March 26th, 1945. Three German generals are screaming into telephones. Army Group B is fleeing northeast. First parachute army is running east. 7th Army is retreating southeast. Same enemy, same 48 hours, different roads, nobody coordinated. A staff officer plots all three retreat routes on a single map and goes pale.

 The lines cross, the roads intersect. In 12 hours, three entire armies will collide with each other in the middle of Germany while American tanks chase them from behind. This isn’t withdrawal. This is the largest traffic accident in military history about to happen in real time. March 24th, 1945. Patton’s Third Army crosses the Rine and begins advancing on multiple axes.

Within 24 hours, American spearheads penetrate German lines in three separate sectors. Each breakthrough threatening a different German army. The speed catches German command unprepared. By the time higher headquarters understands the scope, American armor is already 20 miles beyond the Rine. Army Group B holding the northern sector receives reports that American armor has broken through near Vboden and is driving northeast.

 The commander realizes his Rine positions are flanked. If he holds, Americans will encircle him from the only option is immediate withdrawal northeast toward the Lawn River. Orders issued at 1400 hours March 25th. All units begin phased withdrawal at nightfall. Moving northeast on designated 50 miles south, first parachute army faces different crisis.

TW core has penetrated near mites and is advancing east toward Frankfurt. Intelligence reports Americans already across the main river. His positions are untenable. His withdrawal route is dictated by geography. East through Frankfurt, then northeast toward Castle. He issues orders at 1600 hours, unaware his retreat route will intersect army group B’s corridor in less than 24 hours.

 The third crisis develops in seventh army’s sector. Xak’s core breaks through south of mines and drives southeast toward Dharmmstad. The commander faces encirclement if he remains. His only escape runs southeast through Dharmmstat toward Vertsburg. His withdrawal orders specify night movement only on secondary roads. He has no communication with the other armies.

He’s planning an isolation based solely on local situation. By nightfall, March 25th, three German armies totaling over 200,000 soldiers begin simultaneous withdrawals along routes that will converge and tangle within 48 hours. Vermach high command has not coordinated these movements. Each commander made independent decision based on immediate threat.

 The staff work that should happen before major movements, deconlicting routes, establishing priority, coordinating timing has not occurred because there’s no time. The road network in central Germany is adequate for peace time but wholly inadequate for three armies withdrawing simultaneously. Major highways are limited.

 Secondary roads are narrow, often unpaved, vulnerable to mud. Rail lines are under constant air attack. Everything must move by road and there aren’t enough roads. German staff officers plotting the movements identify potential conflicts immediately. Army Group B’s route crosses first parachute armies near Geishon. First parachute army intersects seventh army near Fula.

But changing routes now means unfamiliar terrain without reconnaissance. The decision is made through inaction. Withdrawals proceed as ordered. Units sort out road priority as they encounter each other. This is not a decision any competent staff would make normally, but American armor is advancing so rapidly that coordination is impossible.

 Units must move now or risk destruction. Traffic problems will be resolved in real time by junior officers. It’s a recipe for chaos and every officer knows it. March 26th, dawn. The withdrawals begin as German columns from three armies converge on limited roads. First sign of trouble appears near Gishon where an army group B supply column encounters a first parachute army combat team on the same road.

 The army group B column has priority according to their orders. The parachute army regiment has priority according to theirs. Neither yields. The two formations merge into single confused mass combat vehicles mixed with supply trucks. Artillery blocking intersections. Similar scenes develop at every junction near Fula. A seventh army artillery battalion finds the road blocked by first parachute army infantry moving at right angles.

 The artillery commander demands right of way. The infantry commander refuses. The result is a traffic jam backing up three m. Vehicle engines idle, burning fuel while going nowhere. Officers consult maps and realize nobody has authority to establish priority. Each unit follows its own orders. The breakdown accelerates through morning.

 A panzer battalion from Army Group B discovers. The road filled with seventh Army vehicles moving southeast. The columns meet head-on at a narrow bridge. Neither can pass. Neither will reverse. The standoff lasts two hours until American artillery begins landing, forcing both units to scatter. The bridge becomes blocked by abandoned vehicle.

 American reconnaissance aircraft observe the chaos and report massive German columns clogging every major road. Fighter bombers are vetored to targets. The attacks are devastating. German columns stationary or moving slowly are perfect targets. Vehicles explode. Roads become impassible. Soldiers abandon trucks and flee.

