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The Vistula-Oder Offensive took place between 12 until 2 February, 1945 and was a successful Red Army operation on the Eastern Front in the European Theatre of World War II that carried the Soviet troops from the Vistula river in Poland to the Oder river deep in Germany, about seventy kilometers from the capital Berlin.

Background

Preceding the offensive, the Soviets had built up large numbers of material, and manpower, concentrated in the brigeheads over the Vistula. The Soviets greatly outnumbered the opposing German army in infantry, artillery, and armor. All this was known to German intelligence and general Reinhard Gehlen, head of Fremde Heere Ost gave the general Heinz Guderian the documentation. Guderian presented the intelligence results to Adolf Hitler, but he refused to believe them. The divisions that had participated in the Ardennes offensive could not be transferred fast enough from the Western front to the Eastern front. Guderian had proposed to evacuate the divisions of Army Group North stuck in the Courland to the Reich via the Baltic Sea to get the necessary manpower for the defense, but Hitler forbade it. In addition, Hitler commanded that troops were moved to Hungary to support the operation Frühlingserwachen.

Opposing forces

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Central Poland and Eastern Germany were defended by Army Group A.

Operation details

The offensive was launched in January 12, 1945 by Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Koniev from the large Soviet bridgehead near Sandomierz over the Vistula and two smaller bridgeheads.

One of the strategies of defense that Hitler had ordered were "fortified cities", some of which, like Breslau held out months. They were however largely ineffective in stopping the Soviet advance.

On January 27, troops of Koniev's First Ukranian Front liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. They found ample evidence of the holocaust there, such as huge collections of human hair, thousands of pairs of shoes, dead or dying people etc.

Koniev's troops managed to conquer the heavily industrialized area of Silesia intact by semi-encircling it. The loss of the area that was a heavy blow for Germany's weapon's industry and meant that the war had become hopeless. Albert Speer wrote this to Hitler, but Hitler did not any steps to end the war.

By January 31 the Red Army had secured bridgeheads over the frozen Oder, 500 km (310 miles) West from their starting point. They decided to stop due to logistics problems aggravated by the Spring thaw, the lack of air support, and fear of encirclement through flank attacks from East Prussia, Pommern and Silesia. At that time Berlin was undefended and only approximately 70 km away from the bridgeheads and the question whether it was a wise decision to stop is as of 2006 still disputed.

Looting, atrocities and the flight of ethnic Germans

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The soldiers of the Red Army looted and committed many atrocities, like rape. Reasons for the atrocities were among others the will to take revenge by soldies who quite often had a personal reason for this, e.g. a family member killed by the German invaders. These atrocities were amplified by German propaganda. As a result millions of ethnic Germans tried fled to the West.

References

• Beevor, Antony. Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2002, ISBN 0670886955
• Rees, Laurence Auschwitz BBC books
• Max Hastings Armageddon. The Battle for Germany 1944-45 published by Macmillan, London

Bibliography

• Duffy, Christopher Red storm on the Reich: The Soviet March on Germany, 1945 Routledge 1991 ISBN 0415228298

External links

• Operation Sonnenwende: Savior of Berlin? See Sonnenwende
• Combat service and logistic support in the Vistula-Oder strategic offensive operation

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