Vistula-Oder Offensive

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The Vistula-Oder Offensive took place between 12 January, 1945 until 2 February, 1945 and was a successful Red Army operation on the Eastern Front in the European Theatre of World War II that carried the Soviet troops from the Vistula river in Poland to the Oder river deep in Germany, about seventy kilometers from the capital Berlin.

Contents

1 Background
2 Opposing forces

2.1 Soviet
2.2 German

3 Operation details
4 Looting, atrocities and the flight of ethnic Germans
5 References
6 Footnotes
7 External links

Background

Preceding the offensive, the Soviets had built up large numbers of material, and manpower, concentrated in the brigeheads over the Vistula. The Soviets greatly outnumbered the opposing German army in infantry, artillery, and armor. All this was known to German intelligence and general Reinhard Gehlen, head of Fremde Heere Ost gave the general Heinz Guderian the documentation. Guderian presented the intelligence results to Adolf Hitler, but he refused to believe them. The divisions that had participated in the Ardennes offensive could not be transferred fast enough from the Western front to the Eastern front. Guderian had proposed to evacuate the divisions of Army Group North stuck in the Courland to the Reich via the Baltic Sea to get the necessary manpower for the defense, but Hitler forbade it. In addition, Hitler commanded that troops were moved to Hungary to support the operation Frühlingserwachen.

Opposing forces

Axis-Soviet War
Barbarossa – Finland 1941-44 – Leningrad and Baltics 1941-1944 – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Bagration – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans 1944 – Hungary 1944-1945 – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague – Manchuria 1945

Axis-Soviet War
Barbarossa – Finland 1941-44 – Leningrad and Baltics 1941-1944 – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Bagration – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans 1944 – Hungary 1944-1945 – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague – Manchuria 1945

Soviet

The 1st Belorussian Front was led by Georgy Zhukov. The 1st Ukrainian Front was led by Ivan Koniev.

Zhukov and Konev had 163 divisions for the operation with Duffy References pages 24, 25

2,203,000 troops
4,529 tanks
2,513 assault guns
13,763 pieces of field artillery (76 mm or more)
14,812 mortars
4,936 anti-tank guns
2,198 Katyusha multiple rocket launchers
5,000 aircraft

German

The main opponent of the Soviets in this sector was Army Group A that defended a front which stretched from East of Warsaw south along the Vistula almost to the confluence of the San. At that point there was a large Soviet salient over the Vistula in the area of Baranow before the front continued south to Jaslo. There were three Armies in the Group, the IX Army deployed around Warsaw, the IV Panzer Army opposite the salient and the XVI Army to their south[Web map copy]] of Ziemke References page 26. The group had a total of 400,000 troops, 4,100 artillery pieces, 1,150 tanks Ziemke page 23. Army Group A was led by Colonel General Josef Harpe who was replaced by Colonel General Ferdinand Schörner on 20 January Duffy page ? .

North of the Warsaw the Vistula turns from a northwards direction to flow eastwards before flowing north-east to the Baltic. The Vistual turns where the Western Bug tributary joins it, and at this point the front left the Vistual to followed the Bug for a short distance before turning north to follow the Narew. The front then followed the Narew north. This section of the front was defended by the II Army under the command of Army Group Center.

On 25 January 1945, Hitler renamed three army groups. Army Group North became Army Group Courland; Army Group Centre became Army Group North and Army Group A became Army Group Centre.

The German intelligence had estimated that the Soviet forces had a 3:1 numerical superiority to the German forces, but this was in fact a 5:1 superiority. Duffy page ?

Operation details

The offensive was launched in January 12, 1945 by Ivan Koniev from the large Soviet bridgehead near Sandomierz over the Vistula. Georgy Zhukov started his attack on the 14th from two smaller bridgeheads northern of Koniev's forces.

One of the strategies of defense that Hitler had ordered were "fortified cities", some of which, like Breslau held out months. They were however largely ineffective in stopping the Soviet advance.

On January 27, troops of Koniev's First Ukrainian Front liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. They found ample evidence of the holocaust there, such as huge collections of human hair, thousands of pairs of shoes, dead or dying people etc.

Koniev's troops managed to conquer the heavily industrialized area of Silesia intact by semi-encircling it. The loss of the area was a heavy blow for Germany's weapon's industry and meant that the war had become hopeless. Germany's Minister of Armaments Albert Speer wrote this to Hitler, but Hitler did not take any steps to end the war.

By January 31 the Red Army had secured bridgeheads over the frozen Oder, 500 km (310 miles) West from their starting point. They decided to stop due to logistics problems aggravated by the Spring thaw, the lack of air support, and fear of encirclement through flank attacks from East Prussia, Pommern and Silesia. At that time Berlin was undefended and only approximately 70 km away from the bridgeheads. After the war a debate raged, mainly between Vasily Chuikov and Zhukov whether it wise to stop the offensive. Chuikov argued that Berlin should have been taken then, while Zhukov defended the decision to stop. The controversy is fueled by the fact that the battle of the Seelow Heights (16-19 April) and the battle of Berlin (April until early May) were costly to the Soviets.

Looting, atrocities and the flight of ethnic Germans

The soldiers of the Red Army looted and committed many atrocities, like rape and murder. Reasons for the atrocities were among others the will to take revenge by soldiers who quite often had a personal reason for this, e.g. a family member killed by the German invaders. Apart from that, the Soviet propaganda machine (e.g. Ilya_Ehrenburg) encouraged a harsh and vengeful attitude to the Germany military and these encouragements may unintentionally led to atrocities on German civilians in Germany. As a result of the Soviet atrocities and their amplification by the German propaganda, millions of ethnic Germans fled to the West.

References

Beevor, Antony. Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2002, ISBN 0670886955
Rees, Laurence Auschwitz BBC books
Max Hastings Armageddon. The Battle for Germany 1944-45 published by Macmillan, London
Duffy, Christopher Red storm on the Reich: The Soviet March on Germany, 1945 Routledge 1991 ISBN 0415228298
Ziemke, Earl F Battle for Berlin end of the Third Reich

Footnotes

External links

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