Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (26 page)

The 3rd Belorussian Front had a second welcome for Raus on 16 August. The 5th, 33rd and 11th Guards Armies attacked Third Panzer’s right and drove to Vilkavishkis, practically on the East Prussian frontier. A few Soviet units even conducted the first raid into German territory, but these were soon defeated. Raus kept his head, and did not allow himself to be distracted from his main mission to help Army Group North.
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Indeed, action again switched north in mid-September. On the 16th, Raus launched a three-division attack under the command of XXXIX Panzer Corps to relieve enemy pressure on Army Group North. In the area south of Riga,
they gained 15km and managed to destroy about 100 tanks and 200 guns. However, the 1st Baltic Front was just too strong for those relatively small losses to make much of a dent in its order of battle. With the bulk of Third Panzer in the Courland anyway, on 20 September, Hitler transferred it to Army Group North. Into early October, Raus, without ‘a single panzer at [his] disposal’, continued to guard the 160km-wide corridor linking Army Groups North and Center. The road to Riga had been blasted open, but at a heavy cost. Losses were high from fighting a defense in the open country. Strength in Grossdeutschland’s infantry companies again sank to forty men.
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Obergefreiter Sachs, 5th Company, 1st Battalion of the division’s Füsilier Regiment described the fighting thus:

As our 1st Battalion attacked toward the east, we had the mission of destroying the Soviets that we had pinned down in the woods. As I got my group into position, I wondered how the infantry and tanks were arrayed over there. I didn’t have long to find out. Nothing, then Ivan storms against us with a loud ‘Hurrah!’ There was wild confusion but we remained and were not deceived.

A comrade destroyed a tank in close combat, but we could not determine how many other Soviets were knocked out in the rush. ‘The situation is favorable’ I thought, and so we pushed further and without much concern about the Ivans came across a supply column with prima Studebakers!

We took out fifteen Soviets in close combat and captured a heap of booty and supplies. From some POWs we learned we were not far from their supply area. I left my men in position with instructions and worked my way forward to see what was up. I hadn’t gone far when I came upon an entire Soviet company right by our position. I thought, ‘In I go!’

Then it happened so fast I didn’t have time to think about it. As I fired my last shot and could finally get my bearing I found at least twenty-five dead, eighteen wounded, two mortars, one heavy- and three light machine guns and many rifles and pistols.

I never would have thought that I would have earned a Knights Cross for that.
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German intelligence assumed the Soviets still needed many days to reorient their forces south from the Riga sector prior to any attack in the direction of East Prussia. Instead, on 5 October, 1st Baltic Front began a new offensive from the vicinity of Siauliai toward Memel. Raus, with never enough infantry, had
to make do with the new Volksgrenadier divisions deployed in this previously quiet portion of his defenses. The 549th and 548th Volksgrenadier Divisions, with the help of the newly arrived 5th Panzer, took the brunt of an attack by 29 rifle divisions and over 500 tanks. Even with the favorable defensive terrain – marshes and bogs made up most of the landscape – it was amazing that they held out at all. It took two days for the Soviets to smash the defenses and two more days for the 5th Guards Tank and 43rd Armies to reach the Baltic coast (they also overran the panzer army command post, although they did not know it and therefore Raus and his staff escaped). When these two armies encircled Memel on 9 September they also cut off Army Group North from the rest of the war. A day later, Hitler transferred Headquarters Third Panzer Army from Courland back to East Prussia. Raus left one corps with Army Group North and another trapped at Memel, so had only one corps with which to fight on the main front.
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Memel enjoyed a stout defense: Grossdeutschland, the 7th Panzer, 58th Infantry, 551st Volksgrenadier Divisions, Luftwaffe Flak Regiment 6, 502nd Heavy Panzer Battalion (Tiger tanks), the Kriegsmarine’s 217th and 227th Flak Battalions and a myriad of smaller formations, including students from the U-boat school. Perhaps its greatest asset was the sea to its back, which the Germans used 1. To resupply the besieged port, in one case removing the wheels from railroad tank cars, filling them with fuel and towing them from East Prussian ports; 2. Transporting troops into and out of the city, and; 3. To provide naval gunfire from
Prinz Eugen
, destroyers, torpedo boats and now even the armored ship
Lützow
. Stuka ace Hans Ulrich Rudel flew overhead. Considering the Red Army’s 600,000 men, 400 armored vehicles – giving them a staggering five-to-one superiority, the defenders needed every advantage available. Soviet attacks began in earnest on 14 October, and were beaten back. Three days later, OKH decided Grossdeutschland and 7th Panzer could do more good on the main front, so these units evacuated by sea in numerous vessels (large and small) and with many losses. At the same time, the 95th Infantry Division arrived from Army Group Courland (formerly Army Group North). Both sides eventually settled into a stalemate, and the city’s garrison remained unbowed into 1945.
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At the same time on the approaches to Königsberg, the Red Army kept up the pressure. Even though the weather had turned bad (the rasputitsa arrived as always), the Soviets had by this stage of the war developed the ability to conduct operations almost any time of year and with much improved logistical support. Guarding the northern face of the East Prussian defenses, Raus once again had three corps of eleven divisions, under command. On 16 October, forty rifle divisions and several tank brigades of the 1st Baltic and 3rd Belorussian
Fronts attacked Third Panzer in the direction of Tilsit and stove in the defensive lines 11km on the first day. Schirwindt, the keystone of the entire ‘East Prussian Defense Position’, fell on the 17th. But as their comrades were doing in the west around the city of Aachen (the first major city in Germany proper to come under direct attack in that theater), Raus’ men put up a furious defense of their own homeland. It took the frontovicki of 3rd Belorussian Front four days just to penetrate the Germans’ tactical defenses. The second defensive line was so strong that the Soviet commander committed his exploitation force to the (attempted) breakthrough battle. Red Army Air Force CAS dominated the skies. By the 20th, the enemy had reached Gumbinnen. Führer Headquarters could not let this stand, so sent to Raus the Army’s 5th Panzer and the Luftwaffe’s Hermann Goring Parachute Panzer Divisions to attack the penetration from the north. Starting on 21 October, along with the Führer Grenadier Brigade attacking from the Fourth Army area in the south, they cut off the attacking Soviets. Around the Prussian town of Goldap, a huge armored battle developed. The Red Army spearhead was isolated, and in a week’s fighting, the Germans destroyed 616 tanks. Fourth Army took over responsibility for the line, and by the first week of November, the front stabilized in a fairly straight fashion. By the end of November, Third Panzer was arrayed north to south thus: XXVIII, XI, XL Panzer and XXVI Corps.
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It would basically stay that way for the next two months.

