Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1944–1945 - Warsaw to Berlin

By Nik Cornish

In the fourth and final volume of Nik Cornish's photographic history of the Second World War on the Eastern Front the defeat of the German army, the destruction and occupation of the cities in eastern Germany and the humiliation of the German people are shown in over 150 mostly unpublished wartime photographs. The extent of the fighting, from the Baltic in the north to the Balkans in the south, is recorded in a selection of graphic images, as is the tenacity and desperation of the German resistance and the unstoppable force of the Red Army as offensive after offensive crushed the Third Reich. While most of the photographs show the Red Army, its troops, equipment and the conditions in which it fought, the shattered cities of Germany and eastern Europe and the suffering and destitution of the civilians are recorded in graphic detail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Apr 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781473862616

Nik Cornish

Nik Cornish is a former head teacher whose passionate interest in the world wars on the Eastern Front and in Russias military history in particular has led to a series of important books on the subject including Images of Kursk, Stalingrad: Victory on the Volga, Berlin: Victory in Europe, Partisan Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1944, The Russian Revolution: World War to Civil War 1917-1921, Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1941-1942 Barbarossa to Moscow, Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1942-1943 Stalingrad to Kharkov and Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1943-1944 Kursk to Bagration.

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Introduction

The final year on the Eastern Front was one of almost unmitigated defeat and disaster for the Third Reich and its remaining allies. The failure of the German offensive at Kursk in July 1943 had seen the strategic initiative pass into Stalin’s firm grip and he was unwilling to relax his hold on an opportunity so bloodily won. In past years Soviet achievements had been followed up with overly zealous counteroffensives such as those of early 1942 and 1943 that had cost the Red Army so dear. The Soviet offensives in the wake of their victory at Kursk were certainly ambitious and on a par with previous operations, but by the summer and autumn of 1943 not only was the Red Army a much more experienced force than ever before, but it was also backed by the industrial capacity to create the machines to do the job. Germany’s Army Group South (AGS) had borne the brunt of the Soviet riposte during the second half of 1943. AGS had been driven out of eastern Ukraine, finally losing Kharkov then, with but a brief pause, was thrown back across the Dnieper River surrendering Kiev to the border of Romania and the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. The Red Army then halted.

Army Group Centre (AGC) too had been pushed back, albeit at a slower pace until it no longer posed the glimmer of a threat to Moscow. However, it enjoyed little respite and during June and July 1944 was virtually wiped out by the juggernaut that was Operation Bagration until the Red Army finally halted, leaving the Germans holding a fragile line through Warsaw and along the course of the Vistula River.

As 1944 began so did the operations that relieved Army Group North’s (AGN) pressure on Leningrad. Finland was subjected to a Soviet offensive that pushed the Finns back and forced their government to approach Moscow for terms. The Red Army was now poised for another series of operations that would break into the Baltic States, the Balkans and Hungary.

Hitler, physically and mentally battered by the failed coup attempt of 20 July (the Bomb Plot), was faced with an even more powerful Red Army to the East and a rapidly advancing Anglo-American force rolling towards the Reich’s borders from the West. The nightmare of war on two fronts for Germany was now a reality. With the Soviets spoilt for choice as to where and in what strength to attack it was a question of how to deploy ever diminishing resources to prop up the crumbling Eastern Front.

Despite the ceaseless bombing of Germany and the weight of the forces pressing from East and West, Goebbels’s propaganda ministry continued to churn out information to support the line that all was normal at home. Here a traffic policeman is checking the blackout headlamps of a civilian vehicle, another consideration alongside the chronic lack of fuel and the dangers facing motorists.

The belief that the approaching Red Army was a tide of Asiatic, Mongol warriors that would fail against a civilized, Western defence is reinforced by this image of Soviet POWs from 1944.

Reality for the USSR was somewhat more concrete. Here recently promoted (29 June 1944) Marshal of the Soviet Union K.K. Rokossovsky, commanding First Belorussian Front opposite Warsaw, considers his next move with his Chief-of Staff-General M.S. Malinin.

As the Germans withdrew and the Soviets advanced the remaining inhabitants of the devastated towns and cities were left to make the best of things.

Smiling Soviet tank troops pose for the camera following an award ceremony.

All the Germans could do was watch and wait for the inevitable next onrush.

Chapter 1

House of Cards

By the early summer of 1944 it would be difficult to describe the forces ranged against the USSR as anything other than allied in name only. When Operation Barbarossa began units of the Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak, Finnish and Croatian armed forces all participated with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Bulgaria, although allied to Germany, did not declare war on the USSR but did commit forces to operations in the Balkans involving Greece and Yugoslavia; furthermore, Bulgarian naval units fought the Soviet Black Sea Fleet.

Following the disaster at Stalingrad and the failure of the Kursk offensive, Hitler’s allies had gradually begun to distance themselves from the looming spectre of defeat. Following a coup, Italy had left Hitler’s side in 1943, and although Mussolini presided over a puppet state its forces had been withdrawn from the Eastern Front earlier that year. The Italian Army in Russia (ARMIR) had suffered almost 50 per cent casualties by early 1943, reducing it to some 150,000 men. Given its ill-equipped and severely weakened condition, this formation’s departure nevertheless left a hole in the line that Germany itself would have to fill.

