It is clear that 1941 was the crucial year of the war because of the failure of the German offensive in the Soviet Union and the entry of the United States into the conflict. But it was in 1942 that the war began to turn against the Axis, not only in the Pacific, but in the Soviet Union as well. Yet during much of the year, Germany again held the initiative on the plains of Russia and seemed poised for the knockout blow that had eluded the Wehrmacht in 1941. This success proved to be a prelude to disaster, however, and the Germans were in full retreat before the end of the year. They were still strong enough to challenge again in 1943, but their last bid for supremacy ended with their failures in the epic Battle of Kursk in July. After that, Germany's defeat became a virtual certainty.
NEW GERMAN GOALS IN THE USSR
In the USSR, the Soviet winter counteroffensive bogged down in February 1942, and the Germans were able to recover from the sledgehammer blows that had sent them reeling in December and January. Hitler planned to wrest the initiative from the Soviets by the summer. But the Germans lacked sufficient strength to attack on the scale of the 1941 campaign. Hitler decided instead to concentrate on the south and abandoned the possibility of a second attempt to capture Moscow. His primary aim in the 1942 campaign was economic - the capture of the Caucasus oil fields. This would cut off the Soviets from their chief source or petroleum and greatly increase German oil supplies. But it also meant that Hitler was abandoning the stated objective of Operation Barbarossa a year earlier - the destruction of the main Soviet forces, which still lay before Moscow.
The Germans planned a three-step operation. Phase 1 called for an encirclement of Soviet troops to the west of the Don River by two powerful components of Army Group South. Field Marshal von Bock, now recovered from the illness that had sidelined him during the winter, had taken over command in the south. General Hoth's 4th Panzer Army provided the spearhead of the northern arm of the planned encirclement, with General Friedrich von Paulus's 6th Army to its right. These forces were to drive toward Voronezh on the Don and then dash southeastward along the river's west bank toward the industrial city of Stalingrad on the Volga River. General von Kleist's 1st Panzer Army formed the southern spearhead and was to advance north of Rostov and link up with Hoth's column. After completing this encirclement, Hoth and Paulus would execute phase 2 by establishing a blocking position on the Volga near Stalingrad to protect the southern force, which would carry out phase 3, the drive to the Caucasus.
When Paulus took over as leader of the 6th Army, it marked his first actual field command. He had served as chief of staff of the 10th Army during the campaigns in Poland and Western Europe. Paulus became Halder's deputy in October 1940 and participated in the planning for Operation Barbarossa. In fact, he had conducted war games prior to the 1941 invasion that demonstrated clearly that the Blitzkrieg would encounter severe supply problems and that German forces were barely adequate to capture Moscow. Halder had ignored his ominous warning. Paulus proved better suited to staff work than leadership in the field.
The German army on the eastern front had fallen below its strength at the start of 1941 campaign by 350,000 men and now depended on Rumanian, Hungarian, and Italian units for support. These satellite troops were of lower quality and morale and lacked adequate equipment. Even the German troops were inferior to those of June 1941. The bitter fighting of the hot summer of 1941 and the terrible winter that followed, along with partisan attacks and disease, had taken their toll. Total tank strength was slightly less than at the start of the 1941 campaign, but the OKH had concentrated a large part of it in the south. Germany still had not developed a tank that was a match for the Soviet T34. The Soviets also had encountered difficulty in replacing their tremendous losses in armor.
The Germans planned to eliminate a Soviet salient in their line south of Kharkov as a preliminary to the summer offensive. But before they could act, the Red Army staged an offensive from the salient with the intention of recapturing Kharkov, the hub of the German communications network in the south. This Soviet operation actually proved a boon to the Germans, who had been building up their strength along the flanks of the salient. Soviet intelligence had failed to detect this. Stalin and Timoshenko, the Russian southern front commander, had insisted on this offensive over the opposition of both Zhukov and Shaposhnikov, the chief of staff. Timoshenko launched his offensive on May 12. The Soviets advanced swiftly at first and made a deep penetration, increasing the vulnerability of their position. On May 17, the Germans struck the enemy flank from the south and within a few days had cut off the Soviet spearhead, capturing 240,000 prisoners and destroying over 600 tanks. Timoshenko had asked for permission to pull back before the Germans sealed off his forces, but Stalin and Stavka had refused.
Another preliminary to the main German offensive came in the Crimea, the peninsula that juts into the Black Sea from the Ukraine. The 11th Army under General von Manstein, who had been so prominent in planning the Ardennes breakthrough in 1940, had conquered most of the Crimea during the fall of 1941. But Manstein's forces had failed to capture the Soviet naval base of Sevastopol, which remained secure behind three belts of powerful permanent defenses. Manstein received reinforcements and strong air support in the spring and on June 7, he unleashed another offensive against Sevastopol, but again the Soviets resisted furiously. Despite incessant air attacks, and shelling by two huge siege mortars, one of which hurled shells weighing over two tons, and a railway gun that fired 5-ton rounds, Sevastopol did not fall until July 3.
