the soviet partisan movement 1941-1944 by edgar m. howell

132 THE SOVIET PARTISAN MOVEMENT
time Govorov had been moving strong elements of his command, including
heavy masses of artillery, across the frozen Gulf of Finland into the
Russian-held beachhead west of the old Czarist capital. By the middle
of January the streams, lakes, and swamps to the south were frozen solid
and suitable for maneuver. On 14 January he launched his attack, the
artillery blasting paths through the prepared German defenses. German
counteraction was weak and disorganized, and in four days his
units had opened a sizable gap and gained operational freedom.
On the same day, Meretskov launched a surprise attack against the
army's right flank. Ignoring the bridgehead he held over the Volkhov
River just north of Novogorod, he struck across the upper end of the
frozen Lake Ilmen and took the strong German defenses along the river
in reverse. Novogorod, the anchor of the line, fell four days later.
With both flanks turned, the commander of the Eighteenth Army,
Generaloberst Georg Lindemann, had no choice but to withdraw to the
south to prevent the larger part of his force being cut off. Momentarily
he was able to outdistance his pursuers, and for a few days managed
to maintain a line between the lakes in the vicinity of Luga. But Meretskov's
pressure on his right soon made this new position untenable and
he was forced to pull back again, this time all the way to the Baltic
States border. The Sixteenth Army, with its right flank thus thrown
in the air, was then forced to withdraw westward, and by 1 March the
whole of Army Group North had taken up a new line extending from
Narva on the Gulf of Finland to a junction with Army Group Center
near Polotsk. From this position the Germans were able to beat off
further assaults, and, with the spring thaws approaching, all movement
came to a halt until summer.
In the south, Vatutin's attacks of early January, which had overrun
Korosten, Zhitomir, and Kazatin and placed the best of the rail net
west of the Dnepr in Russian hands, had left Army Group South in a
difficult position. Only one rail line, the Lwow-Proskurov-Odessa,
remained open, and the Red divisions stood less than 90 miles from it at
Kazatin. In addition, the Sixth and Eighth Armies lay exposed to
envelopment from the north. Under such pressure, Von Manstein was
compelled to shift much of his strength to the center of his line around
Vinnitsa at the expense of weakening his left. He was thus able to
screen his last remaining supply link and at the same time lend support
to his two armies further south. In so doing, however, he was forced
to spread his defenses so thin that he was unable to halt the Soviets who
were moving along the lower edge of the Pripyat Marshes, cutting his
last lateral link with Army Group Center.
On 29 January the First and Second Ukrainian Fronts launched a
coordinated attack from the north and east on the Eighth Army below
Kiev and in less than three weeks cut off and destroyed eight German