Between Giants (59 page)

Brandner’s
Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 912
was also thrown into the fighting in support of 11th Infantry Division. Despite having his personal assault gun knocked out – it was subsequently recovered and repaired, though hit at least twice more before the end of the fifth battle of Courland – Brandner’s vehicles succeeded in stopping the Soviet assault from breaking through the German lines. Brandner received the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross for his brigade’s repeated interventions in the most critical sectors of fighting.
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Regardless of the achievements of Brandner and his brigade, his personal story highlights the perils of interpreting claims for the number of enemy vehicles knocked out. The two hits that forced him to abandon his assault gun were probably claimed as ‘kills’ by the Soviet unit involved – perhaps as two kills, given that two different Soviet tanks might have been involved – even though the assault gun was subsequently repaired and returned to action. The further hits it sustained may also have been claimed as ‘kills’, particularly if Brandner was forced to disengage from combat as a result, even if only temporarily.

Whilst most of the ships arriving at the ports of Liepāja and Ventspils carried munitions and other supplies, some brought reinforcements. The replacement battalion of 290th Infantry Division was in Denmark, and was ordered to Stettin, where it embarked aboard the steamer
Göttingen
on 21 February. The ship was carrying a total of 5,000 personnel to Courland, and its captain would have been aware of the threat of Soviet attacks. Late on 22 February, he received a radio warning that a Soviet submarine had been spotted in the area, but he calculated that it was sufficiently far from his course not to pose a threat. At 0430hrs on 23 February, two torpedoes struck the
Göttingen
, when she was 18 miles short of her destination, Liepāja. The ship sank rapidly, but not before a distress signal was sent. Several small vessels rushed to the scene from Liepāja, and about 2,000 men were saved and taken to Courland. The rest drowned.

At the beginning of March, the Red Army tried to force the lines of VI SS Corps. The weather had turned frosty, allowing for Soviet armour to manoeuvre with greater freedom on the frozen ground. By committing all available reserves to the fighting, including
Panzer Brigade Kurland
, the Germans were able to hold up the attack until a sudden thaw in the middle of the month brought major fighting to a halt again, and marked the end of the fifth battle of Courland. Casualties on both sides were heavy, but at least this time the Red Army had something to show for its assaults: the ruins of Priekule, in the west, and Dzukste, in the east, were in Soviet hands. At the end of the battle, Army Group Courland reported that since the isolation of the peninsula the previous October, the Red Army had lost 320,000 dead, wounded or taken prisoner, 2,388 tanks, 695 aircraft, and 906 heavy guns.
¹³
These figures could be little more than guesses, and are probably hugely inflated.

Von Vietinghoff’s command of Army Group Courland proved to be a short one. He was sent back to Italy, and after a brief period when the group was under the command of Lothar Rendulic, Carl Hilpert became the last commander of the Courland armies. He was replaced as commander of 16th Army by General Ernst-Anton von Krosigk, who was in post for less than a week before he was killed in an artillery bombardment. His replacement was Friedrich-Jobst Volckamer von Kirchensittenbach.

Fighting did not exactly stop between the various Courland battles, but certainly reduced in intensity. The pause between the fifth and sixth battles was only a few days. On 18 March, 10th Guards Army attacked towards Saldus after another heavy artillery preparation. The depleted German infantry divisions of XXXVIII Corps struggled to hold the front line, and 14th Panzer Division was committed almost immediately to the fighting. Although 10th Guards Army was halted south of Saldus, the town remained under pressure, with the Soviet 42nd Army advancing from the east. A battlegroup of 24th Infantry Division held the railway station at Jostaji for four days while neighbouring units pulled back to relative safety. By the end of the month, the intensity of fighting died down again. Army Group Courland was still intact, though looking decidedly battered.

