Hitler, Donitz, and the Baltic Sea (5 page)

The Skl’s optimism, however, proved unfounded. The army group worked out detailed plans to storm Leningrad, but the Soviets frustrated Hitler’s intentions. The Russians launched furious attacks at Velikiye Luki, near the junction of Army Groups North and Center, and against German positions along Lake Ladoga. Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, Eleventh Army’s commander, dispatched to these sectors divisions assembled for the attack on Leningrad, much to Hitler’s displeasure. By the beginning of October the operation’s likelihood appeared remote. In mid-October OKH confirmed this, although the attack on Leningrad had not been canceled entirely; rather, it was now envisioned primarily as an artillery assault. OKH instructed the army group to use Eleventh Army’s heavy guns to
obliterate successive Soviet defensive lines on the city’s southern front. Once these positions had been flattened the army group could move its lines forward without recourse to heavy commitment of troops. By creeping up to the southern edge of Leningrad the Germans would gain more favorable positions for a later attack to capture the city or an attempt to sever its communications over Lake Ladoga.
³³
This scaled-down assault on Leningrad was at best a half-measure and in reality accomplished nothing.

At any rate that was the navy’s opinion, and it repeatedly complained about the army’s inaction in the Baltic theater. The army had failed to capture Leningrad in 1941, reneged on its promises to seize islands in the Gulf of Finland in the spring of 1942, and in the second half of the year had attacked neither Leningrad nor the Oranienbaum Bridgehead. The navy, therefore, had to prepare for action in the Gulf of Finland yet again in the spring of 1943. Despite the use of 13,000 mines in 1942, Soviet submarines had reached the Baltic. In 1943 the navy would have to tighten the blockade with less materiel expenditure. The Skl warned that the use of so many mines in the Gulf of Finland reduced the number available for the coasts of Norway, Holland, and France, as well as in the Mediterranean. The navy needed vessels currently tied up in the Gulf of Finland to escort submarines in the Bay of Biscay, protect North Sea convoys, and clear mines from U-boat training areas. If Russian submarines reached the Baltic again in 1943, they would disrupt shipping and U-boat training, which would delay deliveries of new submarines for action against Britain and America.
³⁴

In February 1943 the suggestion arose to withdraw Army Group North to the Narva area. The navy protested this measure in the sharpest terms and used the same arguments later that year to oppose subsequent proposals that Küchler’s forces retreat to the Panther Position. The Skl insisted that giving up the coast along the Gulf of Finland would mean that the navy could not intercept Soviet warships east of the mine barrages. The Russians then could sweep German-laid mines without interference. This would also provide the Soviets with freedom of movement to train their long-dormant vessels and permit the Russian fleet to raid the Finnish coast and Estonia up to Reval (Tallinn). The Skl declared that if Soviet surface vessels broke through the mine barriers, it would radically alter conditions in the Baltic. The navy warned of the consequences for importing Swedish iron ore and Estonian shale oil, shipping troops and supplies in the Baltic, and the training of U-boat crews. This was one of the earliest proposals for a retreat from Leningrad and, with Dönitz’s appointment as the navy’s commander in chief less than a month old, the
passages referring to the U-boat war in the navy’s response were especially ominous:

Without secure training areas in the Baltic, the U-boat war will immediately come to a standstill,
since U-boats can be built only at shipyards in Germany and trained nowhere else. In all likelihood, the incursion of Soviet naval forces into the Baltic, against which we have practically nothing to offer resistance, thus will have fatal consequences for the U-boat war. . . . The Skl’s view is that the intended shortening of the northern front will certainly bring advantages for the army in the East, but the result will be a fatal threat to the U-boat war.
³⁵

The Skl concluded that the retreat would be extremely detrimental to the overall conduct of the war and that an attack against the Oranienbaum Bridgehead would better serve Germany’s strategic interests. At the end of April, Adm. Wilhelm Meisel, Skl chief of staff, conferred with the OKW operations chief, Gen. Alfred Jodl, and returned with the assurance that a withdrawal to Narva had never been intended.
³⁶

