'Bremen' (ii) was the British advance to and occupation of the port city of Bremen on Germany’s North Sea coast (19/25 April 1945).

On the left of Lieutenant General William H. Simpson’s US 9^th Army, which was currently advancing to the east to reach the Elbe river in the area to the north of Magdeburg, the two leading corps of Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey’s British 2^nd Army, also advancing toward the Elbe but farther to the north, were also pressing ahead with considerable speed. By 3 May Lieutenant General E. H. Barker’s VIII Corps had pushed one division across the Leine river in the area to the north of Hanover, and the armoured spearhead of Lieutenant General N. M. Ritchie’s XII Corps had reached the Weser river just below Verden, where this waterway turns to the north-west in the direction of Bremen. The leading troops of both corps had advanced about 150 miles (240 km) from the Rhine river, and the forward divisions, as well as some of those following them, had been involved in severe fighting. The British advance had met no coherent front, but at many well-chosen places the Germans had taken advantage of defensible positions to attempt to halt the Allied advance. Major General G. P. B. Roberts’s 11^th Armoured Division of the VIII Corps, for example, had reached Emsdetten, about 50 miles (80 km) from the bridgehead, on 31 March and had bridged both the nearby Ems river and the Dortmund-Ems Canal. As it was well ahead of the XII Corps at this time, the 11^th Armoured Division moved into the XII Corps' sector and became involved in hard fighting for a steep, heavily wooded ridge which carried the best road to Osnabrück but was strongly defended near the small country town of Ibbenburen. An infantry attack by the 3/Monmouthshire Regiment, covered by the fire of the 2/Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, was launched up the road which climbed the ridge and some progress was made, but the infantry were driven back by the defenders, who were men of the non-commissioned officers' training school at Hanover, well sited in the bordering woods.

This delay made it possible for the XII Corps to catch up. The corps found Rheine on the Ems river, which lay at the centre of a ring of German airfields, a mass of rubble created by Allied heavy bomber attacks. The area was only lightly defended, but the far bank of the river and beyond it the Dortmund-Ems Canal were held firmly and the the bridges had been blown blown. Consequently, Major General L. O. Lyne’s 7^th Armoured Division of the XII Corps swung to the south of the town in order that it could cross by the bridges which the VIII Corps' engineers had built to the south of Ibbenburen, and there ran into the VIII Corps' fight. In a second attack the Monmouthshire Regiment had fought their way to the top of the ridge, but the Germans had been reinforced and threw back the Monmouthshire Regiment, but one company held the ground it had taken. Fresh troops of the 7^th Armoured Division, centred on the 2/Devonshire Regiment, delivered a fresh attack, the German position fell and the position was captured, and the Monmouthshire Regiment’s company was relieved. The fighting to the south of Ibbenburen had not prevented the leading divisions of the VIII Corps from fighting their way forward on more southerly minor roads: Osnabrück was taken on 4 April and the Weser river was reached on the following day.

Meanwhile the XII Corps ordered three brigades, one of Major General E. Hakewill-Smith’s 52^nd Division and two of Major General R. K. Ross’s 53^rd Division, to mop up the German forces, by then driven back into Ibbenburen. The rest of the 52^nd Division advanced across the Dortmund-Ems Canal at Rheine, where only slow progress was made against a newly arrived Panzer training regiment However, the 7^th Armoured Division pushed forward at speed on the left of the VIII Corps to reach Diepholz, some 40 miles (65 km) ahead of the 52^nd Division advancing from Rheine, on 5 April. From there the 7^th Armoured Division was ordered to seize a bridge over the Weser river, which was still another 40 miles (65 km) ahead of it. Major General L. G. Whistler’s fresh 3^rd Division was brought up from the XXX Corps to hold the long left flank that had opened up in this advance.

After it had found all the Weser river bridges in the Verden area demolished or strongly held, the 7^th Armoured Division was instructed to turn to the west and take Wildeshausen and Delmenhorst, on the main road linking Arnhem and Bremen, in an attempt to cut off General Günther Blumentritt’s (from 10 April Generaloberst Kurt Student’s) 1^st Fallschirmarmee, which appeared to be withdrawing toward Bremen. On 10 April Wildeshausen was secured in a stiff fight and held against a strong counterattack by Generalleutnant Arnold Burmeister’s 15^th Panzergrenadierdivision. By this time the 53^rd Division had come up, crossed the Weser river in the area to the south of Verden, which was still firmly held by the Germans, and attacked Oberst Graf von Bassewitz’s 2^nd Marineinfanteriedivision at Rethem, where a main road to Hamburg crossed the Aller river. The German opposition to the 52^nd Division’s advance from Rheine was still stubborn despite the progress of the remainder of the XII Corps.

