Hitler's Fortresses in the East: The Sieges of Ternopol', Kovel', Poznan and Breslau, 1944–1945

By Alexey Isaev

‘Fortresses must carry out the same tasks as the fortresses of old….They must allow themselves to be surrounded and thus tie down as many enemy forces as possible.’ So Hitler directed in March 1944 and, in so doing, sealed the fate of Ternopol', Kovel', Poznan and Breslau, cities in the Ukraine and Poland that were in the path of the Red Army’s advance towards Nazi Germany. German forces, under orders to resist at all costs, adopted all-round defence and struggled to hold out while waiting for relief – which never came. In this gripping and original book, Alexey Isaev describes, in vivid detail, what happened next –intense and ruthless fighting, horrendous casualties among soldiers and civilians, the fabric of these historic cities torn apart. His account is based on pioneering archival research which offers us an unrivalled insight into the tactics on both sides, the experience of the close-quarter fighting in the streets and houses, and the dreadful aftermath. At the same time he shows why these cities were chosen and how the wider war passed them by as the Wehrmacht retreated and the battlefront moved westward. Each of these cities suffered a similar fate to Stalingrad but their story has never been told before in such graphic and circumstantial detail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781526783967

Alexey Isaev

Alexey Isaev is one of the leading Russian military historians of the conflict on the Eastern Front during the Second World War.

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Translator’s Introduction

This study contains a number of terms that may not be readily understandable to the casual reader in military history. Therefore, I have adopted a number of conventions designed to ease this task. For example, major Soviet field formations (i.e., First Belorussian Front) are spelled out in full, as are similar German formations (i.e., Army Group South). Soviet armies are designated using the shortened form (i.e., 60th Army). German armies, on the other hand, are spelled out in full (i.e., Fourth Panzer Army). In the same vein, Soviet corps are designated by Arabic numerals (i.e., 4th Guards Tank Corps), while the same German units are denoted by Roman numerals (i.e., XLVIII Panzer Corps). Smaller units (divisions, brigades, etc.) on both sides are denoted by Arabic numerals only (i.e., 357th Infantry Division, 322nd Rifle Division).

Given the large number of units involved in the narrative, I have adopted certain other conventions in order to better distinguish them. For example, Soviet armoured units are called tank corps, brigades, etc., while the corresponding German units are denoted by the popular term ‘panzer’. Likewise, Soviet infantry units are designated by the term rifle, while the corresponding German units are simply referred to as infantry.

Elsewhere, a front is a Soviet wartime military organization roughly corresponding to an American army group. Throughout the narrative the reader will encounter such names as the Belorussian and First Ukrainian Fronts, etc. To avoid confusion with the more commonly understood meaning of the term front (i.e., the front line), italics will be used to denote an unnamed front.

Many of the place names in this study are hyphenated, such as Kamen’-Kashirskii. In these cases, the names are separated by a single hyphen, which is to distinguish them from the recitation of a particular line of separate locales, often countered in such works, such as Yezerna–Kozlov–Plaucha Mala–Zborov. In the latter case, the individual villages and towns are separated by en-dashes.

The work subscribes to no particular transliteration scheme, because no entirely satisfactory one exists. I have adopted a mixed system that uses the Latin letters ‘ya’ and ‘yu’ to denote their Cyrillic counterparts, as opposed to the ‘ia’ and ‘iu’ employed by the Library of Congress, which tends to distort proper pronunciation. Conversely, I have retained the Library of Congress’s ‘ii’ ending (i.e., Chernyakhovskii), as opposed to the commonly-used ‘y’ ending. I have also retained the apostrophe to denote the Cyrillic soft sign.

As always, place names in Eastern Europe present a special problem in spelling, as so much depends on which country controlled an area at a particular time. I have chosen to spell/transliterate locales according to how they were written at the time of the events in question. Thus Poznan retains the Polish spelling of Poznan and not the pre-First World War Posen, despite its conquest by the Germans in 1939. Breslau is Breslau throughout, as it was a part of Germany until 1945, when it was acquired by Poland and renamed Wroclaw. Kovel’ is transliterated as such, as its spelling has not changed since 1939. However, since Russian was the dominant language of the Soviet Union, I have elected to spell Ternopol’ as it would have been transliterated from the Russian, and not as Ternopil’, in line with the new Ukrainian transliteration. I have also avoided the German Tarnopol.

