As the breakthrough of Walker's XX Corps developed in the direction of Kaiserslautern, concern had mounted in the 1.
Armee lest those units in the Siegfried Line around Saarbrücken and Zweibrücken be trapped. Once Kaiserslautern fell, the only routes of withdrawal left to those troops led through the
Haardt Mountains south of Kaiserslautern. Covered by a dense wood, the
Pfaelzer Forest, the region was crossed literally by only one main highway, by a secondary highway close behind the Siegfried Line, and by a few minor roads and trails. The natural difficulties posed by these twisting, poorly surfaced routes already had been heightened by a mass of wrecked vehicles as American fighter pilots relentlessly preyed on hapless targets. Using the authority granted by Kesselring on 17 March to pull back units threatened with encirclement, the 1.
Armee′s Foertsch authorized withdrawal by stages of his westernmost troops, those of Knieß′ LXXXV
Korps. Over a period of three days, units of the corps were to peel back from west to east, redeploying to block the main highway leading northeast through the Kaiserslautern Gap. Unfortunately for Foertsch's plan, the principal threat to the Kaiserslautern Gap came not from west or southwest but from northwest where Walker's XX Corps was pouring unchecked through General
Walther Hahm's
LXXXII Korps. The
10th Armored Division′s arrival at Kaiserslautern itself on 20 March meant not only that the gap was compromised by a force well in the rear of Knieß′' formations but also that the only way out for both Knieß′ troops and those of the adjacent XIII SS
Korps was through the Pfaelzer Forest. As Knieß′ withdrawal progressed, it had the effect of opening a path through the Siegfried Line for the left wing of the U.S. Seventh Army. Despite a stubborn rear guard, the 63rd Division of Milburn's XXI Corps broke through the main belt of fortifications near
St. Ingbert late on 19 March. Had events moved according to plan, Milburn then would have sent an armored column northward to link with Walker's XX Corps near
St. Wendel; but so swift had been the advance of Walker's troops that all worthwhile objectives in Milburn's sector beyond the Siegfried Line already had fallen. Milburn and his XXI Corps had achieved a penetration but had no place to go. Patch seized on the situation to provide a boost for his army's main effort, the attack of the XV Corps through Zweibrücken toward the Kaiserslautern Gap. In two days of hammering at XIII SS
Korps, the divisions of the XV Corps still had opened no hole through the Siegfried Line for armored exploitation. Send a combat command, Patch directed the XV Corps commander, Haislip, to move through the 63rd Division's gap and come in on the rear of the Siegfried Line defenders facing the XV Corps. That the Americans would exploit the withdrawal was too obvious to escape the 1.
Armee commander, Foertsch. During the night of the 19th, he extended the authority to withdraw to the west wing of the XIII SS
Korps. Thus, hardly had the American combat command begun to move early on 20 March to exploit the 63rd Division's penetration when the 45th Division of the XV Corps also advanced past the last pillboxes of the Siegfried Line near Zweibrücken. During the night of the 20th, the rest of the SS
korps also began to pull back, and the momentum of the 3rd Division's advance picked up accordingly. The German problem was to get the survivors of both the LXXXV
Korps and the XIII SS
Korps through the Pfaelzer Forest despite three dire threats: one from the closely following troops of the U.S. Seventh Army; another from the 10th Armored Division of Walker's XX Corps, which at Kaiserslautern was in a position to swing south and southeast through the Pfaelzer Forest and cut the escape routes; and a third from the fighter bombers of the XII Tactical Air Command. It was the last that was most apparent to the rank and file of the retreating Germans. Since speed was imperative, the men had to move by day as well as by night, virtually inviting attack from the air. Since almost everybody, including the troops of the motorized 17. SS
Panzergrenadierdivision, had to use either the main east–west highway through the forest or the secondary road close behind the Siegfried Line, American fighter pilots had only to aim their bombs, their cannon, and their machine guns in the general direction of those roads to be assured of hitting some target. An acute gasoline shortage added to the German difficulties. Almost every foot of the two roads soon became clogged with abandoned, damaged, or wrecked vehicles, guns, and equipment. The destruction in the Pfaelzer Forest was in keeping with the pattern almost everywhere. So long a target of both artillery and aircraft, the drab towns and cities in and close to the Siegfried Line were a shambles. "It is difficult to describe the destruction," wrote the 45th Division commander, General Frederick. "Scarcely a man-made thing exists in our wake; it is even difficult to find buildings suitable for CP's: this is the scorched earth." In Zweibrücken, with the entire business district razed, only about 5,000 people of a normal population of 37,000 remained, and they were hiding in cellars and caves. Fires burned uncontrolled, neither water nor fire-fighting equipment available to quench them. No local government existed. Thousands of released slave laborers and German soldiers who had changed into civilian clothes complicated the issue for military government officials. In more than one city, particularly Homburg, looting and pillage were rampant. Running the gantlet of American fighter aircraft through the Pfaelzer Forest, the amorphous mass of retreating Germans faced still a fourth American threat—Brooks's VI Corps, which had followed closely the German withdrawal from northeastern Alsace and on 19 March had begun to assault the Siegfried Line on either side of
Wissembourg. There, Petersen's XC
Korps was charged with holding the fortifications and denying access to the flatlands along the Rhine. In the Seventh Army's original plan, the attached 3rd Algerian Division on the right wing of the VI Corps along the Rhine was to have been pinched out after it reached the Lauter River at the German frontier. The planners had not reckoned with the aspirations of the French and their First Army commander, General
