RUSSIA'S INDOMITABLE ADVANCE

POLAND AND THE APPROACH TO GERMANY

June 1944 saw not only the Allied assault on Normandy and successes for the Americans in the Far East, but also the resumption of the war between Finland and Russia. Following breakdown of negotiations to settle the position resulting from the Winter War of 1940, some 20 divisions of Russian troops attacked the Finns and made rapid progress, taking Viipuri on June 20th. By mid-July, the Soviet Army had retaken the Karelian Isthmus and its advance had slowed to a stop. The Finns had little option but to accept the situation imposed on them, although their counterattacks went on for months.

For the Russians had weightier matters afoot. Three years to the day after Hitler had launched "Barbarossa" against an unsuspecting Soviet Union, the Red Army and Air Force began on June 22nd 1944 the summer offensive that was to end all summer offensives, at least in this war. The objective was the annihilation of the German Army Group Centre, which was in a dangerously exposed salient in Belorussia following the retreats during the winter of Army Groups North and South, and which had recently been deprived of six infantry divisions and two Panzer Divisions by the need to reinforce Field-Marshal Model's Army Group B in France. Army Group Centre, commanded by Field-Marshal Busch, thus had only 37 divisions, all of which were well below strength and none of which stood any real chance of being reinforced.

Against these Germans forces were hurled 166 Soviet divisions, each of 10,000 men, and a total of 4,500 tanks against which the Germans could muster only some 400 tanks. The ratios of Soviet to German guns and aircraft were little different. The Germans were outgunned and outnumbered, but were nonetheless as willing as ever to fight bravely for their country. They were, however, fighting not one enemy but two. Like the armies in Normandy, the men of Army Group Centre were given by Hitler impossible orders based on erroneous hunches and irrational assessments. The obligation to carry out Hitler's Directive of the moment was almost a greater obstacle than the might of the Red Army.

Hitler had decided, on the basis of his own assumption that the Russians would seek next to take the Rumanian oilfields, that the Summer offensive would be directed against Army Group South. Despite compelling and ever growing intelligence based on factual reconnaissance that Soviet troop movements in early and mid-June were all directed at the area between Pripet and the Dvina, Hitler obstinately dismissed the possibility of an attack in Belorussia and a subsequent advance into Poland. He refused totally to consider moving troops to the threatened area from Army Group South, or to go back on an earlier and equally irrational decision to make certain important German strongholds "fortified areas" in which the defenders would fight to the last after deliberately allowing themselves to become encircled. In vain did the experienced and senior Generals of Army Group Centre remonstrate about the loss of men, weapons and supplies. Hitler was beginning to apply his Gothic Wagnerian fantasy of the nobility of war to every decision.

The attack, when it came on 22nd June, was directed at Army Group Centre on a front totalling some 435 miles, with a primary first objective of encircling and taking the prestige target of Vitebsk, one of the cities that Hitler had nominated a fortified area. In only 48 hours, the German 3rd Panzerarmee was overrun on either side of the city, and the circle began to close. Colonel-General Reinhardt, in command of the 3rd Army, whose LIII Corps held Vitebsk, appealed to be allowed to withdraw, knowing from experience and from the evidence of his commanders in the field that there was no hope of holding the city. Hitler's reply, through his chief of Staff, Zeitzler, was that Vitebsk "would be held". Five hours later he countermanded his instruction and gave Reinhardt's LIII Corps permission to withdraw leaving only a token defending force. But it was already too late, and the Russians virtually annihilated the retreating force, which surrendered on June 27th leaving a gap nearly thirty miles wide in the German line.

The same story was repeated all along the line at each of the "fortified areas". Not until June 28th did Hitler accept that the attack in Belorussia was the actual assault rather than a feint. By then the brilliant and resourceful General Chernyakhovsy and his commanders had pushed forward and broken the line at countless points, destroying German communications and tactical command. As he did so, General Rokossovsky and his 1st Belorussian Front had bypassed the fortified areas, and had thrust through gaps to encircle the German forces beyond. By June 29th, he had destroyed two German Corps, had taken 16,000 prisoners and had killed 18,000 more.

