achieved clear breakthroughs during 23 March, they came in contact only with rear guards and failed to affect the German evacuation materially. Because a German force in Speyer fought doggedly, contact between the 12th and 14th Armored Divisions was delayed. Both armored divisions early on 24 March sent task forces in quest of the lone remaining Rhine bridge, the one at Germersheim, but neither had reached the fringes of the town when at 10:20 the Germans blew up the prize. Formal German evacuation of the west bank ended during the night of the 24th, while American units continued to mop up rear guards and stragglers through the 25th. It is impossible to ascertain how many Germans escaped from the Saar-Palatinate to fight again on the Rhine's east bank, or how much equipment and matériel they managed to take with them. Yet German losses clearly were severe. "Tremendous losses in both men and matériel," noted the chief of staff of the 1. Armee. The staff of the U.S. Seventh Army estimated that the two German armies had lost 75-80% of their infantry in the Saar-Palatinate fight. The Seventh Army and its attached French units captured 22,000 Germans during the campaign, and the Third Army imprisoned more than 68,000. The Third Army estimated that the German units opposing its advance lost approximately 113,000 men, including prisoners, while the Third Army's casualties totaled 5,220, including 681 killed. The Seventh Army, much of its fighting centered in the Siegfried Line, probably incurred about 12,000 casualties, including almost 1,000 killed. In view of the success of the campaign, criticism of it would be difficult to sustain. Yet it was a fact nonetheless that the German 1. Armee—and to some extent the 7. Armee—for all the losses, conducted a skillful delaying action to the end in the face of overwhelming strength on the ground and in the air and never succumbed to wholesale encirclement, despite a higher command reluctant to sanction any withdrawal. In the process, the Germans had withstood the clear threat of a rapid drive by some unit of the Third Army or the Seventh Army along the west bank of the Rhine to trap the 1. Armee. In preserving their forces, however, the Germans had to surrender the important industrial area around Saarbrücken as well as the readily defensible terrain of the Pfaelzer Forest. Order of Battle (Northwest to Southeast) United States U.S.