This country is at war with Germany.

We shall go on to the end.

I remember the sheets of flame which came up and almost blinded us from our guns.

By the autumn of 1944, the Allies had pushed across France and Belgium, and they were standing at Germany's doorstep.

Ahead of them lay the Rhine, a vast natural barrier and, for the Germans, the last line of defence protecting the heart of the Reich.

What followed over the next few months was some of the most intense and costly fighting of the war in Western Europe,

and the bitter battles around Aachen and the Hurtgen Forest through the crossing operations of plunder and varsity,

and the dramatic seizure of the bridge at Remagen.

The campaign for the Rhineland was brutal, chaotic and often overshadowed by the better-known

Battle of the Bulge.

Yet, it was here on both sides of the Rhine that the final collapse of Nazi Germany truly

began.

To help tell that story, I'm joined by military historian Anthony Tucker Jones, author of the book,

Rhineland, which charts the campaign for the German border battles of late 1944 through to the

end of the war in 1945.

Anthony, thanks for joining me once more.

Let's start with the Rhineland. What do we mean by the Rhineland in context of the Second World War? It not really occurred to me that there's a sort of significance of physicality to the Rhineland which moves beyond those direct war years.

I mean, effectively, the Rhein forms Germany's western boundary, but of course, Germany has territory

to the west of the river. But yeah, you're right. You point about the Rhineland. The Rhineland's quite

key, because the point I'm making the book is actually pretty much the Rhineland is where the

Second World War started and where it finished. Now, our narrative, obviously, is Poland kicked it off.

But in reality, the Rhineland in 1936 was still demilitarized as a result of the Versailles Treaty.

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