Prague Offensive - The Battle

The Battle

The Soviet assault on Prague crushed the last sizeable pocket of German military resistance in Europe. The Soviet assault on Prague was carried out by the 1st (under Ivan Konev), 2nd (Rodion Malinovsky) and 4th Ukrainian Fronts (Andrei Yeremenko). As well as the Soviet armies these Fronts included the 2nd Polish Army, the 1st and 4th Romanian armies and the I Corps of the Czechoslovakian Army. The Soviet Fronts totalled more than two million troops. In order to participate in the Prague Offensive, the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front made a forced march from south of Berlin just after they had completed their participation in the Battle of Berlin.

The Soviet force was opposed by at most 900,000 German troops of what was left of Army Group Centre commanded by Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner: the First Panzer Army, the Fourth Panzer Army, the Seventh Army and the Seventeenth Army. In addition to battered remnants of Army Group Centre, the Germans opposing the Soviets around Prague included some corps-sized units of what little remained of Army Group South and known as Army Group Ostmark commanded by Dr. Lothar Rendulic.

On 7 May, General Alfred Jodl, Chief-of-Staff of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ("German Armed Forces High Command"), signed the surrender of all German forces at SHAEF. OKW had last heard from Schörner on 2 May. He had reported he intended to fight his way west and surrender his army group to the Americans. On 8 May an OKW colonel was escorted through the American lines to see Schörner. The colonel reported Schörner had ordered his operational command to observe the surrender but could not guarantee he would be obeyed everywhere. Later that day Schörner deserted his command and flew to Austria where on 18 May he was arrested by the Americans.

When it came, the Soviet assault on Prague crushed any remaining Germans and relieved the Czech partisans fighting in the Prague Uprising. The uprising started on 5 May 1945. By 8 May, the Germans fighting the Czech partisans in Prague agreed to withdraw.

The Czech partisans were aided briefly by the 1st Infantry Division (600th German Infantry Division) of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA). The 1st ROA Infantry Division was commanded by General Sergei Bunichenko (or Bunyachenko), whose division until April 30 had continued to pledge loyalty to the Axis and to German command. The 1st ROA Infantry Division, composed of members of ethnicities from Russia, was stationed near Prague at the outbreak of the uprising and supported the Czech partisans against the Germans. The ROA was created by former Soviet General Andrey Vlasov as an anti-communist Russian force in the combat against Bolshevism. The ROA forces were attempting to get to pre-arranged positions where they could avoid the Soviets and surrender to the Americans.

By 8 May, General Bunichenko and his 1st ROA Infantry Division sought refuge with the Americans. Bunichenko, Vlasov, and the ROA forces in general were, however, returned to the Soviet Union, after which they were mostly condemned to the GULAG camps, or in some cases, executed as traitors.

On 9 May 1945, Soviet troops entered Prague. Some remnants of Army Group Centre continued resistance until 11/12 May (see Battle of Slivice). The left flank of the 2nd Ukrainian Front met with troops of the US Third Army (George Patton) in the regions of České Budějovice and Písek, thus completing the encirclement. Later, 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts met with Americans in the regions of Karlovy Vary and Klatovy. German soldiers and ethnic German and a minority of ethnic Czech pro-Nazi civilians fleeing Prague were surprised by the advancing Soviets and completely routed. The local Czech population resumed hostilities against the surrendered Waffen-SS troops regardless of their intentions, in what the veterans of the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) who had laid their weapons down in May 1945 recall as the 'Czech Hell'. Individual Soviet attacks on German civilians and the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia continued into autumn, under the supervision of the first post-war Czechoslovak government of Edvard Beneš.