THE RUSSIANS SWEEP INTO GERMANY

THE STRIKE AT THE THIRD REICH'S HEART

On the colossal and complex front to the East of the Third Reich, the Soviet armies had been since the end of their massive drive into Poland regrouping, refitting and improving their formidably long supply lines. In December, Major-General Gehlen, in command of German Military Intelligence on the Eastern Front, had warned OKH in general, and Hitler in particular, of the tremendous build-up of Russian strength, particularly on the Vistula, which threatened East Prussia and, through it, Prussia, Berlin and the heart of the Reich. Gehlen was a reliable and experienced staff officer, not given (as the postwar facts proved) to exaggeration. Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, OKH Chief of Staff, supported Gehlen's conclusion that the greatest threat to the security of Germany lay in the might of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts, and 1st and 4th Ukrainian Fronts, the five great Soviet armies poised to sweep West from Poland into Germany. Hitler disagreed, believing against all the evidence that the Soviet build-up was no more than mere propaganda, and that his armies had regained the initiative in the West as a result of the Ardennes offensive. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, Hitler even detached without reference to Guderian the IV SS Panzer Corps from German Army Group Centre for what was essentially a hopeless errand to relieve Budapest. By so doing he reduced the strength of the Group's reserves from 14 to 12 divisions.

The colossal foolhardiness of this action can be appreciated only by comparing the enormous strength of the Russian forces massed ready for the attack with those of the German defending armies. On paper, OKH could muster 164 divisions to defend a front extending from Hungary to Lithuania, of which 99 were effectively in the area that mattered to Prussia - Army Groups A and Centre. But all those divisions were grossly undermanned and most were seriously under-equipped. All were short of fuel and some lacked normal supplies of ammunition. Against them, according to Gehlen's calculations, were massed at least 231 infantry divisions, 22 tank corps, 29 independent tank brigades and three cavalry corps, to say nothing of a mighty and effective air force. All these units were well-equipped and to a greater or lesser extent fully-manned.

Russian sources calculated that the Soviet/German ratios were 5.5:1 in men, 7.8:1 in guns, 5.7:1 in armour and a massive 17.7:1 in aircraft. The Russians had no fewer than 13,400 armoured vehicles, mainly tanks and self-propelled assault guns, and some 5,300,000 men on the Eastern Front. In addition to the famous T-34 tank, the Soviet army now had the JS-3, the best-armed tank of the war, with its 122mm gun, a top speed of 25 mph (despite its 45 tons weight), and a range of 120 miles. Russian aircraft had improved enormously, as had the quality of the Soviet pilots' training.

Despite his earlier rebuff from Hitler when the subject of Soviet strength and the imminent danger of a Russian attack was mentioned, Guderian broached to Hitler on January 9th a detailed plan for a structured withdrawal to more defensible positions, and for transfer of a significant number of divisions from the western front to the East. Hitler responded with a furious rage, once again refusing to accept the possibility of a threat from a race whom he had regarded as sub-human. In his fury, he demanded Gehlen's committal to a lunatic asylum, which Guderian countered by saying that if Gehlen went, he went too. It seemed to the desperate Guderian, one of the most successful soldiers of the Second World War, that nothing could be done to forestall the military disaster that was about to befall the once-proud German Army.

The Soviet High Command, Stavka , had planned its new offensive for January 20th, along a 750 mile front extending from Tilsit on the Niemen, on the borders of Lithuania and close to the Baltic, southwards to Baranow on the Lower Vistula. Because of urgent appeals from Churchill to Stalin to launch an offensive in the East as soon as possible to take the heat off the western front, the Russian's first attack was brought forward to January 12th, and was far to the South of the line. It came from the 1st Ukrainian Front, which was facing the German XLVIII Corps of the 4th Panzerarmee across the lower Vistula at Baranow. The German Corps was thinly spread along its front, with only three weak infantry divisions, each of which was down to six battalions. At Hitler's insistence, and against all advice from Colonel-General Harpe, the reserves were only 12 miles to the rear. Despite firm evidence of new Soviet high-speed tanks whose armament and armour made them virtually unstoppable, Hitler refused to believe that a Russian armoured column would be capable of covering 12 miles in one day. Furthermore, Hitler issued a firm order that the reserves were not to be thrown into action without his express permission - but nonetheless continued to lie abed until 11am.

The attack began at 3am with an artillery barrage, followed by a brief diversionary attack to cause the Panzer units to reveal their positions in the darkness. The Soviet army, commanded by Marshal Konev, swiftly demonstrated what Major-General Gehlen had meant by superiority of fire power. Along the line of attack at Baranow, Konev launched against the German defences no less than 34 infantry divisions and 1,000 tanks, and hammered the German positions with guns 320 to the mile - virtually wheel to wheel. In one day on January 12th, the 1st Ukrainian Front completely overran the 4th Panzerarmee and advanced up to 15 miles; so rapid was the advance that by the time Hitler was available to make decisions about the reserves, the decisions were no longer necessary. As darkness fell, the Russians pushed right on without stopping.

