Chapter 9
From October 1944 until the end of the war on 10 May 1945, Witzig fought as the commander of the 6th Parachute Division’s 18th Parachute Regiment in Holland against the Western Allies, following the ill-fated Market–Garden operation in September. Unlike the remainder of his military career, for which there is a wealth of material available, Witzig recorded nothing about his battles in Holland. Indeed, after the war, when he was asked to travel to Emmerich in the Netherlands to brief a Bundeswehr engineer battalion on his Second World War battles in Holland, Witzig absolutely refused, stating that by late 1944 it was no longer a war and there was absolutely nothing to be learned from it. He and his soldiers fought simply to survive.
There were indeed many German commanders and soldiers who spent most of their time simply trying to survive the last months of the war and who would have agreed wholeheartedly. Generalmajor Carl Wagener, Chief of Staff of Army Group B from February to April 1945, for example, wrote that there were no lessons that could be learned from the last period of the war: first, because of the poor performance of the German High Command during this period and the series of strategic mistakes made by Hitler and his generals; second, because the troops were fighting in ‘an abnormal, unnatural condition [so] that even their experiences had no general or valid application’; third, because the Army Group was not really conducting operations but, instead, improvised, emergency ‘first aid’ measures for lower echelons, ‘which they themselves were doing for the lower levels’. ‘Strategy, of course, is always based on improvisations,’ observed Wagener. ‘However, there is a limit; and it must be appreciated that, beyond this limit, improvisation becomes ineffective and strategy and military “leadership” futile.’1 Wagener’s comments provide a great deal of insight into what Witzig experienced in the final year of the war. Thus Witzig’s story in Holland must be told by other participants, most notably, his army, corps, and division commanders, as well as others who participated in the brutal fighting in Holland.
By early September 1944, the German armies in the West had been shattered. On paper, the German order of battle at the beginning of September included an impressive 327 divisions and brigades. Of these, 31 divisions and 13 brigades were armoured. However, most were significantly below strength. According to the High Command War Diary for the period, only 13 German infantry divisions and 3 panzer divisions in the West, along with 2 panzer brigades, were considered fully combat-capable, while the combat capabilities of another 12 infantry divisions, 2 panzer divisions, and 2 panzer brigades were described as ‘shaky’. Altogether, some 28 German infantry and panzer divisions in the West had been decimated or disbanded since D-Day, with only 11 of those regenerated. To stem the Allied onslaught, Hitler and his generals began diverting a steady stream of formations to OB West. Equipment losses had been equally disastrous and, according to Major Schramm, the keeper of the High Command’s War Diary, Hitler’s Western Front was defended by no more than a hundred German panzers.2
Following the Allied breakthrough towards Antwerp and the fall of that city on 4 September 1944, Hitler also directed the restoration of the First Parachute Army destroyed in Normandy. With an initial strength of 20,000 men, its mission was to defend from the North Sea to Maastricht, contain the Allied bridgehead at Antwerp and hold the Albert Canal. Initially, First Parachute Army was placed under Field Marshal Walter Model’s Army Group B for operations along the Antwerp–Albert Canal line. Subordinate units initially included the 3rd, 5th and 6th Parachute Divisions, which were reorganizing and refitting in northern Holland and Germany; LXXXVIII Corps from Holland with the bulk of the 719th and 347th Infantry Divisions; training groups from the Waffen SS and the Hermann Göring Depot Regiment (also from Holland); assorted security units from Belgium, northern France, and Germany; and thirty heavy and ten light anti-aircraft batteries.3 While the reorganized First Parachute Army was no doubt born of necessity, the reputation for dogged tenacity bordering on fanaticism won by the I Parachute Corps at Monte Cassino, which held up the Allies for six months and resulted in more than 35,000 casualties, and the II Parachute Corps in Normandy, which was instrumental in holding up the U.S. advance on St-Lô, no doubt convinced Hitler to gather his few remaining paratroopers in north-west Europe into a single formation and reinforce them in a desperate bid to stem the American and British onslaught and win enough time for him to rebuild the German defences in the West.
By the beginning of September 1944, the situation for the Third Reich was grim. Hitler’s armies were being forced back by the relentless Allied advance from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. In the northern coastal sector, the Fifteenth Army was falling back before the First Canadian Army towards the line of the Scheldt from Antwerp to the sea and across it to Walcheren and the Dutch mainland. To the south of the Fifteenth Army the broken elements of the Seventh Army were escaping before the British Second and the American First Armies towards Aachen and the Ardennes. South of the Ardennes, the German First Army, having come from south of the Loire and the Biscay coast, was moving east and making for the Siegfried Line. Finally, the Nineteenth Army was retreating through Dijon towards the Belfort Gap, driven by the American and French armies which had landed on the Mediterranean coast. Most of the armoured divisions of the Fifth Panzer Army were being withdrawn for rehabilitation to the Saar and further south with a view to counter-attack; the rest of the Fifth Panzer Army was now under Seventh Army. As the German armies fell back towards the prepared positions of the Siegfried Line and its extensions, reinforcements were being sent forward from the Reich and from occupied Holland, notably from the First Parachute Army. A firmer front was soon to take shape, But in September the situation was changing daily. German units found themselves chronically short of personnel, weapons, ammunition and fuel; without reserves, artillery, or signals equipment; and facing absolute Allied superiority in the air, which not only hindered troop movements but also precluded reconnaissance. On paper, the Führer still had ten million men in his armed forces, seven and a half million of them in the Army. Most of these, however, were scattered across Europe, in the Baltic States, Poland, the Balkans, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and northern Italy and were thus not available for the immediate defence of Nazi Germany.
To stem the Allied onslaught, Hitler ordered the German armies facing the Allies to ‘contest every foot of ground in a stubborn delaying action’ in order to gain time to move up new forces to reinforce the western defences from the Zuider Zee to the Swiss frontier and to assemble a mobile combat force west of the Vosges mountains with which to attack the American flank and safeguard construction of the frontier defences.4 ‘The battle in the West has largely moved onto German soil,’ Hitler proclaimed, in a Führer Order dated 17 September 1944. ‘German cities and villages will be battlegrounds. This fact must make our fighting more fanatical and harden every available man in the battle zone to turn every bunker, every apartment block in a German city, every German village into a fortress.’5 So desperate was Hitler for additional manpower that, on 25 September 1944, as the Allies pressed towards Germany’s western and eastern borders, the Führer ordered the creation of the Deutscher Volkssturm, a last-ditch defence force comprised of boys and older men up to sixty years old. Placing it under Nazi Party control, in the form of Martin Bormann, his personal secretary, Hitler dreamed of a large, ideologically committed militia that would help rouse the entire German population to a fanatical resistance that would halt the Allied advance. The Führer’s mistrust of his generals at this critical stage of the war was such that he believed the Nazi Party, rather than the military, would mount the final defence of Germany.
