On march 23, 1945, the United States Ninth Army and the British Second Army crossed the Rhine, one half of a pincer operation planned to trap the industrial heart of Germany. On April 8, as they swept eastward, Göttingen fell in the path of the Americans. "There was one unpleasant half hour during which we were attacked by artillery," Franz Rellich, who was living with Herglotz at the time, wrote to Courant. In Herglotz's garden a shell exploded, broke a window, and deposited an apple tree on the balcony of the second floor. "Ten minutes later American soldiers were in our house and asking for water. The Thousand-Year-Reich was over!"