Between Giants (36 page)

The Soviet response to the German breakout was slow. Late on 13 July, uncoordinated attacks along the narrow escape route were repulsed, but the following day there were several crises as increasingly strong Soviet pincer attacks cut the road repeatedly. Finally, as darkness fell on 14 July, the Germans withdrew to the west. About 5,000 men from the garrison were able to escape, but over 10,000 were lost.

The Soviet authorities proclaimed the liberation of Vilnius on 13 July, but there was still the question of what to do with the Polish Home Army forces that had fought both against the garrison and against
Gruppe Tolsdorff
to the west of the city. Krzyżanowski and his fellow officers wished to use their men to recreate the pre-war Polish 19th Infantry Division, itself a controversial unit in that it was raised by Poland in the Vilnius region after that area was seized by Poland. On 16 July, Krzyżanowski and his officers were invited to a conference with the leadership of the 3rd Belarusian Front, as a report by the NKVD recorded:

Lubosław Krzyżanowski was imprisoned until October 1947. A year after his release by the Soviet authorities, the Polish security service arrested him, and he died of tuberculosis in 1951.
¹¹

Another Polish officer involved in the fighting in and around Vilnius was Maciej Kalenkiewicz. He served as a combat engineer during the German invasion of Poland in 1939, and escaped to France during the first winter of the war. From there, he moved to England, and returned to Poland in a parachute drop in December 1941. Although his unit was captured by the Germans, Kalenkiewicz and his men managed to recover their weapons and fought their way to freedom, killing all their captors, though Kalenkiewicz himself was injured during the brief firefight. He was one of the main authors of the plan to seize Vilnius, and in June 1944, he was once more wounded. He developed gangrene, necessitating the amputation of his hand, and consequently was unable to take part in the fighting for Vilnius; when the Soviets began to arrest Home Army personnel, he led his men – a battalion of the Polish 77th Infantry Regiment – into the Rudnicka Forest, where they regrouped with other Polish fighters, until perhaps 2,000 men had gathered. Aware that they were being monitored by Soviet aircraft, the Poles decided to disperse, with Kalenkiewicz taking command of a contingent of about 100. Conscious that the Soviets were harassing the local population, arresting any suspected of being supporters of the Home Army or in any other respect hostile to the Soviet Union, Kalenkiewicz sent a signal to his superiors, warning them that he and his men were ‘as good as dead’, and all would be lost unless the Western Allies could intervene, perhaps by establishing air bases in eastern Poland. On 19 August, a unit of Soviet soldiers from the NKVD moved against Kalenkiewicz and his small band, near the village of Surmonty near the border with Belarus. The Poles beat off the first attack, but after receiving reinforcements, the NKVD detachment attacked again, swiftly overrunning the Home Army men. Kalenkiewicz and 36 of his men were killed.

The ruthless elimination of the AK throughout Poland, but particularly in the Vilnius region, was an essential prerequisite to Stalin’s preferred solution of reassigning the area to Lithuania. The Poles were far better armed and organised than the Lithuanian nationalist partisans, and far more numerous; they would have opposed the imposition of Lithuanian sovereignty, and the compulsory resettlement of Poles in the region to territories further west. Given their close links with the Western Allies and the pre-war Polish administration, the fighters of the AK were never going to be tolerated by the Soviets after they had seized control of Poland.

