233. The Red Army's winter offensives
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Learn more at phrma.org slash IPWorksWonders. Hello and Merry Christmas. Welcome to another episode of Battleground 44 with me, Saul David. Today I'm talking to Evan Maudsleep, former professor of international history at the University of Glasgow, about the other Eastern Front. And by that, I mean the Soviet offensives in Romania...

Hungary, the Balkans and East Prussia from the autumn of 1944 to early 1945. We last heard, as listeners will know from Evan, talking about the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Pacific in October 1944.

But Evan, before we started writing about the Pacific, wrote a number of books about Soviet Russia, including The Stalin Years, Soviet Union, 1929 to 1953. And more relevant, I suppose, to our discussion today, Thunder in the East, the Nazi-Soviet War, 1941 to 1945. So, Evan, welcome back to the podcast. It's your third appearance this year. Thank you so much, Saul. It's good to be back.

We last discussed the Eastern Front on the podcast when Richard Overy was talking about Operation Bagration, the huge Soviet summer offensive that recaptured Belarus and destroyed the German Army Group Center. So to set the scene, Evan, tell us where the front lines are at the end of Operation Bagration and what the Soviet high command, the Stavka, was hoping to do next. The Operation Bagration was enormously successful and we broke the back of

of Army Group Center, which rolls back into Poland fundamentally. What Begratian does, which is so remarkable, is that it finally clears the Germans out of most of Russia. For the first time after that, the Red Army is fighting outside the Soviet border for the first time since June 1941. So where they end up in at the end of

of Bagration is they reached the line of the river Vistula in the center of Poland. I don't know if you've had an episode on the Polish uprising.

But as the Red Army finally reaches the Vistula, the Polish Home Army, which in some respects is both anti-German and anti-Russian, mounts an uprising. But I would argue that at the same time, in effect, the Red Army runs out of gas. The advance from the start point in Bad Ration to the Vistula is about 450 miles across a region with devastated transport links.

And the Red Army is seriously worn down by the time it gets to the Vistula. At the same time, the Germans, although they do have things like the plot to assassinate Hitler and they have the Polish uprising, they have all these problems going on, they nevertheless now have a functioning rail network behind them. So logistically, the Germans are in a much better position than they were before. And the Russians are pretty much exhausted. So

In a way, the story that I'm talking about begins in August of 1944, just after the beginning of the unsuccessful Warsaw Uprising. But it's at that point that the, I guess the 21st of August, that the Russian armies in Poland are to cease offensive activities. They are now to go over onto a policy of strict defensive, except for

to army groups which are being sent into the Balkans. But the area in Poland is now an area where the Red Army is halted. Now, obviously, that's partly because the Soviet high command

doesn't want to see the success of the Home Army in Warsaw. That's an anti-Russian force. And it can be seen as that the revolt has been provoked by the Russians in order to wipe out the Home Army. I don't think that's actually true. I mean, obviously, there is hostility, but I think it's more that the Red Army isn't capable of fighting its way across the Vistula at that stage. And they really have to regroup as well, having gone 450 miles

They have to do two things. They want to gain political control over eastern Poland, which they now occupy east of the Vistula, and they have to regroup and prepare their forces for the next step, which is the big advance into Germany. That's a huge logistic demand because it's another 350 miles on to Berlin. So that's the basic situation.

Okay. And so we're going to talk about both the North and South strategic advance in turn. So let's deal with the South first, because in chronological terms, that happens first. Why do the Russians go? It's a question of them being drawn into the South. Obviously, they were going to deal with it at some stage in the end. But in an ideal world, they would like to have gone straight for Berlin, would they not have? So why were they drawn into the

the southern area and tell us a little bit about the terrain the geography of the sounds as well

Yeah, we often think of it as sort of a flat plain between Moscow and Berlin, but it's not as simple as that for a lot of reasons. But the terrain is relatively flat, but it is divided up into, once you get beyond Poland, the Carpathian Mountains divide Eastern Europe into two parts. North of the Carpathians is Poland, south of the Carpathians is Hungary.

