Between Giants (57 page)

On 29 December, Betzel returned to Courland, and resumed command of his division from a relieved Oberst Christern. On the last day of the year, Soviet forces penetrated into the positions of 93rd Infantry Division, and 4th Panzer Division once more moved to a new area. Here, they found that the attack was led by the 308th Latvian Rifle Division, made up largely of newly recruited Latvian troops with Russian officers. The panzer division’s reconnaissance battalion immediately counterattacked, followed by other elements of the division as they arrived, led personally by Betzel. In a wild counter-attack that continued long into the night, 4th Panzer Division drove the Soviet forces back to their start lines. Fighting continued for the next two days before both sides came to an exhausted halt.
²²

The contrast between this successful counter-attack and the failed operation by 4th Panzer Division at the beginning of the third battle of Courland could not be greater. Many of the factors that led to a successful counter-attack on 31 December were the exact opposites of those on 21 December. Unlike Busse, Obergruppenführer Walther Krüger did not interfere with the panzer division’s internal arrangements, and other than ordering a counter-attack to restore the front line, he left the details to Betzel. The terrain was more favourable for armoured operations, and the division was back under the control of its experienced commander; likewise, Christern was back with his panzer regiment. The Soviet forces facing 4th Panzer Division on 31 December also put up less determined resistance than those ten days earlier.

This was also one of the few occasions that Latvian troops faced each other across the battlefield. Generally, the Soviets tried to avoid such battles, especially when they involved relatively new Latvian battalions of the Red Army; these often contained men who had served the Germans in a variety of roles, and were regarded as politically unreliable. The longer established Latvian rifle regiments were a different matter, but of course they contained large groups of soldiers who might be Latvian in terms of ethnicity, but had been living in the Soviet Union when they were recruited. These regiments also contained significant numbers of non-Latvian soldiers and officers, another factor that made their possible encounters with pro-German Latvians less ‘risky’. As soon as they realised that the 308th Rifle Division was up against 19th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division (2nd Latvian), the Soviet leadership swiftly arranged for the division to be relieved, and redeployed it elsewhere. The troops of 19th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division fought alongside the panzer divisions during the German counter-attack, and performed well, not least because they had the good fortune to capture Soviet prisoners on 28 December who revealed the intention of the Red Army to attack the following day. The Latvians were able to position their artillery accordingly, and inflict major losses on the Soviet forces with a timely bombardment.

To the rear of the front line, the Germans found that partisan activity in Latvia was, for the first time, a serious matter. Many divisions were required to form company- or battalion-sized groups that were sent into the hinterland to fight the increasingly active partisans. The make-up of these partisan bands was diverse. Their core was formed of Soviet soldiers, often specially parachuted into the area; many were members of the NKVD. Around this leadership there gathered a variety of men and a small number of women. These included deserters from both the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, and also Soviet soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. Some of this last group had succeeded in escaping captivity, but most were men who had volunteered to serve with the Germans as
Hiwis
(
Hilfwilliger
, or volunteers) in order to avoid continued detention in the terrible conditions that prevailed in prison camps for Red Army soldiers. In their role as
Hiwis
, they performed a variety of tasks, such as driving, cooking, and other rear area activities, but many also served as combatants. Now that it was clear that the Wehrmacht was headed for defeat, many
Hiwis
slipped away from the ranks and joined the partisans.
²³

As 1945 began, the outcome of the war was scarcely in doubt. But in order to ensure the success of the coming great offensive, the Red Army remained anxious to prevent any of the Courland divisions from returning to Germany, where they might strengthen the German defences on the Eastern Front. Even had a rapid transfer of all the Courland divisions been possible, it seems likely that the release of the Soviet forces from the Baltic would have offset any strengthening effect, so it is worth considering why Stalin was so keen to ensure a quick victory over Germany. The answer probably lies in his own past behaviour, and how he interpreted the possible intentions of others. During his rise to power, he was very adept at siding with more conservatively inclined members of the Communist Party in order to isolate and destroy radicals such as Trotsky; then, once the threat from the ‘left’ had been dealt with, he adopted the policies of the left and turned against his conservative allies from the ‘right’. As he negotiated the shape of post-war Europe with the Western Allies, Stalin must have wondered whether Britain and the United States might at some point in the near future turn against him, just as he had turned against his former allies. Consequently, although Soviet occupation of much of Germany had been agreed at Tehran in November–December 1943 – and subsequently clarified in meetings of officials in Moscow in 1944 – Stalin was keen to get his troops physically into position before the Western Allies moved against him. As part of this strategy, the German forces in Courland were to be kept under attack, and ideally destroyed where they were; Stalin was determined to ensure that a restoration of pre-war frontiers was interpreted as a return to the
status quo
of 1941, at which time the Baltic States were part of the Soviet Union. Complete occupation of the three countries before the end of the war would ensure that there was no question of any other outcome.

