The Road to Berlin (64 page)

The Slovak rising, sudden as it was, flared up first in central Slovakia, but the main strength of the key force—the Slovak field army—lay in eastern Slovakia. To this geographical division was now added a much more gravely damaging factor, the confused and dangerous situation that built up as a result of the flight in the early hours of 31 August of the Slovak deputy corps commander, Colonel Talsky. Behind the Soviet lines information came in from partisan commanders about the capture of a number of large towns; V.I. Yagupov, a detachment commander, flew in to Koniev’s
HQ
on 29 August to report on the situation in eastern Slovakia and to supply detailed information on the strength and disposition of the Eastern Slovak Corps. It was also on 29 August that Colonel Talsky summoned a council of war in Presov, at which he announced that steps must be taken to arrange contacts with the Soviet command. The colonel, without informing anyone else in the corps staff, arranged through A.A. Martynov’s partisan detachment for flight paths and a landing site to be fixed by the Soviet command.

At 0530 hours on 31 August three Slovak aircraft with nineteen Slovak officers and soldiers landed at Kalinuv in 1st Ukrainian Front area. More Slovak aircraft began landing at Lvov an hour or so later, until twenty-two aircraft finally arrived
on Soviet airfields and unloaded twelve officers with fifty-four soldiers. But while Talsky made his way to Marshal Koniev’s headquarters, confusion began to pile up swiftly in eastern Slovakia. From Bratislava, the seat of the Tiso government, the East Slovak corps commander General Malar sent out radio messages to the corps announcing that German troops entering Slovakia intended to take no punitive action against Slovak army units. Without orders, bereft of its commander and deputy commander, badly deployed and hopelessly confused, the East Slovak Corps proved to be easy meat for the 108th
Panzer
Division which ripped into the Slovak units on 31 August. The bulk of the Slovak soldiers were simply disarmed on the spot; only a few small groups broke away to join up with the partisans. Within twenty-four hours the entire corps was completely disarmed, a number of Slovak officers went over to the Germans and not a few Slovak soldiers found themselves on the way to concentration camps.

This military collapse was by no means confined to eastern Slovakia. The garrison troops in the west, units in Bratislava, Nitra, Hlohovec, Trencin and Kezmatok, also failed to join the rising in any strength, with the result that almost from the outset the Slovak rising was more or less confined to central Slovakia, the region into which both soldiers and partisans began to withdraw, a variegated force of partisan units and some dozen battalions of the Slovak army, badly armed and with little or no artillery. From London the government in exile sent Golian an urgent signal on 30 August asking for information. Golian provided few hard facts, referring only to his ‘solution’ to the problem created by the entry of German troops. Talsky was about to make contact with the Russians, Golian himself was remaining behind to organize resistance with the Slovak army and the partisans, though Golian did include an urgent request for the dispatch of parachute troops who could be landed at
Tri Duba
(‘Three Oaks’) or Mokad aerodromes—‘send help quickly, we need it badly, our situation is critical’. The Czechoslovak Defence Ministry in London, almost completely in the dark about Talsky’s whereabouts and intentions, sent a message to General Pika in Moscow, asking him to contact the Soviet command and to seek the release of the Czechoslovak airborne brigade, or better still the Soviet parachute troops, for use in Slovakia.

The news on 1 September fluctuated wildly. First there was information that all was well with Talsky, that he was supporting Golian’s men; this was followed by the disastrous revelation that Talsky had virtually abandoned the Slovak Corps to its fate. By this time the East Slovak Corps no longer existed. Talsky, however, was definitely at Marshal Koniev’s headquarters, reporting on the German incursion, maintaining stoutly that if Soviet units began a south-westerly advance then two Slovak divisions would fight their way towards Krosno and link up with the Red Army. What Talsky did not know, or did not guess or did not reveal, is that those two divisions had already been obliterated. Marshal Koniev reported by telephone to Stalin on his talk with Colonel Talsky; at 0320 hours on 2 September he sent a written report to Stalin, outlining an operation with his own
left flank and Petrov’s right (4th Ukrainian Front) to break into Slovakia along the Krosno–Dukla–Tilyava axis:

In our conversation Colonel Talsky makes the point that in the event of an offensive operation by our troops in a westerly direction the Slovak 1st and 2nd Divisions which are deployed along the line of the frontier would be able to attack from the east and thus link up with the Red Army.

