Between Giants (35 page)

Cherniakhovsky was also the son of a railwayman, this time from the Ukraine. He was younger than many of his contemporary generals, and his early experience of the Second World War was when he led his 28th Tank Division in a doomed counterattack against Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Group during the early fighting in Lithuania. In early 1943, he achieved fame while commanding 60th Army when he liberated Kursk, creating the salient that was the centre of the following summer’s fighting. He was the youngest man to be appointed to command of a front, and showed great flair in shifting his front’s axis of attack during
Bagration
, something that he repeated during the closing months of the war in East Prussia.

Bagramian’s forces reached Lake Narach in north-west Belarus on 4 July, and were now ordered to press on towards Kaunas and Vilnius. As well as the symbolic importance of these cities, securing either of these objectives would open the way for a push to the Baltic coast, which would isolate Army Group North. The German line facing Bagramian’s 1st Baltic Front was composed of General Gerhard Matzky’s XXVI Corps, part of the remnants of 3rd Panzer Army. Matzky, who had served as military attaché in Tokyo until 1940, took command of 21st Infantry Division in 1943 and XXVIII Corps in early 1944. During the defensive fighting south of Pskov he earned the Knight’s Cross, before taking command of XXVI Corps.

One of the few formations available to 3rd Panzer Army that was in good shape was 7th Panzer Division, newly arrived from Army Group North Ukraine. It detrained north of the town of Lida, in north-west Belarus, and as they arrived on 5 July, its troops were dispatched to the north, in order to set up a protective front some 30 miles south-east of Vilnius. Many of the division’s personnel would have remembered their passage through this area three years ago, when they led the triumphant Wehrmacht in its apparently unstoppable drive into the Soviet Union. The current state of affairs in their new theatre of operations came as a shock to the panzer troops:

There was great turmoil at the front, with some units retreating in complete disarray as individual soldiers. The command staff received no reports from the ‘front’ and could give no information about the enemy, still less which formations they had earlier fought, and there was a complete lack of cohesion.
⁵

In a series of running battles, 7th Panzer Division fell back steadily towards the west. Like all motorised German formations, it was hamstrung by fuel shortages, and on 10 July, Generalmajor Karl Mauss, the division commander, was forced to order the destruction of disabled tanks that were being towed. Crossing into Lithuania on 10 July, Bagramian’s spearheads passed 7th Panzer Division’s northern flank, reaching the outskirts of Alytus, over 40 miles west of the German front line. Whilst the bulk of the panzer division continued to face east, defending the river crossing at Varėna, just inside Lithuania, a battlegroup fought its way towards Alytus in the face of strong Soviet antitank defences. Under constant pressure, 7th Panzer Division fell back to the south-west, crossing the River Niemen at Merkinė late on 13 July. In response to urgent requests for help from the garrison commander of Alytus, who had almost no troops at his disposal, Mauss dispatched a battlegroup to the town, where despite assurances to the contrary, it was promptly dispersed in small detachments. In any event, the town couldn’t be held. Strong Soviet attacks on 15 July forced the Germans back, leaving some elements of the 7th Panzer Division battlegroup to the north-west of Alytus, while the rest fell back to the west. Here, it proved possible to halt the Soviet advance on high ground:

The day brought the division a defensive success through the deployment of all available forces against a continuously attacking enemy. On this day, enemy forces of between 10 and 12 regiments in strength attempted to break through with the use of the heaviest artillery, anti-tank, mortar and air support, particularly west of Alytus. Nevertheless, the main point of effort was clearly disrupted, particularly through the use of artillery.
⁶

One of 7th Panzer Division’s panzer battalions had been in France, re-equipping with new Panther tanks, and its return to the division provided a most welcome boost in strength. Heavy fighting continued, and late on 27 July, the division was ordered north to Kaunas, to deal with a dangerous development that threatened to open up the entire German front.

