Russia at war 1941-1945

Committee, the setting up of a "respectable" (i.e. pro-Western) German Government, with the British and Americans now firmly established on the Continent, might have

created a situation which would almost certainly have turned out detrimental to Russia.

There was nothing the Red Army wanted more at this stage than to "finish off the fascist beast in his lair".

This did not prevent them from letting, or even encouraging, Field-Marshal Paulus (who had kept silent until then) publish a statement calling on the German people to "change the State leadership". The wide use made of this statement in leaflets showered over the enemy lines was intended to demoralise the German soldiers, even though the results of similar attempts in the past had been disappointing, especially if measured by the number of Germans voluntarily surrendering to the Red Army.

Chapter VII GERMAN ROUT IN BELORUSSIA: "WORSE

THAN STALINGRAD"

The great Russian summer offensive started a little over a fortnight after D-Day in the West, and, somewhat symbolically, on June 23, the day after the third anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The rôles had now been completely reversed. In

the last two years, despite extremely heavy losses in both men and equipment, the

Russians had gone on building up a tremendously effective, competent and powerfully

equipped army, while Germany's reserves in manpower were now in constant decline.

[Some very interesting percentage figures are published in Vol. V of the Soviet History, showing that between Stalingrad and the end of the war the Russians increased only slightly the number of soldiers in their Army, but increased enormously the quantity of equipment. (IVOVSS, Vol. V, p. 467).

The following table illustrates this point admirably:

Guns and

Date

Effectives

Tanks Aircraft

Mortars

Nov. 19,

100

100

100

100

1942

Jan. 1, 1944

111

180

133

200

Jan. 1 .1945

112

217

250

343

The increase in the number of trucks must have been greater still.]

Whereas the Soviet Union now had her British and American allies fighting a major

campaign in France, and tying down (according to Russian estimates) thirty percent of Germany's combat troops, the troops of all Hitler's remaining allies were becoming more and more unreliable and their governments were hoping to get out of the war at the first convenient opportunity. It is ironical that one of the reasons why Hitler was determined to cling on to the Vitebsk-Mogilev-Bobruisk Line at the east end of the great

"Belorussian Bulge" penetrating deep into Russia was that its loss would have a demoralising effect on the Finns who, since the loss of the Karelian Isthmus and Viipuri earlier in the month, were sorely tempted to resume their armistice talks with the

Russians.

Field-Marshal von Busch, the commander of Army-Group Mitte which occupied

Belorussia, had been pleading with Hitler to pull out of Belorussia, or at least to "shorten the line". All that Hitler did, after five days of inevitable German defeats, was to sack von Busch and replace him by Field-Marshal Model, one of the losers of the Battle of Kursk.

The Russian offensive began in the best possible conditions. For one thing, until the very last days of the May-June lull, the Germans had expected the next big Russian blow to fall, not in Belorussia, but in the southern part of the front, between the Pripet Marshes and the Black Sea. The Russian concentration of no fewer than 166 divisions in

Belorussia had been done with the utmost secrecy and discretion, and when the blow fell the Germans were taken almost completely by surprise.

[This is the Russian figure; the Germans speak of " 140 rifle divisions, plus forty-three panzer and mechanised formations {Verbände)" (Philippi and Heim, op. cit., p. 247).]

The campaign, starting along a 450-mile front (which was to extend later to over 600

miles) was conducted by four fronts:

1st Baltic Front under General Bagramian,

3rd Belorussian Front under General Cherniakhovsky,

1st Belorussian Front under General Rokossovsky,

2nd Belorussian Front under General Zakharov.

The first two were under the general command of Marshal Vassilevsky and the last two under that of Marshal Zhukov.

The Russians made no secret of the fact that this was, in a sense, their revenge for 1941

and that it was they who now had enormous superiority over the Germans, with 166

divisions (including reserves) in Belorussia, 31,000 guns and mortars, 5,200 tanks and self-propelled guns, and at least 6,000 planes. Their superiority over the Germans was: 2

to 1 in men; 2.9 to 1 in guns and mortars; 4.3 to 1 in tanks; and 4.5 to 1 in planes.