The Road to Berlin (97 page)

Contemplating the high ground enclosing the areas of Kielce and Cracow, with the multiple intersections of river valleys and the dense screen of ancient forest
to the north along the line of the river Pilica, the German command concluded with some confidence that Malopolska was no place for a high-speed offensive with mobile forces. Once before, in November 1914, this natural redoubt had halted two Russian armies in their tracks as they attempted to march on the Silesian border. Following this reasoning, General Harpe duly focused his attention on defences to the south of the upper Vistula, which suited Marshal Koniev perfectly. To encourage this, Koniev assiduously and obviously ‘massed’ his forces to the south of the Vistula, all the while slipping armour, infantry and artillery across the Vistula by night into his old bridgehead to the east of Czarna, aiming to strike directly at Kielce with his right-flank forces and to cross the river Nida with divisions on his centre and left.

At 5 o’clock on the morning of Friday 12 January 1945, deploying as many as 300 heavy- and medium-calibre guns for each kilometre of front, Koniev opened his ‘artillery attack’, simultaneously pushing reconnaissance battalions forward amidst this fierce rolling fire. Driven on by the desperation of the penal units—the
strafbats
—in their midst, these forward battalions took the first line of German trenches and went to ground ahead of the second, whereupon the Soviet guns opened fire once again, an hour and forty-seven minutes of sustained bombardment which blasted away everything in its path, with fearful physical and psychological consequences. The gunfire battered in Fourth
Panzer
Army’s command post and broke up the German mobile reserves that were deployed in the immediate vicinity of the main battle line, the
Hauptkampflinie
, on Hitler’s express instruction—whatever tactical ingenuity or flexibility the German command might have shown had been brutally extinguished by the
Führer’s
own meddling in front-line dispositions. This chaos was also compounded by the damage done by Koniev’s guns which reached into the German rear and also ripped away huge gaps in the first line of German defences: pounded now by Soviet long-range guns, dazed and bludgeoned by the incessant bombardment, the defenders fell back on their second line in order to meet the impending Russian attack just as Koniev loosed his armour into the breaches torn in their lines. Shortly after noon Lelyushenko stood ready with his 4th Tank Army and learned that Pukhov’s 13th Army was already through the first line of German defences. The first German prisoners, ashen and trembling, babbled out the details of what horror the Russian bombardment had brought to the German trenches, with the dead flung over the screaming wounded. At 1350 hours Lelyushenko asked Koniev for permission to launch his tank formations; Koniev replied in seven minutes, authorizing the armoured advance, and at 1400 hours 10th Tank and 6th Guards Mechanized Corps (4th Tank Army) moved off, each with a regiment reinforced with the newer heavy IS ‘Stalin’ tanks mounting 122mm guns. Shortly before three o’clock in the afternoon Soviet tank units were in action against the 168th Infantry Division and 51st
Panzer
Battalion with its own heavy tanks, all elements of the German tactical reserve.

By the evening of 12 January Koniev’s tank and infantry formations had broken through Fourth
Panzer
Army’s defences to a depth of over twelve miles along a 25-mile front, with Lelyushenko’s tanks at least twenty miles into the German positions though now about to collide with Nehring’s XXIV
Panzer
Corps aimed at the Soviet northern flank. In 36 hours of heavy fighting, which brought over two hundred German tanks and assault guns into action, Lelyushenko and Pukhov drove to the river Nida on a broad front, while Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army with two infantry armies—Koroteyev’s 52nd and Zhadov’s 5th Guards—held off more German counter-attacks in the area of Chmielnik. With three Soviet armies closing on Kielce—4th and 3rd Guards Tank Armies, with the sturdy 13th under the imperturbable Pukhov—the fate of XXIV
Panzer
Corps was sealed, trapped as it was to the south of Czarna Nida. Pinczow, an important junction, had already fallen to Soviet troops, despite desperate German attempts to hold it. Koniev had meanwhile launched his left-flank army, Kurochin’s 60th, on a drive for Cracow and, to keep up the momentum of his main attack as the front broadened, he slid Korovnikov’s 59th Army and Poluboyarov’s 4th Guards Tank Corps into the gap between 60th and 5th Guards Army; both of these formations were also speedily aimed at Cracow.