The VIII Corps now had a firm bridgehead beyond the Leine river extending as far to the north as the junction of this river with the Aller river. On the night of 10/11 April the 11^th Armoured Division secured a bridgehead over the Aller river in the face of strong opposition from a training battalion of the Panzerausbildungsregiment 'Brandenburg' and a detachment of Generalleutnant Schaumberg’s 325^th Division 'Jütland' recently arrived from Denmark, and despite losses to British Hawker Tempest single-engined fighters, German warplanes had delayed the bridging operations on the Weser and Leine rivers.

To enable the 2^nd Army’s main body to advance rapidly toward the Elbe river, the XXX Corps, on the left flank, had started from its Rhine river bridgehead on 30 March with Major General A. H. S. Adair’s Guards Armoured Division in the lead. The division reached Enschede at the end of the Twente canal on 1 April after a number of minor engagements with German rearguards, and from there took two roads with a brigade on each. On the right a very tough fight developed short of Bentheim against a group of Generalmajor Walter Wadehn’s 8^th Fallschirmjägerdivision, and not till 4 April did the British secure this town. The Guards Armoured Division’s left-hand brigade advanced on the main road between Arnhem and Bremen to take Lingen on the Ems river despite being delayed by blown bridges, but shortly before midnight on 2 April the way through the last intermediate town was opened and a force of infantry and tanks provided by the Scots Guards and Welsh Guards respectively set off on a 10-mile (16-km) 'midnight dash' for Lingen, with full headlights and shooting at anything in the way. By 04.00 on 3 April the Ems river was reached, but the Germans blew the bridge. After it was light a Household Cavalry patrol reconnoitring to the north found an intact bridge 3 miles (4.8 km) downstream. This was protected by a solid roadblock covered by three 88-mm (3.465-in) dual-role anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, and was prepared for demolition. A group from the Coldstream Guards was detached to capture it and did so before the Germans could demolish it.

The 3^rd Division, following the Guards Armoured Division, crossed this bridge and, attacking Lingen from the north, hit the rear of a battalion of the Panzerausbildungsregiment 'Grossdeutschland' and captured the commanding officer and his staff. This hastened the capture of the town, in which elements of Generalleutnant Wolfgang Erdmann’s 7^th Fallschirmjägerdivision were also met, and Lingen fell after hard fighting only on 6 April. After this, the XXX Corps forged forward once more toward Cloppenburg. For the time being the 3^rd Division now joined the XII Corps.

In the advance from the bridgehead to the Leine, each of the 2^nd Army’s corps included, as well as its organic armoured division, an independent armoured brigade. Thus Dempsey had more than 1,000 tanks deployed at the front. By 6 April the tank casualties had been considerable: more than 125 had been knocked out by German or were too severely damaged for repair at any forward workshop, and about 500 more had been rendered inoperative for more than 24 hours.

On 5 April Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, commander of the Allied 21^st Army Group, had ordered General H. D. G. Crerar to deploy one of his Canadian 1^st Army’s formations (Major General C. Vokes’s Canadian 4^th Armoured Division) for an advance on the axis between Meppen and Oldenburg to shield the 2^nd Army’s left flank. When Crerar was given this order, the most easterly of the Canadian divisions which had broken out of the bridgehead was engaged near Almelo and Coevorden, but a force was immediately despatched to secure Meppen and its crossing of the Ems river. The crossings were forced on 8 April, and two days later the Canadian 4^th Armoured Division was moving toward Oldenburg as the XXX Corps, on its right, advanced from Lingen toward Cloppenburg. As noted above, the XII Corps and VIII Corps had by then secured bridgeheads across the Weser and Leine rivers to the north of Hanover.

