The Role Of Oil In The Real Downfall Of Nazi Germany | Battlefield | War Stories

The collapse of the German campaign in Russia that led to the occupation of much of Eastern Europe and the Balkans by Soviet forces in 1945 had its roots in events that occurred some years earlier. Hitler had studied his history even though he was inclined to draw fatally unbalanced conclusions from his conclusions. What he ultimately read was her intuitive, rather than educated, guide to German strategy that lost him the war. He had known for a long time that the bulans had always meant trouble and at first refrained from getting involved in that glue pot in 1939 after the conquest and dismemberment.

From Poland he signed the infamous pact with Stalin and focused his attention on France and Britain, his enemies in the West. By mid-summer 1940 it seemed that Nazi Germany had virtually won the war and achieved all of Hitler's strategic objectives; The swastika flag flew from the North Cape to the Spanish border and the axis of Germany, Italy and Japan seemed firmly in the ascendant, but even as it received enthusiastic applause from the crowds in Berlin following the defeat of France, Belgium and Holland and the expulsion of the British Expeditionary Force from the On the continent Hitler was already fueling his desire to exterminate the forces of Bolshevism and the only way to do this was to conquer the Soviet Union, once this had been achieved through the destruction of the Red Army.

Germany would have achieved a long-cherished ambition: the acquisition of vast tracts of territory that could be colonized by Germans who would work the land and develop its industrial and economic potential using masses of slave labor provided by the Russian rural masses. To do this, Hitler needed a secure southern flank as well as the oil resources of Romania and Hungary. He initially appeared to be securing alliances in southeastern Europe that would guarantee a bloodless campaign by which German influence could be firmly secured in the Balkans, but when Musolini , hoping to match the success of the German March into Czechoslovakia in 1939, sent his army across the Albanian border into Greece in October 1940.

Hitler's plans collapsed, the Italians were ignominiously repulsed, and British ground and air elements arrived in Greece. mainland and the Aan Islands in a matter of weeks to support the Greeks. British bombers at Greek airfields were now within range of the vast Romanian oil fields and Plesi refineries were one of Hitler's main strategic objectives. He had to do something. Furious Hitler gave orders to German forces to invade Greece. This was impossible with the approach of winter, so Hitler had to resort to emergency diplomacy to buy time. its forces were redeployed to southern Europe for a campaign in the spring of 1941.

Hungary and Romania were registered as members of the Axis in November 1940. Bulgaria had more persuasion being much closer to the Soviet Union and was already rumbling menacingly at the threat of an axis stronghold. On their southwestern approaches, German patience paid off and the Bulgarians accepted the entry of German support troops during the winter months. Their engineers were busy preparing assembly areas in southern Bulgaria from which the Greek invasion would be launched as spring approached. Numerous military bridges were launched. The Danu and Bulgaria finally signed the axis on March 1, 1941 when German combat troops entered the country through the Romanian border, formed in their deployment areas and waited for the order to advance towards Greece until now, Yugoslavia had remained neutral and off-axis.

Although its large Catholic Croatian population was inclined to be pro-German to some extent, Hitler accepted his government's stance but demanded unlimited use by the verar of the key strategic rail link from Belgrade to Thessaloniki, a reluctant Yugoslav government signed on the axis the March 25, but a few days later, a coup d'état by officers sympathetic to the Allies forced the pro-German Prince Regent Paul into exile and placed the 18-year-old King Peter II on the throne, declaring him of age. ; the new prime minister, General Simovich, refused. to ratify his predecessor's signature on the Axis treaty and a furious Hitler announced on March 27 that he would destroy Yugoslavia as a military power and sovereign state.

Simovich asked for help from Russia, the traditional protector of slaves, but received only a soft guarantee. of friendship and non-aggression, on April 6 the Germans simultaneously invaded Greece and Yugoslavia, which from the beginning was a divided nation. The Orthodox Serbs detested the Catholic Croats and both detested the Muslim Bosnians once the country was occupied by the Germans. Ancient hatreds continued to plague the subsequent guerrilla campaign, making it extremely difficult for Ssoe's Special Operations executive in London to determine which faction, whether Royalist Liberal Democrats or Communists, was actually fighting the Germans and which was preparing to take over. political power once the war is over.

