Chapter XXVII: Meatgrinder
The Air War in 1944
In Britain, despite increasingly heavy German bombardment, factories producing war material were still in full swing. These were increasingly built into underground bunkers or dispersed into the countryside where it was difficult to spot them. More and more the British were focusing their efforts on the development of ‘air fleets’ to the detriment of all else. By mid-1944, the Union of Britain would sport the largest air force in the world, though the ratio was continuously more in terms of small-wing aircraft like fighters, interceptors and fighter-bombers than tactical or strategic bombers.
The Union’s most successful air superiority fighter that year was the jet engine Mk. 1 Stormwing, which eviscerated the Fw-191s with ease. This would spur German research initiatives into jet technology that would bear fruit the following year. The dance between innovation and contra-innovation continued as German air defenses slivered away the British bomber fleet. This bomber fleet had also lost replacements due to the new emphasis on fighter aircraft, resulting in the British seeking new methods of hitting German targets. The need would lead British scientists to the world’s long-range guided ballistic missile, the Wrath. Over 900 Wrath rockets of varying iterations would hit German population centers over the remainder of the war. This would be one of the great 'Victory Vanguards' that Oswald Mosely had spoken of in his 1943 New Years Speech. Its arrival into the war temporarily raised the optimism of the British, though it was far too inaccurate to ever pose a truly strategic threat.
Wrath, Series 1. The rocket’s first flight was in November 1943. Development was led by the jet propulsion specialists, Frank Whittle and Roy Fedden.
To counter German bomber groups, the Gladiator aircraft was created from the ‘New Generation Interceptor Programme’, running up losses amongst the Luftstreitkräfte’s Do. 19 Albastroses.
809. Geschwader [ENG. Air Wing] en route to the Toulouse Heavy Industrial Complex
Air battle over London
Quagmire: The West from February 1944 – September 1944
Germany was free, but the war was far from over. The heady feelings aroused by bringing the war to the rich, green countryside of France and the Netherlands ran headfirst into hard, cold actuality in January and February as Franz von Bayern’s drive to the Channel faltered under withering air attack. The enemy was not yet beaten. On the back foot, perhaps, but still able to throw punches.
Marshal Catroux, having settled into the job, would prove an adept defensive strategist. In early 1944 he would develop and instill in his commanders the doctrine of “Compresser et Libérer” [ENG. Compress and Release], replacing the standard theories of Masse Comprimée and Levier Ouvert used earlier in the war. No longer would their armed forces seek decisive encirclements of maneuver. Instead, they would attempt a form of military jiujitsu, using German momentum against them, coiling backwards before countering the exhausted enemy force.
The Internationale’s nations would agree in late 1943 the need to raise a new, eye-watering levée en masse that scraped the barrel of their societies. Most of this new conscription drive would be comprised of inferior quality troops. It was not uncommon to see old men, veterans of the Verdun, Aisne, Mons, Champagne and Marne of the past war, mixed with crippled veterans of this war (many missing arms or legs) and underaged teenagers as young as fourteen. Though women had volunteered in the last two years, they were increasingly prevalent on the frontlines in separate battalions, particularly among the French (the British would refuse to ever arm a woman). Many of these units were hardly trained at all, with few receiving their full allotments of kit and rifles, leaving them disheveled and ununiformed. Each Internationale nation would name these forces, essentially militias, different things, from the French Garde Nationale [ENG. National Guard] divisions to the British Popular Territorials to the Dutch Schutterij (ENG. Shooters).
This provided a temporary and slight numeric advantage on the Low Countries – France front amounting to two million to the Reichpakt’s 1.28 million. Combining the Entente’s contribution of around 327,000 active troops at the time, this brought the Internationale to Alliance ratio to about 2 : 1.5. The Entente, heavily engaged elsewhere in occupying Mexico, fighting in North Africa and Portugal and preparing for the island-hopping campaign toward Britain would mostly pull mostly soldiers from Australasia, Portugal, and the recently integrated military of the South African Dominion for the 1944 European fighting.
Despite this, after a month’s pause the Germans attempted to renew their assault. Army Groups Ivory and Green in the south focused on storming into Bourgogne-Franche-Comté while Army Group Burgundy would once more attempt to seize Amsterdam. The overall goal was to stretch the enemy once more to open gaps in their line that Franz von Bayern’s Army Group Green could exploit.
