Vistula–Oder Offensive

Soviet troops are greeted by the citizens of Lodz.

The Vistula–Oder Offensive was a Red Army operation on the Eastern Front in the European theatre of World War II in January 1945. The army made a major advance into German-held territory, capturing Kraków, Warsaw and Poznań. The Red Army had built up their strength around a number of key bridgeheads, with two fronts commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Konev. Against them, the German Army Group A, led by Colonel-General Josef Harpe (soon replaced by Colonel-General Ferdinand Schörner), was outnumbered five to one. Within days, German commandants evacuated the concentration camps, sending the prisoners on their death marches to the west, where ethnic Germans also started fleeing. In a little over two weeks, the Red Army had advanced 300 miles (483 km) from the Vistula to the Oder, only 43 miles (69 km) from Berlin, which was undefended. However, Zhukov called a halt, owing to continued German resistance on his northern flank (Pomerania), and the advance on Berlin had to be delayed until April.

Background

In the wake of the successful Operation Bagration, the 1st Belorussian Front managed to secure two bridgeheads west of the Vistula river between 27 July and 4 August 1944. The Soviet forces remained inactive during the failed Warsaw uprising that started on 1 August, though their frontline was not far from the insurgents. The 1st Ukrainian Front captured an additional large bridgehead at Sandomierz (known as the Baranow bridgehead in German accounts), some 200 km south of Warsaw, during the Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive.

Preceding the offensive, the Red Army had built up large amounts of materiel and manpower in the three bridgeheads. The Red Army greatly outnumbered the opposing Wehrmacht in infantry, artillery, and armor. All this was known to German intelligence. General Reinhard Gehlen, head of Fremde Heere Ost, passed his assessment to Heinz Guderian. Guderian in turn presented the intelligence results to Adolf Hitler, who refused to believe them, dismissing the apparent Soviet strength as "the greatest imposture since Genghis Khan". Guderian had proposed to evacuate the divisions of Army Group North trapped in the Courland Pocket to the Reich via the Baltic Sea to get the necessary manpower for the defense, but Hitler forbade it. In addition, Hitler commanded that one major operational reserve, the troops of Sepp Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army, be moved to Hungary to support Operation Frühlingserwachen.

The offensive was brought forward from 20 January to 12 January because meteorological reports warned of a thaw later in the month, and the tanks needed hard ground for the offensive. It was not done to assist American and British forces during the Battle of the Bulge, as Stalin chose to claim at Yalta.

Forces Involved

Red Army

Two Fronts of the Red Army were directly involved. The 1st Belorussian Front, holding the sector around Warsaw and southward in the Magnuszew and Puławy bridgeheads, was led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov; the 1st Ukrainian Front, occupying the Sandomierz bridgehead, was led by Marshal Ivan Konev.

Zhukov and Konev had 163 divisions for the operation with a total of: 2,203,000 infantry, 4,529 tanks, 2,513 assault guns, 13,763 pieces of field artillery (76 mm or more), 14,812 mortars, 4,936 anti-tank guns, 2,198 Katyusha multiple rocket launchers, and 5,000 aircraft.

Soviet Deployments

1st Belorussian Front (Marshal Georgy Zhukov)

47th Army (Franz Perkhorovich)

1st Polish Army (General Stanislav Poplavsky)

3rd Shock Army (Nikolai Simoniak)

61st Army (Pavel Alexeyevich Belov)

1st Guards Tank Army (Mikhail Katukov)

2nd Guards Tank Army (Semyon Bogdanov)

5th Shock Army (in Magnuszew bridgehead) (Nikolai Berzarin)

8th Guards Army (in Magnuszew bridgehead) (General Vasily Chuikov)

69th Army (in Puławy bridgehead) (Vladimir Kolpakchi)

33rd Army (in Puławy bridgehead) (Vyacheslav Tsvetayev)

1st Ukrainian Front (Marshal Ivan Konev)

21st Army (Dmitry Gusev)

6th Army (Vladimir Gluzdovsky)

3rd Guards Army (Vasily Gordov)

13th Army (Nikolai Pukhov)

4th Tank Army (Dmitry Lelyushenko)

3rd Guards Tank Army (Pavel Rybalko)

52nd Army (Konstantin Koroteyev)

5th Guards Army (Aleksey Semenovich Zhadov)

59th Army (Ivan Korovnikov)

60th Army (Pavel Kurochkin)

Wehrmacht

Soviet forces in this sector were opposed by Army Group A, defending a front which stretched from positions east of Warsaw southwards along the Vistula, almost to the confluence of the San. At that point there was a large Soviet bridgehead over the Vistula in the area of Baranów before the front continued south to Jasło.

