Chapter 47: Sep 1944 U.S. Troops Reach Seigfried Line in Germany

Adolf Hitler – March 1945

“If the war is lost, the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it will be better to destroy things ourselves because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation [Russia]. Besides, those who remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have been killed.”

The lead elements of the allied forces reached the famous “Siegfried Line” as early as September 1944. This final defensive line for the fatherland consisted of over eighteen thousand bunkers with layered interlocking fields of fire and was known in German as the “Westwall”. It really was not a wall at all but mostly underground with connecting tunnels to protect the defenders at almost every point.

The detour into Paris to liberate the city was the fly in the ointment that slowed down the allied advance long enough to allow the German Wehrmacht to regroup and put up stiff resistance.

The sideshow that was primarily engineered by General Charles De Gaulle more for post-war political reasons rather than reaching the military objective of destroying the German Wehrmacht and bringing the war in Europe to a close was good for the French populace that had suffered under the Nazi rule for more than five years but it was a thorn in the side of the war planners trying their best to end the war in Europe so they could turn their full attention to the Pacific and defeating the Japanese Empire.

The allied assault on the Siegfried Line lasted from September 1944 to March of 1945. Casualties were high on both sides and the Germans even managed to mount a last gasp effort with the “Battle of the Bulge” unexpectedly counterattacking the advancing allied forces in December of 1944.

The two primary obstacles to the Allied advance into the fatherland was the terrain that consisted of many rivers that acted as chokepoints to the advance and slowed down the advancing forces and the famous “Siegfried Line” that was the German final line of defense to the West. Unfortunately, the Germans had no defensive line to slow down the advance of the Russians advancing just as quickly from the East heading to Berlin and the bunker where Hitler had taken refuge. This was more due to the lack of enthusiasm for the German Wehrmacht to fight on the Eastern front after the debacle that was Stalingrad and Hitler’s obscene interference in military planning that caused the loss of almost a million men for no other reason than personal ego. There can be no doubt that the Fuhrer was already contemplating the exit of suicide rather than capture by the allies and almost certain trial as a war criminal.

The pause taken by the allies to Liberate Paris almost certainly allowed the Wehrmacht to prepare for one last “Hail Mary” pass in the form of the Battle of the Bulge and it extended the war into 1945 in Europe when it should have been brought to a conclusion before Christmas in 1944.

The German “Westwall” or Siegfried Line was first started in 1938 as a response by Hitler to the French “Maginot Line” with its stationary underground fortifications to keep Germany out of France in the event of war.

The Siegfried Line stretched from the border with the Netherlands to the border with Switzerland. It was almost 400 miles in length and was heavily fortified with pillboxes and underground fortifications.

The first allied crossing of the Rhine River into Germany was in March 1945 near Mainz, Germany. They took the Germans by surprise and established a beachhead before the defenders could react to the crossing. I was somewhat surprised at this statement in the research I did on the subject because I was in the 14th Armored Cavalry unit that made that supposed first crossing in early March 1945 at Remagen. That was in the after the war occupation of Germany by the Allies in post-war Germany. In any event, the movement into Germany was also delayed by the unexpected Nazi counteroffensive in the Ardennes called the “Battle of the Bulge”.

When the weather cleared in the Battle of the Bulge, the allies had air superiority and the Germans had to quickly retreat out of the territory they had gained at a cost of men and material draining the last few remaining armor assets they had left. Most of the armor was abandoned because the Germans did not reach the allied fuel dumps and they had no fuel to move their tanks in either direction.

The German Wehrmacht was forced to retreat from the Siegfried Line because they lacked logistical support to sustain it. Short on both ammo and fuel the war-weary German soldiers drew back on the city of Berlin for a last ditch effort to defend the Fuhrer and the Thousand Year Reich.

The final analysis indicates that the much-vaunted Siegfried Line was a paper tiger identical to the French Maginot Line that consumed lots of construction material and countless thousands of man-hours of labor to construct and it had similar flaws that doomed any chance at successfully stopping a modern armed force from passing though it or around it whatever the case might be.

The German Wehrmacht knew it, the German people knew it and most importantly, the Allies knew it and acted accordingly.

I stood in the mass of humanity on the Champs-Elysees right next to Simone.

She was wearing her mother’s short skirt and to the best of my knowledge was not wearing anything underneath. Every now and then she would run out into the line of marching troops and smooch one of the uniformed marchers leaning forward and giving the onlookers a tasty peek at her cute pink cheeks.

I wanted to spank her so badly my hand was tingling with frustration.

An older pair of French women standing on my other side was commenting on her inappropriate behavior and I could tell they probably wanted to do the same thing themselves but were too well-behaved and conservative to take the risk. The taller of the duo was almost climbing on my arm to get a better view of the parade and I could smell her French perfumed soap that she must have bathed in before the parade started to celebrate the eviction of the Germans from Paris in no uncertain terms.