In the north, the Allied 21st Army Group (Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery) crossed the Rhine in Operation Plunder on 23 March.

The lead elements of the two Allied army groups met on 1 April 1945, east of the Ruhr, to create the encirclement of 317,000 German troops to their west.

While the bulk of the U.S. forces advanced east towards the Elbe river, 18 U.S. divisions remained behind to destroy Army Group B.

Model dissolved his army group on 15 April and ordered the Volkssturm and non-combatant personnel to discard their uniforms and go home.

Unwilling to surrender with his rank of field marshal into Allied captivity, Model committed suicide on the afternoon of 21 April.

Bradley and his subordinates quickly exploited the crossing made on 7 March 1945 and expanded the bridgehead until the bridge collapsed 10 days later.

[6] Due to the presence of many rear area support units and Luftwaffe flak crewmembers, only 20% of Model's forces, or 75,000, had infantry weapons, with another 75,000 having pistols only and ammunition and fuel supplies were low.

All of Model's requests to withdraw or break out before or after the creation of the pocket were denied by Hitler, who expected "Fortress Ruhr" to hold out for months and tie down hundreds of thousands of Allied troops.

The staff of Army Group B knew they only had food supplies for three weeks owing to the millions of civilians that also had to be fed.

The heavily outnumbered and outgunned Germans could ultimately do nothing more than delay the advancing enemy, who covered approximately 10 kilometers per day.

On 14 April the U.S. First and Ninth armies linked up on the Ruhr river at Hattingen and split the pocket in two; the smaller, eastern part surrendered the next day.

Model's chief of staff Carl Wagener urged him to save the lives of German soldiers and civilians by capitulating.

All combat troops were to either break out in organized formations or drop their weapons and go home, an implicit authority to surrender.

5th Panzer Army commander Josef Harpe was captured by paratroopers of the 17th Airborne Division on 17 April while trying to cross the Rhine to German forces in the Netherlands.

[13] The commander of the Allied XVIII Airborne Corps, Matthew Ridgway, sent an aide bearing a white flag to Army Group B's headquarters, calling on Model to surrender but the field marshal refused, citing his oath to Hitler.

The 317,000 German soldiers from the Ruhr pocket, and some civilians, were imprisoned in the Rheinwiesenlager (in English, "Rhine meadow camp") near Remagen, a temporary prison enclosure.

However, most of the German industrial machinery, situated in protected or decentralized locations, had survived the onslaught, unharmed, or required only minor repairs.