So that is a major division. I mean, there hasn't been that much mountain warfare in the Eastern Front up until this time. And for the first time, it was a bit in the Caucasus in 1942. But in 1944, it's quite a serious issue. So the terrain is important. The other thing about the German set-up

and about the situation in Eastern Europe. I'm talking now primarily about this. I'm not talking about Finland or the Baltic States. I'm talking about the more southern part of Eastern Europe. But there's really enormous diversity there. Romania and Hungary had been allies of Nazi Germany since June 1941. They were kind of like fascist Italy. Whereas Czechoslovakia

Poland and Yugoslavia had been, in a sense, victims of Nazi aggression. So they were anti-Nazi, whereas even in the middle of 1944, Hungary and Romania were still fighting actively on the side of Nazi Germany. They were often called Nazi Axis Satellites.

So what happens to them is important, and what happens to the resistance is also important, but it's partly that dynamic which pulls the Red Army to the south. This turnout to the south means, in effect, going at right angles to the main Berlin axis. It's a 90-degree turn away from where they really want to go. They do this partly because of the opportunity. The main opportunity is that there's a coup d'etat in Romania, and

And that opens the way to, in effect, dissolves the Eastern Front in Romania and allows the Russians to move in very rapidly and take over the country. It's not unlike what happens in Italy, where the collapse of the fascist government is one of the things that really facilitates the success of the Western allies. But the advance does take place. And Romania is the kind of classic case where

where the Red Army moves in quickly, takes over Bucharest. And from there, it's kind of one thing leads to another because part of the Red Army moves south into Bulgaria, which is south of Romania. Bulgaria, oddly enough,

had been in the war, but it hadn't been a war with Russia. It had been a war only with Britain and the United States. But nevertheless, Bulgaria is very important kind of geopolitically to Russia because of the Straits, Turkish Straits, which are next to Bulgaria, and because of longstanding links between Bulgaria, which is a Slav country, and Russia. In any event, so there's that diversion.

There's also a diversion when having taken Bulgaria, the next step is to turn to the west. And west of Bulgaria is Yugoslavia, which as your listeners will know, Yugoslavia has a pretty large scale population.

partisan movement going on against the Germans, which the Red Army is able to support. And in the end, the Red Army, I think it's in October, the Red Army and the partisans more or less simultaneously take the capital of Serbia. And much of Serbia is out of German hands. Those are the kind of major diversions, but the most important militarily is in Hungary. Hungary is, what happens with that is that Hungary is, unlike Romania, is

The Hungarian government doesn't drop out of the war, partly because Hitler purges it and installs his own extreme right-wing fascist group in the country. And the Hungarian army, unlike the Romanian army or the Italian army, remains loyal to the government and continues fighting with German support. Hitler's very interested in Hungary because it has oil, which is important.

because he's next to Austria. Hitler's always been, I think it's probably fair to say Hitler is more interested in southern Germany than he was in northern Germany. He's not a Prussian, you know, he's an Austrian. So he's kind of more concerned about Vienna than he is concerned about Berlin or Königsberg.

So it's important to him that the German army holds Hungary. On the whole, I think the Russians have become rather more over-optimistic in 1944 after their takeover of Romania. And they kind of think that the invasion of Hungary is going to be fairly straightforward. I mean, Malinowski hopes to take

Budapest off the march in October and November 1944. But that doesn't happen. Part of logistic reasons, there's a long protracted campaign in Hungary, which actually goes on until the spring of 1945. One thing I'd say, by the way, in talking about all of this and into the general background, is what is really important about the Red Army is its mobility.

And if you think about what is the strategy of the Red Army in all these areas, then it's the ability to move rapidly in a way that was worked out in military theory in the 1930s. And that was still the theory in 1941. But it's only in 1943 and 1944 that what are called deep operations are achieved successfully. And the campaign in Hungary is sort of part of it. In Romania, then out of Hungary, it's part of that. It's facilitated by...

The Germans being weaker, the Russians having learned how to fight, and the Russians having produced a large amount of equipment, but also being equipped with a large number of Allied trucks, which have given them a mobility which they simply not had before. So what you end up with is the German army has been able to get to Danube.

