Furious Vengeance – The Summer Offensive – Part 1
The timing of the Red Army’s assault on Koenigsberg coupled with the sacking of the city made the German Army desperate for revenge. With little real planning the Reichswehr would begin a front wide assault shortly after the Red Army was routed from East Prussia.
Ever since the start of the war the Eastern Front had been relatively static, after failing to secure Koenigsberg the Soviets expected to simply have to regroup and set up defensively as usual, they were wholly unprepared for the massive attack in the North as they fled from the bloody forests of Suwalki (home to many thousands of fallen soldiers. Through this early period in the attack the Luftwaffe was not present having only recently arrived on the front from the war in Spain.
Reichswehr troops attacking Suwalki
The Battle of Kowel would be the largest seen on the Eastern Front as a quarter of a million German infantry met 400,000 Soviet infantry and around 1,000 soviet tanks. By now the Red Airforce had been almost totally annihilated by the more advanced and numerous Messerschmitts of the Luftwaffe giving the German bombers free reign over the skies. The battle began as the Reichswehr attempted to cross the Bug. The major bridges were quickly destroyed by precise artillery strikes and pre planted bombs forcing the Germans to ford across the river. The Red Army then moved to meet the Germans on the eastern bank of the river causing a terrible bloodbath in the first few hours of the battle. Just when it seemed that the entire German army would be destroyed a massive bombing attack forced the Soviets to fall back a few miles giving time for the Germans to prepare themselves. As the army marched deeper into the province the Red Army launched one enormous attack with all its armored divisions and the almost its entire infantry propend in the area. The Germans attempted to set up a defensive position using several villages as fortifications but the Red hordes were to strong for them and they were forced to fall back in a fighting retreat. By the time the last Germans had returned to the Western Bank of the river 38,000 Reichswehr personnel had lost their lives whilst the Soviets had lost 83, 000 soldiers and about 70 tanks. The terrible losses of the battle meant the Germans would require some time to regroup in the South, meanwhile in the north of the front the German army advanced with ease through Lithuania and into Latvia.
Red Airforce interceptors dispatched to fight at Kowel
In Lithuania von Kluge led 12 German divisions ahead of the main advance and would be attacked on four sides by a ferocious Soviet counteroffensive. He would hastily fall back.
By the end of July the Germans had once again tried to move across the Bug at Kowel and once again they had been pushed back. This battle lasted much longer than the previous one but there were less than half as many combatants on both sides. Slightly to the North the German army now marched towards the city made famous for two agreements between Communist Russia and Germany: The first ending the Great War on the eastern Front and the second where German troops handed over the city as part of the German-Soviet Pact. In Lithuania the Soviet Army has clearly felt the toll of several battles with the German army there and is beginning to crumble.
One week on and the Reichswehr had made significant advances eastward, taking the cities of Grodno and Brest-Litovsk whilst encircling 3 Soviet divisions at Bialystok and forcing them to surrender. As the Russians withdraw from Lithuania the cities of Kaunas and Memel now appear open to the German advance.
After a brief occupation of Lvov the German army was once again beaten in the south of the Front. Te Soviets had placed around 60-70% pf entire army between Germany and Kiev. Although this meant an advance into the Ukraine was for now impossible it did leave the Baltic territories open the German advance, an opportunity instantly pounced upon by the Army Group Nord, hungry for conquest.
To be continued ….