Vistula-Oder operation

Course of operations from January 12 to March 30, 1945

The Vistula-Oder Operation ( Russian Висло-Одерская операция , Wislo-Oderskaja operazija ) is the name of an offensive on the German-Soviet Eastern Front of World War II . The Red Army began a new on January 12, 1945 strategic operation on the 1,200 km wide front between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains . It ended on February 3, 1945. In the course of this operation, two main thrusts developed: via Warsaw and Posen to Küstrin and from the Sandomierz bridgehead to Silesia along the Oder.

Situation before the offensive from a German perspective

The beginning of 1945 was caught in the tension between three theaters of war: in the west the Ardennes offensive was coming to an end, in the south-east the battle for Budapest and Hungarian oil had not yet been decided, and on the eastern front the preparations of the Soviet army were clearly complete.

“On January 9th - one day after Hitler told Commander-in-Chief West v. Rundstedt had given authorization to evacuate the West Ardennes, Guderian arrived at Hitler's headquarters near Frankfurt after a sightseeing trip to the Eastern Front . ”Guderian asked Hitler to give up Italy , Norway , the Balkans and the Baltic States [Courland] and to“ collect all available reserves to keep the Russians out of Germany. ”The Eastern Front had hardly been reinforced since autumn 1944.

On the front between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains there were 75 of the 287 German divisions, "and indeed much weaker divisions than in the west." According to Stalin's information in Yalta , he had assembled 180 divisions, "which, at the main points of the Germans, were men and tanks [... ] were six times superior. "

After a further discussion with Guderian, Hitler ordered the 6th Panzer Army to be withdrawn from the Ardennes. Rundstedts will stay "so that we can keep the initiative there." The Eastern Front will not be reinforced and he will not allow any retreats.

Structure of the opposing forces

course

Konev's major offensive across the Vistula to Silesia

On January 12, 1945 the 1st Ukrainian Front under Marshal Konew attacked the front of the German 4th Panzer Army under General Grasses in the Sandomierz-Silesian Operation from the Vistula bridgeheads of Baranow and Sandomierz . The section of the XXXXVIII. Panzer Corps east of Pinschow was just like the section of the XXXXII. Army corps breached east of Kielce . The XXIV Panzer Corps ( 16th and 17th Panzer Divisions ) pulled forward to counter-attack resisted steadfastly, but was immediately enclosed in the Kielce area by the broken armored wedges of the Soviet 3rd Armored Guard and 4th Panzer Army . Troops of the Soviet 52nd Army occupied Czestochowa on January 17th , the 3rd Armored Guard Army on January 18th Petrikau .

By January 18, the Soviet troops had broken into Army Group A to a depth of 300 km to a depth of 150 km and had overrun the main forces of the German defense. After fighting with Soviet army troops and Polish partisans, cut off German troops tried to re-establish contact with the German front, which had meanwhile been pushed far to the west. The XXXXII. Army corps was largely destroyed by January 23, the commanding General Recknagel was shot by partisans between Petrikau and Tomaszów . In a "wandering basin" the German "Corps Group Nehring" (Gen. Kdo. XXIV. Panzer Corps) withdrew with heavy losses in several days of fighting over the Warta to the Oder in the Glogau area.

On January 19, the first Soviet troops crossed the borders of the German Reich, after which the battle for the Silesian industrial area , which was defended by the German 17th Army , began. Soviet bombers attacked Wroclaw . Cracow was defeated by the Soviet 59th Army on the same day. On January 27, 1945, units of the Soviet 60th Army liberated the survivors of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps . The 100th Rifle Division crossed the Vistula from the north and covered the flank of the 107th, 148th and 322nd Rifle Divisions advancing from the south.

