by David Grier
Although one might argue that in these instances Hitler had no other choice, the case of Army Group North is even more telling. German armies in Finland, France, and the Balkans had not previously lost land contact with the rest of the front; Hitler ordered their withdrawal before this took place. But Army Group North had already been isolated in August 1944 and withdrew from Estonia on Schörner’s initiative in September, only to have its land link to the Reich severed a second time in October. To date, this was the largest German force isolated by the Soviets, far exceeding the 240,000–275,000 troops of Sixth Army surrounded at Stalingrad.68 Why would Hitler suddenly withdraw from entire regions when he had earlier insisted on defending nearly all German-held territory so tenaciously?
The answer perhaps lies on the beaches of Normandy and in the forests of Belgium and Luxembourg. Hitler had never wanted a multifront war, and despite enemy landings in Sicily and Italy in the summer of 1943, he did not have to worry too much about an Allied landing in Western Europe until 1943. In that year and in 1944, however, Hitler stationed more, and better quality, troops in the West to repulse an expected Allied invasion. He genuinely believed that he would smash the invasion force. Recognizing that the Allies would not be able to launch another cross-channel assault soon, he could then transfer an estimated forty divisions to the East, with which he planned to regain the initiative and recapture the Ukraine.69 Not only Hitler but several of his generals also believed this could be accomplished.70 With this in mind, why should he give up territory that Germany would only have to recapture, and, in Hitler’s view, fairly soon?
The Allied invasion, however, succeeded, and Hitler had to revise his plans. He did so, but he clung to his initial conviction that an offensive in the West provided the best chance for a decisive victory, one capable of turning the tide in Germany’s favor. He decided to launch an assault in the West already at the end of July, on the day the Americans captured Avranches. The idea for the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the Bulge) was Hitler’s and his alone.71 Several members of Hitler’s entourage attest to his conviction that the attack would succeed.72 Despite the colossal defeats Germany suffered in the summer of 1944, by early autumn the front had begun to stabilize in the West. Hitler probably thought that he had brought his armies back from France in good order. The Allies were certainly stunned by the Germans’ resilience, as painfully demonstrated during Operation “Market-Garden” in Holland, where success surely boosted Hitler’s confidence.
The most important point to bear in mind regarding Hitler’s plan to attack is the timing of the operation. On 16 September Hitler announced his decision to launch the offensive in the Ardennes, designed to seize the port of Antwerp and produce a second Dunkirk (minus the evacuation). He intended to begin the assault in November and commanded the Luftwaffe to assemble 1,500 fighters by the first day of that month.73 This was precisely the period in which Hitler delayed his consent to Schörner’s requests to evacuate Estonia. If the army group could hold on for only a little longer, it would not have to reconquer Estonia in the near future. On 25 September Hitler established the date for the Ardennes offensive as between 20 and 30 November and instructed Jodl to prepare the operational orders. Jodl submitted his draft on 9 October, the day before Soviet tanks reached the Baltic near Memel. Finally, on 22 October, two days after ordering Schörner’s army group to remain in Courland, Hitler decided to begin the attack in the West on 25 November, barely a month away.74 Several of Hitler’s entourage verify his confidence in the outcome of the attack at this time. In early September Goebbels declared that he shared Hitler’s conviction that the coming winter would bring Germany total victory. Speer stated that on 12 October Hitler confidentially informed him of the upcoming offensive, emphasizing that this would be a decisive blow. Finally, less than a week after Army Group North went over to the defense in Courland, Goebbels again expressed optimism, maintaining that the most important thing was to weather the next two to three months.75
At the time Hitler ordered Schörner to defend Courland, therefore, preparations for the Ardennes Offensive were in high gear. By seizing Antwerp, German armies would cut the supply lines of the British Second Army, Canadian First Army, American Ninth Army, and most of the U.S. First Army. Twenty to thirty Allied divisions then would be ripe for destruction. Hitler believed that after the annihilation of its army, a war-weary Britain would have no option other than to quit the war. The Americans, with little heart for war, would withdraw across the Atlantic following this defeat.76 Then, for the first time, Hitler could concentrate Germany’s entire armed might against the Soviet Union. Perhaps Hitler was looking to the future when he ordered Army Group North to remain in Courland. In response to the army’s