 What began as organized withdrawal transforms into route. By midday, the road network approaches total gridlock. Vermachked movement control officers attempt to establish order by radio, but communications are sporadic. American jamming disrupts frequencies. Many units never receive instructions. Those that do find alternate routes already as congested as primary officers make individual decisions that further complicate the situation.

 A division commander from first parachute army, finding his route blocked, decides to strike cross country. His unit leaves roads entirely, moving through fields. Movement is slow. Vehicles stuck in mud, but they’re moving. Other commanders follow suit. Soon, hundreds of vehicles are off-road, creating new routes not on any map.

 From the air, the pattern is visible. Roads clogged with stationary vehicles and radiating outward. Tracks across fields. The human cost is visible in abandoned equipment. Vehicles that run out of fuel are pushed aside. Trucks with failures are cannibalized. Artillery too heavy for cross country is destroyed.

 By evening March 26th, roads are littered with abandoned German equipment. Not destroyed in combat, but because the retreat became too chaotic to maintain vehicles. March 26th evening, Vermacht High Command attempts to regain control by establishing coordination. Conference calls are arranged. Staff officers exchange emission. Maps are updated.

 What coordination reveals is worse than expected. The three armies have become so intermixed that establishing clear boundaries is impossible. A core from Army Group B has units spread across 50 miles. Some moving northeast as ordered, others diverted southeast because routes were blocked. Still others halted, waiting for congestion to clear.

 The core commander no longer has clear picture. Some units maintain radio contact. Others have gone silent. The staff can plot confirmed positions for 60% of you. The other 40% are somewhere in central Germany, presumably moving. Exact locations unknown. First parachute army reports similar breakdown. Regiments that began as cohesive formations have fractured.

 A regiment might have two battalions together while the third is 15 mi away, separated by congestion. Division and core structures are becoming abstract. The chain of command exists on paper, but physical dispersal means commanders have lost direct control. Seventh Army situation is worst. Their withdrawal through narrow mountain roads created bottlenecks impossible to clear.

 An entire division is strung along a single road for 20 m. Vulnerable to air attack, unable to deploy because there’s no space. The division commander requests permission to abandon heavy equipment and move dismounted. Request is denied. Equipment is needed for future defense. But keeping it means the division remains roadbound, immobile, exposed.

The attempt to coordinate reveals another problem. Incompatible objective. Army group B withdraws toward the ruer, which Hitler declared must be held. First parachute army withdraws toward Castle and the Vaser River. Seventh Army withdraws toward Nuremberg and southern Germany. These objectives pull in different directions.

 Vermachked high command cannot or will not choose which has priority. So armies continue on divergent paths. The breakdown creates catastrophic errors. A battalion from seventh army receives orders to move to assembly area near Fula arrives to find it already occupied by first parachute army.

 The battalion contacts regiment for clarification. Response takes 3 hours. Proceed to alternate area 40 km away. By the time they arrive, they’ve burned half their fuel and fallen 12 hours behind. More serious is failure of intelligence sharing. Army Group B identifies American armor advancing toward Gishon and reports to Higher Command.

 The warning should go to First Parachute Army whose units are moving through Gishon, but message routing is unclear and warning arrives 6 hours late. By then, American tanks are engaging first parachute army columns. The engagement is brief. American armor destroys a supply convoy and withdraws. Supplies lost include ammunition and fuel desperately needed.

 By nightfall, Vermach high command faces reality. They’ve lost effective control. The armies are moving, but not according to plan, not in coordination, not in response to higher direction. Commanders make independent decisions based on immediate circumstances. Coordinated operations have become impossible. March 27th.

 The second day brings inevitable collisions as three armies use the same terrain simultaneously. Near Alzeld, a combat effective Panzer battalion from Army Group B encounters a depleted infantry regiment from First Parachute Army blocking the road. The Panzer commander has orders to reach an assembly area by dawn. The infantry regiment moves at walking pace.

 4,000 soldiers clogging the highway. The Panzer commander could force through, but that means pushing infantry off the road, damaging cohesion, possibly inflicting casualty. He waits. Three hours later, still waiting, American artillery ranges on the column. More violent collisions occur when units mistake each other for enemy.

 German recognition signals are inconsistent. Units from different armies use different frequencies and codes. In confusion of night movement, a seventh army security detachment encounters a column they cannot ident. Challenge protocols fail. The detachment opens fire. The column actually a first parachute army supply unit returns fire.

