Ludendorff Bridge

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Ludendorff Bridge between March 8 and 10, 1945
The bridge on March 11, 1945
Structural damage in the area of ​​the northern river pillar (March 1945)
US military crosses the Ludendorff Bridge
The bridge on March 17, 1945 four hours before it collapsed
The bridge on March 17, 1945 after the collapse
Bridgehead in Remagen (1950)

The Ludendorff Bridge , known as the Remagen Bridge , was a double-track railway bridge over the Rhine between Remagen and Erpel . It was commissioned for military reasons in 1916, during World War I , and was named after General Erich Ludendorff on May 1, 1918 . The inauguration took place on August 15, 1918. Due to difficulties in building the tunnel through the Erpeler Ley and the cut in Erpel, the rails could not be laid until mid-1919. The Cologne Railway Directorate took over the bridge on July 23, 1919, and operations including the feeder routes followed on September 1, 1919. The bridge was the last major construction project of the Prussian State Railways .

In the final phase of World War II , it was the first allied crossing over the Rhine. She gained particular fame through the 1969 US war film The Bridge of Remagen . When Army Group B under General Field Marshal Walter Model withdrew to the right side of the Rhine in 1945, the Wehrmacht leadership wanted all Rhine bridges to be blown up. At the Ludendorff Bridge, however, less (300 kg instead of 600 kg) and less efficient explosives ( Donarit instead of dynamite ) were used than planned. During the demolition, the bridge was briefly lifted from its camps , but not destroyed, which enabled Western Allied troops to cross the Rhine at this point and to accelerate their advance towards the Ruhr area . Wehrmacht soldiers tried in vain to destroy the bridge in the days after the conquest. This finally collapsed on March 17, 1945, probably due to the unsuccessful demolition and the fighting of the previous days. Hitler had several officers who were held responsible for the lack of destruction sentenced by a court martial and shot.

In the post-war period , the Deutsche Bundesbahn considered rebuilding the bridge; In 1960 a cost forecast was made. After the electrification of the left and right Rhine routes (until May 1962) these plans were dropped; the feeder tracks in Remagen and Erpel, which had been kept free until then, were later abandoned. The bridge's piers were removed from the river bed in the summer of 1976. All that remains today are the bridge towers on both sides and parts of the access ramp. Like the Erpeler railway tunnel, they are under monument protection .

history

Ludendorff Bridge

The Ludendorff Bridge existed from 1918 to 1945. Its bridge towers are on the left bank of the Rhine at the southern end of the Remagener Rhein-Promenade and on the right bank of the Rhine on the southern outskirts of Erpel at the foot of the Erpeler Ley . As part of the Schlieffen plan , a bridge was planned at this point as early as 1912, as was the Kronprinzenbrücke near Urmitz and the Hindenburgbrücke near Rüdesheim . The bridge was only built between 1916 and 1918 at the urging of the German generals. It was part of a "family of bridges" made up of three similar railway bridges over the Rhine and was supposed to serve primarily as a connection from the right Rhine route over the Ahr Valley Railway to the Eifel Railway and to improve supplies to the western front . On April 25, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II named the newly built Rhine Bridge the Ludendorff Bridge in honor of the First Quartermaster, General of the Infantry Erich Ludendorff , and it was put into service on May 1, 1918. The City Council Remagen appointed the next day Ludendorff at an extraordinary meeting to honor citizens . The only soldiers who crossed it were returnees. After the completion of the tunnel through the Erpeler Ley, the railway line opened on September 1, 1919.

The bridge was a total of 398 meters long. In the foreland on the left bank of the Rhine, it had two massive vault openings, each with 30 m clear width, and a 325.41 m long steel bridge in the river area. This consisted of an arched bridge construction in the middle, flanked on both sides by parallel-chorded trusses with a carriageway below. The two- hinged truss arched girders with tie and cantilever arms had a span of 156.21 m, the truss girders each had a span of 84.6 m. The highest point of the bridge arch was 28.5 m above the roadway. The clear height above the normal water level of the Rhine was 14.8 m. The 4,642 t steel bridge cost around 2.1 million marks. The construction was similar to the Rhine bridges between Rüdesheim am Rhein and Bingen- Kempten ("Hindenburg Bridge") and between Urmitz and Neuwied - Engers ("Kronprinzen Bridge") , which were also built for strategic military reasons . The Mannheim architect Karl Wiener was involved in the architectural design of the bridge. There was a pedestrian walkway on both sides.

