[See Ch. 16.]
With this in mind OKH conceived the notion that a complete new
army group should be created for the northcentral region. As the
Germans were forced back down the narrowing funnel between the
Baltic and the Carpathians, their command structure had fallen into
mounting disarray. Guderian's scheme was that the battered Army
Group Centre should be broken up, its units divided between Reinhardt
(Army Group North) and the new command. Those divisions which had
been forced southwest against the upper Warthe could be reinforced
from Harpe's relatively intact Army Group South and redesignated as
Army Group Centre. The key area, and the most vital command, lay in
the new region which was to be known as Army Group Vistula, with
responsibility for the front between Poznan and Graudenz. This
command would at first consist of a motley of battle-worn units from
its two neighbours, but Guderian planned that all the reserves from
the West, including Sepp Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army, were to be
directed into it and accumulated in close reserve until the moment
was ripe for the counterstroke. The 6th Pan-zer Army, with its high
SS content and its profusion of the lat-est equipment, was in many
ways the best instrument the Germans could have selected for this
task. It was fresh from a startling "victory" in the
Ardennes (it had been withdrawn be-fore the extent of the failure
there became apparent), it was well used to operating under
conditions of total enemy air superiority, and had trained often over
the very ground on which it was now proposed that it should contest
Germany's most vital battle. The other prerequisite of success in
such an operation—quick and efficient staff work, to ensure
rapid concentration of the force and close phasing of the objectives
—was a quality in which the German Army had always excelled.
Hence there was more than a likelihood that had he been given a
free hand Guderian might yet have achieved his victory and the
Soviet advance would have been stopped short. If this had happened,
it is highly unlikely that Stalin would have been able to mount
another offensive before the Allies had crossed the Rhine—with
consequences to the settlement of Europe and the balance of world
power that cannot be calculated. There are many reasons why the fortunes of this particular operation, both in its planning and in its
belated realisation, repay study.
It was intended by OKH that Army Group Vistula take over the staff
of the army group which had been responsible for the southern Balkans
and for liaison with the Rumanian and Hungarian forces which had been
forced back over the Prut. This organisation was virtually intact
and, its responsibilities having been if not discharged, then
evaporated, had lately returned to Germany. Freiherr von Weichs, its
pains-taking and somewhat elderly head, was selected by Guderian for
the new command, but it seems highly probable that Guderian intended
to direct this battle personally, with Weichs as a
de facto
Chief of Staff.
On the evening of 23rd January, Guderian had outlined his
proposals to Jodl in the course of a telephone conversation. His
intention was to enlist Jodl's support at the Füh-rer
conference the following day. Jodl apparently "agreed to support
the proposal," and at the conference itself everything went
smoothly to begin with and Hitler approved the new command zones,
which were to become operative from 25th January. But when Guderian
suggested Weichs as head of Army Group Vistula, the atmosphere began
to deteriorate. Hitler said, "The Field-Marshal seems to me to
be a tired man. I doubt if he's still capable of performing such a
task." Instead of frankly admitting that Weichs, though
nominally in charge, would in fact be acting as a staff officer under
his own direction, Guderian concentrated on defending the merits of
his choice. Hitler, whose mind was made up, argued with diminishing
patience and waited for an opportunity to explode his bombshell.
The moment came when Jodl, seeing which way the argument was going,
"dropped a sneering re-mark about the Field-Marshal's deep and
genuine religious sense." Thereupon Hitler "refused to
sanction the appointment." He was fed up with these
professional soldiers, there was no end to their betrayals. Hossbach,
Bonin, Rauss, they were fumblers, nincompoops. And there were
blackguards, too. Seydlitz's name came up once again. And the loss of
Lötzen.
After rambling in this vein for some time Hitler announced his
decision. This was to be an SS army. Here in this vital sector the
Reich would be entrusted to the Party, and the Party soldiers, whose
loyalty was never in question. Furthermore, there could be only one
choice for the command of such a force: it must be given to the
National Leader, the one officer of the Reich in whom the Führer
had implicit trust,
Treuer Heinrich
himself.
