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Five years. That's how long the German Army spent turning the Reichswald Forest into a fortress — eighteen thousand bunkers, three defensive lines, minefields, anti-tank ditches, and the finest paratroopers left on the Western Front.
On February 8, 1945, the First Canadian Army walked into those trees. They expected a week. It took thirty days. Twenty miles of mud, concrete, and forest — every yard contested by elite German defenders fighting on their own soil for the first time. And when the Americans couldn't cross the flooded Roer River, the Canadians found themselves carrying the entire weight of the western offensive alone.
What happened inside that forest — the decisions made, the prices paid, the things individual Canadians did when everything went wrong — belongs among the most extraordinary chapters of the war. And almost nobody talks about it.
#canadianwarstories #ww2 #canadianarmy #militaryhistory #canadianhistory #worldwar2
Five years. That's how long the German Army spent turning the Reichswald Forest into a fortress — eighteen thousand bunkers, three defensive lines, minefields, anti-tank ditches, and the finest paratroopers left on the Western Front.
On February 8, 1945, the First Canadian Army walked into those trees. They expected a week. It took thirty days. Twenty miles of mud, concrete, and forest — every yard contested by elite German defenders fighting on their own soil for the first time. And when the Americans couldn't cross the flooded Roer River, the Canadians found themselves carrying the entire weight of the western offensive alone.
What happened inside that forest — the decisions made, the prices paid, the things individual Canadians did when everything went wrong — belongs among the most extraordinary chapters of the war. And almost nobody talks about it.
#canadianwarstories #ww2 #canadianarmy #militaryhistory #canadianhistory #worldwar2
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LearningTranscript
00:00On the morning of February 8, 1945, at five o'clock sharp, 1,034 guns opened fire from the
00:08Dutch-German border near Nijmegen. The noise was so violent that men standing next to each other
00:14could not hear their own screaming. Canadian artillery captain George Blackburn, watching
00:21from an observation post in a windmill cupola overlooking the German frontier, saw the horizon
00:27turn white. The ground beneath him pulsed like a living thing. In the darkness ahead, 8,000 tons
00:36of high-explosive were falling on a forest called the Reichswald, a 10-square-mile mass of pine and oak
00:43that the German army had spent the better part of five years turning into a fortress.
00:50At 10.30, when the barrage lifted, Canadian and British infantry began walking into those
00:56trees. They were walking into the most heavily fortified natural position remaining on the
01:02western front, and most of them knew it. The 2nd and 3rd Canadian infantry divisions had spent the
01:10entire winter of 1944 staring at the Reichswald from their positions around Grossbeck, less than
01:16three miles from the treeline. For four months they had patrolled, watched, and listened.
01:23They had seen the concrete. They had heard the construction. They knew what was waiting inside.
01:31What they did not yet know, what none of them could have known, was that breaking through this
01:36forest would take a full month, cost more than 15,000 casualties, and produce some of the most savage
01:43close-quarters fighting Canadian soldiers would experience in the entire war.
01:49Twenty miles of ground, thirty days to cross it, and every single yard of it contested by
01:55the best troops the German army still had.
01:59This is the story of how they did it. If you want to see more stories of what Canadian soldiers
02:04did in
02:05this war, hit subscribe and like. It helps these stories find the audience they deserve.
02:11To understand what the Canadians were about to walk into, you need to understand what the
02:16Reichswald actually was. Not just a forest, a weapon. The Westwall, which the Allies called the
02:23Siegfried Line, stretched over 600 kilometers from the Dutch border to Switzerland. More than 18,000 bunkers,
02:32tunnels, and tank traps. Construction had begun in 1936, accelerated in 1938, and continued through 1940.
02:41When the Wehrmacht rolled into France in 1940, the transportable weapons were stripped from the line.
02:47The concrete stayed. The bunkers became storage sheds. For four years, the Siegfried Line sat empty.
02:56Then, in the autumn of 1944, everything changed. The Allies were closing in from the west.
03:03Hitler ordered the Westwall reactivated. And the man given the job of defending the Reichswald sector
03:09was not a second-rate garrison commander. He was General der Fallschirm Truppe, Alfred Schlem,
03:17a veteran of Crete, Anzio, and the Eastern Front, one of the most experienced combat commanders left
03:24in the German order of battle. Schlem took command of the 1st Parachute Army in November 1944.
03:31And here is a detail that would prove critical. While his superiors at Army Group H believed the main
03:38Allied attack would come further south, across the Ruhr River, Schlem disagreed. He was convinced the
03:45blow would fall right here, through the Reichswald. So while his bosses looked south, Schlem quietly
03:51reinforced what he had. He layered his defenses three deep. The first line ran along the western edge of
03:58the forest, the old Siegfried positions, manned by the 84th Infantry Division, a reconstituted unit of
04:05older men and recent conscripts. Their job was not to stop an attack. Their job was to absorb it,
04:13to buy time. Behind them, a second line anchored on the towns of Kleiv and Goch. Behind that, a third
04:21line,
04:21the Hochwald Leibach, which the Germans called the Schliefenstellung, a fortified ridge of trenches,
04:28wire, and minefields stretching between two dense forests, the Hochwald and the Ballbergerbald.
