The Bridge at Remagen: A Story of World War II

by Ken Hechler

It was a stunning strategic victory of World War II–and one of the most fantastic breaks for the Allies. On March 7, 1945, a small group of American infantrymen, engineers, and tank crews secured the Ludendorff Bridge that crossed the Rhine. The successful mission saved thousands of American lives and spearheaded the invasion of Nazi Germany.

The Bridge at Remagen is the detailed narrative of this surprising but crucial military action, one that stunned the German army. It is also the moving story of men who did not consider themselves heroes, but who performed magnificently under fire. In this amazing true story, Ken Hechler gives you the hour-by-hour account of brilliant military daring, human courage, and almost incredible luck that profoundly changed the course of the war.

Genres: History, World War II, War, Nonfiction, Military History, Military Fiction, American History

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Kenneth William "Ken" Hechler was an American politician and writer. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented West Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1959 to 1977 and was West Virginia Secretary of State from 1985 to 2001.

Of German-American descent, Hechler was born in Roslyn, New York. He held a BA from Swarthmore College, and an MA and PhD from Columbia University in history and government. Hechler served on the faculty of Columbia University, Princeton University, and Barnard College in the years leading up to World War ll.

Hechler held a series of minor appointed positions in the federal civil service until he was drafted into the United States Army during World War II in July, 1942. After graduation from Armored Force Officer Candidate School, he was assigned as a combat historian in the European Theater of Operations. Hechler helped chronicle the liberation of France, the 1944 Normandy invasion, Battle of the Bulge, and entrance into Nazi Germany. He was attached to the 9th Armored Division when an armored and infantry task force, part of Combat Command B, unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge spanning the Rhine river during the Battle of Remagen. He interviewed both U.S. and German soldiers involved at the time. He was awarded a Bronze Star and 5 battle stars.

He returned after the war twice to interview Germans who took part in the battle. He found Captain Willi Bratge, one of two officers who had not been executed at Hitler's orders because he had been captured, and spent a week with him in the Remagen area learning about details of the battle. In 1957 he published the book The Bridge at Remagen: The Amazing Story of March 7, 1945 which was adapted into a film in 1969.

After the war he went on to serve as a U.S. Congressman from West Virginia from 1959 - 1977 and the West Virginia Secretary of State from 1985 - 2001. He was considered to be a Liberal Democrat.

Ken Hechler passed away on December 10, 2016 at the age of 102.

Reviews

[carl theaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rushed out and bought this book because the movie was 'now a major motion picture', yes it was 1969 and me & my fellow teenage WWII buffs were eagerly awaiting the flic.

The book is a fair read, first published in '57 my paperback in '69. There's a set of photos and a thorough appendix listing medals awarded and rosters of the units involved.

Years later in college we were assigned to interview a WWII vet. I happened to see an article on Alex Drabik, the first Allied soldier across the Rhine since Napoleonic times as he lived in Toledo at the time. I knocked on his door one day and asked for an interview. We had a good time. I used this book as the background. The book focuses more on Lt. Timmerman, you know, dang officiers, but does have some about Drabik. And I got an A on the paper.

[Kristen Hooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable & emotional read.

My grandfather fought in the Battle at Remagen when he was only 19 years old.

He passed away 3 years ago at 95 years old, and I wish I had recorded his stories of his experience at the Ludendorff Bridge and his time in Germany after the war as an MP. Even the ship crossing from NY in the beginning of the book had me in tears as I recalled my grandfather’s same description of the tumultuous weather and the gigantic waves.

I spent some time in Germany a few years ago before he passed and just looking over the Rhine (north of Remagen in Düsseldorf, but the Rhine nonetheless) had me speechless, thinking of all that these American soldiers endured during the war.

I am forever thankful for these brave men who fought so ferociously for our freedom. Words cannot express how grateful I am……..every. single. damn. day.

I will never forget the immeasurable sacrifices my grandfather and the countless soldiers made to give this country the opportunities we have today, because of our American soldier’s service.

[Martin Koenigsberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really enjoyable book, and totally understandable that it would be made into a movie, as it was in the mid 1960s. Soldier-Historian-Politician Ken Hechler gives us a taut and VERY detailed tick tock of the capture of the a Bridge over the Rhine river in March of 1945. The American First Army- pursuing the retreating Germans after the Battle of the Bulge - found a bridge almost completely undefended and intact. The Germans were trying to blow it up as the American crossed- but failed. The last Physical barrier to Central Germany had been pierced. While Britain's Monty and America's Patton would still mount their formal river crossings days later, Courtney Hodge's First Army- spearheaded by 9th Armored Division was over and into the heart of the Reich.

