Duffy Christopher. Red Storm On The Reich (ENG)
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
PART IV
The Baltic Flank
CHAPTER 12
The East Prussian Setting
The Germans
THE BALTIC SHORE swings north-east and north from the Gulf
of Danzig in a sequence of sandy coastlands, river mouths and
the long narrow sandspits which enclose the great lagoons
called the Haffs. Pomerania in the west was ancient Germanic
territory. West Prussia with Danzig and Gotenhafen formed a
land bridge to East Prussia, which was the home of some of
the proudest military families of the Reich. Further along the
coast the Germans at the outset of 1945 still held the bridgehead
of Memel at the outermost tip of East Prussia, and a much
larger coastal enclave in Kurland (Western Latvia).
In the early months of 1945 the operations on the Baltic the-
atre interacted in complex ways, but viewed as a whole, the
German military presence projected in a salient or 'balcony'
along the right flank of the Russian forces which were com-
mitted to the Berlin axis. The German troops were in danger
of being fragmented by Soviet thrusts to the coast, but they
exercised a powerful diversionary effect which helped to pro-
long the existence of the Reich into the early summer.
Where Guderian and the OKH doubted the value of the di-
version was in the Memel and Kurland bridgeheads, which
were difficult to sustain and tied down a disproportionately
large number of German forces. The two veteran divisions from
Memel were withdrawn into the Samland region of East Prussia
in the last week of January (see p. 164). However, the Führer
agreed only to a partial scaling-down of the thirty or so divisions
151
of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth armies in Kurland, for 'ter-
ritory' was sacred to him, and the Kriegsmarine needed the
facilities of Kurland in order to keep a presence in the eastern
Baltic, where it worked up U-boats on training cruises.
Guderian had no luck at all when in early February he tried
to persuade Hitler that it was in the best interests of Germany
to retrieve the forces from Kurland and build up reserves
against the Russians moving on Berlin:
Trembling all down the left side of his body, he [Hitler]
jumped to his feet and shouted: 'How dare you speak to me
like that? Don't you think I am fighting for Germany? My
whole life has been one long struggle for Germany.' And he
proceeded to treat me to an outburst of unusual frenzy until
Goring finally took me by the arm and led me into another
room, where we soothed our nerves by drinking a cup of
coffee together.' (Guderian, 1952, 413)
The consent to evacuate the Kurland army group was given
only on 3 May, after Hitler had committed suicide. Nearly
26,000 German troops were taken by sea to Holstein, but
190,000 more, together with 14,000 Lettish volunteers, were
abandoned to the Russians.
German Army Group Centre (Colonel-General Georg-Hans
Reinhardt) had the task of defending East Prussia and the ad-
jacent areas of northern Poland. The German positions ex-
tended for 360 kilometres, and they were determined less by
technical choice than by the way the fighting had ended in
1944. Reinhardt could ill afford to lose the armoured reserves
which he was now ordered to dispatch to other theatres (four
Panzer divisions were sent to Hungary in December alone).
Moreover, the German forces were deployed in an irregular
north-south alignment running well in front of the strongest
natural and artificial defences, which had their cornerstone at
the fortress of Lötzen amid the Masurian Lakes.
CHRISTOPHER DUFFY
152
Hitler, as we might have expected, refused all the requests
from Reinhardt to be allowed to withdraw to more advanta-
geous positions. In detail, Reinhardt's army group comprised
three individual armies:
• The Third Panzer Army on the left or north, guarding the
northern and eastern access to the East Prussian capital of
Königsberg.
• The Fourth Army in the centre, holding a wide salient which
bulged into Polish territory north of the Masurian Lakes.
• The Second Army on the south or right. It faced the Russian
bridgeheads across the Narew River, and its right flank ex-
tended as far as the boundary with Army Group A north of
Warsaw.
The Soviets
The Russian plans for dealing with East Prussia formed one
component of the grand offensive of January 1945. The attack
was secondary to the assaults on the Berlin axis, but it was
important for their success, for it was intended to hold and
destroy the German forces hovering on the long Baltic flank.
In terms of numbers the opposing forces were very approx-
imately equal, at around 1,650,000 to 1,800,000 troops each.
However 3,800 tanks and assault guns, 25,000 towed artillery
pieces and mortars, and ample fuel and ammunition gave the
Russians the edge in mobility and firepower—advantages
which they exploited by building up their main points of effort
on either flank of East Prussia. The massing of strength cor-
responded with the two Soviet army groups:
• The 3rd Belorussian Front (Marshal I. D. Chernyakovskii) in
the north, driving on Königsberg from the east.
• The 2nd Belorussian Front (Marshal Rokossovskii) in the
RED STORM ON THE REICH
153
south, swinging west-north-west across the lower Vistula to
the West Prussian and Pomeranian coast beyond, so as to
cut off East Prussia as a whole from the rest of the Reich.