In the two weeks between 28 March and 10 April, there were 11 good flying days and on these Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham’s 2^nd Tactical Air Force flew more than 4,500 armed reconnaissance sorties in addition to the provision of pre-arranged and immediate front-line support for all four corps and fighter cover over the battlefield. The armed reconnaissance aircraft claimed the destruction or damage of about 50 German armoured fighting vehicles and more than 2,800 motor vehicles as well as the destruction of many railway locomotives and trucks. Some 90 de Havilland Mosquito warplanes of Air Vice Marshal B. E. Embry’s No. 2 Group attacked night movements from 30 March between the IJsselmeer and the Elbe river, moving their area eastward on the night of 6 April to include Lübeck and Berlin. The Mosquito warplanes claimed to have damaged more than 1,000 motor vehicles, 25 railway locomotives, 350 wagons and 58 trains. During this time the 2^nd Tactical Air Force was still flying from bases to the west of the Rhine river, but on 8 April its squadrons began to use airfields which had been captured around Rheine.

On 10 April General Omar N. Bradley, commander of the US 12^th Army Group, visited Montgomery to co-ordinate plans, as he now had the Ruhr area sufficiently under control to be able to launch his army group’s final drive to the Elbe river. Dempsey and Simpson, the commanders of the British 2^nd Army and US 9^th Army, were also present. Montgomery decided that he too would push his forces forward to the Elbe river without any pause, and in the process the 2^nd Army’s two leading corps were to outflank Bremen, which would be taken later by Dempsey’s third corps. Bradley agreed to the 9^th Army being responsible for its own left flank protection, relieving Montgomery of this responsibility given to him a fortnight earlier by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander-in-chief in Europe, and also agreed that after the Elbe river had been reached he would assume responsibility for the 40-mile (65-km) sector on the river between Wittenberge and Darchau. In response to Montgomery’s new instructions, the 2^nd Army was reorganised to handle its new tasks. To provide the XXX Corps with four infantry divisions for the capture of Bremen, Dempsey ordered the transfer of the 3^rd Division and 52^nd Division to it from the XII Corps as operations progressed, and the Guards Armoured Division to be switched from the XXX Corps to the XII Corps.

At this time the Germans also reorganised their higher commands. Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring was no longer in touch with the northern part of the front from his Oberbefehlshaber 'West' headquarters, whose other subordinate components were now being driven toward Austria, so a new Oberbefehlshaber 'Nordwest' was being created from the headquarters of Heeresgruppe 'H' to be commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Busch. The new grouping was to comprise all the German forces in the Netherlands under Blaskowitz, and, covering the front between the areas of Bremen and Magdeburg, the 1^st Fallschirmarmee under the command of Student, and a new Armee 'Blumentrit', an ad hoc grouping under the command of General Günther Blumentritt.

On 11 April, the VIII Corps advanced on the axis between Celle and Uelzen with Major General C. M. Barber’s 15^th Division and, to its left on minor roads, the 11^th Armoured Division. The 15^th Division reached Celle in the face of only sketchy resistance on 12 April and had to bridge the Aller river before it could advance farther. Demolitions on the main road slowed the division on the following day but, switching to a minor road, it advanced rapidly that night and was almost into Uelzen just before daylight on 14 April. Here it encountered a detachment of Generalleutnant Max Feremerey’s 233^rd Panzerdivision that was just arriving from Denmark and was joining Generalleutnant Martin Unrein’s improvised Panzerdivision 'Clausewitz'. The 15^th Division could not make farther progress during the day and was hit that night by another group of the Panzerdivision 'Clausewitz', which it drove back in bitter hand-to-hand fighting. The Germans lost 12 self-propelled guns and 10 armoured troop-carriers, and though the British personnel casualties were comparatively light, the division lost 63 vehicles destroyed. On 15 April the division closed on the town.

Meanwhile the 11^th Armoured Division had secured a bridgehead over the Aller river, to the west of Winsen, on 11 April against stiff resistance, and on the following day German delegates requested a truce to negotiate the hand-over of a German concentration camp at Belsen, a few miles to the north. Agreement was reached for British guards to go forward while the 11^th Armoured switched its thrust to Winsen, captured that town, bridged the Aller river and on 15 April advanced past Belsen. It was not till the British guards began to take over the camp from its SS guards that the full horror of its condition came to light: in the main camp, designed for 8,000 persons, there were some 40,000 men, women and children, all in the last stages of exhaustion from prolonged and deliberate starvation; there had been no food or water in the camp for four days and both typhus and typhoid were rampant. There were also about 10.000 dead and unburied bodies about the camp at whose far end were huge open pits, containing thousands of decomposing bodies. Steps were immediately taken to alleviate conditions, and within 48 hours British hygiene sections, one light field ambulance and one casualty clearing station were at work in the camp.

