On 22 June 1944, the third anniversary of the German invasion of
the Soviet Union, the Red Army launched Operation BAGRATION, a
massive offensive to drive German forces from western Belorussia.
By mid-1944, the German army was only a shell of what it had been
in 1941, whereas the Soviets had superior numbers of artillery
pieces, tanks, trucks, and aircraft as well as a four-to-one
manpower advantage on the Eastern Front. The Soviets had also
developed new tactical doctrines that took advantage of their
greatly improved mobility.
The great Soviet offensive involved 11 fronts (army groups) and
stretched from the Baltic in the north to the Black Sea in the
south. Within two months, the Red Army had liberated Byelorussia
and destroyed German Army Group Center, but even before the
conclusion of BAGRATION, Soviet leader Josef Stalin issued new
orders through Stavka for the liberation of the Baltic States and
Poland and a drive on Berlin. From north to south, this effort
involved the 1st Baltic and 3rd, 2nd, and 1st Byelorussian
Fronts.
On 20 July 1944, units of the 1st Byelorussian Front crossed the
Bug River in three places and captured Lublin. There the Soviets
established their own Polish government and army and declared open
season on the London government’s anti- Communist Polish Home Army.
On July 25, the Red Army reached the Vistula. The great city of
Brest, encircled, fell on 28 July after a single day of fighting.
Meanwhile, Lvov, capital of Galicia, capitulated on 27 July as the
other fronts, north and south, achieved their objectives against
varying degrees of resistance. Some German army units, cut off and
isolated against the Baltic, did not surrender until the end of the
war. German Colonel General Joseph Harpe, commander of Army Group A
(the redesignated Army Group North), could do little more than
delay the inevitable. Indeed, Hitler’s call for “no retreat,” when
obeyed, resulted in the destruction of many German units in
untenable positions, and static defense also brought the
destruction of the few remaining German maneuver elements. Adding
to Harpe’s difficulties later was Hitler’s decision to withdraw
units to prepare for the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the
Bulge) in the west.
At the end of July, Stavka ordered the 1st and 2nd Byelorussian
Fronts to drive to the Narew River and Warsaw. The 2nd Byelorussian
Front was to advance to Ostrołę and Łiomža. The 1st Byelorussian
Front drove on the Warsaw suburb of Praga, along the way seizing
crossing points over the Narew and Vistula Rivers. Although these
objectives were secured, the Red Army offensive had lost momentum.
In the drive, the Soviets destroyed 28 German divisions, inflicting
350,000 casualties, but logistical problems, in consequence of the
rapid advance and two months of solid fighting, forced a pause.
On 29 August, Stalin ordered that all Red Army fronts were to
dig in generally along the line of the Vistula and Narew Rivers.
Although the 1st and 2nd Byelorussian Fronts continued limited
attacks to strengthen their hold across the Narew, Soviet forces
made no effort to cross the Vistula River and move into Warsaw.
This decision produced one of the most controversial episodes of
the entire war, the Warsaw Rising of 1 August to 2 October
1944.
With the rapid Soviet advance, Polish Home Army commander
General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski ordered a general uprising in
Warsaw, which brought quick German army reaction. The Soviets made
only half-hearted efforts to assist the Home Army in the form of
air-dropped supplies. Although it is true that the Red Army
suffered from genuine logistical problems, it is also quite true
that Stalin was delighted to see the Germans eliminate the
anti-Communist Home Army forces, whose existence he correctly
believed would hinder his own postwar control of Poland. The
Soviets not only refused to help the Poles in any meaningful way,
but they also obstructed efforts by the western Allies to air-drop
supplies to the Polish fighters. The fighting brought the
destruction of 90 percent of the buildings of Warsaw, but it also
claimed 10,000 Germans casualties—tribute to the ferocity of the
two-month-long Home Army resistance.
Stavka, meanwhile, laid plans for the final control of Poland in
an offensive that would carry from the Vistula to the Oder. The
massive offensive involved Marshal Georgii Zhukov’s 1st
Byelorussian Front, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky’s 2nd
Byelorussian Front, General of the Armies Ivan Chernyakovsky’s 3rd
Byelorussian Front, and Marshal Ivan S. Konev’s 1st Ukrainian
Front, all of which were on the Narew-Vistula Line. Meanwhile,
General Ivan Petrov’s 4th Ukrainian Front occupied positions along
the San River line in southern Poland and Galicia.
Stalin’s orders were to destroy Army Group A, with the secondary
objective of drawing off German reserves in response to western
appeals during the German Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge).
Under Stavka’s plan, the 1st Byelorussian Front was to take Poznan
and destroy forces cut off in the Warsaw area. The 2nd Byelorussian
Front would assist in surrounding Warsaw and also take Marienburg.
The 1st Ukrainian Front, with five combined-arms armies, two tank
armies, and four tank/mechanized corps, would carry the brunt of
the offensive, breaking out of the Sandomierz bridgehead and
driving to Breslau. The 4th Ukrainian Front would drive on Kraków.
The Soviet offensive was massive. The 1st Ukrainian and 1st
Byelorussian Fronts together contained 2.2 million ground troops (a
six-to-one advantage over the defending Germans) in 163 divisions
supported by more than 32,000 artillery pieces and almost 4,800
aircraft.
The second half of the offensive to clear Poland began on 12
January 1945. Radom fell on 16 January. By 17 January, Zhukov’s 1st
Byelorussian Front and the Soviet-controlled Polish First Army had
liberated Warsaw. Within the next week, the 1st Byelorussian and
1st Ukraininan Fronts had punched a 310-mile hole in the German
lines and driven 100 miles. There was little Harpe and the German
forces could do to arrest the Soviet advance. Kraków and Poznan
were taken in late January, and on 22 January, Konev’s 1st
Ukrainian Front bridged the Oder. Zhukov also reached the river and
got his troops across, although it took three weeks to close the
70- mile gap separating these two Red Army fronts. On 28 January,
forces of the 1st Byelorussian Front entered German Pomerania,
where they were met by the hastily formed Army Group Vistula,
commanded by the inept Heinrich Himmler. Königsberg was surrounded
and taken on 9 April. Meanwhile, the 1st Ukrainian Front eliminated
pockets of German forces in south-western Poland.
Soviet forces had once again outrun their logistical support and
were forced to halt. Nevertheless, the Red Army was now poised to
begin its final offensive: the drive on Berlin to end the war.
References Borowiec, Andrew. Destroy Warsaw!
Hitler’s Punishment, Stalin’s Revenge. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001.
Erickson, John. The Road to Berlin. Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1983. Glantz, David, and Jonathan House. When Titans Clashed: How
the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
1995. Seaton, Albert. The Russo-German War, 1941–45. New York:
Praeger Publishers, 1970. Ziemke, Earl F. Stalingrad to Berlin: The
German Defeat in the East. Washington, DC: U.S. Army, Center of
Military History, 1966.
