by Prit Buttar
Apparently most of the Latvians merely wished to return to their homeland in this manner, or the leadership was so bad that it completely lost its head and let its troops get out of hand.35
As was so often the case in the occupied territories, it was German activity that proved to be the trigger for increased partisan activity. The population of the eastern Latvian province of Latgale, with its high percentage of ethnic Russians, was the subject of a major German drive in 1942 to collect men for forced labour inside the Reich. One such action, codenamed Winterzauber (‘Winter Magic’), saw 99 villages in Latgale burned to the ground and over 6,000 inhabitants shipped off for forced labour in early 1943; an additional 3,600 people were shot for allegedly supporting partisans.36 In addition to killing suspected partisans and their supporters, and gaining a supply of labourers, these operations were designed to create a desolate landscape where partisans would find it much harder to survive. For the local population, it was often an almost impossible situation. If they helped the partisans, they risked death at the hands of the Germans; if they refused to help the partisans, they risked death from the partisans, who regarded a failure to support them as treason. Indeed, until autumn 1943, almost all partisan activity in Latvia was directed against the civilian population, to extract food, clothing and shelter, with almost no attacks on German military targets.37 On occasion, locals were forced to join the partisans, while others were executed as suspected German spies. Some of the activities of the partisans were irritating enough to lead to German reprisals. After one attack, German security police burned 119 peasants to death in the village of Pirčiupis in June 1944.38 But like their German enemies, the partisans also carried out arbitrary revenge attacks. In 1944, a group of partisans commanded by Vasili Kononov, a Latvian of Russian ethnicity, came under fire near the village of Mazie Bati. Two days later, they returned to the area, and shot nine of the inhabitants of the village.39
Partisans in Latvia reported the tensions between the Germans and Latvians to their commanders in the Soviet Union, and in an attempt to increase recruitment, the Soviet Union began a propaganda campaign that tried to portray German rule as a continuation of the old domination of the area by the Baltic German aristocracy, and claimed that the partisan movement was composed of Latvian patriots. Nevertheless, the majority of Latvian partisans were either from within the Soviet Union, or ethnic Russians from Latgale – for example, the 235-strong partisan brigade Sarkanā Bulta (‘Red Arrow’), which was active in north Courland in 1944, had only 68 Latvians in its ranks.40
It was only towards the end of the war, as the certainty of German defeat became ever clearer, that there was a significant increase in the number of Latvians joining the partisans. Even at this stage, there were tensions between the largely ethnic Russian communists amongst the partisans and their more nationalist Latvian comrades, whenever former members of the German-controlled police or the Latvian SS attempted to desert. The communists were inclined to treat them as enemy Fascists, while the Latvians were more welcoming. Some found that they could not escape their past. Arvīds Štrauss went into hiding in 1944 to escape enforced service in the German cause; when he heard of attempts to raise a national army towards the end of the year, he reappeared, but then deserted when it became clear that this new formation had no future. He then joined the ‘Red Arrow’ partisan brigade, but was captured by a German patrol in the last days of the war, and imprisoned in Talsen. A few weeks later, the Red Army arrived. He was promptly shipped off to a Gulag in the Soviet Far East.41
Many partisan units made exaggerated claims of their efficacy, and given the importance of the partisan war to Soviet ideology, their claims were often accepted with little attempt to validate them. One unit, commanded by Vilis Samsons, later claimed to have destroyed some 130 German trains, but there is no corroborating evidence of train losses in German records, and the claim is probably an exaggeration, if not a complete fabrication. Soviet accounts claim that there were 24 major partisan units, organised in March 1944 into four brigades, each with between 500 and 3,000 men. After the war, Soviet accounts of Lithuanian partisan activity described the destruction of 364 German trains, over 2,000 cars and trucks, and 18 local German garrisons; these claims do not correlate with German reports of losses.42 Activity increased as the war continued, not least due to the continuing exploitation of Latvia as an occupied territory, and in January 1945, an SS officer recorded with glum resignation: ‘It is clear to the Latvians that the German civil authority is the greatest enemy of their people. It has never done anything good for them, and it never will.’43
The first anti-German leaflets appeared in Riga in October 1941, as German attitudes to the ‘racially inferior’ Latvians became widely known. A heavy-handed renaming of roads in Riga, with the creation of ‘Adolf-Hitler-Strasse’, ‘Goering Ring’, and ‘Rüdiger von der Goltz Ring’, together with Germanisation of the education system, reminded many Latvians of the days when they were dominated by the Baltic German aristocracy, and the acquisitive behaviour of senior German officials further alienated local people; Reichskommissar Lohse seized a large mansion on the Baltic shore near Riga, and had several nearby houses torn down to improve the view from his new residence. Rations for Latvians were about half those for civilians in Germany, or for those Baltic Germans who returned to the territory, having left as part of the Heim ins Reich policy. Oskars Dankers protested about the inadequate rations on several occasions, to little avail. Enforced recruitment of Latvians for work in Germany further alienated people who had greeted the German soldiers with flowers and gifts.
