Armageddon - Max Hastings [191]
We shall never know how the Russians would have fared in February had their spearheads pressed on. Chuikov, the hero of Stalingrad, now commanded Eighth Guards Army, which had advanced 200 miles in fourteen days. He vociferously asserted until the day of his death that Hitler’s capital could have been seized in February. His Soviet peers strongly disagreed. First and Second Guards Tank Armies could almost certainly have got to Berlin. But even the Soviets, often so bold about exposing their flanks, feared that after driving a deep salient into the enemy’s line it was too dangerous to go further, leaving large German armies behind their front both north and south, in Pomerania and Hungary. To Stalin’s Stavka it seemed reckless to risk disaster, having achieved overwhelming success. Zhukov’s and Konev’s men were tired. They faced problems of supply immensely more challenging than those of the Anglo-Americans in France in September. Distances were greater, roads worse and transport limited. The Anglo-Americans were still far away, and seemed to pose no threat of pre-empting Stalin’s triumph in Berlin. It was decided to defer the final assault until the Soviet armies north and southwards had caught up; the enemy had been further battered; and reserves of men, guns and ammunition could be brought forward.
As always, the Germans seized the respite. They threw themselves into rendering the Oder line defensible. In the last days of January aircraft bombs, power saws, demolition charges were employed in attempts to breach the frozen river. Then God took a hand. On the night of 1 February, it began to rain. In the days that followed, a premature blush of spring brought a thaw. The snows melted—and so did the Oder ice. Hitler had been given a moat. More than that, and as always when seasonal thaws came, the roads of eastern Europe deteriorated dramatically. The task of providing daily supply for Zhukov’s and Konev’s armies became dauntingly harder, when every ton had to be trucked 300 miles or more through chronic mud from the nearest railheads.
The Germans rushed 88mm flak guns from all over the Reich to reinforce the anti-tank defences beyond Berlin. Almost the entire remaining strength of the Luftwaffe was thrown into the eastern battle. The Germans were able to mount some damaging air attacks on Soviet positions. By St. Valentine’s Day, fourteen German divisions were deployed against Zhukov’s front. In February, while just sixty-seven new and repaired tanks were sent to the west, 1,675 were shipped east. German counter-attacks on Soviet positions west of the Oder failed. The Russians slowly but steadily enlarged their bridgeheads. The outcome of the impending struggle for Berlin was hardly in doubt. But each day of respite granted to the Germans would increase the price the Soviets must pay for final victory.
BEHIND ZHUKOV’S front in Poland, the bitter struggle between the “London Poles” and the communists continued unabated. On the night of 19 February, men of Army Krajowa stormed the communist-run prison in Lublin, killed two guards and released eleven AK prisoners, along with twelve guards who also defected. Seven of the prisoners had been awaiting execution for “political crimes.” On 2 March, the commanding officer of 28th Regiment of the 9th Polish Division of the Red Army persuaded 380 of his men to desert on their way to the front. Most set off for their homes, to which they were pursued by NKVD detachments. On 7 March, a junior officer at the Polish army tank school at Holm, a secret member of Army Krajowa named Kunin, persuaded seventy cadets to quit with their weapons, and to join the anti-Soviet struggle. In the days that followed, the deserters were ruthlessly hunted down by the NKVD. Most were killed or captured. So alarmed was the NKVD by the political threat that a draconian order was issued to remove all