Courland Peninsula

Courland Peninsula. (see Map 24). This part of Latvia became an enclave for German forces during the last months of the German–Soviet war.

By the summer of 1944 the Baltic States were becoming a strategic backwater, but they remained significant to Stalin's war aims and what was left of Hitler's. Wanting to legitimize by conquest Soviet possession of the area, which he had seized in 1940 as a result of the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 1939, Stalin had attached two of his three Baltic fronts (army groups) to the first phase of the summer offensive, although it was aimed south-westwards towards Warsaw and Berlin. Marshal Vasilevsky co-ordinated the Baltic fronts, turning them north-eastwards against German Army Group North, which still occupied Latvia and Estonia. Hitler, engaged in convincing himself that the alliance against him was about to break up and Stalin would then offer terms, dismissed two commanding generals of Army Group North during July, when they argued that their 400,000 troops could not hold its 506 km. (400 mi.) line that stretched north to the River Narva 100 km. (62 mi.) west of Leningrad, and finally called in General Schörner, a specialist in last-ditch battles.

First Baltic front, having by then covered close to 500 km. (310 mi.), broke through to the Baltic coast west of Riga on 31 July. This feat resulted in the front commander, General I. Kh. Bagramyan, being made a Hero of the Soviet Union (see decorations), but Schörner counter-attacked in mid-August and opened a corridor 35 km. (22 mi.) wide along the coast. Vasilevsky thereupon paused a month to regroup and rebuild. On 14 September, when the Baltic fronts plus Leningrad Front, under Marshal Govorov, resumed the offensive with a superiority of 2:1 in troops, nearly 3:1 in armour, and over 6:1 in aircraft, Schörner, realizing at once that the odds were hopeless even for him, proposed a phased withdrawal. Hitler, claiming that Stalin had put out peace feelers, jeopardized the front in Estonia by withholding his approval for four days.

Aware by the end of the month that Schörner would be able to hold the corridor east of Riga long enough to get his troops through, Vasilevsky ordered Bagramyan to redeploy his armour for a thrust due west towards Klaipeda (Memel) on the Lithuanian coast. Schörner's rearguard cleared the corridor on 13 October, but the army group was isolated in Courland, Soviet tanks having reached the coast north of Klaipeda the day before. Nevertheless, the army group's position was much improved as the open sea on the west and the Bay of Riga on the east protected the flanks and rear of its 170 km. (105 mi.) front. On the Soviet side, Vasilevsky returned to his regular duties as chief of the General Staff; Headquarters, Third Baltic front was taken out; and Govorov took over the co-ordination of the three remaining fronts.

Schörner proposed to open another corridor as soon as he could be resupplied, but on 16 October, three Soviet armies attacking his neighbour, Army Group Centre to the south, drove across the East Prussian border and sent a psychological shockwave through Germany. Thereafter, far from getting help himself, Schörner had to give up several divisions to help regain the lost German soil.

By November, the Klaipeda gap had opened to 160 km. (99 mi.), too great a distance for Schörner to have crossed without abandoning Courland, which Hitler would not have countenanced in any case. In early January 1945, Hitler refused to let the General Staff evacuate the army group, which then still had well over 300,000 troops, to strengthen German defences against the impending Soviet Vistula–Oder offensive. He contended there would be no gain because a greater number of Soviet troops would be freed. However, disasters on the approaches to Berlin late in the month compelled him to take out divisions—and to replace Schörner with General Lothar Rendulic and transfer Schörner to the main front.

Stalin gave an ironic validity to Hitler's contention. Determined to destroy Army Group Courland (as it was renamed in January 1945) before the war's fast approaching end arrived, he ordered massive two-week-long attacks in January, February, and March, but none succeeded in more than denting the German line. In April, Hitler told the new army group commander, General Karl Hilpert, who had just relieved Rendulic, that he would have to hold out ‘until the turn that has occurred in every war has taken place.’ By then, Stalin was wholly engrossed in what he took to be a race with his western Allies for possession of Berlin. Between 1 May, the day after Hitler's suicide, and the afternoon of 8 May, when a surrender to Marshal Govorov took effect, German naval vessels evacuated 18,000 men. Hilpert, 41 other generals, and 189,000 officers and troops became Soviet prisoners-of-war.

Earl Ziemke