Most of the public displays of resistance in Latvia met with disapproval and repression. On 15 May 1942, the anniversary of Karlis Ulmanis’ seizure of power, several young nationalists gathered at the Freedom Memorial in Riga, and were promptly arrested. There were plans for a march by students on Latvian National Day in November 1942, culminating in a declaration of independence, but the Germans became aware of the plans and prevented the demonstrations from taking place.
Meanwhile, Latvian officials continued to press for some degree of independence. Some Germans, like Otto Drechsler, favoured a degree of home rule, perhaps along the lines of the governments in Moravia or Slovakia, but others remained adamantly opposed. In January 1943, Alfred Rosenberg submitted a multi-part proposal to Hitler, calling for the restoration of all private property, creation of autonomous governments, and the mobilisation of national troops which would then serve alongside the Wehrmacht. Adhering to his policy that the Baltic States were subject nations, not allies, Hitler rejected the proposals, though he allowed some restoration of private property. Full restoration was not possible; when the Germans took over from the Soviets, they had seized many of the former private firms for their own use, and were therefore not willing to hand them back to Latvians.
In parallel with the development of underground movements in Lithuania, the Latvians created the Latvijas Centrālā Padome (‘Latvian Central Council’ or LCP) in August 1943, seeking like the Lithuanians to create a body that might take advantage of conditions at the end of the war to declare independence. The body met with like-minded Lithuanians in Riga in January 1944, and meetings with representatives of all three nations met in the Latvian capital four months later. The Germans succeeded in identifying members of the LCP towards the end of 1944, and arrested most of its leadership; its head, Konstantins Čakste, died in captivity shortly after.
The soldiers of the Latvian Legion had little doubts about the way that their nation had been left isolated. One wrote: ‘We have no friends either in the east or the west. They all only want to rule and be overlords, which is why we now want – and perhaps even more so at a later time – to fight for independence.’44
Unlike in Latvia and Lithuania, Estonians were able to make use of neighbouring countries to escape from German rule. Many Estonians fled to Finland, where they formed an Estonian regiment in the Finnish army, allowing them to fight the hated Soviets without c
oming under German command. There were only small numbers of pro-Soviet partisans active in the country, almost all of them Soviet soldiers who had been left behind or parachuted into the area. Their activity was further curtailed after the Germans captured one of their members, Karl Sära, who revealed the names and locations of many of the other partisans under interrogation.
The Estonian Directorate led by Hjalmar Mäe was more passive than Baltic politicians in Latvia and Lithuania in demanding independence, though the question arose repeatedly in a variety of forms. Generalkommissar Karl Litzmann felt that a lack of any autonomy was markedly destroying Estonian enthusiasm for supporting the German cause, but Hitler continued to overrule any such suggestion. Eventually, Estonian politicians came together to form the Eesti Vabariigi Rahvuskomitee (‘Estonian Republic National Committee’ or EVR) in early 1944. The Gestapo swiftly attempted to suppress the committee, though as will be seen it played a small part in events in September 1944 as the Red Army advanced across Estonia.
