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TheWestern Front was amilitary theatre ofWorld War II encompassingDenmark,Norway,Luxembourg,Belgium, theNetherlands, theUnited Kingdom,France, andGermany. TheItalian front is considered a separate but related theatre.[j] The Western Front's 1944–1945 phase was officially deemed theEuropean Theater by the United States, whereas Italy fell under theMediterranean Theater along with theNorth African campaign. The Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale combat operations. The first phase saw the capitulation of Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, and France during May and June 1940 after their defeat in theLow Countries and the northern half of France, and continued into an air war between Germany and Britain that climaxed with theBattle of Britain. The second phase consisted of large-scale ground combat (supported bya massive strategic air war considered to be an additional front), which began in June 1944 with theAllied landings in Normandy and continued until thedefeat of Germany in May 1945 with itsinvasion.
On 1 September 1939, World War II began with the Germaninvasion of Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September. The next few months in the war were marked by the Phoney War.
The Phoney War was an early phase of World War II marked by a few military operations inContinental Europe in the months following the German invasion of Poland and preceding theBattle of France. Although the greatpowers of Europe haddeclared war on one another, neither side had yet committed to launching a significant attack, and there was relatively little fighting on the ground. This was also the period in which theUnited Kingdom and France did not supply significant aid to Poland, despite theirpledged alliance.
The French forces launched a small offensive, theSaar Offensive against Germany in theSaar region but halted their advance and returned. While most of the German Army was fighting against Poland, a much smaller German force manned theSiegfried Line, their fortified defensive line along the French border. At theMaginot Line on the other side of the border, French troops stood facing them, whilst theBritish Expeditionary Force and other elements of theFrench Army created a defensive line along the Belgian border. There were only some local, minor skirmishes. The BritishRoyal Air Force dropped propaganda leaflets on Germany and the first Canadian troops stepped ashore in Britain, while Western Europe was in a strange calm for seven months.
In their hurry to re-arm, Britain and France had both begun to buy large numbers of weapons from manufacturers in the United States at the outbreak of hostilities, supplementing their own production. Thenon-belligerent United States contributed to theWestern Allies by discounted sales of military equipment and supplies. German efforts to interdict the Allies' trans-Atlantic trade at sea ignited theBattle of the Atlantic.
While the Western Front remained quiet in April 1940, the fighting between the Allies and the Germans began in earnest with theNorwegian Campaign when the Germans launchedOperation Weserübung, the German invasion of Denmark and Norway. In doing so, the Germans beat the Allies to the punch; the Allies had been planning an amphibious landing in which they could begin to surround Germany, cutting off her supply of raw materials fromSweden. However, when the Allies made a counter-landing in Norway following the German invasion, the Germans repulsed them and defeated the Norwegian armed forces, driving the latterinto exile. TheKriegsmarine, nonetheless, suffered very heavy losses during the two months of fighting required to seize all of mainland Norway.
In May 1940, the Germans launched the Battle of France. The Western Allies (primarily the French, Belgian and British land forces) soon collapsed under the onslaught of the so-called "blitzkrieg" strategy. Following the German breakthrough at Sedan, the BEF, along with the best of the French and Belgian armies, became trapped in Flanders. With the use of paratroopers and concentrated firepower, the Belgian and Dutch armies surrendered after several days. Luxembourg fell within the first day.
The majority of the British and elements of the French forces escapedat Dunkirk. This was due to the combined factors of poor weather, Germans mishaps, and the incredible number of British civilian ships assembled for the undertaking. Following the conclusion of events at Dunkirk on June 4, the Wehrmacht commenced Fall Rot, an offensive against the remaining French armies. With most of the French armies either destroyed or taken prisoner, the Germans quickly broke through the French lines, taking Paris on June 14. As France was falling, the British began the strategic withdrawal of all remaining British troops from France, via French ports still under Allied control.
With the war all but decided, Italy also declared war on the UK and France, but made little progress. With the situation becoming dire, French Prime Minister Philippe Pétain signed the Second Armistice of Compiègne on June 22, 1940, with its terms taking effect on the 25th of June. The terms of the armistice called for the occupation of Northern France, along with the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine into the German Reich. Italy also was allowed a small occupation zone in the southeast. France was allowed to continue its existence in the form of Vichy France, a rump state of the former French Republic, led by Philippe Pétain. The Vichy regime was allowed to keep their colonial empire and navy, as some of Hitler's few concessions.
