Hitler, Donitz, and the Baltic Sea (19 page)

Initially Stalin was determined to annihilate German forces in Courland. He informed his allies in late September 1944 that Soviet troops were “mopping up” German forces in the Baltic States, forces that, due to the threat they posed to his flank, he felt he had to eliminate before the thrust into East Prussia could begin. On 6 November Stalin claimed that German divisions in Courland were “now being hammered to a finish,” and a
few days later he assured Churchill that he had taken steps to hasten the destruction of the Courland armies.
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As late as March 1945 Stalin guaranteed Averell Harriman, America’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, that his forces soon would overcome German troops in Courland. Indeed, the official Soviet history of World War II states that the First Courland Battle represented an attempt to destroy Schörner’s forces. From this point, however, the official account ignores events in Courland, maintaining that Army Group North had lost its strategic significance and could no longer influence the outcome of the war. Subsequent Soviet histories provide little additional information on the campaign in Courland, stating only that Russian forces there had the task of preventing the Germans from withdrawing by sea divisions to send to other sectors of the Eastern Front.
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In view of Stalin’s statements and considering the concentration of forces initially opposite Courland, it seems that the Soviets in fact attempted to annihilate Schörner’s army group in the first three Courland Battles. The withdrawal of several Soviet armies from Latvia in December, however, indicates that the Russians no longer believed they needed to retain such powerful forces there. After the failure of the Third Courland Battle the Russians withdrew further units. Certainly by this time Stalin believed that the army group’s destruction was not worth the effort—there were other far more important areas in which to concentrate his armies. The Russians left behind enough troops to prevent a German breakthrough to East Prussia, which was all that Stalin required.
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The Soviets obviously did not by that time deem possession of Courland to be as important as did the Germans. Stalin now considered the destruction of Nazi armies in Poland and East Prussia more worthwhile than battering German defenses in Latvia. By the end of March the large-scale evacuation of German troops from Courland had ceased, and so had the Courland Battles. The Soviet attacks that produced the Fourth through Sixth Courland battles were probably intended primarily to prevent the withdrawal of additional German divisions. By the beginning of April 1945 the Russians surely viewed the army group as little more than self-supporting prisoners.

A final point of interest regarding the Courland Battles concerns the timing of the Russian offensives. Even if Hitler had allowed Schörner to attempt a breakthrough attack to East Prussia, it is extremely doubtful the operation could have been mounted. Just as the Soviet offensive from 16 to 20 October 1944 frustrated German plans for an attack to regain contact with the Reich, Russian assaults from 27 October through 7 November and from 19 to 25 November almost certainly would have prevented Schörner from launching the proposed thrust to East Prussia. By the end
of the year, when the Soviets gave up their efforts to destroy the army group, the Germans had been so seriously weakened, and the Russians were so firmly entrenched, that a German attack had virtually no chance of success.

Partisan Activity

D
ESPITE THE GERMANS
’ refusal to restore Latvia’s independence, local partisans never posed a serious threat to German forces in Courland. Fearing Soviet occupation more than that of the Nazis, most of Courland’s inhabitants did not actively combat the Germans and refused to aid existing partisan bands. At the time of its isolation, the army group estimated that there was no true Latvian resistance movement and only a few small groups of Soviet partisans. The Germans assessed that these isolated groups lacked central leadership and that no partisan-dominated areas existed in Courland.
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At the end of November German intelligence concluded that there were only about five hundred “bandits” in Courland, consisting of Latvian deserters, local communists, and escaped POWs. Although estimates of the number of active partisans in Courland increased, their operations in 1944 were only a nuisance.
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The Soviets continued to parachute troops behind the front to engage in sabotage and at times landed small groups by sea.
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Nonetheless, partisan activity remained at a low level in 1945. Several small bands, mainly located in northern Courland, operated under the loose direction of two Soviet partisan staffs. German antipartisan operations inflicted high losses on these groups, whose activities consisted primarily of isolated rail demolition and cutting of cable communications.
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The Soviets parachuted into Courland a large number of German POWs who had joined the National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD), but the majority (an estimated 75 percent) promptly turned themselves in, and most of the rest were betrayed by the local populace.
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The Commanders of Army Group Courland

