Ostkrieg

by Stephen G. Fritz

  Neither side remained passive as the Soviets built their strength for the inevitable assault on Berlin. In order to prevent the Germans from transferring forces to the Oder front, the Soviets remained active in Hungary and Silesia; both served, as well, to distract Hitler’s attention from the main threat. To gain better jumping-off points, the Russians also hammered throughout March at expanding and uniting their various bridgeheads across the Oder, while the Germans resisted just as determinedly. The focal point of the March battles soon became the fortress of Küstrin, at the confluence of the Warthe and Oder Rivers. For a variety of reasons, ranging from the historical to the tactical, Hitler was soon obsessed with holding on to the city, which resulted in a wearying, weeks-long contest that the Germans could not win. At his insistence, they even mounted a late March counterattack from Frankfurt/Oder in order to relieve the besieged city. Although it caught the Soviets by surprise and even reached the outskirts of Küstrin, the attack, which could not possibly have altered the balance of forces, rapidly lost momentum, with the only result a waste of scarce German forces. Amazingly, even at this late date, Hitler could not accept the inability of the Wehrmacht to win operational victories or the fact that the enemy now dictated events. Seething with anger, and searching for a scapegoat, the Führer found him in one of his few remaining rational military leaders, Heinz Guderian. Having vigorously defended the actions of the commanders involved in the Küstrin attack, the field marshal now once more felt Hitler’s wrath, being given on 28 March six weeks “sick leave.” Although Hitler would have preferred no OKH chief of staff or to surround himself with old free-booting Freikorps types, he nonetheless named General Hans Krebs, a young firebrand, acting chief of staff. Küstrin fell on the thirtieth, an action that brought to a close the grinding March battles along the Oder that had cost both sides dearly.33

  With the preliminaries resolved, the Stavka could now finalize its plans for the Berlin Operation. Painfully aware of history, of examples of Russian armies denied certain victory because of overconfidence and poor preparation, it was determined to make this the last offensive of the war. Following an impressively rapid redeployment of troops, the Soviets were able to assemble a force of 2.5 million men, 6,250 tanks, and 7,500 aircraft in the three fronts participating in the assault. In order to ensure a breakthrough on the first day of the attack, Zhukov not only created special shock groups but also demanded an extensive tactical concentration of forces, with the result that enormously large numbers of men and equipment were crammed into a very narrow front. In this way, he hoped literally to shove his way through German defenses, but, in the event, he managed only to make a mockery of the Schwerpunkt principle, as the first day would show. Although the Soviets estimated enemy forces at 1 million, with almost 800,000 combat troops, this proved a gross exaggeration of their actual firepower since a sizable percentage of the defenders were Volkssturm battalions or hastily assembled units of undertrained boys. At the beginning of April, the Ninth Army, for example, which would bear the brunt of the attack, reported its strength at around 190,000 men, of whom fewer than 100,000 were regarded as combat troops. To its north, the Third Panzer Army fared no better; on 1 April, it had a daily strength of 51,406 men, with only 27,595 front soldiers. Army Group Vistula, facing the First and Second Belorussian Fronts, had fewer than 800 operational tanks and assault guns, while the Luftwaffe could muster perhaps 1, 600 operational aircraft, although the chronic shortage of fuel hindered the effectiveness of both tanks and aircraft. To bolster their defenses, the Germans had managed to designate a pitifully few divisions as a reserve, while the leadership of the Hitler Youth had trained 6,000 boys for specially created Panzernahkampfeinheit (tank close combat units). Their task, as the name suggested, was to destroy enemy tanks at close range, not an activity designed to ensure a long life. Nonetheless, on 12 April, Hitler announced that he expected a “colossal” victory since nowhere else in Germany was a front so strongly held or well supplied. That the enemy had an even greater concentration of force and that the German supply of munitions was good for only a few days were facts that he ignored.34

  The Soviet plan of attack envisioned, as the Germans anticipated, several simultaneous blows along a broad front, with Zhukov’s First Belorussian Front providing the main thrust directly opposite Berlin. To his north, Rokossovsky’s Second Belorussian Front would support Zhukov’s right flank, with its primary task being to strike quickly toward the Baltic ports of Stettin and Rostock. To the south, Konev’s Third Ukrainian Front was to attack across the Neisse and Spree Rivers, with the main force advancing west and northwest toward the Elbe and the southern outskirts of Berlin, while a secondary attack aimed in the direction of Dresden. Rather pointedly, however, Stalin refused to draw an exact boundary line between Konev’s and Zhukov’s army groups, thus inviting each of his ambitious marshals to entertain notions of capturing the great prize of the war. In operational terms, in order to ensure that this would finally be the war-ending operation, the Stavka aimed at shattering and destroying German forces east of Berlin, surrounding and seizing the capital quickly, and splitting Germany in two by advancing to the Elbe no later than two weeks after the beginning of the offensive. This latter move would, Stalin believed, not only limit any further German resistance but also have the salutary effect both of impressing his Western allies and of keeping them as far from Berlin as possible.35

