The Road to Berlin (67 page)

Unable to deflect or dissuade the
Stavka
, Bagramyan decided to attack without waiting for 39th Army to move up. The two armies available, 6th Guards (two corps) and 43rd (three corps) would be used in the first stage of the diverging attack aimed at Dvinsk and Kaunas. For the Dvinsk attack Chistyakov’s 6th Guards was to co-operate with 4th Shock Army, now under Yeremenko’s command on the 2nd Baltic Front.

Opening on the morning of 5 July, 1st Baltic Front offensive developed more or less as Bagramyan expected, with the heavier resistance developing on his right flank where 6th Guards fought its way towards Dvinsk; at the centre and on the left success came more easily, with Beloborodov’s 43rd Army pushing ahead at some speed, cutting the Dvinsk–Vilno railway line along the entire length of
its front on the morning of 9 July, severing the Dvinsk–Kaunas motorway in the area of Utena the following day and threatening the rail link running from Dvinsk to Shaulyai (Siauliai) and thence to Tilsit. By now Lyudnikov’s 39th Army had moved up into 1st Baltic’s left flank with orders to attack in the direction of Ukmerg, but Bagramyan seized the opportunity presented by Beloborodov’s breakthrough to the Dvinsk–Kaunas road to order 43rd Army to move down this road from the west and south-west, into the rear of the German units holding up Chistyakov’s advance on Dvinsk itself. Elements of 43rd Army would continue their north-westerly drive in the direction of Panevezius, with Butkov’s 1st Tank Corps (attached to 43rd infantry for the attack) aimed at Dvinsk.

The tank-supported attack along the Dvinsk road failed, owing to defective reconnaissance, lack of artillery support and the use of frontal assaults. Through lack of fuel and too few forward airfields, 3rd Air Army could fly only a limited number of sorties in support of 43rd Army. On Chistyakov’s 100-mile front his three rifle corps were splayed out, with German counter-thrusts poking between them and threatening even 6th Guards’ rear; the losses sustained over the previous three weeks, diminished air support, shortage of lorries to move up supplies (only one ‘motor transport brigade’ operated over the bad roads) and the deficit in ammunition all contributed to slowing the advance of 6th Guards, facing fierce and well-organized German resistance. By the evening of 12 July, with three armies now in action across his whole front, Bagramyan had committed all his available forces, at the very moment when the
Stavka
signalled the Front command that the German armies of Army Group North were on the point of pulling out of the Baltic states—a mistaken view of German intentions, as it proved but reason enough for Marshal Vasilevskii,
Stavka
‘co-ordinator’ with the Baltic fronts, to demand faster movement to the west with the main body of 1st Baltic Front.

Bagramyan realized that it would take the best part of a week for 51st and 2nd Guards Armies to move up to the front; what was to be done must be done with the armies presently engaged, without waiting. Chistyakov received orders to attack from the south and to work in with 4th Shock Army to capture Dvinsk, after which Chistyakov was to go for Rokiskis (thirty-five miles to the west of Dvinsk). Beloborodov’s 43rd was aimed along the Utena–Panevezius axis, with 1st Tank Corps covering the attack from the north but needing Bagramyan’s explicit permission to join an extended action. 39th Army would strike for Ukmerg, then attack with its main force towards Kedainia and also Kaunas with part of its strength.

Precisely at 1930 hours on 10 July scores of red signal rockets flared across fifty miles of front in General Yeremenko’s 2nd Baltic command, bringing another four Soviet armies into action against Army Group North. Yeremenko’s front faced the thirteen divisions of the German Sixteenth Army, and his line of advance reached into the southern extension of the ‘Panther line’, the fortifications south
of Opochka built up by Field-Marshal Model at the close of the 1943–4 winter campaign. Behind these positions lay the ‘Reiter line’, with three further defensive lines—‘Blue’, ‘Green’ and ‘Brown’—to the west; marshes, bog and wooded country added natural obstacles to those devised by men. Yeremenko proposed to develop a double attack, on his right (10th Guards and 3rd Shock Army) driving on Rezenka, and on his left 2nd and 4th Shock Armies striking along the eastern bank of the river Daugava in the direction of Dvinsk. The Front offensive would unroll in two stages, the first (10–17 July) involving a penetration of the German defensive system (with mobile units committed to the battle after penetration of 5,000 yards was achieved and with orders to reach the line Opochka–Sebezh–Osveya–Drissa) and the second (17–27 July) spoiling German attempts to establish a firm defence by pushing Soviet armies to a line running from Rezenke to Dvinsk. For a distance of over 150 miles German fortifications of one sort or another, fully fitted out or more hastily flung up, many skilfully adapted to the terrain, faced Yeremenko’s 2nd Baltic Front. The rail junction of Idritsa and the town of Sebezh formed a powerful double bastion straight in the path, of 3rd Shock Army, from whom, as from all other armies on this front, a major effort was required.

