After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (25 page)

The Soviet general staff now contemplates operations into the Vltava valley. My intention, as soon as current operations permit, is to proceed and destroy any remaining organised German forces.

If a move into Czechoslovakia is then desirable, and if conditions here allow it, our logical initial move would be on Pilsen and Karlsbad. I shall not attempt any action which I deem to be militarily unwise.

General Eisenhower was almost certainly being too careful. But after Eisenhower’s brief report Truman had simply added the sentence: ‘This meets with my approval.’ As Churchill observed with wry humour: ‘This seemed to be decisive.’

Churchill summarised the impact of this: ‘Eisenhower’s plan was to halt his advance generally on the west bank of the Elbe and along the 1937 boundary of Czechoslovakia. If the situation warranted he would then cross it to the general line of Karlsbad-Pilsen-Budejovice. The Russians agreed to this.’

Initially, neither Eisenhower nor Marshall had shown much enthusiasm for an attack on Prague. Both men, mindful that the war in the Pacific still needed to be won, wanted to minimise American casualties. And rather than secure a ‘political’ objective – which was how Prague was seen – the Supreme Allied Commander wanted to destroy the remaining major concentrations of German troops and prevent the Nazis making a last stand. But here the chimera of the National Redoubt was still raising its head. The Americans still feared that the Nazis would make a last stand in a specially prepared chain of fortresses deep in the heart of the Alps.

In reality, the greatest concentration of SS and Wehrmacht troops was not in some Alpine fastness but in eastern Czechoslovakia. The capture of Prague would cut any escape route of these forces. And if Eisenhower had used a major river – the Elbe – as a clear demarcation line between US and Soviet troops in Germany, the Vltava, which ran through the Czech capital, offered him the same opportunity farther south – one that sadly would be missed.

A few days later, General Eisenhower became more positive. The National Redoubt was now revealed as largely a figment of the imagination and German resistance was collapsing. On the evening of 4 May Eisenhower authorised that an invasion of western Czechoslovakia take place the following day. He also proposed to the Soviet General Staff that the US Third Army, which would be conducting the operation, might continue to the line of the River Vltava. This expansion of the original remit would almost certainly deliver the Czech capital to the Americans.

But Eisenhower had been too tentative. The Soviets responded firmly the next day. They asked the Supreme Allied Commander to keep to the previously agreed halt line, the one that would not take American troops farther east than Pilsen. General Antonov cited the British incursion into the Soviet line of advance at Wismar – and said it was important to avoid battle confusion and possible friendly-fire incidents. Beneath this practical concern lay all the suspicions aroused by the German announcement of a truce at Lüneburg Heath that would enable the war to go on in the east. The Soviet Union now wanted to see whether the Western Allies would keep their word. Eisenhower, sensing more was at stake than a simple demarcation line, acceded to their request.

The future of Czechoslovakia had not really been discussed at the Yalta conference in February 1945 – and no zones of influence, political or military, had been apportioned there. But Stalin had understood all along the importance of taking Prague. He saw it as the culmination of the Red Army’s offensive in eastern Europe. He knew that such a campaign would gain him political capital and expand his influence, and would make it more likely that a pro-Soviet government would come to power in the country after the war. He was determined that the Red Army destroy the last major force opposing it on the Eastern Front, the German Army Group Centre. And he was willing to pay the price in the blood of his soldiers to achieve these aims. This clarity – and ruthlessness – was lacking in the strategy of the Western Allies.

On 5 May General Omar Bradley, commander of the US 12th Army Group, had met Marshal Ivan Konev of the 1st Ukrainian Front at the latter’s headquarters, some 30 miles north-east of Torgau. The meeting was amicable. General Bradley, anticipating the exchange of gifts, had brought with him a new jeep, just unloaded from Antwerp, with a painted greeting to Konev from the soldiers of his army group. ‘A holster was affixed to the side with a brightly polished new carbine inside,’ Bradley remembered, ‘and the tool compartment was stuffed with cigarettes.’