The disastrous failure of the Red Army's attempt to take Kharkov seriously weakened the Soviets in the south, and when the Germans opened their major offensive (Case Blue) on June 28, they rapidly swept forward. Timoshenko's badly depleted forces, desperately short of armor, had to fall back quickly. Stalin remained convinced that the Germans intended to strike their major blow at Moscow and concentrated the bulk of his strength in defense of the capital. Once again he disregarded intelligence reports that the offensive would come in the south.
Hoth's 4th Panzer Army drove 100 miles in eight days, reaching the Don near Voronezh, which the Germans planned to secure as the anchor for their eastern flank. But the Soviets defended Voronezh stubbornly, and Bock persisted in efforts to take the city before sending Hoth's panzers southward along the Don to form the northern pincer of the planned encirclement of enemy forces. This helped Timoshenko carry out a successful withdrawal toward Stalingrad. Several days elapsed before the 4th Panzer Army headed south. Hitler became disenchanted with Bock's slow progress and replaced him with General Maximilian von Weichs. He also split Army Group South into two separate commands - Army Group B in the north under Weichs and Army Group A to the south under Field Marshal Wilhelm List. Weichs had been a corps commander in the Polish and Western European campaigns and led the 2nd Army in the invasions of Yugoslavia and Russia. List had commanded the 14th Army in Poland and the 12th Army in both the Ardennes breakthrough and the Balkans.
Meanwhile, Kleist's 1st Panzer Army moved eastward to form the southern wing of the encirclement. But the Soviets withdrew here, too, and the Germans took few prisoners. Hitler assumed that the Red Army was fleeing in panic instead of executing an organized withdrawal and ecstatically proclaimed that "the Russian is finished," to which Halder responded, "I must admit, it looks like it." In his euphoria, the Fuhrer decided that it was now possible to drive toward the Caucasus without first securing the German flank at Stalingrad.
In keeping with this new approach, Hitler ordered Army Group A to swing southward with the 1st Panzer Army in the lead. He also ordered the 4th Panzer Army to abandon its drive on Stalingrad and assist Kleist's forces with their crossing of the Don east of Rostov. The less mobile Sixth Army, with its preponderance of infantry, received the task of capturing Stalingrad. The simultaneous pursuit of these two objectives and the diversion of the 4th Panzer Army proved to be serious mistakes. If left to continue their drive on Stalingrad, Hoth's forces might have reached the city before the Soviets had consolidated their position there. And it soon became clear that the 1st Panzer Army did not need help crossing the Don as it made rapid progress against weak Soviet resistance. By August 9, it had streaked 200 miles southeast of Rostov and had reached the Maikop oil fields in the Caucasus foothills.
But now the Germans once again split their forces, one column moving east toward the Grozny oil fields and another hooking west in an effort to clear the Black Sea coast. Again it was a case of too many objectives. Both drives stalled because of a shortage of fuel, difficult mountain terrain, and stronger Soviet resistance. The Germans continued to try to break through during September, October, and November, without success. They had stretched themselves to the limit. Army Group South had originally been responsible for a 500-mile expanse of the front. As a result of the summer offensive, German forces in the south now had a dangerously long front stretching 1,300 miles.
As the Germans penetrated into the Caucasus, they reached the lower slopes of 18,481-foot Mount Elbrus, Europe's highest peak. A team of climbers could not resist the temptation and, braving fog and blizzards, scaled the giant mountain and planted a German flag near its summit.
THE STRUGGLE FOR STALINGRAD
While Army Group A was driving toward the Caucasus, the 6th Army advanced slowly in the direction of Stalingrad. In the process, it created a long, vulnerable flank along the Don, which was guarded by weak satellite troops. The Soviets also retained a number of bridgeheads on the western bank of the river, and these provided strong positions for possible counterattacks. Hitler finally diverted the 4th Panzer Army back to the Stalingrad operation, but it was too late for a speedy conquest. Soviet resistance stiffened as the Germans neared the city in late August, and the war of movement came to an end.
The Soviet position was still highly precarious. During August, Stalin made major leadership changes. He ordered General Andrei Yeremenko to form a new army group in the Stalingrad area from reserve divisions. Yeremenko was still another former tsarist army leader who had become an officer in the Red Army during the civil war. He had emerged as one of Stalin's chief troubleshooters and participated in the defense of Moscow in 1941. More important, Stalin called upon General Zhukov once again to come to the rescue. Although Timoshenko had conducted the retreat with reasonable skill, his name came to be associated with defeat. Zhukov, by contrast, had gained fame as the "savior of Moscow." In late August, Zhukov replaced Timoshenko as overall commander in the south.
General Vasili Chuikov was responsible for the actual defense of Stalingrad itself. Chuikov acted with extreme decisiveness. He had been serving as a military attaché in China when the invasion began and did not return to the Soviet Union until March 1942. Since then, he had seen little action, but he had studied German methods closely. His observations convinced him that the enemy disliked close combat and would not perform well in street fighting. Upon taking up his new command, he notified his superiors that "we shall either hold the city or die there."
