by David Grier
At the beginning of August the distance separating Army Groups North and Center had increased to 120 kilometers. The successful invasion of France and Allied advances in Italy prevented Hitler from transferring units from there to the East to plug the gap. Schörner’s forces, however, faced a new threat from another direction. Second and Third Baltic fronts had resumed the offensive and threatened to break through at the junction of Sixteenth and Eighteenth armies. Schörner informed OKH that his troops were exhausted and so badly weakened that they could not fight defensively for much longer, much less attack to regain contact with Third Panzer Army.17 He proposed, as had Friessner, Army Detachment Narva’s retreat to Reval for evacuation by sea and the gradual withdrawal of Eighteenth Army to a bridgehead around Riga. Following this, he planned to attack to regain contact with Army Group Center and establish a new front along a line Kovno–Schaulen–Bauske–Schlock. Schörner, therefore, proposed a withdrawal to a line west of Riga and the Düna.18 He warned that any delay would make the withdrawal more difficult and pointed out that the situation in Finland could make the retreat essential. Wenck visited Schörner’s headquarters on 10 August and promised that Army Group Center’s counterattack would begin in six days.
Soviet attacks against Eighteenth Army’s left flank increased in intensity, and on 12 August the Russians broke through the German line south of Verro and threatened to do so near Dorpat and Walk as well. Schörner ordered the First Air Force to send all available aircraft to support Eighteenth Army’s crumbling left flank. If that failed to halt the Soviet advance, Schörner declared, he was prepared to order the evacuation of Estonia. He informed OKH that unless he received reinforcements to seal the penetration at Verro, the army group must give up the Narva sector and retreat to Riga. Schörner requested an immediate decision from Hitler, warning that the Russian breakthrough already endangered the retreat. Hitler commanded the army group to hang on and promised to airlift a division to the army group.19 The Russians, however, failed to exploit their success, and Schörner managed to seal off the penetration.
Relief was finally on the way from the south. Army Group Center, commanded by Gen. Hans Reinhardt, prepared an attack to regain contact with Schörner’s forces. This operation envisioned a blow by two powerful armored forces against Soviet divisions in Latvia and Lithuania. One group was to capture Schaulen, and the second would seize Mitau. To cover the northern flank Group Strachwitz, composed of two armored brigades, received orders to advance on Tuckum. The attack began on 16 August. Although the main German forces initially made good progress, they were unable to capture Schaulen or Mitau. Nevertheless, the Soviets were forced to halt attacks against Sixteenth Army in order to parry the German blow.20 Strachwitz’s smaller force, supported by the heavy guns of the navy’s Second Task Force, captured Tuckum and broke through on the extreme northern flank, opening a passage to Army Group North on 20 August.21 Further attacks in the following days expanded the slim corridor to a width of about twenty miles.
After nearly two months the gap between Third Panzer and Sixteenth armies had been closed. But Eighteenth Army was still in danger, as the Soviets had broken through on both flanks. The Russians captured Dorpat on 26 August and gained bridgeheads over the Embach River, threatening Army Detachment Narva’s rear. Schörner again considered ordering Estonia’s evacuation, fearing Soviet troops advancing on Dorpat would cut off Army Detachment Narva’s line of retreat.22 In the following days, however, Soviet attacks diminished. The summer offensive had run its course. Yet as the crisis of the summer appeared finally to have passed, another catastrophe loomed for Germany, this time in Finland.
Prior to the assault on Army Group Center, the Soviets had launched an offensive against Finnish troops on the Karelian Isthmus. The Russians attacked on 10 June and quickly gained ground, piercing two of Finland’s three defensive lines on the isthmus in less than a week. Finnish pleas for German assistance met with approval; realizing that the Finns desperately needed help, on 12 June Hitler rescinded the embargo on arms deliveries to Finland. He informed Dönitz that he would support the Finns as long as they continued to fight, but there was a price; he would again block shipments to Finland if they negotiated with the Soviets. German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop arrived unannounced in Helsinki on 22 June to attempt to bind Finland closer to Germany. Four days later President Risto Ryti pledged that he would not negotiate a separate peace with the Soviets without German consent. Once that assurance had been received, ships laden with war materiel streamed into Finnish ports. From 23 June to 3 September Germany sent the Finns 47 tanks and assault guns, 50 antitank guns, 88 artillery pieces with over 184,000 shells, 88 antiaircraft guns, 24,112 antitank grenades (Panzerfaust), 16,602 bazookas (Panzerschreck), and more than four million rounds of ammunition.23 Considering Germany’s catastrophic materiel losses in France, Italy, and Russia throughout the summer of 1944, these were significant deliveries. Mannerheim requested six divisions to reinforce Finnish troops, but the Germans did not have such forces available. Hitler offered what he could, however, ordering Army Group North to send an infantry division to Finland on 20 June.24
German supplies helped but initially could not halt the Soviet attack. On 21 June the Russians captured Vyborg, dealing a serious blow to Finnish morale. A few days later the Soviets again threatened to break through Finnish lines, but Mannerheim succeeded in repulsing the assault. At the beginning of July the Russians shifted their operations to seizing islands in Vyborg Bay. The division sent from Army Group North arrived in time to repel a Soviet landing on the northern shore of Vyborg Bay. By mid-July the situation had stabilized, and the Finns detected the withdrawal of Soviet divisions from the Karelian Isthmus. The military crisis there had passed.
