The Bridge at RemagenThe Ludendorff Bridge, named after General Erich Ludendorff, was originally built during World War I as a means of moving troops and logistics west over the Rhine to reinforce the Western Front. The bridge was designed by Karl Wiener an architect from Mannheim. It was 325 meters long, had a clearance of 14.8 meters above the normal water level of the Rhine, and its highest point measured 29.25 meters. The bridge carried two railway tracks and a pedestrian walkway. During World War II, one track was planked over to allow vehicular traffic.
19 October 1944 33 planes from Tactical Air Command attacked the bridge and reported it destroyed.
November 9th German pioneers already had the bridge back operational.
December 29th 1944 the bridge was attacked again and 4 bombs almost destroyed the bridge.It was severely damaged and was only held by it's arch.
More bombs during January and February 1945 made the bridge weaker. Pioneers worked hard to repair the bridge so that it was back on its foundation blocks.
This was necessary since the ferry also got destroyed which forced the population to cross the Rhine using the bridge.
Soldiers of the U.S. 9th Armored Division conquered the bridge on 7 March 1945, during Operation Lumberjack. Although German engineers had mined the bridge before the American approach, the fuses had been cut by two Polish engineers forcibly conscripted to the Wehrmacht, in Silesia.
On 7 March 1945, soldiers of the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion, led by Lieutenant Karl H. Timmermann, from West Point, Nebraska, approached the bridge, and found it standing. The first American soldier across the bridge was Sergeant Alex Drabik; Lt. Timmermann was the first officer across.
Responsable for the destruction of the bridge was Hauptmann Karl Friesenhahn. The defense was organized and under the command of Hauptmann Willie Bratge. The defending force consisted of about 750 men, recovering soldiers from the nearby lazaret, some 180 Hitler Jugend, 80 Volkssturm men and 120 Eastern 'volunteers' and some regular, disorganized troops.
In the middle of the fearce fighting Unteroffizier Faust ran towards the bridge and reconnected a part of the explosives.
At 1600hrs there was an explosion and the bridge was totally invisible during some very seconds in the middle of a dustsmoke.
When the smoke was gone, the bridge was still intact.
There was no stopping them anymore.
Although the bridge's capture is sometimes regarded as the "Miracle of Remagen" in U.S. histories, historians debate the strategic importance of the capture of the bridge at Remagen. General Eisenhower said that "the bridge is worth its weight in gold". However, few U.S. units were able to operate east of the Rhine ahead of the main crossings in the south, under Gens. Patton and Bradley, and in the north, under Gen. Montgomery (Operation Plunder). Ultimately, only a limited number of troops were able to cross the Rhine before the bridge's collapse. However, the psychological advantage of having crossed the Rhine in force and in pursuit of the retreating Wehrmacht, improved Allied morale while communicating disaster to the retreating Germans.
In the immediate days after the bridge's capture, the German Army Command desperately attempted to destroy the bridge by bombing it and having divers mine it. Hitler ordered flying courts-martial that condemned five officers to death. Captain Bratge, who was in American hands, was sentenced in absentia while the other four (Majors Scheller, Kraft, and Strobel, and Lieutenant Peters) were executed in the Westerwald Forest. The Allies attempted to repair the bridge by laying pontoon bridges alongside, but despite the best U.S. efforts, on 17 March 1945, ten days after its capture, the Bridge at Remagen collapsed, killing twenty-eight U.S. soldiers. However, because the pontoon bridges and other secured crossing points that had supplanted the bridge, its loss was neither tactically nor strategically significant. Still, the Ludendorff Bridge remained important as the first point at which Allies crossed the Rhine to enter Germany.
sources:
http://www.strijdbewijs.nl/strijd/rem1.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemagenGeneral Ludendorff video on the WaT channel:
