by David Grier
On 12 January 1945 the Soviets opened their offensive. The Russians struck their main blow against Army Group A from the Baranow bridgehead across the Vistula River south of Warsaw. Marshal Ivan Konev’s First Ukrainian Front burst out of this bridgehead and quickly gained an operational breakthrough. G. K. Zhukov’s First Belorussian Front, driving due west from its bridgeheads at Magnuszew and Pulawy, captured Warsaw and Lodz, and encircled Poznan. On 31 January Zhukov’s troops reached the Oder north of Küstrin, only forty miles from Berlin. The Soviet attack against Reinhardt’s army group began on 13 January. German intelligence had correctly determined the time and place of the attack, but this knowledge did not enable the Germans to halt the Soviet juggernaut.11 Third Belorussian Front struck Third Panzer Army, in theory a tank army yet possessing only one armored division, east of Gumbinnen. Second Belorussian Front attacked Second Army north of Warsaw from its bridgeheads at Serock and Rozan the following day. Although Third Panzer Army repulsed the Soviet assault in the first days of the offensive, the Russians quickly gained several penetrations in Second Army’s front. At Fourth Army, occupying Army Group Center’s middle sector, the front remained relatively quiet. Although barely holding on, the army group received instructions on the evening of 14 January to send two armored divisions to Army Group A, causing Reinhardt to note in his diary, “A colossal blow for us!”12 On 16 January the Soviets committed their operational armored reserves against Second Army and achieved a breakthrough. In the next few days the Russians scattered the remnants of Second Army and also broke through Third Panzer Army’s front in the north.
The collapse of Army Group A and Second Army opened a huge gap on Army Group Center’s southern flank. Largely ignoring Fourth Army, the Soviets pushed in both flanks of Army Group Center. Reinhardt informed OKH that at best his forces could delay the Soviet drive to the sea; they could not prevent it. Fourth Army’s front jutted far to the south and east, over one hundred miles from the coast, and it was in danger of encirclement. Hitler finally yielded to the army group’s repeated pleas to withdraw Fourth Army from its exposed position, allowing a retreat to the Masurian Lakes.13 But he had delayed far too long. On 23 January the Soviets reached the Frisches Haff near Elbing, thereby cutting the land link from East Prussia to the Reich. In the following days the Soviets tightened their grip on the coast. Although the remnants of Second Army had been shoved back across the Vistula and Nogat rivers west of Elbing, the Russian drive to the coast had isolated Third Panzer and Fourth armies in their entirety. Over thirty German divisions, about four hundred thousand troops, had been cut off in East Prussia.
As the threat to Army Group Center grew, Hitler reconsidered the situation at Memel. On 23 January he ordered Memel’s evacuation to begin immediately and placed the city’s garrison at Reinhardt’s disposal.14 Following a three-month defense XXVIII Corps abandoned the Memel bridgehead on the night of 27–28 January, after destroying the city’s port facilities.
Hitler, however, had no intention of giving up East Prussia. Reinhardt wanted to abandon the Samland Peninsula and Königsberg and try to fight through to German lines near Elbing. On 23 January Reinhardt’s chief of staff, Gen. Otto Heidkämper, informed Wenck that the army group did not have sufficient forces to hold Samland and Königsberg and also to break through to the west. Heidkämper insisted that it was more important to regain contact with the Reich—otherwise all would be lost—and Wenck agreed. The army group prepared this attack but was compelled first to reinforce the Königsberg front to prevent its collapse. On 22 January Gen. Friedrich Hossbach, Fourth Army’s commander, decided to launch an attack of his own to break through to the west. Without informing OKH or Hitler, or even Reinhardt until the movement began on the 23rd, he withdrew his forces to the northwest to prepare for the assault.15 For allowing Fourth Army’s withdrawal despite explicit orders to the contrary, Hitler sacked both Reinhardt and Heidkämper, ordering Rendulic from Courland to take over the army group. The Germans launched the attack to the west on 26 January. Although it initially made good progress, Rokossovskii rushed reinforcements to the area and halted the German thrust by the end of the month.16 Hitler relieved Hossbach on 30 January, replacing him the next day with Gen. Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller. On 25 January, at the same time as Army Group North became Army Group Courland, Army Groups Center and A were renamed Army Groups North and Center.
