The Road to Berlin (78 page)

The last chance of escape for the German divisions trapped by Malinovskii and Tolbukhin lay in holding a crossing over the Prut, a desperate enterprise which was inadvertently aided by a costly Soviet mistake: 4th Guards Army from Malinovskii’s front, driving down the Prut, became tangled with Berzarin’s 5th Army under Tolbukhin, a mix-up over army boundaries which led to 4th Guards being too quickly disengaged. The
Stavka
and the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, General Antonov, ‘categorically ordered’ Malinovskii to pull back 4th Guards, away from the eastern bank of the Prut—out of contact with the bulk of the trapped enemy formations. Dispersed and weak as it was, Berzarin’s 5th even after two days of heavy fighting could not beat down the fierce German resistance at the northerly crossings of the Prut. Desperate to escape the Soviet trap, German troops managed to prise open a small gap in the ‘pincers’ formed by 5th and 37th Armies, slipping the elements of two corps through this passage, over the Prut and into the woods round Husi. Here this large body of Germans fought it out with the rear units of 52nd Army, causing a considerable crisis to flare in Malinovskii’s rear. Bakers, drivers and mechanics rushed to man what suddenly became front-line positions as the Germans, supported by the tanks
and heavy weapons brought over the Prut, burst into their midst. Among the Soviet casualties was Maj.-Gen. V.I. Polozkov, 18th Tank Corps commander, killed in action on 28 August.

Altogether 70,000 German soldiers had broken across the Prut, determined to force their way to the Carpathians and into Hungary. Those divisions on the eastern bank of the Prut were, however, wholly marooned and doomed either to destruction or captivity. In Malinovskii’s rear the situation nevertheless assumed alarming proportions as the elements of five German divisions roamed through 52nd Army’s positions, aiming to break out to the south-west. There was nothing for it but to move up Front reserves and part of the second echelon, with 25th Guards Rifle Division rushed in to block the German drive that was to lead them to safety. On the night of 28 August the German command issued final orders for one last break-out attack, the dash for the Carpathian passes. At dawn German guns opened fire and the infantry launched themselves on Krivolapov’s 25th Guards Division. On 29 August the main body of 52nd Army began to close in on the Germans concentrated in the area of Husi: 25th Guards fought to hold off the break-out attack, and gradually whittled down the attacking Germans. No more than 25,000 German troops managed to break out of the ‘tactical’ encirclement but they were still deep within the strategic encirclement, bumping into the rear positions of 27th Army; deep in Malinovskii’s rear 38,000 Germans were made prisoner and their equipment captured. Slowly, but not without a whole series of fierce engagements with smaller parties of Germans, the Husi cauldron began to cool. Early in September the German command gave Sixth Army up for lost: five corps and eighteen divisions had been swallowed up in the Soviet encirclement, with four more divisions battered in the battles to cut their way free. The Soviet command claimed 98,000 prisoners and 100,000 German dead for the period 20–31 August; by Soviet reckoning, about 25,000 men made their way out of the trap. At the beginning of September the
Wehrmacht
no longer disposed of any substantial and organized body of troops on Rumanian territory.

Late in August Soviet columns fanned out and sped into the central districts of Rumania. Malinovskii strengthened his right-flank drive in the direction of the Carpathian passes, though the main body of the Front rushed the ‘Focsani gap’ and made for Ploesti and Bucharest; Tolbukhin’s Front cleared the remainder of south-eastern Moldavia, the line of the Danube from Izmail down to the Black Sea, and occupied Constanza on 29 August. Within a very short time Tolbukhin’s troops were on the frontier of the Bulgarian Dobrudja. In a sweep on his right flank, Malinovskii swung 40th and 7th Guards Armies, supported by a ‘cavalry-mechanized group’, towards Brasov (Kronstadt) in southern Transylvania, where Rumanian troops were mounting guard to prevent any Hungarian invasion; 6th Tank Army received orders to go for the oilfield area at Buzeu, after which it was to strike for Ploesti and Bucharest, with 27th Army moving its infantry in the wake of the Soviet tanks. At the end of August Malinovskii
captured Ploesti itself and the surrounding oilfields, trapping three or four German divisions in the process. Kravchenko (6th Tank Army commander) received special orders from Malinovskii specifying the use of one corps for the Ploesti operation and two for the capture of Bucharest, though on receiving a copy of this order the
Stavka
decided for the moment to hold back Soviet troops from an all-out thrust against the Rumanian capital.