This almost unbelievable revelation of German brutality was only the first of many German camps that were uncovered by the British as the war ended. Farther to the south, Lieutenant General George S. Patton’s US 3^rd Army had uncovered the camp at Ohrdruf on 4 April, and Buchenwald and Nordhausen camps had been overrun on 11 April.

As the US 9^th Army made spectacular progress to reach the line of the Elbe river by 11 April, the British advance was turned to the north to cross the Elbe river in the area of Darchau and Hamburg, and the still-unblown railway bridge at Lauenburg became the VIII Corps' immediate objective. At this time Montgomery did not consider that he would need US support assistance for operations beyond the Elbe river other than this change of boundary, but later had to revise his decision. Meanwhile all three of the VIII Corps' divisions had taken part in the attack on Uelzen. While the 15^th Division attacked the town, Major General E. L. Bols’s British 6^th Airborne Division and the 11^th Armoured Division, bypassing the town to the south and north respectively, sought to link to beyond the town and therefore trap its garrison. But the British were unable to achieve this in time to prevent a regimental group of the Panzerdivision 'Clausewitz' from escaping the trap on the night of 17 April. On the following day Uelzen was taken, and on this same day the 11^th Armoured Division took Lüneburg and continued to press forward until it was compelled to halt, at the fall of night, by blown bridges and thick mist about 4 miles (6.4 km) short of the Elbe river at Lauenburg. On the next day the division’s forward elements fought their way to the Elbe river, but the Germans blew the bridge before the British reached it.

Back on the Aller river, the XII Corps had not been able to take Rethem on 11 April but the Germans withdrew across the river during the night. An outflanking operation over an unguarded crossing place 5 miles (8 km) downstream helped the 53^rd Division to gain the high ground to the north of the town, and bridge construction began on 12 April. With Brigadier R. M. P. Carver’s 4^th Armoured Brigade under command, the division now turned to the north-west in order to seize Verden and the high ground to the north of it. The ground was strongly defended, with German naval infantry counterattacking at night, and Verden was not taken until 17 April, but the 7^th Armoured Division crossed the Aller river on 15 April and then became the British vanguard formation. Leaving one infantry brigade to mop up bypassed German pockets, the division switched to minor roads in order to avoid the delays that would have been incurred by movement along the main roads, which the retreating Germans had cratered, and by the evening of 19 April was across the main road linking Bremen and Hamburg just a short distance from the latter.

Behind the division, the mopping-up brigade in the the Soltau area was involved in some hard fighting but the 8^th Hussars freed Fallingbostel to the south of Soltau and had the satisfaction of releasing 10,000 British and US prisoners and 12,000 Allied nationals from a prisoner-of-war camp. When it was relieved, the camp was found already to be guarded by men of Major General R. E. Urquhart’s British 1^st Airborne Division who had been taken prisoner at Arnhem.

In the 2^nd Army’s regrouping, the 52^nd Division bridged the Aller river at Verden and came under command of the XXX Corps for the the capture of Bremen. In its place the Guards Armoured Division joined the XII Corps to advance on the left of the 7^th Armoured Division and help in the isolation of Bremen by destroying the German forces in the area of Zeven and taking Stade on the Cuxhaven peninsula. Attacking 18 April, one group of the Guards Armoured Division met strong opposition in the area to the south of Visselhovede but captured the town on the following day; it was then counterattacked by part of Bassewitz’s 2^nd Marineinfanteriedivision, which penetrated as deep into the British position as the group’s headquarters: it took two hours to repel this attack, in which a German regimental commander and some 440 of his men were taken prisoner. The other group, meeting much less opposition, approached to within 4 miles (6.4 km) of Zeven.

