Read Hitler, Donitz, and the Baltic Sea Online
Authors: Howard D. Grier
In addition, Hitler had originally planned to retain parts of northern Finland, the site of the nickel mines, after Mannerheim surrendered to the Russians. Speer, however, assured Hitler that Germany had sufficient stocks of nickel, and on 3 October Hitler approved Twentieth Mountain Army’s retreat to Norway.
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Thus in the period from mid-August to early October
1944 Hitler ordered several major withdrawals. Hitler’s orders to evacuate southern France, northern Finland, and much of the Balkan Peninsula hardly conform to the portrayal of someone who never permitted retreats. Rather, this seems to have been a period in which he carefully evaluated the territories still under German control and decided which areas he could give up and which ones were essential to retain. For Hitler, Courland belonged in the latter category.
Although one might argue that in these instances Hitler had no other choice, the case of Army Group North is even more telling. German armies in Finland, France, and the Balkans had not previously lost land contact with the rest of the front; Hitler ordered their withdrawal before this took place. But Army Group North had already been isolated in August 1944 and withdrew from Estonia on Schörner’s initiative in September, only to have its land link to the Reich severed a second time in October. To date, this was the largest German force isolated by the Soviets, far exceeding the 240,000–275,000 troops of Sixth Army surrounded at Stalingrad.
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Why would Hitler suddenly withdraw from entire regions when he had earlier insisted on defending nearly all German-held territory so tenaciously?
The answer perhaps lies on the beaches of Normandy and in the forests of Belgium and Luxembourg. Hitler had never wanted a multifront war, and despite enemy landings in Sicily and Italy in the summer of 1943, he did not have to worry too much about an Allied landing in Western Europe until 1943. In that year and in 1944, however, Hitler stationed more, and better quality, troops in the West to repulse an expected Allied invasion. He genuinely believed that he would smash the invasion force. Recognizing that the Allies would not be able to launch another cross-channel assault soon, he could then transfer an estimated forty divisions to the East, with which he planned to regain the initiative and recapture the Ukraine.
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Not only Hitler but several of his generals also believed this could be accomplished.
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With this in mind, why should he give up territory that Germany would only have to recapture, and, in Hitler’s view, fairly soon?
The Allied invasion, however, succeeded, and Hitler had to revise his plans. He did so, but he clung to his initial conviction that an offensive in the West provided the best chance for a decisive victory, one capable of turning the tide in Germany’s favor. He decided to launch an assault in the West already at the end of July, on the day the Americans captured Avranches. The idea for the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the Bulge) was Hitler’s and his alone.
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Several members of Hitler’s entourage attest to his conviction that the attack would succeed.
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Despite the colossal defeats
Germany suffered in the summer of 1944, by early autumn the front had begun to stabilize in the West. Hitler probably thought that he had brought his armies back from France in good order. The Allies were certainly stunned by the Germans’ resilience, as painfully demonstrated during Operation “Market-Garden” in Holland, where success surely boosted Hitler’s confidence.
The most important point to bear in mind regarding Hitler’s plan to attack is the timing of the operation. On 16 September Hitler announced his decision to launch the offensive in the Ardennes, designed to seize the port of Antwerp and produce a second Dunkirk (minus the evacuation). He intended to begin the assault in November and commanded the Luftwaffe to assemble 1,500 fighters by the first day of that month.
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This was precisely the period in which Hitler delayed his consent to Schörner’s requests to evacuate Estonia. If the army group could hold on for only a little longer, it would not have to reconquer Estonia in the near future. On 25 September Hitler established the date for the Ardennes offensive as between 20 and 30 November and instructed Jodl to prepare the operational orders. Jodl submitted his draft on 9 October, the day before Soviet tanks reached the Baltic near Memel. Finally, on 22 October, two days after ordering Schörner’s army group to remain in Courland, Hitler decided to begin the attack in the West on 25 November, barely a month away.
