The Road to Berlin (132 page)

‘Who do you think is going to take Prague?’ There was an all too familiar ring about the question Stalin put to Koniev on 28 April even as 1st Ukrainian Front was deeply involved in gnawing its way through the Berlin defences. Stalin did not need to elaborate; in the briefest space of time Koniev reported that 1st Ukrainian Front could execute this operation, switching its offensive effort from north to south and mounting an attack on Prague from the west of Dresden. Earlier in the year, before the storm broke over Berlin itself, Hitler had assumed that Prague must be a prime Soviet objective, an accurate assessment though the
Führer’s
calculations of the Soviet timetable were somewhat mistaken—first Berlin and then Prague proved to be Stalin’s order of priorities, not the reverse. Since the beginning of 1945 the Red Army had been pushing its attack into Czechoslovakia from the east, utilizing two fronts (4th Ukrainian Front with three rifle armies and 2nd Ukrainian Front with four rifle armies and one tank army)—a grand total of almost three-quarters of a million men (751,000), with 8,300 guns and mortars, 580 patched-up tanks and
SP
guns, and about 1,400 aircraft similarly repaired for first-line duty. In addition, the 1st Czechoslovak Corps mustered 21,000 men, 168 guns and mortars and 10 tanks, supplemented in turn by two Rumanian armies—1st and 4th—adding 81,500 men to the strength of the 2nd Ukrainian Front.

The poor performance of the 4th Ukrainian Front had brought about Petrov’s dismissal as Front commander towards the end of March. The new Front commander, A.I. Yeremenko, pleaded with Stalin for some postponement in the renewal of the offensive aimed at the Moravska-Ostrava industrial region, but Stalin angrily insisted that the operation must go forward with all speed, whatever the shortages of ammunition; Moravska-Ostrava must be taken without delay. The
Stavka
also brooked no delay, issuing its attack orders on 3 April in a joint directive to Yeremenko and to Malinovskii, commanding 2nd Ukrainian Front:

With the aim of destroying enemy formations defending the high ground south-east and south of Moravska–Ostrava, the
Stavka
of the Supreme Commander orders:

1. the commander of 4th Ukrainian Front to mount his main attack with 60th and 38th Army plus two artillery breakthrough divisions and 31st Tank Corps towards the
western bank of the Oder with the immediate objective of occupying—not later than 12–15.4.45—Opava, Moravska–Ostrava and then striking in the general direction of Olomouc, thus linking up with the southerly attack launched by 2nd Ukrainian Front.

2. after the capture of Brno as specified by
Stavka
directive dated 1.4.1945 No. 11051 the commander of 2nd Ukrainian Front will develop his offensive operations in a northerly direction in order to link up with 4th Ukrainian Front with the aim of closing on the Olomouc region. [Koniev,
Za osvobozh. Chekoslovakii
, pp. 194–5.]

The
Stavka
intended to encircle the main forces of the German Army Group Centre in the area of the Carpathians in order to prevent prolonged resistance in the interior of Czechoslovakia—a sound plan, though one which proved difficult in the execution, for all the reinforcement poured into the two Ukrainian fronts, with Kurochkin’s 60th Army now detached from Koniev’s 1st Ukrainian Front and assigned to Yeremenko’s 4th Ukrainian.

Timed to coincide more or less with the main Soviet offensive directed against Berlin, Yeremenko’s attack duly opened on 15 April with the launching of forty rifle divisions, six air divisions, 6,000 guns and mortars with more than 300 tanks and
SP
guns, all supported by 435 aircraft across a 125-mile front; the Soviet command estimated enemy forces at twenty divisions with 300 tanks and 280 aircraft. Two armies—60th and 38th—led the attack, striking across a seven-mile front north-east of Opava with the aim of outflanking Moravska–Ostrava from the north-west; 1st Guards Army also attacked along the eastern bank of the Oder and was under orders to co-operate with 38th Army in taking Moravska–Ostrava no later than three days after the beginning of the offensive. Stiff German resistance, however, sent Yeremenko’s timetables spinning into disarray. By 18 April the two lead armies had expanded their bridgehead on the southern bank of the river Opava and pushed an edge between the German forces holding Opava itself and Moravska–Ostrava, but Soviet troops had to batter their way through the old Czech fortifications—modernized by the Germans—and the heaviest guns were needed to reduce the concrete forts and pillboxes, stout installations which even resisted twenty shells fired at close range by 122mm howitzers. Four days later, on 22 April, two rifle divisions from 60th Army with one brigade from 31st Tank Corps finally broke into Opava and cleared the town after a day of heavy street fighting, while left-flank divisions of 38th Army and Grechko’s 1st Guards Army closed on Moravska–Ostrava.

