Word: wehrmacht
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...Wehrmacht had troops for the Balkans, long driven by guerrillas and now likely to lose their Italian garrisons. Additional Germans moved in, to control, disarm and eventually to replace the Italians in Yugoslavia, Greece and the island of Crete (where, Cairo heard, Germans battled Italians last week. If anything, these movements probably meant that the Allies would find more determined opposition from the Germans than they would have found before the Italian defections...
...availability of these troops did not mean that the German position was secure. The troops had to be drawn from the Wehrmacht's remaining strategic reserves. Every division taken from these reserves was one less for a time of final need in Russia, or for defense in western Europe, or for additional reinforcements, at the points the Allies actually chose for invasion in the south. The once invincible German Army was caught in a fateful chain of unhappy events and conflicting needs...
...Germans already had shown the signs of defeat. Prisoners complained that they were short of tanks, that what tanks they had left were short of fuel. In demolition the Germans had been as skilful as ever. But they were even short of land mines, old standbys of the Wehrmacht in retreat. At this season the rivers were dry, and the Allies had only to march around the ruined bridges. The Germans grew weaker & weaker in the air, until finally Allied soldiers on the ground seldom looked up when they heard a plane. What air support the Germans could muster...
...pastor to remove the stone; twice he refused. Then he got the order from the local Nazi big shot. The pastor's reply: "I have buried this Englishman and he now rests in hallowed earth. So long as I am pastor of this church, none, not even the Wehrmacht, shall violate this place...
...Even if the current offensive is only the first stage of a bigger one, the limited scope of the initial attack reflects the plight of the Wehrmacht. In 1941 its objective, along a 1,500-mile front, was to destroy the Red Army and seize the U.S.S.R. In 1942 the objective, along an 800-mile front, was to seize southern Russia and isolate Moscow from the rear and the south. In 1943 the Wehrmacht attacked on a 200-mile front, aiming at a town and at a portion of the Red Army...