I
N
1945 H
ITLER REVERTED TO
his habit of constantly changing the army group’s commander. On 16 January he recalled Schörner from Courland, and in the following three months Army Group Courland had four commanders, one of them twice, and three in the month of January alone. The characteristics of these generals varied greatly, from the brutality of Schörner and Rendulic to the relative humanity of Vietinghoff and Hilpert. At the time of Germany’s capitulation Hilpert commanded the armies in
Courland, but each of the other three held an important position: Schörner commanded Army Group Center, Rendulic led Army Group South, and Vietinghoff directed German forces in Italy. Hitler did not send second-rate commanders to Courland—or at least, he sent only those he trusted.

On 17 January Gen. Lothar Rendulic, an Austrian who had just directed Twentieth Mountain Army’s perilous withdrawal from Finland to Norway, met with Hitler and received instructions to assume command in Courland. Rendulic had gained a reputation for brutality in Croatia, once exclaiming that he wished that he had enough troops to exterminate all the country’s inhabitants.
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After taking leave to visit his family, Rendulic flew to Courland on 26 January. Only twelve hours after his arrival Hitler ordered Rendulic to report immediately to the headquarters of Army Group North (formerly Army Group Center) in East Prussia. Rendulic was in Courland less than twenty-four hours.

In his place came Gen. Heinrich-Gottfried von Vietinghoff, who arrived on 29 January. Vietinghoff remained in Latvia slightly over a month, but in that time he quickly won the trust of his subordinates through his kindness and courtesy. He questioned the wisdom of retaining Courland and unsuccessfully proposed the army group’s withdrawal into bridgeheads around Libau and Windau, from which the majority of its divisions would be evacuated to Germany.
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On 11 March Hitler ordered Vietinghoff to replace Field Marshal Albert Kesselring as Commander in Chief, Southwest. Vietinghoff returned to Italy and remained there for the duration of the war, negotiating the surrender of German forces in that theater. (Vietinghoff died in 1952.)

Hitler again appointed Rendulic army group commander. Rendulic reached Latvia on 13 March, the final day of the Fifth Courland Battle. In East Prussia Rendulic had employed brutal methods similar to those of Schörner, attempting to prevent retreats and desertion with roving squads of military police who executed stragglers in drumhead courts-martial. Goebbels approvingly compared Rendulic’s leadership to that of Model and Schörner.
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Rendulic considered Russian commanders in Courland superior to those in East Prussia, believing that Soviet leaders in Latvia possessed greater initiative and were willing to exploit successes by committing their reserves without regard to German countermeasures.
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Once more, Rendulic’s stay in Latvia was brief; on 4 April he received orders to report to Berlin immediately. Rendulic left Courland the next day commanding Army Group South until the end of the war. (In 1948 he was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, but he was released in 1951. Rendulic died in 1971 at the age of eighty-three.)

The army group’s final commander was Gen. Carl Hilpert. Formerly Sixteenth Army’s commander, Hilpert had served as acting commander of the army group between Rendulic’s departure and Vietinghoff’s arrival. By all accounts Hilpert was the most popular and humane of the army group’s leaders—kind, sympathetic, devout, honorable, and highly respected by his troops. Rendulic had erected a cinema, club room, and dining room for his personal use; Hilpert dismantled them and lived in a bunker. He conducted the negotiations for the army group’s surrender, and on 8 May he was thus among the first to enter captivity. (He did not return. Hilpert died of disease in a Soviet POW camp in 1947.)
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Schörner commanded Army Group North from July 1944 until mid-January 1945, arguably the most dangerous six months of its campaign in the Soviet Union. One of Hitler’s most controversial generals, Schörner had been born in Munich on 12 June 1892, the son of a police official.
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During World War I he had earned Germany’s highest decoration for bravery, the Pour la Mérite, in October 1917 at the Battle of Caporetto. After the war Schörner joined Germany’s hundred thousand-man army, in which as a lieutenant he participated in the suppression of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. During the Weimar period he was a tactics instructor at the military college in Dresden.
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In the invasion of Poland Schörner was a regimental commander, and he commanded the 6th Mountain Division in the campaigns in France and Greece. In the fall of 1941 he went to the Arctic, to the Murmansk front, where he remained until October 1943, when he traveled to the opposite end of the Russian front to command Army Detachment Nikopol. Thereafter, having served approximately two months as the first head of the National Socialist Leadership Officer Corps, in March 1944 Schörner received command of Army Group South Ukraine. He remained in this position until Hitler transferred him to Army Group North in July.

