The Road to Berlin (108 page)

Though Budapest had fallen, the battle for western Hungary was far from over. Undismayed by Soviet armies massing on the Oder and piling up their reserves in Poland, Hitler determined late in January to switch Sepp Dietrich’s Sixth
SS Panzer
Army, recently withdrawn from the Ardennes and refitting in southern Germany, to Hungary; during the second half of February Sixth
Panzer
began to appear in the area of Vienna and further east, at Györ in Hungary. Impervious to Guderian’s arguments that the armour was desperately needed on the Oder, the
Führer
contemplated an offensive designed to drive a deep wedge between Malinovskii and Tolbukhin, having reached the Danube south of Budapest; the envelopment of part of Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front between the Danube and the Drava would lead to the establishment of fresh German bridgeheads over the Danube, the recapture of Budapest and the recovery of eastern Hungary. Economic considerations also dictated this counter-offensive, for the Hungarian and Austrian oilfields were now producing four-fifths of Germany’s needs; even if the counter-blow failed, it might still delay a Soviet offensive directed against Vienna. And, finally, what Sixth
SS Panzer
had failed to achieve in the Ardennes it might accomplish in Hungary, thus raising the spirits of defending armies in the east and on the Rhine alike.

Hitler may also have drawn some encouragement, even if misplaced, from the limited success of Hungarian divisions attacking in the direction of Szekesfehervar: possibly, the Soviet forces were not as strong as might appear, with Tolbukhin’s troops under heavy pressure and Malinovskii’s command weakened by the heavy, brutal fighting for Pest, with Buda still to be reduced. Smashing into 3rd Ukrainian Front might work, splitting it and driving to the Danube. The German plan called for an offensive by Wöhler’s Army Group South assisted by a supplementary attack from General Löhr’s Army Group E in Yugoslavia; the German Sixth Army under Balck, with 8th Hungarian Corps and Sepp Dietrich’s 6th
SS Panzer
(amounting in all to ten
Panzer
and five infantry divisions), would attack between lake Balaton and lake Velencze, splitting Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front in two. Meanwhile Second
Panzer
Army—a
Panzer
army in name only, equipped with assault guns—would use its four infantry divisions to strike in an easterly direction from the south of lake Balaton, an operation generally coordinated with Army Group E attacking with three divisions from the direction of the Drava. Admirable in conception, this plan took little account of the terrain, for here the Hungarian plain between the northern extremity of lake Balaton and the Danube was intersected by canals and ditches—soft, squashy and watery ground which caused German tank commanders to yell into their telephones that they were equipped with tanks, not U-boats. But by way of compensation Sixth
SS Panzer
mustered the newer ‘King Tigers’, underpowered and mechanically unreliable, but massively armoured and mounting an 88mm gun. Sixth
SS Panzer
Army was a formidable foe by any reckoning.

Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front consisted at this time of five field armies—4th Guards, 26th, 27th and 57th, plus the 1st Bulgarian Army—supported by 17th Air Army; south-east of Budapest 9th Guards Army formed the Supreme Commander’s Reserve. Lt.-Gen. Kosta Nadj with the 3rd Yugoslav Army (formed from 12th Corps in the Vojvodina) held the lower reaches of the Drava on Tolbukhin’s left; the Danube Flotilla with its gunboats and naval infantry also came under Tolbukhin’s operational control. Further north Malinovskii’s 2nd Ukrainian Front disposed of five armies (40th, 53rd, 7th Guards and 46th Armies, plus 6th Guards Tank Army) and 5th Air Army, reinforced with 1st and 4th Rumanian Armies; Malinovskii’s armies were holding a front which reached down from Zvolen to the river Hron in Hungary. Shumilov’s 7th Guards Army occupied the important bridgehead east of Komarno on the western bank of the Hron, preparing all the while to take the offensive. German–Hungarian forces pounded away at this bridgehead in an effort to eliminate it, while away at the southern end of the Danube front German troops crossed the Drava at the junction with the Danube and cut their way to the Mohacs–Pecs road. Something was brewing, but the Soviet command could not quite determine what. Fresh German armour was on the move, but moving so obviously—with tanks laden on railway flat-cars and taken westwards while the air filled with
rumours about them going north—that Soviet intelligence became ever more suspicious.