Stavka’s plan for the January 1945 offensive into East Prussia was to split Fourth and Third Panzer Armies and then destroy each in detail. The panzer army’s old nemesis, 3rd Belorussian Front, with four armies and two tank corps under command, would drive on Königsberg. From there the Soviets planned to finish the war in forty-five days. On the eve of the attack, Third Panzer counted nine infantry divisions: its last panzer division, the 20th, had already departed for Hungary (although the 5th Panzer, with fifty operational panzers, soon returned from Fourth Army in its place). Included in the defenders strength were eighteen battalions of Volkssturm, armed civilians which the soldiers judged as ‘absolutely useless’. The only thing the Germans had in their favor were ‘elaborate prepared defenses’. On 13 January, the 3rd Belorussian Front attacked with 44 rifle divisions, 3,000 guns and 800 tanks. The main effort took the Insterburg–Königsberg axis into the center of Third Panzer’s line. Forewarned, Raus had abandoned his most forward lines so that except for a few rear guards, Red artillery fell mainly on empty positions. German Nebelwerfer units exacted a toll on the Soviet infantry, but when that happened, Soviet tanks merely took over the advance. Red Army Air Force aircraft shot at anything that moved. Army Group Center sent reinforcements, in the form of Sturmgeschutz Battalion 190, which launched a counterattack
towards Kettenau. By the end of the 13th, the Germans had regained their original lines, in the process destroying 122 tanks at Kettenau alone.
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The Soviets renewed their attacks on 14 January, but with less enthusiasm and coordination. The Kettenau heights changed hands many times that day, and the Germans destroyed a further 200 tanks there. As happened in October, creating a Red Army penetration took longer than predicted; the zone defense worked as well as could be expected. By the 18th, the Soviets had battered the defenders to the point where their lines began to buckle. Raus ordered his men back toward Königsberg and the Heilsberg Fortified Region. During the next two days, fighting centered on Schlossberg, where pioneers and Sturmgeschütze saved the day. On 20 January, the Soviets tried to turn the German flank by swinging north near Kreuzingen. Raus organized a counterattack led by 5th Panzer, plus whatever other units he could find, into the flank of the offending tank corps. This small crisis mastered, the panzer army continued withdrawing towards Königsberg ‘according to plan’. On the 24th, the Soviets punched over the Pregel River, creating a real danger of cutting off the East Prussian capital from the south. A day later they were less than 20km from the city.
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A greater threat came from the west where, starting on 23 January, the 2nd Shock Army and Raus raced toward the Baltic. Past German Eylau and then to Osterode, the Germans came in second. The Soviets established a blocking position to hold the Third Panzer, and continued to Marienburg and finally to Ebling. This put Raus at a severe disadvantage. When the 5th Guards Tank Army reached that town on the 26th, Third Panzer, Fourth and a portion of the Second Armies were all trapped in East Prussia. Starting the following day and for a few days beyond, Reinhardt tried to orchestrate a breakout to the west. This ‘treason’ caused him to run afoul of Hitler one last time and lose his job as commander of Army Group Center. The Führer demanded the Königsberg pocket, now renamed Armeeabteilung Samland, hold at all costs. As had often been the case, the mere existence of such a large force on its flank and rear represented a thorn in the side of Soviet forces advancing west. Therefore, the Germans trapped in East Prussia actually delayed Stavka’s Berlin operation. Starting in late January and running through mid-February, 4th Panzer, numerous infantry divisions and other formations evacuated Königsberg aboard Kriegsmarine warships and merchant vessels. Headquarters, Third Panzer was among them. On 21 February it appeared at the front again, this time in Pomerania as part of Army Group Vistula.
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Third Panzer managed to escape much of the destruction meted out by the Red Army during the second half of 1944. Many of its losses were due to Hitler’s insistence that Reinhardt leave corps-sized garrisons in hopeless situations: Vitebsk, Vilnius, Courland and Memel. The counterattack toward
Riga possessed moments of the old blitzkrieg flair, but ultimately accomplished little of lasting (or operational) significance.

