The last bastion: how the Victory banner was raised over Konigsberg
On April 9, 1945, the commandant of Konigsberg, Otto von Lasch, signed the surrender. Germany lost its main outpost on the Baltic Sea, an ancient city turned into a powerful fortress. Izvestia recalled how it was.
"Bastion of the German spirit"
Hitler's generals spoke hundreds of times about the inaccessibility of the capital of East Prussia. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels reported the same thing to the German people in his radio speeches.
200-ton hood of a German pillbox in East Prussia
Russians graves that in August 1914, at the beginning of the First World War, East Prussia had become a trap and a grave for the 2nd Russian Army. Goebbels also stressed this historical analogy.
Koenigsberg was surrounded by defensive lines of 6-7 trenches. The artillery stationed in the ancient forts was connected into a single firing system, which allowed von Lyash to feel quite reliable. Dozens of pillboxes and bunkers were located between the forts.
The wrecked German military equipment in the area of the defeat of the East Prussian group of German troops in the Konigsberg area
The fortress had extensive food and ammunition depots. The city was ready for a long-term defense. Hitler called it an impregnable garrison of the German spirit.
Koenigsberg was defended by units of the Wehrmacht and the Volkssturm with a total strength of 100,000 to 130,000 people. They had about 4,000 guns and mortars, 120 tanks and 170 aircraft.
Marshal Vasilevsky's Plan
The Baltic States were liberated by the 3rd Belorussian Front. After the death of Army General Ivan Chernyakhovsky, he was led by one of the most talented commanders of the Second World War, Marshal of the Soviet Union Alexander Vasilevsky. He had tremendous experience in staff work, was the developer of the largest operations of the Great Patriotic War, coordinated the actions of the fronts, and now he himself led the offensive fist.
And Vasilevsky prepared for the offensive very thoroughly. Assault groups were created, which went through multi-day training. They included shooters, and, of course, sappers with experience in reconnaissance operations. Vasilevsky paid due attention to communication. Flamethrowers followed the assault groups.
The mortar crew is preparing to fire on the enemy. There is an inscription on the projectile: "fire on Konigsberg"
On April 2, intense shelling of Konigsberg began — all three of its defense lines. Vasilevsky relied on heavy cannon fire and simultaneous aerial bombardment. Vasilevsky's troops had considerable air superiority, and he used it fully. The Soviet gunners managed to concentrate such forces on the approaches to Konigsberg (including on the heights) secretly from the enemy. The Nazis were not ready for such intense fire, they faltered. Their defense system no longer looked so invulnerable.
And at noon, the assault units moved to the attack. Going to your death when victory already seemed close is not easy. But in the Red Army in April 1945, cowardice was not in high esteem. The units of the front worked like a well-established mechanism. Sappers, demolition men and flame throwers surrounded the forts — each of them was a small fortress with a garrison of 200-400 people — and began their siege. Meanwhile, the main forces, bypassing the forts, stormed the bunkers and advanced towards the city center, cutting the German garrison into three parts, which lost communication with each other.
The decisive hours of the assault
"In the very center of Konigsberg there was an ancient citadel that could accommodate several thousand people. This internal garrison was staffed by the most rabid fascists," recalled Marshal Vasilevsky. But even this hexagonal fort could not resist the valor of the Red Army soldiers. After the fantastically rapid breakthrough of the Red Army into Charlottenburg, a fortress that was considered first—class, on April 7, the Germans tried to turn the situation around. They fought in Konigsberg (as indeed in the whole of East Prussia) stubbornly, with fanaticism. They considered this city and this land to be an Aryan shrine. The Nazis threw reserves into battle, organized several counterattacks.
But Vasilevsky had calculated such actions in advance, and the attacking Red Army troops also received reinforcements. By the evening of April 7, despite the desperate resistance of the Germans, the liberating soldiers had advanced another 3 km along almost the entire front line. On the night of April 8, German soldiers, losing faith in their command, began to surrender, although special SS units fired into the backs of the wavering soldiers.
According to Vasilevsky, the units of the 3rd Belorussian Front managed to cut off Konigsberg from a strong Wehrmacht group on the Zemland Peninsula, which resisted for a relatively long time, but could no longer provide significant assistance to the city.
The battle on the outskirts of Konigsberg
On April 8, the fighting was already taking place in the old narrow streets of the city — in its historical center. Vasilevsky appealed to the commandant of Konigsberg with a proposal for surrender. Von Lasch rejected this offer. From Berlin, he received Hitler's hysterical order to fight to the end, under any circumstances. For the time being, he fulfilled this prescription. Goebbels assured on the radio that the "hordes of Bolsheviks" would not leave a stone of the city, and all its inhabitants would be destroyed — as a sign of revenge for the destroyed Soviet cities, for the burned villages... Many Germans were still hypnotized by his speeches. But the Red Army soldiers fought without forgetting the basics of humanism. There were no massacres of civilians in the capital of East Prussia, and the prisoners were treated in the best traditions of the Russian army.