By September of 1944, Hitler’s Total War effort had, according to senior Wehrmacht officers, almost completely exhausted the country’s personnel and material resources. Allied air forces had partially or fully destroyed the majority of Germany’s vital industries and the railway net, which was indispensable for continuing the war. Indeed, Allied strategic bombing was seen as such a threat that, by August 1944, there were more than one million men manning some 39,000 antiaircraft batteries attempting to defend Germany’s skies.6 Pending a miracle, some senior Wehrmacht officers believed that the collapse of the Third Reich would take place in the spring of 1945 at the latest.7
The German soldier, however, continued to fight well. ‘He no longer had any great ideals; however, in most cases, he still retained a remnant of faith in Hitler,’ remembered Colonel Günther Reichhelm, Chief of Operations for Army Group B, after having visited almost all corps and division headquarters as well as several regimental and battalion staffs. According to Reichhelm, the German soldier was fighting for a last chance. By autumn 1944, there was hardly a German family which had not lost one of its close kin, or which had not been bombed out and thereby lost everything. In addition to this, there was the reluctance of the German soldier to take second place in the events regarding his own country. Last, but not least, there was the ever-increasing propaganda, announcement of new weapons, imminent large-scale actions by German fighter-bombers and new U-boats on all oceans, and too-favourable predictions by the highest German authorities regarding industrial capability.’8
According to General der Infanterie Hermann Foertsch, last commander of the German First Army, the German soldier continued to fight as well as he did in the final year of the war due to obedience and the fear of harming his comrades should he be forced back; the hope of winning time for an early end to the war by political measures; the hope that, as a consequence of a political decision, easier conditions as a prisoner of war would be granted to the surrendering troops, and the hope that delaying actions might reduce the number of troops eventually captured by the Soviets. For all these reasons, notes Foertsch: ‘German troops performed more than one could have expected by sober comparison of the strength of the opposing forces. Whenever they were able to continue fighting, by having the necessary technical equipment, they were fighting successfully up to the very last moment.’9
It is not surprising that both Reichhelm and Foertsch fail to touch upon two other important factors, which played an increasing role in the continuing cohesion of the German armed forces late in the war. The first was the enormous programme of systemic bribery of the highest-ranking generals and admirals, implemented by Hitler to ensure the continuing loyalty of those at the top. Such inducements began with generous cash payments. Early in the war, Hitler had instituted a programme in which those officers promoted to field marshal and colonel-general received a tax-free ‘gratuity’ of 4,000 and 2,000 Reichsmarks a month, a small fortune at the time.10 He believed that such payments made it easier for his generals, especially the many who were not Nazi Party members, to subordinate themselves to his leadership and execute blindly whatever he demanded of them. According to Major Gerhard Engel, the Führer’s Army adjutant, the process would be accomplished more easily, even against their inner convictions, if they were the recipients of honours awarded by the head of state.11
Another incentive that Hitler used to maintain the continued loyalty of his generals was the presentation of large and valuable estates. He gave General Heinz Guderian, for example, the Deipenhof estate valued at almost 1.25 million Reichsmarks. ‘Previously a critic of Hitler’s conduct of the war,’ writes Richard Evans, in the final volume of his new history of the Third Reich in the Second World War, ‘Guderian returned from enforced retirement towards the end of the conflict as one of the most determined supporters of a fight to the finish.’ These were not just isolated cases, but generally representative of the benefits Hitler bestowed upon his generals to buy their service. Major Engel also recorded that the Führer made it clear to his generals that when the war was finally won, he would not be miserly in the distribution of land.12
For those in the lower ranks, there was, in addition to all other incentives, which included promotions, awards, and even fame, the terror of the German system of military justice, with an average of 5,000 soldiers executed every year for a wartime total of some 30,000 personnel or the equivalent of about three divisions.13 This was a pittance, however, compared with the 158,000 Red Army soldiers formally sentenced and executed during the war or the almost 423,000 who died fighting in punishment units.14 Still, the real German figure is probably much higher. Nor were generals exempt from summary execution. More than 7,000 people were arrested following the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944 and almost 5,000 of them were executed over the next few months, including sixty officers of the Army and Armed Forces High Commands and the General Staff. Twenty generals were executed and another thirty-six were condemned to death for opposition to the regime, while forty-nine committed suicide to escape the verdict of the courts. And, at the front, another 700 soldiers were executed.15
While the execution of Wehrmacht officers on this scale was an abnormality, even for Hitler’s Third Reich, for the ordinary German soldier, summary executions would only accelerate in the last months of the war, with both the Wehrmacht and the SS hanging any soldier even suspected of deserting from the nearest tree or lamppost. Assigned the job of raising a replacement army, SS chief Heinrich Himmler posted an order soon after assuming his new responsibilities: ‘Certain unreliable elements seem to believe that the war will be over for them as soon as they surrender,’ he wrote. ‘Every deserter will find his just punishment. His family will be summarily shot.’ Nor was this an idle threat. Field Marshal Friedrich Schörner, Commander of Army Group Centre, dealt with stragglers by hanging them from the nearest tree with a poster tied to their bodies reading: ‘I am a deserter and I refused to protect German women and children.’16 In the last months of the war, Hitler himself would threaten his soldiers from his bunker in Berlin with action against their families if they allowed themselves to be taken prisoner unwounded.17 And so the German soldier continued the unequal struggle.