On Bagramian’s southern flank was Cherniakhovsky’s 3rd Belarusian Front, opposed by a mixture of units, with the most prominent being 5th Panzer Division. The division had been heavily involved in a fighting withdrawal from Mogilev to Minsk and from there to the Lithuanian and East Prussian borders, and despite its losses remained a powerful force. The bitter fighting made a big impression on the soldiers involved, as the commander of one of 5th Panzer Division’s panzergrenadier regiments recorded:

These battles were the toughest that I had ever experienced, and in the main fitted the motto: Let the enemy come forward, give him a punch on the nose, disengage, attack ourselves, and disappear again. This meant the most strenuous efforts by everyone from the commanders to the youngest grenadiers. There was absolutely no more thought of sleep. Words cannot describe what was required during these days in terms of heroism, operations, and endurance. It would be wrong to single out a few individuals or units, as all gave their best.
⁷

Together with a scattering of
ad hoc
units, it now formed the newly reconstituted XXXIX Panzer Corps – the previous formation of this name had been effectively destroyed east of the Beresina, losing two corps commanders in two days – commanded by General Dietrich von Saucken. The son of Prussian landowners, Saucken had a long and illustrious career behind him, having commanded 4th Panzer Division with distinction from December 1941. Badly wounded shortly after winning the Knight’s Cross in early 1942, he served as commandant of
Panzertruppenschule
(‘School for Armoured Troops’) in Krampnitz. He then returned to 4th Panzer Division, earning the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross in August 1943 and the Swords to the Knight’s Cross during the following winter.

Several panzer divisions – notably 4th, 5th and 7th – fought as ‘firefighters’ during the aftermath of
Bagration
, attempting to intercept the advancing Soviet spearheads. In this role, they were generally very effective wherever they ran into the Red Army, but the combination of their small number and the disruptive effect of constant fuel shortages, ensured that the Soviet advance continued, even though many Soviet units, too, were now getting towards the end of their supply lines and were weakened as much by mechanical attrition as by German resistance. Shuffled back and forth, none of the panzer divisions were able to intercept Cherniakhovsky’s exploitation forces closing in with Vilnius. Nevertheless, 5th Panzer Division succeeded in drawing off a significant part of Cherniakhovsky’s Front.

In any event, fighting had already begun in the ‘historic capital’ of Lithuania. The German garrison consisted of the remnants of 14th and 299th Infantry Divisions, an infantry battalion and artillery battalion of 170th Infantry Division, and an assortment of other small units. Even though none of the panzer divisions on the front could reach the area, reinforcements were en route, in the form of a battalion of the 16th
Fallschirmjäger
(parachute) Regiment. Even as the paratroopers arrived at the city airport in a stream of Ju52 transports, the tangled web of relationships between Poles, Germans, Lithuanians and pro-Soviet partisans erupted.

General Aleksander Krzyżanowski, who had been an artillery officer in 1939, was commander of the local elements of the Polish Home Army. He was a devoted Polish nationalist, and at first attempted to build a broad anti-German coalition, though negotiations with Lithuanian, Belarusian and pro-Soviet resistance groups proved fruitless. At the end of 1943, partly in response to a request from Panteleimon Ponomarenko, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belarus, Stalin approved orders to pro-Soviet partisans to disarm elements of the Home Army – in the words of the order: ‘Should there be any resistance on the part of the Polish partisans, they must be shot on the spot.’ This effectively brought to an end any possibility of cooperation between pro-Soviet partisans and the Polish Home Army. Consequently, like other Home Army leaders, Krzyżanowski responded to Soviet attacks on his forces by coming to regard the Soviet Union as an enemy in the same way that he viewed Germany.
⁸
As hostilities with pro-Soviet partisans grew more problematic, Krzyżanowski held negotiations with German officials, including Seidler von Rosenfeld, a local SD officer, and Julian Christiansen, the head of the local branch of the
Abwehr
(German military intelligence) in January and February 1944 respectively. Christiansen suggested a detailed protocol, in which Germany offered to arm Krzyżanowski’s men, including with light artillery, in exchange for a cessation of hostilities between the Home Army and German forces, and Polish cooperation with the occupying authorities in terms of economic production. Although Krzyżanowski refused to accept the protocol, he came to an arrangement with Christiansen whereby the Germans would ensure that weapons and supplies were left in weakly guarded areas, where they could easily be captured by the Home Army and used against pro-Soviet partisans.
⁹

In May 1944, there were armed clashes in and around Vilnius between the Polish Home Army and Lithuanian forces commanded by Povilas Plechavičius, culminating in a pitched battle near the town of Murowana Oszmianka. The outcome was a clear Polish victory, and a series of reprisals followed, first with Lithuanian units attacking Polish civilians, then with Polish attacks on Lithuanians.