The work on the bridge piers and vaults was carried out by the construction companies Grün & Bilfinger and Philipp Holzmann , the steel bridge over the river was built by the MAN plant in Gustavsburg . Russian prisoners of war were also used in the construction work. Since the bridge was a militarily important structure, both abutments of the bridge were provided with the fortress-like bridgeheads that are still preserved today. These towers are equipped with loopholes , troop accommodation for the bridge crews and storage facilities. From the flat roofs you have an excellent view of the entire valley. The bridge could quickly be made usable for foot troops and road vehicles by covering the railway sleepers with wooden planks.

After the First World War , only a few trains rolled over the Rhine; Pedestrians liked to use the connection from Remagen to get to the Erpel opposite . In times of peace the bridge was a tourist symbol of the Rhineland . It was carefully prepared by the pioneers of the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht for any destruction that might become necessary: ​​at selected points there was space for a total of 600 kg of pioneer explosives , the ignition of which would cause it to collapse.

In 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War, the bridge was taken over by a bridge guard company and prepared for demolition. After the Wehrmacht's successful campaign in the west - it began on May 10, 1940 and ended on June 22 with the occupation of northern France - the explosives were removed again and taken to a camp near Darmstadt . A significance for the war could not be foreseen.

On October 19, 1944, the bridge was hit by a heavy Allied bomb; it was bombed again on December 29, 1944 and at the end of January 1945.

Preparation of the demolition

After the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, 600 kg of TNT had been brought from Darmstadt; But the explosives, which were specially poured into different shapes, were used elsewhere by the Wehrmacht, so that alternative solutions had to be used. In addition, a so-called rapid charge was planned, which was to be ignited "when accelerated ignition is necessary, for example in the event that the planned detonation preparations are disrupted by the enemy." 600 kg of explosives would also have been required for this rapid detonation. According to the orders, the explosives could not be attached to the bridge until the enemy was closer than eight kilometers to the bridge. This was supposed to prevent an unintentional demolition, as happened at the Mülheimer bridge in Cologne by bombs.

The German combat commandant of Remagen, Captain Wilhelm Bratge, wanted to carry out the demolition as early as possible. On the morning of March 7, 1945, he had only 36 soldiers on the bridge. The troops of the 1st US Army pushed past Remagen to the north and south, as they expected the bridge to be blown up soon. Part of the population sought refuge in the railway tunnel that connects to the bridge on the right bank of the Rhine. The transfer of command during the night to Major Johann Scheller , the adjutant of the LXVII deployed between Remagen and Schleiden , caused confusion on the German side . Army corps under Otto Hitzfeld , which Captain Bratge only found out about on March 7th at 11:00. Scheller was commissioned by his commanding general to take on the important task on the bridgehead. The major wanted to keep the bridge open as long as possible so that as many German soldiers and their heavy equipment as possible (some tanks and artillery pieces) could cross the bridge. The bridge officer in charge, Captain Friesenhahn, requested 600 kg of pioneer explosives, but at 11:00 a.m. received only 300 kg of Donarit , a considerably weaker industrial explosive such as that used in mining . He tried to use it for a rapid blast on the right bank of the Rhine.

Attempted demolition and capture by the Allies

Karl H. Timmermann

On March 7, 1945 at 1 p.m., a small vanguard of the 9th US Armored Division led by the 22-year-old 2nd Lieutenant Karl H. Timmermann of German descent managed to reach the completely intact bridge. Surprised, he immediately informed the commander of Combat Group B of the US 9th Armored Division , General William M. Hoge, about the operational bridge. This ordered the immediate attack and its capture. At 1:40 p.m., the Allied soldiers began to attack the bridge. The first blast by the Germans, who detonated some of the charges, tore a ten-meter-wide crater in the ramp on the left bank of the Rhine. At 3:40 p.m., on the orders of Major Hans Scheller, the Germans tried to blow up the bridge. She rose a little, but fell back into her bed . Lieutenant Timmermann and twelve other soldiers were later awarded the " Distinguished Service Cross " for conquering the bridge . Three soldiers ran to the bridge to cut explosive cables; at least one of them did so in machine gun fire.

