The Road to Berlin (99 page)

Taking account of this situation Chernyakhovskii decided to shift the axis of 11th Guards operations from the area of 5th Army to the junction between 39th and 5th Armies. Together with 1st and 2nd Guards Tank Corps, 11th Guards Army went into action on the line of the river Inster and was committed to advancing to the south-west. In this fashion the famous ‘Insterburg gap’ was turned from the west as 11th Guards advanced on Wehlau, outflanking these
long-established fortifications; 5th Army bypassed Insterburg to the east, and 28th Army using its artillery and air support took Gumbinnen.

Now Chernyakhovskii could only slog his way forward to Königsberg, battering down one line of defences after another. At this stage the
Stavka
stepped in and ordered Rokossovskii to complete the job of isolating East Prussia from the
Reich
at large—to the near fury of Rokossovskii, who evidently considered the whole East Prussian campaign ill-planned from the outset, in that it had meant throwing armies against the well-defended eastern and south-eastern areas when the assault should have come from south to north, starting from the Lomza line and aiming directly at Frisches Haff. An operation on these lines would have combined almost automatically with 2nd Belorussian Front plans and would have meant a more rapid penetration of German defences, particularly if 50th and 3rd Armies had been handed over to Chernyakhovskii.

Disgruntled or not, Rokossovskii flung himself with a will into his new assignment, launching tank columns and lorried infantry in a swift and savage attack which brought the modern mechanized equivalent of ‘fire and sword’ to East Prussia, though the pillage and rape was as old as warfare itself. The operation, however, began badly and involved serious loss of time since the commander of 50th Army, holding the line of the Augustov canal, failed to detect that the Germans had pulled back to the north. Two days were lost, and 50th Army—whose commander, Boldin, was summarily replaced by his chief of staff, F.P. Ozerov—had to struggle hard to catch up with the enemy, while 49th Army’s efforts were frittered away in premature attacks. Meanwhile Rokossovskii’s armies were swinging north and north-west in response to
Stavka
orders of 21 January, driving along the Deutsch-Eylau/Marienburg axis and aiming for a line running from Elbing to Marienburg and the lower reaches of the Vistula down to Torun (Thorn). Gorbatov’s 3rd and Gusev’s 48th Armies turned north-west and crashed through the barrier of the old frontier defences, bypassing isolated strong-points; N.S. Oslikovskii’s 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps drove deeper into the German positions, bursting into Allenstein amidst all the bustle of German trains unloading tank and artillery reinforcements. In the bout of furious fighting only the timely arrival of the 48th Army in strength saved Oslikovskii. But the second-defence line had now been staved in, and the central region of East Prussia, hitherto covered from the south, now lay open to the Red Army.

Speed, frenzy and savagery characterized this advance. Villages and small towns burned, while Soviet soldiers raped at will and wreaked an atavistic vengeance in those houses and homes decked out with any of the insignia or symbols of Nazism. German officials lay strewn in the street with a bullet in the head, small-town functionaries and local burgomasters flung about by bursts of automatic fire; some fussily bedecked Nazi Party portrait photograph, seen as a sign of obeisance to the
Führer
himself, would be the signal to mow down the entire family amidst their table, chairs and kitchenware. Columns of refugees, combined
with groups of Allied prisoners uprooted from their camps, and slave labour no longer enslaved in farm or factory, trudged on foot or rode in farm carts, some to be charged down or crushed into a bloody smear of humans and horses by the juggernaut Soviet tank columns racing ahead with assault infantry astride the T-34s. Raped women were nailed by their hands to the farmcarts carrying their families. Under these lowering January skies and the gloom of late winter, families huddled in ditches or by the roadside, fathers intent on shooting their own children or waiting whimpering for what seemed like the wrath of God to pass. The Soviet Front command finally intervened, with an order insisting on the restoration of military discipline and the implementation of the ‘norms of conduct’ towards the enemy population. But this elemental tide surged on, impelled by the searing language of roadside posters and crudely daubed slogans proclaiming this and the land ahead ‘the lair of the Fascist beast’, a continuous incitement to brutalized ex-prisoners of war now in the Soviet ranks or to the reluctant peasant conscripts dragged into the Red Army in its march through the Baltic states, men with pity for no one.

