With Germany having been at war for over five years, and only having steadily transitioned to a wartime economy after Albert Speer was made Minister of Armaments and War Production in 1942, battlefield attrition could not be maintained against the combined might of the Allied nations. Even with a significant rise in armored vehicle, aircraft, and ammunition production during 1944, by February of the following year Germany no longer possessed the materiel, manpower, or opportunity to launch anything save tactical counterattacks with limited objectives. Operation Bagration, the massive Soviet offensive that had shattered Army Group Center the previous summer, and the more recent Ardennes Offensive, had all but destroyed Germany’s strategic reserves on the Eastern and Western Fronts respectively. Lacking such resources, even holding the invading enemy armies at Germany’s Rhine and Oder river borders was by now a hopeless endeavor that no amount of propaganda could change.
Recent German offensives at Arnswalde, Colmar (Alsace-Lorraine), and Budapest illustrated that even the most determined German efforts did not exist in a vacuum, and that deficiencies in logistics, and a lack of air superiority and reinforcements, could not be corrected by will alone. Caught between their duty as German soldiers tasked with defending their homeland, and their mandatory oath to the person of Hitler, the Wehrmacht determined to fight to the end, if only to keep the Red Army from overrunning as much of Eastern Europe as possible, and to extract the multitudes of civilians trying to reach the safety of the West.
The idea of rigidly holding territory through the use of “fortresses” to siphon enemy forces from their spearheads and hamper their overall progress was a tactical expedient that achieved short-term benefits at best. Much as Stalin had done during Barbarossa in 1941, Hitler’s “hold fast” mentality had hindered his commanders’ ability to fight effectively once German military fortunes began to wane, following the Moscow campaign later that year. By his refusal to leave battlefield control to the experts on the spot, large numbers of German defenders became casualties while defending static and increasingly urbanized positions. Numerous “fortresses” throughout Pomerania, Silesia, and elsewhere eventually fell to Soviet forces, with the successful German relief of the Arnswalde garrison being something of an exception. For the Germans, their severe manpower, fuel, and ammunition shortages, and failing command-and-control infrastructure, meant that fortress defenders had negligible support and scant opportunity to be removed from such an environment either through their own, or by outside friendly efforts.
By the end of February 1945 US, British, and Commonwealth forces were preparing to move beyond the Roer and Rhine rivers and into central Germany. In the east Soviet forces were similarly making final adjustments prior to their final offensive to win the war in Europe. Once Zhukov reoriented his focus toward clearing the remainder of Pomerania further German offensive efforts south of the Ihna River were senseless. Fuel and ammunition were nearly gone and Himmler, never possessing the drive and skills required of a military commander, did little to actively adjust to the defensive save issuing an order to “regroup.” Lacking adequate overall guidance, German resistance was sporadic and many vehicles had to be abandoned or disabled by their crews, with III (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps being forced to bear the brunt of Zhukov’s renewed offensive.
Within two weeks of relieving the Arnswalde garrison, 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts pushed ahead into western and eastern Pomerania respectively. On March 4, Zhukov captured Stargard and established a bridgehead near Stettin, and on the following day he reached the Baltic Sea to effectively cut off the German Second Army to the east. Over the next few days the Soviets expanded their Baltic corridor to clear the Oder’s east bank, and compress the Germans back on Danzig. Eleventh SS Panzer Army was subsequently split up, and its subordinate formations were reallocated to the defense of Berlin.
Although Sonnenwende failed to recapture Landsberg and cut off and destroy Red Army spearheads along the Oder River, the operation did reinforce Stalin’s fears of German forces remaining along his Pomeranian flank. Instead of continuing to Berlin in early February, the Stavka postponed the operation until Zhukov and Rokossovsky had built up sufficient offensive forces and secured the Baltic coast. When Berlin was captured in May and the war in Europe ended, Soviet and Polish authorities forcibly expelled the remaining German residents of Pomerania, Silesia, and East Prussia. As the Soviet Union retained the territory it had taken from Poland in 1939, the Poles were in turn allowed to take these areas that had been German since the Middle Ages as part of the “Recovered Territories,” which were then repopulated by Poles, Lithuanians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians.