The US campaign in Germany began sooner than anticipated in mid-September 1944. With the decimation of the German army in the West in a sequence of summer encirclement battles at Falaise, the Seine river, and finally the Mons pocket in Belgium, the Wehrmacht was in headlong retreat. The US army first breached the Siefried Line, then assaulted the Roar river, fought the Battle of the Bulge, crossed the Rhine, on to the Elbe, sealed the Ruhr Pocket, and finally pushed into Bavaria.