Pod Insights Dan Snow's History Hit D-day to Berlin: The Americans Cross the Rhine About this episode 80 years ago this week, American forces unexpectedly discovered an intact bridge across the river Rhine - the last natural defence of the crumbling Third Reich. They mounted a ferocious assault and after a bloody battle with the determined German defenders, were able to capture it, and push into the German heartland.
In the latest episode of our 'D-Day to Berlin' series, Dan is joined again by John C. McManus. John explains how the American assault played out, and how it helped to hasten the end of the war.
Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.
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2:26 Dan Snow? Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Eighty years ago, there's a chapter of Second World War history which is not as well-known as it deserves to be. There was the most extraordinary moment when Allied troops, American troops, arrived at the Rhine to discover a precious bridge still standing. This is the story of what came next. By the beginning of March, Allied troops had advanced into Germany itself. The Rhine presented a major obstacle. It's a big river with steep banks, hilly ground. This was where Hitler hoped against hoped that he could somehow hold back the Allies indefinitely, indefinitely.
3:10 Dan Snow? That was always impossible, but it was a very, very serious geological obstacle for the Allies to try and negotiate. Don't forget, crossing the Rhine had been uppermost in the mind of Montgomery during his attack towards Arnhem in the previous autumn, the previous fall. And so this issue of crossing the Rhine, bouncing the Rhine, was still dominating the thinking of Allied generals. There were only four remaining intact bridges at the beginning of March, and three of those four bridges would be destroyed at the end of the first week of March by the Germans, blown up before they could fall into Allied hands. But something unusual happened in the US First Army sector. The US First Army had made a rapid advance.
3:50 Dan Snow? It surprised the Germans and their own side by how far they'd quickly they'd advanced towards the Rhine. As they came over the last line of hills, last crest of hills, and saw the Rhine itself, they were astonished to see a bridge still standing across the Rhine. They could see German activity on the bridge, people desperately beetling around. They knew that the Germans would be trying to destroy it. And it's true, the Germans had wired up with nearly three tonnes of demolition charges. But when they tried to blow it... Only a portion of those explosives detonated and the bridge stood. The Americans were under the command of Brigadier General William Hodge, who you'll hear more about in a second, but he left a great description of that moment. I'm going to read in full if that's okay. "I got up to the Rhine, stood there
4:35 Dan Snow? on the bank and looked down and there it was. The bridge was right there above the town. I couldn't believe it was true. I should have ordered right away to go down and grab that bridge, go down through the town and put tanks on both sides of the bridge, firing parallel to it. I knew it was, well, a dangerous thing, unheard of, but I just had the feeling that here was the opportunity of a lifetime. It must be grasped immediately. It couldn't wait. If you had waited, the opportunity would be gone. That was probably the greatest turning point in my whole career as a soldier." Incredibly brave American troops pushed across that bridge and set foot on the eastern side of the Rhine. They were two weeks ahead of schedule. Montgomery, the British Field
5:18 Dan Snow? Marshal who was in charge, had set out a very careful timeline in which he expected to arrive on the East Bank in two weeks' time. Well, now the Americans were there. They were way ahead of the game and this was a massive problem for the German defenders on the East Bank. And it's a problem that they'd tried everything to solve and it's a problem that absorbed the full attention of Adolf Hitler, even as his regime crumbled around him. For this podcast on this remarkable battle, we've got John McManus. He's come back. You heard him talking about the Battle of Bulge. He's now back. He's a professor of military history at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He's the author of American Courage, American Carnage, and he hosts the Someone Talks and We Have Ways USA podcast.
6:01 Dan Snow? He is a busy man, but he's made time for us to talk us through this extraordinary event. This is all part of our D-Day to Berlin, 80th season. So, thank you very much for listening to all of those episodes and giving us some feedback. We're going to keep going right up to Berlin. In fact, we're going on. We're going to keep going right up to the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. In the meantime, though, enjoy this story of the Americans and how they seized the last bridge over the Rhine.
6:26 Speaker 04 T minus ten.
6:27 Speaker 05 Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the Queen. No black-white unity till they're dispersed in black unity. Never to go to war with one another again.
6:37 Speaker 04 And looked off and the shuttle has cleared the tower.
6:44 Dan Snow? John, how's it going? Thanks for coming on. Yeah, not bad. You know, I'm deeply involved in-
6:49 Speaker 06 Classes and writing and doing podcasts, all the fun stuff.