On 17 February the
Stavka
issued an operational directive to Malinovskii and Tolbukhin instructing them to prepare and execute an offensive designed to destroy the German Army Group South and occupy the area running from Bratislava to Brno, Vienna and Nagykanizsa. Striking from the Hron bridgehead and from the western bank of the Danube, Soviet forces would move on Brno, Vienna and Graz, complete the liberation of Hungary, deprive the Germans of the use of the Nagykanizsa oilfields, occupy Vienna and threaten the approaches to southern Germany. This sweep towards southern Germany would cut the escape route for German forces operating in Yugoslavia and simultaneously force the speedier capitulation of German troops in northern Italy. 9th Guards Army was specifically earmarked for the Vienna operation; the formation was drawn from reserve and assigned at once to the 2nd Ukrainian Front. Malinovskii’s 2nd Ukrainian Front also acquired operational control of the Danube Flotilla and the 83rd Independent Naval Infantry Brigade. The Soviet offensive would open on 15 March.

Tolbukhin and Malinovskii regrouped and reinforced, but the
SS
struck first, Tiger, King Tiger and Panther tanks to the fore. The German plan called for maximum effort between lakes Balaton and Velencze, using the German Sixth Army and Sixth
SS Panzer
to break through to the Danube in the Dunapentele–Szegzard sector, splitting Tolbukhin’s Front in two and then striking north and south along the banks of the Danube; Second
Panzer
Army would attack from Nagykanizsa in the direction of Kaposvar, while Army Group E attacked from the Drava in the area of Donji–Miholjac to link up with Sixth
SS Panzer
. Sepp Dietrich’s
SS
tank army fielded five
Panzer
divisions, two infantry and two cavalry divisions, two heavy battalions and
SS
units; Sixth Army mustered three infantry and five
Panzer
divisions; and 3rd Hungarian Army one tank division, two infantry divisions and a cavalry division. Second
Panzer
Army could count on four divisions, a motorized brigade and three ‘combat groups’, swelled with a motorized division which arrived on the eve of the counter-offensive; Army Group E deployed eight divisions and two brigades. The full German–Hungarian force committed against Tolbukhin amounted to thirty-one divisions (eleven of them tank divisions), five ‘combat groups’ and motorized brigades and four assault-gun brigades—431,000 officers and men, 5,630 guns and mortars, 877 tanks and assault guns, supported by 850 aircraft. The main assault force accounted for almost 150,000 men, 807 tanks and assault guns, and more than 3,000 guns and mortars. Malinovskii faced Eighth German Army on his left flank, a force of some nine infantry and two tank divisions.

On 17 February, as the
Stavka
advised Front commanders to prepare offensive operations, I
Panzer
Corps of Sixth
Panzer
fell on Shumilov’s 7th Guards holding the Hron bridgehead, striking at Kruze’s 24th Guards Rifle Corps with three infantry divisions and
SS ‘Adolf Hitler’
and
‘Hitlerjugend’ Panzer
divisions. As
many as 150 German tanks and assault guns rolled over the Soviet positions, driving up to five miles into the Soviet defences. Taken completely by surprise, Shumilov rammed 93rd Guards Rifle Division into a counter-attack, but this only weakened his defensive force. During the night of 18 February German armour forced the Danube from the south and threatened the rear of Safiulin’s 25th Guards Rifle Corps, ploughing on for another five miles. Too late the Front command began to react, moving up reserve formations—18th Guards Rifle Corps, 4th Guards Cavalry Corps and units of 6th Guards Tank Army—but all in vain. With left-flank formations threatened with encirclement, Shumilov could only withdraw. During the next four days, from 19–23 February, I
Panzer
Corps flayed Shumilov’s rifle army and succeeded by the morning of 24 February in clearing the bridgehead of Soviet troops; during this period Shumilov lost about 8,800 men and much equipment, leaving him no option but to abandon the bridgehead and pull over to the eastern bank. The German offensive also came to a sudden halt.