Side offensives against East Prussia

On January 13, the 3rd Byelorussian Front under General Tschernjachowski from the Pilkallen area on the northern eastern front also faced the front of the German 3rd Panzer Army on the eastern border of East Prussia with the aim of breaking through to Koenigsberg . On January 14, the offensive of the 2nd Belarusian Front under General Rokossowski followed from the bridgeheads at Serok and Rozan over the Narew with the aim of overrun the province of East Prussia from the south and to break through to the Baltic Sea at Elbing . The German 3rd Panzer Army under Colonel General Raus was pushed back over the Memel to the Pregel and Angerapp . The front of the German 2nd Army under General Weiß am Narew had also been breached and thrown back over the southern border of East Prussia to Osterode by January 21st . The still intact front of the German 4th Army under General der Infanterie Hoßbach between Augustow and Lomscha am Bobr had to be dismantled in a hurry so as not to be cut off. From January 19 and 24, the Soviet troops pushed across the East Prussian border on a broad front between Soldau - Neidenburg - Willenberg and Goldap .

Zhukov's main attack on Poznan via Lodz

Tanks of the 1st Belarusian Front on the advance

"On January 14th [took place] from the bridgeheads of Magnuszew and Pulawy", in the middle of the front in the area on both sides and south of Warsaw the attack of the 1st Belarusian Front under Marshal Zhukov from the bridgehead of Warka against the German 9th Army (General von Lüttwitz ). Together with the troops from Konev's front, a total of 163 rifle divisions and tank brigades with 7042 tanks and assault guns were on the offensive from the three bridgeheads of Baranow, Pulawy and Magnuszew (Warka) that had been captured in September 1944. The Soviet 47th Army and the Polish 1st Army comprised Warsaw, which could be captured by the evening of January 17th. The 8th Guards Army under General Tschuikow, which together with the 5th shock army took up from the Magnuszew bridgehead , broke through the front of the 8th Army Corps on both sides of the Pilica and pushed through to Tomaszow . Counterattacks by the German 19th and 25th Panzer Divisions against the Soviet tank masses that had broken through were unsuccessful. The attack of the Soviet 33rd Army from the Pulawy bridgehead was aimed at the city of Radom , which was surrounded and captured by January 16, together with the 69th Army advancing south . The 1st and 2nd Guards Panzer Army led after the break-in on the front of the German XXXXVI. Panzer Corps made the operational breakthrough in the direction of Kutno and Lodz, in the second phase north of the Warta via Posen to the Oder.

The catastrophic situation in the Generalgouvernement forced the Wehrmacht High Command to release the "Greater Germany" tank corps, which was urgently needed in East Prussia . From January 15, the Hermann Göring parachute division and the Brandenburg armored infantry division were relocated to Kalisz .

The city of Lodz was liberated on January 19th in cooperation of the 29th Guards Rifle Corps of the 8th Guards Army with the 9th Mechanical Corps approaching from the south. From January 25, 1945, the approximately 30,000 to 63,000 defenders of the city ​​of Posen, which was declared a " fortress ", were included. The battle for Poznan that followed until the last defenders surrendered lasted until February 23, 1945.

The Soviet advance in East Prussia and west of the Vistula occurred in half the time estimated by the Soviet High Command . Their peaks reached the Oder on February 2nd (beginning of the Yalta conference) .

Reaction on the German side

Hitler only became aware of the situation more than a week after the start of the attack operations: "On January 22nd, Hitler, who was now desperate to find reserves, approved the evacuation of Memel , but he still refused to give up Kurland ."

Soviet troops on the way to the Oder

The immediate transfer of the 6th Panzer Army from west to east was ordered. From the Palatinate and the Alsace were 21 tanks - and the 25th Panzer Grenadier Division extracted and moved to the threatened or front. Hitler realized that he had lost the advantage of the inner line : “There is no point in hypnotizing yourself into something and saying: I need it here, so it has to be that way. In the end, I have to reckon with things as they are. The deployment of a really considerable force from the west is unthinkable 6 to 8 weeks ago. "

Final phase of the offensive

Delegation of German officers during negotiations on the surrender of the Breslau Fortress

At the end of January Rokossowski's 2nd Byelorussian Front reached Gdansk Bay and cut off the 25 divisions in East Prussia. Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front conquered the Upper Silesian industrial area after Krakow and surrounded Wroclaw . Zhukov's tanks (1st Belarusian Front) rolled through central Poland and crossed the German borders in Neumark . The 4th Ukrainian Front under Colonel General Ivan Petrov conquered southern Poland and northern Czechoslovakia (today's northern Slovakia ).