6:53 Dan Snow? Mining away at the content coalface. That's what I'd like to hear, buddy. Tell me, what's going on since D-Day? We're in the late winter now of 1944. Tell me thoughts going on the eastern front, just the context before we dive in here in the west.
7:07 Speaker 06 Yeah, oh gosh, a lot has happened. The Soviets actually, like in mid-January, launched a massive offensive that they've been building up to for really much of the fall in 1944. So after the Normandy invasion, they had launched what was called Operation Bagration on June 22nd, 1944. And that had basically kicked Axis armies out of Russia and mostly Ukraine, and it plunged them deep into Poland, and they're really on the gates of getting to Germany. But of course, they've been overstretched and they had logistical issues and all that. So it's a long time before they can prepare a similar hammer blow, but they've done it. From a German point of view, all this is happening as the Battle of the Bulge is nearing a climax in the west. So they're really under pressure from both east and west as the Soviets are pushing through western Poland
7:52 Speaker 06 and approaching Berlin almost, you know, within 60 miles or so eventually.
7:57 Dan Snow? And the strangest thing, let's remind the audience, the strangest thing is not a peep from German High Command about maybe calling it a day, surrendering, putting up the white flag. I mean, there's zero chance of victory at this point.
8:08 Speaker 06 Pretty much, yeah. So part of that, of course, is unconditional surrender, but part of it is the nature of the Nazi regime, that Hitler is a zero-sum kind of guy. And he is going to just go for this Dr. Dahmerong to the end. And it really is, he's looking at it by the spring of 1945. Without him, without the Nazi movement, there should be no Germany. And so anybody in the High Command has to really deal with that kind of mindset. Plus too, I should mention, they're fighting for their own soil. They're fighting for their own homes and their own families. And especially they're concerned about the Soviets overrunning their country and rape and plunder and pillage and all that. Not as much the western armies, although they are concerned about fighting for their homes as you might imagine.
8:52 Speaker 06 So I think that's partly what's fueling German resistance too.
8:56 Dan Snow? In the West, so the Battle of the Bulge, the Americans, with a British help of, collapsed that pocket that the Germans were able to punch into the Allied lines. Have they advanced beyond that now by the winter months of early 1945? Have they neared the mighty Rhine River?
9:11 Speaker 06 Yeah, they are approaching the Rhine River. So they'd already been before the Bulge. They had plunged into like this Western German belt of fortifications that we generally call the Siegfried Line, that like pillboxes and dragon's teeth and all that kind of stuff. So the Allied armies had been gnawing away at that in the fall of 1944, when of course the Bulge happens, and that diverts a lot of Allied resources, like you said, Dan, to eliminating that pocket, that bulge they had driven in our lines. All of that is pretty much recovered by the last week of January or so. So the Allied armies then begin to kind of continue that momentum, such as they can, all across the map, from the North Sea all the way to Switzerland. Allied armors are mostly on the move. And so they are approaching
9:55 Speaker 06 the Rhine. Some of them are really nearing it by early March 1945. But from Hitler's point of view, that's his last major barrier, and a kind of a traditional barrier for German defence, that the Rhine River might perhaps hold off the Western armies is the vain hope.
10:11 Dan Snow? And it's Hitler's old, he's playing his favourite tune, no tactical withdrawals, they've got to fight where they stand, even though it might make more sense perhaps to defend the eastern bank of the Rhine. But no, they've got to stay difficult supply, work right out there on the western bank, no matter what.
10:24 Speaker 06 Yep, same old, same old, they hang on to every foot of ground. That, of course, was pretty debatable in the vast expanses of Russia, when sometimes it made sense to even the lines and retreat or whatever. And of course, in the Western campaign sometimes too. But I guess you can somewhat see Hitler's point in this sense, that this is German soil now, and they want to defend every inch of it, I suppose, against an enemy who has said, we're going to accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. So to Hitler's eyes, that basically means the elimination of him and the Nazi regime. So this is an existential fight, and he is, you know, willing to kind of go down fighting, I guess.
10:57 Dan Snow? Yeah, I mean, there is no Germany like Hitler in his mind, right?
11:00 Speaker 06 Exactly.
11:02 Dan Snow? Are the Allies though thinking about how they do jump across the Rhine? I mean, this bounce the Rhine, this is a, it's a pretty major obstacle, right?