Adm. Hubert Schmundt (head of Naval High Command, Baltic, or MOK Ostsee) sent Meisel a rather inauspicious report at the end of June 1943. He also complained of the army’s failure to capture Leningrad or mount attacks on the Oranienbaum Bridgehead, Lavansaari, or Seiskaari. Schmundt insisted that the time had come to eliminate the threat Russia’s Baltic Fleet posed to German submarine testing and training areas and to the import of essential ores. Schmundt also pointed out that Soviet airfields under construction on islands in the Gulf of Finland imperiled the Estonian shale oil area. Moreover, the attitude of the populace in the Baltic States, Finland, and Sweden was being influenced by Germany’s inaction in this theater. Warning that the Soviets had grown stronger each year, he insisted upon the capture of Leningrad, or at least the destruction of the Oranienbaum Bridgehead and seizing the islands, in the present year. In closing Schmundt warned: “Time does not work for us, but against us, since we must count on an increase in our eastern enemy’s strength. Viewed from the perspective of power politics, the Baltic area has the same importance for him as for us. For us, however, total domination of the Baltic is of more decisive importance than for the enemy. That is the problem!”
³⁷

Dönitz discussed these points at a meeting with Hitler in early July, and his warnings obviously had an effect upon Hitler. Deliberations regarding Army Group North’s withdrawal to the Narva area faded into the background until late summer, and Hitler informed Dönitz that he had instructed Küchler to eliminate the Oranienbaum Bridgehead.
³⁸
The failure of the German Kursk offensive and the success of subsequent Soviet operations in the south, however, prevented this attack.

The order for the construction of the Panther Position in August 1943 elicited immediate and stormy protests from the navy. The Skl objected that the proposed course of the East Wall compromised naval interests on both flanks, in the Black and Baltic seas.
³⁹
On 15 August the Skl advised OKW of its reservations, claiming that in the north the withdrawal would endanger the navy’s Baltic submarine training areas and imperil crucial shipments of Swedish iron ore to Germany. In addition, the retreat would jeopardize the navy’s ability to maintain its blockade of Russia’s Baltic Fleet, which had been confined to a very restricted area around Leningrad since 1941. The presence of Soviet warships in the Gulf of Finland would threaten German domination of the Baltic and force Dönitz to transfer to this area vessels urgently needed in other theaters. The Skl insisted that instead of retreating, positions around Leningrad must be maintained at all costs.
⁴⁰

Dönitz voiced his concern for these matters in a private conversation with Hitler on 18 August.
⁴¹
At their next meeting Dönitz again complained of the retreat’s consequences for the navy, but Hitler assured him that the construction of the Panther Position was only a precautionary measure and that he did not intend to withdraw from the Leningrad area.
⁴²
Aware that Germany’s steadily deteriorating situation would not permit the preservation of naval interests in all theaters, Dönitz had instructed Adm. Hans-Erich Voss, his permanent representative at Hitler’s headquarters, not to object too strenuously to the evacuation of the Kuban bridgehead in southern Russia but to reserve his strongest protests for a withdrawal along the Gulf of Finland.
⁴³

On 29 December, the day before Küchler’s visit to Führer Headquarters, Capt. Heinz Assmann (Naval Operations Officer on OKW’s operations staff) informed the Skl that Hitler had not yet decided whether to permit Army Group North’s withdrawal to the Panther Position and suggested immediately preparing a report that stressed the consequences for the navy should the retreat occur. Although Assmann remarked that he did not think the Skl’s opinion would fundamentally influence Hitler’s decision, because the overall situation on the Eastern Front made the decision necessary, he thought it could limit the extent of the withdrawal, so as to facilitate the blockade of the Soviet Fleet. At the Skl situation conference on 30 December, Dönitz again emphasized the potentially fateful consequences for conditions in the Baltic if the withdrawal took place.
⁴⁴
When he visited Hitler’s headquarters a few days later, Dönitz marshaled his strongest argument: the Baltic problem must be considered in connection with the new submarine force, because the Baltic
was the only training area for the new models of U-boats. Hitler assured Dönitz that he realized this completely and would permit no retreat. Two days prior to the Soviet offensive against Army Group North, Assmann confirmed Hitler’s intention to defend the present positions on the Gulf of Finland. Assmann cited several reasons for Hitler’s decision: objections from local commanders (obviously Lindemann); disadvantages for the air force (the vulnerability of German industry in Silesia to Soviet bombers); and “impressive” naval reasons—protection of the Baltic, U-boat training, and ore traffic. Assmann added, however, that following a conversation with Heusinger (head of OKH’s operations section), he thought it preferable to withdraw in good order before a Soviet offensive rather than risk losing the Panther line in the course of an attack. He pointed out that it would be easier to keep the Russians out of the Gulf of Finland, and away from submarine bases, in the Panther Position than if the army were pushed back to Riga.
⁴⁵

