Courland Pocket

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Soviet advances on the Eastern Front (WWII), 1943-08-01 to 1944-12-31
Soviet advances on the Eastern Front (WWII), 1943-08-01 to 1944-12-31

The Courland Pocket[1] referred to the Red Army's blockade or encirclement of Axis forces on the Courland peninsula during the closing months of World War II.

The pocket was created during the Red Army's Baltic Strategic Offensive Operation, when forces of the 1st Baltic Front reached the Baltic Sea near Memel during its lesser Memel Offensive Operation phases. This action isolated the German Army Group North (German: Heeresgruppe Nord) from the rest of the German forces between Tukums and Liepāja in Latvia. Renamed Army Group Courland (German: Heeresgruppe Kurland) on 25 January, the Army Group remained isolated until the end of the war, when they were ordered to surrender to the Soviet command on 8 May 1945.

Contents

[edit] Background

Courland, along with the rest of the Baltic eastern coast and islands, was overrun by Army Group North during 1941. Army Group North spent most of the next two years attempting to take Leningrad, without success. In January 1944, the Soviet Army lifted the siege of Leningrad.

[edit] Operation Bagration

Main article: Operation Bagration

On 22 June 1944, the Red Army launched the Belorussian Strategic Offensive, codenamed Operation Bagration. The goal of this offensive was to liberate the Belorussian SSR from the German occupation. Operation Bagration was extremely successful, resulting in the almost complete destruction of Army Group Centre, and ended on 29 August 1944. In its final stages (the Kaunas and Shyaulyay Offensive Operations), Operation Bagration saw Soviet forces strike deep towards the Baltic coast, severing communications between the German Army Group North and the remnants of Army Group Centre.

After Operation Bagration ended, the Soviets continued the clearing of the Baltic coast, despite German attempts to restore the front (Operation Doppelkopf). The Red Army fought the Memel Offensive Operation with the goal of isolating Army Group North by capturing the city of Memel (Lithuanian: Klaipėda).

[edit] Battles of the "Courland Bridgehead"

Image:Ärmelband Kurland.jpg On Tuesday, 9 October 1944, the Soviets reached the Baltic Sea near Memel after over-running headquarters of the 3rd Panzer Army. As a result, Army Group North was cut off from a route to East Prussia. Hitler's military advisors, notably Heinz Guderian, the Chief of the German General Staff, urged evacuation and utilisation of the troops to stabilise the front in central Europe. However, Hitler refused, and ordered the German forces in Courland and the (Estonian) islands Dagö and Ösel to hold out, believing them necessary to protect German submarine bases along the Baltic coast. Hitler still believed the war could be won, and hoped that Dönitz's new Type XXI U-boat technology could bring victory to Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic, forcing the Allies out of Western Europe. This would allow German forces to focus on the Eastern Front, using the Courland Pocket as a springboard for a new offensive.[2]

Hiltler's refusal to evacuate the Army Group resulted in the entrenchment of approximately 200,000 German troops or about twenty-six divisions, largely of the 16th Army and 18th Army, in what was to become known to the Germans as the "Courland Bridgehead". Some sources indicate that there may have been remnants of as many as thirty-one divisions [3] and one brigade, which remained a threat to the Soviet northern flank.

There were six major periods of fighting in the Courland Pocket between 15 October, 1944, and 4 April, 1945:

The German two-phase withdrawals during the execution of the second stage of the Soviet Baltic Offensive (14 September 1944 - 24 November 1944), subsequent to the pocket being formed in the Baltic Offensive's first stage, the Memel Offensive Operation

  1. From 15 October, 1944, to 22 October, 1944 - Soviets launched the Riga Offensive Operation on the 15th at 10:00am after conducting a heavy artillery barrage[4]. Hitler permitted the Army Group Commander, Ferdinand Schoerner, to commence withdrawal from Riga on October 11, and the city was taken by the 3rd Baltic Front on October 13.[5] The front stabilised with the main remnant of Army Group North isolated in the peninsula.
  2. From 27 October, 1944, to 25 November, 1944 - Soviets launched offensive trying to break through the front toward Skrunde and Saldus including, at one point initiating a simultaneous attack by 52 divisions[4]

The Soviet 2nd Baltic (northern sector) and 1st Baltic Fronts (southern sector) commenced a blockade, precipitating the German defence of the Courland perimeter during Soviet attempts to reduce it. Serving with the 2nd Baltic Front's 22nd Army was the Latvian 130th Rifle Corps that included two rifle divisions in which served a large number of Latvians in their ranks who would soon be facing their opposites in the Latvian 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.

