But when it came down to it. the Russians’ third winter offensive, the Fiihrer showed the same persistent and mistaken obstinacy as he had done in the previous years, bringing his familiar arguments of high politics and the war economy to bear against his army group commanders every time one of them sought to advise him of a suitable chance to disengage in the face of the sheer weight, regardless of cost, of the Soviet onslaught.
And evidence of this came with the fresh disasters that occurred, principally to the south of the Pripet Marshes, when towards the end of January 1944 Kanev and Korsun’ and, on the following May 13, Sevastopol’ found their doleful place in the annals of German military history. So it was again a case of immediately arresting the possible consequences of these new defeats sustained by the Third Reich and, since the few reinforcements still available on the Eastern Front were quite inadequate. Hitler the head of O. K.H. sought help from Hitler the head of O. K.W. in order to avert imminent catastrophe. In these circumstances, born of his quite inexcusable obstinacy. Hitler the supreme commander had no alternative but to depart from the principle he had laid down in his Directive of November 3,1943. At the end of the winter of 1943, the WaffenS. S. II Panzer Corps had to be transferred from the Alengon sector, and hence missed the rendezvous of June 6, 1944 in Normandy.
World History