There were three Armies in the Group; the 9th Army deployed around Warsaw, the 4th Panzer Army opposite the Baranow salient in the Vistula Bend, and the 17th Army to their south. The force had a total complement of 450,000 soldiers, 4,100 artillery pieces, and 1,150 tanks. Army Group A was led by Colonel-General Josef Harpe (who was replaced, after the offensive had begun, by Colonel-General Ferdinand Schörner on 20 January).

German Order Of Battle

Army Group A (Colonel-General Josef Harpe to 20 January; then Ferdinand Schörner)

9th Army (General Smilo Freiherr von Lüttwitz to 20 January; then General Theodor Busse)

LVI Panzer Corps (General Johannes Block)

XXXXVI Panzer Corps (General Walter Fries)

VIII Corps (General Walter Hartmann)

4th Panzer Army (General Fritz-Hubert Gräser)

XLII Corps (General Hermann Recknagel)

XXIV Panzer Corps (General Walther Nehring)

XLVIII Panzer Corps (General Maximilian Reichsfreiherr von Edelsheim)

17th Army (General Friedrich Schulz)

LIX Corps (General Edgar Rohricht)

XI Corps (General Rudolf von Bünau)

XI SS Panzer Corps (SS-Obergruppenführer Matthias Kleinheisterkamp)

German intelligence had estimated that the Soviet forces had a 3:1 numerical superiority to the German forces; there was in fact a 5:1 superiority. In the large Baranow/Sandomierz bridgehead, the Fourth Panzer Army was required to defend from 'strongpoints' in some areas, as it lacked the infantry to man a continuous front line. In addition, on Hitler's express orders, the two German defense lines (the Grosskampf­linie and Hauptkampflinie) were positioned very close to each other, placing the main defenses well within striking range of Soviet artillery.

Offensive

The offensive commenced in the Baranow bridgehead at 04:35 on 12 January with an intense bombardment by the guns of the 1st Ukrainian Front against the positions of the 4th Panzer Army. Concentrated against the divisions of XLVIII Panzer Corps, which had been deployed across the face of the bridgehead, the bombardment effectively destroyed their capacity to respond; a battalion commander in the 68th Infantry Division stated that "I began the operation with an understrength battalion [...] after the smoke of the Soviet preparation cleared [...] I had only a platoon of combat effective soldiers left".

The initial barrage was followed by probing attacks and a further heavy bombardment at 10:00. By the time the main armored exploitation force of the 3rd Guards and 4th Tank Armies moved forward four hours later, the Fourth Panzer Army had already lost up to ⅔ of its artillery and ¼ of its troops.

The Soviet units made rapid progress, moving to cut off the defenders at Kielce. The armored reserves of the 4th Panzer Army's central corps, the XXIV Panzer Corps, were committed, but had suffered serious damage by the time they reached Kielce, and were already being outflanked. The XLVIII Panzer Corps, on the Fourth Panzer Army's southern flank, had by this time been completely destroyed, along with much of Recknagel's XLII Corps in the north. Recknagel himself would be killed by Polish partisans on 23 January. By 14 January, the 1st Ukrainian Front had forced crossings of the Nida river, and began to exploit towards Radomsko and the Warthe. The 4th Panzer Army's last cohesive formation, the XXIV Panzer Corps held on around Kielce until the night of 16 January, before its commander made the decision to withdraw.

The 1st Belorussian Front, to Konev's north, opened its attack on the German 9th Army from the Magnuszew and Puławy bridgeheads at 08:30, again commencing with a heavy bombardment. The 33rd and 69th Armies broke out of the Puławy bridgehead to a depth of 30 km (19 mi), while the 5th Shock and 8th Guards Armies broke out of the Magnuszew bridgehead. The 2nd and 1st Guards Tank Armies were committed after them to exploit the breach. The 69th Army's progress from the Puławy bridgehead was especially successful, with the defending LVI Panzer Corps disintegrating after its line of retreat was cut off. Though the 9th Army conducted many local counter-attacks, they were all brushed aside; the 69th Army ruptured the last lines of defense and took Radom, while the 2nd Guards Tank Army moved on Sochaczew and the 1st Guards Tank Army was ordered to seize bridgeheads over the Pilica and attack towards Łódź. In the meantime, the 47th Army had crossed the Vistula and moved towards Warsaw from the north, while the 61st and 1st Polish Armies encircled the city from the south.

