Hitler, Donitz, and the Baltic Sea (17 page)

Once the ice in the Gulf of Finland melted in the spring of 1944, the Germans replaced the antisubmarine nets and replenished the mine barrages, but once again the Soviet minesweepers set to work. Dönitz ordered immediate attacks against them, considering the use of destroyers for this purpose. In May the Soviets began to carry out fierce attacks on German vessels guarding the minefields. Swarms of Soviet aircraft attacked patrol vessels, inflicting serious losses. As a result, German submarines guarded the minefields by day, and surface vessels returned to protect the barrages under cover of darkness.
⁴⁷

During the summer months, as Army Group Center collapsed and Germany considered the occupation of Finland’s southern coast, the Skl examined all possible locations for minefields to continue the blockade of the Soviet fleet. Geographic conditions in the Gulf of Finland offered three
possibilities. The first, and most desirable, was the site of the
Seeigel
barrage, the effectiveness of which had already been demonstrated. If this position could not be held, the next most favorable location was east of the
Nashorn
barrier, with a length of approximately thirty nautical miles. The third site was nearly forty-five nautical miles in length, from Dagö’s northern tip to Bengtskaer in Finland. Since the creation of this mine barrage required more mines than the navy had at its disposal, and because at this time the Skl doubted the army could provide troops to defend the Baltic Isles, Dönitz rejected this location as impractical.
⁴⁸
The next day Hitler refused Army Group North’s request to withdraw from Narva.

When the Soviets breached the
Seeigel
at the end of July, Burchardi requested that three submarines immediately take up positions in front of the gap until a new minefield could be laid. As the
Nashorn
minefield further west consisted only of antisubmarine mines, a breakthrough of the
Seeigel
would clear a path to the Baltic for Russian surface vessels. Dönitz’s greatest fear, that the Soviet fleet would enter the Baltic and disrupt German U-boat training, seemed close at hand. He requested the Luftwaffe to attack Soviet minesweeping units and protect German vessels laying new mines to close the gap. He also ordered Kummetz to send torpedo boats to guard the minefield, regardless of the danger from Soviet aircraft.
⁴⁹
Dönitz’s insistence upon maintaining patrols to protect the mine barrages resulted in heavy losses. At the beginning of August the operational strength of vessels assigned to guarding the minefields was less than one-third the number available the previous month.
⁵⁰
When the Germans retreated from Estonia, the navy lost its bases for the minefield patrols. With the evacuation of Reval at the end of September the navy withdrew its surface forces guarding the minefields, although German submarines remained on patrol to protect the
Nashorn
mine barrage and the antisubmarine nets. Immediately after the withdrawal from Estonia, the Skl ordered Kummetz to mine Moon Sound as extensively as possible.
⁵¹

On the morning of 5 October a Soviet submarine unsuccessfully attacked the steamer
Leda
south of Memel. This action, although it can hardly have been unexpected, created panic within the German Navy. Despite the Skl’s incessant warnings of the potential for disaster if Soviet submarines or surface forces gained the open Baltic, the navy had, incomprehensibly, been so busy trying to keep the army in positions that permitted retention of the mine barrages that it had made no practical preparations to deal with this eventuality. To its dismay, the Skl discovered Kummetz had sufficient forces neither to protect the navy’s training areas nor to form antisubmarine flotillas.
⁵²
The Skl instructed Naval High Command, North Sea,
to give up vessels for action in the Baltic and notified the commander of naval forces in Norway that the vessels he had temporarily provided Kummetz would remain in the Baltic. At this point, with Soviet submarines in the Baltic, Russian troops surging toward the coast near Memel, and Ösel’s defenders reeling back to Sworbe, Meisel instructed Kummetz to look into use of the Second Task Force and the withdrawal of troops from Riga and Sworbe “in view of the possibility [!] of an unexpectedly rapid development of the situation in the East.”
⁵³

In the following days Burchardi presented the Skl with more unpleasant news. He claimed that the Ninth Escort Division’s forces were stretched to the limit evacuating goods from Riga, delivering supplies to Courland and Sworbe, and providing convoy escorts, and he warned that at present convoys were woefully unprotected. Burchardi estimated that a dozen Soviet submarines prowled the Baltic south of the Irben Straits. Although Germany’s experience had shown that aircraft posed the greatest threat to submarines, he feared that securing aircraft to combat these Soviet submarines was unlikely due to fuel shortages. The isolation of German forces in Courland and Memel, making troops there wholly dependent upon seaborne supply, compelled the Skl to increase the volume of shipping in the eastern Baltic, although few escorts were available. Burchardi concluded that for the Soviets the present situation in the Baltic would be comparable to German U-boats operating in the Mediterranean against weakly protected convoys with no enemy air force to contend with.
⁵⁴