In six weeks of fighting, the combined allied armies suffered more than 375,000 killed or wounded, as well as 1,800,000 soldiers becoming prisoners of war. Meanwhile, Germany suffered a more modest 43,110 killed and 111,000 wounded. Hitler had expected a million men to die in the conquest of France. Remarkedly low casualties and France's quick defeat led to a massive rise in morale among the German people. With the fighting ended, the Germans began to consider ways of resolving the question of how to deal with Britain. If the British refused to agree to a peace treaty, one option was toinvade. However, Nazi Germany'sKriegsmarine, had suffered serious losses in Norway, and in order to even consider anamphibious landing, Germany's Air Force (the Luftwaffe) had to first gainair superiority orair supremacy.
With theLuftwaffe unable to defeat theRAF in theBattle of Britain, the invasion of Great Britain could no longer be thought of as an option. While the majority of the German army was mustered for theinvasion of the Soviet Union, construction began on theAtlantic Wall – a series of defensivefortifications along the French coast of theEnglish Channel. These were built in anticipation of an Allied invasion of France.
Because of the massive logistical obstacles a cross-channel invasion would face, the Allied high command decided to conduct a practice attack against the French coast. On 19 August 1942, the Allies began theDieppe Raid, an attack onDieppe, France. Most of the troops were Canadian, with some British contingents and a small American and Free French presence along with British and Polish naval support. The raid was a disaster, almost two-thirds of the attacking force became casualties. However, much was learned as a result of the operation – these lessons would be put to good use in the subsequent invasion.
For almost two years, there was no land-fighting on the Western Front with the exception ofcommando raids and theguerrilla actions of theresistance aided by theSpecial Operations Executive (SOE) andOffice of Strategic Services (OSS). However, in the meantime, the Allies took the war to Germany, with astrategic bombing campaign - the USEighth Air Force bombing Germany by day andRAF Bomber Command bombing by night. The bulk of the Allied armies were occupied in theMediterranean, seeking to clear the sea lanes to theIndian Ocean, repulse the Axis from North Africa, and commence the invasion of Italy, partly to capture theFoggia Airfield Complex.
Two early British raids for which battle honours were awarded wereOperation Collar in Boulogne (24 June 1940) andOperation Ambassador in Guernsey (14–15 July 1940). The raids for which the British awarded the "North-West Europe Campaign of 1942"battle honour were:Operation Biting – Bruneval (27–28 February 1942),St Nazaire (27–28 March 1942),Operation Myrmidon – Bayonne (5 April 1942),Operation Abercrombie – Hardelot (21–22 April 1942),Dieppe (19 August 1942) andOperation Frankton – Gironde (7–12 December 1942).[39][40]
A raid onSark on the night of 3/4 October 1942 is notable because a few days after the incursion the Germans issued apropaganda communiqué implying at least one prisoner had escaped and two were shot while resisting having their hands tied. This instance of tying prisoner's hands contributed to Hitler's decision to issue hisCommando Order instructing that all capturedCommandos or Commando-type personnel were to be executed as a matter of procedure.
By the summer of 1944, when an expectation of an Allied invasion was freely admitted by German commanders, the disposition of troops facing it came under the command ofOB West (HQ inParis). In turn, it commanded: theWehrmacht Netherlands Command (Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Niederlande) or WBN, covering the Dutch andBelgian coasts;Army Group B, covering the coast of northern France with the German15th Army (HQ inTourcoing), in the area north of theSeine and the7th Army, (HQ inLe Mans), between the Seine and theLoire defending the English Channel and the Atlantic coast; andArmy Group G with responsibility for theBay of Biscay coast andVichy France, with its1st Army, (HQ inBordeaux), responsible for the Atlantic coast between the Loire and the Spanish border and the19th Army, (HQ inAvignon), responsible for theMediterranean coast.
It was not possible to predict where the Allies might choose to launch their invasion. The chance of an amphibious landing necessitated the substantial dispersal of the German mobile reserves, which contained the majority of their panzer troops. Each army group was allocated its mobile reserves. Army Group B had the2nd Panzer Division in northern France,116th Panzer Division in the Paris area, and the21st Panzer Division in Normandy. Army Group G, considering the possibility of an invasion on the Atlantic coast, had dispersed its mobile reserves, locating the11th Panzer Division inGironde, the2nd SS Panzer DivisionDas Reich refitting around the southern French town ofMontauban, and the9th Panzer Division stationed in theRhone delta area.