The latest offensive would see early gains. Most notable was the fall of the historic and symbolic Verdun, generating much fanfare in Germany. Army Group Ivory would see the most ground gained early on. They would advance from Nancy toward Besançon and Dijon, capturing the first on March 22nd and the second on April 13th with relative ease. The land into which the Germans advanced was heavily booby trapped and constantly strafed by enemy airplanes. Sniper nests, landmines hidden beneath corpses, poisoned milk and water wells, and spike pits dotted a landscape of torn up rail lines, fell trees, destroyed bridges and cut telegraph and electric cables all slowed the German advance.
Beyond Verdun and within fifty kilometers of the border however, resistance began to gradually stiffen and German offensive capabilities began to wane. Enemy air power eviscerated many German columns attempting to move up from the rear, inflicting huge losses on the Reichspakt and Entente. It was a sign of what was to come as the carnage of the war began to reach new, unseen heights. Compounding these difficulties was a lack of fuel due to Russian advances on the Ploesti Oilfields in Romania. It would be up to General Loringhoven’s 34. Armee to repel the enemy in the east, but it could not be done overnight, squeezing German supplies of black gold.
Dijon falls, April 13th
The Balkan Front would remain relatively static and quiet between 1943 – 44. Neither the Austro-Hungarians nor the Third Internationale had the strength to mount major actions
“The enemy does not surrender in great numbers unless fully encircled and starved out. Their fighting spirit is still high, nigh fanatical. There are rumors from what few prisoners we take that a great counterstroke is being planned. They do not act broken, let alone beaten,” the Field Marshal wrote.
On May 1st, von Rundstedt’s fears would be realized. The syndicalists ceased their retreat and took to local counterattacks where possible. This would be the unleashing of the ‘coiled spring’s energy’ as Catroux had named it.
The enemy had gained air superiority over France and much of the Low Countries
Reims captured, May 13th
By June, it was clear the German attacks could not be maintained in all directions at once. Complicating matters was the worsening fuel situation. At this stage, supplies had run so low that Army Group Blue’s attack into Flanders-Wallonia was called off before it even began. By this time, 34. Armee had forced the Russians back from the Romanian oilfields, but the national stockpile had run out. The Reich’s economic planners attempted to pivot by increasing fuel imports from America, Brazil and Insulindia but news from other quarters prevented a reliable alternate source from being instituted.
The Portuguese front’s slow-motion collapse would see Lisbon isolated and besieged first, with the syndicalists slowly rolling their way up the country over the next few months
SMS Westfalen sinking off the coast of Scotland
SMS Rhein aflame and listing in the Heligoland Bight
The fuel crisis along with the rate at which German fighters were being shot down led to a temporary grounding order being put out by the Luftwaffe until both problems were resolved.
The inferiority of quality, quantity and now fuel was a lethal combination of Luftwaffe pilots in 1944. Except where offensives were ordered, aircraft would be grounded to conserve resources. The development of the Reich’s own jet aircraft was prioritized for 1945, coming in the form of the Messerschmidt 262
Massive supply issues hampered the Heer by mid-year – attrition rates soared
The sight of Troyes on the far side of the same river that quenched Paris would have been an uplifting sight. Alas, German troops had run out of supplies and were now starving and running out of ammunition in the field. It was now that Marshal Catroux released the pent-up energy of the ‘spring’ once more. His reserves attacked the weakened German forces on the flanks and drove them back.
June 16th – Germany struggled to reset the frontline
Better tidings came from the Netherlands, where on June 16th, 2. Armee, commanded by Erwin Rommel, at last managed to cut off the defenders of Amsterdam. 50,000 syndicalists would fight on until at last surrendering in the wreckage of the Jordaan neighborhood on July 1st.
By this stage, German forces in the south and north were thoroughly fought out, with only Franz von Bayern’s Army Group Blue remaining offensive worthy. Von Rundstedt decided to throw the dice on the hope of success in this sector, ordering the Bavarian forward on July 4th.
With other units ordered to a standstill and the fleets grounded, there was enough fuel to attempt one push. Indeed, the enemy was weak in this direction, allowing Franz von Bayern’s men to desperately push more than 100 kms. to the very outskirts of Lille, but here they would run out of fuel and be thrown back half the distance before stabilizing their positions. Some German troops were literally harnessed alongside horses and cattle to tanks, armored cars and halftracks and forced to drag them down the roads during the retreat.