04:36Three walls, each one harder than the last. But Schlem had something else, something the Canadians would
04:44not discover until they were already committed. He had moved 2,000 elite paratroopers into the
04:50Reichswald to stiffen the resolve of the 84th Division's conscripts. He had positioned 36 self-propelled
04:57guns and 4 battalions of heavy artillery inside the forest. And he had his best divisions, the 6th and
05:057th Parachute, the 116th Panzer, the 15th Panzer Grenadier, held in reserve, ready to feed into the
05:14battle the moment it began. The Canadians were about to attack a fortress. But Schlem had turned
05:22that fortress into a trap. He wanted them to come in. Because he had one more card to play. And
05:30it had
05:30nothing to do with soldiers or guns. It had to do with water. On the night before the attack, German
05:38engineers opened the sluice gates on the Rhine. The water came slowly at first, spreading across the
05:44flood plain north of the Nijmegen-Cleve Road, filling drainage ditches, creeping into fields that were
05:51already soft from weeks of rain and thaw. By morning, the low ground between the Rhine and the Maas had
05:58become a chain of shallow inland lakes, some stretching over a thousand yards wide.
06:05Roads vanished beneath brown water. Tracks became canals. The terrain that was supposed to be the
06:11left flank of the Canadian advance simply ceased to exist as usable ground. But Schlem's flooding was
06:19only half the problem. Remember that the Canadian attack through the Reichswald was the northern arm
06:25of a giant pincer. The southern arm, Operation Grenade, was supposed to be launched simultaneously by
06:32the American 9th Army across the Rohr River, 50 miles to the south. The two forces would converge near
06:40Waisel and trap every German soldier west of the Rhine. That was the plan. But the Germans had blown the
06:47Rohr dams too. The river was in flood. The Americans could not cross. And until they could, every German
06:55reserve division in the west would be free to swing north and concentrate against one target.
07:00The Canadians were on their own. Hold that fact. Because everything that happens next – every
07:08casualty figure, every yard of mud, every desperate close-quarters fight in the trees – has to be
07:15understood against this single reality. For the next two weeks, the First Canadian Army would be fighting
07:22the entire strength of the German Western Reserve. Alone. The first day went better than anyone had
07:30a right to expect. The barrage had done its work. The 84th Infantry Division – the tripwire force Schlem
07:37had placed at the forest's edge – was shattered. By nightfall on February 8th, nearly six of its
07:43battalions had been destroyed. 3,000 casualties. 1,200 prisoners shuffling into Allied cages in mud-soaked
07:51uniforms. The forward positions of the Siegfried Line had been cracked open across a front of several miles,
07:57and British and Canadian infantry were pushing into the Reichswald itself. But inside the forest,
08:03the nature of the war changed. The Reichswald was not a neat woodland with trails and clearings.
08:10It was dense, young pine – trees standing four to seven feet apart, with narrow tracks running north
08:16to south, perpendicular to the direction of advance. There were no east-west roads through the forest.
08:22Tanks could barely move between the tree trunks. The few roads that did exist were immediately chewed to
08:28pieces by the weight of traffic trying to funnel through. Hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, trucks,
08:34ambulances, and guns – all competing for the same narrow corridors of mud. Traffic jams stretched for miles.
08:42Horrocks, commanding 10-10 Corps, would later call the Reichswald battle what it was – a soldier's battle,
08:48fought under the most ghastly conditions imaginable. And in those conditions, individual Canadians
08:55began doing things that defied belief. On the morning of the 8th, the Calgary Highlanders of the 5th Brigade
09:02advanced east through the hamlet of Wosendal. They hit a minefield. The mines were scattered on the
09:09surface, and as men began stepping around them, they discovered that more were buried just below.
09:16Then the mortars opened up. Then the machine guns.
09:21In a handful of minutes, 28 men were killed or wounded. The rest were pinned flat in a minefield,
09:29unable to move forward, unable to move back, with mortar shells landing among them.
09:35Lance Corporal Robert Allen McMahon got clear. Alone, he picked his way through the mines and ran
09:42straight into the buildings where the German fire was coming from.
09:46Inside, he killed several defenders, wounded others, and took one officer and 22 soldiers prisoner.
09:54When he marched them out, a single Canadian with a Sten gun behind 23 Germans,
10:00the captured officer realized McMahon was alone and tried to start a revolt among the prisoners.
