1947-1948
Germany capitulated to the Soviets before the Red Army had made it into Western Germany. What was left of German leadership worked hard to slow the Red Army’s advance while France probed into the Fatherland in search of the Red Army’s front.
By the end of February, the two armies met and furiously tried to outflank each other in a two-month action that was frighteningly similar to the beginning of the Great War. While the Germans as a people harbored resentment toward France for the Treaty of Versailles, many feared the Soviets and considered them to be the greater enemy. In nearly eight years of warfare, France and Germany had hardly fought except during France’s excursion into the Netherlands, a campaign in which strategic factors dictated who advanced and who fell back. Casualties were not low, but neither side came to bayonets and the short confrontation ended with both sides sitting happily in their original bunkers.
The Red Army’s invasion of the Fatherland, was the complete opposite. Germans fought to the death, in some cases defending their very hometowns. German partisans destroyed bridges, rail, and infrastructure in Soviet occupied Germany, while leaving it all untouched in the West for the French to utilize.
Anders launched his offensive, trying to reach the Romanian border, but the Red Army would not budge. Clearly they meant to hold the vital supply lines feeding its army in Europe. Anders army flanked West and then went South again, and slowly they pushed the Red Army back, until Anders finally made contact with the Romanian border in August.
The Red Army had begun withdrawing before France’s advance as soon as its supply lines were threatened, but the work of German partisans made their strategic redeployment difficult, and hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers became trapped in mainland Europe. In September, out of food, bullets, and fuel, they surrendered in droves to the French.
The remnants of the Soviet forces fought hard in the Balkans, but were soon cut off from supplies by the Allied navy and Greek partisans which ousted Soviet occupation. On Christmas day, 1947, it was clear they had no chance of returning to Russia. It was the beginning of the end.
Fighting continued in Southern Poland as Anders army and Allied forces tried to wrestle control of Lvov from the Soviets, but Rydz-Śmigły delayed a full on invasion of the Russian mainland until March. Despite the armored and mechanized divisions of Poland’s allies, Rydz-Śmigły knew the Allied army could not execute a lightning offensive like the German Blitzkrieg. Yet in order for the invasion of Russia to be a success, the remainder of the Red Army needed to be overrun. Rydz-Śmigły knew Poland and her allies could not win a war of attrition.
Thus, during the first two months of 1948, the Polish underground was bolstered with smuggled weapons. On March 9th, 30,000 partisans rose up and destroyed Soviet communications and infrastructure in Eastern Poland, and Rydz-Śmigły’s army attacked. In a week the bulk of the Red Army’s northern Army was trapped and confused, their efforts at reorganisation hampered by Polish partisans.
By April the road to Moscow was nearly empty before the Allied army. Anders Army pushed south with little resistance, liberating Ukraine and marching into Stalingrad by July. Most of the Allied expeditionary forces detached from Anders army in order to join the American and French drive towards Moscow. Rydz-Śmigły’s army pushed north towards Leningrad, in hopes of liberating the Fins.
August 12, 1948, the Soviet Union surrendered to Polish occupation, while its leadership went into hiding in Sinkiang. The Comintern would eventually be dissolved after the arrival of allied forces in Sinkiang in December. While the fighting war had ended, Wadyslaw Sikorski ordered the occupation of Lithuania. Polish forces occupied the country and arrested the Lithuanian cabinet, which had been sympathetic towards Fascist Germany throughout the war.
Ultimately, the war ended in the way that it had been fought. The allies disagreed with Sikorski’s proposal for democratic liberation of the belligerent nations. The result being that Eastern Europe, which had been under Polish occupation, saw the rebirth of its sovereignty. Finland, Russia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Eastern Austria, Mongolia, Tannu Tuva, and Sinkiang existed in a commonwealth with Poland. The Netherlands and Greece were liberated, but Germany and Japan were not. France refused to give the German nation independence, and Great Britain was once again keen on returning to its former colonial glory.