When I say Tick tock- I am not kidding. Hechler was THERE- and he was a Soldier-Historian- so he talked to anyone and everyone he could about this. At first i was annoyed at the level of detail and the discussions of internal motivations- but then I realised as the narrative developed, that this was the result of laborious work and interviews. The book was published in 1957- and my copy was associated with the Film in 1967- so it's a good example of the immediate Histories of the post War era.

There are a lot of Adult themes (not carnal but motivational) and some frank injury discussions that make this best for a junior reader over about 11 years. For the Gamer/Modeller/Military Enthusiast- a real fount of goodness. Lots of help with scenario or diorama development and a LOT of cool command and historical details for the Enthusiast. This is a case where the details do nothing but enrich the story- and this is full of detail- as I said- at first it was too much for me. But I warmed to knowing almost too much- and soon enough, Hechler made it worthwhile-paying off stuff you read at the beginning at the very end. A worthy addition to any WWII, American Army, or Wehrmacht Library shelf.

[Iain · Rating 2 out of 5]

A passable account written in something of the "old School" style. Unfortunately, the author makes several contentions which modern historians hold untrue or at least in dispute.

As an example, he tells us that "there's no question but that Hodges was a smashing success as a commander" who "reached the pinnacle of his success through sound decisions, an imaginative grasp of details." (p15)

Is the same General Hodges who led the American First Army during the pointless slaughter in the Hurtgen Forest and who "took no calls, and for the better part of two days showed symptoms of incapacitation" (Atkinson, p441) during Battle of the Bulge?

The book's lack of introspection or analysis is perhaps understandable given that major players like Eisenhower and Hodges were still alive at the time of writing. It's probably the definitive collection of first person accounts of a pivotal historic event, but like any work it is colored by the time in which it was written.

[Jeremy Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hechler's narrative of American soldiers taking the German bridge at Remagen is riveting. At the time, Hechler was attached to a military historian unit capturing the war as it unfolded. For this book, Hechler interviewed veterans from both sides of the battle. A historical chronicle like this could easily become a dry read, but Hechler spends time allowing the reader to get to know the participants, resulting in a must-read military history classic.

[John J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very timely history lesson. Though written in a less flamboyant style than modern documentaries, it exposes the flawed “top down” management style so evident in the Third Reich. Repeated now to us in the recent fall of the Soviet Union, the starvation in the centrally-controlled economies like Cuba and Venezuela and North Korea where individual initiatives are suppressed. That the American lieutenant could be allowed to suggest, gain approval, and implement a strategy that hastened the end of the war is beyond comprehension in a top down governance.
Also, needless to say, there were American bureaucrats that attempted to thwart this initiative since it didn’t fit the agreed-to plan. It is almost laughable.
Hitler’s response to this failure was to set up a courts martial debacle to try, then execute, the lowest-level officers (nothing above Captain) and blame it on poor implementation and not a flawed strategy.
The current CDC, WHO and other central-based organizations tasked with providing direction, based on very scant empirical information, will continue to do their best to appear in control “utilizing science” to justify their judgement calls. The parallel is that there is a science, Military Science, that uses analytical, historical, and empirical information; however, it cannot assure a successful outcome, it can only guide the decision-makers in making a judgement call.
I don’t even want to mention the other sciences, like Political Science, Social Science -oops, I did it anyway.
A very easy, good read - I highly recommend.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

In March 1945, Allied commanders were shocked to discover that a small group of American soldiers had defied orders and engineered a strategic breakthrough that would shorten World War II. This remarkable little book is their story.

The strategic breakthrough: the context

A vast, largely level plain sprawls westward from Moscow to Paris and beyond. Few formidable obstacles stand in the way of mobile modern armies that traverse this land in either direction. Over the centuries, however, the Rhine River in western Germany has stubbornly halted invading forces from the west, at least temporarily. That was the case for both Caesar and Napoleon. But in World War II, Allied plans to build overwhelming force before attempting to cross the river went magically awry. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was supposed to make the first crossing far to the north. But, to their commanders’ surprise, a small American Army had walked across the sole remaining intact span: the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen. Suddenly, the Allies had a clear shot at Berlin, 300 miles to the east. As Eisenhower himself later wrote, “The final defeat of the enemy, which we had long calculated would be accomplished in the spring and summer campaign of 1945, was suddenly, now, just around the corner.”

