Walter Model

Walter Model (1891–1945) was a German field marshal in World War II, known for commanding defensive operations on the Eastern and Western Fronts.

Adolf Hitler: German dictator from 1933 to 1945 and supreme commander of the armed forces during World War II. Hitler repeatedly entrusted Model with commands during crises and promoted him to field marshal.
Operation Bagration: A Soviet summer offensive in 1944 that destroyed much of German Army Group Centre in Belarus. Model took command after the offensive began and could not restore the shattered front.
Elastic Defense: A defensive method that yields ground to absorb an attack before counterattacking against exposed forces. Model used flexible withdrawals and counterattacks to stabilize threatened sectors.
Wehrmacht: The unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 until the end of World War II. Model's career unfolded within the Wehrmacht's command structure and its campaigns of conquest and retreat.
Erich von Manstein: German field marshal who commanded major forces on the Eastern Front during World War II. Manstein and Model were prominent, contrasting German commanders on the Eastern Front.
Battle of the Ruhr Pocket: The April 1945 encirclement and defeat of German forces in the Ruhr by Allied armies. Model commanded the trapped Army Group B before ordering its remaining troops to disband.
Mobile Defense: A defensive approach that uses maneuvering forces to defeat an attacker rather than holding every position. His crisis responses often depended on moving reserves to threatened points rather than rigidly defending a line.
Eastern Front (World War II): The theater of war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945. Model spent much of the war commanding German forces in this immense and increasingly retreating theater.
Günther von Kluge: German field marshal who commanded armies and army groups on the Western Front during World War II. Model succeeded Kluge as commander of Army Group B in France in August 1944.
Battle of the Bulge: Germany's December 1944 offensive through the Ardennes against Allied forces in Belgium and Luxembourg. Model helped plan and commanded forces in the offensive, which failed to achieve its strategic aims.

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