Operation Spring Awakening 1945. From Joni Nuutinen: by a wargamer for the wargamers since 2011. Last update January 2026.

It's 1945, and you are in control of Axis forces tasked with semi-impossible mission of securing the last Axis oilfields located in Hungary and Austria. You need to both retake the city of Budapest and clear the western side of the river Danube of the Red Army divisions, which have formed a large beachhead reaching all the way to Lake Balaton, getting worryingly close to the only proper source of oil left for the German war machine.

For Operation Spring Awakening (Unternehmen Frühlingserwachen), you have been given a third of all the Panzer formations on the Eastern Front: two Panzer armies strengthened with King Tiger battalions to launch two spearheads from both sides of Lake Balaton, while the third, weaker attack will be launched from the south.

Although the situation in 1945 was desperate for Germans, just two months earlier, the Wehrmacht successfully carried out a similar offensive called Operation Southwind, clearing out another but smaller Soviet beachhead.

Should you fail to secure these crucial last oilfields, Germany would lose 80 percent of the remaining oil output, dooming the defense of Berlin, and with the fall of Vienna, the last remaining Axis partners would surely drop their weapons. The failure of this task would surely mean the end.

Developer note: This particular setup is such that if you do not miraculously achieve an early win before the Red Army gets fully engaged, this scenario will demand a long, painful and shrewd maneuvering to clear the required area....Once you have bounced back from the early struggles. The fact that the lake splits the map into northern and southern sector, with almost all armor locate north, opens up some intriguing possibilities to hook south to cut off all advanced Red Army units below the lake Balaton.

"German HQ considered the protection of Vienna and Austria as of vital importance and would rather see Berlin fall than lose the Hungarian oil area and Austria"
-- Walter Warlimont

Logistic dimension: Option (assumed default) to play with fuel depots, fuel trucks and oilfields to keep the mechanized armed forces moving.