The German Reich and the Second World War

The Romanian Campaign (Operation von Mackensen) 20 September – 24 November 1945

With the conclusion of the campaign against the Soviets, German attention once again returned to the Balkans. In late 1944, in return for troop support, the Hungarians had been promised German aid in the reconquest of Hungarian lands stolen by Romania at the end of the last Great War. The only reason to now back such a promise, since the war on the Eastern Front had been won, was the Romanian oilfields. In exchange for German support, the Hungarians had gifted Germany a free hand over the Moldavian region of Romania and the oilfields. A campaign against Romania would be a prudent affair: the oilfields would bolster the German economy and by indulging the Hungarians we could foster improved relations and pass the burden of policing more of the Balkans to them. However, due to the lackluster performance of the Hungarian military, it was decided German troops would lead the campaign and the Hungarians would not take part so to avoid a bloodbath.

During September 1945, Army Group D, under the command of Field Marshal von Manstein, assembled on the border of Romania. Two panzer armies had assembled in Hungary intending to strike south. Three infantry armies had assembled along the eastern Romanian frontier, with two posed to cross the mountains into Bessarabia. One thousand fighters would seize control of the air and an equal number of light bombers would strike any Romanian strongpoints. The plan was for all forces to conduct a series of encirclement battles in the north, before an advance south to finish off the Romanian army. With their army destroyed, there would be nothing to stop the annexation of the northern sectors of the country and a puppet regime would be installed in what was left. The Romanian army, estimated to be 58 divisions strong or over half a million men, had yet to mobilize and was concentrated along the borders and were not deemed to present a major obstacle. The infantry and panzer divisions were therefore ordered to not to exert themselves and to try and keep losses to a minimum.


On 29 September, the order for Operation von Mackensen to begin was given. A1 01:00 on the 30th, the attack began. The opening artillery barrage, fired against numerous Romanian border positions near Hungary and within Bessarabia, was devastating and killed hundreds. Light bombers added to the surprise and misery. By the end of the first day, breakthroughs had occurred everywhere our troops had attacked. A mere 716 men had been lost, a good sign considering the bloodletting of the Eastern Front, while 4,358 Romanians were counted among the dead.


The first major objective for the two panzer armies was the encirclement of the city of Cluj. The battle plan foresaw that the Romanians would be pushed back from the border towards this important city, and that further troops could be corralled into the area. After a week of fighting, and an almost leisurely drive through the hills and mountains of northwestern Romania, the encirclement of Cluj had completed as planned. Another week passed as light fighting took place around the perimeter of Cluj, and as tanks and supply vehicles moved forward preparing for the final attack was launched. Within a few days the Romanian garrison surrendered and tens of thousands of prisoners had been taken.


During the rest of October, the progress of the campaign was similar: a steady advance against a dispirited Romanian army. In places, the troops awaited the Romanians to withdraw before advancing. Towards the end of the month numerous pockets had been created and on the 30th the oilfields were captured intact. Only near the city of Iasi did the Romanians mount any kind of serious resistance. Over 5,000 men were killed in attempting to encircle and secure the perimeter around the city, and more during the final assault. However, 12,000 Romanians lost their lives in the defense of the city and a further 50,000 were captured. By the 1st of November, all other pockets had been destroyed raising the number of total captured even further.


The start of November saw the Romanians complete their mobilization process, although with the vast majority of their army now destroyed. On the third day of the month, a panzer division reached the Bulgarian frontier cutting Romania in two. While most of their army around the capital collapsed, a small detachment made a valiant effort to break through our tank barrier and link up with their comrades near the Black Sea. The panzergrenadiers and tanks fought off some of the strongest resistance thus far encountered and took numerous casualties. However, the Romanian attack was in vain. The Romanians who were launching the attack, were in turned assault from behind by armoured units and the Romanian divisions near the Black Sea were under heavy attack and unable to offer any assistance. With that spark of resistance crushed, the following two weeks saw a massive mop up operation take place to crush the remnants of the Romanian military.

On the 21st November, with the entire country occupied – bar the capital – and the Romanian military destroyed, the final attack begun. Shelled from every side and with tanks pushing through the streets of the capital opposed by only antiquated artillery, the final Romanian units were only able to offer just 24 hours of resistance. After the loss of 5,000 men, attempting to defend the capital, the military and government surrendered. On the 24th, the borders of the country were redrawn and a new government installed.

While the campaign was supposed to be undertaken in a manner to limit casualties, the slow methodical approach proved to be the incorrect method in the hilly and mountainous terrain of Romania. 30,533 German soldiers were rendered casualties, although only a mere 80 aircraft were lost to anti-aircraft fire. On the other hand, with the capture of the Romanian capital and official records, it was determined the Romanians lost 98,553 men and a further 459,511 prisoners were taken (with 65,420 of that total being taken by the Bulgarians, when Romanian troops fled over the border).

