Duffy Christopher. Red Storm On The Reich (ENG)

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head. The far right flank of Marshal Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front

was now secure, and the entire Fourth Tank Army was free to

join in the general exploitation, which on some sectors already

extended well to the west. The pilgrimage town of Czestochowa

fell undamaged to the Russians on the evening of 17 January,

and soon the

caterpillar tracks of the tanks were screeching and heavy

guns rattling along snow-covered back streets and down the

main thoroughfare of the town, the Avenue of the Virgin

Mary. ... A dead, bloodstained silence settled over the west-

ern bank of the Vistula; just freshly ploughed land, fallen

trees, dead horses, and mutilated bodies remained where the

German lines had been. (Koriakov, 1948, 49)

On the same 17 January STAVKA assigned the ambitious

new objectives. Konev was given two main tasks:

• To send his leading forces (spearheaded by the Third Guards

Tank Army) racing for the German city of Breslau on the

Oder.

• To bring the two all-arms armies on his left flank (the Sixtieth

and the Fifty-Ninth) up from the second echelon and open

a southerly axis of advance by way of Krakow to the Upper

Silesian Industrial Region.

Konev in person directed the operation to clear Krakow.

While the Sixtieth Army exerted frontal pressure, the Fifty-

Ninth Army and the IV Guards Tank Corps closed in from the

north and west. The Germans pulled out at speed on 19 Jan-

uary, without being given time to set off their demolition

charges under the buildings. Konev remarked: 'It is said that

in the course of a long war soldiers get used to the sight of

ruins. But, however accustomed to ruins they become, they

can never reconcile themselves to them, and we were enor-

mously happy that we had been able to liberate such a city as

CHRISTOPHER DUFFY

Krakow intact' (Konev, 1969, 31-32). This was an important

prize, both for its associations as the ancient capital of Poland,

and because it opened the way to the Upper Silesian Industrial

Region.

On that day and the next, units of the Third Guards Tank

Army crossed the German border to the east of Breslau, which

was an event of still greater symbolic magnitude. There was

little to check the progress of the Russians except a few scratch

units which were thrown in their way. Major Tenschert and

his six-hundred-strong battalion of the Training Army took up

positions near Gross Wartenburg, and

at the estate of Grunwitz we discovered that the proprietor,

a singularly resolute lady, was about to escape. She had her

essentials loaded on a two-horse cart with rubber tyres, but

she found the time to guide us through the house, and took

special care to show us the eatables in the dining room and

the bottles in the cellar, advising us to select the oldest vin-

tages first and leave nothing to the Russians. Last of all she

gave us the keys to the house and the courtyard. I sometimes

wonder what happened to that lady and her things. She was

one of the last to leave, long after the individuals who

preached last-ditch stands had made themselves scarce. (Ahl-

fen, 1977, 87)

The Third Guards Tank Army and the Fall

of the Upper Silesian Industrial Region

On the southern flank of the great breakthrough, the Upper

Silesian Industrial Region was still working with unabated en-

ergy for the Reich. It now became the object of some intricate

economic and military calculations. The region had a productive

capacity of 95 million tons of coal per annum (from 104 mines),

and 2.4 million tons of steel (from fifteen plants), and its output

of finished goods included the celebrated 88-mm gun, the main

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factory for which was at Kattowitz (Katowice). These efforts

were vital to the Reich, as was pointed out by the armaments

minister Albert Speer, and the region became still more precious

after the Saar was lost, and the mines, factories and transport

systems of the Ruhr had been heavily damaged by Allied bomb-

ing.

Speer did what he could to persuade the Wehrmacht to turn

a blind eye to Hitler's orders to destroy the region in the path

of the Soviet advance, and in the event, the Russians moved

so rapidly, and the Germans were so short of pioneers and

demolition experts, that the Führer's scorched-earth policy be-

came a simple impossibility. The Seventeenth Army (General

Friedrich Schulz) was responsible for defending the region, and

it held a line which extended along the northern edge of the

conurbation from the Oder at Oppeln to Dabrowa, and then

south to Auschwitz (Oswiecim) near the Carpathians. The Ger-

man positions were 120 kilometres long, and the region was

so heavily cluttered with mines, plants and settlements that

Schulz worked out that he needed twelve full-strength divisions

to defend it instead of the seven wrecks he had at his disposal.

