Operation Queen

Operation Queen
Part of World War II
Date 16 November – 16 December 1944 Location Rur valley and environs, Germany Result German defensive victory
Belligerents
United States  United Kingdom	Germany
Commanders and leaders
Omar Bradley Courtney Hodges William Hood Simpson	Walter Model Gustav-Adolf von Zangen Erich Brandenberger
Strength
First U.S. Army Ninth U.S. Army	15th Army 7th Army
Casualties and losses
~38,500 overall ~340 tanks	Casualties equal to the Allies

Operation Queen was an American operation during World War II at the Western Front at the German Siegfried Line.

The operation was aimed against the Rur River, as a staging point for a subsequent thrust over the river to the Rhine into Germany. It was conducted by the First and Ninth U.S. Armies.

The offensive commenced on 16 November 1944 with one of the heaviest Allied tactical bombings of the war. However, Allied advance was unexpectedly slow, against heavy German resistance, especially in the Hürtgen Forest through which the main thrust of the offensive was carried out. By mid-December the Allies finally reached the Rur and tried to capture its important dams, when the Germans launched their own offensive dubbed Wacht am Rhein. The ensuing Battle of the Bulge led to the immediate cessation of the Allied offensive efforts into Germany until February 1945.

In June 1944, the Allies conducted the invasion in Northern France and opened a second front. After the Allied breakout from Normandy, the German Wehrmacht was involved in a string of disastrous battles in July and August, most notably the Falaise pocket. Following those events, the German defense in northern and western France disintegrated, leading to a hasty retreat of the German forces. The rapid Allied advance together with the ongoing march of the Red Army in the east let the Allied High command believe that the Wehrmacht was about to collapse and total victory could be achieved by Christmas 1944. The Allies therefore launched a high risk plan for a direct thrust through the Netherlands into Germany, called Operation Market Garden. This overly ambitious plan failed, as the Wehrmacht was able to reorganize itself and consolidate its strength. By mid-September, the Allied advance abruptly ended, as the Allies suffered from a logistics crisis, outrunning their supply lines. This gave the Germans further time to prepare for the upcoming Allied offensives. The Germans now could man the fortifications of the Westwall (Siegfried Line), although its old bunkers were more a symbolic than a real obstacle for the Allies.

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