Meanwhile the Canadian 4^th Armoured Division, which has the 1^st Special Air Service under command, continued its advance on the 2^nd Army’s left after crossing the Ems river at Meppen on 8 April and, overcoming patchy opposition, captured Friesoythe, which was stoutly defended, in a dawn attack. The attacking battalion’s headquarters was then strongly counterattacked by a bypassed body of German paratroopers. The division now turned to the north to cross the Küsten canal as the ground on the river’s southern side was boggy and country better for an armoured attack on Oldenburg lay just to the north of the canal. As this move would open a gap between the Canadian 2^nd Armoured Division and the 2^nd Army’s forces at Wildeshausen, Montgomery ordered Crerar to fill it with an infantry division. For this task Major General A. B. Matthews’s Canadian 2^nd Division was moved from Groningen, more than 100 miles (160 km) distant in the Netherlands. The XXX Corps meanwhile had had two hard fights, despite close support by RAF fighter-bombers and medium bombers: on the left by the 43^rd Division in capturing Cloppenburg on 14 April, and on the right by the 3^rd Division in attacking to the north in the direction of Delmenhorst. The village of Brinkum was first attacked without tank support, but was held strongly by the Germans, but after armour had arrived the village was taken on 16 April in stiff fighting. Major General G. H. A. MacMillan’s 51^st Division was then committed to the attack, and by 19 April the road between Bremen and Delmenhorst had been cut and the leading troops were within 3 miles (4.8 km) of Delmenhorst. On the next day the Germans evacuated their force from the town, which was a German military hospital centre.

During this time the Canadian 4^th Armoured Division secured a small bridgehead across the Küsten canal on the night of 16 April as it advanced toward Bad Zwischenahn and then Oldenburg. Attempts to construct a bridge were initially foiled by German artillery and mortar fire. The bridgehead was then reinforced and in the next two days several German counterattacks were driven back with the support of RAF warplanes and the Canadian artillery, which inflicted heavy losses on the retreating Germans. Despite the German counterattacks, a bridge was then completed early on 19 April and, once armour had crossed, the bridgehead was consolidated. The RAF flew 278 sorties in support of the bridgehead operations on these three days, these sorties including medium bomber attacks on the German positions covering Oldenburg.

In these first weeks of April, the 2^nd Army had advanced some 200 miles (320 km) across northern Germany to the Elbe river. It had met strong opposition in many places, especially the region’s many waterways. The army’s engineers had been called upon to build more than 200 bridges, often under German fire, and the 2^nd Army had taken 78,108 prisoners while itself suffering 7,665 casualties since advancing from the Rhine river bridgehead. Logistic support to the east of the Rhine river had depended primarily on road transport, for the building of railway bridges over the river was a task that required some weeks. The three possible sites in the 21^st Army Group’s theatre were at Wesel, Emmerich and Nijmegen/Arnhem. Wesel had been allotted to the Americans. Emmerich saw the start of work by the British but would take a month. The 2^nd Army was allotted an additional 5,000 tons of road transport capacity and obtained another 2,700 tons by grounding artillery and armoured units not required in the high-rate advance that had been ordered. On 10 April, a further allotment of 5,000 tons of road transport was received, but by the time the Elbe river had been reached on 19 April, overall stocks at the forward roadheads at Rheine and Sulingen, some 30 miles (48 km) to the south of Bremen, had been falling steadily. On 16 April the XXX Corps was instructed to despatch its own transport back to the Rhine river roadhead to collect the ammunition it needed for the capture of Bremen. Similar missions had to be undertaken on 19 April by the XII Corps for its operation against Hamburg, and on 22 April by the VIII Corps for the Elbe river battle. Fuel stocks at the forward roadheads were falling steadily despite airlifts and rationing, but the VIII Corps had sufficient fuel for its projected advance from the Elbe river to the south coast of the Baltic Sea, and on 26 April the 2^nd Army received additional transport for another 5,000 tons, and from 1 May for a further 2,700 tons.

Meanwhile the two corps of the Canadian 1^st Army, with much shorter lines of communication from the roadhead at Nijmegen, had no similar difficulty. On 18 April, another roadhead was brought into use in the Almelo area.

