Battle of Poznań

The Battle of Poznań was the struggle for the capital of Greater Poland, fought from late January to 23 February 1945 between the Red Army and the German garrison of a city declared a fortress (Festung Posen). Poznań lay on the shortest route from Warsaw to Berlin and was one of the most important rail and road junctions behind a front which, in little more than a fortnight of the Vistula–Oder offensive, had moved from the Vistula towards the Oder. The spearheads of General Mikhail Katukov’s 1st Guards Tank Army reached the city on 22 January but failed to take it on the march. Once they had moved on westwards, the fortress was besieged and stormed by divisions of the 8th Guards Army (PL) under Colonel General Vasily Chuikov, the defender of Stalingrad, and of the 69th Army under Colonel General Vladimir Kolpakchi, both part of Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front.

The garrison was commanded at first by Generalmajor Ernst Mattern and, from the turn of January and February, by Colonel (later Generalmajor) Ernst Gonell. The number of defenders is disputed: Polish historians who have studied German and Soviet documents in recent years put it at about 15,000–20,000 soldiers and Volkssturm men, rejecting the figure of 61,500 once given by Zbigniew Szumowski as unsupported by the sources. The fighting raged over the ring of forts, the districts on both banks of the Warta, the city centre and the Old Town, and finally over the Citadel – the former Fort Winiary, whose German garrison surrendered on the morning of 23 February 1945. Gonell took his own life and Mattern gave himself up. The city, which for more than five years of occupation had been the capital of the Warthegau annexed to the Reich, emerged from the battle in ruins: according to post-war calculations cited by Poznań historians, about 55 per cent of its buildings were destroyed or badly damaged, and far more in the historic centre.

Name and dates

Polish writing calls the fighting the Battle of Poznań, less often – especially in publications of the communist era – the liberation of Poznań or the fighting for Poznań; German accounts speak of the defence of Festung Posen, Russian ones of the storming of Poznań. The start of the battle cannot be fixed unambiguously. The first Soviet attack on the eastern suburbs came on 22 January; on the night of 23–24 January Katukov’s tanks crossed the Warta south and north of the city, and on the afternoon of 24 January they cut the last roads leading out of Poznań to the north and west. On the same day Chuikov’s first divisions arrived before the city. The encirclement was finally closed on 25 January. The battle can be taken to have begun on 24 January – the day the city was effectively cut off and a combined-arms army entered the fight – and to have ended on 23 February, the day the Citadel capitulated. Polish publications most often speak of a “month-long” battle, counting from 22 or 25 January.

Background

Poznań, the cradle of the Greater Poland Uprising of 1918–1919, was occupied by the Wehrmacht in the first days of the September Campaign and in the autumn of 1939 annexed to the Reich as the capital of the Warthegau (Reichsgau Wartheland). The Reich Governor, Arthur Greiser, pursued a policy of ruthless Germanisation: tens of thousands of Poles were deported to the General Government, Germans from the Baltic states and Volhynia were settled in their homes, and in Fort VII (PL) the Germans set up the first concentration camp on Polish soil, where thousands of people were murdered. At the end of the occupation Poles still made up the majority of the city’s inhabitants, though they had been stripped of their rights and property.

Its Prussian legacy made Poznań one of the most heavily fortified cities in Central Europe. Around the city stood the ring of Fortress Poznań, built in 1876–1896: nine main forts and nine intermediate ones, and at its centre the remains of a 19th-century polygonal fortress with the Citadel on Winiary Hill and smaller works (Grolman, Radziwiłł, Rauch, Prittwitz). The forts, built of earth and brick and obsolete in the face of 20th-century artillery, served during the war mainly as depots, workshops and prisons.

In 1944, as the Eastern Front approached the borders of the Reich, Hitler ordered important cities to be turned into “fortresses” (Feste Plätze), which, once encircled, were to tie down as many enemy troops as possible. The Chief of the Army General Staff, General Heinz Guderian, planned several defensive belts between the Vistula and the Oder; Poznań, in the middle of line “C”, which ran from Piła through Poznań to Głogów, was to be its key strongpoint. On paper the city was to be surrounded by three defensive rings – an outer one about 50 km in diameter, an intermediate one about 24 km across and an inner one based on the forts. In reality little was built: the outer ring was barely begun, the intermediate one was completed only in sections, and around the city little more was done than to dig an anti-tank ditch and add a dozen or so bunkers between the forts. The first fortress commandant, General Heinz Deindl (appointed on 25 September 1944), argued for confining the defence to a smaller area; the OKH rejected his proposals and replaced him with Generalmajor Ernst Mattern.