Thanks guys. I should be able to tell you later where was next on my shitlist But for now, a small update.

Internal security in the conquered territories

From: OKH
To: OKW, and the Reich Ministry
Date: 28 November 1945
Re: Internal security in the conquered territories

Per the communiqué dated 20 September, a complete report on the security situation in the conquered territories is now ready. The gathering of this information, and the attached document, has taken so long due to the still poor infrastructure within the conquered territories and due to awaiting the outcome of the campaign in Romania.

In total, close to 500,000 men have been assigned to internal security duties within fourteen occupation zones that have been established. Every major city or high valued location (air fields, atomic research sites, or other strategically important locations etc) has been garrisoned. The majority of locations, including all major cities, are garrisoned by a static division, although the bulk the Volksgrenadier divisions and the entire cavalry arm make up the rest of the internal security detachment.

The 500,000 men are spread out across 13 Cavalry divisions, 20 Volksgrenadier divisions, 31 Static divisions, fourteen Corps administration centers, three
regional administration centers, and an overall command center based in Smolensk. No combat divisions have been utilized in internal security, and the 500,000 men assigned to the task forms a mere 25 per cent of the total number of men assigned to OKH: the remained are combat formations based in defensive positions along the frontier.

Ha! I like that reference.

Thanks guys.

My security forces are separated under three army commands (north, center, and south) and those are attached to a spare Army Group HQ I had laying around and that in turn is attached to OKH. I do have some additional divisions, although they are all based in Poland, Bohemia, Denmark, and France. I have so much in the former USSR, because I stripped what I had elsewhere to get that buildup in manpower in '45.

Operation Magna Mater (10 December 1945 – 28 January 1946)

With the Romanians pacified, Yugoslavia carved up between the Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians; there remained only one problem in the Balkans. Greece had been at war with the Axis powers since 1941. During the Yugoslav campaign, they had advanced north to attempt to aid the Yugoslavians and inflicted a few setbacks upon the Italians and Bulgarians. Yet, once Yugoslavia surrendered, the Greek army was routed and sent fleeing back south. Several corps of Greek infantry moved to defend the mountain fortress, cum national redoubt, at Astakos. Here the heroic Greek infantry were able to divert Italian attention and allow what remained of their army – along with Yugoslavian exiles – to retreat to the fortresses in Attica north of Athens. From these two positions, the Greek military were able to endure and survive. With a steady increase of men in the army from the Peloponnese and Athens, the Greeks were able to publish a steady stream of propaganda linking the current conflict with the Persian invasions long ago (not to mention previous national crisis’s) calling for a new Marathon and Plataea.


As soon as the Romanian campaign ended, OKW ordered Army Group D to deploy within Albania, Macedonia, and northern Greece for operations to finally defeat the Greeks. OKW chose a host of Roman god names for the various operations to be undertaken, all the Romanized version of their Greek counterparts and somewhat relevant to the tasks at hand, in an attempt to deceive allied intelligence that they were codes for Italian operations. Operation Mercury, the redeployment, started on 25 November. Light bombers, among the first to redeploy, landed on air fields in Italy and Albania, and once ready for action started air strikes, commencing 4 December, against the Greek national redoubt. While von Manstein’s infantry moved into position, the mountain corps and the engineer assault divisions – transferred to Army Group D for the time being – had already arrived in Greece and were ready to attack. The Italians had provided an in-depth intelligence brief on the Greeks at Astakos: 75,000 men strong entrenched in well sited and protected concrete bunkers, along a mountain range, well supplied, and using state of the art British equipment. The task of taking this mountain fortress would not be easy.


Operation Manga Mantra, from Cybele, the Greek goddess of mountains, started on 10 December. The two mountain divisions and three engineer assault divisions launched a reconnaissance in force against the northern end of the mountain range. After years of modern war and tens of thousands of deaths, the slopes were covered with body parts and pocked with shell holes and the remnants of trenches. The terrain was not easy going, a fact not helped by the hailstorm of artillery and machine gun bullets the Greeks were able to rain down on our men. After two days, these five specialist formations had taken a total of 3,000 casualties and the attack was called off. Rather than attempting to use specialized troops to take the Greek positions via skill and surprise, the infantry of Twelfth and Fifteenth armies would capture the redoubt using the successful operational method of the Eastern Front: heavy artillery fire and infantry assault in waves (each division taking several thousand yards of territory, then being relieved by follow-up troops who would push through to capture more. Rinse, and repeat.).


