Duffy Christopher. Red Storm On The Reich (ENG)

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Operation Nordwind, a brainchild of Jodl, whereby the Ger-

mans tried to regain the initiative by opening an attack in north-

ern Alsace (1-9 January).

The Last Decisions

Altogether about 250,000 troops and 1,700 tanks and assault

guns had been committed to the gamble in the West, including

possibly the most potent of the German mobile reserves,

namely General Sepp Dietrich's Sixth SS Panzer Army with its

core of four SS Panzer divisions. The offensive in the Ardennes

had already passed its Clausewitzian 'culminating point' when

Colonel-General Guderian, as manager of the war in the East,

drove to Ziegenberg on 24 December to try to impress on Hitler

the imminent danger posed by the Russians. He was primed

with the latest figures and assessments from Colonel Reinhard

Gehlen, the head of the 'Foreign Armies East' intelligence de-

partment of the OKH, and he hoped to persuade Hitler to

transfer the main defensive effort to the East, where the Soviets

were expected to make their great move by the middle of Jan-

uary at the latest.

Guderian could have spared himself the trouble. Dismissing

Gehlen's calculations as 'rubbish,' the Führer belittled the threat

on the Vistula, and refused to pull out the forces stranded on

the Baltic coast in Kurland or to consider a 'timely evacuation'

of Norway and the Balkans. Jodl afterwards broached the sub-

ject of the forthcoming Operation Nordwind in Alsace, which

seemed to Guderian to be another misapplication of resources,

now that the bombed-out Ruhr was paralysed, whereas the

invaluable Upper Silesian Industrial Region was still in full pro-

duction and was vital to the survival of the Reich: 'All of this

was of no avail. I was rebuffed and spent a grim and tragic

Christmas Eve in those most unchristian surroundings. The

news of Budapest's encirclement, which reached us that eve-

ning, did not tend to raise anyone's spirits. I was dismissed

CHRISTOPHER DUFFY

with instructions that the Eastern Front must take care of itself'

(Guderian, 1952, 384).

Affairs were in a still sorrier state than Guderian had sus-

pected. Gehlen's figures made gloomy enough reading as they

stood, but they missed the movement of armies from STAVKA

reserve, underestimated the number of Russian formations con-

centrated in and immediately behind the three Vistula bridge-

heads by a very wide margin, and represented German Army

Group A in Poland as facing odds of 1:3, whereas the true

proportion by January was an altogether overwhelming 1:5.

On Christmas Day, when Guderian was travelling by train

back to Zossen, Hitler ordered Herbert Gille's IV SS Panzer

Corps to move from the area north of Warsaw all the way to

Hungary, where it was to be thrown into action in a bid to

reach Budapest. This was just the latest of the diversions which

had weakened the German forces facing the Soviets in Poland.

The main task of holding the Polish theatre lay with Army

Group A under Colonel-General Josef Harpe, whose area of

responsibility stretched for more than seven hundred kilo-

metres from the Carpathians to north of Warsaw. By January

1945 he had at his disposal 400,000 troops, 5,000 field guns and

heavy mortars and 1,136 tanks and assault guns, and the sup-

port of 515 tactical aircraft. These were arranged in three com-

mands, which we shall follow in sequence from south to north:

• Army Group Heinrici (First Panzer Army and Hungarian First

Army), and Seventeenth Army. These three armies guarded

a defensively strong sub-theatre on the highland flank, to

the south of the main 'Berlin axis.'

• Fourth Panzer Army.

• Ninth Army (lost to the new Army Group Vistula on 27

January). The Fourth Panzer Army and the Ninth Army to-

gether formed a very thin line strung out along the Vistula,

and they were very weak in armour, since they had only four

Panzer divisions and two Panzer-Grenadier divisions at their

disposal.

