History of the Second World War (99 page)

The weight of the Russian offensive fell on the Germans’ Army Group Centre, now commanded by Busch, who had filled Kluge’s place when the latter was badly injured in a motor crash. Although the Russian offensive during the winter had failed to break down the defence of the sector, Busch and his principal subordinates knew how narrow the margin had been, and were uneasy about their chances of resisting a renewal of the shock when summer came, with conditions more favourable to the attacker. In anticipation of the blow, they wished to withdraw to the historic line of the Beresina, ninety miles behind their existing front. Such a timely step-back would have thrown the Russian offensive out of gear. But it ran contrary to Hitler’s principle, and he would not listen to the arguments for it.

Tippelskirch, who had succeeded Heinrici as commander of the 4th Army, succeeded in damping the shock by a veiled withdrawal of short measure, from his forward positions to the line of the upper Dnieper. But the benefit was nullified by the way that the Russian plan concentrated on exploiting the wedges on either flank.

On the northern flank, Vitebsk was pinched off by converging thrusts, delivered by Bagramyan’s forces between Polotsk and Vitebsk, and by Chernyakhovsky’s between Vitebsk and Orsha. Vitebsk fell on the fourth day, and a great gap was made in the front of the 3rd Panzer Army. This opened the way for a southward drive that cut the Moscow-Minsk highway, and threatened the rear of the German 4th Army, which had resisted Zakharov’s frontal pressure. Its danger was increased by Rokossovsky’s thrust on the other flank, just north of the Pripet Marshes, against the German 9th Army. Breaking through near Zhlobin, which also fell on the fourth day, he crossed the Beresina and by-passed the potential blocking position at Bobruisk. On July 2 his mobile forces reached Stolbtsy, forty miles west of the still greater communication centre of Minsk, thus cutting both the railway and highway to Warsaw.

Space, exploited by the Russians’ increased manoeuvring power, baffled all German attempts to put a check on this sweeping advance which had covered 150 miles in a week since the breakthrough. The value of American supplies to Russia was marked in the way that large numbers of motorised infantry followed on the heels of the tanks, closely backing them up. Meanwhile Chernyakhovsky’s forces were converging on Minsk from the north-east, while also threatening the route to Vilna. Between the two horns a reserve force of tanks under Rotmistrov swept down the Moscow-Minsk highway, and drove into Minsk on the 3rd, after covering nearly eighty miles in the last two days.

This great pincer-manoeuvre bore a striking resemblance to the one which the Germans had executed three years earlier, in the opposite direction. As in that case, only a proportion of the enveloped forces succeeded in slipping out of the trap. In the first week nearly 30,000 prisoners were taken in the northerly breakthrough and 24,000 in the southerly. About 100,000 troops were encircled at Minsk, and although the main route back through Minsk had been closed, part of Tippelskirch’s 4th Army was extricated by diverting it southward to secondary roads whose use, as supply routes, had been abandoned for some time past owing to the harassing activity of the Russian partisans. Army Group Centre was virtually destroyed and the total loss exceeded 200,000 men.

West of Minsk the retreating Germans made a momentary stand, but no naturally strong line was available, and their reduced forces were inadequate to cover the space, which became wider as the Russian bulge grew deeper. The Russians could always find room to penetrate between and by-pass the towns to which the enemy clung. Their advance appeared like a semi-circle of radiating spearpoints — thrusting towards Dvinsk, Vilna, Grodno, Bialystok, and Brest-Litovsk respectively. Vilna was entered on the 9th, and fell on the 13th, after the Russian mobile forces had driven past it on either side. That same day another spearpoint reached Grodno.

By the middle of July the Red Army had not only swept the Germans out of White Russia but overrun half of north-eastern Poland , Its most westerly forces were deep into Lithuania and not far short of the East Prussian frontier. Here they were nearly two hundred miles beyond the flank of the German Army Group North, under Friessner, which was still covering the front gates into the Baltic states. Bagramyan’s spearpoints, now approaching Dvinsk, were closer to the German base at Riga than was Friessner’s front. Chernyakhovsky, who reached the Niemen beyond Vilna, was almost as close to the Baltic — along a line that was much farther west. Thus it looked as if a double barrier would be established across Friessner’s rear before he could retreat. The difficulties of his situation were increased by an extension of the Russian offensive northward to the Pskov sector — where the ‘3rd Baltic front’ under Maslennikov attacked in conjunction with Eremenko’s.

