Ostkrieg

by Stephen G. Fritz

  10

  Death Throes

  By January 1945, the point had long been passed where a continuation of the war made any sense since Hitler had no hope of achieving Lebensraum or the envisioned racial reordering of Eastern Europe. Certainly, the unconditional surrender doctrine of the Western allies as well as fear of Soviet revenge played a role in stiffening both the regime and the population, weary as most were of the war. Hitler, however, had an additional reason. For him, as for many of his generation, the collapse of imperial Germany in November 1918 had been a searing trauma. Indeed, the burning desire to redeem this humiliation as well as ensure that it never happened again formed the core of his ideology. His unyielding hatred of the Jewish conspiracy, his determination to break the bonds of Jewish plutocracy as evidenced in the emasculation of Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, his vision of an empire in the east that would cement German hegemony in Europe, and his notion of a racially pure Volksgemeinschaft all stemmed from his understanding of the causes of the collapse in 1918. On the very day Germany had invaded Poland in September 1939, he had stressed to the Reichstag that “a November 1918 shall never occur again in Germany,” a theme that became an obsession as the war turned against him. At the height of the Stalingrad battle in early November 1942, he had again contrasted his determination with that of the Kaiser’s government. “Germany at that time,” he stressed, “laid down its arms at quarter to twelve. In principle, I always stop only at five past twelve.” Nor, in the intervening two years, had his stance softened, his last proclamation to the Old Fighters at Munich on 12 November 1944 again emphasizing the destructiveness and exterminationist intent of Jewry. This time, however, he also provided a glimpse of how he intended to stage his own and his regime’s demise. He would, he vowed, never capitulate and repeat the shame of 1918; he would instead give the world a “praiseworthy example” of struggle against the “Bolshevik monster.”1

  That this fight to the last, to be staged as a Wagnerian spectacle of epic proportions, would result in the “heroic” destruction of Germany as well as its warlord was self-evident to Hitler, if not welcomed by the mass of Germans. Nonetheless, it resulted in the unparalleled destruction of an advanced industrial society. In the last four months of the war, over 1.4 million German soldiers lost their lives (over 1.5 million through December 1945), Allied bombing reduced the medieval splendor of many German cities to little more than heaps of rubble, and hundreds of thousands of civilians (especially women) felt the brunt of Soviet revenge. Huddled in their ruined cellars beneath mounds of stone, much of the German population at the end of the war resembled nothing more than the cave dwellers of old. True to his racial theories, however, and in accordance with notions of total war developed in the 1930s, Hitler was fully prepared to fight this struggle for the naked existence of Germany to the bitter end, even if it meant the complete destruction of his own people.2

  A number of factors reinforced Hitler’s decision to fight on: the spinelessness of his top military advisers, the ideological indoctrination of young Germans, the conviction of those who had committed crimes that they had nothing to lose by fighting on, and Goebbels’s propaganda argument that both the Western allies and the Soviets were determined to destroy Germany. It was also, ironically, given a boost by seemingly objective factors: natural obstacles protected Germany in the west and south, while the German navy still controlled the Baltic Sea to the north. In addition, the last burst of Speer’s armaments economy had resulted in an upsurge of weapons production, and, although there was no prospect for continued high output, the enormous losses of 1944 had largely been made good, although the Soviets still enjoyed a crushing material superiority. The most serious problems were shortages of ammunition, trucks, and fuel as well as the fact that Hitler would squander much of the tank production in the Ardennes and Hungary, but the quality of the weapons was still outstanding. Moreover, the shortening of the front in the east meant that for the first time in years the Germans had troops available to man defensive lines (even though the strength of the Ostheer was still 700,000 less than a year earlier) and to form at least a limited tactical reserve and that supply of these forces would be easier and quicker. Finally, it could be expected that German troops would fight bitterly to defend their homeland while even the seemingly inexhaustible Soviet reserves of manpower were reaching their limits. With the German hope of a successful conclusion of the war reduced to splitting the Allied coalition, Hitler’s main goal was simply to win time.3

