The Road to Berlin (70 page)

Shaulyai, however, held out. By the morning of 18 August units of 5th Guards Tank Army were arriving in the town, accompanied by 16th (Latvian) Rifle Division under Maj.-Gen. Karvialis. As the day drew to a close, and after repeated German tank attacks, Shaulyai was still in Soviet hands. German tank losses and the lack of reserves brought the offensive to a halt. In a few days Bagramyan’s divisions were reinforced and they launched their own counter-blow, which pushed German troops once more ten miles to the west of Shaulyai. One last attempt by German tanks to drive on Jelgava through Zhagar came to grief by 23 August, by which time Bagramyan had moved up two tank corps (1st and 19th), concentrated the bulk of 51st Army, redeployed the right flank of 2nd Guards Army and 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps, as well as emplacing 5th Guards Tank Army at Ioniskis.

Though Bagramyan held Shaulyai, Jelgava and the Jelgava–Birzha line (covered by the river Lielupe), the Soviet salient contracted to a narrow bulge. The spearhead that reached up to the Gulf of Riga was now blunted and the German attack on Tukums reopened a small corridor with Army Group North, a circuitous land route, but one that momentarily averted the total isolation of the German armies fighting in the Baltic states. The Soviet drive on Riga had been halted; in fifty days of fighting the three Soviet fronts, assisted by the left flank of the Leningrad Front, wrested only half of the Baltic territory from Army Group North but had prevented it going to the aid of Army Group Centre. Schörner broke open the 25-mile corridor through Tukums, but he had not dislodged Bagramyan or significantly affected the situation in Courland and northern Lithuania; nor had he averted the great and growing danger facing the Army Group which
must with time be split within the Baltic states into one large body in the central theatre and another smaller grouping in the western extremities. Withdrawal from Estonia and Latvia, which must be a hazardous business now that only the ‘Tukums gap’ remained, could no longer be either avoided or delayed. Along a defensive line running from the gulf of Finland to the river Niemen—a line stretching for almost 600 miles—the German command deployed fifty-six divisions, among them five
Panzer
divisions and two motorized divisions, 700,000 men with over 1,000 tanks. A strong force of armour held the sector from Jelgava to Aust, with other powerful concentrations in the Narva isthmus, in the Valk ‘bastion’ south of lake Virts Jarvi and west of the Aidikste between Ergli and Plavinas. The Tannenberg line covered the approaches to Tallinn, but Riga became the focus of German attention.

Riga also preoccupied the Soviet command during the reappraisal of its plans for the ‘second stage’ of the Red Army offensive in the Baltic area: the
Stavka
ordered a careful regrouping of all Soviet armies on the four fronts involved, while after 26 August Front commands worked on plans and preparations for a massive concentric attack aimed at Riga, designed to isolate Army Group North once and for all.

The defeat of Army Group Centre, the seizure of vital bridgeheads on the western bank of the Vistula and the advance to the outskirts of Warsaw, the result of the giant offensive waged by five Soviet fronts, pushed Soviet armies as much as 350 miles along ‘the road to Berlin’. On this, the shortest line of advance, Berlin was now less than 400 miles away. Two out of the four major German concentrations, Army Groups Centre and North Ukraine, were fiercely mauled in the battles which sucked in more than six million men on both sides and employed 85,000 guns (and heavy mortars) and over 11,000 tanks or assault guns supported by over 10,000 aircraft. Of the seventy German divisions facing 1st, 2nd, 3rd Belorussian and 1st Baltic Fronts, thirty were obliterated from the German order of battle and thirty more immolated in Koniev’s drive with 1st Ukrainian Front to the Vistula. German formations were encircled five times, at Vitebsk, Bobruisk, Brody, Vilno and Brest-Litovsk; along the ‘western strategic axis’ the Soviet front advanced more than 300 miles to run from the west of Jelgava to Shaulyai, Suwalki, Ostrolenka, Pulutsk, on to the Warsaw suburb of Praga, to Magnuszew, Sandomierz, Drohobych and finally to the junction with 2nd Ukrainian Front at Chernovitsy, the line at which the offensive finally subsided in August. At the end of the month the
Stavka
ordered all five fronts on to the defensive.

