History of the Second World War (113 page)

As a crowning blow, Guderian found, on getting back to his own H.Q., that while he had been travelling Hitler had taken advantage of his absence and ordered two panzer divisions from Poland to go south to Hungary for an attempt to relieve Budapest. That left Guderian with a mobile reserve of only twelve to back up the fifty weak infantry divisions that were stretched out in holding the main front — 700 miles long.

Western doubts of the Russians’ capabilities were magnified by news of the German counteroffensive towards Budapest. Impressions of its potentiality were increased by the shock that the Western Allies had themselves suffered in the recent counteroffensive. For several days the attack towards encircled Budapest made ominous progress. Starting near Komorn, forty miles west of the city, it penetrated more than half the distance that separated it from the besieged garrison. But then persistence in face of stiffening opposition made it a costly failure.

The indirect cost was still heavier. The resisting power of this fresh ‘hedgehog’ had encouraged Hitler’s characteristic tendency to insist on staying too long. When as a result his forces there had been encircled, his anxiety to avert a second ‘Stalingrad’ had prompted him to a step that led him into deeper trouble, for although the two precious panzer divisions held ready to meet the expected Russian winter offensive in Poland had been taken away on the eve of the New Year to form a spearhead for the attempt to relieve Budapest, yet Hitler would not permit any compensating withdrawal from the Vistula line prior to the delivery of the Russian blow. That weakened line was compelled to stand the full shock of it, instead of being allowed to damp the shock by a timely step-back. Once again the psychological assets of the policy of holding ‘at all costs’ were outweighed by its strategical debits, and entailed bankruptcy.

The Russian High Command was now well prepared to exploit the fundamental weaknesses of the German situation. With due realisation of the decisive importance of sustained momentum, and the handicap of overstretched communications, it held its hand until the railways behind the new front had been repaired and converted from the normal Continental gauge to its own broad gauge track. Abundant supplies were accumulated at the railheads. The primary objective was the capture of Upper Silesia, the one important industrial area of Germany which remained intact and was sheltered from Allied bombing. This objective called for an advance of just over a hundred miles from the Baranov bridgehead on the Vistula in southern Poland. But Stalin and Vasilevsky, his Chief of Staff, had wider and deeper aims in the grand design which they had framed. They had their eyes on the Oder, and beyond that on Berlin — nearly 300 miles from their positions near Warsaw. By extending the scope of their offensive they would profit by the wide space for manoeuvre. More important than their numerical superiority of nearly five to one was their increased manoeuvring power. The mounting stream of American trucks had now enabled them to motorise a much larger proportion of their infantry brigades, and thus, with the increasing production of their own tanks, to multiply the number of armoured and mobile corps for exploiting a breakthrough. At the same time, the growing number of Stalin tanks strengthened their punch. These monsters mounted a 122-mm. gun, compared with the 88-mm. gun of the Tiger. They were also more thickly armoured than the Tiger, though not as thickly as the ‘King Tiger’.

Before the new campaign started the ‘fronts’ were reorganised, and Russia’s three outstanding offensive leaders were used to command the main drives. While Koniev remained in charge of the ‘1st Ukrainian front’ in southern Poland, in the central sector Zhukov took over the ‘1st White Russian front’ from Rokossovsky, who was transferred to command of the ‘2nd White Russian front’ on the Narev north of Warsaw.

The Russian offensive was launched at 10 a.m. on January 12, 1945, by Koniev’s forces, from the Baranov bridgehead (which was some thirty miles wide and deep). Ten armies (including two tank armies) were deployed, comprising some seventy divisions supported by two air armies.

At the start, the speed of the penetration was handicapped by the way that fog hung over the battlefield and kept the air forces on the ground. But the fog helped to cloak the assaulting troops, and the mass of well-handled artillery steadily pulverised the defence, so that on the third day the attack had broken through to Pinczow — twenty miles from the jumping off line — and crossed the Nida on a broad front. Then the phase of exploitation began. Pouring through the gap, the armoured corps spread over the Polish plain in an expanding torrent. For the moment the widening of the breach was more significant than its deepening. Kielce was taken on the 15th by a column that was sweeping north-westward round the end of the Lysa Gora hills, and thus threatening the rear of the German forces facing Zhukov’s front.

