REVIEW BY DAVID PORTER
In January 1945, the Red Army launched a powerful operation that was intended to go all the way to Berlin. The Vistula–Oder Offensive, as it was known, is the subject of this new book by Prit Buttar, who has already written extensively on the campaigns of the Eastern Front. What makes the offensive worthy of continual study was partly its scope, and partly the discipline Stalin showed when faced with still-bitter German resistance.
The Soviet leader assigned the operation to two fronts: Marshal Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front holding the Magnuszew and Pulawy bridgeheads across the Vistula in the centre of Poland, and Marshal Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front occupying a further bridgehead at Sandomierz in the south. A total of 163 divisions were assembled for the offensive, with 2,203,000 troops, 4,529 tanks, and more than 5,000 aircraft. The logistical preparations were staggering – 2,500,000 shells and mortar bombs were stockpiled in the Magnuszew bridgehead, with a further 1,300,000 held in the Pulawy sector. The two fronts also held 30,000,000 gallons of fuel for the extremely ambitious advance.
The Wehrmacht were down, but not entirely out. Generaloberst Josef Harpe’s Army Group A had no more than 400,000 troops and 4,100 guns, and his freedom of movement was limited both by worsening fuel shortages and by Hitler’s obsession with holding every scrap of territory.
Salt of the earth