Armageddon - Max Hastings [6]
Eisenhower also possessed a strategic reserve, First Allied Airborne Army (Lieutenant-General Lewis Brereton), comprising I British (Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning) and XVIII U.S. Airborne Corps (Lieutenant-General Matthew Ridgway). In September 1944, Brereton’s force contained two American and two British divisions. Two more American divisions were added in the spring of 1945, while the British 1st Airborne was removed from the order of battle after Arnhem. Brereton never exercised field command of his formations. These were placed under the orders of local commanders in north-west Europe as operational requirements demanded.
THE SOVIET UNION
Supreme Commander-in-Chief: Marshal Joseph Stalin
Each Soviet “front”—the equivalent of a Western Allied army group—comprised anything from three to ten armies of 100,000 men, up to a million men in all. The “fronts” in 1944–45 are listed here in north–south descending geographical order, from the Baltic to Yugoslavia:
Leningrad Front: Marshal Leonid Govorov
3rd Baltic Front: Colonel-General Ivan Maslennikov (terminated October 1944)
2nd Baltic Front: General Andrei Eremenko then Govorov from February 1945
1st Baltic Front: Marshal I. Kh. Bagramyan (merged into 3rd Belorussian 24 January 1945)
3rd Belorussian Front: General I. Chernyakhovsky, then Marshal Alexandr Vasilevsky from February 1945
2nd Belorussian Front: Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky from September 1944
1st Belorussian Front: Rokossovsky, then Marshal Georgi Zhukov from November 1944
1st Ukrainian Front: Marshal Ivan Konev
4th Ukrainian Front: General I. Ye. Petrov, then General A. I. Yeremenko from March 1945
2nd Ukrainian Front: Marshal Rodion Malinovsky
3rd Ukrainian Front: Marshal Fydor Tolbukhin
The Soviet Union used the same nomenclature for its formations as the Western allies—armies, corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, battalions—but all were much smaller than their Anglo-American counterparts. A Soviet rifle division usually comprised between 3,000 and 7,000 men. Formations were granted the honorific title of “Guards” for distinguished conduct in action. “Shock” and “Tank” armies fulfilled the functions their titles suggest. Elite formations were trained and equipped to a much higher standard than the huge armed rabble which followed the spearheads, of whom little was expected save an ability to occupy ground and absorb enemy fire.
GERMANY
Army Commander-in-Chief: Adolf Hitler
Chief of Staff of the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW): Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel
Chief of the Operations Staff of OKW: Colonel-General Alfred Jodl
Chief of the General Staff of OKH (Army High Command): Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, then General Hans Krebs from 28 March 1945
Commander-in-Chief of the Replacement Army: Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler
If this structure sounds ambivalent and confusing, so it was to senior German officers at the time, reflecting rival centres of power within the Nazi military hierarchy. Hitler changed operational commanders so frequently that it would be wearisome to list all incumbents. The following were the principal holders of some major operational posts in the last months of the war:
GERMAN FORCES IN THE WEST
Commander-in-Chief West: Field-Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, then Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring from 10 March 1945
Army Group B (Field-Marshal Walter Model) comprised Fifth Panzer Army (Lieutenant-General Hasso von Manteuffel to March 1945), Seventh Army (General Erich Brandenburger, then from 20 February 1945 General Hans Felber, then from 25 March 1945 General Von Olstfelder) and Fifteenth Army (General von Zangen). Sixth SS Panzer Army (Colonel-General Sepp Dietrich) was also under command until January 1945
Army