The work contains endnotes by the author. They have been supplemented by a number of appropriately-identified editor’s notes, which have been inserted as an explanatory guide for a number of terms that might not be readily understandable to the foreign reader.

Preface

The development of events along the Soviet-German front, which were unfavourable for the German army, forced the German leadership to look for new methods and forms of fighting. One of these was the concept of the so-called fortresses, which were towns and cities defended in complete isolation. The author of this method is considered to be Hitler himself, namely in his Directive No. 11 of 8 March 1944, which became the guiding document for the choice and construction of fortresses. Strictly speaking, in the early stages of the war with the USSR the Wehrmacht also adopted tactics quite close to that of fortresses. Units and formations that ended up isolated took up an all-round defence and sought to hold out, while awaiting a relief attack from outside. It is enough to recall Kholm, Demyansk and Sukhinichi (von Gilsa’s group) in the 1941–2 winter campaign, and Millerovo and Chertkovo in the winter of 1942–3 as examples. However, during 1944–5 the concept was taken to its logical conclusion.

It was planned to employ towns and cities, which were assigned the role of ‘breakwaters’ along the path of the attacking enemy, as fortresses. According to Directive No. 11, ‘Fortresses must carry out the same tasks as the fortresses of old. They must prevent the enemy from seizing places of significance from the operational point of view. They must allow themselves to be surrounded and thus tie down as many enemy forces as possible.’¹ As opposed to preceding campaigns, the locations for the fortresses were selected in advance and headed by a commander chosen for his personal qualities. According to Directive No. 11, the fortress commander was subordinated directly to the army group commander, and not the army commander, in the sector in which the given fortress was located.

One should emphasize that they assiduously avoided using the word ‘fortresses’. The reasons for this were quite obvious – the name fortress, without permanent fortifications (the construction of which demanded time and expenditure of materiel) appeared ridiculous. The more delicate formula of ‘fortified place’ (Festung Platz) was employed. The impossibility of maintaining large forces in a fortress forced them to adopt a compromise. Directive No. 11 called for the presence of a ‘security garrison’ and a ‘full garrison’. The former was permanently located in the fortress and prepared it for defence, while the latter occupied its positions immediately before the attack on the fortress by the Red Army. The garrison’s strength was determined by the army group command, depending upon the size of the fortress.

It should be noted that the subsequent fate of a fortress after its encirclement was not laid out in Hitler’s directive. Later practice showed that they tried to relieve some fortresses from the outside. It was vaguely assumed that the isolated garrisons would be relieved following the overall stabilization of the situation at the front. There were precedents for this in the relief of the garrisons of Kholm, Demyansk and Sukhinichi in 1942, after the situation stabilized. At the same time, one should stress that a deep attack was required for relieving the above-mentioned cities.

The new concept was tested by the Germans not long after the publication of Directive No. 11. The Ukrainian cities of Proskurov, Ternopol’ and Kovel’ were destined to become the first fortresses. All of these were important road junctions, the retention of which would make the supply situation of the Red Army’s forces attacking westward more difficult. It is very interesting to note that the status of fortress could be removed due to military necessity. For example, the status of fortress, which had been awarded earlier, was removed from the city of Proskurov at 13.00 on 24 March 1944.² This was done in accordance with the overall retreat by the First Panzer Army’s forces under the threat of encirclement. That is, there was an element of military expediency in according the status of fortress and one should not exaggerate the ‘thickheadedness’ of the German command in this regard.

Chapter 1

Ternopol’: The First Attempt

The struggle for the city of Ternopol’ was, on the one hand, a peripheral one as regards the offensive toward the Dnestr River. On the other hand, fairly large forces were engaged in the fight for this major road junction in western Ukraine. Thus a description of the combat actions which led to the formation of the ‘Hube ¹ Pocket’ would be incomplete without a description of the battle for Ternopol’. Following the breakout from the bridgehead over the Goryn’ River, I.D. Chernyakhovskii’s ² 60th Army was in a very favourable position. The tank and mechanized corps of V.M. Badanov’s ³ and P.S. Rybalko’s ⁴ tank armies, which had moved ahead into the breach, had tied down the small German reserves, thus allowing the infantry behind them to follow in their tracks. Aside from the attack behind the tank armies, the 60th Army also had the task of securing the First Ukrainian Front’s western flank. The situation here was also quite favourable, as the Germans lacked a continuous front along this axis. The army’s right-flank formations were moving on Zbarazh and Ternopol’.