As the infantry moved into position, the Hungarians launched a major effort. Prior to the arrival of our forces, just following the ending of the war with the Soviets, Astakos had been assigned as an objective for the Hungarian and Bulgarian armies leaving Athens to the Italians. Until our arrival they had not attempted this. In fact prior to our strategic intervention in telling our partners where to attack, all three militaries had launched uncoordinated and ad-hoc attacks resulting in no gains and atrocious casualties. With the Hungarians battering away at the Greek positions from the east, having to negotiate river crossings at the same time, a small German force was ordered to tackle the northern end of the mountain ridge line. From the 19th of December until the 28th, the Hungarians battled away. Their river assault was a mess, employing too few guns to cover the attack, resulting in hundreds killed in assault boats before they reached the opposite shore. However, these soldiers were tenacious and stormed the Greek positions on the eastern slopes. Their bravery could not overcome the Greeks. As the Hungarian attack faltered, Italian troops entered the bridgehead to carry on the attack. On the 30th, the Hungarian military completely pulled out of the battle and the Italian General Romegialli, known more for his command of Italian political-military units rather than his skill, took over overall command of the assault. Without respite, the Greek force finally started to fall back. On New Year’s Eve, the Greeks began evacuating the national redoubt for Corfu. Within three days, the Greeks had completed their withdrawal. The national redoubt, held since 1941, fell largely thanks to the fact that the Italians and Hungarians had finally started working together. The Greek month long defensive action had inflicted close to 20,000 casualties (only 2,049 of which were German). From the bodies found in the well-constructed trenches and other defensive positions, the Greeks barely lost 5,000 men.


On 4 January 1946, the 82.Infantrie-Division landed on the eastern beaches of Corfu and rapidly captured 1,499 Greeks. Regardless of first impressions, this would not be the easy mop up of a defeated force. As the division pushed inland it met fierce resistance from the recently evacuated Greek garrison of the national redoubt. Additional German divisions were transferred to the island to aid in its captured while light bombers and fighter-bombers launched daily air strikes. Two Italian divisions were also landed resulting in a joint Axis effort to sweep the island clear of Greek resistance. As heavy fighting progressed on Corfu, Italian troops started landing – due to German orders – on the Greek-held islands in the Aegean. On the 18th, the Bulgarian military made a token effort. They assigned three divisions to aid the fighting on Corfu. With no room to deploy the Bulgarian troops on the island, they remained sitting on the mainland inactive. After three days of inactivity, several German divisions were rotated off the island due to heavy casualties and the Bulgarians were given their chance to get involved in the fighting. Another week of heavy fighting went by, nearly a month in total, before the Greek force finally surrendered and Corfu could be deemed clear. 73,000 Greeks walked into captivity, having lost only 2,300 men on the island during the fighting. Over 11,000 Axis soldiers, however, had been rendered casualties.

I wish it was a dramatization, they literally did beat the crap out of my guys and the AI! They are some of the most one sided battles I have thus seen.

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Thanks very much. That is also one of the features I miss the most.

There was no way I would have been able to win one of my HOI2 games with the current system. During which, the Japanese AI overrun Burma and India. I was able to, just in time, redeploy forces to counterattack and stabilize the front. But the advance to retake what was lost, and to capture Indo-China and China proper, involved the use of the Dominion forces along side my own, while I had used the French troops to garrison elsewhere against possible German-Italian aggression. It was possibly the best game of HOI2 I ever played. Another, also played as the UK, had an entire New Zealand Army as part of my British Army Group. Without them I would have had a huge hole in the frontline. My own experience of HOI3 has shown substantial numbers of troops assigned by the AI to other AI countries via expeditionary forces, but never to me. I had to fiddle around to get the AI expeditionary forces and it would have been so much easier to start Operation Barbarossa with the Slovakian and Hungarian troops under my own command ala HOI2.

Operation Minerva (29 January – 18 April)

With the final shots fired on Corfu, the job of taking care of the Greek prisoners of war was handed over to the Italians and Bulgarians. The three infantry armies – as well as the mechanized and motorized infantry of the panzer armies – of Army Group D started to redeploy to tackle the final bastion of Greek resistance: Athens. For this final struggle, OKW assigned the codename Minerva: the Latinized version of Athena, the patron of the capital.

North of Athens, in the hills and mountains of Attica, the Greeks had established extensive fortifications defending the plains, passable mountain routes, and all other approaches to the capital and the Peloponnese. From these positions, as they had done via the national redoubt, all assaults had been repulsed. While the steel-reinforced concrete bunkers and pillboxes had withstood the onslaught of the various assaults, Athens had not been so fortunate. Artillery and air strikes had leveled huge sections of the city in an attempt to cut off the lifeline of the Greek army, despite the damage the strong-greaved Greeks had kept on fighting.