10:06McMahon stopped him with his fists. Two of those German prisoners then stepped on their own mines
10:12and were killed. McMahon received the Distinguished Conduct Medal. He was not the only Canadian that
10:19day to do something extraordinary with no one watching. He was simply one of the ones who survived long
10:25enough for someone to write it down. By the end of the second day, the guts of the Reichswald had
10:32been
10:32cleared and 2,700 German prisoners were in the bag. But General Schlem was not panicking. The 84th Division had
10:40done
10:40exactly what it was designed to do. Absorb the first blow and buy time. Now his real defenders were arriving.
10:49The 7th Parachute Division, tough and under strength but still dangerous, was feeding into the line piecemeal.
10:56The 6th Parachute Division was moving down from Arnhem, and Schlem had finally convinced Army Group H to
11:03release the 47th Panzer Corps, the 116th Panzer Division, and the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division.
11:10Two formations with outstanding combat records and enough armor to make a difference.
11:15The Canadians had broken the first wall, but they had done so at the cost of speed,
11:20surprise, and dry ground. Every road behind them was a river of mud.
11:25Every supply truck was stuck. Every reinforcement was late. And now, Schlem's second wall, the fortified
11:33line between Kleeve and Goch, was fully manned, by troops who knew the Canadians were coming. With
11:40armor the Canadians had not yet seen. The battle for the Reichswald was only beginning, and the forest
11:47had not yet shown its worst face. The ancient city of Kleeve fell on February 12th. Or rather,
11:55what was left of it fell. On the night before the attack, 750 RAF heavy bombers had turned Kleeve into
12:03a moonscape of broken stone and shattered timber. The bombing was supposed to help. Instead, it created a
12:11new problem. The rubble blocked every road through the city so completely that tanks and supply vehicles
12:18could not pass. The single corridor that was supposed to funnel the advance eastward
12:23was choked with its own destruction. While engineers worked around the clock to clear a path,
12:29the advance stalled. And every hour it stalled, Schlem's reinforcements got closer.
12:34By the 14th of February, the character of the battle had changed entirely. The Reichswald
12:41forest itself was largely cleared, but what lay beyond it was worse.
12:46The second German defensive line, anchored on the Goch-Kaukar road, was now fully manned by
12:52troops of a completely different quality than the shattered 84th Division. The 6th Parachute
12:58Division had arrived from Arnhem. The 116th Panzer Division was in position.
13:04And between Kleeve and Kalkar, stretching for three miles through dense woodland and rising ground,
13:09sat Moyland Wood. Moyland Wood is where the Canadian Army met the German paratroopers face to face.
13:17And it is where the cost of this operation began to register in numbers that no one at headquarters had
13:23planned for. On February 16th, the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade entered the Wood. The Royal Winnipeg Rifles,
13:32the Regina Rifle Regiment, the Canadian Scottish, regiments that had fought from Juneau Beach through
13:38the Schelt, regiments that thought they had already seen the worst the war had to offer. They had not.
13:45The 6th Parachute Division had turned Moyland Wood into a killing ground. The trees were young
13:52conifers, dense enough to stop a man from seeing thirty yards in any direction, but not dense enough
13:58to stop armor. Which meant German self-propelled guns could move between them and fire at point-blank
14:04range. Artillery shells detonated in the treetops, turning branches into shrapnel that sprayed downward.
14:11The effect was devastating. A man could survive a shell landing ten yards away in open ground.
14:18In a forest, the same shell killed everyone within thirty yards because the blast had nowhere to go
14:24but down. For five days the fighting went on. The Germans counterattacked repeatedly. Vicious,
14:32coordinated strikes that came out of the trees with no warning. The Canadian Scottish took high ground south
14:38of the wood and held it against wave after wave, with an acting corporal named Kachinoski taking
14:45command of his platoon after every officer and senior NCO became a casualty. He held for three days.
14:52He earned the Distinguished Conduct Medal. On the 21st of February, the Royal Winnipeg Rifles made the
14:59final push. They divided the entire wood into belts three hundred yards wide and saturated each belt
15:06systematically. Divisional artillery, mortars, medium machine guns of the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa
15:13firing on fixed lines over open sites. Tracked carriers called WASPs crawled between the trees,
15:21spraying liquid fire into German positions. Tanks of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment ground forward
15:28alongside the infantry, blasting strongpoints at close range. That night, two sharp German counterattacks
15:36were thrown back. Moyland Wood was Canadian. The cost? Approximately 500 casualties for the 7th Brigade
15:45alone. Five days. Three miles of forest. And Moyland Wood was only one piece of the second wall.
15:55To the south, the battle for Gough raged simultaneously.
15:59The 43rd Wessex Division fought an 8,000-yard running advance that Lieutenant General Horrocks would later
16:06call the turning point of the entire Reichswald campaign. On the Canadian left, the 3rd Division's
16:13battalions, the Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry Highlanders, the Highland Light Infantry, the North Nova
16:20Scotia Highlanders, pushed through flooded ground in amphibious buffaloes, clearing villages one by one,
16:26each one a fortified box of concrete, wire, and mines.