Marshal Konev reciprocated. ‘I had prepared a personal present for Bradley,’ the Soviet commander said. ‘It was a horse which had followed me everywhere since the summer of 1943, when I assumed command of the Steppe Front. It was a handsome, well-trained Don stallion – and I presented it to Bradley with all its harness. It seemed that the American general was sincerely pleased with the gift.’

There followed a lavish banquet with speeches and toasts. After the meal, in another room, the Song and Dance Company of the 1st Ukrainian Front sang the two national anthems followed by a performance of Russian folk dances and American music. Bradley honoured Konev with an American decoration and received a Red Banner in return. Yet tension lay beneath the surface.

General Bradley also presented Konev with a map showing the disposition of every US division in Europe. The Soviet commander did not reciprocate. Instead, he pointed to Czechoslovakia and asked how far the US forces intended to go. Bradley told him they would stop at Pilsen. There was an awkward pause. Then the American general added that they would be willing to help the Red Army liberate Prague. Konev smiled. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that will not be necessary.’

On hearing of the Prague uprising, Marshal Konev had moved forward his Czech offensive by a day, but realistically, Red Army troops would not reach the city until the early morning of 9 May. In the meantime, the city would have to fend for itself.

The last Soviet offensive was a major operation involving armies stretching from Potsdam to the Danube. Although it involved three Ukrainian Fronts (the 1st, 2nd and 4th) Stalin had given overall command of the offensive to Marshal Konev. If Zhukov had gained the honours for taking Berlin, the Soviet leader reasoned, Konev should receive the laurels for Prague. Konev had set out a directive for the attack on 4 May. It involved three thrusts, and these would be staggered.

Konev would launch the offensive himself on 6 May from the area around the German town of Riesa, midway between Leipzig and Dresden. The first objective was to capture Dresden and gain access to the motor highway to Prague; the second was to take control of the Ore mountain passes, the main physical obstacle to reaching the Czech capital; the third would be a non-stop tank and motorised vehicle dash to Prague itself. The distance from Riesa to Prague was 134 miles. Konev reckoned that if all went well this last push could be made on the night of 8 May.

In support of Konev’s main offensive, two subsidiary attacks would be made on 7 May. Marshal Fedor Tolbukhin’s 4th Ukrainian Front would advance on German positions at Olomouc, some 174 miles east of Prague. Marshal Rodion Malinovsky’s 2nd Ukrainian Front would push forward from Brno, some 130 miles south-east of the Czech capital.

As these preparations unfolded, all were aware of an echo from the past. In August 1944 Red Army troops had suddenly experienced logistical difficulties as they approached the Polish capital. The supply problems may have been real, but it suited Stalin’s political purposes to wait outside Warsaw while the Germans brutally crushed the popular uprising there, a revolt which had been organised by forces unsympathetic to the Soviet Union and its puppet Lublin regime. Once the Germans re-established control, the logistical issues were quickly resolved.

But Prague was no Warsaw. The uprising broke out independently of the Soviet-directed partisans, who had been active in harassing the Germans in the Bohemian countryside. But the Czech National Committee was pro-Soviet, and its vice-chairman, the communist Josef Smrkovsky, soon emerged as a key figure within it. And Stalin knew that if he hesitated the Americans might well take the city instead. Marshal Konev’s orders to his troops made it clear that speed was of the essence: army formations needed to maintain a rate of advance of 20–30 miles a day, and tiredness and combat fatigue must be overcome. As Konev emphasised, in an address to Soviet officers after the war: ‘The success of the Prague operation consisted to a large degree in our ability to carry out actions calculated to prevent our [Western] allies from getting into the Czech capital. And the situation happened to be such that they could have made it. The drive to Prague was dictated by political and strategic objectives, to strengthen our ties with the Czech people and to create a more favourable position for us in post-war Europe.’

The overall objective of this offensive, and these coordinated actions, was not, however, to take Prague but to ensure that Soviet armies reached western Czechoslovakia in force and prevented the German Army Group Centre from surrendering to the Americans. The Czech capital was a means to that end – and as the 1st Ukrainian Front was strongest in tank and motorised formations, it was taking the main role in the attack. But once the uprising took place, the rebels would have to hold out for five days against the Wehrmacht and SS before the Red Army could reach them.