As Soviet forces approached Vilnius, the German authorities contacted Colonel Lubosław Krzeszowski, one of Krzyżanowski’s subordinates, and suggested that the Germans and the Home Army combine forces against the Red Army. In return, civilian control of Vilnius would be handed over to Poland, and a number of Polish prisoners held by the Germans would be released. Krzeszowski rejected the offer, not least because the Poles had plans of their own. The Home Army intended to use the arrival of the Red Army as an opportunity to seize control of parts of Poland from the Germans, with coordinated uprisings in several cities under the codename
Burza
(‘Tempest’ or ‘Storm’). In Vilnius, the operation was codenamed
Ostra Brama
(‘Gate of Dawn’), after a famous landmark on the south-east edge of the old heart of the city. Late on 6 July, the Home Army tried to seize Vilnius in an attempt to gain control of the city before the arrival of the Red Army. In the preceding days, the Home Army had effectively secured much of the countryside around the city, but the unexpectedly fast advance of the Soviet forces – about a day ahead of Polish expectations – resulted in Krzyżanowski moving his own timetable forward. Consequently, Krzeszowski had fewer troops at his disposal than he might have wished, and his men were left in possession of only the north-east part of the city. Much of the Polish 77th Infantry Regiment found itself held at arm’s length to the east of Vilnius, its movements further hampered by a German armoured train. Elements of the Polish 85th Infantry Regiment took up positions to the west, beyond the River Vilnia, threatening the German lines of retreat. It is striking that despite years of Soviet and German occupation and tens of thousands of arrests, the AK continued to organise itself into formations that drew their ancestry from the pre-war Polish Army.

Soviet forces arrived outside Vilnius at about the same time that the Poles launched their attack. 35th Guards Tank Brigade, part of General Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army, was involved in heavy fighting with the German paratroopers at the airport, from where fighting gradually spread into the city. On 8 July, Krylov’s 5th Army reached the city outskirts, while the Soviet armour gradually encircled the garrison.

It had been Krzyżanowski’s intention to secure the city for Poland before the arrival of the Red Army, but the planners of
Burza
had always intended that the Poles would cooperate at a tactical level with the Soviets, though they would attempt to set up their own Polish civil authorities before the Red Army could establish pro-Soviet administrations. Unlike in many of the other ‘fortresses’ that Hitler insisted were defended to the last man, the Vilnius garrison put up a stiff fight, inflicting heavy losses on their opponents. Rotmistrov’s tanks had suffered considerable losses in Minsk, and now found themselves engaged in close-range combat against a determined enemy, equipped with weapons such as the
Panzerfaust
, that were at their most effective in this environment. Nevertheless, there could be no question of the Germans holding on for long.

Relief was on the way. The rest of 16th
Fallschirmjäger
Regiment arrived by train near Vilnius early on 9 July, and almost immediately it was assigned to an
ad hoc
battlegroup,
Kampfgruppe Tolsdorff
, which went into action outside the western outskirts. Another formation dispatched to try to stem the Soviet flood was 6th Panzer Division, which had been recuperating in Soltau in Germany after suffering heavy casualties earlier in the year. As the men of the panzer division arrived, they were hastily organised into two battlegroups.
Gruppe Pössl
consisted of a battalion of tanks from the
Grossdeutschland
division, a battalion of 6th Panzer Division’s panzergrenadiers, and artillery support; it was ordered to advance to make contact with Tolsdorff’s group on the outskirts of Vilnius, and thence to link up with the garrison.
Gruppe Stahl
, with two panzergrenadier battalions and artillery support, would attempt to hold open the line of retreat.

The attack began on 13 July, with Generalleutnant Waldenfels, the commander of 6th Panzer Division, and Generaloberst Georg-Hans Reinhardt, commander of 3rd Panzer Army, accompanying Pössl’s group. The thin screen of Soviet and Polish forces to the west of Vilnius was unable to stop the thrust, which reached Rikantai, about eight miles outside the city. Here, contact was established with
Gruppe Tolsdorff
, which in turn had a tenuous connection with the Vilnius garrison. During the afternoon, German wounded were evacuated from Vilnius and along the road to the west.