The Fall of Berlin 1945 Read Online Free PDF Page B

importance?' Rokossovsky suspected that Zhukov, whom he had considered a friend, had undermined him, but in fact Stalin did not want a Pole to enjoy the glory of taking Berlin. It was natural that Rokossovsky should be suspicious. He had been arrested during the purge of the Red Army in 1937. The beatings from Beria's henchmen demanding confessions of treason were enough to make even the most balanced person slightly paranoid. And Rokossovsky knew that Lavrenty Beria, the head of the NKVD secret police, and Viktor Abakumov, the chief of SMERSH counter-intelligence, watched him closely. Stalin had left Rokossovsky in no doubt that the 1937 accusations still hung over him. He had simply been released conditionally. Any blunder as a commander would put him straight back into NKVD custody. 'I know very well what Beria is capable of,' Rokossovsky said to Zhukov during the changeover. 'I have been in his prisons.' It would take Soviet generals eight years to get their revenge on Beria.
    The forces of the 1st Belorussian Front and the 1st Ukrainian Front lining up against the German front line along the Vistula were not simply superior, they were overwhelming. To Zhukov's south, Marshal Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front would attack due east towards Breslau. Its main thrust would be launched from the Sandomierx bridgehead, the largest salient of all on the west bank of the Vistula. Unlike Zhukov, however, Konev intended to use his two tank armies to smash the enemy line on the very first day.
    Konev, according to Beria's son, had 'wicked little eyes, a shaven head that looked like a pumpkin, and an expression full of self-conceit'. He was probably Stalin's favourite general and one of the very few senior commanders whom even Stalin admired for his ruthlessness. Stalin had promoted him to marshal of the Soviet Union after his crushing of the Korsun pocket, south of Kiev, just under a year before. It had been one of the most pitiless engagements in a very cruel war. Konev ordered his aircraft to drop incendiaries on the small town of Shanderovka to force the Germans sheltering there out into the blizzard. As they struggled to break out of the encirclement on 17 February 1944, Konev sprang his trap. His tank crews charged straight for the column, firing machine guns and running men down to crush them under their tracks. As the Germans scattered, trying to flee through the heavy snow, Konev's three divisions of cavalry set off in pursuit. The Cossacks cut them down mercilessly with their sabres, apparently hacking even at arms raised in surrender. Some 20,000 Germans died that day.
    On 12 January, the Vistula offensive began at 5 a.m. Moscow time, when Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front attacked out of the Sandomierz bridgehead. The snow was quite heavy and visibility almost nil. After shtraf companies of prisoners were forced through the minefields, rifle battalions secured the front line. The full artillery bombardment then began, using up to 300 guns per kilometre, which meant one every three to four metres. The German defenders were shattered. Most of them surrendered, grey-faced and trembling. A panzergrenadier officer watching from the rear described the spectacle on the horizon as a 'fire-storm' and added that it was 'like the heavens falling down on earth'. Prisoners from the 16th Panzer Division captured late that day claimed that once the bombardment started, their commander, Major General Müller, drove off towards the town of Kielce, abandoning his men.
    Soviet tank crews had painted slogans on their turrets: 'Forward into the fascist lair!' and 'Revenge and death to the German occupiers!' They faced little resistance as their T-34 and heavy Stalin tanks moved forward at 2 p.m. Their hulls coated in frost were well camouflaged for the snowy landscape ahead, even if all was brown in the middle distance from shell-churned mud.
    Along with Breslau, the main objectives of General Rybalko's 3rd Guards Tank Army and General Lelyushenko's 4th