The Road to Berlin (109 page)

Neither the time nor the place of the German counter-offensive came as a surprise to Marshal Tolbukhin. During the night of 2 March three Hungarian soldiers deserted to the Russians and talked about a German attack due to be launched in three days’ time in the Balaton–Velencze sector; a Hungarian deserter to 57th Army also spoke about a forthcoming German attack on 5–6 March, an offensive which would also develop to the south of lake Balaton. (Further interrogation and additional reconnaissance in 57th Army established that this attack would materialize in the sector between Nagy Bajom and Kaposvar.) Tolbukhin meanwhile received additional intelligence from the Yugoslavs, indicating that the German offensive would unroll along three axes—from Szekesfehervar in an easterly direction, from Nagykanizsa towards Pecs, and from Osijek and Donji-Miholjac towards the north.

Strictly according to plan, entirely in line with the information given to Tolbukhin’s command, the German attack began on the night of 5–6 March, jabbing into the Soviet 57th Army and the 1st Bulgarian and 3rd Yugoslav Armies. But this was a mere prelude south of lake Balaton. On the morning of 6 March, preceded by a thirty-minute artillery barrage supported by air attacks, Sixth
SS Panzer
and Sixth Armies smashed into Tolbukhin’s main force: III
Panzer
Corps moved against the junction between Zakhvateyev’s 4th Guards Army and Gagen’s 26th, while I
SS Panzer
Corps and 1st Cavalry Corps went for the centre and right flank of Gagen’s army. Soviet riflemen and gunners fought off the
SS
, who were supported by formidable waves of tanks. The
SS
troops ground forward slowly but steadily, cutting into Gagen’s 26th. Soviet artillery fired over open sights at the mighty German tanks, using the most modern equipment and manned by superb crews inured to any hardship of the battlefield. Gagen’s men faced a fresh assault on 7 March when two infantry divisions and 170 tanks and
SP
guns moved up in attack; Tolbukhin responded by moving 5th Guards Cavalry Corps and a brigade of
SP
guns from his reserve to stiffen the 26th. Nadelin also massed his guns, bringing 160 guns and mortars to bear across a 3,000-metre field of fire. To step up the air support the
Stavka
authorized the transfer of aircraft from 2nd Ukrainian Front to operate with Sudet’s 17th Air Army.

After two days the
SS
had cut its way some four miles into the Soviet defences, south of lake Velencze; on 8 March the German command committed 2nd
SS Panzer
division, bringing more than 250 tanks into action in the reach between Balaton and Velencze. Both sides suffered heavily and at this stage Soviet
AA
guns joined the battle, fighting off German tanks which threatened to break into the depth of the Soviet positions. The next day 9th
SS Panzer
Division joined the battle, bringing more than 600 German tanks and
SP
guns into action south of lake Velencze and steadily widening the breach in the Soviet defences, pierced now to a depth of some fifteen miles.

Tolbukhin, faced with a situation growing more serious as his reserves began to dwindle, moved Trofimenko’s 27th Army—reinforced with the three armoured formations (23rd Tank Corps, 18th Tank Corps and 1st Guards Mechanized Corps)—into the first echelon to close the gap in the Soviet defences. Meanwhile the
Stavka
ordered 9th Guards Army to deploy south-west of Budapest, bringing it under Tolbukhin’s command. Tolbukhin at once asked permission of the
Stavka
to bring 9th Guards into the defensive battle but this was peremptorily refused—9th Guards was not to be drawn into the defensive fighting and would be held back for the offensive operations. That signal went out on 9 March and four days of heavy fighting still faced Tolbukhin. The
Stavka
took the view that the German counter-offensive was beginning to lose its impetus and Tolbukhin could hold with his existing forces, leaving 9th Guards intact, fresh and fully reinforced.

German armour battered away at Trofimenko’s right flank, where on 14 March Wöhler threw in his last reserve formation, built out of 6th
SS Panzer
Division and fielding 200 tanks and
SP
guns, in one final desperate push to the Danube. General Goryachev’s 35th Guards Rifle Corps on Trofimenko’s right flank, supported by 23rd Tank Corps and two
SP
-gun brigades from
Stavka
reserve, fought fiercely to hold the German tanks from the rear defence line, halting them just short of it; on the left flank 30th Rifle Corps and 18th Tank Corps kept the
SS
back even though outflanked to the east. Gagen’s 26th Army and 5th Cavalry Corps were also fighting to keep the rear defence line intact.