Chuikov organized a skillful defense, and the Germans resorted to battering-ram tactics. They also bombed and shelled the city incessantly, reducing it to a wasteland of utter destruction. The Germans encountered extreme difficulty in moving through this sea of rubble, and the struggle deteriorated into a myriad of hellish small battles around Soviet strongpoints. At times the fighting even extended into the city's sewers. The ruins also provided ideal hiding places for deadly snipers on both sides. Nevertheless, the Germans gradually drove the Soviets back, street by street, block by block, building by building, sometimes room by room. The struggle became a colossal battle of attrition, and Stalingrad became a symbol for both sides. Stalin was insistent that that the city that bore his name should not fall. Hitler became so mesmerized by the thought of taking Stalin's city that he kept hammering away despite heavy casualties and the erosion of his armor, which was not well suited for this type of close-quarters conflict in support of infantry. Ironically, Stalingrad was not a vital objective. The Germans could have established their block on the Volga much more easily to the south of the city. Nevertheless, by early November they held nine-tenths of Stalingrad. But their position took the form of a salient with long, inviting flanks to the north and south of the city.
The Soviets, too, suffered serious losses, but they were in a better position to replace them because of their greater manpower reserves. Soviet leaders had conscripted vast numbers of men after the invasion of 1941. By the fall of 1942, this policy had produced numerous fresh, well-trained divisions. Soviet war production had slumped drastically between October 1941 and the following spring as a result of the large-scale evacuation of industry to the Urals and other areas. But by early fall, factories were turning out a much greater flow of equipment. This was due in large part to concentration on only a few types of tanks, trucks, and artillery that could be easily mass-produced and round-the-clock manufacturing schedules.
Meanwhile, relations between Hitler and some of his top generals became increasingly strained. He dismissed List on September 9 and took over command of Army Group A himself. Even more significant, he ousted Halder as chief of staff late in September and replaced him with General Kurt Zeitzler, a younger, less experienced, and more pliable officer who had started the Russian campaign as a colonel. Zeitzler had gained a reputation as an expert in logistics and a dynamic problem solver. Rising quickly in rank, he won the admiration of Hitler, who elevated him to chief of staff over many senior generals.
While the struggle for Stalingrad raged on into the fall, Zhukov followed the same approach he had used with success at Moscow a year earlier. He deliberately kept reinforcements for the Stalingrad garrison to a minimum in order to mass as much strength as possible opposite the weak Rumanian forces that held the flanks of the Stalingrad salient. On November 19, Zhukov launched his counterstroke, Operation Uranus.
An army group under General Nikolai Vatutin's command delivered the first blow against the Rumanian 3rd Army to the northwest of Stalingrad. Vatutin had started the war as deputy chief of staff and had stymied Bock's attempt to seize Voronezh early in the 1942 offensive, helping to prevent the encirclement of Timoshenko's forces. Vatutin's troops struck the Rumanians from a large bridgehead on the west bank of the Don, quickly tore a gaping hole in their front, and then swung southeastward. The next day, a second army group, commanded by Yeremenko, shattered the Rumanian 4th Army to the south of Stalingrad and raced northwestward. The Soviet spearheads came together 45 miles west of the city on November 23, sealing off the 6th Army and one corps of the 4th Panzer Army.
Paulus asked permission to abandon Stalingrad and attempt to break through the encirclement, but Hitler refused. Memories of his "hold fast" order of the previous year were still fresh. The Fuhrer informed Paulus, "I am not leaving the Volga!" He thought of Stalingrad as a super hedgehog and ordered the Luftwaffe to supply the trapped forces by air, as it had done with isolated strong points called hedgehogs in the winter of 1941-42. But this time the Luftwaffe failed. To supply Stalingrad was a far greater task, and its earlier efforts had eroded both planes and pilots. Prolonged periods of violently stormy weather also snarled operations.
Hitler ordered Manstein, now a field marshal, to lead an expedition to reestablish contact with the Stalingrad garrison. Manstein launched his attempt on December 12 and made fairly good progress at first, but he could not possibly succeed unless the 6th Army attempted to break out and link up with his forces. Hitler refused to allow this, and Paulus himself seemed to have had no confidence in his army's ability to carry out such a difficult undertaking at this late date. The whole question of the relief of Stalingrad became academic when the Soviets unleashed another offensive (Operation Saturn) on December 16. This time they smashed through the Italian 8th Army, and lunged from the Don toward Rostov with the intention of cutting off all German forces to the south, including Army Group A, which was still fighting in the Caucasus. Even Hitler could see the danger of a far worse disaster than Stalingrad. He ordered his troops in the threatened areas to retreat, and they managed to escape the impending trap.
