The Road to Berlin (29 page)

Towards the end of September, forty-three independent groups, 2,300 men under the officers of 3rd and 5th Brigades, operated in the German rear; about 600 men under Colonel Sidorchuk concentrated in the woods near Kanev. The Soviet paratroopers landed in a hornet’s nest, with three German divisions in the area of the drop and two on the move towards it, information actually in the possession of Vatutin’s
HQ
but not passed on to the airborne commanders. Nor did the airborne corps have any mission other than to ‘hold ground’ until 40th Army moved up, but Front
HQ
was none too confident that 40th Army could close up. Assembling a corps staff had been done pell-mell, an over-rapid improvization in which the worst weakness was the lack of unified command over the actual aircraft designated for the operation. Throughout October Sidorchuk’s ‘Kanev group’ grew to about 1,000 men as other detachments linked up with him or sabotage squads joined the beleaguered paratroopers. From the woods near Kanev the brigade moved into hiding at Tagancha, also heavily wooded; flushed out of there, Sidorchuk’s men slipped through to the Cherkassy woods, twenty miles east of Korsun, where they came within the operational area of 52nd Army. During the night of 14 November, 52nd Army began its assault crossing of the Dnieper, and at long last the Soviet paratroopers linked up with their own line.

In their race for the Dnieper the Soviet fronts and armies all too often outran their supplies and resources. The rush towards the great river line became one great frontal pursuit, though slowed by lack of powerful mobile formations and weakened as fuel or ammunition (or both) petered out. The decision of 6 September on the part of the
Stavka
to regroup and reinforce had come very late, given
that it needed almost a fortnight for the formations to shuttle around: 3rd Guards Tank Army and 37th Army arrived on the scene when German troops were already speedily falling back to the Dnieper. The first Soviet divisions to show up on the Dnieper had rushed far ahead of their rear units with heavy bridging equipment (much of which was immobilized anyway through shortage of fuel); the two divisions of 37th Army (62nd and 92nd) set about their assault crossing ‘off the march’ with eight N2P pontoons and six A-3 light boats supplied by the two engineer battalions that had moved along with them. Soldiers and partisans elsewhere scoured the banks for barges sunk by the Germans, raised them and shipped tanks across on these or on platforms lashed to pontoons. As skiffs and light craft used for fishing were collected at the water’s edge, squads of soldier-axemen chopped out hundreds of rafts or assembled piers, causeways and timber trestles to shore up shattered bridges. Ahead, in some places 3,500 yards away across the deep Dnieper water, lay the high western bank humped with hills, ridges and crests, obscured by day with smoke screens and lit by gun-flashes or exploding shells at night. The
Stavka
early in September had underlined the vital importance of forcing rivers ‘off the march’ in its directive to Front and Army Military Soviets: the directive (‘On the rapid and decisive assault crossing of rivers and the award of decorations to Soviet army personnel …’, issued on 9 September) prescribed that for forcing the Desna to the north and other rivers ‘presenting a comparable hazard’ army commanders would receive the Order of Kutuzov 1st Class, corps down to brigade commanders would receive the Kutuzov Order 2nd Class and regimental commanders the 3rd Class: for forcing the Dnieper at Smolensk and lower down its reaches (and for rivers of comparable difficulty), the prize was the decoration Hero of the Soviet Union. With assault units paddling and ferrying themselves over the Dnieper, with tanks plugged up with putty or pulled across on barges, the bridgeheads north of Kiev and between Kremenchug and Dnepropetrovsk swelled by the hour. Those who lived could claim their hard-won decorations. Meanwhile the Soviet command regrouped its forces and planned for the battle of the Dnieper line, upon the success of which so much turned.

