Patton crossed the Rhine at Nierstein before Field Marshal Montgomery's Operation Plunder ever fired a shell — nine hours, five hundred plywood assault boats, and fewer than twenty casualties, against a river Adolf Hitler had called the last wall protecting the Reich. The Wehrmacht would never hold a fixed defensive line on the Rhine again.
This documentary covers the U.S. Third Army's surprise assault crossing of the Rhine River near Nierstein and Oppenheim on the night of March 22-23, 1945, spearheaded by the 5th Infantry Division's 11th Infantry Regiment under Colonel Paul J. Black, and the command rivalry between Lieutenant General George S. Patton, General Omar Bradley, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery that shaped the final weeks of the war in Europe — from the Saar-Palatinate offensive and the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen through Operation Plunder and Operation Varsity.
Built from after-action reports, engineer crossing logs, division histories, and official U.S. Army records of the campaign in the West.
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