FH2 Campaign #15 - The Last Winter: Battle #11 Hochwald

CMP FH2 Campaign #15: The Last Winter
 

Battle #11: Hochwald

History

"In February 1945, there was little left for most of the Wehrmacht to go home to. The Soviets were an unstoppable juggernaut rumbling out of the East and overrunning desperate outnumbered Nazis. The Allies had opened a second front in Occupied France and were squeezing the Nazis out of Western Europe. The Nazi’s lost their western ports, thusly they suffered an attenuated supply line, factories that were cramped desperate underground organizations and most of the countryside was in a state of perpetual anomie. Few know that the heroes who opened the gate into Germany were really Canadian and British forces who were the first to cross the Rhine at Xanten.
The Nazis of course stole the Rhineland because Hitler felt it had been once German land, and now a replevin made possible by the Treaty of Versailles. As I have stated before, the Wehrmacht could hurt you as badly in retreat as they could on the offensive. They were well organized, highly disciplined, blooded and ideologically motivated to bring down as many invaders as they could. This was the irony. After having invaded a dozen or more countries and inflicting millions of casualties, they now saw themselves as victims, defending the homeland.

The Battle of Hochwald Gap was almost as big as Normandy, but with three times the number of casualties. The Canadians assembled a force of 90,000 infantry, 1300 artillery guns and over 1000 tanks, most attached to the Canadian 2nd Division. They faced a force of about 10,000, with a handful of Panzer Mk. Vs, less than 100 Panzer Mk. VIs and a handful of PAK 28 anti tank guns. The Battle itself a was masterpiece of defensive combat by Germans who intimately knew their own territory and set up one tank trap after another. Outnumbered hopelessly, the German fought about as well one could expect.

The Canadians, under the Command of Guy Simmonds, had M4 Shermans armed with a short-barreled 75mm gun and just 2 inches of armor. One in five of the Canadian tanks were Fireflies, basically an M4 Sherman with a British 17 pounder, capable of stopping a Panzer. The short-barreled 75 mm could do little against the Tigers or the Panthers firing against their front plating armor. That said, they had ten times the number of tanks, and like Stalin said “Quantity is a quality all itself”."
 

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Map edited by @GeoPat