One Soviet mechanized corps (the 5th), two rifle divisions from 53rd Army together with the 1st Rumanian Tudor Vladimirescu Infantry Division (raised in the Soviet Union and recruited from men taken prisoner in southern Russia) already lay in a semi-circle not more than ten miles to the east and north-east of Bucharest. To ensure that the Soviet entry into the Rumanian capital would be made in proper style—organized and disciplined … the infantry with bands playing … divisional and regimental commanders on horseback, at the head of their columns’—Malinovskii flew on 28 August to Managarov’s
HQ
(53rd Army). On the return flight the small machine passed over Husi, where the encircled German troops were still fighting; heavy anti-aircraft fire wounded Malinovskii and only the skill of the pilot prevented a disaster. Back at Front
HQ
Malinovskii found several disquieting reports awaiting him from Soviet army commanders. At Ploesti General Sanatescu had approached the commander of 6th Tank Army with a formula designed to contain the Soviet advance (the same approach was made to the commander of 46th Army), suggesting that the Rumanian government should deal with German forces left on territory ‘not yet occupied by the Red Army’ and that in effect the Red Army should halt along a line running from the Carpathians to the Danube, making no further southerly movement. The
Stavka
naturally refused this and ordered Malinovskii to move into Bucharest as from 10 am on the morning of 31 August, a move designed to stifle the ‘intrigues’ of the ‘internal and external reactionaries’, which meant bringing the nationalist politicians to heel and forestalling any Anglo-American ‘intervention’.

The Red Army’s entry into Bucharest provided the briefest carnival, with the Soviet press recording Rumanian ‘wonder and surprise’ at the sight of Soviet soldiers, at their youth and at the quality of their guns and tanks. With the German Sixth Army all but smashed to pieces, there was now nothing to hold the Russians from flooding into the whole of Rumania. On 29 August the Military Soviet of the 2nd Ukrainian Front met for an extended discussion of future operations. The head of Front intelligence, Maj.-Gen. F.F. Povetkin, reported that only the remnants of seven divisions now faced Soviet forces along the right flank and centre of the 2nd Ukrainian Front; to the left and at the junction with 3rd Ukrainian Front no organized German force existed at all. The German southern flank, which had hitherto rested on the Black Sea, had now disintegrated; the German command could in no sense rely on Bulgarian forces—if they had not used Bulgarian troops before on the Soviet-German front, they would hardly use them now. On Malinovskii’s left and at the centre, however,
there was some enemy force—elements of those seven German divisions and Hungarian units—in Bystritsa and Cluj, plus eight Hungarian divisions (shortly to be formed into the 2nd Hungarian Army), and in Transylvania up to 30 battalions of frontier guards on the present Rumanian–Hungarian border. In Hungary itself up to nine divisions were presently identified.

From forward Front
HQ
in the small village of Ipatele, Malinovskii’s command reported to the
Stavka
that the enemy in Rumania was completely ‘demoralized’, a verdict with which the
Stavka
agreed wholeheartedly and promptly issued a fresh set of directives to Malinovskii and Tolbukhin that same day (29 August). There were more than reasonable grounds for optimism, with the Slovak rising just beginning deep in the German rear, with Hungary showing signs of wavering and Bulgaria on the point of wobbling out of the war. The new
Stavka
orders set Malinovskii and Tolbukhin moving in disparate directions, with 2nd Ukrainian Front advancing through the central and western areas of Rumania towards the frontiers with Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, all west of Giurgiu; and 3rd Ukrainian Front moving down the coast towards the Rumanian-Bulgarian frontier east of Giurgiu. Malinovskii’s front was also ‘split’, into left-flank operations (27th, 53rd and 6th Tank Armies) driving into the southern Carpathians (from Turnu-Severin to Giurgiu) and the right flank (40th, 7th Guards Army and a ‘cavalry-mechanized group’) making for the eastern Carpathians, to reach the line Bystritsa–Cluj–Aoud–Sibiu by mid-September. The ultimate objective of Malinovskii’s right-flank drive was Satu-Mare, with the idea of ‘co-operating with the forces of 4th Ukrainian Front forcing the Carpathians and driving for the Uzhorod-Mukachevo area’. That latter refinement was amplified in a revised directive sent out by the
Stavka
early in September.

