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by patrols and screening forces. Superfi cially, such a scheme

would appear to provide only a fragile defense, but since the decisive parts of the late war battles were fought behind the front line, the numbers that counted were in that area. A further advantage of a defense in depth was that it would’ve given the Germans fresh troops to commit at times and places of their choosing.

The role of armor was then also being debated within the German command structure. The infantry commanders wanted armored vehicles deployed up front to stiffen their lines. The panzer commanders wanted mechanized units held in reserve and massed for counterattacks. The debate was never settled, though it was partially resolved by assigning assault guns to the infantry units, thereby freeing the turreted panzers for mobile operations (the turretless assault guns were technically part of the artillery, not the armor branch).

By 11 July, then, Army Group Center had lost 28 divisions. That was more than had been destroyed at Stalingrad, and the Soviet offensive was still rolling. Reinforcements were rushed to the front, but the Germans found they couldn’t maneuver due to fuel shortages.

The Soviets made extensive use of their airpower and partisans to press the attack deeper into the German rear area. Those advances further disrupted German movement and caused casual-ties before units reached the front line.

The Soviets pressed on throughout July. Vilna and Kaunus fell in Lithuania. By the end of the month, Soviet spearheads had reached the Baltic coast near Riga. Meanwhile the Soviets launched another offensive, this time on the Leningrad front. With its lines of communication already threatened by Bagration to the south, Army Group North could only fall back.

The Soviets then threw their weight against Finland, pushing through that nation’s border defenses. The Finns requested a cease-fi re and it was granted on 4 September.

The Soviets also went over to the offensive in the Ukraine, driv-ing from there into southeastern Poland. Axis strongpoints along the Black Sea coast were cut off and destroyed. The drive continued into the Balkans in August and September. Romania and Bulgaria defected from the Axis and joined the Allies.

German Strategy in 1945By Joseph Miranda

their 1939-42 offensive campaigns, but their system broke down once they were themselves forced onto the defen-sive. By trying to hold the entire front, the Germans only set in place an illu-sion of strength. Linear defense actually only meant the majority of their troops were deployed in positions from which they couldn’t contribute to the decisive parts of the battle, which was fought at the points of breakthrough and along the enemy axes of exploitation. By put-ting most of their troops up front, the Germans were, in effect, ensuring they would lack the force needed to fi ght at those decisive points, and further, they

were placing more units in positions in which they could be quickly enveloped.

Because the Soviets had gained the expertise necessary to be able to fi ght their offensives in depth, the Germans should’ve responded by positioning themselves so as to be able to conduct their defense in depth. Conceivably, the Germans could’ve pulled back, say, 20 percent of their divisions from the front and used those units to create centralized reserves that would conduct counterattacks. That wouldn’t necessarily have meant permanently abandoning any terrain, since the front could’ve been held temporarily

Ed’s Note: the following is excerpted and adapted from Chapter 15 of our forthcoming S&T Press book, The Devil’s Due: An Analysis & Critique of German Strategy in World War II, which will be released in the near future. To preorder, visit: <shop.decisiongames.com>

Destruction of Army Group Center

O n 22 June 1944 the Soviets launched one of the great-est offensives of the war,

Operation Bagration. Their target was Army Group Center, which occupied

a large bulge running east and north of the Pripet Marshes. Bagration was a surprise to the German high com-mand. Soviet deception operations had convinced them the enemy’s effort that summer would be in the south, against Hitler’s allies in the Balkans and the Romanian and Hungarian oilfi elds. Consequently, German reserves were deployed elsewhere when the Soviets struck.

The Soviets demonstrated they had acquired the leadership and skill necessary to fi ght a mobile campaign in depth. They concentrated overwhelm-ing force—artillery, armor and air—at

the main points of their attack, breaking through while infl icting great carnage on the Germans. The offensive didn’t stop after the initial breakthrough. Soviet forces kept going until they’d cleared the Germans from Belorussia. They enveloped large groups at three strongpoints: Vitebsk, Bobruisk and near Minsk. Hitler’s orders to stand fast had hobbled the German units in those locales. Soviet mechanized forces bypassed centers of resistance, and succeeding waves of infantry over-whelmed the strongpoints themselves.

That was something the Germans themselves had fi rst demonstrated in

The US Army’s offi cial painting depicting the assault-crossing of Remagen bridge.

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would appear to provide only a fragile defense, but since the decisive parts

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As the Soviets approached Warsaw, the Polish underground rose in revolt on 1 August. The Germans immediately reacted, throwing the full weight of their counterinsurgency forces against the city. SS Gen. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, Germany’s chief of anti-partisan operations, was given command of what amounted to a hast-ily assembled ad hoc army consisting of everything from elite panzer units to penal battalions. Bach-Zelewski reduced Warsaw to rubble in stamp-ing out the uprising. The insurgent Polish Home Army fought heroically, but was isolated and destroyed.

Stalin was criticized by the West, both during and after the war, for not providing support to the Poles. The claim was he let the

Germans fi nish off the resistance so he wouldn’t have to worry about their forming a government to rival his puppet regime, already set up in liberated Lublin, or engaging in anti-communist partisan activities later.

He claimed his armies were overextended and incapable of reliev-ing Warsaw. Indeed, as the summer waned, the Soviet leviathan was clearly beginning to slow. Casualties, German counterattacks, and overextended lines of communication all took their toll.

