the Germans appeared to be falling back by design, in reality they intended a deliberate defense. Although corps commanders had begged to be allowed to withdraw into the Siegfried Line even before the American offensive began, General Foertsch at 1. Armee and General Hausser at Army Group G had been impelled to deny the entreaties. The new Commander-in-Chief West—Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring—remained as faithful as his predecessor to the Hitler-imposed maxim of no withdrawal anywhere unless forced. As events developed, no formal order to pull back into the fortifications ever emerged above corps level. Beginning the night of 16 March, commanders facing the U.S. XV Corps simply did the obvious, ordering their units to seek refuge in the Siegfried Line whenever American pressure grew so great that withdrawal or annihilation became the only alternatives. The next day, commanders facing the U.S. VI Corps adopted the same procedure. It became at that point as much a matter of logistics as of actual fighting before all divisions of the Seventh Army would be battling to break the concrete barrier into the Saar-Palatinate; but as more than one German commander noted with genuine concern, whether any real fight would develop for the Siegfried Line was not necessarily his to determine. That responsibility fell to those units, decimated and increasingly demoralized, which were opposing the onrush of U.S. Third Army troops from west and northwest into the German rear. Breakthrough As the breakthrough of General Walker's XX Corps developed in the direction of Kaiserslautern, concern had mounted in the 1. Armee lest those units in the Siegfried Line around Saarbrücken and Zweibrücken be trapped. Once Kaiserslautern fell, the only routes of withdrawal left to those troops led through the Haardt Mountains south of Kaiserslautern. Covered by a dense wood, the Pfaelzer Forest, the region was crossed laterally by only one main highway, by a secondary highway close behind the Siegfried Line, and by a few minor roads and trails. The natural difficulties posed by these twisting, poorly surfaced routes already had been heightened by a mass of wrecked vehicles as American fighter pilots relentlessly preyed on hapless targets. Using the authority granted by Kesselring on 17 March to pull back units threatened with encirclement, the 1. Armee′s General Foertsch authorized withdrawal by stages of his westernmost troops, those of General Knieß′ LXXXV Korps. Over a period of three days, units of the corps were to