Операция «Лесоруб» на Рейне в 1945 году

WWII allied military operation in Germany

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. One unexpected outcome was the capture of the Ludendorff bridge, a strategic railroad bridge across the Rhine, in the Battle of Remagen. Despite German attempts to destroy the bridge, Allied forces captured it intact and were able to use it along with pontoon and treadway bridges to establish a bridgehead. The bridge finally collapsed at 3:00 PM on 17 March 1945 after ten days of aircraft bombing, direct artillery hits, near misses, and demolition attempts.

The Germans had repeatedly frustrated Allied efforts to cross the Rhine. With the 21st Army Group firmly established along the Rhine, U. S. General of the Army Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group prepared to execute Operation Lumberjack. Bradley's plan called for the U. S. First Army to attack southeastward toward the juncture of the Ahr and Rhine Rivers and then swing south to meet Lieutenant General George Patton, whose U. S. Third Army would simultaneously drive northeastward through the Eifel. If successful, Lumberjack would capture Cologne, secure the Koblenz sector, and bring the 12th Army Group to the Rhine in the entire area north of the Moselle River. The 12th Army Group also hoped to capture a large number of Germans. Following Lumberjack, the Allies had planned for a pause along the Rhine while Montgomery's 21st Army Group began Operation Plunder, a large, carefully planned movement across the Rhine near Düsseldorf and the Dutch border. Montgomery would then capture the Ruhr, the industrial heartland of Germany. During Operation Lumberjack, the U. S. Army's 9th Armored Division was tasked with mopping up elements of the German Army trapped on the west bank of the Rhine and to prevent a counterattack against the Ninth Army's flank. They were to secure the region between Mosel and the Duren Cologne and to destroy the German army's capability to fight in that area. The First Army was to seize the entire region west of the Rhine. After capturing Cologne, the First Army was to wheel southeast and join up with Patton's Third Army. Patton was supposed to capture the Eifel Mountains and then the Mosel Valley, trapping the remainder of the German Seventh Army in the Eifel area.

Bradley launched Lumberjack on 1 March. In the north, the First Army rapidly exploited bridgeheads over the Erft River, entering Euskirchen on 4 March and Cologne on the fifth. Cologne was in U. S. Army control by the seventh. The First Army then pushed towards the Ahr River valley, the likely point of retreat for what was left of the German Army's LXVI and LXVII Korps. About upstream from Bonn, they unexpectedly found the Ludendorff railroad bridge still standing.

During Operation Lumberjack, on 7 March 1945, when troops of the U. S. Army's 9th Armored Division Combat Command B, 9th Armored Engineer Battalion reached the river, they were very surprised to see that the railroad bridge was still standing.

The capture of the bridge convinced the Allied high command in Western Europe that they could envelop the German industrial area of the Ruhr as opposed to focusing primarily on General Bernard Montgomery's plan, Operation Plunder, which would bring the British 21st Army Group across the Rhine into northern Germany. The unexpected availability of the first major crossing of the Rhine, Germany's last major natural barrier and line of defense, caused Allied high commander Dwight Eisenhower to alter his plans to end the war. U. S. forces were able quickly to establish a bridgehead on the eastern side of the Rhine and to get forces into Germany. This allowed the U. S. forces to envelop the German industrial area of the Ruhr. The Allies were able to get six divisions across the Rhine before the Ludendorff Bridge collapsed ten days after it was captured on 17 March. Twenty five soldiers were killed or went missing and three died later from injuries; 63 others were injured. Before it collapsed, five U. S. divisions had already used it and two adjacent tactical bridges to cross into Germany, creating a well established bridgehead almost long, extending from Bonn in the north almost to Koblenz in the south, and deep. The bridge was not rebuilt after the war. However, the bridge towers remain and in 1980 a peace museum was opened to the public.

Operation Lumberjack succeeded in clearing the Rhine north of Mosel of effective German forces. The Allies destroyed four corps of the German 15th and 7th Armies. The capture of the bridge at Remagen was an unexpected bonus that advanced the timetable for crossing the Rhine.

The battle was depicted in the novel The Bridge at Remagen by Ken Hechler, which was later adapted into the film of the same name. The battle acts as the finale of the video game Call of Duty: WWII, though the details in game are not historically accurate.

Charles MacDonald, The Last Offensive, Washington: GPO, 1973. Georg Tessin, Verbände und Truppen der deutschen Wehrmacht and Waffen SS 1939 1945, Volume 2, Osnabrück:Biblio Verlag, 1973. Georg Tessin, Verbände und Truppen der deutschen Wehrmacht and Waffen SS 1939 1945, Volume 4, Osnabrück:Biblio Verlag, 1975.