On 16 January, Hitler returned to the partly bombed
Chancellery in Berlin to be nearer to the Eastern Front. He now decided that
the Western Front should go on the defensive to release troops to fight in the
east. He also decided that they must hit the southern flank of the Russian
spearhead and Hitler ordered Guderian to send the Sixth Panzer Army to Hungary.
It was necessary, Hitler said, to hang on to the oil fields in Hungary,
otherwise there would be no fuel for the Panzers.
General Nehring's XXIV Panzer Corps was stemming the Russian
attack around Kielce, but the XLVI Panzer Corps had to pull out of the Warsaw
area when it risked being encircled. It was supposed to go south to stop a
Russian breakthrough that would cut East and West Prussia off from the rest of
Germany. But the Russians threw it back on to the north bank of the Vistula and
began their dash on the German border unhindered.
The German garrison in Warsaw now risked being cut off.
Guderian told Hitler that they should be withdrawn, but he grew angry and
insisted that Warsaw be held at all costs. But the garrison commandant had
little artillery and only four infantry battalions with limited combat
experience. It would have been impossible for them to hold the city and the
commandant withdrew his garrison despite Hitler's orders not to. Hitler was
furious and spent the next few days investigating the loss of Warsaw rather
than devoting himself to more pressing matters. When Hitler ordered the arrest
of members of the general staff, Guderian said that he alone was responsible
for the loss of Warsaw, so it was he who should be arrested, not his staff.
Nevertheless Hitler had three of Guderian's staff arrested at gunpoint.
Guderian again insisted that he was the one whose conduct should be
investigated, so ending up subjected to lengthy interrogations at a time when
he should have been concentrating all his efforts on the battle for the Eastern
Front. Two of his staff were then released, but instead of returning to their
staff duties were sent to command regiments on the Eastern Front. Three days
later one of them was killed. The third member of Guderian's staff was sent to
a concentration camp, which he later swapped for an American prisoner of war
camp.
On 18 January, the Germans in Hungary attacked in an attempt
to lift the siege of Budapest. They fought their way through to the banks of
the Danube. But that same day the Russians entered the city, so the effort had
been wasted. Nevertheless Hitler sent the Sixth Panzer Army to Hungary in an
attempt to hold the Russians there.
On 20 January, the Russians first set foot on German soil.
Guderian's wife, who had been under constant surveillance by the local Nazi
Party, was then allowed to leave and flee to the safety of Guderian's headquarters,
half an hour before the first shell landed in Deipenhof.
The Russian onslaught could not be resisted. Hitler began to
accuse his Panzer commanders of treason. Guderian tried to calm him, but
Reinhardt and Hossbach were relieved of their commands.
The Russians had now mastered the art of Panzer warfare.
They advanced rapidly, bypassing strongpoints and outflanking fortified lines -
though most of the fortifications in the east had been stripped to build the
Atlantic Wall. Germany's only hope now was that the Western Allies would
realize what the rapid Russian advance might mean for the future of Europe and
sign an armistice. Guderian said that he proposed to the German foreign
minister von Ribbentrop that he open negotiations for an armistice on at least
one front - preferably the Western. Von Ribbentrop told Guderian that he was a
loyal follower of Hitler and he knew that the Führer did not want to make
peace.
`How would you feel if in three or four weeks the Russians
were at the gates of Berlin?' said Guderian.
`Do you believe that that is possible?' asked a shocked von
Ribbentrop.
When Hitler heard of this, Guderian too was accused of
treason, though he was not arrested. Hitler had few enough able officers left.
Guderian proposed a plan that would give them some breathing
space. They should form a new army group specifically to hold the centre of the
line. Guderian suggested that its commanding officer should be Field Marshal
Freiherr von Weichs, a commander in the Balkans. Hitler approved Guderian's
plan for the creation of a new army group, but gave its command to Himmler.
Guderian was appalled. Himmler was not a military man. He was a politician, the
head of the SS. He was also chief of police, minister of the interior and
Commander in Chief of the Training Army, any one of which positions might be
thought a full-time job. But Hitler was insistent. Guderian tried to persuade
him at least to give Himmler von Weichs' experienced staff. But Hitler, who was
now wary of all his generals, ordered Himmler to choose his own staff. Himmler
surrounded himself with other SS leaders who were largely, in Guderian's
opinion, incapable of doing the jobs they had been given. SS Brigadenführer
Lammerding was his chief of staff. Previously the commander of a Panzer
division, Lammerding had no idea of the duties of a staff officer. The new army
group was to be called Army Group Vistula, though the Russians had crossed the
Vistula months before.
Hitler set up new `tank destroyer' divisions. These
consisted of men issued with antitank grenades and bicycles. Somehow they were
expected to stop the huge armies of T-34s that were now driving westwards. And
by this time 16-year-old boys were being conscripted into the army.
By 28 January, Upper Silesia was in Russian hands. Speer
wrote to Hitler saying, `The war is lost.' Hitler now cut Speer completely and
refused to see anyone alone in private, because they always told him something
he did not want to hear. Hitler began demoting officers on a whim, and brave
soldiers denounced by party members found themselves in concentration camps
without even the most summary investigation. Guderian found that more and more
of his day was spent listening to lengthy monologues by Hitler as he tried to
find someone to blame for the deteriorating military situation. Hitler often
became so enraged that the veins on his forehead stood out, his eyes bulged and
members of staff feared that he might have a heart attack.
On 30 January, the Russians attacked the Second Panzer Army
in Hungary and broke through. Guderian proposed evacuating the Balkans, Norway
and what remained of Prussia and bringing back all the Panzers into Germany for
one last battle. Instead Hitler ordered an attack and on 15 February the Third
Panzer Army under General Rauss went on the offensive. In overall command of
the offensive was General Wenck. But on the night of the 17th, after a long
briefing by Hitler, Wenck noticed that his driver was tired and took the wheel,
only to then fall asleep himself and crash into the parapet of a bridge on the
Berlin-Stettin highway. Wenck was badly injured and, with him in hospital, the
offensive bogged down and never regained its momentum.
In March, Rauss was summoned to the Chancellery and asked to
explain himself. Hitler did not give him a chance to speak. After he had
dismissed Rauss, Hitler insisted he be relieved of his command. Guderian
protested that he was one of the most able Panzer commanders. Hitler said that
he could not be trusted because he was a Berliner or an East Prussian. It was
then pointed out that Rauss was an Austrian, like Hitler himself. Even so he
was relieved of his post and replaced by von Manteuffel.
Himmler's Army Group Vistula did little to halt the Russian
advance and Guderian eventually suggested that Himmler be replaced. On 20
March, Hitler agreed. He was replaced by a veteran military man, Colonel-General
Gotthard Heinrici, who was currently commanding the First Panzer Army in the
Carpathians. Under his command was the Third Panzer Army under von Manteuffel.
Guderian continued to come up with suggestions of how the
Russian advance could at least be slowed. But after one final falling-out with
Hitler, he was ordered to take convalescent leave of six weeks. He left Berlin
on 28 March intending to go to a hunting lodge near Oberhof in the Thuringian
Mountains, but the rapid advance of the Americans made this impossible. Instead
he decided to go to the Ehenhausen sanatorium near Munich for treatment of his
heart condition. Warned that he might invite the attentions of the Gestapo,
Guderian arranged to be guarded by two members of the Field Police.
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