), taking the same title as the army of occupation following the Great War in 1919. PDF Fire and Fury Games - designers of wargame miniatures rules By then, the paratroopers had taken all their first day's objectives in addition to 3,500 prisoners. With the surrender of the German Army on 9 May 1945, the 21st Army Group became an army of occupation. US General George Marshall estimated about 263,000 German battle deaths on the Western Front for the period from 6 June 1944 to 8 May 1945, or a longer period. By the evening of 11 April, elements of the 9th Army's 2nd Armored Divisionseemingly intent on demonstrating how easily their army could take that coveted prizehad dashed 73mi (117km) to reach the Elbe southeast of Magdeburg, just 50mi (80km) short of the German capital. 1st Training Regiment Corps of Royal Engineers. Once the bridgehead was secured the British 6th Airborne Division would be transferred to Second Army control, while the U.S. 17th Airborne Division would revert to 9th Army control. [38], In the center of the Allied line, Eisenhower inserted the new 15th Army, under U.S. 12th Army Group control to hold the western edge of the Ruhr Pocket along the Rhine while the 9th and 1st Armies squeezed the remaining German defenders there from the north, east, and south. [44], The 4 April pause in the 3rd Army advance allowed the other armies under Bradley's command to reach the Leine River, about 50mi (80km) east of Paderborn. 4th Armoured Division was the corps' Southern forward deployed division. 9th Field Workshop, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (V). The 2nd Army's XII Corps and the 9th Army's XVI Corps began the main effort about 02:00 on 24 March, following a massive artillery and air bombardment. [10] Many of the units stationed in the United Kingdom were to move immediately to Germany to reinforce British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in case of war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. [35], To the south, the discovery of a defensive gap in front of the 30th Infantry Division fostered the hope that a full-scale breakout would be possible on 25 March. 11th Signal Regiment Royal Corps of Signals. Soon there is more line in the German defense. Jonathan Biney - Logistics Supply Specialist (LSS) & Health - LinkedIn As its forces approached Leipzig, about 60mi (97km) south of Magdeburg and 15mi (24km) short of the Mulde River, the 1st Army ran into one of the few remaining centers of organized resistance. The executive committee of the Army Board was responsible for the 'detailed management of the Army.' There have been two formations named British Army of the Rhine ( BAOR ). The next day they gained some more ground, and one even seized its objective, having slogged a total of 6 miles (9.7km), but the limited progress forced Hobbs to abandon the hope for a quick breakout. British Army of the Rhine - YouTube The BAOR was formerly armed with tactical nuclear weapons. The divisions were created from 6th (Soest) and 20th (Detmold) Armoured Brigades and the divisional troops of 4th Division. Rdiger Overmans, Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. Nowhere, it seemed, were the Germans able to resist in strength. Simpson planned to commit the XIX Corps as soon as possible after the bridgehead had been secured, using the XIII Corps to hold the Rhine south of the crossing sites. PDF 21 Army Group History & Personnel - British Military History West German military historian Burkhart Mller-Hillebrand estimated 265,000 dead from all causes and 1,012,000 missing and prisoners of war on all German battlefronts from 1 Jan 1945 30 April 1945. During Operation Lumberjack, Operation Plunder and Operation Undertone, German casualties during FebruaryMarch 1945 are estimated at 400,000 men, including 280,000 men captured as prisoners of war.[18]. Both formations had areas of responsibility located around the German section of the River Rhine . In the center of the front, defending the Ruhr, Kesselring had Field Marshal Walther Model commanding Army Group B (15th Army and 5th Panzer Army) and in the south Paul Hausser's Army Group G (7th Army, 1st Army and 19th Army). During the fighting west of the Rhine up to March 1945, the German Army on the Western Front had been reduced to a strength of only 26 divisions, organized into three army groups (H, B and G). Includes 25 armored divisions and 5 airborne divisions. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. It was fought in March and April 1945, after the Allied crossing of the Rhine River. Everyone is asking its whereabouts and what its future role will be, says the British United Press correspondent with the British forces. Both were originally occupation forces in Germany, one after the First World War, and the other after the Second World War. Despite a wide armored thrust to envelop the enemy defenses, it took nine days of intense fighting to bring Heilbronn fully under American control. Behind the screening force 1st Armoured and 4th Armoured Division would form up. As soon as Patton had received the orders on the 19th to make a crossing, he had begun sending assault boats, bridging equipment and other supplies forward from depots in Lorraine where they had been stockpiled since autumn in the expectation of just such an opportunity. [31], Plunder called for the Second Army to cross at three locations along the 21st Army Group frontat Rees, Xanten and Rheinberg. HQ Wales District & Signal Troop, Royal Signals. The Order of Battle (OrBat) shows the formation of the forces that were in Operation Veritable in the beginning of February 1945. . [57], By the beginning of 1945, Allied victory in Europe was inevitable. But, the site and the Forum are not solely for the ex-services community. 1stCorps District8th Corps District30th Corps DistrictBritish Troops Berlin, Click here for information from Mar 49 onwards 1st (BR) Corps6th Armoured Division7th Armoured Division11th Armoured Division2nd Infantry DivisionBritish Troops BerlinRhine Army TroopsHamburg DistrictHannover DistrictRhine District5 Army Group Royal Artillery (Anti-Aircraft). [36], Adding to the Germans' woes, the 6th Army Group made an assault across the Rhine on 26 March. Structure of the British Army in 1989 | Military Wiki | Fandom British 2nd. Army. Phantom Force Of Western Front Northern Advocate, 14 To the south, elements of the VI Corps met unexpectedly fierce resistance at Heilbronn, 40mi (64km) into the German rear. Lt Gen Ivan Jones, Commander Field Army (CFA), described plans for rebalancing his command which will see changes to the structure of the Field Armys primary formations. Patton also appreciated the opportunity he now had to beat Montgomery across the river and win for the 3rd Army the coveted distinction of making the first assault crossing of the Rhine in modern history. [34], Plunder began on the evening of 23 March with the assault elements of the British 2nd Army massed against three main crossing sites: Rees in the north, Xanten in the center, and Wesel in the south. Orders of battle (London : Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1960) 2 vol. On 7 March, Hodges's U.S. 1st Army captured the last intact bridge over the Rhine at Remagen and steadily expanded the bridgehead. To view a summary of the British Army in 1952 please click here.During October 1954 HQ BAOR reallocated fromBad Oeynhausento Rheindalen. Little or no reinforcement was forthcoming as the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) continued to concentrate most forces against the Soviets; it was estimated that the Germans had 214 divisions on the Eastern Front in April. Regimental headquarters are administrative and ceremonial in nature. (see. The Defence Operations Executive, led by the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Commitments) and including the Assistant Chiefs of the Naval, General, and Air Staffs, supervised the Joint Operations Centre which in turn passed orders to the forces in Cyprus, Belize, the Falklands, and Hong Kong. The . Brigade groups took over from divisions as the smallest operative units. The British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) was the United Kingdom's main contribution to NATO. The XV Corps' 45th Infantry Division fought for six days before taking the city of Aschaffenburg, 35mi (56km) east of the Rhine, on 3 April. The British Army of the Rhine was born in 1945 out of the British Liberation Army at the close of the war as the military government of the British zone of occupied Germany. The British army has never excelled at swift advances, and the Guards Armoured Division mandated to dash for the Rhine was better suited to conduct last-ditch, last-man infantry defensive actions than to emulate General Erwin Rommel's panzers. Some areas were stoutly defended while in others the enemy surrendered after little more than token resistance. Advancing from northern Italy, the British Eighth Army[l] pushed to the borders of Yugoslavia to defeat the remaining Wehrmacht elements there. [55] The British and Americans contemplated an airborne operation before the attack. The only potent unit left for commitment against the Allied Rhine crossings in the north, the 116th began moving south from the Dutch-German border on 25 March against what