The only major German response came on 15 January, when Hitler (against the advice of Guderian) ordered the Panzerkorps Großdeutschland of Dietrich von Saucken from East Prussia to cover the breach made in the sector of the 4th Panzer Army, but the advance of Zhukov's forces forced it to detrain at Łódź without even reaching its objective. After covering the 9th Army's retreat, it was forced to withdraw southwest toward the Warthe.

Taking of Kraków and Escape of the XXIV Panzer Corps

On 17 January, Konev was given new objectives: to advance towards Breslau using his mechanized forces, and to use the combined-arms forces of the 60th and 59th Armies to open an attack on the southern flank towards the industrial heartland of Upper Silesia through Kraków. Kraków was secured undamaged on 19 January after an encirclement by the 59th and 60th Armies, in conjunction with the 4th Guards Tank Corps, forced the German defenders to withdraw hurriedly.

The second stage of the 1st Ukrainian Front's objective was far more complex, as they were required to encircle and secure the entire industrial region of Upper Silesia, where they were faced by Schulz's 17th Army. Konev ordered that the 59th and 60th Armies advance frontally, while the 21st Army encircled the area from the north. He then ordered Rybalko's 3rd Guards Tank Army, moving on Breslau, to swing southwards along the upper Oder from 20 January, cutting off 17th Army's withdrawal.

In the meantime, the shattered remnants of the 4th Panzer Army were still attempting to reach German lines. By 18 January, Nehring and the XXIV Panzer Corps found that their intended route northwards had been blocked, so pulled back to the west, absorbing the remnants of XLII Corps that had escaped encirclement. Much of the remainder of XLII Corps was destroyed after being trapped around Przysucha. Screened by heavy fog, the lead elements of XXIV Panzer Corps reached the Warthe on 22 January, and having linked up with Grossdeutschland Panzer Corps of von Saucken, were finally able to cross the Oder, some 350 km (220 mi) from their positions at the start of the Soviet offensive.

Withdrawal of 17th Army from Upper Silesia

On 25 January, Schulz requested that he be allowed to withdraw his 100,000 troops from the developing salient around Katowice/Kattowitz. This was refused, and he repeated the request on 26 January. Schoerner eventually permitted Schulz to pull his forces back on the night of 27 January, while Konev – who had allowed just enough room for the 17th Army to withdraw without putting up serious resistance – secured the area undamaged.

On Konev's northern flank, the 4th Tank Army had spearheaded an advance to the Oder, where it secured a major bridgehead at Steinau. Troops of the 5th Guards Army established a second bridgehead upstream at Ohlau.

Advance of 1st Belorussian Front

In the northern sector of the offensive, Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front also made rapid progress, as 9th Army was no longer able to offer coherent resistance. Its XXXVI Panzer Corps, which was positioned behind Warsaw, was pushed over the Vistula into the neighboring Second Army sector. Warsaw was taken on 17 January, as Army Group A's headquarters issued orders for the city to be abandoned; units of the 2nd Guards and 3rd Shock Armies entering the city were profoundly affected by the devastation wrought by German forces after the Warsaw Uprising. Hitler, on the other hand, was furious at the abandonment of the 'fortress', arresting Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin, head of the Operations Branch of OKH, and sacking both the 9th Army and XXXVI Panzer Corps commanders; Generals Smilo Freiherr von Lüttwitz and Walter Fries.

The 2nd Guards Tank Army pressed forward to the Oder, while to the south the 8th Guards Army reached Łódź by 18 January, and took it by 19 January. The 1st Guards Tank Army moved to encircle Poznań by 25 January, and the 8th Guards Army began to fight its way into the city on the following day, though there was protracted and intense fighting in the Siege of Poznań before the city would finally be taken.

To the northeast of Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, the lead elements of Marshal Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front taking part in the East Prussian Offensive had reached the Baltic coast of the Vistula delta by 24 January and so succeeded in isolating Army Group Centre in East Prussia. On January 27, the abandoned Wolf's Lair - Hitler's former headquarters on the Eastern Front, was captured.