  To that end, the Vistula front had been prepared according to the World War I model. In view of the enemy’s manpower and material superiority and their own continued deficiencies, the Germans aimed to create successive defensive lines to a depth of 120 miles that would slow an advancing army by forcing it to fight its way through endless defensive positions while at the same time defending against mobile counter-thrusts. In addition, the backbone of this defense tactically was to be a series of fortified front positions that, as in the Great War, would allow the defenders to withdraw from the exposed forward line during an enemy artillery bombardment, absorb the energy of the attack and slow its momentum, and then launch tactical counterattacks that would snap the defenders back to their original positions. The key problem, however, remained that this sort of defense required sufficient manpower and mobile reserves, neither of which the Germans possessed. Army Group A, which would bear the brunt of the Soviet winter offensive, at best numbered 400,000 troops with just over 300 tanks and 600 assault guns, while Luftflotte 6, covering the areas of both Army Group A and Army Group Center, on 10 January 1945 had only 300 fighters against 10,500 enemy aircraft, a ratio of thirty-five to one, which actually represented an improvement from June 1944, when the figure was forty to one. Although reinforced on the eve of the offensive with another 300 fighters and 700 ground attack aircraft, Luftflotte 6 faced the impossible task of compensating for army weakness on a five-hundred-mile-wide front. Nor, evidently, had anyone at the OKH pondered the obvious lesson of July 1943 when, during the Kursk offensive, a far smaller German force had penetrated a much more elaborate Soviet defensive system. The question of how a much smaller defending force in far less prepared positions would halt an attack by an overwhelmingly superior enemy remained unasked. Indeed, Army Group A’s own study had already shown not only that the Russians could break through and reach the Silesian border in six days, but also that even stopping them on the Oder was problematic.4

  Although, in retrospect, an assault west from Warsaw toward Berlin appeared most favorable for a rapid and relatively bloodless victory, the planners at the Stavka seem to have arrived at this option only gradually. By late October 1944, the outlines of what became the Vistula-Oder operation had been hammered out. While Soviet forces would continue to attack in Hungary to draw off German reserves, preparations would be made for the main thrust, with the goal nothing less than a daring dash to Berlin that would end the war. This, however, required a considerable logistic effort to supply the massive forces involved, which, in turn, necessitated a rebuilding of the Polish railroad system. As a result, and much to Stalin’s displeasure, the Red Army was forced to go on the defensive to prepare for what was expected to be the last offensive of the war. As finally developed, the Stavka plan envisioned a complicated two-pronged attack. In the north, the Second and Third Belorussian Fronts would assault East Prussia in a virtual replica of the disastrous August 1914 campaign, with the intention of isolating and destroying Army Group Center. The main attack, however, would be directed at the dangerously weak Army Group A on the middle Vistula. To the south, Konev’s First Ukrainian Front would launch its assault from the Sandomierz bridgehead and advance toward Breslau. The next day, Zhukov’s First Belorussian Front would unleash the main offensive from the Magnuszew bridgehead in the direction of Lodz and Posen. Both aimed through irresistible power and a rapid tempo to destroy the enemy in front of them and then strike into the heart of the Reich, ending the war in about a forty-five-day campaign.
As usual, the Soviets assembled an overwhelming force for the winter offensive. Together, the First Belorussian Front under Zhukov, who had been given the honor of commanding the main thrust to Berlin, and the First Ukrainian Front under Konev had over 2.2 million troops, some seven thousand tanks, and five thousand aircraft. At the same time, the Second and Third Belorussian Fronts together possessed 1.67 million men, thirty-five hundred tanks, and fifteen hundred aircraft. In order to force a breakthrough as quickly as possible, at the point of attack in the bridgeheads the Soviets had amassed a numerical superiority of men, tanks, and artillery of ten to one.5