Earlier in February, Himmler, the unlikely commander of the new Army Group Vistula, had created the Eleventh SS Panzer Army out of ten divisions under a former corps headquarters. In its only combat mission prior to arrival of Raus and his staff, it had gained perhaps 5km in two days of attacking. After this lackluster performance, Raus took over most of that corps’ responsibilities. Sandwiched between the Second Army and the Oder River, the new Third Panzer Army manned a 240km-wide front with 3 infantry divisions and 2 fortification regiments defending forward, 3 more infantry and 2 motorized divisions in reserve, 4 brigades and some independent regiments and other units in its order of battle. It could muster about 250 artillery pieces and 70 AFVs. Along each kilometer of front it had 1 artillery piece, 1 heavy and 2 light machine-guns and 40 men. The day after Raus arrived, the Soviets attacked with two objectives: split Third Panzer and Second Armies, and take Stargard on Raus’ western extremity. The first attack, conducted mainly by the 2nd Belorussian Front, managed to achieve a breakthrough on 22 February, and reached Bublitz two days later. This thrust separated the SS 15th Latvian and 33rd Charlemagne Divisions away from Second Army and toward Third Panzer. The Soviets continued to press along the seam until the 3rd Guards Tank Corps reached Koeslin on 1 March, effectively isolating Second Army to the east. Hitler’s order on the 4th for Raus to counterattack to regain contact with Second Army was not based on reality and could not be carried out.
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The Second ended the war with its back to the Baltic, a German island centered on the Vistula delta, surrounded on three sides by the Red ocean.

In the Stargard area, Marshal Rokossovsky’s attack did not do as well against the 5th Jäger Division. On 1 March, he therefore shifted his main effort slightly east to Reetz. His 1st and 2nd Guards Tank Armies led the way, followed by 3rd Shock. Within three days, 1st Guards Tank Army reached the Baltic coast, isolating the fortress city of Kolberg, famous for Napoleon’s siege and Gneisenau’s defense in 1807. Remnants of the 163rd and 402nd Infantry Divisions plus Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe, Volkssturm, Hitler Youth forces held the city of 35,000, now swollen by 50,000 refugees fleeing the avenging Red Army. Against the 2nd Belorussian Front, these defenders and the Kriegsmarine worked miracles for 10 days as nearly 80,000 escaped by sea. The last soldiers followed them in a destroyer on 18 March. By then, Third Panzer, a collection of ‘isolated formations and detachments’ had lost all of Pomerania except for the 90km Altdamm bridgehead just east of Stettin and Raus had lost his job. On 5 March, after Hitler had taken ‘a sudden dislike’ to the general,
he brought in Hasso von Manteuffel to be the Third Panzer Army’s last commander. One of the new general’s first accomplishments was to talk Hitler into abandoning the hopeless bridgehead on 19 March (but left much of its heavy equipment on the far bank).
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