Third Reich Victorious (46 page)

Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein, commanding Panzer “Lehr” Division, was surely the first Panzer commander in the East to understand the massive reorganization. He had been Rommel’s chief of staff in Africa. They met again at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia as the Kursk fiasco was unfolding. Rommel immediately grasped the lessons of that
totenritt
(“death ride”) of the German Panzer divisions into the depths of the Soviet defenses. Bayerlein clearly remembered Rommel’s opinion of what to do.

“You know, Bayerlein, we have lost the initiative, of that there is no doubt. We have just learnt in Russia for the first time that dash and overoptimism are not enough. We must have a completely new approach. There is no question, of taking the offensive for the next few years … and so we must try to make the most of the advantages that normally accrue to the defense. The main defense against the tank is the antitank gun; in the air we must build fighters and still more fighters and give up all idea for the present of doing any bombing ourselves …

“We must fight on interior lines … In the East we must withdraw as soon as possible to a suitable, prepared line … You remember, Bayerlein, how difficult we found it to attack the British antitank screens in Africa. It needed first-class, highly trained troops to achieve anything at all against them. Now I’ve made a careful study of our experiences in Russia. The Russian is stubborn and inflexible. He will never be able to develop the well-thought-out, guileful method with which the Englishman fights his battles. The Russian attacks head on, with enormous expenditures of material, and tries to smash his way through by sheer weight of numbers.

“If we can give the German infantry divisions first fifty, then a hundred, then 200 75mm antitank guns each and install them in carefully-prepared positions, covered by large minefields, we shall be able to halt the Russians … There is not the slightest hope of our keeping pace with the enemy in the production of tanks, but we certainly can in antitank guns, if the enemy is having to produce tanks for his attack … Now let us suppose that the Russians attack in a heavily mined sector where our antitank guns are forming a screen, say six miles deep, then—for all their mass of material—they are bound to bog down in the first few days, and from then on they’ll have to gnaw their way through slowly. Meanwhile we shall be installing more antitank guns behind our screen. If the enemy makes three miles’ progress in a day, we’ll build six miles’ depth of antitank screen, and let him run himself to a standstill. We’ll be fighting under the cover of our positions, he’ll be attacking in the open … Once it becomes clear to the troops that they can hold their ground, morale will go up again … Our last chance in the East lies in equipping the army thoroughly for an unyielding defense.”
¹⁷

By the beginning of August, the situation had changed so dramatically that Stalin ordered a fundamental reappraisal of planning assumptions. Again, Zhukov took the lead in the briefings. For the past three weeks the Germans had dodged the pursuing Soviets, turned to strike, and then retreated again. But that stopped as new divisions from other theaters began strengthening their front. They had clearly been trading space for time until now. And that change was worrying for Stalin and Zhukov. Despite the loss of their prized spy in Hitler’s headquarters, there was enough low level intelligence coming in to paint a vivid picture of German intentions. Army Group North was reassembling in East Prussia with its 16th and 18th Armies. A reconstituted Army Group Center ran from the East Prussian border to the confluence of the Vistula and San Rivers in southern Poland and now consisted of 2nd Army plus 7th, and 15th Armies from France. Army Group A (former AG North Ukraine) consisted of the German 14th (from Italy), 17th, 20th Mountain, and 1st Hungarian Armies and was the link between Army Groups Center and South. Randulic’s 20th Mountain Army was slowly moving into the Carpathian Mountains after its long trek from the shores of the Arctic. Army Group South’s line ran 8th, 10th (from Italy), 4th Romanian, 6th, and 3rd Romanian Armies Nowhere was there evidence of any of the Panzer armies along the front.

Zhukov explained the situation to the gathered Soviet leaders: “They are planning a Kursk in reverse but a Kursk on a theater scale. The only difference is that they cannot be as strong everywhere as we were at Kursk.”

Stalin pointed to the south:

“There in Romania is where they are most vulnerable. We should let Timoshenko proceed with his attack. The Romanians are sick of the war and will fall apart. Once the Germans are unhinged there, they can never hope to fight over such a huge front. It will serve to suck resources away from their concentrations in Poland. Then we will strike.”

He took grim satisfaction that the full fury of the Soviet peoples was at white heat to begin this final push. In the back of his mind, though, was a worry. The power equation in the war had shifted since this Rommel had come to power. He missed Hitler. He understood Hitler. Already the first hints from the “former” allies had come, suggesting he make peace. How long would it be before those hints became hands squeezing off Lend-Lease? If something went wrong?

He turned back to Zhukov, said, “You, Comrade Marshal, you will have overall command of the offensive operation in Poland.”
¹⁸

Timoshenko’s offensive roared into life on August 20. As Stalin predicted, the Romanians flew apart, but this time Kesselring kicked them back into line and the line held. It buckled, bent, and drifted back, but it held. And every once in a while it snapped forward in a deadly sting of a counterattack. Timoshenko’s two fronts with 929,000 men were a powerful force, but the reinforced Army Group South was no longer the beaten command it had been in June. The reinforcement was by no means complete, but the recuperative powers of the German Army had made the most of what had arrived, and reinforcements continued to arrive as the battle ground on. Fighting a dogged but nimble defense, the Germans extracted an enormous price from the Soviets. The active presence of the Luftwaffe was considered a miracle by the German troops and did much to keep morale up. That and the strongly increased flak did much to lessen the ground support provided by the Red Air Force to Timoshenko’s armies.