  Early on 14 April, in order to draw as many enemy troops as possible into the front line and, thus, expose them to artillery bombardment once the main attack began, Soviet forces began a preliminary assault against German defenses in the Oderbruch. In some areas, the weight of the attack was so great that already in this opening phase the Germans had to dispatch troops from the reserve to maintain the line. The pressure continued the next day, and, in places, the Soviet attackers wedged their way three miles into the first line of defense, but the Germans, by now familiar with this Soviet tactic, refused to allow more of their troops to be drawn forward. Not until 3:00 A.M. on 16 April did the Russians launch the main offensive. In the hope of providing some element of surprise, Zhukov had chosen to attack two hours before sunrise, relying on 143 searchlights to illuminate the battlefield. Neither the extended preliminary assault of the previous two days nor the intense thirty-minute artillery barrage accomplished the Russians’ goals, however, for the Germans had simply withdrawn much of their strength to the second and third positions, with the result that the shells fell largely on empty trenches. Moreover, since dust and smoke filled the predawn air, the powerful searchlights merely disoriented the attacking troops, who floundered about while trying desperately to see the enemy positions behind the dense dust clouds. As waves of concentrated infantry stumbled blindly forward on the narrow fronts, the troops inevitably piled on top of each other in the withering German fire. By daybreak, the confusion was complete. Nor could tanks come to the aid of the infantry since the roads quickly became jammed and the shoulders and fields were too swampy and heavily mined to allow vehicles to advance. Even when the infantry managed to reach the base of the Seelow Heights, it could go no further since a canal running in front proved difficult to cross and the slopes were too steep for the accompanying vehicles. By late morning, then, the attack had made disappointingly little progress.36

  Zhukov, anxiously watching the scene from a forward command post, now compounded the problem by making an error more typical of Soviet commanders in 1942–1943 than in the late stage of the war. Impatient, he ordered his armored exploitation force to move forward in an effort to hasten the penetration of German defenses. Not only did this play to the German strength in antitank defenses, but it also caused the attacking units to become hopelessly entangled. Each time they attempted to move forward through the maze of fortified villages, German infantry armed with Panzerfausts swarmed around, destroying vehicles and further blocking the roads, while armored units launched tactical counterattacks. The opening day for the Soviets had, thus, resembled a comic opera mor
e than a well-planned attack by five Russian armies against vastly inferior enemy forces. Despite high losses, they had not been able to penetrate the first German line of defense, let alone achieve any sort of breakthrough. Disappointed, Zhukov telephoned Stalin with the bad news, which the ill-tempered dictator took surprisingly calmly. This was likely because he had already received a report from Konev indicating that his attack had gone off splendidly, information that he gleefully passed on to the chagrined Zhukov. Moreover, given the disappointing lack of progress of the First Belorussian Front, Stalin the next day deliberately provoked a competition between his commanders to see who could be the first to Berlin. In a tense telephone conversation with Zhukov and Konev late on the seventeenth, Stalin erased even the indistinct boundary line between the two army groups, thus encouraging the bitter rivals to intensify their efforts. Although risky in the sense that it increased the danger of Soviet units slamming into and firing on each other by mistake, this move certainly accomplished its practical purpose, which was to speed the advance.37

  The defensive success of the Ninth Army had exacted a stiff toll, however, as already on the first day of the attack it had been forced to commit its reserves to the battle, even those intended for operational counterattacks. Thus, when the attack resumed the next day, the lack of German strength began to have noticeable consequences. As Soviet forces pushed inexorably forward in a slow, grinding battle, the brittle German front began to crack in numerous sectors. The most intense fighting had now developed around two key cities, Wriezen to the north and Seelow in the center, where all day on the seventeenth the two sides traded attack and counterattack. Although reinforcements were rushed to the front on Berlin city buses and Hitler allowed tactical withdrawals in some areas to furnish yet more troops, the Germans had begun to approach the limits of their strength. For the Soviets, too, the culmination point appeared near, for Zhukov had thrown service troops into the battle and threatened all who refused to advance with the death penalty. The breaking point came on the eighteenth. Zhukov, now feeling Stalin’s whip on account of the increased tempo of the American advance in the west, drove his troops forward ruthlessly. By noon, Seelow had fallen and the Ninth Army’s front between that city and Wriezen begun to crumble. Still, not until the next day did the Germans give up the struggle for Wriezen, and not until the twentieth did the Soviets manage finally to break through the third and final line of defense. It had taken four days (six if the two-day preliminary attack is included) for the First Belorussian Front to break the resistance of nine understrength divisions and achieve the objectives set for it for the first day. Russian attacks had bogged down so severely that most of the Landsers had managed to extricate themselves and withdraw. Still, even the most determined of defenders were bound sooner or later to run short of men and ammunition, a weakness exploited by Zhukov in his brute force tactics. The operation had not been a thing of beauty, and the Soviets had paid their usual high price—in less than a week, they had lost thirty thousand men and seven hundred tanks—but at last the Oder line had been broken. In the final irony, at the Oder the Soviets finally reached their manpower limits, as Hitler had always anticipated, but by then it was too late.38