To speed up the capture of this substantial industrial centre Yeremenko decided on 24 April to mount a series of concentric attacks on narrow sectors to the north-west, using three armies—60th, 38th and 1st Guards—and then strike at the town from the west. After two days of preparation these three armies launched their attacks, though Kurochkin’s 60th Army had already struck out on 25 April with a drive aimed to the south-west of Moravska–Ostrava. Slowly but surely the Soviet ring tightened, and by the evening of 29 April Moskalenko’s 38th Army had closed on the western suburbs, while Grechko’s 1st Guards was
approaching the northern outskirts. The assault on the town began at 10 o’clock on the morning of 30 April with only a minimum of artillery fire in order to preserve as many as possible of the mines, factories and industrial installations. Towards 1 o’clock both Moskalenko and Grechko reported good progress; Soviet air reconnaissance spotted precipitate German withdrawals and after a final burst of fighting both Soviet army commanders could signal on the evening of 30 April that the entire town had been taken.

While Yeremenko battered his way towards Moravska–Ostrava, Malinovskii with 2nd Ukrainian Front pressed forward to Brno, having forded the river Morava in mid–April. To capture Brno, Malinovskii proposed a double outflanking movement with his mobile forces combined with a frontal attack launched by rifle units: 53rd Army received orders to launch an attack on the morning of 23 April with the object of securing a passage for 6th Guards Tank Army—now back with 2nd Ukrainian Front—and then to drive on Brno from the east while the tank army outflanked the town from the north-east. The badly battered 6th Guards Tank Army could only muster 164 hastily repaired tanks and
SP
guns, but Malinovskii stiffened the striking force with Pliev’s 1st Guards Cavalry–Mechanized Group—with 132 tanks and
SP
guns—and then added one rifle corps from 53rd Army to this group, which was ordered to outflank Brno from the south-west. Supported by Goryunov’s 5th Air Army, Lt.-Gen. I.M. Managarov with 53rd Army and Pliev’s cavalry-mechanized group opened the attack at 10.30 am on the morning of 23 April, under the watchful eye of Malinovskii himself. At noon the German tactical defence had been overwhelmed and Malinovskii at once ordered Kravchenko’s 6th Guards Tank Army to move out with the 120 tanks of the first echelon (2nd and 9th Guards Mechanized Corps).

Kravchenko’s tanks and Pliev’s mobile group moved north and south respectively, with the infantry making straight for Brno—and crossing the famous battleground of Austerlitz in the process. Already on 24 April Kravchenko committed his second echelon (5th Guards Tank Corps), which pushed into the eastern and the south-eastern suburbs only to lose more than thirty tanks to German counter-attacks; this armoured fist now needed reinforcement from 9th Mechanized Corps. Colonel Boldynov’s 109th Rifle Division from 18th Guards Rifle Corps also succeeded in breaking through to the suburbs and reached the river Svitava, improvising a crossing since the bridges had been blown; three Soviet rifle divisions followed the 109th in rapid succession. Pliev’s mobile group cut the German escape to the west, while Kravchenko’s tanks took up a blocking position to the north-east. During the night of 26 April Soviet units set about clearing the town, with Kamkov’s 4th Guards Cavalry Corps operating with Katkov’s 7th Guards Mechanized Corps fighting in the south-western part, Afonin’s 18th Guards Rifle Corps coming in from the east and two armoured corps (5th Tank and 9th Mechanized) fighting in the north-east.

The capture of Brno was saluted by the Soviet command with a shower of battle honours and high decorations. The German defences in eastern Czechoslovakia
had been finally cracked and both Soviet fronts now swung on Olomouc, forcing a hasty withdrawal by First
Panzer
Army to escape encirclement. Yeremenko employed three of his four armies to press forward to Olomouc, while Malinovskii used his right-flank armies to strike towards Olomouc and link up with 4th Ukrainian Front. Soviet success at long last was undisputed, but the price was high—38,400 killed in action, 140,000 wounded; while the 1st Czechoslovak Corps fighting under Soviet command lost 774 killed and 3,730 wounded. Nor was Stalin satisfied, for all the thunder of the salutes in Moscow and the lavish distribution of medals. Beyond the battle lines a struggle of larger proportions was being waged for Czechoslovakia, involving not only Schörner’s German Army Group Centre but also American divisions racing now to the Czechoslovak border from the west and promising to be the first to reach Prague. Stalin had not the least intention of allowing this to happen.

