The Ruhr Pocket closes and Germany's army in the west dies
317,000 prisoners in the largest single German surrender in western Europe, and Field Marshal Model's suicide rather than captivity
Quick facts
- Location
- Ruhr industrial region, western Germany
- Encirclement closed
- 1 April 1945 (Lippstadt)
- German force trapped
- Army Group B, 19 divisions, 7 corps
- Prisoners
- 317,000, roughly double the US intelligence estimate
- German commander's fate
- Field Marshal Walter Model died by suicide, 21 April 1945
What happened
At noon on 1 April 1945, Easter Sunday, lead elements of the US Ninth Army, advancing from Wesel, and the US First Army, advancing from Remagen, met at Lippstadt, closing a ring around Field Marshal Walter Model's Army Group B: the 5th Panzer and 15th Armies, seven corps, and 19 divisions, trapped in an egg-shaped pocket roughly 30 by 75 miles. Within three days, four American corps had tightened the encirclement. By 14 April, with the pocket split in two and German units out of food and ammunition, mass surrenders began, and the final tally of prisoners reached 317,000, twice what American intelligence had estimated going in. Model, unwilling to surrender as a field marshal into Allied captivity, walked into woods outside Duisburg on 21 April and shot himself; organized resistance in the pocket had already ended on 18 April.
Why it matters
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum's account calls the Ruhr the moment the German army died: the loss of Army Group B and its 317,000 men left Germany with no organized force left in the west capable of slowing the Allied advance, and the surrender came barely three weeks before the war in Europe ended entirely.
How we know
US Army and German records of unit strength going into the encirclement, cross-checked against the actual prisoner count taken out of the pocket, are the source of the striking gap between the 150,000-plus American intelligence estimate and the 317,000 who actually surrendered.
Sources
- The National WWII Museum. Death in the West: The Battle of the Ruhr Pocket · Reputable sourcenationalww2museum.org · The domain "nationalww2museum.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Holocaust Encyclopedia, US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Encircling the Ruhr · Reputable sourceencyclopedia.ushmm.org · The domain "encyclopedia.ushmm.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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