The Road to Berlin (119 page)

Three rifle armies, Gordov’s 3rd Guards, Pukhov’s 13th and Zhadov’s 5th Guards made up Koniev’s main infantry assault force. Gordov was assigned 25th Tank Corps and Zhdanov 4th Guards Tank Corps, the armoured formations coming under their immediate command during the breakthrough, after which they would operate as ‘mobile groups’. The first operational plan called for the main assault force to break through the depth of the enemy’s tactical defence along the Forst–Muskau sector and by the second day of operations reach the river Spree. The two tank armies would be introduced once the line of the Spree had been gained, with Rybalko’s 3rd Guards attacking from south of Cottbus and Lelyushenko’s 4th Guards from north of Spremberg, after which both would drive north-westwards in the general direction of Treuenbrietzen. The implications of this plan were plain—two days could be lost before the armour really moved off.

Zhdanov, Lelyushenko and Rybalko put their heads together, coming up with a plan to commit lead elements of the armoured armies the moment one sixty-ton bridge was open, though two such bridges would help. Forward elements from the two tank armies could then race across the 20–25 miles of ground stretching between the Neisse and the Spree, thus disrupting any German attempt to meet the Soviet thrust with a prepared defence stiffened with reserves. If all went well with the bridging operation on the Neisse, Lelyushenko was even prepared to throw in his entire first echelon. However, the new chief of staff of 1st Ukrainian Front, General I.E. Petrov (the recently disgraced commander of the 4th Ukrainian Front, sent to Koniev as a replacement for Sokolovskii, whom Zhukov had commandeered to be his own deputy with 1st Belorussian) was aghast at this suggestion. According to his book, tank armies simply did not waste themselves on trifling with the enemy’s tactical defence and should be held back for deep operational penetration, which meant waiting for the infantry to force both the Neisse and the Spree.

Marshal Koniev, seeing all the possibilities, took a very different view. On 14 April Lelyushenko received orders to the effect that the moment Zhadov had two bridges open, two forward detachments of 4th Guards Tank Army would cross the Neisse and break into the enemy’s tactical defences. Lelyushenko got it both ways: using the instruction about forward detachments to ram much of his first echelon forward, he selected two brigades from 10th Guards Tank Corps and one reinforced brigade from 6th Guards Mechanized Corps to operate with 95th Guards Rifle Division and with 13th and 58th Guards Rifle Divisions, respectively. Both armoured corps would make an assault crossing on the Spree,
with 10th Corps driving on Sonnenwalde and the 6th on Finsterwalde; 5th Guards Mechanized Corps, which formed the second echelon, would follow in the wake of 6th Mechanized towards Finsterwalde and screen the left flank of 4th Guards Tank Army from possible counter-attacks. Koniev, however, stipulated that the tank armies must not use any of their river-crossing equipment on the Neisse, all bridging and ferries to be saved for the Spree.

In the space of the forty-eight hours between 12 and 14 April both Front commanders, Zhukov and Koniev, had drastically revised the original operational plan for the attack on Berlin. Katukov, commanding 1st Guards Tank Army, received his final orders from 1st Belorussian Front command on 12 April, which stipulated that the tank army would operate from the Küstrin bridgehead in the wake of Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army, with Bogdanov’s 2nd Guards Tank Army to the north and fighting with Berzarin’s 5th Shock Army. Katukov’s orders prescribed in detail that his tanks should go into action only when Chuikov’s infantry reached the Seelow–Dolgelin–Alt Malisch line, whereupon 1st Guards would drive westwards and on the second day of operations reach the eastern outskirts of Berlin, switching then to a south-westerly axis in order to outflank the city from the south as well as seizing those southerly suburbs. The prospect of committing his tanks to heavy street fighting scarcely filled Katukov with elation and there was the uncomfortable thought of throwing in two tank armies before the defences of the Seelow Heights had been thoroughly neutralized. Meanwhile he prepared to move his tank divisions from the cover of the woods on the eastern bank of the Oder and into the Küstrin bridgehead.