Zhukov's Advance to the Oder

After encircling Poznań, the 1st Guards Tank Army advanced deep into the fortified region around the Obra River against patchy resistance from a variety of Volkssturm and Wehrmacht units. There was heavier resistance, however, on the approaches to the fortress of Küstrin.

The German reorganization of command structure that resulted in the creation of Army Group Vistula was accompanied by the release of a few extra formations for the defense; the V SS Mountain Corps, with two reserve infantry divisions, was deployed along the Obra and the prewar border fortifications known as the Tierschtigel Riegel, while the Panzergrenadier-Division Kurmark was ordered to reinforce it.

On 16 January 1945 Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin, the Chief of the Operational Branch of the Army General Staff (Generalstab des Heeres) gave Army Group A permission to retreat from Warsaw, overruling a direct order from Hitler for them to hold fast. Three days later von Bonin was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned first at Flossenbürg concentration camp and then Dachau concentration camp. The officer was eventually liberated along with other prisoners in South Tyrol by the US Army in May 1945.

The military historian Earl Ziemke described the advance thus:

On the 25th, Zhukov's main force passed Poznań heading due west towards Kuestrin, on the Oder forty miles east of Berlin. The path of the Soviet advance looked like the work of a gigantic snow plough, its point aimed on a line from Warsaw to Poznań, to Berlin. All of Army Group A was being caught up by the point and the left blade and thrown across the Oder. On the right the German had nothing except a skeleton army group that Hitler had created some days earlier and named Army Group Vistula.

On 25 January, Hitler renamed three army groups. Army Group North became Army Group Courland; Army Group Centre became Army Group North and Army Group A became Army Group Centre.

The 2nd Guards Tank and 5th Shock Armies reached the Oder almost unopposed; a unit of the 5th Shock Army crossed the river ice and took the town of Kienitz as early as 31 January.

Stavka declared the operation complete on 2 February. Zhukov had initially hoped to advance directly on Berlin, as the German defenses had largely collapsed. However the exposed northern flank of 1st Belorussian Front in Pomerania, along with a German counter-attack (Operation Solstice) against its spearheads, convinced the Soviet command that it was essential to clear German forces from Pomerania in the East Pomeranian Offensive before the Berlin offensive could proceed.

Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps

In July of 1944, the Soviet 8th Guards liberated Lublin, and after a brief skirmish with German forces outside the city, came upon the Majdanek concentration camp. Although the Soviets invited press from around the world to witness the horrors of the camp, war news overshadowed the event.

After being caught off guard at Majdanek, the Nazis realized that the Soviets would end up finding every camp within Eastern Europe (with all of the prisoners and guards still present) if something were not to be done. As a result, by mid-January, the SS and Nazi-controlled police units had begun forcing thousands of camp prisoners from Poland, East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania to walk westward away from the advancing Red Army. The death marches, which took place over hundreds of kilometers in sub-zero conditions without food and medicine, resulted in thousands of concentration camp prisoners and allied POWs dying en route. It is estimated that in March and April 1945 at least 250,000 men and women were marched on foot to the heartland of Germany and Austria sometimes for weeks at a time.

On 27 January, troops from Konev's First Ukrainian Front (322nd Rifle Division, 60th Army) liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. Despite attempts by retreating SS units to destroy parts of the camp, the Soviet forces still found graphic evidence of the Holocaust. The Soviets would also liberate camps such as Płaszów, Stutthof, and Ravensbrück.

Flight of Ethnic Germans

In anticipation of the approaching Red Army, the retreating Wehrmacht left parts of the German territory largely abandoned. With widespread unchecked chaos erupting, numerous reports of looting and attacks against ethnic Germans emerged. Nazi propaganda had furthermore demonized the Soviet Army so much that most Germans attempted to run. Millions of ethnic German refugees fled west to escape the inevitable persecutions, seeking relative safety in central or western Germany, or even in the custody of the American and British west of the Rhine.

Outcome

The Vistula–Oder Offensive was a major success for the Soviet military. Within a matter of days the forces involved had advanced hundreds of kilometers, taking much of Poland and striking deep within the pre-war borders of the Reich. The offensive broke the back of Army Group A, and much of Germany's remaining capacity for military resistance. However, the stubborn resistance of German forces in Silesia and Pomerania, as well as continuing fighting in East Prussia, meant that the final offensive towards Berlin was delayed by two months, by which time the Wehrmacht had once again built up a substantial force on this axis.