As Lelyushenko outflanked Kielce from the west in a drive across the Nida, Soviet infantry fought a final fierce battle for the town, losing it briefly to
Panzer
troops who were eventually destroyed, together with remnants of XXIV
Panzer
Corps. The capture of Kielce secured the whole of Koniev’s right flank and brought his armies into open country; Zhadov and Rybalko struck out in pursuit, taking their infantry well beyond the Nida and towards the foothills of Cracow, while to the north Soviet tanks reached the Pilica. This deep penetration brought imminent danger to the German XLII Corps, already half encircled, but the attempt at withdrawal degenerated into hopeless chaos as Soviet tank units broke into Corps
HQ
, killing or capturing the German staff; the Corps commander, General Recknagel, fell into the hands of Polish partisans. In a wild and ill-considered move, which ran counter to Guderian’s urgent advice, Hitler ordered the
Gross Deutschland Panzer
Corps from East Prussia to Lodz in order to stiffen the defence of Kielce—but Kielce had already fallen to the Russians. The
Panzer
corps found itself fighting not for Kielce but in Lodz itself, which all too soon came under attack.

The fall of Kielce and the growing threat to Cracow finally brought signs of movement to that strangely inert German force deployed in the Wisloka area on the southern side of the Vistula—all in expectation of that Soviet attack which never materialized. On 16 January the withdrawal began, prompted by the beginning of an attack aimed at Jaslo (mounted by Moskalenko’s 38th Army on the extreme right flank of Petrov’s 4th Ukrainian Front) and nudged on its way by Gusev’s 21st Army (Koniev’s Front); with luck these German divisions would be eventually outflanked from north and south, but next day the German
command suddenly speeded the withdrawal, pulling units towards the south of Cracow and into the Myslenice area.

As the evening of 17 January drew on, Koniev’s left-flank armies were drawing up on Cracow; Zhadov’s 5th Guards and Rybalko’s tanks, operating along the ‘Czestochowa axis’, had already outflanked the city far to the north, while 59th and 60th Army closed on the city. Koniev determined on a rapid operation to seize this ancient Polish city. Up with 59th Army on the morning of 19 January, he ordered Poluboyarov’s tank corps to envelop the city from the west and thus threaten encirclement in company with Kurochkin’s 60th Army operating to the south and south-east. Korovnikov’s 59th would attack from the north and north-west in a special bid to take the bridges over the Vistula. But that same evening the city was cleared and spared all-out bombardment, the threat of encirclement precipitating a German retreat; for once, the usually merciless Koniev let them go on their way. The fall of Cracow completed the battle for Malopolska. The way to the Oder was open, for which Koniev intended to use Rybalko’s tanks, while the infantry armies would envelop the Silesian industrial area from the north, north-west and south. In the course of a week Koniev’s Front had achieved major successes and a victory of strategic proportions, comparable to earlier resounding Soviet triumphs.

If Koniev toppled the pillars of the German defensive system, Zhukov pulled down the entire roof. On 17 January, the sixth day of Koniev’s offensive and the fourth of Zhukov’s, the situation had become plainly catastrophic; every vestige of a front line running from the Pilica in the north to the Nida in the south had been totally obliterated. Marshal Zhukov proposed to attack out of his two bridgeheads at Magnuszew and Pulawy, north-east and east of Radom—an unlikely axis of advance at first sight due to the heavy forestation between the Pilica and the Radomka rivers. Zhukov carefully fostered this impression by appearing to aim directly at Warsaw, but steadily cramming the Magnuszew bridgehead—a mere seven miles deep with a frontage of fifteen miles—with almost half a million men and well over a thousand tanks.

On the morning of 14 January Zhukov unleashed his Front forces in what proved to be a savage and relentless offensive, achieving stunning tactical surprise from the outset. Under cover of a pulverizing artillery barrage lasting twenty-five minutes, forward assault battalions moved out of the Magnuszew bridgehead and along the ‘fire lanes’ in what Zhukov called ‘the reconnaissance action’—but one conducted with such punch and power that German units fell back from their first line in confusion. To exploit this momentum Zhukov sent in his main assault forces virtually on the heels of the assault battalions, their passage secured by double ‘fire lanes’ reaching up to three kilometres into the German positions. The leading tank corps were committed shortly after noon, deepening the penetration along the southern bank of the Pilica and the northern bank of the Radomka; 26th Rifle Corps took the Pilica in its stride, established a small bridgehead near Warka—whose garrison fled in the direction of Warsaw—and secured a bridge
capable of taking sixty tons, mined but not blown. Bogdanov’s 2nd Guards Tank Army speedily made full use of this godsend from the infantry: by the evening of 14 January Russian tanks were driving at will as much as twenty miles beyond the breakthrough line. Even greater success attended the attack from the Pulawy bridgehead, which brought a Soviet tank corps (the 11th) into striking distance of Radom.