The OKW retained a substantial reserve of such mobile divisions also, but these were dispersed over a large area: the1st SS Panzer DivisionLeibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler was still in theNetherlands, the12th SS Panzer DivisionHitlerjugend and thePanzer-Lehr Division were located in the Paris–Orleans area, since the Normandy coastal defence sectors or (Küstenverteitigungsabschnitte – KVA) were considered the most likely areas for an invasion. The17th SS Panzergrenadier DivisionGötz von Berlichingen was located just south of the Loire in the vicinity of Tours.
On 6 June 1944, the Allies beganOperation Overlord (also known as "D-Day") – the long-awaitedliberation of France. The deception plans,Operation Fortitude andOperation Bodyguard, had the Germans convinced that the invasion would occur in thePas-de-Calais, while the real target wasNormandy. Following two months of slow fighting inhedgerow country,Operation Cobra allowed the Americans to break out at the western end of thelodgement. Soon after, the Allies were racing across France. They encircled around 200,000 Germans in theFalaise Pocket. As had so often happened on theEastern Front Hitler refused to allow a strategic withdrawal until it was too late. Approximately 150,000 Germans were able to escape from the Falaise pocket, but they left behind most of their irreplaceable equipment and 50,000 Germans were killed or takenprisoner.
The Allies had been arguing about whether to advance on a broad-front or a narrow-front from before D-Day.[41] If the British had broken out of the Normandybridgehead (orbeachhead) aroundCaen when they launchedOperation Goodwood and pushed along the coast,facts on the ground might have turned the argument in favour of a narrow front. However, as the breakout took place during Operation Cobra at the western end of the bridge-head, the21st Army Group that included theBritish andCanadian forces swung east and headed for Belgium, the Netherlands and Northern Germany, while theU.S. Twelfth Army Group advanced to their south via eastern France, Luxembourg and theRuhr Area, rapidly fanning out into a broad front. As this was the strategy favoured by theSupreme Allied Commander,GeneralDwight D. Eisenhower, and most of the American high command, it was soon adopted.
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On 15 August the Allies launchedOperation Dragoon – the invasion of Southern France betweenToulon andCannes. TheUS Seventh Army and theFrench First Army, making up theUS 6th Army Group, rapidly consolidated this beachhead and liberated Southern France in two weeks; they then moved north up the Rhone valley. Their advance only slowed down as they encountered regrouped and entrenched German troops in theVosges Mountains.
The Germans in France were now faced by three powerful Allied army groups: in the north the British 21st Army Group commanded by Field Marshal SirBernard Montgomery, in the center the American 12th Army Group, commanded by GeneralOmar Bradley and to the south the US 6th Army Group commanded by Lieutenant GeneralJacob L. Devers. By mid-September, the 6th Army Group, advancing from the south, came into contact with Bradley's formations advancing from the west and overall control of Devers' force passed fromAFHQ in the Mediterranean so that all three army groups came under Eisenhower's central command atSHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces).
Under the onslaught in both the north and south of France, the German Army fell back. On 19 August, theFrench Resistance (FFI) organised a general uprising and theliberation of Paris took place on 25 August when generalDietrich von Choltitz accepted the Frenchultimatum and surrendered to GeneralPhilippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, commander of theFree French 2nd Armored Division, ignoring orders from Hitler that Paris should be held to the last and destroyed.
The liberation of Northern France and theBenelux countries was of special significance for the inhabitants of London and the southeast of England because it denied the Germans launch sites for their mobileV-1 andV-2Vergeltungswaffen (reprisal weapons).
As the Allies advanced across France, their supply lines stretched to breaking point. TheRed Ball Express, the Allied trucking effort, was simply unable to transport enough supplies from the port facilities in Normandy all the way to the front line, which by September, was close to the German border.