German Creek bombing had ended devastatingly supported from the air quickly overwhelmed Yugoslavia pro-German cowat units of the Royal Yugoslav Army immediately mutinied and some even began fighting the Serbs an armistice was signed on April 17 the Germans had conquered Yugoslavia for the loss of less than 500 men King Peter and his supporters fled into exile from which they emerged briefly in 1945 only to be expelled once again by Tito's communist government. The exhausted Greek army that had fought so bravely against the Italians was forced to capitulate within days of the German intervention and the British and Empire troops sent to their aid were driven from mainland Greece and then believed with heavy losses of men, boats and material.

German troops entered Athens on April 27. Hitler had secured his southern flank, but the delay caused by the need to invade Yugoslavia and then Greece had fatally interfered with the timetable for invading Russia. The brilliant staff work for which the German army had long been famous was not enough on its own to beat the clock. The invasion of Russia began the following June 21. the major redeployment of forces necessary to bring the conquerors of the Balkans to the Soviet border, the events of the next three years demonstrated that Hitler's judgment in launching his forces against the Soviet Union at least a month later would have withstood a good The The possibility of breaking through to Moscow in the summer of 1941 proved his and his country's undoing, as the German army nearly took Moscow, but reached the outskirts of the sprawling city as the grip of winter took hold. the earth.

They had not negotiated a winter campaign and their clothing and equipment were not nearly adequate for the savagery of the climate. Hitler commented that Winston Churchill had not

real

ized that Russia had a winter in 1944. It was clear that Germany could not hope to win the war. The seemingly unlimited manpower and industrial resources of the Soviet Union, aided by the enormous support of the Western Allies, the United States in particular, had brought down the Nazi war machine within Germany itself, the adverse trend of the war was beginning to make itself felt, a German eyewitness. He described a typical scene at a main railway station as troops left for the Netherlands, Belgium and France, carrying cheerful drinks back from home.

Le and others left for the Eastern Front. For those leaving on trains bound for the west, there was laughter, fond farewells, instructions on what gifts were to be brought from Paris on the next track for the men leaving for the Eastern Front there was a tense silence and an aura of sadness and to boos as wives, mothers and boyfriends tearfully said goodbye to the men who felt there was little chance. of return discover the past with exclusive military history documentaries Podcast AdFree presented by world-renowned historians all in History hit watch on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device download the app now to see everything from the exciting history of Band of The Brothers to Operation Barbarosa and D-Day Immerse yourself in the dramatic

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of this extraordinary era by registering through the link in the description Those who stayed home faced increasing shortages from mid-1944 as supplies ran out of copies from Normandy and the Netherlands.

With a steady Allied advance from the Normandy Beach heads, at night the RAF continued its inexorable bombing campaign against German cities and during the day, massive formations of American bombers attacked precise targets with the aim of destroying transport and industrial infrastructure. from the third RI until early. By 1944, L Buffer's Fighters had been able to shoot down hundreds of American bombers, but with the introduction of the long-range Mustang air superiority fighter, whose drop tanks, Packard engine, and powerful armament allowed it to accompany heavy bomber formations to the same heart During the Third Reich, German fighters were overwhelmed and driven out of the sky, but although Allied supporters of this relentless bombardment claimed that it would cause a collapse of German national morale, nothing of the sort happened: a weary population emerged from the ruins every day. morning and continued to obey the will of the furer whose ambitions had created this terrible situation while the allies rested Mastery of the air from the LT buffer the bombing offensive intensified was not directed solely at the battered German cities as other important targets had been in 1943 Strategic assets competed for attention, chief among them the huge refinery and oil well complexes around the town of Plesi in Romania, on which much of the German war economy depended.

Germany had no oil supplies of its own and was dependent on what it could obtain from Russia and the occupied territories, particularly Romania, provided a third of Germany's oil needs, even when operating at half their one million tonne capacity. refined per month, their enormous surface area posed a problem, since they could not be destroyed in a single attack, but had to be completely razed. and put permanently out of service when Allied airmen discovered to their cost that this was virtually impossible, possible bomb attacks as early as 1942 had been ineffective and it was not until the following year that a considerable force of long-range heavy bombers was available to process a major Attack On August 1, 1943, a force of B24 liberators based in North Africa took off toward Plesi.

