Rhineland, battle of (1945), the name given to a series of battles fought by the Allied armies to capture terrain up to the west bank of the Rhine river, from 8 February until the crossings of mid-March 1945. In the northern sector, also known as the Reichswald battle, Montgomery planned to seize the land ahead by a pincer movement, advancing from the line of the Roer river westwards towards the Rhine. VERITABLE began on 8 February with the most concentrated British-Canadian artillery barrage of the war: 6, 000 tons of shells were fired in the first 24 hours to support the advance of II Canadian Corps moving south-east, while XVI US Corps of Simpson's Ninth Army moved north-east to meet it. Horrocks's British XXX Corps held the front between the two, but the Germans breached local dykes to create large flooded areas, and with foul weather, notoriously difficult terrain, and the stiffening resistance of the German First Parachute Army of Army Group B, the Allied advance was stalled.
To the south, fierce German resistance at Düren and Jülich on the Roer, and the use of floodwater from the Schwammenauel dam delayed the progress of Simpson's Ninth and Hodges's First US Armies. By 23 February the water levels had subsided sufficiently for the Americans to resume, and the Canadian-American pincers in the north closed at Geldern on 3 March. By 7 March all troops had come up to the west bank of the Rhine, and were preparing to cross. Elements of the eight German divisions under Model in Army Group B fought in the Rhineland battle, which was characterized by its unfriendly weather and hard terrain, and suffered about 45, 000 killed, wounded, or captured, while Allied losses were 15, 000.
— Peter Caddick-Adams
