Eastern Axis Campaigns and Operations: Poland, Finland & USSR
Posted by webmaster
The Eastern Wehrmacht campaigns included:
- Battle of Poland campaign (Fall Weiss) — a joint invasion and division of Poland between the USSR and German Reich
- Operation Barbarossa Campaign
- Advance to the Caucasus Campaign
Operation Barbarossa Campaign, also known as the Eastern Front, was the largest and most lethal campaign that the Wehrmacht Heer fought in during World War II. The Campaign against the Soviet Union was strategically the most crucial for Germany and its allies during World War II because of the economic and political repercussions defeat of the Soviet Union would have had on the outcome of the war, including that of the conflict with the United Kingdom and the United States in the Western Theatre. The Eastern Front was also the Theater that demanded more resources than any other Theater throughout the war. The large area covered by the Eastern Front necessitated the division of the Theatre in to four separate Strategic Directions overseen by the Army Group North, Army Group Centre, Army Group South, and the Norwegian Army. These commands would conduct their own interdependent strategic campaigns within the Theater.
A subset of the Eastern Front was a number of anti-partisan operations against guerrilla units on the Eastern Front and insurgency operations largely by Waffen-SS units behind Allied lines during early 1945.
However, strategic mistakes by Hitler demanded that the Wehrmacht had to fight on other fronts, sometimes three simultaneously, that stretched its resources too thin. By 1944, even the defense of Germany became impossible.
