Leaving Warsaw (FLAME THROWING T-34 in pursuit) Ausland-Tonwoche Nr 700 Jan. 1945

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Episode 244

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Ausland-Tonwoche

Nr. 700, Jan. 1945

printing, hairdressing salon.

Before the end of December ominous reports were received by Guderian—who, in this desperately late period of the war, had been made chief of the German general staff. German Army intelligence reported that 225 Soviet infantry divisions and 22 armored corps had been identified on the front between the Baltic and the Carpathians, assembled to attack. But when Guderian presented the report of these massive Soviet offensive preparations, Hitler refused to believe it, exclaiming: “It’s the biggest imposture since Genghis Khan! Who is responsible for producing all this rubbish?”

If Hitler had been willing to stop the Ardennes counteroffensive in the west, troops could have been transferred to the Eastern Front; but he refused to do so. At the same time he refused Guderian’s renewed request that the 30 German divisions now isolated in Courland (on the Baltic seacoast in Lithuania) should be evacuated by sea and brought back to reinforce the gateways into Germany. As a consequence, Guderian was left with a mobile reserve of only 12 armored divisions to back up the 50 weak infantry divisions stretched out over the 700 miles of the main front.

The Soviet offensive opened on January 12, 1945, when Konev’s armies were launched against the German front in southern Poland, starting from their bridgehead over the Vistula River near Sandomierz. After it had pierced the German defense and produced a flanking menace to the central sector, Zhukov’s armies in the centre of the front bounded forward from their bridgeheads nearer Warsaw. That same day, January 14, Rokossovsky’s armies also joined in the offensive, striking from the Narew River north of Warsaw and breaking through the defenses covering this flank approach to East Prussia. The breach in the German front was now 200 miles wide.

On January 17, 1945, Warsaw was captured by Zhukov, after it had been surrounded; and on January 19 his armoured spearheads drove into Łódź. That same day Konev’s spearheads reached the Silesian frontier of prewar Germany. Thus, at the end of the first week the offensive had been carried 100 miles deep and was 400 miles wide—far too wide to be filled by such scanty reinforcements as were belatedly provided.