Shumilov had only himself to blame, having organized his defence badly, neglected any proper reconnaissance and ignored the proper deployment of reserves, as well as failing to maintain effective vigilance. Nor did the Front command escape censure: with their attention fixed on the fighting in Budapest, they had failed to notice the operational importance of the Hron bridgehead, were tardy in reinforcing the forces holding the bridgehead, and had completely misunderstood the scope and scale of German activity on ‘the Komarno axis’. It began to dawn on the Soviet high command that something drastic was afoot. On 20 February General Antonov received a signal from General Marshall that the German command proposed to launch two major attacks on the Eastern Front—the first from Pomerania in the direction of Torun, the second from Vienna and Moravska–Ostrava towards Lodz. For this southerly blow Sixth
SS Panzer
Army had been redeployed from the western theatre. (Colonel Brinkman of the army section of the British Military Mission had already passed information on Sixth
Panzer’s
transfer to the Soviet command on 12 February.) Clearly the situation of Soviet troops along the northern reaches of the Danube had worsened, and this required immediate changes in Soviet operational planning, but not until the end of February—certainly after the loss of the Hron bridgehead—did the Soviet high command decide that Sixth
Panzer
would launch its attack in the area of lake Balaton and strike at 3rd Ukrainian Front.

Little time remained to Tolbukhin, whose orders from the
Stavka
prescribed fighting a defensive action against a German thrust between lakes Balaton and Velencze while continuing to prepare a major Soviet offensive. Marshal Tolbukhin, a calm and skilful commander well versed in the arts of war, went about his job in measured fashion; it was not the first time the Red Army had had to hold off a massed tank assault and grapple with the
SS
, hard-driving and daring tank men. He deployed his Front in two echelons, 4th Guards, 57th and 1st Bulgarian army in the first army, 27th Army in the second, supported by all
available tank and mechanized formations deployed on the right flank. On the left, where a German supporting unit could be expected, Tolbukhin put in 133rd Rifle Corps from his main reserve. The terrain itself presented problems, the ground low and water-logged, dissected with canals and rivers to the front and rear of Tolbukhin’s formations. The Danube itself stood astride Soviet communications, causing Tolbukhin to take special measures to maintain contact with Malinovskii.

Soviet soldiers dug in, now under increasing German artillery fire and air attack. Tolbukhin’s men set up three main defence lines, two Front defensive lines and interconnecting defence lines: on the bridgehead west of the Danube these lines were set close together due to lack of space, but the main defence belt was 3–4 miles thick, the second line five miles from the forward edge of the main defence line, and the third as much as fifteen miles. Heavy-calibre guns would tackle the King Tigers, while each army, corps and division set up its ‘anti-tank reserve’, which could be switched to threatened sectors. Mines went down by the thousand, both anti-personnel and anti-tank. Col.-Gen. Nadelin co-ordinated Front artillery resources, while separate formations deployed their available guns—57th Army adopted a centralized fire-control plan codenamed
Shtorm
, which allowed the infantry commander to bring down fire as the situation required, subject to the authorization of his immediate superior.

The weather played havoc with Tolbukhin’s supply services. Ice-floes on the Danube threatened the pontoon bridges and ferry points. An overhead cable railway went into service to supply forward units with essentials—principally ammunition—able to deliver 1,200 tons per day across the river on to the western bank of the Danube; for the first time in the war, the Red Army delivered fuel via a pipeline to forward units. The 1st Bulgarian Army stood in urgent need of supplies, since it was now operating at some distance from its bases; Soviet instructors also went to the Bulgarian units to teach officers and men how to handle Soviet weapons and follow Soviet tactical practice. Soviet officers spoke Russian but were well enough understood by the Bulgarians. Tolbukhin himself went to the Bulgarian
HQ
at Szigetvar on 5 March to look over the final details of the defensive battle to which 1st Bulgarian Army was committed.

Tolbukhin’s Front, with its five armies (thirty-seven Soviet rifle divisions, plus six Bulgarian infantry divisions), numbered 407,000 officers and men, almost 7,000 guns and mortars, and 407 tanks and
SP
guns; 3rd Ukrainian Front also included two tank corps, one mechanized and one cavalry corps. The 17th Air Army comprised 965 aircraft, though some frenzied work had to be put in hand to improve the network of forward airfields available to Soviet squadrons. The wear and tear of the earlier fighting in February, however, still showed in the Front command. In 14th Guards Army, average divisional strength had fallen to 5,100 men, in 26th Army to 4,250, in 57th Army to 5,300, and to 4,100 men in 27th Army; tank and mechanized formations had suffered correspondingly, leaving 18th and 23rd Tank Corps plus 1st Guards Mechanized Corps only 166
tanks and
SP
guns between them. Some tank regiments could only field 2–8 tanks.