All through July, the Soviet armies pushed relentlessly forward on six major fronts towards Poland and East Prussia, taking Vilnyus on the 13th, Pinsk on the 14th, Grodno on the 15th. July 18th saw Rokossovsky cross the arbitrary Russo-Polish frontier that had been fixed at the Teheran conference; without a backward glance he pushed on to Lublin by the 23rd, Brest-Litovsk by the 28th and Praga, in the suburbs of Warsaw, by the 31st. An idea of the pace of the advance can be gained by looking at the distance between Brest-Litovsk and Warsaw - 120 miles in less than three days. Vast Russian reinforcements had been brought into the battle during the month, and the ratio of fire-power and manpower against the German Army became ever more disadvantageous. So headlong was the German retreat at times that experienced and able commanders took desperate risks. The 8th Panzer Division was caught by Russian aircraft on the move in broad daylight along the main road to Brody, breaking every rule of tank warfare, and paid dearly with the total destruction of a large proportion of its tanks in one attack. In the same area, General Hauffe and 17,000 men of XIII Corps were taken prisoner. Another 30,000, either the lucky or the unlucky ones, depending on your view of Russian prison camps, were killed.

Having crossed the Vistula and reached Praga, within a few miles of the centre of Warsaw, Rokossovsky's Soviet advance came to a sudden and exhausted halt. That his troops were greatly fatigued, and that his lines of supply were extended and not at their best is beyond doubt. Nonetheless there was a strong political motive for the halt. Knowing that the Russians were close, an uprising of the non-Communist Polish Home Army, sparked by a broadcast by Radio Moscow, was under way in Warsaw. Stalin had every reason for wanting as many non-Communist Poles as possible to be killed before his Communist "Polish Army" "liberated" their homeland. He knew that the Germans were massing what force they could to retake Praga, and that they would put down any insurrection, whatever its motives, without a thought. Throughout the first two weeks of August 1944, Stalin studiously ignored Churchill's calls either for Russian help for the Warsaw insurgents against the Germans, or for permission to land and refuel on Soviet-held territory Allied aircraft airlifting supplies to the beleaguered city.

The Germans counterattacked the Russians and drove them back from Praga - then turned their tanks and guns on the lightly armed Poles who held the centre of the city of Warsaw. A motley collection of ex-convicts and Russian prisoners in German uniforms under Waffen-SS control were turned loose on the gallant Polish patriots under General Bor-Komorowski, who were gradually hemmed in and either killed or captured. Appalling atrocities were committed in the name of order in the city before Bor-Komorowski finally surrendered on October 2nd, with 22,000 of his 40,000 fighters dead. Estimates put civilian deaths in the capital as high as 200,000.

By the end of September, the whole of the vast Russian front had caught up with the high-speed advance that had singled out Rokossovsky's advance on Warsaw, and the front stabilised along the line of the Rivers Narew and Vistula. The Russians had now advanced almost 400 miles since June 23rd, and had virtually annihilated 25 of the 37 divisions of the Germany Army Group Centre. As winter came on, the pace quietened, and the Red Army in Poland and on the border of East Prussia prepared its supply lines, brought up its new tanks and equipment, and trained yet more reinforcements for the final push that would clearly bring to Germany the peril it had dreaded more than any other - the Bolshevik invasion.

In Germany, the immense losses of men and equipment brought desperate measures. On October 5th it was announced that all 16-year old youths were to be conscripted for military service and that all hospitals were to be under military control. The Volkssturm or People's Militia was formed to defend the homeland, and all night clubs that had remained open after the disaster of Stalingrad, together with other places of entertainment were closed. To add to the gloom, Goebbels announced that Erwin Rommel had "died of his wounds". In fact, he had committed suicide, aged 52, when it was made plain to him that this was the only permitted alternative to trial, humiliation and execution for his part in the July 20th plot. Thus did Hitler serve those of ability.

The anguish of the German civilian population could only get worse, and get worse it assuredly did as the Allied air offensive maintained the pressure on German cities and sources of production, and the armies of the USA, Britain and Canada advanced on Germany's cities from the West. But it was in the East that terror lay, and the vast exodus of German refugees Westward caused by the Russian advance early in 1945 was to see no equal in the West. The Germans had had their fill of tyranny, and had no wish to exchange one tyrant for another.