Hitler, Donitz, and the Baltic Sea (23 page)

The next day Schörner informed Gollnick that Hitler had issued an explicit order to hold Memel at all costs. OKH ordered XXVIII Corps attached directly to Army Group Center as of 12 October, a provision that scarcely appealed to the army group’s commander, Gen. Hans Reinhardt.
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From 10 to 12 October the Soviets attempted to seize Memel on the march, but they could not pierce the German defenses. On the morning of the 14th the Russians launched a prepared assault but again achieved no major success. The German Navy’s Second Task Force repeatedly shelled Russian troop concentrations poised to storm the city, thereby playing a key role in preventing the Soviets from capturing Memel. The Russians then shifted their attacks to Courland and East Prussia. Memel’s defenders dug in and prepared for a siege in positions on an arc approximately seven kilometers from the city.
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In late October German intelligence reported that the Soviets had withdrawn their armored units from the Memel front and replaced them with infantry, indicating the crisis had passed. Guderian, mainly concerned with blunting the Soviet thrust into East Prussia, ordered the withdrawal of two infantry divisions from Courland to relieve the two mobile divisions cut off in Memel. When Gollnick learned of this he protested that his present forces barely sufficed to hold their positions against the ten Soviet divisions he estimated besieged the city.
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The situation in East Prussia, threatened by a Soviet thrust northeast of Goldap, clearly had priority. In the course of November OKH ordered the withdrawal of both mechanized divisions from Memel, replacing them with a single infantry division. Although the front at Memel remained quiet, Gollnick fretted about his ability to defend the bridgehead during the winter months, when the Haff, southwest of the city, froze. Once this occurred he feared the Soviets would cross the ice to the Nehrung, over which his forces received most of their supplies. Reinhardt passed on Gollnick’s concerns to Guderian and agreed that the withdrawal of the two divisions from Memel had made it unlikely that the corps could hold its
positions if the Soviets launched a major attack.
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The Soviets probably would coordinate an attack on Memel with an offensive against Army Group Center, he assumed, and this would prevent him from reinforcing Memel.
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Memel’s defenders awaited the onset of winter with a sense of foreboding.

