bigpigeon.us webpage WWII-Germany > The ETO > Siegfried Line 1945, © 2023 by Robert A. Christiansen, updated by RAC 26 Dec 2022.
​The early 1945 Allied operations summarized herein penetrated most remaining portions of Germany's defensive Siegfried Line.
​Links to Big Pigeon's The ETO > Siegfried Line 1945 pages:
The Siegfried Line 1945 - Context
By the end of January 1945, Germany forces had been squeezed out of the Bulge, the salient in the Allied lines created by the German Ardennes counteroffensive of December. The Wehrmacht was again behind the defensive fortifications known as the Siegfried Line, commonly known in Germany as the Westwall. A subsidiary German counteroffensive in the northern Alsace in France, known as Operation Nordwind, had been contained. Offensive operations, suspended by the Western Allies in mid-December 1944, had already resumed.

​General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the ground commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in the European Theater, planned to secure most of the west bank of the Rhine River with his seven Allied armies before crossing the Rhine and taking the war to the German heartland. Securing the west bank would increase the number of divisions he could safely commit to activity east of the Rhine.

In much of the western front, the Siegfried Line still stood as a barrier between the Allied armies and the Rhine River. Only in the Ninth Army's sector in the northern Rhineland had the Siegfried Line been penetrated, during various campaigns by the First and Ninth Armies the previous fall.

By the conclusion of the operations described herein, all major portions of the Siegfried Line west of the Rhine had been penetrated.​
The Siegfried Line 1945 - Summary 
​The following bullets correspond to the subpages in the above list of links.
  • Operation Blackcock cleared German troops from the triangular area between the Meuse/Maas River in the Netherlands and the Roer River in Germany. This area is above the upper left corner on the accompanying map.
  • General Eisenhower terminated The First US Effort, launched from the Losheim area northeast of St. Vith, to avoid dissipating resources potentially needed for the later Rhine crossing to the north.
  • The Roer River Dams was a valiant but only  partially successful effort northeast from Monshau to prevent downstream flooding of the Roer River, along which the Ninth Army was staging.

Having played the major role in clearing German forces from the Bulge, General George Patton ended January with four corps in his Third Army. III Corps was reassigned to the First Army effective 11 February. For most of February, Patton was under instructions to restrict offensive actions to "probing attacks". Fortunately, Patton chose to redefine the meaning of a probing attack. Thus the last three operations in the above list of links took the Third Army through the Siegfried line and positioned it for quick dashes to the Rhine in mid-March.  ​
Siegfried Line - 1945
Ninth, First & Third Armies, 17 Jan, 24 Jan, & 7 Feb 1945
The Third Army's February Probing Attacks
  • VIII Corps on the Third Army's left wing penetrated the Siegfried Line in the Schnee Eifel region of Germany's Rhineland Palatinate and advanced eastward towards Prüm.
  • XII Corps in the Third Army's middle crossed the swollen Our and Sauer Rivers from Luxembourg into Germany and advanced eastward towards Bitburg.
  • XX Corps on the Third Army's right wing attacked northward and advanced to Trier.
The Third Army Order of Battle, ~ 11 February 1945
The major Third Army units, holding the Allied line between the Losheim Gap northeast of St. Vith and a point midway between Saarlautern and Saarbrucken near the Saarland border, were deployed thusly in early February 1945:
VIII Corps in the north (General Troy Middleton):
  • 87th Infantry Division
  • 4th Infantry Division
  • 90th Infantry Division
  • 11th Armored Division
  • 6th Armored Division (from III Corps 11 Feb 1945)
  • 6th Cavalry Group (from III Corps 11 Feb 1945)
(As of 11 February, III Corps was reassigned to the First Army. However, as indicated above, the majority of III Corps combat units remained with the Third Army.)
XII Corps in the middle:
  • 80th Infantry Division
  • 5th Infantry Division
  • 76th Infantry Division
  • 2nd Cavalry Group
  • 4th Armored Division
XX Corps in the south:
  • 94th Infantry Division
  • 5th Infantry Division
  • 3rd Cavalry Group
  • 26th Infantry Division
  • 10th Armored Division (in Metz, part of theater reserve), assigned back to XX Corps on 10 Feb 1945)
Third Army Order of Battle
Third Army Order of Battle, ~ 11 February 1945
Sources for Big Pigeon's The ETO > Siegfried Line 1945 webpage:
​Major Sources:
  • The Last Offensive, by Charles B. MacDonald, 1972, ~532 pp. [CMH #7-9] - the 1945 ETO Rhineland Campaign.
Sources for the webpage images: