in Europe in World War I.
The 8th Armored Division was an armored division of the United States Army that served in the European Theater of World War II.
Operation Cobra was an offensive launched by the First United States Army under Lieutenant General Omar Bradley seven weeks after the D-Day landings, during the Normandy campaign of World War II. The intention was to take advantage of the distraction of the Germans by the British and Canadian attacks around Caen in Operation Goodwood, and thereby break through the German defenses that were penning in their forces, while the Germans were unbalanced. Once a corridor had been created, the First Army would then be able to advance into Brittany, rolling up the German flanks once free of the constraints of the bocage country. After a slow start, the offensive gathered momentum and German resistance collapsed as scattered remnants of broken units fought to escape to the Seine. Lacking the resources to cope with the situation, the German response was ineffectual and the entire Normandy front soon collapsed. Operation Cobra, together with concurrent offensives by the British Second Army and the Canadian First Army, was decisive in securing an Allied victory in the Normandy campaign.
Operation Lüttich was the codename of the Nazi German counter-attack during the Battle of Normandy, which occurred near U.S. positions near Mortain, in northwestern France. Lüttich is the German name for the city of Liège, Belgium. In British and American histories of the Second World War, the German Operation Lüttich is known as the Mortain counter-attack, which Hitler ordered to regain territory gained by the First United States Army during Operation Cobra by reaching the coast of the Avranches region, which is at the base of the Cotentin peninsula, in order to isolate the units of the Third United States Army that had advanced into Brittany.
The Ruhr pocket was a battle of encirclement that took place in April 1945, on the Western Front near the end of World War II in Europe, in the Ruhr Area of Germany. Some 317,000 German troops were taken prisoner along with 24 generals. The Americans suffered 10,000 casualties including 2,000 killed or missing.
The First Allied Airborne Army was an Allied formation formed on 2 August 1944 by the order of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force.
The 9th Panzer Division was a panzer division of the German Army during World War II. It came into existence after 4th Light Division was reorganized in January 1940. The division was headquartered in Vienna, in the German military district Wehrkreis XVII.
The Ludendorff Bridge was a bridge across the river Rhine in Germany which was captured by United States Army forces in early March 1945 during the Battle of Remagen, in the closing weeks of World War II, when it was one of the few remaining bridges in the region and therefore a critical strategic point. Built during World War I to help deliver reinforcements and supplies to German troops on the Western Front, it connected Remagen on the west bank and the village of Erpel on the east bank between two hills flanking the river.
Operation Veritable was the northern part of an Allied pincer movement that took place between 8 February and 11 March 1945 during the final stages of the Second World War. The operation was conducted by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group, primarily consisting of the First Canadian Army under Lieutenant-General Harry Crerar and the British XXX Corps under Lieutenant-general Brian Horrocks.
Operation Lumberjack was a military operation with the goal of capturing the west bank of the Rhine River and seizing key German cities, near the end of World War II in Europe. The First United States Army launched the operation in March 1945 to capture strategic cities in Nazi Germany and to give the Allies a foothold along the Rhine.
The Western Allied invasion of Germany was coordinated by the Western Allies during the final months of hostilities in the European theatre of World War II. In preparation for the Allied invasion of Germany east of the Rhine, a series of offensive operations were designed to seize and capture its east and west banks: Operation Veritable and Operation Grenade in February 1945, and Operation Lumberjack and Operation Undertone in March 1945; these are considered separate from the main invasion operation. The Allied invasion of Germany east of the Rhine started with the Western Allies crossing the river on 22 March 1945 before fanning out and overrunning all of western Germany from the Baltic in the north to the Alpine passes in the south, where they linked up with troops of the U.S. Fifth Army in Italy. Combined with the capture of Berchtesgaden, any hope of Nazi leadership continuing to wage war from a so-called "national redoubt" or escape through the Alps was crushed, shortly followed by unconditional German surrender on 8 May 1945. This is known as the Central Europe Campaign in United States military histories.
Operation Queen was an American operation during World War II on the Western Front at the German Siegfried Line.
The Battle of Remagen was an 18-day battle during the Allied invasion of Germany in World War II. It lasted from 7 to 25 March 1945 when American forces unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine intact. They were able to hold it against German opposition and build additional temporary crossings. The presence of a bridgehead across the Rhine advanced by three weeks the Western Allies' planned crossing of the Rhine into the German interior.
Fox on the Rhine is a 2000 alternate history novel written by Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson. It details a course of events over late 1944 that resulted from Adolf Hitler's death in the July 20 plot and from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's survival of the crackdown.
The Battle of Arracourt took place between U.S. and German armoured forces near the town of Arracourt, Lorraine, France between 18 and 29 September 1944, during the Lorraine Campaign of World War II. As part of a counteroffensive against recent U.S. advances in France, the German 5th Panzer Army had as its objective the recapture of Lunéville and the elimination of the XII Corps bridgehead over the Moselle River at Dieulouard.
The 373rd Fighter Group is an inactive United States Army Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with First Air Force stationed at Mitchel Field, New York. It was inactivated on 7 November 1945.
Al Murray's Road to Berlin is a British documentary television series about World War II, presented by Al Murray. The ten-episode series was produced for the Discovery Channel, and first broadcast in 2004. During the series, Murray travels across the Western Front in a restored Willys MB Jeep, covering the timeline from the Invasion of Normandy to the fall of Berlin, interviewing survivors and showcasing some of the equipment used.
The Gau Cologne-Aachen was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 in the north-central part of the Prussian Rhine Province. Before that, from 1931 to 1933, it was the regional subdivision of the Nazi Party in that area.
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