The Germans were not alone in raising formations of Baltic citizens. In May 1942, the Red Army created the 16th Latvian Rifle Division, which was assigned to the Soviet 48th Army, part of the Bryansk Front, in early 1943. At about the same time, the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps was created, and was deployed in the northern sector. Although both formations contained large numbers of Baltic citizens, largely those who had fled with the Red Army during the German conquest in 1941, most of their senior officers and large numbers of their lower ranks had little or no connection with the Baltic States. Some were descendants of former Baltic citizens who had moved to the Soviet Union, but many were simply Soviet conscripts who were assigned to the new formations. Nevertheless, the propaganda value of these formations, particularly after the war, when they were portrayed as showing how Baltic citizens had fought to help the Red Army drive the Germans out of the Baltic region, was substantial.
As the tide of war turned against the Germans, the front line once more approached the Baltic States. Disillusioned with German rule, yet fearful of the return of Soviet control, the people of the three countries could do little more than watch helplessly while their destiny was decided by their powerful neighbours.
Chapter 6
NARVA, JANUARY TO APRIL 1944
Apart from sporadic air raids and a few partisan attacks, the Baltic States spent all of 1942 and 1943 free of fighting between the armies of their giant neighbours. When the battlefront moved back to their territory in 1944, a great deal had changed from 1941.
Army Group North, which had surged across Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in its imperious drive towards Leningrad, still had its 16th and 18th Armies. 4th Panzer Group, renamed 4th Panzer Army, departed in the winter of 1941 to take part in the great battle for Moscow, and thereafter moved to the Ukraine. Without its armour, Army Group North besieged Leningrad for months, isolating the city from the south, with only the roads across the ice of Lake Ladoga during the winter providing any supply route for the population and garrison. Casualties amongst the Soviet people and troops in the city were terrible, with over a million soldiers killed and nearly 2.5 million wounded, sick or missing. The civilian population fell by over a million – about 400,000 were evacuated, and the rest succumbed to the German bombardment or died of sickness or starvation.
The details of the long siege, which was finally broken in January 1944, have been covered in several books.1 The significance of the siege was that for the Germans, it was regarded as a lesser theatre than the Ukraine, and consequently had lower priority for supplies and reinforcements. During this time, the repeated attempts by the Red Army to lift the siege, and – in the early stages – the attacks by the Wehrmacht, aimed at completing their encirclement, resulted in huge casualties for both sides. The steady stream of reinforcements reaching the Soviet forces ensured that the balance of power steadily tipped in their favour. The Luftwaffe had lost control of the skies over the entire Eastern Front, and Soviet armaments production totally dwarfed German output. The increasing partisan war also disrupted German supply lines and tied down resources behind the front line. German figures of their strength on the Eastern Front in late 1943 showed about 2.5 million men, with an additional 500,000 Finns, Rumanians and Hungarians. The Soviet forces, according to German estimates, numbered over 6 million.2
Whilst Army Group North retained its two infantry armies, its leadership had changed. 18th Army had originally been commanded by Georg von Küchler; he was now commander of Army Group North itself, and had been replaced as commander of 18th Army by Generaloberst Georg Lindemann. Lindemann had commanded an infantry division in France in 1940, before leading L Corps during the early phase of Barbarossa. The army consisted of five Wehrmacht infantry corps and III SS Panzer Corps. These formations were deployed from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ilmen, a front line of nearly 200 miles.
Alongside Lindemann’s army was 16th Army. Its former commander, Ernst Busch, now commanded Army Group Centre, and had been replaced by General Christian Hansen. He was a veteran of Army Group North, having led X Corps from the first day of the German invasion. In addition to his old X Corps, he had an additional three corps at his disposal.
