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The Battle of the Transdanubian Hills (also known in Bulgaria as the "Drava Operation") was a defensive operation of the Bulgarian First Army during Bulgaria's participation in World War II against German Wehrmacht forces, who were trying to capture the north bank of the Drava river as part of Operation Spring Awakening. Combat in the Transdanubian Hills lasted from 6 to 21 March 1945. The German attacks failed to achieve their objectives and were then eclipsed by the large-scale Soviet offensive from the area of Lake Balaton to Vienna. ==Deployment== German forces south of Lake Balaton were organized into two groups. The northern group was General de Angelis' 2nd Panzer Army which had the town of Kaposvár as its objective. Facing the 2nd Panzer Army's northern flank was General Sharokhin's Soviet 57th Army. The area in front of the 2nd Panzer Army's southern flank was defended by the III Corps of General Stoychev's Bulgarian First Army. The other German group was General von Erdmannsdorff's LXXXXI Corps of Army Group E in northern Yugoslavia. LXXXXI Corps had concentrated near Donji Miholjac and Valpovo. Across the Drava River at Donji Miholjac, the IV Corps of the Bulgarian Army defended the routes leading to Pécs and Mohács. Northeast of Valpovo and across the Drava, General Nađ's 3rd Army of Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslav National Liberation Army defended the routes leading to northeast Yugoslavia. Named "Forest Devil" ((ドイツ語:Waldteufel)), the LXXXXI Corps' operation had as its primary objective the town of Mohács. In tandem with other German attacks that formed a part of Operation Spring Awakening, the German advance south of Lake Balaton aimed to surround and annihilate the 57th Army and First Bulgarian Army west of the Danube. The 57th Army was the southernmost unit of the Red Army on the eastern front. South of the 57th Army, the Germans of 2nd Panzer Army and Army Group E were confronted by Soviet allies—Bulgarian forces in southern Hungary and Tito's forces in Yugoslavia. An attack in these areas offered the Germans the opportunities of attacking the less well equipped Bulgarians and Yugoslavs as well as potentially rolling up part of the Soviet southern flank. Thus, this region was of particular concern to Soviet Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin,〔''Endkampf'', p. 222〕 whose 3rd Ukrainian Front was deployed in southern Hungary and which commanded both the 57th Army and the Bulgarian First Army. (The unit south of the Bulgarians was the Yugoslav 3rd Army which was not subordinated to 3rd Ukrainian Front.) Alerted that a German attack south of Lake Balaton was imminent, Marshal Tolbukhin deployed additional artillery units to reinforce the 57th Army and the Bulgarian III Corps. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of the Transdanubian Hills」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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