Just click the year above to get a summary of what happened at that time.

The Eastern Front in 1944

By now, Allied bombing of Germany is causing huge damage to its ability to produce the equipment needed to conduct the war.  Despite this, Germany still manages its best ever production, including some 12,000 tanks.  But this dwarfs compared to regular Russian production along of 20,000, to say nothing of the USA and UK production.  This year therefore is all about Germany trying to maintain the status quo and hold back the Russian advance.

As the summer begins, Germany is convinced that a huge Russian attack is in the offing.  German generals are convinced the attack will come in the centre, but Hitler is convinced it will be in the South, perhaps an attempt to cripple Germanys oil supplies from the Ukraine and Romania.  He therefore orders the south to be shored up at the expense of Army Group Centre.

Hitler is proved wrong as the Russians launch their huge offensive in the centre.  The Germans are hopelessly outnumbered, some six to one and are pushed back.  Many units are cut off, and ultimately die or are taken prisoner.  Losses for Germany are massive, and the gains for Russia are massive, as they push hundreds of miles Westward, the attack finally stopping just outside Warsaw.  This stoppage of the attack is a contentious issue, as Polish partisans, led to believe the Russians are coming to liberate the city, conduct a huge uprising against the Germans.  The uprising is put down brutally, with huge killing, and Warsaw remains in German hands.  Apparently, it later turns out that Stalin ordered the halt to the advance outside Warsaw, so that much of Polands political power would be destroyed by the failed uprising and that Stalin would be able to implement his own brand of communism on the Polish people once the war had ended.

The attack is such a major success that the German Army Group North is now cut off in the North and forced to retreat.  Army Group North never again manages to meetup with the main German line and continues to fight as a pocket in the Baltic region right up to the end of the war in 1945.

This year also sees the first Russian advance in German territory, in East Prussia.  As a portent of what is to come, rapes are committed and the entire population of several villages are killed.  Stalin himself orders his troops to "rob the women of their Germanic pride".  A command many will heed in the coming year.

Finland agrees a peace with Russia.  ceding back some of the border territories it had reclaimed in the intervening years since 1940.