However, the situation outside of Siedlce was more complicated. On July 24, General Krjukov’s rapid response forces approached the city. Seizing Siedlce and cutting off the road between Warsaw and Brest was a vital component of the plan to encircle the German 2nd Army. The defeated VI11 Army-Corps’ retreat in an easterly direction towards Biała Podlaska, suited Soviet plans “hand in glove.” Soon, however, the 11 th Tank Corps’ frontline troops were subjected to heavy attack from the Luftwaffe. Aircraft from the German 6th Luftflotte carried out concentrated carpet and dive-bombing attacks on the stretched-out mechanised columns. General Weiß made the decision to try and hold Siedlce at any price. He gave the order to call in the 3rd SS-Panzer-Division “Totenkopf ” and the 5th SS-Panzer-Division “Wiking,” which until then had been fighting north of Brest, in preparation for the battle. Transporting the whole of both divisions at such short notice was an impossibility (as late as July 17 the forces of the 3rd SS-Panzer-Division “Totenkopf” had been defending the isolated Grodno area), and therefore an improvised Kamfgruppe was sent south. The 5th SS-Panzer-division “Wiking” — for example — was split up with support from the grenadier regiment. And while Kamfgruppe “Westland” (SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 “Westland”, the 1st Battalion from SS-Panzer-Regiment 5 and elements of the SS-Panzer-Artillery-Regiment 5) remained at the north front in the vicinity of the Bug River, other units began to slowly wend their way south. Holding the overland road toward Siedlce was a key concern for the 2nd Army’s right flank, because on July 22 the Soviet 65th and 28th Armies had reached the Bug River close by Siemiatycze. This meant that now the defenders of Brest — the XX Army-Corps and the VIII Arm-Corps, who had also been transported there — could only retreat to the west through Siedlce and the nearby Sokołow Podlaski.
Now that troops from Heeresgruppe “Mitte” and those from “Nord Ukraine” had been isolated from one another, OKH made the decision to redraw the operational boundaries for the armies fighting at the front. The 4th Panzer-Army received orders to hold the line along the Wisła south of Radom, while operational responsibility for the terrain north of this town fell on the shoulders of Heeresgruppe “Mitte.” In this way the VIII Army-Corps came to be incorporated into the 2nd Army. However, this army did not have sufficient troops to man the Warsaw defence line. The army command, with a great deal of difficulty, managed to organise the defence of Siedlce with its rearguard troops, but any chance of sending troops 70 km west towards Warsaw was out of the question! For this reason OKH handed over responsibility for the defence of the Wisła River’s central portion and of Warsaw to the reorganized 9th Army. General Nicolaus von Vormann, who had command of this army, received orders to hold the front from Pulawy to Minsk Mazowiecki, where his left flank would establish contact with General Weiß’s forces.
General von Vormann was an experienced commander, but it seemed that the mission he had been handed was impossible to carry out. On July 25, when he reported to Heeresgruppe “Mitte” that his staff had taken up their duties, there was not a single German division between Puławy and Siedlce. The road to Warsaw, as with the frontline along the Wisła north of Dęblin, was not manned by even a single German soldier. To plug this enormous gap, OKH earmarked the 9th Army Parachute-Panzer-Division “Hermann Göring” which was still on route via rail from Italy, plus the 17th and the 73rd Infantry-Divisions as well as the 174th Ersatz-Division. The Ersatz-Division had, up to this point, been engaged with carrying out missions in the occupied General-government, so that it could, in principle, be directly sent into battle between Dęblin and Puławy. Immediately following which, it could then be supported by the 17th Infantry-Division. Meanwhile, the 73rd Infantry-Division together with Parachute-Panzer-Division “Herman Göring” were despatched to Warsaw’s outskirts. The 60 kilometres that separated these two forces stood, for all practical purposes, completely undefended.
The following four pictures show Panther tanks from the 1st Panzer-Regiment 35, 4th Panzer-Division, July 1944 east of Warsaw in the war zone.
On July 25, the 2nd Tank Army’s frontline troops reached the Wisła having taken Dęblin and Puławy. An attempt to cross the river failed due to the determined resistance of the 174th Ersatz-Division. While awaiting the arrival of larger infantry units, General Radzjijevskij had held a part of the 16th Armoured Corps there, but gave the 3rd Armoured Corps and the 8th Armoured Guards Corps the mission of continuing attacks along the Wisła in a northerly direction. On July 26, Soviet tanks set off at speed towards Garwolin. Following with them was the 8th Army’s Infantry Guards Corps. This was the 1st Polish Army — renamed on July 27, the 1st Polish Volunteer Army — which had the mission of manning the frontline outside Dęblin.
At the same time that the two armoured corps from 2nd Tank Army pressed on, without pause, towards Garwolin, the battle for Brest in the east was being decided. The Germans, making use of components out of the 102nd Infantry-Division and the 3rd SS-Panzer-Division “Totenkopf,” succeeded in manning Siedlce in time and General Krjukov’s rapid response force’s first attack on the city on July 24 was thrown back in bloody fighting. In short, the 11th Tank Corps and the 2nd Cavalry Brigade Corps got tied down in intense fighting and were not able to defeat the enemy by themselves, who had rather unexpectedly and in significant force made use of air attacks. As a result, the attackers were forced to await the arrival of the 47th Army. General Weiß had been successful in holding on to Siedlce, but the situation outside Brest by the Bug River had become critical. With the Soviet 28th Army having reached the Bug River near Siemiatycze, the city’s garrison — the XX and the VIII Army Corps — was now under threat of encirclement. Sometime on or about July 23, the commander of the 2nd Army ordered both corps to leave the city, and in all haste make towards Siedlce and Sokołów (at this time, the VIII Army-Corps was about to be split up: both units were actually already under the command of the XX Army-Corps’ staff). A consequence of this sizable German retreat towards the west was that it worked to enhance the German troop strength protecting the Siedlce road. Brest itself was defended by the weakened Tactical Group “E” under the command of General Felzmann. This group had been built up from the bones of 203rd Sicherungs-Division.
The Commandant for the installation was General Scheller.