On 21 January one memory of German militarism had been erased when Tannenberg fell. The scene of Hindenburg’s crucial battle in August 1914 and the symbol of earlier Russian disgrace and defeat, the town was evacuated by German units who also carried away with them the remains of Hindenburg and his wife, blowing up the huge memorial behind them. The Soviet units involved in a battle that was less ferocious than symbolic and psychological, took ‘Tannenberg’ as a battle honour. The fall of the Allenstein fortified zone, however, on 23 January opened up greater vistas for Rokossovskii; he ordered Volskii’s 5th Guards Tank Army into the gap and instructed this formation to strike for the sea. Gusev’s 48th and Fedyuninskii’s 2nd Shock Army meanwhile won the race to occupy the Deutsch-Eylau/Osterode line, heading off the vanguard of Third
Panzer
which might have checked the Soviet advance in the direction of Marienburg–Elbing. Volskii unleashed his armoured columns: 10th Tank Corps took Mohrungen on 23 January and Mülhausen the next day, trapping German reserves moving along the Königsberg–Elbing autobahn. The 29th Tank Corps swept even further ahead with 31st Tank Brigade in the lead. The forward battalion, Captain Dyachenko’s 3rd with seven tanks and a group of tommy-gunners, received orders to push on to outflank Elbing from the east, cutting road and rail links east of Elbing at Gross-Robern.

Driving on Elbing from the east, Dyachenko found it easier to race straight through the city, headlamps full on in the gathering gloom, lighting up trams lumbering about and shoppers going about the streets; taken at first for a German tank training unit, panic-stricken realization that these were Soviet tanks gave way to bursts of gunfire but Dyachenko pressed on and towards midnight reached the Frisches Haff. Colonel Pokolov’s 31st Brigade was following behind Dyachenko, but finding the defences fully alerted he too swung to the east and linked up with his 3rd Tank Battalion on the morning of 24 January. The main body of
the tank army now drew up on Tolkemit east of Elbing, broke through to the sea and trapped German forces who might try to make their way to the Vistula. Meanwhile Fedyuninskii’s 2nd Shock Army was closing on Marienburg, that time-honoured fortress of the Teutonic Knights; 8th Mechanized Corps forced the river Nogat off the march, while Fedyuninskii’s troops attacked to the north and set about storming the city, which fell on 26 January. At the same time Batov’s 65th and Popov’s 70th Armies made for Grudziadz (Graudenz) and Torun, the 70th fighting in the ‘Kulmland’, that reach of land between Grudziadz and Torun.

With his armies at the sea and on the lower Vistula, Rokossovskii had severed the land communications of German forces in East Prussia: Third
Panzer
Army, Fourth Army and six infantry divisions plus two motorized divisions of Second Army were trapped. In a desperate attempt to re-establish the land link in the direction of Marienburg, the command of Fourth Army decided on a powerful break-out attempt from the west of Heilsberg, assembling seven infantry divisions and a
Panzer
division to fight this deblockading action. The idea was originally Reinhardt’s, commander of Army Group Centre in East Prussia; while Hitler raged that the line in the Masurian lakes must be held at all costs, Reinhardt saw the only hope of salvation in withdrawal and in an attempt to smash through to the Nogat and the Vistula, taking as many civilians with the German troops as could be managed. Hossbach, commander of Fourth Army, agreed and had fallen back behind the Heilsberg line to launch the attack. Two infantry divisions, a motorized and a
Panzer
division would attack from Wormditt, two infantry divisions from Mehlsack and two from Braunsberg towards the south-west.

On 27 January a short but powerful artillery barrage preceded the German attack, which unrolled against Soviet units at the height of a fierce blizzard and tearing winter winds. Rokossovskii’s armies were stretched thin, all the way from Tolkemit to Allenstein, supplies were low and reserves at some distance from the front-line units; Gusev’s 48th Army was particularly exposed and not a little complacent, thinking the enemy beaten into the ground. On that blizzard-swept night German infantry, driven by desperation, fell on the 96th Rifle Division of 48th Army; heavily damaged and short of ammunition, the division fell back to the south-west. The alarm bells rang in every sense at Rokossovskii’s
HQ
, where he was holding a supper for his generals: Volskii’s 5th Guards’ tanks, 8th Tank Corps and Oslikovskii’s 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps were alerted at once, with instructions to Fedyuninskii to redeploy 2nd Shock Army in a blocking position to the east, from its present location south of Elbing.

The German attack pushed ten miles into the Soviet positions, recapturing Liebstadt and encircling the 17th Rifle Division of 48th Army, though Colonel Grebnev hung on grimly with his 17th. During the next forty-eight hours Fourth Army fought furiously to break through to Marienburg, driving more than fifteen miles into 48th Army positions and recapturing Mühlhausen and Pr.-Holland. With lead German units only about six miles from Elbing the threat of a German
breakthrough to the Vistula had suddenly become very real, forcing Rokossovskii to mass four corps (one rifle, one mechanized and two tank), the elements of a cavalry corps, a mechanised brigade, five anti-tank artillery brigades and a rifle division (3rd Guards Tank Corps, assigned as the Front reserve, was too short of equipment to be committed). These formations rushed to build up a firm battle-line between Allenstein and Frisches Haff.

