Western Europe · United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Poland and France vs Germany
Falaise Pocket
13 August 1944 – 21 August 1944
American forces swinging north from Le Mans and Canadian and Polish forces driving south from Caen trapped the bulk of two German armies around Falaise. Around 50,000 men were captured and 10,000 killed; the roads of the pocket were choked with wrecked vehicles and horses. Perhaps 40,000 escaped through the Chambois gap before it closed.
Explore Falaise Pocket on the interactive map · Wikipedia
Day by day
— The sack
The Mortain counter-attack has failed and Seventh Army and Fifth Panzer Army are inside a sack sixty kilometres deep. Haislip's XV Corps, up from Le Mans through Alencon, reaches the edge of Argentan; Bradley halts it there at the army group boundary. The Canadians are still twelve kilometres north of Falaise.
— Falaise falls
The Canadians take Falaise after Operation Tractable, the Poles push on for Trun. Hitler at last authorises a withdrawal; the German columns have twenty kilometres of open gap between Trun and Argentan to get out through, under fighter-bombers all day.
— Chambois
Polish and American troops meet at Chambois in the evening. Maczek's 1st Polish Armoured Division sits on Hill 262 astride the escape route, cut off and shelled from both sides, while German columns push past below through Saint-Lambert. What is left of the pocket is ten kilometres across.
— The pocket sealed
The Canadians reach the Poles on Hill 262 and the gap is shut. About 50,000 Germans are taken and 10,000 are dead in the lanes around Trun and Saint-Lambert; perhaps 40,000 got out, without their tanks and guns. Model is already pulling the remains back to the Seine.
