Battle of the Seelow Heights

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Date	April 16, 1945 - April 19, 1945
Location	Seelow Heights, Germany
Result	Soviet victory

Combatants

Commanders

Strength

100,000 men
512 Tanks
344 artillery pieces
400 Anti-aircraft guns

1,000,000 men
3,155 Tanks
16,934 artillery pieces

Casualties

12,000 Killed

33,000 Killed

Eastern Front
Barbarossa – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Belorussia – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans – Hungary – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague

Battle of Berlin
Seelow Heights – Berlin – Halbe

The Battle of the Seelow Heights was one of the last pitched battles of World War II. It was fought over four days, from April 16 until April 19, 1945. Close to one million Soviet soldiers were in action to break through the "Gates to Berlin" which was defended by about 100,000 German soldiers.

This battle is often incorporated into the Battle of the Oder-Neisse of which the Seelow Heights was the sector in which most of the fighting in the overall battle took place, but it was only one of several points along the Oder-Neisse that the Soviets crossed to attack the Germans. The battle of the Oder-Neisse was itself only the first battle in the larger context of the Battle of Berlin.

1 Buildup
2 The Battle
3 Conclusion
4 See also
5 References
6 Notes

[edit] Buildup

On April 9, 1945 Königsberg in East Prussia finally fell to the Red Army. This freed up General Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front (2BF) to move west to the east bank of the Oder river. During the first two weeks of April the Russians performed their fastest Front redeployment of the war. General Georgy Zhukov concentrated his 1st Belorussian Front (1BF) which had been deployed along the Oder river from Frankfurt in the south to the Baltic, into an area in front of the Seelow Heights. The 2BF moved into the positions being vacated by the 1BF north of the Seelow Heights. While this redeployment was in progress gaps were left in the lines and the remnants of the German II Army, which had been bottled up in a pocket near Danzig, managed to escape across the Oder. To the south, General Konev shifted the main weight of the 1st Ukrainian Front (1UF) out of Upper Silesia north-west to the Neisse River.

The three Soviet Fronts together had 2.5 million men (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st Polish Army), 6,250 tanks, 7,500 aircraft, 41,600 artillery pieces and mortars, 3,255 truck-mounted Katyusha rockets (nicknamed 'Stalin Organs' by the Germans), and 95,383 motor vehicles, many manufactured in the USA.

On the northern flank Seelow Heights stretching to the coast The 2BF had 8 armies consisting of 33 rifle divisions, 4 tank and mechanised corps, 3 artillery divisions, and a mixture of more artillery and rocket launcher brigades. The front had 951 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 6,642 artillery pieces. The 1BF had 11 armies consisting of 77 rifle divisions, 7 tank and mechanised corps, 8 artillery divisions, and a mixture of more artillery and rocket launcher brigades. the front had 3,155 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 16,934 artillery pieces.

On the northern flank of facing the 2BF, the German III Panzer Army had 11 divisions, 212 tanks, and practically no conventional artillery but between 600 and 700 anti-aircraft guns (some of them 88mm which were very effective anti-tank guns). The German IX Army covering the front which stretched from about the Finow Canal in the north to Guben in the south and included the Seelow Heights, had 14 divisions, 512 tanks, 344 artillery pieces and 300 to 400 anti-aircraft guns.^[1]

General Gotthard Heinrici replaced Himmler as commander of Army Group Vistula on March 20. He was one of the best defensive tacticians in the German army and immediately started to lay defensive plans. He (correctly) assessed that the main Soviet thrust would be made over the Oder river and along the main east-west autobahn. He decided not to try to defend the banks of the Oder with anything more than a light skirmishing screen. Instead he arranged that his engineers fortify the Seelow Heights which lay about 48 meters above the Oder and overlooked the river at the point where the Autobahn crossed it. He started to thin out the line in other areas to increase the manpower available to defend the heights. German army engineers turned the Oder's flood plain, already saturated by the spring thaw, into a swamp by releasing the waters in a reservoir upstream. Behind this they built three belts of defensive emplacements which reached back towards the outskirts of Berlin. The last line of which was known as the Wotan position 10 to 15 miles behind the front line^[2]. These lines consisted of anti-tank ditches, anti-tank gun emplacements, and an extensive network of trenches and bunkers.