Aftermath

On 31 January, the Soviet offensive was voluntarily halted, though Berlin was undefended and only approximately 70 km (43 mi) away from the Soviet bridgeheads across the Oder river. After the war a debate raged, mainly between Vasily Chuikov and Georgy Zhukov whether it was wise to stop the offensive. Chuikov argued Berlin should have been taken then, while Zhukov defended the decision to stop.

The operation was followed by a period of several weeks of mopping-up and consolidation on the part of the Red Army, along with ongoing hard fighting in pockets in the north. On 16 April, the Red Army jumped off from lines on the Oder and Neisse Rivers, the opening phase of the Battle of Berlin, which proved to be the culminating offensive of the war on the Eastern Front. The relatively rapid progress of this new offensive toward the German heartland seems to illustrate the cumulative extent of the erosion of the Wehrmacht's capability to defend a broad front. Nevertheless, they remained dangerous opponents for some weeks longer, especially when allowed or forced to concentrate in limited areas.

Bibliography

Bahm, Karl (2001). Berlin 1945: The Final Reckoning. St. Paul: Motorbooks International.

Beevor, A. Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2002

Duffy, C. Red Storm on the Reich: The Soviet March on Germany, 1945 Routledge 1991

Glantz, David M. & House, Jonathan (1995), When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas

Hastings, Max (2004). Armageddon. New York: Macmillan.

Le Tissier, T. Zhukov at the Oder, Greenwood, 1996

Rees, Laurence (2005). Auschwitz. London: BBC Books.

Rzheshevsky, Oleg A. (2002). Берлинская операция 1945 г.: дискуссия продолжается [The Berlin Operation of 1945: Discussion Continues]. Мир истории [World of History] (in Russian) (4).

Sims, D; Schilling, A (October 1990), "Breakout from the Sandomierz Bridgehead (pages 20-24)" (PDF), Field Artillery

Ziemke, Earl (1969). Battle for Berlin. London: Macdonald. 

Disposition of forces and advance of the Soviet Army.

 

World War II Eastern Front during the 1945 Vistula-Oder offensive. The map also shows the East Prussian Offensive, Lower Silesian Offensive, the East Pomeranian Offensive, and the battles in Courland.

Soviet troops enter Łódź, led by an ISU-122 self-propelled gun.

Delegation of German officers arriving to negotiate for the capitulation of Festung Breslau, May 6, 1945.

The troops of the 10th Tank Corps 5th Guards Tank Army 2nd Belorussian Front occupied city Mühlhausen (now the Polish city Młynary) the city was liberated from the Nazi troops January 24, 1945.

Russian ferry, Poland.

German refugees from East Prussia, February 1945.

Russian troops house fighting, Breslau.

Russian 122mm gun, Breslau.

Tree carving in Bielinek (Bellinchen), Pomerania, immediately east of the Oder. It reads, in Russian, "March 1945, Death to the Germans."

Tomorrow’s Soldiers

by Hans Hubmann

First published in Signal, No. 4, 1944.

Translated by Thomas J. McGuirl

Anyone interested in military training in Germany today will come upon some rather interesting photographs. One such picture reveals many generals listening attentively to the explanations of another general. These high-ranking officers appear to be at school. This is correct. They have been assembled in order that new information may be learned.

Another photo shows newly mobi­li­zed civilians marching to their barracks. They are called to “the school of War.” These are adults but they still have some­thing to learn. Thus the common thread of both these photos: The Reve­la­tion of Germany’s Military Secret. In order that tomorrow’s soldier be better trained, his officers continue to study cease­lessly. For each contingent of civi­li­ans who arrive at the training barracks, the combat units at the front send back numerous officers of all ranks. Their most recent combat experiences, new methods, etc., are intensely discussed, and, when they have been assimilated, the training of the young conscripts be­gins.

Inversely, when, at the end of their in­struction, the young soldiers go to the front, they are accompanied by their camp commandant whose purpose it is to observe how closely their training cor­re­sponds to combat condi­tions. Indeed, there is here a fundamental method of mili­tary training which has evolved slowly and subtly over the years. All the specialties which surpass theory but which can only be understood after hav­ing internalized the aforementioned theo­ries, are in a continual state of evolu­tion.