On 16 January 1945 Hitler again called upon Schörner to reestablish a crumbling front, this time for Army Group A (ten days later renamed Army Group Center), which was reeling under a terrific Soviet offensive. Before he left Army Group North, Hitler awarded Schörner Diamonds for his Knight’s Cross in recognition of his successful defense of Courland.
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With Army Group Center, Schörner managed to re-form a line and keep his army group largely intact until Germany’s surrender. On the morning of 9 May he flew to the Tyrol—deserting, his critics charge, his men at the last moment, having executing many for cowardice. For Schörner, of all people, to have deserted his men at the end was unforgivable. He was to claim that his staff had been scattered for several days and that transmitting orders to his troops was no longer possible.
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The Americans captured Schörner and turned him over to the Russians, who in 1952 sentenced him to twenty-five years imprisonment for war crimes. The sentence was later reduced, and he was released on Christmas Day of 1954. He returned to Munich, where in January 1955 a West German court indicted him for executing soldiers in the war’s final weeks. In 1957 he received a sentence of four and a half years’ imprisonment for manslaughter. Denied a pension and other rights of returned prisoners of war after his release from prison in 1960, Schörner died in Munich in 1973 at the age of eighty-one.

Although he proved himself a capable commander in offensive operations in Poland, France, and particularly Greece, he earned his reputation and Hitler’s praise for his tenacity on the defense.
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His methods were effective but exceedingly brutal; he ordered the execution of numerous soldiers for cowardice, which he interpreted more broadly than most generals. A terror to staff and rear-area units, he sacked divisional, corps, and army commanders whom he considered not tough enough, and he was infamous for establishing roving squads of military police to round up—and often execute—stragglers behind the front.
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His motto was that his soldiers’ fear of their commander should be greater than their fear of the enemy, and this slogan applied equally to officers and enlisted men. He received several unflattering nicknames, including “Wild Ferdinand,” “the Bloodhound,” “the Gendarme of Courland,” and “the Legend of a Thousand Gallows.”
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In times of crisis Schörner relied upon draconian decrees to stabilize the front. During the Soviet offensive that isolated Army Group North in Courland in October 1944, Schörner instructed General Raus (Third Panzer Army’s commander) that rear area units were to fight to the last round in their current positions or face a firing squad. In another instance Schörner decreed that a major who had given up his strongpoint had forfeited his life; the division’s commander had forty-eight hours to report if the major had earned a reprieve by some act of special bravery. Schörner once instructed Eighteenth Army to inform one of its divisional commanders, whose troops had not carried out an attack as ordered, that he was to reestablish his and the division’s honor or face dismissal. The general had less than four hours to report which commander he had shot, or ordered shot, for cowardice.
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Other officers would have quickly learned of these measures and presumably attempted to ensure that they did not incur Schörner’s wrath.

There are also numerous examples of Schörner’s posting lists of soldiers executed for a variety of offenses, such as desertion, cowardice, self-mutilation, unauthorized presence in the rear area, or pretending to be wounded.
Wenck, who served as Schörner’s chief of staff with Army Group South Ukraine, later claimed that Schörner invented lists with fictitious names and offenses, to maintain discipline.
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Yet many of these names were not fictitious, and a marked increase in the number of cases brought before military judges occurred when Schörner commanded the army group. Schörner issued his most famous order on the Murmansk front. Receiving reports that Arctic conditions were causing morale to decline, he decreed, “The Arctic does not exist!”
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Notwithstanding his harsh methods, however, Schörner insisted that no effort be spared to support frontline troops, and whatever else they may have thought of him, many soldiers in the trenches believed that he would not abandon them.
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He commanded from the front lines and displayed personal bravery, frequently visiting the heat of the action.
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