Battle of the Scheldt

Battle of the Scheldt
Part of the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine in the Western Front of World War II
Buffalo amphibious vehicles taking Canadians across the Scheldt in Zeeland, 1944
Date 2 October – 8 November 1944 Location Dutch Zeeland and northern Belgium 51°25′N 4°10′E / 51.417°N 4.167°E / 51.417; 4.167 Result Allied victory Territorial changes Antwerp opened to Allied shipping
Belligerents
Canada  United Kingdom Poland  United States  Belgium  Netherlands France  Norway	Germany
Commanders and leaders
Bernard Montgomery Guy Simonds Harry Crerar Bertram Ramsay	Gustav-Adolf von Zangen
Units involved
First Canadian Army	15th Army
Strength
450,000+	230,000
Casualties and losses
Canadian: 6,367 Total: 20,873	Roughly 10-12,000 41,043 captured

The Battle of the Scheldt in World War II was a series of military operations to open up the Scheldt river between Antwerp and the North Sea for shipping, so that Antwerp's port could be used to supply the Allies in north-west Europe. The operations were carried out by the First Canadian Army, with assistance from Polish and British units which had been attached. The action was under the acting command of the First Canadian's Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds. The battle took place in the vicinity of the Scheldt river in northern Belgium and southwestern Netherlands from 2 October to 8 November 1944.^[1]

The Canadians had been delayed, and the need to clear the Scheldt had not yet been addressed, due to Allied decisions up to that point to focus instead on Arnhem (Operation Market Garden), Boulogne (Operation Wellhit), Calais (Operation Undergo) and Dunkirk. By the time the Canadians were sent into the Battle of the Scheldt, the Wehrmacht defenders had been reinforced. The Germans staged an effective delaying action during which they flooded land areas in the Scheldt estuary and slowed the Allied advance. After five weeks of difficult fighting, the Canadian First Army, at a cost of 20,873 Allied casualties (6,367 of them Canadian), was successful in clearing the Scheldt after numerous amphibious assaults, obstacle crossings and costly assaults over open ground.

Once the German defenders were no longer a threat, it took another three weeks to de-mine the harbours; the first convoy carrying Allied supplies could not unload in Antwerp until 29 November 1944. Once Antwerp was opened, it allowed 2.5 million tons of supplies to arrive at that port between November 1944 and April 1945, which were critical to the successful Allied advance into Germany in 1945.