The joint effort was not intended to be a pincer movement
against East Prussia, but a drive to the Baltic on nearly parallel
axes. The whole weight of the attacks was therefore to fall on
the Third Panzer Army and the German Second Army, which
left the Fourth Army in the centre chiefly to the attentions of
the very thinly spread Fiftieth Army of the 2nd Belorussian
Front.
Chernyakovskii's army group attacked first, on 13 January,
and since its operations form a coherent entity, we shall follow
the campaign against Königsberg in an uninterrupted sequence
into February.
CHRISTOPHER DUFFY
154
CHAPTER 13
The 3rd Belorussian Front
in Northern East Prussia
The Opening, 13-24 January 1945
ON THE FOGGY and frosty morning of 13 January, the 3rd Be-
lorussian Front opened its offensive against northern East Prus-
sia with a bombardment of nearly 120,000 rounds. Major Bau-
mann was returning at this time to his battery with the Third
Panzer Army:
Already en route to the front, on the train travelling
through the East Prussian countryside, one became aware of
an almost unnoticeable vibration in the air. Leaving Königs-
berg railway station, one could hear a soft and deep
rumbling—the sound of the continuous barrage between
Gumbinnen and Schlossberg, at a distance of approximately
100 to 120 kilometres away. (Glantz, ed., 1986, 399)
In fact, the noise was more impressive than the reality. The
Russian gunners were frustrated to find that the weather had
worsened overnight:
The moon grew dim in the freezing air, and the higher it
rose in the sky the more the fog spread on the ground. By
five in the morning the moon was finally engulfed. The vis-
ibility was now minimal, and this had a considerable effect
on the opening of the offensive. (Krylov et al., 1970, 375-76)
155
The Russians did not see that the Germans had already aban-
doned their outermost positions on purpose, so as to absorb
the weight of the bombardment, and so, after a brief unopposed
advance, the Russians ran into dogged opposition and fulmi-
nating counterattacks. Moreover, the German defences on this
sector were exceptionally strong, for they lay on the direct ap-
proaches to Königsberg and, for once, the Germans had
reached an accurate estimate of the number of forces facing
them.
A particularly hard fight developed for Kattenau in the
centre, which was retaken by the Germans on 14 January,
though at the price of committing the 5th Panzer Division,
which was their sole operational reserve. The expenditure was
probably worthwhile, for the Russian offensive threatened to
stall after it had scarcely begun. The 3rd Belorussian Front sus-
tained nearly 80 per cent of the total Russian casualties in the
whole of the East Prussian Operation, and the delays and cost
of its initial attack were going to have far-reaching consequences
on the events on the whole Baltic flank, and indirectly on the
planned offensive against Berlin.
It was in some ways too late when Marshal Chernyakovskii
redeployed his forces and made his breakthrough. Displaying
the kind of flexibility which is too rarely credited to the Rus-
sians, he shifted all his disposable forces (the Eleventh Guards
Army and two tank corps) from behind his centre to his right,
where the Thirty-Ninth Army was making some headway in
the sector north of Schlossberg. On 20 January Chernyakovskii
finally broke through the German defences. The powerful new
striking force cruised through the gap between the Pregel and
Niemen rivers, and the line of the Niemen itself was breached
by the hitherto inactive Forty-Third Army, which sprang to life
and crossed the ice near and below Tilsit, where, 'just as we
had supposed, the Volksgrenadiers and the Volkssturm at once
streamed away to the rear in disorganised mobs, the com-
manders having ceased to exercise any control over their forces'
(Beloborodov, 1978, 356).
CHRISTOPHER DUFFY
156
Late on 23 January a state of wilde Sau broke out in the German
rear, and by the twenty-fourth the Russians were exploiting
the passages they had made on the Deime, the Pregel and the
Alle, which formed the last respectable river lines short of Kön-
igsberg. A Russian war correspondent reached a little town in
the wake of the victorious armies:
Under the low, gloomy and smoky sky . . . the streets were
in the grip of the flames, and they looked like aisles extending
between the pillars of some infernal cellar. Here and there
long thick tongues of flame burst out of the windows, lashed
over the walls, brought down the shop signs and reached
out to the middle of the street as if to unite with the fires
raging on the opposite side. . . . The oil paint on the walls
of the rooms ignited, the waxed and meticulously carpen-
tered parquet floorings crackled and burst into flames, and
the hangings, panelling and household furniture took fire along
with everything else which could burn. (Paul, 1978, 84)
The First Siege of Königsberg, 27 January
to 26 February 1945
The German defence of northern East Prussia had been
smashed, and now the city of Königsberg itself was at stake.
The unspeakable East Prussian gauleiter, Erich Koch, had
seized the chance of making good his escape while the railway
to the south-west was still open, and his Gauleiter Sonderzug
had drawn out of the city on the night of 21-22 January. It took
some time yet for the reality of the situation to dawn on minor
functionaries, and three days later a group of retreating German
soldiers had a frustrating experience outside Königsberg at Wal-
dau, just ahead of the Russians:
There we found a mighty store of provisions in a gym-
nasium, which was stocked with things like coffee, chocolate
RED STORM ON THE REICH
157