Hitler, Donitz, and the Baltic Sea (16 page)

On the same day Burchardi determined that holding Sworbe served no real purpose, the Skl reevaluated Sworbe’s value to naval strategy and reached precisely the opposite conclusion. The Skl contended that possession of Sworbe, as well as Courland’s northern coast, was essential for passage through the Irben Straits in order to support army operations by coastal bombardment with light naval forces, as well as to carry out mining operations and offensive raids to contest the Soviets’ use of newly acquired bases on the Estonian and Latvian coast. The naval staff also claimed that Sworbe’s retention was vital to protect minefields blockading Soviet naval forces. In contrast to Burchardi’s appraisal, the Skl maintained that the navy could not block the Irben Straits if the Soviets possessed Sworbe. The
Skl also warned that loss of the peninsula would grant the Russians total freedom of movement in the Gulf of Riga and the use of forward bases from which their surface vessels could endanger German shipping routes and training areas in the eastern Baltic.
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The next day Kummetz reported that he concurred with Burchardi’s opinion—holding Sworbe was no longer necessary. Meisel, however, insisted that the opposite was true, especially if divisions were to be withdrawn from Army Group North. He also cautioned that it was still uncertain whether the army group could hold Libau; if the port fell, the army’s formations in Courland could be evacuated only from the open coast on the Gulf of Riga. Dönitz ordered a report prepared for OKW and OKH that explained Sworbe’s significance and clarified this confusion.
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Schörner regarded the Skl’s declaration of Sworbe’s “new importance” ridiculous and angrily refuted the navy’s arguments for holding the peninsula. He insisted that the Skl’s claim that control of the Irben Straits was essential for a possible evacuation of the army group made no sense. In the first place, the army group could hold its positions in Courland. Moreover, the greatest danger to his troops, one that could force an evacuation, was a large-scale Soviet landing in northern Courland, in which case the evacuation of troops from Courland’s eastern coast would be impossible anyway. Finally, erection of mine barrages along Courland’s northern and eastern coast to protect against enemy landings, as well as mining of the Irben Straits, could not take place until German forces evacuated Sworbe. The Skl informed Army Group North’s naval liaison officer that it had taken note of Schörner’s protests but that in the meantime Hitler had declared Sworbe a “fortified site,” which rendered further discussion on the subject unnecessary.
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During Bonin’s visit to Courland on 19 October, one of Schörner’s foremost demands was to withdraw from Sworbe. OKH wanted the army group to give up several divisions, but Schörner insisted that he could not relinquish any units until he evacuated Sworbe. Schörner wanted to abandon Sworbe in any event, claiming that to continue holding the peninsula would lead to the useless sacrifice of two divisions. He repeated his assertion that artillery on Courland’s northern coast could control the Irben Straits. Two days prior to this meeting, however, Hitler had decreed that Sworbe be held until further notice, and in his command of 20 October for the army group to go over to the defense in Courland instructed Schörner to continue to hold the peninsula.
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General Hilpert, commander of Sixteenth Army, initially understood Sworbe’s defense as merely a temporary measure. He instructed his troops on 12 October that they must hold the peninsula until coastal defense in
northern Courland had been established. Natzmer had notified Hilpert earlier that day that he hoped to begin the evacuation of the peninsula on the 15th. When the 15th arrived, however, Hilpert informed his men that for the present, Sworbe’s evacuation was out of the question. On 19 October he briefed the local commander that the U-boat war required the continued defense of Sworbe.
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A few days later Gersdorff, now Sixteenth Army’s Chief of Staff, complained to Natzmer that further requests to evacuate Sworbe seemed hopeless, adding that Dönitz was the main advocate of Sworbe’s defense.
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The navy displayed an extraordinary interest in the Baltic Isles. Meisel later claimed that these islands were
the
key position in the eastern Baltic.
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Although on 9 July Dönitz had commented to Hitler that possession of the Baltic Isles would be useless if the Soviets reached the coast in Latvia or Lithuania, a few days later he asserted that if Finland collapsed, Dagö and Ösel must be held in order to erect a new mine barrage to continue the blockade of the Soviet fleet. On 22 September Meisel again argued the need to reinforce the islands.
