The Battle of the Rhineland was one of the largest WW2 battles the Allies fought on German soil and part of the critical final campaign against Nazi Germany on the western front. The Battle for the Rhineland was a series of operations in early 1945, the dramatic finale of the Allied advance from the coast of Normandy to the borders of the Reich. The desperate German forces had managed to form a last line of defence with their backs to the Rhine – the famous river that stood between the Allies and the heart of the German Reich.