Hitler’s intelligence was well informed of Stalin’s intentions for early 1945. Stalin had mobilised every last resource at his disposal. His priorities were to occupy East Prussia and defeat the remaining German forces in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria. The Warsaw–Berlin line of attack was to constitute his main effort. Simple mathematics meant that Hitler’s Third Reich was completely doomed.
According to General Heinz Guderian, now chief of the General Staff:
We calculated that the attack would begin on 12 January. The Russians’ superiority to us was 11:1 in infantry, 7:1 in tanks, 20:1 in guns. An evaluation of the enemy’s total strength gave him a superiority of approximately 15:1 on the ground and 20:1 in the air, and this estimate did not err on the side of exaggeration. […]
I was faced with the problem of whether in fact what was now demanded of our soldiers was humanly feasible.1
Guderian says that he had every confidence in the intelligence and assessments of the Foreign Armies East Department: ‘I had known its head, General Gehlen, and his colleagues’ methods and results for long enough to be able to judge their efficacy. General Gehlen’s estimates of the enemy were, in due course, proved correct.’2
By January 1945, Hitler had twice as many divisions under arms as in May 1940. On paper, he had 260, of which ten divisions were in Yugoslavia; seventeen in Scandinavia; twenty-four in Italy and seventy-six in the west. In the remnant of German-occupied Hungary, twenty-eight divisions were futilely clinging on to Budapest. To ward off a Red Army push across the northern plains to Germany’s eastern industrial heartland of Silesia, Saxony and then Berlin itself there were just seventy-five under-strength divisions. Once reinforcements were despatched to beleaguered Budapest, Hitler could muster just twelve and a half divisions in reserve to assist a front stretching over 750 miles. In the west, Hitler would not be distracted eastwards, instead he pressed on with his Ardennes counter-offensive and launched another futile offensive in the northern Alsace.
Guderian visited Hitler, Keitel and Jodl on 24 December 1944 to get them to transfer troops to the east, where Stalin’s preparations for his offensive in the New Year were all too evident. Hitler rejected Guderian’s requests and concerns, claiming that Stalin was bluffing. The Führer and Jodl insisted priority be given to the west. Guderian had to make do with what he had deployed in the east. He knew that it would not be enough to stop Stalin’s anticipated Vistula–Oder Offensive. There could be no denying the situation on the Eastern Front was now extremely grim.
Instead of reinforcing the crumbling Eastern Front, the rejuvenated and re-equipped forces that had been so masterfully assembled in late 1944 were thrown away in the Ardennes and Alsace. Hitler gathered his commanders on 28 December 1944 and gave them a dressing down for their pessimism. Once again, he was delusional in believing times had not changed:
Gentlemen, I have been in this business for eleven years and during those eleven years I have never heard anybody report that everything was completely ready. Our situation is not different from that of the Russians in 1941 and 1942 when, despite their most unfavourable situation, they manoeuvred us slowly back by single offensive blows along the extended front on which we had passed over to the defensive.3
Hitler withdrew his FHQ to the Führer bunker under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, in January 1945. Secretary Christa Schroeder witnessed her boss’s deteriorating health:
At six in the morning, when Hitler received us after the nightly situation conference, he would usually be lying exhausted on the little sofa. His physical decline made daily advances despite his desperate attempts to hold himself together. […] He was almost permanently emotional and his talk was increasingly the monotonous repetition of the same stories.4
Hitler was failing fast, thanks to the enormous pressure he was under and ill-advised medicines being administered by his personal physician. Guderian recalled, ‘It was no longer simply his left hand, but the whole left side of his body that trembled. […] He walked awkwardly, stooped more than ever, and his gestures were both jerky and slow.’5 When Guderian tried to highlight the realities facing the Eastern Front in a conference with Hitler on 9 January 1945, he was given the usual hysterical tirade. ‘He had,’ explained Guderian, ‘a special picture of the world, and every fact had to be fitted into that fancied picture. As he believed, so the world must be: but in fact, it was a picture of another world.’6
Captain Gerhardt Boldt, who served first as Guderian’s aide-de-camp and then General Kreb’s (the last chief of the Army General Staff), was also aghast at the condition of Hitler:
His head was slightly wobbling. His left arm hung slackly and his hand trembled a good deal. There was an indescribable flickering glow in his eyes, creating a fearsome and wholly unnatural effect. His face and the parts around his eyes gave the impression of total exhaustion. All his movements were those of a senile man.7
During the beginning of 1945 the Red Army maintained its relentless pressure on the Wehrmacht, with major offensives in Poland, Silesia, Pomerania and Prussia. These were, in part, driven by Stalin’s desire to secure his flanks from the threat of German counter-attack before driving on to Berlin.
