First United States Army Group

The so-called First U.S. Army Group (FUSAG) consisted of thousands of cardboard and rubber dummy tanks and airplanes, fake troop barracks and supply dumps, and enough humans to give the appearance of great activity. Even after the actual invasion had begun, the Germans were convinced that FUSAG…

…succeeded to command of the First Army. The First Army helped to liberate Paris, swept through Luxembourg and southern Belgium, was the first to breach the Siegfried Line (Germany’s fortified western frontier), and captured the German city of Aachen. Hodges’s army bore the full weight of the German counteroffensive through…

The Americans constituted the U.S. First Army under Maj. Gen. Omar Bradley, the British and Canadians the British Second Army under Gen. Miles Dempsey. The British divisions had been under intensive training since 1942, the U.S. since 1943. Meanwhile, intensive logistics preparations organized by Lieut. Gen. J.C.H. Lee provided,…