Word: belfort
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...Sandy" Patch exacted terrible losses from the enemy, in his four-week pursuit up the Rhone and Doubs to the Belfort Gap, where he made junction with the U.S. Third Army. The Germans lost an estimated 60,000 in western France who never had a chance to fight...
...Germans may have had about 20 divisions available last week in the West Wall and its approaches, perhaps ten more that can get back from the Low Countries. Perhaps six or eight more succeeded in retiring from southern France to the Belfort Gap; and perhaps ten divisions were available from Himmler's reserve army...
...that might swoop to cut any line of retreat anywhere. It could be used to speed the juncture of the Seventh Army in Provence with the forces before Paris. It might be dropped beyond Paris to slash the German escape route-or be set down in Germany beyond the Belfort Gap to speed an advance into Germany at the Swiss-border hinge of the Siegfried Line-or used to blaze the advance of the combined Allied Armies on north Germany along the coastal plane-the route by which Germany had invaded France twice in this century...
...retreating across the border into Switzerland. The onrushing German columns, their tanks and trucks beginning to break down after strenuous campaigning, pushed down through Lyon, "Pittsburgh of France," but a segment of fierce French resistance formed west of there at Clermont-Ferrand and with other French remnants from the Belfort district momentarily pocketed the German elements...
...Paris fell, so did Le Havre. So did Montmedy, northern anchor of the fabulous Maginot Line, and Verdun, long thought impregnable, was encircled from the west, cracked. Meanwhile additional German forces thrust past Reims to Chalons, headed for Dijon, Chaumont, Belfort, Mulhouse, to take the whole Maginot Line from the rear...