  For all practical purposes, on 20 April, Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday, the battle for Berlin had been decided. Even as long-range artillery from Zhukov’s Third Shock Army brought the eastern suburbs under fire, to the south forces from Konev’s First Ukrainian Front were rapidly approaching the city, having successfully broken the Neisse-Spree defenses at Cottbus. Although Konev, too, had encountered unexpectedly fierce resistance, his troops, supported by effective artillery fire, had been much more adept than Zhukov’s at piercing the German defenses. On the first day, 16 April, they had not only forced the Neisse but also penetrated the first line of German defenses and punched a mile into the second German belt. German counterattacks the next day were beaten back as the Soviet advance reached a depth of ten miles. By the end of the nineteenth, Konev had achieved an operational breakthrough, with his forward tank units now racing some twenty to thirty miles to the northwest, in the direction of Berlin. On that same 20 April, Konev’s panzers cut the central nervous system of the German military, seizing the combined command center of the OKW/OKH at Zossen, thus eliminating any effective control over German military operations. They also penetrated into the southern suburbs of the city itself. Konev’s success in part stemmed from more favorable ground on which to operate as well as a curious misjudgment by the OKH, which had believed that the main axis of Konev’s advance would be to the southwest, in the direction of Dresden and the industrial areas of Saxony and Bohemia, and, thus, had positioned the strongest defenses on the right flank of Army Group Center.39

  In these days, the only German success was registered in the north, where Rokossovsky’s Second Belorussian Front struggled to force its way across the lower Oder south of Stettin. Although the woefully understrength Third Panzer Army under General Hasso von Manteuffel had been able to limit Russian attempts, begun with the usual probing attacks on 16 April and then widened to full-scale assaults on the eighteenth, to secure and expand bridgeheads on the west bank of the river, even these tactical victories were misread in Berlin. Both Hitler and Krebs convinced themselves that they were not the last desperate efforts of a beaten army but signaled the possibility of building a stable defensive front east of Berlin. Inexorably, however, Manteuffel’s forces were ground down as the advance of Zhukov’s units to the south opened a gap that he could not cover and offered the enemy the possibility of a deep breakthrough to the west. By the twenty-fifth, the same day that troops of Zhukov’s First Belorussian Front and Konev’s First Ukrainian Front closed the ring around Berlin and that American and Russian troops met at Strehla and Torgau on the Elbe, Rokossovsky’s units were also poised for their own decisive breakthrough. Perhaps nothing symbolized so well the wreckage of the once-proud Wehrmacht than this union of its enemies, which split Germany in two. Although the official celebration of this epochal event that shifted the balance of power away from Europe for the first time in three centuries took place at Torgau, fifty miles downriver from Dresden, the initial encounter had actually taken place to the north at the small town of Strehla. There, just before noon, advance American and Soviet patrols had met amid the gruesome carnage of a German refugee trek. The banks of the Elbe were littered with the corpses of dozens of women, children, and old men, victims not of their enemies but of their own troops. Desperate to escape the oncoming Soviets, German soldiers had blown up the makeshift pontoon bridge even as civilians still streamed across. As many as four hundred might have been blown to bits or drowned.40

  By this time, Hitler’s hopes of forming an effective defense of Berlin or of drawing the Soviets into a protracted, Stalingrad-like struggle for the city had evaporated. Although some local defensive successes on both the northern and the southern ends of the front, near Stettin and Görlitz, encouraged the delusional thinking so typical in the Führer’s bunker in these days, seemingly more realistic hopes had been placed in the possibility of a successful urban struggle. After all, Berlin would easily be the largest city to be conquered by an enemy army in the war, not only in terms of population, but also with regard to physical size. With a population swollen to 4.5 million people, and sprawling over an immense area, the city seemed perfect for prolonged urban warfare. Not only did it have an extensive subway system and underground network of canals that would facilitate troop movements, but many housing blocks, as well as the numerous flak towers that dotted the city, had already been fortified as strongpoints. In addition, British Bomber Command’s futile effort to create another Hamburg in Berlin had resulted in much more extensive destruction of residential areas than industrial complexes; the rubble-clogged streets of these neighborhoods had, thus, already been turned into potential strongpoints for urban fighting. Finally, the failure of Zhukov’s offensive to trap and destroy German forces east of Berlin meant that the possibility still existe
d for them to be drawn back into the city. Although Zhukov had in February already ordered that special storm troop units be formed for just such an eventuality, both he and the Stavka understood just how costly such fighting could be. Nor did Stalin relish the prospect of being tied down in protracted urban fighting since, in his paranoid vision, any time won by the enemy gave his Western allies the further chance to do the deal with Hitler that he expected and feared.41