By November 1944, the First Parachute Army had been placed, together with the Twenty-Fifth Army, under Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz’s Army Group H. Blaskowitz was a staunch admirer of Adolf Hitler and had been the former commander of Army Group G, which had been sacrificed in southern France following the Allied invasion and break-out. On 25 April 1945, he would be awarded the Swords to the Knight’s Cross, making him one of the last recipients of that award. He was the only officer holding the rank of Generaloberst commanding an army group.18 Army Group H was one of three army groups commanded by Field Marshal Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt, Commander-in-Chief West. At sixty-nine, Rundstedt was one of the Wehrmacht’s oldest, most durable and most highly respected commanders.19
Leadership of the First Parachute Army, whose mission it was to stem the Allied advance in the north, was vested in Generaloberst Alfred Schlemm, who assumed command on 20 November 1944. A First World War artillery officer and winner of the Iron Cross First and Second Classes, Schlemm had transferred to the Luftwaffe in 1938 and won the German Cross in Gold as commander of Combat Unit Schlemm, part of VIII Fliegerkorps. This was followed by assignments as commander of 1st Air Division and then II Luftwaffe Field Corps. Schlemm had also been Student’s chief of staff in Crete. Afterwards, he left the paratroopers to command a regular army corps, fighting first at Vitebsk and then Smolensk in 1943. In January 1944, he was named commander of the I Parachute Corps in Italy, where his paratroopers fought with distinction, earning him the Knight’s Cross on 11 June 1944 for its achievements near Velletri. Small and with a somewhat dark complexion, Schlemm was a man of strong personality and high intelligence, not afraid to hold his own with those who outranked him.20 His Allied opponents would later dub him ‘a fighting man of undoubted military ability’.21 Now fifty years old, he was a highly skilled combat commander with a great deal of experience in fighting rearguard actions.
In November, Schlemm’s new command consisted of two corps: II Parachute Corps, commanded by General Eugen Meindl, and LXXXVI Infantry Corps, commanded by General Erich Straube. After commanding the Air-Landing Assault Regiment during the invasion of Crete, Meindl had gone on to command the 21st Luftwaffe Field Division, XIII Fliegerkorps and then I Luftwaffe Field Corps, providing him with a wealth of combat experience.22 His three divisions, now the 6th, 7th, and 8th Parachute Divisions, each numbering some 10,000–12,000 fighting men, would serve as the defensive backbone of the First Parachute Army. These were supported by some 80 artillery pieces along with 60 dual-purpose 88-mm anti-aircraft guns.23 Meindl was well-known among his British and Canadian opponents, who reported that his reputation had been enhanced by words of praise from both his seniors and subordinates.24 Two additional corps would later join the First Parachute Army: General der Panzertruppen Heinrich von Lüttwitz’s XLVII Panzer Corps, on 12 February 1945; and General der Infanterie Erich Abraham’s LXV Infantry Corps, on 18 February 1945. Army reserves consisted of two battalions of the Armeewaffenschule (Army Weapons School), while each corps had local reserves of its own with varying strengths.25 The immediate mission of the First Parachute Army when Schlemm took command in November 1944 was to hold its positions in the Reichswald Forest and on the Maas. The West Wall, extending along the German border, was the rear position of the army. The position was strongly constructed south of Geldern, while to the north it consisted only of field fortifications. Another line was under construction along the east bank of the Niers River. Adjacent units included the Twenty-Fifth Army to the north, commanded by General Blumentritt, and the Fifteenth Army to the south, commanded by General von Zangen.26
Schlemm’s newly formed parachute divisions were airborne in name only. According to General Student, only parts of the six airborne divisions existing in 1944 were trained for airborne operations. Indeed, Student gives a figure of 30,000 trained parachutists in the summer of 1944. Most of these were in the 1st and 2nd Parachute Divisions, of whose personnel 50 and 30 per cent respectively were trained parachutists. Commitment of these divisions in ground combat continually decreased these figures so that parachutists from all units had to be recruited for a major airborne operation. Overall, the training of these troops was described as ‘inadequate’ and only about 20 per cent were capable of jumping fully equipped with weapons.27 Nonetheless, much was expected of Schlemm’s ‘paratroopers’.
The vast majority of the Wehrmacht’s parachute divisions had, in fact, been manned with any troops that were available, but especially remnants of Luftwaffe field divisions and fortress battalions, along with a small core of veteran paratroopers. It was with these ‘paratroopers’ that Schlemm was expected to resist the Allied advance. And yet they would fight as well and as desperately as any elite Fallschirmjäger, not so much because they were paratroopers but because they wanted to survive the war and there was no other option available to them.
The 6th Parachute Division was one of three parachute divisions assigned to the First Parachute Army. Originally formed in June 1944 at Amiens, France, elements of Generalleutnant Rüdiger von Heyking’s 6th Parachute Division had entered combat as a regimental-size battle group formed around the Parachute Lehr (Demonstration) 21st Regiment. The battle group fought on the Normandy front in August 1944, along the Le Mans–Alençon axis as part of the German LXXXI Corps and the Fifth Panzer Army. After the withdrawal across the Seine, the remnants of the division sought refuge with the remainder of the Fifth Panzer and Seventh Armies in the Pas de Calais area. By early September the battle group, which had been reduced to two infantry battalions and a few heavy calibre weapons, had been pushed back to Mons, Belgium, by the First U.S. Army. Harassed from the air, ambushed by resistance groups, attacked by Allied spearheads and finally encircled near Mons, the Germans, with little ammunition, fuel, or communications, blundered repeatedly into American roadblocks and were thrown into confusion. Only a few escaped the Allied encirclement and Heyking was taken prisoner.28 ‘The 6th Parachute Division engaged in Normandy at the beginning of the invasion had been completely annihilated by the end of August 1944 during the heavy fighting which took place in the area roughly between the Seine and Amiens,’ recorded Generalmajor Rudolf Langhaüser in a history of the unit. ‘No remnants of any consequence were left of these fighting units which would, later on, be used as seasoned cadre for a subsequent reorganization. The new organization was effected in October 1944 in Holland in the area of Assen–Mepel–Coevorden.’29
The reorganized 6th Parachute Division was classified as an ‘Infantry Division, Two Regiment Type’ consisting of two infantry regiments with three battalions each and having a total strength of approximately 10,000 personnel.30 The soldiers were far from the highly trained Fallschirmjäger ideal one would expect in a parachute division, as Langhaüser remembered.
