Hitler's Soldiers: The German Army in the Third Reich by Ben H. Shepherd

Author:Ben H. Shepherd [Shepherd, Ben H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780300179033
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2016-06-28T07:00:00+00:00

6. The defeat of Germany, 1943–588

Similarly, when the German generals in the east prepared Operation Citadel, they refused to recognize that the Wehrmacht’s remaining technical, tactical, and operational strengths were no longer enough to deny the strategic initiative to an increasingly powerful and proficient Red Army. Hitler’s vacillation over Citadel’s start date shows that he instinctively recognized the offensive’s fundamental limitations more than Field Marshal von Manstein did. Citadel’s failure exposed the German army’s new limitations even more mercilessly, as did the Allied invasion of Sicily. This brought to bear Allied strength in all three dimensions of the battlefield – on land, at sea and in the air – against German defenders who, valiantly though they fought, could only marshal strength in one dimension. July 1943 was also the first time Allied success in one theatre directly affected the Germans in another, and it also heralded a tug of war for resources between the OKH in the east and the OKW in the west. This dispute would go on to highlight the nonsensical dysfunction of a high-command system with two heads.

The Germans’ painful predicament would worsen over the following ten months. However, the German army would fight ever more desperately, both to defend the battlefronts and to maintain its hold over Germany’s dwindling territory. It would continue to be aided by a war economy that was producing quality weaponry and equipment on a scale that, though it could not alter the war’s eventual outcome, could at least delay it considerably.

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.