The Road to Berlin (43 page)

The General Staff thus arrived at two fundamental conclusions: that simultaneous offensive operations on all Soviet fronts were undesirable and impossible, and that the misfortunes of the Western Front could be attributed not merely to German strength but to ‘organizational failures’ on the Soviet side, the immediate corrective to which must be to split the Western Front into two entities. The Western Front disposed of five armies (thirty-three rifle divisions, three artillery, one
AA
and one mortar division), one air army, one tank corps and nine tank brigades; the front had previously attacked in the direction of Vitebsk, Orsha and Moghilev, thereby dissipating its striking power. The precise recommendation of the General Staff envisaged splitting the front, moving the headquarters further forward up to the fighting formations, and bringing in reinforcement. Front commanders had meanwhile completed the ‘questionnaires’ sent out to them on operational possibilities. Rokossovskii at the Belorussian Front had reported to Stalin (and also to the
Stavka
in writing) that his front should take in all formations operating in the Polesia sector and in the Kovel area, thus enabling
him to deal with both the Bobruisk and the Lublin ‘axes’. After a fierce argument, the
Stavka
approved this proposal and Rokossovskii received orders to plan operations on this basis. By 12 April, the investigation of the Western Front carried out by the
GKO
(the State Defence Committee) was complete, and the tally of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ shortcomings filled out.

Apparently at an early stage in its ‘investigation’ the
GKO
had itself plumped for splitting the Western Front into two new fronts, 2nd and 3rd Belorussian, since early in April Stalin was consulting Marshal Vasilevskii—then with 4th Ukrainian Front in the Crimea—about a possible commander for 3rd Belorussian. The new 2nd Belorussian Front (the command of the designation under Kurochkin had been wound up on 5 April) went to General I.E. Petrov, the able and energetic commander of the Independent Coastal Army, currently storming its way through the Crimea. But the 3rd Belorussian Front command was even more important. Vasilevskii nominated Chernyakhovskii, 60th Army commander on the 1st Ukrainian Front, whom Marshal Zhukov on 5 March in a special telegram to Stalin had recommended for immediate promotion to colonel-general. Ivan Danilovich Chernyakhovskii had already displayed exceptional ability; thirty-eight years old, a regular officer of Jewish origin, orphaned when typhus struck his family in the Civil War, he began his military career as a cadet at the Odessa Infantry School in 1924, serving with the tank forces in the 1930s. In 1941 he commanded the 28th Tank Division in the Baltic district, fought in the north-west until 1942, went to Voronezh to command 18th Tank Corps, and then to 60th Army, the army he commanded at Kursk and used like a rapier in 1st Ukrainian Front operations early in 1944. Stalin also consulted General Antonov, who confirmed Marshal Vasilevskii’s choice. Chernyakhovskii became the youngest Front commander in the Red Army when his appointment was confirmed on 12 April. Two days later he took over the old Western Front administration at Krasnoe, while General Petrov set up his 2nd Belorussian
HQ
at Mstislavya. The old, battle-scarred Western Front, having survived for three years, died an official death on 24 April 1944.

By mid-April the General Staff had completed its outline plan for the 1944 summer offensive, involving 5–6 fronts extending from Idritsa in the north to Chernovitsy in the south, though operational planning considerably expanded this range. The General Staff plan envisaged the summer offensive being opened with the Leningrad Front attack, timed for the beginning of June and aimed at Vyborg, to be supplemented by the Karelian Front striking out for Svirsk–Petrozavodsk to knock Finland right out of the war. Once the Karelian attack began, the main operations of the summer campaign—the offensive in Belorussia—would open, with a fair prospect of attaining surprise and accomplishing the destruction of Army Group Centre. As this offensive unfolded, persuading the German command that this was the ‘main blow’ against which German reserves should be moved from the south, then the major offensive ‘on the Lvov axis’ mounted by the 1st Ukrainian Front would open. Meanwhile, 2nd Baltic Front would appear to be
on the point of launching its own operations, thus restraining Army Group North from trying to help its neighbour on the right, Army Group Centre. With success in these operations, it was reasonable to consider that the Soviet offensive could be swung in new directions—to Rumania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, though not excluding Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia.

