Battle at Remagen – Race Over the Rhine 1945 World War II Documentary Part 1

By March 1945, Hitler’s orders to destroy every bridge leading into Germany had been carried out almost completely… with the exception of one railroad bridge. Almost every bridge the Allies could use to cross the Rhine had been destroyed… all except one. In a town called Remagen, The Ludendorff Bridge remains standing, the lone bridge still connecting the Rhine’s eastern and western banks. What would transpire here has been debated since its occurrence. Nevertheless, the battle about to ensue, no one on either side planned for or expected to ever happen. It was an accidental battle, one which happened so quickly that both German and Allied high commands were unaware of what was happening until well after that battle had started. This is the battle at Remagen

TIMELINE
  • 0:00 – Introduction
  • 4:01 – Allied Invasion of Germany 1945
  • 9:36 – The Luddendorff Bridge Order of Battle
  • 14:17 – American Order of Battle
  • 16:45 – March 7, 1945
  • 21:28 – 11:15am
  • 25:55 – 12:00pm
  • 29:53 – 2:00pm
  • 34:31 – 3:20pm
  • 38:20 – 3:50pm
  • 40:34 – Endgame
SOURCES

“Battle of Remagen,” Battlefront (September, 25, 2001).

Bradley, Omar, “The Bridge at Remagen: Part 1.” The Big Picture. 1965. https://archive.org/details/gov.dod.dimoc.30185

Bratge, Willi, “The Bridge at Remagen: Part 1.” The Big Picture. 1965. https://archive.org/details/gov.dod.dimoc.30185

Decuers, Larry, “The MG-42 Machine Gun,” from The National WWII Museum (November 9, 2018), https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/mg-42-machine-gun#:~:text=You%27ve%20been%20in%20combat,to%2025%20rounds%20per%20second

DTIC ADA163875: Combat Studies Institute, Remagen Bridgehead, Offensive, Hasty Assault, River Crossing, Defense Technical Information Center, March 23, 1984, https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA163875/page/n31/mode/1up

Eisenhower, Dwight, D. “The Bridge at Remagen: Part 1.” The Big Picture. 1965. https://archive.org/details/gov.dod.dimoc.30185

Hansen, Ken, “What finished the bridge at Remagen?,” Stars and Stripes, March 17, 1962, https://www.stripes.com/news/what-finished-the-bridge-at-remagen-1.18143

Hitzfeld, Otto, “The Bridge at Remagen,” (1981), accessed March 03, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXXpIPModTo

Learned, George E. “The Remagen bridge, six years after,” Stars and Stripes. 18 March 1951.

MacDonald, Charles B. The Last Offensive. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army1 1993,
https://archive.org/details/CMHPub791TheLastOffensive/page/216/mode/1up

McMullen, Emerson Thomas and Rogers, George, GEORGE ROGERS and the BRIDGE at REMAGEN. Copyright 2000 by Emerson Thomas McMullen and George Rogers. https://web.archive.org/web/20030228031634/http://www2.gasou.edu/facstaff/etmcmull/REMAGEN.htm