West Front ‘44, Decision on the Rhine The final quarter of 1944 saw Anglo-Allied armies advance toward the Rhine in a series of hard-fought battles. The start of that winter also saw the Germans launching a last great offensive. The result was, by the spring of 1945, the Allies were in position to move into the heartland of the Reich. All that was the result of command decisions made starting years before.

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• The Uman Pocket, July–August 1941 Even as Army Group South (AGS) advanced beyond the Stalin Line, its operations remained disjointed while Hitler and his generals debated the unresolved questions resulting from the ambiguities of the invasion plan. The fierce Soviet resistance on the border—which delayed the AGS advance by about a week—denied the Germans the kind of breakthroughs enjoyed by their two other army groups. The end result was a pocket around the town of Uman.
• Australia’s Bougainville Campaign, Nov 1944–Aug 1945 On 22 Nov. 1944, Australian II Corps, commanded by Lt. Gen. Stanley Savige, assumed responsibility for securing Bougainville. The Australians were relieving Americans who were in turn being redeployed to the Philippines. Rather than have his units sit passively within the perimeters around their bases, Australian land force commander-in-chief Gen. Thomas Blamey decided to take the fight to the Japanese. Why he made that decision remains controversial to this day.
• Hermann Balck, Greatest “Forgotten” German General of World War II Though he was one of only a few German officers to receive the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, Hermann Balck is arguably the least known of all the Third Reich’s generals. As commander of the 11th Panzer Division in December 1942, his management of the battles along the Chir River constituted one of the most brilliantly fought engagements of the war.