The first five months of 1944 were marked by new Red Army offensives to the south of the Pripet Marshes. The offensives led to the liberation of the Ukraine and Crimea as well as to the conquest of the northern part of Rumanian Moldavia, while in the Leningrad region they succeeded in throwing the Germans back ¦ from a line linking Oranienbaum-Volk-hov-Novgorod-Lake Ilmen onto one linking Narva-Lake Peipus and Pskov. At the same time, the Western Allies were also putting the pressure on Germany.
Further south, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, new Allied Commander-inChief in the Mediterranean, endeavoured to carry out the limited mission which had been entrusted to him in implementation of decisions recently taken at the Teheran Conference. Two days before the Normandy landings, the advance guard 'of his 15th Army Group under General Sir Harold Alexander had entered Rome hard on the enemy’s heels. Thereby the allies had achieved their strictly geographical objective, but arguably at the price of sacrificing their strategic objective in Italy, namely the destruction of the enemy forces.
Parallel to this, in Great Britain the preparations for Operation "Overlord”, with all their attendant difficulties, were rapidly approaching their climax. While the divisions taking part in the landings by sea and by air were undergoing intensive training, in London Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery were putting the final touches to the invasion plans drawn up by the American and British Combined 'Chiefs-of-Staff, C. O.S. S.A. C., and submitted for their approval by General Morgan.
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World History
