Battle of Bautzen (1945)
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- This is about the battle of World War II, for the battle of the Napoleonic Wars see Battle of Bautzen
The battle was fought in the town of Bautzen and the northeast situated rural areas above all on the line Bautzen - Niesky. The fights began on the 21st April and continued up to the 26th April. There were isolated collisions still up to the 30th April. In particular the Polish Second Army under Karol Świerczewski had to deplore high losses.
The opponents
The Germans had for the fight the 1. Fallschirm-Panzer-Division "Hermann Göring" and the 2. Fallschirm-Panzergrenadier-Division "Hermann Göring" - around 50,000 men. These units were a mix of combat-experienced veterans and new recruits. They still had about up to 300 tanks and 600 guns. The 2. Polish army consisted of about 90,000 men, a large part of it's soldiers had only little combat experience.The Germans succeeded in expelling their opponents from Bautzen after several days of bloody house fighting. The Polish units were saved from complete destruction by Soviet units that Ivan Konev had pulled back from his thrust to the west and sent to support them. But the Soviet troops also suffered heavy losses in the following fights.
In a relatively short time the 2nd Polish Army had lost more than 22% of her soldiers and 57% of it's tanks and armoured vehicles. According to Polish sources there has been no single military operation except the Warsaw uprising in which more Poles died. Also the Germans and the Sowjets suffered heavy losses.
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