No great success attended the other supporting German attacks. Sharokin’s 57th Army, using its guns to great effect, smashed up Second
Panzer
Army attacking from east of Nagykanizsa in an effort to draw Soviet forces from the main axis of the German assault. Army Group E struck out at the 1st Bulgarian Army and 3rd Yugoslav Army on the night of 6 March, using three divisions in the region of Donji–Miholjac and driving to the north. Once across the Drava, German divisions moved on to break into the rear of the Soviet 47th Army and 1st Bulgarian Army. Sharokin decided to use General Artyushenko’s 133rd Rifle Corps to eliminate the German threat to the junction between the Bulgarians and Yugoslavs. Maj.-Gen. A.É. Breido, artillery commander of 57th Army, worked the
Shtorm
artillery plan to manoeuvre his sixteen artillery units—with 150 guns and mortars—to break up German attacks. Worn down after days of fighting, the German divisions fell back to the southern bank of the Drava.

The main German assault lumbered to a final halt on 15 March, the tanks badly shot up or marooned in the muddy wash of the low-lying ground of central Hungary. Starved of fuel, the heaviest battle tanks lay immobile and presented easy targets to Soviet ground-attack planes. Over 500 tanks and assault guns, 300 guns and 40,000 men had been pounded to pieces in this last abortive offensive, all to no avail. Sepp Dietrich pulled his surviving tanks away from the Danube as fast as possible, using the pretext of protecting Vienna. Now the Russians were on the move with a thundering charge of tanks, unleashed in the wake of the defeat of the German attack and overwhelming the remnants of
Sixth
Panzer
Army in a pell-mell engagement where the few German Panthers fired into the massed ranks of Soviet heavy tanks in a fruitless attempt to hold this armoured rush.

The loss of the Hron bridgehead and the German offensive in the Balaton area caused the
Stavka
to reconsider its original plan for offensive operations designed to capture Vienna. The main axis of the forthcoming Soviet offensive was now shifted from north of the Danube to the south, into Tolbukhin’s command: 3rd Ukrainian Front would now mount the main attack. In holding back 9th Guards from the defensive battle, the
Stavka
also issued attack orders to Tolbukhin: once the German assault force had been worn down, 3rd Ukrainian Front would take the offensive not later than 15–16 March, using right-flank armies to destroy the enemy north of lake Balaton and then to drive on in the direction of Papa and Sopron. This shifted the main axis of advance to the north-west rather than the westerly advance prescribed in the directive of 17 February. Malinovskii’s 2nd Ukrainian Front would move its right flank on to the Hron and use left-flank armies south of the Danube to attack no later than 17–18 March in the direction of Györ.

While Tolbukhin held off the German counter-offensive, Malinovskii fought his way to the river Hron using 53rd and 40th Armies and his two Rumanian armies, the 1st and 4th. Zvolen in Slovakia also fell to Soviet troops, operating in the difficult mountainous country. Malinovskii’s front was spreadeagled between Czechoslovakia and Hungary; south of the Danube Malinovskii planned to use Kravchenko’s 6th Guards Tank Army, Petrushevskii’s 46th Army and 2nd Guards Mechanized Corps in a drive on Györ, but on 16 March 6th Guards Tank Army with 406 tanks and
SP
guns was handed over to Tolbukhin. The reasons for this transfer were compelling: though 4th and 9th Guards Armies were to carry the main attack on 3rd Ukrainian Front, they could only muster some 200 tanks between them and they would inevitably run into German
Panzer
units equipped with 270 tanks and
SP
guns. Kravchenko received orders to concentrate his tanks in the area of 9th Guards Army, to the west of Budapest. The Soviet 6th Guards Tank Army would thus grapple with Sixth
SS Panzer
, smashing the German tank force once and for all.

Malinovskii’s Front committed only one reinforced army to operations on Hungarian soil: out of thirty-six divisions (Soviet and Rumanian alike), he deployed only twelve for offensive operations connected with the drive on Vienna. Tolbukhin decided to use two infantry armies on his right flank (9th and 4th Guards), drive into the flank and rear of the German armour, cut its escape route to the west and destroy these remnants with 27th and 26th Armies, thereby opening up a route for a speedy advance to the frontiers of Hungary. Glagolev’s 9th Guards Army was to isolate and destroy the enemy north of lake Balaton, assigned to cover twenty-five miles in five days; although fully manned (with divisions swelled to 11,000 men and more, plus a heavier complement of guns), 9th Guards had not been-blooded, lacked infantry support tanks and possessed only
small-calibre
SP
guns, in spite of having to tackle German armoured units. Zakhvateyev’s 4th Guards received orders to break the German lines north of lake Velencze, outflanking Szekesfehervar to the north and south, and drive to the south-west. The two remaining Soviet armies, 27th and 57th (with 1st Bulgarian Army), would wait on the success of 9th and 4th Guards before moving off themselves.

