Information included with the photograph,"Debris spilled from bombed buildings of Mainz fills a street of the ancient Rhine River city captured by troops of the 80th Division, Third u.S. Army, March 23, 1945. Mainz, birthplace of Johannes Gutemberg, credited with the development of printing in the 15th Century, was a strategic Nazi manufacturing center of machinery and chemicals."
U.S. Army troops pushed through German resistance in the Spring of 1945. Many towns such as this were bombed from the air and assualted by ground forces.
Dead Horses and Wrecked Vehicles of German Convoy, Lus, Germany
Date:
ca. 1945
Description:
Information included on back: "Dead horses and wrecked vehicles of German convoy are strewn along road in vicinity of Lus, Germany. Following attack on convoy by American Dive Bombers. Germans were trying to escape from encirclement by troops of the 3rd and 7th U.S. Armies." (U.S. Signal Corps).
Information included on back: "Two Aged German women with civilian escorts are guided by a Ninth U.S. Army soldier (right, foreground) to Allied Military Government authorities in Erkelenz, Germany, for registration February 27, 1945, following capture of the town by Ninth Army forces driving toward the Rhine. Erkelenz is east of the Roer River, nine miles southwest of Munchen-Gladbach." (U.S. Signal Corps).
U.S. Bombs and Shells Leave German Town in Ruins, Duren, Germany
Date:
ca. 1945
Description:
Part of the information included on back: "German town near Duren on the Roer River, important junction point of the road leading to Cologne and the Rhine lies shell-wrecked and bombed to ruins February 21, 1945 as U.S. troops advanced deeper into Germany."(U.S. Signal Corps).
Part of information included on back: "A knocked-out American tank stands behind a small, leveled building in captured Heilbronn. German industrial city which was virtually demolished prior to its occupation . . ." (U.S. Signal Corps).
German Girls in Captured Town, Rittersdorf, Germany
Date:
ca. 1945
Description:
Information included on back: "Two young women of captured Rittersdorf, Germany, step over an abandoned Nazi rifle as they carry water in the Reich town, seized by troops of the Third U.S. Army February 26, 1945. The town was cleared by American soldiers driving to Bitburg, last important German road center west of the Rhine in the Third Army battle sector."