He commanded Army Group G during the Allied invasion of Southern France and Operation Nordwind, the last major German offensive of World War II on the Western Front.

[1] Johannes Blaskowitz was born on 10 July 1883 in the village of Paterswalde, (East Prussia), Germany (now Bolshaya Polyana in the Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia).

In 1901, he started his military career as a supreme officer candidate[clarification needed] cadet in an East Prussian regiment in Osterode (Polish: Ostróda).

As a traditional soldier, Blaskowitz kept firm control on the men under his command in their dealings with civilians and was opposed to Army participation in war crimes by the SS and Einsatzgruppen.

"[4] However, his protests failed to produce results, and merely earned him the enmity of Hitler, Hans Frank, Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler, while Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl dismissed them as naive and "uncalled for".

Among his complaints were strip searches and rape of Jewish women, a whipping orgy in Nasielsk affecting 1,600 Jews, and a clear case of race mixing committed by a junior SS officer.

[10] Following the Fall of France in May 1940, Blaskowitz was initially slated to command the 9th Army for occupation duties, but the appointment was blocked by Hitler and instead he was appointed to a relatively minor position as Military Governor of Northern France, a position he held until October 1940, when he was transferred to the command of the 1st Army, on the southwest coast between Brittany and the Pyrenees.

The 50,000-strong Vichy French Army took defensive positions around Toulon, but when confronted by German demands to disband, it did so since it lacked the military capability to resist.

[13] According to historian Christopher Clark, in France, Blaskowitz tried to "build a constructive relationship with the local population", even though the conditions for him to do so were worse than in Poland.

Although army appraisal forms, compiled by Rundstedt, described him as a National Socialist, Christopher Clark opines that Blaskowitz likely never had any ideological attachment to Nazism.

After a visit in October 1943, German resistance member Ulrich von Hassell lamented that it was not fruitful to discuss with Blaskowitz who saw everything from a military point-of-view.

From this "very bounded standpoint", whatever one thought about the regime's moral character became overshadowed by duty to his superiors and his troops, as well as the people whose fate "now hung in balance.

"[14] The invasion of southern France commenced on 15 August 1944, with Operation Dragoon, when Allied forces landed on the Riviera between Toulon and Cannes.

Blaskowitz's forces had been weakened by the relocation of its divisions to other fronts and the replacement of its soldiers with third-rate Ostlegionen outfitted with obsolete equipment.

Although badly outnumbered and lacking air defence, Blaskowitz brought up troops, stabilized the front, and led a fighting withdrawal to the north to avoid encirclement.

[19] On 5 May Blaskowitz was summoned to the Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen by Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes, (commander of I Canadian Corps), to discuss the surrender of the German forces in the Netherlands.

The next day, both parties returned and, in the presence of both Foulkes and Prince Bernhard, Blaskowitz signed the surrender document, which in the meantime had been typed.

[11] During the Nuremberg trials, Blaskowitz and Werner von Blomberg, Minister of War during the years leading to World War II, signed affidavits declaring that:[22]The whole group of German staff and front officers believed that the question of the Polish Corridor would have to be settled some day, if necessary by force of arms.A war to wipe out the political and economic losses resulting from the creation of the Polish Corridor was regarded as a sacred duty though a sad necessity.Before 1938-39, the German generals were not opposed to Hitler.Hitler produced the results which all of us warmly desired.Both the indictment and the suicide have since been considered an enigma by scholars because Blaskowitz almost certainly would have been acquitted on all counts and had been told by his defence to expect to be acquitted.

[23][24][25] According to Hans Laternser, the defence counsel for the lead defendant, Wilhelm von Leeb, the prosecution told him, "Blaskowitz did not need to do that as he would certainly have been acquitted".

[27] Historian Jen Scholten states in Norbert Frei's book on the elites of Nazi Germany, that the Nuremberg judges expressly saw Blaskowitz as a positive example of how Wehrmacht officers could have behaved.