The tanks of the 4th Guards Tank Corps moved forward. For the 60th Army’s rifle formations, the brigades of P.P. Poluboyarov’s corps were like a ‘needle’, behind which they moved as the ‘thread’, while developing the tank troops’ success. In this case, the phrase ‘the tanks were moving’ is not a figure of speech and should be understood literally. Tanks, with infantry riding on them, moved forward, while sometimes also loaded with canisters of fuel.

It was precisely such a cavalcade of ten tanks (eight vehicles from the 14th Guards Tank Brigade and two from corps headquarters), with infantry riding on them, that on the evening of 5 March reached the town of Zbarazh from the east. Poluboyarov, who was not above being personally at the spearhead of the attack, was in one of the headquarters tanks. It was quiet in the town and lights were on in the buildings, while the garrison’s soldiers, who consisted of a regiment of the SS ‘Galicia’ Division,⁵ were peacefully watching a movie. The ‘Galicia’ Division evidently had some serious problems, insofar as the tanks broke into Zbarazh quite unexpectedly, causing panic and a commotion among the garrison’s soldiers. The T-34s,⁶ along with their mounted infantry, passed through the whole town, firing in all directions, and took up defensive positions, not even on the southern outskirts, but on the Chernikhovtsy crossing to the south-west of the town. Not knowing this, the motor vehicle drivers in Zbarazh gathered themselves into a column and attempted to escape to Ternopol’. Upon colliding with a screen of Soviet tanks, the column’s drivers abandoned their vehicles and scattered across the fields, while keeping up a disorderly fire. There was shooting all night in Zbarazh between Soviet infantrymen and small, isolated groups of Germans and Ukrainian SS troops.

However, a tank-borne assault by sixty men prevented them from clearing the town of the ‘Galicia’ Division’s soldiers and small German subunits which had holed up in the buildings. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that intelligence had revealed large German forces, backed by armour, on the approaches to the town. Moreover, the German Armoured Train No. 71 was rendering support to the garrison of Zbarazh. It was an assault party from the train that pulled the headquarters of the Ukrainian SS troops out of the town.

General Poluboyarov immediately turned to the commander of the 60th Army, I.D. Chernyakhovskii, with a request to free up the 13th Guards Tank Brigade, which had earlier been directed to Vishnevets, as a forward detachment. The corps’ other units were being brought up at the same time. A brigade of motorized riflemen arrived at Zbarazh on the night of 5/6 March, having only light infantry weapons. However, this was quite sufficient for clearing the town of scattered groups of the enemy. By midday on 6 March the 13th Guards Tank Brigade had arrived at the town and got into a fight for the Zbarazh station from the march. The infantry and armoured train became the brigade’s enemy. Two SU-85s⁷ were detailed to fight the latter and they quickly put the armoured train out of commission. This was confirmed by German data, and in the report by Armoured Train No. 71 it is pointed out that ‘The locomotive received several direct hits and was unable to move’. However, at that moment the Germans managed to avoid the complete loss of the armoured train: they uncoupled the train’s undamaged part and towed it away and, at night, with the assistance of three locomotives, evacuated the damaged part. Armoured Train No. 71 went in for repairs. After putting the armoured train out of action, the 13th Guards Tank Brigade occupied Zbarazh station and took up defensive positions, cutting the roads leading to the town. The brigade simultaneously carried out reconnaissance of the possible routes to Ternopol’.

German reserves with tanks and assault guns presented the greatest danger to the 4th Guards Tank Corps’ brigades. Throughout 6 March Zbarazh was counterattacked several times by ten or eleven ‘tanks’ (according to Soviet data). According to German data, seven assault guns were operating in this area. However, one cannot of course exclude the employment of the 7th Panzer Division’s tanks arriving from the west, which were advancing to link up with the division’s main forces in Volochisk. Also, according to the scanty information available, Dr Major I. Erasmus, from the 7th Panzer Division, led the counter-attacking group.

