In 1940, Andersch was conscripted into the Wehrmacht, but deserted at the Arno Line in Italy on 6 June 1944.

In September, the Wehrmacht high command's reinforcement of the Siegfried Line brought total troop strength up to an estimated 230, 000 soldiers, including 100, 000 fresh personnel.

The second was the Siegfried Line itself, which fell under the command, along with all Wehrmacht forces in the west, of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.

However, command problems ensued, as the assault guns were considered to be artillery by the Wehrmacht and therefore the assault guns were not under the control of the Panzer unit's commanding officer, reducing unit effectiveness.

However, precisely because the French thought the Ardennes unsuitable for massive troop movement, particularly for tanks, they were left with only light defences which were quickly overrun by the Wehrmacht.

After the war Liddell Hart imposed his own perceptions, after the event, claiming that the mobile tank warfare practiced by the Wehrmacht was a result of his influence.

The Nationale Volksarmee used a tag nearly identical with that used by both the Wehrmacht and the West German Bundeswehr.

The initial, formal killings of the Final Solution were undertaken by the SS Einsatzgruppen ( Task Forces ) death squads who followed the Wehrmacht during the Operation Barbarossa invasion of the USSR in June 1941.

Bartov wrote no German film of the 1950s showed the deep commitment felt by many German soldiers to National Socialism, the utter ruthless way the German Army fought the war and the mindless nihilist brutality of the later Wehrmacht.

Up to his death he refused to comment on the incident and in other opportunities he denied explicitly that he had been opportunistic by joining the NSDAP in 1933 ( albeit he conceded joining the Nazi Foreign Ministry to dodge his 1940 draft by the Wehrmacht ).

* 1943 – Wehrmacht officer Rudolf von Gersdorff plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler by using a suicide bomb, but the plan falls through.

* 1944 – Athens, Greece, is liberated by British Army troops entering the city as the Wehrmacht pulls out during World War II.

Because of the novelty of it all, and a feared occupation of the Vatican by the German Wehrmacht, not all documents exist today.

Likewise, the Soviet treatment of Red Army personnel captured by the Wehrmacht was especially harsh.

However, by the final stages of the war, the SS came to dominate the Wehrmacht in order to eliminate perceived threats to Adolf Hitler's power while implementing his strategies, despite the increasingly futile German war effort.

While the Waffen-SS remained officially outside the armed forces ( Wehrmacht ) and under Himmler's authority, they were placed under the operational command of the Armed Forces High Command ( OKW ) or Army High Command ( OKH ), and were largely funded by the Wehrmacht.

Foreign labour, both slave labour and labour from neighbouring countries who joined the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany, was used to augment German industrial labour which was under pressure by conscription into the Wehrmacht ( Armed Forces ).

Beginning in September 1944, over 3, 000 V-2s were launched as military rockets by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets during the war, mostly London and later Antwerp.

** Operation Bagration: A general attack by Soviet forces clears the German forces from Belarus, resulting in the destruction of German Army Group Centre, possibly the greatest defeat of the Wehrmacht during WWII.

* April 13 – WWII: Radio Berlin announces the discovery by Wehrmacht of mass graves of Poles killed by Soviets in the Katyn massacre.

Liechtenstein gave asylum to approximately five hundred soldiers of the First Russian National Army ( a collaborationist Russian force within the German Wehrmacht ) at the close of World War II ; this is commemorated by a monument at the border town of Hinterschellenberg which is marked on the country's tourist map.

The bridge's central section was, ironically, demolished by the Wehrmacht during the German occupation of World War II to allow for the free movement of its vehicles.

On 27 June 1944 the Gestapo took the tapestry to the Louvre and on 18 August, three days before the Wehrmacht withdrew from Paris, Himmler sent a message ( intercepted by Bletchley Park ) ordering it to be taken to " a place of safety ", thought to be Berlin.

Raeder accepted without complaint orders from the War Minister von Blomberg on 21 May 1935 that those who were of " non-Aryan descent " would not be permitted to join the Wehrmacht and all members of the Wehrmacht could only marry women of pure " Aryan descent " and another order from Blomberg in July 1935 saying no member of the Wehrmacht could buy from a store owned by " non-Aryans " under any conditions.

" until he reaches his teens ( wearing a uniform similar to that of the Sturmabteilung ) still " marching and heiling " until he becomes an adult or " Good Nazi " ( now in Wehrmacht uniform ) embroiled in hatred towards anyone else who opposes Hitler, " seeing nothing but what the party wants him to see, saying nothing but what the party wants him to say, and doing no more than the party wants him to do.

Einsatzkommando units typically followed close behind Wehrmacht army formations, marching into cities and towns where large numbers of Jews were known to live.

According to Genscher's statements, this happened through a collective application in his Wehrmacht unit and against his own intentions.

The French Resistance played a significant role in facilitating the Allies ' rapid advance through France following the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, and the lesser-known invasion of Provence on 15 August, by providing military intelligence on the German defenses known as the Atlantic Wall and on Wehrmacht deployments and orders of battle.

By this stage, there were indications of an impending Soviet offensive which would target Wehrmacht forces around the city, including increased Soviet activity opposite the Sixth Army's flanks, and information gained through the interrogation of Soviet prisoners.

Subsequently an agreement was reached in June leading to extensive transfers of ( unarmed ) Wehrmacht troops on Swedish rail-roads – probably Sweden's chief digression from her policy of neutrality between the parties of the World War – and in August Finland concluded a secret agreement according to which Finland could acquire weapons through Germany and Germany could transfer ( armed ) troops by truck through northernmost Finland.

Frontline is a first-person shooter where players take control of the protagonist player character in a first-person perspective where they fight through levels set during the Second World War against the Wehrmacht using historical weaponry of the era, performing a series of military operations.

On 16 December the Wehrmacht launched an offensive in the Ardennes region of Belgium, breaking through Allied lines and rapidly advancing towards Antwerp.

Each death squad followed the Wehrmacht Heer ( German Army ) as it advanced eastwards through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

These numbers were limited to 12 % of the Wehrmacht forces, however, the Army of the Alps facing Italy and 600, 000 men dispersed through the French colonial empire are not included in this figure.

Following the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II, the Wehrmacht feared that a second Allied invasion might take place through Denmark, and contemplated converting the earthen wall into an anti-tank trench to counter this threat.

The transit road through northern Finland had a significant symbolic value, but in transit volume it was of lesser significance until the run up to Operation Barbarossa, when the route was used to deploy five Wehrmacht divisions in northern Finland.

Adolf Hitler took advantage of the situation through the replacement of several generals and ministers with Nazi loyalists, which strengthened his control of the German Armed Forces ( Wehrmacht ).

In 1945, the Partisans, numbering over 800, 000 strong defeated the Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia and the Wehrmacht, achieving a hard-fought breakthrough in the Syrmian front in late winter, taking Sarajevo in early April, and the rest of the NDH and Slovenia through mid-May.

The remaining hotels and spas of Bad Kreuznach again became the seat of an Army Command from 1939 to 1940, important to the course of the War, because of the Wehrmacht barracks in the Bosenheimer Strasse, the Alzeyer Strasse and the Franziska-Puricelli-Strasse, and the strategically important Berlin – Paris railway line passing through the city -- always a target for Allied bombing raids.

Several Volksgrenadier divisions, especially those made up of " jobless " Wehrmacht personnel drawn from the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, often displayed high motivation and morale which resulted in surprisingly good cohesion and military effectiveness against the Reich's enemies in the last eight or so months ( about October 1944 through May 1945 ) of the war in Europe.

In the sixties, George got the chance to show that he is able to do more than playing sappy peasants, through roles in movies such as Kirmes, playing a desperate Wehrmacht deserter, and Herrenpartie.

Signal was a magazine published by the German Wehrmacht from 1940 through 1945.

On the 12th of March, 1938-the day of the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany-units of the German Wehrmacht marched into Ried ; Hitler passed through the city on his way to Linz.