Stalin launched his Vistula–Oder Offensive Operation as predicted, which took the Red Army from the Vistula in Poland to the Oder, east of Berlin. The 2 million men of Zhukov’s 1st Byelorussian Front and Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front, supported by 4,529 tanks and 2,513 assault guns, simply overwhelmed the 400,000 troops of Army Group A (consisting of the 4th Panzer Army, and the 9th and 17th Armies) with 1,150 tanks and 4,100 artillery pieces.
Guderian recalled the fall of Stalin’s sledgehammer in the early New Year:
So on 12 January the first blow fell at Baranov [south of Warsaw]. Fourteen rifle divisions, two independent tank corps and elements of another army were committed. The mass of the Russian tanks assembled in this area was apparently held back during the first day, since the enemy wished to decide, according to the results of the initial attack, in which direction he could best advance. The Russians had a superabundance of equipment and could afford such tactics.
The enemy’s attack succeeded and he penetrated far into the German defences.
On this day a great convergence of Russian offensive force was observed moving into the bridgeheads over the Vistula farther to the north at Pulavy and Magnuszev. Thousands of vehicles were counted. Here, too, the attack was obviously about to start. It was the same story to the north of Warsaw and in East Prussia.8
After twenty-three days, the Zhukov and Konev, supported by the 2nd Byelorussian and 4th Ukrainian Fronts, tore open a breach 625 miles wide by 375 miles deep and swept across the Oder. Zhukov’s 1st Byelorussian Front secured a bridgehead a Kuestrin, just 35 miles from Berlin. It was only a matter of time now for Hitler and his generals.
At the same time, Stalin and his generals conducted the East Prussia Offensive Operation on 13 January 1945, which represented the Red Army’s renewed effort to subdue the region following its unsuccessful attempts in late 1944. This was carried out by Chernyakovsky’s 3rd Byelorussian Front thrusting west toward Königsberg against the 3rd Panzer Army and 4th Army, part of Army Group Centre under General Georg-Hans Reinhardt. From the north, Bagramyan’s 1st Baltic Front attacked the 3rd Panzer Army and to the south Rokossovsky’s 2nd Byelorussian Front initially attacked north-west to the Vistula through the German 2nd Army, sealing off East Prussia. By 2 February, Hitler’s forces had suffered 1.4 million casualties comprising 377,000 killed, 334,000 wounded and 292,000 missing. The Red Army sustained 193,125 casualties, including 43,251 killed and missing.
The German 4th Army withdrew toward the German 2nd Army at Elbing, but found its way barred by the Soviet 48th Army. An initial German breakthrough was quickly sealed. The bulk of the 4th Army was surrounded on the shore of the Vistula Lagoon in the Heiligenbeil Pocket, which was not finally subdued until 29 March 1945. According to Soviet sources, some 93,000 German troops were killed and 46,449 taken prisoner. The remains of the 3rd Panzer Army were trapped in the city of Königsberg, holding out until 9 April. This offensive cost Stalin 126,464 killed and missing, along with a further 458,314 sick and wounded by 9 May.
In the meantime, Budapest was cut off by the Red Army on 26 December 1944, once the Budapest–Vienna road was secured. This trapped 33,000 German and 37,000 Hungarian troops, along with over 800,000 civilians. Refusing any withdrawal, Hitler declared ‘Festung Budapest (Fortress Budapest)’, which was to be held to the last. The 9th SS Corps (consisting of the 8th SS and 22nd SS Cavalry Divisions) were inside the city while the 18th SS Panzergrenadier Division was forced to retreat. Budapest’s mixed German-Hungarian garrison also included the Hungarian 1st Armoured, 10th Mixed and 12th Reserve Divisions, as well as several armoured car and assault artillery battalions.