On 14 April, as Marshal Koniev gave his personal approval to the plans for speedy movement of armour across the Neisse, Zhukov launched his reconnaissance in force in the areas of 47th, 3rd Shock, 5th Shock and 8th Guards Armies—the frontage of his main attack. First-echelon divisions received orders to use reinforced rifle battalions for this purpose, all covered by heavy artillery fire. Supported by tanks, Soviet units pushed into the forward German positions covering the Seelow Heights, driving in places as far as three miles and apparently disorganizing the German fire system, as well as plotting the location of large minefields. Appearances, however, were deceptive, almost fatally so as events were to prove. The German command was not fooled, and one Soviet prisoner blithely told German officers that the present attacks were only for reconnaissance. What this prisoner did not know was that the reconnaissance, put forth with such vigour, had for all practical purposes failed, since neither Front nor army staffs drew the ‘correct conclusions’ about the existence of the second line of German defences—the main defensive positions to which Soviet officers had drawn Zhukov’s attention as early as 5 April, suggesting that the main artillery and air strikes should be directed here.

As Sunday, 15 April, drew to a close the Soviet attacks slackened and died away. The dark came, screening frantic activity on both sides of the line as German troops started on their night movement to man the second, main defensive
line on the Seelow Heights while Soviet soldiers gathered round to hear last-minute, fiery exhortations from political officers, clustered at pre-attack Party meetings, trundled weapons forward, topped up tanks, filled magazines, adjusted the hundreds of guns and mortars, and lugged great quantities of bridging equipment up to the Oder bank. For all the bustle and sweaty work, there was little noise; the entire Front seemed to be creeping forward, rustling, creaking, stepping out of natural cover and from under camouflage netting, a military monster in the making and coming more alive with each minute. Closer now to zero hour and in the deep night the Guards battle-standards were taken up to front-line positions and Guards units repeated their oath to fight with honour. Two hours before the opening of the artillery barrage—timed for 5 am (Moscow time)—Marshal Zhukov appeared at Chuikov’s command post, having carried out last-minute checks with several army commanders while en route to 8th Guards. Chuikov, with Marshal Zhukov uncomfortably close at his elbow, waited out the final minutes drinking tea, while across the entire Front masses of Soviet soldiers tensed up.

On the stroke of five, with the dawn not yet come, three red flares shot up and at that moment thousands of Soviet guns,
Katyusha
rocket-launchers and mortars tore the darkness apart in great gouts of muzzle flashes followed by a rolling thunder throbbing more intensely with the engine noise of the Soviet bombers and
shturmoviki
making for their targets. Not only the ground itself heaved and whirled in repeated spouts, but the very air set up its own screeching and whirring, sending its own storm of blast-whipped wind in a fresh vortex of destruction. As the guns fired on for twenty minutes, earth and what passed for sky slowly merged, a vast curtain raised by half a million shells, rockets and mortar bombs falling to a depth of five miles on the forward German positions. Three minutes before the end of this opening bombardent one searchlight shone its beam vertically into the sky, at which 143 searchlights in the sectors of the assault armies switched on, to light up the ground in front of the advancing infantry, while the artillery moved its main fire deeper into the German positions.

The searchlight beams lit up an eerie, pulsating world hung with a great pall of smoke, dust and spewing earth. Under cover of a double moving barrage the assault troops moved out of the Küstrin bridgehead, while to the north and south Soviet troops literally flung themselves at the Oder, sometimes swimming where there were as yet no bridges or paddling their way across on improvised rafts or even clinging to tree trunks amidst the great litter of guns and supplies being floated over. Ahead, the assault infantry and tanks moved forward for more than a thousand yards only to find themselves unnerved by their own lights throwing up strange reliefs or simply failing to pierce the gloom thickened with dust. Frantic orders to switch off the lights were as quickly countermanded, bringing fresh confusion as light gave way to sudden total darkness, only to be lit again with fresh beams. Chuikov’s riflemen supported by forward detachments of Katukov’s tank army, lurched forward searching out the terrain and, where
the lights failed, simply waiting for daylight to tackle the numerous streams and canals intersecting the Oder valley. But now the tanks and
SP
guns began to flounder, falling further behind the infantry and steadily unwinding the co-ordination of the attack. Closing on the flooded Haupt canal at the foot of the Seelow Heights, with the only bridges under German fire, Chuikov’s attack came to a complete stop until Soviet engineers could set up their own bridges. Behind, the roads began to clog with more and more traffic, piling up remorselessly and unable to move elsewhere owing to the marshy ground—and the minefields.

To the south Koniev’s guns opened fire at 0615 hours on the morning of 16 April, the artillery bombardment combined with laying down smoke across 250 miles of front. From his observation post with Pukhov’s 13th Army, Koniev noted with great satisfaction that the smoke laid by the guns and by aircraft—at least in this sector—was both dense and at just the right height, following the line of the Neisse exactly. With the good weather and a light but adequate wind, the smoke was beginning to fill the entire valley of the Neisse and to drift into the depth of the German defences, this artificial screen thickened now by smoke from burning forests. After forty minutes of artillery bombardment, supplemented by air strikes, Koniev set in motion the second crucial stage of his plan, launching the first-echelon assault battalions over the Neisse across a relatively narrow frontage between Forst and Muskau, and with three armies in the lead—13th, 3rd and 5th Guards.