Within little more than forty-eight hours Yeremenko’s assault armies ripped out a gap fifty miles wide and more than ten deep in the German defences. By 12 July Lt.-Gen. M.I. Kazakov’s 10th Guards Army had cut the Pskov–Idritsa railway line and the Nevel–Opochka road, Lt.-Gen. A.V. Yushkevich’s 3rd Shock Army had reached the eastern bank of the river Velikaya, captured the bridges with demolition charges already laid on them and pushed on to outflank Idritsa. Lt.-Gen. P.F. Malyshev’s 4th Shock Army, after forcing the Drissa along a wide front, took the town of Drissa; and Lt.-Gen. G.P. Korotkov’s 22nd Army was already more than ten miles into the German defences along a 100-mile front. With 2nd Baltic offensive developing northwards between Idritsa and the river Sorot and a mounting attack on the north side of the Dvina aimed at Dvinsk, Kazakov’s 10th Guards Army registered a most significant gain on 15 July with the capture of Opochka. Two days later Yushkevich’s 3rd Shock Army took Sebezh after a deep outflanking movement and that same day Korotkov’s 22nd captured the strong-point of Osveya.

The fall of Opochka, a major strong-point in the Panther line, opened a gap in the whole German defensive system guarding the Latvian frontier—Kazakov was now fighting on the frontier itself and was engaged in the northern reaches of the Green line defence works, having broken through the Blue line in the rush to Ludza. To hold the Soviet penetration, the German command moved up the 126th Infantry Division from Pskov, units of the 58th Infantry Division from Narva and brought 87th Infantry Division from reserve. The German infantry in these northern armies were battle-hardened veterans, highly skilled in fighting rearguard and holding actions; with the terrain well suited to defensive operations, Soviet riflemen struggled through the bogs and marshes, fighting
through the numerous defiles between the many lakes, crossing the multitude of small rivers and feeder streams, and at the larger river barriers racing for the bridges before German demolition crews blew them. The worst job remained for Soviet sappers in the forest paths and tracks, all of them liberally strewn with mines. On each road German rearguards planted four or five charges of high explosive every thousand yards.

Yeremenko’s 2nd Baltic Front, fighting through the forests and swamps, had nevertheless staved in the Panther line with the capture of Idritsa, Sebezh and Opochka; 2nd Baltic armies were now penetrating Latvia, and on the left flank 4th Shock Army closed in on Dvinsk. Bagramyan at 1st Baltic Front, with two new armies and a mechanized corps under his command, now pleaded for permission to strike at Riga, but again the
Stavka
refused. Meanwhile Col.-Gen. Maslennikov in command of 3rd Baltic Front prepared to loose the third and final blow of the offensive against Army Group North, with an attack aimed at Pskov and Ostrov. Maslennikov’s orders, laid down in the
Stavka
directive of 6 July, specified the destruction of the ‘Pskov–Ostrov concentration of enemy forces’. The first stage of this offensive involved the capture of Ostrov, Liepna and Gulbene; the second an advance in the general direction of Verro (almost due west of Pskov), a penetration into the rear of the ‘Pskov concentration’ and the capture of both Pskov and Verro; followed by an attack on Parnu and Tartu, thus bringing Soviet troops into the rear of the ‘Narva concentration of enemy troops’. The immediate task of Maslennikov’s left-flank armies was to cut the Ostrov–Rezenke railway line, then to seize Liepna and Gulbene: not less than twelve or thirteen rifle divisions were to be employed on this line of advance running through Balvi and on to Gulbene. Maslennikov’s own operational plans (built round the
Stavka
’s instructions) assigned the right-wing and centre armies (42nd and 67th, with seven divisions between them) a defensive role to pin down German forces, while the left flank—1st Shock Army and the 54th, with fifteen divisions—set about breaking into the German defences.

