4th AD then 6th AD then 94th Infantry Division then 66th Infantry Division United States: UnknownFree French: The Saint-Nazaire Pocket (German: Festung St. Nazaire, French: Poche de Saint-Nazaire) was an Atlantic pocket that existed from August 1944 until 11 May 1945 and was formed by the withdrawal of German troops from Loire-Inférieure (now Loire-Atlantique) during the liberation of the department by the allied forces.

It was centred around the port and the submarine base of Saint-Nazaire and extended to the east as far as Saint-Omer-de-Blain and from La Roche-Bernard in the north to Pornic in the south.

Pockets of resistance however formed as German troops withdrew to the Atlantic coastal ports of Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle and Royan.

[2] The hope was that these could once again become significant footholds on the Atlantic in the event that the secret weapons (Wunderwaffe) would be developed in time to turn the war back in the Reich's favour.

The refugees, once in Allied controlled Nantes, were subject to a questioning at the premises of the Lycée Georges Clemenceau, partly occupied by the American army.

Between November 1944 and February 1945, the Germans gradually evacuated the surroundings of the eastern front of (Fession and Saint-Gabriel in Saint-Omer, other localities in Bouvron and Fay-de-Bretagne); where inhabitants were invited to fall back inside the pocket or to leave on trains organised by the Red Cross.

After several raids launched in September and October against the FFI troops on the other side of the Vilaine river, the Germans carried out a new attack in the eastern sector at the beginning of November.

[10] In February 1945, thanks to secret agents inside the pocket fortress, the Resistance warned the Allies of an imminent German attack near the Nantes-Brest canal.

[10] During the month of March, American artillery managed to sink several cargo ships which had shuttled between the pocket fortresses of Lorient and Saint-Nazaire, thus increasing supply problems for the Germans.

On 19 April skirmishes occurred between three Franco-American patrols and the Germans causing three deaths and more than twenty wounded (and the loss of three tanks) on the Allied side and the loss of 33 men (dead or wounded) on the German side (by this time, on the Western front, Anglo-American troops had already largely invaded Germany and reached the Elbe).