East Prussia

A
LTHOUGH REINHARDT DID
what he could to defend Memel, protecting East Prussia was his top priority. Despite its limited gains, the Soviet offensive in East Prussia in mid-October rattled the Germans. The army group halted the Russian advance by the end of the month and then counterattacked to drive the Soviets from German soil. By early November the Germans had recaptured Goldap, leaving the Soviets with only a small strip of East Prussian territory. But no one doubted that the Soviets would strike again. The Germans constructed an elaborate series of defensive positions between the Vistula and Oder rivers and gathered reserves to counter the expected blow. By the beginning of December Army Group Center, consisting from north to south of Third Panzer, Fourth, and Second armies, had amassed a powerful mobile reserve. With these troops Reinhardt believed he could repulse a Soviet offensive, provided that none of his units were withdrawn.
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Yet by the beginning of January Reinhardt’s reserves had dwindled to insignificance. Hitler ordered several divisions transferred to Hungary, and the units the army group received in return in no way compensated for those taken away. Reinhardt repeatedly protested to Guderian, and at the beginning of 1945 he warned that he could no longer guarantee that his forces could hold their sectors.
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On the eve of the Soviet offensive, the Germans were in a dangerous position. Against Army Group Center’s three armies, with about 580,000 men, 8,200 artillery pieces, 515 aircraft, and 700 tanks and assault guns, the Soviet Second and Third Belorussian fronts had massed fifteen armies, with over 1.6 million men supported by 24,000 artillery pieces, 3,000 aircraft, and 3,800 tanks and assault guns. The Soviet offensive in East Prussia envisaged isolating Army Group Center, pushing the Germans back against the sea, and then splitting up and destroying the Nazi formations. Marshal Konstantin Rokossovskii’s Second Belorussian Front was to attack from bridgeheads over the Narev River north of Warsaw and drive northwest toward the Baltic coast midway between Elbing and Danzig. This would sever Army Group Center’s land contact with the rest of the front. At the same time I. D. Cherniakovskii’s Third Belorussian Front would
strike at the junction of Third Panzer and Fourth armies, then advance on Königsberg.
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On 12 January 1945 the Soviets opened their offensive. The Russians struck their main blow against Army Group A from the Baranow bridgehead across the Vistula River south of Warsaw. Marshal Ivan Konev’s First Ukrainian Front burst out of this bridgehead and quickly gained an operational breakthrough. G. K. Zhukov’s First Belorussian Front, driving due west from its bridgeheads at Magnuszew and Pulawy, captured Warsaw and Lodz, and encircled Poznan. On 31 January Zhukov’s troops reached the Oder north of Küstrin, only forty miles from Berlin. The Soviet attack against Reinhardt’s army group began on 13 January. German intelligence had correctly determined the time and place of the attack, but this knowledge did not enable the Germans to halt the Soviet juggernaut.
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Third Belorussian Front struck Third Panzer Army, in theory a tank army yet possessing only one armored division, east of Gumbinnen. Second Belorussian Front attacked Second Army north of Warsaw from its bridgeheads at Serock and Rozan the following day. Although Third Panzer Army repulsed the Soviet assault in the first days of the offensive, the Russians quickly gained several penetrations in Second Army’s front. At Fourth Army, occupying Army Group Center’s middle sector, the front remained relatively quiet. Although barely holding on, the army group received instructions on the evening of 14 January to send two armored divisions to Army Group A, causing Reinhardt to note in his diary, “A colossal blow for us!”
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On 16 January the Soviets committed their operational armored reserves against Second Army and achieved a breakthrough. In the next few days the Russians scattered the remnants of Second Army and also broke through Third Panzer Army’s front in the north.

The collapse of Army Group A and Second Army opened a huge gap on Army Group Center’s southern flank. Largely ignoring Fourth Army, the Soviets pushed in both flanks of Army Group Center. Reinhardt informed OKH that at best his forces could delay the Soviet drive to the sea; they could not prevent it. Fourth Army’s front jutted far to the south and east, over one hundred miles from the coast, and it was in danger of encirclement. Hitler finally yielded to the army group’s repeated pleas to withdraw Fourth Army from its exposed position, allowing a retreat to the Masurian Lakes.
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But he had delayed far too long. On 23 January the Soviets reached the Frisches Haff near Elbing, thereby cutting the land link from East Prussia to the Reich. In the following days the Soviets tightened their grip on the coast. Although the remnants of Second Army had been shoved back across the Vistula and Nogat rivers west of Elbing, the Russian
drive to the coast had isolated Third Panzer and Fourth armies in their entirety. Over thirty German divisions, about four hundred thousand troops, had been cut off in East Prussia.

As the threat to Army Group Center grew, Hitler reconsidered the situation at Memel. On 23 January he ordered Memel’s evacuation to begin immediately and placed the city’s garrison at Reinhardt’s disposal.
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Following a three-month defense XXVIII Corps abandoned the Memel bridgehead on the night of 27–28 January, after destroying the city’s port facilities.

Hitler, however, had no intention of giving up East Prussia. Reinhardt wanted to abandon the Samland Peninsula and Königsberg and try to fight through to German lines near Elbing. On 23 January Reinhardt’s chief of staff, Gen. Otto Heidkämper, informed Wenck that the army group did not have sufficient forces to hold Samland and Königsberg and also to break through to the west. Heidkämper insisted that it was more important to regain contact with the Reich—otherwise all would be lost—and Wenck agreed. The army group prepared this attack but was compelled first to reinforce the Königsberg front to prevent its collapse. On 22 January Gen. Friedrich Hossbach, Fourth Army’s commander, decided to launch an attack of his own to break through to the west. Without informing OKH or Hitler, or even Reinhardt until the movement began on the 23rd, he withdrew his forces to the northwest to prepare for the assault.
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For allowing Fourth Army’s withdrawal despite explicit orders to the contrary, Hitler sacked both Reinhardt and Heidkämper, ordering Rendulic from Courland to take over the army group. The Germans launched the attack to the west on 26 January. Although it initially made good progress, Rokossovskii rushed reinforcements to the area and halted the German thrust by the end of the month.
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Hitler relieved Hossbach on 30 January, replacing him the next day with Gen. Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller. On 25 January, at the same time as Army Group North became Army Group Courland, Army Groups Center and A were renamed Army Groups North and Center.