The men of the outfit, all of them of the younger and youngest age groups and full of the highest initiative but without any experience in ground warfare, were furnished from units of the Luftwaffe ground crews, signal units, anti-aircraft artillery and pilot cadets. They had received no more than the private’s basic infantry training and had never before taken part in any, not even the smallest-scale, exercises with combat teams. On the whole they were excellent replacements, who, however, first required a thorough training to bring out their true value.31
According to Langhaüser, the unit’s leadership was equally deficient. The NCOs, who came from the same replacement sources, were poorly trained in infantry warfare and were much harder to retrain due to their many years of service in their specialized fields and their seniority. ‘Their value in battle only rose later,’ wrote Langhaüser, ‘after they had gained more experience and when better trained elements of the battle-tested 1st, 4th, and 5th Parachute Divisions were incorporated into their ranks.’ As for the junior officers, the bulk came from the antiaircraft and signals troops and consisted of young, active men, ready for action, but weak in ground tactics. ‘About 25 per cent of the commanders of battalions and regiments could be considered as very good,’ assessed Langhaüser, ‘50 per cent as good and 25 per cent as weak in their ground warfare training. At the time of the newly formed division’s first action, its commander, Generalleutnant Plocher, reported its aggregate battle value to the High Command as being “conditionally suited for defensive action”.’32
Still, the Allies did not underestimate their opponents. A First Canadian Army intelligence report noted that the men of the parachute divisions gave the impression of high morale and intended on fighting to the end:
They are proud of belonging to an elite branch, however exterminated it may become in the meantime. They are, as a rule, younger and physically better qualified than other troops. Their relations to the Army are without a stigma, in contrast to the notorious SS gang. They like to consider themselves the successors of the crack troops which invaded Holland in 1940, Crete in 1941, and made a last-ditch stand in Cassino. Actually, only a handful have survived these ‘memorable’ days and, considering the quality and length of Para training now given, only very few would equal these accomplishments . . .
Practically all of them have been made to believe that Hitler has restored law and order, greatness and equality to the German people. The Hitler myth has taken so strong a hold on them that many refuse to consider even the possibility of a German defeat. Hitler’s promise of a victory and of secret weapons to achieve it with is accepted by many like a guarantee from a higher being. Others think that Nazi Germany was a good thing until the war but that Hitler should never have challenged the entire world as he did.33
The reorganized 6th Parachute Division was composed of the 17th and 18th Parachute Regiments. Each regiment was authorized 3,206 personnel and, according to Allied intelligence reports, the 6th Parachute Division’s total strength was approximately 6,000–7,000 men.34 The division was commanded by Generalleutnant Hermann Plocher, a prewar infantry officer turned pilot prior to the beginning of the Second World War. Plocher had served as the chief of staff of Germany’s Condor Legion for fourteen months during the Spanish Civil War and then on the Luftwaffe General Staff, the staff of V Fliegerkorps and that of Luftwaffe Command East during the first four years of the war. In 1943 he was rewarded with command of the 19th Luftwaffe Field Division followed by command of the 4th Fliegerdivision. Prior to serving as commander of the 6th Parachute Division he had been the Chief of Staff of Third Air Fleet. He had been awarded the German Cross in Gold in April 1942 and the Knight’s Cross on 22 November 1943.35 Plocher’s Canadian adversaries would quickly learn to respect him and would later write about him: ‘In the forceful personality of this sound professional soldier is a clue to the fierce, skillful fighting of his paratroopers.’36
Major Rudolf Witzig commanded the 18th Parachute Regiment. On paper, the regiment would have consisted of a regimental headquarters, regimental headquarters company, three parachute infantry battalions, a 120-mm mortar or light artillery company, and an anti-tank company. Its authorized strength was 96 officers and 3,110 other ranks. At full strength, each of the three battalions was authorized 853 men and each of the parachute infantry companies 170. On paper, the regiment’s armaments included a high proportion of automatic and heavy weapons, giving it tremendous firepower and making it the ideal formation for defensive operations.
On 19 November 1944, the 6th Parachute Division was incorporated into the LXXXVIII Infantry Corps and took over the combat sector of II SS Panzer Corps on both sides of the Arnhem front running from Grebbedann to the bend of the Waal River near Nijmegen. The division command post was located in Velpe, east of Arnhem. The division was reinforced by four companies of the 30th Machine-Gun Battalion and, for a short period, by the 46th or 49th Machine-Gun Battalion. The fighting qualities of the machine-gun battalions was assessed as ‘good’, in comparison to most garrison battalions, which were considered ‘weak’, consisting of men of old age classes without combat experience and lacking initiative. As well as the normal artillery units the division’s artillery consisted of a heavy artillery battalion with a battery of 170-mm guns, a battery of 150-mm guns, and several other medium-calibre guns. Artillery was thus not in short supply. Forces were deployed along the front so as to provide depth to the defence, while at the same time allowing necessary training. Available to the 6th Parachute Division for training purposes and as a reserve were another parachute regiment, a parachute tank company, and a parachute mortar company. In a series of minor engagements, the men of the division were able to gain battle experience and confidence and improve their training. At the time it occupied its sector, defensive positions were weak and needing reinforcement. Lack of building material complicated improvements and the lack of mines precluded the desired depth of minefields in the outpost area. Although a fallback position was also under construction, this too suffered from the lack of building material. The strategic importance of the 6th Parachute Division’s combat sector on both sides of Arnhem made it almost certain that the Allies would launch an attack there. ‘A breakthrough at Arnhem could have folded up the whole lower Dutch defence and severed communications,’ wrote Rudolf Langhaüser, ‘as well as destroying the lower Rhine defences, opening up routes in the direction Bremen–Hamburg.’37
Around 10 December 1944, the 6th Parachute Division was relieved by the newly reconstituted 2nd Parachute Division and withdrawn from its first position. The following night, it took over the sector then held by the 711th Infantry Division, extending from the recent western divisional boundary to the Waal bend at Hesselt. Subsequently, the division also took over in quick succession the sectors of the 712th and 719th Infantry Divisions so that by 20 December it was responsible for the defence of an 80-km front, extending from the beginning of the Holland Diep River, the right-hand boundary, to Schedrecht and then to the area east of Rhenen. A wide estuary of the Rhine and Meuse rivers, the Holland Diep runs between Rotterdam in the north and Breda in the south with a bridge spanning it at Moerdijk. The reason that the 6th Parachute Division assumed this tremendous frontage was the withdrawal of the 711th, 712th, and 719th Infantry Divisions for an attack in conjuction with the planned Ardennes offensive. The 6th Parachute Division was also scheduled to be detached in order to join the attack on the left wing and to ensure the security of the east flank. This plan, however, was later rejected as the forces available were thought to be too weak for the intended attack and its far-reaching aims. In the end, the three infantry divisions were held in reserve for the Ardennes offensive.38