For a few days after the fall of Vilnius, the front line appeared to stabilise to the west of the city. Despite his success in capturing Vilnius, Cherniakhovsky was disappointed with the performance of his subordinates. Pavel Alexeyevish Rosmistrov, commander of 5th Guards Tank Army, was heavily criticised for allowing his armour to become embroiled in costly urban combat in both Minsk and Vilnius, and was removed from command. Both Cherniakhovsky and Bagramian were forced to pause while supplies were brought up to the front, and the shattered remnants of German divisions that had almost been destroyed during
Bagration
had a brief respite. But on 28 July, Cherniakhovsky renewed his offensive, pushing forward towards Kaunas. The Red Army was only 30 miles from Kaunas, and on the second day of the new assault, the Soviet troops had already covered nearly half this distance in some locations. On 30 July, Soviet spearheads from 33rd Army penetrated the threadbare German line and reached the Niemen valley to the south-east of Kaunas. Immediately, the Soviet armoured reserve for the operation, 2nd Guards Tank Corps, was committed to the sector; bypassing the German forces pulling back towards Kaunas, the Soviet tanks raced on to Vilkaviškis, far to the south-west of the city. From here, the tank corps was close to the East Prussian frontier, but also had the option to swing to the north and isolate Kaunas. The city was given up almost without a fight on 1 August, the German forces pulling back to the west.

On Cherniakhovsky’s northern flank, Bagramian pushed on from Lake Narach into Lithuania towards Švenčionys. Initially, STAVKA assigned him the objectives of Panevezys, Kaunas and Šiauliai. Although Bagramian received reinforcements in the form of 2nd Guards Army and 51st Army, neither of these formations would be available until mid-July, and at first, he was left to push on with 6th Guards Army and 43rd Army, both weakened substantially by the fighting during
Bagration
, reinforced by the similarly understrength 1st Tank Corps. Fortunately for Bagramian, the German forces in front of him were in an even worse state.

At first, Bagramian made good progress, but the arrival of Strachwitz and his small group of tanks shored up the defence. The armies of Bagramian’s front were covering such a large sector of front – estimated at about 120 miles – that he struggled to make adequate progress. Accordingly, the objective of Kaunas was transferred to Cherniakhovsky’s front, allowing Bagramian to concentrate on driving west towards Šiauliai. 2nd Guards Army and 51st Army now arrived and immediately made better headway, capturing Panevėžys on 22 July and thus completely outflanking the German defences at Daugavpils. Bagramian assigned 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps to 51st Army, and powerful motorised formations pushed forward rapidly to Šiauliai, reaching the eastern outskirts on 25 July. Oberst Hellmuth Mäder, who had taken command of Army Group North’s
Waffenschule
(weapons school) after being badly wounded on the Narva front, deployed his men – a mixture of instructors and trainees from the weapons school, and other
ad hoc
companies made up of rear area units and stragglers – in the town, and succeeded in holding Šiauliai for two days, inflicting significant losses on the Soviet forces and buying invaluable time for other German units to pull back to the west.

For Bagramian, there was now finally an opportunity to deal with Army Group North, something that he had wished to do ever since the early successes of
Bagration
. 51st Army was ordered to strike north from Šiauliai and, over the next three days, pushed forward against weakening opposition. Elements of 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps, supported by 279th and 347th Rifle Divisions, pushed a mixture of German units from I Corps out of Jelgava on 31 July, on the same day that 35th Guards Mechanised Brigade, also from 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps, took Dobele. Tukums fell the same day, and shortly after, Soviet soldiers from 347th and 416th Rifle Divisions reached the Gulf of Riga a few miles away. Army Group North was cut off from the Reich.

On Bagramian’s northern flank was General Andrei Ivanovich Yeremenko’s 2nd Baltic Front, which had not been involved in
Bagration
. Nevertheless, Yeremenko’s armies maintained considerable pressure on the German lines to prevent redeployment of forces to other sectors. VI SS Corps came under repeated attack from 22 June, and as the catastrophic collapse of Army Group Centre developed, orders were issued to pull back the entire front line to prevent it being outflanked from the south.

