The Road to Berlin (68 page)

The drive for Shaulyai began on 20 July, preceded by a rapid regrouping as Kreizer’s 51st Army and Lt.-Gen. P.G. Chanchibadze’s 2nd Guards moved into the Front area. Kreizer’s newly arrived divisions changed positions with 43rd Army, now under orders to cover the main drive on Shaulyai in a north-easterly direction by striking out for Birzha; 2nd Guards Army deployed on Kreizer’s left with orders to move on Baisogala–Tituvenai, and further south 39th Army provided protection for the assault armies (though the 39th soon came under Chernyakhovskii’s 3rd Belorussian Front command for the attack on Kaunas). The new armoured formation, Lt.-Gen. V.T. Obukhov’s 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps, needed still more time to complete fitting out with men and tanks; Obukhov’s orders specified that he would be held back until Panevezius fell and then be thrown straight into the attack on Shaulyai. On Bagramyan’s right flank, however, the situation showed little sign of improvement as Chistyakov’s 6th Guards slogged ahead in the attack aimed at Dvinsk, where fresh German reserves were already moving to block 6th Guards. The shortage of ammunition persisted and Soviet air support remained curtailed; for the moment Bagramyan committed Chistyakov’s army on a line of advance to approach Dvinsk from the south, but the three corps of 6th Guards made only slight progress.

On Bagramyan’s left flank, the advance by 51st and 2nd Guards Armies gathered speed, building up to a rapid drive on Shaulyai. On 22 July two rifle divisions from Kreizer’s 51st (417th and 267th Divisions) burst into Panevezius and on the following day lead units on Kreizer’s right flank took Bibalnikas and Pumpenai. Driving north-west, 43rd Army collided with units of the German 43rd Corps which slowed the Soviet advance in the direction of Birzha and thus opened a ‘gap’ between the faster-moving 51st Army and 43rd Army, a breach that Kreizer lost no time in covering with one of his rifle divisions. Bagramyan, who watched his Front deployments like a hawk, confirmed Kreizer’s decision and moved a rifle division out of reserve up to 51st, with orders to use it in the event of real danger developing at the junction with 43rd Army. Apart from
this potential danger, now headed off, events were moving favourably and at great speed; the Soviet command detected a perceptible German retirement in the general direction of Riga, slow at the moment, but attributable to the pressure built up by the attacks launched by 2nd and 3rd Baltic Fronts. The whole German front was beginning to sway and had cracked wide open further to the north once Yeremenko broke through the Panther line. Bagramyan reined in his forward armies for a few hours to adjust his line before loosing them, together with 3rd Guards Mechanized, on Shaulyai; the fruitless advance on Dvinsk to the south he called off, ordering Chistyakov to regroup as the 4th Shock Army fought its way to the western Dvina north of Dvinsk.

On the morning of 26 July Bagramyan’s right flank opened its full drive for Shaulyai; 51st Army brought its second echelon (1st Guards Rifle Corps) into action and Obukhov’s brigades swept west of Panevezius, covering over fifty miles that day. Soviet mechanized units had already raced to the south-east of Shaulyai, with armour and motorized infantry closing on the town from the north and the east. Major Sparykin’s 44th Tank Regiment with a regiment of self-propelled guns in support was in contact with the main German garrison, but the first Soviet attempt to rush the town failed. As 35th Guards Tank Brigade worked its way to the south-west to cut the German escape route, General Obukhov decided to storm Shaulyai on the morning of 27 July with simultaneous attacks from the east and north-west. German counter-attacks rolled against the Soviet brigades, a situation that eased only when Soviet motorized infantry cleared Meskuachai to the north-east, the area from which the attacks were being launched in an effort to hold off 3rd Mechanized at any price. Joined now by rifle troops of 51st Army, the mechanized brigades fought throughout 27 July to clear Shaulyai and by evening the vital junction was in Soviet hands: 8th Guards Mechanized and 35th Guards Tank Brigade took Shaulyai as a battle-honour.