  Although Guderian at the OKH, Gehlen at Foreign Armies East, and the army group commanders all anticipated the Soviet offensive—and even got the approximate date right—they expected a reprise of Bagration and, thus, had strengthened the German flanks at the expense of the center. Their response was also hindered by Hitler’s failure to take intelligence reports of growing enemy strength and activity seriously and, thus, to allow Army Groups A and Center to withdraw to more defensible positions as well as his decision to deploy most of the Wehrmacht’s scarce reserves to Hungary. Typically, as late as 9 January, the Führer not only refused to believe intelligence estimates of Soviet strength, claiming that they had to be inflated, but also even rambled on about the folly of giving ground in Russia in the first place. Although Guderian warned him that the Ostfront was like “a house of cards”—“if the front is broken through at one point, all the rest will collapse”—he had no convincing response. His reply that “the Eastern Front must help itself and make do with what it’s got” was dismissed derisively by Guderian as an “ostrich strategy.” Even on the tactical level, the Führer’s obsession with holding ground undermined the planned German defense in depth. At his insistence, the second and main defensive positions had been built within a few thousand meters of the forward lines, which made them vulnerable to Soviet artillery and, thus, negated the whole German strategy. In addition, German commanders down to the company level, under threat of punishment, could leave their positions only if given explicit orders from their divisions, which, in practice, meant approval from Hitler, again undermining the idea of a flexible defense. Finally, in order to prevent their movement from being disrupted by enemy air attack, many German mobile divisions had been deployed far forward. Not only did they have less room to maneuver, then, but they also would quickly get caught up in the main attack, thus limiting their assigned role of pinching off enemy breakthroughs.6

  When forward units of the First Ukrainian Front launched their attack in the early morning hours of 12 January, their commander, Marshal Ivan Konev, had taken steps to further negate the German defense in depth. Following an intense twenty-five-minute artillery bombardment, his troops in the Sandomierz bridgehead pushed into the first German position and in some cases the second, then halted before the main battle line, which was then subjected to a shelling lasting well over an hour and a half. Only after destroying up to a quarter of the strength of the defending battalions did the Russians storm ahead behind a rolling barrage. The effect was devastating. As Guderian had predicted, the Ostheer proved unable to withstand the enemy onslaught. Within hours, the Soviets had penetrated up to twelve miles through the German defenses. The speed of the enemy advance swept the German mobile reserve in this area, the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Panzer Divisions, almost immediately into the heat of battle, forcing them to fight for their lives rather than launch a counterattack. By the end of the day, Konev’s forces had blasted a hole in German defenses over twenty-five miles wide and twelve miles deep. By the end of the second day, the penetration was thirty-six miles wide and twenty-four miles deep, while, on the sixteenth, the Soviets seized the cities of Radom and Czestochowa. Having achieved an operational breakthrough, Konev’s troops raced to the west, sweeping aside or surrounding the remnants of the German defenders.7

  Having achieved immediate success in the first phase of a staggered operation designed to hinder any movement of German forces opposite the main attack in the center, Soviet troops of Cherniakhovsky’s Third Belorussian Front launched their offensive on the thirteenth. Striking against the Third Panzer Army of Army Group Center, they aimed to advance from the eastern border of East Prussia in the direction of Königsberg. Although effective German defense turned the attack into a prolonged penetration rather than a breakthrough, Soviet pressure nonetheless forced the German defenders back. Despite this momentary German success, the situation of Army Group Center began quickly to deteriorate, for the next day, 14 January, Rokossovsky’s Second Belorussian Front attacked the Second Army out of its Serock and Rozan bridgeheads across the Narew just north of Warsaw. Quickly penetrating German defenses, Rokossovsky unleashed his mobile forces into the German rear. Soviet tank units swiftly overwhelmed the Seventh Panzer Division, the only formidable German mobile reserve in the area, forcing it to fight its way back to the west. Although Guderian that same day was already warning of an “extraordinarily serious situation,” Hitler, as well as the army group commanders, seemed to have only belatedly realized the approaching catastrophe. On the thirteenth, the Führer had ordered two infantry divisions transferred from the west but refused to move the Fourth SS Panzer Corps out of Hungary and, incredibly, two days later directed that the Sixth SS Panzer Army be sent from the Ardennes to the east, but to Hungary, not Poland. On the fourteenth, with the situation of Army Group A nearing the critical point and the danger to Upper Silesia acute, Hitler ordered Army Group Center to transfer Panzer Corps Grossdeutschland and its two powerful divisions, Brandenburg and Hermann Goering, to its neighbor to the south, a decision that hurt the former more than it helped the latter. The result was immediately apparent; by 16 January, the Third Panzer Army neared the breaking point, and the Fourth Army faced encirclement, while, on the eighteenth, the Second Army’s front snapped. The Soviets seemed well on their way to achieving their goal of isolating East Prussia and finally destroying their old nemesis, Army Group Center.8