Hitler blindly persisted until the end of the war with his fortress mentality. His rationale was that reinforcements would cut their way through to a strongpoint, which could then be used as a springboard for a counter-offensive. In the early years of the war this strategy often worked well, but by this stage the Wehrmacht simply did not have the resources to indulge in such luxuries. In an effort to raise the siege of Budapest, the 4th SS Panzer Corps comprising the 3rd and 5th SS Panzer Divisions was diverted from Warsaw. They did have some opportunity of breaking through, as initially they had 70 per cent more troops and 140 per cent more armour than the Soviet 4th Guards Army holding the outer ring; although the Soviets did enjoy a three to one superiority in artillery.
General Kurt Dittmar was dismayed at Hitler’s fixation with holding Hungary and Budapest. Three of the best-equipped panzer divisions were diverted away from the defence of the Vistula, ‘the reserves that had been held ready to meet the threat were taken away at the critical moment and despatched to the relief of Budapest,’ noted Dittmar.9
Operation Konrad I was launched on 1 January 1945, which saw the 4th SS Panzer Corps strike from Tata, north of Budapest. Attacks were also conducted to the west. Martin Steiger, commander of the 3rd SS Panzer Division’s tank regiment, was in the thick of the bitter fighting trying to reach Budapest. ‘The attack began on 1 January 1945, at 6 p.m., without preparatory artillery fire,’ Steiger recounts, ‘Enemy tanks of the Type T-34/85 sat in the farms in town [Dunaalmás] and fired at our point vehicles from only five metres away.’10 Every step of the way his men met determined resistance.
The Soviet 6th Guards Army thwarted the first attempt, which launched from Komarno and initially pushed the Soviets back along the right bank of the Danube. The 6th Guards were ordered to march down the left bank to Komarno, thereby compromising the Germans’ flank and rear. The Soviets deployed four extra divisions and the German counter-attack was halted at Bicske and by 12 January they were forced to withdraw having got to within 15 miles of the city. Desperate to open an air bridge to Budapest, Hitler tried to recapture Budapest Airport.
Operation Konrad II was launched from Esztergom, but again was halted just short of its objective. Konrad III, the last part of the operation, commenced on 17 January with 4th SS Panzer Corps and 3rd Panzer Corps attacking from the south, with the aim of trapping ten Soviet divisions. Again, this operation failed.
During the second counter-attack, 100 panzers supported by two regiments of motorised infantry tried to punch through the Soviet 5th Guards Airborne Division. Eighteen panzers broke through, only to run into a Soviet anti-tank regiment, which accounted for half the tanks. The Soviet 34th Guards Division also held fast despite everything that was thrown at them.
Also on 17 January, Hitler reluctantly agreed that the garrison could abandon low-lying Pest, in order to hold the hillier Buda. The garrison and the civilian population fled across the five Danube bridges, until the Germans brought them down the following day in the face of Hungarian objections.
The SS ensconced themselves in the citadel on Gellért Hill, while other units defended the city cemetery and Margaret Island. Soviet plans were distracted on 20 January by a renewed German relief effort which was attempted to the south of the city. Karl-Heinz Lichte was with the 5th SS Panzer Division Viking when their attack was thwarted. He recalls the battle, ‘A number of “Josef Stalin” tanks were spotted.11 The numerically vastly superior enemy bypassed us and attacked our flank. Then, the first of our Panzers was knocked out.’ Their commander was killed and Lichte ordered a withdrawal. ‘At the same time I grasped a smoke grenade,’ he recalls, ‘pulled and threw it to obstruct the enemy field of vision of our withdrawal. That very moment, there was an immense bang. I saw a bright flash, then darkness.’
Martin Steiger continues:
Counter-attacks began, and our attack had to be stopped. […] The expected enemy tank attack deep into our flanks took place on 29 January from Vertes Aska. It started a huge tank battle near Pettend. Some 200 enemy tanks were knocked out.
