In early January 1945, Hitler mandated that AOK 6 would mount a relief operation to rescue the trapped forces in Budapest, which included the 13.Panzer-Division, Panzergrenadier-Division Feldherrnhalle and Hungarian 1st Armoured Division. Operation Konrad was hastily organized, with the IV SS-Panzerkorps (Totenkopf and Wiking) making two efforts to break through to the city but failing. Even with the addition of the 23.Panzer-Division and King Tigers from the s.Pz.Abt.503, the third attack also failed. A small number of troops escaped the city in a breakout effort, but the rest of the garrison surrendered on 13 February. The quality of German replacements dropped off sharply by late 1944, as youths were conscripted to replace combat veterans. Even the Waffen-SS was scraping the bottom of the barreclass="underline" 16-year-old Gunter Grass was conscripted in autumn 1944 and sent to join the SS-Frundsberg division in Silesia in early 1945. Grass was assigned to a unit with three Jagdpanthers but was given no training and panicked in his first taste of combat.{50} Even as Germany deployed its best tanks and tank destroyers in the final hours of the war, it had few competent troops left to operate them.
Meanwhile, the German forces defending the Vistula were out-numbered 6–1 in armour, 5–1 in personnel and 8–1 in artillery. Indeed, the German defence in central Poland was little more than a reinforced screen. Zhukov and the Stavka spent months planning the Vistula-Oder operation and it was the best Soviet set-piece offensive of the war. Zhukov decided to use the Magnuszew and Pulawy bridgeheads as the springboards for the 1st Byelorussian Front’s attack on the rebuilt AOK 9. He brought up Katukov’s 1 GTA and Bogdanov’s 2 GTA to serve as his exploitation forces. The offensive began on the morning of 14 January 1945 with an artillery preparation that shattered two frontline Volksgrenadier-Divisionen and Zhukov’s troops advanced 20km on the first day. The AOK 9 committed its mobile reserve – the 19. and 25.Panzer-Divisionen from XXXX Panzerkorps – but their counter-attacks were too puny and uncoordinated. Zhukov committed Bogdanov’s armour on the second day of the operation and it created a broad wedge in AOK 9’s front. After four days of fighting, the German front broke wide open and Warsaw was occupied. In less than three weeks, Zhukov’s forces shattered Heeresgruppe Mitte and Heeresgruppe A and advanced 500km to the Oder River. Soviet losses were relatively light, but Soviet logistics were still inadequate despite the influx of large numbers of American-made trucks.
In March 1945, the Germans mounted their last offensive in the East near Lake Balaton, south of Budapest with the 6.SS-Panzerarmee, transferred from the West. Guderian wanted to use this armour to stabilize the main front in the east, but Hitler was focused on recovering ground in Hungary. Operation Frühlingserwachen (Spring Awakening) employed virtually all the Waffen-SS Panzer-Divisionen (LSSAH, Das Reich, Totenkopf, Wiking, Hohenstauffen and Hitler Jugend), elements of four Heer Panzer-Divisionen (1, 3, 6, 23) and two King Tiger battalions against Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukraininan Front on 6 March. This operation saw the last major concentration of German armour, with almost 500 tanks (including 249 Panthers and 72 King Tigers) and 173 assault guns. After a brief initial period of success that achieved a 30km advance in two days, the offensive bogged down and was called off after 10 days. German material losses were crippling in this last offensive, leaving the panzer units involved in woeful state by mid-March.
The final campaign along the Oder River in April 1945 and the subsequent attack into Berlin was not the Red Army’s finest hour. Instead, Zhukov allowed his rivalry with Konev to affect his decision-making and Stalin goaded both men into a sloppy offensive that relied on mass, rather than skill. Zhukov’s decision on 16 April to commit the 1 GTA and 2 GTA into battle, even though the German defences on the Seelow Heights were still unbroken, resulted in massive Soviet casualties. Amazingly, Hitler had not anticipated a direct Soviet advance across the Oder and had left his best armoured units in Hungary, which left few Panzer units on the Oder. The SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Nordland and 10 King Tigers from schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 503 were the only veteran armoured units to fight in the final battle for Berlin. Instead of elite units, the approaches to Berlin were defended by extemporized units such as Panzer-Division Müncheberg and Panzer-Division Kurmark, which were divisions in name only. The final German stand on the Oder and in Berlin involved only small amounts of armour, mostly assault guns, but the fanatical defence inflicted enormous losses on the Red Army, including nearly 2,000 tanks. The widespread introduction of the Panzerfaust proved deadly in Berlin and the Soviet use of so much armour in the dense urban terrain was a tactical error. Nevertheless, Zhukov and Konev used their armour to batter their way into Berlin and brought an end to the Third Reich.
Conclusions
Both sides made tactical and operational mistakes in the conduct of armoured operations on the Eastern Front in 1941–45, but it was the Germans who made the strategic mistake of starting a war that they were not prepared to win. Furthermore, the Red Army learned a great deal more from its defeats in 1941– 42 than the Wehrmacht learned from its victories. Both during and after the war, the Germans repeatedly tried to rationalize their defeat by pointing to the Soviet numerical superiority, as if it was somehow not fair. Yet the reason that the Red Army enjoyed a numerical superiority in tanks was due to the fact that its tanks were designed to be simple to produce and operate and easy to repair; they could also move lengthy distances without too many breaking down. This functionality of Soviet tanks was based on pre-war industrial decisions that were made with an eye to winning a protracted war. Both before and throughout the war, the Soviet oversight of tank development, production and evolution was much more professionally directed than on the German side. Unlike the Germans, who did not put a tank expert like Guderian in charge of overseeing the restoration of the Panzer-Divisionen until after Stalingrad, General-leytenant Yakov N. Fedorenko, head of GABTU, directed Soviet tank programmes throughout the entire war. Furthermore, Guderian was ignored on all the key decisions – such as the premature commitment of the Panther tank, the decision to attack at Kursk, the need to build panzer reserves – whereas Fedorenko played a key role in reconstituting shattered Soviet tank armies and ensuring that tank production stayed ahead of combat losses. Instead, the Germans opted for more sophisticated tanks that were produced in smaller numbers and were more difficult to maintain. The Germans also enjoyed producing small numbers of experimental designs such as the Ferdinand tank destroyer, whereas the Soviets had the discipline to focus on a few proven designs.
Certainly the most obvious mistake German tank designers made was to rely upon petrol engines rather than expending the effort to build a high-torque diesel engine, as the Soviets had. Fuel-hogs like the Panther and King Tiger were using 2–4 times as much fuel as earlier designs, just when Germany was running short of fuel. Hitler regarded the diesel engine as the preferred solution, but allowed himself to be dissuaded by technocrats who opined that it would take too long to develop and the war would be over before it was ready. Tied in with the mistaken reliance on fuel-inefficient petrol engines, the Germans became enamoured of mounting bigger and bigger guns on their tanks and Panzerjägers. The problem was that armoured vehicles over 45 tons were difficult to get across rivers, since German pontoon bridges were not intended for heavy tanks, and it was increasingly problematic for recovery vehicles to retrieve them on the battlefield. Thus, by 1943, German heavy tanks had difficulty getting across minor water features, which negatively impacted mission accomplishment on a number of occasions, such as Kursk and the Korsun relief operation. Germany needed a good 30–35-ton tank with a diesel engine and a long 7.5cm gun that could be built in quantity, but instead the Panzer-Divisionen were provided with tanks that increasingly failed to meet the operational requirements of Bewegungskrieg. Interestingly, many of the design features that the Germans found so interesting – such as interweaved road wheels – were abandoned by all post-war tank designers.