The Soviet offensive of January 1944 settled the issue—the Germans were thrown back to the Panther Position and received a clobbering in the process. The Skl viewed the Soviet advance with considerable alarm, and for this reason, in addition to diplomatic and economic considerations, Hitler had ordered the defense of every foot of ground in the army group’s area. At the end of January Hitler assured Dönitz of his “unshakeable goal” not to allow the Russians into the Baltic.
⁴⁶
On 30 January, when Küchler received permission to retreat to the Luga, Assmann reported that Hitler hoped to prevent a retreat to the Panther Position because of the resulting problems for the navy—the U-boat war, sea links to Finland, and Estonian shale oil. Hitler asked for the navy’s aid, requesting naval emergency units
(Alarmeinheiten)
to assist in shoring up the army group in order to hold the Luga Position. The following day the Skl reported on measures, both on land and at sea, that it had taken to help Army Group North.
⁴⁷

As the situation at Narva grew more desperate, Dönitz became frantic. He issued an extremely unusual directive to the commander of naval forces in Estonia, ordering him unconditionally to hold all positions.
⁴⁸
On 13 February Hitler asked Dönitz if warships could support the army’s hard-pressed troops on the Narva front. The Skl immediately dispatched two destroyers and a torpedo boat to Reval, and Dönitz hastily began to assemble a task force of heavy surface vessels to support the army at Narva. The following day the Skl ordered the pocket battleship
Admiral Scheer,
the heavy cruiser
Prinz Eugen,
two destroyers, and six torpedo boats immediately attached to Naval High Command, Baltic (MOK Ostsee), for action in the Gulf of Finland. The fact that Dönitz did not intend to send these ships into action in the event of an Allied invasion of Western Europe clearly indicates that he considered the
Narva position to be of the utmost significance, which is interesting considering his earlier protests that the Narva line was unacceptable.
⁴⁹
More surprising, he ordered submarines placed on alert in case the Soviet Baltic Fleet put to sea, even though this reduced the number of U-boats available for action in the Atlantic.
⁵⁰
In view of his repeated assertions that the navy’s most important task was to sink as much Anglo-American shipping as possible and of his insistence scarcely three months earlier that the U-boat situation in the Atlantic required every available submarine as quickly as possible, Dönitz’s willingness to reduce the delivery of U-boats to the Atlantic in this way underscores the great importance he assigned to the Narva sector.
⁵¹

The task force Dönitz assembled, however, was not yet needed. The Skl instructed MOK Ostsee to assure the army that naval forces, including heavy cruisers, were ready to support the army group at any time. The army group informed the navy that it would require assistance from heavy German vessels only if heavy Soviet warships appeared off the coast. The Naval Staff nonetheless decided that a show of force was desirable, and on 12 March three destroyers shelled Soviet positions in Narva Bay.
⁵²

Dönitz was not alone in his anxiety for the army’s retention of the Narva sector. Hitler’s actions during the Soviet offensive reveal his intense interest in the Narva area in particular, and for German positions along the Gulf of Finland in general. On several occasions prior to the Russian attack, Hitler expressed concern that German forces guarding coastal areas, especially the Oranienbaum Bridgehead, required reinforcement.
⁵³
In a rare personal directive to Model on 6 February, he warned that the army group’s greatest danger was at Narva and ordered Model to reinforce that sector and destroy Soviet bridgeheads over the Narva River immediately.
⁵⁴
At this time Army Group North did not view the threat at Narva as its most pressing concern but was more worried about the Soviet pincers threatening to encircle most of Eighteenth Army. Despite the danger to Eighteenth Army, during the retreat Hitler insisted that most reinforcements sent to Army Group North, including a battle group
(Kampfgruppe)
of his personal escort battalion
(Führer Begleit-Batallion),
go to the Narva front, although the army group intended to use some of these forces elsewhere.
⁵⁵
Furthermore, Hitler approved the retreat to the Panther Position only when he feared the loss of the Narva sector.