Hitler's Defeat on the Eastern Front by Ian Baxter

Author:Ian Baxter [Baxter, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844688807
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Bagration and Aftermath

By June 1944, German strategy was faced with a full-fledged two front war. More than fifty-three percent of the army was fighting in Russia, whilst the other forty-seven percent were in Western Europe trying to stem the Allied invasion along the Normandy coast. On the Eastern Front the German Army strength had reached a new low of some 2,242,649 against more than six million Russian troops. The best-equipped and most effective segment of the German force, the Waffen-SS, reached a strength of some 400,000 men. Of this total the bulk of the most elite SS combat formations were fighting in France. In the East the SS were distributed on the northern, central and southern fronts and were intended to act as the backbone of the German fighting machine. Many of its commanders were well aware of the seriousness of the military situation and looked ahead to the coming battles, knowing that that they were bound by orders for which they could not successfully achieve. In front of them stood a huge enemy army whose strength was almost three times their own.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.