German forces isolated at Stalingrad now found themselves in a hopeless position. They continued to hold out against increasing pressure, but the Soviets split them into two pockets in late January 1943. Hitler ordered the defenders to fight to the last man. He also promoted Paulus to field marshal, partly as a bribe to continue the struggle, but also to remind him that no German field marshal had ever surrendered. But the Germans were exhausted and short of food, medicine, and other supplies. Indeed shortages were so severe that Paulus actually cut off food supplies to approximately 30,000 wounded men, who could not be evacuated, in order to give healthy soldiers a better chance at survival. Many wounded men also froze to death while awaiting treatment. The Germans could not avoid surrender, however, and fighting ceased on February 2. Some Germans attempted to escape to the west. Only one of them actually succeeded; ironically, he fell victim to a mortar shell 24 hours after reaching the apparent safety of the German line. Hitler viewed the surrender as a betrayal. He railed against Paulus, vowing never to appoint another field marshal and complaining that it was shameful for him not to have committed suicide. The Fuhrer also insisted that his troops should have shot themselves with their last bullets.
In all, the Germans lost over 200,000 troops at Stalingrad, including 90,000 prisoners. Only 5,000 of the latter would ever see Germany again. The disaster was one of the war's great turning points. Henceforth, with few exceptions, the Germans would remain on the defensive on the eastern front.
THE GERMANS ON THE DEFENSIVE
After the disaster at Stalingrad and the retreat from the Caucasus, no real hope remained that Germany could achieve an offensive victory over the Soviet Union. The Wehrmacht had twice shown itself unable to overcome the twin obstacles of the USSR's vast distances and Soviet staying power. By early 1943, it was clear that the Red Army was superior in materiel as well as in numbers. Germany's only hope now lay in a defensive strategy that would inflict such severe losses on the Red Army that Stalin might be willing to seek a negotiated peace. But visions of victory still danced in Hitler's head. He was not interested in a negotiated settlement, only in winning the war. Instead of assuming a defensive posture, the German army resorted to a massive and ultimately disastrous offensive in July 1943 - the Battle of Kursk. If Germany's defeat at Moscow in 1941 had shattered Hitler's dream of a quick, decisive victory, and Stalingrad had sounded the death knell for the offensive approach, Kursk destroyed even the possibility of a successful defensive strategy. From that point the initiative passed permanently to the Soviets, and throughout the remainder of 1943 and 1944 the Red Army relentlessly drove the Germans westward. By the end of 1944 it was poised within striking distance of Germany itself.
The Germans managed to escape the trap that the Soviets had tried to spring on their armies in the Caucasus, but Red Army forces pushed them back to the starting point of their 1942 offensive and for a time drove well beyond this line. Two factors prevented an even more catastrophic defeat. As the Soviets moved west, they faced the same problems that the Germans had encountered during the 1941 and 1942 offensives. Their supply lines became badly overextended while the enemy fell back on its main supply bases. Also, Field Marshal von Manstein proved himself a master of defensive warfare. He succeeded in holding Rostov long enough to enable large German forces to escape the Red Army spearhead that threatened to cut them off. Then, in February 1943, just as the Soviets appeared to be on the verge of dealing a death blow to the whole German position in the south, he delivered a brilliantly conceived counterattack. The Red Army had captured Kharkov and was driving toward the Dnieper River, but in the process it had created a deep salient with long, vulnerable flanks. Manstein sensed his opportunity and thinned out his forces in the path of the Russian advance while massing his panzers to the south and north of the overextended Soviets. He then attacked the enemy flanks and forced the enemy to retreat. His troops recaptured Kharkov and drove beyond.
Other developments bolstered the German cause. One of the most important was Hitler's appointment of Albert Speer to the position of minister of armaments in 1942. Within a year, Speer had placed German industry on a basis approaching full wartime footing, and his efforts greatly accelerated production of tanks and other weapons until well into 1944. Hitler also brought General Guderian back to active duty as inspector general of armored troops in February 1943. Speer and Guderian worked together to increase the quantity and improve the quality of German armor. Their efforts led to the adoption of two new models, the Tiger and the Panther. The Tiger was a heavy tank with thick armor, wide tracks, and a powerful 88-mm gun. The Panther, a medium tank with a high-velocity 75-mm gun, was faster and more maneuverable than the Tiger and eventually was equal or superior to the Soviet T34. Unfortunately, it suffered from various mechanical problems at first, including an alarming tendency to catch fire. It was not until the winter of 1943-44 that the Panther's designers overcame these "teething" problems.
German numerical inferiority after Stalingrad not only sounded the death knell for an offensive strategy but cast serious doubt on the possibility of a static defense as well. The Wehrmacht simply lacked the strength to defend the entire front, which sprawled from Leningrad to the Black Sea. The only hope for a successful strategy lay in an elastic defense. Such an approach required extensive withdrawals to shorten the front. As the Germans pulled back, they hoped to be able to lure the Soviets into an overly aggressive pursuit. This could create the opportunity for counterattack similar to the one that Manstein had used to such good effect in February. Both Manstein and Guderian favored this approach. They believed that it offered the only chance to wear down the Soviets to a point that might erode their will to continue the war and open the way to a negotiated peace.
