1944: the trap closes
In 1944 the promise of strategic disaster was duly, though not quite inevitably, realized.
After the failure of the Kursk offensive in July 1943, it is hard to discern any German
strategy. Hitler’s residual hopes for victory rested upon the possibility of a break-up of
the Grand Alliance that opposed him; the defeat of the amphibious second front that was
certain to be launched in 1944; and the strategic effect of his ‘vengeance’ secret weapons
- the V-1 cruise and the V-2 ballistic missiles. It may not be an exaggeration to say that
Hitler would simply fight on to the bitter end, possibly confident until the very last stage
that something would turn up to save him and his uniracial Reich. Well, nothing did
turn up.
The fighting in Italy rumbled on indecisively as a modest drain on both German and
Allied resources, but the three military events that shaped and paced the course of
strategic history in 1944 were, first, the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the so-called ‘Big
Week’ air offensive against German air power, launched on 20–21 March; second, the
successful Allied landings in Normandy on 6 June; and, last but not least, the destruction
in twelve days of the twenty-five divisions of Army Group Centre in Operation Bagration,
which the Red Army initiated on 9 June. It was crisis time in both East and West for the
Reich, and the Luftwaffe’s fighter force had been all but eliminated in the attritional
struggle against the new long-range fighter escorts to the daylight bombing campaign
conducted by the US Army Air Forces (USAAF).
Bagration effectively destroyed any real coherence in Germany’s Eastern Front. By the
end of 1944 the Red Army stood on the Vistula, it threatened Budapest, it had reached
Czechoslovakia, it had cleared the Balkans, and it had isolated as many as fifty German
divisions in Baltic enclaves and East Prussia. That isolation was far from complete,
however, given the naval superiority exercised in the Baltic by the Kriegsmarine. Plainly,
the end was approaching for Nazi Germany. The only question was: how quickly?
On the Western Front a combination of inspired Allied deception – Operation
Fortitude, the absence of unified command by the Germans, Hitler’s habit of sleeping
late, doctrinal and operational disagreements on the proper deployment of the panzer
reserves, and complete Allied command of the air – allowed a secure beachhead to be
established in Normandy in early June. However, the German defenders conducted a
spirited defence, and certainly frustrated the initial Allied plan to effect a rapid breakout
into the open tank-friendly country beyond the coast. Despite suffering crippling losses,
the German Army also succeeded in evacuating many of its more valuable personnel
from the meat grinder in Normandy. The result was that the Western Allies failed to
achieve a defeat of the German Army in France of such magnitude that it would be unable
to rally and regroup for the defence of its home territory. Also, as the Germans fell back
towards their own soil, their logistic problems eased dramatically, while those of the
Allies multiplied.
It is difficult to resist the judgement that with more Allied drive and determination,
and a greater willingness to take risks and casualties, Germany should have been beaten
in 1944. As it was, by December of that year the Reich itself was menaced everywhere,
but its greatly reduced and decidedly ragged military assets were still battle-worthy and
battle-willing, in the East and the West. From 16 December 1944 until 2 8 January 1945,
Germany launched its final major offensive of the war, in what came to be known as the
138 War, peace and international relations