The Road to Berlin (111 page)

Zhukov attacked on the morning of 1 March, launching 3rd Shock Army and 1st Polish Army under cover of a fifty-minute artillery barrage supported by ground-attack aircraft. To the complete astonishment of the German General Staff, Zhukov’s tanks swung northwards instead of streaking towards Berlin as they had expected. Katukhov’s 1st Guards Tank Army smashed into the German defences, forcing troops and refugees to flee northwards in helpless, vulnerable columns. 2nd Guards Tank Army with 61st Army had meanwhile to fight its way through Stargard, but Katukhov pressed on to the north, reaching Kolberg on 4–5 March accompanied by units of 3rd Shock Army and 1st Polish Army. On 5 March, 61st Army finally broke into Stargard and uncovered German defences screening Stettin, but 47th Army was fighting hard to cover the ground towards Altdamm.

Zhukov and Rokossovskii swept on to the Baltic coast, closing on Danzig and Gdynia. Refugees crowded on to the roads, trying to escape to the west and east, facing the trials of the spring flooding and the terror of Soviet tank columns on the move. German ships moved party officials and some wounded from Danzig; to cope with the German warships lying off the gulf of Danzig, the Soviet command rushed up heavy guns to counter this sea-borne fire support for the German defences, while Soviet aircraft attacked both the ground troops and the German navy.

On 8 March the
Stavka
assigned Katukhov’s 1st Guards Tank Army to Rokossovskii’s Front command, a move which prompted Zhukov to telephone Rokossovskii and inform him that he wanted the tank army ‘returned in the same state as you received it’. Rokossovskii duly promised, tongue in cheek. The Soviet plan now envisaged splitting the Danzig–Gdynia fortified area in two, separating Danzig from Gdynia. Rokossovskii was also encouraged by the fact
that the frontage of his divisions shrank considerably, adding power to their attack as losses made themselves felt. The first attack was aimed at Sopot, a seaside resort. Soviet troops broke into the suburb of Oliwa late in March. On 25 March, having reached the Gulf of Danzig, Rokossovskii reported that the German defenders had been split into three pockets, one at Danzig, another at Gdynia and a third at the Putziger–Nehring spit.

Katukhov’s tanks, with 19th Army, struck along the coast towards Gdynia. Fedyuninskii’s 2nd Shock Army moved towards the southern suburb of Danzig. The attack on Danzig was easier from the north, but Gdynia fell first, stormed on 26 March. Some days were needed to clear the port of remnants, by which time the assault on Danzig began, preceded by a rejection of the Soviet offer of surrender. Attacked from three sides on 26 March, the garrison fought from building to building, calling once more on German warships for fire support. After a few days it was all over; the survivors fled to the mouth of the Vistula and on 30 March Danzig was cleared of German troops. True to his promise, Rokossovskii had already handed back 1st Guards Tank Army, not much the worse for wear.

Far to the rear on Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front, German fortresses and strong-points fell one by one. Chuikov with 8th Guards Army fixed 20 February as the final date for the storming of the citadel in Poznan. That morning, at 9 o’clock, the Soviet assault began, followed by two days of hand-to-hand fighting. The storm operation recalled the breaking of a medieval siege, filling the moat with fascines and mining the outer wall, though a modern touch was supplied by tanks and
SP
guns making their way through the breach in the walls. The German command rejected Chuikov’s radio appeal to surrender, but late at night on 22 February General Bakanov with 74th Rifle Division reported that German emissaries were moving out to parley. Thirty minutes later the German garrison surrendered, their commander having committed suicide; the defeated troops marched out in good order, a marked contrast to what Chuikov had seen at Stalingrad when pathetic crippled columns of starving men dragged themselves away to captivity. The fall of Poznan unlocked the floodgates of Soviet supplies, sending men and ammunition racing to the Oder bridgeheads.

Chuikov’s 8th Guards now closed on the Oder, all formations—nine divisions, with combat support—up to strength, deployed between Frankfurt and Küstrin. The preliminary operations closed the gap between 8th Guards and 5th Shock Armies, isolating the German garrison in Küstrin. Berzarin with 5th Shock and Chuikov with 8th Guards planned to close on this famous fortress town from the south and north. Already the old forts covered by streams and marshes had fallen, but a hand-picked German garrison still held the town. Berzarin and Chuikov duly linked up, and the assault on the town began on 22 March. The irony was that Küstrin had already ‘fallen’, at least in Front reports, early in February; Chuikov sarcastically told the Front chief of staff that since 5th Shock had already captured Küstrin, a feat proclaimed by an artillery salute in Moscow,
why bother to do the job again? Marshal Zhukov interrupted the conversation to say that things go wrong in war and they must be put right.