Meanwhile, the front command demanded of Chernyakhovskii that he take Ternopol’ as early as the evening of 7 March. Essentially, at that moment a race was underway on both sides of the front, with a very small divide separating success from failure. The German side was striving to restore the integrity of the front through the arrival of fresh formations, which were subordinated to the headquarters of the XLVIII Panzer Corps. These were the recently formed 357th and 359th Infantry Divisions, which had been unloading since 7 March in the Ternopol’ area. It was specially noted in the Fourth Panzer Army’s war diary, that ‘One should make fewer demands on both divisions than on the rest, insofar as two-thirds of the rank and file were born in 1926’. The divisions were up to authorized strength in men, but were short of communications equipment and other gear.

The German command was trying to win time for deploying the arriving formations through counter-attacks in the Zbarazh area. The 4th Guards Tank Corps’ brigades suffered appreciable losses in these battles and there remained only nineteen T-34s and six SU-85s in line.⁸ One should add that as early as 7 March Poluboyarov attempted to develop the offensive in the direction of Ternopol’, but it soon came up against the blown-up crossing near Chernikhovtsy. The Germans, in turn, threw a prefabricated metal bridge across the river alongside the blown-up crossing, and continued their counterattacks on Zbarazh. At that moment Poluboyarov showed himself to be an intelligent tank commander. Upon putting out a screen in the southern part of Zbarazh, he gather together a shock group (the 12th Guards Tank Brigade with a battalion of motorized riflemen), which turned the enemy flank and attacked Chernikhovtsy along the other bank of the river. This manoeuvre forced the counter-attacking group to hurriedly fall back on Ternopol’. The road to the city was clear. Only the absence of fuel, which was traditional in the March fighting, held up the brigades of General Poluboyarov’s corps, which at that moment had only 0.2–0.3 refills of fuel.

A serious obstacle to the advance of the Soviet forces became the washed-out dirt roads. The attacking 60th Army’s motor transport became bogged down, forming enormous traffic jams of several hundred vehicles. In order to avoid vehicle losses, motor transport was even gathered into individual shelters, where it remained under guard until the roads could be restored. Motorized and horse-drawn artillery also became bogged down and advanced with great difficulty. They literally pushed the horse carts forward by hand. In one of the Soviet reports on the results of the March and April fighting, the conditions of the offensive were described in a few short but weighty phrases: ‘The infantry units advanced up to their knees in the mud and the conditions for manoeuvre and feeding the fighting with ammunition were exceptionally difficult.’

By the evening of 7 March units of the 15th Rifle Corps began to approach the Zbarazh area. At this time the corps was commanded by Major General I.I. Lyudnikov, a veteran of Stalingrad who had become famous for the defence of ‘Lyudnikov’s Island’. It should be mentioned that at that moment the rifle units of Lyudnikov’s corps were experiencing the front’s general problems with movement in conditions of washed-out roads. In a report by the 322nd Rifle Division on the results of the fighting, it was noted that on 8 March its regiments were advancing, ‘having an insufficient amount of ammunition, while lacking artillery altogether, because the latter had gotten bogged down due to the very bad roads’.⁹ Army commander Chernyakhovskii assigned the 4th Guards Tank Corps the task of capturing Ternopol’ on 8 March, in conjunction with rifle units, and consolidating there while securely holding the approaches to the city. In order to achieve the thrust on Ternopol’, titanic efforts were undertaken to restore the tanks’ manoeuvrability. With the aid of a pair of U-2¹⁰ liaison aircraft, 400kg of fuel each per flight was transported by air. Also, a column of trucks, with diesel fuel and oil, set out from the Yampol’ area, accompanied by five tanks (not so much for protection as for towing out bogged-down vehicles). By this time oil had become a matter of life and death for supporting the tanks’ combat capability, as the engines of the T-34s, which had become worn out in the preceding fighting, used up more of it. A certain amount of fuel was located in Zbarazh itself. All of this enabled them to refuel the tanks and raise the supply of fuel in them to 0.7–0.8 of a refill.