  With the Germans strained to the breaking point in both the north and the south, on the morning of 14 January Zhukov unleashed his First Belorussian Front from the Magnuszew and Pulawy bridgeheads south of Warsaw. Similar to Konev’s successful effort to the south, after a twenty-five-minute artillery barrage, Zhukov’s forces launched a series of powerful probing attacks on the forward German positions, followed by the main assault. Even though Zhukov planned to engage his mobile forces only on the second and third days of the attack in order to generate momentum, the power of the Soviet onslaught so unhinged the Ninth Army’s defenses that, by the end of the first day, the Russians in the Magnuszew bridgehead had advanced up to seven miles and the gains at Pulawy were even more impressive. The next day, the Soviets shattered a determined counterattack by the Nineteenth and Twenty-fifth Panzer Divisions and achieved an operational breakthrough. While Russian armored units began their drive toward Lodz, eighty miles northwest of Magnuszew, units of the First Polish Army moved north to encircle Warsaw, in combination with forces of the Soviet Forty-seventh Army that had pushed across the Vistula at Modlin, north of the capital. On the sixteenth, Hitler reacted in typical fashion to the brewing disaster, sacking the hapless commander of Army Group A, General Joseph Harpe, and replacing him with the ubiquitous Ferdinand Schörner. At the same time, he issued a completely delusory directive that Army Group A should not only hold a line from east of Krakow to Warsaw and Modlin but also attack and destroy or throw back the enemy all along the line—even though it could expect no reinforcements for two weeks. Despite the Führer’s will, however, the next day Polish forces seized Warsaw with virtually no opposition, an action that touched off an explosion in Berlin. Hitler immediately suspected that the OKH had sabotaged his orders, on the eighteenth ordering the arrest of the three senior officers at Operations Branch, and the next day signing an order that effectively directed all commanders down to the division level to get permission from him for any operational movement, whether attack or wit
hdrawal.9

  The energetic and ruthless Schörner quickly emulated his Führer by getting rid of various commanders and issuing orders that exuded will and confidence, but to no avail. By the end of the day on the eighteenth, having destroyed forward German defenses and routed their counterattacks, Soviet forces were in a headlong dash westward, with some units advancing twenty-five to thirty miles a day. Behind the front, masses of civilian refugees, and not a few stragglers from combat units, fled westward in treks that would become all too familiar. Although the Grossdeutschland Panzer Corps, sent by train from East Prussia with orders to “restore the situation,” and the remnants of the Nineteenth and Twenty-fifth Panzer Divisions tried to halt the Soviet advance near Lodz, they did little to slow Soviet momentum. By now, the Russians had steamrollered any opposition in their way and, enjoying complete aerial domination, swarmed toward the German border. The Stavka had itself been surprised by the swiftness of the collapse of Army Group A but reacted immediately and directed both Zhukov and Konev to push on to the Oder. On the nineteenth, Konev’s troops overran the Reich border in Silesia and, three days later, reached the Oder south of Breslau. Not to be outdone, Zhukov’s troops seized the industrial city of Lodz on the nineteenth, encircled Posen on the twentieth, took Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) on the twenty-first, and had reached the fortifications on the east Brandenburg border by the twenty-sixth. Four days later, these had been broken through, and, by the end of January, Zhukov’s troops had reached the Oder at Küstrin, over 240 miles from their starting point two weeks earlier. Over the first few days of February, they proceeded to establish bridgeheads across the Oder in preparation for what seemed an imminent strike at the Reich capital. Hitler reacted to this disaster, perhaps hoping to conjure something out of nothing, by renaming his army groups: Army Group Center became North, North became Courland, and A became Center. At the same time, a new army group, misleadingly named Vistula, was created under the most improbable of commanders, Heinrich Himmler, with the task of defending western Pomerania and the port city of Stettin.10