On the Russian side Konev was taking stock of the situation

on his southern flank. Stalin had left him in no doubt as to the

importance he attached to the region as an economic prize (see

p. 17), which seemed to argue against smashing the place up

in a set-piece battle. Fighting in an urbanised area like this,

which measured 70 kilometres by 110, and which contained

many buildings of solid masonry and ferroconcrete, was in any

case a very expensive business, which left Konev further dis-

inclined to stage a second Stalingrad. At the same time, Konev

was convinced that he must move rapidly to forestall a German

buildup there, for he overestimated the enemy strength in the

region at eleven divisions, and he knew that reinforcements

were on the way.

As a solution, Konev launched a wide envelopment that was

intended to bring the region under attack from three sides and

CHRISTOPHER DUFFY

force the Germans into the open, in other words applying on

a grander scale the technique by which he had cleared Krakow:

• Konev ordered the Sixtieth and Fifty-Ninth Armies on his far

left to continue their westward advance and approach the

region frontally.

• The Twenty-First Army was to swing down from the north-

east and embrace the northern flank.

• The final element in the design, and the boldest of all, con-

cerned Rybalko's Third Guards Tank Army, which had been

heading due west towards Breslau in central Silesia. It was

now instructed to turn sharply to its left, or south, and take

the Region in the deep rear.

The Third Guards Tank Army executed its change of direction

on 20 January and began to exploit up the right bank of the

upper Oder. This sharp turn was carried out on the move, and

it was a considerable technical achievement in its own right.

Driving south-south-east, Rybalko at once proceeded to unseat

the German forces which were still fighting to the east of the

upper Oder, and so helped the rest of the centre and left-

flanking forces of the 1st Ukrainian Front to approach the river

on a wide sector. More significantly, he threatened the Upper

Silesian Industrial Region with a deep envelopment, as was

clear to the headquarters of German Army Group A by 23

January. The three Russian all-arms armies were pressing si-

multaneously from the east and north, and General Schulz, as

commander on the spot, asked the Army Group headquarters

on 25 January and again on the next day for permission to

withdraw from the developing cauldron. Both requests were

refused.

On 26 January the Third Guards Tank Army was approaching

Rybnik and was poised to close off the German path of retreat.

Konev was aware that he had it in his power to eliminate the

estimated 100,000 Germans in the cauldron, but he remained

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true to his aim of winning the Upper Silesian powerhouse of

the Reich in a rapid and economical operation—applying the

ancient principle of the 'Golden Bridge' in the age of Total War.

Konev drove to the front line (he does not state the actual

date in his memoirs) and ordered the Twenty-First Army to

attack frontally rather than carry out a turning movement to

the north-north-west, as had only just been arranged. The mar-

shal continued on to the Third Guards Tank Army, and through

the radio of Rybalko's command car the two leading corps were

ordered to halt, while an undeployed corps from the second

echelon was diverted in the direction of Ratibor on the upper

Oder. Konev and Rybalko then waited on a hilltop for the

orders to take effect. The field of view was excellent, and Konev

noticed that many of the tanks had been festooned with white

silk netting from a warehouse as camouflage against the snow:

Ahead of us was the battlefield spread before our eyes,

and we could see the movement of Rybalko's tanks. His

brigades were manoeuvring before us as if they were on a

good reviewing ground, moving under enemy fire toward

the Silesian industrial area. In the distance we saw the in-

dustrial area with its smoking factory chimneys. On our left,

where Gusev's Twenty-First Army was fighting, we heard

incessant artillery fire and spotted the advancing infantry.