Heavy rain and winter conditions, hitherto not present, slowed down the redeployment. Rather than taking just a few days to get into position, it was almost a week and a half of heavy foot slogging along water-logged roads and soaking hills. It was an infuriating delay. The Italians, who were extremely forthcoming with intelligence on the national redoubt, had furnished little information on what to was await our military in Attica. While the movement of German troops south came almost to a standstill, the swift-footed Hellenes used this opportunity to strike out at their Latin counterparts. The Greek military assaulted the cordon facing them. They broke through men as a shield of thunder crashed down ahead of them. Heavy losses were inflicted on the Italians, but the long haired Achaeans were unable to completely break through. Rather, they gained several thousand yards of territory before the wind was taken out of their sail, and they started to dig in. The Italians, either exhausted or unwilling, did nothing to retake the lost ground or tackle the Argives. The first four German divisions to arrive in the area, a mix from the three armies, were ordered to launch an immediate counterattack to retake the territory lost by the sons of Aeneas. The counterattack brought about a startlingly revelation hidden from us by our Latin friends. As the landser retook the lost trenches and other defensive positions, they did so by battling against men who had driven far to aid the besieged Achaeans. American and British soldiers were fighting side by side to ensure that Greece did not fall to the invading horde. It would seem the supposed weakness of the British military around the British Isles, was because the British Army had been deployed in Southern Europe for quite some time. Likewise, the lack of American troops and the various indications that the Great Depression was still burning strong in the United States had led to the belief that the Americans lacked much of a military. The Italians, it would seem, had been holding off an Allied invasion for quite some time.


The Anglo-American troops, unprepared for such a counterattack (a standard part of our doctrine, but not part of the Italians) were taken by surprise. Having stuck their heads out from the protection of the defensive positions in Attica, having no firm base to fall back upon, the fortifications were rushed. In the ensuing battle, the American 31st 'Dixie' Infantry Division was routed with heavy losses opening a gap in the static line. Our infantry pushed on through allowing the battle to take place closer to the city and not up against the cunningly designed concrete bunkers. Desperate acts of courage and soldiering by British and other American units managed to ensure a complete rout did not occur or the city fall. The fighting was so fierce that an American mechanized cavalry division was almost destroyed in the initial fighting.


While victory had been so close during February, the sturdy defense of the Anglo-Americans kept Athens tantalizing out of reach. With three infantry armies and several additional motorized divisions to throw at the defenders, Army Group D was able to rotate units in and out of battle thus keeping the pressure upon the Allies who were unable to do likewise. In March, heavy rains broke across the battlefield and winter snows melting turning the ground to mud. The conditions the men were fighting in were almost comparable to those seen on the Eastern Front. While the weather blunted our air strikes and ground attacks, it provided the Allies an opportunity. On the frontline, our infantry reported fighting an increase number of Greeks and fewer other Allied troops. From the air, reports came in of massed movement into the Peloponnese.


While the Greeks mounted determined resistance, they were fighting a battle they were not use to. The Italians had been spread out and lacked the strength to maintain a battle for this long and thus had not been able to break through whereas Army Group D had forty divisions arrayed north of Athens. On 6 April 1946, the center of Greek resistance for close to five years finally fell. With the Greek capital and government captured, the Greek military laid down their arms. In the meantime, the Anglo-Americans along with some Yugoslavians had crept away. Unaware until it was too late, the Allies had managed to withdraw their forces bar a single division who acted as a rearguard in the Peloponnese to buy the last ships some time.


The United States 93rd Infantry (Colored) Division took up positions in the center of the Peloponnese mountains and fought on. The final Allied escape was thanks to the heroic stand of this division. As April wore on, motorized and mechanized infantry were able to outflank and surround the division. With no escape possible, surrounded, and attacked from all sides, the division continued to fight on. On 18 April, having finally ran out of ammunition and with the Allied evacuation a success and long gone, the division surrendered.

During the defense of Athens, the Allies lost around 40,000 men. During the five months of fighting in Greece, the Greeks had lost 30,216 men, 29,617 British casualties had been inflicted, as well as 37,887 American. 12,500 Americans, most from the 93rd Division, were also captured. Over 150,000 Greeks marched into Italian captivity. Our own losses had amounted to 31,127 men, along with 550 light bombers and 120 fighters with most aircraft being shot down during the battle for Athens. Captured ration information revealed that the Anglo-American force was in the region of 1.4 million strong. As the map of the Balkans was redrawn, the Italians were rewarded with additional land in the Balkans at the expense of the Hungarians and Bulgarians. After all, the Italians had secured the southern flank for so long and had stopped the Western Allies from saving the Soviets and unraveling all of our hard work.