The attrition of the fighting – as heavy as any during the long, bitter campaigns of the Eastern Front – had taken a heavy toll on the German divisions. Hilpert prepared a detailed analysis of his formations on 1 April. He reported that only five of his divisions – 11th, 24th, 81st, and 121st Infantry Divisions, and 12th Panzer Division – could be graded as still being at a high standard. Five further infantry divisions were rated as good, but the rest were barely ‘adequate’, on account of their losses, both in absolute terms and in terms of experienced officers. 14th Panzer Division, one of the bulwarks of the German defence, had only a handful of armoured vehicles left, and amounted to barely more than a battlegroup.
¹⁴
However, the terrible losses of the Red Army during the fighting had greatly degraded the combat-worthiness of the Soviet formations that faced them. Here, in a corner of Latvia, the German and Soviet soldiers fought on in battles that were increasingly meaningless, neither able to prevail over the other, but neither willing to stop.

On 13 April, Hilpert ordered naval and Luftwaffe units in Courland to provide more manpower for his front-line units. Remarkably, the Luftwaffe managed to release sufficient men to create 17 infantry battalions, but the lack of heavy weaponry, and total lack of combat training, meant that these formations would be of very limited use, should a seventh battle of Courland commence. But it became increasingly clear that the Red Army had finally tired of the pointless fighting. From east to west, its lines were held by 1st Shock Army, 22nd Army, 4th Shock Army, 6th Guards Army, and 51st Army. The rest of the major formations were withdrawn from the front line. A further indication of the irrelevance of the Courland fighting came on 3 May. All along the front line, Soviet guns suddenly opened fire, lighting up the sky with tracers and flares. At first, the Germans prepared for yet another onslaught, but it rapidly became clear that the firing was more of a celebration than a bombardment. A few minutes later, Soviet loudspeakers confirmed this suspicion: the Red Army was marking the fall of Berlin, hundreds of miles to the west.

Of all the German forces still in the field, Army Group Courland was now perhaps the most coherent, and the one most capable of continued resistance, but there would be no further tests of its strength. Together with the German forces in the Vistula estuary and the Hela peninsula –
Armee Oberkommando Ostpreussen
, or ‘Army High Command East Prussia’ – the troops in Courland now became the focus of a last desperate effort to evacuate them to the west. Surrender to the Allies was inevitable, but, wherever possible, the Wehrmacht intended to surrender to the British or Americans rather than to the Red Army. The appalling treatment dealt out to Soviet prisoners of war by the Wehrmacht during the years of victory, and the long history of brutal atrocities by both sides, made the prospect of final surrender to the Soviet Union something to be avoided at all costs. Konteradmiral Conrad Engelhardt, who held the post of
Seetransportchef der Wehrmacht
(‘Sea Transport Chief of the Wehrmacht’), had overseen the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Germans, civilians and soldiers alike, as part of
Hannibal
. Now, the last civilians – or at least, the last of those who wished to leave – had been taken to the relative safety of north Germany and Denmark, and it was time to consider an evacuation of the last troops in the east.

Compared to previous proposals for the evacuation of Courland, such as
Laura
, the task was now far simpler. There would be no need to provide shipping space for equipment; the only consideration was to transport as many men as possible to the west. It would be possible, therefore, to evacuate both Army Group Courland and
AOK Ostpreussen
in a far shorter period than had previously been imagined – provided sufficient shipping was available. And here, Engelhardt found himself at the end of his resources. Although Soviet submarine and air attacks had sunk only a relatively small number of ships (though the losses of the
Goya
and
Wilhelm Gustloff
were probably the two worst losses of life at sea in history), many of the freighters, former trans-Atlantic liners and coastal vessels that he had cobbled together for his rescue fleet had been damaged, either as a result of Soviet action or simply due to mechanical breakdown. In the last days of the Third Reich, repairs for any of these ships were almost impossible. To make matters worse, throughout the course of
Hannibal
, Engelhardt had struggled to secure sufficient fuel oil and coal to keep his fleet running, and fuel supplies were now almost exhausted.