The threat to Königsberg became acute at the end of January. The Soviets advanced to within twelve miles of the city on the 25th, and three days later Russian troops broke into the Samland Peninsula, cutting the road from Königsberg to Cranz. After isolating Army Group North from the Reich, the Soviets proceeded to carry out their plan of splitting up the group’s formations and destroying them one by one. By 29 January it appeared that the Russians had succeeded, having shattered German forces in East Prussia into four groupings. By reaching the Frisches Haff north and south of Königsberg, the Soviets had isolated the city from the rest of Third Panzer Army, then cut off in the Samland, and also from Fourth Army, isolated along the coast southwest of Königsberg. Finally XXVIII Corps, coming from Memel, occupied a small bridgehead at the northeastern end of the Samland Peninsula at Cranz. On 30 January the Germans opened a slim corridor joining Königsberg with Fourth Army. Although Russian counterattacks narrowed the passage, the Germans managed, barely, to maintain contact. Third Panzer Army’s task, therefore, was to unite its forces in Königsberg, the Samland, and at Cranz in order to carry out Hitler’s directive to defend Königsberg. On 2 February OKH ordered Rendulic to unite his forces, prepare another assault to regain contact with the newly created Army Group Vistula, and evacuate Third Panzer Army’s staff to Stettin, where it would join Army Group Vistula.17 The next day XXVIII Corps attacked from Cranz to the west and linked up with Third Panzer Army on 7 February. The following day Third Panzer Army turned command of its units over to the staff of XXVIII Corps, which received the designation Army Detachment Samland.
MAP 8. EAST AND WEST PRUSSIA
Army Detachment Samland planned an operation to reestablish land contact with Königsberg and requested warships to support the assault.18 The attack both from the city and the Samland began on 19 February and caught the Soviets off guard, in the midst of preparations for an operation of their own, and the Germans linked up the next day. Attacks to expand the corridor continued until the end of the month and provided Königsberg with a road and rail link to the port of Pillau. For the time being, Rendulic had succeeded in thwarting the Soviets’ attempt to dismember and destroy his army group.
Still the Soviets clung to their original plan. On 9 February Cherniakovskii’s Third Belorussian Front received orders to complete the destruction of Fourth Army by 25 February. The staff of Bagramian’s First Baltic Front, withdrawn from Courland, was charged with storming Königsberg and eliminating German forces in Samland. This operation, however, did not proceed according to plan. Cherniakovskii began his offensive against Fourth Army on 10 February, but he encountered stiff resistance and made little progress. On the 18th Cherniakovskii was killed in action, and A. M. Vasilevskii arrived to replace him three days later. Due to bad weather and tough German opposition, Vasilevskii canceled the attack. Bagramian had intended to begin his offensive on 20 February, but the German thrust to reestablish the link between Samland and Königsberg on the 19th foiled his plans. Following this setback Stavka stepped in and made some organizational changes. It disbanded First Baltic Front and placed all troops in East Prussia under Third Belorussian Front, with Bagramian as Vasilevskii’s deputy commander. Instead of attacking Rendulic’s forces simultaneously, the Soviets decided first to eliminate Fourth Army, then to clear German forces from the Samland, and finally to seize Königsberg. Vasilevskii planned to complete his operation against Fourth Army by 22 March and instructed Bagramian to prepare an assault on Königsberg for early April.19
Hitler also reorganized his forces. On 12 March Rendulic returned to Courland, and Gen. Walter Weiss assumed comm
and of Army Group North. In order to achieve unified command in East and West Prussia, as of 13 March OKH attached Second Army (at this time isolated in the Danzig–Gdynia sector) to Weiss’s army group. Fourth Army, with the remnants of nineteen divisions, held a front along the Haff around Heiligenbeil approximately fifty kilometers long and twenty kilometers deep.20 Vasilevskii resumed the attack against Fourth Army on 13 March. The Soviets cut the army’s link with Königsberg on the first day of the assault and began to squeeze the pocket. Hitler repeatedly refused the army’s requests to evacuate the coast, rejecting proposals for an attack to reach Königsberg or for a withdrawal across the Haff to the Nehrung. He maintained that it would be impossible to bring out the troops’ heavy equipment, a loss that he could not permit due to the current weapons shortage.21 Suddenly, on 24 March, Hitler reversed this decision and allowed Fourth Army to withdraw to the Nehrung after it evacuated its heavy equipment. The last troops crossed to the Nehrung and Pillau on 29 March.
On 6 April, the same day as the final Soviet assault on Vienna, Bagramian launched his offensive on Königsberg. The Soviets quickly broke into the city and cut the link to the Samland on 8 April. By the 9th the city’s commander, Gen. Otto Lasch, regarded the situation as hopeless and offered Fortress Königsberg’s surrender early the next morning.22 All that remained for the Soviets was to destroy German forces in the Samland. On 13 April Vasilevskii was ready, and the Russians scored a quick success in the northern part of the peninsula. By 15 April they had pushed the Germans into a small bridgehead at the base of the Pillau spit. At this point German morale began to crack. Troops of the once-vaunted 5th Panzer Division disobeyed an order to counterattack and withdrew to the coast to flee the Samland in barges. After the Russians captured Fischhausen on 16 April the Germans slowed the Soviet advance down the narrow peninsula to Pillau, only twelve kilometers long and two to five kilometers wide, until 25 April. The few surviving German troops crossed over to the Frische Nehrung.23 Here the Germans yielded ground slowly down the Nehrung in the final days of the war.
West Prussia and Pomerania
IN THE MEANTIME, on 21 January Hitler created a new Army Group Vistula under Himmler. Hitler charged the SS leader with closing the gap between Army Groups Center and A (on 25 January renamed, as noted above, Army Groups North and Center) and preventing the Soviets from isolating East Prussia by a thrust to the coast near Danzig. To accomplish this Himmler received the battered Ninth Army, defending the sector in front of Berlin; the equally weakened Second Army at the mouth of the Nogat and Vistula; and a newly formed Eleventh SS Panzer Army to fill the huge void between the two. In early February Third Panzer Army’s staff, evacuated from East Prussia, joined the army group. OKH instructed Army Group Vistula to prepare an attack from the Stargard sector to smash Soviet forces advancing on the Oder and thereby eliminate the threat to Berlin. In addition, Himmler’s army group was to mount an attack to reestablish a secure land link to East Prussia.24
On 8 February Stavka instructed Rokossovskii’s Second Belorussian Front to destroy German forces in Pomerania and seize the ports of Danzig, Gdynia, and Stettin, clearing the Baltic coast to the mouth of the Oder River. Rokossovskii attacked Second Army on 10 February but his exhausted divisions, hampered by poor weather and encountering fierce resistance, made little progress, and he called off the attack on the 19th.25 The Red Army had outrun its supplies and needed time to rest and replenish its units.
Guderian recognized that despite their tremendous gains in the past weeks, the Soviets were overextended. He proposed a pincer attack from Pomerania and Silesia to cut off and eliminate Soviet spearheads, reducing the threat to Berlin. Hitler, however, decided to conduct the offensive only from Pomerania, ordering Sixth SS Panzer Army, transferred to the East after the failure of the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the Bulge) to Hungary instead to protect vital oilfields there. The German attack from Pomerania envisioned an assault with over a dozen divisions from Stargard to the south, to clear Soviet units north of the Warthe River and allow the Germans to maintain possession of Pomerania. This ill-conceived offensive began on 15 February and gained only a few miles of ground. Hitler canceled the attack on 21 February, but it had effectively been halted three days earlier.26 Although this offensive had utterly failed in achieving its ambitious goals, however, it gave Stalin pause.
Zhukov, First Belorussian Front’s commander, wished to make a dash for Berlin, but Stalin hesitated. Zhukov’s troops had reached a broad line along the Oder, even crossing the river in places, but Second Belorussian Front lagged behind on the Vistula, nearly a hundred miles away. Soviet intelligence reported the arrival of German reinforcements in Pomerania, poised to strike Zhukov’s open right flank. Stalin’s caution appeared justified in view of Cherniakovskii’s and Rokossovskii’s failure to eliminate Fourth and Second armies and of the German counterattack from Pomerania. Possibly recalling the Red Army’s defeat at the gates of Warsaw in 1920, Stalin ordered the drive on Berlin postponed until Zhukov secured his northern flank. The offensive in Pomerania called for Zhukov and Rokossovskii to thrust to the Baltic coast to isolate Second Army. Rokossovskii’s goal was to reach the coast near Köslin and turn east to wipe out Second Army in the Danzig–Gdynia sector, while Zhukov drove to the sea near Kolberg and pushed Third Panzer Army back behind the Oder.27
This time the Soviet offensive proceeded according to plan. Rokossovskii attacked on 24 February, striking Army Group Vistula at the junction of Third Panzer and Second armies. Second Belorussian Front reached the Baltic north of Köslin on 3 March, isolating Second Army with approximately sixteen divisions in eastern Pomerania and West Prussia. Zhukov attacked on 1 March, much to the surprise of the Germans, who expected an assault on Berlin. Three days later Zhukov’s troops fought through to the coast near Kolberg and gained the Oder on 5 March near Cammin. Rokossovskii’s troops wheeled to the east and hurled Second Army back against the Bay of Danzig. By 25 March the Russians had splintered Second Army into three groupings: one in Danzig, another in Gdynia, and the third at the base of the Hela Peninsula.28 Gdynia fell on 28 March, its defenders fleeing to a bridgehead north of the city near Oxhöft. The Germans held the Oxhöft bridgehead until 5 April, when they were evacuated to Hela. By 30 March the Russians had driven German troops from Danzig to their last refuge at the mouth of the Vistula. The remnants of Second Army clung to this area and the Hela Peninsula until Germany’s surrender on 8 May.