But once it's on the Danube, it's kind of stalled. It gets there, but it can't get beyond the Danube. It's kind of like the Vistula. It's another river line which the Germans are able to hold with the aid of the Hungarians. And it gives them a supply base, a central position. And until the Russians can knock out

Budapest, they can't get on to Vienna. It's a fearful hundred miles further west into the Reich itself. So there's this prolonged battle for Budapest, which is really one of the major examples, one of the few examples of urban fighting in the entire Eastern Front because it lasts for several months

It leads to major damage to Budapest. And it's really the only major city fighting aside from Stalingrad and maybe Berlin, but it's a major campaign. So that's the basic position. What you've got is a situation where the Russians have had a large campaign in the southern part of Eastern Europe, in the Balkans and in Hungary, what was called Danubian campaign.

Eastern Europe. And this is all south of the Carpathian Mountains. And they're now kind of held up on the line of the Danube. But all this has meant that through the north, the Red Army's kind of halted at the Vistula and isn't able to move any further west until January. So this is like a five-month gap from the time that the Russians came

get to the Vistula before they're able to go beyond the Vistula towards Berlin. It's that level of gap. And that gap is there partly, I think, because they need to regroup and partly because they're distracted into fighting this campaign in the Balkans and fighting this campaign in Central Europe, both of which are related to Russian political aims. Obviously, Russia wants to gain control of

of Southern Europe. There's the famous percentages agreement with Churchill in the autumn of 1944 where he tries to write down a deal whereby the British and the Russians will actually agree to take percentage shares in their influence in Eastern Europe. Roosevelt hates this kind of stuff. He thinks that's really unacceptable. But

But both Stalin and Churchill are real politicians, and they do think in those terms. So, yeah, you can sort of see why Stalin kind of takes his eye off the wall.

He's looking south to gain control over Central Europe and the Balkans, and he's prepared to delay the advance into Germany in order to do that. Okay, we'll take a break there. Do join us in a moment when we'll hear more from Evan about the events on the Eastern Front in early 1945.

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Welcome back. Meanwhile, Evan, we've got some interesting, of course, significant fighting going on in the west of Europe. In particular, of course, the last great German offensive of the war, which is in the Ardennes, known, of course, to the Americans as the Battle of the Bulge. It doesn't really come that close to succeeding, but what it does do is waste a lot of armor and vehicles for the

German army. I mean, first of all, how significant was the loss of that army for what's going to go on in Eastern Europe? And how do the two campaigns compare with each other in the West and in the East? Yeah, the Battle of the Belt is very important, I think, to understand how the Russians see things.

Because until December 1944, it looks like the Western Allies are advancing quite rapidly and are going to get to the Rhine pretty quickly and are able to create a strong situation there. It also looks kind of as though the German army is collapsing, especially after the Battle of the Bulge.

And that's one of the reasons why in January they launched a major offensive, which is called the Vistula Odor, from the Vistula River to the Odor River. They launched the Vistula Odor River campaign, I think because they assume that it's going to be fairly straightforward. And they are thinking in terms of a campaign which is going to last like six or seven weeks.

And that kind of optimism comes about because of the apparent result of the Battle of the Bulge. They're not terribly clear. Even at the Yalta Conference in early 1945, the Russians weren't terribly clear where all these German formations were.

what the impact on the Battle of the Bulge should be. But it's important to bear in mind, we often see the Battle of the Bulge as the last throw. You know, this Hitler is finally throwing everything into this. Actually, there are three more major German counter offenses in the East.

which occur after that, one of which is in March in Hungary. A lot of the same SS divisions, often SS divisions that are in the Belge, are actually then moved to Eastern Europe and they're going back and forth fighting in battles there. So the Battle of the Belge is quite important. It's always important from the Russian point of view. The Russians are very keen to get to Berlin first and they're very keen to get to Prague and to Kozlokia first.