11:10 Speaker 06 Yeah, it really is. I mean, you know, like I mentioned, this has been like the traditional barrier to protect the heart of Germany, the Rhine, and it's a wide river, it's deep. And of course, especially like in the eastern bank of much of the Rhine, there's a lot of high ground brooding over it. There had been castles built there in the medieval period. And so it's obviously a good defensible barrier, but, but I think we also have to understand the larger context. The Allies aren't rookies at this. They've been doing river crossings since Sicily. And so, and especially the US Army, I think, has become incredibly proficient at engineering, at building of pontoon bridges. And, and also we're pretty amphibious capable too. And so the idea that we're going to be stopped by the Rhine permanently, I think,
11:53 Speaker 06 is really quite silly. But in the immediate, yes, this is a challenge to coordinate this and figure out how exactly you're going to breach the Rhine.
12:02 Dan Snow? What is their plan? How do they do it? Give me a sense, where does it go on the scale from crossing a little stream to bouncing across the English Channel on D-Day? What kind of logistical lift is going to be required?
12:13 Speaker 06 It's probably, you know, about 60% of that.
12:15 Dan Snow? Wow.
12:16 Speaker 06 Certainly the English Channel was quite a barrier, but the Rhine, certainly you can get pockets of troops across, but you're worried they could be vulnerable if you can't reinforce them and have this kind of united front. So the challenge is in having enough transport, enough engineering know-how, enough logistical heft, and obviously combat power, especially in terms of vehicles, to get across and be able to fight well and continue the advance and to not lose lots of people in besieged pockets. So the answer that they've got on the books as we enter March is what's called Operation Varsity, which is Field Marshal Montgomery's concept of an airborne and kind of amphibious and engineering operation to breach the Rhine, which makes all kinds of sense because it's
12:58 Speaker 06 using all of our major strengths. But that's not the only concept. I mean, each army level command has its own plan for breaching the Rhine. So like First Army and Patton's Third Army and so on and so forth. And so all of these are kind of working on this on their own. And then in the meantime, you know, we get an opportunity in the First Army sector at a place called Remagen, because like obviously the Germans had destroyed all the bridges that they could across the Rhine prior to this, so that we couldn't cross on them.
13:29 Dan Snow? But there are a few bridges surviving, but I bet they're absolutely loaded up with explosives.
13:33 Speaker 06 They are, exactly. And the Germans have gotten really good at this, too. They've been doing a lot of it again since Sicily, where they had destroyed a lot of aqueduct-style bridges that dated back to Roman times, and it presented the Allies with some serious engineering problems. So again, these are not new operational issues that by March 1945, it's kind of old hat for both sides. So yeah, the Germans, of course, know their own bridges better than anybody, and they have very good engineers, they know explosives, they know booby trapping like no one else on earth almost at this stage. And so they have succeeded in destroying the bulk of their bridges. But famously, of course, the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen becomes another story.
14:13 Dan Snow? Well, tell me about that. In early March, as the Allies approach, the Germans are able to blow up three of these big bridges. But the Ludendorff Bridge, something goes wrong. So tell me about that bridge. What happens?
14:24 Speaker 06 Yeah, so the Ludendorff Bridge, interestingly, I think, dated to World War I. It's built by Russian POWs of the Germans in World War I. It's basically a railroad bridge that they had used to resupply their armies on the Western Front of World War I. It had been bombed a little bit by Allied planes from the beginning of World War II. And the Germans, interestingly enough, too, had for years had it wired up just in case they had to blow it up. So this is just a typical railroad bridge, but it's fairly modern in that time context. And in this case, I mean, no one knows exactly why they were not able to blow it up. But there's a sort of, I guess, a comedy of errors or whatever,
15:03 Speaker 06 where you don't necessarily have sufficient wiring, you know, to set the charges and all this kind of stuff. Bottom line, the bridge blows but is not destroyed, is what I would say. So initially, without going too deep in the weeds of what the German engineers are doing, initially, they tried to blow it up and nothing happens. They go out, they fix the fuses, the wires, all that kind of stuff, even as the Allied armies were approaching. The explosion happens and the bridge is actually kind of lifted up, but it's not destroyed. And so it's still intact, and obviously, that's a real problem for them.
