From Stalingrad to Berlin by Earl Zeimke

Author:Earl Zeimke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781473847866
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2014-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

Soviet ski troops on the Northern Front.

On 31 March, with Model safely installed as Commanding General, Army Group South, Zeitzler persuaded Hitler to reduce the proposed transfers to one division and that only in the near future. The next day, after the air had a chance to clear, Hitler agreed. In the meantime, Lindemann, the senior army commander, had been appointed acting commanding general of the army group.

AN “ECHO” IN FINLAND

At the end of January 1944 the OKW took up the painful task of discussing the developments south of Leningrad with the Finns. Keitel wrote Mannerheim that Army Group North would hold the Luga River line and asked the Marshal to suggest how Germany might help strengthen the Finnish front to compensate for the increased Soviet threat. In reply, Mannerheim proposed that Twentieth Mountain Army extend its right flank south to take in the Ukhta sector, which would release one Finnish division. The Commanding General, Twentieth Mountain Army, Dietl, objected. He insisted that it was a waste of manpower to tie down more German troops on a secondary front in Finland and that Finland, “through greater efforts in the sense of total war,” was capable of creating a reserve division out of its own resources “without laying claims on the German Army which is already carrying the entire burden.” Irritated also by recent Finnish protests against even the smallest withdrawals of German troops from Finland, Dietl wanted to urge Mannerheim not to raise objections if Twentieth Mountain Army were to offer all the troops it could spare to Army Group North, “which is also fighting for Finland.”29 But the OKW, remembering the warnings that had come from Finland in the fall of 1943, considered Mannerheim’s response comparatively moderate and ordered Dietl to take over the Ukhta sector.

At the Tehran Conference (27 November-2 December 1943), Roosevelt and Churchill had told Stalin that they wished to see Finland out of the war before the invasion of Western Europe planned for the spring of 1944 and that they desired a peace which would leave Finland its independence. Roosevelt, representing the only one of the three countries not at war with Finland, had offered to help persuade Finland to ask for an armistice. Stalin had stated that, in the course of the current Finnish peace feelers, the Soviet Union had declared it had no designs on Finland’s independence. He had added, however, that the Soviet Union would demand restoration of the 1940 border plus Pechenga and heavy reparations.

During the night of 6 February 200 Soviet planes bombed Helsinki. The next day the United States Department of State dispatched a note warning the Finnish Government that the longer Finland stayed in the war the more unfavorable the terms of peace would become. On the 8th, in a long editorial, Izvestia took up the subject of a Soviet drive to Helsinki, pointing out that the Soviet Union had more than enough forces to spare for it. On the 10th the text of the United States note

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