Thousands of residents of the city, hiding in basements, dreamed of one thing — the end of the battle. The belief in the inviolability of the Third Reich no longer united them. White flags appeared in the windows of the houses. Ancient forts filled with modern weapons, many of which are still intact, did not help the Germans to hold the city. Some of the garrison troops tried to retreat to the west, but their path was blocked by units of Colonel—General Afanasy Beloborodov's 43rd Army.
Self-propelled guns of the 3rd Belorussian Front during the fighting in Konigsberg
And the fighters continued to advance further, recapturing every meter with grenades and machine-gun bursts. The Red Army soldiers already had the railway station and the port, as well as the most important communication facilities of the city. By the end of the day on April 9, the Germans continued to resist, essentially only at a few intersections of the city. In the very center and in the east of the old Konigsberg.
Marshal Vasilevsky von Lyash received a new ultimatum on April 9 at 21:00. The Nazi commandant signed an order: stop resistance. It was getting dark late in those days, and many saw red Victory banners flying from masts in dozens of places in Konigsberg, and Soviet tanks taking up positions wherever possible.
Heroes of the Offensive
Let's recall some of the heroes of Konigsberg. During the battle for the ancient 5th fort, which was not going to surrender, Private Ivan Dvorsky was the first to overcome an anti-tank moat filled with water and managed to mount his heavy machine gun under the very nose of the Germans unnoticed by the enemy. Dvorsky fired continuously, spreading panic in the ranks of the fort's defenders, and allowed his company to establish a crossing and cross the moat. The fort's garrison was almost destroyed.
Gunners of the 3rd Belorussian Front during firing on enemy positions in Konigsberg
He distinguished himself in the battles for Konigsberg and was the brother of the first female Hero of the Soviet Union of the Great Patriotic War. At the head of the ISU-152 self—propelled gun battery of the Guards, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Kosmodemyansky approached the walls of one of the forts of Konigsberg — it was called "Queen Louise" - and pierced its wall with accurate fire. After such a blow, 550 German soldiers and officers surrendered, and the Red Army received a fort with warehouses and nine brand-new tanks. Alexander Kosmodemyansky will die a few days after the surrender of Konigsberg on April 13.
Vasilevsky's troops accomplished the impossible: they took the city in four days, which was ready for months of defense. They fought like Suvorov, outstripping the enemy in both ideas and action. 70,000 Germans surrendered right on the streets of Konigsberg. The rarest case: in such a risky offensive operation against selected enemy forces, Vasilevsky's losses were less than von Lyash's. About 4 thousand people against 30-40 thousand Nazis. Having defended their country, the front-line soldiers marched to Berlin to bring peace to Europe. And they died, opening the way to Hitler's lair.
The city of Konigsberg after the assault
When Hitler in Berlin learned of Konigsberg's surrender, he (of course, in absentia) sentenced the former commandant to death. More than ten of his relatives ended up in prison. General von Lyash himself received 25 years in the USSR, of which he served 10.
Victory from the textbook
On the same night, without delay, in honor of the capture of Konigsberg, a fireworks display of the highest category thundered in Moscow. 324 guns fired 24 artillery volleys. 216 soldiers and officers were awarded gold stars of the Hero of the Soviet Union for that unprecedented assault. This ended the German history of East Prussia, the land where Slavs and Balts lived in ancient times. And the city of Konigsberg soon received a new name — Kaliningrad. After the Victory, on June 9, 1941, the medal "For the Capture of Konigsberg" was established. The only Soviet medal from the time of the Great Patriotic War, in the name of which appeared the capital city. After all, it was the first major German fortress city that the Red Army liberated from the Nazis. Every front-line soldier was aware of the importance of this four-day battle.
Red Army soldiers at the monument to Emperor Kaiser William near the tower of the Royal Castle in captured Konigsberg
The operation conducted by Marshal Vasilevsky's troops is now described in all textbooks of combat tactics. It has remained in history as one of the most brilliant victories of the Great Patriotic War. Perhaps the most important thing about Vasilevsky's success is that he managed to confound the German command, which expected the Red Army to be stuck around the capital of East Prussia for a long time. It happened differently. The rapid capture of the "super fortress" of Konigsberg brought the capture of Berlin and the surrender of Nazi Germany at least a few weeks closer.
The author is the deputy editor—in-chief of the magazine "Historian"
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