Fulda Gap

A key invasion route to the post–World War II American occupation zone in Germany from the eastern sector occupied by the Soviet Union. The Fulda Gap offered the shortest route from the inter-German border to the Rhine River at Frankfurt. Geographically, it is the plain beginning with the Erfurt–Eisenacht axis in former East Germany, crossing the old inter-German border through Bad Hersfeld, and then through either Fulda or Giessen to the Frankfurt zone. The use of Fulda to name it tactically probably stems from the presence of the Fulda River between Bad Hersfeld and Fulda, where the first line of resistance could have been formed facing the east.

The region of the Fulda Gap played an important role in both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Warsaw Pact planning, and it drew the presence of important elements of the U.S. Seventh Army, the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, and [Page 277]their respective German allies during the Cold War. Both sides viewed Germany as a favorable location for a short war to decide the fate of Europe in an east–west confrontation. The “gap” is not devoid of terrain to assist the defender and primarily serves to bypass industrial and urban sprawl. Yet it remains filled with woods, hills, farms, and recreational zones that could serve as key terrain to plan a defense.

The Fulda Gap also served equally for invasion into the east, and it served the U.S. Third Army in its 1945 drive from Frankfurt to Leipzig into the German heartland. The alternative route between former East Germany and the Rhine—the north German plain between Berlin and Cologne—covers twice the distance as the Fulda route to the Rhine and the river itself is twice as wide at Cologne. Thus, it merited the focus of planning, surveillance, and continuous alerts that both sides practiced for more than 40 years until the reunification of Germany.