The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was a major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II which took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg. The offensive was intended to stop Allied use of the Belgian port of Antwerp and to split the Allied lines, allowing the Germans to individually encircle and destroy the four Allied armies and force the western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis powers' favor.
The Malmedy massacre was a German war crime committed by soldiers of the Waffen-SS on 17 December 1944 at the Baugnez crossroads near the city of Malmedy, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge. Soldiers of Kampfgruppe Peiper summarily killed eighty-four U.S. Army prisoners of war (POWs) who had surrendered after a brief battle. The Waffen-SS soldiers had grouped the U.S. POWs in a farmer's field, where they used machine guns to shoot and kill the grouped POWs; the prisoners of war who survived the gunfire of the massacre were killed with a coup de grâce gunshot to the head.
The Third Battle of Kharkov was a series of battles on the Eastern Front of World War II, undertaken by German Army Group South against the Soviet Red Army, around the city of Kharkov between 19 February and 15 March 1943. Known to the German side as the Donets Campaign, and in the Soviet Union as the Donbas and Kharkov operations, the German counterstrike led to the recapture of the cities of Kharkov and Belgorod.
Josef "Sepp" Dietrich was a German politician and SS commander during the Nazi era. He joined the Nazi Party in 1928 and was elected to the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic in 1930. Prior to 1929, Dietrich was Adolf Hitler's chauffeur and bodyguard.
Army Group Centre was the name of two distinct strategic German Army Groups that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II. The first Army Group Centre was created during the planning of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, as one of the three German Army formations assigned to the invasion.
Operation Spring Awakening was the last major German offensive of World War II. The operation was referred to in Germany as the Plattensee Offensive and in the Soviet Union as the Balaton Defensive Operation. It took place in Western Hungary on the Eastern Front and lasted from 6 March until 15 March, 1945. The objective was to secure the last significant oil reserves still available to the European Axis powers and prevent the Red Army from advancing towards Vienna. The Germans failed in their objectives.
Operation Northwind was the last major German offensive of World War II on the Western Front. Northwind was launched to support the German Ardennes offensive campaign in the Battle of the Bulge, which by late December 1944 had decisively turned against the German forces. It began on 31 December 1944 in Rhineland-Palatinate, Alsace and Lorraine in southwestern Germany and northeastern France, and ended on 25 January 1945. The German offensive was an operational failure, with its main objectives not achieved.
The 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler or SS Division Leibstandarte, abbreviated as LSSAH, began as Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard unit, responsible for guarding the Führer's person, offices, and residences. Initially the size of a regiment, the LSSAH eventually grew into an elite division-sized unit during World War II.
The SS Division Hitlerjugend or 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend" was a German armoured division of the Waffen-SS during World War II. The majority of its junior enlisted men were drawn from members of the Hitler Youth, while the senior NCOs and officers were from other Waffen-SS divisions.
The 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking or SS Division Wiking was an infantry and later an armoured division among the thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions of Nazi Germany. During World War II, the division served on the Eastern Front. It surrendered on 9 May 1945 to the American forces in Austria.
The Battle of Debrecen, called by the Red Army the Debrecen Offensive Operation, was a battle taking place from 6 to 29 October 1944 on the Eastern Front in Hungary during World War II.
The II SS Panzer Corps was a German Waffen-SS armoured corps which saw action on both the Eastern and Western Fronts during World War II. It was commanded by Paul Hausser during the Third Battle of Kharkov and the Battle of Kursk in 1943 and by Wilhelm Bittrich on the Western Front in 1944.
The I SS Panzer Corps was a German armoured corps of the Waffen-SS. It saw action on both the Western and Eastern Fronts during World War II.
Hermann August Fredrich Priess was a German general in the Waffen-SS and a war criminal during World War II. He commanded the SS Division Totenkopf following the death of Theodor Eicke in February 1943. On 30 October 1944 he was appointed commander of the I SS Panzer Corps and led it during the Battle of the Bulge.
The 44th Infantry Division was formed on 1 April 1938 in Vienna, about two weeks after the Anschluss of Austria. It first saw combat at the start of the war in the Invasion of Poland, and also took part in the Battle of France in 1940. After a 9-month period of coastal defence the division was transferred East. On 22 June 1941, the division took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union, attached to Army Group South. It remained in the east after the failure of "Operation Barbarossa", taking part in defensive actions for the winter against the Soviet Army offensives near Izum and Kharkov. Refurbished, the division participated in the German summer offensive, and was subsequently destroyed with the 6th Army at Stalingrad in January 1943.
The Vienna offensive was an offensive launched by the Soviet 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts in order to capture Vienna, Austria, during World War II. The offensive lasted from 16 March to 15 April 1945. After several days of street-to-street fighting, the Soviet troops captured the city.
The Battle of the Transdanubian Hills was a defensive operation of the Bulgarian First Army during Bulgaria's participation in World War II against German Wehrmacht forces, who were trying to capture the north bank of the Drava river as part of Operation Spring Awakening.
The Nagykanizsa–Körmend offensive carried out between 26 March and 15 April 1945 was part of the 3rd Ukrainian Front's Vienna offensive during World War II against the Army Group South forces defending the Kisbajom–Nagykorpád–Nagyatád–Heresznye defensive line north of the Drava river and west of Lake Balaton.
The Wehrmacht forces for the Ardennes Offensive were the product of a German recruitment effort targeting German males between the ages of 16 and 60, to replace troops lost during the past five months of fighting the Western Allies on the Western Front. Although the Wehrmacht was keeping the Allied forces contained along the Siegfried Line, the campaign had cost the Wehrmacht nearly 750,000 casualties, mostly irreplaceable. However, the rapid advance of the Allied armies in August and September after Operation Overlord had created a supply problem for the Allies. By October, the progress of the Western Allies' three army groups had slowed considerably, allowing the Germans to partly rebuild their strength and prepare for the defense of Germany itself. Adolf Hitler decided that the only way to reverse his fortunes would be to launch a counter-offensive on the Western Front, forcing both the United States and Great Britain to an early peace, and allowing the Wehrmacht to shift its forces to the Eastern Front, where it could defeat the much larger Soviet Red Army.
Operation Konrad III was a German military offensive on the Eastern Front of the Second World War. It was the third and most ambitious of the three Konrad Operations and had the objective of relieving the siege of Budapest and recapturing the entire Transdanubia region. Achieving complete surprise, the German offensive began on 18 January 1945. Supported by the Luftwaffe, the IV SS Panzer Corps, the principal German attack formation, overran the Soviet 4th Guards Army in two days, destroying hundreds of Soviet tanks along the way, reached the Danube river on 19 January and recaptured 400 square kilometers of territory in four days. After nine days of combat, and the destruction by the SS of two-thirds of Soviet tanks in the entire 3rd Ukrainian Front, the German offensive was stopped by Soviet reinforcements 25 kilometers short of Budapest on 26 January.
Nazi Germany