The Road to Berlin (101 page)

1.Enemy forces facing 1st Belorussian Front do not dispose of sufficient forces for a counter-attack and cannot maintain a continuous defence line.

The enemy has moved four Panzer divisions and five-six infantry divisions from the Western Theatre to the east, continuing at the same time to transfer troops from the Baltic and East Prussia.

During the next six-seven days enemy forces on the move will be deployed along the Schwedt–Stargard–Neustettin line in order to cover Pomerania and to deny Soviet forces Stettin and access to the Bay of Pomerania.

Enemy troops transferred from the west will be deployed in the Berlin area to cover the approaches to the city.

2.The Front assignment for the
next six days
is to consolidate gains, move supplies from the rear, concentrate two ‘fills’ of fuel and two of ammunition and in a high-speed assault—
stremitel’nym broskom
—
capture Berlin by February 15–16
.

     The consolidation of gains between February 4–8 will require

(a) 5th, 8th, 69th and 33rd Army to sieze the bridgeheads on the western bank of the Oder, with 8th Guards and 69th having a common bridgehead between Küstrin and Frankfurt and also, if possible, combining the bridgeheads of the 5th and 8th Army;

(b) Polish 1st Army, 47th and 61st Army, 2nd Tank Army and 2nd Cavalry Corps to push the enemy back beyond the Ratzeburg–Falkenburg–Stargard–Altdamm–river Oder line, leaving a covering force in position until 2nd Belorussian Front troops move up and regroup along the Oder line for a breakthrough;

(c) the complete elimination of the enemy forces at Poznan–Schneidemühl by February 7–8;

(d) recognition of the fact that breakthrough reinforcement will be precisely what the armies possess as of now;

(e) return to service of tanks and
SP
guns presently undergoing running repairs or medium refit by February 10;

(f) the completion of air force re-deployment, with at least six ‘fills’ of aviation fuel at forward airfields;

(g) a state of full readiness for Front, army and unit rear services [logistics] by February 9–10, for the decisive stage of the operation.

[Zhukov,
Vosp
… (2), 304–5.]

As both Marshals Zhukov and Koniev struggled to build up their main striking forces (with divisional strengths dwindling now to an average of 4,000 men), even as their armies grappled on the Oder, the
Stavka
mulled over the implications of German reinforcement, order of battle and the problem of the two flanks—Zhukov’s right and Koniev’s right, though the latter stirred less apprehension. Was that gap in the north between Zhukov and Rokossovskii really ‘huge’, or was it simply ‘a visual impression’ induced by poring over maps in the distant calm of Moscow? Was the right flank of 1st Belorussian Front so desperately and dangerously open? Soviet intelligence had estimated at the outset that only eleven German divisions ‘and a few detachments’ opposed the Red Army along ‘the Berlin axis’, but growing German resistance fostered serious doubt and air reconnaissance was now reporting a German build-up in East Pomerania. The
Luftwaffe’s
local air superiority also impinged quite dramatically upon General Staff calculations. In essence, their appreciation pointed to the growing Soviet disadvantage in the ‘balance of forces’, the lack of adequate air support, the growing shortage of artillery munitions and the danger to the flanks emanating from East Pomerania and Silesia. The first priority was to fend off the threat of ‘converging attacks’ from East Pomerania and Silesia; removing the threat from the flanks was manifestly beyond the resources of 1st Belorussian Front alone and necessitated a new design involving three fronts—1st Belorussian, 2nd Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian. Whatever the inclination of Front and army commanders, the centre—which, in the person of Stalin, was all-powerful—took a simple but forthright motto for itself: no risks.

Marshal Zhukov had yet to learn officially that he was not to drive immediately and directly for Berlin, but Stalin knew this even as he joked over a wager with President Roosevelt at the Yalta conference that an immediate attack on Berlin was off, for the moment. In the absence of disclaimers or formal orders of any kind, however, Stalin could still hedge his bets.

Shortly before midnight on Friday, 2 February 1945, the first of twenty Skymaster and five York transport planes lifted off from Luqa in Malta and headed away on the 1,400-mile flight to Saki airfield on the Crimea, there to disgorge some 700 assorted officers and officials of the party destined for the ‘Crimea Conference’ and its actual venue at Yalta. In the deeper, darker hours after midnight the two planes carrying President Roosevelt and the Prime Minister duly took off, retracing the route earlier reconnoitred by Lt.-Col. Myers whose aircraft on this test run had come under fire of a sort from anti-aircraft guns, either German or Turkish. Blacked out and observing strict radio silence, the President’s transport
bored its way towards Soviet territory, icing up steadily and dragging this same dangerous load as the six P-38 fighters flying escort over Greece. The Prime Minister slept on in his own C-54, flying a little behind the President’s aircraft.

