The Road to Berlin (31 page)

At 2200 hours on the night of 13 October Chuikov’s Guards with 1st Guards Mechanized and 23rd Tanks Corps launched the main assault: 12th Army attacked from the north and 3rd Guards from the south. German armour and infantry abandoned Zaporozhe, blowing up the road along the dam and the Dnieper railway bridge behind them. Malinovskii’s 3rd Ukrainian Front could now broaden
its bridgehead in the Dnepropetrovsk bend, an operation that was co-ordinated with Koniev’s 2nd Ukrainian drive on Krivoi Rog. The objective was to trap First
Panzer
in the eastern reaches of the Dnieper bend, a danger to which Manstein was very much alive. Koniev’s operations secured Malinovskii’s right flank: as Rotmistrov’s tanks drove on Krivoi Rog, two of Malinovskii’s formations, 8th Guards and 46th Armies, developed concentric attacks designed to trap German units in Dnepropetrovsk and Dneprodzerzhinsk, the site of the huge hydroelectric power stations—
Dneproges
—that the Germans were intent on blowing up, tucking aerial bombs round the turbines. Glagolev’s units (46th Army) raced into Dnepropetrovsk on 25 October and caught the ‘torch-bearers’ (the German demolition crews) about to light their fires of destruction. But not all the demolitions could be prevented; the aerial bombs and dynamite blew many of the
dneproges
installations to pieces. Dnepropetrovsk was finally taken by 39th Guards Divisions (8th Guards Army).

The fusion of Koniev’s left and Malinovskii’s right at this time produced the consolidation of the two fronts’ bridgehead holdings into the single ‘Kremenchug–Dnepropetrovsk bridgehead’. For the moment, First
Panzer
was saved as Koniev’s units were held off from Krivoi Rog and pushed behind the river Ingulets; Koniev had been halted for the moment, but it was only the Ingulets, not the Dnieper, behind which his forward units had been shunted. And now, from another direction, further dangers loomed over First
Panzer
. Tolbukhin’s 4th Ukrainian Front to the south had smashed into the Sixth Army on a front running from the Dnieper to the sea of Azov. Tolbukhin was under orders to destroy German forces at Melitopol, seize the Dnieper crossings and a bridgehead on the western bank, then shut off the German Seventeenth Army in the Crimea by seizing the Perekop isthmus. Striking out from the river Molochnaya, Tolbukhin’s first attacks with 5th Shock, 44th and 2nd Guards Armies in the lead had made little progress by 9 October, but on 24 October Kreizer’s 51st Army had finally ground its way into Melitopol, whereupon the German Sixth Army fell back on the heavily fortified Nikopol bridgehead, a massive defensive position fitted out with great skill and much care, utilizing the reach of the river and the swamplands that stretched beside it. With the Sixth Army shovelled out of the northern Tauride and withdrawn behind the lower Dnieper, the German Seventeenth Army in the Crimea was in a precarious position, on the point of being marooned. When Sixth Army fell back beyond Perekop, Seventeenth Army—which Hitler refused permission to evacuate, demanding that the Crimea be held at all costs to deny the Russians bomber-bases from which to launch attacks on the Rumanian oilfields—was well and truly isolated. Early in November Tolbukhin’s troops had established bridgeheads on the Sivash lagoons, while on the Kerch peninsula General Petrov’s North Caucasus Front, having cleared Taman, landed more troops. Putting down units of the 56th and 18th Armies from ships of the Black Sea Fleet and the Azov Flotilla at Kerch incurred all the hazards of the amphibious
operation launched in December 1941, but this time, once ashore, the Soviet troops were there to stay.

This crisis in the south, however, could not match the real danger now building up in the area of Fourth
Panzer
, the northern wing of Army Group South, which remained ‘operationally decisive’, a view shared by Marshal Zhukov and Manstein alike. Twice Vatutin’s 1st Ukrainian Front formations had tried to charge out of the Bukrin bridgehead (south of Kiev) to lunge deeply into the western Ukraine and reach the Berdichev–Zhmerinka–Moghilev Podolskii line laid down by
Stavka
orders on 29 September. The attacks out of Bukrin failed: shortages of men and ammunition, lack of heavy artillery, the terrain itself—and ten German divisions—brought Soviet attempts to nought. Vatutin came, therefore, to examine the possibilities of the Lyutezh bridgehead north of Kiev (presently held by Chibisov’s 38th Army) with a much heightened interest. The Military Soviet of the 1st Ukrainian Front had already made a suggestion on these lines to the
Stavka
on 18 October:

At the present time in the bridgehead 20–30 kilometres directly north of Kiev Chibisov’s 38th Army has crushed enemy opposition and is pursuing the enemy. The complete possibility does exist of developing this success in a south-westerly direction; however, we lack reserves to do this. There is also a possibility of developing success from the bridgehead held by 60th Army [Chernyakhovskii] but here also we are lacking forces. [A.A. Grechko,
VIZ
, 1963 (11), p. 5.]