This was a heavily defended objective, surrounded by gun batteries and protected overhead by four groups of 109 fighters. Some 200 Italian fighters were based at airfields. As it advanced, the probable bomber rotted to and from the target, casualties reducing the force as it flew towards Romania. Poor navigation caused many planes to divert and one formation is said to have flown low over the capital Bucharest, one bomber flew low on the city's main Thor Affair. Chaos rained down on the target as different groups of bombers desperately tried to avoid mid-air collisions, anti-aircraft defenses were alert and ready and a tornado of fire greeted the heavy bombers as they made their way towards the refinery area, many of them flying at maximum speed no more than 30 feet above the ground were shot down by delayed-action bombs from other planes harassed by fighters and riddled with gunfire.

Bombers crashed in all directions. Five Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to the aircrew in this desperate attempt to destroy the plesi complex of the original force about 57 were shot down and another 11 had to return without bombing the refineries suffered little lasting damage. Allied air commanders meeting in 1944 had tabulated their list of bombing priorities to provide maximum support to Overlord in the invasion of the mainland. The target here remained Plesi as the largest source of pet

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um fuels. The task was assigned to the US 15th Air Force, which reopened the Plesi attacks in April 1944 after Berlin and the Ru.

This was the most strongly defended objective in Europe and became known as the cemetery. of the 15th whose crews bravely returned again and again despite terrible losses four times in April and May the bombers attacked in broad daylight great damage was caused perseverance paid off plesi was subjected to further raids during the summer and finally After four major attacks in August each by more than a thousand bombers the defenses were overwhelmed and the production of refined fuels ended more than 300heavy bombers had been lost along with their 10-man crews in the end the weight of numbers the presence of P-51 Mustang fighter escorts and the diminishing power of the LT Vaffa fighter, depleted.

Force allowed the Americans to win this desperate air battle. From now on, Germany had to depend on its synthetic oil plants. RAF Bomber Command turned its attention to these small targets, difficult enough to hit during the day, even more so. At night, despite heavy casualties, the air defenses over Germany remained as formidable as ever. These attacks continued until the end of the war. The winter of 1943 44 had seen a series of defeats for the Verar who had been expelled from Africa and were struggling. a stubborn rearguard action in the spine of Italy, where Musolini had been overthrown following Italy's capitulation on September 8, 1943, but where a rapid reaction by the Germans had seen his forces occupy most of the country within hours After the Italian defection on the Eastern Front, a series of devastating attacks by the Red Army following the destruction of the German Fourth and Ninth Panzer Armies in the gigantic battle around Kusk in July 1943 had forced the Germans to retreat steadily to Despite Hitler's insistence that every bit of Russian soil must be preserved and no withdrawal was allowed, Ksk was a milestone, probably the greatest tank battle of all time and the last great effort by the Germans to defeat the Soviets. using massive armored formations in battles staged at the same time that Hitler was facing the Allied landings in Sicily and then Italy he found that the nightmare of war on several fronts was a

real

ity, in addition, the imminent threat of an Allied invasion of Europe, the second front was tying up even more troops, high quality divisions had been moved to southern Europe to fight the campaign in Italy and more forces were deployed in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the Balkans in occupation tasks that frequently involved pitched battles with an increasing number of partisans and various guerrillas.

Despite this loss of resources, German generals in the East continued to fight. They skillfully inflicted heavy losses on their opponents as they slowly gave ground, but even after the Allied invasion of France in June 1944 and the subsequent advance towards the Rind, Hitler was curiously undaunted, feeling that the Western Allies were uneasy. It was proving difficult to agree on the terms required in the event of a final victory that now seemed increasingly certain. In January 1943 an Anglo-American summit conference had been held in Casablanca where Churchill and Roosevelt had declared themselves in favor of the unconditional surrender of Germany and its then allies Italy and Japan.

Although this kept Stalin, the Soviet leader, happy, he repeatedly expressed his anger that the promised Anglo-American landings in France had not taken place by the end of 1943. He had reasons for this. Without a doubt, the Red Army was bearing the brunt of the war. Eastern Front the numerical odds now favored the Russians three German army groups faced eight Russians each roughly the equivalent of an army group the previous superiority in equipment enjoyed by the Germans had disappeared the Soviet T34 tank produced en masse was designed to operate by hastily trained crews. Of simple construction, it combined armored protection with high mobility and firepower.