Guderian was aghast. Such an arrangement did more than upset his
plans for the counterattack. It threatened to under-mine the whole
new command structure which had already been promulgated, for
controlled by a "military ignoramus," (as he would
frequently refer to Himmler) this vital new sector would place the
whole front in even more serious jeopardy than if the original
dispositions had been retained.
It is true that there was no lack of precedent in the history of
the German Army for vesting the nominal command in a man of straw and
providing a strictly professional staff organization to guide his
hand. But the National Leader was not well cut out for the role of
Hohenzollern effigy. He would feel "uncomfortable" if
surrounded by regular officers, Hitler said, and it was proposed
that he assemble his own staff; as Chief, Hitler favoured SS brigade
leader Lammerding. Guderian argued for hours, but the most that he
could achieve was that a few General Staff corps officers were
assigned to the new headquarters in "purely administrative"
roles. The majority of positions were filled by SS officers "who
for the most part were uniformly incapable of performing their
allotted tasks."
The day after this disastrous conference, 25th January, was that
which had been fixed by Dr. Barandon for Guderian's interview with
Ribbentrop. It may well be imagined that the Chief of the General
Staff, who had enjoyed little more than three hours' sleep and had
seen his plans for a military initiative with which to balance the
political overtures he favoured dashed, spared no detail in his
exposé of the crisis. At the end Ribbentrop, a trifle
incredulous, asked if he had been told "the exact truth."
He suggested, "The General Staff seems to be losing its nerve."
[Guderian's comment on this remark has a certain dry humour: "As
a matter of fact, a man needed an almost cast-iron nervous system to
carry out these exploratory conversations with the requisite calm and
clarity of thought."]
After some further discussion of the position Guderian asked
Ribbentrop pointblank if he was ready to accompany him to see
Hitler and "propose that we attempt to secure an armistice on
at least one front." The exchange is recorded as hav-ing
continued as follows:
Ribbentrop. I can't do it. I am a loyal follower of the Führer.
I know for a fact that he does not wish to open any diplomatic
negotiations with the enemy, and I therefore cannot address him in
the manner which you propose.
Guderian. How would you feel if in three to four weeks' time the
Russians were to be at the gates of Berlin?
Ribbentrop. Good heavens, do you believe that that is even
possible?
Guderian. It is not only possible but, due to our actual
leadership, certain.
Ribbentrop thereupon "lost his composure." He still refused to approach Hitler, but just as Guderian was leaving said to
him, "Listen, we will keep this conversation to ourselves,
won't we?"
[Ribbentrop's attitude at this meeting is not without hypocrisy,
to put it no lower. For his personal secretary, Fräulein
Margaret Blank, giving evidence at Nuremberg (27th March, 1946), told
how the Foreign Minister had personally selected a member of his
staff, a Herr Birger, to approach the Spanish Ambassador to
Switzerland and urge him to "make enquiries as to the
possibility of an understanding, if only of a temporary nature,"
with the West. The date of this project is given as "the winter
of 1944," i.e., some weeks, at least,
before
he was
approached by Guderian.]
After Guderian had departed, the Foreign Minister (it appears)
brooded on what he had been told. Whether it was that he doubted
Guderian's assurance of keeping their meeting secret, or whether out
of that loyalty to Hitler which he had mentioned at the time,
Ribbentrop decided to break his compact, and sat down to write a
report on the conversation in his own hand. He did not refer to the
Chief of Staff by name, but as
"an exceptionally high-ranking
officer at present in active service in the most responsible
position."
That night chance delayed Guderian on his way to the routine
briefing with Hitler, and as he entered the conference room the
Führer was already speaking, "in a loud and excited voice."
Hitler was in fact holding forth on the subject of Basic Order No.
1 (which laid down that no one was to discuss his work with any other
person unless such knowledge was needed for his own official duties).