In the area of Krosno our front is about 30–40 kilometres from the Slovak frontier. To link up with Slovak army units and with the Slovak partisan movement, if you give your permission, it would be sensible to mount a simultaneous operation with the left flank of the 1st Ukrainian Front and the right flank of the 4th Ukrainian Front to come out on Slovak territory in the area of Stropkov–Medzilaborze.

For this operation 1st Ukrainian Front could commit four RDs [rifle divisions] 38th Army and 1 GDs. Cav. Corps [Guards cavalry corps]: attack along the axis Krosno–Dukla–Tilyava. On that axis also it would be desirable to use 1st Czechoslovak Corps. It would be possible to begin the operation in 7 days. I request your orders on this issue. [Koniev,
Zapiski komand. frontom
, p. 300.]

On the evening of 2 September the
Stavka
sent Koniev specific orders to commit Soviet troops for this operation, necessitated by a situation ‘arising out of the activation of the partisan movement in Slovakia and the development of the armed struggle of independent regular units and formations of the Slovak Army against the German invaders’.

The
Stavka
directive instructed 1st Ukrainian Front to ‘prepare and execute an operation at the junction of 1st and 4th Ukrainian Fronts striking from the Krosno–Sanok area and driving in the general direction of Presov to reach the Slovak frontier and to join up with the Slovak troops’. Koniev received permission to use 1st Czechoslovak Corps and was advised to exploit ‘the presence of Slovak forces north-east of Presov, with whom consultations must take place’. To secure the operations of the left-flank armies of 1st Ukrainian Front, the
Stavka
sent Petrov at 4th Ukrainian Front orders to organize an attack on his right wing from the Sanok area towards Komanc, a supporting attack employing one rifle corps. The
Stavka
worked on the assumption that the Slovak Corps could still fight, and Marshal Koniev did the same in submitting his attack plans on 3 September. The main role fell to Moskalenko’s 38th Army, with 1st Czechoslovak Corps attached: the Soviet plan envisaged the rapid destruction of enemy forces in the Carpathian foothills by Soviet rifle divisions, followed by a deeper penetration with 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, 25th Tank Corps and second-echelon units moving through the mountain range, to link up after three or four days with the Slovak partisans. The selection of the line of advance running along the road to Dukla and through the Dukla pass provided the shortest route into Slovakia and would enable Soviet troops, once they had broken through the German tactical defence zone, to use the motor-roads for rapid movement. Bringing out 38th Army on the southern slopes of the Carpathians in the direction of Dukla would also cut First
Panzer
Army’s main lines of communication with the left
flank of Army Group North Ukraine. Koniev’s Front command, with Sokolovskii as chief of staff, worked on two assumptions in planning the Slovak operation: that on the third day after the opening of the Soviet offensive 1st and 2nd Slovak divisions would begin attacking to the north of Stropkov, thus fighting their way towards Moskalenko’s 38th Army and forcing the main mountain passes, and that the whole Soviet operation would be concluded after five days, by which time 38th Army would have reached the line running from Stara Liubovna to Presov, some sixty miles deep inside Slovakia. Apparently still unaware that these Slovak divisions no longer existed, the
Stavka
approved Koniev’s attack plans on 4 September and fixed 8 September as the last possible date for taking the offensive.

Under orders from the Czechoslovak government in London, General Pika submitted a formal request for Soviet military aid in the Slovak rising, a document that was in the hands of the Soviet military authorities by 2 September. The two representatives of the Slovak National Council in Moscow were meanwhile unable to discover anything definite about possible Soviet assistance and turned to the London government with an appeal of their own. The Czechoslovak government for its part instructed the Czechoslovak Ambassador, Zdenek Fierlinger, to seek some assurance of Soviet support, an application supplemented by Klement Gottwald’s letter to Molotov stressing the significance of the Slovak rising for the whole communist cause. The Soviet government delivered an assurance of help without either delay or demur, and the first Soviet decisions seemed to promise speedy action: a
Stavka
directive went out to Koniev for military support for the rising and, in response to General Pika’s request for arms (1,000 automatic weapons, 300 anti-tank rifles, 400 machine-guns, ammunition and a ton of explosives as a first consignment), the Soviet command detached two long-range bomber corps (4th and 5th) for air transport operations, a decision effective from 5 September. That same night nineteen Soviet planes from the thirty originally sent out landed at
Tri Duba
airfield near Banska Bystrica and unloaded their supplies, small arms plus 13,800 rounds of machine-pistol ammunition, 41,800 cartridges and 125,000 more for the automatic weapons. During the next two days more flights came in while the ‘transplanting’ of Soviet partisan units from their Ukrainian bases continued, bringing the total Soviet partisan strength in Slovakia up to some 3,000 men. On 5 September, Prokopyuk’s partisan brigade, 600 men strong and the third large detachment sent into Slovakia, crossed the land frontier and began operating in the Medzilaborce area; two additional Soviet units, each of twenty men, later dropped into the base area set up by Prokopyuk.