But in accordance with the High Command’s earlier intent, the 6th Parachute Division had been reinforced with 30th Machine-Gun Battalion, the 800th Russian Battalion, and Kampfgruppe Fuchs, a mixed regimental size battle group, consisting of one Luftwaffe and one Army battalion commanded by a Luftwaffe Colonel Fuchs. In addition, the division was reinforced with a heavy artillery battalion and the division’s 6th Artillery Regiment, consisting of three batteries, each with four 122-mm Russian medium howitzers. ‘These howitzers were very good guns capable of great firing accuracy and small dispersion,’ recorded Langhaueser, ‘very mobile; sufficient ammunition was available.’ In spite of the tremendous frontage and his force’s relative weakness, General Plocher aimed to deploy as few troops as possible in the front lines and instead sought to keep strong and mobile reserves in high readiness. These reserves were also responsible for planned training and increasing the combat efficiency of the division.39
Apart from a short spell, during which Witzig’s 18th Parachute Regiment was drafted out of the division to work on the construction of field fortifications in the Reichswald, south-west of Cleve, during the Christmas season of 1944, the division had, besides its local regiment reserves, two battalions of the 16th Parachute Regiment, one battalion of the 17th Parachute Regiment, and a motorized reserve group consisting of one parachute company, one parachute mortar platoon, one anti-tank company, and one engineer company. Appropriate steps had been taken by the division to ensure that these reserves, which were at the disposal of both division and the corps, were fully mobile. By this point, General Plocher had reported the division’s fighting abilities to higher headquarters as ‘fit for defensive action’ and ‘conditionally fit for offensive operations’.40
Opposite Plocher’s 6th Parachute Division was the First Canadian Army commanded by Lieutenant-General Henry Crerar. Crerar was a First World War veteran, graduate of the Canadian Royal Military College and former Chief of the Canadian General Staff. According to historian Mark Zuehlke, the leading authority on the Canadian Army in the Second World War, Crerar was a fervent nationalist who wanted Canada to play a significant role in the Allied war effort. The title ‘First Canadian Army’ was somewhat of a misnomer, however. In reality, the Canadian contingent consisted of little more than a single corps – II Canadian Corps – supported by ancillary units attached to the army headquarters. The corps consisted of three divisions and one armoured brigade under the command of Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds, one of Canada’s brightest military leaders and the youngest corps commander in the Allied army. On 23 July 1944, I British Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General John Crocker, was attached to the First Canadian Army. It comprised the British 3rd, 49th, 51st (Highland), and 6th Airborne Divisions. Three days later, the newly arrived Polish 6th Armoured Division joined II Canadian Corps – the beginning of a long relationship between the Canadians and the Poles. Arrayed against the Germans, from east to west, were the Dutch Princess Irene Brigade, the Canadian 4th Armoured Division, the Polish 1st Armoured Division, approximately two battalions of UK Royal Marine Commandos, and a regiment of paratroopers.
Witzig and the men of the 6th Parachute Division thus faced a combination of British, Canadian, Dutch and Polish soldiers and paratroopers. ‘The 4th Canadian Armoured Division and the Polish Armoured Division were often mixed,’ reported Langhaueser, ‘from which it could be gathered that the Canadians did not rate the fighting qualities of the Poles very highly.’ This was not so, although some of the Allied commanders did consider the Poles to be impetuous. It was with these superior Allied forces that the 6th Parachute Division took part in a series of engagements, characterized by patrol actions, in difficult terrain, including largely flooded marshes and canals, and in extremely cold weather. Larger scale and more protracted fighting arose over possession of the small bridgehead at Kapellsche-Veer.41
In early December, the 6th Parachute Division assaulted a small Allied bridgehead about 5 km upstream from Nijmegen across the Waal River, losing sixty men killed and more than a hundred captured to a British counter-attack. Afterwards, the Germans were content with shelling enemy positions and floating mines and explosives down the river to damage British pontoon bridges. The 6th Parachute Division was also tasked to attack across the Maas as part of a planned three-division assault in support of the Ardennes offensive in December. These three divisions were to be ready to cross the Maas when ordered and seize the Wilhelmina Canal from Oosterhout to Dongen on the way to Breda. The outpost at Kapellsche-Veer, established by the 711th Infantry Division and later taken over by the 6th Parachute Division, was immediately increased in strength to one company. As a result, the Canadians decided to eliminate it.42
In the early morning of 16 December 1944, the Germans launched their Ardennes Offensive, code-named Operation Herbstnebel (Autumn Mist). Hitler’s final great attack of the war sought to drive apart the two major Allied formations, Montgomery’s Twenty-First Army Group from Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group, by striking along the seam separating the two formations and then thrusting eastward towards the Meuse. From there, German forces would drive towards Antwerp to recapture the Allies’ most vital supply port. Hitler hoped to inflict a major defeat on the Allies and force a peace settlement on them that would end the war on the Western Front.
For the attack, the Wehrmacht massed three armies against Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges First U.S. Army, part of Twelfth Army Group. Taking advantage of the heavy cloud cover and winter weather, which grounded the Allied air forces and both concealed and muffled the concentration of troops and equipment, the Germans managed to achieve total surprise on the first day. Once confusion subsided, however, General Eisenhower responded by directing a steady flow of reinforcements into the threatened sector. At the same time, the American defenders of first St-Vith and then Bastogne managed to hold their positions long enough to derail the entire German offensive timetable. Fierce fighting ensued, as the Germans struggled to break out eastward, while the Americans did everything in their power to prevent them from doing so. By 22 December, the skies had cleared sufficiently for the Allied air forces to take to the air and begin savaging the attackers. In the end, this massive intervention proved crucial to the failure of the offensive, which was plagued from the beginning by fuel shortages, heavy snows, reliance on a poor road network, the narrowness of the front, and lack of manoeuvre space for the panzers.
By 16 January, the Allies had pinched off the bulge caused by the German attack in the Ardennes and what remained of the attack force retreated to the east. Casualties on both sides were heavy, with the Germans suffering more than 100,000 casualties, including 80,000 killed, and the Allies suffering 70,000 killed, wounded, and missing. More importantly, the Germans lost some 600 tanks and 1,000 aircraft. While the Allies could replace their equipment losses in a matter of weeks, the losses to the Wehrmacht were irreplaceable.