Behind both men lay the previous day spent in talk of the forthcoming conference, though the brevity of these exchanges troubled Churchill, whose constant plea had been for more extensive preparation and consultation. The Prime Minister confided his misgivings in a signal to the President on 5 January, filled with the foreboding that ‘this may well be a fateful Conference, coming at a time when the Great Allies are so divided and the shadow of the war lengthens out before us’. Nor were the combined chiefs of staff presently assembled in Malta and engaged in a review of Anglo-American strategy in any more optimistic or amiable mood. The discussions over General Eisenhower’s ‘Appreciation’ brought on a blustery session, with a deal of British huffing and puffing over the ambiguity of the Supreme Commander’s operational outline, which promised a main thrust in the north across the Rhine yet seemed to support substantial offensive action to the south; the ‘Appreciation,’ in a dismissive British judgement, ‘points to no decisive action’. The ensuing debate, pursued in closed session, brought General Marshall out fighting, insisting on the validity of Eisenhower’s plan and simultaneously denouncing Montgomery in no uncertain terms.

The arrival of the President in Malta aboard the US cruiser
Quincy
brought an affectionate reunion on 2 February with the Prime Minister. The President perforce listened to General Marshall and Fleet Admiral King recount their collisions with the British and British opposition to a Rhine crossing by General Bradley, but both senior officers cut their tale short at the sight of a much tired and worn President. At an evening meeting with the combined chiefs and in the presence of the Prime Minister, the wrangle over Anglo-American strategy was swiftly resolved. In the event the Americans understood the need for concentration in the north, even if this did not mean denying General Bradley his supporting attack in the south, while once again the Americans approved the transfer of British and Canadian divisions from Italy to swell Montgomery’s forces, with US troops remaining in place. On one question, however, General Marshall remained unyielding: he refused to countenance either giving Eisenhower a British ‘deputy’ for ground operations or handing over greater powers of command to Montgomery once the Rhine had been crossed.

Still on the
Quincy
, the President and the Prime Minister sat down to dinner and to a review of yet another series of talks, those conducted between Edward Stettinius Jr, replacement as Secretary of State for Cordell Hull, and Anthony Eden. This working dinner left Eden in a despondent frame of mind, fearing that too little had been done to prepare negotiation with ‘a Bear who would certainly know his own mind’. In their earlier talks, this time on the British cruiser
Sirius
, Eden came to understand the depth of American resistance to recognizing the ‘Lublin government’ in Poland and promptly urged his American counterpart to take up this particular cause, since ‘a change of bowling’ might
work the desired effect on Stalin. Eden worried that the Americans were too eagerly bent on bringing about a world security organization, the United Nations, possibly at the expense of attending to the Polish question—and it could not be gainsaid that if the Russians would not treat Poland with ‘some decency’, then little value could attach to any ‘United Nations’ organization. Perturbed and bemused, gloomily disposed, Eden turned to Harry Hopkins, the real power behind the Presidential seat, with a plea to inject some sense of urgency and cogency of business into these last-minute discussions—but to little or no avail.

