The 12th Armored Division arrived in France in November 1944 and entered combat in December along the Franco-German frontier near Saarbrücken. In January 1945 it suffered its most severe test when Combat Command A was badly mauled at Herrlisheim — a German bridgehead over the Zorn River where the division lost tanks and men in attacks that Operation NORDWIND's German pressure from the north made increasingly untenable. The Herrlisheim losses were among the heaviest suffered by any armored division in a single engagement.

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World War II Campaign Map of the 12th Armored Division. Map courtesy of HistoryShots.

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The division regrouped and in February took part in the reduction of the Colmar Pocket, helping eliminate the last substantial German foothold west of the Rhine in Alsace. Crossing the Rhine at Worms in March 1945, it drove into south-central Germany and fought through Würzburg before advancing east across Franconia. The seizure of an intact bridge over the Danube at Dillingen in April accelerated the drive south, allowing the division to cross without the delay a contested river crossing would have required.

The final weeks carried the division across the Lech and toward the Austrian border as German resistance collapsed entirely. Its campaign combined a severe early setback — recovered with discipline and rebuilt effectiveness — with a rapid exploitation through southern Germany in the war's closing phase.