Soviet East Pomeranian Strategic Offensive Operation (I)

Soviet Red Army steamrolling west in 1945

Ostpreußen refugees fleeing before the advancing Red Army

German refugees from Ostpreußen moving westward

Luftwaffe and Heer soldiers yield themselves prisoners in Ostpreußen

The massive Soviet East Pomeranian Strategic Offensive took place in the eastern Pommern and Danzig-Westpreußen region from February 10 to April 4 1945 before the Berlin offensive could proceed. The need to secure the flanks of the primary thrust delayed into April 1945 the Soviets' final push toward Berlin, which had originally been planned for February 1945. The Soviets had an extremely impressive array of forces confronting the Germans. The 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts in the north, with 12 armies, faced Heeresgruppe Mitte's three armies. On the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts the Soviets had 2,200,000 troops, 6,400 tanks and self-propelled assault guns, and 46,000 indirect-fire weapons. Against these two fronts Heeresgruppe A could muster 400,000 troops, 1,150 tanks, and 4,100 indirect-fire weapons. However, the Soviet forces took heavy casualties while penetrating westward, their greatest obstacle became the renewed fury of the German soldiers who were now fighting to defend their own homeland. Tens of thousands of German troops were sacrificed in trying to hold places that had little tactical or strategic significance. The Wehrmacht was driven westward in the relentless tide of the Soviet offensive and along with the German Army was a mass of refugees fleeing in terror from the Soviet Red Army, fully aware that the Soviets were raping and crucifying women and young girls on their advance westward. East European women were not spared either. Nazi propaganda - originally meant to stiffen civil resistance by describing in gory and embellished detail Russian atrocities such as the Nemmersdorf and Metgethen massacres - often backfired and created panic. Large numbers of the inhabitants of the German provinces of East Prussia, Silesia, and Pomerania died during the evacuations. A significant percentage of this death toll occurred when evacuation columns encountered units of the Red Army. Civilians were run over by tanks, shot, or otherwise murdered. In addition, fighter bombers of the Soviet Red Air Force, whose presence was now unchallenged in the sky, flew bombing and strafing missions that targeted columns of refugees. Credit: Military historian Ian Baxter and Wikipedia inter alia. Top image: a Soviet T-34-85 tank crossing a chilly river in Silesia during the Pomeranian and Silesian offensives in 1945. USSR propaganda photo. Public domain. Middle images: German refugees from the East Prussian capital Königsberg fleeing massacres in their homeland in February 1945. The West German search service reported that 31,940 civilians from East Prussia alone, were confirmed as killed during the evacuation. Photos by Vinzenz Engel. Credit: Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Fair use. Bottom image: German soldiers surrendering to the Soviets in eastern Prussia in early 1945. Julius Backman Jääskeläinen. Soviet Union stock photos.