In late August, when the Central and Bryansk Fronts rolled on Bryansk, as the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts were locked in the slogging fighting for Kharkov, the Western Front (under Sokolovskii) and the Kalinin Front (under Yeremenko) made their final preparations for the second stage of the operations aimed at the liberation of Smolensk, the assault on Army Group Centre—Third
Panzer
, Fourth Army and elements of Second
Panzer
(by Russian estimates some forty divisions in all). The first stage of the Western Front offensive was aimed at Yelnaya–Spas Demensk to open the road to Roslavl, while the right wing co-operated with the Kalinin Front to capture Yartsevo–Dorogobuzh and then on to Smolensk; Yeremenko’s left wing would attack Dorogobuzh, operating with Sokolovskii’s
right in the offensive aimed on Smolensk after which both fronts would drive on deep into Belorussia. Marshal of Artillery Voronov acted as
‘Stavka
coordinator’ for the Smolensk operations. When the Western Front offensive opened on the morning of 7 August, German troops were ready and waiting within their systems of fortification; east of Spas Demensk the Western Front assault force—5th Army under Lt.-Gen. V.S. Polenov, 10th Guards under Trubnikov and 33rd Army under Gordov—moved only slowly into the German defences. To reinforce the attack Sokolovskii ordered Lt.-Gen. Zhuravlev’s 68th Army from the second echelon into action, but it was Lt.-Gen. V.S. Popov’s 10th Army attacking north of Kirov that was really making progress away to the south. Sokolovskii now ordered 5th Tank Corps to move ahead of 10th Army, to cut the Warsaw motorway and to hold it until the rifle units drew up, after which 5th Corps would advance into the wooded area west of Spas Demensk and cut the railway line leading to Yelnaya. Equipped largely with British–built Valentine tanks, 5th Corps ran into tough German opposition; caught with its
AA
defences badly disorganized, the corps took a terrible beating from the air and a pounding on the ground as its light tanks were shot to pieces under it. The deflection of German units to the south-west nevertheless had its effect in the Spas Demensk bulge and Spas Demensk itself fell on 13 August, the day on which Yeremenko on the Kalinin Front ordered Lt.-Gen. A.I. Zygin with 39th Army and Lt.-Gen. K.D. Golubev with 43rd Army to begin their attacks aimed at Dukhovshchina, the capture of which Yeremenko had earmarked for the second day of the offensive. But five days of fighting in this boggy ground brought the Kalinin Front, its way barred by repeated German counter-attacks, only two miles forward into the German defences. The
Stavka
called a halt.

The revised plan for the Smolensk operation received
Stavka
approval on 22 August. The Western Front would now direct its main effort in the direction of Yelnaya rather than Roslavl, and for the next five days Sokolovskii regrouped to bring Trubnikov’s 10th Guards and Krylov’s 21st Army on to their new lines, their sector set at eighteen miles with the breakthrough planned along the length of a ten-mile front. Yeremenko had meanwhile brought up Front reserves and attacked again on 23 August, only to have more than a fortnight of battering German defences bring little result. Early in September the
Stavka
once more intervened to call a halt. With heavy ground and air bombardment, Sokolovskii renewed his offensive on 28 August and by the end of the month Yelnaya was in Soviet hands. With Soviet troops over the Dnieper, Dorogobuzh fell on 1 September, but ahead lay a well-prepared German defence line upon which German reserves including 1st
SS
Brigade were already closing. Sokolovskii halted again to organize the third stage of the Smolensk attack; the centre would attack Smolensk directly, the left was to aim for the Desna and Roslavl, the right to co-operate with the Kalinin Front and destroy German forces in the Yartsevo area.

The final attack opened on 15 September. The next day Yartsevo fell, in a welter of bloody fighting. On the left Popov’s 10th Army was over the Desna and aiming for Roslavl. Berzarin took over control of the left-flank operations of the Kalinin Front directed against Rudnya–Vitebsk. In support of the left-flank operations of the Western Front, Popov of the Bryansk Front, whose armies had already reached the Desna, pressed on for Bryansk and Bezhitsa, which fell on 17 September to Bagramyan’s 11th Guards. The
Stavka
now ordered Popov to move as rapidly as possible to the river Sozh, which in any event he must reach by 2–3 October, whereupon the Bryansk Front was to strike into the flank of Army Group Centre. One by one the German bastions were toppled in late September—Bryansk, Roslavl and Smolensk, the latter being finally cleared of German troops on the morning of 25 September, the ancient city having been set to the torch as the Germans pulled out. The fighting here, at the centre of the whole Soviet–German front, had been heavy and costly for both sides; Sokolovskii’s first attacks, preparations for which had been carefully monitored by
Luftwaffe
reconnaissance, had inevitably met powerful and well-organized German resistance. The Soviet command, however, reckoned that these attacks at the centre held down fifty-five German divisions and kept any reinforcement away from the southern wing which the Red Army was intent upon annihilating.

For a few days early in October the briefest lull settled over the length of the front, a moment of short-lived calm before Stalin unleashed his autumn storm designed to burst over two regional capitals, Minsk in Belorussia and Kiev in the Ukraine. Orders for the attack on Kiev had already gone out, and those for the very ambitious undertaking of the liberation of Belorussia were on their way. Taking on the simultaneous re-conquest of ‘right-bank [western] Ukraine’ and Belorussia was a mammoth requirement, one that once more overestimated the capabilities of the Red Army and in particular oversimplified the problems of supplying it. Certainly the summer campaign had done serious damage to the north–south interlinking of the three German army groups, and it had also inhibited—permanently, as events proved—their capacity for combined manoeuvring. If Stalin had not devised present operations in conjunction with the winter offensives as the decisive campaign of the war, there were compelling reasons for it, not the least being the need to ensure the full co-operation of his western allies. That became plain in the course of the Moscow conference of foreign ministers held in Moscow later in October, the clearing ground for the projected meeting of the ‘Big Three’, the ‘Cairo Three’ who were to meet towards the end of the year in Teheran. Press as they might, Molotov and Voroshilov could obtain only ‘the spring of 1944’ as the date of the cross-Channel invasion; Anthony Eden and Cordell Hull reaffirmed the validity of the Quebec Conference decisions, but the British Prime Minister asked that Stalin be warned of a possible stretching of the term ‘spring’ even into July. On the evening of 29 October Stalin asked Mr Eden, who had the Prime Minister’s signals to hand, whether delays with
Overlord
might run to one or two months; it was a question the British Foreign
Secretary could scarcely answer, but Stalin showed no great dissatisfaction. That he meant to soldier on with the coalition Stalin signalled in no uncertain fashion at the dinner held on the following evening; here he told Cordell Hull that, not only was the Soviet Union bent upon the destruction of Nazi Germany, but she would then participate with her allies in the defeat of Japan. (At this time, almost exactly, the
Führer
lashed out at his Japanese partners to keep alive the ‘military threat’ to Russia from the east.)

