The Road to Berlin (83 page)

The storming of Belgrade and the destruction of the German units trapped to the south-east occupied the week of 14–20 October. On the eve of the attack on the city Marshal Tito again reminded the Soviet command of his request to ‘make it possible for troops of the Yugoslav National Liberation Army, supported by tanks and artillery, to be the first to enter Belgrade’. The Soviet plan for the assault involved a frontal attack on a narrow sector to break through the German defences and into the rear of the defenders, followed by a rush for the bridge over the river Sava, thus depriving the Germans of any chance to move up reinforcements or to escape to the north-west; 4th Guards Mechanized Corps supported by two rifle divisions would carry out the assault, with Gorshkov’s
gunboats fighting on the Danube. To get the Yugoslav troops into the city, Zhdanov instructed the commanders of 4th Mechanized to lift the men of 1st Proletarian Corps on to the Soviet tanks moving into and through the German defences.

In the small hours of 14 October Soviet guns fired off a short but intensive artillery barrage against the German positions, after which the assault on the Avala heights began, still under cover of darkness. During the course of the day Soviet and Yugoslav troops broke through this first line of defences. Once inside the city itself, Tolbukhin ordered Soviet units to avoid using their heavy weapons to blast their way through from building to building or from street to street, many of which had to be wrested from the Germans in hand-to-hand and close-quarter fighting. Behind the assault troops came the sappers—seven battalions—under orders to clear buildings of the thousands of mines or booby-traps, literally to clear the path for the Yugoslav authorities and military staffs to move in. As the street fighting intensified, by 16 October the Soviet–Yugoslav troops pressing towards the centre of the city were suddenly threatened to the rear by a strong force of Germans bearing down from the direction of Smederovo; if they gained the city limits they would provide substantial reinforcement for the defence. With Soviet troops turned to face south-east, this force of Germans was kept within encirclement and was finally wiped out on 19 October after rejecting a Soviet ultimatum to surrender. At Kragujevac another fierce battle raged to keep the Germans hemmed in.

Inside Belgrade with the Germans fighting desperately to hold each house, street and square, Soviet tanks, artillery and aircraft were continuously in action to flatten the defence. Gunboats of the Danube Flotilla also poured their fire into German strong-points and on 19 October seized the island of Ratno, severing the German escape route over the Sava and the Danube. On the evening of 20 October the Yugoslav 1st Proletarian Division fought its way along one of the main boulevards leading to the old Turkish fortress, the Kalemegdan; Yugoslav troops cleared it of Germans, and Soviet sappers cleared the mines, at which Peko Dapcevic and General Zhdanov of 4th Mechanized met and embraced to signal joint victory over Army Group F. Throughout Belgrade, Soviet and Yugoslav soldiers fired off their own victory salute, loosing off signal rockets to proclaim the end of the assault. German units were already falling back across the river Sava and making for Zemun, trying to break westwards; for the past two days Soviet aircraft had been attacking both Zemun and the concentrations of lorries spotted in the area. Hot on the heels of the retreating Germans came more Yugoslavs and Russians, who cleared Zemun on 22 October and then moved on north-westwards.

Further south at Kragujevac, German resistance also collapsed by the afternoon of 21 October, though here too German troops held on until the last possible moment, fighting to keep Soviet units away from the Kraljevo–Cacak–Sarajevo road, the last remaining trunk route for the German divisions on their way from
Greece, deprived by now of the Athens–Belgrade railway line. But at Kraljevo the 117th German Infantry Division was still fighting, a fiercely dogged action to win a few more hours though Soviet troops had already cut the Krusevac–Kraljevo railway line. The Morava valleys were now virtually closed to the retreating Germans: the
OKW
recognized that, with the Bulgarians in Nis and the Soviet–Yugoslav breakthrough to Belgrade, Army Group E was ‘in fact cut off’, with only the road running from Skopje through Mitrovica and Kraljevo on to Sarajevo still in use. Col.-Gen. Löhr ‘never for a moment doubted’ that the loss of this road and ‘its key point of Kraljevo’ meant catastrophe for the men under his command: to shunt them into the mountains of Albania and Montenegro meant almost certain death with winter fast coming on. Kraljevo had to be defended to the limit of German exertions. Immediate orders went out to fly one battalion of 22nd Infantry Division from Salonika (and a battalion from Rhodes) into Kraljevo, where
General der Infanterie
Müller took command of a motley group of German regiments unable to make their way out of the Soviet trap. Kraljevo had become the German
Schwerpunkt
, and Müller ‘the very man’ to fight a defensive battle with his highly variegated forces. Kraljevo continued to hold out for many more days and nights, while an additional screen for the Ibar valley was provided by the German command mobilizing Albanian units, stiffened where necessary with German troops.