Chuikov’s men fought their way along narrow roads and the tops of dykes to crack German resistance. Soviet guns pounded the fortifications, aiming to drive the defenders out of the fixed defences and into the earthworks where Soviet aircraft waited to attack them. On the morning of 29 March the final assault began, as the guns now shifted to the field works and assault troops landed on the island formed by the Oder and the Warta. Soviet infantrymen stormed the fortress itself, racing to the fortress wall and breaking into the fortress yard. By noon the fiercest of the fighting was over and resistance ended, the dead lying strewn throughout the fortress and prisoners being collected. Chuikov reported the news to Marshal Zhukov in Moscow. This was Zhukov’s second visit to Moscow during the month of March; during the first week in March Stalin summoned him for a meeting during the course of the East Pomeranian operation. Stalin was tired, dispirited and far from well. During the course of a long talk Zhukov finally asked him about the fate of his son, Yakob, who had been captured in 1941; Stalin remained silent for a long while and then remarked that the Germans were bound to shoot him, for he would never betray his country. Zhukov also learned some details of the Yalta conference, laying much stress on the importance of having a Poland friendly to the Soviet Union. After giving Zhukov some information about the administration of Germany after the capitulation, Stalin instructed him to discuss the attack on Berlin with Antonov.

Further south Zhukov’s arch-rival Marshal Koniev, also poised along the ‘Berlin axis’, renewed his offensive in order to occupy western Silesia and to close on the Neisse in Brandenburg, thus bringing him fully abreast of the 1st Belorussian Front. On his two bridgeheads north and south of Breslau, Koniev concentrated three rifle armies and two tank armies (to the north) and two rifle armies supported by two tank corps to the south; a third assault group with two rifle armies and a cavalry corps deployed along the left flank, south-west of Oppeln. Like other Soviet fronts, Koniev faced serious supply problems, lack of reinforcements and battle-weary troops; shortage of ammunition and bad weather added to the Front commander’s difficulties. To maintain as much ‘shock power’ as possible, Koniev ordered his two tank armies to concentrate closely behind the rifle armies and break through enemy defences in a single echelon.

At 6 am on 8 February Koniev’s guns opened fire, laying down a fifty-minute barrage and signalling the attack from the Steinau bridgehead north of Breslau. After three days the Soviet breakthrough reached a depth of forty miles across a front of more than ninety, encircling the German garrison at Glogau and, after forcing the Bobr, approached the river Neisse. Though Gordov’s 3rd Army had trapped the German garrison in Glogau, Koniev became increasingly concerned about German resistance at the centre, at Breslau, which blocked the advance of Zhadov’s 5th Guards and 21st Armies. Gluzdovskii’s 6th Army was also stuck
and the left-flank armies of the Front had failed to manage a breakthrough. German counter-attacks flailed away at 6th Army in an attempt to fend off the danger to Breslau, but on 15 February Zhadov’s 5th Guards linked up with 6th Army to the west of Breslau, sealing the encirclement and shutting up 40,000 German troops. To make assurance doubly sure Koniev routed Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army towards Breslau, putting in armour to secure the infantry encirclement.

Facing the formidable Soviet ring of steel to the west, the refugees piling out of Breslau hastily turned back and sought safety in the city. Two German infantry divisions received orders to break out, leaving only one—the 609th—to hold the fortress, a puny garrison supplemented by an assortment of
SS
units,
Luftwaffe
personnel and
Volkssturm
battalions. Elsewhere the population fled headlong before the Soviet advance, denuding Silesia of its population. (Somewhat later the Soviet
kommandatura
registered only 620,000 Germans remaining out of what had been almost five million a year before.) Koniev’s immediate gains, however, consisted of the advance to the Neisse and the encirclement of both Glogau and Breslau, all by 15 February. More he could not do, as he pointedly emphasized in his Front report of 16 February. The
Stavka
approved his plan to drive for the Neisse but Stalin throughout the Yalta conference prodded him about his southern flank—the German command had every intention of retaking the Silesian industrial basin and would strike in the direction of Ratibor. ‘You had better look out’, Stalin advised Koniev, and asked for details of his operational plan to cope with the situation.