The threat to Königsberg became acute at the end of January. The Soviets advanced to within twelve miles of the city on the 25th, and three days later Russian troops broke into the Samland Peninsula, cutting the road from Königsberg to Cranz. After isolating Army Group North from the Reich, the Soviets proceeded to carry out their plan of splitting up the group’s formations and destroying them one by one. By 29 January it appeared that the Russians had succeeded, having shattered German forces in East Prussia into four groupings. By reaching the Frisches Haff north and south of Königsberg, the Soviets had isolated the city from the rest of Third Panzer Army, then cut off in the Samland, and also from Fourth Army, isolated along the coast southwest of Königsberg. Finally XXVIII Corps, coming from Memel, occupied a small bridgehead at the northeastern end of the Samland Peninsula at Cranz. On 30 January the Germans opened a slim corridor joining Königsberg with Fourth Army. Although Russian counterattacks narrowed the passage, the Germans managed, barely, to maintain contact. Third Panzer Army’s task, therefore, was to unite its forces in Königsberg, the Samland, and at Cranz in order to carry out Hitler’s directive to defend Königsberg. On 2 February OKH ordered Rendulic to unite his forces, prepare another assault to regain contact with the newly created Army Group Vistula, and evacuate Third Panzer Army’s staff to Stettin, where it would join Army Group Vistula.
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The next day XXVIII Corps attacked from Cranz to the west and linked up with Third Panzer Army on 7 February. The following day Third Panzer Army turned command of its units over to the staff of XXVIII Corps, which received the designation Army Detachment Samland.

MAP
8.
EAST AND WEST PRUSSIA

Army Detachment Samland planned an operation to reestablish land contact with Königsberg and requested warships to support the assault.
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The attack both from the city and the Samland began on 19 February and caught the Soviets off guard, in the midst of preparations for an operation of their own, and the Germans linked up the next day. Attacks to expand the corridor continued until the end of the month and provided Königsberg with a road and rail link to the port of Pillau. For the time being, Rendulic had succeeded in thwarting the Soviets’ attempt to dismember and destroy his army group.

Still the Soviets clung to their original plan. On 9 February Cherniakovskii’s Third Belorussian Front received orders to complete the destruction of Fourth Army by 25 February. The staff of Bagramian’s First Baltic Front, withdrawn from Courland, was charged with storming Königsberg and eliminating German forces in Samland. This operation, however, did not proceed according to plan. Cherniakovskii began his offensive against Fourth Army on 10 February, but he encountered stiff resistance and made little progress. On the 18th Cherniakovskii was killed in action, and A. M. Vasilevskii arrived to replace him three days later. Due to bad weather and tough German opposition, Vasilevskii canceled the attack. Bagramian had intended to begin his offensive on 20 February, but the German thrust to reestablish the link between Samland and Königsberg on the 19th foiled his plans. Following this setback Stavka stepped in and made some organizational changes. It disbanded First Baltic Front and placed all troops in East Prussia under Third Belorussian Front, with Bagramian as Vasilevskii’s deputy commander. Instead of attacking Rendulic’s forces simultaneously, the Soviets decided first to eliminate Fourth Army, then to clear German forces from the Samland, and finally to seize Königsberg. Vasilevskii planned to complete his operation against Fourth Army by 22 March and instructed Bagramian to prepare an assault on Königsberg for early April.
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