Just as was the case along the other sectors of the front, all of the 4th Guards Tank Corps’ artillery had fallen behind on the flooded roads. Anti-tank artillery, in the form of both 57mm and 85mm guns, was completely absent, which significantly reduced the opportunities for opposing the new types of German tanks. There were only twelve 120mm mortars and three rocket artillery platforms (katyushas).¹²

Table 1.1: The Strength of the 4th Guards Tank Corps’ Tank Park on 8 March 1944

¹¹

The shortest route to Ternopol’ was the Zbarazh–Ternopol’ road. However, the greatest enemy resistance was expected here. According to Poluboyarov’s plan, it was planned to break through to the city by a turning movement through the village of Dubovtsy with the forces of the 12th and 13th Guards Tank Brigades, while simultaneously tying down the enemy from the front with the forces of the 14th Guards Tank Brigade. According to this plan, the first to enter the city from the north was to be the 13th Guards Tank Brigade, with the infantry in its wake, while breaking through to the southern outskirts, where it was supposed to take up defensive positions. In this manner the city was to be isolated from the arrival of reinforcements. This method, one might say, was the ‘essence’ of Poluboyarov’s tactics for taking cities. In this way not only would the arrival of reinforcements be blocked, but the illusion of being encircled created as well. After this, the assault would begin by the motorized riflemen and infantry. Everything was built upon a surprise attack, insofar as the units that had arrived at the approaches to Ternopol’ disposed of only light artillery and had limited supplies of ammunition. All wheeled transport had stalled and ammunition was being delivered by U-2s.

The start of the offensive was delayed by the late arrival of the 15th Rifle Corps’ infantry at their jumping-off positions. As a result, the attack began when it was dark, at 05.15 on 9 March. As early as 06.00 the 13th Guards Tank Brigade’s tanks and self-propelled artillery had reached the northeastern outskirts of Ternopol’ and entered the city. Upon breaking into the streets, the tanks crushed cars, carts and scurrying German soldiers, causing a panic. Immediately upon entering the city, the T-34s broke the illumination and communications lines. The bet on surprise proved justified to a significant degree: there was no organized resistance until sunrise, only isolated small-arms fire. However, it was precisely in the northern part of the city that the ‘Demba’ Fusilier Battalion, which had been formed from an NCO school and which had been dispatched to Ternopol’, was located. The ‘Demba’ Battalion’s elements did not give way to panic and took up an all-round defence, while claiming to have shot up two Soviet SU-85s, which had passed within 50m. It was also precisely the ‘Demba’ Battalion that was blocking the infantry’s entrance into the city behind the tanks.

As a result, the tanks’ breakthrough into the city was not supported by the infantry. The infantrymen, upon encountering rifle and machine-gun fire, took cover. To be fair, it should be pointed out that one of the reasons for this was the above-mentioned absence of artillery capable of suppressing the enemy’s fire. Meanwhile, a pinning group, consisting of the 14th Guards Tank Brigade, had arrived at the approaches to Ternopol’. As Poluboyarov had expected, the bridge on the Zbarazh–Ternopol’ road had been blown up. Seven hours of sustained labour by the engineers were required to restore it. As a result, the tank brigade’s first three T-34s only arrived at Ternopol’ at 07.30 on 9 March. Here they were halted by fire from tanks and assault guns.

Thus the attempt to take Ternopol’ from the march was not successful and a planned assault began. On 10 March, having brought up their artillery, the rifle units became involved in street fighting. Two of the 322nd Rifle Division’s regiments advanced through the city blocks in the north-eastern and eastern part of Ternopol’, while approaching to within 600m of the station. The division’s losses in two days of fighting were 50 men killed and 188 wounded. Elements of the 336th Rifle Division reached Ternopol’ from the south-east. The enemy’s data also testifies to the fact that the crisis with artillery support for the 15th Rifle Corps’ infantry attack had been overcome. Major Erasmus, an officer who had been dispatched to Ternopol’ from the headquarters of XLVIII Panzer Corps, wrote in his report that ‘The city was under the enemy’s massed artillery and mortar bombardment. The commandant and his attached 144th Artillery Command (Colonel Schrepler and his staff), were in the basement of the former command post, because all of the glass had been knocked out in the upper storeys by the bombardment.’

