What was Rhineland, it is on the back of my grandfather's discharge paper under the 'Battles and Campaigns' section. Thanks.
The Rhineland was the industrial heartland of Germany with abundant supplies of coal and was an area of heavy industry. The Rhineland is situated around Dortmund, Essen and Dusseldorf. It was the primary objective following the Normandy landings the area was encirled by the US 1st and 9th Armies in April 1945 finally falling on the 18th of April.
He might have been attached to the US 1st or 9th Armies as the US 7th Army went to Alsace and Lorraine then on to Southern Germany.
There may be some confusion here between the Rhineland and the Ruhr. The Rhineland is the part of Germany between the Rhine and the German border. US forces waged a long and sometimes bitter campaign here from September 1944 through to the Rhine crossings in 1945 and I would include such battles as the bloody Huertgen Forest in the campaign. The US 7th Army entered the Rhineland area on their advance from the south, reaching beyond Worms and Mannheim before commencing their swing south to Bavaria. After crossing the Rhine in 1945, the US 1st Army encircled the Ruhr from the south, while the US 9th Army, on the right flank of the British 21st Army Group, did so from the north, in a pincer movement to form the Ruhr pocket. Although the German forces in the pocket held out nearly to the end, with the Ruhr encircled the heartland of German coal and munitions production was cut off from the rest of Germany, thus hastening the end of the war.
All the American fighting in the area between the German border and the Rhine River, from the end of the Battle of the Bulge until the Rhine Crossing, is considered the "Rhineland" battle for service records and histories.