Army Group Green stopped cold on the edges of Lille by 8th July, only four days into its attack. They would be forced back to their original lines by July 21st
On the 4th of August, Reims would fall once more to the Internationale. It was the fourth time the city had traded hands in as many months. By this stage it had become a symbol of the war: a gristle-festooned meatgrinder. As with the rest of the front, both sides resembled prize fighters too tired to raised their arms to defend themselves while also punching. Blood, bruising and broken bones were overcome with sheer psyche all along the line. Organization on both sides of the line had plummeted as summer reached its end.
“I have been ordered to throw more men into retaking Reims like so many logs into the fire,” Günther von Kluge’s last diary entry of the war would read. “The city is just a smear of ash on the landscape now. What are we fighting for there? Why does the Field Marshal [von Rundstedt] keep ordering us forward? He must come here to see this disaster for himself. I am driving myself insane with this place. The very is poisoned with the corpses we left here in May, June, July and August. How many more?”
Alliance forces on the western front were running on literal fumes. Günther von Kluge was ordered to take Reims once more, but the general would convince the OKW of the task’s impossibility and instead advocate a push from the south around the city. He would mass his troops and attack on the 2nd of September. The move failed. This time, it was German intelligence that was misled. The syndicalists had cracked German codes and planted false leads that the area around the region between Reims and Troyes was defended only by broken units.
On September 7th, after five days of being driven to the waiting arms of enemy defensive positions, the German troops under von Kluge had enough. A limited mutiny broke out with troops refusing to advance. Even under threat of death they refused to budge, with NCOs taking the lead. While the rebellion was mostly passive, a small group of radical young officers stormed von Kluge’s headquarters and took the general hostage. A standoff ensued for an hour before a shootout broke out that saw the mutineers dead or captured and von Kluge freed.
The event was a sign of the burnout the troops were suffering. Despite a hurried coverup, news still leaked out. To save face and restore discipline, the captured leaders were publicly shot. Traditionally, the German public, the Prussian people in particular, would have sided with the officer corps against what they might’ve seen as a gang of indolent troublemakers. The size of the mutiny struck the Homefront. Many of these men, tens of thousands of them, were fellow brothers, husbands, sons, neighbors, and colleagues. It reinforced the perception that the issue was with the commanders and the incessant offensive operations which had lasted the better part of a year. Calls for “the Butcher” von Kluge’s resignation erupted in the front pages of newspapers from Luxemburg to Königsberg. OKW buckled, replacing von Kluge with the popular commander of 2. Armee, the ‘Jungle Rat of Borneo’, Erwin Rommel. Rommel’s immediate assessment was that the troops had been pushed too hard these last months and that the situation remained dangerous. Even being one to never turn down an opportunity to attack, even Rommel suggested a cooling off period. The German high command was disturbed enough by the mutiny that they called off all offensive actions for the remainder of the year.
In the moment, there was a great fear of revolution either amongst the troops or at home in the German government, but what they could not see as clearly was the deterioriating state of their enemy. While the Germans suffered, the Internationale's multi-national armies and home fronts were suffering even more. Syndicalist South America was cut off from Europe, India had isolated itself to its sphere of influence, America was lost, and now the war was being waged in France and the Netherlands with the brunt of damage being inflicted there. Along the whole front the Internationale's armies were fighting better than one might have supposed at this stage, but it could only last for so long. With their industries collapsing from lack of resources and trade, their peoples leeched white, and their homes and livelihoods being destroyed, morale and organization amongst the syndicalist cause was on the precipice of caving in on itself. No longer did syndicalism provide for the people. No longer could it withstand the hammer blows being smashed upon it. Against the gloomy prevailing opinions of OKH, Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord would advise Chancellor Schleicher that "All we need is one good kick at the rotting wall to send the whole structure tumbling down. Let us gird ourselves over this winter to deliver that kick next year."