[edit] The Battle

In the early hours on April 16, the offensive began with a massive bombardment by thousands of artillery pieces, and Katyusha rockets which sustained the barrage for days. Shortly afterwards, and well before dawn, the 1BF attacked across the Oder. The 1UF attacked across the Neisse before the dawn the same morning. The 1BF was the stronger force but it had the more difficult assignment and was facing the majority of the German forces.

The initial attack by the 1BF was a disaster. Heinrici and General Theodor Busse, the commander of IX Army which was the army holding the heights, anticipated the attack and withdrew their defenders from the first line of trenches just before the Soviet artillery obliterated them. The light from 143 searchlights which it was planned would blind the defenders was diffused by the early morning mist and made useful silhouettes of the attacking Soviet formations. The swampy ground proved to be a great hindrance and under a German counter barrage, Soviet casualties were enormous. Frustrated by the slow advance, or on the direct orders of Stalin, Zhukov threw in his reserves, which in his plan were to have been held back to exploit the expected breakthrough. By early evening an advance of almost six kilometres had been achieved in some areas, but the German lines remained intact. In the south the attack by the 1UF was keeping to plan. Zhukov was forced to report that the Battle of the Seelow Heights was not going to plan. Stalin, to spur Zhukov, told him that he would give Konev permission to wheel his tank armies towards Berlin from the south.

On the second day, the 1BF staff were reduced to combing the rear areas for any troops which could be thrown into the battle. The Soviet tactic of using massed attacks was proving more costly than usual. By night fall of April 17, the German front before Zhukov remained unbroken, but only just. To the south Army Group Centre under the command of General Ferdinand Schörner were not proving such a hindrance. IV Panzer Army on the north flank of his formation was falling back under the weight of the 1UF Attack. He kept his two reserve panzer division in the south covering his centre, instead of using them to shore up the IV Panzer Army. This was the turning point in the battle because by nightfall the positions of both the Army Group Vistula and southern sectors of Army Group Centre were becoming untenable. Unless they fell back in line with the IV Panzer Army they faced envelopment. In effect, Konev's successful attacks on Schörner's poor defences, to the south of the battle of the Seelow Heights, were unhinging Heinrici's brilliant defence.

On April 18, both Soviet Fronts made steady progress but Soviet losses were again substantial. By the nightfall, the 1BF had reached the third and final German line of defence and the 1UF having captured Forst was preparing to break out into open country.

On April 19 (the fourth day), the 1BF broke through the final line of the Seelow Heights and nothing but broken German formations lay between them and Berlin. The remnants of the IX Army which had been holding the heights and the remaining northern flank of the IV Panzer Army were in danger of being enveloped by elements of the 1UF, these were the 3rd Guards Army and the 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies, which having broken through the IV Panzer Army turned north towards Berlin and the 1BF. Other armies of the 1UF raced west towards the Americans. By the end of the 19th the German eastern front line had ceased to exist. All that remained were pockets of resistance.

The cost to the Soviet forces had been very high, with over 2,807 tanks lost between April 1 and April 19. During the same period the Allies in the west lost 1,079 tanks. 33,000 Soviets and 12,000 Germans lost their lives during the four days of the battle.

[edit] Conclusion

The defensive line on the Seelow Heights was the last major defensive line outside Berlin. Following April 19, the road to Berlin (90 kilometers westward) lay open. By April 23 Berlin was fully encircled and the Battle for Berlin entered its last stage. Within two weeks Hitler was dead and the war in Europe was effectively over.

Following the war, Zhukov's critics claimed that he should have diverted 1BF from the main highway to Berlin, circumventing the strong German defences at Seelow Heights by way of the 1UF's route over the Neisse, thereby preventing many casualties and the delay in the Berlin advance. However, the 1BF had been drawn up on a very narrow front, possibly preventing a bypass. The other Front commanders could and did bypass the main defences.

[edit] See also

Eastern Front (World War II)

[edit] References

Beevor, Antony. The Fall of Berlin, 1945, ISBN 0-670-88695-5
Ziemke, Earl F. Battle For Berlin: End Of The Third Reich, NY:Ballantine Books, London:Macdomald & Co, 1969.