Elsewhere, in groups large and small, the units of Army Group F were ground to pieces or taken prisoner: the battles in and around Belgrade cost the German army 15,000 dead and 9,000 prisoners. South and south-east of the city the last of the German anti-tank gunners and the infantrymen fought their last-ditch actions, waiting with no hope of escape to be blown apart by massed Russian guns. Inside Belgrade the Yugoslav partisans and the Red Army counted their dead; though justly proud of their part in liberating Belgrade, the partisans had suffered heavy casualties. On 22 October the bodies of Yugoslav and Soviet soldiers killed in the city were drawn in a massed procession through the gashed and scarred streets, a final journey to the communal graves. Somewhat later, in a Belgrade suburb not far from the site of the German concentration camp of Banjica, Marshal Tito held his victory parade for Yugoslav units; among the ragged soldiers but veteran units was the ‘Belgrade battalion’, which three years earlier had begun fighting in Serbia, had criss-crossed the whole of Yugoslavia in the many partisan campaigns and was now returning home, though with only two men of its original complement left in its ranks.

In the celebration parade held to salute the liberation of the city the Soviet 36th Guards Tank Brigade led off, the T-34 tanks rolling past the saluting base and then making straight for the temporary bridges over the Danube to drive northwards to Hungary, where 4th Mechanized was to join the coming battle for Budapest. More armour followed this first brigade, the drab-green T-34s spurting along the flat if bumpy roads of the Voivodina to the frontier in the north, followed by lorried infantry and the
Katyusha
rocket-launchers shrouded
in canvas wraps. At a slower pace other Soviet infantry formations began to pull northwards from the more southerly reaches of Yugoslavia, though one Soviet rifle corps on the move—Lt.-Gen. G.P. Kotov’s 13th—came in for some rough handling from American aircraft as it crossed the mountain road out of Nis; the American planes shot up Soviet aircraft on the local airfield while another group strafed the Soviet infantry columns, killing Kotov and a number of his men. Displaying recognition signs did nothing to diminish the American attacks, but—in the words of a Soviet commander who watched this melancholy incident—‘decisive measures’ by the Russians finally did.

The ‘Belgrade operation’ was conducted and concluded more or less simultaneously with Soviet offensives aimed at Debrecen and Uzhorod, thus bringing all four Ukrainian fronts into action—the left flank of 1st Ukrainian and 4th Ukrainian Front (Uzhorod), 2nd Ukrainian Front (Debrecen), the left flank of 2nd Ukrainian and the 3rd Ukrainian Front (Belgrade). Malinovskii’s immediate objective was to clear northern Transylvania and eastern Hungary; Petrov with 4th Ukrainian Front battled his way into Slovakia and sub-Carpathian Rus, taking Mukachevo on 26 October and Uzhorod one day later, a tough campaign over rugged country—the main Carpathian range, through which Petrov passed 1st Guards, 18th and 38th Armies. To the rigour of the terrain was added the tension within the command generated by the mutual hostility between Moskalenko and Grechko who were commanding adjacent armies, the 38th and the 1st Guards.

During the first half of October Petrov’s armies made agonizingly slow progress, fighting the terrain, the elements and a stubborn enemy: Grechko’s 1st Guards Army came grinding to a halt by 18 October; at the centre 18th Army registered local successes but on a limited scale, while on the left the 17th Guards Rifle Corps found itself facing determined resistance in the area of Yasina. The unrelieved gloom of the situation, however, was about to be lifted, endowing Petrov’s efforts with ultimate success. Though Grechko with 1st Guards and Moskalenko with 38th Army made little progress in terms of ground gained, they did nevertheless draw off a great deal of German–Hungarian strength to hold them; as a result the force facing Petrov’s left flank was weakened and Petrov was quick to take advantage of this development, setting up a ‘mobile group’ to strike towards Mukachevo and Uzhorod.