The enemy attacks increased on 30 January. We could no longer hold our positions and withdrew westward on both sides of the Valencze Lake.12
This third counter-attack, launched from north of Lake Balaton, proved to be the most threatening. The Germans quickly got to the Danube near Dunapentele on the western bank of the river and cut the 3rd Ukrainian Front in two. To counter this, reinforcements had to be transferred from the 2nd Ukrainian Front. From these, two combat groups were formed and they counter-attacked north and south of the German breakthrough on 27 January. Ten days later, they had restored the outer ring around Budapest.
Toward the end of January, garrison commander General Pfeffer-Wildenbruch signalled:
The battle of Castle Hill has begun … Forming a main battle line in the jumble of houses on Castle Hill is an illusion. […] All day there have been extremely heavy air attacks on the Castle and the fighting troops. […] The plight of 300,000 Hungarian inhabitants cooped up in the smallest possible space is terrible. No building is intact. Losses due to enemy action are enormous.13
By the end of the first week of February, the exhausted Hungarian defenders could endure no more. Colonel Lajos Lehoczky, the last commander of the Hungarian 10th Infantry Division, reported to Colonel General Schmidhuber, commanding the 13th Panzer Division:
The sufferings and deprivations of the civilian population are even greater than those of the garrison and from this moment the historical responsibility will rest with the commander of the Hungarian Army corps, Colonel General Hindy. […]
I can see no other way out of the conclusive and catastrophic disintegration than the issuing of a general order for the unified cessation of hostilities.14
General Balck, commander of the 4th Army seeking to trap ten Soviet divisions north of Lake Balaton, called the 4th SS to his assistance, but stiff Soviet resistance also thwarted this effort. The diversion sealed the fate of Budapest’s garrison. It took Soviet troops two days to capture the city’s southern railway station on 10 February, and this allowed them to push up to the Castle Hill.
Jenő Sulyánsky, a 15-year-old Hungarian cadet, recalled:
During the night and morning a huge battle raged, particularly near Lenke Square. Burnt-out tanks, lorries, bodies everywhere. […] Not far from us in Horthy Miklós Road, a retreating German military lorry had received a direct hit and was on fire. In and around it were bodies of German soldiers, partly or entirely charred.15
The defenders of Gellért Hill successfully repulsed several Soviet attacks until 11 February when a three-pronged assault seized the feature. Soviet artillery was quickly moved on to the hill, which enabled them to dominate the entire city. The garrison continued to refuse to surrender.
That night, 28,000 German and Hungarian soldiers attempted to escape Castle Hill. General Pfeffer-Wildenbruch fled through the sewers, only to emerge into the midst of the Red Army. Everywhere his fleeing men were mown down and massacred, only 800 men reached German lines. The vengeful Soviets annihilated both the SS divisions in the city. During the failed break-out, General Joachim Rumohr, commander the 8th SS Cavalry Division, was wounded and took his own life rather than face capture; just 170 of his men got away.
Taking Budapest cost Stalin 80,000–160,000 dead and 240,056 wounded and sick. The German and Hungarian armies lost up to 150,000 killed, wounded and captured, while 40,000 civilians perished. Eighty per cent of the city lay in ruins. The Red Army anticipated a trouble-free push through the rest of Hungary to the Austrian capital, Vienna.
However, Hitler planned otherwise. In total, ten panzer and five infantry divisions were to launch a counter-offensive dubbed Operation Frühlingserwachen (Spring Awakening), between Lake Balaton and Lake Velencze, splitting Marshal Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front in two. Hitler was convinced if the Soviets were caught by surprise it would be their undoing. To this end, secrecy was taken to extremes and reconnaissance of the attack routes was forbidden, lest it tip the Soviets off.
Not only was his last-ditch offensive relying on surprise, but also the weather to carry it through. It would take a severe frost to ensure the marshy ground around Lake Balaton would take the weight of the panzers, especially the massive King Tiger.