Preparations were hampered by the German command’s conviction that there would be no great offensive in the east in the winter of 1944–1945 – the reserves had been sent to the Ardennes offensive and to Alsace. Unified command was also lacking: the fortress battalions answered to Heinrich Himmler’s Replacement Army, the Volkssturm to Gauleiter Greiser, and the staffs of Military District XXI and of the air district were not subordinate to the fortress commandant.

Opposing forces

The final make-up of the garrison took shape only in the last days before the encirclement. The fortress alarm was declared on 20 January, and the official evacuation of the German civilian population began the next day. Mattern took command of every soldier in the city: fortress and training battalions, officer cadets, soldiers returning from leave, the Volkssturm, the police, anti-aircraft crews and the remnants of 9th Army units smashed on the Vistula were all incorporated into the garrison. According to more recent research (by Günther Baumann and Michał Krzyżaniak, among others), the garrison numbered about 15,000 men, 20,000 at most, including some 450 Hungarians and a group of volunteers from the Baltic states; thousands of wounded also lay in the hospitals. Older studies, beginning with the work of Zbigniew Szumowski, gave 61,500 defenders – a figure now regarded as greatly inflated. The fortress area was divided into three sectors: eastern (right bank, Colonel Ernst Gonell), western (left bank, Major Ewert) and the Warta valley (Major Hahn).

On the Soviet side the first to fight at the city was the 1st Guards Tank Army – General Ivan Dremov’s 8th Guards Mechanised Corps and Colonel Amazasp Babadzhanian’s 11th Guards Tank Corps. After it left, the burden of the siege passed to four divisions of the 8th Guards Army – the 27th, 74th and 82nd Guards Rifle Divisions of General Afanasy Shemenkov’s 29th Guards Rifle Corps and the 39th Guards Rifle Division of the 28th Corps – and to the 117th and 312th Rifle Divisions of the 91st Rifle Corps from the 69th Army. They were backed by strong artillery, including heavy guns and mortars, and assault groups, specialised in street fighting since Stalingrad, played a major part. The Soviet forces greatly outnumbered the garrison, but being bogged down in the fight for the city weakened the advance to the Oder.

Attempt to take the city on the march (22–24 January)

The offensive of the 1st Belorussian Front, launched on 14 January from the bridgeheads on the Vistula, shattered the German 9th Army within days; on 17 January Soviet and Polish troops entered Warsaw, and on 19 January the 8th Guards Army took Łódź. Zhukov, though reluctant to use tanks in city fighting, ordered Katukov to seize the unprepared fortress on the march by 22 January. The spearheads of the 1st Guards Tank Army covered more than 200 km in a few days and got more than 100 km ahead of the infantry.

On 22 January the 8th Guards Mechanised Corps took Swarzędz without a fight and in the afternoon struck at the eastern suburbs. The attack on Antoninek and Rataje stalled at the railway line under fire from the forts; at the same time the 20th Guards Mechanised Brigade captured the Focke-Wulf works and airfield at Krzesiny and – led by Polish guides – took infantry across the ice to the left bank of the Warta at Czapury. A renewed frontal attack on 23 January collapsed after a few hours. General Dremov concluded that tanks alone could not take the city, and front headquarters decided that the tank army would bypass Poznań and push on westwards, leaving the fortress to the 8th Guards Army.

On the night of 23–24 January Katukov’s units crossed the Warta at Czapury and, in the north, at Czerwonak and Różany Młyn, where Lieutenant Colonel Vasyl Lenskyi’s group established a bridgehead. Inhabitants of the surrounding villages helped to build the crossings, reinforcing the ice and bridges with timber. A raid by a few armoured cars on Ławica airfield destroyed, according to Soviet figures, more than a hundred aircraft. By the afternoon of 24 January every road leading north out of the city had been cut. That same day the first divisions of the 29th Guards Rifle Corps attacked the city straight from the march; the unprepared assault, made in marching columns, broke down with heavy losses. At midnight on 24–25 January Fortress Poznań was placed under the newly formed Army Group Vistula, commanded by Himmler.

The ring of forts and the districts (25 January – 5 February)

Chuikov and Katukov both urged Zhukov to send the tank armies west and leave the encircled city to the infantry. That is what happened: the 1st Guards Tank Army set off towards the Międzyrzecz Fortified Region and the Oder, while the 11th Guards Tank Corps took up positions on the western approaches near Junikowo to cut off the defenders’ line of retreat. From 25 January units of the 8th Guards Army and the 69th Army steadily tightened the ring. As early as 26 January the 27th and 74th Guards Rifle Divisions took two forts in the south in a swift attack, which let them get inside the ring and attack the remaining forts from the city side. One fort after another fell to heavy artillery fire and to assaults by sappers with demolition charges and flamethrowers; some garrisons surrendered after brief resistance, others fought to the end. In the first days of fighting the Russians took the southern and western districts of left-bank Poznań – Dębiec, Wilda, Górczyn, Łazarz, Grunwald and Jeżyce – and the defenders fell back towards the centre.