OPERATION CITADEL
Manstein proposed such a strategy for the spring of 1943. The southern portion of the front in the Ukraine took the form of a large German bulge that jutted precariously eastward, well beyond the northward extension of the battle line. Manstein assumed that the Soviets would try to cut off this salient in the spring and urged that the Germans fall back toward the Dnieper when the Soviets struck. He hoped to entice the Soviets into overextending their advance. Then, when they were most vulnerable, he would attack their flank near Kiev. If all went well, the Red Army would suffer a disastrous defeat. But such an operation would necessitate abandoning the mineral-rich Donetz Basin, and Hitler was unwilling to give up this valuable territory.
Instead the Germans adopted an alternative and much less imaginative plan that ultimately proved catastrophic. It focused on another salient, this time an enemy bulge that extended around the city of Kursk to the north of Kharkov. The OKH feared that the Soviets would stage their spring offensive from this position and urged that it be eliminated by simultaneous attacks against its northern and southern flanks. Manstein had actually suggested such an undertaking soon after his victory at Kharkov. He had insisted that the assault begin in April, before the Soviets could build up their defenses in the salient. But a series of delays forced postponement of the offensive until July.
The German plan, Operation Citadel, called for Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge's Army Group Center to attack the salient from the north while Manstein's troops struck from the south. General Zeitzler, the chief of staff, and Kluge were the foremost advocates of Citadel. Guderian was dead set against it from the start, and Manstein's enthusiasm colled when it became clear that delays would be involved. Hitler had strong misgivings, too. At one point, he told Guderian, "Whenever I think about this attack my stomach turns over." Guderian responded, "In that case your reaction is the correct one. Leave it alone!" Unfortunately for the Germans, Hitler eventually bowed to the arguments of Zeitzler and Kluge. Kluge and Guderian were old and bitter rivals. Before succeeding Bock as head of Army Group Center, Kluge had commanded the 4th Army in Poland, France, and the 1941 Russian campaign. He considered Guderian to be bold to the point of recklessness and once charged that the panzer leader's operations "always hang by a thread." At one point Kluge challenged Guderian to a duel, but Hitler ordered the two generals to reconcile their differences.
Unfortunately for Hitler and his generals, the Soviets soon learned about the entire plan from their spy network and took elaborate defensive measures. Marshal Zhukov, the hero of Moscow and Stalingrad, once again directed Soviet planning. He intended to follow his usual approach: wear down the attacking Germans and then direct powerful counterstrokes against their flanks. To facilitate this plan, the Soviets laid deep mine fields, behind which they concentrated vast quantities of artillery and antitank guns as well as large reserves of armor. Their efforts created a prodigiously strong defensive position that extended 65 miles in depth. An army group commanded by General Rokossovsky, who had led a corps in the Ukraine, an army in the Battle of Moscow, and an army group at Stalingrad, defended the northern position of the salient. General Vatutin, another veteran of the Stalingrad encirclement, directed another army group along the southern flank.
When the Germans finally launched Operation Citadel on July 5, they unleashed an exceptionally powerful force of 17 panzer divisions. Despite the magnitude of their effort, the Red Army outnumbered them in manpower 1.3 million to 900,000 and enjoyed an advantage in tanks of 3,300 to 2,700. Soviet superiority in artillery was even more marked - 20,000 to 10,000. The Germans soon encountered heavy losses in the mine fields, which the Soviets had situated in a way as to channel enemy armor directly into artillery and antitank fire.
The struggle became a great battle of attrition along a front that seldom exceeded 15 miles in width. It was the greatest clash of armor of the entire war, with almost 3,000 tanks on the field at the peak of the fighting. It was also one of the bloodiest and most hideous of the many horrendous battles on the Eastern Front. Many German infantrymen insisted that it was the worst they had experienced. Soviet artillery took an especially grim toll of German armor. The 3rd Panzer Division lost all but 30 of its 300 tanks, and several other panzer divisions suffered similar losses. The Germans did little more than dent the Soviet defenses. Both sides suffered exceptionally heavy losses, but whereas the Soviets could sustain theirs, the Germans were less fortunate. For them, Kursk was fatal. On July 12, Hitler ordered his generals to break off their attacks.
His action did not come a moment too soon, because the Red Army opened a powerful counteroffensive the same day. They attacked the enemy flank to the north of the Kursk salient and threatened to cut off the German forces, which had been advancing southward. On August 3, the Soviets delivered another blow against the Germans to the south of the salient and thrust toward Kharkov. The great industrial city changed hands for the fourth and last time on August 22 as General Ivan Konev's troops drove the enemy westward. Konev was another general who rose to prominence during the war. His fame ultimately became second only to that of Zhukov. Konev had followed the usual route of future Soviet commanders. A noncommissioned officer in the tsar's forces, he joined the Red Army in 1918, winning renown for his guerilla exploits in Siberia during the civil war. He had assumed command of the Moscow front just in time to take the blame for the disasters of October 1941. For a time he appeared headed for oblivion, but Zhukov came to his rescue and made him his deputy. He became an army group commander in 1943. Despite Zhukov's kindness, Konev later became his chief rival.
