Vistula-Oder Offensive

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Vistula-Oder Operation
Part of Soviet-German War, World War II
WWII Eastern Front during the 1945 Vistula-Oder offensive
Date 12 January - 2 February 1945 Location Poland and Historical Eastern Germany Result Soviet Victory
Combatants
Wehrmacht i.e. Army Group A renamed Army Group Centre	Red Army i.e. the First Belorussian Front and the First Ukrainian Front
Commanders
Ferdinand Schörner Josef Harpe	Georgy Zhukov, Ivan Koniev
Strength
450,000[1]	2,203,000 troops
Casualties
the Soviets claimed 295,000 enemy killed and 86,000 enemy captured[citation needed]	43,476 killed and missing; 150,717 medical; 194,191 total (Krivosheev)[citation needed]
Note: Apart from the Vistula-Oder offensive, the map also shows the East Prussian operation, Silezian Operation, the East Pomeranian Operation, and the battles in Courland. See here for an accurate map

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 Footnotes 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Background

In the wake of the successful operation Bagration the 1st Belorussian Front managed to secure two bridgeheads West of the Vistula river between 27 July and 4 August 1944.^[2]The Soviets remained inactive during the failed Warsaw uprising that started on August 1, 1944, though their frontline was not far from the insurgents. The 1st Ukrainian Front captured an additional large bridgehead at Sandomierz during the Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive.^[3]

Preceding the offensive, the Soviets had built up large numbers of material, and manpower, concentrated in the three bridgeheads. 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.

[edit] Opposing forces

Eastern Front
Barbarossa – Baltic Sea – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – 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 – Belorussia – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans – Hungary – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague

[edit] 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 ^[4]

• 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

[edit] 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^[5]. The group had a total of 400,000 troops, 4,100 artillery pieces, 1,150 tanks ^[6]. Army Group A was led by Colonel General Josef Harpe who was replaced by Colonel General Ferdinand Schörner on 20 January ^[7].

North of the Warsaw the Vistula turns from a northwards direction to flow eastwards before flowing north-east to the Baltic. The Vistula turns where the Western Bug tributary joins it, and at this point the front left the Vistula to follow 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. ^[8]

The Germans had their two defence lines close to each other and close to the front. ^[9]

[edit] Operation details

The offensive was launched on 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 Pulawy and Magnuszwew bridgeheads north of Koniev's forces. ^[10]The Soviet artillery attacks that preceded the armored and infantry assaults were very effective due the fact that the Germans had their two main defence lines within the reach of the Soviet artillery.^[11]

One of the strategies of defense that Hitler had ordered was "fortified cities", some of which, like Breslau held out for 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 weapons 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 was 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.

[edit] Looting, atrocities and the flight of ethnic Germans

According to Anthony Beevor the soldiers of the Red Army looted and committed many atrocities, like rape and murder. Beevor mentioned as reasons for the atrocities, 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 toward the Germany military and these encouragements may have unintentionally led to atrocities on German civilians in Germany. As a result of the Soviet atrocities that were widely published by the German propaganda, millions of ethnic Germans fled to the West.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ Duffy pages 51, 59
2. ^ Duffy, 11
3. ^ Duffy, 12
4. ^ Duffy References pages 24, 25
5. ^ Web map copy of Ziemke References page 26
6. ^ Ziemke page 23
7. ^ Duffy page ?
8. ^ Duffy page 51, 59
9. ^ Duffy, page ?
10. ^ Duffy, pages 71-73
11. ^ Duffy, page?

[edit] References

• Beevor, Antony. Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2002, ISBN 0-670-88695-5
• 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 0-415-22829-8
• Ziemke, Earl F Battle for Berlin end of the Third Reich

[edit] External links

• Operation Sonnenwende: Savior of Berlin? See Sonnenwende
• Combat service and logistic support in the Vistula-Oder strategic offensive operation