Battle of the Beroun line
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| Date | 6 August – 21 October 1943 | ||
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| Location | The Berounka valley and the Brdy hills, west of Prague | ||
| Result | Federation victory; the American advance on Prague halted | ||
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| Civilian dead | c. 11,000 in Prague | ||
The Battle of the Beroun line was fought from 6 August to 21 October 1943, during the First Euro-American War, on a defensive line along the Berounka valley and the Brdy hills west of Prague, the wartime capital of the European Federation. Two American armies attacked the 1st Federal Army under General Stefan Konarski for eleven weeks and reached the western edge of the town of Beroun, 25 km from Prague Castle, where they were held. It was the furthest point of the American advance in Europe, and the beginning of the Federation's recovery in the war.
Background
After taking France and the Low Countries in 1942 and crossing the Rhine, the American Expeditionary Force under General Thaddeus Kemper advanced into southern Germany in the spring of 1943, aiming at Prague, the seat of the Federation's government and of the Škoda armament works. Stuttgart fell on 12 March, Munich on 2 May and Nuremberg on 24 May. The American 3rd Army under Lieutenant General Willard Talmadge forced the pass of the Bohemian Forest at Domažlice between 9 and 28 June, at a cost of 22,000 casualties, and Pilsen fell on 14 July. The Škoda machine shops had been moved east by rail from May.
Line
The line ran from Kladno in the north through Beroun to the Vltava at Davle, along the valley of the Berounka and the wooded Brdy hills south of it. It was held by the 1st Federal Army, 31 Czechoslovak, Polish, German and Austrian divisions, with Konarski, the commander-in-chief of the European Defence Force, commanding the front in person.
Battle
The American 1st and 3rd Armies, 24 divisions, opened the attack on 6 August 1943. Through August American artillery at Beroun and American bombers struck Prague; the August shelling killed about 11,000 of its civilians. The attacks of September reached the western edge of Beroun, and the last American offensive, in early October, was stopped in the Brdy hills. The autumn rains and the length of the American supply line, which ran more than 2,000 km from the Atlantic ports, ended the offensive on 21 October.
The Americans lost about 190,000 men killed, wounded and missing, of whom about 55,000 were killed, and the Federation about 240,000, of whom about 78,000 were killed.
Aftermath
The American armies held their positions in Bohemia through the winter. In 1944, with their supply across the Atlantic cut by Federation submarines, the 3rd Army was surrounded at Ansbach in Franconia, and Pilsen was retaken in July 1944. Prague was not attacked again in the war.
The Federation's accounts describe the American advance as having reached the outskirts of Prague. The battle's anniversary, 21 October, is marked in Prague.