Russia at war 1941-1945

position is when a very broad front has to be defended after temporary loss of the initiative. It is General Eisenhower's great desire and need to know in outline what you plan to do... [Can we] count on a major Russian offensive on the Vistula front, or elsewhere, during January?... I regard the matter as urgent

On the next day Stalin replied that it was "very important to make use of our superiority in artillery and aircraft", for which clear weather was essential—and the weather prospects were bad—but "in view of the position of our allies on the Western Front, Headquarters of the [Soviet] Supreme Command has decided to complete the

preparations at a forced pace and, disregarding the weather, to launch wide-scale

offensive operations against the Germans all along the Central Front not later than the second half of January."

On January 9, Churchill replied with overwhelming gratitude:

"I am most grateful to you for your thrilling message. I have sent it over to General Eisenhower for his eyes only. May all good fortune rest upon your noble venture.

The news you give me will be a great encouragement to General Eisenhower

because... German reinforcements will have to be split."

The Russian offensive was duly launched on the 12th—even earlier than Stalin had

promised: five days later, Churchill cabled to Stalin thanking him "from the bottom of his heart" and congratulating him on "the immense assault you have launched upon the Eastern Front."

Later, in February, in an Order of the Day, Stalin claimed that the Russian offensive had undoubtedly saved the situation in the West: "The first consequence of our winter offensive was to thwart the German winter offensive in the West, which aimed at the

seizure of Belgium and Alsace, and enable the armies of our allies, in their turn, to launch an offensive against the Germans."

Churchill, while quoting some of this correspondence, gives it rather less dramatic

significance. He describes it, nevertheless, as "a good example of the speed at which business could be done at the summit of the alliance." Also, "it was a fine deed of the Russians and their chief to hasten this vast offensive, no doubt at heavy cost in life.

Eisenhower was very pleased indeed."

[Churchill, op. cit., vol. VI, p. 244. On the other hand, Chester Wilmot, in describing the military events in the West in December 1944-January 1945 in The Struggle for Europe greatly minimises the effect of the Russian offensive on the situation on the Western Front.]

On January 14, two days after Konev's thrust from the Sandomierz bridgehead, the 1st Belorussian Front under Marshal Zhukov (Chief of Staff, General Malinin) struck out

from their two bridgeheads south of Warsaw, and from another one to the north. After surrounding Warsaw, the two groups entered the Polish capital (or rather, its ruins) on the 17th. Units of the Polish Army took part in this operation.

The timing of the Russian offensive on the middle Vistula appears to have come as a

surprise to the German High Command. True, an eventual Russian thrust in the "Warsaw-Berlin direction" was to be expected, and the Germans had built seven defence lines between the Vistula and the Oder. But in January they expected that, before attacking here, the Russians would try to destroy the thirty German divisions trapped in Courland and also strike their heaviest blow in Hungary. The concentration of German forces along the middle Vistula was therefore not as great as it might have been. The enormous

superiority the Russians achieved in this "sector of the main blow" may be gauged from the following figures quoted by the Soviet History.

The 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts had 163 divisions, 32,143 guns and

mortars, 6,460 tanks and mobile guns and 4,772 aircraft. The total effectives were 2,200,000 men. Thus we had in the Warsaw-Berlin direction [at the beginning of the offensive] 5.5 times more men than the enemy, 7.8 times more guns, 5.7 times more tanks, and 17.6 times more planes.