The Rhine Crossings 1945

By Ken Ford and Howard Gerrard

'The last great heave of war,' according to Churchill, took place with the crossing of the Rhine in 1945. No invading army had crossed this great river since Napoleon's in 1805 and the task fell to Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Opposing them were the forces of a failing fascist regime, including battalions of old men and boys, strengthened by several formations of crack troops including paratroopers and Panzer Grenadiers. With an elaborate description of the combined Allied attack, second in magnitude only to the Normandy invasion, this book charts the history of the last great set-piece battle of the war that ultimately brought the defeat of Hitler's Nazi regime one step closer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781849087230

Ken Ford

Ken Ford was born in Hampshire in 1943. He trained as an engineer and spent almost thirty years in the telecommunications industry. He now spends his time as an author and a bookseller specialising in military history. He has written a number of books on various Second World War subjects. Ken now lives in Southampton.

Reviews for The Rhine Crossings 1945

[ericcostello-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Solid entry in Osprey's Campaign series, this one looking at the crossings by Anglo-American forces of the Rhine River, in March of 1945. While the battle does not have the drama of other campaigns (probably the sole drawback for this entry), Ford does an admirable job of laying out how the battle was set up, and how it was carried out.