Not long after the
Stavka
directive was sent to Maslennikov, Stalin expressed much concern that ‘no one had been even once up to Maslennikov’; here was ‘a young commander, with a young staff and not enough experience’, needing ‘experienced gunners and airmen’ but no tank officers, since Maslennikov had few tanks on his front. Shtemenko, Yakovlev and Vorozheikin—a high-powered team—flew out to Maslennikov’s
HQ
the next day, working for much of the time on the small bridgehead on the western bank of the river Velikaya. The final operation plan, accepted by the
Stavka
, confirmed the use of 1st Shock Army and the 54th in an attack from the left wing in the direction of Ostrov–Liepna–Gulbene with the object of destroying German forces west and south-west of Ostrov and capturing Ostrov itself, a penetration of 100 miles in seven days; the second stage involved using two rifle corps of the same two armies to drive on Verro and, with three rifle corps, on Valga with the object of breaking
into the rear of the German forces holding Pskov, an eight-day operation with a penetration of over sixty miles.

In the first half of July, 3rd Baltic regrouped its rifle formations and artillery units; the nine divisions ‘deployed’ on the ‘Ostrov axis’ exercised and trained with some deliberate show, while three dummy tank regiments and four radio transmitters ‘worked’ for 20th Army. One full decoy aerodrome operated fighter and training aircraft. By mid-July, of the twenty-five divisions available to 3rd Baltic, eighteen had been concentrated within the armies assigned to the main assault. After 11 July all armies north of Pushkinskie Gory carried out intensive battlefield reconnaissance, and on the late afternoon of 16 July left-flank units of 1st Shock Army were already on the attack. The next day both assault armies, 1st Shock and the 54th, were attacking and within two days they tore out a gap thirty-five miles wide and twenty-five deep in the German positions south of Ostrov. By 20 July two divisions of 1st Shock Army, 23rd Guards and 33rd Rifle Division, deeply outflanked the Ostrov positions in their drive to the west and south-west. As German units began to withdraw, on the morning of 21 July a Soviet rifle regiment with tank support broke into the north-eastern outskirts of Ostrov, another Soviet regiment was fighting on the southern outskirts, and shortly before noon elements of four Soviet divisions took Ostrov by storm. The same night, units of 42nd Army made ready to attack Pskov; by the evening of 22 July their forward units had reached the river Velikaya and with it the eastern and central areas of Pskov, which by 6 am on the morning of the twenty-third was cleared of German troops. The
Stavka
now intervened to redirect 3rd Baltic Front’s assault formations towards Valga, a main junction of great importance, with the object of cutting the one link connecting all German forces in Estonia and northern Latvia with Riga—a ‘variant’ previously investigated by 3rd Baltic command but rejected for lack of sufficient troops.

Riga also drew Bagramyan like a magnet. By the middle of July, with his armies wholly bereft of reserves, with 2nd Guards and 51st Army still moving up (and not likely to be in position for at least another four days), two firm conclusions were forming in the Front commander’s mind: that the German command showed not the slightest sign of ordering a pell-mell flight into East Prussia from the Baltic states, and that the continuation of 1st Baltic Front’s offensive in the direction of Kaunas was not only pointless but downright dangerous. At least Bagramyan had some small consolation, since Marshal Vasilevskii undertook on his own responsibility to shift the axis of 1st Baltic’s main attack towards Shaulyai once the two fresh armies arrived at the front. Bagramyan himself submitted proposals directly to the
Stavka
for a full-scale attack on Riga, using only a part of his Front forces against Shaulyai, but the
Stavka
refused to consider this. Behind the
Stavka’s
resistance to Bagramyan’s proposal lay its particular fear that by the time 1st Baltic actually reached the Shaulyai–Riga road, the offensives by 2nd and 3rd Baltic Fronts would have dislodged the main body of Army Group North from Estonia and eastern Latvia, German divisions would
have pulled back into East Prussia and Bagramyan’s great blow would simply meet ‘empty space’.

Undeterred by this rebuff, Bagramyan set about dispelling the
Stavka
arguments: neither 2nd Baltic (seriously deficient in armour) nor 3rd Baltic, nor even the two fronts in combination, could ‘eject’ Army Group North, whose command showed every sign of hanging on grimly in the Baltic states where the terrain could tie up large Soviet forces. A ‘voluntary withdrawal’ on the part of the Germans was virtually unthinkable. In this case, Bagramyan would certainly not be thrusting into thin air, and what gave his plan added advantage was that he did not need to regroup in order to go for Riga—two of his three armies were already committed to the ‘main axis’, while the fresh formations (2nd Guards and 51st Armies plus 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps) could be deployed at will. The
Stavka
, however, remained wholly unconvinced, and Shaulyai remained as Bagramyan’s immediate objective.