The Bloody Rur: America’s First Strike Into the Heart of Hitler’s Reich

The first assault boats sliced into the black water at a.m.

On the far bank, thirty thousand German soldiers waited in the ruins.

This was Operation Grenade—the final push into the heart of Hitler’s Reich—and Hollywood filmmakers were there to capture every deadly second.
“The crossing of the Rur was no picnic,” filmmaker Sam Fuller would later say.

He was one of the cameramen embedded with the US First and Ninth Armies, filming the risky mission as 300,000 soldiers crossed a 70-kilometer front.

The cameras rolled as GIs ventured into the devastated town of Düren, where plastic mines tore through flesh and the resistance proved ferocious.

The Americans had reached the small river west of Cologne in December 1944, but the German offensive in the Ardennes had stalled their advance.

Now, two months later, the Allies were ready for the crucial blow.

The attack had been postponed for two weeks after the Germans destroyed dams upstream, turning the river into a raging torrent.

US artillery had pounded Düren for days, and most of its 30,000 residents had fled or been evacuated.

The shelling was so relentless that supplies to the front had to be suspended to avoid friendly fire.

At dawn, soldiers in assault boats crossed the river.

Among the first to reach Düren was cameraman Hartman, who filmed the risky mission as the Americans met strong resistance.

Many GIs were wounded or killed by plastic mines.

The veterans still call this battle the Bloody Rur.

Further north, reinforcement units of the US 84th Infantry Division reached the town of Linn.

Just as in Düren, assault troops crossed the Rur at dawn and surprised a German infantry division of General Köchling’s 81st Corps.

The official Wehrmacht report of the following day read: “Fierce fighting has erupted on the eastern bank of the Rur River near Linn, Ulik, and Düren.

However, the enemy was unable to penetrate further into any of our main positions.” The Wehrmacht chroniclers were not too far from the truth—particularly in Ulik, where US troops faced vehement resistance.

Photographer George Silk from Life magazine was there as the GIs fought their way into the town, taking building after building.

A New York Times journalist reported: “After our troops crossed the Rur today, they were able to gain one or two miles of land east of the river by dusk.

It was something like a second D-Day.” In Ulik, the Americans secured a bridgehead overnight.

Fresh troops moved in via pontoon bridges.

The GIs witnessed a picture of total devastation.

Ulik no longer existed—the town had been under bombardment for months, the target of countless artillery shells and aircraft bombs.

The last remaining inhabitants had been evacuated in December 1944.

In this heap of ruins, the German defenders had entrenched themselves and fought a senseless battle against the Americans over mountains of rubble.

Years later, an observer raised a question in the face of the destruction: “Is there anyone who has the courage to start a new life in a place that looks worse than a ravaged cemetery?” The price the victors paid was also dear.

In just one day, they counted 2,400 casualties.

The American cameramen were not allowed to film dead GIs.

The few frames that were shot were never shown at home.

For some days now, the Americans have been moving heavy equipment across the river for their further onslaught toward the Rhine.

A US Army cameraman advancing with the 84th Infantry Division reached Baal, a small place near Eschweiler, which had been the theater of fierce fighting.

Using mortars and smoke grenades, the GIs secured the northeastbound traffic routes toward Münchengladbach and Düsseldorf, the next cities to be taken.

The German commander, General Gustav-Adolf von Zangen, had initially hoped that the Americans would concentrate their efforts on Cologne.

By the time he sent an infantry unit, already weakened by heavy fighting in the Aachen area, to defend the area, it was much too late.

The Nazi Gauleiter had been distributing flyers with fanatic holdout appeals to stir up the population of the entire Rhineland for the oncoming battle. “The enemy is trying with a storm to make inroads into our homeland.

Behind the Americans lurk the Jews as occupation army officers, military policemen, and economic exploiters waiting for the hour of their revenge.

There is only one thing we can do to shatter the intentions of our enemies: Fight with all available means, with all our weapons, with our last ounce of strength.”
The propaganda had hit its target.

A German private wrote to his family: “The Americans are expecting us to lay down our arms, but they’re dead wrong.

It’s true that things look bad, very bad, but I’m still confident that we will win the war nonetheless.” Curious but distant at the same time, the American camera crew made contact with the civilian population in Baal for the first time.

The desperate determination of some Germans is revealed in a letter a father wrote to his son on the battlefield: “We cannot face a daunting end.

Therefore, we should rather fight on so that our people are not at the mercy of an enemy who cannot be measured with conventional yardsticks.

More powerful than fate is the man who bears it courageously.”
The inhabitants of the surrounding villages were herded together for security purposes and taken to Eschweiler, where they would remain in custody for ten days.

Time and again on the 27th of February 1945, the Americans encountered resistance by small German armored units or thrown-together groups of Wehrmacht and Volkssturm men.

These, however, could do little more than needle the superior US Army.

The American bridgehead east of the Rur River had become invulnerable.

Operation Grenade was a total success.

Hitler’s soldiers did not know their Führer’s whereabouts.

It was said that he was in one of his headquarters.

In reality, however, he commanded the remaining troops from the bunker of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

Despite his orders that capitulation to the enemy carried the death sentence, more and more units were surrendering to the Allies without resistance.

Yet confidence in their supreme commander still seemed to exist with some people.

A letter written by a soldier reads: “The Führer is not a rogue.

