Snow Tigers
Following the success of Operation Bagration, the Soviets advanced towards Memel on the Baltic coast. This advance quickly cut the lines of communication between Army Group North and the rest of Army Group Central.
At the beginning of October 1944, the Soviets reached the sea, definitively isolating Army Group North and cutting off any retreat. Guderian wanted to evacuate his troops by sea and redeploy them in Central Europe, where the situation was deteriorating rapidly. However, Hitler firmly opposed this, ordering the 200,000 encircled troops to withdraw to the Curonian Spit, hoping to use it as a springboard for a future offensive.
Little did the Führer know that what he saw as a bridgehead (der Kurland-Brückenkopf) was in fact a death trap for his divisions. Despite this, they withstood six violent assaults before surrendering to Marshal Govorov on 8 May 1945. Most of the prisoners captured by the Soviets that day were sent to camps in the Soviet Union, and few returned.
Operation Market Garden
Operation Market Garden was the largest airborne operation in history. General Montgomery had devised a daring plan against the German forces in the Netherlands: three airborne divisions would parachute behind enemy lines to capture and hold the bridges along a hundred-kilometre route towards northern Germany.
From the Belgian border, XXX British Corps would then be able to cross the Meuse and Rhine rivers, bypassing the Siegfried Line to reach the Ruhr, the industrial heart of Germany.
The first parachute drops took place at dawn, capturing the Wall Bridge at Nijmegen, but German resistance proved more intense than expected. The 1st British Airborne Division failed to capture the Arnhem bridge. In addition, the marshy ground in the area slowed the Allied advance considerably.
Although Eindhoven was liberated by a joint parachute and armoured assault, the British XXX Corps was unable to relieve the 1st Airborne Division. The latter fought valiantly around the Arnhem bridge, but despite all their efforts, the operation was a failure. Montgomery would not succeed in crossing the Rhine until the spring of 1945.
