The Germans decided to relieve Arnswalde and attack in the Landsberg-Küstrin area. The 10th SS, serving with SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner’s 11th SS Panzer Army(XXXIX Panzer, III SS Panzer and X SS Corps), was to take part in the counterattack on Marshal Georgi Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front. In conference with Hitler on 13 February, Guderian, hoping to keep open 2nd Army’s lines of communication between East Prussia and Pomerania, along with Dietrich, advocated a pincer movement against the advancing Soviets. Over 1,200 panzers from 3rd Panzer Army were earmarked for the Operation Sonnenwende (Solstice), but there were insufficient trains to move them and little fuel and ammunition.
In the event, just four SS divisions, including the 10th SS and four Army divisions supported by only 250 tanks (barely a division’s worth), were thrown into the short-lived attack three days later, between Stargard and Arnswalde. To the displeasure of the SS, the attack was directed by army General Walther Wenck. Initially they made good progress on the first day, penetrating the Soviet envelopment of Arnswalde and rescuing the German garrison.
Panzer Abteilung 503’s Tiger IIs were instrumental in holding the corridor open as the wounded and civilians were evacuated and fresh troops sent in. During the fighting in the Danzig-Gotenhafen area, Tigers of the 503 destroyed sixty-four Soviet tanks. Soviet troops were also expelled from Brallentin and two villages. The Germans then cut into Marshal Bogdanov’s 2nd Tank Army to retake Pyritz.
The 10th SS and 503’s short-lived success was to swiftly come to a halt. The Tigers could do little once the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army brought up heavy Joseph Stalin tanks on the 17th. On the same day, Wenck, returning from Hitler’s evening briefing, was injured in a car crash and the momentum of the operation was completely lost.
In reality, this attack constituted little more than a nuisance to the Red Army. Hitler achieved nothing save grinding down those few units that could be relied on to attack. Steiner called off the assault, pulling the III (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps back to Stargard and Stettin on the northern Oder River. The few remaining panzers were moved to the Oder front. By the 19th the Soviets had captured Arnswalde, surrounded Graudenze and destroyed the German base at Stargard. However, the Stargard operations caused enough anxiety in the Soviet headquarters for them to halt the main offensive toward Berlin and lose some six weeks.
Six Tiger IIs from Panzer Abteilung 503 withdrew to Berlin and became the backbone of the defence of the beleaguered government quarter. The delay in the delivery of Tiger IIs to Panzer Abteilung 502, due to heavy air attacks on the Henschel plant in Kassel, meant that the battalion did not move to the Oder between Frankfurt and Küstrin until early March and then with only twenty-nine tanks. Thrown into attack near Sachsenheim, they forced the Soviet armour to fall back and the Tigers soon outstripped the other panzers. On 26/27 March they were involved in the attempt to break through to Küstrin.
Operation Spring Awakening
The crumbling German war effort was threatened with the loss of the vital Hungarian oilfields at Nagykaniza, with the Red Army less than 50 miles (80km) away. These and the Austrian oil fields were providing four fifths of Germany’s oil supplies and Hitler convinced himself that they could be saved by a massive panzer counteroffensive that would throw the Soviets back over the Danube and secure Vienna. Even if the plan failed, Hitler hoped it would delay the Soviet offensive against the Austrian capital.
To his generals all this seemed madness. Why defend foreign lands when the Red Army was a mere forty-five miles (72km) from the German capital? The Führer’s Hungarian adventure was a final effort that the exhausted German armed forces could ill afford. Perhaps Hitler misguidedly hoped that what 6th SS Panzer Army had so conspicuously failed to achieve in the Ardennes might be pulled off in Hungary, boosting morale on the Eastern Front and on the Rhine.
Sepp Dietrich must have felt a sense of futile déjà vu. Rather than withdraw behind the Rhine, Hitler had insisted they fritter away the reconstituted panzers in the Ardennes, leaving 5th Panzer Army once again exhausted. Now, rather than hold the Elbe, it seemed 6th SS Panzer Army was to suffer a similar fate, attacking a relentless and well-equipped enemy. Once again, many of the Normandy generals were to be involved.
On 17 February, to the south, I SS Panzer Corps attacked the Soviet 7th Guards holding the Hron bridgehead with up to 150 tanks and assault guns. Seven days later the Soviets lost their foothold with the bloody loss of 8,800 men and most of their equipment. Nonetheless, this small victory cost the Germans 3,000 casualties and confirmed to the Soviets that a major counter-offensive was looming.
