Between Giants

by Prit Buttar

  Together with a scattering of ad hoc units, it now formed the newly reconstituted XXXIX Panzer Corps – the previous formation of this name had been effectively destroyed east of the Beresina, losing two corps commanders in two days – commanded by General Dietrich von Saucken. The son of Prussian landowners, Saucken had a long and illustrious career behind him, having commanded 4th Panzer Division with distinction from December 1941. Badly wounded shortly after winning the Knight’s Cross in early 1942, he served as commandant of Panzertruppenschule (‘School for Armoured Troops’) in Krampnitz. He then returned to 4th Panzer Division, earning the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross in August 1943 and the Swords to the Knight’s Cross during the following winter.

  Several panzer divisions – notably 4th, 5th and 7th – fought as ‘firefighters’ during the aftermath of Bagration, attempting to intercept the advancing Soviet spearheads. In this role, they were generally very effective wherever they ran into the Red Army, but the combination of their small number and the disruptive effect of constant fuel shortages, ensured that the Soviet advance continued, even though many Soviet units, too, were now getting towards the end of their supply lines and were weakened as much by mechanical attrition as by German resistance. Shuffled back and forth, none of the panzer divisions were able to intercept Cherniakhovsky’s exploitation forces closing in with Vilnius. Nevertheless, 5th Panzer Division succeeded in drawing off a significant part of Cherniakhovsky’s Front.

  In any event, fighting had already begun in the ‘historic capital’ of Lithuania. The German garrison consisted of the remnants of 14th and 299th Infantry Divisions, an infantry battalion and artillery battalion of 170th Infantry Division, and an assortment of other small units. Even though none of the panzer divisions on the front could reach the area, reinforcements were en route, in the form of a battalion of the 16th Fallschirmjäger (parachute) Regiment. Even as the paratroopers arrived at the city airport in a stream of Ju52 transports, the tangled web of relationships between Poles, Germans, Lithuanians and pro-Soviet partisans erupted.

  General Aleksander Krzyżanowski, who had been an artillery officer in 1939, was commander of the local elements of the Polish Home Army. He was a devoted Polish nationalist, and at first attempted to build a broad anti-German coalition, though negotiations with Lithuanian, Belarusian and pro-Soviet resistance groups proved fruitless. At the end of 1943, partly in response to a request from Panteleimon Ponomarenko, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belarus, Stalin approved orders to pro-Soviet partisans to disarm elements of the Home Army – in the words of the order: ‘Should there be any resistance on the part of the Polish partisans, they must be shot on the spot.’ This effectively brought to an end any possibility of cooperation between pro-Soviet partisans and the Polish Home Army. Consequently, like other Home Army leaders, Krzyżanowski responded to Soviet attacks on his forces by coming to regard the Soviet Union as an enemy in the same way that he viewed Germany.8 As hostilities with pro-Soviet partisans grew more problematic, Krzyżanowski held negotiations with German officials, including Seidler von Rosenfeld, a local SD officer, and Julian Christiansen, the head of the local branch of the Abwehr (German military intelligence) in January and February 1944 respectively. Christiansen suggested a detailed protocol, in which Germany offered to arm Krzyżanowski’s men, including with light artillery, in exchange for a cessation of hostilities between the Home Army and German forces, and Polish cooperation with the occupying authorities in terms of economic production. Although Krzyżanowski refused to accept the protocol, he came to an arrangement with Christiansen whereby the Germans would ensure that weapons and supplies were left in weakly guarded areas, where they could easily be captured by the Home Army and used against pro-Soviet partisans.9

  In May 1944, there were armed clashes in and around Vilnius between the Polish Home Army and Lithuanian forces commanded by Povilas Plechavičius, culminating in a pitched battle near the town of Murowana Oszmianka. The outcome was a clear Polish victory, and a series of reprisals followed, first with Lithuanian units attacking Polish civilians, then with Polish attacks on Lithuanians.