Major German units in the French southwest that had not been committed in Normandy withdrew, either eastwards towards Alsace (sometimes directly across the US 6th Army Group's advance) or into the ports with the intention of denying them to the Allies. These latter groups were not thought worth much effort and were left "to rot", with the exception ofBordeaux, which was liberated in May 1945 by French forces under GeneralEdgard de Larminat (Operation Venerable).[42]
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Fighting on the Western front seemed to stabilize, and the Allied advance stalled in front of theSiegfried Line (Westwall) and the southern reaches of the Rhine. Starting in early September, the Americans began slow and bloody fighting through theHurtgen Forest ("Passchendaele with tree bursts"—Hemingway) to breach the Line.
The port ofAntwerp was liberated on 4 September by theBritish 11th Armoured Division.However, it lay at the end of the longScheldt Estuary, and so it could not be used until its approaches were clear of heavily fortified German positions. TheBreskens pocket on the southern bank of theScheldt was cleared with heavy casualties by Allied forces inOperation Switchback, during theBattle of the Scheldt. This was followed by a tedious campaign to clear a peninsula dominating the estuary, and finally, the amphibious assault onWalcheren Island in November. The campaign to clear the Scheldt Estuary along withOperation Pheasant was a decisive victory for the Allies, as it allowed a greatly improved delivery of supplies directly from Antwerp, which was far closer to the front than the Normandy beaches.
In October the Americans decided that they could not justinvestAachen and let it fall in a slow siege, because it threatened the flanks of theU.S. Ninth Army. As it was the first major German city to face capture, Hitler ordered that the city be held at all costs. In the resultingbattle, the city was taken, at a cost of 5,000 casualties on both sides, with an additional 5,600 German prisoners.
South of theArdennes, American forces fought from September until mid-December to push the Germans out of Lorraine and from behind the Siegfried Line. The crossing of theMoselle River and the capture of the fortress ofMetz proved difficult for the American troops in the face of German reinforcements, supply shortages, and unfavorable weather. During September and October, the Allied 6th Army Group (U.S. Seventh Army andFrench First Army) fought a difficult campaign through the Vosges Mountains that was marked by dogged German resistance and slow advances. In November, however, the German front snapped under the pressure, resulting in sudden Allied advances that liberatedBelfort,Mulhouse, andStrasbourg, and placed Allied forces along theRhine River. The Germans managed to hold a large bridgehead (theColmar Pocket), on the western bank of the Rhine and centered around the city ofColmar. On 16 November the Allies started a large scale autumn offensive calledOperation Queen. With its main thrust again through theHürtgen Forest, the offensive drove the Allies to theRur River, but failed in its core objectives to capture the Rur dams and pave the way towards the Rhine. The Allied operations were then succeeded by the GermanArdennes offensive.
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The port of Antwerp was liberated on 4 September by the British 11th Armoured Division.Field MarshalSir Bernard Montgomery, commanding the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group, persuaded theAllied High Command to launch a bold attack,Operation Market Garden, which he hoped would get the Allies across the Rhine and create the narrow-front he favoured.Airborne troops would fly in from the United Kingdom and take bridges over the main rivers of the German-occupied Netherlands in three main cities;Eindhoven,Nijmegen, andArnhem. TheBritish XXX Corps would punch through the German lines along the Maas–Schelde canal and link up with the airborne troops of theU.S. 101st Airborne Division in Eindhoven, theU.S. 82nd Airborne Division at Nijmegen and theBritish 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. If all went well XXX Corps would advance into Germany without any remaining major obstacles. XXX Corps was able to advance beyond six of the seven airborne-held bridges but was unable to link up with the troops near the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem.
The result was the near-destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division during theBattle of Arnhem, which sustained almost 8,000 casualties. The offensive ended with Arnhem remaining in German hands and the Allies holding an extended salient from the Belgian border to the area between Nijmegen and Arnhem. A Germanattempt to recapture the salient ended in failure in early October.
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The Germans had been preparing a massive counter-attack in the West since the Allied breakout from Normandy. The plan calledWacht am Rhein ("Watch on the Rhine") was to attack through the Ardennes and swing north to Antwerp, splitting the American and British armies. The attack started on 16 December in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Defending the Ardennes were troops of the US First Army. Initial successes in bad weather, which gave them cover from the Allied air forces, resulted in a German penetration of over 80 km (50 mi) to within less than 16 km (10 mi) of theMeuse. Having been taken by surprise, the Allies regrouped and the Germans were stopped by a combined air and land counter-attack which eventually pushed them back to their starting points by 25 January 1945.