In its final form the General Staff plan went to the
Stavka
for consideration at the end of April. As such, it was used to define the main political objectives of the summer campaign, which were spelt out in Stalin’s May Day order. The Soviet objective was to clear Soviet soil of remaining German troops, to strike out in order to lift ‘the Fascist yoke’ from Poland, Czechoslovakia and the ‘fraternal’ Slav nations. These national and international flourishes had a place all their own; now that the Allies were closing in on Germany they assumed vast new importance, but the Soviet command worked feverishly to keep its plans and planning absolutely secret, essential if the Belorussian attack was to come as a stunning surprise to the German Army. The full outline of the summer campaign was kept within the circle of five men only. All telephone and telegraph traffic was rigorously controlled. At Front command the smallest possible number of officers worked on operational plans and all draft orders were written out by hand; the political administrations with fronts and armies received orders to lay on ‘defensive ideas’ thick. Signal centres closed down their big transmitters, and formations used only low-power sets, none of which must be located within 2030 miles of the front line.

The General Staff aimed to convince the German command that the Soviet offensive would develop in the south and in the Baltic area. On 3 May the two fronts selected to ‘dis-inform’ the German command, 3rd Ukrainian in the south and 3rd Baltic in the north, received special orders on ‘operational camouflage’: 3rd Ukrainian was to ‘concentrate’ 8-9 rifle divisions, with supporting armour and artillery, on its right flank (north of Kishinev), 3rd Baltic would ‘concentrate’ east of the river Cherekh, all ‘preparations’ to be fully effective for the period 5–15 June. To lend greater credence to the idea of a southern attack the Soviet tank armies remained in position in the south-west, but the bulk of the new equipment and reinforcement went to armoured units about to regroup for the Belorussian attack. None of the Belorussian fronts disposed of a tank army, though a preliminary General Staff plan called for a powerful tank ‘fist’ to strike towards Bobruisk–Minsk, principally to block the movement of German reserves. Almost immediately Chernyakhovskii asked the
Stavka
for a tank army to be assigned to his front, a request supported by the General Staff which resulted in 5th Guards Tank Army being moved up to 3rd Belorussian Front.

Between April and May the Soviet command drastically altered its distribution of strategic unities north and south of the Pripet marshes. The splitting of the Western Front now brought the total of major Front organizations north of Pripet to eight (three Belorussian fronts, three Baltic fronts, two northern fronts), with at first only three in the south—1st, 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian. Here the commanders
were rapidly changed round: Marshal Koniev took over 1st Ukrainian, Malinovskii 2nd Ukrainian, Tolbukhin 3rd Ukrainian (the armies of his old 4th Ukrainian Front were transferred from the Crimea to 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian). Somewhat later 4th Ukrainian Front reappeared, this time under General Petrov, whose fortunes suffered a blow almost as soon as he took over 2nd Belorussian: this new front was finally inserted on Koniev’s left flank between 1st and 2nd Ukrainian, its purpose to operate with special mountain troops in the Carpathians.

Stavka
‘co-ordination’ of the four-front offensive (1st, 2nd, 3rd Belorussian, 1st Baltic) aimed at Army Group Centre presented difficulties and peculiarities. Neither Bagramyan (1st Baltic) nor Chernyakhovskii (3rd Belorussian) were experienced Front commanders; Marshal Vasilevskii took these two under his wing, while Marshal Zhukov assumed control of 1st and 2nd Belorussian. General Petrov’s tenure at 2nd Belorussian was brief, thanks to Lev Mekhlis, the ‘political member’ of the Military Soviet. Mekhlis had denounced Petrov to Stalin as unfit for his present command, reporting that he was ill and always requiring medical attention, plus a pack of the usual Mekhlis lies. Mekhlis did not think Petrov—a commander at Odessa and Sevastopol, defender of the Terek, Coastal Army commander—‘capable’ of carrying out his present responsibilities. At Mekhlis’s prompting Stalin therefore removed Petrov and appointed Col.-Gen. G.F. Zakharov (2nd Guards Army commander in the Crimea) as Front commander. Two months later Petrov, with his experience of mountain warfare, took over the new 4th Ukrainian Front. Also attached to 2nd Belorussian Front was a special ‘General Staff group’ under Shtemenko, Chief of Operations, subordinated in all operational questions to Marshal Zhukov but with special authority to contact the Chief of the General Staff directly in all questions of planning. By mid-May, however, the General Staff had finished its detailed planning for the Belorussian operation and on 20 May General Antonov signed the handwritten operational brief, a few sheets of paper with maps attached. On receiving the General Staff paper, Stalin asked what code-name the General Staff proposed for the operation. Hearing that none had been so far affixed, Stalin at once suggested
Bagration
, in honour of the Russian commander of 1812 mortally wounded at Borodino.