15:37 Dan Snow? That is brutal. Can you imagine that engineering? They've had the whole war. They've had months to prepare. And then they go and screw up the detonation. Oh, my goodness.
15:46 Speaker 06 I know.
15:46 Dan Snow? So the Americans are literally like arriving, what, recce units are arriving, watching this activity, thinking, what, can they try and seize the bridge intact or partially intact?
15:55 Speaker 06 Exactly. So this is what's called Combat Command B of the Ninth Armored Division. So that basically means a combination of tanks and infantry, usually like armored infantry on half tracks or whatever, that are mobile units, almost convoy style units, combined arms units working on the roads. You're definitely seeing this in the campaign in Germany in 1945, these kind of mobile combined arms formations. So here we've got one that is really at the point of the spear for First Army and realizes, hey, there's a bridge intact. So like if you'd been scouting along the Rhine River and you're used to seeing no bridges intact, no bridges, same old thing. And all of a sudden, here's one right in front of you. So they move very quickly to seize it, even as the Germans had tried to destroy it in vain, of course.
16:37 Speaker 06 Combat Command B is able to get some troops and vehicles across to secure control of the bridge. One challenge, though, the bridge on the eastern side leads right into this big tunnel. So you just don't know if you go into that tunnel, whether they've got that wired up too, to explode it and collapse everything there and destroy everyone who goes in the tunnel. Fortunately, they don't do that.
16:57 Dan Snow? It's a good command case study that because if you're going to order people onto a bridge that you know has been wired with explosives by the Nazis, you're going to have to go yourself first, right? I mean, that's not, that's not a thing to delegate.
17:08 Speaker 06 Exactly right. So there's a Lieutenant Timmerman who really takes the lead on this. And yeah, that's pretty dicey stuff when you're considering going across the bridge that could blow up at any moment. We had this experience at Nijmegen during Operation Market Garden in Holland, a very, very similar there in September 1944. Similar to and that the Germans tried to wire it up and blow it up of the bridge there and failed. So in this case, yes, that point of the spear goes across successfully. There is some German resistance, but I should point out too, the problem the Germans have operationally is that there's all these hodgepodge units that have been retreating. So you don't have a real good cohesiveness. Command, this is a byproduct of what's happening and that their armies are getting
17:51 Speaker 06 beaten up on every sector. So the other thing I should mention as well on top of that is that one of the things that leads to the bridge not being blown is perhaps a little bit of delay to try and make sure as many German troops could escape to the eastern bank of the Rhine as possible. And that costs them some time that the Americans then take advantage of.
18:15 Dan Snow? This is Ansel's History. This is how the Americans seized that vital bridge across the Rhine 80 years ago. More coming up.
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20:56 Dan Snow? Ah, that fatal error. It's like when you leave the, you leave the gates of your walled city open to let your troops all back in, but some of the attacking force end up mingled in with them. That's the old classic. The Americans also get lucky in it again, don't they? They have one of the, well, the outstanding engineer of the US Army seems to be just by chance on that spot.
21:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, this is William Hodge, H-O-G-E. And he is, like you said, I mean, he's, he's engineer branch. He's an outstanding engineer. He's got a good future ahead of him. He's going to end up as I think a corps commander in the Korean War. Hodge is very well regarded. He's already fought very, very well in the Battle of the Bulge, so kind of earned his stripes there. And obviously he understands engineering, military engineering, as well as anybody on site. And I really do think that's a factor in how we're able to preserve the bridge as well as we do. You know, I mean, it's one thing to exploit it, to send people across. It's another to keep it in some condition and to repair it for several days. They do for the better part of about a week. Hodge, I think. Understand that and also long term, more importantly, the accompanying
21:56 Speaker 06 bridge crossings that we're going to have as a result of controlling some of the eastern bank there. The Bailey Bridges, the Pontoon Bridges, all that kind of stuff. I mean, Hodge is just ace at that. And so I think you got to the exact right guy on scene from a like a one star brigadier point of view.
22:12 Dan Snow? I mean, it goes all the way back to the first war. He's crossed the Merz River in 1918. He gets decorated for that. And then he builds a thousand miles of highway from the Pacific Northwest up to Alaska as well between the wars. So this guy, this guy knows bridging.
22:26 Speaker 06 Yeah, he does.
22:27 Dan Snow? So when Hodge seizes the bridge, I guess, what he secures it, he starts doing repairs on it. And what's the plan? From that point, do you keep pushing the advantage or do you just sit back and secure the bridgehead on the far side?