pleas for Schörner’s forces to break through to East Prussia, Hitler claimed that he anticipated a change in the situation soon, at which point he would need the army group to fall upon the Russians’ exposed flank.77 This change in the situation almost certainly referred to the coming offensive in the West. Since Hitler assumed the attack would succeed, after driving the Anglo-Americans from the continent he could shift his forces to the East to settle with Russia. Once his reinforced eastern armies had burst through the Soviet lines, Army Group Courland could break out from its bridgehead in Latvia and fall upon the rear of a demoralized Russian army. The soldiers of Army Group Courland, as Hitler knew, were neither sixty-year-old Volkssturm nor fourteen-year-old Hitler Youth but nearly half a million veterans of warfare on the Eastern Front. Guderian attests that these men were good, experienced troops, full of fighting power.78
Although there is little direct evidence to substantiate this theory, the timing of the evacuations from Courland, an analogy from the previous year, and an assignment Hitler gave to Speer provide evidence that could support it. On 16 January 1945, following the failure of the Ardennes offensive Hitler returned to Berlin. On the same day he ordered one armored and two infantry divisions withdrawn from Courland. Two weeks later three additional divisions, a brigade, and a corps staff had received instructions for shipment to Germany. The previous month, however, Hitler had refused to evacuate some of these very units.79 In the period from mid-January to mid-March 1945 Hitler ordered ten to eleven divisions, one brigade, and three corps staffs withdrawn from Courland, approximately a third of the army group’s units. Yet from mid-October 1944 to mid-January 1945 only three to four divisions had been brought back to the Reich. It is possible that once Hitler accepted that the offensive in the West had failed, he realized the Courland divisions would be unable to launch an attack in the near future and should return to Germany, leaving behind a smaller force to deny Courland’s ports to the Soviets.
The decision to retain Courland also bears a striking similarity to Hitler’s order to defend the Kuban bridgehead two years earlier. The Soviet offensive that trapped Sixth Army at Stalingrad in November 1942 threatened Germany’s entire southern wing on the Eastern Front. Army Group A, commanded by Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist and consisting of Seventeenth and First Panzer armies, then held positions on the eastern coast of the Black Sea and in the Caucasus, far south of the Don River. Hitler continued to delay Army Group A’s withdrawal until Zeitzler ordered Kleist to retreat to the Kuban on 13 January 1943. By the middle of February Seventeenth Army, with some 400,000 troops, fewer than were later isolated in Courland, had withdrawn to the Gotenkopf Position in the Kuban.80 Hitler ordered Seventeenth Army to remain and defend the Kuban Peninsula. Not until September 1943 did he order the evacuation of the Gotenkopf Position. By the end of the month Seventeenth Army had completed its withdrawal south of the Don, except for a small bridgehead on the Taman Peninsula that was given up on 10 October.81
The main reason Hitler decided to hold a bridgehead in the Kuban was that he planned to attack from this position later. In the spring of 1943 he instructed Speer to build a road and railroad bridge across the Strait of Kerch, divulging that he would launch an offensive from the Kuban.82 At the end of July, after the German attack at
Kursk had failed, Hitler still refused to evacuate the Kuban, despite Zeitzler’s insistence that it no longer fulfilled its primary task since Germany could not mount an attack from there.83 Hitler’s chief goal in the 1942 summer offensive in southern Russia had been to seize the oil fields in the Caucasus. The assault had bogged down, and then the Soviets thwarted his plan with their offensive at Stalingrad. But in Hitler’s eyes this was only a temporary setback: he still intended to launch a future attack from the Kuban to capture the oil fields. Petroleum extracted from the Caucasus would fuel Germany’s industry and military, and its loss would cripple Russia. Retaining a position in the Kuban meant that his troops would not have to force the Don River and the Kerch Straits and fight for the same territory all over again. Stalingrad was obviously another site Hitler considered extremely important, and one reason for holding out there bore resemblance to the Kuban. He claimed that to recapture the city in 1943 would require even greater sacrifices than had already been made. This also was a factor in the Crimea’s defense.84 Similarly, the troops defending Memel believed the main reason they continued to retain the bridgehead was so that Army Group North could break out of Courland as part of a major flank attack against the Soviets.85 Hitler might have been willing to sacrifice a couple of divisions here and there to serve as a Wellenbrecher, but when he allowed the Soviets to isolate entire armies, as at Kuban and in Courland, he had an attack in mind.