The more difficult the war, the richer in finesse the German military training be­comes, and this is all to the good be­cause Germany opposes the masses of the enemy with the individuality of its soldiers. Germany desires to spare her sol­diers. One is most astonished to dis­cover that the young German soldier in this fifth year of war must be judged fully trained by his superiors before being sent to the front.

In 1939 at the beginning of the Polish Campaign, the commandant of a train­ing school was sent to compare the training regimen with the troops per­for­mance in a combat situation. The gen­eral, to whose staff he was attached, told him: “For all the good it will do! The troops fight the way the enemy tells them to.” Skeptical and mocking words it would seem. Not entirely true, however not entirely without truth. The general gave valuable advice to take into ac­count of the psychology of the enemy, and not only his psychology but also his weapons. One may guess just how much the German soldier has learned in both of these domains in the course of five years of war, in addition to which basic training has become more compli­cated and refined.

One example from the beginning should suffice to illustrate this point. In his speech to the Reichstag sum­mariz­ing the Polish Campaign, Adolf Hitler cited the example of “Territorials” (Land­wehr) who, in a very ex­tended sector had repulsed all Polish breakthrough at­tempts in the course of several days. At the com­mence­ment of hostilities these heroes had gone to the front directly from their places of work without re­ceiv­ing any refresher training. They had only their bravery and their experience in World War I to take the place of the know­ledge of modern military science.

It is experiences such as these from which the Ger­man people derive their un­shakable confidence in their military power. The training of the younger con­scripts who were since mobilized has been based on completely dif­ferent prin­ciples.

Today a German training camp re­sembles more a modern university than a barracks of the past century. Such a fact has its roots in the character of the German people and its daily life. The re­cruits who arrive daily for military train­ing, the young as well as those older, have already received physical educa­tion. In Germany, in effect, all male citi­zens within the age limits may be eligible for pre-military training supervised by the S.A. or the regular armed forces (Wehr­macht). There, they ac­quire the military principles and physical qualities of a soldier. The award of the sport badge (the so-called S.A. Wehrabzeichen) is their highest award. In this fifth year of war, scarcely five per cent of the German men are ineligible for military service. For the youth, the percentage is lower still—thanks to the high place that physical education occupies, and also to their paramilitary training in the Hitler Youth. Their duty in the labor service and modern education in general rounds this out.

Thus, in a German barracks, phy­sical education is not only quicker than in other lands, but it is directed from the beginning towards its true objective. The reader no doubt suspects that this is not exclusively infantry train­ing or muscle toning. The principle goal is the most rapid assimilation of urban and rural ele­ments. The urbanite must become a hunter and child of nature, while the pea­sant must acclimatize himself to city life. These two characters must merge to create the modern combat sol­dier. The ideal German soldier is the energetic man, toughened by open-air life and endowed with a lively and supple intelligence, physical culture, primary school, and an advanced technology are the natural basis for this ideal type.

Conditions are also as favorable as possible, never­theless, training requires much time. It’s nearly impos­sible to indi­cate the exact number. The training of spe­cialist troops demands two years. These, however, are exceptions, even in normal units there are weapons whose effectiveness requires at least eight months training. These long training periods, although not general, may appear extraordinary to our readers; one might suppose that certain specialist units require men experienced in similar occupations in civilian life. The combat engineers, for example, would choose masons, carpenters or lock­smiths. But this is not the German custom.

Taking as an example, in the com­bat engineers we find side by side the pianist, the blacksmith, the uni­versity pro­fessor and the factory worker. Before their mobilization, the majority of these men were no doubt ignorant about such subjects as bridge building, laying or re­moving mines, construction of field forti­fications or the destruction of said works in an assault. They were astonished when told they were chosen especially for their new vocation by the repre­sen­tative officer at their in­duction. This may seem curious but it is only modern medi­cal science joined to old soldierly ex­peri­ence, and in the majority of cases the choices prove excellent. The new re­cruits gain the required skills with an aston­ishing rapidity in the arm which doctor and officer have chosen for them.

This old method has proven itself over and over. However, the time re­quired and the most effective use of that time are of primary importance.

Germany meets both of these re­quirements. This is fortunate, for without them she could not continue the fight.