22:38 Speaker 06 So they press the advantage, but only to a point. And so at the Eisenhower level, he sees this. He's delighted, of course. He and his 12th Army Group Commander, General Lamar Bradley, of which First Army is a part of Bradley's command. I mean, they love the idea of having this bridgehead that they never expected. And so they want to exploit it, but only to a certain extent. Because as they see it, this is a way to draw off German reserves from elsewhere where we're also going to be crossing the Rhine. They don't necessarily want us to go too far with a with an easterly advance because I think they're a little worried that those divisions on the east bank of the Rhine could be vulnerable to German counterattacks because remember, we still really don't have any other troops on the other side of the Rhine. So the Germans could concentrate on these divisions we do have. So,
23:22 Speaker 06 so he authorizes Eisenhower does the better part of about five divisions across. You've got elements of ninth armored. You're going to have the ninth infantry division, the 99th, the 78th for a while. And so you'll have that. So it's more like a an exploitable bridgehead. And then, of course, the Germans, once this goes forward, they're realizing what a mortal threat this could be. And they're sending whatever reinforcements they can to deal with the US divisions that are on the eastern bank. So the fighting in some parts of that pocket are pretty ferocious. Meanwhile, on the bridge, of course, you've got the engineering units trying to rehab and maintain this thing the best they can. And really, that's a simple thing they do. Remember, there's a railroad bridge and we're really moving just vehicles across.
24:02 Speaker 06 So you got to put planking down, like basically wooden planking so that the vehicles and people can come across because we're not moving trains across the thing.
24:11 Dan Snow? It's very interesting, isn't it, for people to think about because of course finding that bridge intact is great, but having a bunch of troops on the eastern side of the Rhine only supplied by that tiny thinnest of threads, which is that bridge, which is already damaged, which the Germans might try and hit with artillery or something, that could easily switch around suddenly, the bridge gets interrupted and then you've got lots of guys stranded on the far side. So it's a sort of mixed blessing, the bridge in a way, isn't it?
24:34 Speaker 06 It is, and this is always the concern, that we're going to bottleneck and then we're going to have people cut off on the eastern side. I mean, we had, we'd seen that on a much lesser level at various times in the war. There was another time, I mentioned Market Garden, but there was a campaign in Holland in October, November 1944 to open up the Skelp Estuary, and we'd had incidents where like battalion sized units had been stranded and cut off when we had a fledgling river crossing. And so I think Eisenhower's concern is that you could have the same kind of circumstance happen at a higher level with multiple divisions, that the Germans were still potent enough that they can inflict serious damage. Now, if it came to it, perhaps you could run a rescue operation with landing
25:15 Speaker 06 craft or drop supplies to them or whatever, but this is less than ideal, obviously. And so Montgomery's Operation Varsity is still scheduled to go off like on March 25th, in addition to Patton's Third Army moving to cross the Rhine, almost the same kind of timeframe. So from Eisenhower's view, it is a really good bridgehead to develop. From the soldiers' point of view, I think many of them wonder why we aren't advancing more aggressively east to exploit this thing.
25:43 Dan Snow? Just quickly run me through the process of Hodges sending his guys across. As you say, they're laying planks across railway track, they're snipping a lot of wires. It must have been stressful work. These are combat engineers. Are they particularly people that are used to dealing with unexploded devices? Or are these just normal infantry Joes?
26:00 Speaker 06 So it's both. And the normal infantry Joes are going to be told, keep moving across, go down the east bank, go on and fight. The engineers though are going to stay in place at the bridge site and try and maintain it and try and keep this thing open. But there are also, there are other engineers working at other sites near the bridge, within a mile on either side to create... Great crossings there. Now, the reason we can do this is because we control the Eastern Bank, which means you can build from both sides. And obviously, the army has gotten really good at this. So you have that going on, too, because I think Hodges understands Ludendorff Bridge, or Bridge at Remagen, as we tend to call it, is not in good shape, and it's probably not going to be able to withstand First Army's entire traffic that could be coming across, not just in the short term,
26:44 Speaker 06 but in the longer term, once First Army plunges deeper into Germany and goes east alongside the other armies. So this is certainly an engineering problem. But also, like you said, Dan, I think a great point is the stress of snipping the wires and wondering what the Germans have in store. And oh, by the way, the Germans are reacting ferociously to this, trying to destroy the bridge now that the Allies have it.