The Germans launched a second, smaller offensive (Nordwind) intoAlsace on 1 January 1945. Aiming to recapture Strasbourg, the Germans attacked the 6th Army Group at multiple points. Because the Allied lines had become severely stretched in response to the crisis in the Ardennes, holding and throwing back theNordwind offensive was a costly affair that lasted almost four weeks. The culmination of Allied counter-attacks restored the front line to the area of the German border and collapsed theColmar Pocket.
In January 1945 the German bridgehead over the riverRoer between Heinsberg and Roermond was cleared duringOperation Blackcock. This was followed by a pincer movement of theFirst Canadian Army inOperation Veritable advancing from the Nijmegen area of the Netherlands, and the US Ninth Army crossing the Roer inOperation Grenade. Veritable and Grenade were planned to start on 8 February 1945, but Grenade was delayed by two weeks when the Germans flooded the Roer valley by destroying the gates of theRur Dam upstream. Field MarshalGerd von Rundstedt requested permission to withdraw east behind the Rhine, arguing that further resistance would only delay the inevitable, but was ordered by Hitler to fight where his forces stood.
By the time the water had subsided and the US Ninth Army was able to cross the Roer on 23 February, other Allied forces were also close to the Rhine's west bank. Von Rundstedt's divisions, which had remained on the west bank, were cut to pieces in the 'Battle of the Rhineland' – 280,000 men were taken prisoner. With a large number of men captured, the stubborn German resistance during the Allied campaign to reach the Rhine in February and March 1945 had been costly. Total losses reached an estimated 400,000 men.[43] By the time they prepared to cross the Rhine in late March, the Western Allies had taken 1,300,000 German soldiers prisoner in western Europe.[k]
The crossing of the Rhine was achieved at four points:
Once the Allies had crossed the Rhine, the British fanned out northeast towardsHamburg crossing the riverElbe and on towards Denmark and the Baltic. British forces capturedBremen on 26 April after a week of combat.[49] British and Canadian paratroopers reached the Baltic city ofWismar just ahead of Soviet forces on 2 May. The US Ninth Army, which had remained under British command since the battle of the Bulge, went south as the northern pincer of theRuhr encirclement as well as pushing elements east. XIX Corps of the Ninth Army capturedMagdeburg on 18 April and the US XIII Corps to the north occupiedStendal.[50]
The US 12th Army Group fanned out, and the First Army went north as the southern pincer of the Ruhr encirclement. On 4 April the encirclement was completed and the Ninth Army reverted to the command of Bradley's 12th Army Group. The German Army Group B commanded by Field MarshalWalther Model was trapped in the Ruhr Pocket and 300,000 soldiers became POWs. The Ninth and First American armies then turned east and pushed to the Elbe river by mid-April. During the push east, the cities ofFrankfurt am Main,Kassel, Magdeburg,Halle andLeipzig were strongly defended by ad hoc German garrisons made up of regular troops,Flak units,Volkssturm and armed Nazi Party auxiliaries. Generals Eisenhower and Bradley concluded that pushing beyond the Elbe made no sense since eastern Germany was destined in any case to be occupied by theRed Army. The First and Ninth Armies stopped along the Elbe andMulde rivers, making contact with Soviet forces near the Elbe in late April. The US Third Army had fanned out to the east into western Czechoslovakia and southeast into easternBavaria and northern Austria. By V-E Day, the US 12th Army Group was a force of four armies (First, Third, Ninth andFifteenth) that numbered over 1.3 million men.[51]
General Eisenhower's Armies were facing resistance that varied from almost non-existent to fanatical[l] as they advanced toward Berlin, which was located 200 km (120 mi) from their positions in early April 1945. Britain'sPrime Minister,Winston Churchill, urged Eisenhower to continue the advance toward Berlin by the 21st Army Group, under the command of Montgomery with the intention of capturing the city. Even Patton agreed with Churchill that he should order the attack on the city since Montgomery's troops could reach Berlin within three days.[52] The British and Americans contemplated an airborne operation before the attack. In Operation Eclipse, the17th Airborne Division,82nd Airborne Division, 101st Airborne Division, and a British brigade were to seize theTempelhof,Rangsdorf,Gatow,Staaken, andOranienburg airfields. In Berlin, theReichsbanner resistance organization identified possible drop zones for Allied paratroopers and planned to guide them past German defenses into the city.[53]
After Bradley warned that capturing a city located in a region that the Soviets had already received at theYalta Conference might cost 100,000 casualties,[53] by 15 April Eisenhower ordered all armies to halt when they reached the Elbe and Mulde Rivers, thus immobilizing these spearheads while the war continued for three more weeks. 21st Army Group was then instead ordered to move northeast toward Bremen and Hamburg. While the U.S. Ninth and First Armies held their ground from Magdeburg through Leipzig to westernCzechoslovakia, Eisenhower ordered three Allied field armies (1st French, and the U.S. Seventh and Third Armies) into southeastern Germany and Austria. Advancing from northern Italy, the British Eighth Army[m] pushed to the borders ofYugoslavia to defeat the remainingWehrmacht elements there.[52] This later caused some friction with theYugoslav forces, notably aroundTrieste.