Brought to the eastern bank of the Neisse in broad daylight, the assault troops plunged across under cover of artillery fire and the drifting smokescreens. Neither could last very long and speed was vital. Planned on a massive scale, the main assault on the Neisse involved no less than 150 different sites where engineers held bridges and ferries in readiness. The lead battalions made their crossing in boats, towing small assault bridges behind them; with a bridge laid down, infantry raced over while the engineers plunged shoulder-deep into the ice-cold water to put prefabricated wooden bridge sections in position, bolt them together and speed more infantry on its way. Within fifteen minutes of the infantry reaching the western bank, the water crossing whipped by machine-gun fire and the air slashed by Soviet weapons firing towards the German positions to make the defenders ‘keep their heads down’, 85mm anti-tank guns were brought over pell-mell to stiffen the tiny bridgeheads, followed by tanks and
SP
guns lashed to ferries. It took just under an hour to launch the light pontoon bridges, but with the tanks presently on their way to the western bank Koniev knew towards eight o’clock in the morning that his first echelon was well astride the Neisse and had secured numerous crossings. With the smoke slowly dissipating but still under the cover of the bombardment, which roared away into indeterminate distances, Soviet tanks squatted in the bridgeheads and field guns went into action. At nine o’clock the first of the heavier bridges carrying thirty-ton loads opened, but furious work went on to lay down the sixty-ton bridges capable of passing armour and heavy artillery to the western bank.

At the stroke of noon the first sixty-ton bridge in Zhdanov’s 5th Guards sector opened, and in high good humour Lelyushenko prepared his two ‘forward detachments’ for action on the western bank, the lead tanks moving off at exactly 1300 hours—the first ‘detachment’ made up from 62nd Guards Tank Brigade (10th Mechanized Corps) reinforced with heavy tanks, anti-tank guns and the lorried infantry from 29th Guards Motor-Rifle Brigade, followed by a second ‘detachment’ comprising 16th Guards Mechanized Brigade (16th Mechanized Corps) with substantial reinforcement. Both brigade commanders received orders to cut loose from the infantry with all speed and to move ahead at a cracking pace, orders enthusiastically noted as hatches slammed, engines roared and gears crashed in, with the riflemen mounting up to follow the tank columns.

Lelyushenko and Rybalko might well rub their hands in glee as they unleashed what amounted to their first armoured echelon. But to the north, on Zhukov’s front, a mighty traffic jam was building up, much to the Marshal’s consternation and mounting rage. Brought to a halt on the Haupt canal, Chuikov’s 8th Guards clawed its way forward, using air support to silence some of the German guns sited to the rear of the forward defence lines. Soviet infantry cleared two lines but a third, reaching to the steep slope of the Seelow Heights where the going was impossible for tanks and
SP
guns, remained intact. Battalion after battalion piled into this soggy, swampy, churned-up morass, with 47th Army pushing ahead for a few thousand yards, 5th Shock trying to batter its way ahead while fighting off small but ferocious counter-attacks, and 3rd Shock throwing in Kirichenko’s 9th Tank Corps in an attempt to speed the breakthrough. The tanks and
SP
guns were forced to fan out, seeking easier ways up the Seelow escarpment but in the process slamming into German strong-points along the roads leading to Seelow itself, Friedersdorf and Dolgelin—the shout went up for artillery support and the guns were forced to redeploy to support this movement.

Fretting and fuming, Zhukov decided at noon that he could wait no longer and against the protests of the infantry commanders decided to call on both of his tank armies. Chuikov had already issued fresh orders for a renewed infantry assault, timed to go in at 1400 hours after a twenty-minute artillery bombardment and aimed at the capture of Seelow, Friedersdorf and Dolgelin, thus securing the heights. Brooking no opposition Zhukov brushed this aside and peremptorily demanded that the tanks take the field, disregarding the battle plan which expressly stipulated that the armour would go in only when the heights had been taken and the breakthrough accomplished. In a transport of rage, with little to show for nine hours of infantry actions, Zhukov now intended to loose 1,377 tanks and
SP
guns—six armoured corps—in order to smash his way to the heights.