Politically, however, Finland was still in turmoil. The Finns had not received as much assistance from Germany as they had expected or as much as the Germans had promised, and casualties had been heavy for the small nation.25 Furthermore, Finland’s leaders nervously followed the Red Army’s successes against Army Groups Center and North. At the end of July Soviet pressure forced Army Group North to recall its division from Finland, the only one the Germans had sent.
The day after the fall of Vyborg, on 22 June, the Finns had asked Erik Boheman, secretary-general at the Swedish Foreign Ministry, to inform the Soviets that they were ready to discuss peace. The Russians indicated willingness the next day but demanded that Finland’s president and foreign minister first issue a written statement that Finland was ready to capitulate.26 Dissatisfied with these terms, the Finns fought on. After the front had stabilized, however, Finnish politicians believed that it was time to resume negotiations, for it was unlikely Finland would be able to withstand another attack. Ryti resigned on 31 July, and Mannerheim became president by parliamentary decree on 4 August. The change of government alarmed Hitler, who ordered Schörner to Finland to assure Mannerheim that Army Group North would hold its positions along the Narva Isthmus.27 By this time the army group had been cut off from the rest of the front, however, and it is unlikely that Schörner’s optimistic report eased Mannerheim’s concern. Keitel arrived in Finland for talks with Mannerheim on 17 August, and Finland’s new president explained that he did not consider Ryti’s assurance of late June binding on his government. The Finns realized Germany was in no condition to provide help against a future Soviet attack. The Anglo-Americans had made impressive gains in the West, and in the East the Red Army stood at the gates of Warsaw. News of Romania’s surrender the following week also had a sobering effect.
On 25 August the Finnish legation in Stockholm reestablished contact with the Soviets, and the next day the Finns officially declared the Ryti agreement invalid. Finland’s parliament voted to break off relations with Germany on 2 September and ordered all Nazi troops from its soil by the 15th, two preconditions set by the Soviets before they would receive a Finnish armistice delegation.28 Finland’s cooperation in the war against the Soviet Union had come to an end.
There is no doubt that Dönitz wanted to help the Finns, even if his primary goal was to preserve domination of the Baltic for Germany’s purposes, but he also had an ulterior motive in sending heavy surface vessels to the area. At the end of April Hitler had approved the Skl’s proposal to seek Finland’s consent to transfer German warships to the Åland Islands, ostensibly to guard against Soviet landings in Estonia and Finland or a breakout attempt by the Soviet fleet. The Finns, however, refused the German request to use the islands as a base.31 Dönitz’s underlying motive for this transfer was to have German forces on the spot in case the Finns collapsed. At the end of June Lützow left Gdynia for Utö, carrying weapons and ammunition for the Finns. Yet that was not all the warship carried—Lützow also had orders to occupy the Åland Islands in the event of Finland’s collapse.32
As the situation in Finland began to stabilize, however, the plight of Army Group North became the focus of Dönitz’s concern in the East. At the beginning of June his fears of a Soviet landing on the Estonian coast resurfaced. In response to the invasion of France, Dönitz ordered all warships in the Baltic assembled to intervene in the event of further Anglo-American landings on other coastal sectors. Yet the following day Dönitz assured Kummetz that he had full recourse to these vessels for action in the East and warned him to be on guard against surprise Soviet landings in Estonia.33
At this point, however, Dönitz began to falter; he experienced a crisis of confidence. Disheartened by the failure to repulse the Normandy invasion, Finland’s uncertain attitude, and the collapse of Army Group Center, he wavered in his hitherto unshakable belief in victory and in his adherence to Hitler’s doctrine of “hold at all costs.”34 Like Hitler, Dönitz had long believed that the Allied invasion of the continent would be a decisive moment. If Germany repulsed the landing, its position would improve immeasurably, for the Allies would not be able to attempt another invasion for some time. Furthermore, German divisions held in reserve behind the Atlantic Wall would then be available to regain the initiative in the East. Instead of an event to be feared, the Allied invasion offered Germany a splendid opportunity.35
But the Normandy invasion force was not smashed. Allied troops secured a beachhead and ferried massive quantities of men and equipment across the Channel. Conceding on 10 June that the Allied invasion had succeeded, Dönitz declared that he intended to offer Hitler personnel from submarine training units for action on land, men he previously had jealously protected.36 Looking to the future, Meisel advised the preparation of submarine bases in Norway, but Dönitz gloomily replied that construction of U-boat bunkers was difficult and time consuming and that he could not count on bases in Norway with certainty. At a meeting with Keitel and Gen. Alfred Jodl a few days later, Dönitz observed that if the Allies gained freedom of movement from their bridgehead, all of France would be lost. Keitel believed that if this occurred, Germany could still hold along the West Wall; Jodl, however, was not so optimistic.37 The destruction of Army Group Center only deepened the grand admiral’s despair.
