The Road to Berlin (133 page)

Stalin wasted neither time nor words. At 0130 hours on 1 May he issued operational orders to Marshal Zhukov with 1st Belorussian Front to take up Koniev’s 1st Ukrainian Front positions in Berlin and south of the city to the Lubben–Wittenberg line no later than 4 May, while Koniev received categorical orders to finish off the German forces encircled east of Luckenwalde no later than 3 May, complete the exchange of positions with Zhukov and then swing his right-flank forces on to the river Mulde. Within a matter of hours (at 1940 hours, 2 May) Malinovskii received a separate but complementary set of orders for 2nd Ukrainian Front: he was to deploy his Front to the west in the direction of Prague in order to bring his formations on to the line of the river Vltava and capture Prague, all no later than 12–14 May, with his right flank continuing the attack towards Olomouc. The German Army Group Centre and remnants of Group ‘Austria’—estimated by the Soviet command at sixty-two divisions—lay athwart the Soviet route to Prague, but between Potsdam and the Danube three Soviet fronts (1st, 2nd and 4th Ukrainian) mustered eighteen rifle armies, three tank and three air armies, five independent tank and two independent mechanized corps with three cavalry corps, a grand total of 153 divisions and seven rifle brigades, with 24,500 guns and mortars, and more than 2,100 tanks and
SP
guns, plus 4,000 combat aircraft—as well as the 1st Czechoslovak Corps, the 1st Independent Czechoslovak Tank Brigade, the 2nd Polish Army and two Rumanian armies (the 1st and 4th). The
Stavka
plan envisaged two powerful attacks aimed at both flanks of Army Group Centre, fusing into a general attack in the direction of Prague designed to complete the encirclement of German forces to the east of the Czech capital, thus cutting off the enemy escape route to the west and south-west. The main attacks would be developed from the area north-west of Dresden by 1st Ukrainian Front and from south of Brno by 2nd Ukrainian Front, while the main body of 4th Ukrainian Front and the right-flank armies of 2nd Ukrainian Front squeezed First
Panzer
Army tighter and tighter in the Olomouc encirclement operation.
Stavka
orders transmitted on 1–2 May laid down the essentials of the Prague operation—timed to begin on 7 May—leaving the three Front commanders to issue their own detailed instructions.

The Prime Minister’s message of 30 April to President Truman had urged that General Eisenhower be made aware of ‘the highly important political considerations’ involved in the liberation of Prague, though nothing should impede the success of the primary operations against the German Army. While Stalin raced to issue the first major operational orders for the drive on Prague, the President consulted his own military commanders about the feasibility of a drive on Prague: General Patton with the US Third Army had already crossed the Czechoslovak frontier and pushed south-eastwards, with another column advancing eastwards towards the Karlsbad–Pilsen–Budejovice line. Cleaving to the side of
the Prime Minister, the British Chiefs of Staff at the end of April naturally urged the combined Chiefs to press the wisdom of a continued advance in Czechoslovakia on General Eisenhower, provided that he could also maintain his pressure on the Germans in Denmark and Austria. General Marshall was less than enthusiastic about driving deep into Czechoslovakia merely for ‘highly important political considerations’ and was inclined to advise that General Eisenhower’s resources would be fully committed throughout the theatre, though the final defeat of the German Army might mean some move into Czechoslovakia. This left the final operational decision to General Eisenhower himself and it was in this vein that President Truman replied to Churchill on 1 May: since the Soviet command envisaged operations into the Vltava valley, General Eisenhower proposed first to move on Pilsen and Karlsbad but not to proceed to further action which might be ‘militarily unwise’ all for the sake of some political prize.

Stalin showed no comparable disdain for or delicacy about political prizes: here was the very essence of his war-making and his fervour in ramming the Red Army forward. One such prize, the province of Sub–Carpathian Ruthenia, had already fallen into his lap—or rather, had been forced into the lap of the Soviet Ukraine at Red Army gun-point. Although the Czechoslovak–Soviet agreement of 8 May 1944 stipulated that Czechoslovak territory would be treated as that of a liberated ally, reports reaching Dr Benes in London towards the end of 1944 added up to an alarming picture of Soviet coercion in Ruthenia, in spite of formal permission for a Czechoslovak government mission to establish itself in Užhorod. Though the darkest suspicions roused by Soviet deviousness over the Slovak rising in the early autumn of 1944 seemed to have been allayed, they were now given fresh life and uncomfortable vigour by more reports that Soviet ‘non-interference’ in Czechoslovak affairs was a blatant fiction.

Stalin took the deliberate step in January 1945 of trying to calm the fears of Benes. In a personal letter dated 23 January Stalin explained to Benes that the Soviet Union had no intention whatsoever of solving the question of Sub–Carpathian Ukraine ‘unilaterally’: of course, the Soviet Union could not prevent Sub–Carpathians ‘expressing their will’ but this did not signify any Soviet intention to break the Soviet–Czechoslovak agreeent. Dr Benes replied to this profuse expression of goodwill in the same kind, asserting that none could suspect the Soviet government of unilateral action in the matter of the Sub–Carpathian Ukraine and that the matter would be settled ‘in complete friendship with you’ long before any peace conference convened. Nevertheless, the signs of degeneration in Soviet–Czechoslovak relations were plain: the Red Army was already deeply implanted in eastern Czechoslovakia, the forcible suppression of opposition in Slovakia could not be denied, and Czech and Slovak communist leaders were standing by to execute orders emanating from Moscow—though those Slovak Communists inadvertently pressing for a ‘Slovak Soviet Republic’ had to be reined in since this was no part of the Soviet design.

On 11 March 1945 Benes left London for Moscow, with the desperate hope—as he confided to Churchill—that he could ‘keep matters under control’. As if by way of gloomy portent Benes was suddenly stricken in health just before his departure recovering sufficiently to travel but with his energies much impaired. Though received by Stalin on 19 March, when both men reviewed the military situation and discussed the build-up of the Czechoslovak Army, it was left to Molotov to handle much of the subsequent business. The main item concerned Ruthenia, which Benes could only cede in principle but try to postpone the actual act of cession until he could return to Prague, while Klement Gottwald and his communist associates urged him to yield immediately. Equally anguishing was the question of the Red Army’s attitude to industrial plant and raw materials in Czechoslovakia, equipment seized at once on the pretext that it was held by Germans although it was essentially Czechoslovak property in the beginning. Grudgingly Molotov agreed to a review of this situation.

Yet flashes of encouragement lit this gathering gloom. As if to revive some of the euphoria of 1943 and genuine warmth in Soviet–Czechoslovak relations, Stalin spoke out at a farewell banquet in blunt but far from menacing terms. He reminded Benes that the Red Army—guilty of ‘acts of wantonness’—clearly was not composed of angels, the soldiers having been fed on a diet of a heroic image and, being heroes, expecting to be excused as heroes, the uneducated especially abusing this honour. ‘Grasp this and forgive them.’ In a second and significant speech Stalin outlined his view of ‘neo–Slavism’, not Tsarist Slavism which had meant brute subordination to the Tsarist regime. ‘I hate Germans’, Stalin continued, Germans who made the Slavs pay both for the First World War and for the present war, Germans put back on their feet to form ‘the so-called European balance of power’—‘but this time we will break the Germans so that never again will attacks against Slavs be repeated’. The Germans would be neutered. As for the Soviet Union, there were people—some actually present on this occasion—who had their doubts about Soviet promises and undertakings, but the Soviet Union had no intention whatsoever of interfering in the internal affairs of its allies and there could be no question of ‘the hegemony of the Soviet Union’.

It remained to work out the details of a new Czechoslovakia, one which would soon return to a liberated country. The communist leaders in exile—Gottwald, Slansky, Sverma and Kopecky—had earlier refused the offer by Benes of places in his London government, arguing instead for a wholly new cabinet with a pronounced leftist complexion: now, two years later, a new government began to take shape in Moscow, comprising representatives of the four parties in exile plus representatives for the two Slovak parties, superficially democratic but quickly overwhelmed by Gottwald’s ‘programme’ for a National Front of Czechs and Slovaks. Gottwald’s list of cabinet posts reserved the key ministries—all save the Ministry of Justice—for Czech and Slovak communist nominees, though with much-publicized generosity they ceded the premiership to ‘social democrat’
Fierlinger: Jan Masaryk remained Foreign Minister but with a communist watchdog in the person of his deputy minister, Clementis. On 4 April 1945 the new government was installed and unveiled in Košice in eastern Slovakia, proceeding at once to unfurl its programme under the banner of the ‘National Front of Czechs and Slovaks’. Benes could only acquiesce or face the possibility of fierce civil war.

