On the afternoon of 7 March 1945 American infantry of the 9th Armored Division ran across the Ludendorff railroad bridge at Remagen as German engineers tried and failed to blow it up. They were the first Allied soldiers to cross the Rhine, Germany's great natural barrier in the west. Within a day about 8,000 men had followed. The damaged bridge collapsed ten days later, but by then the bridgehead on the east bank was secure.
A bridge that should not have been there
By early March 1945 the Allies had cleared most of Germany west of the Rhine, but the Germans had destroyed or prepared to destroy every important bridge over the river. Allied plans assumed a set-piece amphibious crossing further north, and Remagen, about 15 miles south of Bonn, with steep ground on the far bank, was hardly considered.1
The Ludendorff Bridge, a railroad bridge built during the First World War and named after General Erich Ludendorff, was still standing. Its east end ran straight into a railroad tunnel under the Erpeler Ley, a cliff on the far bank. German engineers had wired it for demolition, but an order from the high command, issued after a bridge at Cologne was destroyed prematurely by an American bomb, said charges should be placed only when the front came close, the official history explains. The troops guarding it were few and weak.2
The race to the bridge
On 7 March a task force of the 9th Armored Division under Lieutenant Colonel Leonard Engeman reached the heights above Remagen and saw the bridge intact, with German troops and vehicles still crossing it. Engeman sent Lieutenant Karl Timmermann's infantry company and a platoon of the new Pershing tanks down through the town. They reached the bridge in the afternoon.3
The German engineer officer, Captain Karl Friesenhahn, first set off a charge that blew a crater in the approach to stop tanks. Then he turned the key for the main demolition. The bridge lifted in a cloud of smoke and dust, but it did not fall; the official US Army history concludes that something had damaged the electric circuit shortly before. Timmermann's men ran across under fire, shooting apart cables as they went. Sergeant Alexander Drabik is credited as the first American on the east bank.4
Holding the bridgehead
According to the official US Army history, General Courtney Hodges of the First Army rushed troops to Remagen before he had even asked his superior, General Omar Bradley, for approval. Eisenhower agreed at once, telling Bradley, according to the US Army history, to "shove over at least five divisions instantly". The same history counts almost 8,000 men across the Rhine in the 24 hours after the capture.5
The National Park Service notes that the Germans attacked the bridge with aircraft, artillery and floating mines. From 12 to 17 March they also fired eleven V-2 rockets at it, the only tactical use of the V-weapons in the war, the US Army history notes. American engineers built pontoon bridges nearby in case the railroad bridge fell. On 17 March, weakened by the demolition attempt and the bombardment, it collapsed into the Rhine; the official history counts 28 engineers killed and 93 injured among the men working on it.6
Aftermath
According to the official history, Hitler ordered a flying court-martial. It condemned five officers connected with the bridge to death. Four were shot; the fifth, Captain Willi Bratge, survived because he was already an American prisoner, and Friesenhahn, also a prisoner, was acquitted. The fighting in the bridgehead from 7 to 24 March cost the US III Corps about 5,500 casualties, according to the official US Army history.7
The capture changed Allied plans and gave them a foothold that helped speed the advance into Germany. The bridge was never rebuilt; since 1980 its surviving towers on the west bank have housed a peace museum. The rival Allied drives to the Rhine are covered in our article on Patton and Montgomery.8 › Ruhr Pocket, 1945
Also on this day
- 1938: Aragon Offensive. After the Battle of Teruel, Franco's Nationalists launched a major offensive through Aragon against the exhausted Republican army in the Spanish Civil War.