Jean de Lattre. Assured of support from the provisional head of the French state, General
Charles de Gaulle, de Lattre was determined to acquire a zone along the Rhine north of the Lauter in order to assure a Rhine crossing site for the final drive into Germany. As the Algerians matched and sometimes exceeded the strides of the American units of the VI Corps and reached the Lauter along a front, de Lattre had no difficulty pressing his ambition on the Sixth Army Group commander, Devers. Using the 3rd Algerian Division and a combat group from the
5th French Armored Division, again to be attached to the VI Corps, the French (organized as Task Force (
Groupement) de Monsabert) were to continue northward some beyond the Lauter River, thereby gaining limited Rhine River frontage inside Germany. The subsequent French advance pushed through the
Bienwald, a large forested expanse just north of the Lauter through which bunkers, trenches, and other obstacles of the Siegfried Line were emplaced. In the ensuing clash, elements of the German 257th
Volksgrenadier and 905th Infantry Training Divisions were forced to retreat northward in fighting dominated by the forested terrain. The adjustment meant that the Siegfried Line assault by the four American divisions of the VI Corps was to be concentrated in a zone less than wide. Since the German XC
Korps had only the remnants of two
volksgrenadier divisions and an infantry training division to defend against both Americans and French, a breakthrough of the fortifications was but a matter of time. Yet just as had been the case in the zones of the XXI Corps and the XV Corps, it was less the hard fighting of the VI Corps that would determine when the Siegfried Line would be pierced than it was the rampaging thrusts of the Third Army's XX Corps in the German rear. The divisions of the VI Corps had been probing the pillbox belt less than 24 hours when Walker, leaving the task of gaining the Rhine to the
12th Armored Division and of actually capturing Kaiserslautern to an infantry unit, turned the 10th Armored Division south and southeast into the Pfaelzer Forest. By nightfall of 20 March, two of the 10th Armored's columns stood only a few hundred yards from the main highway through the forest, one almost at the city of
Pirmasens on the western edge, the other not far from the eastern edge. A third was nearing
Neustadt, farther north beyond the fringe of the forest. The 12th Armored meanwhile was approaching the Rhine near
Ludwigshafen. Not only were the withdrawal routes through the Pfaelzer Forest about to be compromised but a swift strike down the Rhine plain from Neustadt and Ludwigshafen against the last escape sites for crossing the Rhine appeared in the offing. In desperation, on 20 March the
Luftwaffe sent approximately 300 planes of various types—including jet-propelled
Messerschmitt Me 262—to attack the Third Army's columns, but to little avail. Casualties on the American side were minor. Anti-aircraft units—getting a rare opportunity to do the job for which they were trained—shot down 25 German planes. Pilots of the
XIX Tactical Air Command claimed another eight. In the face of the 10th Armored Division's drive, the word to the westernmost units of the XC
Korps to begin falling back went out late on the 20th, and when the 42nd Division—in the mountains on the left wing of the VI Corps—launched a full-scale assault against the Siegfried Line late the next day, the attack struck a vacuum. Soon after dawn the next morning, 22 March, a regiment of the 42nd cut the secondary highway through the Pfaelzer Forest. A column of the 10th Armored had moved astride the main highway through the woods and emerged on the Rhine flatlands at Landau. Any Germans who got out of the forest would have to do so by threading a way off the roads individually or in small groups. By nightfall of 22 March, the Germans west of the Rhine could measure the time left to them in hours. In the Siegfried Line on either side of Wissembourg, Petersen's XC
Korps continued to fight in the pillboxes in a manner that belied the futility of their mission. The
14th Armored Division (Maj. Gen. Albert C. Smith) attacked into the Wissembourg Gap on 20 March and then fought Germans of the
XC Corps over the possession of
Steinfeld for the next two days. Both at Neustadt and at Landau, remnants of two divisions of the XIII SS
Korps, including the 17. SS
Panzergrenadierdivision, had held through the day, but early in the evening the defense collapsed.
General Franz Beyer's
LXXX Korps, transferred from the 7.
Armee to plug the hole from the north alongside the Rhine, had hardly anything left to prevent the 12th Armored Division from driving southward from Ludwigshafen toward
Speyer. By nightfall of the 22nd, a column of the 12th Armored stood only from Speyer, and on the 23rd, the 14th Armored broke through the Siegfried Line at Steinfeld and began its advance on
Germersheim. To forestall a second
Remagen, by 19 March the Germans had blown all Rhine bridges from Ludwigshafen northward. Of three that remained upstream, the southernmost, the
Maxau Rhine Bridge at
Maximiliansau, was destroyed on 21 March when a round of American artillery fire struck a detonator, setting off prepared demolitions. A second, at Speyer, was too immediately threatened and too far removed from the main body of German troops to be of much use to any but the defenders of Speyer itself. It would be blown late on the 23rd. Over the remaining bridge, at Germersheim, roughly east of Landau, as many vehicles and field pieces as could be salvaged began to pass during the night of the 22nd. Still no orders for final withdrawal beyond the Rhine came from the Commander-in-Chief West. Headquarters of both the 1.
Armee and Army Group G still were west of the river. Some German officers were beginning to wonder if every last increment of the 1.
Armee was to be sacrificed when at last, on 23 March, authorization came to cross the Rhine. While the bridge at Germersheim continued to serve artillery and vehicles, foot troops began to evacuate the west bank at three ferry sites south of the town. A smattering of infantrymen, an occasional tank or assault gun, and a regiment of antiaircraft guns operating against ground targets formed rear guard perimeters west of the ferry sites. ==Conclusion==