On January 16, Hitler finally abandoned what Guderian called his "little Vosges war” and returned to his office in the Chancellery. Here he made two decisions which brought a show-down with the O. K.H. Chief-of-Staff. First of all he stuck to his order to transfer the ”Gross-deutschland” Panzer Corps from Army Group "Centre” to Army Group "A” and send it over to Kielce, where it was to attack the flank of the Russian tank forces advancing on Poznan. Guderian repeated the arguments he had put forward the previous evening on the phone, but in vain.
"They would not arrive in time to
Stop the Russians and they would be withdrawn from the defences of East Prussia at a time when the Russian offensive was reaching its peak. The loss of this formation would give rise to the same catastrophe in East Prussia as we had had on the Vistula. Whilst we were struggling for a final outcome, the divisions up to full fighting strength would still be on the trains: the 'Grossdeulsch-land’ Panzergrenadier and the Luftwaffe 'Hermann Goring’ Panzer Division of the 'Grossdeutschland’ Panzer Corps, under General von Saucken, the staunchest of commanders.”
It was no good, as usual, and events bore out the gloomiest of forecasts: not only did the German 2nd Army cave in and Rokossovsky set off for Elbing as ordered, but the "Grossdeutschland” Panzer Corps arrived at Lodz under a hail of Soviet shelling and only saved its neck by a prompt retreat. Reduced to a moving pocket, together with XXIV Panzer Corps, it nevertheless managed to filter back through the Soviet columns and to cross over to the left bank of the Oder.
A Colonel-General P. S.
Rybalko (seated), commander of the 3rd Guards Tank Army, follows the progress of his forces, part of Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front.
Hitler may have satisfied Guderian’s demand by announcing that he would go over to the defensive on the Western Front, but he aroused his indignation by ordering to Hungary the best of the formations salvaged in this manner, in particular the 6th S. S. Panzerarmee. - In Guderian’s opinion, the Hungarian railways could not cope with the traffic and it would take weeks before Army Group "South” could go over to the counterattack as Hitler had ordered, whereas Sepp Dietrich’s Panzers could concentrate on the Oder in ten days. Beaten on the military question, the Fiihrer counterattacked on the grounds of the economy, maintaining "that Hungarian petroleum deposits and the nearby refineries are indispensable after the bombing of the German coal hydrogenation plants, and have become decisively important for the conduct of the war. No more fuel means your tanks can’t run or your planes take off. You must see that. But that’s the way it is; my generals understand nothing of the economy of war!” Hitler’s reasoning was clearly not devoid of foundation as petroleum, until uranium came along, was the life-blood of war. But his chief-of-staff s calculations turned out to he correct, since the 6th Panzerarmee had to wait until March 6 before it could launch its offensive on the Hungarian front. Even so, its intervention north of the Carpathians was hardly likely to have prevented Zhukov from reaching the Oder between Kiistrin and Frankfurt. Diverting it to the south made the Soviet invasion easier.
World History