  As Soviet forces approached Vilnius, the German authorities contacted Colonel Lubosław Krzeszowski, one of Krzyżanowski’s subordinates, and suggested that the Germans and the Home Army combine forces against the Red Army. In return, civilian control of Vilnius would be handed over to Poland, and a number of Polish prisoners held by the Germans would be released. Krzeszowski rejected the offer, not least because the Poles had plans of their own. The Home Army intended to use the arrival of the Red Army as an opportunity to seize control of parts of Poland from the Germans, with coordinated uprisings in several cities under the codename Burza (‘Tempest’ or ‘Storm’). In Vilnius, the operation was codenamed Ostra Brama (‘Gate of Dawn’), after a famous landmark on the south-east edge of the old heart of the city. Late on 6 July, the Home Army tried to seize Vilnius in an attempt to gain control of the city before the arrival of the Red Army. In the preceding days, the Home Army had effectively secured much of the countryside around the city, but the unexpectedly fast advance of the Soviet forces – about a day ahead of Polish expectations – resulted in Krzyżanowski moving his own timetable forward. Consequently, Krzeszowski had fewer troops at his disposal than he might have wished, and his men were left in possession of only the north-east part of the city. Much of the Polish 77th Infantry Regiment found itself held at arm’s length to the east of Vilnius, its movements further hampered by a German armoured train. Elements of the Polish 85th Infantry Regiment took up positions to the west, beyond the River Vilnia, threatening the German lines of retreat. It is striking that despite years of Soviet and German occupation and tens of thousands of arrests, the AK continued to organise itself into formations that drew their ancestry from the pre-war Polish Army.

  Soviet forces arrived outside Vilnius at about the same time that the Poles launched their attack. 35th Guards Tank Brigade, part of General Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army, was involved in heavy fighting with the German paratroopers at the airport, from where fighting gradually spread into the city. On 8 July, Krylov’s 5th Army reached the city outskirts, while the Soviet armour gradually encircled the garrison.

  It had been Krzyżanowski’s intention to secure the city for Poland before the arrival of the Red Army, but the planners of Burza had always intended that the Poles would cooperate at a tactical level with the Soviets, though they would attempt to set up their own Polish civil authorities before the Red Army could establish pro-Soviet administrations. Unlike in many of the other ‘fortresses’ that Hitler insisted were defended to the last man, the Vilnius garrison put up a stiff fight, inflicting heavy losses on their opponents. Rotmistrov’s tanks had suffered considerable losses in Minsk, and now found themselves engaged in close-range combat against a determined enemy, equipped with weapons such as the Panzerfaust, that were at their most effective in this environment. Nevertheless, there could be no question of the Germans holding on for long.

  Relief was on the way. The rest of 16th Fallschirmjäger Regiment arrived by train near Vilnius early on 9 July, and almost immediately it was assigned to an ad hoc battlegroup, Kampfgruppe Tolsdorff, which went into action outside the western outskirts. Another formation dispatched to try to stem the Soviet flood was 6th Panzer Division, which had been recuperating in Soltau in Germany after suffering heavy casualties earlier in the year. As the men of the panzer division arrived, they were hastily organised into two battlegroups. Gruppe Pössl consisted of a battalion of tanks from the Grossdeutschland division, a battalion of 6th Panzer Division’s panzergrenadiers, and artillery support; it was ordered to advance to make contact with Tolsdorff’s group on the outskirts of Vilnius, and thence to link up with the garrison. Gruppe Stahl, with two panzergrenadier battalions and artillery support, would attempt to hold open the line of retreat.

  The attack began on 13 July, with Generalleutnant Waldenfels, the commander of 6th Panzer Division, and Gener
aloberst Georg-Hans Reinhardt, commander of 3rd Panzer Army, accompanying Pössl’s group. The thin screen of Soviet and Polish forces to the west of Vilnius was unable to stop the thrust, which reached Rikantai, about eight miles outside the city. Here, contact was established with Gruppe Tolsdorff, which in turn had a tenuous connection with the Vilnius garrison. During the afternoon, German wounded were evacuated from Vilnius and along the road to the west.

  The Soviet response to the German breakout was slow. Late on 13 July, uncoordinated attacks along the narrow escape route were repulsed, but the following day there were several crises as increasingly strong Soviet pincer attacks cut the road repeatedly. Finally, as darkness fell on 14 July, the Germans withdrew to the west. About 5,000 men from the garrison were able to escape, but over 10,000 were lost.

  The Soviet authorities proclaimed the liberation of Vilnius on 13 July, but there was still the question of what to do with the Polish Home Army forces that had fought both against the garrison and against Gruppe Tolsdorff to the west of the city. Krzyżanowski and his fellow officers wished to use their men to recreate the pre-war Polish 19th Infantry Division, itself a controversial unit in that it was raised by Poland in the Vilnius region after that area was seized by Poland. On 16 July, Krzyżanowski and his officers were invited to a conference with the leadership of the 3rd Belarusian Front, as a report by the NKVD recorded:

  Yesterday [i.e. on 17 July] at 0800 hours, under the pretext of an inspection by the commandant of the Front, commandants of brigades and regiments [of the Home Army] were gathered around the village Bogusze. Altogether, 26 officers, including 9 commandants of brigades, 12 unit commanders, and 5 staff officers of the Polish Army were gathered.

