Operation Spring Awakening
Operation Frühlingserwachen ("Spring Awakening") (6 – 16 March 1945) was the last major German offensive launched during World War II. The offensive was launched in Hungary on the Eastern Front. This offensive was also known in German as the Plattensee Offensive, in Russian as the Balaton Defensive Operation (6 – 15 March 1945), and in English as the Lake Balaton Offensive.
The offensive was launched by the Germans in great secrecy on 6 March 1945. The German attacks were centered in the Lake Balaton area. This area included some of the last oil reserves still available to the Germans.
Operation Spring Awakening involved many German units withdrawn from the failed Ardennes Offensive on the Western Front including the 6th SS Panzer Army.
Read more about Operation Spring Awakening: Order of Battle, German Plan, German Attack, Soviet Counterattack and Subsequent Operations, Aftermath, Armband Order
Famous quotes containing the words operation, spring and/or awakening:
“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)