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After the loss of Moon, Bonin phoned the Skl and reported the army’s intention to reinforce the islands, but he warned that this would take time—during which anything could happen. Bonin solicited the navy’s opinion on the army group’s proposal to withdraw from Dagö to concentrate its forces on Ösel. Dönitz replied that the navy wanted all the Baltic Isles held as long as possible and regarded Ösel’s port of Arensburg and the Sworbe Peninsula essential. The Skl requested OKH to examine an operation to regain Moon, since it considered control of the Moon Sound especially important to holding the Baltic Isles.
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Soviet landings on Dagö and Ösel rendered any hopes of recapturing Moon futile. On 3 October OKH suggested the use of the Second Task Force to support the army’s defense of the Baltic Isles. The Skl welcomed this proposal but stipulated that fighter aircraft protection was necessary and placed the warships on alert. Four days later, upon learning that the army planned to evacuate Arensburg, the Skl instructed Voss to try to prevent this, lest the troops on the island be isolated.
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The following morning Dönitz instructed that Voss be informed that Sworbe’s importance concerned more than just the evacuation of the troops from Ösel.
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On 14 October, immediately after Riga’s evacuation and increased demands by Schörner to withdraw from Sworbe, Dönitz impressed upon Hitler the need to hold the peninsula as long as there was any chance Army Group North would have to be evacuated by sea. Upon learning of the desperate situation on Sworbe when the Soviets launched their final offensive, Dönitz ordered the accelerated dispatch of heavy warships without even a request from the army. Hitler commanded the navy to support the fighting
on Sworbe at all times with one or two heavy cruisers. Kummetz reported on 23 November that he believed Sworbe could no longer be held, but Dönitz refused to lend his support to save the troops there, claiming that it was a matter for OKW and OKH to decide. Although unable to prevent the evacuation, after the loss of Sworbe Dönitz pointed out to Hitler the increased danger of Soviet landings on Courland’s coast.
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As the Soviets launched their final attack on Sworbe, Capt. Victor Oehrn, Skl operations officer, remarked that the army would surely claim that Sworbe had been held only at the navy’s behest. He suggested that the navy take advantage of a favorable opportunity to free itself from this task, which tied down so much of its forces. Dönitz angrily replied that the navy was concerned only with Sworbe’s supply and that the matter was an OKW question in which the navy supported holding the peninsula solely in the army’s interest, since it protected Courland’s coast from landings and provided for the army group’s evacuation from the open coast. He repeated this argument the day after Sworbe fell, again insisting that he had only acted in the army’s interest.
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It is unlikely that even Dönitz believed this nonsense, since a month earlier the Skl had concluded that a Soviet breakthrough on the land front, not landings on Courland’s coast, posed the greatest danger to the Army Group North.
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German attempts to supply Sworbe offer convincing evidence of the intention to conduct a major holding operation on the Baltic Isles. In late October Burchardi warned that it would be impossible to deliver supplies to Sworbe once ice formed in the waters surrounding the peninsula. A few days later Sixteenth Army received orders to provide Sworbe with provisions sufficient to last three months, from mid-December to mid-March, when ice conditions would prevent resupply.
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Yet Sworbe’s supply was no simple task. There were no storehouses there, and goods could not be placed in underground bunkers, because of the high ground-water level. Soviet air superiority meant that troop and supply shipments could take place only under cover of darkness.
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At the end of October the army group’s quartermaster concluded that it would be impossible to deliver the requisite supplies to Sworbe before the onset of winter. Exasperated, Schörner complained to Guderian that on the one hand the navy demanded that Sworbe be held come what may, yet on the other it could not deliver the stores necessary to fulfill this task.
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Schörner had good reason for his frustration. There was a great deal of confusion even within the navy regarding the feasibility of supplying Sworbe. Kummetz and Blanc also contended that it was not possible to provide Sworbe with enough supplies to last through the winter, and at the end
of October Kummetz warned that the ability to evacuate Sworbe’s garrison soon would be endangered.
