The Ruhr Pocket

The Ruhr had been a central Allied objective because its coal mines, steelworks and factories formed one of Germany’s principal industrial concentrations. By late March 1945 bombing, transport disruption and the loss of territory had already weakened that economic system, yet the region still carried strategic weight. Army Group B was also concentrated around it, so an envelopment could remove a major German field command while avoiding a frontal advance through every industrial city.

The Allied plan therefore linked the Ruhr to the campaign beyond it. First and Ninth Armies would close the encirclement, selected corps would reduce the trapped force, and the main effort would continue into central Germany. Eisenhower’s decision to shift the principal Allied drive to Bradley’s 12th Army Group made that separation even clearer: the Ruhr had to be contained and eliminated, but it would no longer determine the pace of the advance toward the Elbe.

The encirclement enclosed two different kinds of ground. North of the Ruhr River, Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Bochum and Dortmund formed a dense industrial belt of factories, railways, canals, housing and spoil heaps. South of the river the pocket widened into the Sauerland, where steep hills, narrow valleys and extensive forest restricted movement to a smaller number of roads. The U.S. Army official history described the southern sector as roughly three times the size of Ninth Army’s northern sector.

Those landscapes produced different tactical problems. Canals, railway embankments and built-up districts in the north gave local garrisons defensible positions, yet the shrinking German front increasingly broke into isolated towns and roadblocks. In the Sauerland, wooded approaches and constricted valleys let small groups with tanks, assault guns and Panzerfausts threaten columns at short range. American infantry therefore had to secure road junctions behind the armoured spearheads as the pocket contracted.

The Ruhr River became the interarmy boundary for the reduction. Ninth Army attacked south through the industrial zone while First Army’s III and XVIII Airborne Corps pushed north through the larger southern sector. That division matched the terrain and also separated the two armies’ artillery and movement areas as their fronts converged.

First Army’s breakout from the Remagen bridgehead opened on 25 March with five infantry and two armoured divisions. German forces had concentrated heavily against the northern side of the bridgehead, while the American attack broke more rapidly east and south-east. The resulting freedom of movement allowed 12th Army Group to turn part of First Army toward the Ruhr without halting the wider advance into Germany.

On 28 March Omar Bradley redirected First Army north toward Paderborn while Third Army continued toward Kassel. The next day Walter Model reported that Army Group B was losing contact with Fifteenth Army and asked to withdraw from the Ruhr before the encirclement closed, proposing attacks from the Winterberg area and from farther east to open movement. Albert Kesselring authorised attacks but enforced Hitler’s order to hold the Ruhr. Army Group B therefore remained tied to the industrial region while the American pincers approached from north and south.

The southern pincer then met its hardest local resistance near Paderborn. An improvised German defence around the training grounds included SS Panzerbrigade Westfalen, schwere Panzer-Abteilung 507 and other units with heavy tanks, self-propelled guns and Panzerfausts. The 3rd Armored Division was delayed south of the city, and its commander, Major General Maurice Rose, was killed on the evening of 30 March. Late the next day VII Corps commander J. Lawton Collins proposed Lippstadt as a new meeting point. William Simpson sent part of the 2nd Armored Division south-east while a 3rd Armored task force approached from the south; they met east of Lippstadt at about 13:00 on 1 April.

Once the ring closed, the main Allied advance continued east while selected formations reduced Army Group B. First Army assigned III Corps and XVIII Airborne Corps to the southern reduction while other corps moved toward the Weser and Elbe. Ninth Army returned from 21st Army Group to Bradley’s 12th Army Group on 4 April and attacked south through the northern sector. The pocket had become a containment and reduction problem inside a campaign already moving far beyond the Ruhr.

American armoured columns depended on Shermans, half-tracks, tank destroyers, trucks and motorised infantry using the same road network. Their advantage came from sustaining movement around local resistance and keeping infantry close to the spearheads. The 3rd Armored Division also had a small number of new T26E3 Pershings; three accompanied the task force moving toward Paderborn while Shermans remained the division’s principal tanks.

Around Paderborn the German defence briefly concentrated heavier armour than the Americans usually encountered during the reduction. MacDonald’s official history describes roughly sixty Tiger and Panther tanks in the broader improvised force, along with self-propelled guns and Panzerfaust teams. Local documentation identifies Tiger II tanks of schwere Panzer-Abteilung 507 among the defenders. Several formations and training establishments contributed to this mixed armoured defence.

After the pocket closed, smaller weapons appeared more often than massed armour. Before dawn on 1 April, a German attack at Medebach included four tanks; a U.S. 57 mm antitank gun destroyed one and a bazooka team another. Later roadblocks combined infantry with tanks, assault guns, 20 mm flak weapons and Panzerfausts. Clearer weather from 7 April also returned Ninth Air Force fighter-bombers to the battle, while artillery supplied much of the sustained firepower as American formations converged.

MacDonald’s detailed U.S. Army history gives about 317,000 German prisoners for the Ruhr Pocket. For Ninth Army’s reduction north of the Ruhr, it records 341 killed, 121 missing and fewer than 2,000 wounded. It estimates First Army losses at roughly three times Ninth Army’s total without providing a separate audited figure. These categories are kept distinct because they cover different commands and different methods of counting.

The pocket also contained large populations of foreign forced labourers and displaced civilians. As towns changed hands, thousands moved onto roads already carrying combat traffic, prisoners and supply columns. MacDonald records roughly 16,000 foreign workers in Hagen and about 30,000 in Wuppertal alone. Their release therefore became an immediate transport, food, shelter and medical problem for the occupying forces.

Stalag VI-A at Hemer exposed the most concentrated prisoner-of-war emergency on the page. The 7th Armored Division recorded 23,302 Allied prisoners on 14 April, including 19,411 Soviet prisoners. Its after-action record described severe hunger, overcrowding and widespread infectious disease. American officers initially kept the camp population under controlled guard while medical and relief arrangements were organised, because an uncontrolled release into the active battle area would have deepened the emergency.

Charles B. MacDonald’s The Last Offensive provides the principal operational narrative. It combines U.S. unit records and combat interviews with German postwar manuscripts and interrogations, making it especially useful for reconstructing decisions and movements on both sides. Where surviving records support only an estimate, its figures are treated here with the same limits.

The 7th Armored Division’s April 1945 after-action record supplies the contemporary count and medical description for Stalag VI-A. Kreismuseum Wewelsburg’s local research helps identify the German formations and heavy armour around Paderborn and the circumstances of Maurice Rose’s death. MacDonald’s chronology places Gustav-Adolf von Zangen’s surrender on 13 April; later summaries sometimes give 14 April.