For Malinovskii the invasion and investment of Transylvania presented some difficulties, not least the need to split his forces into several columns and the distance involved in keeping them supplied; at the same time the presence of substantial Rumanian forces and the absence of any appreciable German strength clearly favoured rapid Russian exploitation of the situation. For the moment the remnants of Eighth Army—three or four battered divisions—could scarcely fill out the ‘front’ running along the line of the Transylvanian Alps (southern Carpathians) from Brailov westwards on to the Danube, which the German command hoped to hold. In southern Transylvania, in the towns of Brasov, Sibiu, Arad and Timosoara, the Rumanian army was in control, and it kept more of its forces along the Rumanian–Hungarian frontier: two full Rumanian armies (4th and 1st) with two additional corps came under Soviet operational command when the Rumanian government agreed (as indeed it had no choice but to agree) that Rumanian forces should come under Soviet control, thus giving Malinovskii some twenty Rumanian divisions, indifferently equipped but infantrymen at least who knew the ground on which they were to fight.

Stunned by events in Rumania, the Hungarians now faced an obvious and immediate threat to northern Transylvania, though their reaction was surprisingly
sluggish. At this point Hungarian forces were scattered from Galicia to the Carpathians, with the 1st Hungarian Army holding the Carpathian passes from Dukla to Yablonitsa. The 2nd Hungarian Army was still forming up and was about to be rushed to the scene of the gravest crisis, the Rumanian–Hungarian border, to which divisions of the 1st Hungarian Army were also being directed, thus producing a combined German–Hungarian force (some five German divisions and about eight Hungarian). Malinovskii was already moving with some speed into western Rumania and turning north-west, reaching Pitesti and Craiova by 5 September and taking Turnu-Severin and Giurgiu on the Danube the following day. By this time strong forces were through the passes in the Transylvanian Alps and already Brasov and Sibiu were in Russian hands, thereby giving the Red Army a firm grip on southern Transylvania. The lead units of 6th Tank Army were on the Danube at Turnu-Severin, the junction with Yugoslavia and not more than 100 miles east of Belgrade.

At dawn on the morning of 5 September a mixed German-Hungarian force five divisions strong suddenly struck back, launching an attack from the Cluj–Turda area against the 4th Rumanian Army, which had just begun to deploy in the area to the north of the southern Carpathians to cover this south-eastern approach and to block just such an attack as was now developing. Ill-prepared as they were, the Rumanians fell back to the line of the river Muresul, while Kravchenko’s 6th Tank Army moved into the Sibiu area, having swung north on Malinovskii’s orders. Kravchenko’s tank army was showing all the signs of its recent travels and battles: tank strength was down to 130 tanks and 56 self-propelled guns, with the majority of the machines in need of substantial maintenance, the tanks having covered almost 600 miles and the engines run well over the 200-hour mark. By the evening of 11 September Kravchenko had moved his tank army into positions to mount a counter-attack and started to push the German-Hungarian troops away from the Maros; on 12 September the tank troops celebrated not only their successful counter-thrust but also their elevation to ‘Guards’ status.

Towards the middle of September Malinovskii’s front had almost cleared southern Transylvania, an operation conducted amidst one of the most formidable mountainous regions of Europe. On the extreme right flank of 2nd Ukrainian Front, 40th, 7th Guards Army and a ‘mobile group’ pushed through the eastern Carpathians, occupying the upper valley of the Moldava and reaching a line running from Dorna–Vatra to Targul–Mores, capturing Toplita at the eastern end of the upper Maros gorge on 15 September. At the centre Malinovskii’s forces made the fastest progress, with 6th Tank Army moving across the southern Carpathians and driving north to support the Rumanian troops pressed by the German-Hungarian attacks from the Cluj–Turda area: the Soviet 27th Army finally closed with the Rumanian 4th Army and by 15 September moved up to the line running from Turda to Targul–Mores. On the left flank, 18th Tank Corps striking from Slatina made for Deva in the valley of the Maros, from
which point Malinovskii switched the tanks north-west in the direction of Arad. Managarov’s 53rd Army was moving at ‘a record pace’ in a north-westerly direction towards Arad and Timosoara, two important towns from which the Rumanian garrisons were on the point of being ejected by another German–Hungarian force. Left-flank Soviet units joined by the Rumanians retreating from Arad and Timosoara prepared to fight it out for the possession of these two key towns, which must serve as bases for any advance into the middle reaches of the Danubian plain. Meanwhile at the centre, in the area of Cluj, a bout of heavy fighting set in as the Germans moved up
Panzer
reinforcements, bringing these divisions from Moravia through the chaos and collisions in Slovakia where the insurgents slowed down the passage of the German armour but did not manage to halt it completely.