The Battle of the Remagen Bridgehead, 7-17 March 1945

Over ten days in the spring of 1945, Army Engineers expedited the invasion of Germany by daringly capturing a bridge across the Rhine. It had been nine months since D-Day, and Allied forces had just crossed the German border. The last natural barrier to driving deeper into Germany was the Rhine. The Allies had systematically bombed bridges up and down the river for months, so the discovery of the intact WWI-era Ludendorff Bridge at the town of Remagen was a big surprise. After realizing retreating German forces detonated but failed to destroy the bridge, engineers quickly started cutting wires and removing a thousand pounds of unexploded demolitions under a steady bombardment from German artillery. Engineers then started repairing the bridge’s railway and planking so that tanks could move across. Over the next ten days, the Germans made several concerted efforts to destroy the temporary bridges constructed across the Rhine and the Ludendorff itself. On March 17 the Ludendorff Bridge finally collapsed while two hundred soldiers from the 276th Engineer Combat Battalion and 1058th Engineer Port Construction and Repair Group were still desperately working to maintain it. The bridge collapse ultimately killed twenty-eight soldiers and injured sixty-three others; of those who died that day, eighteen were missing and likely drowned in the frigid swift-moving river. By that time, five American divisions were able to cross the Rhine in support of Operation Plunder, the large-scale British push across the river farther north in late March. Footage: Army Pictorial Service, Signal Corps Film 111-CB-4R1-3. National Archives and Records Administration.