At the same time the strain on the German forces as a whole was multiplied by a still bigger development. For on July 14 the Russians launched their long-expected offensive south of the Pripet Marshes, between Tarnopol and Kovel. It was a two-horned thrust. The right horn pushed across the Bug towards Lublin and the Vistula — converging with Rokossovsky’s drive north of the marshes, which was now swerving round the southern side of Brest-Litovsk. The left horn drove through the enemy’s front near Luck, and outflanked Lwow from the north.

This famous city fell to Koniev’s forces on July 27, by which time his spearheads were already over the river San, seventy miles west of Lwow. The vastness of Russia’s offensive effort was dramatically signalised by the capture on the same day of Stanislav, in the Carpathian foothills; Bialystok in northern Poland; Dvinsk, in Latvia; and Siauliai junction on the railway back from Riga to East Prussia. This last stroke, the result of a dash by one of Bagramyan’s armoured columns, threatened to seal the fate of the German forces in the north.

Yet even this coup was overshadowed by the deep advance in the centre, and the danger it carried. For three days earlier, on the 24th, Rokossovsky’s left wing had swept into Lublin, only thirty miles from the Vistula and 100 miles south-east of Warsaw. In that stroke he had exploited the way the German armies were divided by the Pripet, and the confusion caused by the near offensive south of it. On the 26th several of Rokossovsky’s mobile columns reached the Vistula, while others were wheeling north towards Warsaw. Next day the Germans abandoned Brest-Litovsk, while that same day one of the Russian columns that had by-passed it reached Siedlce, fifty miles west of it, and barely forty miles from Warsaw.

At Siedlce the Germans imposed a momentary check on the advance. On the Vistula, too, there were signs of stiffening resistance, for although Rokossovsky’s troops secured five crossings on the night of the 29th, four were eliminated on the following morning.

But on July 31 the Germans were forced back from Siedlce by outflanking pressure, while one of Rokossovsky’s columns reached the outskirts of Praga, the suburb of Warsaw that lies on the east bank of the Vistula. Next morning the Germans troops began to retreat across the bridges into the city; and the Polish ‘underground’ leaders were encouraged to give the signal for a rising.

That day also saw striking developments near the Baltic. On Bagramyan’s front an armoured column under General Obukhov captured Tukkums junction on the Gulf of Riga, after a fifty mile night advance, and thereby cut the escape-corridor of the Germans’ Army Group North. Chernyakhovsky occupied Kaunas, the Lithuanian capital, while his advanced forces, which had pushed ahead, arrived close to the East Prussian frontier at the approach to the Insterburg Gap. On August 2 Koniev’s forces established a fresh and large bridgehead over the Vistula 130 miles south of Warsaw, near Baranow, above the point where the San flows into the Vistula.

It was a moment of universal crisis for the Germans. In the West their front in Normandy was collapsing, and Patton’s tanks were pouring through the Avranches breach. Behind the fronts there had been a political earthquake, and its tremors were spreading outwards. For the concerted attempt to kill Hitler, and overthrow the Nazi regime, had taken place on the 20th, and a number of generals were implicated in the plot that had then miscarried. Initial uncertainty as to the outcome, and subsequent fear of retribution, had produced a paralysing confusion in many of the military headquarters.

After the bomb had burst in Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg, in East Prussia, telegrams had been sent out from there to members of the conspiracy at the various Army Group Headquarters, telling them that Hitler had been killed. The contradictory report that was broadcast by the German radio service raised doubt of the first message, but naturally resulted in perplexity as to the truth. Moreover, the conspirators’ telegram to Friessner’s headquarters was accompanied by explicit instructions that the forces in the north were to retreat without delay, and avoid any risk of a second ‘Stalingrad’. There, as in the West, the events of July 20 had important repercussions.

