Battle of the Scheldt
The Battle of the Scheldt in World War II was a series of military operations led by the First Canadian Army, with Polish and British units attached, to open up the shipping route to Antwerp so that its port could be used to supply the Allies in north-west Europe. Under acting command of the First Canadian's Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds, the battle took place in northern Belgium and southwestern Netherlands from 2 October to 8 November 1944.
| Battle of the Scheldt | |||||||||
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| Part of the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine in the Western Front of World War II | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Germany | |||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Gustav-Adolf von Zangen | |||||||||
| Units involved | |||||||||
| First Canadian Army | 15th Army | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 450,000+ | 230,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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The Canadians had been delayed, and pressure on the Scheldt left wanting, by Allied decisions to focus 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.