Her adversaries are masses plus tech­nology. The mathematics of it are of horrible simplicity. In February 1940, the American periodical Fortune wrote of ten million unemployed in the U.S.A.: “To­day, most of these jobless are sub­si­di­zed by the government. The U.S. eco­nomy has shown itself able to make great profits without employing these jobless men. It is also a fact that from an economic point of view, they have no raison d’être. Who cares about them?”

But, Germany is a populist state. It must take account of each of its sons. It finds itself surrounded by immense masses of disinherited Americans and Rus­sians. Immense armies of those, who, from the moment of mobilization have been condemned to death by their countries because they have no reason for being. Each soldier in this army of robots is nothing but a living cartridge, destined to be fired at the German soldier and his European comrades. In training its troops in this fifth year of the war, Germany must take account of the fact more than in previous wars where European fought European of the same racial stock and where gang­ster­ism was not yet the military ideal. Ger­many must oppose these robot masses with prudence and cold blood. To these requirements must be joined a know­ledge of the technological possibilities of the enemy. This takes time.

Without worrying about “the enemy at the gates,” as Schiller said, Germany devotes time to the training of its recruits and in so doing, strengthens its reserves of time.

You might object that time is not a commodity which one stores, but in this case, in the course of the last five years, Germany has been careful to train such a large number of recruits that a large margin exists between the demands for reinforcements and the manpower re­serves who find themselves at home. This margin is the “time provision”—from which our young recruits may profit at their ease.

Indeed, the soldier of tomorrow pre­sents several new traits. They have been imposed on him by his adversary, and the best means to combat him, but the soldier of tomorrow bears the in­destructible mark of the ancient qualities of the German soldier. The principle is his offensive spirit which manifests itself even in defensive actions which he con­ducts with the courage of an offensive action.

The best training remains that which our enemies have not considered, but which is of primary importance in de­velop­ing the positive qualities proper to the fighting soldiers. These qualities are, for the German soldier, his bravery and his spirit of the offensive.

The most recent offensive units of the German forces, the parachute troops and motorized infantry, are based en­tirely on the value of the individual sol­dier. The actions of the squad develop from the base of the position won by the individual; the actions of the platoon on that of the squad, and so on. The stupe­fication of the English on Leros, who only discovered after their capitulation that they were facing only a small num­ber of Germans, is the result of this ori­ginal method. The enemy, with his masses, cannot oppose the spirit of a strong and ancient race. Tomorrow’s fight­ing men continue to give striking proof of this method which will prove fatal to the enemy.

Experience Report of Obergefreiter Wilhelm Majce, 4.schwere Kompanie, Panzer Grenadier Regiment 304, 5-23 August 1942

This experience report was located in the National Archives by Tom Jentz and translated by Bob Thompson.

After an eleven-day rest, the word came down to “Mount up… March!” On the evening of 3 August 1942, at 2100 hours, we once again started on an operation about which nobody knew any details. We only knew we were headed for combat, and that was sufficient. After a year’s fighting in Russia we knew what would happen, for we had already experienced it countless times and found nothing unusual or interesting.

We drove through the entire night and in the morning came into a village and camouflaged our vehicles against aircraft. The night march had been only exhausting for the drivers, but in spite of this we stretched ourselves out in the grass and slept on through the day, for sleep had not been possible on the shaking, heaving vehicles, where on every bump you hit your head. But now we slept as every Landser wished. On the evening of 4 August, about 2200, we again sat neatly on our vehicles and steered off into a raven-black night.

The day before, to our annoyance, we had learned that we knew this area very well; we had spent a quarter of a year last winter in this region on the main front lines. However, we had no time for further ruminations, for just as we were heading through Karminova the Russians bombarded the place with all friendliness. After taking cover from the planes for a while, we advanced until we finally halted in some small villages. During this time we had enjoyed a lunch of white beans, and began to hear talk that the Russians had succeeded in penetrating the main front lines in this area and that they were bumming around with tanks, death, and the devil. We were the group that was to seal them off.

Hardly had we eaten lunch when the order came “Prepare for action!” Short minutes of intense preparation, then we mounted, and away we went. Four vehicles, each mounting a light infantry gun… that’s the way we went forward on the dusty road. A few vehicles came at us at break-neck speed. We suspected more than knew that up ahead was more than one enemy tank. It wasn’t especially encouraging to know this, as an infantry cannoneer, for among our infantry guns there was, unfortunately, no armor-piercing weapon. Against such monsters there was little prospect of success.

