Ludendorff Bridge

American troops on the Ludendorff Bridge in 1918

Remagen is located close to and south of the city of Bonn. The town of Remagen had been founded by the Romans about 2,000 years earlier. The town had been destroyed multiple times and rebuilt each time. Under the Schlieffen Plan, a bridge was planned to be built there in 1912, as well as bridges in Engers and Rüdesheim am Rhein.

German General Erich Ludendorff was a key advocate for building this bridge during World War I and it was named after him.[3] It was designed by Karl Wiener to connect the Right Rhine Railway, the Left Rhine Railway and the Ahr Valley Railway (Ahrtalbahn)[4] and carry troops and supplies to the Western Front. Constructed between 1916 and 1919, using Russian prisoners of war as labour, it carried two railway lines and a pedestrian catwalk on either side.[3] Work on the bridge pillars and arches was done by leading construction companies Grün & Bilfinger[5][6] with the steel bridge built by MAN-Werk Gustavsburg.[7]

It was one of three bridges built to improve railroad traffic between Germany and France during World War I; the others were the Hindenburg Bridge at Bingen am Rhein and the Urmitz Bridge on the Neuwied–Koblenz railway near Koblenz.

The railway bridge had three spans: two on either side 85 metres (279 ft) long and a central arch span of 156 metres (512 ft). It had dual tracks that could be covered with planks to allow vehicular traffic. The steel section was 325 metres (1,066 ft) long, and it had an overall length of 398 metres (1,306 ft). On the eastern bank the railway passed through Erpeler Ley, a steeply rising hill over 150 metres (490 ft) high. The tunnel was 383 metres (1,257 ft) long.[4][5] The arch at its highest measured 28.5 metres (94 ft) above the water. It was normally about 15 metres (48 ft) above the Rhine.[5]

The 4,640-tonne (5,110-short-ton) structure cost about 2.1 million marks when it was built during World War I. Since the bridge was a major military construction project, both abutments of the bridge were flanked by stone towers with fortified foundations that could shelter up to a full battalion of men.[4] The towers were designed with fighting loopholes for troops.[3] From the flat roof of the towers troops had a good view of the valley.[5] To protect the bridge, both an engineering unit and a military police unit were assigned to the site.

The designers built cavities into the concrete piers where demolition charges could be placed.[3] During the Occupation of the Rhineland after World War I, the French filled these cavities with concrete. It was one of the four bridges that were guarded by Americans during the occupation.

In 1938, after the Germans reacquired the Rhineland and control of the bridge, they attached 60 zinc-lined boxes at key structural points to the bridge girders, each capable of containing 3.66 kg (8.1 lb) of explosives. The system was designed to detonate all 60 charges at once. The engineers connected the charges in the piers and the zinc boxes by electrical cable protected by steel pipe to a control panel inside the rail tunnel under Erpeler Ley where engineers could safely detonate the charges.[3] As a backup, engineers laid primer cord that could be manually ignited. They believed they could destroy the bridge when necessary with minimal preparation.[3]

On 14–15 October 1944, an American bomb had struck a chamber containing the demolition charges of the Mulheim Bridge in Cologne, destroying the bridge. German leader Adolf Hitler reacted by demanding that demolition charges on bridges could only be set when the enemy was within a specific distance, and only exploded by written order. He ordered those "responsible" for the destruction of the Mulheim Bridge court-martialed. This left officers responsible for destroying bridges, in the event that the enemy approached, nervous about both blowing it too soon and the consequences if they failed.[4] In keeping with Hitler's orders, by 7 March 1945 the charges on the Ludendorff Bridge had been removed and were stored nearby.[8]

In March 1945, about 5,100 people lived in Remagen. On the Western shore, the Allied bombing campaign had destroyed more than half of Erpel's buildings, including all the buildings between Erpel's market place and the bridge, which had been built during the 17th and 18th century.[5]

The Rhine near Remagen is about 300 m (980 ft) wide.[3] During Operation Lumberjack, on 7 March 1945, troops of the U.S. Army's 9th Armored Division reached the bridge during the closing weeks of World War II and were surprised to see that the railroad bridge was still standing.[1] It was one of the very few bridges remaining across the Rhine, because the Germans had systematically destroyed all of the others in advance of the Allies' attack. Although this bridge was wired with demolition charges, the weak civilian-grade "Donarite" explosives failed to bring the bridge down, and Allied engineers risked their lives manually removing the remaining charges before the bridge was captured.[1]

The ability to quickly establish a bridgehead on the eastern side of the Rhine and to get forces into Germany allowed the U.S. forces to envelop the German industrial area of the Ruhr.[1]^:1430–1 The Germans sent several bombing missions to destroy the bridge, though the Allies got six divisions across the damaged bridge before it collapsed due to cumulative bomb damage on 17 March 1945, ten days after it was captured. The collapse killed twenty-eight and injured ninety-three[9] U.S. Army Engineers. However, a pontoon bridge had been built across the river by then. The main bridge was out of use for repairs at the time of its collapse.

The unexpected availability of the first major crossing of the Rhine, Germany's last major natural barrier and line of defence, caused Allied high commander Dwight D. Eisenhower to alter his plans to end the war. Hitler's Nero Decree of 19 March ordered the destruction of any infrastructure that could aid the Allied advance, but the order was not carried out due to opposition from German generals and the rapid Allied advance.[1]^:1432–4 Instead, U.S. forces advanced rapidly through Germany and, by 12 April the Ninth United States Army had crossed the Elbe.[1]^:1434

Former location of the Ludendorff Bridge in 1953

The piers supporting the Ludendorff Bridge were a navigation hazard and were removed in 1976

After the war, the railway crossing was not deemed important enough to justify rebuilding the bridge. Parts of the land used for the approaching railway lines are now used as an industrial estate on the western bank and a park on the eastern bank.

Since 1980, the surviving towers on the western bank of the Rhine have housed a museum called "Peace Museum Bridge at Remagen" containing the bridge's history and 'themes of war and peace'.[10] This museum was partly funded by selling rock from the two piers as paperweights, the two piers having been removed from the river in the summer of 1976 as they were an obstacle to navigation.

In the middle of 2018, the two eastern towers of the bridge were announced to be for sale. Three bids were submitted, but due to the poor condition of the building and expected costs of approximately €1.4 million for its restoration, the sale was expected to be difficult.[11]