After the snowstorms that raged from January 26th to 29th, General Chuikov's units advanced as far as the Oder. The decisive success of the offensive was achieved in the center of the operation on both sides of Küstrin . On February 1st, advance divisions of the 8th Guard Army reached the still frozen river. On February 2, the 4th Guards Rifle Corps (Major General Glasunow) formed a small bridgehead on the western bank near Neu Manschnow . Bersarin's 5th shock army reached the Oder to the north-west of Küstrin. The 1st mechanical corps under Lieutenant General Kriwoschein built another small bridgehead near Genschmar on the Kalenziger Bunst. On the same day, the 8th Mechanical Guard Corps (Major General Dremow) and the 11th Guard Armored Corps (Colonel Babadschanjan) reached the Oder. The units crossed formed the first strong bridgeheads south and north of Küstrin near Güstebiese and Kienitz. “Apart from the fact that an icy river did not form a natural obstacle , it did not seem to be defended at all where it is closest to Frankfurt and Küstrin Berlin.” However, the edge of the Oderbruch remained largely under German control.

Location at the end of the offensive

On February 4, 1945, the fighting in the northern area from Koenigsberg to the Carpathian Mountains had largely come to a standstill. New fronts formed: two basins in East Prussia on the Baltic Sea, the northern part of Courland was able to hold out, in Silesia as far as Küstrin the line of defense ran around or along the Oder , from Küstrin through the south of Pomerania to Danzig. In Hungary the fighting continued unabated. Budapest fell on February 14, 1945 .

The offensives until May 1945

In the briefing on January 27, 1945 with Göring and Jodl , Hitler's hope was that "with every step the Russians took closer to Berlin, the Western powers would be brought one step closer to a compromise." As an immediate measure, the Berlin Volkssturm was on the Eastern Front relocated and Heinrich Himmler appointed commander-in-chief of an army group in the Vistula to consolidate the new front on the Oder. More than half of the tank divisions were withdrawn from the western front.

Hitler now gave priority to the Eastern Front in production as well: In February 1945, “1,675 new or repaired tanks and assault guns went to the East, while only 67 to the Western Front in the same period of time. [...] Through this drastic redistribution, Hitler hoped the Eastern Front to stabilize before the British-American armies could renew their offensive on the Rhine. "(Wilmot, 714.)

In March 1945, in the battle for Küstrin , the Wehrmacht tried in vain to remove the bridgeheads between which the supply line to the city ran. On March 22nd, the Soviet troops succeeded in uniting the two bridgeheads. The 1st Belarusian Front finally consolidated the Oder bridgehead to 44 km wide and 7-10 km deep by the beginning of April, which stretched from Lebus in the south to north of Kienitz .

Effects

The Soviet troops were exhausted after the offensive and did not take the opportunity to advance further into Berlin. They could "not make a breakthrough [on Berlin] [...] as long as they had not organized the supply traffic through devastated Poland." (Wilmot, 740) In the next few weeks the Soviet fronts cleared their rear area: In the battle for East Pomerania (February 10 to April 4, 1945) they invaded the Baltic Sea, the East Prussian operation was largely concluded on April 9, 1945 with the conquest of Königsberg , Danzig was occupied at the end of March 1945 and the Lower Silesian Operation and the West Carpathian Operation were the German troops pushed back into Czechoslovakia. Despite the military success of the Soviet fronts, the overall situation was reversed: for the time being, the German armies on Oder and Neisse had been able to set up a new line of defense, while now - from the beginning of February 1945 - the Western Allied armies broke into Germany.

