ABSTRACT
At the end of 1944, despite still being relatively bogged down in Hungary in the south, the Red Army was readying itself for the final blows of the war on the principal Berlin axis, operations that had been in the planning phase from October 1944. In November, Zhukov took over command of the 1st Belorussian Front standing before Warsaw from Rokossovskii, who took over 2nd Belorussian Front on Zhukov’s right flank facing the southern portion of East Prussia (Pomerania).1 To the south of 1st Belorussian Front was Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front that had seized the Sandomierz bridgehead over the Vistula, threatening southern Poland.