The US 6th Army Group fanned out to the southwest, passing to the east of Switzerland through Bavaria and into Austria and northern Italy.[when?] TheBlack Forest andBaden were overrun by the French First Army.[when?] Determined stands were made in April by German forces atHeilbronn,Nuremberg, andMunich but were overcome after several days.[when?] Elements of theUS 3rd Infantry Division were the first Allied troops to arrive atBerchtesgaden, which they secured, while the French 2nd Armoured Division seized theBerghof (Hitler's Alpine residence) on 4 May 1945. German Army Group G surrendered to US forces at Haar, in Bavaria, on 5 May. Field Marshal Montgomery took the German military surrender of all German forces in The Netherlands, northwest Germany and Denmark onLüneburg Heath, an area between the cities of Hamburg,Hanover and Bremen, on 4 May 1945. As the operational commander of some of these forces[vague][clarification needed] was Grand AdmiralKarl Dönitz, the newReichspräsident (head of state) of theThird Reich this signaled that theEuropean war was over.
On 7 May at his headquarters inRheims, Eisenhower took the unconditional surrender of all German forces to the western Allies and the Soviet Union,[54] from the German Chief-of-Staff, General Alfred Jodl, who signed the first generalinstrument of surrender at 0241 hours. GeneralFranz Böhme announced the unconditional surrender of German troops in Norway. Operations ceased at 23:01 hours Central European time (CET) on8 May. Onthat same day Field MarshalWilhelm Keitel, as head ofOKW and Jodl's superior, was brought to MarshalGeorgy Zhukov inKarlshorst and signed another instrument of surrender that was essentially identical to that signed in Rheims with two minor additions requested by the Soviets.[55]
The Allies suffered: 1,093,000 killed/wounded/missing. Apart from about 2 million prisoners, mostly French. The United States suffered the highest losses: 152,109 killed and missing, 365,086 wounded, 73,759 captured.[56] France suffered relatively high losses: 152,000 killed or missing, about 300,000 wounded, and 1,454,730 taken prisoner.[57] Britain lost 120,000 killed,[58] nearly 111,000 wounded and 56,000 captured. The rest of the allied countries lost 284,000 killed, wounded and captured (among them 24,000 killed and missing).[8][9]
German losses are much more difficult to deal with, as different sources claim conflicting information. According to George Marshall, the Germans lost 263,000 killed. German historian Rüdger Overmans points to other numbers: 339,000 killed and missing on the Western Front until 31 December 1944. He also claims that in the "final battles" from January to May 1945, Germany lost 1,230,000 killed and missing, of which 1/3 on the Western Front. According to Rüdiger Overmans, German losses totalled 750,000 killed. Due to low morale towards the end of the war, the Germans often surrendered. Unlike their colleagues on the Eastern Front and their Japanese colleagues, the Wehrmacht did not fight to the last in the defensive battles on the Western Front in 1944–1945 and for the most part surrendered when the defeat was obvious. 7,614,790 were held in POW camps by early June 1945 (including 3,404,950 who were disarmed following the surrender of Germany).[11]
Quoting Alfred Jodl's "Strategic situation in spring 1944" presentation. The total given for German forces in the west in May 1944, prior to a slight upgrade of forces in the west in preparation forOperation Overlord, was 1,873,000 personnel.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) Only includes those wounded who were not captured after, and only records wounded up to 31 January 1945. Likely to be drastically underestimated considering the corresponding figures for the Eastern Front on the same document.
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