He is not so bad that he would lead a whole nation to its demise.

So far, the Führer has always given us his love and promised us liberty, and all his plans have come to fruition.”
On that day, an American unit reached the Arnoldsweller concentration camp near Düren.

Only a few dozen Polish and Russian slave laborers were still there to celebrate their liberation.

Up until the very end, they thought they would not live to see the end of the war.

The number of slave laborers who paid for the brutal treatment in Arnoldsweller with their lives was unclear at the time.

The scale of the terror became known only in 1960, when 1,500 skeletons of former forced laborers were found in a mass grave.

The Wehrmacht report concerning the west of the Reich was monosyllabic on that day: “The breakthrough attempts of the enemy through position number two have so far been of only local significance.

They were intercepted by counterattacks.

We have succeeded in keeping the front intact.”
The American units continued to advance without encountering serious resistance.

These images are from the small village of Vettweiss near Düren, which infantry units had taken after a short battle on the previous day.

The signs of total warfare were still visible here.

Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary on the 28th of February 1945: “We must be like Frederick the Great once was and follow his example in resolve.” The Führer agrees with me totally when I tell him that it should be our ambition to ensure that our grandchildren can refer to us as a heroic example of determination should a similar crisis strike Germany one day, maybe in 150 years.

Cameraman Thompson captured some very moving scenes of zero hour in the village of Hinsbeck, west of Krefeld.

On that 2nd of March, a young woman wrote in her diary: “It pains me, for in my soul, I am still German.

I went inside and wept in my room.

It’s a strange and bitter feeling seeing the enemy in our country.

I constantly think of my husband, Rudy.

I don’t know where he is now or how he’s coping.

When will all this end?”
A large-scale attack on the fourth largest city of the Reich was launched at a.m.

Entering from the northwest, an assault unit of the US Third Armored Division, with backup provided by snipers, combed the Cologne suburb of Bickendorf.

On the day before, a Nazi party official had demanded that Commander General Köchling defend Cologne to the last man standing.

He told Köchling that the bazookas of the Volkssturm should be able to hold back the American tanks.

The GIs had been told that the Germans would probably offer little resistance.

Yet as soon as the US troops reached the city boundary, they became engaged in a fervent battle.

Cameraman Walter Rosenblum shot these extraordinary images at the risk of his own life when German 88mm guns opened fire.

In the end, the inadequately armed police and Volkssturm units could not persist against the thirty-ton Sherman tanks and had to surrender.

Along the Venloer Strasse, the US Third Armored Division moved into Bickendorf, another Cologne suburb.

An eyewitness remembered later how she felt on that 5th of March: “I was overcome by a strange feeling.

It was relief mixed with fear.

I was relieved that everything would be over soon—the relentless air raids and the endless sleepless nights of the last weeks and months.

But I was also scared because the Nazi propaganda had been continuously reporting Allied atrocities in the press and on the radio, rapes and abductions.

However, we soon found out that the Americans were not the monsters the Nazis had claimed them to be.”
In order not to run the risk of being hit by ricochet shots, the civilians had once again to find refuge in the air raid shelters where they had already spent so many nights of bombing.

By dusk, the Americans would have advanced to the ring road encircling the old town.

Cologne’s landmark was now within sight.

The US Third Armored Division units met with a dreary sight in the center of Cologne.

The church towers were the only orientation points.

After countless nights of bombing, the old town had been reduced to heaps of rubble.

A US soldier said later he came to a dead city.

How many German troops may have been entrenched in the houses was unclear.

Snipers could have been lurking anywhere.

Anyone who got in the sights of the GIs was fired upon instantly.

Two cameramen accompanied the US forces that day—Bates and Rosenblum—capturing spectacular house-to-house fighting scenes from close up.

The majority of the population had long been evacuated or had fled to the other side of the Rhine.

Several thousand had been dwelling in cellars for months.

As a precaution, the Americans searched every building.

During the early afternoon, Sherman tanks cautiously approached the Cathedral Square where another pocket of resistance was expected.

Suddenly, soldiers armed with bazookas and a German tank appeared and started firing at the Americans.

A Sherman was hit full-on.

Two crew members died on the spot.

The commander bled to death.

A few minutes later, a US armored unit approached the site and attacked the German Panzer that had taken position at the end of Komödienstrasse.

Three soldiers managed to escape from the burning vehicle and were shot on the street.

Its commander burnt inside the tank.

The cameramen captured these dramatic images.

At p.m. on the 6th of March 1945, the war was over in Cologne.

The Americans had now reached the Rhine.

The Wehrmacht Supreme Command issued just a brief comment on the events of the previous day: “The pile of rubble that was once Cologne was left to the enemy.”
Journalist Janet Flanner went to Cologne a few days after its capture.

She noted: “Reduced to rubble and in the isolation of total physical destruction, Cologne, a city without any shape or features, leans on its riverbank.

Those who have remained here laboriously battle their way through the blocked side streets.

A diminished population dressed in black and loaded with bundles, quiet like the city itself.”
By capturing Cologne, the Americans had achieved an important goal.

Yet there were many more cities, towns, and villages to be taken before Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich were defeated.

The war in Germany would last another 43 days.

What do you think—was the capture of Cologne the true turning point of the war in the West, or just another bloody step toward Berlin?