The strategic breakthrough: the historical setting

By March 1945, Nazi Germany was all but beaten. In the east, Russian armies were rushing through Poland and approaching the outskirts of Berlin. In the west, Dwight Eisenhower‘s legions had overcome Nazi resistance in Normandy and were massing in western Germany and the Low Countries on their way to the Rhine. But German resistance was fierce, often fanatical, and the Rhine stood in the way. The Germans were under orders to blow every bridge when the Allies drew close. For Eisenhower and the generals commanding his armies in the field—Bernard Montgomery, Omar Bradley, George Patton, and others who today are less well known—were planning a massive pincer movement to encircle and destroy the remaining German forces west of the Rhine. Crossing the river and opening the way to Berlin would have to wait, or so they thought.

Then Second Lieutenant Karl H. Timmermann and a small detachment of his men unexpectedly came across an open, intact bridge across the Rhine. When, under heavy fire, they made their way more than 1,000 feet across to the eastern side, they opened a bridgehead that surprised both the Germans and their own superiors all the way up the chain of command to Eisenhower himself. In The Bridge at Remagen, military historian Ken Hechler tells their amazing story—one of the most remarkable episodes in all of World War II.

The ordinary men who engineered that strategic breakthrough

Hechler introduces Timmermann and his men and follows them through the bloody fighting that led them at length toward the town of Remagen. They were ordinary men, undistinguished in civilian life, with names that reflect the diverse history of the United States: Drabik, DeLisio, Mott, Dorland, Reynolds, Soumas, Miller, Goodson, Grimball, Chinchar, Petrencsik, Samele. Timmermann and these dozen men under his command were all awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and a long list of individual fighting units involved in the followup operation received Presidential Unit Citations. Thirty-two other soldiers died and sixty-three were wounded when, after the Allies made heavy use of the bridge for days, the structure collapsed into the frigid waters of the Rhine.

Five German officers were sentenced to death

Meanwhile, Hechler details the experiences of the German troops sent to defend—and, ultimately, to blow up—the Ludendorff Bridge. Through interviews in the early 1950s with many of the surviving German soldiers who had been posted to Remagen, he gained valuable insight into their perspective on the event. And he learned the grisly details of Adolf Hitler’s reaction to the shock of the Allies’ crossing the Rhine: upon the Führer‘s direct order, “five German officers were sentenced to death . . . for failing to blow the Remagen bridge.” And, as Hechler explains in detail, the fault lay not with these junior officers but with Hitler and the senior generals who commanded them. In the final analysis, the bridge remained intact because the Wehrmacht was losing the war. They were disorganized, desperately short of supplies, engaged in petty turf battles, and subjected to delusional orders from Berlin.

About the author

For nine terms, Ken Hechler (1914-2016) represented West Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives. Later, he served for sixteen years as that state’s Secretary of State. However, as a young officer in World War II, Hechler was a member of a team of military historians. He was working in the vicinity when Timmermann and his men unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge. As he writes in the preface to this book, “Not long after receiving the electrifying news, I went down to Remagen and talked personally with some thirty officers and men directly involved in the crossing. . . I found [Timmermann] shaving in a bombed-out house east of the Rhine. His first reaction was to wonder what all the excitement was about.”

[Art · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author talked w/those who actually were there. Interesting. written only nine years after the war. Good interviews with participants.

[Socrate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pădurile din Renania par dese, întunecate, nostalgice, datorită numeroaselor soiuri de conifere amestecate cu foioase. La sud de Bonn, în apropierea Rinului, asprimea peisajului se îndulceşte oarecum, deşi colinele dinspre nord ale masivului Eifel, prelungire naturală a Ardenilor, se înalţă pînă în preajma marelui fluviu. O fîşie mai mult sau mai puţin lată de pădure acoperă pe alocuri dealurile de primprejur, dintre care unele păstrează înfăţişarea de foişor, imagine caracteristică pentru meleagurile romantice din amonte de fluviu.
Ici-colo drumeaguri înguste şi întortocheate brăzdează pădurea, ieşind pe neaşteptate deasupra văii şi coborînd rîpa spre tîrgurile ghemuite la poalele povîrnişului. Contrastul dintre potecile de pădure şi regiunea aproape bucolică de vii şi livezi, pe care o descoperi ieşind din desiş, este întotdeauna prilej de uimire. Niciodată nimeni din detaşamentul înaintat al Diviziei 9 blindate de tancuri americane, şi mai cu seamă sergentul Carmine Sabia, nu aveau să uite priveliştea ce li s-a înfăţişat ochilor în acea ploioasă zi de miercuri, 7 martie 1945!

