Duffy Christopher. Red Storm On The Reich (ENG)
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RED
STORM
ON
THE
REICH
The Soviet March on
Germany, 1945
CHRISTOPHER DUFFY
RED STORM ON THE REICH
ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER DUFFY
The Wild Goose and the Eagle:
A Life of Marshal von Browne 1705-1757
Borodino 1812
The Army of Frederick the Great
Fire and Stone: The Science of Fortress Warfare 1660-1860
The Army of Maria Theresa
Austerlitz 1805
Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World 1494-1660
Russia's Military Way to the West
The Fortress in the Age of Vauban and Frederick the Great 1660-1789
Frederick the Great: A Military Life
The Military Experience in the Age of Reason
IN ASSOCIATION WITH HUGH FARINGDON
Confrontation: The Strategic Geography of NATO and the Warsaw Pact
Strategic Geography: NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the Superpowers
RED STORM
ON THE REICH
THE SOVIET MARCH ON GERMANY, 1945
Christopher Duffy
DA CAPO PRESS • NEW YORK
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Duffy, Christopher, 1936-
Red storm on the Reich: the Soviet march on Germany, 1945 / Christopher
Duffy.—1st Da Capo Press ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: Atheneum: Maxwell Macmillan Interna-
tional, 1991.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-306-80505-7
1. World War, 1939-1945—Campaigns—Eastern. 2. World War, 1939-
1945—Campaigns—Germany. 3. Soviet Union. Raboche -Krest'ianskaia
Krasnaia Armiia—History. I. Title.
[D764.D797 1993] 92-43696
94O.54'2l3l —dc2O CIP
First Da Capo Press edition 1993
This Da Capo Press paperback edition of Red Storm on the Reich is an
unabridged republication of the edition published in New York in 1991.
It is reprinted by arrangement with Atheneum Publishers, an imprint of
Macmillan Publishing Company.
Copyright © 1991 by Christopher Duffy
Published by Da Capo Press, Inc.
A Subsidiary of Plenum Publishing Corporation
233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
List of Maps vii
Introduction ix
PART I: TOTAL WAR 1
1. The Evolution of Total War 3
2. The War Until 1945 7
3. Instrument of Vengeance 15
4. The Reich Before the Storm 38
PART II: FROM THE VISTULA TO THE ODER 65
5. Breakthrough on the Vistula 67
6. The First German Response 79
7. Konev's Exploitation 87
8. Zhukov's Exploitation 98
9. Stay of Execution 114
PART III: THE SOUTHERN FLANK: KONEV AND THE
CONTINUING CONTEST FOR SILESIA 125
10. The Actions on the Oder 127
11. Heinrici's Command and the Southern Highlands 142
PART
IV: THE BALTIC FLANK
149
12. The East Prussian Setting
151
13.
The 3rd Belorussian Front in Northern East Prussia 155
14. The 2nd Belorussian Front in Southern East Prussia
167
15.
The Buildup of German Army Group Vistula 175
16.
The East Pomeranian Operation 186
v
PART V: THE SIEGE OF THE FORTRESS CITIES 199
17. East Prussia 203
18. Danzig and Gotenhafen 220
19. Kolberg 232
20. The Altdamm Bridgehead 236
21. Küstrin 239
22. Posen 249
23. Breslau 252
PART VI: 1945 AND GERMANIC EASTERN EUROPE 269
24. The Catastrophe 271
25. The End of the War and Beyond 293
26. Summary and Conclusions 304
APPENDIX: THE CONDUCT OF WAR: SOVIET SCIENCE
AND GERMAN ART 311
The Soviet Style 313
The Evolution of Soviet Mechanised Warfare 313
Soviet Organisation in 1945 316
Notes on Some Key Weapons 320
The Storm on the Reich 323
The German Style 355
The German Forces Under the Storm 355
Organisation and Weapons 356
Notes on Some Key Weapons 359
Command and Control 362
Mobile Warfare 364
Positional Warfare 373
Supporting Arms and Services 382
Bibliography 385
Index 391
vi
MAPS
by the author
1. Overview of operations, January-April 1945 18
2. Formations on the Eastern Front, early January 1945 28
3. Breakthrough on the Vistula, 12-18 January 1945 71
4. The Vistula-Oder Operation,
12 January-2 February 1945 84-85
5. The Soviet offensive is contained, February 1945 119
6. The Dyhernfurth raid, 5 February 1945 131
7. Silesia, February-March 1945 136-137
8. East Prussia, January-April 1945 158-159
9. The first campaign for Königsberg,
January-February 1945 162
10. Operation Sonnenwende, 15-21 February 1945 184
11. East Pomerania and the lower Oder,
February-March 1945 190-191
12. The storm of Königsberg, 6-10 April 1945 216
13. The siege of Danzig, 15-28 March 1945 226
14. The siege of Breslau, 15 February-6 May 1945 257
vii
INTRODUCTION
This book is the story of a decisive but as yet little-understood
episode in the most terrible war in history—the Soviet assault
on the historic lands of Germany between the middle of January
and the middle of April 1945. We trace the events from the
opening of the offensive on the Vistula, and follow them up
to, but not through, the Berlin Operation, on which very many
works have already been published.
Red Storm on the Reich has a curious history of its own. It
began life (if that is not an inappropriate term) as a technical
analysis of the Vistula-Oder Operation, which I wrote as teach-
ing material for the British Army's Junior Command and Staff
Course. My dissatisfaction with this booklet impelled me to
start work on a much wider ranging strategic study. The 'Vis-
tula-Oder Operation,' as I soon grasped, never existed as such,
but formed a chapter which was related in complex ways with
the course of European war and politics in the early months of
1945. Here my immediate problems were not connected with
high-flown historical interpretations, but with establishing
basic chronologies and tracing the most important sequences
of cause and effect. No single account had yet attempted to
match the Soviet accounts with the German in any convincing
detail, or to present an overview of how operations on any
given theatre were related with those on others.
It has often been observed that works of history tell us as
much about the period in which they were written as about the
time they purport to explain. The composition of Red Storm on
the Reich coincided with some remarkable international
developments—the disintegration of Communism over wide
areas of Europe, and, far sooner than expected, the reunifica-
ix