On 15 March Koniev struck again, this time with his left-flank armies in an operation designed to seize Upper Silesia as far as the Czechoslovak frontier. Koniev planned to use two assault forces to encircle German forces in the Oppeln bulge and in Oppeln itself: one force (with 21st Army and 4th Tank Army, plus two corps) would attack from the area of Grottkau in a south-westerly direction, while the other with two armies (59th and 60th) supported by one tank and one mechanized corps received orders to attack from the north of Ratibor in a westerly direction. At least Koniev did not have to face Sixth
SS Panzer
Army—expected hourly, only to materialize in Hungary.

Aiming concentric blows at Neustadt, Koniev first encircled the Oppeln group, with two armies linking up in the Neustadt area. The
Hermann Göring Panzer
Division tried to break into the encirclement but was beaten off by Belov’s 10th Guards Tank Corps. The following day, 20 March, a German army corps, two
Panzer
and one infantry division tried again to break the Soviet ring, only to be engaged by three Soviet corps. Inside the ring 30,000 German officers and men fell to the Soviet onslaught, with 15,000 finally taken prisoner. Kurochkin with 60th Army now received orders to take Ratibor, for which task he was given four tank and mechanized corps together with two artillery ‘breakthrough divisions’. To speed the blow Koniev sent two more tank corps from 4th Guards Tank
Army in the wake of 60th Army with orders to attack from the north; but speed itself failed to materialize as Soviet troops battered their way through villages, across road junctions and over hill after hill. Suddenly, away to Koniev’s left on the 4th Ukrainian Front, Moskalenko’s 38th Army resumed its own offensive and faced the German forces with the spectre of yet another encirclement in the area of Rybnik and Ratibor. Kurochkin seized the chance to storm both cities, taking Rybnik off the march and putting one corps across the Oder to the south of Ratibor. For an hour heavy guns bombarded Ratibor, after which two rifle corps of 60th Army and 4th Guards Tank Army launched their assault on 30 March, clearing the Germans from the city. Upper Silesia had fallen to the Red Army, there could be no German recovery and Breslau was completely sealed off.

In less than a month the euphoria generated by the Yalta conference had all but vanished. The Moscow Commission, set up to implement the conference decisions on Poland, met for the first time on 23 February and immediately set off a fresh and bitter wrangle with the Russians. In spite of the representations of Ambassadors Harriman and Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, urging that three Poles should be invited from outside Poland, Molotov in a stinging rebuff charged that the Yalta agreement stipulated consultation only with the ‘Warsaw Poles’ in the first place, without intruders. On the vexed question of British and American observers in Poland, Molotov agreed four days later to such a move, a step welcomed by the British government provided that it did not imply recognition of the ‘Warsaw Poles’. At this Molotov suggested a postponement of discussions but was visibly taken aback when the two ambassadors agreed with the dispatch of observers—whereupon the Soviet government abruptly withdrew this facility on 1 March. As the impasse deepened the Prime Minister prepared a special message for Stalin but was persuaded to wait on the results of one more attempt to cajole Molotov into accepting the Anglo–American interpretation of the Yalta agreement. On 19 March the British and American ambassadors presented separate but identical notes setting out the Anglo–American position, but Molotov on 23 March rejected them outright, with a show of high dudgeon at the ‘insult’ to the Poles if outsiders were brought in, and repeated with iron insistence that the ‘Warsaw Poles’ had a right to prior consultation.

This embitterment on both sides lurched suddenly to the edge of estrangement over the Soviet attitude to Anglo–American contacts with the German command, a highly secret undertaking engineered by Allen Dulles in Berne and involving the possible surrender of German forces in Italy. The hidden German hand behind this belonged to none other than Himmler himself, who used Karl Wolff (head of the
SS
in Italy) to pursue these probes. Field-Marshal Alexander warily obtained the authorization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington to send two senior
officers to Switzerland to hear Wolff out, but they advised the Field-Marshal that the Russians must be informed. The British Chiefs of Staff urged not only notification to the Soviet government but also an invitation for Soviet officers to participate in the talks. By way of compromise the British and American ambassadors broke the news of the proposed talks to Molotov on 12 March; Molotov raised no objection but proposed the attendance of three Soviet senior officers. General Deane, the head of the American Military Mission in Moscow, strenuously opposed the idea of Soviet officers joining this enterprise, whereupon Molotov was told that the object of the talks was to facilitate the passage of a German plenipotentiary to Caserta, Field-Marshal Alexander’s
HQ
—and here Soviet officers would be most welcome.