On the 14th, Zhukov had launched an offensive from his bridgeheads around Magnuszev and Pulawy. His right wing wheeled north towards the rear of Warsaw, while his left wing took Radom on the 16th. That day Koniev’s spearheads crossed the Pilica River — only thirty miles from the Silesian frontier. Meanwhile Rokossovsky’s forces had struck, also on the 14th, from their two bridgeheads over the Narev and broken through the defences covering the southern approach to East Prussia. The breach was 200 miles wide, and altogether a flood of nearly 200 divisions (including the reserves) was now rolling westward.

On the 17th Warsaw fell to Zhukov’s forces, which had swept round it on both flanks, and his armoured spearheads had penetrated west almost as far as Lodz, Koniev’s advanced forces captured the city of Czestochowa, close to the Silesian frontier, and further south they passed the flank of Cracow.

On the 19th Koniev’s right wing reached the Silesian frontier, while his left wing captured Cracow by an enveloping attack. Zhukov’s forces captured Lodz, and Rokossovsky’s reached the southern gateway into East Prussia, near Mlawa. Chernyakhovsky’s and Petrov’s forces had made advances on the two extreme flanks. Thus at the end of the first week the offensive had been carried 100 miles deep, and its frontage widened to nearly 400 miles.

In a belated effort to cover the approaches to Silesia, seven German divisions were rushed north from the front in Slovakia. Heinrici, who commanded there, had actually suggested before the storm broke that he could spare part of his strength to provide reserves for the Vistula line, but such a redistribution ran contrary both to Hitler’s principle that ‘every man must fight where he stands’, and to his habit of conducting the campaign in compartments. After the front in Slovakia had been almost stripped, it was still maintained for several weeks — showing that its original strength had been in excess of the need. But the arrival of seven extra divisions on the north side of the Carpathians now counted for less than a couple would have meant before the Russian offensive opened. For the breach had become too wide to be filled.

Most of western Poland is so open that it gives the attacker a natural advantage, easy to exploit if he possesses the superiority of strength or mobility to profit by the wide spaces. The Germans had thus profited in 1939. Now, themselves on the defensive, they were short of both strength and mobility. As an exponent of mechanised warfare, Guderian had realised that rigid defence was vain and that the only chance of checking a breakthrough lay in the counter-manoeuvre of armoured reserves. But he had been compelled both to stay on the Vistula and to see a portion of his scanty armour despatched to Budapest just before the attack. By throwing in part of the remainder near Kielce, time was gained for the extrication of the enveloped forces in the Vistula bend; consequently the Russian bag of prisoners — 25,000 — in the first week of the offensive was remarkably small for such an immense breakthrough. But the German Army’s growing deficiency in the means of mobility, for rapid retreat, was reflected in the fact that the bag was more than trebled in the second week — rising to 86,000. The Russians’ increased mobility was similarly reflected in their continued strides.

The hasty evacuation of the civil population from the towns inside Germany’s borders was a sign that the pace of the Russian advance had upset all calculations, and hustled the German forces out of intermediate positions which they had hoped to hold.

On January 20 Koniev’s forces penetrated the Silesian frontier and established themselves on German soil. More ominous still was Rokossovsky’s arrival on the historic field of Tannenberg, across the southern frontier of East Prussia. This time there was to be no repetition of the Russians’ 1914 reverse, and next day his spearheads reached Allenstein junction, severing the main rail artery of East Prussia, while Chernyakhovsky, advancing from the east, captured Insterburg. Continuing his uppercut, Rokossovsky reached the Gulf of Danzig near Elbing on the 26th, thus isolating all the German forces in East Prussia. These fell back into Konigsberg, where they were invested.