At the CMC, Marshal Catroux sensed that his aggressive defensiveness had been successful this year, but could not be next year. "We felt as if we were peering into the blackness of an ocean at midnight," he later stated. The replacement gap amongst conscripts had become a yawning chasm. By the end of 1944, the Internationale's strength had slipped from its 2 million high to 1.4 million. For the French, recovered wounded were only around 40,000 while new conscription classes added up to no more than 73,000 in 1944. This was not nearly enough to regenerate strength, especially when considering that these numbers were the best among all the multinational forces on the Western Front, with the French being a 50% of that strength. The British were having the utmost difficulty slipping men across the Channel, as were the Norwegians. The Italians were too stretched as it was across the Alps, Balkans and fighting resistance fighters in Sardinia that they had to cancel their planned invasion of Malta. The Dutch were wading through rivers of their own blood already. Beyond all this was the issue of deserters. It was recognized that there would be no more help on the way. This dread was left to fester for a prolonged period of time as the Germans retracted within their shell momentarily to re-plan. Feeling he had no other choice, Catroux ordered his commanders to continue pursuing the strategy of Compresser et Libérer all the while working what leverage he could on those close to Premier Valois to convince him of the need to negotiate an end to the war.
A period of consolidation and reflection would be undertaken. German command would work to rebuild morale and update tactics and strategy for 1945 with the aim of taking Paris and gutting the syndicalists once and for all. The government would also work to regain control of the supply situation and pump out huge quantities of the latest mass-production models of fighters, tanks, guns, and cannon, all to ensure that the troops would never be as deprived as they were in 1944. At the same time, force generation measures were heightened to provide the numbers needed to finally break the syndicalists and continue to grind away at Russian spirit. This would have impacts at home but the risk was deemed worth it. Increasingly, the German Reich was becoming an army with a state.
Western Front territorial exchanges between February 1st and September 30th, 1944
Long trapped in the marshes of the Prut and Danube River delta, the Russian 23rd and 27th Armies at last trudged out of the mud and into the Romanian heartland. It would begin in early February when Marshal of the State Pyotr Wrangle would join Generals Denikin and Drozdovsky to plan a way to break the Romanian gordian knot. An ambitious double-envelopment river crossing was planned, developing into what is today known the Prut-Ploesti Offensive.
This was executed on the leap year day of February 29th. It was a remarkable success, with the Hungarian forces on the far side of the Prut River taken completely aback. The wings of a Hungarian field army were block backwards and solid bridgeheads established. The success was built on with a close pursuit of the Hungarian remnants until most were captured or abandoned their heavy equipment and scattered into the countryside. The Russians were on the move once more.
Under Wrangle’s oversight, Denikin and Drozdovsky collaborated well, with their units driving deep into Romania, threatening Bucharest by early March. The moment of high drama would come when Romanian troops and oil workers began sabotaging the oil derricks as the first Russian tanks and motorcycle outriders began to appear. Thick clouds of black smoke choked the advancing columns of Russians as the wind blew the effluence into their faces, blinding both them and their scout aircraft to the arrival of the General Loringhoven and 34. Armee, the ‘Ritterretter’ [ENG. Knightly Saviors].
By late March, Russian overextension and German-Romanian resistance halted the Russians at the edges of the largest concentration of refineries in the geological oil complex. Having advanced too quickly from their supply bases, Wrangle’s attack could no longer be sustained. Meanwhile, German strength had grown from seven to thirteen divisions, including two elite marine units while allied formations had coalesced around these forces like frozen crusts extending around an ice nucleus. Sensing the enemy’s difficulties, Loringhoven’s men would attack on March 27th. On the 4th of April a Bohemian division would push past the enemy defending an airfield in the town of Vălenii de Munte, essentially surrounding the Russian forces at the foothills of the Carpathians.
Frontline, 30th April – the trapped Russian forces would surrender on May 16th, netting 31,000 prisoners
Wrangle once more assumed command of the forces, creating blocking detachments and instituting harsh penalties for deserters and ‘the craven’ as he named those who fled from battle. This stiffened Russian morale, but only temporarily. Thinking the worst was over, Wrangle departed for Moscow once more with instructions to take to the attack once more when possible.
Back north, the oil situation had essentially ended Operation Erik [Rurik] in February. Small attacks beyond the border of White Ruthenia secured crossings over the Daugava and into Russian territory. Though Generals Falkenhorst and Blomberg had ambitions of taking Smolensk and Kyiv apiece, these were simply not feasible at this stage. Instead, cleanup activities were prioritized.
Advancing out of Petrograd, Guderian’s men had met up with those of General Hoth around Pskov. This cut off the Russian forces in the Baltics for a final time. Through hard fighting the Germans reduced the cauldron into an ever-smaller space. After a year of being stranded on the West Estonian Archipelago and the Läänemaa coastline, the British were finally targeted by the guard divisions Hoth had left behind in Courland. German forces pushed on the Anglo-Russian units who, against Savinov’s commands, had been forced to act together for the purposes of simple survival. Out of food and surrounded, it was only a matter of time before these isolated holdouts were forced to give in.