The first reports from Ternopol’ caused a good deal of concern in General Erhard Rauss’s¹³ headquarters. At one moment they considered the city to have been all but lost and were thinking of how to minimize the consequences of it. It was seriously believed that the unloading of fresh formations arriving in the Ternopol’ area was in danger of being aborted. It was noted in the Fourth Panzer Army’s war diary that

Insofar as there is the danger that the enemy’s tanks will break through Ternopol’ onto the road leading to the west and will interfere with the unloading of troops in Yezerna and to the west, following a discussion of the situation, an order was issued by radio at 09.41 by the army commander and his chief of staff to cover the Yezerna–Ternopol’ road with the aid of anti-tank weapons and to dispatch reconnaissance to Ternopol’.¹⁴

It was precisely for the purpose of clarifying and stabilizing the situation in Ternopol’ that Major Erasmus was dispatched from the XLVIII Panzer Corps’ headquarters.

Erasmus immediately set about preparing a counterblow for the purpose of throwing out the Soviet units that had penetrated into the city. The counterblow’s main shock force was a tank group of two Panther¹⁵ tanks, two armoured personnel carriers and a battery of assault guns (seven vehicles). They considered the north-eastern axis, where food stores were located, to be the most important. The German offensive began on the morning of 11 March. Erasmus wrote of the early morning hours, but according to Soviet data the counterblow followed at about 11.00 and was estimated in the 322nd Rifle Division’s operational report at ‘600 infantry, supported by 17 heavy tanks and eight armoured vehicles’. Three battalions from 322nd Rifle Division’s 1085th and 1089th Rifle Regiments were cut off by the counterblow and the remaining elements of these two regiments were thrown back to the suburbs. The 4th Guards Tank Corps’ 3rd Motorized Rifle Brigade also came under attack.

The counterblow made the situation of the 13th Guards Tank Brigade’s tanks and assault parties, which had broken into the city, entirely hopeless. They waged an isolated battle in the city for two and a half days. After expending its ammunition, the detachment broke out of the city on the three most combat-capable tanks and linked up with the corps’ remaining units on 11 March. On this day elements of the fresh German 949th Infantry Regiment arrived in the city and took up defensive positions along the outskirts of Ternopol’. The opportunity of taking the city from the march had been lost.

It was precisely at this moment that the city of Ternopol’ became the proving ground for testing one of the German army’s most controversial concepts of the latter half of the war – the so-called fortresses. Hitler himself is considered its author. Strictly speaking, during the early stages of the war the Wehrmacht¹⁶ also employed tactics quite close to those of the fortresses. Units and formations that had ended up isolated had occupied an all-round defence and sought to hold out, awaiting a relief attack from without. It is sufficient to recall Kholm, Demyansk and Sukhinichi (von Gilsa’s group) in the 1941–2 winter campaign, and Millerovo and Chertkovo in the winter of 1942–3. However, in 1944–5 the concept was taken to its logical conclusion and formalized in a series of orders. The key moment in its formation became the Führer’s Directive No. 11 of 8 March 1944 on ‘fortified places’ (Festung Platz). It was pointed out as early as the introductory part of the order that ‘The fortresses are supposed to carry out the same tasks as the fortresses of the past. They must prevent the enemy seizing places important from the operational point of view. They should allow themselves to be surrounded and thus tie down as many large enemy forces as possible. In this manner they must create the prerequisites for successful counterblows.’¹⁷

One must note that they assiduously avoided using the word ‘fortress’ in the text of the directive. The reasons for this were quite obvious – the name ‘fortress’, without permanent fortifications, appeared ridiculous. It was planned to employ cities as fortresses, which were assigned the role of ‘breakwaters’ along the path of the attacking enemy. The ‘fortified places’ were supposed to tie down significant numbers of the advancing forces, diverting them to the siege instead of continuing the offensive. The necessity of freeing up a road junction was supposed to force the Red Army to storm the fortress. In this sense, Ternopol’ was practically an ideal choice: all the roads, railways and communications lines came together in the city.

Ternopol’ was declared a fortress on 10 March by an order from Army Group South, to be operationally subordinated to the Fourth Panzer Army command (the subordinating of the fortress to corps was clearly forbidden by Directive No. 11). The