8,000 soldiers crossed the Rhine in an easterly direction within 24 hours. General Eisenhower ordered the Commander in Chief of the 12th Army Group, Omar N. Bradley , to move as many divisions as possible to the other bank of the Rhine, even if that thwarted the original plans. He is said to have exclaimed: "The bridge is worth its weight in gold". From March 7 to the collapse on March 17, 1945, the Allies were able to cross 18  regiments over the intact Remagen bridge. Immediately after the Allied capture, US pioneers attempted to repair the bridge's weakened structure. In addition, three additional pontoon bridges were built.

German reactions to ingestion

Between March 8 and 9, 1945, Wehrmacht soldiers shot around 3,000 grenades on the bridge, but did not hit them. On March 10, 1945, a German counterattack by the LXVII began. Army corps, which was too weak to be successful. The German army command tried in the following days to have the bridge destroyed by combat swimmers . They should attach explosives to the river pillars below the waterline. However, they could be spotted in good time through powerful searchlights. In addition, the Luftwaffe tried in vain from March 8 to 12, 1945 to collapse the bridge by bombing it from the air. On March 12, 1945, the climax of the air battle, the Americans shot down 26 aircraft and damaged nine more of a total of 91 attacking aircraft. The Germans used the Arado Ar 234 jet bomber for the first time , the first operational - and actually used - jet-powered bomber in the world. The Karl mortar (caliber 540 mm) that was brought in also missed its target and had to stop firing after a short time due to technical problems. Between March 11th and 17th, the SS throwing division 500 shot down eleven V2 rockets at the bridgehead from their position north of Hellendoorn in the Netherlands . A rocket hit a house east of the bridge around 270 m away and shook it noticeably. Three US soldiers were killed and fifteen wounded. Three rockets landed not far from the bridge in the Rhine, five more to the west of the bridge.

On March 9, 1945, Hitler set up the Flying Stand trial West , which, chaired by Lieutenant General Rudolf Huebner, sentenced five officers to death on March 13 and 14, 1945, and four of them, including Major Scheller, for "cowardice" and "breach of duty" , immediately after the judgment in Westerwald (two of them in Rimbach, two in Oberirsen ) shoot allowed. They were buried on the war cemetery in Birnbach (coordinates: 50 ° 42 ′ 22.5 ″  N , 7 ° 35 ′ 11.8 ″  E ).

Gravestone in Birnbach - Flying Standjury - Ludendorff Bridge Remagen.jpg

Captain Wilhelm Bratge, who was also sentenced to death, survived as he was in US captivity. Field Marshal General Gerd von Rundstedt was also replaced as Commander in Chief West by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring . Kesselring had the judgment announced throughout the armed forces by daily order :

“I hereby again order that every failure is to be judged and dealt with in the shortest possible way . I expect the sharpest cracks and the greatest severity from the stand courts. "

On the initiative of Major Scheller's widow Lisel Scheller-Gottschalk, the Koblenz public prosecutor's office investigated for years against the members of the “flying stand trial” for “crimes against humanity”; In 1951 she stopped the proceedings for lack of “proof of guilt”. Scheller-Gottschalk then pursued the reversal of the sentence against her husband and finally achieved his full legal rehabilitation: Major Scheller was acquitted in February 1967 in a retrial at the Landshut Regional Court .

Collapse of the bridge

Filming before and after the collapse (March 14th to 17th)

On March 17, 1945, the heavily damaged bridge collapsed due to overload. 32 American pioneers were killed (only ten bodies could be recovered); there were also 63 injured. Only the bridge piers remained. Because of the damage caused by the blast attempts and the artillery fire, the bridge was closed to military traffic a few days after it was captured in order to carry out repairs. At the same time, the Americans gradually built a total of five pontoon bridges over the Rhine between Niederbreisig / Bad Hönningen and Oberwinter / Unkel in order to ensure the supply of the bridgehead on the right bank of the Rhine. The longest of them, the Victor Bridge between Niederbreisig and Bad Hönningen, was 1,370 feet (420 meters) long; it went into operation on March 22, 1945 at 8 p.m. Between Kripp and Linz , the Rhine was spanned by the "Rozisch-Blackburn-Thompkins Bridge". At the end of May 1945 these temporary bridges were dismantled.

The two pillars of the bridge were initially preserved after the collapse and were dismantled in the summer of 1976, as they were an obstacle to navigation on the Rhine.