At the turn of January and February Mattern was replaced as commandant by Colonel Ernst Gonell, hitherto commander of the eastern sector, who was soon promoted to Generalmajor. Sources give various dates for the change, from 28 January to 7 February; Mattern remained in the fortress. Gonell, unswervingly loyal to Hitler’s orders, imposed draconian discipline: according to accounts cited in the literature, soldiers who tried to surrender were shot. He expected relief from the reconstituted 9th Army, but the German command no longer had the strength to break through to a city more than 100 km behind the new front line.

The fighting in the built-up areas was conducted by assault groups supported by direct-fire guns and tanks. The defenders held out in tenements, cellars, government buildings and barracks, and were pounded in return by Soviet artillery and aircraft. On 5 February Soviet units broke into the left-bank city centre; in the first days of February fighting also raged in the Imperial Quarter around the Imperial Castle, which had been converted into a residence for Hitler during the occupation. Meanwhile, on the right bank of the Warta, soldiers of the 69th Army fought for Rataje, Śródka, Główna and Ostrów Tumski, where the defenders blew up the bridges and held out in historic buildings.

The city centre, the Old Town and the breakout attempt (5–17 February)

The heaviest street fighting took place in the first half of February in the left-bank city centre and the Old Town. The Russians advanced house by house, knocking passages through walls and blowing up defended buildings; the Germans set fire to the blocks they had to abandon. Artillery fire from both sides and the fires destroyed much of the area around the Old Market Square – the Renaissance town hall burned down, among other buildings, and the cathedral on Ostrów Tumski and the Old Town churches were badly damaged. By the middle of February the defenders had been pushed back onto the slopes of Winiary Hill, and the fighting in the city centre and the Old Town died down around 16 February.

When it became clear that no relief would come, Gonell allowed some units to break out of the encirclement. On the night of 15–16 February several groups – by various estimates from about 1,000 to about 2,000 soldiers – left the city heading west. Most of them were rounded up or destroyed in the surrounding forests; according to Polish researchers, a few hundred men at most reached their own lines on the Oder. The remaining defenders – including thousands of wounded – gathered in the Citadel and its immediate surroundings.

The storming of the Citadel (18–23 February)

The Citadel, built by the Prussians in 1828–1842 on a hill commanding the city, was the last centre of resistance (the Germans called it the Kernwerk). Its moat-ringed ramparts and redoubts gave the defenders good cover against infantry, and its thick walls protected them from shellfire. The encirclement of the Citadel was closed on 17 February, and on 18 February the 29th Guards Rifle Corps began the assault: the 27th Guards Rifle Division attacked from the north, the 82nd from the south-west and General Dmitry Bakanov’s 74th from the south-east. The deep moat and steep ramparts forced the attackers to use scaling ladders, and the men climbing them were caught by fire from the redoubts flanking the moat. Destroying these with flamethrowers and demolition charges took nearly three days.

According to Polish accounts, Stalin expected the Citadel to fall by 23 February, the anniversary of the founding of the Red Army. Chuikov’s bled-white divisions lacked sufficient sappers and infantry, so in the last days of the assault some 2,000 inhabitants of Poznań – the so-called Cytadelowcy (PL) (“Citadel men”) – were drawn into the fighting. On 22 February, once a crossing over the moat had been built, tanks and self-propelled guns drove into the Citadel. On the night of 22–23 February Gonell allowed his soldiers to try to escape from the fortress on their own, and then took his own life. Mattern, who assumed command of what was left of the garrison, capitulated on the morning of 23 February – at about 6 a.m., according to Poznań sources. Between about 12,000 and more than 20,000 soldiers were taken prisoner, depending on the source and on how the wounded are counted. Chuikov described in his memoirs a conversation with Mattern, who allegedly told him that he was not a member of the Nazi Party, would not shed blood needlessly and that Hitler was finished. The Citadel itself came through the fighting relatively little damaged; the barracks redoubt suffered most.