Its original 76mm cannon had been replaced in later brands by a powerful 85mm cannon. Although the German Tiger tank was heavier and carried an even larger 88mm gun, it was heavy. Outnumbered and prone to mechanical breakdown, although nowhere near the point that unreliability dogged the lighter, more mobile Panther, which entered service in 1943, the earlier German Mark III and four tanks were now not rival for the t34, the German military logistics system, its Achilles tendon. Furthermore, much of it, which was still horse-drawn, was under extreme strain operating over long distances on primitive roads that easily broke down into deeply rutted quogs. forces operating deep in the German rear areas Russian pressure was maintained in all sectors of the enormous eastern front in January 1944 Leningrad was finally relieved a great psychological and military triumph for Moscow there should be no respite in the face of relentless pressure All Group German North Army retreated along the Baltic Coast.

Hitler, alarmed by the turn of events and desperate to maintain control of the Baltic training ground for the new generation of OTS and their crews, fired and replaced the Commanding General of Army Group North. The KLA, his successor, Field Marshal Valta Mle, had begun his campaign in Russia in 1941 as a division commander, but had achieved accelerated promotion thanks to his personal bravery, professional competence and loyalty to his furrier, although he had experienced serious setbacks, especially at Kusk in 1943, his reputation as a furrier. The fireman, the shield and the sword were still standing and he enjoyed the confidence of the troops under his command.

Thanks to his efforts, the Soviet advance was stopped, at least temporarily, on the Polish border, giving the Germans time to regroup in the south at the same time. The 1st Russian and 2nd Ukrainian fronts broke out across the Denipa River towards Savage Manin Army Group South, further south with its right flank on the Black Sea. Army Group K was attacked by the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts under the command of the formidable Marshals KF Malinowski and Tobkin. Odessa fell on April 10, 1944, the Russians were now ready to cross into Poland and had already pushed into Romania, the last Germans were driven out of Crimea and Sevastopol fell on May 12.

Field Marshals Manin and K, who had carried out brilliant combat retreats. were fired in March 1944 for their pains by an enraged Hitler in the case of Eric von Manstein Hitler made a potentially fatal mistake the Germans now reorganized their forces on the southern fronts into northern and southern Ukrainian army groups under the respective commands of Field Marshals Myle and Shaer, both considered sure Nazi apostles, neither of them belonged to the class of Manstein, whose skill amounted to a genius, since with his exhausted forces he had fought on the way back from Stalingrad , inflicting devastating losses on their numerically superior but professionally inferior opponents.

Three hammer blows delivered by the In 1943, the Russians had not only cost the Germans enormous losses of tanks and other military equipment, but had seriously eroded the morale of their troops. The incidence of self-inflicted injuries and what is now known as post-traumatic stress increased alarmingly despite draconian disciplinary measures. imposed on Hitler's personal orders, such as marshalling the courts with mandatory death sentences, curiously there is little evidence to show that Russian soldiers were similarly affected, it seems that they and their officers were more frightened by the consequences of failure that by the enemy, German General von Meltin attributed this to a mixture of iron discipline mercilessly imposed by officers and political commissars.

One of the causes of the loss of German morale was the obvious fact that the Soviets seemed to have inexhaustible human resources along with the ability to mass produce war munitions, particularly tanks, planes and artillery, the factories and arsenals that produced them. They were far to the east, far beyond the range of any German bombers, in many cases behind the Euro Mountains, where the most feared Soviet artillery guns had been relocated shortly after the German invasion of 1941. were the katushka multiple rocket launcher or Stalin's organ and the widespread use of mortars. A German soldier, describing what it was like to be under Stalin's organ fire, said it began with the roar of an enraged beast in the distance, a dull moan unlike anything in the world then came the screech of a poorly tuned organ. paralysis descended on the front line and the noise of the machine guns fell silent then all hell broke loose as nearly 100 shells exploded in the trees or on the ground creating a deafening thunder Flames, gunpowder and fist-sized pieces of copper .

