Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1943-1945: Red Steamroller

In early January 1945, Hitler mandated that AOK 6 would mount a relief operation to rescue the trapped forces in Budapest, which included the 13.Panzer-Division, Panzergrenadier-Division Feldherrnhalle and Hungarian 1st Armoured Division. Operation Konrad was hastily organized, with the IV SS-Panzerkorps (Totenkopf and Wiking) making two efforts to break through to the city but failing. Even with the addition of the 23.Panzer-Division and King Tigers from the s.Pz.Abt.503, the third attack also failed. A small number of troops escaped the city in a breakout effort, but the rest of the garrison surrendered on 13 February. The quality of German replacements dropped off sharply by late 1944, as youths were conscripted to replace combat veterans. Even the Waffen-SS was scraping the bottom of the barrel: 16-year-old Gunter Grass was conscripted in autumn 1944 and sent to join the SS-Frundsberg division in Silesia in early 1945. Grass was assigned to a unit with three Jagdpanthers but was given no training and panicked in his first taste of combat.⁵⁰ Even as Germany deployed its best tanks and tank destroyers in the final hours of the war, it had few competent troops left to operate them.

Meanwhile, the German forces defending the Vistula were out-numbered 6–1 in armour, 5–1 in personnel and 8–1 in artillery. Indeed, the German defence in central Poland was little more than a reinforced screen. Zhukov and the Stavka spent months planning the Vistula-Oder operation and it was the best Soviet set-piece offensive of the war. Zhukov decided to use the Magnuszew and Pulawy bridgeheads as the springboards for the 1st Byelorussian Front’s attack on the rebuilt AOK 9. He brought up Katukov’s 1 GTA and Bogdanov’s 2 GTA to serve as his exploitation forces. The offensive began on the morning of 14 January 1945 with an artillery preparation that shattered two frontline Volksgrenadier-Divisionen and Zhukov’s troops advanced 20km on the first day. The AOK 9 committed its mobile reserve – the 19. and 25.Panzer-Divisionen from XXXX Panzerkorps – but their counter-attacks were too puny and uncoordinated. Zhukov committed Bogdanov’s armour on the second day of the operation and it created a broad wedge in AOK 9’s front. After four days of fighting, the German front broke wide open and Warsaw was occupied. In less than three weeks, Zhukov’s forces shattered Heeresgruppe Mitte and Heeresgruppe A and advanced 500km to the Oder River. Soviet losses were relatively light, but Soviet logistics were still inadequate despite the influx of large numbers of American-made trucks.

In March 1945, the Germans mounted their last offensive in the East near Lake Balaton, south of Budapest with the 6.SS-Panzerarmee, transferred from the West. Guderian wanted to use this armour to stabilize the main front in the east, but Hitler was focused on recovering ground in Hungary. Operation Frühlingserwachen (Spring Awakening) employed virtually all the Waffen-SS Panzer-Divisionen (LSSAH, Das Reich, Totenkopf, Wiking, Hohenstauffen and Hitler Jugend), elements of four Heer Panzer-Divisionen (1, 3, 6, 23) and two King Tiger battalions against Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukraininan Front on 6 March. This operation saw the last major concentration of German armour, with almost 500 tanks (including 249 Panthers and 72 King Tigers) and 173 assault guns. After a brief initial period of success that achieved a 30km advance in two days, the offensive bogged down and was called off after 10 days. German material losses were crippling in this last offensive, leaving the panzer units involved in woeful state by mid-March.