Hitler, Dönitz, and Guderian
THE SOVIET SEIZURE of the Baltic coast from Memel to Stettin dealt a catastrophic blow to Hitler and Dönitz. Despite the Soviet advance to the gates of Berlin, however, both Nazi leaders insisted to the very end on the defense of virtually every foot of ground along the Baltic. Both men realized that possession of Baltic ports was essential both to supply the ever-increasing number of German units isolated along the coast and to maintain domination of the Baltic itself. Moreover, Hitler contended that the presence of German fortresses in the Russians’ rear, both on the coast and in the interior, tied down vast numbers of Soviet divisions, divisions Stalin could not deploy for an attack on Berlin.
The army had no interest in defending Memel. Guderian doubted the city could be held for any length of time and indicated no desire to maintain a bridgehead there. His main concern was to obtain for his own use the two motorized divisions isolated there to defend East Prussia.29 Thus, from the beginning neither OKH nor Reinhardt considered Memel’s defense particularly advantageous, much less essential. This was not the case with the navy. As early as September the Skl asked OKW to declare Memel a fortified site. Although Guderian claimed this was unnecessary, the navy won its case. On 22 November OKH informed Reinhardt that Memel had been declared a fortress.30
The Skl grew increasingly anxious as the Soviets drove toward the Baltic coast at the beginning of October. For about a week, from 7 to 15 October, the fate of Memel hung in the balance. The Skl did everything in its power to ensure that the garrison held on, r
ushing ammunition, weapons, and food to the soldiers defending Memel. Moreover, naval troops, including U-boat trainees, manned positions around the city. The navy provided the greatest assistance, however, with its warships. Heavy warships and destroyers pounded Soviet troop concentrations near Memel on 11, 12, 14, and 15 October. Fear of another Soviet attack the following week, an assault that never materialized, brought the Second Task Force back on the 23rd.31 The navy’s concern for Memel is evident in the Skl’s approval of the use of Second Task Force off Sworbe and south of Libau for the following days only if it was not needed at Memel. The Skl was willing to risk its heavy warships despite the presence of Soviet submarines, which sank two vessels near Memel on 15 October. In addition, the Luftwaffe notified the Skl that fuel shortages would reduce the amount of fighter protection to an absolute minimum. Nevertheless, when Army Group Center requested support against the anticipated Russian attack on 23 October, the Skl ordered Kummetz to send the task force even if there was no fighter escort.32
Hitler also closely followed Memel’s defense. He commanded the Skl to consider using artillery barges in the Haff to shell Soviet positions and prevent crossing attempts. On 10 December Hitler briefed Dönitz that intelligence reports indicated the Soviets had withdrawn troops from Courland to the Memel front. He instructed Dönitz that if the Russians launched a major offensive against the city, the navy was to commit everything it had to support the defense. In reply, Dönitz emphasized the navy’s great concern for Memel, the loss of which would further endanger naval bases, training areas, and convoy routes.33 The Skl instructed Kummetz to utilize the current lull to make all necessary preparations for action off Memel, insisting that warships be ready to support the army there at any time. Mines posed the greatest challenge to Kummetz. At the end of December he complained that he had no forces available to clear mines from predetermined bombardment positions off Memel. The Skl declared that this was intolerable and ordered the mines swept from the area at once.34