As for the performance of the once vaunted Fallschirmjäger, the airborne operation during the Ardennes offensive, the last of the war, was assessed by the Germans themselves as a complete failure, demonstrating the low standards of training in both the parachute forces and supporting transport units. ‘The number of parachute troops committed in the Ardennes was so small that a decisive influence on the overall offensive could not have been expected,’ wrote a group of German airborne specialists after the war. ‘Since most of the parachute divisions were committed in regular ground combat, only a battalion of inadequately trained parachutists was literally “scraped” together for this operation. Its strength would have been sufficient at the most to attain a small tactical success.’43 The necessity of having well-trained, specialized troops available for airborne operations was adequately proven.
In the meantime, Plocher and the men of the 6th Parachute Division had been attempting to hold their ground against a Canadian attack on 26 December led by the Polish 1st Armoured Division and British Royal Marine Commandos. Well supported by artillery, the German paratroopers defended tenaciously and then counter-attacked fiercely, inflicting more than 200 casualties on the attackers. A deliberate assault at the end of the month, preceded by all the firepower of I Canadian Corps shattered the German defences, however, throwing the paratroopers back and allowing a Canadian infantry brigade, supported by an armoured regiment, to cross the river. The 6th Parachute Division suffered 300–400 casualties during this period, including almost 150 killed and another 100 who succumbed to frostbite. The Germans gave almost as good as they got, inflicting 234 casualties on their opponents. As a result of these heavy losses, however, the Kapellsche-Veer bridgehead was abandoned by the Germans in mid-January.44 During this entire period, numerous reconnaissance patrols were operating against the Allies, furnishing excellent intelligence. On one occasion, the 16th Parachute Regiment was transferred to the area of the 2nd Parachute Division, but then withdrawn again immediately.45
The beginning of 1945 brought no respite for Witzig, the men of the First Parachute Army, or the Third Reich. Instead, the Wehrmacht’s strategic situation worsened drastically. On 10 January, the Red Army launched its offensive against East Prussia, one of the springboards for the invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. More than 130 Soviet divisions, consisting of some 1.6 million men and supported by 25,000 artillery pieces and mortars, almost 4,000 tanks and assault guns and more than 3,000 aircraft, hurled themselves at what remained of Army Group North along a 500-km front. Caught in an annihilating encirclement were three German armies consisting of 40 divisions and numbering almost 800,000 men, 8,200 artillery pieces and mortars, 700 tanks and assault guns, and almost 800 combat aircraft.46
The battle for East Prussia would last until April, but the end was never in doubt. Two days later, on 12 January, the Red Army launched its greatest offensive of the war aimed at destroying German forces between the Vistula and Oder Rivers, conquering Polish territory still under German occupation and plunging into the heart of the Third Reich to establish a bridgehead for the final assault on Berlin.
The two offensives succeeded in shattering German defences in East Prussia and Poland. By 27 January, Soviet troops were 150 km from Berlin, having overrun the strategic Silesian industrial basin. Pondering the loss of the coal mines alone, Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister, told the Führer in a memorandum that the war was lost. Together, the two offensives stripped the Army and Luftwaffe of more than a million defenders as well as the vast bulk of their remaining tanks, artillery pieces, and combat aircraft. Few illusions now remained either among the military or the German population as to the ultimate outcome of the war. And yet, like German soldiers everywhere, the men of the First Parachute Army continued to defend desperately, true to their oath. But every day that Rudolf Witzig and his Fallschirmjäger fought to keep the Americans and British at bay saw the loss of huge swathes of the Reich’s territory to the much-hated and feared Russians in the East, a fact that could not have been lost on the German soldiers in the West.
In the meantime, the 6th Parachute Division had launched a series of counter-attacks on 18 January 1945 against the British 49th Division near Zetten, about 15 km south-west of Arnhem. Although they initially gave way before the German onslaught, the British regrouped and then counter-attacked fiercely, regaining the town and their original defensive positions after bitter fighting, killing and wounding some 500 German paratroopers and capturing another 340. Allied casualties totalled 220 men.47
Incredible as it seems, somehow, in the midst of all that was happening, Rudolf Witzig found the time to get engaged and married. In December, he had taken a day of leave to ask Hanna to marry him. She accepted and he returned to the front almost immediately. And then, in January, he returned to Höxter for the wedding. It was a major event for the city. After all, Rudolf Witzig was not only still a major celebrity; he was also an adopted son of the city. Furthermore, with little money available for entertainment of any kind, the wedding, attended by the German press, offered the population a temporary diversion from the grim reality of the war and the Third Reich’s declining prospects. The wedding took place in the church which Hanna and her family had attended for so many years. Dr Remmers, her father, was there, along with the hospital sisters and all the patients capable of attending. ‘It was a beautiful wedding at the Kiliani Church in Höxter,’ Hanna remembered later. ‘The unforgettable Pastor Schloemann conducted the ceremony.’48 The couple arrived and departed in a horse-drawn buggy and spent three days honeymooning in the city. They then departed for Austria and the Brenner Pass, where they spent eight days at Steinach in the Tyrol on the property of Dr Hans Holzmeister, Witzig’s surgeon from his 21st Parachute Engineer Regiment days. Two and a half days were spent travelling to and from their destination aboard ‘Front Holiday’ trains, reserved for those serving in an official capacity, with Witzig in his Luftwaffe uniform and Hanna in her German Red Cross uniform. There the couple enjoyed a short but peaceful respite from the war, which ended all too soon when Rudolf returned to his regiment.49 Knowing what he was fighting for no doubt hardened his resolve to do his best to stop the Allied advance.
At the end of January 1945, the British and Americans launched a series of attacks against the boundary between the First Parachute and Fifteenth Armies, south and south-east of Roermond. German forces south of the Roer were pushed back to the north, but elements of Generalmajor Walter Wadehn’s 8th Parachute Division succeeded in holding a small bridgehead on the south bank of the river. ‘This enemy attack was believed to be more than a secondary effort,’ recorded Alfred Schlemm, in a postwar monograph on the First Parachute Army.50 On 2 February, Plocher received welcome reinforcements in the form of elements of six fortress battalions redesignated as paratroop units. The additional troops were welcome as his paratroopers found themselves alongside their comrades of the 7th and 8th Parachute Divisions resisting the II Canadian Corps near Cleve, some 24 km south-east of Nijmegen, during Operation Veritable. Generalmajor Hans Erdmann commanded the 7th Parachute Division.51
The Allies sought to clear the defenders from the west bank of the Rhine in order to facilitate a crossing of the river and an advance on the heart of Germany along a northern route. The German defence consisted of three belts, each made up of two to three lines of trenches, reinforced with wire and mines and anchored on village strong-points, farmhouses, and anti-tank ditches. Extensive flooding in the sector forced the Allies to attack along a narrow front to the north and south of the Reichswald, a heavily wooded area stretching from Nijmegen to Cleve.52
The Reichswald was ideal defensive terrain. The thick woodland was almost impenetrable to tanks and the heavy foliage prevented them from traversing their turrets. Additionally, the dense cover made them extremely vulnerable to Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck ambushes. A British lieutenant would later remember: ‘The Reichswald was the nastiest battle we had fought since Normandy.’53 Leading the Allied attack was the British XXX Corps, which had been transferred to the First Canadian Army.
