The Road to Berlin (46 page)

On the Soviet side of the front, Zhukov and Vasilevskii drove Front and army commanders relentlessly, hammering on the need to speed up the rail movements. On 13 June Vasilevskii countered Stalin’s insistent queries about how the Front preparations were going and if his original timetable (15-20 June) would be kept, by stating categorically that ‘once again I submit that the final date for beginning operations depends entirely on the work of the railway men: from our side we have done everything and we are continuing to do everything to keep to your timetable.’ Roused at last, Stalin turned on Kaganovich and demanded an investigation of rail movement. Traffic did speed up as a result, but the original timetable for
Bagration
could no longer be maintained. Preparations were still not complete, and Stalin agreed to a four-day postponement. The opening of
Bagration
therefore coincided almost by chance with the third anniversary of the German attack on the Soviet Union. By mid-June, however, the ground-attack plans were almost complete. On 10 June Zhukov had asked Stalin to send out the Soviet Air Force commander, Marshal Novikov, to the operational area and on 19 June Zhukov, Novikov and yet another aviation marshal,
Golovanov (in command of Long-Range Aviation, the bomber force) worked on detailed plans for Soviet bomber and ground-attack squadrons.

The
Stavka
directive for
Bagration
(31 May), the basic directive, embodied a relatively new feature in Soviet strategic planning: for the Belorussian operation, immediate Front assignments were limited to a depth of 30–40 miles, and wider objectives were set at a range not exceeding 100 miles (in contrast to previous wildly ambitious, if unrealistic,
Stavka
operational directives). Working under the supervision of Zhukov and Vasilevskii, Front commanders completed their planning for ‘immediate assignments’ by mid-June: the diary of their respective
Stavka
activities with Front commands is a terse record of how these two marshals, each with his own distinctive style of command, bored into armies, corps, divisions on all four fronts (Shtemenko,
VIZ
, 1966 (2), pp. 72-7):

11 June   
Zhukov

At 0548 hours reported to Stalin that movements of transport with ammunition for 1st Belorussian Front proceeding behind schedule.… At 0655 hours requested Stalin to authorize increased fuel for 16th Air Army which is receiving additional new units. During day proceeded with Rokossovskii to Luchinskii’s formation. With him, as well as chief of staff of 28th Army Major-General Rogachevskii, artillery and engineer commanders also, examined operational plan in detail and issued orders on the spot …

Vasilevskii

Supervised preparations of 3rd Belorussian and 1st Baltic Fronts. Preparations work on these and other Fronts proceeding to plan. Dangers arise above all from railway movements. Today obliged to approach Kaganovich with request to chase up traffic, to get Rotmistrov in position not later than 18 June.

15 June   
Zhukov

Present with commanders of corps, divisions, chiefs of arms of troops of 28th Army (Luchinskii) committed to attack.

Vasilevskii

Detailed inspection of combat preparation and supply services for presumed operations of 6th Guards and 43rd Army 1st Baltic Front. During inspection issued series of orders dealing mainly with employment of artillery, tanks,
SP
Gun regiments and aircraft.

16 June   
Zhukov

With Rokossovskii and Yakovlev [head of Red Army Artillery Administration] up with corps, division and heads chiefs of arms of troops of 48th Army under Romanenko. Gave orders that by 17 and 18 June to eradicate shortcomings revealed during inspection concerning co-operation and organization of artillery offensive. At 0245 hours during night reported to Moscow on work undertaken during day.

Vasilevskii

Continued with work reported June 15. Ordered Rotmistrov as from 17
June with night marches to move combat ready units into area of Gusino into rear area of Galitskii’s army, so as to have the army in this area in full state of readiness in the first days of the operation.

During night of 17.6 reported to Stalin: ‘Good impression of new commander of 43rd Army Beloborodov. Corps commanders Vasilev and Ruchkin sent from south working excellently. Gave order allowing Vasilev, sent from Guards to non-Guards corps to retain Guards rate of pay. Request that you authorize my decision and give corresponding order to comrade Khrulev [Chief of Rear Services] …’

In its latter stages, much of this work involved the detailed ‘Front co-ordination’.

The attack plans devised by the Front commands and supervised down to the last detail by the two marshals involved a considerable degree of ‘inter-Front’ co-operation in time and space. On 1st Baltic Front, Bagramyan decided to make his breakthrough on a twelve-mile sector south-west of Gorodka, with two mixed armies, Chistyakov’s 6th Guards and Beloborodov’s 43rd: after the breakthrough, the objective was Beshenkovichi and the forcing of the western Dvina. Elements of 43rd Army in co-operation with 39th Army (3rd Belorussian Front) would attack Vitebsk, while Front armies moved in the direction of Lepel covering the Front offensive operations against any incursion from Polotsk; 1st Tank Corps received orders to make for the western Dvina and Beshenkovichi, once the rifle armies had reached the Vitebsk–Polotsk railway line. Chernyakhovskii on 3rd Belorussian Front set up two ‘assault groups’ to carry out his immediate Front assignments: ‘Northern Group’ (39th, 5th Army and a ‘cavalry-mechanized group’ from 3rd Cavalry and 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps) to attack Bogushevsk, ‘Southern Group’ (11th Guards, 31st Army) to attack along the Orsha axis. ‘Northern Group’ received orders to attack on a nine-mile front south-east of Vitebsk, the right-flank divisions of Lyudnikov’s 39th to operate with 43rd Army (1st Baltic) in the Vitebsk operation. Krylov’s 5th Army would attack towards Bogushevsk–Senno, destroy enemy forces in the Bogushevsk–Orsha area in co-operation with 11th Guards and then move forward to the Berezina. The ‘cavalry-mechanized group’ had the task of seizing the Berezina crossings north-west of Borisov. ‘Southern Group’, Galitskii’s 11th Guards and Glagolev’s 31st Army, was aimed at Orsha and thence Borisov on the Minsk motorway; the ‘mobile group’ (Burdeinyi’s 2nd Guards Tank Corps), having cut the communications of German troops at Orsha, would make for the Berezina at Chernyavki.

But when and where should Marshal Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army go into action? This crucial decision exercised the
Stavka
, the General Staff and the Front commands. On 17 June Vasilevskii presented the plans for 3rd Belorussian and 1st Baltic Fronts. For two days at
Stavka
meetings in Moscow 5th Guards Tank was tossed about on two possible axes, as a striking force in 11th Guards area aimed at Borisov, or in 5th Army area to attack towards Bogushevsk–Tolochin–Borisov. The
Stavka
proposed to give the
Stavka
co-ordinators, Zhukov and Vasilevskii, the right to decide on 5th Guards’ line of advance, but
the point at which it would pass under Front control must be subject to General Staff opinion and personally approved by Stalin himself.

South of Smolensk, Zakharov’s 2nd Belorussian possessed no armoured force of any significance. On Stalin’s orders, Zakharov displaced Petrov and caused consternation in the General Staff group attached to the Front when he disputed the line of advance prescribed in the
Stavka
directive. In the end, however, Zakharov came to accept both the
Stavka
requirement and Petrov’s Front decisions. Grishin’s 49th Army would strike for Moghilev and then on to the Berezina: Kryuchenkin’s 33rd Army and Boldin’s 50th Army received orders to hold their positions, though one corps from 50th Army must move into reserve to exploit 49th Army’s success.

General Rokossovskii on 1st Belorussian Front, with full permission to mount his ‘double attack’ on Bobruisk, planned one breakthrough north of Rogachev and a second to the south of the village of Parichi with two ‘assault groups’ (‘northern’ and ‘southern’) mounting concentric attacks aimed at Bobruisk. The ‘northern group’ (or ‘Rogachev group’) included Gorbatov’s 3rd Army, Romanenko’s 48th Army and a ‘mobile group’ attached to 3rd Army (Maj.-Gen. Bakharov’s 9th Tank Corps); ‘southern group’ also comprised two infantry armies, Batov’s 65th and Luchinskii’s 28th, with Maj.-Gen. Panov’s 1st Guards Tank Corps supplying the ‘mobile group’ attached to 65th Army. The ‘mobile group’ would be introduced at the junction of 65th and 28th armies, with Slutsk, Osipovichi or Bobruisk as possible objectives. The five left-flank armies of 1st Belorussian Front (not counting the 1st Polish Army) were for the moment to remain in position, to inhibit any German movement on Minsk and to prepare a major attack in the direction of Kovel–Lublin. This plan Zhukov and Rokossovskii worked over on 20 June, giving orders for the final version to be prepared for submission to Stalin.

By 20 June the four Soviet Fronts assigned to
Bagration
mustered fourteen ‘all-arms’ armies, one tank army, four air armies, 118 rifle corps divisions, two cavalry corps and eight tank or mechanized corps—1,254,000 men (plus 416,000 of the left-flank armies of 1st Belorussian Front), a combined strength of 166 rifle divisions. Armoured and mechanized units disposed of 2,715 tanks, supported by 1,355
SP
guns. Lined up practically hub to hub were 24,000 guns and mobile heavy mortars, supplemented by 2,306
Katyusha
rocket-launchers. The four air armies deployed 5,327 aircraft (not including the 700 bombers of the Long-Range Bomber Force asigned to operate with 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts). Between them, the four fronts had 70,000 lorries and 43,500 machine-guns. Each day 90-100 trains shifted fuel and ammunition up to the four fronts, while 12,000 lorries operating on Front supply duties hauled up to 25,000 tons in one run—one fifth of the ammunition, and one quarter of the fuel supply required for a 24-hour supply period under the ‘norms’ set for
Bagration
. The medical services, in addition to setting up their base hospitals, organized 294,000 forward aid stations. And atop this pyramid of men, tanks, guns and aircraft stood
Marshal Zhukov, waiting impatiently to lash Soviet armies forward in a savage attack on the one remaining bastion of German strength on the Eastern Front.

Three days before any Soviet unit crossed its start line, Soviet partisans opened the battle of Belorussia, laying and exploding their demolition charges in the
relsovaya voina
, ‘the war of the railway tracks’, which the Belorussian Communist Party ordered in the instruction radioed to all partisan units on the night of 8 June. Throughout the short summer night of 19 June more than 10,000 demolition charges ripped up German railway links west of Minsk. The next night, and for three successive nights, the partisans went back to the tracks, sidings and junctions, blasting away with 40,000 demolitions which spread the destruction as far as possible. The lines between Vitebsk and Orsha, Polotsk and Molodechno, suffered heavy damage; the partisans visited even greater destruction on the lines connecting Minsk with Brest and Pinsk, the routes German reinforcement might be expected to take.

The Soviet partisan brigades west of Vitebsk and south of Polotsk, 140,000 men lodged in the thick forest and screened by the swamp of the Ushachi, Lepel and Senno area, had long been the scourge of Third
Panzer
and Fourth Army. To be rid of this menace in the spring of 1944,
SS
anti-partisan units, assisted in the grim work of
Bandenkrieg
by the ‘Kaminsky Brigade’ (manned by Russian collaborators), launched two
operations–Frühlingsfest
and
Regenschauer
to wipe out the partisan strongholds in the Ushachi area: a third operation
(Komoran)
planned for June aimed to clear the area further south, to destroy partisan brigades between Lepel and Borisov. In mid-April the partisan hunt began, directed at flushing out and destroying the Ushachi units: the German estimate of Soviet losses reached 7,000 partisans killed. The
SS
men cut a swathe of blazing villages and massacre through the partisan ‘blanket’ laid over Third
Panzer’s
rear areas—and possible escape routes. The Soviet military command, by sending in Soviet planes to attack the partisan hunters and by mounting diversionary attacks at the front, did what it could to stave off destruction for the partisan brigades, but they were both mauled and scattered. Yet as thousands of demolitions in June disabled mile upon mile of railway track or knocked out precious rolling stock, it was plain that the German punitive actions had not eradicated the partisans as a force to reckon with.

The Red Army opened its offensive on 22 June 1944, three years to the day after the
Wehrmacht
had first loosed its stunning surprise attack on the Soviet Union. With the massive Soviet build-up now almost complete, all four Soviet Fronts rushed ahead with last-minute preparation. Delays in rail movement had already disrupted the initial Soviet timetable, and as late as 21 June Marshal Zhukov reported to Stalin that six trains were still due on Zakharov’s 2nd Belorussian Front. The whole Soviet offensive was staggered, with 1st Baltic Front in the north leading off on 22-23 June, followed by 3rd Belorussian Front, then
extending to 2nd and 1st Belorussian Fronts. The time differential was very small, a matter of forty-eight hours at the most from north to south (and to some degree owing to utilizing both tactical and long-range air forces), but its contribution to eventual Soviet success proved to be considerable, since the German command persisted in believing that Soviet troops were merely putting in ‘holding attacks’, an impression given greater substance since the first Soviet attacks involved only battalions, ‘reconnaissance battalions’ detached from first-echelon rifle divisions from each front.