So they're always kind of worried about how rapidly the Allies are going to advance. It doesn't look that critical in January, but it does look like the German army is in a very bad place. It's being very badly defeated. So it's possible, it seems, that the Red Army can now advance rapidly towards Berlin. And the person who's really in favor of that is...

is Marshal Zhukov, who's the commander of the Central Group of Forces. Can I just make one or two points here about the actual layout of the Soviet forces? Because it kind of explains a lot of the decisions that are made in January and February. I mean, what we're looking at right now, we're kind of into the second part of what we're talking about, is the delay in taking Berlin. Fundamentally, it was hoped

in January. It was hoped actually in October when the plans were being made for the assault on Berlin by Stalin, by the general staff, notably General Antonov and his operations chief, General Stimenko. It's hoped this will be quite a quick campaign which will get the Germans, get the Russians into Berlin by the end of February.

And we're looking at really why that doesn't happen, what the distractions are from the Russian point of view. The Russians basically are laid out in three general axes of advance. The main axis can be called the Berlin axis, the actual movement towards Berlin itself. But north of that is the northern axis and the south of the Carpathians is the southern axis. And each of these embodies a huge number of forces.

But the most important one is this Berlin Axis. And that's the one that Stalin takes personal command of in the latter part of 1944. And he puts his major generals in charge of the three army groups in that axis. So Zhukov is the guy. Zhukov is in command of the First Belarusian Army Group, or Front. The term Front is used in Russian, but it really means an army group. But Zhukov is in command of that. To his north,

is Marshal Rokossovsky with the 2nd Belorussian Army Group and to the south of Zhukovsky-Konev, Marshal Konev with the 1st Ukrainian Army Group. So Ukrainian Army Group. So that's the kind of core of the attack. And it's really this kind of three armies moving forward side by side, which its hope will steamroller the Germans that allow the capture of Berlin. And the fact that that doesn't happen is the reason why there's a delay.

delay. Now, north and south of the Berlin Axis, there are these two other axes. To the north is another Soviet army advancing to the west, which is aimed at East Prussia.

and it's coming out of Russia, going towards East Prussia, and at the heart of its campaign is capturing Königsberg. And that army is the third Belarusian army group commanded by originally General Chinyakovsky, who was killed in January, and then Marshal Vasilevsky. But they have a particular goal, which is to take East Prussia. And then on the

to the south of Zhukov is Konev, who's advancing, you know, also into central Germany, but he's just north of the Carpathians. The key problem here is East Prussia. Now, why is East Prussia important and why does it, you know, why does it lead to this major delay in the campaign? East Prussia, you will recall the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914 was also a key kind of area, but the importance of East Prussia is that it has a number of

features which made it extremely important to the Red Army and extremely dangerous. And one of the things that Stalin and the Moscow High Command are very worried about is what's going to happen unless East Prussia is taken. You have this sort of big thrust towards Berlin by Zhukov's people and the central axis. But what happens if the armies in East Prussia can hold out and can strike

behind the advancing armies moving towards Berlin. And the thing about East Prussia is it's very well defended. The Germans take it very seriously because it's part of the Reich. The population is German and so on, and it's heavily wooded. It's very hard to capture. So it does become a major campaign from the point of view of the Russians.

The problem is that when they launch a defensive, first of all, in October, they don't really get anywhere. Their defenses are too strong that they can't get through. Although the armies on the Vistula are to the west of them, it's not possible to break through or to cut the armies in East Prussia off from the rest of Germany. That's the kind of basic problem strategically, which the Russians have in late 1944-45. And again,

What eventually happens is when the operation to move on Berlin in January is beginning to take shape, Stalin gets kind of cold feet about what's happening in the North. He's worried that they haven't been able to eliminate the East Prussian pocket.

And so because of that, there's nothing protecting them. So at the very beginning of January, after the operation to move west has begun, he makes a basic change in the deployment. Rokossovsky, who's supposed to be covering the north flank of Zhukov, is ordered not to go northwest to do that, but to move due north to basically cut off East Prussia and to resolve the battles there. Rokossovsky...

had no idea that was going to happen. He was just told about it and he had to rapidly re-gear his troops. And Zhukov also was not aware that was going to happen. So he was left with this exposed right flank going towards the Baltic in Pomerania. So although

In fact, the danger in East Prussia is fairly quickly eliminated. By the time Rokoslovsky is turned away and is moving north towards Königsberg, he's no longer in position to cover the flank of Zhukov's main forces. And Zhukov has got as far as the Oder River, which is about 80 miles to the east of Berlin, and then has to stop because he's got to deal with this problem in the north. He has to use his own troops now to cover his right flank between where he is and the Baltic.

