1 Army Corps (France) - France 1944

France 1944

Following the successful landings in southern France, the headquarters of the 1st Army Corps was assembled at Aix, France on September 1, 1944 to command troops as a subordinate corps of the French First Army. 1st Army Corps was now under the command of Lieutenant General Émile Béthouart, a veteran of the 1940 campaign in Norway and an officer who had actively assisted the Allied landings in French North Africa in November 1942. For the remainder of the war in Europe, many French divisions would be subordinated to 1st Army Corps, but the divisions that spent the most time with the corps were the 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division (2e DIM), the 9th Colonial Infantry Division (9e DIC), the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division (4e DMM), and the 1st Armoured Division (1re DB).

1st Army Corps drove north along the east bank of the Rhône River, but the push lacked strength as the 4e DMM was still deploying to France (and would be further engaged securing the alpine frontier with Italy for several months) and the 1re DB was still assembling in southern France. In mid-September, the corps secured the Lomont Mountains, a range about 130 kilometers (81 mi) long running from the Doubs River to the Swiss border. German resistance was spotty in September, but rapidly coalesced in front of the Belfort Gap, a corridor of relatively flat terrain that lies between the Vosges Mountains and the Swiss frontier and that is a gateway to the Rhine River. Operating with one division and experiencing the same logistics problems as other Allied units in Europe, the advance of the 1st Army Corps was slowed in front of the Belfort Gap by the German 11. Panzer-Division.

Compounding the distance that supplies had to travel from the ports in southern France were the north-south railway lines with destroyed bridges and sections of track. Early October 1944 also saw the unseasonably early arrival of cold and wet weather more characteristic of November. All of these factors served to force a halt to the 1st Army Corps' advance in October while the corps improved its supply situations and resolved manpower issues caused by the French high command's decision to rotate the Senegalese troops to the south and replace them with FFI manpower. The supply situation had improved by early November, coinciding with orders from General Eisenhower, now in charge of all Allied forces in northwestern Europe, directing a general offensive all along the Western Front.

Believing that the relative inactivity of 1st Army Corps meant the corps was digging in for the winter, the Germans reduced their forces in the Belfort Gap to a single, not-at-full strength infantry division. The 1st Army Corps launched their attack to force the Belfort Gap on November 13, 1944. By a stroke of fate, the French attack caught the German division commander near the front lines, who perished under a hail of Moroccan gunfire. The same attack narrowly missed capturing the commander of the German IV. Luftwaffen-Feldkorps. Although desperate German troops formed islands of resistance, most notably at the fortified city of Belfort, troops of the 2e DIM, 9e DIC, and the 1re DB pushed through gaps in the German lines, disrupting their defense and keeping the battle mobile. French tanks moved through the Belfort Gap and reached the Rhine River at Huningue on November 19.

The battle cut off the German 308. Grenadier-Regiment on November 24, forcing the German troops to either surrender or intern themselves in Switzerland. On November 25, 1st Army Corps units liberated both Mulhouse (taken by a surprise armored drive) and Belfort (taken by assault of the 2e DIM). Realizing the German defense had been too static for their own good, General De Lattre (commander of the French First Army) directed both corps of his army to close on Burnhaupt in order to encircle the German LXIII. Armeekorps (the former IV. Luftwaffe Korps). This maneuver succeeded on November 28, 1944 and resulted in the capture of over 10,000 German troops, crippling the LXIII. Armeekorps. French losses, however, had also been significant, and plans to immediately clear the Alsatian Plain of German forces had to be shelved while both sides gathered strength for the next battles.

The November offensives of the French First Army and the U.S. Seventh Army had collapsed the German presence in Alsace to a roughly circular pocket around the town of Colmar on the Alsatian Plain. This Colmar Pocket contained the German 19. Armee. As the southern-most corps of Allied forces in northwestern Europe, the French 1st Army Corps now faced the Rhine at Huningue and held Mulhouse and the southern boundary of the Colmar Pocket. A French offensive in mid-December designed to collapse the Colmar Pocket failed for lack of offensive power and the requirement to cover more of the Allied front line as U.S. units were shifted north in response to the Ardennes Offensive. On January 1, 1945, the Germans launched Operation Nordwind, an offensive with the goal of recapturing Alsace. After the U.S. Seventh and French First Armies had held and turned back this offensive, the Allies were ready to reduce the Colmar Pocket once and for all.

The 1st Army Corps led the attack against the Colmar Pocket on January 20, 1945. Fighting in woodlands and dense urban areas, the 1st Army Corps attack stalled after the first day, meeting a German defense in depth and attracting German 19. Armee reinforcements. By the end of the month, however, other attacks by U.S. and French forces against the Colmar Pocket had forced the Germans to redistribute their troops, and an early February attack by the 1st Army Corps moved north through weak German resistance, reaching the bridge over the Rhine at Chalampé and making contact with the U.S. XXI Corps at Rouffach, south of Colmar. The final German forces in the 1st Army Corps area retreated over the Rhine into Baden on February 9, 1945. Thereafter, the thrust of the Allied offensive moved to the north, and the 1st Army Corps was assigned the defense of the Rhine River from the area south of Strasbourg to the Swiss frontier until mid-April, 1945.