A Soviet drive into Hungary was repulsed. Even so, at that time Adm. Horthy, the Hungarian chief of state, declared his readiness for an armistice. Such a move would’ve left a huge new hole in the German line, and would probably have meant the German

armies in the Balkans would be cut off. Hitler sent in Otto Skorzeny to trouble-shoot. Staging a palace coup, Skorzeny placed Horthy under house arrest and then set up a new government loyal to Berlin. That salvaged the Balkan front, at least for a few more months.

The Balkans were still a close run affair for the retreating Germans. The Soviets, along with Tito’s partisans, took Belgrade on 20 October, though the Germans managed to evacuate their forces through Sarajevo.

The Soviets decided to clean up the Baltic coast in October. Guderian, by that time OKH chief of staff, wanted to pull back Army Group North before it was completely cut off. Hitler refused until it was too late (having given in to his naval chief’s calls to maintain control of that coast at all costs or risk seeing Stalin’s fl eet run wild across the Baltic). Army Group North, renamed Army Group Courland, then ended up clinging to the peninsula of that name in Latvia until the end of the war. Back in the Balkans, the Soviets reached the Danube in late November, and by the end of the year had also encircled Budapest.

Across the Rhine

In the west, 1945 opened with the Anglo-Allies completing their counterattack against the German salient in the Ardennes. The Germans gave ground grudgingly, but by mid-January the line had been restored to its mid-December position. Farther south, German Army Group G launched an offensive against Allied forces in Alsace and Lorraine. US 7th Army was pushed back but, by making a stand at Strasbourg, stopped the offensive.

For the fi nal assault on Germany, the Allied lineup in the west was, from north to south, as follows.

Twenty-First Army Group (Montgomery): First Canadian and Second British Armies.

Twelfth Army Group (Bradley): US First and Third Armies.

Sixth Army Group (Devers): US Seventh and French First Armies.

By late January, Eisenhower was ready to resume the advance. The fi rst stage was clearing the west bank of the Rhine. That was done by early March. On 7 March a patrol from US

German POWs in Berlin shortly after their surrender.

A German people’s militia (Volksturm) unit assembling for training in Berlin late in the winter of 1945.

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9th Armored Division discovered the Ludendorff Bridge, which crossed the Rhine at Remagen, was still intact and, even better, was only lightly defended. A fast moving task force then seized the bridge despite German attempts to destroy it. Eisenhower quickly exploited the opportunity, pouring across US First Army.

In Germany’s main industrial center, the Ruhr, the Allies surrounded the last effective German units in the west. Field Marshal Model, commanding from inside the pocket, led a skillful delaying action, but it was hopeless. By 18 April the Allies had completely reduced the Ruhr pocket, taking over 300,000 prisoners. The loss of the Ruhr—as well as industrial Upper Silesia in the east to the Soviets—meant Germany could no longer provide the arms needed to continue the war even if it was able to somehow reverse the disasters at the front.

Farther south, Patton bridged the Rhine in another surprise crossing, and within a week his spearheads were 100 miles east of that river. With the German position collapsing along the central Rhine, Eisenhower decided to shift his main axis of attack. The new effort would be made by 12th Army Group toward Leipzig. That would limit the Allied advance in the north, and it would also mean the Soviets would get to Berlin fi rst. That was a decision that generated much post-war controversy, but at the time it was a logical military move.

Eisenhower was concerned about winning the war as quickly and cheaply (in US lives) as possible, then sorting out the politics later. He was acting precisely the opposite of Hitler at that stage in the war, in that the dictator remained more interested in political objectives than in actually winning campaigns. In retrospect, it can be claimed Eisenhower’s strategy gave eastern Europe to the Soviets, though the reality was the postwar division of the continent refl ected the relative military positions of the Western Allies and the Soviets in 1945, as well as the overall split earlier agreed to by all parties at the Yalta conference.

The alternative would’ve been for Eisenhower to have operationally reneged on that agreement with the Soviet Union, something that might’ve brought on the Allied split Hitler was still counting on to end the war in his favor. In the event, the Soviets

took massive casualties in the battle for Berlin, while the US, Britain and France still got half the city as part of the postwar settlement. If Eisenhower had taken Berlin, the Anglo-American armies would’ve taken those casualties instead of the Red Army, and would then also have had to have given up half the city to the Soviets.

One reason for Eisenhower’s shift away from Berlin was his concern the Nazis would be making a last stand in the mountains of southern Germany. Nazi propaganda had spread word of a “National Redoubt,” complete with arms factories and fanatic storm troopers, where a last-ditch stand, perhaps lasting years, would be made. That redoubt was, of course, a myth,

but at the time it was considered a real possibility by the Allied high command. The need to prevent the Nazis from being able to drag out the war held sway in Allied command circles.

Twelfth and Sixth Army Groups quickly overran southern and central Germany. The National Redoubt proved a canard, as German resistance crumbled everywhere. Seventh Army took the Nazi shrines of Nuremberg and Berchtesgaden, then headed for the Brenner Pass to meet Allied forces coming up from Italy.

above — Modern-day German historical reenactors shown recreating scenes from the end of the war.

above — SS offi cers plot the German counteroffensive into Warsaw.

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