The East Pomeranian offensive begins

On Saturday 10 February 1945 the armies of Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky’s 2nd Belorussian Front went over to the attack from the line of the lower Vistula, from around Grudziądz and Bydgoszcz, deep into East Pomerania. That same day his troops finally took Elbląg (Elbing), which had been holding out behind the front since the end of January, and on the southern edge of Pomerania soldiers of the Polish 1st Army captured Mirosławiec, ending several days of fighting to break through the Pomeranian Wall. So began the Pomeranian offensive, called the East Pomeranian offensive in Russian literature – one of the hardest campaigns of the last months of the war, which was to last almost two months and end only at the beginning of April on the Gulf of Gdańsk.

Pomerania on Zhukov’s flank

At the end of January the Red Army’s great winter offensive had produced results that neither side had expected. The troops of Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front had advanced from the Vistula to the Oder in less than three weeks, and on 31 January they seized a bridgehead on the western bank of the Oder at Kienitz, about 70 km from Berlin. The Vistula–Oder offensive, however, had left an unsolved problem behind it. Zhukov’s front resembled a long, narrow wedge driven into Germany: its tip stood on the Oder, while its right, northern wing stretched for hundreds of kilometres along the edge of Pomerania – from around Chełmno through Sępólno Krajeńskie, Okonek, Kalisz Pomorski and Recz to Pyrzyce and Cedynia.

North of this line considerable German forces still stood, based on the fortifications of the Pomeranian Wall and on forests, lakes and rivers. Behind the Soviet front encircled garrisons were holding out in Piła (Schneidemühl), Wałcz, Choszczno and Poznań, where the battle for the city had been under way since 24 January. To the Soviet command it was clear that a thrust from Pomerania southwards into Zhukov’s exposed flank could cut the troops on the Oder off from their rear. Before the advance on Berlin could begin, therefore, the German Pomeranian grouping had to be smashed, or at least pushed back towards the sea.

This task fell above all to the 2nd Belorussian Front. Rokossovsky, who in November 1944 had handed command of the 1st Belorussian Front to Zhukov and taken over the neighbouring front, had been fighting in East Prussia since 14 January. His armies, setting out from the Narew, had reached the Vistula Lagoon near Tolkmicko on 26 January and cut East Prussia off from the rest of the Reich in the course of the East Prussian offensive. By a directive of 8 February the Supreme Command (Stavka) ordered Rokossovsky to hand over the armies of his right wing to the 3rd Belorussian Front, which was to finish the fight for East Prussia, and to turn west with the rest of his forces, through Pomerania towards Szczecin (Stettin).

Army Group Vistula and Himmler

On the German side Pomerania was defended by Army Group Vistula, created by Adolf Hitler on 24 January to close the gap that had opened between the troops in East Prussia and the front in Silesia. Command went to Heinrich Himmler – Reichsführer-SS, chief of the police and commander of the Replacement Army, who had never commanded large formations at the front. The Chief of the Army General Staff, Heinz Guderian, regarded the appointment as a mistake, and later recalled that Himmler, working from a headquarters far from the front, understood neither the situation nor the capabilities of his troops.

The army group consisted of the 2nd Army, defending the lower Vistula and Gdańsk Pomerania; the hastily formed 11th Army (also known as the 11th SS Panzer Army) in central Pomerania; and the 3rd Panzer Army; the 9th Army covered the Oder on the Berlin axis. Most of these formations had been weakened by the defeats of January, and alongside the front-line divisions fought hastily assembled replacement, training and police units, the Volkssturm and SS divisions made up of foreigners. On the Soviet side, too, strengths were far below establishment: according to Polish studies, the divisions of the 2nd Belorussian Front had on average about half their authorised manpower, and their supply lines stretched for hundreds of kilometres over wrecked roads and railways.

Pomerania was also crowded with civilians. The local population had been joined by tens of thousands of refugees from East Prussia and from Gdańsk Pomerania, who were trekking west in the winter or waiting in the ports for ships. The evacuation of the region was ordered late and not everywhere, and columns of carts became entangled on the roads with retreating troops.

Rokossovsky’s offensive (10–19 February)

The Soviet plan assumed that within ten days the 2nd Belorussian Front would reach a line running from the mouth of the Vistula through Tczew, Bytów and Miastko to Szczecinek, and then, reinforced by the 19th Army, would push on west towards Szczecin; with its right wing it was to take the area of Gdańsk (Danzig) and Gdynia. On 10 February the 65th Army attacked from Grudziądz towards Bytów, the 49th Army towards Biały Bór and the 70th Army from Bydgoszcz towards Czaplinek; from 11 February a Guards cavalry corps joined the fighting, advancing through Człuchów on Miastko.

The offensive made far slower progress than planned. The Germans defended themselves stubbornly, and the weak Soviet divisions, without adequate tank support, fought in the woods of the Tuchola Forest, on sodden roads and in a thaw. By 15 February Rokossovsky’s armies had advanced a mere 15–40 km, taking Chojnice and Tuchola among other places, and by 20 February Czersk as well, and had come up to Gniew. On 19 February, with no prospect of reaching the original objectives, Rokossovsky halted the offensive. Grudziądz was a separate episode: declared a fortress and defended by some 10,000 soldiers, it was also attacked from 10 February, but the garrison did not surrender until 6 March.