On 9 July, supply units and ammunition were evacuated to the rear in preparation for a general withdrawal the following day, but early on 10 July Yeremenko’s armies unleashed a surprise attack. The shortage of ammunition brought about by the previous day’s withdrawals greatly hampered the defensive capabilities of the Latvian divisions, and instead of an orderly withdrawal, the line was pulled back in almost constant contact with the Red Army. As a consequence, many of the new defensive positions were overrun by the pursuing Soviets before they could be manned properly. The fighting reached the city of Opochka on 13 July, but the line of the Velikaya could not be held, and the retreat continued. 15th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division’s 32nd Grenadier Regiment found itself isolated on the southern flank of the division, and attempted to retreat to the west, fighting its way through a group of Soviet partisans in dense woodland. On 16 July, after a gruelling march of two days, the survivors reached the River Isa, not far from the Latvian border. From here, they turned north, encountering and destroying a small Soviet force. Mounted in the vehicles they had captured from the Soviets, the remaining men, led by Obersturmbannführer Aperats, attempted to seize a bridge over the River Zilupe. Although they secured a small bridgehead, they then came under heavy attack by Soviet forces, including a substantial number of tanks, and the Latvian regiment was completely destroyed. Aperats chose suicide rather than surrender after he was seriously wounded. Sturmbannführer Hazners, accompanied by only four men, managed to reach the lines of the German 93rd Infantry Division.
¹²

The Latvian divisions regrouped near Kārsava, within the borders of Latvia. The combat strength of both divisions was greatly reduced by their casualties, and as it was the weaker of the two formations, 15th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division handed over its artillery and much of its manpower to 19th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division. It was perhaps typical of the manner in which the people of the Baltic States were exploited by both the Soviet Union and Germany that, now the war was once more returning to Baltic territories, a proportion of those who had taken up arms specifically to defend those territories should be moved elsewhere, to suit the needs of their powerful occupiers; 15th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division was pulled out of the front line and sent to the rear for reorganisation and replenishment, eventually being transferred to West Prussia in August.

The Soviet 10th Guards Army crossed the border into Latvia, seizing Zilupe on 17 July, pushing on to Ludza on 23 July. Further south, 22nd Army and 3rd Shock Army advanced towards the vital river crossings at Daugavpils, and when the German 290th Infantry Division, protecting the road that ran north-east from Daugavpils towards Rezekne, came under pressure, the Germans were forced to react. Otto Carius and his fellow Tiger tank crewmen of
Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502
had been employed in a number of minor actions since their battles near Narva, and on 20 July were ordered to move up to the front to prevent a Soviet breakthrough that might threaten both Daugavpils and Rezekne. As he led his company forward along the road from Daugavpils towards Rezekne, Carius came across German units fleeing the Soviet advance:

Just short of the village of Malinovka, Carius encountered a junior officer who told him that the village had been occupied by Soviet tanks. A brief reconnaissance suggested that Soviet infantry was not present in any significant numbers, and swiftly Carius made a plan to retake Malinovka: he and another tank commander would drive into the village at full speed and engage any enemy tanks there, while the other six tanks in the company took up positions on high ground to the south and engaged any Soviet tanks that attempted to retreat.

The attack lasted less than 15 minutes, resulting in the swift recapture of the village. Some of the tanks appeared to have been left with only one or two crewmembers aboard – the rest were apparently busy collecting loot. Without losing any tanks, Carius and his company claimed to have destroyed 17 JS-2 tanks and five T34s. From Malinovka, they moved on to ambush the rest of the Soviet tank brigade, inflicting further heavy casualties.
¹⁴
However, the Soviet forces in the area at the time, 5th Tank Corps, gave different losses for 41st Tank Brigade (ten T34s) and 48th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment (five JS-2s), as the heavy tank regiment reported:

At 1200 the enemy opened coordinated fire of tanks and SP-guns from the region of Malinovo [Malinovka]. Taking cover in folds in the terrain, the regiment started a firefight with the enemy. Enemy aircraft actively operated overhead. As a result of bombing and enemy artillery fire the regiment suffered losses – five tanks were set ablaze. The regiment was withdrawn from combat and laid an ambush in the forest south-east of Malinovo.
¹⁵