The main hope for the rebels was the Americans. Once they had invaded western Czechoslovakia, they were much closer to the Czech capital and German resistance to their forces was much weaker. General George Patton did want to take Prague – and he could have done so very rapidly. Patton was a swashbuckling, larger-than-life commander, who revelled in fast-moving warfare. He and his Third Army had caught the public imagination by their dramatic breakout from Normandy in the summer of 1944. A natural showman, Patton cultivated a flashy, distinctive image – wearing an ivory-holstered, silver-plated revolver as if he was a gunslinger. General Patton was a maverick who possessed great military skill but was also reckless and impulsive.

One lieutenant in the Third Army stressed the positives, saying of his commander: ‘He never squandered the lives of his troops needlessly. Patton’s sense of what was possible on the battlefield was unequalled … In the Third Army we knew what General Patton expected us to do, and we believed that if we did it we would win. That’s what generalship is about.’

Others, while admiring his courage, felt that Patton loved war a little too much. They nicknamed him ‘Old Blood and Guts’, and said of him: ‘It’s our blood and his guts!’

By the end of the war General Eisenhower had known George Patton as a friend and fellow soldier for twenty-six years. He had rescued his career after an incident at a hospital in Sicily in 1943 when Patton slapped two American soldiers suffering from combat shock. When news of this got out, it sent a wave of outrage across America – and many thought that Patton should never hold military office again. Eisenhower stuck by his friend and brought him back to army command. In return, Patton had repaid his supreme commander with victories on the battlefield. General Eisenhower wrote of him: ‘Patton was one of those men born to be a soldier, an ideal combat leader whose gallantry and dramatic personality inspired all he commanded to great deeds of valour. His presence gave me the certainty that the boldest plan would be even more daringly executed. It is no exaggeration to say that Patton’s name struck terror at the hearts of the enemy.’

This was a generous appreciation. The Germans certainly feared Patton, but within the US Army he remained a controversial figure. In Sicily in 1943 General Patton had deliberately disregarded the orders of his superiors. General Bradley said of the slapping incident that if he had been in overall charge at the time he would have dismissed Patton and never had anything more to do with him. Patton’s language to his troops was laden with expletives – and while his toughness and directness were often an advantage, he was also tactless and insensitive. In an address shortly before D-Day he created a furore by saying that Britain and America would dominate the post-war world, not Russia. Patton seemed to revel in such heedlessness.

Patton’s charisma could certainly lift his men – and drive them forward. During the bitter German Ardennes offensive the American commander at Bastogne, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, was summoned by the Germans to surrender. McAuliffe was heavily outnumbered, and yet it was vital that he hold on. His defiant response to the Wehrmacht was expressed in one word: ‘Nuts!’ Patton – determined to relieve him – told his soldiers: ‘Any man as eloquent as that deserves to be rescued!’

And yet, his army group commander, General Omar Bradley, always quiet and methodical, and an excellent strategic planner, did not trust Patton’s bravura style of generalship. He sensed the personal ambition – the thirst for glory – which drove it: ‘Canny a showman though George was, he failed to grasp the full psychology of the combat soldier,’ Bradley observed. ‘For a man who lives each day with death tugging him at the elbow inhabits a world of dread and fear. He becomes reproachful of those who flaunt the pageantry of command.’

General Patton was a complex man. He was an inspirer and motivator of the ordinary American GI, but among the upper echelons of the US high command he was seen as a loose cannon and never promoted to higher office than army command. And while Eisenhower admired and liked Patton, although at times he was infuriated by his behaviour, it was Bradley’s opinion which he respected and listened to.

By May 1945 George Patton had grown increasingly mercurial and erratic. He had also become alarmingly anti-communist, referring to the Red Army as ‘Mongols’ and making dark threats about the need to confront this new danger to America. He also professed sympathy for those ‘White Russians’ who had been fighting with the Germans against the Bolshevik regime. From a tactical point of view, George Patton was the ideal man to take Prague. From a political standpoint, he was an accident waiting to happen.