Vistula-Oder offensive

Vistula-Oder Offensive
Part of the Eastern Front of World War II
Soviet troops enter Łódź, led by an ISU-122 self-propelled gun
Date 12 January – 2 February 1945 Location Central Poland and Eastern Germany Result Soviet victory
Belligerents
Germany	Soviet Union Poland
Commanders and leaders
Ferdinand Schörner (Army Group A) (from 20 January) Josef Harpe (Army Group A) (until 20 January)	Georgy Zhukov (1st Belorussian Front) Ivan Konev (1st Ukrainian Front)
Strength
450,000 men	2,203,600 men
Casualties and losses
Soviet claim: 295,000 killed 147,000 taken prisoner	43,476 killed or missing 150,715 wounded and sick

The Vistula–Oder Offensive was a successful Red Army operation on the Eastern Front in the European Theatre of World War II in January 1945. It saw the liberation of Kraków, Warsaw and Poznań.

The Red Army had built up their strength around a number of key bridgeheads, with two fronts commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Konev. Against them, the German Army Group A, led by Colonel-General Josef Harpe (soon replaced by Colonel-General Ferdinand Schörner) was outnumbered 5:1. Within days, German commanders evacuated the concentration camps, sending the prisoners on their death marches to the west, where ethnic Germans also started fleeing. In a little over two weeks, the Red Army had advanced 300 miles from the Vistula to the Oder, only 43 miles from Berlin, which was undefended. But Zhukov called a halt, owing to continued German resistance on his northern flank (Pomerania), and the advance on Berlin had to be delayed until April.

In the wake of the successful Operation Bagration, the 1st Belorussian Front managed to secure two bridgeheads west of the Vistula river between 27 July and 4 August 1944. The Soviet forces remained inactive during the failed Warsaw uprising that started on 1 August, though their frontline was not far from the insurgents. The 1st Ukrainian Front captured an additional large bridgehead at Sandomierz (known as the Baranow bridgehead in German accounts), some 200 km south of Warsaw, during the Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive.

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Wikipedia