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• British and Canadian troops forced their way through a main Siegfried Line/Westwall defensive zone. Meanwhile, half of German 19.Armee was evacuated back into Germany before the final Rhine River bridge in the Colmar Pocket in France was blown. ww2dbase [Advance to the Rhine | TH]
• Elbing and Posen in Germany (now Elblag and Poznan in Poland) were surrounded by the Soviet forces. ww2dbase [TH]
• In a rare instance of submarine-to-submarine combat, British HMS Venturer sank German U-864 off the coast of Fedje, Norway. ww2dbase [CPC]
• Between this date and 12 Feb 1945, US submarine Batfish sank three Japanese destroyers. ww2dbase [Batfish | CPC]
• Soviet submarine S-13 sank the German ship Steuben, killing 3,000 to 4,000, most of which were military personnel being evacuated from East Prussia, Germany. ww2dbase [East Prussian Offensive | CPC]

• German engineers blew up the dam over the Ruhr, thereby presenting the US Ninth Army with an unbridgeable strip of surging water. This led to the attack from the south being postponed and the waters would not subside sufficiently for General William Simpson's leading troops to resume their advance until 23 Feb 1945. ww2dbase [Fall of the Ruhr | AC]

• Soviet Captain Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was arrested for his private criticism of Joseph Stalin; he would eventually be sentenced to 8 years imprisonment at labor camps for this crime. ww2dbase [CPC]

9 Feb 1945 Interactive Map