Chapter 258
The German counterattack on the Western Front was extremely fierce. The British and American Allied Forces were caught off guard and their defenses on the Meuse River were directly broken through. Subsequently, the British and American Allied Forces were cut into two parts and lost contact with each other. At the same time, their main supply ports were threatened from the front and were in danger.
In this passive situation, the British and American Allied Forces were forced to ask Moscow for help, demanding that the Soviet Red Army quickly complete its troop deployment and launch a new round of offensive on the Eastern Front to tie down the German forces so that the British and American Allied Forces could consolidate their defenses and rebuild the defensive areas on the Western Front.
Although Moscow hoped that Britain and the United States would suffer greater losses on the Western Front so that a situation more favorable to the Soviet Union would emerge when Europe rebuilt its political structure after the war, allies are still allies after all. Continuing to delay the war on the Eastern Front when Britain and the United States have already made demands would create an international public opinion environment that is very unfavorable to the Soviet Union.
Therefore, there was a long interval between wars this time. In less than two weeks, a new round of Soviet offensive was launched.
This battle was first launched from Romania and Hungary. The main organizer of the attack was the 2nd Ukrainian Front. Its combat objective was to cooperate with the 4th Ukrainian Front to encircle and annihilate the German Eastern Carpathian Group.
The battle was fought in the long area from Cluj to Arad. The Soviet army was divided into three routes and attacked the three areas of Cluj, Arad and Oradea where the German troops were deployed respectively. Except for the relatively tenacious defense of the German troops in the Oradea area, the German troops in the remaining two areas were almost defeated in one blow. The Soviet Red Army broke through the German defense in just one day.
Subsequently, the 4th Ukrainian Front crossed the Eastern Carpathian Mountains and advanced into Czechoslovakia, posing a direct threat to the rear of the German Army Group South, forcing the German troops to abandon their existing positions and retreat into Hungary.
On the fifth day of the campaign, the left wing corps of the 2nd Ukrainian Front broke through the German Kreš River defense line while marching and rushed into the middle Danube plain. The right wing corps broke through the German Nyiregyhaza defense line. The two corps encircled the Hungarian 1st and 2nd Armies of the German Army Group South and the German 9th Army in the Debrecen area.
In order to escape the fate of being surrounded and annihilated, this group of German troops broke out to the northwest at all costs, while the 2nd Ukrainian Front continued to besiege them at all costs. As a result, the scene that had appeared in the Minsk encirclement was repeated. The entire encirclement continued to advance northwest from Debrecen until the Saty River line, when the German First Tank Group came to support them, and the German troops finally escaped. Behind them, the 170-kilometer arc was covered with the bodies of Hungarians and Germans.
After the Battle of Debrecen, the German Army Group South was crippled and lost the ability to cover Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
Subsequently, part of the 2nd Ukrainian Front went south to the Balkan Peninsula where Yugoslavia was located, and part of it advanced into Hungary, approaching the Hungarian capital of Budapest. At the same time, the 4th Ukrainian Front also entered Czechoslovakia and began to advance towards the Western Carpathian Mountains.
In order to cooperate with the offensive launched first on the southern front, on the third day after the 4th Ukrainian Front launched its offensive, the 1st Ukrainian Front launched an offensive operation aimed at sweeping the entire southern Poland and the area north of the Western Carpathian Mountains in Czechoslovakia. Comrade Zhukov, who was eager to direct the spearhead of the offensive towards Berlin, commanded his troops to launch a sharp offensive on this front. He mobilized twice the enemy's troops, three times the German tanks, and 1.5 times the German artillery and mortars. In half a month, he defeated the already crippled German "Northern Ukraine" Army Group.
Just two weeks after the campaign on the southern front was launched, a massive offensive jointly launched by the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts was officially launched.
Before launching this battle, Yuri did a lot of work with the field command organizations of the two fronts. According to intelligence, the German army had only one Ninth Army responsible for defense on the offensive fronts of the two fronts. Its troops were seriously short of manpower and it was difficult to organize a defense force in a large depth.
Therefore, the campaign command decided to launch a comprehensive breakthrough on the German front from five directions, and to use rapid corps to advance rapidly to the rear of the German army, striving to cut the German forces into several parts and annihilate them. At the same time, it would launch the greatest possible assault on the Oder River basin.
According to this operational plan, the 61st Army commanded by Belov will take the lead in launching an attack from the Sochaczew area. Once the German defense line is broken through, the 9th Guards Army will launch an offensive along the Bzura River from the breakthrough point. At the same time, the 9th Assault Army, the 9th Guards Tank Army, and the 2nd Army (mainly tank troops, commanded by Lieutenant General of the Tank Corps Bogdanov) will quickly launch a major assault in the direction of Kutno and Poznan.
The 69th and 33rd Armies will launch an attack from the Spawa direction with the cooperation of the 9th and 11th Tank Armies and the 7th Guards Cavalry Army, and carry out a second assault in the general direction of Lodz. The 47th Army will be responsible for carrying out an auxiliary assault north of Warsaw to contain the German troops west and north of Warsaw.
The Polish 9th Army will coordinate with the 2nd Guards Tank Army to launch an attack west of Warsaw. After a breakthrough, it will coordinate with the 47th Army to launch an attack towards Toruń along the right bank of the Vistula River.
As for the main force of the 2nd Belorussian Front, it was responsible for launching an offensive northward from the Omlev River basin and sweeping through the various fortified areas in southern East Prussia.
The offensive was launched very smoothly. The main force of the 61st Army received support from the artillery barrage in the process of breaking through the German Pilica River defense line. On the same day, it wedged the front line nearly three kilometers into the German defense line.
On the second day of the campaign, the 9th Guards Army went into battle, and the Germans were forced to use their only reserve, the 40th Tank Army, but they were attacked by the 9th Guards Tank Army and bombed by the 16th Air Army. On that day, the 16th Air Army dispatched nearly 2,000 sorties, and the main force of the 40th Tank Army was defeated.
On the left wing, the 9th and 11th Tank Armies rushed to the German-occupied city of Spawa on the first day of the battle. At dawn the next day, the 33rd Army liberated Spawa and began to advance towards Lodz.
On the Warsaw front, the 47th Army launched a sweep of the German defense support points west of Warsaw, the troops deployed in the depth of the defense, and the transportation hubs. On this line, the German defense was weak, and the 47th Army advanced 12 kilometers into the depth of the German defense in one day.
The glory of the Greater German Empire was gone. Before the battle was launched, no one expected that the battle would go so smoothly. The Second Guards Tank Army, which had the fastest attack speed, advanced 80 kilometers into the depth of the German defense in one day, as if it was in an empty land. Along the way, a large number of German field hospitals did not have time to retreat, and a large number of German wounded became prisoners of the Soviet army.
By the fifth day of the battle, the Soviet army had pushed the front line more than 130 kilometers westward. The main force of the German Ninth Army was cut off and surrounded, and it was only a matter of time before it was eventually annihilated.
