The Pittsburgh Press (September 20, 1944)
Hitler in command at front; British drive 40 miles to Rhine
Allied invasion thrust into Germany from Netherlands indicated
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
Bulletin
SHAEF, London, England –
U.S. and German tanks were locked in battle on 1st Army and 3rd Army fronts in France and Germany today. At least 71 German tanks were knocked out in two sectors alone, first reports said.
A dispatch from the 3rd Army said tanks were slugging it out 16 miles northeast of Nancy and that Gen. Patton’s armor knocked out 40 German Tiger tanks near Athienville yesterday. Artillery bagged three more. A First Army dispatch said 28 of 41 attacking German tanks were knocked southwest of Bitburg, German town 16 miles north of Trier.
Violent fighting of the “Cassino” type was raging in Stolberg, industrial city five miles east of Aachen, with the Americans advancing from house-to-house. Some counterattacking Nazis were using flamethrowers.
Turning the Siegfried Line, British 2nd Army troops and Allied air-borne forces drove into Nijmegen, on the south bank of the Rhine three miles from the German border, while airborne troops to the north were at Arnhem. The U.S. 1st Army smashed beyond Aachen to the Duren area and strengthened its positions across the German border north and south of Aachen. The U.S. 3rd Army closed on Metz and advanced from the Nancy area to within 45 miles of Strasbourg. French troops of the Allied 6th Army Group closed on Belfort and captured Fougerolles, 25 miles to the north.
SHAEF, London, England –
Lt. Gen. Sir Miles C. Dempsey’s patrols. were believed to have scored the first British thrust into Germany east of the embattled Dutch stronghold of Nijmegen today, coincident with disclosure that Adolf Hitler had taken direct command of the defense of the Reich.
Gen. Dempsey’s British 2nd Army troops fought a violent battle through the streets of Nijmegen after a 40-mile dash across the Netherlands to that ancient Dutch city perched on the high south bank of the Rhine River. Meanwhile, his advanced elements and troops of the 1st Allied Airborne Army were swinging around the northern end of the Siegfried Line.
Airborne headquarters in Britain reported authorities well satisfied with the progress of the aerial invasion of Holland which had already opened the way for a drive into northwestern Germany and on to Berlin.
Lt. Gen. Frederick A. M. Browning’s sky troopers were supplied again, today for the fourth straight day by aerial trains which sped across the North Sea despite rain and mist.
While the street battle went on in Nijmegen, British forces were believed to have struck the three miles eastward to the German frontier. Any such limited operation was regarded at headquarters, however, as of little tactical significance for the moment.
Germans hurl suicidal attacks
Hitler’s generalship was already in evidence all along the blazing battlefront from northern Holland to the edge of the Saar Valley. Front dispatches said crack German troops and panzer units were being hurled into reckless counterattacks that slowed the Allied advance in some sectors at a frightful cost in Nazi lives. In others, they resulted only in a slaughter of Germans without stemming the Berlin-bound Allies.
The Führer’s hand was also seen in the appearance of Nazi robot bombs on the fighting front for the first time. Field dispatches said two flying bombs crashed into U.S. positions along the Meuse River, exploding with terrific force but apparently causing few casualties among the well-dispersed troops.
First official word of the Führer’s new role, similar to that which he assumed with disastrous results on the Russian front, came from Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery at his forward command in Belgium.
Marshal Montgomery told officers and men of a Scottish division:
** The Allies have a lot to be thankful for in that Hitler has taken charge of operations. It means the enemy is commanded by a lunatic. In that respect, I’m glad the German generals failed in their bomb attempt against the Führer.**
Hitler’s decision to lead the defense of the Reich, he added, strengthened his (Marshal Montgomery’s) belief that the war in Europe would end before the close of 1944.
One major triumph was confirmed by Allied headquarters today – the capture of the great Atlantic port of Brest and the elimination of the Germans from the neighboring Crozon Peninsula, ending a month-old siege that virtually wrecked the harbor.