  When directed by us to turn in their weapons, they refused, and only after the threat of force were they disarmed.

  … Today, at dawn, we began combing operations through the forests, in which, according to our estimates, the Poles were present. … It was ascertained that during the night they marched away to the south. Because of the steps taken, we caught up with them, and disarmed them.

  According to the situational reports for 1600 hours, 3,500 men were disarmed, among them, 200 officers and NCOs.

  During the disarming, 3,000 guns, 300 machine guns, 50 heavy machine guns, 15 mortars, seven light artillery pieces, 12 vehicles, and large number of grenades and ammunition were confiscated.10

  Lubosław Krzyżanowski was imprisoned until October 1947. A year after his release by the Soviet authorities, the Polish security service arrested him, and he died of tuberculosis in 1951.11

  Another Polish officer involved in the fighting in and around Vilnius was Maciej Kalenkiewicz. He served as a combat engineer during the German invasion of Poland in 1939, and escaped to France during the first winter of the war. From there, he moved to England, and returned to Poland in a parachute drop in December 1941. Although his unit was captured by the Germans, Kalenkiewicz and his men managed to recover their weapons and fought their way to freedom, killing all their captors, though Kalenkiewicz himself was injured during the brief firefight. He was one of the main authors of the plan to seize Vilnius, and in June 1944, he was once more wounded. He developed gangrene, necessitating the amputation of his hand, and consequently was unable to take part in the fighting for Vilnius; when the Soviets began to arrest Home Army personnel, he led his men – a battalion of the Polish 77th Infantry Regiment – into the Rudnicka Forest, where they regrouped with other Polish fighters, until perhaps 2,000 men had gathered. Aware that they were being monitored by Soviet aircraft, the Poles decided to disperse, with Kalenkiewicz taking command of a contingent of about 100. Conscious that the Soviets were harassing the local population, arresting any suspected of being supporters of the Home Army or in any other respect hostile to the Soviet Union, Kalenkiewicz sent a signal to his superiors, warning them that he and his men were ‘as good as dead’, and all would be lost unless the Western Allies could intervene, perhaps by establishing air bases in eastern Poland. On 19 August, a unit of Soviet soldiers from the NKVD moved against Kalenkiewicz and his small band, near the village of Surmonty near the border with Belarus. The Poles beat off the first attack, but after receiving reinforcements, the NKVD detachment attacked again, swiftly overrunning the Home Army men. Kalenkiewicz and 36 of his men were killed.

  The ruthless elimination of the AK throughout Poland, but particularly in the Vilnius region, was an essential prerequisite to Stalin’s preferred solution of reassigning the area to Lithuania. The Poles were far better armed and organised than the Lithuanian nationalist partisans, and far more numerous; they would have opposed the imposition of Lithuanian sovereignty, and the compulsory resettlement of Poles in the region to territories further west. Given their close links with the Western Allies and the pre-war Polish administration, the fighters of the AK were never going to be tolerated by the Soviets after they had seized control of Poland.

  For a few days after the fall of Vilnius, the front line appeared to stabilise to the west of the city. Despite his success in capturing Vilnius, Cherniakhovsky was disappointed with the performance of his subordinates. Pavel Alexeyevish Rosmistrov, commander of 5th Guards Tank Army, was heavily criticised for allowing his armour to become embroiled in costly urban combat in both Minsk and Vilnius, and was removed from command. Both Cherniakhovsky and Bagramian were forced to pause while supplies were brought up to the front, and the shattered remnants of German divisions that had almost been destroyed during Bagration had a brief respite. But on 28 July, Cherniakhovsky renewed his offensive, pushing forward towards Kaunas. The Red Army was only 30 miles from Kaunas, and on the second day of the new assault, the Soviet troops had already covered nearly half this distance in some locations. On 30 July, Soviet spearheads from 33rd Army penetrated the threadbare German line and reached the Niemen valley to the south-east of Kaunas. Immediately, the Soviet armoured reserve for the operation, 2nd Guards Tank Corps, was committed to the sector; bypassing the German forces pulling back towards Kaunas, the Soviet tanks raced on to Vilkaviškis, far to the south-west of the city. From here, the tank corps was close to the East Prussian frontier, but also had the option to swing to the north and isolate Kaunas. The city was given up almost without a fight on 1 August, the German forces pulling back to the west.