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Burchardi, however, reversed his position at the beginning of November and maintained that it was still possible to supply Sworbe. The Skl ignored Kummetz’s caution and insisted upon the continued delivery of provisions to Sworbe.
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Although the navy sustained its supply shipments, by 17 November barely a third of the required tonnage had been delivered, and stores of the most important goods were perilously low.
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Nonetheless, even though barely a month remained before ice would isolate the troops on Sworbe, the Skl showed no inclination to yield to Schörner’s pleas to evacuate.

The navy’s interest in Sworbe is also clear from its commitment of forces to the peninsula’s defense, both on land and at sea. Despite increased demands upon Blanc to provide escorts for convoys to Memel and Courland, the Ninth Escort Division allocated considerable resources to Sworbe’s supply and defense.
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The navy originally planned to prevent Soviet landings on the Baltic Isles with such vessels as artillery barges, minesweepers, and motor torpedo boats, but this hope soon proved illusory. It was the navy that first proposed the use of heavy warships for action off the islands. Only when the Soviets threatened to annihilate the German troops on Sworbe did Natzmer request additional naval support. In addition, on at least two occasions the Skl approved action by the Second Task Force even though the army group could not guarantee fighter protection, supposedly a prerequisite for the use of cruisers.
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The Second Task Force repeatedly provided invaluable assistance to the troops on Sworbe, blasting Soviet troop concentrations and thereby granting the defenders an opportunity to re-form their units. The action off Sworbe, in which virtually every major vessel afloat participated, represented the German Navy’s largest ground-support mission to this point, and one of the largest of the war.
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The navy also contributed ground troops to the fighting on the islands. Following the loss of Moon, two thousand naval troops went to the Baltic Isles, and by the end of October half of the combat soldiers on Sworbe were naval personnel. The navy paid dearly for its contribution, suffering perhaps as many as 2,000 casualties during the struggle for the islands.
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The navy’s insistence upon the defense of the Baltic Isles, like its earlier demands for holding the Leningrad and Narva sectors, resulted from Dönitz’s desire to preserve the mine barrages in the Gulf of Finland. The maintenance of minefields to blockade the Soviet fleet within the Gulf had constituted one of Dönitz’s chief goals in the Baltic since the very beginning of the Russian campaign. The effective use of mines was possible due to the geographic conditions of the Gulf, which has an average width of only thirty
nautical miles. Shortly after the army had cut Leningrad’s land link with the Russian interior in September 1941, German and Finnish ships began to lay mines to seal off the Soviet fleet in Kronstadt Bay, although at this time the German Navy’s, and Hitler’s, greatest concern was that the Soviet fleet would break out and sail for neutral Sweden to be interned.
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Leningrad, however, held out, and the threat of the Baltic Fleet remained. In mid-April 1942 German and Finnish naval officers met in Helsinki to plan the establishment of mine barrages. This conference resulted in the decision to lay two minefields across the Gulf of Finland as soon as the ice melted: the
Seeigel
(sea urchin), extending from the Finnish skerries, east of the islands of Tütters and Hogland, to Cape Kurgalowo; and the
Nashorn
(rhinoceros), from Porkkala to the Estonian coast east of Reval.
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Several Soviet submarines managed to breach the mine barriers and operate in the Baltic in 1942, but they were unable to disrupt German shipping to a serious extent.

To prevent Soviet submarines from reaching the Baltic again, in the spring of 1943 the Germans supplemented their system of minefields by laying a double antisubmarine net,
Walross
(walrus), directly west of the
Nashorn
mine barrage.
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This device proved a complete success, for no Russian submarines managed to break through to the Baltic until October 1944. Yet in the latter part of 1943 Soviet attempts to clear a passage through the southern portion of the
Seeigel
barrage alarmed the German Navy. In September 1943 Naval High Command, Baltic, reported a marked increase in Soviet minesweeping activity and warned that Russian air superiority made protection of the barrages by German patrol craft increasingly costly. Schmundt, Kummetz’s predecessor, maintained that the forces at his disposal could no longer prevent Soviet vessels from clearing mines, due to their strong air cover.
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