To effect a real change in the dire German situation, at about the same time Zeitzler proposed, and Model supported, a much more daring plan, in effect a replay of Manstein’s backhand blow of 1943 that would have units from Army Group North strike south into the exposed Soviet flanks. Since the necessary forces for the attack could be assembled only through a withdrawal of Army Group North behind the line of the Dvina, thus abandoning Estonia and Latvia, which Hitler categorically refused to do, yet another in a long series of leadership crises was touched off. In one of the most turbulent scenes of the war, Zeitzler confronted Hitler on 30 June at the Berghof, where he told him point-blank that he had twice been forced to make fateful decisions against his convictions (Stalingrad and the Crimea) but that it would not happen a third time. Zeitzler also declared the war lost militarily and offered his resignation, after which he simply disappeared from the Berghof and suffered a nervous breakdown. Hitler, already contemptuous of what he saw as the defeatism of the General Staff, never spoke to Zeitzler again. He did not, in fact, even bother to replace him until 21 July, the day after the attempt on his life, when Guderian, who had proved his loyalty during the coup attempt and, in any case, had long made no secret of his contempt for the leadership of the Ostheer, was appointed to the position. Although the Führer’s comments in the days before he departed the Berghof for the last time on 14 July left some of his intimates under the impression that he had no illusions about the outcome of the war, they made it equally clear that he would not capitulate. There would be no repeat of 1918; his strength of will—or obstinate refusal to face reality—remained intact.20
In the meantime, despite their losses, the Soviets pressed on past Minsk to the west, on 8 July encircling Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, which fell on the thirteenth, although the Germans managed to extract most of the four thousand defenders of yet another of Hitler’s fortified places. The next day, as the Germans had long expected, Soviet forces under Konev burst out of Kovel and, by the eighteenth, had linked up with armored spearheads from Rokossovsky’s units on the Bug River thirty miles west of Lvov. This time, however, Soviet success proved less directly threatening since Army Group Center had already been pushed out of its exposed position to the north. In addition, much to the OKH’s relief, enemy forces pushed straight west toward the Vistula rather than turn northwest to Warsaw. Within a week, Brest-Litovsk, the scene of such hard fighting in 1941 and the cornerstone of Army Group Center’s defense in the south, was surrounded, falling to the hard-charging Soviets on the twenty-sixth, as over the next few days did Lvov, Lublin, and Kaunas. In celebration of the destruction of Army Group Center, Stalin had already on the seventeenth paraded over fifty-five thousand haggard German prisoners through the streets of Moscow, an action, ironically, that had allowed many of them to survive, but perhaps even he had been astounded at the extent of Russian success. On 27 July, Soviet forces, as the Germans had long feared, finally turned north toward Warsaw. By 1 August, Russian spearheads had reached Praga, a suburb of Warsaw east of the Vistula and, more threateningly, breached the river and established a bridgehead on the west bank at Magnuszew, fifty miles to the south. Further, unable to close the gap with its southern neighbor, and forbidden to retreat—Hitler wanted to hold on to the Baltic coast to give Doenitz time to develop new submarines—Army Group North found itself cut off in the Baltic. North and east of the Vistula at Warsaw, the Germans seemingly had no organized forces to oppose the enemy advance.21
By now, however, logistic and supply problems as well as the considerable decimation of enemy tank forces combined to slow the momentum of the Soviet attack. Still, the Russians showed every intention of taking Warsaw, a vital German transportation and supply center, on the run and advancing down the Vistula to cut off German forces to the east. Model, however, capable and energetic in a crisis as always, had one last surprise. The continual shortening of the front caused by the Russian push west allowed him to shift the Fourth and Nineteenth Panzer Divisions, along with the SS Panzer Division Viking and the newly arrived Panzer Division Hermann Goering, into position for a counterstrike. With a total of 223 battle tanks (109 Pz IVs and 114 Pz Vs) as well as a handful of assault guns and tank destroyers, this was a surprisingly strong German force at this stage of the Russian offensive, although, in numbers, it was again dwarfed by the 810 armored vehicles of the Soviet Second Tank Army. Model’s operational plan envisioned a pincer attack by the Nineteenth Panzer from the west and SS Viking from the east on Okuniew, just twelve miles east of Warsaw, in order to cut off the Soviet Third Tank Corps, which had advanced far to the north. This would be followed by a concentric attack of all four German tank divisions on the encircled corps with the aim of destroying it.22
In their rush toward Warsaw and the north, the Soviets had neglected elementary precautions, such as basic reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, flank protection, and the provision of supply lines, so, when it came on 1 August, Model’s attack took the enemy completely by surprise. Over the next four days, in fighting so savage that the noise of battle could be heard in Warsaw, itself now the scene of bitter street fighting, the Germans largely crushed the Third Tank Corps and dealt a sharp blow to the other formations of the Soviet Second Tank Army. Its units suffered such severe losses—on 5 August it had only 263 of its original 810 tanks and assault guns left—that it had to be pulled off the line. Still, Model proved unable completely to destroy the enemy, for, on the fourth and fifth, first the Nineteenth Panzer and then the Hermann Goering Panzer Division had to be withdrawn from the battle and sent to contest the Soviet bridgehead across the Vistula at Magnuszew. Although overshadowed in historical literature by other important events at the same time (the Warsaw Uprising of the Polish Home Army and, the day before, the American breakout from the Cotentin Peninsula at Avranches), this tank battle in front of Warsaw was, perhaps, the key operational turning point on the eastern front in 1944. It allowed the Germans finally to stabilize a defensive line, avoid the encirclement of their remaining forces to the east, and prevent the Soviets from overrunning East Prussia.23
The battle also sheds some light on the controversy surrounding Stalin’s response to the Warsaw Uprising. Despite later denials, the Russians almost certainly meant to take Warsaw on the run as their forces swept north and west along the Vistula. Model’s counterattack, however, had the unintended effect of dooming the Polish uprising, for, after weeks of unbroken fighting, the Soviets had outrun their supply capabilities and passed the culmination point of the offensive. The Poles, hoping to liberate their capital just before the Russians arrived, had assumed, at most, a few days’ combat against the German occupiers, followed by the entry of the Red Army into the city. Instead, the uprising lasted sixty-three agonizing days, during which the Soviets at first were unable and then unwilling to help the besieged Poles, even as the Germans destroyed their capital around them.24
Despite the success at Warsaw, however, from the German point of view the situation could hardly have been worse. To further compound the grim news in the east, American forces had at the end of July broken out from the Cotentin Peninsula and, after repelling a senseless German counterattack at Mortain, destroyed large numbers of the enemy at Falaise, followed by a swift advance across France. Having recklessly reduced German strength in the east in order to strike a decisive blow in the west, Hitler had now suffered fatal blows in both areas. Even with American forces poised to race across France, the Führer now reversed himself and declared the eastern front once again to be the area of vital concern. As with most of his decisions in the summer of 1944, it came too late. Still, the Germans could take some comfort in the fact that they had managed finally to build a stable front and that, even though the Soviet offensive had been a spectacular operational success, it had not, at the end of the day, knocked them from the war. Hitler, grasping at the thinnest of straws, even posed the question at the end of July as to whether the situation was all that bad. Amazingly, since his desire for Lebensraum had been a prime reason for the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Führer could now state, “If the territory that we now possess can be held, that is an area that will enable us to live, and we don’t have this giant rear area.”25