German advance in the Baltic, 24th April
Marginal German advances out in Russia and Ukraine, 30th April
General Fred Copeman, by now a hero back in Britain for holding out against all odds, would wire the government that his men had made a ‘fine stand and now would be the right proper time to pull us out’. It was too late for that though as access to the last viable port and airfields were cut on May 18th. Instead of pulling out his full force, the ragged leftovers of the proud force that had once threatened eastern Germany, a single plane was flown over with orders to evacuate Copeman and his staff. The general refused the direct order but when threatened with punishment to his family, he tearfully acquiesced He boarded the plane back to Britain via Oslo while his men were left to surrender alongside the Russians. Mosely could not afford to let heroes such as Copeman die, but he should also have acted in such a way as to prevent alienating him. He would live to regret his actions in the matter.
Between May 26th and 31st, the Anglo-Russian forces in the Baltics surrendered. It was the last time in the war that the war-torn region would be visited by Mars.
In June, a finite offensive was pitched by General Falkenhorst to Army Command East in Vilnius. The general wished to take Smolensk before the end of summer to better position the Reichspakt for attacks into the heart of Russia the following year. After much bargaining, a plan was agreed to that would use minimal resources. The Smolensk Offensive was a testament to the debilitated state of the Russian forces. Despite the drawbacks the Germans were facing, their intelligence had cracked Russian codes and had a good understanding of unit locations, enabling them to target the known weakest links. multiple Russian units were pushed back around the city, putting it in danger of encirclement.
Using independently operating penetration groups of shock troops and armor units specifically ordered not to burn more than seventy miles of fuel, the 27. Armee would advance between the unusually thin no man’s land between the lines and quickly crashed over the enemy defenses. The approaches to Smolensk were thus taken and the Russians under Kappel still too weak from last year’s losses to retake them. Kappel pulled his forces back behind the city, abandoning it to Germany.
With the city taken, the focus of action now shifted back to Romania. Having secured a goodly portion of Ploesti oil for himself, Loringhoven planned a blitz into the rear of the exposed Moscow Accord positions on the Carpathian foothills.
After a month of arrangements, Loringhoven opened up the fighting once more by cracking the weakened shell of Russian defenses in Moldova and driving with a motorized and panzer division into the enemy’s rear with lightning speed. The Russians, unused to this speed of combat, were too slow to respond.
The Moldovan Breakthrough, 17th August
21st August
Unable to account for the unraveling situation in Romania along with the new attacks in Ukraine, Moscow Accord positions in eastern Ukraine collapsed. On September 12th, Kyiv was liberated once more.
“Many men here lie to their women and tell them all is fine, not wanting to worry them. Well, dear Natalia, you know me better than that. The air is being rent as a write with German shells. Lithuanian shells. Ukrainian shells. Belorussian shells. Austrian, Hungarian, Polish, South Slavic shells. It felt like the whole world had come together against us. They’d taken our shovels to give to another division in Romania where they said more important events were happening. Use your hands, mobik! The war will be won when we take Germany’s oil, the quartermaster told us. Fuck him. He’s not the one that must dig a trench getting 10.5mm. shells shoved up his ass every day. When you’re out there scrambling in the dirt to dig a foxhole that fills in with water two hands down your gut puckers and becomes one with the muck. The explosions shake your scurvy-loosened teeth out of their sockets. And food? Its like Christmas Feast when we find a rogue carrot or apple in the fields. The only thing in abundance was vodka. Of course, the motherfucker quartermaster provided for that. If we’re drunk we can’t complain, you see, my love.. How the hell are hungry, drunk men with no ammunition supposed to hold the line? As always love, thinking of you and our Sacha.” – Excerpt from the Letters of Private Gedeon Vasiliev, 316th Rifle Division, 19th Army, 1944. Gedeon would be killed two days later.
September 21st
September 26th
On the final day of the month, to encirclement was achieved and Operation Oleg deemed a success. To the west of the Reichspakt spearheads, hundreds of thousands of Moscow Accord and APON forces would be besieged in the greatest encirclement of the eastern front thus far. It would prove a prelude to the liberation of Ukraine.