Having punched this double hole in the German positions, Zhukov pressed his advance by night and day. Heavy barrages fired off for up to forty minutes on 15 January preceded Berzarin’s 5th Shock Army’s attack across the Pilica. Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army struck out for the Warka–Radom railway line and final German defensive positions, with Katukov’s 1st Guards Tank Army sent in to pursue retreating German units. The right flank of Zhukov’s Front now went into action, when on the morning of 15 January under cover of a 55-minute bombardment Perkhorovich’s 47th Army north of Warsaw began clearing the reach between the Vistula and western Bug. To this envelopment from the north was added another building up from the south, where Belov’s 61st Army was approaching Warsaw from the south-west—while Bogdanov’s tanks were sweeping in a north-westerly direction on Sochaczow to cut the main German escape route. Faced with the imminence of encirclement, the German command decided on the hasty evacuation of the Polish capital; if the city could not be held as one of the ‘fortresses’ specifically designated by Hitler, it could at least be burned, blown up, mined and even looted in a revolting spasm of vengeful destruction. The German withdrawal began during the night of 17 January whereupon the task of breaking into the city was assigned to the 1st Polish Army operating with 1st Belorussian Front; the 6th Polish Division crossed the Vistula near Praga (supported by the gunfire of the Soviet 31st Special Armoured Train Artillery Battalion), as the 2nd Polish Division fought its way into the city from the north, eliminating the German rearguards amidst these fearful and tragic ruins. By noon on 17 January 1945 Warsaw was cleared of German troops.

The fall of Warsaw triggered off reaction in both Berlin and Moscow. Maddened by the abandonment of the city in spite of categorical orders to hold, Hitler lashed out at his military commanders, removing Harpe from Army Group A and replacing him with a man supposedly after his own heart, Schörner, at the same time dismissing von Lüttwitz as
GOC
Ninth Army and putting Busse in command. Vindictive though this fiat directed against the General Staff was, its irrationality paled into insignificance compared with Hitler’s other decision—to transfer the powerful Sixth
SS Panzer
Army from the Ardennes to Hungary, of all places. For the sake of the paltry Hungarian oilfields, the
Führer
dismissed the actual and impending loss of two army groups (A and, latterly, Centre), ignored the massive threat building up in the direction of the Oder and derided the imminent peril to the German population. Guderian could make no impression with his pleading to bring Sixth
Panzer
to bear in the battle for the Oder—shunting an entire
Panzer
army half way across Europe must in any event keep
it out of action for many weeks—nor was he able to persuade Hitler to bring Army Group North back into the battle for the
Reich
by evacuating it from Courland. If Hitler’s decisions were extravagant and even unreal, Stalin at the
Stavka
showed a marked disposition to caution. The
Stavka
directive of 17 January issued to 1st Ukrainian and 1st Belorussian Fronts redefined their respective objectives: Koniev would make his main effort in the direction of Breslau in order to reach the Oder not later than 30 January, with the left-flank armies taking Cracow by 20–22 January and thereafter outflanking the Dabrowa coalmining area from the north and south, using second-echelon armies for that latter move; Zhukov’s primary target was fixed at Poznan and his final objective to secure the Poznan–Bydgoszcz line ‘not later than 2–4 February’.

Events soon outpaced both Hitler and Stalin. In not much more than a hundred hours after these various decisions, by 20 January at the latest, the gigantic Soviet breakthrough reaching from East Prussia to the foothills of the Carpathians—a huge rent almost 350 miles across—was an accomplished fact. After one week’s fighting, the German defensive system had been staved in, overrun or bypassed, Fourth
Panzer
and Ninth Armies reduced to a drifting mass of men and mangled machines, left far to the rear and oozing in a glutinous military mass in the direction of the Oder and hopefully home. On the day that Koniev took Cracow, 19 January, the large industrial city of Lodz fell to Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army on Zhukov’s Front. Without any specific orders from Front
HQ
, Chuikov had decided to take Lodz, which lay spread out before him in the winter sunshine on the morning of the 19th, smoke coming from the factory chimneys and without visible signs of preparation for a determined defence. The first hazard came from the Soviet air force, bent on a bombing and strafing mission and completely unaware that the Soviet 8th Guards Army lay beneath its bomb-line; only frantic ground signals and the desperate firing of green rockets caused the aircraft to sheer off. The city remained wholly intact. Soviet tanks broke into the western suburbs and forward units reached the road along which German units were pulling out to the south-west. Further to the north Zhukov’s tank columns were fanning out across Mazovia, racing along the good road network in western Poland. Meanwhile, the locking of Zhukov’s left flank (33rd Army and a tank corps) with Koniev’s right in the region of Ilza (south-west of the Pulawy bridgehead) finally eliminated the Opatow–Ostrowiec salient and scooped up further remnants of Fourth
Panzer
Army near Skarzisko and Konsk.