Vatutin himself put the matter plainly: one infantry army and one tank army would be needed to exploit any northerly attack. In a week (by 24 October), the
Stavka
signalled its permission for Vatutin to work out attack plans utilizing the Lyutezh bridgehead. This revised plan for 1st Ukrainian Front finally called for a northerly attack, with the Bukrin bridgehead mounting a diversion; the main assault force (38th, 60th, 3rd Guards Tank Army, 1st Guards Cavalry Corps) would attack on 1–2 November, supported by Krasovskii’s 2nd Air Army. In the Bukrin bend, 40th and 27th Armies, supported by two tank corps would hold German strength south of Kiev by attacking two days earlier. The immediate task of 1st Ukrainian Front was the destruction of Fourth
Panzer
and the liberation of Kiev, after which the offensive would unroll west and southwest: on the fourth day of operations infantry formations were to be on the Korosten–Zhitomir–Berdichev–Rakitno line, armour at Khmelnik–Vinnitsa–Zhmerinka.

Vatutin had now to empty the Bukrin bend of much of its armour, artillery and support units. In pouring rain and amidst the mud the 3rd Guards Tank Army, 7th Artillery Breakthrough Corps, 23rd Rifle Corps and clusters of other units drew over to the eastern bank of the Dnieper and then took four routes for their hundred-mile journey to the north into the Lyutezh bridgehead. As the tanks, guns, lorries and mortars toiled northwards, 38th and 60th Armies lapped up the reinforcements detached to them from 13th Army. Red Army engineers
worked like madmen to repair or erect bridges over the Dnieper for Rybalko’s 3rd Guards armour. At Svaroma (directly opposite Lyutezh on the eastern bank of the Dnieper) German dive-bombers and artillery brought the last remaining bridge under continuous bombardment, blasting it piece by piece into the river. The rain of bombs and shells had also blown nearby buildings to pieces, loosing logs and planking which Russian bridge-building units seized to rebuild the bridge. At the end of October, for all the bombardment, the heavy tanks had recrossed the Dnieper and were moving on to Lyutezh. In the Bukrin bend 3rd Guards Tank
HQ
and radio units stayed put until 0500 hours on 28 October, surrounded by dummy tanks as the real ones trundled north. If the rain hampered Soviet movement, it also helped to hide it.

Three days before the Kiev attack began, Vatutin himself moved into the Lyutezh bridgehead, setting up his
HQ
in the cellar of a half-ruined house in Novo Petrovtsy; here he briefed his army and corps commanders. Front forward
HQ
also moved into the bridgehead. To the south, Lt.-Gen. F.F. Zmachenko’s 40th and Trofimenko’s 27th Armies had opened their attack in the Bukrin bend on 1 November. The northern attack was now timed for 3 November and on the eve of the offensive Vatutin received a specific directive from the
Stavka
to operate with the maximum speed—‘the operation which is to open on the right flank of the Front must not be dragged out, since each day lost only contributes to the enemy’s advantage, permitting him to concentrate his forces in this area using his good roads while our movement is delayed or hampered by roads damaged by enemy action’. Kiev must fall within forty-eight hours, no later than 5–6 November; the directive emphasized that the ‘Kiev bridgehead’ was the most important of any on the western bank of the Dnieper, a key position from which to eject German troops from the western Ukraine.

Speed the
Stavka
demanded, and speed it got. In the greatest artillery barrage so far seen anywhere on the Eastern Front, 2,000 guns and mortars with 50
Katyushas
, 480 guns to the mile—one-third of the entire artillery strength of 1st Ukrainian Front—Moskalenko (who had taken over 38th Army) and Chernyakhovskii (the brilliant and energetic commander of 60th Army who had earlier pleaded with Rokossovskii for the ‘Kiev axis’ to be his) burst out from the Lyutezh bridgehead on the morning of 3 November. During the afternoon of 4 November, as the rain came down in a steady, unpleasant drizzle, Vatutin committed Rybalko’s 3rd Guards armour and Baranov’s 1st Guards cavalry, ordering them to move through 38th Army and then to drive south-westwards for Fastov, Belaya Tserkov and Grebenka. Passing through the Soviet infantry, Rybalko’s tanks were four miles deep in the German positions by the evening. With sirens wailing and headlamps blazing, the tanks fought through the night and by morning reached Svyatoshino (west of Kiev), cutting the Kiev–Zhitomir road. Moskalenko’s units were by now already fighting in the outskirts of Kiev, with Chernyakhovskii’s 60th swinging south-west on the right flank. Fighting alongside Moskalenko’s 38th were the men of the 1st Czechoslovak Independent
Brigade, encouraged by Colonel Svoboda to fight for Kiev as they would fight for ‘Prague and Bratislava’. The Czechs fought in exemplary fashion, capturing the railway station by the evening of 5 November. Moskalenko’s two corps (50th and 51st) were at this juncture right inside the city along with the lead tanks of Kravchenko’s 5th Guards Tank Corps. The rattle and crack of the street fighting was drowned by the roar of demolitions, but the German 7th Corps began to pull back as the Soviet encirclement tightened. At 0400 hours on 6 November, 38th Army reported that ‘the mother of Russian cities’, ancient Kiev, ripped and torn by bombardment and demolition, a city that had taken savage punishment from its occupiers, was cleared of enemy troops. One hour later the Military Soviet of the 1st Ukrainian Front radioed to the
Stavka
that Kiev had been liberated: ‘With unbounded joy we report to you that the assignment under orders from you of capturing our fair city of Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, has been carried out by the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front. The city of Kiev has been completely cleared of its Fascist occupiers’ (G.K. Zhukov,
Vospominaniya …
, vol. 2, p. 203). It was a handsome contribution by Vatutin and his men to the forthcoming anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution, and was handsomely acknowledged in turn by the victory salutes fired off by the Moscow gun batteries.

