The Road to Berlin (115 page)

The
Stavka
confirmed Vasilevskii’s operational plan but resolutely refused to supply him with additional reinforcement in spite of the heavy losses suffered by 3rd Belorussian Front. Fuel and ammunition were in short supply, delay piled on delay with roads clogged increasingly with mud, holding up armour, artillery and lorries moving from the more distant dumps. Meanwhile Bagramyan was preparing Operation
Samland
, the codename for the storming of Königsberg itself, for which Vasilevskii promised nothing less than
all
Soviet aircraft operating in East Prussia (two tactical air armies, 1st and 3rd, reinforced with divisions from 18th Air Army, a heavy bomber formation), together with the very heaviest artillery from the High Command reserve, including 305mm-calibre siege guns. Bagramyan was under no illusions about the enormity of the task facing him, nothing less than the largest and most complex urban assault operation undertaken by the Red Army, facing powerful forts, innumerable pillboxes, well-constructed fortified buildings and obstacles at every turn. To assist the planning a model of the city in 1:3000 scale was built, detailing the external and internal fortifications, particularly the forts. Three lines of defences ringed Königsberg, with fifteen forts presenting a major threat to the Soviet assault; the second line of defences followed the outline of the suburbs and the third covered the centre, also fitted out with its own forts. Having studied the defensive system on the model, Bagramyan marked out the attack sectors for 43rd, 50th and 11th Guards Armies, with 39th Army also committed, a ‘psychological stroke’ suggested by Vasilevskii, for its was Lyudnikov’s 39th which had failed to hold the German attack from the
city and also from Samland on 18 February, thus establishing a land link which breathed fresh life into German resistance. Lyudnikov might now get his revenge.

On 13 March Vasilevskii told Bagramyan that in spite of the rain, sleet and poor visibility the assault on the Heiligenbeil defences must open on time; it was also time for Bagramyan to move. Bagramyan could at least report that 16th Guards Rifle Division was in action and had cut the road linking Brandenburg with Königsberg. Three days later, on 16 March, Vasilevskii submitted a lengthy report to Stalin on the situation in East Prussia, specifying the details of the planning for the assault on Königsberg; but the official
Stavka
reply stipulated that the Heiligenbeil operation must be concluded by 22 March and the assault on Königsberg begun no later than 28 March. Vasilevskii turned at once to Stalin and pointed out that this timetable simply could not be carried out, since the Heiligenbeil operation could not be concluded before the 25–28 March and it would take three or four days to regroup, thus delaying the artillery and air bombardment of Königsberg until early in April. Stalin not only agreed but promised major reinforcements and the dispatch of two senior air officers, Air Chief Marshal A.A. Novikov and A.E. Golovanov, to assist Vasilevskii.

Fighting for every foot of its bridgehead, the German Fourth Army was pushed steadily back to the sea, jammed into the cramped Balga peninsula which poked out into the Frisches Haff in the direction of Pillau. Heiligenbeil itself fell on 25 March in a welter of hand-to-hand fighting, while on the beaches at Balga the remnants of German divisions came under sustained Soviet air attack. Hitler at first refused to permit any evacuation and only agreed on 26 March, provided the heavy equipment had been rescued, a decision which came too late to save either the equipment or the men. Only small groups made their escape to Frische Nehrung and Pillau; on 29 March the German bridgehead to the south had been completely eliminated, leaving Vasilevskii free to unleash all his forces on Königsberg, which the Soviet command intended to smother in a giant wave of fire. Meanwhile, the
Stavka
ordered the disbanding of Bagramyan’s Samland Group, the divisions being assigned to reserve at Insterburg, though Bagramyan himself remained as deputy commander of the 3rd Belorussian Front.

The preliminary bombardment of Königsberg began early in April but low cloud and driving rain impeded Soviet pilots and gunners. Vasilevskii telephoned Stalin and found him fretting over any possible delay to the Berlin operation; a glance out of the window revealed only more fog and rain, but Vasilevskii knew he could delay no longer. The guns would have to take the main weight at the moment, though Novikov promised an all-out air effort even with a marginal improvement in the weather. All Soviet armies were on their start lines, prepared if necessary to rely on artillery alone. Marshal Novikov could give no firm indication when his air armies would be committed and pointed out drily that he did not command the weather, only the planes and pilots. The Soviet assault force with its four armies numbered 137,250 men (more or less equal to the German garrison) but massively reinforced with fire-power—5,000 guns and
heavy mortars, 538 tanks and
SP
guns, and 2,444 aircraft. The
Stavka
directed guns and aircraft from a variety of sources. The Baltic Fleet contributed its naval aircraft, river gunboats brought from the gulf of Finland, the 404th Railway Artillery Division, naval infantry to strike at Samland, a naval component organized into the ‘South-Western Naval Defence Zone’ under the command of Rear-Admiral N.I. Vinogradov. Almost half the artillery strength consisted of large-calibre guns, including the heaviest pieces (203mm to 305mm) and the naval railway artillery with 130mm and 180mm guns; rifle-division commanders could call on 152mm and 203mm guns, as well as 160mm mortars supplemented by 300 multiple rocket launchers.

