BETWEEN WAR AND ABUNDANCE 213More than 16 million men and women served in the
American armed forces in World War II. Staggering
as that may seem, the war killed 60 million people
worldwide. About 320,000 Americans died fighting
the war, and 800,000 were injured; their commitment
helped to defeat the brutal regimes in Germany and
Japan. At the front lines of the European theater was
the Nineteenth Corps, which landed on the beaches
of Normandy in June 1944. Through summer and
fall the men pushed through western Europe, where
they awaited instructions from Supreme Commander
Dwight Eisenhower before driving into Germany.
Henry MacMillan, an Army engineer, mapped the
maneuvers of the Corps in that last year of the war. At
left is a portion from his first map, which detailed the
battle to liberate France. On both maps, MacMillan
depicted the individual encounters that so profoundly
affected the millions of Americans serving in Europe.
Alongside depictions of tactical victories and enemy
fire we find careful renderings of the local people
as well as landmarks that MacMillan and so many
others were seeing for the first time as they fought
through Europe: the Eiffel Tower, Chartres, and—
poignantly—the battlefield cemeteries of World
War I. Shown here is the upper corner of that map,
where the Corps pushed through France into Belgium
and Holland toward Germany.
On the following page is the entire second map,
which documented the Corps as it fought through
Germany toward victory. As an engineer with the 62d
Division, MacMillan took care to note the logistical
support and tactical ingenuity that made it possible
to cross five rivers, capture German soldiers, and
liberate thousands of prisoners.
The push began at the lower left of the next map,
where the First and Ninth armies held the northern
shoulder of the Battle of the Bulge through the brutal
winter of 1945. From there they turned toward the
Roer River, but found that the enemy had destroyed
a dam in order to flood the region. The river had
widened from 20 to 300 yards, making any Allied
advance impossible. For two weeks, engineers
worked around the clock to build fifteen bridges
while under enemy fire, withstanding a powerful
THE DEFEAT OF GERMANY
Henry MacMillan, US Army, “XIX Corps
in Action” and “XIX Corps in Action:
From Siegfried Line to Victory,” 1945
current that brought dangerous debris and broken
boats down the river.
Once they had finally crossed the Roer, the
infantry moved quickly past Jülich, grateful for earlier
American air strikes that had pacified the city. The
capture of München-Gladbach, a manufacturing
center, led them toward the Rhine; they were
prepared to cross by March 1, but were ordered to
delay until preparations could be made for the final
push into the heart of Germany. The crossing of the
Rhine on March 28 set up what MacMillan considered
the most important moment in the campaign: the
conquest of the Ruhr Pocket by the First and Ninth
armies. The two armies stretched across 150 miles
to corner and conquer Germany’s most critical
industrial area, further weakening the Reich and
capturing over 300,000 enemy soldiers.
The men then raced toward the Elbe River at
right, the last major obstacle to Berlin. On one day,
they logged a record fifty-seven miles. The urgency
of the march was heightened by the corresponding
progress of the Soviet Army from the east. While the
Americans welcomed Soviet support in defeating
the German enemy, this dual advance also required
some diplomatic maneuvering in light of the mutual
suspicion between the two powers. In mid-April,
Commander Eisenhower ordered the armies to
stand on the Elbe River rather than cross it and
continue on toward Berlin. At the banks of the
river, the Corps established a preliminary military
government to evacuate thousands of prisoners and
displaced persons.
On April 11, the 83rd Infantry arrived at
Langenstein, a sub-camp of Buchenwald that had
been built just a year earlier to provide labor for
the German war effort. The Germans had forced
prisoners to labor sixteen-hour days to construct
underground factories at nearby Halberstadt; those
who were too weak to work were executed. Just before
the Americans arrived, Langenstein reached the peak
of its operation, with 5,000 prisoners at work. After
the liberation, only 1,000 were still alive, and almost
all died soon thereafter. On April 30, just seven days
before the Allies declared victory in Europe, the corps
met their Soviet counterparts at Wittenberg.
The Nineteenth Corps landed on D-Day, sent
the first men into Belgium and Holland, and led
the assault on the Lower Rhine. MacMillan’s maps
capture the pride and anguish of soldiers in the final
year of war, a narrative of a corps in action.