Mueller, | Official |
Mussolini, | Born |
Paulus, | Surrendered |
Philip, | Obergruppenfuhrer |
Pohl, | Head |
Popitz, | Acting |
Reichenau, | Played |
Reinecke, | Chief |
Ribbentrop, | German |
Rosenberg, | Chief |
Rundstedt, | Commander |
Sauckel, | Gauleiter |
Schellenberg, | Deputy |
Schlabrendorff, | German |
Schleicher, | Reich |
Schorner, | Commander |
Shaposhnikov, | Career |
Speer, | Hitler's |
Stalin, | Born |
Stauffenberg, | Chief |
Thomas, | Chief |
Timoshenko, | Distinguished |
Tresckow, | Successive |
Vaslov, | Russian |
Voroshilov, | Early |
Warlimont, | Led |
Zhukov, | Served |
CHRONOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENTS IN THE EASTERN CAMPAIGN
1941-45
1941
June 22nd Invasion starts.
End
July Panzers diverted to attack Kiev.
October 2nd Germans resume
advance on Moscow.
December 2nd Failure of the "last heave"
at Moscow.
December 5th Zhukov's counteroffensive opens.
December
7th (Pearl Harbor)
1942
April Russian winter operations
peter out.
May 9th-26th Russian offensive against Kharkov
defeated.
July 28th German summer offensive opens.
August 30th
Germans reach outskirts of Stalingrad.
September-November Street
fighting in Stalingrad.
November 18th Russian winter offensive
opens.
1943
February 2nd German 6th Army
surrenders at Stalingrad.
February 22nd Manstein's
counteroffensive starts; Russian winter operations halted.
July
4th
Zitadelle
, attack on the Kursk salient, starts.
July
10th (Allies land in Sicily.)
July 25th (Mussolini overthrown.)
1944
June 6th (D-Day; Allies land in
Normandy.)
June 21st Soviet summer offensive opens.
August
1st-October 2nd Warsaw uprising.
August 20th-October 31st Collapse
of German position in the Balkans.
December 16th (Start of German
offensive in the Ardennes.)
1945
January 12th Start of Soviet
winter offensive.
February Russians reach the Order.
March 28th
Guderian dismissed.
April 25th U.S. and Russian forces join at
Torgau on the Elbe, splitting Germany.
April 30th Hitler commits
suicide.
May 2nd Surrender of Berlin to General Chuikov.
THE COMMISSIONED RANKS
OF THE WAFFEN SS AND THEIR ARMY EQUIVALENTS
Untersturmführer
—Second
Lieutenant
Obersturmführer
—Lieutenant
Hauptsturmführer
—Captain
Sturmbannführer
—Major
Obersturmbannführer
—Lieutenant
Colonel
Standartenführer
—Colonel
(Oberst)
Oberführer
—Brigadier
General
Brigadeführer
—Major
General
Gruppenführer
—Lieutenant
General
Obergruppenführer
—General
Oberstgruppenführer
—Colonel
General (Generaloberst)
There were no field marshals in the SS, but Himmler held the
special supreme rank of Reichsführer, equivalent to Goering's
rank of Reichsmarschall as senior officer of the armed forces. Many
of the higher SS officers had double ranks, as members both of the SS
and the police, e.g., Obergruppenführer and General of the
Police.
There were four regular SS divisions which passed through the SS
training school at Bad Tölz, and these are referred to in the
text by their titles:
Das Reich, Leibstandarte, Totenkopf
, and
Viking
. The "Police Division" was also granted the
substantive title of Waffen SS, but had not passed through Bad Tölz.
After 1943 the rapid expansion of the SS (to twenty-nine divisions in
1945) was achieved by the incorporation of ethnic Germans and other
racially "pure" nationalities. Very few of their members
passed through Bad Tölz, and in view of this and the constant
overlapping of commands and staffs in the last years of the war these
units are referred to by their numbers and not by their titles.
GLOSSARY OF MOST
FREQUENTLY USED ABBREVIATIONS
AK—Polish "Home Army" (organised by the London
government)
AL—Polish "People's Army" (independent
left-wing sympathisers)
AWA—General Armed Forces Dept. of
the OKW
E.L.A.S.—Communist-dominated Greek guerilla
force
GBA—Special German office of labour
"allocation"
GESTAPO—German Secret State
Police
G.O.C.—General Officer Commanding
GOKO—Soviet
Committee of the Defence of the State
GPU—Soviet Secret
Police (title held until 1938)
G.S.O.—General Staff
Officer
KV—Kirov plant (tanks)
MVD—Soviet Secret
Police (1948-55)
NKVD—Soviet Secret Police
(1938-46)
NSZ—Nationalist Polish Armed Forces (extreme
right-wing force which had broken away from AK at first sign of
impending compromise with Russian power)
OKH—High Command of
the German Army
OKW—Organisation of the Supreme Command of
the German Armed Forces (including Luftwaffe and
Kriegsmarine)
PAL—Communist-dominated Polish guerilla
force
RSHA—SS Main Office for State Security
SA—"Brown
Shirts," Nazi private army under Roehm, purged in
1934
SD—Security and Intelligence Service of the
SS
SHAEF—Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary
Forces
SS—Elite Nazi armed force concerned with security and
intelligence (SD, etc.) and actual combat (Waffen SS). Originally
Hitler's personal bodyguard.
Stavka
—Soviet equivalent
of Combined Chiefs of Staff
WVHA—Economic Administrative
Head Office of the SS