abstract
| - The Continuation War (Not to be confused with: The Continuation War) was a two year long conflict consisted of Western and Central Europe fighting against the communist governments of Eastern Europe. Causes for the conflict directly relate to the initiation of Operation: Unthinkable and Stalin's persistent stance on winning the conflict. With nations such as Germany, Denmark and Norway regaining their independence they were able to commit several dozen divisions to the Ally cause. In 1947, president of Poland, Władysław Raczkiewicz, reached out to the Allies to halt any military operations on Polish territories and in exchange declare neutrality. Angering the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Iosef Stalin decided to attempt and initiate a coup within Poland and convert the government to a loyal Communist regime. However the plan failed and resulted in the division of Poland by the Vistula River. With the Allied aligned portion belonging to Władysław Raczkiewicz and the relocated capital at Kraków and the Soviet leaning Communist faction known as the Polish People's Republic, with the capital at Bialystok and leaded by Władysław Gomułka. As a result of Stalin's failure to consolidate power within Poland, he ordered Red Army divisions to stage simultaneous coups across Eastern Europe and install loyal Communist regimes. This quickly succeeded with most of Eastern Europe joining the war on his side with the exception of Yugoslavia. With the backing of several Eastern European powers, Stalin soon assembled around an extra one million troops to fight for his cause. To respond to this, Allied military analysts decided to go with liberating Czechoslovakia and and pushing through Slovakia into the Balkans. These armies were poorly equipped and supported by war torn Hungarian and Romanian units. By the beginning of 1947, Czechoslovakia was liberated and fighting alongside the Allies. Allied forces were able to send troops through Slovakia and liberated Austria the following year from the 3rd Ukrainian Front. During the third and fourth quarters of 1947, both sides were constantly suffering heavy casualties and accomplishing very small amounts of victories. Multiple attempts were made by both sides to cross or bypass the Danube and the Vistula but were repelled due to heavily entrenched positions. Just after the year ended, the leaders of Finland saw an opportunity to retake Karelia and other lost territories from the USSR during the Winter War. Approximately 100,000 troops crossed the border into Karelia and soon reclaimed the territory, as well as making several advances upon Leningrad. These offensives were soon repelled and Finnish forces retreated back to Finland. Soon after, the government of Finland requests troops to be sent to the nation. Under pressure from the European Theater that was required a constant flow of manpower to replace the casualties, about 50,000 troops were spared. Considering the several months of absolute stalemates, morale was plummeting, Allied forces attempted to rescue several German prisoners of war that were held in Novocherkassk, in order to raise morale for troops within the European continent. After continuous bombardment of the city by air and sea, US Marines soon landed on the beaches of the Rostov Oblast and in several weeks captured the city of Novocherkassk. Several thousand German prisoners of war were soon rescued along with pilot Erich Hartmann.
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