During the next ten days Vatutin’s front raced to fill out the ‘Kiev bridgehead’ until it became a sizeable strategic holding: 3rd Guards Tanks and 38th Army moved south-west and west beyond Kiev, the right-flank formations (60th and 13th Armies) advancing north-west and west. Rybalko’s tanks took the important rail junction of Fastov. Zhitomir fell on 12 November: five days later Chernyakhovskii’s 60th took Korosten, and on the following day (18 November) Pukhov’s 13th Army was in possession of Ovruch to the north-west. The capture of Zhitomir and Korosten severed the main rail links between the German Army Groups South and Centre: the loss of Fastov also appreciably complicated Army Group South’s internal movement. Fourth
Panzer
was being steadily chopped into three pieces. With each day the outlook on Manstein’s northern wing became gloomier, the most dangerous threat emanating from Rybalko’s south-westerly armoured drive. Heavy German counter-attacks at Tripole (south of Kiev) and at Fastov on 8 November had caused Vatutin to order 40th and 27th Armies from the Bukrin bridgehead to regroup, so that they might operate more effectively with 38th Army units in the Fastov area in countering German movements along the Dnieper. Soviet units driving to the west of Fastov gave Manstein less cause for alarm—provided they did not swing south; Manstein even derived a certain comfort from the diversity of the Soviet thrusts to the west and south-west. West of Fastov, Soviet units in the Zhitomir and Chernyakov areas splayed themselves out on an ever-widening front, a dispersion that could become dangerous as Army Group South moved up divisions to strike back. The
Stavka
also saw some of the danger. Vatutin received orders to rein in his formations moving westwards at the centre, to reinforce 38th Army to block any German thrust for Kiev, after
which offensive operations were to be resumed in the direction of Kazatin, south-west of Kiev. Though his left and centre went over to the defensive, Vatutin’s right wing (60th and 13th Armies) nevertheless continued to drive on.

With fresh armoured divisions moving up, Manstein launched his counter-blow in mid-November. In the first bout of heavy fighting, which lasted until the end of the month, Zhitomir was recaptured and 49th Corps took Korosten, thus reopening the rail link with Army Group Centre. Vatutin’s formations fell back on a line running east of Korosten, on to Radmyshl, east of Brusilov and west of Fastov. The German attack developed along both sides of the main Kiev–Zhitomir highway and aimed at Kiev, but for all the severity of the fighting German units came to grief in the mud and in Vatutin’s ‘defensive zones’. On 28 November the
Stavka
ordered Vatutin to go over to the defensive, ‘wear down’ the enemy and prepare a counter-offensive as strategic reserves moved up. Col.-Gen. A.A. Grechko’s 1st Guards Army took station in the gap between 38th and 60th Armies, holding off one danger, while Vatutin mobilized all his reserves. At the beginning of December, Marshal Zhukov as
Stavka
‘representative’ worked over the new plans for an offensive with Vatutin and the 1st Ukrainian Front Military Soviet, of which Lt.-Gen. A.N. Bogolyubov was chief of staff and Lt.-Gen. N.S. Khrushchev and Maj.-Gen. K.V. Krainyukov the ‘political’ members. The Zhukov–Vatutin plan envisaged the destruction of the main enemy force in the Berdichev–Kazatin area, to bring the main body of the front to a line running from Lyubar to Khmelnik and the southern Bug (on the Khmelnik–Vinnitsa sector), and thence to Tetiev–Volodarka: mobile formation would strike for Zhmerinka. Right-wing armies must wipe out German forces at Korosten: the left flank would eliminate enemy forces at Belaya Tserkva. Reinforcement was meanwhile massive. Grechko’s 1st Guards, Leselidze’s 18th Army, the 1st Tank Army, 25th Tank and 4th Guards Tank Corps and enormous quantities of artillery piled up on the 1st Ukrainian Front in early December, finally giving Vatutin a strength of 452,000 men, 1,100 tanks (most of them reconditioned and repaired), 750 aircraft, almost
6,000
guns and mortars—
66
rifle divisions, 3 cavalry divisions, 8 armoured or mechanized corps: 7 infantry armies, 2 tank armies and one air army made up Vatutin’s strength in November, his target that convergence of the road and rail links connecting Manstein with his deep rear. Kazatin was again the main target, with a south-westerly drive from Fastov into the ‘black earth’ area and the sugarbeet factories.