The weather cleared appreciably on 6 April, whereupon Vasilevskii launched infantry and armour on the storming operation, driving into the German perimeter at eight separate points on the north-western and south-western sectors of Königsberg. The Soviet regiments had earlier set up their ‘assault squads’, made up of a rifle battalion, a company of engineers, a section of 76mm guns, one flamethrower section, a battery of 120mm mortars, a tank company and
SP
guns; battalions and companies formed similar assault groups supported by two anti-tank guns, two guns and two or three tanks. Every rifleman in the assault groups was equipped with six grenades and rigged out with all the kit that arduous experience of street fighting dictated. The Soviet artillery fire never slackened, and in the afternoon Soviet aircraft joined the assault as the weather improved, 1st Air Army attacking from the east, 15th Air from the north, Baltic Fleet naval aircraft coming from the west and bombers of Long-Range Aviation striking from every direction. Against these swarms of aircraft the
Luftwaffe
could do little or nothing with a hundred or so fighters desperately trying to fly off from airfields under heavy bombing or even using the main streets in Königsberg.

As the evening arrived, Soviet assault units had already pushed their way into the city, blockading or blowing up several forts, cutting the Königsberg–Pillau railway line and piercing the entire defensive system. Night brought no respite. Vasilevskii ordered all army commanders to fight on without pause, a fiery prelude to the storm of fire poured over the city the following day. Königsberg was doomed and the mass of civilians, mixed with the fighting troops, could not fail to be seized with terror amidst this military cremation stoked quite mercilessly by the Red Army. 7 April dawned with clearer skies, the morning mists dispersing quickly, but dense smoke piled over Königsberg. The Soviet guns fired off their covering barrages and the aircraft of 11th Guards Fighter Corps swept in to attack what remained of aerodromes and
AA
positions. At ground level, forts, fortifications and buildings fell to Soviet fighting squads leaping, running, squirming, climbing, firing, dynamiting and burning out German garrisons in the fearful drills of street fighting. The heavy guns continued to batter down the defences, some of which proved to be astonishingly durable—Fort Nos. 5 and 5a survived a rain of 500–600 shells from heavy-calibre guns (203mm and 280mm) and even then crippled the German gun-crews fought Soviet riflemen from the
covered passageways crisscrossing the ditches and moats ringing the forts.

That massed formation of Soviet fighter-bombers, however, signalled fresh frenzy about to be injected into the battle. Bad weather had kept Novikov’s air armies grounded on 6 April, with the bombers managing only 85 sorties of a planned 1,218; out of the grand total of 4,000 planned sorties, only 1,000 were flown. But at 10 am on 7 April Novikov launched 246 bombers to carry out three waves of attacks and decided to use the heavy bombers of Long-Range Aviation in daylight attacks, much to Golovanov’s consternation. Golovanov argued that Soviet bomber crews, used to operating only at night, were not trained for daylight formation flying and would be easy meat for German fighters. Novikov dismissed that last point with derision: ‘Don’t fret yourself on that score. I will give your bombers an escort of 125 fighters, so not a single “Messer” will touch you. In addition, 200–300
shturmoviki
with heavy fighter escort will cover the city constantly and in co-operation with our artillery will make sure that German
AA
guns won’t utter a peep.…’ Golovanov tried to argue back but Novikov, Soviet Air Force C-in-C, told him to get on with it. More than 500 bombers duly dropped 550 tons of bombs on the defences, knocking down whole buildings and blocking street after street, piling a huge shroud of dust over the defenders.

