Qualla: Ruhr Pocket

Ruhr Pocket: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On 1 April 1945, spearheads of the U.S. 9th Army coming from the north and the U.S. 1st Army coming from the south met near Lippstadt and closed a ring of steel around 317,000 German troops. The encirclement covered the entire industrial heart of the Third Reich - the Ruhr, the cities of Krupp and Thyssen and the coal pits that had fed both. Inside the ring were the bulk of Army Group B, fourteen divisions plus two parachute corps, commanded by a field marshal named Walter Model who refused to consider surrender. Outside were eighteen American divisions, growing hungrier by the day to push east to the Elbe. What followed over the next eighteen days was the largest single mass capitulation of German troops in the war.

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Image: Public domain

Ruhr Pocket: The Long Walk to the Ring

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The path to the Ruhr pocket began the moment American troops grabbed the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen on 7 March 1945. The bridge was supposed to be demolished. The German demolition crew had wired the charges. The charges had failed. Within ten days the bridge collapsed of its o...

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Image: Public domain

Ruhr Pocket: Boys, Old Men, and a Bottomless Shortage

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Political Intelligence Department (PID) und Office of Strategic Services (OSS) für Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) und Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), Public domain. Inside the ring on the day it closed were 370,000 soldiers - the figure later revised down to 317,000 prisoners after the casualties and breakouts of the next two weeks. The composition tells the story of where the German army had ended up by April 1945. Only twenty percent had i...

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Image: Political Intelligence Department (PID) und Office of Strategic Services (OSS) für Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) und Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) | Public domain

Ruhr Pocket: Eighteen Days, City by City

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michielverbeek, CC BY-SA 3.0. The reduction began on 1 April with the U.S. 9th Army, joined on 4 April by the 1st Army. The two converged toward the middle of the ring. Some German cities surrendered openly. The mayor of Duisburg came out under a white flag. Essen capitulated quickly, and was taken by the 9th...

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Image: Michielverbeek | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ruhr Pocket: Send Them Home

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0. Field Marshal Walter Model is the human center of this story. His chief of staff, Carl Wagener, urged him to surrender and save lives. Model refused, knowing Hitler would not authorize it. But he also wanted to spare as many lives as possible for the work of postwar rebuilding, a...

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Image: Raimond Spekking | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ruhr Pocket: Two Hundred and Seventeen Thousand on the Rhine Meadows

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The pocket's western half held out weakly until 18 April. Matthew Ridgway, commanding the XVIII Airborne Corps, sent an officer under a white flag asking Model to surrender. Model refused, citing his oath to Hitler. He tried to slip through the American lines toward the Harz moun...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain