Late in the war, after the failure of the final Ardennes offensive and the Allied crossing of the Rhine into Germany itself, Hitler hoped that a decisive victory on the Eastern Front might still preserve the Nazi regime, resulting in Operation Spring Awakening.[134] He believed that, with the conclusion of a separate peace-treaty with the Soviet Union, a division of Poland might still be realized and leave Hungary and Croatia (the former still under German occupation at the time, the latter a Croatian fascist puppet-state) under German control.[134] Hitler only acknowledged Germany's imminent defeat mere days prior to his suicide.[135]