16:31By the 19th of February, Lieutenant General Guy Simmons and his 2nd Canadian Corps took over the main
16:38thrust. The shift was more than administrative. Simmons was a different kind of commander. Cerebral,
16:44demanding, willing to throw away the rulebook if the rulebook was not working. At 41, he was the
16:51youngest corps commander in the Commonwealth armies. He had invented the Kangaroo Armored
16:57Personnel Carrier six months earlier in Normandy, stripping the guns from obsolete tanks and cramming
17:04infantry inside the hulls so they could ride into battle with armor protection instead of walking into
17:09machine gun fire on foot. His instinct was always the same. Find the thing the enemy does not expect
17:16and do it faster than the enemy can react. Simmons looked at his maps and saw what Schlem had built
17:23behind Moyland Wood, behind Goch, behind the entire 2nd line. One more wall. The 3rd and last.
17:32The Hochwald Layback, a fortified ridge running between two forests with a narrow gap in the middle.
17:40The last German defensive position west of the Rhine. Everything the Canadians had fought for,
17:47every yard of mud, every shattered tree, every man lost in Moyland Wood, had been the price of reaching
17:54this point. And the hardest part was still ahead. Because Simmons was about to ask his men to do
18:01something that even his own officers thought was impossible. The Hochwald Layback was not a line.
18:06It was a system. Picture two dense forests, the Hochwald to the north, the Badberger Wald to the south,
18:14sitting on a low ridge that commanded the surrounding countryside for miles.
18:18Between them, a gap roughly two miles wide. Open ground. Flat. Completely exposed to observation
18:27and fire from both forests and from German artillery on the far side of the Rhine. The only way through
18:33to Zanten and the Rhine beyond was through that gap. Or through the forests themselves. The Germans knew this.
18:41They had spent the previous two weeks, while the Canadians bled for every yard between Kleeve and Goch,
18:46pouring everything they had into the Hochwald position. Trenches, wire belts, minefields,
18:54anti-tank ditches. The Schliefenstellung. The 6th and 7th Parachute Divisions dug into the tree line.
19:01The 116th Panzer Division held the gap itself. And behind all of it, German artillery batteries
19:08across the Rhine fired with impunity. Because the guns were on the far bank, beyond the reach of any
19:15ground attack. And could pour shells into the gap from an angle the Canadians could not suppress.
19:21On February 22nd, Simons gathered his divisional commanders.
19:26No written operation order was issued. He stood before them and laid out his plan.
19:32He called it blockbuster. And it was unlike anything that had come before.
19:39The conventional approach would have been simple. Rest, regroup, bring up fresh supplies,
19:45and launch a deliberate set-piece attack in daylight with overwhelming force.
19:50That was what the Germans expected. That was what Schlem was preparing for.
19:57Simons rejected it. His reasoning was precise. The Hochwald gap was open ground overlooked from
20:04higher elevations on both sides. Any force crossing it in daylight would be visible for miles.
20:12German artillery, including the batteries firing from across the Rhine, would destroy an armored column
20:19before it reached the far side. The only way to cross the gap was in darkness. Speed and surprise
20:26against firepower and fortification. It was a gamble. Simons knew it. His officers knew it.
20:33The plan had four phases, each one hinging on the one before it.
20:38First, three infantry brigades would seize the high ground on the plateau south of Kalkar in a night
20:44assault, clearing the way. Second, the 4th Canadian Armored Division, reorganized into mixed battle
20:51groups of tanks and infantry, would push through the gap itself, using the darkness and a massive
20:57artillery program to suppress the German guns. Third, the 2nd Canadian Division would fight through
21:04the Hochwald Forest while the 3rd Canadian Division cleared the Baldberger Wald. Fourth, the armor would
21:11break out eastward toward Zanten and the Rhine. The key to everything was the axis of advance.
21:18Three roads led east. The northern route through Kalkar was congested. The southern route,
21:24through Goch, would have to be shared with Djek Djek Kor. But in the center, a railway line ran along
21:31a
21:31solid embankment straight through the gap between the Hochwald and the Ballberger Wald. Simons' engineers
21:38would tear up the tracks and turn the roadbed into a highway, building the road as the army advanced
21:44along it. It was the kind of plan that looked elegant on a map and brutal on the ground. Simons
21:52reorganized
21:52the 4th Armored Division under Major General Chris Vokes into two battle groups. Tiger Group,
21:59commanded by Brigadier Robert Monsell, was the spearhead. Three armored regiments and two infantry
22:05battalions, subdivided into four mixed columns, each with specific tasks and precise timings.
22:12The men who had to execute it found it unnecessarily complicated.
22:17The diarists of the South Alberta Regiment recorded their feelings about one flanking maneuver,
22:22that would take a small force deep into enemy territory, with the words,
22:27This attack will be made in spite of our protestations. It is a brigade order.
