Stalin's General (34 page)
Authors: Geoffrey Roberts
Although the Vistula-Oder operation was a complex, multi-Front offensive, Stalin decided to coordinate the operation himself rather than to rely on Stavka coordinators on the ground, roles that Zhukov and Vasilevsky would normally have played. Zhukov speculated that Stalin decided this because he wanted to be in direct command of the Red Army when it marched into Berlin, just as Tsar Alexander I had been when the Russian army occupied Paris in 1814. Indeed, when the American ambassador, Averell Harriman, later congratulated Stalin on the capture of Berlin, the dictator told him “Alexander got to Paris.” In any event, by this stage of the war Stalin was supremely self-confident as a military leader and had at his disposal the very able assistance of General Antonovâsoon to succeed Vasilevsky as chief of the General Staffâand the equally able General Shtemenko, his chief of operations.
Shtemenko was the General Staff's deputy chief of operations for most of the war. A striking-looking man who in later life sported a dramatic handlebar mustache, he would publish an influential insider account,
The Soviet General Staff at War
, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
4
After the war Shtemenko served as deputy and chief of the General Staff but was banished to the provinces when he fell out with Khrushchev. When Zhukov became minister of defense in 1955 he brought Shtemenko back into the fold, making him deputy chief of the General Staff. But when Zhukov was removed as defense minister in 1957 Shtemenko found himself once again serving in a regional military command. After Khrushchev's fall from power in 1964 the Zhukov-Shtemenko alliance was renewed in the battle for the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War that raged in the 1960s, even though the two men's memories did not always coincide.
5
The Vistula-Oder operation was to launch on January 8â10 but was delayed by bad weather. Stalin then set January 20 as the start time but brought it forward in response to Churchill's request for help in relieving pressure on the Western Front following the success of the Germans' Ardennes offensive of December 1944 (known as the Battle of the Bulge). Konev began his attack on January 12, followed the next day by Zhukov, Rokossovsky, and Chernyakhovsky.
Zhukov's first objective was to take Warsaw, which he did by using existing bridgeheads on the west bank of the Vistula to launch a flanking attack on the city from the south. The pro-communist 1st Polish Army was tasked to enter Warsaw first and it did so on January 17, 1945. Zhukov recalled:
Listening to people from Warsaw tell about Nazi atrocities during the occupation, and especially before the retreat, one found it hard to understand the psychology and moral character of the enemy. Polish officers and men took the destruction of the city especially hard. I saw battle-scarred Polish soldiers shed tears, and pledge then and there to take revenge on the fiendish foe. As for Soviet soldiers, we were all embittered and determined to aptly punish the enemy for the atrocities committed.
6
Zhukov's next advance was from Warsaw to Poznan, 120 miles to the west, not far from Poland's prewar border with Germany. The mission was to reach Poznan by early February but Soviet forces achieved this goal within a week, albeit by circumventing rather than assaulting the heavily defended city. One reason for the astounding speed of the Soviet advance was that Zhukov did not introduce his tank armies into the battle until day two or three of the offensive, when enemy defenses had already been breached, thereby preserving their capability for in-depth exploitation of the breakthrough.
7
Speed was the characteristic feature of the Vistula-Oder operation. During the first twenty days of the operation Soviet troops advanced at the rate of fifteen to twenty miles a day, with some tank units going twice as fast.
8
(See
Map 24
: The Vistula-Oder Operation, JanuaryâFebruary 1945
.)
On January 26 Zhukov proposed to Stalin an advance to the Oder by the end of the month, to be followed in early February by Soviet troops forcing their way across the river along a broad front and then skirting Berlin north and south.
9
In effect, it was a plan for the encirclement of the German capital. Stalin approved and on January 27 Zhukov informed his troops, “if we can seize the western bank of the Oder the operation to seize Berlin will be fully guaranteed.”
10
The 1st Belorussian did reach and cross the Oder by early February, establishing a bridgehead west of the river in the Kustrin area. German resistance was strong, however, and Zhukov was forced to regroup with a view to preparing, as he put it, a “sweeping assault to capture Berlin on 15 or 16 February.”
11
On February 10 Zhukov submitted his plan for the capture of Berlin to Stalin, an operation now scheduled to begin on February 19â20.
12
But on the evening of February 18 Zhukov was ordered by Stavka to halt his attack on Berlin.
13
Stavka's decision was made in response to the situation on Zhukov's northern flank. While in the south Konev's progress had been as spectacular as Zhukov's, Rokossovsky's advance to the northern Oder had lagged behind. The 3rd Belorussian Front had run into trouble in East Prussia and the right flank of Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front was ordered to lend assistance. The knock-on effect of the redeployment slowed Rokossovsky's left flank and opened a gap with Zhukov's rapidly advancing armies in the central sector. This exposed Zhukov's drive to Berlin to a counterattack by strong Wehrmacht forces stationed in Pomerania (the north German province adjacent to East Prussia). To counter this threat Stavka ordered Zhukov to turn his right flank north, away from Berlin, and attack Pomeranian positions. Another complication was that Konev's rapid advance in the south was slowing down. The 1st Ukrainian reached and crossed the southern Oder by the end of January and Konev formulated grandiose plans for a further advance all the way to the River Elbe, including a strike at Berlin from the south in late February. The first phase of this missionâan advance from the Oder to the River Neisseâwas completed by mid-February but after forty days of continuous fighting and an advance of some 300â400 miles Konev's troops were in no condition to continue the offensive.
14
This series of events became the subject of a sharply contested controversy
in the 1960s when Marshal Vasily Chuikov published an article claiming that Zhukov could have successfully stormed Berlin in February 1945, thereby bringing the war to an early conclusion. Chuikov was commander of the 62nd Army during the siege of Stalingrad. After the battle of the 62nd was renamed the 8th Guards Army and Chuikov was still in command when it took part in Zhukov's drive on Berlin.
