The Soviet Army's "first south, then north" operational plan was carried out very smoothly, and when the Soviet Red Army swept into the Bavarian region of Germany with a million troops, the German army could only temporarily transfer hundreds of thousands of troops to resist. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

After several years of fighting, the German tank forces were basically left with little left, but the Soviet tanks were greatly improved in terms of quantity and quality.

By January 1944, the Soviet Red Army had been equipped with tens of thousands of T-44 tanks, and the number of T-54 tanks had reached more than 1,000, and the number of IS series heavy tanks, SU-152 and other self-propelled guns also had an overwhelming numerical advantage in front of the German army.

Although the Germans were equipped with anti-tank weapons such as the King Tiger tank, the Cheetah tank destroyer, and the Tiger Hunter destroyer, their tank production was limited due to various factors such as the high cost of production and the bombing of factories.

These few hundred "animals" (King Tiger tanks, Cheetah tank destroyers, Tiger Hunters and other destroyer vehicles are named after animals) are not useful at all in the face of tens of thousands of Soviet tanks.

Due to the small number and large size of the new German tanks, they could easily become targets for Soviet tanks, attack aircraft, and bombers, and they were often bombed indiscriminately by Soviet planes or besieged by three or four Soviet tanks as soon as they appeared.

Although the German King Tiger tank has an advantage in armor and firepower, it will be beaten to scrap metal in the face of a large number of Soviet tanks with no bad firepower and armor.

Moreover, due to the lack of materials, the armor production quality of German tanks was poor, and the protection was greatly reduced, and sometimes the frontal armor of the King Tiger tank with a thickness of 185mm could be easily penetrated by Soviet tanks.

With the Soviet Union's superiority in the number of aircraft, tanks, artillery, and soldiers, the Germans could only fight and retreat. Although the Soviet army encountered stubborn resistance from the German army after entering Germany, it finally successfully captured Munich, Nuremberg and Augsburg, the three important German industrial towns, by virtue of its superiority in troops, equipment and air supremacy.

Subsequently, the Soviet Red Army troops entering Bavaria attacked westward to seize the industrial towns of Stuttgart and Karlsruhe in southern Germany, and the other advanced north with Soviet forces in the Czech Republic, aiming at the three important cities of Elft, Dresden, and Leipzig, and threatening the southern flank of the German army in Berlin.

Under such circumstances, Hitler had no choice but to mobilize troops from France and transfer nearly half of the troops stationed in France and Germany back to the mainland, so as to fill the gap in a large area of Germany and prevent the Soviet army from easily occupying the German mainland.

The remaining German troops were stationed along the northern coastline of France and in important cities such as Paris and Lyon to prevent the landing of Allied troops. In the event of a successful Allied landing and the Germans were unable to defend it, Hitler would order the German troops in France to destroy the French cities, including Paris, and then withdraw to the Ardennes and Alsace-Lorraine for defense.

The Nazi German troops stationed in Italy did not move, because as soon as they left, Mussolini's regime in Italy would be wiped out by the Allied and Italian communist partisans, and after the Allies occupied all of Italy, they would be able to enter southern France from Piedmond and Liguria in Italy, and then go north to attack Germany from France.

So that they would not need to launch a landing war in northern France, wouldn't it be enough to go directly from Italy to France, and then from France to Germany? Hitler would not have let the Allies do this.

Even so, the Axis forces were unable to hold the territory of northern Italy.

In January 1944, the Soviet army gathered more than 800,000 troops to invade Italy from Carinthia and Slovenia in Austria, and successfully liberated many towns in northeastern Italy such as Udine, Venice, Bolzano and Verona with the assistance of local communist guerrillas, and directly attacked Milan, Bologna and Turin, the three most important industrial cities in Italy.

Not to be outdone, the American forces stationed in southern Italy broke through the Gustav and Adolf Hitler lines, which were heavily defended by the Germans, and it was only a matter of time before Rome was captured.

The capture of Rome is of great political significance to the U.S. military, and even to the entire Allied camp, after all, it is the first Axis capital taken by the U.S. military, and the city is also the capital of the ancient Roman Empire and the seat of the Holy See, which has great historical, cultural and political value, and is the political and cultural center of Europe in the past.

However, the U.S. military does not seem to be satisfied with this result, although Rome has political value, historical value, and cultural value, the Yankees value economic value and industrial value more, after all, these are real interests.

The most important industrial area in Italy is not in Rome, but in the northern part of Italy, which is occupied or about to be occupied by the Soviet Union, where most of Italy's military production and heavy industry production are carried out in Milan, Turin, Bologna and other places.

Judging from the current progress of the American army, it is impossible to occupy Milan, Turin, and Bologna before the Soviets, and they can only advance to Florence at most, and they will not be able to set foot in the most elite northern part of Italy.

Therefore, in order to extract more benefits from the Axis powers, the Anglo-American coalition had to focus on the more valuable regions of France and Germany proper.

To achieve this, the Allies would have to land on the coasts of France, Belgium, or the Netherlands as soon as possible. If you were ruthless, it was not impossible to land on the German coast, but it would cost you a lot, so the proposal to land on Germany was not approved by the Allied top brass.

So where should you land in? On this issue, there were different opinions within the Allied leadership.

General de Gaulle of Free France believed that the Allies should concentrate on landing in Normandy in northern France, and then storm Paris and liberate all of France before attacking Belgium and Germany proper.

De Gaulle's opinion was endorsed by many high-ranking Allied generals, because the German army had very few troops deployed in France at this time, most of the troops had been transferred to Germany to deal with the Soviet Red Army that had invaded the German mainland, and the French resistance was not weak, with their help, the Allies could easily destroy the German troops deployed in France and drive the Germans out of France, thus liberating the whole territory of France.

After the liberation of France, the Allies were able to use the resources of France, a former European power, to supplement the war effort, concentrating the resources of the three powers (the United States, Great Britain, and France) against Nazi Germany.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill put forward a proposal to land in the Netherlands/Belgium, because the Netherlands and Belgium are relatively close to the German mainland, and the Allies can reach the German mainland more quickly after landing there, with the goal of occupying the most economically valuable Ruhr industrial area in northwest Germany one step ahead of the Soviet Union, so as to avoid the Soviet Union from obtaining the industrial resources of the Ruhr area and strengthen its own strength.

However, Churchill's proposal did not win the support of the Allied generals, as the Germans had already deployed heavy forces in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Calais in France, which could flank the Allied landings in the Netherlands/Belgium, which could cost the Allies heavy casualties.

In the end, with the strong support of Charles de Gaulle and others, the Allies adopted the plan of landing in Normandy, France.