  On Cherniakhovsky’s northern flank, Bagramian pushed on from Lake Narach into Lithuania towards Švenčionys. Initially, STAVKA assigned him the objectives of Panevezys, Kaunas and Šiauliai. Although Bagramian received reinforcements in the form of 2nd Guards Army and 51st Army, neither of these formations would be available until mid-July, and at first, he was left to push on with 6th Guards Army and 43rd Army, both weakened substantially by the fighting during Bagration, reinforced by the similarly understrength 1st Tank Corps. Fortunately for Bagramian, the German forces in front of him were in an even worse state.

  At first, Bagramian made good progress, but the arrival of Strachwitz and his small group of tanks shored up the defence. The armies of Bagramian’s front were covering such a large sector of front – estimated at about 120 miles – that he struggled to make adequate progress. Accordingly, the objective of Kaunas was transferred to Cherniakhovsky’s front, allowing Bagramian to concentrate on driving west towards Šiauliai. 2nd Guards Army and 51st Army now arrived and immediately made better headway, capturing Panevėžys on 22 July and thus completely outflanking the German defences at Daugavpils. Bagramian assigned 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps to 51st Army, and powerful motorised formations pushed forward rapidly to Šiauliai, reaching the eastern outskirts on 25 July. Oberst Hellmuth Mäder, who had taken command of Army Group North’s Waffenschule (weapons school) after being badly wounded on the Narva front, deployed his men – a mixture of instructors and trainees from the weapons school, and other ad hoc companies made up of rear area units and stragglers – in the town, and succeeded in holding Šiauliai for two days, inflicting significant losses on the Soviet forces and buying invaluable time for other German
units to pull back to the west.

  For Bagramian, there was now finally an opportunity to deal with Army Group North, something that he had wished to do ever since the early successes of Bagration. 51st Army was ordered to strike north from Šiauliai and, over the next three days, pushed forward against weakening opposition. Elements of 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps, supported by 279th and 347th Rifle Divisions, pushed a mixture of German units from I Corps out of Jelgava on 31 July, on the same day that 35th Guards Mechanised Brigade, also from 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps, took Dobele. Tukums fell the same day, and shortly after, Soviet soldiers from 347th and 416th Rifle Divisions reached the Gulf of Riga a few miles away. Army Group North was cut off from the Reich.

  On Bagramian’s northern flank was General Andrei Ivanovich Yeremenko’s 2nd Baltic Front, which had not been involved in Bagration. Nevertheless, Yeremenko’s armies maintained considerable pressure on the German lines to prevent redeployment of forces to other sectors. VI SS Corps came under repeated attack from 22 June, and as the catastrophic collapse of Army Group Centre developed, orders were issued to pull back the entire front line to prevent it being outflanked from the south.

  On 9 July, supply units and ammunition were evacuated to the rear in preparation for a general withdrawal the following day, but early on 10 July Yeremenko’s armies unleashed a surprise attack. The shortage of ammunition brought about by the previous day’s withdrawals greatly hampered the defensive capabilities of the Latvian divisions, and instead of an orderly withdrawal, the line was pulled back in almost constant contact with the Red Army. As a consequence, many of the new defensive positions were overrun by the pursuing Soviets before they could be manned properly. The fighting reached the city of Opochka on 13 July, but the line of the Velikaya could not be held, and the retreat continued. 15th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division’s 32nd Grenadier Regiment found itself isolated on the southern flank of the division, and attempted to retreat to the west, fighting its way through a group of Soviet partisans in dense woodland. On 16 July, after a gruelling march of two days, the survivors reached the River Isa, not far from the Latvian border. From here, they turned north, encountering and destroying a small Soviet force. Mounted in the vehicles they had captured from the Soviets, the remaining men, led by Obersturmbannführer Aperats, attempted to seize a bridge over the River Zilupe. Although they secured a small bridgehead, they then came under heavy attack by Soviet forces, including a substantial number of tanks, and the Latvian regiment was completely destroyed. Aperats chose suicide rather than surrender after he was seriously wounded. Sturmbannführer Hazners, accompanied by only four men, managed to reach the lines of the German 93rd Infantry Division.12