The British–Canadian attack south-east of Nijmegen against the northern wing of the First Parachute Army began on 8 February. ‘The enemy had great numerical superiority; their strength was estimated at six or seven full corps,’ recorded Schlemm. ‘They could relieve their divisions for reconstitution after three or four days of combat. First Parachute Army could not relieve its divisions at all.’54 In fact, the Canadian First Army disposed of two corps, while the U.S. Ninth Army disposed of another three plus ten more divisions. These would be supported by more than a thousand artillery pieces. The Allies unleashed an artillery bombardment reminiscent of the First World War at five in the morning and, after five hours of unmerciful pounding, the ground forces began their advance. Confident that the opening artillery bombardment heralded the much-awaited Allied offensive, General Schlemm requested and received permission to move the 7th Parachute Division from below Geldern into the line on the left of the 84th Infantry Division.
By early evening, the 84th Division had lost over 1,200 men taken prisoner and had five or six battalions shattered. The commander of the LXXXVI Corps believed that, if the British pushed on through the night, they would secure Cleve and achieve a break-through. This, in fact, is what they were trying to achieve and what Schlemm was trying to prevent. But low-hanging clouds and heavy rain persisted, curtailing air support and slowing ground movement. Still, the Siegfried Line defences were breached astride the northern boundary of the Reichswald and the Allies made good progress on the extreme right, although strong German resistance in the Reichswald halted their progress. But weather remained the greatest enemy and, after several days, water and mud put the brakes on ground movement, while low clouds and rain halted close air support.55
On about 10 February 1945, the 6th Parachute Division headquarters was withdrawn and transferred to a combat sector east of the Reichswald, south of Emmerich. There it relieved the staff of the 84th Infantry Division and took command of several composite battle groups, which had been subordinate to the 84th Division. In its new sector, the division was at first under the command of the XLVII Panzer Corps, commanded by General von Lüttwitz, and later under Meindl’s II Parachute Corps.56
The men of the 6th Parachute Division found themselves facing the Canadian 2nd and 3rd Infantry Divisions, both of which the Germans assessed as ‘excellent’. These two divisions were supported by armoured formations, including the 4th Canadian Armoured Division. ‘These divisions relieved each other in their assaults and were thus able to return to the attack fresh and rested,’ recorded Langhaüser, ‘while facing the heavily battered but firmly resisting troops of the division.’57 Still, in his monograph on the 6th Parachute Division in Holland, Langhaüser called the Allied conduct of battle ‘highly schematic’:
Every assault would be recognized in good time by its long term moving into positions and the careful adjustment of fires of the artillery. From these it was also possible – in most cases – to determine the direction of an assault and the point of main effort beforehand. Any infantry assault would be preceded by a heavy artillery barrage, lasting up to eight hours. Thus, it was often possible to withdraw our infantry from the danger zone at the beginning of the preparation fire, and return it to the front before the enemy attack was launched.58
Casualties in this phase of the fighting were still ‘bearable’, according to Langhaüser, with the 6th Parachute Division managing to repel the enemy’s assaults, despite his ‘crushing superiority’ or clear up any penetrations with immediate counter-attacks:
After an attack had been repelled a pause of three days usually followed, used by the enemy for the relief of assault troops and their replacement with new formations for the next assault. The division used these pauses for planned withdrawals and preparation of the new main line of resistance. The disengagement was always voluntary and only executed on higher orders; also, great care was taken to maintain integral contact within the division, whose strength was steadily diminishing as a result of the severe fighting.59
When the men of the 6th Parachute Division were not defending in place, they were launching frequent counter-attacks, aimed at stealing the initiative from the Allies, inflicting casualties, and winning enough time either to prepare for the next series of attacks or to withdraw to another prepared defensive line. Supported by German artillery from across the Rhine, the German paratroopers desperately counterattacked the Canadian thrusts on 19 February and continued their attacks on the 20th, when they were brought to a halt barely fifty metres from the forward Canadian positions. The Allies drove the Germans back on the following day in a well-coordinated attack backed by artillery, armour, flamethrowers and supported by rocket-firing Typhoons. ‘The fighting, often in close combat, was hard and bitter on both sides,’ remembered Langhaüser.60
Indeed, Allied losses since the opening of their offensive totalled more than 6,000 men, while the Allies believed the Germans had suffered 20,000 men ‘put out of action’. ‘Our troops had buried “a very great number” of their dead and had taken well over 11,000 prisoners,’ reported General Crerar.61
In General Schlemm the Allies had come up against an opponent with experience fighting rear-guard actions in Russia and Italy [notes the official British history of the battle]. But in addition to his practical experience, Schlemm, in the Rhineland battle, had both ground and weather on his side; ground which drew from General Eisenhower the comment: ‘Probably no assault in this war had been conducted under more appalling conditions of terrain than was that one’; and weather so unfit for air operations that it was only on the 28th of February that the Second Tactical Air Force, with 1,117 sorties, could give support on any large scale during the last fortnight.62
By 24 February, the First Parachute Army’s northern wing had been driven back to the general line of Rees–Udem–Weeze–Bergen–Maas River. Plocher’s 6th Parachute Division, with Witzig’s 18th Parachute Regiment, was located in the area of Marienbaum as part of XLVII Panzer Corps.63 The 7th Parachute, 15th Panzergrenadier and 116th Panzer Divisions had already sustained heavy losses in the fighting in Lorraine and the Ardennes and were under-strength and by 24 February most of their regiments were reduced to battalion size.64 Indeed, according to General von Lüttwitz of XLVII Panzer Corps, the 15th Panzergrenadier and 116th Panzer Divisions were at less than a third of their authorized strength and possessed only thirty-five tanks between them.65
