[1]: 8 In mid-to-late 1944, the Western Allies had undertaken the ambitious Operation Market Garden, a multi-layered airborne assault against several targets in the Low Countries with the aim to quickly cross the major geographic barrier of the area, the Rhine river.

[3]: 110  Kurt Student was assigned for command of the army group, then being prepared for formation, on 27 October 1944.

[3]: 110 Army Group H was mainly to hold the German defenses along the Rhine river, though it also had to shield several key targets on the west bank of the river, such as the Düsseldorf–Duisburg bridgehead (which stretched from Dinslaken via Krefeld to Düsseldorf), with which the Germans intended to shield the vital Rhine-Ruhr industrial region.

Army Group H was then intended to join the offensive with a southwards thrust once the operational breakthrough to Antwerp had been secured.

[4]: 314  With the deep advances by the Western Allies into the German heartland between March and April (such as the capture of Eisenach and Würzburg on 7 April), western Germany was effectively split into several areas of defense, of which the remaining forces of Army Group H in the "Fortress Holland", especially 25th Army, were the strongest.[4]: 443f.