The list of problems continued. Meisel informed Kummetz that the crews of
Admiral Hipper
and
Admiral Scheer
had insufficient training to support the army through coastal bombardment. In addition, ammunition for the Second Task Force’s heavy guns was in short supply in Germany and had to be retrieved from Norway.
⁵⁵
Furthermore, the navy had not even designated convoy routes prior to the appearance of Soviet submarines in the Baltic and of Russian artillery along the Lithuanian coast. Maintenance of the Ninth Escort Division’s vessels was jeopardized because the shipyard in Libau had been incapacitated by a lack of Latvian personnel.
⁵⁶
As if there were not already enough problems, on 15 October
Prinz Eugen
and the light cruiser
Leipzig
collided east of Hela, causing serious damage to both vessels. The situation had scarcely improved in the next month, especially during the final Soviet offensive on Sworbe. The persistent lack of escorts, greatly exacerbated by the withdrawal of vessels for the fighting on Sworbe, on several occasions delayed the delivery of supplies to Courland and Memel.
⁵⁷
By the end of the campaign on Sworbe, Blanc’s vessels had suffered serious losses. The Skl’s ability to gauge Soviet intentions at sea
was seriously impaired in that there was not a single reconnaissance flight over the Gulf of Finland during the month of November.
⁵⁸

When Dönitz learned that Sworbe’s evacuation was imminent, he immediately ordered the Second Task Force to support the withdrawal and that the Irben Straits be mined. The Skl’s evaluation of the consequences of Sworbe’s loss revealed a bleak picture. The Soviets had gained control of the entrances to the Gulf of Riga and acquired several bases in the area, which provided their fleet greater operational freedom. Possession of Sworbe would facilitate enemy landings on Courland’s northern and eastern coast from Ösel or from ports on the Gulf of Riga. Moreover, the Russians now could threaten Germany’s sea routes to Courland.
⁵⁹

Unwilling to accept the reality that the mine barrages in the Gulf of Finland had been lost even prior to Sworbe’s evacuation, the Skl ordered an operation to reinforce the
Nilhorn
barrage, a minefield west of the
Nashorn
laid shortly after the withdrawal from Estonia.
⁶⁰
On the morning of 11 December 1944 three destroyers and two torpedo boats left Pillau to carry out this mission. For the Germans this operation was a repetition of the nightmare that had occurred when torpedo boats attempted to reinforce the
Seeigel
barrage in August. Once again German ships ran into their own mines, and this time two modern destroyers sank.
⁶¹
The loss of two destroyers was a heavy blow not only to naval forces in the Baltic but to the German Navy as a whole. The navy possessed only nineteen destroyers in December 1944, and it sacrificed two of this number in a senseless operation.
⁶²
The German Navy’s last offensive action in the Gulf of Finland had resulted in disaster.

The Soviet conquest of the Baltic Isles, with the exception of Sworbe, was carried out swiftly and efficiently. Soviet troops conducted multiple landings on the islands, which dispersed the defenders’ strength and led to the rapid occupation of Moon, Dagö, and Ösel, excluding Sworbe. As a result the Russians controlled the entrances to the Gulfs of Finland and Riga, creating favorable conditions for operations against German shipping lanes in the Baltic. Soviet historians have pointed out that the use of airborne troops on Ösel to cut off the Germans’ retreat to Sworbe would have spared them the long and difficult operation to seize the peninsula.
⁶³
Furthermore, had the Soviets delayed their final assault on Sworbe by only a few weeks, they probably would have killed or captured the entire German garrison because ice conditions would have prevented their evacuation. Nevertheless, the Soviet success on the Baltic Isles seriously disrupted Army Group North’s plans, because three divisions freed by the retreat from the Segewold Position had been siphoned off—one division for Ösel and two for coastal defense in Courland.
⁶⁴

The Germans, on the other hand, did not make a particularly good showing on the Baltic Isles, except for their stubborn defense of Sworbe. They simply did not have enough forces to hold the islands. As soon as the Soviets moved out from their beachheads, which they did in every instance without difficulty, the defenders had no choice but to withdraw into bridgeheads of their own and await evacuation. Once the Germans had retreated to Sworbe, they had sufficient troops to defend the narrow front for approximately six weeks. With the navy’s assistance, they were able to guard against Soviet amphibious assaults and repulse all Soviet landings behind the front. As long as evacuations from Riga were in progress, the army recognized the value of holding Sworbe. After Riga had been given up and coastal defense in Courland had been organized, however, Schörner repeatedly requested Hitler’s approval to evacuate the peninsula. In the end, the troops on Sworbe escaped annihilation solely because Schörner was willing to risk Hitler’s wrath and order the evacuation on his own responsibility.
⁶⁵

