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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.
When Konev’s attack began at Sandomierz on 12 January, it rapidly broke through the Fourth Panzer Army, which was stunned by the ferocity of the bombardment. A German battalion commander recalled that he ‘began the operation with an under-strength battalion… after the smoke of the Soviet preparation cleared… I had only a platoon of combat-effective soldiers left.’ General der Panzertruppe Walther Nehring’s XXIV Panzer Corps was one of the few German formations to fight its way back to the Oder, covering at least 350km in an epic retreat. Zhukov attacked two days later and achieved an equally rapid breakthrough of the German defences in his sector. Within hours, its leading elements were well on the way to Łódź. On 17 January, the First Polish Army took Warsaw, and Konev’s forces made impressive advances, too, occupying the industrial centres of Upper Silesia by the month’s end.
Buttar includes a particularly good analysis of the cities in the path of the Soviets. These had been designated Festungen (‘fortresses’) by Hitler, with the intention that their garrisons should hold out ‘to the last man’. Many were only protected by poorly constructed field defences manned by virtually untrained and ill-equipped Volkssturm militia, but a few were formidable and played a significant role in slowing the Soviet onslaught. For instance, Posen (now Poznań), which commanded the main route from Warsaw to Berlin, was ringed with nine 19th-century forts and garrisoned by at least 40,000 troops and 8,000 Volkssturm. On 25 January, the 105,000 men of General Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army besieged it. The old fortifications proved surprisingly resistant to modern weapons, and it was not taken until the end of February.
On 31 January, the 1st Belorussian Front secured bridgeheads over the frozen Oder, bringing them within 60km of Berlin. Although both Zhukov and Konev strongly advocated continuing the offensive all the way to the German capital, Stalin ended the operation on 2 February. In retrospect, it was the correct decision, as the supply lines of both fronts were dangerously over-stretched, a problem made more acute by the stubborn resistance of Posen.
Although Into the Reich has some weaknesses, most notably the maps, which are often too small to be useful, the author has provided a valuable account of one of the final major offensives launched by the Soviet army. By early 1945, this had become an almost unstoppable juggernaut.
Into the Reich: The Red Army’s Advance to the Oder in 1945
Prit Buttar
Osprey Publishing, hbk, 448pp (£32)
ISBN 978-1472866981
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