But as we still saw no tanks, we kept on going.

Suddenly from ahead came a dust cloud. We thought at the moment that it was one of our own vehicles, but at a hundred meters we realized it was a T-34. Then its machine gun rattled away. Never in my life have I dismounted a vehicle so swiftly, and my comrades followed. I sneaked off away from the street-ditch as far as I could, for the Russians had the habit of frequently driving up the ditches and I had no wish to let myself be flattened. My goal was a puddle about twenty meters from the road, into which I plopped. The still exposed areas of my body I hid behind an overturned tree trunk. Just in time to see the way the T-34 drive by, wildly firing in all directions. Behind the turret of the tank sat Russian soldiers. They didn’t have the pleasure of riding for long, for we shot them off with our carbines.

The tank drove crazily on for a few hundred meters, turned and then came back. In driving by it smashed against our “Klara,” reducing her to various and sundry parts. “Klara” was our oldest and most trusted gun, which had already been rammed last winter by a tank, but after extensive repairs had again been made serviceable. Now our “Klara” was finally “kaput.” As I watched this, rage bubbled in my belly and I could only regret that I had no mine or shaped charge at hand. Like a spook, the monster disappeared again. We couldn’t hang around long, for we had to get to the nearest village, where our comrades of the Schützenkompanien were in action.

We went ahead in a line and had hardly gone three hundred meters when suddenly low-flying aircraft were over us. We had barely made it to the side of the road and they were gone. Nothing had happened. This was a very eventful day.

A half-hour later we reached the edge of the village. There, all hell was breaking loose. Machine gun fire was hissing through the air and the tanks were shooting one house after another into flames. Munitions were blowing up in the houses, and the heat given off robbed one’s breath. In spite of it all, we came through to the other end of the village in good shape. From here we could see four T-34s, about four hundred meters away. Seconds later the first shots screeched out of our barrels. We could see hits, but what good is a hit from such light infantry guns on such a monster? Once we had been spotted, the devil really went to work. After ten minutes of the hottest fire fight, two of our guns were knocked out by direct hits. We all had our hands full trying to bind up our wounded. During this, the third gun kept firing until it had no more ammunition.

Without ammunition we couldn’t do anything, so we took the remaining gun and dragged it back to the entrance of the village, under heavy fire. When we once looked around, we saw that the tanks were moving up behind us accompanied by two or three companies of enemy infantry. In the village behind us our infantry had set up a defense line. We, the infantry gun section, were now employed as infantry since we had only one gun left and it was hardly combat-effective. This is just what had happened the previous winter.

Hardly had we arrived at our posts when there came the four monsters, slowly driving towards us. As I had received an order to immediately bring up a 50 mm anti-tank gun, I left my group. Even on the way to the anti-tank gun, several tank shells burst uncomfortably near. After delivering the order to send over the gun, I went behind a barn and made myself small. So I lay there for a bit, when suddenly there was a crash that threw dirt around my ears… there the tank had knocked a corner off the barn I was lying behind! I carefully got back to the road.

Having reached the road, I caught sight of a comrade from our platoon who had received an eye injury and was now sitting there helpless. We bedded him on a sidecar of a motorcycle that was going by, when we suddenly saw the four tanks coming at us through the gardens. What could we do but make sure that we weren’t run over by the tanks.

Everything went well. We breathed more easily, for finally our anti-tank guns were in position, and several tanks were knocked out in the next hour.

The 6th through the 22nd were hard days for us. The Russians attacked almost without interruption. Days of violent fighting in the forests, during which we often lay twenty meters from each other. In these battles we suffered greatly from mortar fire which was especially dangerous due to tree-bursts. There were rainy days in which we stood in our foxholes, soaked to the skin. The water was up to our knees. In spite of all this, the Russians could not do anything.

Our Luftwaffe and artillery helped to inflict great losses on the enemy. For tactical reasons, we withdrew from the enemy in the forest and went back to the open flat ground. Here we built a bunker line, from which there is an open area and a swamp in front of the forest in which the Russians remained. The Bolshevists haven’t attacked here yet. Sometimes we have seen tanks driving around over there, but our artillery knocked them out right sway.

Otherwise, there’s not much going on here, and we’re just waiting until they come. That’ll be a big pleasure for us, to give them a nice juicy one on the head!