The Soviet Army attacked Berlin on April 16, 1945 .

The fighting was very costly for both warring parties. According to its own information, the Red Army lost 193,125 soldiers (43,251 dead and missing and 149,874 wounded), 1,267 tanks, 374 guns and 343 aircraft.

Remarks

1. ^ According to reports from OKH v. Rundstedt 2,299 new or restored tanks and assault guns had been assigned, but only 921 Guderians for the Eastern Front. Half of Guderian's tanks "stood on the south wing, covering Hungary's oil and bauxite and blocking the road to Vienna." (Wilmot, 666 f.).
2. ↑ He justified this with the control of the Baltic Sea and pointed out "the crucial importance of the Gdańsk Bay for maintaining sea warfare (only submarine training areas)". ( Führer-Marine Conferences January 21, 1945 , Wilmot, 670.)
3. ↑ It was the only industrial center spared from air raids and in December 1944 had supplied 60% of the coal production. Speer declared that he could now “only provide a quarter of the coal and a sixth of the steel that had been produced in January 1944.” (Speers report to Hitler, January 30, 1945. In February 1945 it was 7 Millions of tons of coal and around 0.5 million tons of steel, a fifth of the amount in the summer of 1944. Source: Speer-Akten. Wilmot, 671 and 710). Three new synthetic fuel refineries that had just started production were also lost.
4. ↑ Hitler named the association not after its current operating room, but after the line that he would have to conquer in the future - here after the recently lost Vistula front.
5. ↑ On February 4th, the US troops took the first of the Roertalsperren , which they had attacked when the Ardennes offensive began. The major offensive on the Rhine began on February 8, 1945.

literature

• Erich Kuby : The Russians in Berlin 1945 , Scherz Verlag, Munich 1965.
• Heinz Magenheimer : Defensive battle on the Vistula in 1945. Preparation, procedure, experiences (= individual publications on the military history of the Second World War , Volume 20). Rombach Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1976, ISBN 3-7930-0179-2 .
• Chester Wilmot : The Struggle for Europe , Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1955.
• Alexei W. Isajew: Vistula-Oder Operation from 1945 Fighting in the Cave of the Beast , Yauza-Edition, Moscow 2007.

Web links

Commons : Weichsel-Oder-Operation  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• United International Biographical Center: Soldier 20 weka. Vistula-Oder Operation 1945 (Russian)
• The liberation of Poland secret documents published by the Russian Ministry of Defense (russ.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://wwii-soldat.narod.ru/OPER/ARTICLES/034-visla.htm
2. ↑ Chester Wilmot : The fight for Europe , Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1955, p. 666.
3. ^ Führer situation discussions, fragment 33, January 10, 1945 (Wilmot, p. 668.)
4. ↑ WI Festjkow / KA Kalashnikov: Красная Армия в победах и поражениях 1941-1945, Moskwa 2003, pp. 150-160.
5. ↑ OKW war diary, Volume IV, p. 1886. Note: The Heinrici army group was not hit by the Soviet attack on January 12, but is included here for completeness.
6. ^ Ernst Piper: January 27, 1945: The Red Army liberates Auschwitz
7. ^ Wolfgang Paul: The final battle for Germany , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1978, p. 47. ISBN 3-453-00835-9 .
8. ^ Barr: Panzerkrieg, Kaiser Verlag 2000, p. 163.
9. ↑ Führer situation discussions, fragment 24, January 27, 1945. , Wilmot, 670.
10. ↑ Tony Le Tissier: Breakthrough on the Oder, Augsburg 1997, p. 61 f.
11. ↑ Erich Kuby: The Russians in Berlin 1945 , Scherz Verlag, Munich 1965, p. 24.
12. ^ GF Krivošeev (Ed.): Soviet casualties and combat losses in the twentieth century. Greenhill Books, London 1997, p. 253 u. 263. ISBN 1-85367-280-7 .