Still, the Romanians bled away quickly because the Soviets especially targeted their divisions. Timoshenko could report that Bessarabia had been cleared of the fascists, and Stalin could order another massive fireworks display in Moscow to celebrate the liberation of one of the last pieces of Soviet territory in enemy hands. But by the beginning of September, the going had been so slow and costly for Timoshenko that another front from Stavka Reserve was allocated to continue the operation. Losses in tanks had been particularly severe, and the German front did not seem to have suffered fundamental damage in its bloody fighting retreat. Soviet bomber attacks against the Ploesti oil fields were deadly failures. And the oil kept pumping.

Kesselring’s “Latin” experience was finally called on again. His success in holding the Soviets to a slow advance had done much to strengthen the hand of the Romanian dictator Marshal Antonescu. However, appalling Romanian losses triggered attempts by King Michael to unseat Antonescu and declare Romania out of the war. Kesselring politely but firmly took the king into custody by providing him a German “Guard of Honor.”

Army Group South’s success contributed to a remarkable strengthening of Germany’s positions in the Balkans. Bulgaria edged back closer to the Germans after nearly ordering the German mission out when the German position in the east had been on the point of snapping. Turkey, which had also been on the point of breaking relations, quietly shelved those plans and continued exports, particularly of chrome. In fact, as the months dragged on, the position of the Rommel government slowly but steadily increased among the neutrals. German propaganda went to great lengths to demonstrate the new government’s desire for peace. This uncharacteristically subtle approach had a positive effect, decisively enhanced by Rommel’s de-Nazification program. It was easy to blame it all on Hitler, and this message sold. Latin American countries quickly reestablished relations and resumed trade, though it remained a cold armistice with the British and Americans. Sweden and Switzerland doubled their deliveries of war materials. Imports began easing critical shortages in Germany, though the volume of trade was not great. In September, Sweden and Uruguay offered themselves as joint mediators between Germany and the Soviet Union, only to be turned down brusquely, but the door was left open.
¹⁹

At the beginning of January 1945 a tense quiet hung over the front from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian Mountains. Gehlen’s
Foreign Armies East
reported that the Soviets had massed along the entire Eastern Front “414 formations of division or brigade size in the fronts, 216 in front reserves, and 219 in reserves in depth.” Most of these were opposite von Manstein’s three army groups in Poland. Against Army Group North, the 2nd and 3rd Byelorussian Fronts massed in the north against East Prussia and northern Poland 1,670,000 men with over 28,000 guns and 3,300 tanks and assault guns. Against the remaining two army groups, the 1st Byelorussian Front, commanded by Marshal Koniev, and the 1st Ukrainian Front, commanded by Marshal Vasilievskiy, counted 2.2 million men, 6,400 tanks and assault guns, and 46,000 guns, including heavy mortars and rocket launchers. They were supported by over 10,000 combat aircraft.
²⁰
Soviet propaganda fed the desire for revenge among the troops. The months since the end of Bagration had been used well to amass huge stocks of supplies and train to a razor’s edge for the final, brutal campaign. Stalin had released the huge stockpiles of supplies and equipment he had stored in the Far East for the war with Japan and drawn even more of the divisions from there to deepen his reserves. Nothing would be withheld from the Red storm, code-named “Operation Suvorov” after the most brilliant general in all Russian history.

Kesselring now commanded forty battle-tried divisions; Manstein’s supercommand controlled another 150, with the remainder in OKW reserve. Luftwaffe strength in the East had increased to 5,000 aircraft, supplemented by thousands of flak guns. Tank strength now exceeded 4,000 machines. The reinforcements sent to the East had swelled the German army groups to strengths they had not seen since the beginning of the war. Army Group Center was now over a million strong. An immense confidence also grew from the Luftwaffe’s increasing ability to protect the German troops on the ground from incessant attacks. Training had also been constant and hard, reminding retreads from the last war of the defensive preparations on the Western Front. Central Poland seemed to be one vast trench system. Some of the infantry had not seen a tank in months.

The Panzer armies were key to von Manstein’s thinking. He had fully agreed with Rommel’s concept of creating a defensive morass to soak up the offensive power of the Soviet armies. He took it one step further. The rebuilding of the German Army in the East was finally creating a powerful Panzer reserve that had been grouped carefully behind the first deep defensive system. He had available four Panzer armies, all of which reported directly to him at Oberkommando Ost: 1st Panzer Army (Generaloberst Erhard Raus), 3rd Panzer Army (Generaloberst Georg Reinhardt), 4th Panzer Army (Generaloberst Hermann Hoth), and 5th Panzer Army (General der Panzertruppen Hasso von Manteuffel).
²¹

The 3rd Panzer Army was positioned to support Army Group North. The remaining armies he grouped from Warsaw to Krakow, the area of the front against which the Soviet buildup seemed to be directed. The 1st and 5th Panzer (newly created) Armies were massed behind Warsaw and the 4th Panzer Army was in the vicinity of Krakow. Substantial strength would then be available to counter a deep penetration anywhere along the front. Farther to the west, the Polish earth was scarred in another vast defensive network, the Friedrich der Grosse Line, in a great bow from just south of Warsaw to Krakow. This was manned by divisions of the newly reconstituted 4th and 9th Armies.

It was the hardest thing Rommel had ever had to do—just sit there and listen as von Manstein delivered the final briefings at the front commanders’ conference in Poland. For the man who had always been on the spear tip in battle, this had been his most difficult conquest. Then again, von Manstein and his subordinate commanders had left him little to do.
²²
They were good, and he gave them all the slack they wanted—not much different than letting a good lieutenant take on all the work he could handle. They were the final briefings. Gehlen had predicted that the Soviet offensive would begin within days.

Von Manstein had wanted it more precisely than that. And Gehlen delivered.

Map 13. Operation Suvorov