On 16 March Tolbukhin’s troops began that gigantic heave which quickly toppled the entire German southern flank. Two armies, 9th and 4th Guards, jumped off in the attack and steadily widened a gap for Soviet armour, while Malinovskii launched 46th Army on the following day in his own Front offensive. Heavy fighting centred on Szekesfehervar, which the German command determined to hold at all costs. On the morning of 19 March, Kravchenko’s tank army went into action, and both Malinovskii and Tolbukhin raced to encircle the German
Panzer
army, Malinovskii attacking from the north and Tolbukhin bringing three armies to bear against Szekesfehervar. By the evening of 22 March the bulk of Sixth
Panzer
faced the threat of complete encirclement south of Szekesfehervar, with only a narrow corridor less than a mile wide and already swept by guns and machine-gun fire providing a hazardous route to safety. Four
Panzer
divisions and a German infantry division fought fiercely to keep this lifeline open, throwing in tanks to keep the Soviet ‘pincers’ apart, straining, sweating, infantry fighting agonized actions to keep contact with islands of German soldiers sinking beneath this sea of Soviet attacks. Home was not so far away, but thousands of German soldiers died in this Hungarian
débâcle
as Tolbukhin rolled on relentlessly. Szekesfehervar fell on 23 March, the Bakony Hills came under Soviet attack and the flimsy defence lines at Vesprzem collapsed under increasing Soviet pressure. But Sixth
Panzer
had escaped encirclement. Shortage of ammunition to pound the German defenders into dazed insensibility, lack of infantry support tanks, the slow progress of the main assault group and the absence of overwhelming superiority in armour all contributed to the failure; Kravchenko’s 6th Guards Tank Army should also have been brought to battle much more rapidly.

The pursuit, however, quickly became a rout. The much-vaunted
SS
took to their heels and now the Soviet tanks ground on, smashing down the German defences and turning to the road junction at Papa. German forces west of lake Balaton milled about in total confusion. Malinovskii battered the German positions north of the Danube, taking Komarno, so that by 23 March the German defences were on the point of collapse; Esztergom was surrounded and stormed, the Vertesz Hills pierced and Totis captured. By 25 March Malinovskii’s troops had pushed more than twenty miles into the German positions and ripped a sixty-mile gap in the defences. Having cleared the valley of the Hron, Malinovskii prepared to strike in the direction of Bratislava, following fleeing German troops.

Tolbukhin’s successes north of lake Balaton also gave 57th Army its chance, operating on the left flank of the 3rd Ukrainian Front. Pitted against Second
Panzer
Army, a staunch enemy which gave ground only slowly, Sharokhin closed
on the oilfields at Nagykanizsa and encircled them completely towards the end of March. To the west, the main body of 3rd Ukrainian Front swept on, taking Papa and then driving to the north-west towards the river Raab and the Austrian frontier: on 28 March Soviet troops forced the Raab on a broad front, brushing aside the attempts of Sixth
Panzer
and Sixth Army to hold the river line. The last town of importance in Hungary—Sopron—fell on 1 April, Soviet lead units were already across the Austrian frontier near Keszeg and the Red Army was poised to strike on Vienna from two directions. German resistance in Hungary was at an end, leaving in its wake a great litter of shattered tanks and doomed men. Faced with a hopeless situation, Hungarian troops and even some German units abandoned a wholly unequal struggle and began to surrender in large numbers, with 40–45,000 men giving themselves up to Tolbukhin’s units towards the end of the month.

On 1 April the
Stavka
issued revised battle orders for the speedy capture of Vienna. The city was to be encircled from the east and attacked from the west and south-west in a joint operation mounted by 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts.

Though a mere thirty-five miles from Berlin early in February, Zhukov’s armies closing on the Oder learned quickly enough that they were not about to launch a high-speed attack on the German capital, taking the city off the march with a couple of rifle armies and two tank armies. German resistance stiffened everywhere, even if the days of fielding mighty armies had passed. Scratch units, stragglers, impressed deserters, the ageing and enfeebled
Volkssturm
enrolled as an embattled Home Guard, merciless
SS
holding detachments, regular
Wehrmacht
formations and the remnants of the
Luftwaffe
—all fought bitter battles in desperate attempts to hold off the Bolshevik hordes whose fearsome reputation went before them. The ferocity of the fighting took inevitable toll of the Red Army, which now all too frequently hurled men with fatalistic recklessness and in a veritable passion of destructiveness against German redoubts. German defenders hung on grimly to their Oder fortresses of Küstrin, Glogau, Breslau and Ratibor; in the rear of the advancing Soviet armies, garrisons at Elbing, Poznan, Deutsche-Krone and Schneidemühl continued their resistance, tying down much artillery and many Soviet battalions. Losses bit deep on both sides. Rokossovskii’s 2nd Belorussian Front, which had carved its way through East Prussia, fielded scarecrow divisions ground down to 3–4,000 men supported by 297 patched-up tanks. Mud, rain, sleet and snow slowed the movement of Soviet supplies and reinforcement, with traffic further hampered by the need to shift from the broad Russian railway gauge to narrower European tracks.