But the effect was least in Army Group Centre. That was largely due to its new commander, Model, who had replaced Busch almost immediately after the original breakthrough — when Busch broke down under the combined pressure of the Russians in front and Hitler behind. Model had been merely a divisional commander in the 1941 invasion of Russia, and now at fifty-four was nearly a decade younger than most of the German higher commanders. In his rapid rise he had maintained the same driving energy and ruthlessness that he had shown in handling a panzer division. He was also one of the few generals who dared to argue with Hitler, and the latter preferred his roughness to the caustic manner of Manstein, thus being more ready to allow him a free hand. Profiting by Hitler’s unusual tolerance, Model acted on his own judgement in pulling out from awkward positions, and frequently disregarded the instructions he received. It was this insubordinate initiative, even more than the skill shown in conducting the retreat, which accounted for his achievement in extricating the imperilled armies. At the same time, his position and Hitler’s way of accepting his decisions naturally heightened his sense of loyalty under his oath to Hitler. After July 20 Model was the first of the military leaders to denounce the plot and proclaim the Army’s continued fidelity. Hitler’s faith in him was still better justified by the military events that followed.

For a remarkable German rally was seen at the beginning of August, and the Russian entry into Warsaw was deferred until the following year. By nightfall on the 1st most of the city was in the hands of its own people. But just as they were expecting the Russians to cross the river, and come to their help, they heard the sound of the guns fading away, and were left to nurse their perplexity in an ominous silence. Then on the 10th that silence was shattered by a massed bombardment from the air and the ground, inaugurating the Germans’ bid to regain control. Inside the city, the Polish underground forces under General Bor fought on stubbornly, but they were soon isolated in three small areas, and no aid reached them from the other side of the river.

It was natural that they should have felt that the Russians had deliberately stood back. It was understandable, too, that the Soviet Government was not keen to see the Poles take the lead in freeing their capital from the Germans, and thus be inspired to adopt a more independent attitude. But although it is difficult to unravel the skeins of this controversy, the much wider extent of the Russian check at this time indicates that military factors could well have been more decisive than political considerations.*

* Nevertheless, Russia’s refusal to allow American bombers from Western Europe to land on Soviet airfields after dropping supplies to the Poles in Warsaw has never been satisfactorily explained. British and Polish pilots flew from Italy and back on such missions, but at such extreme range their efforts, courageous though they were, could hardly affect the issue.

In front of Warsaw the most upsetting factor was the intervention of three fairly strong S.S. panzer divisions, which had only arrived on July 29 — two from the southern front and one from Italy. The counterstroke which they delivered from the northern flank drove a wedge into the Russians’ salient position, forcing a withdrawal. At the same time an attempted Russian advance from the bridgeheads over the Vistula was brought to a halt with the aid of some reinforcements from Germany. By the end of the first week of August the Russians were held up everywhere except for some diminishing progress in the Carpathian foothills and in Lithuania. The wave had spent its force long before it stopped. The later stages of that racing advance had been carried on by wavelets of mobile troops, and Model’s scanty reserves sufficed to stop them once he had reached suitable ground for a stand. After advancing up to 450 miles in five weeks — much the longest and fastest advance they had yet achieved — the Russians were suffering the natural consequences of overstretching their communications, and had to bow to that strategic law. They were to stay on the Vistula for nearly six months before they were ready to mount another massive drive.

The second week of August was marked by stiff fighting at many points, with the Germans counterattacking vigorously and the Russians seeking fresh openings, but neither side gained an appreciable advantage. The Vistula front became stabilised. On the East Prussian frontier the Russian advance towards the Insterburg Gap was checked by Manteuffel’s panzer division, just brought back from the Rumanian front, which pushed the Russians back from the road-centre of Vilkaviskis. Stalemate set in along that lake- and swamp-filled frontier. Manteuffel was then sent north, and in the later part of August drove through from Tauroggen to Tukkums on the Gulf of Riga, reopening the line of retreat for Army Group North.

The results achieved by such a small armoured force strikingly illustrated the fluid nature of the situation, and the extent to which the difficulties of supply limited the Russians’ capacity to consolidate their gains. In such conditions packets of armour weighed far more heavily than masses of infantry, and the course of the campaign was determined by the capacity of either side to produce such packets at the critical points. The story of David and Goliath was repeated many times in its modern form.