27:08 Dan Snow? Yeah, I guess initially, I'd be very concerned this was all some sort of genius plan by the Germans to get me to hang on this bridge high above the Rhine, start snipping things, and then just get blown up and land in the river.
27:17 Speaker 06 Exactly.
27:19 Dan Snow? Okay, so the Germans then, because there's hilly ground on that East Bank, so they're able to look down that bridge, are they? And they bring down fire on the bridge. What do they do to try and, well, destroy it?
27:28 Speaker 06 Big time effort to try and destroy it. So they launch a lot of airstrikes. I mean, of course, the Allies obviously are mostly in control of the air at this point, but the Germans scrape together what other planes they've got. I mean, several hundred planes in various sorties to come and try and bomb the bridge and destroy it that way. They fail. And they lose, I think, something in order of about 100 aircraft
27:48 Dan Snow? Wow.
27:49 Speaker 06 to Allied planes and also Allied anti-aircraft. Because remember, there's a lot of Allied anti-aircraft units now protecting the bridge, too.
27:56 Dan Snow? It shows what a priority it was for the Germans to try and take this bridge out.
27:59 Speaker 06 Oh, it's a big priority, yeah. They saw it, certainly Hitler sees it as kind of existential. And so he's like, this bridge has to be destroyed. These guys east of the bridge have to be eliminated. So they're actually going to send specially trained explosives experts, like frogmen, swimmers, down the Rhine to try and get at it that way, to affix more explosives on the bridge to destroy it. These guys are intercepted and captured. But really, the biggest thing they're going to do is just hurl artillery at it. And some of it's really heavy stuff. 320-ton shells hurled at the bridge. And usually, that's not very accurate, but still, they're going to try that. That's the biggest peril you've got. And also, the V2s, they're going to point them
28:40 Dan Snow? No.
28:41 Speaker 06 toward the bridge and try and destroy them that way. All in vain. But for the soldiers around the bridge area, the artillery fire is really a serious peril. There's a lot of people wounded. So this is a very, at times, a very insecure combat zone at the bridge site, much less, of course, what's beyond where the front lines are to the east.
29:03 Dan Snow? I can't believe there's special forces swimming down rivers. I mean, that must have been brutal trying to keep that bridge standing. So the bridge does its job. A lot of troops are getting across. And what condition does it remain in? Is that German fire taking its toll?
29:16 Speaker 06 German fire is absolutely taking its toll. So I think it's about a week after the initial capture of the bridge, something like March 14th or so, the commanders actually shut down access to the bridge while the engineers were trying to repair it and make it usable again. So that tells you it's kind of interesting because the bridge was this sort of vital piece of hardware and ground for that moment in time to get these units to the eastern side. Once we're there and can develop these other river crossing sites, the bridge becomes less and less valuable, ironically enough. And so it also too now is under great stress. So it's a bit dangerous to be using it to have vehicles go across, especially heavy tanks and whatnot.
29:58 Speaker 06 And so it's the engineers trying to kind of rehab and repair this thing so that we can get something out of it going forward. And then, of course, the bridge has just had enough and eventually it just collapses. This is the tragedy of it too, that we don't know this is going to happen and there's several hundred engineers on the thing when it collapsed. I think 28 get killed, 80 some odd wounded. Horrifying, horrifying circumstance for the engineers who were on the bridge when it actually collapses. And the sound of it, they said it was like a shot, you know, they heard this and then this kind of creaking and groaning, you know, that sense of foreboding like, oh, boy, I need to get out of here. You know, and so here all of a sudden, although the girders and the concrete and all that just just dumps into the Rhine.
30:43 Speaker 06 It's horrifying.
30:45 Dan Snow? But the fact the bridge was captured intact and remains for 10 days or so, just about usable. Does that affect the course of the war? Is this a big deal?
30:53 Speaker 06 Well, I think it does. Yeah, I think it's the major first Allied foot in the door of the heart of Germany. Now, they're going to get there anyway, of course, so it's a matter of time. I think it accelerates the Allied advance into the heart of Germany. And it eliminates, of course, Hitler's last dash hope that somehow maybe he'll hold off the Western Allies of the the Rhine River Barrier and get them to join him against the Soviets or something. Now, that's all a pipe dream as we know, but you know, that's how Hitler is looking at it. We get, I think, the better part of 125,000, almost entirely American troops across. That's a problem for the Germans and it really is the first entry point to ultimately destroying Germany and overrunning the rest of the country.