The Canadian 1^st Army had had an equally strenuous time of it. The Rhine river bridgehead did not include the town of Emmerich, but the full strength of the Canadian 1^st Army could not be brought to bear in the absence of another bridge across the Rhine river at that point. The decision had therefore been made to capture the town from the bridgehead, and this was achieved after a three-day battle and the Rhine river bridged by midnight on 1 April. Before the Emmerich bridge was available for use by motor transport, however, the Canadian II Corps had already put its three Canadian divisions across over the existing bridges at Rees. Two more bridges at Emmerich were constructed quickly after the first had been opened. On 2 April the leading troops of the Canadian II Corps had reached the Twente canal and, after securing bridgeheads against Generalleutnant Hermann Plocher’s 6^th Fallschirmjägerdivision, had broken out to the north on 4 April with the Canadian 4^th Armoured Division on the right and the Canadian 2^nd Division in the centre while the Canadian 3^rd Division on the eft cleared the western flank toward the IJssel river. The country to the north was crossed by many natural and artificial waterways of varying sizes, but inhabited by a friendly Dutch population. It was decided to drop small parties of Special Air Service troops in the area in order to confuse the enemy while saving bridges and airfields for the approaching Canadians. The SAS parties were to be bolstered with reconnaissance vehicles and Belgian Special Air Service armed Jeeps operating ahead of the Canadians. On the night of 7 April, 47 Short Stirling four-engined transport aircraft of the RAF’s No. 38 Group dropped nearly 700 men of the 2ème and 3ème Régiments de Chasseurs Parachutistes, and in their subsequent operations these parties generally achieved their object, took 200 prisoners and caused many German casualties at a cost to themselves of 90 casualties: a few of the SAS parties held their objectives for a week before they were relieved.

The Canadian offensive now made fast progress. The Ems river estuary near the Dutch/German border was reached by Generał brygady Stanisław Maczek’s Polish 1^st Armoured Division, of the Canadian II Corps, on 18 April. Groningen had been captured and cleared by the Canadians two days earlier after a four-day urban battle. On the IJssel river’s eastern bank, the Canadians had taken Zutphen on 8 April after a stiff fight, Deventer with strong air support on 10 April and Zwolle within much opposition The Canadian forces then swept forward to Leeuwarden, some 70 miles (112.5 km) to the north, and on 18 April occupied the town. Pockets of German resistance in the surrounding country were mopped up and by 19 April the only part of northern Holland left in German hands was an area to the west and south of Delfzijl on the Ems river estuary.

While northern Holland was thus being cleared, the Canadian I Corps set out to expel the German forces from the country to the south of the IJsselmeer. At the beginning of April the Nijmegen bridgehead was expanded to the Nederrijn river from the point where it separated from the Waal river to some 8 miles (12.8 km) downstream of Arnhem. Units of the 49^th Division then crossed the river and moved eastward to the Zevenaar area in anticipation of taking Arnhem from the east as the Germans appeared to be prepared for an attack from the south. Farther to the north, the Canadian 1^st Division was concentrated in the area to the south of Deventer for an assault across the IJssel river and the capture of Apeldoorn; on 11 April the Canadian 1^st Division crossed the river at a point 115 yards (105 m) wide, in Buffalo tracked tractors of the 79^th Armoured Division and met only light resistance. Rafts and a bridge had been built by the arrival of daylight on the following morning, armour crossed and the division advanced on Apeldoorn, where it encountered strong resistance.

On 12 April, after fighter-bombers and Hawker Typhoon close-support aircraft had attacked and artillery had bombarded the German defences of Arnhem, the 49^th Division assaulted across the IJssel river in Buffalo tractors and storm boats, and in small landing craft manned by the Royal Navy. The crossing met little in the way of opposition, rafts and a bridge were quickly built and Canadian tanks crossed to support the infantry. Resistance in the town was not strong except in a few patches, and by 14 April Arnhem had been cleared of Germans. On the next day, the Canadian 5^th Armoured Division passed through the cleared area and advanced toward the IJsselmeer. On 16 April strongly defended German positions were met in the Barneveld area, and that night a force of several hundred men under a regimental commander of Generalmajor Alfred Philippi’s 361^st Division tried to break through the Canadian 5^th Armoured Division’s headquarters, which had been warmed through the interception of a German radio message and was fully prepared. Hand-to-hand fighting developed, the range being so short that guns were firing over open sights, and by the morning 75 Germans had been killed and 150 taken prisoner, while the Canadian losses had been comparatively light. That same night the German forces abandoned Apeldoorn, but not until 18 April were the Canadians able to reach the IJsselmeer as the Germans held open a corridor along the southern shore for as many men as possible of General Felix Schwalbe’s LXXXVIII Corps to fall back into western Holland. A supply route could now be established through Arnhem, but orders were issued that no advance was to be made to the west beyond the Eem and Grebbe rivers. The Canadian 1^st Division and British 49^th Division closed up to these and the Canadian 5^th Armoured Division moved into northern Holland. Nearly 9,000 Germans were taken prisoner in these operations by the Canadian I Corps.