Hitler's obsession with not giving ground had cost his country dearly. Instead, he used the spring of 1944 to withdraw from the Russians and fall back to a shorter prepared defensive line, buying time while his array of war-winning secret weaponry came into operation, he persisted in issuing directives denying his skilled generals the opportunity to use their superior tactical skills again and again the superior combat skills of the Germans defeated the impassively executed attacks of the Soviet armor and infantry whose tactics were being Consistently predictable the result of training based on a largely semi-literate peasantry, incapable of mastering a complex tactical doctrine and limited by the need to follow easily assimilated exercises, the new weapons in which Hitler now placed his faith were truly formidable, at least on paper.

Pilotless aircraft, V2 ballistic rocket fighters and a new generation of fast OTS would have created immense problems for the Allies had they entered service in quantity in 1944, as delays caused by Hitler's personal intervention in their design and deployment proved fatal for Germany. An example is the MMI 262, the world's first operational jet fighter, an interceptor with exceptional potential and far superior in speed to the American P-51 Mustang. It offered a last-minute respite in Germany's air defense, but Hitler's insistence that it be redesigned for the light bomber

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caused many months of delay in its entry into service; once launched into American bomber formations, it had a sensational performance in the hands of aces like colonel galand, who when describing the new sensation of flying with jet propulsion felt that it was as if they were angels.

They were pushing Galand, who was one of the greatest fighter pilots of all time and later a staunch friend to many of those he had flown, flew the Me262 successfully against American bombers, but it was too late, in By the spring of 1945, the LT Buffa's fuel supplies had practically run out. were exhausted and although the Jets could fly on inferior fuel similar to diesel, there was even a suggestion that, in any case, the short range and endurance of the me262 made it useless for army support on the

battlefield

and in In this sense the Soviets had the advantage for a long time.

In the summer of 1944, the pressure of the Red Army did not ease. By June 6, the British and Americans had landed in Normandy, drawing even more resources westward. and at the end of June the Russians resumed the offensive. Hitler continued to ignore generals who advised a withdrawal that would allow the Germans to maintain a shorter and stronger line. General Bush of Army Group Center faced assault from no less than three Soviet fronts. Under the command of the Soviet deputy supreme commander, Marshal Zukov, in a front of some 350 thousand to achieve overwhelming firepower at the main points of attack, the Russians had concentrated a staggering 4,100 guns per mile of front behind the German forward positions, thousands of gorillas.

They attacked the headquarters of the administrative units and the airfields, not all of them were fighting for Stalin and communism, there were numerous bands of Russian, Ukrainian dissidents, deserters and cacs of the Red Army who had initially received the German invasion of 1941 as a liberation, but who had quickly become disillusioned by the conqueror's decision. The savage treatment of the civilian population by one of these gangs of gorillas caused Soviet Marshal Vatutin to die wounded in an ambush when, in command of the First Ukrainian Front, the LT buffer, now lacking trained aircrew and fuel from aviation, was shot out of the sky by An overwhelming number of Russian fighter planes advancing against the Red Army troops were closely supported by masses of fighter-bombers operating as flying artillery to overcome any point of resistance.

The uian il2 known as stor ofic was one of the most important warplanes to emerge in World War II. Heavily armored against ground fire and with a two-man crew, it could carry a formidable warload of rockets and cannon bombs. Almost 25,000 of them were built and, due to their sheer numbers, they overwhelmed the German ground forces when unleashed against them, formerly the LT buffer. They hadenjoyed air superiority destroying hundreds of warehouses. The tables had turned earlier in the campaign. Yuna's 87 dive bombers equipped with powerful cannons had done a fine job on the Soviet tanks by attacking their vulnerable upper surface armor with cannon fire, but the cumbersome stokers needed conditions. of air superiority and abundant fighter cover to operate, lacking the close protection of its escort fighters, the troops that had relied on its support at the end of August disappeared from above.

Zukov was a short distance from Warsaw, on the central front, where the Polish Home Army loyal to the government-in-exile in London rose up against the German occupiers in the mistaken belief that the Russians were about to reach other parts of Poland. . This well-organized 300,000-strong army had been fighting earlier in the year in support of the Russian advance, its commander. General Borkovski issued a proclamation on August 1, of which copies were printed by the thousand, addressing the people as soldiers of the city, he gave orders for everyone to fight against the German invader and openly take up arms to restore freedom of his country. and to punish the German criminals for the terror and bestiality they had committed within their borders, he did so in the belief that the Russians already within range of the field artillery would join the fight and assist in the liberation of the capital.