The Vozhd was forced to admit that over-mobilization of the economy, which to date had been fastidiously avoided, was necessary. Russian forces were lacking themselves in basic supplies and in certain deprioritized sector’s like Kappel’s, were in a far worse state than even the Germans. To date, Russian production had been carved up and run by different economic warlords in a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy and much of the slave labor in the Siberian work camps had been set on creating consumer goods for the population at large. This had cleared Savinkov’s flanks of potential competitors and placated the people but placed severe restrictions on the efficiency of the Russian war economy. By 1944 this was no longer tenable. Savinkov would issue ‘Kremlin Order: Bulgaroktonos’, unifying the disparate elements of the economic and financial state under his party apparatus. This was preceded by the assassination of multiple men Savinkov deemed ‘a plausible liability’ should their empires be stripped of them. Everyday people not already suborned to the war would find their lives now forcibly dedicated to the effort, being drafted to serve in the army or in factories. Agriculture was now heavily managed, with outputs being diverted to the front. Despite the late hour, Russia would now be on a complete war footing.
It would alleviate little and damage much. The tighter the Vozhd attempted to grip the economy, the more it fell out of his hands. The disappearance of goods from shelves would begin to cause hyperinflation around 1943 which would explode the following year, topping out at 600% per year. The ruble became more priceless as flame kindling or to stick under one’s shirt as insulation in the winter. Black and grey markets would crop up in response to price controls, causing stockpiles to ‘bleed out’ as folk working in the supply chain nodes would sell the wares for themselves or high-ranking officers pilfered their choice of goods. Like an unending nightmare, circumstances were only made worse by entire companies of soldiers abandoning the line and taking to banditry in the countryside simply to feed themselves. Many of these would set up protection rackets in nearby villages, going so far as to even set up miniature gang empires that would fight one another for resources. Everyday people were forced to scrounge for their basic needs like never before, save perhaps during the civil war. Famine would soon break out, carrying off people like sheafs of wheat in an autumn field. Into this misery stepped the Orthodox Church, who's priests, deacons and bishops would provide what they could. Some of these certainly took advantage of the situation, but on the whole, by 1945 the Church would hold a position amongst the Russian people that it did for the rest of the century: that of the most trusted institution in the land.
Though similar deprivation had occurred in Germany in the war, the type of men and women promoted to positions of power in Savinkov’s Russia were ultimately corrupt beyond the wildest dreams of the more disciplined and policed German government bureaucracy and military apparatus. As '45 dawned, though their armies would be greater than ever in numbers and equipment the Russian home front had begun to flame out.
Eastern Front territorial exchanges between February 1st and September 30th, 1944
Other Headlines
Though 1944 was a slow affair in Western Europe, events were taking place that would affect the situation across the rest of the world. On February 28th, the Centroamerican government surrendered to Commonwealth forces. Centroamerica’s executive, Augusto Sandino would flee into the forests and lead an insurgency that would last for years. Regardless, official operations in the western hemisphere had now ended.
Since 1941 the small Cairo Pact and Entente forces in southern Egypt had been sparring across the dunes, savannah and steppe of Sudan. This oft-forgotten theater of war would swing back and forth in a remarkably even match between the combatants, but increasingly the depredations visited on the local populace by the Egyptians would see tribal resistance grow.
Frontlines as of 16th August, 1944
Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi (1885-1959)
The Entente would take advantage of the development by immediately recognizing the new Mahdi’s state and, in an ironic turn of events, would ally with it against the Sultanate of Egypt.
The bedlam in Sudan was magnified by a French breakthrough in June on the Cyrenaican front. This understrength National French army under Charles du Gaulle’s understrength forces managed to breakthrough the Cairo Pact’s lines and by summer’s end were threatening Alexandria.
In South America, Brazil at last achieved success after crossing the blood-soaked Paraná River and capturing Cordoba. The well-connected and supplied city enabled the Brazilians to expand their zone of control deep into Argentina. By August 16th, Buenos Aires was under siege.
Pampas Front, 16th August 1944
Andean Front, 16th August 1944
Lastly, after extended preparations, the Royal Canadian Navy departed from its ports in Halifax carrying the first of many Canadian units to join the fray in Europe. Led by the one-eyed general, Adrian Carton de Wiart, three marine divisions approached the shores of Iceland, the frigid water of the Denmark Straight splashing around them as shore batteries opened fire.
Men of the Canadian 3rd Royal Marines preparing to storm the black sands of Iceland
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