On 16 July, Konev gambled and sent the 3rd Guards Tank Army through that gap
to close the pocket on the German XIII Corps. 69 The XIII Corps’s attempt to
disengage and escape encirclement failed, and on 18 July the pincers closed
around the corps and other elements of the 4th Panzer Army. The 3rd and 4th
Guards Tank Armies continued their advance deep into the enemies’ rear. To the
south, the 4th Tank Army was ordered to envelop Lvov from the south, cutting
the city off from re-enforcement.
At this juncture, General Baranov’s cavalry-mechanized group was ordered to
attack towards the Vistula in cooperation with the 8th Guards Army of the 1st
Belorussian Front. Instead, it found itself engaging enemy defences at Zholkev.
Konev ordered the commander to fix the defenders and continue manoeuvring
west to make contact with Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army, thus permitting that
force to envelop Lvov from the north. By this point, Lvov, whose defences were
originally weak, had been re-enforced. Konev ordered his tank armies to bypass the
city and cut it off by deep envelopment and leave the follow-on infantry units to
reduce the city. Facing encirclement, the defenders of Lvov stood their ground, and
Konev found his forces involved in brief but intensive street fighting until the city
was liberated on the morning of 27 July. 70 Finding his front with a 200-km gap,
Harpe authorized the withdrawal of the 4th Panzer Army on the Vistula, while the
1st Panzer and 1st Hungarian Armies fell back on the Carpathian Mountains.
On28July, the Stavka,assessing these developments,authorized the 1st Ukrainian
Front to continue its operations and seize a bridgehead across the Vistula in the
Sandomierz area. Regrouping his forces, Konev, on 29 July, mounted the next phase
of the operation to seize the bridgehead. Against light German resistance, the 3rd
Guards Army seized the bridgehead. Both the Stavka and the OKH recognized the
importance of the bridgehead. Konev moved the 13th Army and the 3rd Guards
Tank Army to support the bridgehead and brought up additional anti-tank assets to
blunt the anticipated German effort to reduce the bridgehead. The OKH also
recognized the danger posed by this bridgehead and rushed reserves from Army
Group South Ukraine, including Panzer and Panzer Grenadier divisions, to assist
Harpe in reducing the bridgehead. In heavy fighting, Soviet forces held the bridge-
head. Konev committed his front reserve, General Zhadov’s 5th Guards Army, into
the bridgehead. He moved artillery assets into the fight to beat off German Panzer
attacks and sent General Leliushenko’s 4th Tank Army into the fight. The German
forces broke off their attacks to eliminate the bridgehead. He again regrouped his
forces and committed the 13th Army, the 1st Guards Tank Army, and part of the 3rd
Guards Tank Army against the German XLII Corps to expand the bridgehead and
take Sandomierz, which fell on 18 August. 71
In a little over a month’s fighting, the 1st Ukrainian Front had advanced over
250 km and inflicted serious damage upon Army Group North Ukraine. The
OKH had restabilized the situation on the Vistula by drawing forces from Army
Group South Ukraine and thereby making it vulnerable to the next multi-front
operation which the Stavka had planned at Jassy–Kishinev, which began on 20
August 1944. The advance into the Balkans continued into late 1944, when the
Red Army was stopped before Budapest. The Soviet offensive to remove the
86 The Evolution of Operational Art