the Germans considered their most dangerous threat, the U.S. 9th Army. A British infantryman removes a Nazi flag from a building after crossing into Germany following the river crossing on March 23, 1945 Operation Plunder followed the Allies' victory in the Battle. Forward Vehicle Depot, Royal Army Ordnance Corps. The 9th Army's sector of the Ruhr Pocket, although only about 1/3 the size of the 1st Army's sector south of the river, contained the majority of the densely urbanized industrial area within the encirclement. With the Soviets at the door of Berlin, the western Allies decided any attempt on their behalf to push that far east would be too costly, concentrating instead on mopping up resistance in the west German cities. "I have been visiting some of the units and found them, ready for the . This consisted of: 10th Infantry Brigade Group11th Infantry Brigade Group12th Infantry Brigade Group. Army Groups, Armies, Corps and Divisions. Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally on 8 May, leaving the western Allies in control of most of Germany. [31], By 28 March, the 8th Armored Division had expanded the bridgehead by only about 3mi (4.8km) and still had not reached Dorsten, a town about 15mi (24km) east of the Rhine, whose road junction promised to expand the XVI Corps' offensive options. The Battle of Aachen: Breaking Down the Door to Europe in WWII The bridgehead expanded rapidly, and by 2 May Lbeck and Wismar, 4050 miles (6480km) beyond the river, were in Allied hands, sealing off the Germans in the Jutland Peninsula. South of the Ruhr River, the 1st Army's northward attack was to be executed by the XVIII Airborne Corps, which had been transferred to Hodges after Operation Varsity, and the III Corps, with the 1st Army's V and VII Corps continuing the offensive east. 21st Army Group was then instead ordered to move northeast toward Bremen and Hamburg. [28], The terrain in the vicinity of Nierstein and Oppenheim was conducive to artillery support, with high ground on the west bank overlooking relatively flat land to the east. [51], On the 21st Army Group's left, one corps of the Canadian First Army reached the North Sea near the Dutch-German border on 16 April, while another drove through the central Netherlands, trapping the German forces remaining in that country. These commands consisted of units of all three services and were commanded by one or 2-star rank flag officers. The officer in charge of the unit capturing the area, typically a company or battalion, accepted responsibility over the town. 27th District Workshop, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. 221st (BAOR) EOD Company, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Communications Zone Ordnance Depot, Antwerp, Belgium, Forward Stores Depot, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Dulmen. HQ Allied Mobile Force & 249 Signal Squadron (AMF(L)). Recce Intelligence Centre (Gtersloh), Intelligence Corps. Although Montgomery's drive was still planned as the main effort, Eisenhower believed that the momentum of the American forces to the south should not be squandered by having them merely hold the line at the Rhine or make only limited diversionary attacks beyond it. The British Army is the land warfare branch of the British Armed Forces. The failure of this offensive exhausted Germany's strategic reserve, leaving it ill-prepared to resist the final Allied campaigns in Europe. The 12th Army Group commander said that American troops could cross the Rhine anywhere, without aerial bombardment or airborne troops, a direct jab at Montgomery whose troops were at that very moment preparing to launch their own Rhine assault following an intense and elaborate aerial and artillery preparation and with the assistance of two airborne divisions, the American 17th and the British 6th. Britains Armed Forces Today:3 British Army of The Rhine, T Gander 1984; Britains Modern Army, edition 1 1995, T Gander; Battle of Rolia - Wikipedia Instead, the 1st Army struck eastward, heading for Giessen and the Lahn River, 65mi (105km) beyond Remagen, before turning north toward Paderborn and a linkup with the 9th Army. This change will be integrated within broader Defence, national and alliance efforts and enable the Field Army to operate and fight more effectively above and below the threshold of conflict. . At first, this was done informally with occupants evicted immediately and taking with them few personal possessions, but the process became standardized, with three hours' notice and OMGUS personnel providing receipts for buildings' contents. British Army of the Rhine: The BAOR, 1945-1993 (Cold War 1945-1991