The Soviets rolled on toward the Dnieper and crossed the river near Kiev at the end of September. Instead of halting their advance to organize a conventional crossing, their spearhead units simply stormed across the river with the help of small boats and improved rafts. They established several bridgeheads on the west bank before the Germans could consolidate their defense. By early November, the Red Army had recaptured Kiev.
THE GERMANS BEGIN TO CRUMBLE
If the failure at Stalingrad had ended all hope for a German offensive victory, the disaster at Kursk and the subsequent Soviet counteroffensive eliminated any chance for a successful defensive struggle. Hitler's panzer forces never fully recovered from the triphammer blows of the summer and fall of 1943. And despite Speer's amazing achieving in increasing German tank production, it did not keep pace with Soviet output of armor. During 1944-45, Germany produced 8,400 tanks, a figure almost three times greater than the entire armored force that had launched the Russian campaign in 1941, but the Soviets produced 10,000 T34's alone during 1944. Russian industry turned out vast quantities of other arms as well, including greatly improved aircraft, guns, mortars, and automatic infantry weapons.
By this time, American industry had also made the transition to a full wartime basis. In addition to providing a steadily accelerating flow of materiel to their own armed forces, the Americans sent increasing lend-lease aid to Russia. This included all types of equipment, food, and other supplies. Most significantly, America provided more than 375,000 trucks, over 50,000 Jeeps, and almost 9,000 tractor vehicles, including half tracks used to haul Soviet artillery, as well as vast quantities of spare parts. This gave the Red Army much greater mobility and hastened their ultimate victory.
In the aftermath of the Kursk debacle, Germany also found it impossible to replace its manpower losses, whereas the Soviets were able to draft large numbers of men from the areas they recaptured. The Red Army also absorbed partisan units that had been operating behind enemy lines. If the Soviets harbored any doubts about their ability to win the war before the Battle of Kursk, they had none afterward.
The staggering defeat at Kursk struck Hitler with tremendous impact. He now withdrew in relative isolation, with only a few people in attendance, and found refuge in his own dream world. The catastrophe increased his distrust of the generals. After all, Kursk had been their idea, not his. The OKH had planned the operation, and Zeitzler had talked him into overcoming his own doubts. In the future, he relied more and more on his own intuition. But even though he had been right about Kursk, he now returned to the rigid "stand fast" mentality that had led to the Stalingrad encirclement and soon contributed to new disasters. The first of these occurred when the Fuhrer rejected Manstein's plea that he evacuate the 17th Army from the Crimea. His refusal enabled the Soviets to cut off this force in November.
THE SOVIETS ROLL ON
Meanwhile, the Red Army continued to drive westward. In January 1944, it penetrated into the southeastern corner of prewar Poland. The same month also witnessed the lifting of the 900-day siege of Leningrad. In early February, Soviet troops, operating from bridgeheads west of the Dnieper, attempted to cut off a German salient around the town of Korsun. Konev sent a spearhead slashing northwestward, while Vatutin swung to the southeast. The two forces came together on February 3, trapping almost 75,000 Germans. Konev received a promotion to the rank of marshal as his reward. Vatutin was not so fortunate. He died of wounds inflicted by a band of Ukrainian nationalists soon afterward.
In March, Konev launched an incredible operation, his "mud offensive," which took place during the worst part of the spring thaw in the Ukraine. It provided ample evidence of the growing skill of Red Army commanders and violated all the rules of war. Playing on the advantage of complete surprise, it resulted in another great Soviet victory. The keys to this achievement were the wide-tracked T34 tank, with its center of gravity located in the midsection of the vehicle, and the American four-wheel-drive truck; both were able to perform efficiently in the abominable conditions. Before the month was over, the Soviets swept into Bessarabia in prewar Rumania. These defeats so enraged Hitler that he dismissed both his army group commanders in the south, Manstein and Kleist. Despite their many brilliant contributions to Germany's efforts in Russia, they could not accomplish the impossible.
A lull set in on the eastern front in April. But the Soviets resumed the offensive with even greater vigor in Belorussia on June 23, a little over two weeks after the start of the Anglo-American cross-channel invasion of France. Once again Marshal Zhukov held overall command. This time he enjoyed a 4-to-1 superiority in manpower and a 6-to-1 advantage in armor. With the possible exception of the Battle of Kursk, this was the most carefully prepared Soviet offensive of the war. It caught Army Group Center off guard and stabbed deep into the German rear, destroying 25 divisions with a total of 350,000 men. The disaster was greater than Stalingrad. Soviet forces now proceeded to liberate the last remnants of Soviet soil from German control and threatened the Baltic states. They also overran most of eastern Poland. By late August, troops under Rokossovsky's command had reached the outskirts of Warsaw.
THE WARSAW UPRISING
The arrival of the Soviet spearhead in the vicinity of the Polish capital triggered one of the great tragedies of the war - the Warsaw Uprising. The Polish Home Army, an anti-Communist resistance force affiliated with the London-based Polish government in exile, attempted to seize Warsaw before the Red Army entered the city. This action represented the culmination of gradually deteriorating relations between the London Poles and Moscow.
