Although, in retrospect, an assault west from Warsaw toward Berlin appeared most favorable for a rapid and relatively bloodless victory, the planners at the Stavka seem to have arrived at this option only gradually. By late October 1944, the outlines of what became the Vistula-Oder operation had been hammered out. While Soviet forces would continue to attack in Hungary to draw off German reserves, preparations would be made for the main thrust, with the goal nothing less than a daring dash to Berlin that would end the war. This, however, required a considerable logistic effort to supply the massive forces involved, which, in turn, necessitated a rebuilding of the Polish railroad system. As a result, and much to Stalin’s displeasure, the Red Army was forced to go on the defensive to prepare for what was expected to be the last offensive of the war. As finally developed, the Stavka plan envisioned a complicated two-pronged attack. In the north, the Second and Third Belorussian Fronts would assault East Prussia in a virtual replica of the disastrous August 1914 campaign, with the intention of isolating and destroying Army Group Center. The main attack, however, would be directed at the dangerously weak Army Group A on the middle Vistula. To the south, Konev’s First Ukrainian Front would launch its assault from the Sandomierz bridgehead and advance toward Breslau. The next day, Zhukov’s First Belorussian Front would unleash the main offensive from the Magnuszew bridgehead in the direction of Lodz and Posen. Both aimed through irresistible power and a rapid tempo to destroy the enemy in front of them and then strike into the heart of the Reich, ending the war in about a forty-five-day campaign. As usual, the Soviets assembled an overwhelming force for the winter offensive. Together, the First Belorussian Front under Zhukov, who had been given the honor of commanding the main thrust to Berlin, and the First Ukrainian Front under Konev had over 2.2 million troops, some seven thousand tanks, and five thousand aircraft. At the same time, the Second and Third Belorussian Fronts together possessed 1.67 million men, thirty-five hundred tanks, and fifteen hundred aircraft. In order to force a breakthrough as quickly as possible, at the point of attack in the bridgeheads the Soviets had amassed a numerical superiority of men, tanks, and artillery of ten to one.5
Although Guderian at the OKH, Gehlen at Foreign Armies East, and the army group commanders all anticipated the Soviet offensive—and even got the approximate date right—they expected a reprise of Bagration and, thus, had strengthened the German flanks at the expense of the center. Their response was also hindered by Hitler’s failure to take intelligence reports of growing enemy strength and activity seriously and, thus, to allow Army Groups A and Center to withdraw to more defensible positions as well as his decision to deploy most of the Wehrmacht’s scarce reserves to Hungary. Typically, as late as 9 January, the Führer not only refused to believe intelligence estimates of Soviet strength, claiming that they had to be inflated, but also even rambled on about the folly of giving ground in Russia in the first place. Although Guderian warned him that the Ostfront was like “a house of cards”—“if the front is broken through at one point, all the rest will collapse”—he had no convincing response. His reply that “the Eastern Front must help itself and make do with what it’s got” was dismissed derisively by Guderian as an “ostrich strategy.” Even on the tactical level, the Führer’s obsession with holding ground undermined the planned German defense in depth. At his insistence, the second and main defensive positions had been built within a few thousand meters of the forward lines, which made them vulnerable to Soviet artillery and, thus, negated the whole German strategy. In addition, German commanders down to the company level, under threat of punishment, could leave their positions only if given explicit orders from their divisions, which, in practice, meant approval from Hitler, again undermining the idea of a flexible defense. Finally, in order to prevent their movement from being disrupted by enemy air attack, many German mobile divisions had been deployed far forward. Not only did they have less room to maneuver, then, but they also would quickly get caught up in the main attack, thus limiting their assigned role of pinching off enemy breakthroughs.6
When forward units of the First Ukrainian Front launched their attack in the early morning hours of 12 January, their commander, Marshal Ivan Konev, had taken steps to further negate the German defense in depth. Following an intense twenty-five-minute artillery bombardment, his troops in the Sandomierz bridgehead pushed into the first German position and in some cases the second, then halted before the main battle line, which was then subjected to a shelling lasting well over an hour and a half. Only after destroying up to a quarter of the strength of the defending battalions did the Russians storm ahead behind a rolling barrage. The effect was devastating. As Guderian had predicted, the Ostheer proved unable to withstand the enemy onslaught. Within hours, the Soviets had penetrated up to twelve miles through the German defenses. The speed of the enemy advance swept the German mobile reserve in this area, the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Panzer Divisions, almost immediately into the heat of battle, forcing them to fight for their lives rather than launch a counterattack. By the end of the day, Konev’s forces had blasted a hole in German defenses over twenty-five miles wide and twelve miles deep. By the end of the second day, the penetration was thirty-six miles wide and twenty-four miles deep, while, on the sixteenth, the Soviets seized the cities of Radom and Czestochowa. Having achieved an operational breakthrough, Konev’s troops raced to the west, sweeping aside or surrounding the remnants of the German defenders.7
Having achieved immediate success in the first phase of a staggered operation designed to hinder any movement of German forces opposite the main attack in the center, Soviet troops of Cherniakhovsky’s Third Belorussian Front launched their offensive on the thirteenth. Striking against the Third Panzer Army of Army Group Center, they aimed to advance from the eastern border of East Prussia in the direction of Königsberg. Although effective German defense turned the attack into a prolonged penetration rather than a breakthrough, Soviet pressure nonetheless forced the German defenders back. Despite this momentary German success, the situation of Army Group Center began quickly to deteriorate, for the next day, 14 January, Rokossovsky’s Second Belorussian Front attacked the Second Army out of its Serock and Rozan bridgeheads across the Narew just north of Warsaw. Quickly penetrating German defenses, Rokossovsky unleashed his mobile forces into the German rear. Soviet tank units swiftly overwhelmed the Seventh Panzer Division, the only formidable German mobile reserve in the area, forcing it to fight its way back to the west. Although Guderian that same day was already warning of an “extraordinarily serious situation,” Hitler, as well as the army group commanders, seemed to have only belatedly realized the approaching catastrophe. On the thirteenth, the Führer had ordered two infantry divisions transferred from the west but refused to move the Fourth SS Panzer Corps out of Hungary and, incredibly, two days later directed that the Sixth SS Panzer Army be sent from the Ardennes to the east, but to Hungary, not Poland. On the fourteenth, with the situation of Army Group A nearing the critical point and the danger to Upper Silesia acute, Hitler ordered Army Group Center to transfer Panzer Corps Grossdeutschland and its two powerful divisions, Brandenburg and Hermann Goering, to its neighbor to the south, a decision that hurt the former more than it helped the latter. The result was immediately apparent; by 16 January, the Third Panzer Army neared the breaking point, and the Fourth Army faced encirclement, while, on the eighteenth, the Second Army’s front snapped. The Soviets seemed well on their way to achieving their goal of isolating East Prussia and finally destroying their old nemesis, Army Group Center.8