‘The enemy artillery fired, on an average, 80,000–100,000 rounds a day,’ recorded Schlemm. ‘First Parachute Army could expend only 8,000–10,000 rounds. The enemy had about 500 tanks; we usually had 40 or 50. However, morale was high and the performance of the troops excellent.’ It is to their credit that, after sixteen days of heavy combat, the First Parachute Army had been thrown back 20 km on the northern flank but had prevented a breakthrough on its front and never lost control of a critical situation. ‘Discipline and order behind the front were good,’ boasted Schlemm after the war. ‘The vast air superiority of the enemy had little effect on the fighting at the outset, since the weather made flying very difficult in early February 45.’66 As usual at this late stage in the war, there was no air support on the German side. Still, the Allied air forces had not succeeded in destroying or seriously damaging the two Rhine bridges at Wesel and the supply lines of the army across the river remained intact, even when ferrying was no longer possible because of high water. And Schlemm believed that the British and Canadians had also suffered heavy losses, which slowed their advance.67
Nonetheless, the end seemed near for the First Parachute Army. ‘If you have a map before you, you will take in the situation at a glance,’ Schlemm reported to Field Marshal von Rundstedt on 3 March. ‘My divisions are surrounded with the Rhine at their back.’68 Schlemm received permission to withdraw a number of formations to the east bank of the Rhine. These included large numbers of administrative staffs, supply units, and unit trains for both the First Parachute and Fifteenth Armies. There were also large numbers of trucks carrying machinery from the German factories on the west bank of the Rhine. ‘There were, all told, about 50,000 vehicles of all types,’ records Schlemm. ‘Because of enemy air activity they could only move at night. The crossing of the Rhine was made on available bridges and ferries, which I had arranged for as early as January and February 1945.’ Schlemm placed staff and numerous other personnel at the crossing points ‘to maintain order and ensure that personnel and weapons no longer suitable for combat [would] be carried over to the east bank’. By 6 March, all workshops, supply depots and material, ammunition dumps, excess hospitals, unit trains, and even veterinary equipment, as the German Army of 1945 was moved principally by horses, had been transferred to the east bank of the Rhine. ‘The movement offered large and worthwhile targets because of congestion lasting until late in the day,’ remembered the First Parachute Army commander, ‘But they were little disturbed by enemy air attacks, in spite of good flying weather.’69 This move allowed continued command, control, and supply of the German forces for weeks to come, further delaying the Allied advance and the end of the war.
Still, the final outcome of this uneven battle was never in doubt. ‘It became clear as early as 3 March 1945 that First Parachute Army could not continue to hold the west bank of the Rhine against the overwhelming superiority of the Allied forces which were brought closer and closer together in concentric attacks,’ wrote Schlemm, assessing the correlation of forces. ‘Against our ten or eleven divisions, now reduced to regimental size and possessing about 20 tanks, stood nine or ten enemy corps with about 3,000 armoured vehicles.’ Short on everything else, the First Parachute Army had an abundance of artillery, which proved to be the Wehrmacht’s saving grace in the final months of the war:
I succeeded in evacuating promptly large elements of the artillery employed in the West Wall [continued Schlemm] about 40 batteries, in spite of the lack of transport. The divisional artillery had lost few pieces despite the large number of shells the enemy had expended. In addition, First Parachute Army had two artillery corps with five battalions each. These were brought up from OB West in February 1945.
Full use of these heavy artillery assets for effective shelling of enemy concentrations of tanks and infantry, however, proved impossible. The increasing destruction of the German railway net by Allied air attacks prevented the supply of sufficient ammunition. ‘I informed army group of this situation,’ reported Schlemm. ‘As an answer I received an order from OB West for the First Parachute Army to hold the west bank of the Rhine. This was necessary to prevent the Allied forces fighting against the Army from disengaging units for new operations.’70
The decision to hold on the west bank caused Schlemm great trouble: ‘How could I defend the east bank of the Rhine if my army were completely destroyed on the west bank? The enemy could divert strong forces to carry out a crossing of the Rhine, perhaps between Emmerich and Xanten. The east bank had not been fortified for defence.’ Aside from a few Volkssturm battalions with little combat value, there were no other units for the defence of the east bank of the Rhine. Schlemm believed that an Allied attack across the Rhine in his sector would have been immediately successful, even if carried out with only weak forces. He therefore asked army group to permit the withdrawal of the staff of LXXXVI Infantry Corps, commanded by General Straube, to prepare a defensive line on the east bank of the Rhine between Emmerich and Ürdingen followed by a transfer to the east bank of large elements of the artillery, for which there were neither positions nor ammunition in the narrow bridgehead. Once across the river, Schlemm planned on positioning these in such a way that, with a new supply of ammunition, they could support the army from the east bank. Both requests were granted on 3 March, and, by 9 March, almost seventy batteries of artillery had been transferred across at night, most of them on ferries. Losses from Allied air attacks and artillery fire were slight. These batteries joined the Rhine defences, which were to be rebuilt, and later supported the fighting in the German bridgehead with great success, using flanking fire against the wings of the attacking Allied forces.71 The extraction of the fighting formations themselves, along with numerous other units, followed. ‘On the east bank were numerous ersatz [replacement] and marsch [personnel replacement transfer] battalions from Germany,’ recorded Schlemm. ‘They totalled about 40,000–50,000 men, but were of no use since they had no leaders, combat experienced cadres, or weapons.’72
Using the under-strength but still hard-fighting parachute divisions of the II Parachute Corps as a rearguard, Schlemm’s First Parachute Army managed to retreat across the Wesel on 10 March, destroying the bridges at 0700 hours as they reached the east bank. The Allies did not follow up at first and later cautiously felt their way to the weak rearguard troops, who remained on the left bank of the Rhine for approximately twenty-four hours. Their retirement across the Rhine took place without any disturbance.73 Rudolf Witzig’s 18th Parachute Regiment was one of the last units to cross the Rhine. ‘Thanks to the valiant resistance of the infantry and the Fallschirmjäger,’ recorded Schlemm, ‘heavy weapons and other troops could be brought over to the east bank.’74
‘It is fairly clear that First Parachute Army crossed the Rhine reasonably well according to plan and in fairly good order,’ noted a Canadian First Army intelligence report. ‘It is also certain that the bulk of the equipment of this Army was transferred across the Rhine.’
British and Canadian casualties in the month’s fighting totalled some 15,500 personnel. The Allies estimated that they had, in turn, killed or seriously wounded 22,000 Germans and taken another 22,000 prisoner. On 10 March, Hitler replaced Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt with Field Marshal Kesselring as Commander-in-Chief West.75