  1. From 23 December, 1944, to 31 December, 1944
  2. From 23 January, 1945, to 3 February, 1945
  3. From 12 February, 1945, to 19 February, 1945
  4. From 17 March, 1945, to 4 April, 1945

On January 15, 1945, Army Group North was renamed Army Group Courland (Heeresgruppe Kurland) under Colonel-General Dr Lothar Rendulic. Until the end of the war, Army Group Courland (including divisions such as the Latvian Freiwilligen SS Legion) remained blockaded on the Latvian peninsula.

On May 8, Germany's Head of State (Staatsoberhaupt) and President (Reichspräsident) Karl Dönitz ordered Colonel-General Carl Hilpert, the Army Group's last commander, to surrender. Hilpert, his personal staff, and staffs of three Armies surrendered to Marshal Leonid Govorov, the commander of the Leningrad Front. At this time the group still consisted of the remnants of twenty-seven divisions and one brigade.[6]

On May 8, General Rauser succeeded in obtaining better surrender terms from the Soviet command.[7] On May 9, the Soviet commission in Peilei started to interrogate the captive staff of Army Group Courland, and general collection of prisoners begun.

By May 12, approximately 135,000 German troops surrendered in the Courland Pocket. On May 23, the Soviet collection of the German troops in the Courland Pocket was completed. A total of about 180,000 German troops were taken into captivity from the Baltic area. The bulk of the prisoners of war were initially held at the Valdai Hills camps.

[edit] Historiography

German, Latvian, and Soviet historiography differ greatly with respect to the character of the fighting in Courland and to the strategic intent of Soviet forces.

[edit] Soviet sources

The Soviet account states that Army Group Courland was blockaded, as the theatre was of little strategic importance after the isolation of Army Group North, and the main offensive effort was required for the Vistula-Oder and Berlin Offensives, with correspondingly low casualty figures (these agree with the modern research of Grigoriy Krivosheev,[8] which accounts for 30,501 "irrecoverable" and 130,447 "medical" losses, for a total of 160,948 Soviet casualties between February 16th and May 8th). In this account, the Soviet actions in Courland were defensive blockading operations. Hostilities consisted of containing German breakout attempts, and the Red Army made no concerted effort to capture the Courland Pocket.

[edit] Latvian sources, German sources

The Latvian Encyclopedia states that the Soviet command attached great importance to the capture of Courland, which held special significance for the Latvians as it was the beachhead from which they had retaken their territory from the Bolsheviks after World War I.[4] Latvian records show that Soviet forces launched half a dozen unsuccessful attacks to defeat the German Army Group Courland.[4]

Latvian sources state that Stalin ordered repeated attacks into the Courland cauldron, disregarding heavy losses. According to a communiqué from the German Courland command of March 16,[4] the Soviet army lost 320,000 soldiers (fallen, wounded, and taken prisoner), 2,388 tanks, 659 planes, 900 cannons, and 1,440 machine-guns through the first five battles for Courland.[4] The Soviets are estimated to have lost an additional 74,000 with 553 taken prisoner in the sixth and last battle,[4] a total of more than 390,000 Soviet troops killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

[edit] Aftermath

After May 9, 1945, according to Russian records, 146,000 German and Latvian troops were taken prisoner, including 28 generals and 5,083 high-ranking officers [4], and taken to camps in the USSR interior. The Soviets detained all males between the ages of 16 and 60, and conducted widespread deforestation campaigns, burning vast tracts of forest, to flush out resisters.[4]

Some members of the Latvian Legion would continue fighting the Soviets as Forest Brothers. Those who surrendered along with the Germans or were captured were treated as traitors under the pretext that Latvia was part of the Soviet Union.[citation needed]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Russian: блокада Курляндской группировки войск (Blockade of the Courland army group), German: Kurland-Brückenkopf (Courland Bridgehead), Latvian: Kurzemes katls (Courland Cauldron) or Kurzemes cietoksnis (Courland Fortress).
  2. ^ Gerhard L. Weinberg, Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History, Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN 0521566266, page 290
  3. ^ World War II Eastern Front, Time Line (1944)
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Švābe, Arveds (ed.) (1950-55). Latvju Enciklopēdija (in Latvian). Stockholm: Trīs zvaigznes, 3 v. OCLC 11845651. 
  5. ^ Mitcham, S. German Defeat in the East, Stackpole, 2007, ISBN 0811733718, p.152
  6. ^ p.442, Great Patriotic War encyclopaedia, 1941-1945, M.M. Kozlov, ed.
  7. ^ Jürgen Thorwald, Fred Wieck, Flight in the Winter: Russia Conquers, January to May 1945, Pantheon 1951, page 64
  8. ^ Krivosheev, G.F. (1997). Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century. London: Greenhill Books. ISBN 1853672807. OCLC 36884089. 

[edit] Sources

  • Dallas, Gregor., 1945: The War That Never Ended, Yale University Press, Yale, 2006 ISBN 0300109806
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