The negotiations that had begun with the Western Allies about a final surrender of the Reich were strongly influenced by the plight of the soldiers still fighting on the Eastern Front. Grossadmiral Karl von Dönitz, who had become leader of Germany after Hitler’s death, was desperate to secure a ceasefire in the west, while continuing to resist the Red Army in the east, and on 3 May, his headquarters sent a signal to General Dietrich von Saucken, who was now commander of
AOK Ostpreussen
:

At the same time, Dönitz tried to obtain terms from the Western Allies that would allow operations, including evacuations, to continue on the Eastern Front, even after a ceasefire was signed in the west. At first, there seemed a prospect of achieving some such understanding; on 4 May, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, one of the German emissaries negotiating with the Western Allies, reported to Dönitz that the British required any surrender to include the Netherlands and Denmark, but that Montgomery would issue orders that would prevent any interference with the ongoing evacuation from the east. A ceasefire was signed that evening, coming into force at 0800hrs on 5 May.

When Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, the leader of the German delegation, and Friedeburg proceeded to Rheims, where they met Eisenhower’s staff, they had a somewhat different reception. The Germans insisted that the disruption of communications caused by the collapse of the Reich would make any immediate ceasefire in the east difficult to achieve. The Kriegsmarine had advised Dönitz that, provided sufficient fuel could be found, all the troops in Courland and the Vistula estuary could be brought west in three days. But unlike Montgomery and the British, Eisenhower refused to countenance any such arrangement. Although the Germans made repeated representations, they were all rebuffed, and early on 7 May, Jodl sent a message to Dönitz. Eisenhower insisted on immediate surrender on all fronts, he said, and any ships at sea would have to surrender to whichever Allied Power had been assigned control of that region. If the Germans were not willing to accept these terms, Jodl reported, Eisenhower threatened to prosecute the war to the very end. In order to prevent any prevarication, Jodl was given just 30 minutes to decide whether the terms were acceptable. He advised Dönitz that in his view, there was no alternative to accepting the terms.
¹⁶

At 0130hrs on 7 May, Dönitz sent a radio message to Jodl, authorising him to agree to the terms offered by Eisenhower. The ceasefire would come into effect at 0900hrs on 9 May. At the same time, Engelhardt and his staff were ordered to redouble their efforts to bring as many personnel west as was possible in the few hours that remained. Inevitably, the main effort concentrated on the Vistula estuary, as its relative proximity to Denmark and Germany allowed for more journeys to be made. Nevertheless, ships were also dispatched to Liepāja and Ventspils, where they joined forces with vessels already present. Aware of the extreme time pressure under which they were operating, the commander of the German destroyers still seaworthy in the Baltic sent a signal from aboard one of his ships shortly before midnight on 8 May:

A similar sense of urgency gripped the ships and men of the Kriegsmarine’s 9th Security Division, which operated the minesweepers and torpedo boats active around Courland. Their orders also left no room for confusion:

As a result of the changed situation subsequent to the surrender, all sea and security forces, as well as all commercial shipping, must depart from the harbours of Courland and Hela [the naval base on the northern side of the Bay of Danzig, in German hands until the final surrender] by 0100 on 9 May. Ships and boats are to proceed to the harbour limits of Kiel, Eckernförde and Neustadt. Putting in at other harbours en route is prohibited based upon the situation.
¹⁸

Hilpert and his staff in Army Group Courland had already started making arrangements for the final surrender. Front-line units were thinned out, then withdrawn from the front line that had been defended at such a terrible cost throughout the winter. The German troops were under orders to destroy as much equipment as possible as they retreated, but the shortage of explosives and in particular specially designed demolition charges made the destruction of the few remaining tanks almost impossible. Instead, the crews of 14th Panzer Division simply drove them into the swamps. Collection stations were created in rear areas, where radios, maps and other documents were left, and then set ablaze.
¹⁹