True, losing its stills would be a serious blow to the 2nd MarDiv and would all but halt its offensive operations. It raises a problem, though. Without any fuel, how would it get back to northern Germany? It would presumably have to abandon almost all of its vehicles. This would certainly not make it "more powerful" as Going Home implies (I haven't looked at it myself, so I'm taking your word for it). If anything, it would make the division less powerful.
EDIT: Leg, I just reread your post and absorbed the bit about scavenging/building new stills. That might work. It would strand the 2nd MarDiv for a while (explaining the comment about "its location and status are unknown" in the U.S.A.V.G.) yet allow them to get back to N. Germany eventually, as the GH module says it does.
In my mind, I too have the 2nd MarDiv landing between Gdansk and Elblag, then pushing south, southeast to cover the 8th ID's right flank as it pushes west on its end-run along the Baltic Coast. I would also like to include the Danish Jutland division, the Canadian mechanized brigade (and/or para regiment) and at least one of the German units in the operations on or near the Baltic coast to account for stragglers of each nationality in the region after the failure of the offensive.
And that brings us back to the question of why the 3rd Army's offensive failed and/or was stopped and why all of its constituent units remain in northern Germany despite significant threats on other sectors of the "front".
I still have a problem with the 3rd Army just stopping its offensive and pulling back to its start lines in northern Poland. Why doesn't it detach units to follow the 5th ID south and hit its antagonists in their flank? Why are no additional units sent to support the 8th ID's mission? Why doesn't it at least shift units south, southwest to face the newly discovered Soviet units responsible for the 5th ID's destruction? What about the imbalance in the correlation of forces in west central Poland? Why aren't those addressed at all?
Canon doesn't seem to give any clues. The writers made a mess of it and, instead of addressing the inconsistencies, they just gloss over them. They put a lot of time and effort into explaining/describing the destruction of the 5th ID and apparenty none to how the rest of 3rd Army's missions played out and, ultimately failed. Unless someone finds a canonical explanation somewhere (Challenge, maybe?), that leaves it up to us.
What about a nuke? Even if it didn't hit any of the 3rd Army's units, it could conceivably stop them in their tracks.
What about a mutiny? Did one or more of the 3rd Army's constituent units refuse orders to advance?
It doesn't seem like any of the national governments involved would have the power in mid 2000 to stop a large scale offensive in its tracks. Why would they want to anyway?
What about Soviet reinforcements from Belarus and/or Latvia? AFAIK, canon makes no mention of this, but it could explain the blunting of 3rd Army's drive and also why the entirety of 3rd Army remained in N. Germany (as opposed to shifting south to face the much stronger Soviet forces shown as present in west central Poland and east Germany).
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