In the extreme south, Devers' 6th Army Group made the most significant Allied gains of November. On 13 November the Seventh Army attacked through the Vosges Mountains. Patch's troops took Sarrebourg and the Saverne Gap on 20 November and, spearheaded by General Jacques P. LeClerc's 2d French Armored Division, reached Strasbourg on 23 November. Within hours, the city was cleared with the Allied forces pushing north and south opposite the Rhine. By 27 November, after repulsing a German counterattack, the Seventh Army had secured a widening and dangerous salient into the German defensive line.
The Rhineland: Operation Market Garden
Third Army tank destroyer in Metz . (National Archives)
To Patch's south, de Lattre's First French Army attacked on 14 November to force the Belfort Gap and expel the Germans from Alsace. From 18-25 November, de Lattre's forces drove the Nazis before them, liberating Belfort; Altkirch, and Mulhouse and reaching the upper Rhine. Only in the High Vosges Mountains, just west of Colmar, did the Germans manage to hang on. Stiffening German resistance, however, stopped the continuing French offensive short of Colmar on 28 November, and de Lattre opted to consolidate his gains in the area of Belfort.
Opposite Devers, the German Nineteenth Army still controlled a large area west of the Rhine between Colmar and Mulhouse, which the Allies soon called the Colmar pocket. But Devers was not particularly worried by the last-ditch German defense of the High Vosges, believing it could be eventually eliminated. Instead, he and his generals focused on forcing the Rhine above Strasbourg--where the Seventh Army had driven a deep, virtually undefended wedge between the Nineteenth and First Armies-and exploiting his army group's success. Eisenhower, however, was more concerned by the Colmar pocket than Devers. Furthermore, the supreme commander clearly believed that the Allied priority of effort still belonged in the north. Hence, he ordered Devers to abandon his plans to move across the Rhine and to reorient his force to attack north, well west of the river. By mid-December, the 6th Army Group thus occupied positions south of Bitche to Wissembourg and then on to the Rhine. From there south to Switzerland, Devers' forces were snugged up against the Rhine with the exception of the Colmar pocket.
The Rhineland: Operation Market Garden
Seventh Army artillerymen, November 1944 . (National Archives)