On January 14th, the next Soviet army to the North, Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, broke out of the Pulawy and Magnuszew bridgeheads on the Vistula and, more by chance than planning, encountered German Panzer formations that were well separated from each other and thereby incapable of putting up a united front. General Berzarin's 5th Shock Army and Chuikov's 8th Guards Army virtually annihilated three German divisions that were absurdly outnumbered, and the Soviet 33rd and 69th Armies overran two luckless German divisions whose soldiers must have wondered what hit them. The tidal wave of Russian power almost destroyed the German 9th Army, sweeping across the Vistula and carrying all before it.

Further North again, the Russians encountered firmer German resistance. On January 13th and 14th, the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts and their respective Air Armies went into action against German Army Group Centre and achieved little headway until January 16th, despite outnumbering the German defenders locally by at least 3:1. Soviet intelligence had failed to note that the crack Grossdeutschland Panzer Corps was in the sector it had attacked, and the experienced and skilful German tank commanders made the most of foggy conditions and the surprise their presence had created. On January 14th, the German Panzer units, despite their numerical disadvantage, had launched 37 counterattacks in one day.

Clearly, the Grossdeustchland Panzer Corps had become a key factor in keeping the Soviet 3rd Army at bay. Hitler therefore made, and obstinately refused to alter despite the obvious facts and the outspoken criticism of his Chief of Staff, a decision that even he rarely exceeded in its sheer madness. He ordered that the Grossdeutschland Panzer Corps should be immediately transferred from its present location in Army Group Centre to Army Group A, where it was to attack the Russian forces advancing on Poznan, despite the fact that it would almost certainly be too late arriving there to be any use, and that its removal from its current location would assuredly cause the collapse of the German line.

The Grossdeutschland Corps was duly pulled out of the line, and, on the 16th of January, the Soviet armies began to break through the greatly weakened German 2nd Army. By the 20th January, Marshal Rokossovsky had reached the border of East Prussia and had crossed it, launching his 5th Tank Army towards Elbing. Meanwhile the Grossdeutschland Panzer Corps arrived at Lodz just in time to retreat under heavy fire in an impossible situation and only just made cover in Prussia without being encircled. Hitler's decision precipitated the destruction of no less than 28 German divisions.

To the North, the 3rd Belorussian Front under Chernyakhovsky had pressed forward, overcoming and destroying the 3rd Panzerarmee and approaching, as January drew to a close, within 30 miles of Konigsberg. Colonel-General Reinhardt's 4th Army had, on January 17th, been in what was clearly a dangerously exposed position, and liable to encirclement as the 2nd Belorussian Front pushed forward. Despite urgent appeals from Reinhardt, Hitler refused permission to withdraw. The inevitable happened. On January 21st, 350,000 men of the German 4th Army were encircled and trapped at Lotzen. With considerable ingenuity and great bravery, General Hossbach broke out Southwards and attempted by forced marches over five days through biting snowstorms to get to Elbing before the 5th Guards Tank Army. He failed. The Russian tanks had reached Elbing on January 27th.

Further South, Marshals Zhukov and Konev crashed on towards their goal. The German 2nd Army was shattered and unable to do anything constructive to stop the Russian advance. Between January 19th and January 23rd, Marshal Konev fought 90 miles towards Berlin in just three days. Colonel-General Schoerner, who had replaced Harpe following the latter's disgrace at Hitler's hands following the collapse of Army Group Centre, was a competent general, and a capable administrator, but there was nothing he could do to slow the Russian advance. By the end of January the forward troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front had reached the River Oder above Oppeln and either side of Breslau. At two points they were on the West bank of the Oder. Further South, Zhukov's tank armies had, by the end of the first week of February, reached Frankfurt on Oder, and were only some 50 miles from Hitler's bunker.

At the end of January, Hitler made his last disastrous attempt at reorganising the smashed German armies into some semblance of resistance to the Russian onslaught. Instead of giving the experienced Colonel-General Weichs command of the new Army Group Vistula, as Guderian had wanted, Hitler gave it to his uniquely incompetent and twisted Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, who had already proved with Operation Nordwind the massive extent of his inability to achieve military success. Himmler compounded Hitler's stupidity by appointing his commanders on a basis of party purity rather than military competence. The scene was set for total and unmitigated disaster.

After February 6th, when the Soviet front line extended almost to the border of Prussia, the Soviet advance slowed. Throughout February 1945 and into March, the Russian armies continued the task of isolating and annihilating Germany's remaining forces in Silesia and East Prussia. By mid-April, East Prussia had been taken, and the Soviet line extended from Stettin on the Baltic coast, southwards to Frankfurt on Oder, Forst and Bunzlau, then South-Eastwards around the borders of Czechoslovakia. The victory was almost, but not quite complete. The final act remained to be played, in the West as in the East.