On 30 January Fourth Army made its last attempt east of Elbing to break out to the Vistula, only to be met by Volskii’s tanks: Grebnev’s 17th Division was freed from its encirclement, while Gorbatov’s 3rd Army and the unfortunate 50th attacked the fortifications of Heilsberg, threatening the left flank of the German force. One by one, German units were smashed to pieces, grimy Soviet soldiers and battle-worn divisions grappling with desperate German soldiers whose salvation lay so near and yet so far. Stirred by suspicions that here was yet more treason in unauthorized withdrawal, Hitler had removed Reinhardt and Hossbach (Fourth Army commander) on 26 January; Rendulic, successor to Reinhardt, received the strictest injunction from Hitler to hold the East Prussian capital Königsberg at all costs. Having switched commanders, Hitler also juggled with their commands, turning Army Group North into Army Group
Kurland
, Centre into a new Army Group North, and Army Group A into Army Group Centre. Two of these groups, North and
Kurland
, were now completely isolated and marooned with their backs to the Baltic, unable to take any part in the battle for the
Reich
. For the defence of north Germany Hitler now raised a new army group—Vistula—made up of Second Army and Ninth Army, or what remained of them. Command of this key force went to none other than Heinrich Himmler,
Reichsführer SS
and Chief of Police. The chief hangman had finally arrived among his minions at the front.

The encirclement of East Prussia was complete, though the reduction of the string of
Festungen, ‘Führer
fortresses’—meant to hold out to the bitter end however improvised or impoverished the defences and whatever the hazard to the civilian population—took many weeks of ferocious fighting and a horrendous toll in lives. The greatest and grimmest of these
Festungen
was Königsberg, which by the end of January 1945 was encircled by Soviet armies and seemed likely at one moment to fall speedily to Soviet troops. On 27 January Bagramyan’s 1st Baltic Front took Memel, from which the German garrison fell back on the Kurische Nehrung and took up positions to the north of Königsberg. Chernyakhovskii’s 3rd Belorussian Front was striking due west, hammering its way through the fortifications of Heilsberg and closing on the eastern edge of Königsberg, while the left flank steered its way through the Masurian lakes (capturing in its passage Hitler’s old headquarters at Rastenburg). Once Beloborodov’s 43rd Army encircled the city from the north, capturing Cranz at the exit to the Kurische Nehrung and advancing to the Frisches Haff (thus isolating the city from Samland
and Pillau), it seemed that the end could not be long delayed, since Galitskii’s 11th Guards Army advancing along the Pregel had by now cut the road link between the city and those German troops still fighting south of the Frisches Haff. German forces still fighting in East Prussia were now splintered into three isolated groups.

But Königsberg did not fall with a rush. Attacking from Brandenburg, south of the city, panzer grenadiers of the
Grossdeutschland
Division, the
Hermann Göring
Division motorized infantry and other units beat back 11th Guards’ left flank, making contact with the city from this southerly point. What then remained to the German army consisted of a long, narrow, formidable pocket, packed with the elements of twenty-three divisions, extending for some forty miles from the southern shore of the Frisches Haff to include Königsberg itself and varying in depth, though nowhere greater than twelve miles; west of Königsberg, but separated from the city by a narrow strip of land held by Soviet divisions, were the nine divisions of ‘Group Samland’, the erstwhile defenders of Memel now holding the port of Pillau at the tip of the peninsula. (In mid-February a sudden and highly successful blow linked Samland with Königsberg, furnished a narrow land corridor and kept the city out of Soviet hands for a further two months.) Rokossovskii’s right flank, fighting to hold off the attempted break-out to the Nogat and Vistula, had suffered badly: Elbing had yet to be subjugated and Grudziadz (Graudenz) was transformed into yet another
Festung
, while on the left at Torun—famed in its own right as a ‘Vistula fortress’—V.S. Popov with 70th Army made the foolish blunder of thinking that he could rush a supposedly small garrison with one under-strength rifle division and a single rifle regiment woefully short of artillery. Nine days of fighting (1–9 February) were needed to smoke out this ‘hornets’ nest’, from which only 3,000 men escaped from a garrison of 30,000.