15
Chuikov argued that Zhukov had enough forces to storm Berlin in February 1945 and that the threat represented by the Pomeranian grouping was exaggerated. Zhukov wanted to continue the advance to Berlin, said Chuikov, but he was overruled by Stalin, who insisted the 1st Belorussian Front turn north into Pomerania. In the article Chuikov claimed to have overheard a telephone conversation between Stalin and Zhukov on February 4 during which the Soviet dictator ordered a halt to the attack on Berlin. Concluded Chuikov:
To this very day, I do not understand why Marshal Zhukov, as First Deputy Supreme Commander and as someone who knew the situation perfectly, did not attempt to convince Stalin of the necessity of waging the offensive against Berlin instead of Pomerania. All the more so since Zhukov was not alone in his view; he was well aware of the mood of the officers and the troops. Why then did he agree with Stalin without a murmur?
16
Chuikov was not the first person to suggest that Berlin could have been taken by the Red Army in February 1945. On February 19, 1945,
Time
magazine published a report under the headline: “In Zhukov's Good Time.” Reported the magazine:
Last week, Marshal Zhukov had to call upon all his will power. Temptation was great. Berlin, the great prize for which he had fought and planned since the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad, was almost within range of his big guns.⦠With one more massive lunge Zhukov might have carried the battle to Berlin.⦠But Zhukov paused to strengthen his grip. Perhaps there was no great danger, but there was still some danger in attempting a quick blow against Berlin. Zhukov knew well
what the Germans knew too well: that a sprawling city becomes a fortress, that an attacking force risks being pinched into its ruins by flank attacks. That was what Zhukov had done to the Germans at Stalingrad.
Time
was close to reading Zhukov's mind, as evidenced by his remarks to a Red Army conference in Berlin in April 1946. Convened to discuss the lessons of the Vistula-Oder operation, the conference heard suggestions that the operation could have culminated with the capture of Berlin in February 1945. Zhukov responded:
Of course, at this time Berlin did not have strong defences. On the west bank of the Oder the enemy had only individual companies, battalions, tank units and no real defence along the Oder. This was well known. It would have been possible to send tank armies â¦Â directly to Berlin and they might have got to Berlin. The question, of course, is whether or not they would have been able to take it, and that is difficult to say. But it was necessary to resist temptationânot an easy business. A commander must not lose his head, even in the face of success. You think that comrade Chuikov did not want to dash to Berlin or that Zhukov did not want to take Berlin? It was possible to go to Berlin; it was possible to throw mobile forces at Berlin. But â¦Â it would not have been possible to turn back since the enemy could easily have closed the path of retreat. The enemy attacking from the north could easily have broken through our infantry, reached the Oder crossings and placed our forces in a difficult position. I emphasise again that it is necessary to keep a grip, to resist temptation and avoid adventures. When taking decisions a commander must never lose his common sense.
17
Zhukov's response to Chuikov's later critique was considerably less relaxed, not surprisingly given the personal barbs directed at him by his former subordinate. Zhukov emphasized the reality of the threat posed by the Pomeranian grouping and denied Chuikov's claim that enough forces were available to isolate that threat
and
march on Berlin. Zhukov also denied that the February 4 telephone conversation
with Stalin took place, noting he was elsewhere on the given date. Zhukov also took on Chuikov's argument that in war it was necessary to take risks. “Historical experience shows,” retorted Zhukov, “that risks have to be taken, but not excessive ones.”
18
The dispute between Zhukov and Chuikov centered on the evaluation of the threat posed by the German armies in Pomerania. The severity of this threat can be gauged by the fact that the right wing of Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian and the left wing of Zhukov's 1st Belorussian did battle with the Germans in Pomerania for nearly two months. During the course of those operations the Red Army destroyed more than twenty enemy divisions but at the cost of 50,000 dead and 170,000 wounded and the loss of 3,000 tanks, aircraft, and artillery pieces.
19
When the issue was discussed at a Moscow military history conference in January 1966, Zhukov's view received overwhelming support from the participants, who included many high-ranking veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Chuikov (but not Zhukov) attended and defended his position but among Zhukov's supporters were Konev and Rokossovskyâneither of whom were his friendsâand both of whom contested the idea that German defenses would have crumbled if the Vistula-Oder operation had been continued.
20
His later defense of Stavka's strategic decisions notwithstanding, Zhukov seems to have been less enthusiastic about the Pomeranian operation at the time. When Stavka ordered Zhukov to transfer his 1st Guards Tank Army to the 2nd Belorussian for the duration of the Pomeranian operation, he told Rokossovsky: “I warn you that the Army must be returned in the same state as you received it.”
21
During the lull in the Red Army's advance to Berlin that set in at the end of February 1945 Zhukov had a chance encounter with someone who was to become one of the most famous foot soldiers of the Second World War. Sergeant Joseph R. Beyrle is thought to be the only American soldier who served in both the U.S. Army and the Soviet army during the Second World War. Beyrle was a paratrooper captured by the Germans in France just after D-Day. In January 1945 he escaped from prison camp in eastern Germany and headed for the Soviet lines where he met up with a Red Army tank unit. Beyrle was experienced in the use of explosives and he persuaded the tank unit's
commanders to allow him to fight alongside them. A month later he was wounded in action and found himself in a Soviet military hospital in what was then called Landsberg (it is now part of Poland). One day there was a commotion in the hospital ward when Zhukov came to visit. Zhukov was intrigued to learn of the wounded American soldier and through an interpreter conducted a conversation with Beyrle, who told him he had no papers, which meant it was difficult for him to get home. The next day Beyrle was supplied with a document authorized by Zhukov that enabled him to travel to Moscow and then to the United States.