Operation Spätlese (ii)

late vintage

'Spätlese' (ii) was a German unrealised operation planned by the Oberkommando des Heeres for General Hermann Breith’s III Panzerkorps of General Hermann Balck’s 6th Army within Generaloberst Johannes Friessner’s (from 28 December General Otto Wöhler Heeresgruppe 'Süd' to move on a south-eastern axis between Lake Balaton and Lake Velencze (17 December 1944).

The move by the III Panzerkorps, which comprised Generalleutnant Wilhelm Philipps’s 3rd Panzerdivision, Oberst Friedrich-Wilhelm Jürgens’s 6th Panzerdivision, Generalmajor Gottfried Frölich’s 8th Panzerdivision and three Panther battle tank battalions, could not be made as the operational premise of which it had been based had been rendered obsolete by the continued advance of Marshal Sovetskogo Soyuza Fyedor I. Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front.