The civilian population and the Cytadelowcy

The battle was fought in a city in which several tens of thousands of Poles had remained. Mattern feared an uprising and on 22 January ordered the Polish population to be evacuated as well, and on 23 January he gave civilians an ultimatum to leave the city; most Poles ignored these orders, and the city was by then almost cut off. Before fleeing Poznań the Gestapo murdered most of the prisoners held in the jail on Młyńska Street and in the Soldiers’ House (PL), the Poznań Gestapo headquarters, as well as prisoners of the Żabikowo camp (PL) who were unable to march. For the month of fighting the inhabitants lived in cellars, without electricity, water or food supplies, under fire from both sides. According to estimates cited by Poznań historians and by the city, some 600–650 civilians were killed.

In the liberated suburbs Poles supported the Soviet troops from the very first days: as guides, in building the crossings over the Warta and in carrying the wounded. The best-known episode is the part played by the Cytadelowcy in the assault on the last centre of resistance. About 2,000 inhabitants of Poznań were organised into assault and auxiliary (so-called sapper) groups under Polish or Soviet command. There were volunteers among them, but – as more recent studies stress – many were forcibly mobilised through the stations of the Citizens’ Militia with the participation of Soviet soldiers, often without training or proper weapons. Depending on the source, between 84 and about 100 Poles were killed in the fighting for the Citadel and some 300 wounded. They were buried in a cemetery on the slopes of the Citadel; after 1990 the inscription “Cytadela Poznańska 21–23 II 1945” (Poznań Citadel, 21–23 February 1945) was placed on one of the plaques of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.

Losses

According to the findings of Adam Pleskaczyński, based on documents in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, at least 5,512 Soviet soldiers were killed, went missing or died of wounds in the fighting for Poznań; in all, he estimates the number killed and died of wounds at about 6,000 and the wounded at about 16,000. The Russian historian Alexey Isaev gives 4,887 irrecoverable losses. Older estimates spoke of more than 10,000 killed; some 10,000 soldiers are buried in Poznań’s Soviet cemeteries – on the Citadel and at Miłostowo – but roughly half of them died in hospital of wounds received in other operations or were moved there from smaller cemeteries. German losses are estimated at about 5,000–6,000 killed (according to some studies, 2,000–3,000 killed and 7,000–9,000 wounded); almost all who survived were taken prisoner. More than 5,000 fallen German soldiers lie in Miłostowo cemetery (PL).

The city suffered enormous material losses. According to post-war calculations, about 55 per cent of its buildings – some 5,800 buildings and 360 industrial plants – were destroyed or badly damaged, and in the Old Town 80–90 per cent. A report drawn up in 2005 at the request of the Mayor of Poznań put the city’s wartime losses, most of them from the period of the battle, at more than 10 billion złoty (at 2006 prices).

Significance

Fortress Poznań did not halt the Soviet advance westwards – the tank armies bypassed the city and reached the Oder by the end of January – but for a month it blocked the most important rail and road junction between the Vistula and the Oder and tied down several divisions whose absence was felt on the Oder front. Supply difficulties were one reason, though not the only one, why the Soviet command halted the advance on Berlin in February 1945; the threat to its flank from the German forces in Pomerania proved more important. From the German point of view the defence of Poznań was a typical example of the “fortress” strategy: well over ten thousand soldiers, wounded and civilians were sacrificed to delay the enemy by a few weeks. For the Red Army the battle was another lesson in fighting in a large city before the storming of Berlin; Chuikov, who went on to command the 8th Guards Army in Berlin as well, devoted long passages of his memoirs to the capture of Poznań.

For Poznań the battle meant the end of more than five years of German occupation, and at the same time one of the greatest catastrophes in the city’s history. Polish memory records not only liberation from Greiser’s rule but also the heavy losses, the destruction, the looting and abuses by Soviet soldiers, and the communist rule swiftly imposed – and for decades judgements of these events differed depending on who was making them.

Aftermath

After the fighting ended, Poznań became a rear base for the front on the Oder. In February and March 1945 Soviet troops and the Polish 1st Army cleared Pomerania, Küstrin (Kostrzyn nad Odrą) fell on 30 March, and on 16 April the Berlin offensive began, ending with the capitulation of Berlin on 2 May. Ernst Mattern went into Soviet captivity. The rebuilding of Poznań took many years; the Old Market Square and its town hall were reconstructed in the 1950s. The Citadel was turned into a park, on whose slopes a cemetery of Soviet soldiers (PL), a cemetery of the Cytadelowcy and war cemeteries of other nations were laid out, and the former fortress buildings now house the Poznań Army Museum (PL) and the Museum of Armaments. Every year on 23 February, the anniversary of the end of the fighting, ceremonies are held in Poznań to commemorate the battle and its victims.