Word: ludendorffers
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...hours and 20 minutes the triple-span Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen had served its American captors well. But it had taken a terrible beating for most of that time. First there had been the charges set off by the Germans when the Americans came to grab the bridge. Then, for three or four days of terrible urgency, it bore the quaking weight of tanks, big guns, heavy trucks, the tread of thousands of men as they hurried across the Rhine. Hour after hour shells had screamed through its beams; several had gouged big chunks...
Last week the bridge caught particular hell. It was then less important than the ponton bridges the Americans had slung together downriver. The 1,200-foot bridge no longer carried heavy traffic and was frequently blocked off for repairs. But the Germans were determined to avenge the Ludendorff's betrayal of their cause. In six days they sent 104 dive bombers, singly and in threes, to blast at the bridge. It trembled to a thunderous barrage of ack-ack all around...
...wirephoto which appeared on the front page of almost every U.S. newspaper, the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen did not look like a thing of beauty. Its squat towers, like two massive beer mugs, looked typically Teutonic. The picture, taken on a grey day, showed the grey rubble of war in the foreground. But the bridge was intact, and therein lay its exquisite beauty. Every American could see in it an imminent promise of victory in Europe...
...also a moment of historic ironies. Remagen's bridge had spanned the years between World Wars I and II. Completed in 1918, it had been named for General Erich von Ludendorff, later to be Adolf Hitler's sponsor. Its seizure occurred nine years to the day after Hitler had brazenly violated the Versailles and Locarno Treaties by sending German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland...
...north Rokossovsky's forces, with a thundering echo of history, pierced a memorable spot: Tannenberg. There the Russians looked upon the huge tomb of Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, There Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler's onetime mentor, Ludendorff, had cut to pieces a Russian army in one of World War I's classic victories. When the Germans struck in 1914, the Russians were at the same points they passed this week-Gumbinnen in the northeast, Tannenberg in the south. But this time there were also vast differences : 1) Ludendorff's daring now appeared to be possessed...