From the depth of our rear new masses of tanks were coming

into the foreground: that was the corps which Rybalko was

now turning towards Ratibor by radio. . . . And that is how

I see in my mind's eye that picture with all its contrasts: the

smoking chimneys of Silesia, the gunflashes, the grinding

caterpillar tracks, the tulle-covered tanks, and the tank-borne

infantrymen. (Konev, 1969, 38-39)

On the night of 27-28 January the Germans began to pour

out of the Kattowitz salient like liquid through the neck of a

bottle. Konev ascribes the movement to the frontal pressure

which was being exerted by his all-arms armies, but it was in

CHRISTOPHER DUFFY

fact the result of an order from German Army Group A. What

was surprising about the clearance was that it came from Colo-

nel-General Schörner, who had arrived as commander on 20

January with the express commission from Hitler to stiffen the

resolution of the Germans in southern Poland.

Ferdinand Schörner, the Bavarian ex-schoolteacher, the de-

votee of Hitler, had enough military sense to be aware that the

Kattowitz salient had become totally untenable. Not until the

extrication of the Seventeenth Army was well under way did

he telephone Hitler:

'My Führer! I have just ordered the Upper Silesian Indus-

trial Region to be evacuated. The troops have put up a hard

fight there for seventeen days, and they can do no more. If

we don't pull out, we'll lose the whole army. . . . We're going

back to the Oder. That's where we will make a stand.'

Schörner had expected an outburst, but the Führer replied in

a weary and broken voice: 'Yes, Schörner, if that's what you

think. You are doing well' (Thorwald, 1950, 116). Schörner was

probably the only general who could have gotten away with it.

The Soviets gained the grimy wealth of the Upper Silesian

Industrial Region on 29 January, and only the south-western

extension into Moravia (see p. 143) remained in the hands of

the Germans. Also in the possession of the Russians was prob-

ably the most terrible place there has ever been on earth—the

death camp at Auschwitz, which had been uncovered by the

Sixtieth Army a couple of days before. If the Soviet soldiers

needed any justification for why they were fighting, they found

it in the skeletal corpses, the bones and the grey mud which

were all that remained of the victims, and in the mountains of

clothing, suitcases, false teeth, spectacles and shorn hair. Ko-

nev passed close by but did not permit himself to make a detour:

I had already received the first reports of what that camp

was actually like. It was not that I did not want to see that

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death camp with my own eyes; I simply made up my mind

not to see it. The combat operations were in full swing, and

to command them was such a strain that I could find neither

time nor justification for abandoning myself to my own emo-

tions. During the war I did not belong to myself. (Konev,

1969, 35)

Konev's Advance to the Oder

From a saddle in the southern hills the Oder wound for more

than seven hundred kilometres through some of the fattest

lands of the Reich to the lagoon of Stettin and the Baltic. On

the middle reach between Oppeln and Küstrin, the river mea-

sured between one hundred and two hundred metres wide and

two metres or more deep, and where the ice cover was contin-

uous, it was still too thin to bear tanks or artillery. This was

one of the natural barriers which helped to limit and define the

shape of the Vistula-Oder Operation.

By 20 January the Soviet forces were already crossing the old

German border into the province of Silesia, as has just been

noted. 'After one week's fighting, the German defensive system

had been staved in, overrun or bypassed, Fourth Panzer and

Ninth Armies reduced to a drifting mass of men and mangled

machines, left far to the rear and oozing in a glutinous mass

in the direction of the Oder and hopefully home' (Erickson,

1975-83, II, 460).

Only the right-angled turn by the Third Guards Tank Army

had prevented it from spearheading the advance of Konev's

Front to the Oder, and now the push to the river was led by

the right-hand tank army—Lelyushenko's Fourth—and the

neighbouring all-arms armies. From 22 January the Russians

forced a number of crossings which gradually coalesced into

two main bridgeheads:

CHRISTOPHER DUFFY

• A southern bridgehead began to take shape late on the

twenty-second, when units of the Fifth Guards Army reached

and crossed the Oder near Brieg, above Breslau. This holding

gradually expanded into an area measuring eighty kilometres

wide and about twenty-five deep. It became known as the

Ohlau bridgehead.

• More significant was the northern, or Steinau, bridgehead

downstream from Breslau. This was opened by Colonel

Churilov's mechanised group of the Fourth Tank Army,

which crossed at Göben on the night of 22-23 January. The

Germans were completely unaware that the Russians had

crossed the river at this point, and the next day

a steamer appeared from the direction of Breslau, evidently

laden with military supplies. Colonel Tkachuk, as com-

mander of the relevant tank regiment, concealed his ve-

hicles in ambush. The steamer approached unsuspecting.

Upon a signal which had been agreed by Colonel Churilov,

two of the tanks opened fire. After three minutes the vessel

sank in flames in the fareway. Another craft appeared a

couple of hours later and shared the same fate. (Lelyush-

enko, 1970, 286)

The Steinau bridgehead was widened with the help of the Thir-

teenth Army, which arrived on the left. However, the Germans

were now on the alert, and the Russians also had to cope with

a variety of natural and mechanical hazards. Lelyushenko him-

self was nearly lost to view on 26 January, when the motor boat

which was towing his ferry broke down and he was carried

some distance downstream.

At first the Germans defending this part of Silesia could put

up just an improvised defence, for the only forces available to

them were troops falling back under pressure from the Vistula,

or units which were being rushed up from the rear. Among

the latter was Major Tenschert's battalion (see p. 89), which

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was isolated when the Russians reached Oels, near Breslau. He

and his men broke out early on 23 January, cutting across the

Oels airfield and through the town:

The aircraft were out of fuel, and they had been parked

close together. We dashed wildly among them under ma-

chine-gun and mortar fire, and ran through the town . . .

and out through the Breslau Gate. The interior of the town

was deserted and unnaturally quiet. A number of isolated

fires were burning, but otherwise the black night lay over

everything like a pall. (Ahlfen, 1977, 90)

Breslau itself stood in immediate danger until the 169th In-

fantry Division arrived from the Western Front to stiffen the

resistance, and the city (sprawling over both banks of the Oder)

remained as a German bastion between the Ohlau and Steinau

bridgeheads. The name Steinau is something of a misnomer in

this context, for the personnel of the NCO training school at

Jauer were still putting up an extraordinarily obstinate fight in

the town of Steinau itself. The old sweats were finally elimi-

nated only on the evening of 3 February.

Scarcely less heroic was the undertaking of von Saucken's

Grossdeutschland Panzer Corps and the remnants of Nehring's

roving cauldron, which had only just completed their harrow-

ing retreat from central Poland. They were short of tanks, am-

munition and fuel, and without being given the time to recover,

they were flung against the north flank and rear of the Steinau

bridgehead. Advancing from Glogau along the western, or

'near,' bank of the Oder, Nehring's 16th Panzer Division was

stopped short by the Russians at Gaffron. Grossdeutschland

was in a still worse situation. Not only was it committed on

the exposed eastern side of the Oder, but it was ordered by

Hitler to swing away from its communications and come at the

Russians from the east. Von Saucken's progress was halted by

the Soviets on the natural barrier of the Bautsch Niederung

(Hollow) south of Guhrau, and the history of Grossdeutschland

CHRISTOPHER DUFFY

might have terminated there and then if Nehring had not

thrown a pontoon bridge across the Oder and opened a new

path of retreat. The last of Grossdeutschland crossed to safety

on 2 February, but the blameless von Saucken was relieved of

command.

By conventional standards of reckoning, Marshal Konev had

achieved a victory of a major order. His 1st Ukrainian Front

had destroyed a major force of the German Fourth Panzer

Army, dealt a body blow to the Reich by capturing the Upper

Silesian Industrial Region, and rounded off its triumphal prog-

ress by gaining bridgeheads across the Oder for the final push

into the heart of Germany. Konev's offensive, however, was

just the southern axis of the Vistula-Oder Operation. We still

have to take into account the advance along the northern axis,

which extended from the middle Vistula to the immediate ap-

proaches to Berlin.

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