When Hitler saw Guderian at the back of the room he went on "in
an even louder voice": "So when the Chief of the General
Staff goes to see the Foreign Minister and informs him of the
situation in the East with the object of securing an armistice in
the West, he is doing nothing more nor less than committing high
treason!"
Considering the fate of other members of the General Staff corps
who had been thought to have committed this crime in the preceding
months, it says much for Guderian's courage that far from being
embarrassed or apologetic, he immediately took up his arguments
afresh with Hitler. From the aspect of his own personal safety, this
proved to be the best policy, for Hitler was driven over to the
defensive, "adamantly refused to discuss the proposal," and
discussion passed on to other subjects. But not without the Führer's
first declaring the incident to be one more example of the
unreliability of professional soldiers, who put their own interpretation of the national interest above the dictates of "loyalty"
to Führer and Party.
As the reports of the day's fighting came in, it was plain that
sheer force of circumstances was pressing impartially on soldiers and
Party members alike. In particular, the news from the National
Leader's front was not good. The assimila-tion of the twenty or so
divisions which were to come under the orders of the new army group
was proving a heavy bur-den for the uneven competence of that
group's staff organisation, and the many difficulties encountered
were leading to local tactical upsets which further eroded the front.
Particularly serious was the plight of the 111th Panzer Division,
which, together with two weak infantry divisions, was in a position
south of Marienwerder on the right bank of the Vistula, and had been
caught off balance by a renewal of the Russian attack.
A forty-eight-hour lull in this sector had begun the result of one
of those lightning command switches at which the Russians were now so
adept: After their junction at Graudenz, Zhukov had passed command
of the area east of the upper Vistula to Rokossovski. Rokossovski had
taken three armoured corps out of Bogdanov's 2nd Armoured Army,
moving them across the German front from the area Orel-Masurian
Lakes. On paper this force had a strength of over three thousand
tanks. It is likely that wear and casualties had reduced the figure
by about half in this, the fourth week of the Russian offensive, and
as Rokossovski had opened his attack with the first corps to arrive,
four armoured brigades, the total strength was not more than about
450 T 34's. However, the 111th Panzer was also seriously
understrength. In origin one of the "weak" two battalion
formations, it had only one depleted company of Panthers and five of
PzKw Mk IV's (with long 75-mm.). The antitank battalion had only
nine
Jagdpanzer
as runners, and eleven towed 88-mm.
[I am indebted to Major von Wittenberg, who commanded the 2nd
Battalion of this division, for these details of its armament.]
Even after making some allowance for additional artillery support
from the two infantry divisions, it is plain that the Russians
enjoyed a superiority of three to one in gun power and an even
greater leverage in terms of mobility. This superiority was not such
as to give an absolute guarantee of success against a resolute
defence, but the power of Bogdanov's follow-through, with two
additional armoured brigades coming into action on the two following
days, made such a success almost certain unless the defenders reacted
very quickly.
Speed of reaction, however, was the last thing that could be
expected from Army Group Vistula. The 111th Panzer had reported the
start of the Russian attack at four thirty-five on the morning of
26th January, but during the day fought entirely without direction
from headquarters. Guderian noted in his diary that Himmler's
signals service "failed to function," and that "lack
of organisation began to make itself felt," both of which were
certainly true, but these failings were aggravated by the fact that
on the day of the attack Himmler had decided to move his headquarters
back sixty miles to the Ordensburg Croessinsee. By nightfall the
111th Panzer, having been unable to make contact with army group
headquarters for fourteen hours, but being in communication with Army
Group Centre (which was under a brief interregnum between the
dismissal of Reinhardt and the arrival of Rendulic), side-stepped by
withdrawing eastward during the night. The move was timely, for at
dawn on the 27th the second of Bogdanov's armoured brigades started
its attack, on an axis that was in echelon to and northeast of the
original thrust. The Russians drove straight through the last of
the 111th Panzer's rear guard and forced the two infantry divisions
back against the Vistula. By midday the Soviet tanks had passed
through Marienburg and their leading elements were nearing Miil-hausen—less than twenty miles from the Baltic.