After the German rout in Belorussia the Russian pursuit was relentless, ramming its way through towns and villages ripped to pieces by the deliberate devastation of the retreating German troops or all but demolished by the fierce fighting. One by one the last of the ancient cities of Russia, gutted as they were by fire
or ruined by bombardment, returned to Soviet possession, but at fearful cost. Further west the dreadful enactment of the destruction of Warsaw took place before the eyes of Soviet troops who seemed on the point of bursting into the city at the end of July; then came the silence on the eastern bank of the Vistula and the inhuman fighting on the western side, the stillness to the east remaining unbroken through a fiery August followed by the furious spurt over the broad river and into the outposts of the underground army, much too late in September when the Warsaw rising was nearing its last horrifying gasp. Polish rashness and icy Soviet calculation combined in their own way to produce the monstrous wreckage of Warsaw, but this was not all Soviet deceit (or if it was, the reckoning is even grimmer); at the approaches to Warsaw, fending off German counter-attacks or trying finally to batter its way in, the 1st Belorussian Front also fighting on Polish soil lost almost 123,000 men in these same agonizing weeks. Further south in Slovakia yet another rising in the German rear ended before Soviet troops and rebel forces linked up, in an insurrection that Soviet-controlled partisans operating inside Slovakia and communist leaders outside the country did much to precipitate. The Soviet 38th Army lost 80,000 men in attempting to force the Carpathians, overall Soviet losses reached 90,000 and General Svoboda’s 1st Czechoslovak Corps (raised in the Soviet Union) suffered very heavily in the fighting for the mountain passes. The Polish and Slovak insurgents, and the Red Army, incurred brutal losses as a result of the devious political manoeuvres, made worse by inflexibility and tardiness either in rendering aid or forcing access. Slovakia was the sole Soviet success in ‘transplanting’ its partisan movement across the frontiers, but as in Poland those patriots who enjoyed the political support if not large-scale material aid from the Western powers were viewed by Stalin as inherently and unalterably hostile to the Soviet Union. Those whom he could not discredit he set out to destroy, a policy that meant consigning many thousands of the brave political innocents of the anti-Nazi resistance movements to a grisly and untimely death. The Red Army however has angrily, even passionately, rebutted charges of any connivance in these massacres of the blameless, citing as proof of its own exertions the lengthening toll of the Soviet dead.

Though not decisive in its own right, the north-western flank occupied a significant place in Soviet strategic plans: the reduction of Army Group North’s forty-seven divisions was a necessary preliminary to administering the
coup de grâce
to Army Group Centre. Army Group North, in addition to covering East Prussia from the north-east, hung over the flanks of any Soviet army driving into Poland and on to East Prussia. German occupation of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia secured communications with Finland (and Sweden), thereby contributing to the supply of strategic war materials; German possession of the coastal states also imprisoned the Soviet Baltic Fleet in the eastern reaches of the gulf of Finland. Six weeks of offensive operations pushed German troops out of their defensive positions and back to the west, but the veterans of Army Group North, though thinned by casualties and transfers, did not give ground easily, fighting
off Soviet troops with skilful counter-attacks over terrain that lent itself very readily to stubborn defence. Yeremenko’s 2nd Baltic and Maslennikov’s 3rd Baltic Fronts were slowed down and then held at Plavinas and Valk, while Bagramyan reached the sea to sever German communications only to be pressed back by Schörner, who managed to bring momentary relief to the situation in Courland and northern Lithuania. The left flank of Govorov’s Leningrad Front stormed Narva and broke into north-east Estonia, only to be brought to a halt by more German resistance and impassable terrain. The Soviet invasion of Estonia nevertheless brought home to the Finns how perilous their plight had now become. The fall of Vyborg on 20 June produced a critical situation, but beyond the city the Finnish line held against heavy Russian attacks and the Germans, anxious to hold Finland within the German orbit, supplied men and equipment to assist the Finnish defence, provided it was maintained along the Vyborg–Vuoks line.

The blow unleashed by Govorov (appointed a Marshal of the Soviet Union within the month) against the Finns in the Karelian isthmus was both massive and fiercely sustained. One day after the fall of Viipuri yet another Soviet offensive opened, General Meretskov’s Karelian Front attacking with 7th and 32nd Armies (twelve rifle divisions supported by three brigades of Naval Infantry and garrison troops) fighting in the passage of land between the lakes Ladoga and Onega and striking from the direction of Medvezhegorsk to cut off the Finnish ‘Olonets Group’. Early in June Meretskov flew to Moscow for talks with the General Staff and for an interview with Stalin on what came to be known as the ‘Svir–Petrozavodsk operation’. Intent on impressing on his listeners the strength of the enemy fortifications between the two lakes, Meretskov took with him an elaborate relief map which—against the advice of Shtemenko and Antonov at the General Staff—he insisted on producing in the talk with Stalin. The map only roused Stalin to anger, who asked Meretskov if ‘the enemy has personally let him in on their plans’ and whether he was trying to ‘scare all of us’ with this ‘toy’. Meretskov had already been told that Stalin did not like detailed analyses of enemy plans and positions, nor would he countenance attempts to wheedle reinforcements out of him, which is precisely what Meretskov went on to do, asking for several regiments of heavy tanks and breakthrough artillery. At this Stalin broke off the interview and ordered the General Staff to draw up the necessary plans. The next day the review of these plans went by in the usual fashion; Stalin wished Meretskov success and dismissed him with an admonition about ‘scaring the enemy yourselves’. For all his rough sarcasm at the outset, however, Stalin relented in the end. During the final investigation of the attack plans, Marshal Vasilevskii and Zhukov, supported by General Antonov, refused to make an additional rifle corps available to Meretskov, but Stalin invited Meretskov and his chief of staff to watch the artillery salutes fired off in honour of the Leningrad Front. When the Kremlin guns had ceased firing, Stalin spoke softly into Meretskov’s ear: ‘I will give you as additional strength that rifle corps you have been asking for.’