Under Army Group South’s direction, the 6th SS Panzer Army and 6th Army, supported by the Hungarian 3rd Army, were to attack between the lakes, while the 4th SS Panzer Corps held the Margarethe defences around Lake Balaton itself. The German 8th Army north of Budapest was also to remain on the defensive. At the same time, Army Group South’s 2nd Panzer Army, equipped only with assault guns, would employ its four infantry divisions to attack in an easterly direction south of Lake Balaton. This was to be co-ordinated with a supplementary attack by General Löhr’s Army Group E in Yugoslavia, which was to launch three divisions from the direction of the Drava to link up with the 6th SS Panzer Army.
In theory, this pincher attack would crush Marshal Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front. This consisted of five Soviet Field Armies, 4th Guards, 26th, 27th and 57th, plus former German allies, the 1st Bulgarian Army, supported by the Soviet 17th Air Army. The Soviet 9th Guards Army formed the reserve south-east of Budapest.
To the north, Marshal Malinovsky’s 2nd Ukrainian Front stretched from Zvolen to the River Hron (a northern tributary of the Danube), in Hungary. The Soviets received intelligence from the British Military Mission on 12 February, just as Budapest was liberated, that 6th SS Panzer Army had moved east from the Western Front following the aborted Ardennes Offensive.
On 17 February Malinovsky and Tolbukhin were directed to prepare their own counter-offensive which would destroy the German’s Army Group South, drive them from Hungary, deprive them of the Nagykanizsa oilfields, occupy Vienna and threaten southern Germany. This move would also threaten to cut off German forces operating in Yugoslavia and Italy. Stavka ordered the offensive to open on 15 March, but little did they know that Hitler was about to pre-empt them.
In total, the German-Hungarian force destined to assault Tolbukhin’s troops amounted to thirty-one divisions, eleven of them armoured plus other supporting formations, numbering 431,000 men, 5,630 guns and mortars, 877 tanks and assault guns, supported by 850 aircraft. The main strike force accounted for almost 150,000 men, 807 tanks and assault guns, and over 3,000 guns and mortars. This was a remarkable achievement considering the catalogue of defeats the Third Reich had suffered since 1943 and in light of the fact that the war would be over within two months.
The 6th SS Panzer Army fielded six panzer divisions, two infantry and two cavalry divisions, as well as two heavy tank battalions. The 6th Army had five panzer and three infantry divisions, and the 3rd Hungarian Army had one tank division, two infantry and a cavalry division. On paper, the 6th SS Panzer Army was a formidable formation that included four veteran SS panzer divisions, with the 1st and 12th grouped into the 1st SS Panzer Corps and the 2nd and 9th formed into the 2nd SS Panzer Corps. However, these forces had been spent during Hitler’s Ardennes Offensive, which had failed to seize Antwerp. The Hungarian 2nd Armoured Division, equipped with Hungarian-built Turan medium tanks, was considered inadequate for offensive operations and only a single Hungarian infantry division was placed under General ‘Sepp’ Dietrich’s command. Since Stalingrad, the Germans had little or no faith in their dwindling East European allies.
Hitler had a 2:1 superiority in tanks, and Stalin’s forces in Hungary were weak in armour, which meant anti-tank guns would be their main defence against the panzer force about to be thrown at them. However, the area chosen for the attack between the River Danube and northern end of Lake Balaton was criss-crossed by canals and ditches and was unsuitable for the panzers. Tolbukhin was ordered to hold the Germans, while the Red Army prepared its own offensive. His men established three main defensive lines of considerable depth.
Soviet suspicions regarding the direction of the Hitler’s attempts to stop them were confirmed on 2 March, when Hungarian deserters told their captors of a German attack due in three days’ time in the Balaton-Velencze sector. Now fully prepared, Tolbukhin sat back and awaited the German offensive.
On the morning of 6 March 1945, after a thirty-minute artillery bombardment supported by air attacks the 6th SS Panzer and 6th Army crashed into the Soviet defences. As planned, the Germans launched a furious three-pronged attack with the 6th SS Panzer Army striking in a south-easterly direction, between Lakes Velencze and Balaton. The 2nd Panzer Army struck eastward in the direction of Kaposvar, while Army Group E attacked north-east from the right bank of the Drava with the aim of uniting with the 6th SS Panzer Army.