At the very end of July the whole German front in the north seemed in imminent danger of collapse as key positions tumbled one by one—Dvinsk (27 July), followed by Rezekne the same day and Shaulyai, then Narva (attacked by Govorov’s Leningrad Front coming in from the east). The fate of the German armies east of the Dvina was hanging in the balance, now tipped in Soviet favour by the fast-moving invasion of Latvia and the successful elimination of the Dvinsk stronghold. The Soviet drive for Shaulyai came as a thoroughly unpleasant shock to the German command and a catastrophic situation seemed to be in the making. The Soviet seizure of Shaulyai pointed Soviet armies straight at the flank and rear of Army Group North, promising the eventual realization of Bagramyan’s notion—to press the German divisions behind the Dvina where they could be pounded to pieces by the other two Baltic fronts, 2nd and 3rd. Bagramyan at once determined to strike among the ‘Riga axis’: 2nd Guards Army would push to the west of Shaulyai, but the main force of 1st Baltic would go for Riga, using 51st Army and 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps for a thrust to the gulf of Riga, while 6th Guards Army and the 43rd advanced to the western Dvina. Marshal
Vasilevskii approved these plans, at which 1st Baltic Front command flung their caps in the air. Bagramyan could issue orders for an advance on Riga with the overall situation vastly improved now that the destruction of the powerful German force at Dvinsk removed the threat of a thrust from the north into his flank; he was free to unleash 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps for a drive on Riga and at liberty to push in behind the tanks any rifle divisions he could lay his hands on. Kreizer therefore received orders to leave one rifle corps in the Shaulyai area and to push on for Jelgava (Mitau) with the remainder of his divisions: Obukhov’s 3rd Mechanized Corps would take the lead.

Soviet armour moved off at high speed along the Shaulyai–Jelgava road. At 2 am on the morning of 28 July Captain Galuzo’s armoured reconnaissance detachment from 9th Guards Mechanized Brigade roared into Ioniskis, scattering the few German guards posted beside vehicles and military dumps and waking German troops sleeping in the town square. Galuzo’s tanks opened fire, cutting down infantrymen rushing out of the houses. Within minutes the fire-fight was over, the German garrison dispersed and Ioniskis in Soviet hands. Galuzo’s column struck due north for Jelgava but this time the German garrison with its
SS
troops, supported by artillery on the bank of the river Lielupe, did not scatter so easily. The lead Soviet tanks could only wait for the main body of 3rd Mechanized Corps to close on Jelgava, where on the morning of 29 July the fighting began to intensify as more Soviet units arrived on the scene. Most of Obukhov’s 3rd Mechanized was now tied down in front of Jelgava and Bagramyan’s uneasiness was not diminished as heavier German reinforcement began converging on the-town.

If the situation at Jelgava was confused, at least the morning of 29 July brought Bagramyan some relief in another direction when
Stavka
Directive No. 220159 arrived. This fresh set of orders authorized an attack with the main forces of 1st Baltic against Riga, supplemented by an assault of Memel—objectives that Bagramyan had already assigned to his assault armies forty-eight hours earlier, but with these new official orders it seemed at long last that 1st Baltic and the
Stavka
were fighting the same battle. Meanwhile in Jelgava Soviet riflemen with tank support were engaged in heavy street fighting in which 1st Guards Rifle Corps (51st Army) speedily joined, but lack of proper co-ordination with 3rd Mechanized hampered progress. Bagramyan therefore ordered Kreizer to take personal command of the battle, with 3rd Mechanized subordinated to him for the duration of the fight for Jelgava; to seal off the town, Bagramyan instructed Obukhov to advance an armoured force to the north-west as far as the gulf of Riga and to push another due west up to Dobele. The advance to the gulf of Riga was entrusted to Colonel S.D. Kremer’s 8th Guards Mechanized Brigade whose tanks struck out along the road to Tukums. Tukums was captured on 30 July and forward units of the 8th rushed on to the gulf of Riga, coming out at Klapkalns. Colonel A.A. Aslanov’s 35th Guards Tank Brigade simultaneously
sent out armoured detachments in the direction of Dobele, thus isolating Jelgava from the west.

Army Group North was now completely cut off. The rapid Soviet tank thrust to the Gulf of Riga severed the last vital land communication link joining Army Group North with the main body of the German army on the Eastern Front and with its immediate rear, East Prussia. Colonel Kremer’s tanks stationed on the shore of the gulf formed the point of an ever-thickening Soviet salient straddling the German overland route to the west from Estonia and Latvia, a salient with its eastern face running from Tukums to Jelgava, Bausk to Birzha, its western edge starting also at Tukums and running down to Aust (south-west of Jelgava) and as far as Shaulyai. Together with Marshal Vasilevskii and other
Stavka
officers with 1st Baltic—Aviation Marshal Falaleyev, Col.-Gen. of Artillery M.N. Chistyakov and Lt.-Gen. V.D. Ivanov—Bagramyan had cause to be not only pleased but downright relieved that the ‘Riga thrust’ undertaken without specific authorization from the
Stavka
was proving successful. There were, however, grounds for concern now that 1st Baltic extended itself day after day and moved further from its supply bases. Chanchibadze’s 2nd Guards Army holding the extreme left flank was already fighting off German counter-attacks south of Shaulyai; mounted by 7th
Panzer
Division, these attacks were growing in strength and had pushed back at least one Soviet division, 32nd Guards, making for Rasieni. On the eastern face of the salient, 60th Rifle Corps (43rd Army) was holding Birzha but here too there were signs of an impending German attack. Early in August that attack materialized on some scale when elements of six German infantry divisions supported by over 100 tanks started a drive north-east of Birzha with the aim of breaking through to Panevezius.