This corresponds with Hitler’s conception of how to wage war. Hitler consistently adhered to the principle of the attack, and he asserted that since the war began, his policy had always been to conduct it offensively. In speeches to his generals immediately before the Ardennes Offensive and prior to the subsequent attack in Alsace, Hitler emphasized that Germany could not win the war defensively.86 Even after the failure of these attacks, Hitler was determined to fight offensively on the Eastern Front. He clung to his belief that one day he would recapture the territories lost to the Soviets. He refused Reinhardt’s request to withdraw Fourth Army on 20 January 1945, because that would sacrifice German land that later must be reconquered.87 Throughout 1945 Hitler attempted offensive operations in the East. Examples include attacks in Hungary, the ill-fated Stargard offensive from Pomerania, and Schörner’s attacks in Silesia. Despite Guderian’s opposition, he insisted upon the offensive in Hungary to safeguard Germany’s oil supply. Hitler also hoped to gain a shorter line there and free a dozen divisions to recapture Soviet territorial gains in eastern Germany. Shortly before the Soviets lunched their massive offensive in January 1945, Hitler announced his intention to use the next year’s recruits to replenish fifty of his best divisions as an offensive force for attacks on all fronts.88
Finally, on 19 August 1944, three days after he ordered the withdrawal from southern France, Hitler instructed Speer to prepare a report evaluating the consequences of further territorial losses upon armaments production, primarily regarding the availability of metals and ores. Speer assumed that Germany would retain parts of Hungary, Croatia, and northern Italy. His study, however, also provided information on armaments production should Germany lose Finland, Norway, and the rest of the Balkans, and obtain no more raw materials from Sweden, Spain, or Portugal. Speer reported that the most critical shortage would be in chromium but that stocks existed to guarantee delivery of weapons up to 1 January 1946. Speer submitted this study on 5 September.89 The timing of Hitler’s order to Speer to prepare this report coincides too closely with his permission to withdraw from southern France, the Balkans, and Finland to be a coincidence. With plans for the Ardennes Offensive nearly completed, Hitler made crucial decisions regarding which areas he must hold to continue the war successfully. It was also the period when Hitler had to decide what to do with Schörner’s army group in the Baltic States. No economic goods essential for the armaments industry came from Courland. If he was retreating from Finland, with its nickel deposits, then he must have found Courland indispensable for reasons other than economic ones.
CHAPTER 8
The Swedish Question
SWEDEN’S ROLE IN WORLD WAR II has evoked little interest outside of that country. Although we now know this nation would never enter the war, Hitler and Dönitz could not count on this. For Hitler Sweden represented a valuable source of raw materials and manufactured goods, as well as a possible threat to Germany’s position in Norway. To Dönitz this politically unreliable nation’s location potentially endangered the navy’s U-boat training areas in the Baltic. Particularly in the final stage of the war, both Hitler and Dönitz endeavored to ensure at all costs that Sweden remained neutral.