Prague also loomed no less large in Churchill’s mind at this juncture, though the sombre drift of his thought encompassed the entire face of Europe. German armies in the west crumbled one by one, speeding the advance of Allied divisions to the north—and on to the Elbe—and into Austria in the south, but wherever the Red Army trod one steely portcullis after another dropped upon the liberated and the conquered alike with chilling abruptness. Writing on 30 April to President Truman, Churchill insisted that ‘the liberation of Prague and as much as possible of the territory of western Czechoslovakia’ by US forces could make an appreciable difference not only to Czechoslovakia itself but to ‘near-by countries’, which might otherwise ‘go the way of Yugoslavia’. Mention of Yugoslavia simply turned the knife in a deeper hurt, the suppurating sore of Poland. On 18 April both the Prime Minister and President Truman pressed on Stalin the urgency of a fair settlement to the question of forming a Government of National Unity consonant with consultations with Polish leaders and excluding an automatic application of ‘the Yugoslav precedent’, only to receive a hard rebuff from Stalin, who argued that the present Polish Provisional Government should be ‘the core, that is, the main part’ of a new, reconstructed Polish Government of National Unity. By rejecting ‘the Yugoslav example’, the British and Americans were saying in effect that the Polish Provisional Government could not be regarded as ‘the basis for, and the core of, a future Government of National Unity’. Marshal Stalin in his signal of 24 April made his point bluntly plain: accept the Yugoslav precedent as a model for Poland and, as soon as this is done, we shall be able to make progress on the Polish question.

It was not, however, the London and Lublin governments which were swept away but the Prime Minister’s hopes for an amicable and democratic settlement. Stalin wanted no new government brought into being beyond his own creation, scheming to trap Polish representatives with General Okulicki at their head and pinion them with the
NKVD
. In an extraordinary, passionate, importuning but despairing message on 29 April the Prime Minister played his final card, opening with a categorical statement that none would ever favour ‘a Polish Government
hostile to the Soviet Union’. ‘The Yugoslav precedent’ was in no way applicable to Poland: the process of consultation had been cut short even though it was agreed upon at Yalta, with the Soviet government signing its own treaty with the Bierut government and producing a feeling on the Western side that ‘it is we who have been dictated to and brought up against a stone wall.…’ In any event, Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia broke the ‘fifty-fifty rule’, proclaiming at once that his prime loyalties lay with the Soviet Union and rigging the business of consultation, so that only six members of the Royal Yugoslav government entered the government as opposed to twenty-five of his own nominees. What was now proposed for Poland meant that for every four representatives of the present ‘Warsaw Provisional Government’ there would be only one from ‘the other democratic elements’—a position wholly unacceptable to the British government:

there is not much comfort in looking into a future where you and the countries you dominate plus the Communist parties in many other states are all drawn up on one side, and those who rally to the English-speaking nations and their Associates or Dominions are on the other. It is quite obvious that their quarrel would tear the world to pieces and that all of us leading men on either side who had anything to do with that would be shamed before history. [
Perepiska
, vol. 1, p. 407.]

There may be cause for offence here—‘but … , I beg you, my friend Stalin
(moi drug Stalin)
, do not underrate those matters which you may think small to us but which remain symbolic of the way the English-speaking democracies look at life’.

The reply, when it came on 4 May, was crude, rude and curt: ‘I must say frankly’, wrote Stalin, ‘that this attitude [the refusal to consider the Provisional Government as a basis for a future Government of National Unity] precludes the possibility of an agreed decision on the Polish question.’ Even as Stalin’s message fell upon his desk the Prime Minister outlined a nightmarish prospect to Eden in a message sent the same day: ‘terrible things’ had undoubtedly happened in the course of the Soviet advance through Germany to the Elbe, an American withdrawal to the demarcation lines sketched in at Quebec could only mean a mighty Russian advance for 120 miles across a massive 300/400-mile front, fastening upon Europe a frontier running from the North Cape in Norway to the Baltic east of Lübeck along the agreed line of occupation and thence in Austria as far as the Isonzo river—to the east of which ‘Tito and Russia will claim everything’. Russia would inherit the Baltic provinces, Germany as far as the demarcation line, Czechoslovakia, much of Austria, all of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria. The great capitals of central Europe—Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia—would have come under complete Soviet sway, ‘an event in the history of Europe to which there has been no parallel.…’ Vienna, occupied by the Red Army, was already closed to the visitations of Allied missions, in spite of vigorous protest to the Russians and energetic reminders about the stipulations of the European Advisory Commission.
Lübeck might yet be saved and the British Army ‘head off our Soviet friends’, thus barring the road to Scandinavia. Prague alone, it seemed, was still within the reach of the Western allies.