On paper, these were still formidable armies. For example, I Corps, which was transferred from one army to the other during the winter of 1943–44, listed no fewer than 16 infantry and security divisions in its ranks; the army group as a whole included 44 infantry divisions and a panzergrenadier division. However, none of these was remotely at full strength, and the true strength of I Corps, for example, was probably closer to three or four divisions. Another huge weakness was the lack of armour. The only armoured assets available to Küchler’s entire group amounted to a battlegroup from the SS Panzergrenadier Division Polizei and the SS Panzergrenadier Division Nordland, both part of III SS Panzer Corps. To make matters worse, many of III SS Panzer Corps’ tanks consisted of some Panthers that were from an early production run, and had mechanical problems, rendering many of them immobile despite the best efforts of the repair companies. In addition, there were understrength battalions of assault guns and Tiger tanks, but not in sufficient numbers to make a radical difference; the entire tank strength of Army Group North amounted to only 146 tanks, while German estimates put Soviet strength at 650 tanks.3 Whilst the terrain between the Estonian border and Leningrad favoured defensive warfare, any significant Soviet armoured breakthrough was likely to be decisive, as there were no mobile forces available with which to intercept any such breakthrough. Indeed, the entire army group had little by way of reserves.
The organisation and equipment of German formations had changed, though much remained the same. The infantry divisions at the start of the war were weak in terms of mobility and anti-tank firepower, and there had been little improvement. By contrast, the increasing mechanisation of the Red Army – at least partly as a result of the steady supply of equipment from the United States and Britain – meant that the German infantry would fight at a significant disadvantage. Panzer divisions, though initially absent from Army Group North in 1944, had changed significantly. They now had a single regiment of tanks, organised as two battalions. One of these battalions was meant to be equipped with the Pz.IV tank, and the other with the newer, harder-hitting Panther, but in early 1944, many divisions had not received these vehicles, and still operated a variety of older tanks. The Sturmgeschütz brigades were still equipped with the tried and trusted StuG III, based on the old Pz.III chassis, but most now had vehicles armed with the longer, more penetrative 75mm gun. Alongside these brigades were the Tiger tanks of the Schwere Panzer Abteilung. These 57-ton vehicles, armed with the famous KwK-36 88mm gun, first saw action near Leningrad in 1942, and were capable of dealing with any enemy threat they might encounter. However, their limited numbers – only 1,347 Tiger Is were built in the entire war, compared with over 36,000 T34s – meant that their availability and therefore their impact was limited.
Facing Küchler’s depleted formations were several Soviet fron
ts. Opposite 18th Army were the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts, commanded by Leonid Alexandrovich Govorov and Kirill Afanasevich Meretskov respectively. Govorov, an artilleryman by background, had taken command of the Leningrad Front in April 1942. Later that year, he launched spoiling attacks that prevented Manstein from mounting a possibly decisive assault on Leningrad, and masterminded Operation Iskra, which finally established a tenuous land corridor between the besieged city and the outside world. His Leningrad Front consisted of four armies. Romanovsky’s 2nd Shock Army, with two rifle corps, was in the isolated pocket around Oranienbaum, which had survived every attempt by the Germans to reduce it in the previous two years. Cherepanov’s 23rd Army faced the Finns north of Leningrad, and south of the city were Nikolaev’s 42nd Army with three rifle corps, and Sviridov’s 67th Army with two rifle corps. In addition, the front had substantial reserves, including two full rifle corps.
The Volkhov Front faced the Germans from Siniavino to Lake Ilmen, consisting of Starikov’s 8th Army with a single rifle corps, Roginsky’s 54th Army with two rifle corps, and Korovnikov’s 59th Army with three rifle corps. It was these two powerful fronts that would launch the decisive Soviet drive to break Army Group North. Although the initial fighting took place to the east of the Estonian border, the battles that took place in Estonia were a direct continuation of the earlier campaign closer to Leningrad, and the details of these earlier operations are therefore of importance to what followed.
Although there was little prospect of a renewed German drive to take Leningrad, the city remained within bombardment range of German artillery. The narrow land corridor, too, was easily interdicted by the Germans. Consequently, an operation to drive back Army Group North had a high priority for the Red Army. The Germans were aware of a likely attack, and had made good use of the terrain behind their front line to build an extensive series of defences in depth. In order to improve his defensive positions, Küchler wanted to withdraw to a shorter line further west, freeing troops that could then act as reserves; without such reserves, Küchler argued, it was inevitable that any Soviet attack would eventually succeed in penetrating his lines. As was almost always the case, Hitler refused to accept any withdrawal.