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

To win battles, troops needs to move fast, punch hard, exploit opportunities and have a lot of good luck. These are the qualities that allowed units of the U.S. 9th Armored Division to capture the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen to establish the first Allied bridgehead east of the Rhine-- well before Eisenhower and his planners had ever dared to expect. How these soldiers accomplished this wartime miracle is told in absorbing detail by Ken Hechler, an official war historian of the European Theatre. A decade after the battle, Hechler interviewed one of the bridge's German defenders. He described the motley group of American soldiers who first stormed the bridge knowing it was mined with explosives as "the greatest heroes of the whole war." Hechler's account, published in 1957, was praised by Harry Truman as one of the best books on World War II he had ever read. I don't think I would go that far (after all, unlike Truman, we have Rick Atkinson's "Liberation Trilogy") but it is well worth your World War II reading.

[Brian Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The leaders of the various platoons of the company of Americans who first arrived at Remagen and first crossed the bridge were described in detail along with their commanders up through Eisenhower. German officers at the bridge were also described. German forces were in such disarray and so undermanned that their resistance was ineffective. The failure of German attempts to destroy the bridge was dramatically described and later analyzed from at least two perspectives. The demoralizing effect of Hitler’s orders on German troops was noted. Lots of detailed info in short book.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Bridge at Remagen" by Ken Hechler details a small but important turn of fate in World War II (see the book jacket synopsis). Hechler wrote this only 12 years after the event and his research was impressive. He also had access to witnesses and primary sources, making this book a key historical document. I enjoyed the book, although I would not rate Hechler as an inspiring writer. A solid 3.5 to 4 stars.

[Christi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting little book. Full disclosure-I didn't finish it before I had to turn it back in. The story is interesting, the characters (there are a lot!) are fine. It's historical and obviously well-researched. The author clearly is excited about his subject and writes well. There is a lot to keep track of, so read it when you can focus.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miracle at Remagen

Definitely a case of FOG OF WAR and confusion among the German forces caused by the relentless pressure from Allied Forces all along the Rhine River Front. Allied version of Blitzkrieg "Lightning War"! Germans not allowed to get reorganized and counter attack! Individual leadership and bravery taking advantage of OPPORTUNITY to move forward! outstanding!

[E M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very very big-picture about the battle for Remagen Bridge but is a bit too focused on the big picture. Could’ve been shorter. Really good chapter about the trial and killing of German officers “responsible” for the loss. Otherwise pretty forgettable, would only read if you’re interested in this exact topic.

[Martin Cuevas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Densely detailed, and not so much for those with little to no military experience. There is so much here to dissect and explore. There are so many accounts and stories of how it did, or may have gone down. I think there could be many individual stories that could be fleshed out in separate books/movies/mini-series and what have you. Would engage with those in a heartbeat.

[Andrew Lipiansky · Rating 3 out of 5]

dull. probably only got good reviews because at the time, there was very little literature on the war. there certainly is value to the book having been written by someone who interviewed the people involved, but a ten page article in a magazine could have covered the story in sufficient detail.

[Cheri Branham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very Interesting Story

This was a story that I had not known about. The author do a good job of setting up the background of characters before telling of the capture of the bridge by the Americans. I did not know of it's importance to the ending of the war.

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing: I'm so glad to finally read this compelling account, well detailed. Turns out the author was elected Secretary of State for West Virginia as I began to visit the state and its culture! But this, earlier, work, caught memories while they were fresh.
Highly recommended.

[Monical · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing book documenting the events up to and the day that the bridge at Remagen was taken. The book is replete with technical detail but lacks the personal stories of that combat. Very disappointing especially in comparison to "Pegasus Bridge" which I recently read and reviewed.

[Ann Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real History

Better than any novel or movie about war. This well-researched book lives up to the opinion of my husband, a war veteran, that real-life exploits in war are much better stories than any fiction.

[Drew Mashburn]

This was a good detailed description of the events that led up to the Allies coming to the Rhine River and to their surprise found the bridge was still intact. The author, Ken Hechler does a good job summarizing why the Germans left the bridge up unintended.

[Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent work that details one of the truly important moments of the war.

[David Orbin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written history of the first crossing of the Rhine by allied. Troops.

[Leanna M Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth reading

A well researched and thorough treatment of the incident covering all aspects of both sides. Well written and very readable. --Steve Cole (Leanna's husband)

[Robert Buelow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book. It makes you wonder "what was that movie I saw?"
This book is the truth from the interviews of the people who were there.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read his entire book today. Couldn't put it down. Now, I'll have to go back and watch the movie again, which I haven't seen for some time but which I'm sure will be even more fun to watch.

[Rob Perschau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting analysis of a significant WWII victory for the Allies.

[David Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling story with the first man across the bridge from my hometown

[Caroline Shepherd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once I started reading, it was seriously hard to put down. Love the amount of detail that was put in and how easy it was to follow. Highly recommend if you like stories about soldiers.