The beginning of 1945 in Courland saw a continuation of the fighting that had smouldered on as the third battle of Courland passed its peak.
Gruppe Bodenhausen
, consisting of 12th Panzer Division on the eastern flank and 4th Panzer Division on the western flank, deployed to the west of Džūkste, and on 5 January attacked towards the south, with 12th Luftwaffe Field Division and 19th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division to their east and west respectively. Once again, Betzel was with the leading elements of his division. The objective of the attack was to secure a new, shorter front line, by advancing about two miles. The leading armoured elements achieved this on the first day of the operation, with infantry gradually following, clearing the pockets of woodland of Soviet defenders as they came. 4th Panzer Division now turned to the west in order to close up with the Latvians of 19th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division, attacking just after midnight. By first light, the assault formations had broadly achieved their objectives, but found themselves in an area overseen by Soviet defences further south. Fighting continued through 6 January, with Soviet counter-attacks from the south being beaten off. As darkness fell, 4th Panzer Division’s combat engineers hauled away a large amount of Soviet materiel that the division had captured the previous night, including several T34 tanks.
¹

Although German combat losses in this latest operation were not severe, they reduced the strength of 4th Panzer Division to what the division commander described as ‘barely supportable’, with most of its Pz.IVs out of action; although several of the division’s tanks, including three Panthers, had been knocked out in
Gruppe Bodenhausen
’s attack, most of the vehicles that were no longer available were disabled due to mechanical problems. Nevertheless, the German estimates of Soviet losses were considerable. Betzel’s staff reckoned that since the start of the third battle of Courland, the division had accounted for half the tank strength of a tank brigade, almost half a regiment of assault guns, the anti-tank gun complement of a tank corps and a rifle division, and half the artillery complement of a rifle division. A further five Soviet infantry battalions were accounted for in terms of dead, with an unknown number of wounded.
²
In a similar manner, 19th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division calculated that it had destroyed or severely degraded ten rifle divisions and an armoured corps during the fighting of December and early January.
³
Whilst such claims have always been regarded as being prone to exaggeration, the German attack does seem to have caught the Red Army by surprise, resulting in many tanks and guns being captured as their crews fled. It should also be remembered that in almost every battle on the Eastern Front, Soviet losses were higher than German losses; but the ability of Soviet armaments production to replace these losses was also far greater than German industrial output. In earlier years, Soviet resources of manpower had also seemed bottomless, but by 1945, this had changed. The huge losses of earlier years had left much of the Soviet Union denuded of men, and the advancing Red Army was forced to recruit replacements, often forcibly, from the areas that it ‘liberated’. The training and discipline of these replacements was poor, and as a result, may have contributed to the ease with which operations such as the attack by
Gruppe Bodenhausen
put the Soviet troops to flight.

There were further changes in higher commands. Generaloberst Hilpert and General Boege remained commanders of 16th and 18th Armies respectively, but it was time for Schörner, the commander of Army Group North, to move on. Whatever the views of his critics, both then and since, many front-line soldiers held him in high regard, as a junior NCO of 4th Panzer Division wrote:

In Courland, apart from our camaraderie, which grew ever stronger, only iron orders to hold out kept us together. General Schörner was an iron commander. He was frequently with the combat troops. It was this man who prevented chaos for thousands of soldiers, by mobilising numerous rear area and administrative units for front line service.
⁴

In recognition of their achievements, all soldiers serving in Army Group North were awarded a ‘Kurland’ badge or armband. For 4th Panzer Division, though, its time in Courland was coming to an end. On 9 January, orders arrived for the division to be withdrawn into a rear area, where it would form a reserve for the entire army group. On 17 January, as the final crisis in East Prussia and Poland began, the division was ordered to proceed to Liepāja, from where its personnel would be transferred by sea to Gdansk. It was to leave its heavy equipment behind, though at a later date, much of this equipment was sent to help re-equip the division. Although the division had sometimes failed to achieve its objectives – particularly during
Doppelkopf
and
Cäsar
– its personnel could be proud of their achievements. The total tank losses of the division since the beginning of
Doppelkopf
were 20 Pz.IVs and 12 Panthers, compared to an estimate of 215 Soviet tanks and assault guns destroyed. These figures include a distortion: they give the number of German tanks lost, i.e. unrecoverable, whilst the Soviet ‘losses’ would include knocked out tanks and assault guns that would subsequently have been recovered, repaired and returned to the front line. Nevertheless, even allowing for this, and for exaggerated claims of enemy losses, it was a remarkable achievement.

12th Panzer Division continued to be involved in fighting in the front line after the success of the attack near Džūkste. Operations continued until 15 January, with the division claiming the destruction of 81 Soviet tanks, many with close-range
Panzerfaust
and
Panzerschreck
weapons. But although the division’s own losses were light, their impact on the thinning ranks of veterans was considerable. The commander of the division’s 5th Panzergrenadier Regiment, Oberstleutnant Bischoff, was seriously wounded and had to hand over his command; he recovered and returned to the front line just a few days before the final surrender.
⁵

The great Soviet offensive against the German defences on the Eastern Front began on 12 January, and spread from the Sandomierz bridgehead in southern Poland to East Prussia over several days. Bagramian’s armies had already been depleted to ensure that the assault formations had the greatest possible advantage, but the forces assembled against the Courland Bridgehead remained formidable. Yeremenko was replaced as commander of 2nd Baltic Front by Leonid Alexandrovich Govorov, whose Leningrad Front had been disbanded. Together, he and Bagramian planned further assaults on Courland, in an attempt to prevent German forces from being withdrawn for use elsewhere. This strategy proved to be of limited efficacy. As has already been seen, 4th Panzer Division was transferred to Gdansk and thence to the Vistula valley, and several infantry divisions followed in the next few weeks.

In his memoirs, Bagramian reflected on whether he and his colleagues might have done more to destroy the Courland Bridgehead. He concluded that the Red Army faced several major difficulties: