The Road to Berlin (28 page)

If Stalin’s strategy had become militarily more realistic, it remained still highly ambitious, if not dangerously over-ambitious, as he escalated the scale and scope of the Soviet summer–autumn offensive between the end of August and the first week in October. This time Stalin sought decisive success in the Ukraine and in Belorussia. The orders for the great south-western sweep had gone out as the battle for Kharkov was beginning. The destruction of German forces on the southern wing would be accomplished in the Donbas, in the eastern Ukraine, while the North Caucasus Front would destroy German forces on the Taman peninsula and eliminate the German Seventeenth Army in the northern Kuban. Vatutin and Koniev received their orders on 12 August; the Voronezh Front would destroy German forces in the Kharkov area and then advance in the direction of Poltava–Kremenchug, break out to the Dnieper and establish bridge-heads on the western bank; the Steppe Front, its operations co-ordinated with the Voronezh Front, was to move on Krasnograd–Verkhne Dneprovsk, make for the Dnieper in the Dnepropetrovsk area and also establish bridgeheads. Rokossovskii received his orders on 12 August; his Central Front would strike on Sevsk–Khutor Mikhailovskii, reach a line running from Rylsk to Glukhov to Novgorod Severskii by 1–3 September, then drive south-west in the general direction of Konotop–Nezhin–Kiev, and, if the operational situation was favourable, force the Desna so as to drive on Chernigov along its western bank. The South-Western and Southern Fronts, their offensive already detailed by the
Stavka
, would aim for the lower reaches of the Dnieper.

The partisans had a specific part to play in the operational plans drawn up by the
Stavka
. Strokach at the head of the Ukrainian Partisan Movement staff attached himself with fourteen officers of his staff group to Vatutin’s Front staff. Strokach’s Ukrainian Partisan staff was in many respects a singular organization, enjoying the special attention and favours of the top command group, the Central Staff of the Soviet Partisan movement. Strokach and his staff had their top headquarters in Moscow, with an operational command group (a miniature of the Moscow staff organization) deployed in Voroshilovgrad. Strokach pressed on with his main assignment, building up partisan activity in the western Ukraine particularly, a difficult undertaking managed by ‘seeding’ the lands west of the Dnieper with groups or bands moving in from southern Belorussia; Kovpak with his considerable guerrilla force had moved into this westerly region during the winter of 1942 and in the spring and summer of 1943 began great, sweeping
raids with Naumov’s band into ‘right-bank Ukraine’. The guerrillas suffered heavy losses, but Kovpak, Naumov, Fyodorov and Saburov regrouped and reorganized the partisan units, out of which a new guerrilla strike force was assembled, the force Strokach was currently co-ordinating and mobilizing from Vatutin’s
HQ
. (The Ukrainian partisans operated under the immediate auspices of the Red Army and during the winter passed under direct Red Army control.) These August plans envisaged twenty partisan groups (about 17,000 men) operating in the western Ukraine, their main mission being another partisan offensive against the German lines of communication deep in the rear to prevent the movement of reserves on Kiev, Kremenchug and Dnepropetrovsk.

Delayed for a week by shortage of fuel and ammunition, Rokossovskii launched his Central Front attack on 26 August in the direction of Sevsk–Novgorod Severskii with three armies. The next day he ordered in 2nd Tank Army (now under Lt.-Gen. S.I. Bogdanov since Rodin had been taken ill during the fighting for Kursk), but Bogdanov’s tanks only crashed into German reserves hurriedly moved up from other less exposed sectors. Bogdanov’s tank army took a heavy battering and the assault armies made only slow, painful progress. But not so Chernyakhovskii’s 60th Army (with Rudchenko’s 9th Tank Corps in support), operating south of Sevsk; 60th Army had put in a supporting attack which now began to roll faster and faster to the south-west, and on into the northern Ukraine. Rokossovskii swung all available divisions from his right to his left flank: the
Stavka
ordered Popov to transfer 13th Army to the Central Front and moved up four additional corps including 7th Guards Mechanized (2nd Tank Army) which had been taken into reserve. Within a week Rokossovskii’s left-flank formations had reached the Desna on a broad front, tearing away a fifty-mile gap between Army Group Centre and South. This south-westerly sweep on Rokossovskii’s left now menaced the rear of German units holding out against the right-wing thrusts of the Voronezh Front. Fearing eventual encirclement, German armour had already pulled out of the Akhtyrka positions; Vatutin’s right-wing and centre armies pushed on westwards, aiming for Romny and Poltava. Malinovskii’s South-Western Front had attacked on 13 August, Tolbukhin’s Southern Front five days later; Malinovskii’s first attacks rolled along the eastern bank of the northern Donets (covering Koniev’s assault on Kharkov), while Tolbukhin began to smash in the Mius Front once and for all, pouring the fire of 5,000 guns and mortars on the German defensive positions. At the end of the month the Mius line had been shattered, Tolbukhin’s armies had taken Taganrog; rushing eastwards to Vinnitsa from his East Prussian headquarters, Hitler finally authorized Sixth Army—‘if necessary’—to pull back to the river Kalmius, and First
Panzer’s
right wing to retire westwards.

During the night of 2 September, 3rd Guards Army on Malinovskii’s front forced the northern Donets: regrouping on his left, Malinovskii aimed to drive south-west and south, but the
Stavka
on the eve of these operations ordered him to transfer two corps (one rifle, one cavalry) and five divisions to
Stavka
reserve, although this was bound to weaken the attack aimed at outflanking the Donbas from the north. It was Tolbukhin who received reinforcement, amounting to thirteen rifle divisions and three mobile corps (11th, 20th Tank and 5th Guards Cavalry); on 8 September the Southern Front took Stalino, the capital town of Donbas, liberated by Svetayev’s 5th Shock Army. During this first week in September Rokossovskii’s left and Vatutin’s right wing rushed on towards Konotop and Romny; Shumilov’s 7th Guards Army on Koniev’s Steppe Front had cleared Merefa to the south of Kharkov, but the drive on Poltava was momentarily halted. The Poltava–Kremenchug axis, however, had ceased to be the focus of the
Stavka’s
attention as Rokossovskii and Vatutin pressed on with their Konotop–Romny sweep. The prospect of developing a major breakthrough to the Dnieper at the junction of the two German army groups and then racing for Kiev—simultaneously driving into the deep flank of Army Group South—beckoned irresistibly. On the night of 6 September Stalin issued revised orders to the fronts and realigned frontal boundaries: Central Front would attack with its left on Chernigov, with its right on Gomel; the Voronezh Front would strike toward Pereslav (to force the Dnieper in the Bukrin bend and finally outflank Kiev from the south); Koniev’s Steppe Front would now aim for Kremenchug. As reinforcement for this intensification of the Soviet drive, the
Stavka
assigned 61st Army to Rokossovskii, 3rd Guards Tank Army and 1st Guards Cavalry Corps to Vatutin and, to Koniev, 37th Army from
Stavka
reserve, Zhadov’s 5th Guards from Vatutin and 46th Army from Malinovskii. The Southern Front had also acquired quite hefty reinforcement.

Map 6
The drive to the Dnieper, August–December 1943

Field-Marshal Manstein emphasized to Hitler that the situation on his northern wing was deteriorating fast. Marshal Zhukov was out to break Fourth
Panzer
Army and would brook no dilatoriness from his own commanders in doing it; he urged Katukov forward as fast as possible, and Lt.-Gen. Kulik, the downgraded marshal who reappeared in the summer of 1943 at the head of a reserve army, got short shrift—Zhukov berated him for using the tactics of the 1920s and finally sent him packing. By 14 September Manstein’s northern wing was beginning to break up as Fourth
Panzer
split into three parts. The road to Kiev was rapidly being uncovered. Both the Russians and the Germans raced for the Dnieper, though lack of tanks and lorries on the Soviet side (as well as shortage of bombers in the air divisions) blunted and slowed Soviet probings. Chernyakhovskii nevertheless was enlarging his bridgeheads on the western bank of the Desna, while 61st Army and 7th Guards Cavalry Corps were pushed forward between 65th and 13th Armies. On 15 September, 60th and 13th Armies with 7th Guards Mechanized Corps reached Nezhin; Vatutin’s right wing, outflanking Poltava by its wide north-westerly drive, was pushing up to eight German divisions back towards Kanev on the Dneiper. If Chernyakhovskii’s 60th now turned due south (and the 60th consisted of four corps), it could drive straight into the flank and rear of these German formations as well as cutting off the escape route for no less than thirteen German divisions. Rokossovskii now put this proposal to Marshal
Zhukov,
Stavka
representative at Voronezh Front
HQ
—60th Army should swing to link up with 38th Army on Vatutin’s right. Zhukov, for reasons as yet unexplained, turned down this plan; under orders issued on 18 September 38th Army would drive on the Dnieper in the area south of Kiev. But three days later the 38th had to be swung north as the frontal boundaries between Rokossovskii and Vatutin were also shifted northwards. On 21 September, 38th Army received orders to regroup so as to bring it into Central Front territory, force the Desna north of Pukhovka—although 60th Army had already crossed the Desna—then force the Dnieper in order to establish a bridgehead not later than 27 September to the north of Kiev. Thereafter, 38th Army in co-operation with Moskalenko’s 40th would encircle the enemy in the area of Kiev and take the city itself. The net result was to shift 60th Army from its sites on the Dnieper further to the north, while only small detachments of 38th Army made it over the Dnieper on 26 September.

At the beginning of the last week in September more and more Soviet armies, driving over 150 miles to the west, drew up at the river Dnieper. Rokossovskii’s left forced the Desna south of Chernigov and reached the Dnieper on 21 September (the entire Central Front advancing to Sozh and Dnieper by the end of the month). Vatutin aimed the main body of his Front at the Rzhintsev–Kanev crossings and on the night of 22 September forward units of 3rd Guards Tank Army improvized a rapid crossing. First across from Koniev’s Steppe Front was Shumilov’s 7th Guards, whose forward elements went over during the night of 25 September south-west of Kremenchug. Malinovskii’s South-Western Front reached the Dnieper on 26 September when detachments of 6th Army seized two small bridgeheads south of Dnepropetrovsk. Within a week, as Soviet troops improvized rafts or used little boats hidden by partisans, or hacked timber to build the first bridges, twenty-three bridgeheads, ranging in depth from a thousand yards to twenty miles, dotted the western bank of the mighty Dnieper. While these men heaved their way over the river and clung on as best they might on the far bank, the Soviet command flung in three airborne brigades to hold and to expand the Bukrin bridgehead, which a mechanized brigade had widened to some ten miles by 24 September. Aerial reconnaissance showed at that time only a weak German defence with no reserves, though much of the situation remained obscure. The airborne drop, directed by the Airborne Forces commander Maj.-Gen. A.G. Kapitokhin with the corps (1st, 3rd and 5th Airborne Brigades) under his deputy, Maj.-Gen. Zatevakhin, received Marshal Zhukov’s full approval: 3rd and 5th Brigades would go in during the night of 26 September, 1st would be held in reserve to be dropped during the second or third night. Golovanov’s
ADD
, the long-range bomber force, would provide 50 PS-84 bomber-transports and 150 Il–4 and B-25 night-bombers; the Airborne air force, 10 glider-tugs, 13 Il-4s for dropping weapons by parachute, 35 A-7 and G-11 gliders. The transports were scheduled to carry twenty paratroops but the pilots pointed out that the planes would at best take only fifteen to eighteen men: fewer transport
planes arrived at the forward airfields than had been planned and planes were late owing to the bad weather.

During the night of 26 September, 3rd Airborne Brigade flew out westwards; 296 aircraft sorties dropped 4,575 men but none of their 45mm guns, 13 planes turned back unable to find the dropping zone (
DZ
), 2 dropped their paratroops too deep in the rear, one plane unloaded its paratroopers in the Dnieper and one dropped the men on Soviet positions; 5th Brigade had only 48 of an expected 65 transports, and the 4 tankers could not refuel all the machines on time. Nor was there enough fuel at Bogodukhov airfield to supply all the transports, so that planes took off singly as and when they were fuelled. Two battalions—some thousand men—got down, but lack of fuel caused the cancellation of further flights. German
AA
guns now forced the remaining transport planes up, the men and canisters going out at between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. With transports speeding over the dropping zones, the paratroops fell in widely scattered groups. As radio operators were separated from their few (about half a dozen) sets or sets were separated from their batteries, the brigades were practically bereft of communications with Front
HQ
. The three signals groups dropped during the night of 28 September never linked up, and a PO-2 plane sent in with powerful equipment that same day was shot down.