The destruction of enemy forces between lakes Ladoga and Onega fell to Lt.-Gen. A.N. Krutikov’s 7th Army, which was to force the river Svir and attack in the direction of Olonets–Pitkiaranta–Sortavaala. One rifle corps with a tank brigade was detached to operate with 32nd Army in clearing the western shore of lake Onega and capturing Petrozavodsk. North of lake Onega Lt.-Gen. F.D. Gorolenko’s 32nd Army received orders to destroy the ‘Medvezhegorsk concentration’ of enemy forces, to co-operate with 7th Army in taking Petrozavodsk and then advancing to the Soviet–Finnish frontier in the area of Kuolisma. Aware of an impending Soviet offensive, the Finns withdrew from their bridgehead on the Svir and from forward positions covering the ‘Medvezhegorsk axis’; Meretskov ordered Soviet units from 7th Army to close on the southern bank of the Svir which they reached by the evening of 20 June, while further to the north 32nd Army made final preparations for its own attacks. On the morning of 21 June Meretskov watched the full offensive with Krutikov’s 7th Army take shape, preceded by a massive artillery barrage fired off from over 1,500 guns and by heavy bombing of the northern bank of the Svir carried out by over 3,000 aircraft from 7th Air Army, three and a half hours of sustained shelling and bombing. The first assault troops then moved over the broad Svir. By the evening Soviet engineers had twenty pontoon bridges in position and within twenty-four hours 7th Army pushed across the river on a 35-mile front to a depth of some seven or eight miles; but failure to shift supplies and weapons over the Svir at the proper rate slowed the Soviet advance to such a degree as to bring
Stavka
intervention.
Stavka
orders demanded faster movement and required a rapid advance on Olonets using three corps (7th Army) with not less than one corps committed to the capture of Petrozavodsk in co-operation with 32nd Army.

Within a week 7th Army, assisted by marines of the Lake Ladoga Flotilla, landing on the eastern shore of the lake, took Olonets and were closing in on Pitkiaranta. Right-flank units of 7th Army and 32nd Army, assisted in turn by the Lake Onega Flotilla, struck out for Petrozavodsk, which fell on 29 June, a victory saluted like the crossing of the Svir by salvoes from the Kremlin guns. Within a month of the opening of the offensive in southern Karelia, units of 32nd Army reported early on the morning of 21 July that they had reached the Soviet–Finnish frontier, a signal relayed at once by Meretskov’s command to Moscow.

The moment to tighten the screw on Finland had finally come; the first June attacks, though ultimately contained, virtually exhausted Finnish reserves (so Marshal Mannerheim reported to Hitler), and after another month of ceaseless hammering the situation had grown desperate. The Finns struggled furiously to seal up every path and passage from the defile between the two great lakes but it was, as Meretskov observed, a losing battle. Soviet troops bored on with Finnish resistance stiffening nearer to the frontier; roads were mined and barricaded, bridges blown, stretches of open country mined. The Red Army pounded the Finns into asking for an armistice and into repudiating the
Waffenbruderschaft
with Germany. Already on 28 July President Ryti appeared at Finnish Headquarters to inform Mannerheim of his decision to lay down his office and begged the Marshal to assume the presidency. President Ryti resigned on 1 August and Mannerheim took up his new post, intent on leading Finland out of the war. Though Keitel rushed to Finland on 17 August, showering decorations on Mannerheim and Heinrichs, desperate to keep Finland in the war, the German–Finnish compact was doomed and done. Mannerheim repudiated the agreement signed between President Ryti and Ribbentrop on 26 June as one not ratified by the
Eduskunta;
the Ryti–Ribbentrop agreement bound Finland not to conduct separate peace negotiations without the prior approval of Germany, but this was now a dead letter. On 25 August the Finnish Minister in Stockholm, through a note delivered to Mme Kollontai, formally asked the Soviet government for an armistice delegation to be received in Moscow. Moscow agreed and set out its terms: Finland must break absolutely with Germany and all German troops must be withdrawn from Finland by 15 September. If the Germans resisted the Finnish request, the Finns were to disarm the Germans and turn them over to the Allies as prisoners of war. These were the conditions agreed between the Soviet Union and Great Britain, together with the assent of the United States. The
Eduskunta
duly submitted and authorized the opening of talks on this basis.