On several occasions Hitler claimed a political motive for retaining a foothold in the Baltic States. He feared that withdrawing from Estonia, and later from Courland, would adversely affect Sweden’s attitude. Hitler believed that the presence of German troops in the Baltic States deterred Sweden from cutting off ore imports. On 5 September 1944, when Army Group North wished to evacuate Estonia in the wake of Finland’s surrender, Hitler insisted that holding the current positions in that sector was politically important as a way of exerting influence on Sweden. Two days later Natzmer phoned OKH to check on the army group’s request to retreat; Berlin replied that Guderian had attempted to convince Hitler to give up the Baltic States but that Hitler had again brought up his concern for Sweden. In the winter and spring of 1945 Hitler returned to this theme, at times responding to Guderian’s demands to evacuate Courland by insisting that only the presence of the Courland armies prevented Sweden from declaring war on Germany.1 To understand why Hitler feared Swedish belligerence and whether the Swedes had given him cause for suspicion, a brief review of Sweden’s policy since 1939 is necessary.
Upon the outbreak of war Sweden declared its neutrality and continued to trade with both Britain and Germany. Sweden experienced few problems until the end of November 1939, when the Soviet Union attacked Finland. Sweden found itself in a precarious situation during the Winter War, as it had long maintained very close ties to Finland and traditionally feared Russia. The Swedish government was willing to assist the Finns in almost any way possible, short of war. Sweden provided Finland with substantial aid and sent large quantities of arms and ammunition, seriously depleting its own stocks. The Winter War also brought difficulty on the diplomatic front. Determined to prevent Swedish belligerency, Germany sent several thinly veiled threats demanding that Sweden remain neutral. Hitler feared that Sweden’s entry into the war would jeopardize the delivery of iron ore and that if Russia attacked Sweden, it would be difficult for the Swedes to refuse Allied offers to intervene in Scandinavia. The Germans warned the Swedish government that they would take swift action if Allied troops entered the country. Hitler’s anxiety in this matter was justified, because the British and French made repeated requests that Allied troops be allowed to pass through Sweden to aid Finland; Sweden refused them.2 The end of the Winter War in March 1940 did not lessen the danger to Sweden, for on 9 April Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark. Although a Swedish military attaché had alerted Defense Minister Per Edvin Sköld, this warning went unheeded.3 Sweden’s military position at this time was even worse than in autumn 1939. Southern Sweden was virtually defenseless, because the Swedes had concentrated their army in the north during the Winter War, and the delivery of arms and ammunition to Finland had deprived Sweden of a significant proportion of the supplies needed for its own defense.4
Admiral Raeder provided Hitler with convincing naval arguments for the occupation of Norway, but Hitler’s interest in guaranteeing supplies of Swedish iron also played a role.5 The Winter War and the danger of Allied intervention in Scandinavia had revealed the threat to Germany’s ore imports. Swedish iron ore reached Germany by two main routes. The Swedes shipped some from ports in the Gulf of Bothnia, mainly Luleå, but most of these ports were closed nearly half the year due to ice. The preferred route was to send the ore to the Norwegian port of Narvik, ice free throughout the year, for transshipment to Germany. Yet with the outbre
ak of war the Narvik route proved vulnerable to British interference.
Churchill considered halting iron ore shipments to Germany decisive. The British predicted that without these imports German production would cease within months, if not weeks (an assessment that greatly exaggerated the importance of Swedish iron ore to Germany’s war economy). In April 1939 British trade envoys tactlessly warned the Swedes that in the event of war, Britain might have to destroy the iron mines. A major reason for Britain’s interest in assisting Finland during the Winter War was to occupy Sweden’s iron mines.6 In the end the British decided not to take military action against Sweden, but they did mine Norway’s coastal waters and planned to sabotage port facilities at Oxelösund, an ice-free port on Sweden’s southeastern coast from which Germany received ore.7 During the fighting in Norway in the spring of 1940 the British destroyed port installations at Narvik, significantly reducing its capacity for ore shipments.
Swedish iron ore was of a very high quality, having an iron content of nearly 60 percent, compared to 30 percent for German ores. Germany obtained most of its iron ore from the Reich and Nazi-occupied areas, but about 80 percent of the iron ore it did import came from Sweden. Another vital import was ball bearings. The Nazis received no more than 10 percent of their ball bearings from the Swedes, but these bearings were of the types Germany lacked later in the war due to Allied air raids. Germany also imported from Sweden high-grade steel, finished copper, sulfur, and timber.8