General ‘Sepp’ Dietrich described the 6th Panzer Army’s role as follows:
My left flank [2nd SS Panzer Corps] had no success worth mentioning. The emplacements along the western bank of the Danube, the hard, strong enemy, and the marshy terrain, impassable for tanks, prevented our advancing and attaining our goal. The attacked was bogged down at Sarosd and Sar-Keresztur. The centre [1st Panzer Corps and the cavalry divisions] reported good success, yet when tanks were employed to exploit the initial success, the terrain proved completely impassable. The terrain, which was supposed to be frozen hard, and which General von Wöhler had maintained as passable, was wet and marshy. For reasons of camouflage, I had been forbidden to make an earlier terrain reconnaissance. Now 132 tanks were sunk in the mud and fifteen King Tigers were sunk up to their turrets, so that the attack could be maintained only by infantry. Considerable losses of men followed.16
His panzers ran headlong into the defences of the Soviet 26th Army and part of the 1st Guards’ Fortified Area (part of the 4th Guards Army). In response, the Soviets pounded them with artillery and air attacks. … The 1st SS Panzer Corps managed to push through Soviet defences to a depth of 25 miles, but the 2nd SS Panzer Corps struggled forward just 5 miles.
Two days after Hitler’s Spring Awakening opened, the 2nd SS Panzer Division reinforced the offensive with 250 tanks, followed by the 9th SS the next day. The Red Army now found itself under attack by almost 600 panzers. Nevertheless, the Germans were rapidly running out of time and resources. Hitler, however, refused all Dietrich’s requests to halt Spring Awakening.
In a final desperate push for the Danube, the 6th Panzer Division with 200 tanks and self-propelled guns, Spring Awakening’s last reserves, were committed on 14 March. They managed to force their way to the Soviet rear defence lines, but no further. Although the Soviet 9th Guards Army was moved south-west of Budapest, Tolbukhin was under strict instructions not to employ it in his defensive operations. It was to be held ready for the Soviets’ counter-blow.
Elsewhere, Hitler’s master plan was coming unstuck. The 2nd Panzer Army’s attack launched east of Nagykanizsa was broken up by concentrated Soviet artillery fire. Similarly, Army Group E, which attacked the 1st Bulgarian Army and 3rd Yugoslav Army on the night of 6 / 7 March, was soon driven back across the Drava by massed Soviet artillery. Tolbukhin, lacking armour, was reinforced by the 406 tanks and self-propelled guns of the Soviet 6th Guards Army. On 16 March, Stalin launched his counter-offensive stroke west of Budapest hitting General Balck’s 6th Army and the Hungarian 3rd Army north of Lake Velencze. Motorised infantry rolled through a breach, which 12th SS Panzer Division tried to block, and the Red Army swept south-west toward Balaton.
The Soviets sought to encircle the 6th SS Panzer Army and 6th Army. In a repeat of the disaster at Stalingrad, Hitler’s forces were once again let down by their Eastern Front allies. The inadequately equipped Hungarians on 2nd SS Panzer Corps’ left flank defected, with inevitable results. The skeletal Hungarian 3rd Army withdrew west, losing the 1st Hussar Division near Budapest. Under pressure, the 1st SS Panzer Division gave ground exposing Balck’s flank. Six days later, the 6th SS Panzer was trapped south of Szekesfehervar and barely managed to get away.
By 25 March, Malinovsky had torn a 60-mile-wide gap in the German defences and penetrated more than 20 miles. He then prepared to strike toward Bratislava. The 6th SS Panzer Army and 6th Army took up positions on the Raab River, south of the Austrian capital, and on Lake Neusiedl against Tolbukhin’s troops. Three days later, the Red Army was over the river. The Soviets pressed home their attack, pushing toward Papa and Gyor and by 2 April had reached Lake Neusiedl on the border between Hungary and Austria.