On 23 April General Antonov had written to Maj.-Gen. Deane that the Soviet General Staff was ‘satisfied’ with ‘ “R” date’ (the timing of
Overlord)
. Antonov then intimated with a brevity bordering on the enigmatic that the Red Army would attack simultaneously in the east, but he gave no hint of time or place. At this stage neither of these had, in fact, been decided. The General Staff plan submitted to the
Stavka
selected Belorussia as the best target for a Soviet attack but no specific date was mentioned. On the Soviet–German front the Soviet command took a whole series of measures to hide their intention of attacking in the centre and at the same time worked on an even larger deception scheme connected with the cross-Channel attack; the object was to persuade the Germans
that an invasion would not come before July and that July was also the likeliest date for a Soviet attack. Under
Bodyguard
(the combined deception operation) the Russians worked to suggest a joint Allied attack on Norway, and went about concentrating ships and men to lend credence to the idea of an assault on Petsamo. Information was leaked about ‘preparations’ for a Russian concentration at the centre of the Soviet–German front, to be ready for action at the end of June and with reserves to be trained for July. Meanwhile the Soviet tank armies remained bunched up in the southern theatre, posing yet another apparent threat.

Gehlen at
Fremde Heere Ost
submitted a steady stream of reports and assessments of Soviet operational intentions and capabilities to the German high command. On the German side, an early Soviet thrust in the direction of Lvov—precisely the attack Marshal Zhukov had proposed in March—seemed as imminent as it was likely and, because 1st Ukrainian Front held an extended front from Kovel down to the Bukovina, late in April German–Hungarian troops launched their own attacks on the left flank of 1st Ukrainian to hinder Soviet concentrations for the presumed attack on Lvov. Hungarian troops went into action between the Carpathians and the upper Dniester. Soviet units pulled back a little but apart from these tactical adjustments held their positions intact.

In his major intelligence surveys,
Wichtige Abwehrmeldungen
, Gehlen drew on many sources of information to establish Soviet operational intentions—agents’ reports, order-of-battle information, the neutral press, the Soviet press and Soviet broadcasts. Early in May Maj.-Gen. Gehlen presented an agent’s report on a secret conference in the
Stavka
held under Stalin’s presidency at the end of March where two offensive plans were discussed: either a major attack in the Kovel–Lvov area with a drive on Warsaw (and a Polish rising in the German rear), or an offensive in the Baltic with supporting attacks in the south. According to this agent, Stalin selected the second plan which also included a Polish rising. Tank strength was another indicator: on 3 May Gehlen reported 39 armoured corps (106 units) in the line, 1,200 Soviet tanks facing the German group
Süd-Ukraine
, 500 deployed against
Nord-Ukraine
, 423 against German Army Group North and a mere 41 at the centre—2,214 tanks, which could be reinforced to 2,437 in less than four weeks and more than 3,400 after one month, to give a grand Soviet tank strength (with reserves) of 8,117. The radio silence was duly noted, especially in the south, and the German command anticipated that it would be broken only when operations began. It looked on this evidence more and more like an attack in the Kovel–Lvov area, and possibly a major attack in the Baltic zone. Meanwhile German intelligence picked up
Bodyguard
rumours of ‘Soviet–American naval planning’ in Novorossiisk for a landing on the Rumanian coast.

By mid-May the first operational plan for Operation
Bagration
, the onslaught against Army Group Centre in Belorussia, had been completed: in this form it envisaged the elimination of the German salient in the Vitebsk–Bobruisk–Minsk area in order to reach a front running from Disna on to Molodechno, Strolbtsy
and Starobin, thereby crushing the German flanks and breaking through the centre of the defensive front with concentric attacks aimed at Minsk. Current Soviet estimates of German strength reckoned on encountering 42 German divisions in the Belorussian salient, to be destroyed by 77 Soviet divisions, three tank corps, one mechanized corps, and one cavalry corps, six artillery divisions and three Guards
Katyusha
divisions. The General Staff proceeded to divide the four Soviet fronts involved in
Bagration
into two main components, Group A (1st Baltic and 3rd Belorussian Fronts) with 39 divisions and two tank corps, and Group B (2nd Belorussian and the right-flank armies of 1st Belorussian Fronts) with 38 divisions, one tank and one mechanized corps. For reserves the
Stavka
dipped at once into the Crimea, proposing to move out 51st Army to Gomel and 2nd Guards Army to Yartsevo; at the beginning of May a small General Staff group flew to the Crimea to arrange the movement of these armies and to hand over the defence of the Crimea to the remaining units of the Coastal Army.