Today's use of the bridge portals

Photo of the former bridge piers (Rhine flight 1953)

A Peace Museum has been set up inside the bridge towers on the Remagen side since March 7, 1980 . The initiator of the museum was the long-time mayor of Remagen, Hans Peter Kürten, who on March 7, 1978, sold small stones from fragments of the bridge's piers, which had only been removed in 1976, as souvenirs. The response was remarkable. With the income and the many photos and other original documents, he was able to set up the museum. The bridge stones are still available in the museum with a certificate of authenticity.

The bridge portal on the right bank of the Rhine near Erpel has not changed much since the end of the war. Access to the towers is walled up from one side and a steel door from the other. The portal was sold by the Deutsche Bundesbahn to the local community of Erpel in March 1988 for a symbolic price and is now used for cultural events. In September 2012, the Erpeler Kulturkreis "Ad Erpelle" acquired the former railway tunnel behind the bridge portal and adjacent land from Deutsche Bahn for a symbolic price of one euro in order to maintain its public accessibility and to continue to use it culturally. In the spring of 2015, the renovation of the Erpeler bridge portal should begin with an expected cost of 1.4 million euros. In July 2015, it was transferred to the Federal Railroad Assets through the reversal of the purchase agreement from 1988 ; the renovation was planned for 2016 at the earliest.

In May 2018 the building was put up for public sale by the Federal Railway Administration. There are plans to rebuild the bridge structure as a suspension bridge between the towers for pedestrians and cyclists.

Feature film, drama, exhibitions

  • On March 10, 1967, ZDF broadcast the documentary "Die Brücke von Remagen" by Hellmut Kotschenreuther.
  • In 1969 David L. Wolper produced the American film The Bridge at Remagen . Although it shows the real historical background, it is otherwise freely designed. The novel Die Brücke von Remagen by Rolf Palm (1985) is closer to the actual events .
  • In October 2006 the play Die Brücke was premiered based on the novel by Rolf Palm. The entire piece was played at the original location in the Erpeler Tunnel, in a newly created theater and concert room in the former railway tunnel behind the bridge towers (on the right bank of the Rhine). The play was staged by the artistic director of the Rhineland-Palatinate state theater , Walter Ullrich . In August and September 2015 the piece was performed there in the eighth season. The bridge was performed again in 2017 and 2018 . In 2017 there were 14 regular performances and two special performances, all of which were sold out.
  • Occasionally the Erpeler side of the bridge is also used for exhibitions, for example as part of a bridge festival , which took place in 2007 and 2009 and used all five floors of the towers and the theater and concert room in the railway tunnel.
  • In 1995 , Günther Oellers created a memorial for international understanding in Neutraubling near Regensburg from rubble stones from the bridge .

  • View from the northwest of the bridged Rhine passage

  • Bridgehead in Remagen (2005)

  • Bridgehead in Remagen (2005)

  • Bridgehead in Remagen and Erpel (2007)

  • Ship loading station at the former bridge location

  • South tower on the west bank photographed from the Rhine side (2011)

  • South tower on the west bank photographed from the land side (2011)

  • Towers on the west bank photographed from the land side (2011)

  • Memorial plaque on the south tower, west bank (1990)

  • German bomb in the Bridge Museum (1990)

  • Memorial in Neutraubling, created from stones from the destroyed bridge (Oellers, 1995)

literature

The remains important book published in 1957 on the bridge of policy professor and later deputy Ken Hechler , entitled The Bridge at Remagen: The Amazing Story of March 7, 1945, the Day the Rhine River What Crossed . 3rd edition 1998, ISBN 0-89141-860-1 . Presidio Pr. (As a US Army historian, Hechler had the opportunity to interview many of those involved just a few days after the event. However, this book was not translated into German. It was published by the Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, ISBN 092952179X . 1993, and is now also available as paperback). The German counterpart was written in 1993 by Lothar Brüne and Jakob Weiler (among others) with their investigation: Remagen in March 1945 - A Documentation on the Final Phase of the Second World War . ISBN 3-9803385-9-2 .

