Battle of The Seelow Heights - Buildup

Buildup

On 9 April 1945, Königsberg in East Prussia fell to the Soviet Army. This freed the 2nd Belorussian Front under Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky to move to the east bank of the Oder. During the first two weeks of April, the Soviets performed their fastest front redeployment of the war. The 2nd Belorussian Front relieved the 1st Belorussian Front along the lower Oder between Schwedt and the Baltic Sea. This allowed the 1st Belorussian Front to concentrate in the southern half of its former front, opposite the Seelow Heights. To the south, the 1st Ukrainian Front under Marshal Ivan Konev) shifted its main force from Upper Silesia north-west to the Neisse river.

The three Soviet fronts together had 2.5 million men, 6,250 tanks, 7,500 aircraft, 41,600 artillery pieces and mortars, 3,255 truck-mounted Katyusha rocket launchers, and 95,383 motor vehicles.

The 1st Belorussian Front had nine regular and two tank armies consisting of 77 rifle divisions, two cavalry, five tank and two mechanized corps, eight artillery and one guards mortars divisions, and a mixture of other artillery and rocket launcher brigades. The front had 3,059 tanks and self-propelled guns and 18,934 artillery pieces and mortars. Eight of the 11 armies were posted along the Oder. In the north, the 61st Army and the 1st Polish Army held the river line from Schwedt to its meeting with the Finow Canal. On the Soviet bridgehead at Küstrin, the 47th Army, 3rd and 5th Shock Armies, and 8th Guards Army were concentrated for the attack. The 69th Army and 33rd Army covered the river line south to Guben. The 1st and 2nd Guards Tank Armies and the 3rd Army were in reserve. The 5th Shock and 8th Guards were posted directly opposite the strongest part of the defences, where the Berlin Autobahn passed through the Heights.

The German 9th Army held the front from about the Finow Canal to Guben, an area which included the Seelow Heights. It had 14 divisions, the "Fortress" (Festung) Frankfurt (Oder), 587 tanks (512 operable, 55 in repair, 20 in transit), 2,625 artillery pieces (including 695 anti-aircraft guns. Further south, the front was held by the 4th Panzerarmee, which opposed the 1st Ukrainian Front.

General Gotthard Heinrici replaced Heinrich Himmler as commander of Army Group Vistula on 20 March. He correctly predicted that the main Soviet thrust would be made over the Oder river and along the main east-west autobahn at Seelow Heights. He decided to defend the riverbank with only a light skirmishing screen, but to strongly fortify the Seelow Heights, which rise about 48 m (157 ft) above the Oder and overlook the river where the autobahn crossed it. He thinned out the line in other areas to put more men at the Heights. The Oder's floodplain was already saturated by the spring thaw, but German engineers also released water from a reservoir upstream, which turned the plain into a swamp. Behind the Heights, they built three lines of defenses, spreading back toward Berlin. The last was the Wotan Line, 10–15 mi (16–24 km) behind the front line. These lines consisted of anti-tank ditches, anti-tank gun emplacements, and an extensive network of trenches and bunkers.