East Prussian offensive

• 1. Introduction

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  The East Prussian offensive officially ended on the 25th of April 1945. Yet some German units under Wehrmacht command refused to surrender until the entire country did, on the 9th of May. This campaign set the Red Army against German forces across the Eastern Front of World War II. Its centerpiece, the Battle of Königsberg, closed in a Red Army victory. Why would soldiers keep fighting for weeks after their own campaign had already been decided?

  German historians give this campaign a second name: the second East Prussian offensive. That label only makes sense if an earlier, incomplete attempt came first. What happened during that first push, and why did the Red Army need to try again?

• 2. The October Rehearsal

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  The first East Prussian offensive, also called the Gumbinnen Operation, ran from the 16th to the 27th of October 1944. General I.D. Chernyakhovsky's 3rd Belorussian Front carried it out, as part of the wider Memel offensive under the 1st Baltic Front.

  Soviet troops pushed 30-60 km into the east-northern part of Poland during this attempt, but paid for that ground with heavy casualties. Those losses forced Soviet commanders to postpone any further advance until they could gather greater reserves.

  Three full Soviet fronts would need to align before the second attempt could begin.

• 3. A Three-Front Plan

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  Ivan Chernyakhovsky's 3rd Belorussian Front carried the main thrust of the second attempt, driving west toward Königsberg. His troops faced the 3rd Panzer Army and the 4th Army, the two northern armies within Generaloberst Georg-Hans Reinhardt's Army Group Centre.

  On Chernyakhovsky's right flank, General Hovhannes Bagramyan's 1st Baltic Front would strike the 3rd Panzer Army's positions along the Neman river. Bagramyan's forces also had orders to crush the small German bridgehead still holding out at Memel.

  To the south, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front supported Chernyakhovsky's left flank. Rokossovsky's initial orders sent him north-west toward the Vistula river, cutting through the German 2nd Army's lines to seal off the whole of East Prussia. That order would not survive first contact with the battlefield.

• 4. Grinding Through the Lines

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  Soviet guns opened the offensive on the 13th of January with a heavy preparatory bombardment. Progress fell far short of what Soviet commanders expected; the 3rd Belorussian Front advanced only 1.5 km on that opening day. Over the next five days, Soviet forces gained a further 20 km, but only at the cost of very high casualties.

  Nearly two weeks of severe fighting passed before the Red Army began making steady headway, still paying in heavy losses. German defenders held a serious advantage here: strong fortifications in the Insterburg Gap, east of Königsberg, and around Heilsberg slowed every Soviet step.

  Generaloberst Erhard Raus's 3rd Panzer Army bore the brunt of the fighting that followed. Much of it was destroyed or forced to withdraw into Königsberg. General der Infanterie Friedrich Hossbach's 4th Army, meanwhile, began to find its own flank exposed as the front shifted around it.

  South of this fight, another Soviet front was already forcing its own crossing, this time over the Narew river.

• 5. Closing the Ring

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  On the 14th of January, Rokossovsky's forces attacked across the Narew river against fierce German resistance. Six days later, on the 20th of January, Rokossovsky received new orders: swing his axis of advance north toward Elbing.

  This abrupt change of direction caught both Reinhardt and Hossbach completely by surprise. On Rokossovsky's right flank, the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps captured the major town of Allenstein on the 22nd of January. That capture threatened the rear of Hossbach's entire formation.

  By the 24th of January, Rokossovsky's leading tank units had reached the shore of the Vistula Lagoon. That advance cut all land communication for the entire 4th Army. It also trapped several divisions of the 2nd Army, in a pocket centered on East Prussia.

  That same day, Hossbach began pulling his units back from Lötzen. This fortified town had served as a center of the East Prussian defence system. Through a series of forced marches, his troops tried to break out westward.

  To the east, Chernyakhovsky had already rolled up the German defences, pushing the remnants of the 3rd Panzer Army into Königsberg and the Samland peninsula. On the 28th of January, Bagramyan's forces captured Memel itself. The three divisions that had defended the town were evacuated and redeployed to Samland to reinforce its defence there.

  For Reinhardt and Hossbach, the reckoning for this retreat was still to come.

• 6. The Generals Fall

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  With the remnants of Army Group Centre now boxed in, Soviet planners turned their attention toward Pomerania and Berlin's northern flank. Reinhardt and Hossbach, who had tried to break out of East Prussia and save their troops, were both relieved of command. Their Army Group was renamed Army Group North and placed under Generaloberst Lothar Rendulic.

  Reinhardt handed over his command with a single blunt line: "There is nothing more to say." Erhard Raus and the staff of his now-destroyed 3rd Panzer Army were reassigned to an entirely new formation.

  The men still trapped inside East Prussia, however, answered to nobody but the Soviet armies now closing in around three separate pockets.

• 7. Two Sieges

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  Some 15 divisions of the 4th Army found themselves encircled on the shore of the Vistula Lagoon, in what became known as the Heiligenbeil Pocket. After bitter fighting, Soviet forces finally overcame these trapped divisions on the 29th of March.

  The remnants of the 3rd Panzer Army, placed under 4th Army's command, became isolated inside the siege of Königsberg. Massive casualties fell on both sides before the city finally fell to the Soviets on the 9th of April.

  After Königsberg's fall, the surviving German forces around the Bight of Danzig were reorganised into a new formation, Armee Ostpreußen, under Dietrich von Saucken.

  One more pocket, holding the Samland peninsula, had not yet been accounted for.

• 8. The Last Holdouts

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  General der Infanterie Hans Gollnick commanded the third group of German forces, the XXVIII Army Corps, known as Armeeabteilung Samland. His troops held the Samland Peninsula, where the port of Pillau remained the last effective evacuation point for the entire area.

  Soviet forces cleared the last defenders from Pillau on the 25th of April, in what became known as the Samland offensive.

  Even so, German units kept fighting on the Vistula Spit, the long sandbar that encloses the Vistula Lagoon. That resistance continued until the war itself ended. That narrow strip of sand became the final unresolved corner of an offensive that had otherwise reached its end.