While this avowedly pro–Soviet group sought to entrench itself in Czechoslovakia, an anti–Soviet movement—the ‘Vlasov movement’—set out on a feverish search for salvation also in Czechoslovakia, living out a grim cycle of hope and despair in a matter of months and all within the compass of that ancient Slav city, Prague. Six months earlier, on 14 November 1944, Lt.-Gen. Andrei Vlasov in the company of five hundred delegates assembled in the Spanish Hall of the Hradcany palace to inaugurate the ‘Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia’
(KONR);
a German guard of honour was drawn up in front of the Alcron Hotel for Vlasov and
Reichsminister
Frank entertained the Russian general and selected guests to lunch. The ‘Prague Manifesto’ was adopted as the
KONR’s
political creed of struggle against the Bolshevik dictatorship and the promise of a future ‘free, democratic order’. But the odds were already hopelessly stacked against Vlasov; the
KONR
could neither engage the effective support of Hitler’s Germany—least of all, of Hitler himself—or imprint any trace of political legitimacy on the mind of the western allies.

After the Prague meeting, the
KONR
‘government’ repaired to its old haunts in Berlin, only to be bombed out and transferred to Karlsbad in February 1945. This was a ‘government’ in title only and even that was suspect, a dispiriting prospect made deeply disagreeable by the growing dependence of the movement on Himmler, though General Vlasov used this sinister patronage to raise and arm the first of three divisions—a far cry from the fully-fledged army Vlasov envisaged, but this was all Himmler would countenance. Maj.-Gen. Bunyachenko, an erstwhile officer on Timoshenko’s staff in 1942, took command of the 1st Division but refused to allow it to be committed against the Red Army until it had been trained and equipped; instead, in order to show the paces and the possibilities of these Russian soldiers, a volunteer unit fought an action in February on the Oder and performed most creditably, enough to convince Himmler. At the beginning of March General Bunyachenko received orders to proceed forthwith to the
Ostfront
and deploy along a sector between Stettin and Berlin, a move at once protested by Bunyachenko who insisted that he obeyed only Vlasov, not the
Wehrmacht
. Vlasov raced up from Karlsbad and duly authorized the move, whereupon the 1st Division set off on a 120-mile march, footslogging it towards Nuremberg. As the Division, now swelled with several thousand volunteers from the
Ostarbeiter
picked up along the line of march, loaded itself on to troop trains, Vlasov paid the troops a visit—only to stumble upon a very drunk Bunyachenko and his equally drunk chief of staff. Understandably Vlasov feared for the impression this must have made on the Germans.

Finally deployed north of Cottbus at the end of March, Bunyachenko’s 1st Division was assigned to a hazardous attack on Soviet positions near Frankfurton–Oder, an assault necessitating substantial artillery and air support. Neither was forthcoming. The 1st Division was cut to ribbons on the morning of 14 April and Bunyachenko broke off the murderous action, withdrawing to stem his losses and brood on a bleak future. The 1st Division never returned to the German front line, since to remain there only invited certain death. If not actually instructed by Vlasov, Bunyachenko read the former’s mind aright, arguing with General Busse of Ninth Army for permission to turn 1st Division south, away from the front but down a perilous corridor with the Red Army to its left and ahead Schörner’s Army Group Centre ready to pounce in its search for fighting men.

General Vlasov himself arrived in Prague on 16 April and tried at once to breathe some life into the idea of a ‘third force’, including non-communist Czechs who might help to hold Bohemia against the Red Army until the arrival of American troops. The
KONR
movement had so far managed to draw in von Pannwitz’s Cossack troops and those of Domanov, as well as Rogozhin’s ‘Serbian Defence Corps’, though the Ukrainians remained aloof. Through contacts arranged with the Czech underground by Russian
émigrés
, one of Vlasov’s emissaries discussed the future with General Klecanda, an officer who had fought under Kolchak in the Russian Civil War and who now worked with the resistance forces. Klecanda saw no hope either for Vlasov’s cause or for his person: the western allies would do nothing for Vlasov and much as they had dismissed any idea of war with Hitler, so they could see no possibility of a collision with the Soviet Union. The Czechs would welcome the Red Army with open arms because Benes would be borne home along with the Soviet troops; only later would they learn what fate really awaited them.