At the end of June Dönitz remarked that perhaps Army Group North should evacuate Estonia, despite the problems this would cause for Finland and control of the Baltic, or else it might suffer Army Group Center’s fate.38 He expressed this view at a situation conference with Friessner and Model at Hitler’s headquarters on 9 July. When both army group commanders pleaded to withdraw Army Group North behind the Düna, Hitler asked Dönitz what consequences the evacuation of Estonia would have for the navy. The grand admiral replied that the Narva front was of decisive importance to blockading the Gulf of Finland and pointed out related diplomatic and economic considerations in Scandinavia, as well as the significance for U-boat training. But, in a surprising reversal from all earlier declarations, he stated that possession of the Estonian coast was meaningless if the Soviets reached the Baltic in Latvia or Lithuania; the establishment of enemy air bases in that area would wrest domination of the Baltic from Germany. Nevertheless, Hitler, probably rather perplexed by this change in attitude, refused to permit the retreat. The importance of Dönitz’s comments, however, did not escape the army’s notice. Heusinger informed Kinzel that he and Zeitzler did not share Hitler’s predilection for a “Fortress Baltic States (Festung Baltikum)” and that in this connection Dönitz’s statement was helpful.39
On 11 July, still at Hitler’s headquarters, Dönitz reported that the land situation had further deteriorated and instructed Meisel to initiate planning for precautionary measures in case the Soviets reached East Prussia. The next afternoon Meisel assembled several leading naval officers to discuss this matter. Rear Adm. Eberhard Godt (U-boat operations chief) explained the importance of the eastern Baltic for the U-boat arm, disclosing that 25,000 U-boat men occupied bases in the sector Hela-Libau. Furthermore, he reported that 50–60 percent of all training took place in the same area and that there were five vital shipyards in this region. Germany’s loss of the Bay of Danzig would reduce the number of new U-boats ready for combat to twelve to fifteen per month. The navy was confronted with a dilemma of immense proportions, because submarine training could continue outside of the eastern Baltic only in an improvised manner, and training for surface vessels would be reduced by half. In addition, ports in the western Baltic were already filled to capacity, so the transfer of vessels from the East posed a seemingly insurmountable problem.40
Meisel alerted Dönitz that the following tasks faced the navy if the situation in the East continued to deteriorate: fortification of the Baltic coast; supplying Army Group North and Twentieth Mountain Army (in Finland) by sea; preparing bases for naval forces to deliver these supplies; preparations for, and if necessary carrying out, the evacuation of Army Group North and Twentieth Mountain Army by sea; evacuation of naval bases in the East, and thus the transfer of training from ports in the Baltic States and Prussia; and the evacuation of the civilian population and economic goods. Meisel pointed out that the implementation of these measures would require all of the navy’s resources and cause drastic reductions in training and merchant shipping. A few days later the Skl ordered preparations for these measures, code-named “Weissdorn” and “Rotdorn” (white and pink hawthorn, respectively).41 This was, indeed, a worst-case scenario, and that the Skl even considered it revealed Dönitz’s despair.
In the following days Dönitz displayed further signs of resignation. Upon Friessner’s request to withdraw Army Detachment Narva to the shorter line on the isthmus of Narva, instead of vigorously protesting this proposal the Skl merely noted that it had asked the Luftwaffe to support a mining operation at Hungerburg and to prevent the Soviets from building up this port as a naval base. Dönitz also ordered the erection of coastal batteries at Memel and Pillau, ap
proved a proposal to form a naval task force from training units, and agreed that vessels requiring long-term repairs should no longer be sent to shipyards in endangered ports.42 He designated the Baltic task force the Second Task Force (the First Task Force consisted of the Tirpitz and accompanying vessels in Norway). The Skl planned to create a Third Task Force, also for the Baltic.
Assmann too underwent a change of heart. He informed the Skl on 8 July that the Army General Staff deemed it essential to withdraw Army Group North behind the Düna to prevent its encirclement and to counter the threat to East Prussia. He explained that the army recognized the importance of the Estonian coast to the navy but nevertheless considered an immediate retreat an urgent necessity. Hitler would strive to retain the front along the Gulf of Finland, Assmann reported, and naval interests (shale oil, U-boat training, and control of the Baltic) played a decisive role in his decision. Adding that Hitler possibly would permit a temporary isolation of Army Group North for these reasons, he advised the Skl to investigate supplying the army group by sea.43