General Wladislaw Sikorski had personally organized the Polish exile regime in Paris during the fall of 1939. Sikorski, who had commanded the forces that had halted the Red Army's attempt to capture Warsaw during the Russo-Polish War in 1920, had also recruited an 82,000-man military force, largely from Poles who had been working as miners in France. With the French capitulation in 1940, Sikorski moved his government and army to Britain.
Sikorski had established diplomatic relations with Moscow after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin had been eager to accept any offers of friendship at that time, but he was not willing to agree to Sikorski's plea for a restoration of Poland's prewar eastern border after the conflict. His refusal contributed to continuing tension between the Soviets and the Poles. This worsened dramatically in April 1943, when Germany announced the discovery of the bodies of 4,300 Polish army officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. The Germans charged that the Russians had murdered these men while this area had been under their control. Many Westerners believed that the Germans had actually committed the atrocity, but Sikorski's government asked for an inquiry by the International Red Cross. Stalin reacted to this by angrily breaking off relations with the Poles. It is now certain that the Soviets were indeed the culprits.
Shortly after the severing of relations, Sikorski died in a plane crash, and Stanislaw Mikolajczyk succeeded him as prime minister. Mikolajczyk was a moderate of peasant stock who had fought the Germans in 1939 before escaping to the West. He tried to persuade his colleagues that they had no choice but to seek an understanding with the Soviets. But he lacked Sikorski's prestige and authority, and anti-Russian members of his cabinet refused to follow a conciliatory policy.
When the Soviets smashed into Poland during their 1944 summer offensive, they recognized the Communist-dominated Polish Committee of National Liberation, which established itself as a provisional government in the city of Lublin. They also arrested members of the Home Army in areas that fell under their control. The Soviet presence and the existence of the Lublin regime badly undercut the London Poles' claim to be the legitimate government of Poland. It was this combination of events that led to the decision to launch the Warsaw Uprising. If the Home Army could gain control of Warsaw, it would provide Mikolajczyk's government with a power base in Poland. Whether it could maintain that position once the Red Army arrived in strength was another matter. At best, the operation was an act of desperation.
The Warsaw Uprising began on August 1, and General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski's Home Army forces soon captured half the city. The general's name originally had been simply Komorowski, and he served as a cavalry leader during the German invasion of Poland. Soon afterward, he had persuaded Sikorski to allow the formation of an underground home army and became its commander in 1943. The general had assumed the name Bor as a cover and subsequently retained it. Despite their initial success, the Poles could not defeat the German garrison without help from the Red Army, but Rokossovsky halted his advance along the Vistula River to the east of Warsaw.
Critics have charged that Stalin deliberately refused to allow his troops to come to the rescue and thus enabled the Germans to destroy the Home Army. Although it is true that the Soviet dictator had no sympathy for Bor-Komorowski's forces and was not sorry to see the Germans crush the revolt, the Soviet failure to act appears to have been due to less sinister factors. When Rokossovsky's troops reached the vicinity of Warsaw, they were suffering from exhaustion and severe supply problems. They were especially deficient in bridging equipment, which was necessary for a crossing of the Vistula. It appears that Rokossovsky had no choice but to halt. Indeed, the whole massive offensive into Poland had lost its momentum by this time. When the Soviets did attempt to force their way across the river in mid-September, the Germans repulsed the attack.
Anglo-American leaders hoped to drop supplies by air to the beleaguered Poles, but for several weeks Stalin would not allow their planes to land on Russian airfields to refuel for the return trip. When he finally granted permission for one such operation, it proved a dismal failure. By this time, the Germans had recaptured much of the city, and most of the supplies fell into their hands. Without outside help, the Poles were doomed, and on October 2 the survivors of the horrible ordeal surrendered. In the process of crushing resistance, the Germans committed savage atrocities against Warsaw's population. They set fire to buildings and shot down many thousands of men, women, and children. When the fighting ended, Hitler ordered the total destruction of what was left of the city. The Germans also shipped 150,000 civilians to the Reich as slave laborers and sent the remaining 550,000 to concentration camps. Not a single Pole remained in the wasteland of demolished buildings that had once been Poland's capital.
SOVIET SUCCESSES IN THE BALTIC STATES AND THE BALKANS
Zhukov's sweepingly successful offensive against Army Group Center had also threatened to outflank Army Group North in the Baltic states. But the Soviet high command left the actual task of clearing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to other Red Army forces. A major offensive began on September 14 with the objective of breaking through to the Baltic coast near Riga, the Latvian capital. Field Marshal Ferdinand Schorner, the commander of Army Group North, was a staunch supporter of the Nazi regime as well as a tough and resourceful officer. He managed to evacuate his forces from Estonia and northern Latvia but encountered increasing pressure from General Ivan Bagramyan's troops, which were thrusting through Lithuania. Bagramyan had seen most of his previous service in the Ukraine. He had narrowly missed being captured in the 1941 Kiev encirclement and had commanded an army in the Battle of Kursk. His troops reached the Baltic to the southwest of Riga on October 10 and captured the city five days later. The bulk of Army Group North was now trapped in a pocket in the Courland Peninsula of western Latvia.