Reluctant though its leader, His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary Admiral Nicholas Horthy, was, Hungary agreed to commit part of its army to the invasion of the USSR in 1941. In similar circumstances to the Italians, the Hungarian forces north of Stalingrad were virtually wiped out. From this point onwards the Hungarians were deployed in the rear areas of AGS where they were involved in security and anti-partisan activities. However, although Horthy’s government tried time and again to get their nine or so divisions returned home, Hitler always vetoed such requests. As AGS fell back towards the Carpathian Mountains the Hungarians, now reduced to three reorganized divisions, anticipated being part of the defence of their homeland. But this was not to be and they were transferred to reinforce AGC as II Reserve Corps.

During the early hours of 12 March 1944 German troops marched across the Hungarian border from the north and the south. Horthy, out of the country at a conference with Hitler, had been transformed from the leader of a virtually independent country into the Gauleiter of a Nazi fiefdom. The main reason for this action, codenamed Operation Margareta, was to deny Hungary the opportunity of continuing its overtures to the Allies regarding its exit from the war.

Unable and unwilling to fight back, Horthy accepted a more pro-German government that would ensure that Hungarian oil and munitions production would continue to supply the Reich, but prevaricated about the other terms. Inevitably, the result was a foregone conclusion, Horthy accepted the Führer’s conditions along with his demand that Hungary’s Jews be subject to deportation to the concentration camps. The Hungarian fascist party, the Arrow Cross, happily supported these measures. The Germans regarded the occupation of Hungary as complete on 24 March 1944.

Hungary was not the only German partner to be looking for a way out. Finland, never a full member of the Axis, was also desperate to sever its connection with the Reich. Indeed, following the Stalingrad defeat the Finns had conducted secret talks with various Western representatives as well as the Soviets. Stalin, increasingly frustrated with the Finns’ attitude and prevarication, concluded that military action was the only solution to this problem. Therefore, on 9 June 1944 the Leningrad Front began a two-day bombardment of Finnish positions on the Karelian Isthmus. By 18 June the Finns had been driven back to their second line of defence, the Viipuri-Kuparsaari-Taipale Line (VKT), and it was at this point that they appealed to Hitler for help. Support was rapidly forthcoming in the shape of a Luftwaffe unit and an assault gun brigade. But this aid was not without terms, Finland’s President, Risto Ryti, being obliged to guarantee that his country would not sue for a separate peace with the USSR. Ryti accepted this condition for his term of office.

On 20 June the city of Viipuri, roughly 200km west of Helsinki, was captured, threatening the right flank of the VKT Line with collapse. The Finns rushed reinforcements to the area from the units holding the line north of Lake Ladoga which resulted in the fall of the city of Petrozavodsk on 28 June. With the Finns now holding firm, the Soviet advance began to grind to a halt. Two battles effectively stopped the offensive, the first took place around the villages of Tali and Ihantala near Viipuri where lay the only good ground for an armoured attack on the VKT Line. Fighting swayed to and fro at Tali during the last week of June and Ihantala during the first week of July. Soviet attacks increased in ferocity as June drew to an end and their losses, including up to 600 tanks and some 25,000 men, mounted. German armoured and aerial support along with excellent Finnish artillery support enabled the defenders to hold on for long enough to sap the Soviets’ energy. The Battle of Ilomontsi (26 July–13 August), a village north of Lake Ladoga, finally convinced Stavka to call a halt.

It was the only occasion on which the Red Army reached the old 1940 border. In this densely forested wilderness the Soviets were outfought by the Finns, whose forces first isolated enemy units by cutting their supply lines and then defeated them in detail. Two Soviet divisions were thus lost and operations in this area suspended. Already on 10 July Stalin had ordered the attacks in Karelia to halt and for the men there to assume a defensive posture. As this was undertaken the best units were transferred to Estonia for the attack on AGN’s positions around Narva.

The resignation of President Ryti on 4 August cleared the way for Finland to approach the USSR for peace. An armistice was signed on 19 September 1944 under the terms of which the Finns were obliged to drive the Germans out of Lapland. When the armistice was signed the German Twentieth Army began to withdraw into Norway as planned earlier that year. Operation Birke (Birch) and Operation Nordlicht (Northern Light), which directed the German retreat, were completed by January 1945 and signalled that Hitler’s Arctic ambitions were over. Norwegian troops were shipped to Murmansk in November 1944 to liaise with the Red Army. From there they moved into the Norwegian border region of Finnmark to supervise its liberation, which was declared on 26 April 1945.

At the other extreme of the Eastern Front, the situation in Romania looked extremely dangerous for the Reich in June 1944. Defeated at the Battle of Targu Frumos, the Soviet advance into Romania halted. Romania’s head of state, Marshal Ion Antonescu, had been offered an armistice by the Soviets which he had rejected. Anticipating such an offer and its being accepted, German forces in the region had formulated a plan to take control of Romania that was so similar to Operation Margareta undertaken earlier that year in Hungary that it was codenamed Operation Margareta II. However, Hitler, reassured at a meeting with Antonescu on 5 August 1944 that his country would fight on (and continue to supply Germany with huge amounts of vital oil), did not imagine that such a scenario was likely. Consequently, Operation Margareta II was not carried out.

The line from the Carpathian Mountains to the Black Sea