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Several of Hitler’s entourage verify his confidence in the outcome of the attack at this time. In early September Goebbels declared that he shared Hitler’s conviction that the coming winter would bring Germany total victory. Speer stated that on 12 October Hitler confidentially informed him of the upcoming offensive, emphasizing that this would be a decisive blow. Finally, less than a week after Army Group North went over to the defense in Courland, Goebbels again expressed optimism, maintaining that the most important thing was to weather the next two to three months.
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At the time Hitler ordered Schörner to defend Courland, therefore, preparations for the Ardennes Offensive were in high gear. By seizing Antwerp, German armies would cut the supply lines of the British Second Army, Canadian First Army, American Ninth Army, and most of the U.S. First Army. Twenty to thirty Allied divisions then would be ripe for destruction. Hitler believed that after the annihilation of its army, a war-weary Britain would have no option other than to quit the war. The Americans, with little heart for war, would withdraw across the Atlantic following this defeat.
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Then, for the first time, Hitler could concentrate Germany’s entire armed might against the Soviet Union. Perhaps Hitler was looking to the future when he ordered Army Group North to remain in
Courland. In response to the army’s pleas for Schörner’s forces to break through to East Prussia, Hitler claimed that he anticipated a change in the situation soon, at which point he would need the army group to fall upon the Russians’ exposed flank.
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This change in the situation almost certainly referred to the coming offensive in the West. Since Hitler assumed the attack would succeed, after driving the Anglo-Americans from the continent he could shift his forces to the East to settle with Russia. Once his reinforced eastern armies had burst through the Soviet lines, Army Group Courland could break out from its bridgehead in Latvia and fall upon the rear of a demoralized Russian army. The soldiers of Army Group Courland, as Hitler knew, were neither sixty-year-old Volkssturm nor fourteen-year-old Hitler Youth but nearly half a million veterans of warfare on the Eastern Front. Guderian attests that these men were good, experienced troops, full of fighting power.
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Although there is little direct evidence to substantiate this theory, the timing of the evacuations from Courland, an analogy from the previous year, and an assignment Hitler gave to Speer provide evidence that could support it. On 16 January 1945, following the failure of the Ardennes offensive Hitler returned to Berlin. On the same day he ordered one armored and two infantry divisions withdrawn from Courland. Two weeks later three additional divisions, a brigade, and a corps staff had received instructions for shipment to Germany. The previous month, however, Hitler had refused to evacuate some of these very units.
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In the period from mid-January to mid-March 1945 Hitler ordered ten to eleven divisions, one brigade, and three corps staffs withdrawn from Courland, approximately a third of the army group’s units. Yet from mid-October 1944 to mid-January 1945 only three to four divisions had been brought back to the Reich. It is possible that once Hitler accepted that the offensive in the West had failed, he realized the Courland divisions would be unable to launch an attack in the near future and should return to Germany, leaving behind a smaller force to deny Courland’s ports to the Soviets.
The decision to retain Courland also bears a striking similarity to Hitler’s order to defend the Kuban bridgehead two years earlier. The Soviet offensive that trapped Sixth Army at Stalingrad in November 1942 threatened Germany’s entire southern wing on the Eastern Front. Army Group A, commanded by Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist and consisting of Seventeenth and First Panzer armies, then held positions on the eastern coast of the Black Sea and in the Caucasus, far south of the Don River. Hitler continued to delay Army Group A’s withdrawal until Zeitzler ordered Kleist to retreat to the Kuban on 13 January 1943. By the middle of February
Seventeenth Army, with some 400,000 troops, fewer than were later isolated in Courland, had withdrawn to the Gotenkopf Position in the Kuban.
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Hitler ordered Seventeenth Army to remain and defend the Kuban Peninsula. Not until September 1943 did he order the evacuation of the Gotenkopf Position. By the end of the month Seventeenth Army had completed its withdrawal south of the Don, except for a small bridgehead on the Taman Peninsula that was given up on 10 October.