Although I SS Panzer Corps’ preliminary attack got off to a good start by destroying the Soviet bridgehead around Estergom, once the Soviets established the attack was being conducted by Hitler’s elite Waffen-SS it was obvious what was going on. When Hitler’s Operation Spring Awakening commenced two weeks later, the Soviets were already very much awake to the threat.
The 6th SS Panzer Army fielded six panzer, two Infantry and two cavalry divisions as well as two heavy tank battalions. General Balck’s 6th Army had five panzer and three Infantry Divisions, and the 3rd Hungarian Army had one tank, two Infantry and a cavalry division. On paper, 6th SS Panzer Army was a formidable formation that included four veteran SS panzer divisions. The 1st SS, commanded by SS-Brigadeführer Otto Kumm, and 12th SS, still under SS-Brigadeführer Hugo Kraas, were grouped into the I SS Panzer Corps. The panzer regiment of 1st SS was reinforced with the Tiger IIs of Panzer Abteilung 501. The 2nd SS, commanded by SS-Standartenführer Rudolf Lehmann, and 9th SS, still under SS-Brigadeführer Sylvester Stadler, formed the II SS Panzer Corps.
In reality, these units had been spent during the Ardennes offensive, but this would not stop them inflicting appalling losses on the Red Army. On the Eastern Front the Wehrmacht enjoyed a local 2:1 superiority in tanks. The Red Army in Hungary was particularly weak in armour, which meant antitank guns would be their main defence against the 900 panzers and assault guns about to be thrown at them. Soviet anti-tank gunners were especially contemptuous of the Panzer Mk IV, which they considered old.
On the morning of 6 March 1945, after a thirty-minute artillery bombardment supported by air attacks, 6th SS Panzer and 6th Army crashed into the Soviets’ well-prepared in-depth defences. As planned, the Germans launched a furious three-pronged attack. 6th SS Panzer Army struck in a southeasterly direction between Lakes Velencze and Balaton; 2nd Panzer Army drove eastward in the direction of Kaposvar; and Army Group E, in Yugoslavia, attacked northeast from the right bank of the Davra, with the aim of uniting with the 6th SS Panzer Army.
The Hungarian plain between the northern extremity of Lake Balaton and the Danube was not good tank country and was bisected by canals and ditches. The SS-Panzer grenadiers were dropped ten miles (16km) from their jumping off points, ironically, so that the Russians would not alerted by their halftracks. To make matters worse, II SS Panzer Corps found itself in a sea of mud and penetrated the Soviet defences to a depth of just five miles, I SS Panzer Corps made better progress of twenty-five miles (40km).
Dietrich was soon angry with General Wohler, who had maintained that the ground in front of his two panzer corps was passable. The mud claimed 132 panzers and fifteen of Panzer Abteilung 501’s Tiger IIs, which sank up to their turrets and had to be abandoned before they had even fired a shot.
General N. A. Gagen’s Soviet 26th Army and elements of the 1st Guards Fortified Area (part of the 4th Guards Army) bore the brunt of the steel storm. In response, an artillery group of 160 field guns and mortars was established to provide 26th Army with massed covering fire. During the opening day General Sudet’s Soviet 17th Air Army flew 358 sorties, of which 227 were directed at the exposed panzers. A huge and furious battle followed as each side brought their well-honed tactics to bear.
Lehmann’s 2nd SS Panzer Division joined the combat with 250 tanks on 8 March, followed by Stadler’s 9th SS the next day, bringing the total number of panzers committed to the b
attle up to 600. However, the Germans were rapidly running out of time and resources. On 11 March Dietrich contacted Hitler’s headquarters, requesting permission to call off Spring Awakening; he repeated his request three days later knowing full well that his panzer divisions were bleeding to death.
The 6th Panzer Division with 200 tanks and self-propelled guns, Spring Awakening’s last reserves, were thrown into a desperate push for the Danube on the 14th. They attacked resolutely for two days and almost reached the Soviet’s rear defence line, but Marshal Tolbukin’s men held on. By 15 March Dietrich had lost over 500 tanks and assault guns, 300 guns and 40,000 men, battering themselves to death against the Soviets’ defences. Using the excuse of defending Vienna, Dietrich retrieved his shattered forces and withdrew.
Whilst Spring Awakening slowed the Soviet drive on Vienna, ultimately it did not greatly affect their plans, although the main axis of their forthcoming offensive was now moved south of the Danube to Tolbukin’s command. He was still weak in tanks, which numbered just 200 while the German panzer units could still scrape together some 270 tanks and self-propelled guns. The Soviet 6th Guards Army from Malinovskii’s command joined Tolbukin, bringing with them 406 tanks and self-propelled guns. Their job was the final destruction of the remnants of the 6th SS Panzer Army. Two Soviet infantry armies, the 9th and 4th Guards, were assigned the task of cutting the German armour off.
Final defeat
The Soviets launched their counterstroke on 16 March along the entire front west of Budapest and the German spearhead was sheered off. The weight of the attack fell on General Balck’s 6th Army and the Hungarian 3rd Army north of Lake Velencze. Soviet armour and lorried infantry poured through a breach, which Kraas’ 12th SS Panzer Division was hastily sent to seal. The Soviets swung in a southwesterly direction toward Lake Balaton.
Instead of throwing the Red Army back in disarray, 6th SS Panzer Army and 6th Army now found themselves in danger of being cut off and a huge battle ebbed and flowed around Lake Balaton. Under pressure, 1st SS Panzer gave ground, exposing Balck’s flank. Six days after the Soviet counteroffensive commenced, 6th SS Panzer Army, with just a mile-wide escape corridor that was already under heavy enemy fire, was faced with complete encirclement south of Szekesfehervar. Four panzer divisions and an Infantry Division fought desperately to keep the closing Soviet pincers apart and 6th SS Panzer Army only just managed to escape.
In the meantime, elements of 6th SS Panzer Army and 6th Army attempted to hold the River Raab, south of Vienna, and Lake Neusiedler against Tolbukin’s troops. The Soviets crossed on 28 March and brushed aside the exhausted defenders. By the end of the month up to 45,000 German and Hungarian soldiers had surrendered. Vienna now lay open to the Red Army.
Hitler could not believe his Waffen-SS had failed him and raged: ‘If we lose the war, it will be his, Dietrich’s fault.’ In a fit of ingratitude he ordered General Guderian to fly to the front to instruct the exhausted troops to remove their SS cuff bands. Guderian was appalled and pointed out that they were under the jurisdiction of Reichsführer-SS Himmler, not the Wehrmacht. The spineless Himmler sent a message, but Sepp Deitrich was made of sterner stuff.
In the seven months since their defeat at Falaise the panzer divisions had worked wonders for the Führer, but in the end he was simply not grateful. Upon receiving the teletype message Dietrich remarked with bitterness: ‘This is thanks for everything.’ He summoned his four divisional commanders and threw Hitler’s message on the conference table, saying: ‘There’s your reward for all that you have done the past five years’. Dietrich instructed them not to pass the order on, but word of it quickly spread through the tattered ranks of the SS divisions.
It was rumoured that the German Army deliberately ensured their rivals knew of their final shame. Removal of unit insignia was largely symbolic, as they had already been removed when 6th SS Panzer Army moved secretly into Hungary, but Hitler’s order was still seen as an insult by the surviving SS veterans who had shed so much blood for him and their beloved Reich.
Dietrich’s response was to inform Berlin that he would rather shoot himself than carryout the order. When he got no reply he reportedly sent all his decorations back to Hitler. Setting Dietrich’s war crimes and political beliefs aside, this was appalling ingratitude for a general who had served Nazi Germany so well. It also shows the level of insanity that Hitler and his entourage had reached as the Nazi house of cards collapsed around them.
Dietrich, avoiding censure, was assigned to General von Buenau, Battle Commander of Vienna; both men knew the defence could last little more than a few days. By his own admission, Dietrich’s defensive measures round his command post were designed to protect him from the Führer as much as the Soviets. Vienna fell during the second week of April with the loss of 125,000 prisoners and 6th SS Panzer Army’s message to Berlin read: ‘The garrison of Vienna has ceased to exist. Despite their exhaustion, the troops are fighting with exemplary courage’.
After the fall of the Austrian capital, Dietrich withdrew west to the River Traisen, where 10,000 men gathered from local training units reinforced his forces, and held the Soviets for several more weeks. The Soviets though had shifted their main attention to capturing Brno, an important industrial centre in Czechoslovakia.