Guderian, who had succeeded Zeitzler as chief of staff in July, urged Hitler to evacuate Schorner's forces by sea. Hitler flatly refused, insisting that by staying in the Courland Pocket, Army Group North would divert Soviet strength away from other operations. Guderian pointed out that these troops would be far more useful in defense of the eastern approaches to Germany. As usual, Hitler won the argument. Although some units were evacuated later, 26 divisions remained in Courland until the end of the war.
The collapse of Germany's position in the East led to the rapid defection of its satellites during the late summer of 1944. On June 10, Red Army troops had opened attacks against Finland in the Karelian Isthmus. By June 20, the Finns asked for an armistice. But both the negotiations and the Soviet offensive bogged down for the next two months. It was not until September 19 that hostilities finally ceased. The Soviet terms were roughly those that had ended the Winter War four years earlier, with some relatively minor changes. Finland's timely exit from the conflict allowed it to avoid occupation by Soviet forces.
Rumania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Hungary had been seeking to desert the Axis fro some time. Rumania was the first to succeed. On August 20, Soviet army groups, commanded by Marshals Rodion Malinovsky and F. I. Tolbukhin, converged on the Axis troops defending northeastern Rumania. They broke through to the Danube River and cut off 12 German divisions. Malinovsky had won fame for his part in repulsing Manstein's attempt to relieve the German troops trapped in the Stalingrad pocket. This had required leading his army on a forced march that covered 125 miles in five days through a howling blizzard. As an army group commander, he had played a major role in expelling the enemy from the Ukraine. Tolbukhin had commanded an army in the encirclement of Stalingrad. Later his army group had contributed to the first sweep across the Ukraine and the reconquest of the Crimea.
When the Red Army began its offensive, Rumania's King Michael, with the support of army leaders, ousted the pro-German premier, Marshal Ion Antonescu, and announced the end of hostilities. In their surrender terms, the Soviets forced the Rumanians to return Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the USSR. But in return, they supported Rumania's claim for the restoration of Hungarian-occupied Transylvania to Rumanian sovereignty. A Rumanian coalition government, consisting of both Communist and non-Communist ministers, took office, but it was disunited and inefficient. By February 1945, the Soviets had pressured the formation of a new regime that was essentially Communist.
After their disaster in Rumania, the Germans faced a hopeless position in much of the Balkans. A vast open flank lay in the path of the Soviet juggernaut. Germany's remaining forces in Rumania fell back to the west and abandoned both the Ploesti oil fields and Bucharest, the capital, before the end of September. There was now nothing to prevent the Red Army from overrunning Bulgaria while other Soviet forces penetrated into Yugoslavia. On October 20, they joined with Tito's Partisans to capture Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital.
These developments made the position of the German troops in Greece highly precarious. Retreat northward was the only option if they were to avoid being cut off by the Soviet advance. They had to carry out their withdrawal over extremely poor roads, which Tito's forces subjected to repeated attacks. But they did escape. The German departure left a political vacuum in Greece, and Churchill dispatched British troops to fill it. They landed in Greece on October 4 and occupied Athens nine days later, just after the Germans had evacuated. A coalition Greek government took over administration of the country, but its prospects were bleak. Large guerilla bands, including many Communists, roamed over much of the country. The regime could maintain itself in power only with British military support.
In Slovakia, disenchantment with the German alliance led to a revolt by Slovak partisans in September. The Slovaks hoped that Red Army troops would soon join them, but the Soviets had to cross the rugged Carpathian Mountains, which the Germans defended tenaciously, and did not reach Slovakia until October. By then the Germans had crushed the revolt.
Hungary, the last of the Nazi satellites, also looked for a way out of its dilemma. When the Soviets made their first penetration into Rumania in March 1944, Hitler sent German troops to stiffen Hungary's will to resist. But with the defection of the Rumanians from the Axis camp in September, Hungarian dictator Admiral Nicholas Horthy tried to secure an armistice. Hitler responded with his usual quickness. He dispatched an SS unit to kidnap Horthy and recognized a new pro-Axis Hungarian regime. The Fuhrer's efforts proved less successful in halting the relentless advance of the Red Army. The Soviets broke into the Hungarian Plain in October and reached the suburbs Budapest on November 4. Axis forces defended the Hungarian capital stubbornly, but by late December, the Soviets had encircled the city.
The year 1944 had been one of unrelieved disaster for the Germans on the Eastern Front. The Red Army had ousted them from the USSR, most of the Baltic states, half of Poland, and all but the northern fringes of the Balkans. It had even occupied the extreme eastern border area of East Prussia, the first Soviet penetration of Germany's prewar territory. But Hitler's forces were not yet finished. By late December, the Soviet steamroller had ground to a halt. This lull was due less to German defensive efforts than to Russian logistic problems, however. And it was not destined to last for long. Stalin's forces were planning to unleash a new series of powerful blows early in 1945.