RED STORM ON THE REICH

Beyond Harpe's left, the Germans held what Guderian called

a 'balcony' along the Baltic coastlands, where the misleadingly

named Army Group Centre (Colonel-General Hans Reinhardt)

covered north-eastern Poland, the area of Danzig and the an-

cient German territory of East Prussia. Army Group Centre was

relatively strong, with its 580,000 troops and three Panzer and

four Panzer-Grenadier divisions.

Guderian believed that Army Group Centre posed a standing

threat to the northern flank of the Soviet forces operating on

the Berlin axis, but he was dismayed to find that Hitler insisted

on keeping significant formations locked up further along the

coast in the isolated bridgehead of Kurland (Colonel-General

Ferdinand Schörner's Army Group North—thirty divisions on

9 October, reducing slowly to twenty-two by 1 March).

In Guderian's view the greatest maldeployment of all was

the weighting in favour of the Hungarian theatre, where the

German efforts around Budapest absorbed some of the most

valuable armoured assets. Gille's IV SS Panzer Corps was or-

dered from Poland on Christmas Day, as we have seen, and

the process assumed still larger dimensions in 1945.

Having failed to carry his point on his visit to Ziegenberg on

Christmas Day, Guderian returned to the charge on 31 January.

This time his first call was on the theatre commander in the

West, Field-Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, and his chief of staff

General Siegfried Westphal. These men were under no illusion

as to the desperate state of affairs in the East, and they ordered

three divisions on the Western Front and one in Italy to hold

themselves in readiness to move. Guderian could now address

himself to Hitler and Jodl with more confidence. The Führer

reluctantly agreed to transfer these four divisions, but he in-

sisted that they must be deployed in Hungary, and not on the

threatened front in Poland.

In the New Year Guderian made a rapid tour of the Eastern

Front to see what might yet be done on the ground. On 5

January he was at the headquarters of Army Group South at

Eszterhaza in Hungary, and he learned in detail how the newly

CHRISTOPHER DUFFY

arrived IV SS Panzer Corps had failed to break through to

Budapest at the beginning of the month. On the night of 5-6

January Guderian's command train took him to Poland and the

headquarters of Army Group A at Krakow. Here the chief of

staff Lieutenant-General von Xylander presented him with de-

tailed and well-considered proposals for an Operation Schlit-

tenfahrt (Sleighride). The army group had calculated that if its

forces remained in their present deployments the enemy would

be able to break through to the German border by the sixth day

of the offensive. To avert this danger, and especially to prevent

the army group from being encircled by concentric thrusts from

the Sandomierz and Magnuszew bridgeheads, Harpe and von

Xylander proposed to pull back their main forces two days

before the anticipated attack to a rearward position, the Hu-

bertuslinie, which was a hundred kilometres shorter than the

present defences facing the Vistula bridgeheads. This move was

expected to yield two advantages. It would cushion the Ger-

mans against the initial Soviet bombardment, which would

now fall on defences that were thinly held or abandoned al-

together. Second, it would permit the Germans to create a mo-

bile reserve, by grouping the four Panzer divisions in two pairs

for a pincer attack of their own against a thrust from the Mag-

nuszew bridgehead. According to von Xylander it was reason-

able to hope that the Russian advance would be turned back

at the Hubertuslinie, or at least at the Silesian border: 'That is

the extent of what we may do by such means. However, the

Upper Silesian Industrial Region will remain in production, the

enemy will be held away from German soil, and the higher

leadership of the Reich will gain time to turn the military sit-

uation, as created by us, to advantage in political negotiations'

(Ahlfen, 1977, 39).

Guderian telephoned Colonel-General Reinhardt and found

that Army Group Centre was thinking of a limited retreat in

the same style, in this case from the position along the Narew

River in northern Poland to the borders of East Prussia. Gu-

derian agreed that these proposals were sensible, and he de-

RED STORM ON THE REICH

cided to lay them before Hitler, although with no great hope

of success.

On 9 January Guderian visited Ziegenberg for the third time.