The Red Army finally stormed into the shattered rubble of Berlin on 21 April 1945, just as 5th Panzer Army was finally surrendering in the Ruhr pocket. Panzer driver Sturmmann Lothar Tiby witnessed the end of Panzer Abteilung 503 and the final demise of the panzer units that had escaped from Normandy on 2 May. He recorded almost with an air of unreality:
Attempt to break out from Berlin in a westerly direction with the two last panzers of our abteilung. Our vehicle with commander Lippert, the second panzer with the holder of the Knight’s Cross Schafer of III Kompanie. The heavy fighting against a vastly superior force lasted all day. There were very high losses of vehicles, infantry, and civilians on our side and very high losses of personnel carriers and infantry on the Russian side due to the action of the two panzers. During a renewed attempt to break through, Schafer’s panzer took a direct hit, two men dead, the rest seriously wounded. A further attempt to break out was no longer possible. Our vehicle, the last panzer of the abteilung, was destroyed.
By the end of the war, the once-mighty 6th SS Panzer Army had ceased to exist because of Hitler’s obsession with Hungary and Budapest. One can only speculate how things might have gone if Guderian and Dietrich had got their own way and kept the 6th SS Panzer Army on the Oder. Sepp Dietrich was taken by the Americans at Kufstein, southeast of Munich.
Surrender
The 21st Panzer Division, which had struggled to counterattack the British on D-Day and had played a key role in stopping Good wood, after fighting in the Lauban, Gürlitz and Cottbus areas was finally overrun by the Soviets in April 1945. Losing command of 21st Panzer in January 1945, General Feuchtinger was arrested and busted to the ranks for his absence from divisional headquarters on the night of 5/6 June 1944 and transferred to the 20th Panzergrenadier Division, though he never served with the unit.
The Waffen-SS veterans of Normandy suffered varying fates on the Eastern Front, most seeking to avoid the wrath of the Soviets by retreating westward. The 1st SS Panzer Division, which had come to the rescue of the German defences south of Caen on the Bourguébus Ridge, now totalling just 1,500 men with sixteen tanks, as well as the remnants of the 9th SS, surrendered to American forces at Styer in Austria in May 1945. However, the Russians captured some of the forlorn rearguard of 1st SS.
Survivors from the 2nd SS, which had achieved miracles at Mortain, surrendered to American forces in Slovakia after fighting the Czech insurrection in Prague. The 10th SS, masters of Hill 112, surrendered to the Red Army at Schünau. Panzer Abteilung 502, which had also fought for Hill 112, ended its days trapped with the 9th Army in the Halbe pocket. The 12th SS, Hitler’s teenage Nazis who had so bitterly contested Caen and Falaise just eight months earlier, numbering 455 men, also
surrendered to the Americans in Austria. The bulk of the division finally gave up their arms to Patton’s 65th Infantry Division, near Amstetten in Austria on 8 May. The sole surviving panzer belonging to the 12th SS also surrendered to the Americans that day. Those who had survived Falaise and the Ardennes must have felt bitterly that it had all been for nothing; in many ways they were right.
Eight bloody months
The Western Allies’ victory in Normandy may not have been as resounding as they had hoped or planned, their faltering advance on Germany across France, Belgium and the Netherlands in the following months testified to that. Expectations that the war could be over by the autumn of 1944 in the wake of the destruction of the panzers in the Falaise pocket and the Rouen bridgehead, do seem over optimistic and grossly underestimated the Germans’ ability and desire to carry on resisting. The defeat at Arnhem and the long drawn-out battle to clear the Scheldt estuary and open Antwerp soon crushed such optimism, resulting in a much broader and unnecessary effort against Germany’s defences.
The panzer divisions’ escape, fighting withdrawal and Herculean resurrection after the near destruction of Panzer gruppe West in August 1944 ultimately prolonged the ugly death throes of Nazi Germany by eight bloody months, even though the Nazi High Command, apart from Hitler, recognised that the strategic initiative had long been lost. If Hitler had not insisted on throwing away his two revitalised panzer armies in the winter of 1944 it is likely the war could have dragged on even longer.
Plates
Commander-in-Chief West Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt confers with SS-Standartenführer Kurt Meyer, commander SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 25. The 12th SS Panzer Division’s commander, SS-Brigadeführer Fritz Witt, stands in the centre. After he killed on 14 June 1944 Meyer assumed command. (via Author)
Falaise: The Flawed Victory Page 29