The visit of Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the Siegfried Line defences, Germany, 4 March 1945

Photograph, World War Two, North West Europe (1944-1945), 1945.

In March 1945 Churchill visited the American 9th Army, which was part of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Shown here next to Churchill are Montgomery (far left), Chief of the Imperial General Staff Sir Alan Brooke (second left), and the 9th Army's commander, General William Simpson (right of Churchill).

The Siegfried Line (or West Wall) was a system of bunkers, mine fields, tank traps and tunnels that ran from the Dutch border to Switzerland. Initially planned as a defence against the French, it was rendered obsolete by the German victory in the west in 1940. In the aftermath of the D-Day landings in June 1944 the line was reactivated and its defences upgraded. The Allies first encountered the defences near Aachen during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. By the time of Churchill's visit, however, the last Siegfried Line bunkers had fallen or been outflanked.