The simmering ill feeling and the half-smothered row over the Arctic convoy question now began to fade. In September Molotov directed a blunt message on the urgent need to resume sailings to the British, a missive to which the Prime Minister took strong exception. Nevertheless, on 1 October he informed Stalin that the convoys would sail again, the first coming in November. Within the week Stalin summoned Admiral Golovko, Northern Fleet commander, to Moscow, where he questioned him very closely on recent mishaps in the Kara Sea and demanded details of naval deployment to protect Allied convoys moving into the Northern Fleet’s operational zone. For instance, would the Fleet be ready to receive an Allied convoy in November? The land-lubber members of the
Politburo
who joined in the discussion obviously had no idea what the Kara Sea was like; Golovko understandably lost his temper, whereupon Stalin rebuked him sharply, but he agreed to supply anti-submarine aircraft and promised naval reinforcement of ‘various types’.

At the end of the month Stalin had reasonable cause for satisfaction. He had a firm undertaking about
Overlord
even if the date hovered somewhat uncertainly between spring and summer; he had implanted himself deeply in the coalition on advantageous terms with his offer of eventual aid in the Pacific war; and he was on the way to correcting what he himself had called ‘that catastrophic diminution’ in war supplies now that the convoys were set sailing once more. In his talk with Golovko he had been singularly confident: ‘Be prepared to meet the convoys. No matter how the allies might delay—Churchill especially—they will have to resume the convoys.’

The Soviet autumn offensive was, therefore, a ‘war-shortening’ move undertaken in line with proposals to ‘shorten the duration of the war in Europe’ (the cross-Channel attack, the entry of Turkey into the war and the use of Swedish air bases for the air offensive against Germany) which Molotov presented to the Moscow Conference. For their autumn strikes the Soviet fronts in the south-west came out decked in new designations, the 1st Ukrainian (Voronezh), the 2nd Ukrainian (Steppe) and the 3rd and 4th Ukrainian (South-Western and Southern) Fronts. Vatutin’s 1st Ukrainian would mass its main force on ‘the Kiev axis’ and build up a strategic bridgehead here. Koniev’s 2nd Ukrainian Front with Malinovskii’s 3rd was to destroy enemy forces on the Kirovgrad–Krivoi Rog axis and build a second strategic bridgehead south-west of Kremenchug; Koniev was to attack south-westwards, while Malinovskii would destroy the German bridgehead at Zaporozhe on the eastern bank and then move westwards. Tolbukhin’s 4th
Front would advance from the river Molochnaya to the lower reaches of the Dnieper from the northern Tauride. Both the Soviet and German commands had their eyes fixed on the Kiev axis, the northern wing of Army Group South; a collapse here would imperil the entire Army Group and sweep the Red Army forward to the approaches to Poland and the Carpathians. That line of march emerged in the
Stavka
directive (29 September) to Vatutin, whose Voronezh (1st Ukrainian) Front was to co-operate with the left wing of the Central (Belorussian) Front in driving on Kiev, moving to the line Stavishche–Fastov–Belaya Tserkov and thereafter toward Berdichev–Zhmerinka–Moghilev Podolskii. Vatutin’s first operational plan proposed to launch the Front shock group (40th, 27th and 3rd Guards Tank Army) from the Bukrin bridgehead to outflank Kiev from the south-west and to cut the German escape route westwards; a supporting attack would come from the Lyutezh bridgehead to the north of the city, with 38th Army and 5th Guards Tank Corps outflanking the city from the north-west. It was a plan that failed to survive the tests of actual execution and was finally consummated in reverse, the main attack coming from the Lyutezh bridgehead after 3rd Guards Tank Army and the bulk of artillery moved the hundred miles northward into 38th Army area, for at Bukrin Soviet troops were hemmed in by ten German divisions. Moskalenko with 38th Army, Lt.-Gen. A.G. Kravchenko with 5th Guards Tank Corps, Chernyakhovskii’s 60th, Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army and Baranov’s 1st Guards Cavalry Corps were all massed at the end of October north of Kiev and about to fall on Fourth
Panzer
.