This first assault on the eastern face of the Soviet salient was held by 43rd Army, assisted by 6th Guards Army and a tank corps (the 19th) moved from
Stavka
reserve. But fierce though these attacks were, they were only the prelude to very heavy fighting on the western face which developed in the middle of the month. The German command was now aiming for Shaulyai. Elsewhere, in the remainder of the Estonian–Latvian theatre—north of the Dvina—Yeremenko’s and Maslennikov’s armies battered away at the German defences but without winning success on any decisive scale. Towards the end of July Yeremenko’s assault armies took Dvinsk and Rezekne, a feat for which Yeremenko himself received the decoration ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ and a victory saluted in Moscow by twenty salvoes fired from 224 guns. By 25 July 2nd Baltic Front armies had broken through the last of the German defensive lines—the Brown line—covering Rezekne and Dvinsk from the east; on the right flank 10th Guards Army took Karsava and was advancing on Ludza from the east, bringing Soviet troops within easy striking distance of Rezekne. South of Rezekne 3rd Shock Army closed in on Kaunata, 22nd Army cut the Dvinsk–Rezekne railway line, while away on the left flank 4th Shock Army, supported by Maj.-Gen. M.G.
Sakhno’s 5th Tank Corps, pushed along the river Dvina and was preparing to storm Dvinsk itself.

Malyshev, 4th Shock Army commander, took elaborate measures to cut off the German garrison in Dvinsk: 100th Rifle Corps and 5th Tank Corps were pushed to the north and west, two more corps (14th and 83rd) moved from the north-east along the Rezekne–Dvinsk railway line and also from the east. Preceded by a heavy artillery barrage and under cover of air attacks, Soviet infantry closed in hour by hour, cutting the Dvinsk–Riga road very quickly. Captain Moroz’s 3rd Tank Battalion made the first interception of German columns pulling out to the west towards safety, the chance of which was much diminished on 26 July when 100th Corps captured the whole stretch of railway line north-west of Dvinsk and sealed off the motor-road. All the German escape routes to Riga were now cut.

Two Soviet armies, 4th Shock and 6th Guards, closed in to Dvinsk from the north and south, completely trapping the German garrison. To clear a route to the west, German units attacked the flank of 100th Corps, only to be beaten back and pinned against the Dvina. Malyshev’s 4th Shock Army was now only a short distance from Dvinsk and in the early hours of 27 July two corps advanced under cover of artillery fire on the ancient town, breaking in from the east and west. At 8.30 am all German resistance ceased. Inside Dvinsk more than half the houses and factories lay in ruins, many more were swept by fire or destroyed by delayed-action bombs. The power station lay gutted, the water supply and sewers had been put out of action and every bridge over the Dvina blown up. The capture of Dvinsk was nevertheless a triumph much sought after and a victory that was compounded that same day when 10th Guards Army crossed the river Retupe north-west of lake Tsirma, pushed on for twenty miles and took Rezekne in one rush.

Central Latvia now lay ahead of Yeremenko’s armies, great stretches of marsh in the area of lake Luban and the plain of Luban itself, a last natural barrier of bog and forest in front of Riga. With Dvinsk and Rezekne in Soviet hands, Yeremenko received orders to advance across the Luban plain, reach a line running west of Gulbene, through Madona and on to Plavinas, then to deploy for a ‘decisive thrust’ against Riga. To achieve these objectives Yeremenko’s command decided to use 10th Guards to outflank lake Luban from the north and south, bringing this army up to the line formed by the river Aidikste (the Ewst) and to push it westwards to a line running from Madona itself on to the west of Gulbene: 3rd Shock Army would move south of lake Luban and to a line south of Madona, 22nd Army to an even more southerly sector (Martsiena–Yankalsnava) and 4th Shock—securing the left flank along the Dvina—to a line running from Yankalsnava to Plavinas. None of this terrain was easy, and the river Aidikste, 70 metres broad and over 2 metres deep in places, offered a natural defensive line; the Germans had blown every bridge and the lower reaches of the river formed one great expanse of swamp.