The swirl of transports and escorting fighters, after making a right-angle turn for identification, touched down at Saki a little after midday on 3 February. With the immediate reception ceremonies over, the President and the Prime Minister went their separate ways in motor cavalcades along the seventy-mile route to Yalta, passing through the battle damage strewn about in the wake of the German retreat from the Crimea only a short ten months ago. Stalin, who had stipulated from the outset his total aversion to air travel to any destination, trundled down by train and arrived on Sunday, 4 February. At 4 pm he called on the Prime Minister, starting up an ‘agreeable discussion’ about the progress of the war. The talk was agreeable because it was largely desultory. Stalin exuded optimism, stressing the damage inflicted on Germany—blood drawn by the Red Army as a consequence of total Soviet commitment of its manpower and the will to win. Interested, Churchill asked Stalin what might happen if Hitler moved south, to entrench himself there in some last-ditch redoubt: ‘We shall follow him!’ Stalin answered without hesitation. The Oder no longer posed any barrier for the Red Army: Soviet troops had swept past German units pulled back from the Vistula to hold this river line and were now astride the Oder at several points. The German Army disposed now of a strategic reserve reduced to a mere twenty or thirty divisions, the bulk ill prepared, though some good divisions were still available in Scandinavia, Italy and the west. Stalin ridiculed the Rundstedt offensive, a vain venture mounted only for prestige: the German Army had harmed itself irrevocably, the most able commanders had been swept away leaving only Guderian, who was at best ‘an adventurer’. The divisions isolated in East Prussia could have been used to defend Berlin but these, too, had been squandered; eleven
Panzer
divisions still clung to Budapest but were simply hostages to fortune; Germany’s role as a world power was done. While looking at the Prime Minister’s map room Stalin suddenly brought to life a suggestion made by Churchill himself at an earlier stage in the war, that British divisions should be transferred from Italy to Yugoslavia and Hungary and then aimed at Vienna, thus linking up with the Red Army and outflanking the Germans south of the Alps. At some cost Churchill bit back his words, contenting himself with observing that ‘the Red Army may not give us time to complete this operation’. It must have tasted bitter to Churchill that the Red Army was indeed on the verge of consummating his own cherished strategic design; all that was left to him was what he had emphasized in the flurry of the Malta talks with the President, that as much of
Austria as possible should be occupied and no more than was strictly necessary of western Europe should be invested by Soviet troops. If Stalin’s comment was mere gratuitous insult, the Prime Minister let it pass.

Calling next on the President at the Livadia Palace (the location of the full plenary sessions of the conference), Stalin assumed quite a different pose and came not so much as a self-confident conqueror but almost as a hard-pressed supplicant. The Red Army was certainly on the Oder, but meeting with stiff German resistance; the Americans must surely be in Manila before the Russians were in Berlin and Stalin dismissed any bets on the outcome with a laugh. At the President’s expressions of shock and dismay at the destruction he had just seen in the Crimea, Stalin remarked that this was nothing compared to the planned ruination worked in the Ukraine. Turning to the western front Stalin learned with obvious pleasure that a limited offensive would begin on 8 February, followed by a second on the 12th and a full-scale attack in approximately one month, even if the President hedged all this about with talk of ice on the Rhine and hinted at Anglo-American divergence over the location of the major assault crossing. The advance of the Allies into Germany nevertheless gave the President the opportunity to propose to Stalin direct communication between General Eisenhower and the Soviet military command, a proposal cordially received by Stalin. In a free and easy exchange over matters more specifically political, the President gave Stalin to understand that the British and American positions were by no means one in relation to France and the question of the treatment of Germany. Stalin at once joined the President in mocking the pretensions of the French and in emphasizing French weakness—but the British were intent on recreating French power. Once more the British were proving troublesome over the question of a possible occupation zone in Germany prescribed for France; to Stalin’s direct question about the President’s own attitude to this, Roosevelt returned an evasive answer, intimating that any gesture in this direction would merely be one of charity. Stalin and Molotov for their part signalled the same identity of feeling.

At this juncture, shortly before 5 pm, the ‘Crimea Conference’ was about to assemble for its first plenary session, devoted to a review of the military situation, following the agenda tabled on Stalin’s behalf the day before. At the outset Marshal Stalin proposed that President Roosevelt should once more preside over the proceedings, to which request Roosevelt gracefully acceded. Conforming to an agreed order of business, the President called at once on General Antonov to make his report on the military situation and to present the Soviet assessment. Antonov carefully recounted the course of Soviet operations since 12 January, when—under favourable weather conditions—the Red Army had gone over to the offensive across a mighty battle front ranging from the Niemen in the north to the Carpathians in the south, all in response to the plea of the Western allies for aid in a difficult situation. The Soviet operational plan, based on a recognition of German strength on the central sector, called for the diversion of these forces
to the flanks, hence Soviet offensive operations in East Prussia and Hungary, both of which had had the desired effect in drawing off German armour—with as many as twenty out of twenty-four
Panzer
divisions being so diverted; even now eleven
Panzer
divisions were marooned in the area of Budapest. On the vital central sector the Red Army had established superiority in infantry and crushing strength in armour, artillery and aircraft. In a matter of eighteen days the Red Army had advanced some 500 kilometres, averaging thirty kilometres per day, investing the Silesian industrial region, reaching the eastern bank of the Oder and slicing East Prussia off from the
Reich
, and inflicting drastic losses upon the German Army, to the tune of 400,000 men and the destruction of no less than forty-five divisions.