Troops hold path across Rhine
A second and greater victory was in the making in northern Holland where the armored might of the British 2nd Army reached the Rhine Line and threatened to break across the barrier momentarily into the open country before Berlin.
U.S. and Allied airborne troops joined the British around Eindhoven, 32 miles southwest of Nijmegen, and formed up in their rear as infantrymen, while others held open a path ahead of the Tommies as far as Arnhem, on the north bank of the Rhine 11 miles beyond Nijmegen.
First reports indicated the vital bridge across the Rhine on the road to Arnhem still was standing when the Allies broke into Nijmegen. An unconfirmed Radio Paris broadcast said British armored forces drove five miles beyond Nijmegen and effected a juncture with airborne troops moving down from Arnhem.
United Press writer Walter Cronkite, with the sky troops in Holland, said the airborne army, now equipped with light tanks and big field guns, could beat off anything the Germans might try to throw against them.
He reported that the Germans were counterattacking desperately but ineffectually with shock troops and heavy artillery, and the fighting was within sound of the German border.
At Nijmegen, the Allies were about 12 miles north-northwest of Kleve, where the Nazi West Wall reputedly ends. At Arnhem, they were less than 10 miles from the Reich, and, if the British armor can be brought up in force, in position for a smash across excellent tank country all the way to Berlin, some 260 miles to the east.
The Germans appeared to have rallied somewhat from the initial shock of the Allied airborne invasion and were fighting fanatically even when bypassed by the British armor.
They hit back with particular ferocity around Best, on the Wilhelmina Canal, six miles northwest of Eindhoven, and won back the town, but were stopped before they could cut dangerously into the Allied flank. Other Nazi units counterattacked repeatedly against the base of the Allied spearhead along the Belgian-Dutch border, but without success. Troops, tanks and guns were still pouring across the frontier to join in the big push for the Reich.
Some 80 miles southeast of Nijmegen, the U.S. 1st Army completed the encirclement of Aachen and sent armored spearheads eastward toward Cologne in a bitterly-opposed drive that had already forced the evacuation of German civilians from the Rhineland.
American 155mm Long Toms shelled Duren, 16 miles east of Aachen and 19 miles from Cologne.
Southwest of Cologne, U.S. and German troops locked in savage street battles for Stolberg and the nearby village of Büsbach. Still farther south, 1st Army troops and tanks widened their salients inside Germany in the Monschau, Prüm, Echternach and Trier areas, knocking out pillboxes on each side of their spearheads but making only yard-by-yard progress forward.
Capture many Nazis
Despite the stubbornness of the German resistance on the 1st Army front, United Press writer Henry T. Gorrell reported that prisoners were still coming in at the rate of 2,000 a day and that the 1st Army bag now totaled 180,000 men.
On Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s U.S. 3rd Army front to the south, United Press writer Robert Richards said French Forces of the Interior had joined the Americans in a two-pronged drive for the Saar Valley that made good progress in the face of heavy opposition.
One column advanced 23 miles northeast of Épinal to the Baccarat area, while a second moved 20 miles northeast of Nancy, to the vicinity of Marsal and Dieuze.
Use tanks, minefields
German panzer grenadiers, many of them veterans of the Italian and North African campaigns, opposed the 3rd Army drive and Mr. Richards reported they were using tanks, minefields and roadblocks in a stubborn fighting retreat through the forests east of the Moselle River.
At least 14 enemy tanks were destroyed in the Dieuze sector yesterday, Mr. Richards said.
Battle hard for Metz
Fighting in the Metz area to the north was still “very stiff,” with the Americans gaining ground slowly and painfully, he added.
Far to the west, all organized resistance was ended in Brest and U.S. infantrymen probed through the wreckage of the port mopping up isolated Nazi snipers. The battle for the Channel port of Boulogne was also about ended, despite bitter resistance met by Canadian troops in some parts of the town. Almost 3,000 Germans, it was disclosed, have been captured in Boulogne.