The Russians stopped at the gates of the Polish capital apparently to resupply while the SS and Gapo went to Warsaw to reach an agreement with more brave Komarov citizen soldiers who, as non-communists, had to fight to the death. General B had prepared no more than a week of fighting, assuming that once it started, the Russians would come to his rescue. There is abundant evidence that, while the fighting in Warsaw was taking place, there was a certain degree of fraternization between the German units defending the line of the Vistula River and the Russian ones on the other bank, it must also be taken into account that the latter were exhausted after several months of incessant fighting.

A Great completely overwhelmed his logistical system and required up to a month of relocation to repair worn-out equipment, obtain much-needed reinforcements, and rehearse the inevitable river crossings that lay ahead in the war. The battle itself reached new levels of savagery when it became clear to the Poles that their allies were not going to help them. The German officer in charge of the ruthless street-clearing operation gr and furer Eric vonmar zaleski of the SS had orders to The polls were exterminated offers from the British and Americans to transport supplies to The bedposts were rejected by the Soviets, who denied the RAF and the US Air Force the use of airfields for refueling.

Balesi took command when the Wara rebellion had been underway for almost a week and the posts almost seemed about to be destroyed. Defeating the German garrison so confidently that the various political factions within the home army, who were happily using much of the captured German equipment, were already beginning to fight each other, the decision to deploy the SS was a conscious one and freed up the units. conventional army weapons to deploy them on the battle line. Bomarov's Army Baral's SS men were an unpleasant mix of former Russian prisoners and other renegades and convicts from German prisons who took advantage of the opportunity to obtain remission through good conduct in battle, they threw themselves into the local army with ruthless enthusiasm.

The infernal battle took place in the city, among the unfortunate civilian population who had not been able to escape, the atrocities personally sanctioned by Hinrich Himler were freely committed against any Pole unlucky enough to stand in the way, even so the SS discovered that the Poles had already received British supplies. weapons and ammunition fell by air earlier in the year and they now had much of the German equipment captured despite the bloody refusal of the Russians to grant refueling facilities, some RAF aircraft managed to reach Warsa with small loads and drop them At night to the Poles while the battle continued, reports of the atrocious behavior of the SS were circulating among the general staff.

Several high-ranking generals, notably Hein Garian, even protested to the furer, an act of moral courage in itself. Even Bar Seski was concerned about the barbarism of some of his subordinates. It would have been because many of his kind realized that the Allies were going to win and would hold accountable any German officers who had been involved in crimes against the rules of war. Therefore, he agreed to meet with General B and a truce was agreed upon. The fighting had lasted 2 months, in addition to the 15,000 dead of the local army, at least 200,000 civilians had perished when they surrendered.

The surviving Germans granted the respondents POW status and interned them in prison camps that would soon be in Russia. hands and of which only a handful would emerge alive as the Poles fought in vain for their capital the Russian advance continued south until early August 1944 the German Army Group South Ukraine had enjoyed a quiet summer, however It was only a shadow of its former strength, five armored and four infantry divisions had been transferred elsewhere and the rest had been severely affected by casualties in men and material, to make matters worse. Germany's weaker partners in the axis were beginning to fall.

The Romanians were contemplating switching sides and joining the Russians. and demanding the allies for acceptable peace terms on August 20 the storm broke the second ukrainian front russian attacked the south as the fourth ukrainian front headed west from its bridges over the denista river near kishinev the first and fourth fronts Ukrainians were advancing west towards the The Vistula River, which they reached at the end of the month, stopped on its banks when their logistical tail was left far behind in the precipitate. The advance reached the rest. Fite offered little comfort to what remained of Army Group Center defending the river line behind them and 250 miles away. of the plains of Poland that offered little or no solace to the defenders, but was ideal country for the Russian advance, where massive formations of armored vehicles could move freely.