31:38 Dan Snow? And are those troops now cut off or has sufficient time passed that bridging equipment has been brought up? The Americans can be able to create something makeshift?
31:45 Speaker 06 They're supplied reasonably well. They're not cut off. They are just sort of developing that perimeter, that bridgehead at a steady pace, just attacking eastward, very unglamorous. Same old, same old thing in this war where you're just kind of grinding them down day by day. The Germans launched counterattacks and the Germans were laying hands on anyone they can, you know, from Volksturm, 60-year-old part-timers to Panzertruppen, you know, everything in between. And so, you know, you're fighting mixed resistance. But I would say too, the biggest peril you've got as an American soldier really still is the artillery, which is obviously being zeroed in on the American bridgehead. And also, you know, as you advance, you're more vulnerable to it. So it's just a tough soldier's fight from that standpoint.
32:30 Speaker 06 In the bigger picture, it becomes extremely useful for that two-week period. And then, of course, Operation Varsity happens, breaching the Rhine and Third Army gets across as well. And then we're off, but it's quite a dramatic episode in this instance.
32:45 Dan Snow? And I'm sure it sucked in a lot of German attention and resource that they needed elsewhere.
32:49 Speaker 06 Yeah, it did. And famously, of course, Hitler is just enraged by the whole thing. And he orders four of the officers whom he considers most responsible for the bridge not being destroyed, he orders them shot. So they're kind of scapegoated in a way. So it shows the desperation there, too. But it also shows, just one little anecdote I can share, sort of like the American soldier's point of view. This is a battle that if you were part of it, you probably remembered is one of your most violent experiences in World War II because of the level of the German airstrikes and the shelling and the counterattacks because obviously the Germans are so desperate to go back and seize the bridge or whatever. And an example is a guy who becomes very famous here in the US, particularly in my
33:30 Speaker 06 hometown of St. Louis, a guy named Jack Buck, who was a baseball broadcaster and kind of a legend here. Well, he was in K Company, the 47th Infantry Regiment of the 9th Division, comes in, joins as a replacement, and he hears all about, oh, my gosh, you know, we seized this bridge, this dramatic event, and now we need to go the eastern side and do, you know, whatever we're doing. And so to him, it's just this kind of muddling battle where one day a shell comes in, explodes and hits him, you know, like in the arm and shoulder and does some nerve damage or whatever. And he gets evacuated and he has this sort of war wound the rest of his life, but he's not really disabled. But the bridge at Remagen to him is like the central seminal experience in World War II. And I think that's probably
34:15 Speaker 06 true for a lot of these guys in the various divisions. That moment to them is something they remember because they saw it as having maybe a larger strategic purpose that they contributed to.
34:26 Dan Snow? There's certainly no shortage of, clearly no shortage of lethality or action there as well. I'm not surprised he remembered it. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and telling us about that. Just one of those remarkable chapters of the of the war in Europe that was certainly not over by New Year's 1945. There was obviously a lot of fighting left to do.
34:46 Speaker 06 Oh, definitely. And I'm glad you said that because I think that's really important to understand. The outcome of the war is certainly not in doubt now, of course. But are those of us who are soldiers, are we going to survive to see it? I mean, the casualty rates in the US Army. In April 1945 are almost as high as they were in the Battle of Normandy, the previous summer, when the issue was more in the balance. And so there were a lot of ways still to get hurt and killed. And also too, like, what's going to happen next? I mean, who's going to be in charge in Germany? Is it going to be a real surrender? Is it going to be messy? Is there going to be guerrilla war? I mean, nobody knows. And I think that from, especially from the average soldier's point of view, it's like, are we going to live to see tomorrow? That question is just as relevant in April as it had been the previous fall
35:31 Speaker 06 or whatever, much less to now you're liberating your own POWs and also concentration camps too. That's in the offing once we're into April. So there's a heck of a lot going on. It may seem anticlimactic, I guess, from the, the kind of bird's eye view of history. But for the participants, it really looks completely different.
35:50 Dan Snow? Yeah, that's for sure. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Bud. Tell us all about it.
35:55 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's been a pleasure, Dan. Appreciate you having me on.
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