22:33On the night of February 25th, the infantry moved into position. Icy rain fell without stopping.
22:40The men were soaked, cold, and exhausted before the first shot was fired. Behind them,
22:47the artillery was massing. Twelve field regiments, six medium regiments, three heavy regiments for the
22:54second division's front alone. Seven field and two medium regiments for the third division.
23:01The weight of metal that was about to fall on the hochvad position would be staggering.
23:06At 3.45 on the morning of February 26th, the barrage began. And somewhere in the darkness ahead,
23:13on the outskirts of a hamlet called Mushoff, a 23-year-old sergeant from northern Ontario named
23:20Aubrey Cozens, was about to find out what his war had been building toward. Aubrey Cozens had already
23:26lived through more war than most men twice his age. Born in Latchford, Ontario, he had left school at
23:3317 to work on the railway. When the war broke out, he tried to join the Air Force and was
23:39rejected for
23:39being too young. He enlisted in the army in 1940 at 19. By D-Day, he was a corporal in
23:48the Queen's Own Rifles
23:49of Canada. By February 1945, he was a sergeant. He had fought through the Falaise pocket, through the
23:57Schulte, through the long winter on the Nijmegen line. He had watched his regiment lose men at a
24:04rate that made replacement impossible. By the time Operation Blockbuster began, the Queen's Own,
24:11like most Canadian infantry battalions, was short roughly 200 men. Companies that should have had
24:18120 soldiers were operating with 65. On the night of February 25th, the 1st Battalion of the Queen's
24:25Own Rifles was ordered to take Mushoff, a cluster of three German-held farm buildings on the approaches
24:31to the Hochfahrt. The position had to be taken before the armor could advance.
24:37Kozenz's platoon was given the job. They attacked twice. Both times they were thrown back by what the
24:44official citation would call fanatical resistance. Entrenched German paratroopers firing from concrete
24:51reinforced farm buildings with interlocking fields of machine gun fire. During the second assault,
24:58a fierce German counterattack swept through the platoon. The casualties were devastating.
25:04The platoon commander was killed. One of the two supporting tanks was knocked out.
25:09When the firing paused, Sergeant Kozenz counted his platoon. Four men. Out of an entire platoon,
25:18he had four men left and one working tank. What Kozenz did next earned him the Victoria Cross.
25:26He placed his four surviving riflemen in a position to give covering fire. Then he ran,
25:32across open ground, under mortar and shell fire, to the remaining tank. He climbed onto the front of
25:38the hull, completely exposed, and began directing the tank's fire onto the farm buildings. When he was
25:45satisfied the defenders were suppressed, he ordered the tank to ram the first building. The tank drove
25:51straight through the wall. Kozenz dropped off, went in alone through the breach, and cleared the building
25:57room by room, killing several defenders and taking the rest prisoner. Then he walked to the second
26:03building and did it again. Then the third. By the time he was finished, Sergeant Aubrey Kozenz had
26:09personally killed at least 20 German soldiers and captured an equal number. Three fortified buildings,
26:16taken by one man with a tank and four riflemen providing cover from a ditch. Minutes later,
26:22as he organized the defense of the captured position, a German sniper shot him through the head.
26:28He died almost instantly. He was 23 years old. The position at Mushoff was secured,
26:35and the road to the Hochwald Gap was open. But the gap itself was another matter entirely.
26:41By dawn on February 27th, the first three phases of Blockbuster had succeeded. Tiger Group's mixed
26:48columns had seized the plateau south of Kalkar in a night operation that the official history
26:53described with rare admiration. Piece after piece of the intricate puzzle falling into place,
26:59each formation completing its task and moving on while a relieving force took over the ground behind it.
27:05The Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada, the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, the South Alberta
27:11Regiment, they had taken the plateau with remarkably light casualties. By daylight, the important high
27:18ground from Kalkar to east of Oudem was in Canadian hands. Now came the moment of decision.
27:25Simons had to push armor through the Hochwald Gap. Two miles of open ground, overlooked from both sides,
27:32swept by artillery fire from across the Rhine. The 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade was supposed to move
27:39through the Hochwald forest itself and outflank the German defenses from within the trees. But the
27:45brigade could not begin its advance until morning. The 11th British Armored Division, assigned to protect
27:51the southern flank, had its tanks bogged in mud and taking fire from German anti-tank guns.
27:57It was the night of February 26th. Simons had two options. Delay everything for 24 hours,
28:05giving the Germans time to reinforce, or send the 4th Armored Division across open country in the dark,
28:12hoping that speed and surprise would compensate for the absence of flank protection.
28:16He chose speed. The armor moved forward. And what met them at the mouth of the Hochwald Gap
28:23was something that the diarist of the Lake Superior Regiment described with a phrase that needed no
28:28elaboration. A veritable hell. As the Canadian armor crested the rise at the western edge of the
28:35Hochwald Gap on the morning of February 27th, every German gun in the sector opened fire simultaneously.