After the dismal failure of Spring Awakening, a Soviet attack into Austria was inevitable. A question mark remained over its status amongst the allies, so Stalin was keen to grab his share. Although Stalin was ready to attack Berlin, the ultimate strategic prize as early as February, he decided it prudent to secure his flanks to the north and south where sizeable German forces remained a possible threat. He also deemed Austria a useful pawn in the inevitable horse-trading that would take place over post-war boundaries. Spring Awakening had cost Dietrich 40,000 men, over 500 tanks and assault guns, and 300 guns. Using the excuse of defending Vienna, he retrieved his surviving forces.
At the end of March the Red Army forced the Hron and Nitra rivers, swept into Sopron and Nagykanizsa and crossed the boundary between prostrate Hungary and Austria. This placed Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front in position to strike at the Austrian capital. The only thing that stood in his way was the 2nd SS Panzer Corps. Vienna had been under aerial attack by the British and American bomber fleets for a year by March 1945. These had dropped 80,000 tons of bombs, killed 30,000 people and levelled 12,000 buildings, which had left 270,000 people homeless. On 12 March it had been struck by 747 bombers.
General Dietrich knew that keeping the Red Army out of Vienna was a tall order:
My orders were to get four divisions as fast as possible for the hitherto unprepared defence of the city. We had to defend in, but not in front of Vienna. The city still had 3,000,000 inhabitants, and no water or supplies for the civilians, but these conditions were not even discussed. General von Buenau was appointed Battle Commander of Vienna, and arrived without bringing any troops for the defence.17
Stalin’s Vienna Offensive opened on 2 April and lasted just under two weeks. The Red Army quickly overran Wiener Neustadt, Eisenstaedt, Neunkirchen, Gloggnitz, Baden and Bratislava. That day, the Germans denied Vienna had been declared an open city, thereby condemning it to bloody street fighting. Once the 3rd Ukrainian Front had surrounded Vienna, the Soviet 4th Guards, 6th Guards Tank, 9th Guards and 46th Armies were thrown against the city’s defences. By 9 April they had reached the city centre, and two days later the 4th Guards attacked across the Danube canals, while other forces moved to secure the Reichsbrücke Bridge. The fierce battle cost the Germans 19,000 dead and the Soviets 18,000 and the city capitulated on 13 April. The city was overrun, with the loss of 125,000 prisoners.
Stalin then shifted this attention to Czechoslovakia. His Prague Offensive was his last assault of the war and was conducted after Berlin had been overwhelmed and Germany had surrendered. The war had first come to Prague on 14 February 1945, when the American Air Force bombed the city, killing 701 inhabitants, destroying 100 buildings and damaging another 200.
Fought from 6–11 May, the Prague Offensive culminated in the liberation of the city. Army Group Centre, which had been at the very heart of Operation Barbarossa and Hitler’s dream of capturing Moscow, fought to the very last. It did not surrender until nine days after the Red Army had captured Berlin and three whole days after Victory in Europe Day.
This final major offensive was conducted by Konev’s 1st, Rodion Malinovsky’s 2nd and Andrei Yeremenko’s 4th Ukrainian fronts. Konev’s troops, although exhausted after their efforts against Berlin, were directed south to help secure Prague. Soviet forces amounted to over 2 million men; they were supported by the Czech 1st Corps, the Polish 2nd Army and the Romanian 1st and 4th Armies. Hitler’s old allies now had new masters.
Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörhner’s battered Army Group Centre comprised the 1st and 4th Panzer Armies and the 7th and 17th Armies – in all, about 900,000 men. They were supported by the miserable remnants of Army Group South, now known as Army Group Ostmark.
General Alfred Jodl, chief of staff of the German armed forces (OKW), surrendered to the Western Allies on 7 May. Two days later, the Red Army rolled into Prague, but elements of Army Group Centre needlessly held out until 11 May. Once the Soviets had linked up with the Americans, Army Group Centre was surrounded, making any further resistance a futile exercise as there could be no escape westward. Even though these were the dying days of the war in the east, Army Group Centre still had fight left in it. This last, and in many ways, futile operation by the Red Army cost them 52,498 casualties, 11,997 killed and 40,501 wounded and sick, 373 tanks, 1,006 artillery pieces and eighty aircraft.