Meanwhile the threat of Soviet invasion was enough to throw the Hungarian political and military leadership into a turmoil, though the Germans had learned enough from Rumania’s defection and the Bulgarian
débâcle
to act more speedily in Hungary, instigating their own
coup
this time and making use of a much stronger local pro-Nazi element. German troops had already installed themselves in Hungary as an occupation force since March when the Kallay government was replaced by one under Szotaj, a most pliable puppet amenable to every German pressure, intent on demonstrating fidelity to the German cause by introducing among other repressions a virulent and murderous anti-Jewish programme.

Regent Miklos Horthy and his political circle showed little liking for the Szotaj government. Emboldened by Anglo-American successes after the cross-Channel landing in Europe, Horthy removed the extreme pro-German representatives on 7 August and on 29 August, in the wake of Rumania’s defection from Germany, dismissed Szotaj in favour of General Lakatos. Horthy was now aware that, in abandoning Germany, he must come to terms with the Soviet Union; throughout August contacts with the Western powers were resumed through Gyorgy Bakach-Bessenyei (formerly Hungarian minister in Bern) but the Hungarians were given to understand on 29 August that a request for an armistice must be directed towards the Soviet Union. It was a full month before Horthy exercised this option, while exploring other possibilities, not least negotiations with the Hungarian underground to arm the workers against German reprisals when Hungary left the war and also an application to the Germans for increased military assistance to hold off the Russians. As late as August the Hungarian Cabinet Council buoyed up its hopes with the expectations of a landing by the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ on the Adriatic coast, at which the Hungarians would fight to hold up the Russians ‘until the Anglo-Saxons would occupy Hungary’. There was no landing in Dalmatia, however; there would be no ‘Anglo-Saxon’ protectorate in Hungary, nor could the German forces presently deployed in Hungary prevent the Soviet advance beyond the Carpathians or turn back the threat to Budapest. A break with Germany and submission for an armistice in Moscow could no longer be postponed.

The Hungarian armistice delegation arrived in Moscow on 1 October, at a time when the Soviet breakthrough to the line of the river Tisza brought home the reality of destruction at Soviet hands. Eleven days later, and on the sixth day of Malinovskii’s Debrecen operation, the Hungarian delegation signed the armistice terms, which General Antonov of the Soviet General Staff communicated to Malinovskii on 12 October—Hungarian troops would evacuate the territory of neighbouring states; the three Allied powers would send their military representatives to Hungary to supervise these arrangements, but this ‘military mission’ would operate under the chairmanship of the Soviet representative; Hungary would at once break with Germany and declare war on Germany, in which event the Soviet Union would lend all aid. Though committed to surrender, Horthy still waited out the days and failed to make adequate preparations to cover Hungarian withdrawal from the war. Dislike of the Russians and bitter memories of 1918—revolution and the short-lived communist republic—reinforced by real fears for the stability of an outmoded social system all contributed to this procrastination.

By the end of the first week in October Malinovskii’s tanks had broken into Mezö Tür, Szentes and Hödmezo Vasarhely, bringing his Front forces to within a few miles of the Tisza. His mobile units then pressed on in the direction of Debrecen, with Szeged falling to the Russians on 11 October. Further to the south, on Malinovskii’s left, Soviet units operating beyond the Yugoslav frontier crossed the lower Tisza at Zenta and Stari Becej and, linking up with the forces
which had already taken Szeged, captured Subotica on 12 October. Meanwhile the Soviet attack in northern Transylvania was making greater progress and was rolling towards Cluj (Koloszvar), the important traffic centre which had so far eluded them; a complicated outflanking manoeuvre in difficult terrain finally succeeded and Cluj fell on 11 October after a burst of fierce fighting. German and Hungarian troops began pulling back to the north, since the road to the west was already cut in two places. From the north, Petrov’s 4th Ukrainian Front was pressing down steadily through the Carpathian front (in Galicia), along a sector running from Sanok to the Yablonitsa pass. With the first phase of his ‘Debrecen operation’ working so far successfully, Malinovskii on 13 October submitted plans for the next stage to the
Stavka:
with 53rd and 46th Armies on the Tisza, he proposed to use a ‘cavalry-mechanized group’ under Pliev to attack towards Nyiregyhaza–Cop (Csop) with the object of speeding the movement of his forces into the Hungarian plain north of the Tisza, at the same time pushing another ‘cavalry’ mechanized group’ under Gorshkov from Orad towards Karoly and Satu Mare, a sweep designed to trap the German-Hungarian forces withdrawing through northern Transylvania.