On 12 April it was learned that President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the USA had died. It had been realised for some time by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and others nearer to Roosevelt that the president’s health was failing, but this sudden collapse came as a serious shock to the US people and indeed to the world. Churchill especially felt deeply the loss of a major partner in the war against Germany and the close personal friendship which had developed during its day-to-day conduct. From the outset they had shared a common objective and had sustained each other in a real unity of purpose. The vice president, Harry S Truman, succeeded Roosevelt, and though he was comparatively little known both inside and outside the USA he was soon to show that he was ready to uphold the same ideals and to pursue them with the same vigour as his predecessor.

By 17 April, Montgomery had decided that the 21^st Army Group was in fact not strong enough for the speedy execution of all the tasks allotted to it, even though Bradley had already agreed to take over the Elbe river front between Wittenberge and Darchau. Eisenhower now agreed to place one US corps under Montgomery’s command to help in the capture of ground beyond the Elbe river, and visited Montgomery on 20 April to approve the latter’s plan first to capture Bremen, then to complete the clearance of the Emden/Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven peninsulas and to force the crossing of the Elbe river. Beyond this river barrier, the forces under Montgomery’s command were to take Lübeck and finally clear the area northward to the German border with Denmark. Major General Matthew B. Ridgway’s US XVIII Airborne Corps, put under Montgomery’s command, would form a right flank beyond the Elbe river from Darchau to Wismar. For this last task the US corps was not expected to be needed before 4 May. By 19 April, the 21^st Army Group had outflanked Bremen and reached the Elbe river, both of these being Montgomery’s objectives of 10 April. To overcome both of these obstacles, the 21^st Army Group appeared to need strong artillery support, and for neither was there sufficient ammunition in the forward areas. Transport was sent to obtain ammunition from the area to the west of the Rhine river, and the capture of Bremen was given preference to the crossing of the Elbe river.

From 20 April the four infantry divisions of the XXX Corps (3^rd, 43^rd, 51^st and 52^nd Divisions) closed round Bremen, finding patches of determined opposition, especially on high ground in the north, where Air Vice Marshal H. Broadhurst’s No. 83 Group of the RAF were important in softening some the the German positions. The fighting continued through the next five days as the British divisions made steady progress against a stubborn defence. On 25 April, following heavy and medium bomber attacks, the city itself was assaulted with two heavy and four medium regiments of artillery supporting the infantry. German resistance had been very considerably demoralised, and it was only round the garrison headquarters that a hard core of opposition was encountered: this was destroyed by the 43^rd Division during the night of 26 April. The garrison commander and the commander of the city’s defence were taken prisoner, and the city itself had been cleared of German forces by 27 April. To the north the Guards Armoured Division had captured Zeven and freed 8,000 British and Allied prisoners, mostly sailors, from a camp at nearby Westertimke. The XXX Corps then advanced on Cuxhaven while, to the west of the Weser river, the Canadians were pressing forward from the Küsten canal toward Wilhelmshaven in the face of strong opposition.

With the greater part of Bremen captured on 26 April, Montgomery ordered that the assault crossing of the Elbe to be made on the night of 28 April, and knowing that the Soviets had invested Berlin on the 25 April, on 27 April Eisenhower sent Montgomery a signal urging all possible speed to the Baltic.

In this 21^st Army Group offensive from the Rhine river to the Elbe river the greatest contribution of British tactical air power was made by armed reconnaissance aircraft, which flew more than 10,000 sorties, but tactical air support and offensive fighter operations each took about half that number. In all, the 2^nd Tactical Air Force flew more than 28,000 sorties on various tasks for the 21^st Army Group in this period.