Desperate Measures - Tank Battles for Eastern Germany, January-April 1945

It’s 1945 on the Eastern Front. It's a brutal, fierce, and desperate fight. The Germans are fighting at the borders of the Reich. Many of the soldiers can see their homes and will stop at nothing to prevent the Red Army from reaching them. For the Soviet soldier it is a time for revenge. Years of fighting and liberation have finally delivered the moment of crushing their fascist enemies completely. They too, will stop at nothing to make that happens. Enter into the final battles of World War II, starting with Desperate Measures.

The history of World War II during December 1944 and January 1945 often focuses on Hitler’s grand Ardennes Offensive, known popularly as the Battle of the Bulge. However, while Germany’s finest troops were fighting to reach Antwerp in Belgium, long and bloody winter battles raged unabated across Eastern Europe. Stalin’s forces, positioned in Poland on the Vistula River, launched a general Winter Offensive aimed at reaching the Oder River, the eastern border of the Reich itself. Meanwhile, Hitler and his staff sent armies and divisions, many formed overnight, to meet the Red Army in Poland, Prussia, and Hungary. The battles on the Eastern Front, already desperate and merciless, are about to get even more so as the war closed in on the Third Reich’s heartland.