The navy’s interest in the Baltic Isles was apparent from the beginning. In addition to the heavy commitment of naval troops and practically all of its heavy surface vessels to defending the Baltic Isles, during the last four months of 1944, Dönitz retained an astonishing 10 percent of his operational submarine force in the Gulf of Finland.
⁶⁶
It was undoubtedly due to the navy’s pleas to hold the islands at all costs that Hitler ordered a major defensive operation on Sworbe. Yet the Skl’s failure to prepare for the emergence of Soviet naval forces into the Baltic is inexplicable, unless the navy believed that it could continue to rely upon the army to maintain positions that permitted the blockade of the Soviet fleet. Moreover, the loss of two modern destroyers in a futile mining operation indicates that the Skl had become mesmerized by the belief that the same minefields that had served so well in previous years represented the only solution to the present problem. Unlike most admirals, who after the war tended to minimize the navy’s role in Hitler’s strategy, Admiral Burchardi declared that the Baltic Isles had been held at the Skl’s express order.
⁶⁷

Dönitz’s insistence upon continuing to hold Sworbe, ostensibly for the benefit of the army, even after it became clear that sufficient supplies could not be brought over before weather conditions isolated the peninsula is another example of his adherence to a hold-at-all-costs strategy in the Baltic theater. His desire to seize Hogland, which also would have been impossible to supply, illustrates this as well. In both cases Dönitz disregarded obvious logistical considerations, which local naval commanders pointed out, in his effort to hold the Soviet fleet at bay. Moreover, aside from the problem of delivering supplies to Sworbe during the winter, there
was no way to evacuate wounded or deliver replacements during the peninsula’s weather-enforced isolation.
⁶⁸
It would have been almost impossible for German troops there to survive the winter.

As previously, Hitler here demonstrated extraordinary concern for events in the Baltic theater. Most evidence of Hitler’s interest deals with the loss of the smallest of the islands defended by the Germans, Moon, and tiny Sworbe Peninsula. After German troops withdrew from Moon, Guderian instructed Schörner to investigate the reason for the island’s loss. Schörner explained that the garrison was simply too weak, but later that day he sent a military judge to Ösel. Apparently Hitler had demanded this inquiry because Schörner informed Keitel that he had complied with his instructions for a court-martial investigation.
⁶⁹
OKH’s command that the army group mount an operation to recapture the island is, at first glance, incomprehensible. It is safe to assume that Guderian had more pressing concerns than the use of increasingly scarce troops to regain control of a seventy-seven-square-mile island off Estonia’s coast. Schörner certainly had no interest in regaining this island, as he was in the midst of overseeing an extremely perilous and complicated withdrawal from Estonia. In view of the litany of disasters unfolding for Nazi Germany at this time, Hitler must have had a reason to order this attack.

In the debate regarding Sworbe’s defense, Hitler faced a dilemma. He had to decide whether to support Schörner or Dönitz, two of his favorites. Hitler sided with the latter, as had been the case on several other occasions. Hitler’s order to recapture the Ariste Line on Sworbe reveals his intention to hold at least a part of the islands as long as possible. His repeated instructions to the navy to provide gunnery support from heavy surface vessels and for the Luftwaffe to transfer additional fighters to Army Group North—thus involving additional forces from three branches of the armed forces in the fight for Sworbe—demonstrate Hitler’s resolve to hold the peninsula. It is perhaps easiest to determine his motive by a process of elimination. By the end of October, Finland and the shale oil deposits had long since ceased to have any influence. Sweden had closed its Baltic ports to German vessels, thereby negating the delivery of Swedish iron ore as a plausible cause. Propaganda reasons can also be ruled out, because the loss of a few square kilometers of a remote Baltic island was unlikely to dampen German morale or boost that of its enemies. At a time when American troops had occupied Aachen and Soviet troops held portions of East Prussia, Hitler must have had a compelling reason to risk the loss of ten thousand men on Sworbe and to endanger the navy’s few remaining heavy warships offshore. Only Dönitz could offer Hitler a viable reason, and this was to protect waters in the eastern Baltic for the testing and training of the new classes of U-boats.