Meanwhile the troops of Zhukov’s right wing were eliminating the encircled garrisons on the southern edge of Pomerania. Wałcz fell on 12 February, and on the night of 13/14 February the garrison of Piła abandoned the town, most of it breaking through to the German lines. The Polish 1st Army of Major General Stanisław Popławski had meanwhile completed the breakthrough of the Pomeranian Wall (PL) that it had been fighting since the turn of January and February (Podgaje, Jastrowie, Nadarzyce, Mirosławiec). According to Polish studies it cost the army 1,780 killed, 2,767 wounded and 1,055 missing; by 12 February the Poles had halted before a German switch position on the line Żabin – Nadarzyce – Borujsko.

Sonnenwende at Stargard

The German command did not intend merely to defend itself. Guderian had long been calling for a thrust from Pomerania southwards into Zhukov’s overstretched flank, and in the end he wrung from Hitler consent to a limited counter-offensive. According to his memoirs, a violent scene took place in the Reich Chancellery on 13 February, after which Hitler agreed that the operation should in practice be directed by General Walther Wenck rather than by Himmler himself. The attack, named Sonnenwende (“Solstice”) – like the January operation in Alsace, with which it had nothing to do – was carried out by the 11th Army, reinforced among others by divisions of the III SS Panzer Corps brought by sea from Courland.

The original intention, a pincer movement from Pomerania and from the middle Oder, proved unrealistic; all that remained was an attack from the north, from the area of Stargard. According to most sources it lasted from 15 to 18 February. On 15 February the Germans struck from Suchań towards encircled Choszczno (Arnswalde) and for a time linked up with its garrison, which allowed some of the soldiers and civilians to be brought out of the pocket. On 16 February the main thrust began from the line between Stargard and Lake Miedwie. Despite local successes the pace was slow, and on the evening of 17 February the Soviet 3rd Shock Army went over to counter-attacks. That same night Wenck, returning from Hitler, fell asleep at the wheel and was seriously injured in a car crash; he was replaced by General Hans Krebs. On 18 February the attack was called off. Choszczno fell after heavy street fighting on 22 February.

Sonnenwende did not change the situation and cost the Germans many tanks that they no longer had the means to replace. At the same time it confirmed the fears of the Soviet command: Pomerania remained a source of danger to the troops on the Oder. Historians still argue over whether it was this counter-attack, or rather the general exhaustion of the troops, the overstretched supply lines and the thaw, that decided the postponement of the advance on Berlin. Marshal Vasily Chuikov claimed years later that Berlin could have been taken as early as February; Zhukov and most historians considered that with the Pomeranian flank open this would have been too great a risk.

What followed

After the failure of the first phase the Stavka changed its plan. Instead of attacking with Rokossovsky’s front alone, it decided to strike with the adjoining wings of both Belorussian fronts towards Kołobrzeg (Kolberg) and split the German grouping in two. On 24 February the 2nd Belorussian Front, reinforced by the 19th Army, resumed its offensive and broke through the defences between Czarne and Człuchów. On 1 March the 1st Belorussian Front joined the operation, and with it the Polish 1st Army, which attacked the Pomeranian Wall’s switch position from Żabin in the area of Borujsko and Wierzchowo. The Poles had thus fought their main battles for the Wall in the first half of February, as part of the Vistula–Oder offensive, and in March they fought on its rear positions. On 4–5 March Soviet tanks reached the Baltic near Koszalin and Mrzeżyno, cutting Pomerania in two.

Zhukov had taken the western part of Pomerania by the second half of March; the heaviest fighting was for the bridgehead at Dąbie and Gryfino and for Kołobrzeg, where Soviet and Polish troops fought from 4 to 18 March, and on the night of 17/18 March the remnants of the garrison were evacuated by sea. Rokossovsky, reinforced by the 1st Guards Tank Army, turned east: Gdynia fell on 28 March, and on 30 March Gdańsk, destroyed by the fires that followed the air raids and the assault, and the fighting on the Oksywie Heights went on until 4–5 April. The remnants of the German 2nd Army held out on the Hel Peninsula and in the Vistula delta until the surrender in May. Under cover of the fighting the Kriegsmarine carried out Operation Hannibal, evacuating hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers from the ports of Pomerania and East Prussia. On 20 March Himmler was replaced at the head of Army Group Vistula by General Gotthard Heinrici.

The Red Army’s entry into Pomerania brought the German population the same fate as in East Prussia earlier: historians describe mass rape, killings, looting and arson, as well as the deportation of civilians for labour in the USSR. Many towns – Choszczno, Pyrzyce, Kołobrzeg, Gdańsk – were largely destroyed. According to figures based on Soviet data, the losses of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts in the whole operation, from 10 February to 4 April, amounted to some 55,000 killed and missing and about 179,000 wounded; German losses cannot be established precisely.

The operation’s place in the war

The Pomeranian offensive was a precondition for the final assault on Berlin: only after Army Group Vistula had been smashed in Pomerania could Zhukov concentrate all his forces on the Oder, which he did in April. It was also the last great campaign in which Rokossovsky and Zhukov operated side by side on neighbouring fronts, and the campaign in which the Polish 1st Army fought its hardest battles so far – from the Pomeranian Wall to Kołobrzeg – while the Polish 1st Armoured Brigade fought for Gdynia and Gdańsk.

The fate of the region was being decided in parallel at the negotiating table. At the Yalta Conference, which ended the day after Rokossovsky’s offensive began, the Big Three agreed that Poland would receive substantial territorial gains in the north and west, leaving the final delimitation of the border to the peace conference. In the summer of 1945, at Potsdam, Pomerania east of the Oder was placed under Polish administration. The German population that had not fled, or had returned after the fighting, was expelled in the following years, and in its place came Poles from central Poland and resettlers from the eastern territories that had gone to the USSR. The offensive that began slowly and laboriously in the Tuchola Forest on 10 February thus changed not only the course of the last months of the war but also the map and the population of the whole region.