Operation Grenade

Operation Grenade (Battle of the Reichswald)

Part of Western Front, World War II

Operations Veritable and Blockbuster (yellow) and Grenade (green)

Date	9 February 1945
Location	Reichswald Forest (Germany), and adjacent areas
Result	Allied victory

Belligerents

United States

Germany

Casualties and losses

7,300 casualties^[1]

~45,739 casualties^{[lower-alpha 1]}

Western Allied invasion of Germany

Blackcock Veritable Grenade Lumberjack Remagen Undertone Amherst Plunder Varsity Ruhr TF Baum Frankfurt South Germany Kassel Heilbronn Nuremberg Archway Hamburg

West European Campaign (1944–45)

Overlord Dragoon Paris Paris to the Rhine Channel Coast Market Garden Aachen Hürtgen Forest Scheldt Queen Bulge Nordwind Blackcock Colmar Pocket Reichswald Invasion of Germany End of World War II in Europe

During World War II, Operation Grenade was the crossing of the Roer (Rur) river between Roermond and Düren by the U.S. Ninth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General William Hood Simpson, in February 1945.

On 9 February, the U.S. Ninth Army—operating under Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery's Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group since the Battle of the Bulge—was to cross the Roer and link up with the Canadian First Army, under Lieutenant-General Harry Crerar, coming from the Nijmegen area of the Netherlands in Operation Veritable, which had started at 05:00 on 8 February. However, once the Canadians had advanced, the Germans destroyed the dams upstream. This stopped the Americans from crossing as planned. It had been anticipated that the Germans would try to do this, and that General Omar Bradley′s U.S. 12th Army Group could capture them in time to stop the flooding.

During the two weeks that the river was flooded, Hitler would not allow Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt to withdraw behind the Rhine, arguing that it would only delay the inevitable fight. He ordered him to fight where his forces stood.

The Ninth Army was finally able to cross the river on 23 February. By then, other Allied forces were also close to the Rhine. Rundstedt′s divisions—which had remained on the west bank of the Rhine—were cut to pieces in the Battle for the Rhineland, and 290,000 men were taken as prisoners of war (POW).

Notes

Footnotes

↑ Ninth Army captured 29,739 prisoners during the operation, and estimated to have inflicted 16,000 other casualties on the German army. In conjunction with Operation Veritable/Blockbuster, the combined allied effort inflicted approximately 90,000 casualties on the German army.^[1]

Citations

1 2 Stacey, p. 522

References

Stacey, Colonel Charles Perry; Bond, Major C.C.J. (1960). Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War: Volume III. The Victory Campaign: The operations in North-West Europe 1944–1945. The Queen's Printer and Controller of Stationery Ottawa.

External links

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