  • Ken Hechler: Hero of the Rhine - The Karl Timmermann Story. Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, Missoula, Montana, 2004.
  • L. Brüne, J. Weiler: Remagen in March 1945 . In: H.-G. Borck and HW Herrmann (eds.): Yearbook for West German State History , 21st year 1995, pp. 503-540.
  • Paul Berben, Bernard Iselin: Remagen, le pont de la chance, 7 mars 1945. Laffont, 1970 (in French)
  • Stars & Stripes (Pub.): The 9th: The Story of the 9th Armored Division. Paris in 1944–1945. (the history of the 9th Armored Division; Engl.)
  • Wolfgang Gückelhorn: March 7, 1945. The miracle of Remagen. Contemporary history guide to the events that made war history in March 1945. (Documentation) Helios, Aachen 2008, ISBN 978-3-938208-65-6 .
  • Rolf Palm : The Remagen Bridge, the fight for the last Rhine crossing - a dramatic piece of German contemporary history . (historical novel). Scherz, Bern / Munich 1985, ISBN 3-502-16552-1 .
  • Rolf Palm: The Remagen Bridge and the story of the Black Madonna from the "Golden Mile". The documentary report on the dramatic events on the Rhine in spring 1945 . Der Rheinländer, Unkel 2010, ISBN 978-3-942035-12-5 (updated, revised and greatly expanded new version of the first edition).
  • Bernd Franco Hoffmann: 111 must-see railroad locations in the Rhineland . Emons-Verlag, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-7408-0344-5 .

Web links

Commons : Ludendorff Bridge  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volkhard Stern: The bridge from Remagen . In: Köln-Bonner Verkehrsmagazin, issue 11/2009, online
  2. ^ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - Neuwied district. Mainz 2019, p. 16 (PDF; 6.4 MB).
  3. ^ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - Ahrweiler district. Mainz 2020, p. 57 (PDF; 5.1 MB).
  4. ↑ Telegram from the headquarters on April 25, 1918
  5. ^ Hans-Wolfgang Scharf: Eisenbahn-Rheinbrücken in Deutschland , EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2003, ISBN 3-88255-689-7 , p. 190.
  6. ↑ L. Brüne, J. Weiler: Remagen in March 1945 . See references
  7. ↑ page 40
  8. ↑ a b The Rhine River Crossings PDF, 13 pages ( Memento from November 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ named here
  10. ↑ Eyewitness report , accessed November 2013
  11. ^ US Army in World War II - The last Offensive - Chapter XI: A Rhine Bridge at Remagen (p. 228): [1] ; Retrieved March 24, 2012.
  12. ^ Andreas Kunz: Wehrmacht and defeat. The armed power in the final phase of the National Socialist rule 1944-1945 , series of publications of the Military History Research Office , vol. 64, Munich 2005, p. 279, ISBN 3-486-57673-9
  13. ^ The Ludendorff Bridge Erpel , accessed on March 7, 2011.
  14. ↑ Rhine bridges that are already gone on Drehscheibe-Foren.de from September 17, 2005, accessed on March 7, 2011.
  15. ↑ http://www.bruecke-remagen.de/
  16. ↑ Text of the certificate at www.bruecke-remagen.de (as of July 27, 2015)
  17. ↑ Art and culture group "Ad Erpelle" buys former railway tunnel , General-Anzeiger , September 3, 2012
  18. ↑ In 2013 there will be Theater im Tunnel again , General-Anzeiger , September 15, 2012
  19. ↑ Preservation of the monument should cost 1.4 million euros , General-Anzeiger , November 11, 2014
  20. ↑ Erpel returns the "present" , General-Anzeiger , July 1st, 2015
  21. ↑ Application page , accessed on May 7, 2018.
  22. ↑ Towers of the Remagen Bridge are for sale. In: Der Spiegel. May 7, 2018, accessed May 4, 2020 .
  23. ^ "Bridge of Remagen": Study for a suspension bridge between towers. In: Süddeutsche.de. July 9, 2019, accessed May 4, 2020 .
  24. ↑ Day - TV programs. Retrieved June 8, 2020 .
  25. ↑ The bridge. (No longer available online.) Landesbühne Rheinland-Pfalz in the Schlosstheater Neuwied, archived from the original on September 19, 2015 ; accessed on March 20, 2016 .
  26. ↑ News. Retrieved June 11, 2018 .
The next bridge upstream:
Raiffeisenbrücke (Neuwied) 		Bridges over the Rhine The next bridge downstream:
Konrad-Adenauer-Brücke (Bonn)

Coordinates: 50 ° 34 ′ 45 ″  N , 7 ° 14 ′ 39 ″  E