Four days earlier, Koniev had reached the Oder on a forty-mile front, north of the industrial area of Upper Silesia. By the end of the second week of the offensive his right wing was across the Upper Oder at numerous points along a sixty-mile stretch south of Breslau — which was 180 miles from its starting line. Other columns had enveloped the Silesian capital from the north. Behind this line of spearheads other troops had wheeled south to capture Gleiwitz junction and isolate the industrial area of Upper Silesia. The whole area was criss-crossed with trenches, barbed wire, and anti-tank ditches, studded with pill-boxes, but the forces to hold this potential fortress zone were lacking. Those that were available, or arriving, were impeded by the flood of civilian refugees. The roads were jammed with wrecked vehicles and abandoned chattels. Exploiting the confusion, the Russian columns were able to enter by the back door when the front was barred. German air reports vividly described the Russian advance as looking like an immense octopus weaving long tentacles among the Silesian towns. They spoke of seeing apparently endless columns of trucks, laden with supplies and reinforcements, stretching far to the east.

Even more striking in measure, and deadly in prospect, was Zhukov’s sweeping advance in the centre. Executing an oblique manoeuvre, he had shifted the mass of his armoured forces to his right. They drove down the corridor between the Vistula and the Warta, profiting by this unexpected turn to penetrate the chain of lakes cast of Gniezno, at the narrowest part of the corridor, before the passages could be manned. Their drive carried them across the rear of the famous Vistula fortress of Torun, and into Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) on the 23rd. Other armoured columns were closing on the still greater communication centre of Poznan. Here they met stiffer resistance. By-passing the fortress, they drove on to the west and north-west; by the end of the week they had reached the frontiers of Brandenburg and Pomerania — 220 miles from Warsaw and barely 100 miles from Berlin. At the same time Zhukov’s left wing, after crossing the Warta and capturing Kalisz, had come up level with Koniev’s right wing.

The third week opened with the occupation of Katovice and other big industrial towns in Upper Silesia by Koniev’s left wing, while his right wing gained a fresh bridgehead over the Oder at Steinau, forty miles north-west of Breslau. Zhukov’s advanced forces crossed the frontiers of Brandenburg and Pomerania on the 30th, and then overcame the resistance which the Germans put up on the line of the Oder, which was frozen. On the 31st Landsberg was captured, while Zhukov’s tank spearheads, thrusting past it, reached the Lower Oder near Kustrin — forty miles from the outskirts of Berlin. A space of only 380 miles now separated the Russians from the forward positions of their Western Allies.

But the law of overstretch was at last coming to the Germans’ aid, in diminishing the pressure that the Russians could develop on the Oder, and multiplying the resisting power of the mixture of regular and Volkssturm ‘Home Guard’ troops which the German Command had scraped together to hold that line. The stubborn defence of Poznan helped to block the routes by which the Russians could bring up supplies and reinforcements to their advanced forces. A thaw in the first week of February also imposed a brake by turning the roads into quagmires, while it unfroze the Oder, thus increasing its effect as an obstacle. Although Zhukov’s forces had closed up to the river on a broad front by the end of the first week of February, and gained crossings near Kustrin and Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, they had not sufficient weight to exploit these, and were then penned into shallow bridgeheads.

Koniev now sought to develop a flanking leverage, and oblique approach to Berlin. Extending their bridgeheads north of Breslau, his forces burst out to the west on February 9, and then wheeled north-west in a wide-fronted sweep down the left bank of the Oder. On the 13th they reached Sommerfeld, eighty miles from Berlin (that same day Budapest at last fell, having yielded 110,000 prisoners altogether), Two days later, and a further twenty miles on, they reached the Neisse, near its junction with the Oder, and thus came up level with Zhukov’s advanced forces.

But the Germans’ defence also benefited, once more, from being driven back to the straight, shorter line formed by the Lower Oder and the Neisse. On that line their front was only a fraction of its former width — less than 200 miles from the Baltic to the Bohemian mountain-frontier. That great reduction of the space to be covered went far to balance their loss of strength, enabling them to recover a more reasonable ratio of force to space than they had ever enjoyed since the scales turned against them. Behind the Russian front Breslau still held out, and thereby put a rear-wheel brake on Koniev’s progress, just as Poznan — which at last fell on the 23rd — had earlier hampered Zhukov’s.

Koniev was checked on the Neisse, while Zhukov’s more direct advance was still blocked on the lower Oder. By the third week of February the front in the East was stabilised, with the aid of German reinforcements brought from the West and from the interior. The Russians were held up on that line until the issue had been finally decided by the collapse on the Rhine.