Battle for the Seelow Heights Part I

During the devestating Soviet onslaught in the fall of 1944, Heinrici commanded 1st Panzer Army which resisted the Soviet advance so stubbornly that Heinrici was credited with their hesitation to advance further and the subsequent restoration of a stable German front. Equally important was the fact that Heinrici made do with whatever he was given. He was never favored by Hitler and his commands never received generous quantities of replacements or material. The battle Heinrici was now expected to fight would be no different - Hitler had other priorities.

Ever since the unsuccessful conclusion of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler had turned his attention southwards to Hungary and its scanty oil resources. In March, the last panzer reserves were used in an attempt to recover the Hungarian oil fields. It failed. Hitler continued to see the threat from the southeast as greater than that from the east, regardless of what his senior generals advised, and he showered what little reserves were left to the German armed forces (including some from Army Group Vistula) on Field Marshal Schorner, Heinrici's southern neighbor.

Schorner, the devout Nazi, commanded Army Group Center facing Marshal Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front. The Soviet leadership had hoped for precisely this. They wanted Konev to appear more menacing and draw German units south away from their intended axis of advance along the Berlin highway. Hitler apparently fell for the deception, leaving Heinrici's command with even less to resist a Soviet assault.

It was a situation that Heinrici had faced before and his four years of command experience on the Eastern Front had prepared him well for the coming battle. Heinrici firmly believed in a defense in depth. When his forces were not engaged in combat they were utilized for building lines of communication and further defensive lines behind the front. Doing so facilitated the movement of units from quiet sectors of the front to the focal point of a battle and it allowed for the ability to fall back in the face of overwhelming forces without losing the advantages of a prepared defense. There were some serious risks involved in the manner in which Heinrici fought back against a Soviet attack.

Heinrici tended to aggressively thin out quiet sectors in order to provide enough forces to the sectors targeted for a breakthrough. Given the generally inadequate number of troops he had available, it was the only way to compensate for Soviet numerical

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