By early 1945, less than a year before General George S. Patton’s mysterious death, Adolf Hitler’s armies were almost exhausted. With most of Poland in Soviet hands and the Ruhr in ruins from Allied air attacks, the replenishment of fuel, ammunition, and weapon stocks had almost come to a halt, and coal and steel production had been reduced to a fifth of what it had been only six months earlier.
On the Eastern Front, the Soviet winter offensive had reached a line less than 100 miles from Berlin, and although in the West the Siegfried Line was still basically intact and the Rhine had yet to be crossed, it was clear that with American divisions arriving in Europe at the rate of one a week it was only a matter of time before the Third Reich collapsed in chaos and disaster. Still, Hitler refused to consider surrender. (You can get a more in-depth look at the final months and days of the Second World War inside WWII History magazine.)
