Operation Grenade

Operation Grenade (Battle of the Reichswald)
Part of Western Front, World War II
Operations Veritable and Blockbuster (yellow) and Grenade (green)
Date 23 February 1945 – 10 March 1945 (2 weeks and 1 day) Location Rhineland (Germany) Result American victory
Belligerents
United States	Germany
Commanders and leaders
William H. Simpson	Gustav-Adolf von Zangen Alfred Schlemm
Strength
380,000 men 1,400 tanks 2,070 guns 375 aircraft	54,000 men 180 tanks
Casualties and losses
7,478 men 1,330 killed	~45,739 men 6,000 killed 10,000 wounded 29,739 captured 85 tanks destroyed

During World War II, Operation Grenade was the crossing of the Roer (Rur) river between Roermond and Düren by the U.S. Ninth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General William Hood Simpson, in February 1945.

On 9 February, the U.S. Ninth Army—operating under Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery's Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group since the Battle of the Bulge—was to cross the Roer and link up with the Canadian First Army, under Lieutenant-General Harry Crerar, coming from the Nijmegen area of the Netherlands in Operation Veritable, which had started at 05:00 on 8 February. However, once the Canadians had advanced, the Germans destroyed the dams upstream. This stopped the Americans from crossing as planned. It had been anticipated that the Germans would try to do this, and that General Omar Bradley′s U.S. 12th Army Group could capture them in time to stop the flooding.

During the two weeks that the river was flooded, Hitler would not allow Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt to withdraw behind the Rhine, arguing that it would only delay the inevitable fight. He ordered him to fight where his forces stood.

The Ninth Army was finally able to cross the river on 23 February. By then, other Allied forces were also close to the Rhine. German forces west of the Rhine during operations Veritable, Blockbuster and Grenade lost 90,000 men, of which more than 50,000 became prisoners of war (POW). Allied casualties amounted to some 23,000 men.

Notes

Footnotes

Citations

References

• Clodfelter, M. (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492-2015 (4th ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0786474707. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stacey, Colonel Charles Perry; Bond, Major C.C.J. (1960). Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War: Volume III. The Victory Campaign: The operations in North-West Europe 1944–1945. The Queen's Printer and Controller of Stationery Ottawa.

External links

• http://www.104infdiv.org/grenade.htm
• From the Rur to the Elbe (pdf, 92 pages)
• http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/download/csipubs/fromroer/from_cii.pdf (PDF)