28:43Anti-tank rounds came from the front, from positions dug into the tree line of the Hochwald on the left,
28:49and the Ballbergerwald on the right. Mortar bombs dropped in clusters across the open ground.
28:55And then, from over the right shoulder of the advancing Canadians, came something worse.
29:01Heavy artillery fire from German batteries positioned on the far side of the Rhine,
29:07firing across the river at an angle that no amount of counter-battery work could suppress.
29:13The shells arrived from a direction the Canadians had not been trained to expect.
29:18The war diary of one regiment described the effect of artillery coming in from behind as
29:24unsettling. That was an understatement. Within minutes, the advance stalled. Tanks were hit and
29:32burning. The mud, which had been the enemy since the first day of Veritable, now turned lethal.
29:40Vehicles that tried to maneuver off the railway embankment sank to their hulls and became stationary
29:45targets. The Algonquin Regiment and the South Alberta Regiment, leading the push into the mouth
29:51of the Gap, found themselves trading fire at ranges measured in dozens of yards with German paratroopers
29:57who had no intention of giving ground. What followed was five days of fighting that the official history
30:04measures not in miles but in hundreds of yards per day. The problem was structural. The Hochwald Gap was a
30:12one-time-finger in the middle of the tunnel. Everything the Canadians pushed into it — tanks, infantry,
30:16supplies — had to pass through the same narrow corridor of open ground. And every inch of that corridor
30:23was registered by German guns. The 4th Armored Division discovered what infantry commanders already knew.
30:30An armored division could not simply blast its way through when the enemy had short-range anti-tank weapons in
30:36every foxhole, when tanks could not move off the road without drowning in mud, and when there was not
30:42enough infantry to clear a path through the trees on either side. But Simons had anticipated this. Not
30:49the scale of the resistance — no one had predicted the ferocity with which the German paratroopers would
30:55fight for their own soil — but the possibility that armor alone would fail. And so, while the 4th Armored
31:02Division held the mouth of the Gap, Simons set his infantry to work on both flanks. On the left,
31:09the 2nd Canadian Division drove into the Hochwald Forest itself. The 4th Infantry Brigade — the Royal
31:16Hamilton Light Infantry, the Royal Regiment of Canada — the Essex Scottish — began clearing the northern
31:24woods in a series of close-quarters actions that bore no resemblance to anything taught in any manual.
31:30The Essex Scottish launched a night assault against German positions at the forest's edge on the 28th.
31:37Trees splintered by shellfire turned the forest floor into an obstacle course of jagged timber.
31:43Visibility dropped to yards. Men stumbled into German trenches without seeing them until they were on
31:50top of them. The fighting was hand-to-hand — bayonet and grenade, shouting and silence alternating in
31:57unpredictable bursts. On the right, the 3rd Canadian Division attacked into the Balberger Wald.
32:04Le Régiment de la Chaudière pushed south and east, was thrown back by an overwhelming concentration of
32:11fire, attacked again the next morning with tank support from the 1st Hussars, and reached the eastern
32:17edge of the wood. The Queen's own rifles — the same regiment that had lost Aubrey Cozens three days earlier
32:24— and the
32:27larger forest beyond. Every one of these actions was fought at the company level — 60 or 70 men
32:34attacking a position, taking it, holding it against a counterattack, then watching the next company
32:40pass through to do the same thing 200 yards further on. The German paratroopers fought from positions that
32:47had been improved for weeks. Often, a single machine gun nest was manned by only two soldiers. But two
32:53well-trained soldiers with an MG 42 in a prepared position could hold up an entire company for hours.
33:01On the 1st of March, the Germans played their last reserve card. Two independent parachute battalions,
33:08including the Parachute Army Assault Battalion — an elite unit held for exactly this kind of crisis — were
33:14committed to the Hochwald Gap. Supported by tanks and artillery of the 116th Panzer Division,
33:21they stopped the Canadian advance cold for three more days. But here is where the mathematics of the
33:29battle began to shift. The same flooding that had delayed the American 9th Army for two weeks had
33:35finally subsided. On February 23rd, the Americans crossed the Roar. Operation Grenade was moving. And
33:45every German division that Schlem had concentrated against the Canadians now had a second threat
33:51approaching from the south. Schlem could no longer feed reserves into the Hochwald — everything he had
33:58was already committed. And the Canadians, exhausted, under strength, fighting in mud that swallowed men
34:05to their knees, kept pushing forward. Not because they had some advantage the Germans lacked, but because
34:13they would not stop. On the morning of March 3rd, the 5th Infantry Brigade took over the devastated gap
34:20from units that had been fighting without rest for four days. The Algonquins had suffered 87 casualties
34:27since the 2nd of March. The Lake Superior Regiment had lost 53. The Gap — that two-mile corridor of
34:35open
34:35ground that Schlem had turned into a killing field — was finally in Canadian hands. The battle for the Hochwald
34:42was over.