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The main reason Hitler decided to hold a bridgehead in the Kuban was that he planned to attack from this position later. In the spring of 1943 he instructed Speer to build a road and railroad bridge across the Strait of Kerch, divulging that he would launch an offensive from the Kuban.
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At the end of July, after the German attack at Kursk had failed, Hitler still refused to evacuate the Kuban, despite Zeitzler’s insistence that it no longer fulfilled its primary task since Germany could not mount an attack from there.
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Hitler’s chief goal in the 1942 summer offensive in southern Russia had been to seize the oil fields in the Caucasus. The assault had bogged down, and then the Soviets thwarted his plan with their offensive at Stalingrad. But in Hitler’s eyes this was only a temporary setback: he still intended to launch a future attack from the Kuban to capture the oil fields. Petroleum extracted from the Caucasus would fuel Germany’s industry and military, and its loss would cripple Russia. Retaining a position in the Kuban meant that his troops would not have to force the Don River and the Kerch Straits and fight for the same territory all over again. Stalingrad was obviously another site Hitler considered extremely important, and one reason for holding out there bore resemblance to the Kuban. He claimed that to recapture the city in 1943 would require even greater sacrifices than had already been made. This also was a factor in the Crimea’s defense.
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Similarly, the troops defending Memel believed the main reason they continued to retain the bridgehead was so that Army Group North could break out of Courland as part of a major flank attack against the Soviets.
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Hitler might have been willing to sacrifice a couple of divisions here and there to serve as a
Wellenbrecher,
but when he allowed the Soviets to isolate entire armies, as at Kuban and in Courland, he had an attack in mind.
This corresponds with Hitler’s conception of how to wage war. Hitler consistently adhered to the principle of the attack, and he asserted that since the war began, his policy had always been to conduct it offensively. In speeches to his generals immediately before the Ardennes Offensive and prior to the subsequent attack in Alsace, Hitler emphasized that Germany could not win the war defensively.
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Even after the failure of these attacks, Hitler was determined to fight offensively on the Eastern Front. He clung
to his belief that one day he would recapture the territories lost to the Soviets. He refused Reinhardt’s request to withdraw Fourth Army on 20 January 1945, because that would sacrifice German land that later must be reconquered.
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Throughout 1945 Hitler attempted offensive operations in the East. Examples include attacks in Hungary, the ill-fated Stargard offensive from Pomerania, and Schörner’s attacks in Silesia. Despite Guderian’s opposition, he insisted upon the offensive in Hungary to safeguard Germany’s oil supply. Hitler also hoped to gain a shorter line there and free a dozen divisions to recapture Soviet territorial gains in eastern Germany. Shortly before the Soviets lunched their massive offensive in January 1945, Hitler announced his intention to use the next year’s recruits to replenish fifty of his best divisions as an offensive force for attacks on all fronts.
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Finally, on 19 August 1944, three days after he ordered the withdrawal from southern France, Hitler instructed Speer to prepare a report evaluating the consequences of further territorial losses upon armaments production, primarily regarding the availability of metals and ores. Speer assumed that Germany would retain parts of Hungary, Croatia, and northern Italy. His study, however, also provided information on armaments production should Germany lose Finland, Norway, and the rest of the Balkans, and obtain no more raw materials from Sweden, Spain, or Portugal. Speer reported that the most critical shortage would be in chromium but that stocks existed to guarantee delivery of weapons up to 1 January 1946. Speer submitted this study on 5 September.
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The timing of Hitler’s order to Speer to prepare this report coincides too closely with his permission to withdraw from southern France, the Balkans, and Finland to be a coincidence. With plans for the Ardennes Offensive nearly completed, Hitler made crucial decisions regarding which areas he must hold to continue the war successfully. It was also the period when Hitler had to decide what to do with Schörner’s army group in the Baltic States. No economic goods essential for the armaments industry came from Courland. If he was retreating from Finland, with its nickel deposits, then he must have found Courland indispensable for reasons other than economic ones.