‘Free Slovakia’ in these early September days attacked the invading German troops at a number of points and tried simultaneously to complete its emergency mobilization. Only 16,000 men of the 60,000-strong Slovak Army joined the insurgents during these first days of the rising, but the National Council decreed general mobilization and managed to add 25,000 more men, all organized into
the ‘1st Czechoslovak Insurgent Army’. Other Slovaks joined the partisans. Soldiers and guerrillas alike put up stiff resistance, forcing General Berger and the German command to revise their calculations that the rising could be put down in a matter of days simply by rolling over the insurgents from the north-west (from Zilina to Turciansky Sv. Martin), from the north, the south-east and the south-west.
Reichsführer
Himmler, from whom Berger received his assignment in Slovakia (only to be unceremoniously ejected in less than a month and replaced by Höffle, a senior
SS
police commander), ordered nothing less than the total suppression of the rising and demanded the clearing of the rail links (the double-tracked Zilina–Bratislava line and the Zilina–Kostice line) that bisected the country. For this clearing operation the Tatra
Panzer
Division pushed through the Jablunkow pass making for the junction at Zilina and Cadca; units of 20th
SS
Security Division advanced on Trencin from Moravia; an improvised
SS Panzer
Regiment strung together from the training schools in Moravia struck into western Slovakia towards Nitra; units of 86th
Waffen SS
came in from the north;
Kampfgruppe Schäffer
advanced from the east along the line of the Vah with orders to close on Ruzomberok; and finally from the south-east came the tanks of the
SS Panzer
Division that had already disarmed the hapless East Slovak Corps.

At the end of the first week in September German troops took Liptovy Sv. Mikulas and Ruzomberok, trapping the Slovak insurgents north of the Vah. Less success attended the German drive towards the south-east which was held at Strecno; French prisoners of war fighting as partisans under Captain de Lanurienne, supported by Slovak troops and Soviet guerrillas, held off the German tanks and won time to reorganize the defences of the Turec valley. Checked in the north, the German command decided to penetrate from the south with an attack aimed through the Nitra valley at Prievidza and Handlova, while away to the south-east (on the eastern edge of Slovakia) German tanks reached Telgart on 4 September; Slovak troops under Captain Stanek and Soviet partisans commanded by Major Yegorov counter-attacked fiercely, pushing the Germans back and forcing a German withdrawal,
eastwards
, to Dobsina and Spisska Nova Ves. The subsequent withdrawal of German units from this sector to the Carpathian defence lines caused the fighting to die down here towards the middle of the month. The southern sector which adjoined Hungary remained quiet for the moment, because the Hungarians did not elect to intervene in Slovakia.

While the Slovaks fought erratically but not unsuccessfully against the first wave of German troops, Moskalenko’s 38th Army with a ‘mobile group’ (1st Guards Cavalry and 25th Tank Corps, 1st Czechoslovak Corps) as reinforcement made final preparations for the attack into Slovakia, amassing three rifle corps (52nd, 101st and 67th) with a total of nine rifle divisions, though many of them were below strength and short of weapons. On this sector of the Carpathians only the Dukla and Lupkow passes afforded access through the heights up to 800 metres, with thickly wooded slopes and narrow valleys bisecting mountain valleys swept with small rivers and mountain torrents. The German defences on
which Slovak and Hungarian soldiers had toiled for many months stretched across a 25-mile zone with the main positions sited in the foothills and the northerly slopes fitted out to cover the main approaches and the few roads in particular. Two German corps (11th from Seventeenth Army and XXIV
Panzer
from Fourth
Panzer
Army) were presently holding the ‘Krosno–Dukla axis’: ahead of Moskalenko’s 38th lay three German infantry divisions, an engineer training battalion, police units and a regiment from 96th Division, in all 20,000 men with 200 guns using Krosno as their strong-point. Elsewhere all roads and the approaches to the mountain passes were mined, tank-traps and obstacles laid with fire-points and small positions strung out along the ridges and slopes.