34:44But General Simons was already looking east. Because between the Gap and the Rhine, one more town stood in
34:50the way. And the Germans had no intention of giving it up without a final fight.
34:55Xanten was a small town on the banks of the Alter Rhine, less than 10 miles from the Hochwald Gap.
35:01In peacetime, it was known for its Roman ruins and its Gothic cathedral. By March 1945, it was known for
35:08one
35:09thing. It was the last German defensive position west of the Rhine in the Canadian sector.
35:15If Xanten fell, Schlem would have nothing left to hold. His entire army would have to cross the river
35:21or be destroyed. Schlem understood this perfectly. He had been pulling his forces back toward the Rhine
35:28in stages, trading ground for time, feeding just enough men into each position to slow the Canadian
35:34advance while evacuating supply columns, artillery batteries, and headquarters staff across the river
35:40behind him. It was a fighting withdrawal conducted by a professional, and it was buying Germany days
35:47it desperately needed. Every day the Canadians spent clearing forest and mud west of the Rhine
35:53was a day Schlem used to prepare defenses on the east bank. He was losing the battle. He knew it.
36:00But he was
36:01determined to make the Canadians pay for every last yard of ground, and to get as many of his men
36:06across
36:06the river alive as possible. The approach to Xanten was a nightmare of saturated ground, shattered woodland,
36:14and isolated German strongpoints manned by soldiers who had nowhere left to retreat to.
36:19The 4th Canadian Armored Division used small battle groups, a company of infantry with a squadron of tanks,
36:25to probe forward along the roads from Sonsbeck toward Vane. The Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders
36:32of Canada and the South Alberta Regiment advanced along the main road until a crater blown in the
36:38pavement and heavy machine gun fire stopped them dead. They dug in beside the road and could not move
36:44for two days. Meanwhile, Simons was planning what he called Blockbuster II, the direct assault on
36:52Zanten itself. He gave the job to the 2nd Canadian Division, reinforced by the British 129th Brigade
36:59of the 43rd Wessex Division. On the 6th of March, the 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade pushed forward from
37:07positions northwest of Zanten to the village of Rochehof, 2,500 yards from the town. The 5th Brigade moved
37:15through the Westin Woods to Birkenkampshof, south of Zanten. Both formations were now within striking distance.
37:23That evening, Brigadier Allard of the 6th Brigade sent the Queen's own Cameron Highlanders of Canada
37:29on a probing attack to keep the Germans off balance. The Camerons ran into a wall of fire and were
37:35forced back.
37:37Simons, watching the situation develop, made a decision that was characteristic of the man. Instead
37:43of persisting with the same approach, he scrapped the plan and ordered a complete regrouping.
37:49The assault on Zanten would be a coordinated blow by three brigades attacking simultaneously from
37:54different directions. At 5.30 on the morning of March 8th, the attack went in. The 2nd Division advanced
38:02from two axes, through Rochehof on the left, through Birkenkampshof on the right. By midday,
38:09the left side was secured. The right was under constant fire from defenders in Zanten and from
38:15German guns on the far bank of the Rhine. The advance ground forward in the way that every advance in
38:21this campaign had ground forward. One building at a time, one hedgerow at a time. Men dying in doorways and
38:29ditches, while tanks tried to find ground firm enough to support their weight. In the afternoon,
38:35the 43rd Wessex Division passed through the Canadian positions and drove into the town itself. By late
38:42afternoon, the firing in Zanten had stopped. What remained was rubble. The Gothic Cathedral, the Roman
38:49ruins, the houses, all of it destroyed in the fighting or by German demolitions. The next day, the 2nd Division
38:58pushed through Zanten and secured positions south of the town. The 4th Armored Division's battle
39:04groups, fighting eastward from Sonspeck, reached Vane on the 9th. And on the 4th of March, days before
39:10Zanten even fell, patrols of the British 158th Brigade had already made contact with troops from the
39:17American 35th Infantry Division near Geldern. The pincers had closed. Schlem, for all his skill,
39:25was now trapped in a pocket. His divisions had been compressed against the Rhine, battered from the
39:32north by the Canadians and from the south by the Americans. On the night of March 10th, the last
39:38rear guard of the 1st Parachute Army crossed to the east bank of the Rhine. The bridge at Wessel was
39:44destroyed behind them. There was nothing left on the western bank. No German soldiers, no German guns,
39:51no German line. For the first time since September 1939, the west bank of the Rhine in this sector
39:59belonged to someone other than Germany. The Rhineland campaign was over. The bill was still being counted.