This devastating attack spread the ruin but it did not crack German resistance, which continued from underground shelters and heavily reinforced strong-points. Through the passages blasted by Soviet dive-bombers and cleared by sappers, Soviet armies cut their way street by street into the city: Beloborodov’s 43rd Army ground its way from the north-west, Galitskii’s 11th Guards from the south, crossing the river Pregel in its path. On 8 April, as Beloborodov and Galitskii fought to link up, Novikov put in a maximum air effort with Soviet aircraft flying 6,000 sorties, but as Soviet troops closed on each other from the north-west and from the south there was growing danger of Soviet air attacks and artillery fire engulfing Soviet units. General Lasch, the German commander of
Festung Königsberg
, could see no point in this continued carnage. He had already asked General Müller, Fourth Army commander, for permission to withdraw into Samland but this was refused. Now Königsberg was cut off from Samland, making a mockery of Müller’s belated permission for a withdrawal.

Engulfed in horrible destruction and trapped in a morass of flame under continuous bombardment inflicted on soldiers and civilians alike, Lasch reluctantly signed an act of capitulation with the Soviet command at 2130 hours on 9 April. At dawn on the following day columns of Geman prisoners assembled in the ruined city centre, senior German officers much in evidence and Lasch himself in the van. Lasch, interviewed by Marshal Vasilevskii, complimented the Soviet command on the speed with which the final storming of the fortress had been carried through. His own defensive operations, largely improvised as they were, also commanded respect, though all he received from Hitler was an accusation of a ‘premature’ surrender, the death sentence and the arrest of his family. The
Red Army claimed 42,000 German officers and men killed, 92,000 prisoners (including 1,800 officers and generals) and a lengthy tally of weapons and equipment. The civilians suffered cruelly and one quarter—25,000 people—perished, trapped as they were without any means of escape, a situation deliberately planned by East Prussia’s
Gauleiter
.

It remained now to deal with the German Group Samland, which Vasilevskii’s chief of intelligence reported to consist of eight infantry divisions and one
Panzer
division. He also reported that Müller had been dismissed as commander of Fourth Army, being replaced by von Saucken. The whole German force amounted to about 65,000 men, with 1,200 guns and 166 patched-up tanks. To eliminate this group and to reduce Pillau, the Soviet command proposed to use five armies, with the main attack directed on Fischausen. The Soviet attack opened on 13 April and ushered in a final bout of savage fighting as German rearguards fought regardless of cost to themselves to hold off the Russian attacks and to cover the withdrawal on Pillau. Group Samland, battered out of all recognition, ceased to exist formally in the German order of battle after 15 April, but orders went out to hold Pillau at all costs in order to permit every available German ship to take off refugees and soldiers. A fighting force of 20,000 German troops manned an improvised but fanatically fought defence at Pillau, grappling with Soviet assault units and grinding them to pieces, piling loss on loss until Vasilevskii was forced to commit his second echelon—11th Guards Army—in a last furious effort to overwhelm the German defences. Six long, drawn-out bloody days ensued, costing both sides dear before the fighting died away amidst the mounds of shattered equipment and the litter of corpses strewn across the sands and heaped in the pine forests, the last spasm in 105 days of butchery, ferocity and almost ceaseless bombardment which had stamped the East Prussian campaign, culminating in the fiery reduction of Königsberg.

Nor did events to the west and the south fail to have an impact on the mood of the defenders and the eventual fate of the defence of Königsberg: the fall of Danzig, followed by the capture of Vienna by the Red Army, brought great gloom to the civilians and soldiers trapped in the mighty circle of Russian guns clamped round Königsberg. Surveying this scene, becoming increasingly nightmarish with each day, Hitler divined at the end of March that the massive Soviet buildup at the approaches to Berlin was nothing but a feint and that, when it came, the main Russian attack would fall in the south with a drive into Czechoslovakia in order to lay hands on vital and extensive industrial resources. The
Führer
accordingly ordered the transfer of
SS Panzer
divisions from Army Group Vistula to the south, all to stiffen Schörner’s forces defending Czechoslovakia. Soviet plans did indeed call for a major offensive directed against Czechoslovakia, though the execution in March proved to be a costly and disappointing affair. The operational plan submitted by 4th Ukrainian Front in mid-February envisaged an initial stage designed to improve the Front’s general position, followed by a thrust to a depth of 250 miles and reaching as far as the line of the river Vltava—and
Prague itself; the first stage of the operations would involve the capture of the Moravska-Ostrava industrial region, a mission assigned to 38th Army. Malinovskii’s 2nd Ukrainian Front received orders to use its main force to capture Bratislava and Brno, diverting elements of the Front at the same time to co-operate with 3rd Ukrainian Front in the seizure of Vienna.