20 minutes before officers establish communication and cease fire. Four Germans dead, killed by German bullets. Physical collisions are worst at critical junctions. The autobond intersection near Bad Hfeld becomes focal point of disaster. Three routes converge. Army Group B needs to turn north.

 First parachute army needs to continue east. Seventh Army needs to turn southeast. All three flows arrive simultaneously around 1,000 hour. The result is gridlock spanning 3 km. Vehicles packed so tightly drivers cannot turn around. American aircraft spot the concentration and attack in waves. Germans have no space to disperse.

 Burning vehicles block all directions. Ammunition trucks explode. Fuel trucks ignite. Soldiers abandon vehicles and run. By evening, Bad Herszfeld is smoking ruin. Hundreds of vehicles destroyed. Casualties in the hundreds, possibly over a thousand. The intersection is now impassible. The breakdown forces desperate decision. A division commander from Army Group B orders units to abandon vehicles and continue on foot.

 10,000 soldiers begin marching carrying only personal weapons. Everything else destroyed to prevent capture. The mechanized division is now light infantry, moving at 3 kilometers per hour. Another division attempts night movement to avoid air attack. The lead elements take wrong turn, follow a road that dead ends at a river with no bridge. Must backtrack.

 The mistake costs 8 hours. When dawn breaks, division is exposed and American fighter bombers find them. The division scatters into forests. Reassembling will take days, if possible at all. March 28th. Patton’s forces recognize the scale of German disorganization. Reconnaissance reports German columns scattered across hundreds of square miles, moving slowly or not at all, offering minimal resistance.

 American armored spearheads exploit the chaos, driving deep, cutting roads, seizing bridges, capturing entire units too disorganized to defend. A battalion from Fourth Armored Division encounters a kilometer long German column halted near Fula. The American commander expects a fight. Instead, chaos. German soldiers mill around vehicles.

 Many without weapons, no defensive positions, no command visible. An American battalion deploys and is approached by German officer under white flag. The entire column surrenders without firing. Over 800 prisoners. 50 vehicles captured in less than an hour. American forces capture Germans not through combat, but through encounter.

 A patrol discovers a German regiment bivwacked in forest. Soldiers sleeping. Minimal security. No awareness. Americans are The patrol calls for support. Infantry arrives. Regiment surrenders when surrounded. These are intact formations with weapons. But they’re so disoriented, disconnected from command, exhausted from chaotic movement that resistance seems pointless.

 The German withdrawal has become hundreds of independent retreats by units ranging from company to division, each moving in whatever direction local commanders judge safest. Some still attempt to follow original orders. Others have abandoned any pretense and simply retreat eastward with no clear destination. The distinction between withdrawal and route has disappeared.

 Vermach high command issues new directives establishing rally points. The directives specify locations, timing, command arrangements, but they assume units can receive orders, navigate to locations, arrive on time. None of those assumptions are valid. Radio communications barely function. Road networks are congested or destroyed.

 Units cannot move to schedule under constant air attack. The human experience is captured in prisoner interrogations. German officers describe withdrawal not as military operation, but as survival ordeal. A company commander reports three days trying to move 40 kilometers constantly diverted by blocked roads, air attacks, conflicting orders.

 When captured, he expressed relief the chaos ended. A battalion commander describes losing contact with his regiment first day and never reestablishing it. He led independently 4 days before surrendering. The statistical picture tells the story. In 4 days, three German armies lost over 30,000 captured, thousands killed or wounded, vast equipment destroyed or abandoned.

 But more significantly, they lost organizational coherence. The armies that began retreating March 25th no longer exist as functioning formations. Individual units remain, some combat effective, but army level structures have ceased to function. The historical significance is clear. Patton’s multidirectional advance didn’t defeat three German armies.

 Through decisive battle, it forced simultaneous retreat along incompatible routes, creating traffic jams, command confusion, coordination breakdown. The German armies destroyed themselves, trying to withdraw faster than their roads and command systems could handle. By March 28th, organized resistance in central Germany has ended, not because soldiers stopped fighting, but because formations disintegrated during retreat that became route.

 In mobile warfare, forcing the enemy to move simultaneously in multiple directions can be more destructive than destroying him in place. The German army suffered worse breakdown retreating than they would have standing and fighting. When three armies used the same roads while moving in different directions, the chaos accomplished what firepower alone might not.

 The roads that should have been escape routes became killing grounds. The withdrawal that should have saved the armies shattered them beyond reconstitution. Patton didn’t have to destroy them. He just had to make them move. The roads did the rest.