40:06And what that bill revealed, about the men who paid it and the forest they broke, is the part of
40:12this
40:12story that tends to be forgotten. The 1st Canadian Army's casualties, for the period from February 8th
40:18to March 10th, totaled 15,634. Of those, 5,304 were Canadian. The rest were British soldiers,
40:30fighting under Canadian command. The majority of Canadian losses came during Operation Blockbuster,
40:36the assault on the Hochwald. To put those numbers in perspective, the Canadians fought for 30 days to
40:44advance 20 miles. In the weeks that followed, Allied forces would cover 200 miles in the same amount of
40:51time. The distance was not the point. The distance never was. The point was what stood between the
40:59start line and the finish. Three defensive walls, each one harder than the last, defended by the
41:07finest troops remaining to the German army in the west, in terrain that negated every advantage the
41:13Allies possessed in armor, air power, and numbers. The Reichswald reduced the war to its most basic equation,
41:22infantry against fortification, men against concrete, willpower against engineering. 22,239 German soldiers
41:35were taken prisoner during the campaign. The intelligence section of the 1st Canadian Army
41:41estimated that an equal number had been killed or seriously wounded. Alfred Schlem got most of his
41:47surviving troops across the Rhine, but the divisions he brought with him were shattered. The 1st Parachute
41:54Army would fight again. Schlem himself was wounded by an air attack on his command post just days before
42:00Operation Plunder, the Allied crossing of the Rhine. But it would never again be the force that had held
42:06the Hochwald Gap for five days, against everything the Canadians could throw at it. The Canadians crossed the
42:13Rhine on March 23 as part of Operation Plunder. From there, they drove north into the Netherlands
42:19and northwest Germany, liberating Dutch cities, accepting German surrenders, and pushing all the
42:26way to the North Sea. The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945, exactly three months after that first
42:34barrage
42:35lit up the sky over the Reichswald. Sergeant Aubrey Cozens is buried in Gruzbeck Canadian War Cemetery in
42:42the Netherlands. Plot 8, Row H, Grave 2. He lies among more than 2,300 Canadians who died in the
42:51Rhineland.
42:53In 1986, the Ontario government named a bridge in his honor near his hometown of Latchford,
42:59the Sergeant Aubrey Cozens 5C Memorial Bridge. His Victoria Cross was the first awarded to the
43:073rd Canadian Division. Lance Corporal Robert McMahon survived the war. The German officer he punched
43:15into submission in the minefield at Fossendal never learned that the man who captured him and 22 of his
43:20soldiers was operating entirely alone. Captain George Blackburn, the artillery observer who watched the
43:28opening barrage from his windmill cupola at Gruzbeck, survived as well. He was told he was the longest
43:35serving forward observation officer in the entire 1st Canadian Army, a job with one of the highest
43:41casualty rates in the service. After the war, he wrote three books about his experience. The last one,
43:49The Guns of Victory, describes what he saw that February morning when a thousand guns opened fire
43:56and the horizon turned white. There is a plaque on the mill today, dedicated to him. Guy Simmons went on
44:04to serve as Chief of the General Staff of the Canadian Army after the war.
44:09The Kangaroo Armored Personnel Carrier he invented in Normandy, tanks stripped of their guns and filled
44:16with infantry, became the blueprint for every APC built by every army in the world in the decades that
44:22followed. The concept was born from a simple insight. Canadian soldiers were dying because they had to
44:30walk into machine gun fire. Simmons decided they would ride instead. That decision, made in a field
44:38workshop in 1944, changed mechanized warfare permanently. And the Reichsweid itself still stands. The trees
44:47grew back. The bunkers remain, overgrown, half-buried, crumbling. If you walk through the forest today,
44:54you can still find the concrete, the rusted steel, the outlines of trenches beneath the pine needles.
45:01The forest looks peaceful now. It does not look like a place where 15,000 men were wounded or killed
45:08in 30
45:08days. It does not look like a fortress that took five years to build and one month to break. But
45:16it was.
45:16And the men who broke it. The Calgary Highlanders wading through minefields. The Winnipeg rifles
45:22burning their way through Moyland Wood. The Queen's Own Rifles storming farm buildings with four men and a
45:29tank. The gunners and engineers and stretcher bearers and drivers who kept the whole thing moving through mud
45:36that swallowed vehicles whole. Those men did not break it because they had better weapons or better
45:42plans or better luck. They broke it because they kept going when the forest, the mud, the fortifications,
45:49and the finest paratroopers in the German army all said, stop. That is how Canadians broke through a
45:56forest Germans had fortified for five years. Not with a single brilliant stroke. Not with overwhelming
46:02force. Yard by yard. Wall by wall. Day after day. Until there was nothing left to break.
46:11Thank you for watching this all the way through. It means a great deal that you stayed with this story
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46:35from. Drop a comment and tell me. And if someone in your family served with the Canadian, British,
46:40or Allied forces in the Rhineland, or anywhere in the Second World War, I want to hear about them.
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