And that's because of this crisis in East Prussia, which is really important.

And that's really where the thing bogs down, that the Red Army is stalled on the odor. It's ironic that they are only 80 miles from Berlin. And again, there are logistic reasons for that in addition to the problem with East Prussia. The Germans are fighting pretty hard once they get into the eastern part of Germany. The Russians are now fighting in winter conditions. The railways are badly damaged. They have to bring out reinforcements and so on. So it is slowed down. And further south,

Other Russian forces are making advances and Konyov was able to get into Silesia, which is just south of where Zhukov is. But the final advance into Berlin is not possible. And in effect, in late February,

everything comes to a halt. The Red Army stops. And although the Allies are now advancing more rapidly, they have put themselves in a position where they can't make the final jump into Berlin. And I think I have seen it argued that part of the problem with Stalin and all this is, this I would not go to the death to defend as an argument, but I think it's something to bear in mind, is that something like this happened to Stalin in 1920. Right.

When his armies, his and Lenin's armies and Trotsky's armies had advanced on the Vistula and had seemed about to be able to take Warsaw and with that to spread the revolution into Central Europe, the Poles were able to counterattack the overexposed Russian forces.

And it may have been that that was Stalin's fear also in 1944-45, that maybe we're pushing too hard. It's best to get a sure thing. We don't want to be embarrassed by a major German counterattack. And if that does happen, the Allies will get into Berlin first and be in a much stronger position.

political position. So I think that may have been somewhat in the background in Stalin's thinking. But by the time you get to February, the campaign has not gone according to plan for various reasons. There's

So what's happening by February is that the position of the Russians is one of having made major advances. But because of events somewhat beyond their control in the Balkans and in East Prussia, the armies have been held up. And there'll be a whole new stage before the events on Berlin can begin. Aaron, you've explained why the Russians paused in their drive on Berlin. Stalin said,

sent Rokossovsky north to deal with East Prussia. But was that a mistake with the benefit of hindsight, do you think? Could they have got to Berlin sooner? Probably it was a mistake because in a tactical sense, because it was able to, the danger was eliminated very quickly. Rokossovsky always said that this was, you know, he couldn't understand why he'd been moved because he was able to eliminate the, to carve East Prussia within a couple of weeks.

And so at that point, Konigsberg is taken and the danger disappears. So it was a mistake, maybe not by Stalin, but by Antonov, who's the head of the general staff. It did turn out to slow things up. So rather than the Red Army taking Berlin in late end of February or beginning of March, it doesn't happen until the end of April and beginning of May. There's two months delay, which I think was a mistake.

Whether that's also true of the Balkans or not, I mean, if you think about what Russian objectives are, they want to establish control over Eastern Europe politically. And they need time to do that. And because of having advanced the army into Eastern Europe, they're able to create the beginnings of the system which will be so central to the Cold War of Russian control and that whole belt of countries, Poland, Czechoslovakia.

Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, not Yugoslavia, but they'll be in the Soviet sphere. So from that point of view, it was successful. It was able to do that. But I would say that one of the things about the campaign in Eastern Europe in the winter of 1944-45 is that it was very costly for the Russians. Overall, Russian losses in the East European countries was reckoned to be about...

1,100,000 troops. It was very expensive in terms of human lives. And even the campaign in East Prussia, which is kind of a forgotten campaign, I think, of the Second World War, cost the Red Army 126,000 men killed, 3,400 tanks lost, 1,500 aircraft lost, and overall losses that were 40% higher than the much better known Berlin operation.

So it was a major and very costly military operation. If it had been possible to isolate East Prussia earlier and to what happened to fight there altogether, it would have made the campaign towards Berlin a lot easier. And finally, Evan, I think, you know, listeners will know that the fighting on the Eastern Front, generally speaking, was of a pretty savage nature, but it really caused

got to the heights of savagery, didn't it, during the Russian advance into the Reich proper, but also in Hungary too. I mean, I suppose the answer is obvious, but can you explain why Russian troops were able to behave with such brutality, particularly towards civilians?