As had happened before, Hitler flared up when Guderian pro-

duced maps and diagrams which had been compiled by 'For-

eign Armies East.' Tempers calmed a little, but the session was

completely unproductive, and nothing could persuade Hitler

and Jodl that it was important to create adequate reserves be-

hind the front line.

To console me Hitler said, at the end of the conference:

'The Eastern Front has never before possessed such a strong

reserve as now. That is your doing, and I thank you for it.'

I replied 'The Eastern Front is like a pack of cards. If the front

is broken through at one point all the rest will collapse, for

twelve and a half divisions are far too small a reserve for so

extended a front.' . . . With Hitler's parting remark—'The

Eastern Front must help itself and do with what it's got'—I

returned, in a very grave frame of mind, to my headquarters

at Zossen. (Guderian, 1952, 387-88)

On the express orders of Hitler the main forces of Army

Group A remained packed into what the Soviets termed the

German 'tactical zone of defence,' which consisted of an outer

belt of positions extending to a depth of five to seven kilometres

from the forward edge of the battle area, and a second line a

further twelve or fifteen kilometres to the rear. The four pre-

cious Panzer divisions could hardly be counted as operational

reserves at all, for most of their forces were deployed within

twenty-five kilometres or very much less of the front line.

Meanwhile the doom of the German forces on the Vistula

drew measurably nearer. The twentieth of December came and

went without producing the offensive which some analysts had

predicted. On 4 January 1945 the interrogation of prisoners led

German intelligence officers to expect the attack in the middle

of the month. On 9 January Guderian had his final interview

CHRISTOPHER DUFFY

with Hitler. It turned out badly, as we have seen, but early the

next morning the news had still not reached the commander

of Army Group A, Colonel-General Josef Harpe, who was re-

turning from the positions which faced the Sandomierz bridge-

head. A biting wind whipped across the Polish plain, but Harpe

drew the fur collar of his coat around his face, and he comforted

himself further by reflecting that Hitler's luck and intuition

would not allow him to leave the German forces in Poland

exposed and defenceless. The command car sped through the

streets of Krakow and came to a halt in front of the school

where the staff had been established. A slim and youthful-

looking figure stepped forward to meet him. This was the chief

of staff, von Xylander, who appeared uncharacteristically

downcast. He informed his superior that news of Guderian's

audience had just arrived:

'The Führer has rejected everything—Kurland, reinforce-

ments from the West, and Schlittenfahrt. The front line stays

where it is, and the situation remains the same. The Führer

does not believe that the Russians will attack.' (Thorwald,

1950, 39)

RED STORM ON THE REICH

PART II

From the Vistula

to the Oder

CHAPTER 5

Breakthrough on

the Vistula

Konev and the 1st Ukrainian Front

ON THE NIGHT OF 11-12 JANUARY 1945 the ten armies of the 1st

Ukrainian Front made ready to deal the first blow of the Soviet

offensive on the Vistula. It was physically impossible to observe

silence in the Sandomierz bridgehead because the tanks, assault

guns and towed artillery pieces were moving into position by

the thousand, but loudspeakers blared music into the night, ov-

ercoming the growl of the diesel motors. Marshal Konev placed

his observation post in a small house near the edge of a wood.

One of the windows faced west and should have given him a

fine view over the nearby German main line, but now the fog,

low clouds and blizzards reduced the visibility at times to liter-

ally zero. Air support would not be at hand, though the artillery

would be firing against pre-registered targets, and the bad

weather gave the infantry and tanks an extra element of sur-

prise.

The Russian heavy and medium artillery was ranged literally

wheel to wheel in concentrations of up to three hundred pieces

per kilometre of front, and the first bombardment fell on the

Fourth Panzer Army and the right-flanking Seventeenth Army

at 0435. The air incandesced with an unnatural light, and before

long a 'sky of fire and smoke lowered over the country on the

west side of the Vistula. The frozen soil was torn up hundreds

of times over, houses flared up like torches, bunkers collapsed,