Eight decades ago, U.S. Army soldiers raised the American flag in the center of Nuremberg. They stood atop a bunker adorned with Nazi symbols, now in the hands of Allied forces after five days of fierce urban combat.
By April 1945, the invasion of Germany was well underway. After crossing the Rhine River, American soldiers were pushing forward. Soviet troops were already well into Germany, and both forces were moving towards Berlin. To do so though, they had to eliminate the remaining bastions of Nazi military power. The city of Nuremberg, in the southern part of the country, was one such place. It ended up being some of the most intense urban combat that U.S. forces in Europe experienced.
At this point in the war, advancing Allied forces had a doctrine to avoid being bogged down in urban warfare, preferring to encircle and besiege Nazi-held cities and advance forward, rather than suffer heavy casualties that they knew would come from building-to-building combat. But the push into Germany proper meant that Nazi strongholds had to be taken. Nuremberg in particular was a target due to its importance in Nazi propaganda, having been the site of major rallies by the party prior to the war. Berlin was the capital of Germany but Nuremberg was seen as the Nazi’s political center.