Sure. I mean, actually, I would argue that the German brutality towards civilians in 1941-42 was actually worth it. It is certainly true that Russian troops' behavior in Eastern Europe and in Germany was much worse than the behavior of Western Allied troops themselves.

There is a difference, I think. What I've been talking about primarily has been Eastern Europe, South of Germany. So Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia are treated somewhat differently because there are governments there that have emerged which are pro-Soviet. And they sometimes protest about the actions of Soviet troops, raping women and looting and so on. And on the whole, there are attempts to deal with that.

but it does seem to be different in Germany where the Red Army behaves much worse than it had elsewhere. And that would also apply to East Prussia,

One of the first German accusations about Russian atrocities takes place in East Prussia in October of 1944 when they get an East Prussian village, which has been pillaged by the Reds with civilians shot and raped. And that, you know, is put into all the newsreels as a kind of object lesson to Russia.

to the German population. This is what's going to happen when they get nearer us. So yes, it was the conduct of the campaign there is much worse. It's hard to say why that is. I don't think it's necessarily a conscious policy of the Russian government to terrorize the population. In some ways,

They are trying to win hearts and minds in Germany. I mean, they're looking at a post-war German government. They're very keen to have a large part of Germany or all of Germany controlled by the USSR with a communist government.

So from that point of view, the kind of terror and criminality is something which is not to be desired. It's a very large army, and they've been fighting for a long time away from home. They never get away. There is no excuse for their activities, but they are looting. To some extent, it's understandable given that they're coming up against areas wealthier than Russia with greater resources, but still the behavior is reprehensible.

And lastly, Evan, say a little bit about one of the great unsung heroes of the Soviet armed forces. You mentioned him a couple of times, Alexander Vasilevsky, who's really been the head of the Soviet armed forces for most of the war. And yet, as I think you pointed out, in February, he takes over one of the army groups and is replaced by Antonov. And it strikes me, given that Antonov was in charge when this kind of strategic decision

takes place that I wonder if Vasilevsky would have done the same thing but if you could just sketch a little bit about him because he isn't often mentioned yeah he's one of my heroes Vasilevsky glad you actually brought him in the irony is is that Vasilevsky is parachuted in

after January to lead the attack on East Prussia. And it's successful. He's actually succeeded in doing that. And he has to do that because the commander of that particular army group has been killed by the Germans, but he was caught in a not friendly fire. It was actually, he was driving a Jeep and a shell went off near him. He was killed. So Tchaikovsky is replaced by Antonov. But

The irony is that that's actually a diversion for Antonov because his role is nothing to do with Europe. He's supposed to be the commander-in-chief of the armed forces in the campaign against Japan, which is going to begin in the summer of 1945. So that's what he's actually being geared up to do. He is actually pretty much very, very, very much still in Stalin's good books. He's given this very responsible position.

So it's actually because of an emergency that he's dropped into East Prussia. And so he's there at the end of the war. It's possible that it took a while to actually take Königsberg, and it wasn't the smoothest of campaigns. But that's because he was a very capable officer, and he kind of moved back and forth between Moscow and being a sort of plenipotentiary with different army groups. He's very important at Stalingrad.

He's quite important at Kursk as well. So I think he's actually in a good position. There are other people like Yeliyaminko, who is one of the generals of Stalingrad, who's dropped into the fighting in Bohemia in 1945, and that goes rather badly. He rather suffers from that. And then, of course, you've got the other person we haven't mentioned in Germany. We have mentioned Rakoslovsky in the north. We mentioned Zhukov in the center, but also Marshal Konev in the southern part of that central axis.

And in 1945, in April and May, it's going to be a race between Konev and Zhukov to see who's going to get to Berlin first. Well, that's for another day. Evan, thanks so much for coming back on the podcast. Really great stuff. Have a great Christmas and New Year. And hopefully we'll get you back to chat about the drive on Berlin when the time comes.

Well, that was fascinating stuff. Do join us on Friday when we'll be looking back at all the events in Ukraine in 2024 and trying to look ahead at what might be in store in 2025. Goodbye.