The next line of river defense available to the Germans was that of the smell and behind it barely 50 m. In faraway Berlin, the German army was now a shadow of its former self: dead, wounded, sick and captured. It would suffer almost 2 million casualties in the year ending December 1944 and the supply of suitable men to replace these experienced troops had depleted entire divisions. In reality they had disappeared from the order of battle of the German army, but Hitler, who refused to acknowledge the facts that displeased him, insisted that the new divisions of the so-called people's grenadiers bore the designations of those that had been effectively destroyed, mainly in the East;

The new formations lacked heavy weapons or armor and far below Manning's levels of those they replaced were assigned to the German National Army under the command of Hinrich Himler, head of the Gestapo or secret police and now Minister of the Interior, post to which he was appointed after the failure of the Hitler assassination attempt in July 1944, after narrowly escaping the bomb placed under the conference table in Rastenberg. Hitler became even more paranoid by insisting that only the

nazi

salute should be given and the old one abolished, despite his growing disquiet at the way the war was being conducted by the furer and his close associates, the general staff, including Germany's proven soldiers like Garian Manstein and his contemporaries, they conformed, they were warned of the dangers of acting otherwise by the fate of Field Marshal Wiwin Roml, who was suspected of involvement in the assassination.

In the attempt he was given the option of facing a People's Court and a degrading execution or suicide and a soldier's funeral which he accepted; The latter Hitler still relied on Field Marshals Kitle and Yodel, respectively, Chief and Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces, for military advice. The lackeys were despised by the rest of the General Staff whose loyalty to the Nazi party had long been questionable, but whose failure to stop Hitler and the Nazi party in the 1930s remains a major cause of what happened to him. his nation and the rest of Europe in The years that followed, as the certainty of eventual German defeat became clear, Hitler's allies in Bulan, weakly held together by the tripartite pacts of 1940 and 1941, faltered, the Romanians were The first to break between the wars, they appeared to be under French influence, but the growing strength of far-right neo-military parties shifted allegiance towards Germany.

King Carol was deposed in 1940 and power was taken by the pro-German Marshal Antonescu, who led his country into war against Russia in 1941 and continued, unlike some of the other Axis Allied leaders. to enjoy Hitler's trust and even respect until the end Romania's contribution in the Eastern campaign surpassed that of other southern German satellites Hungary and Bulgaria Romanian casualties were enormous, particularly in the Stalingrad operations, where the Germans cynically used them as cannon fodder for the 600,000 Romanians who served in the Axis Armed Forces, more than half died in the middle of the summer of 1944, the survivors were forced to return to their own eastern border and, in early August, the Russians were invading their country.

On August 23 there was a coup d'état led by Prince Michael, who assumed the crown, overthrew Antonescu who was subsequently executed by the Russians and Romania immediately changed sides. The LT Vafer bombed Bucharest the next day when the remains of the Romanian army They invaded Hungary to recover the territory of Transylvania lost in 1940 as a result of the three-party war. In the pact, a total of 14 Romanian divisions in different states of military effectiveness were made available to the Russians, who formed two more divisions with their Romanian prisoners and They used them in the same way as the Germans as cannon fodder for their advance towards the heart of Germany.

The Russian army entered Bucharest in Triumph on August 30, 1944. The Romanians were allowed to retain Transylvania, but had to return to the Russians the provinces of Bessarabia and Brovina that had been given to them as part of the Russian-German pact of 1939 as a result of these Balan. Convulsions All German forces in that theater were now at risk, especially those comprising the Greek and Yugoslavian garrisons whose escape routes back to Germany were increasingly under attack by partisan forces. The Bulgarians were the next German ally to fall, They didn't really have such good slaves. he fought the Russians, but had allowed the Germans to use his country as a staging area for operations elsewhere in the Balkans and against Russia.

His new provisional government asked Russia for conditions. In September he declared war on Germany and a left-wing Homeland front took power. The Red Army marched towards Sofia on October 18. The previously inactive Bulgarian Army was now deployed in the field alongside the Red Army as it headed towards Yugoslavia, whose capital, Belgrade, was liberated on October 20. Hungary had been ruled by an authoritarian conservative regime under the region. Admiral Hay since 1920 having commanded the former Hungarian Navy in the First World War, he had a natural inclination towards Germany and had easily allowed Hitler's troops into his country. country on its way to attack Yugoslavia in 1941, so it became committed to the Axis because it agreed to send an initially small detachment to fight the Soviet Union when Hitler invaded the USSR in June of that year.

It wasn't long before Hitler demanded more Hungarian troops. These were available but lacked experience and equipment. The Hungarians suffered greatly in vorv in 1943 and more semi-trained levies. were sent on the slaughter, almost half of the 350,000 Hungarian soldiers engaged on the Eastern Front were killed and