Although suffering heavy losses the Russians kept coming forward, but when the scattered groups of enemy soldiers were only about 80 yards away they came upon an invisible obstacle which stopped them in their tracks. There, in front of our trenches, sappers had cut down some young trees, leaving the short stumps hidden in the grass, and had attached lengths of barbed wire to them. As the Russians advanced across the belt of barbed wire, we were able to pick them off at ease. By now they were in range of our hand grenades and very soon those Ivans who were still alive began to panic. Very few of them reached the cover of the bushes and many dead and wounded littered the ground in front of our trenches. We were excited and jubilant, shouting to each other and continuing to fire into the bushes. Any enemy wounded who were still moving in no-man’s-land were shot dead. The Company Commander walked along the trench distributing cigarettes and congratulating the men.5
As the Latvians retreated, a reduced battalion from the Walloon Assault Brigade took up positions close to them around Dorpat, just south of the Narva position. The Walloon deployment was little more than a gesture, however, far too small to make any difference to the wider military situation.
As the Latvian and other Wehrmacht formations retreated, the situation of Army Detachment “Narwa” in Estonia grew ever more perilous. On 25 July the troops were ordered back to the Tannenberg Line. The Soviets, aware of the withdrawal, launched an immediate attack to catch the Germans when they were most vulnerable. As a result, the retreat did not go according to plan, and the Dutch “General Seyffardt” Regiment was surrounded and all but annihilated on the twenty-sixth.
At the center of the Tannenberg Line were several small hills forming a ridge that dominated the surrounding low-lying terrain. The Red Army hoped to exploit the confusion caused by the withdrawal and threw all its troops forward to capture the ridge. During the last days of July, III SS Panzer Corps fought its most intense battle, to secure their new position and repel the Soviets hard at their heels. At this point the newly arrived battalion from the Flanders Brigade was committed to battle.
Holding a line on the key Orphanage Hill, the Flemish troops acted as a rock against the Soviet tide. Among them was Remi Schrijnen, an antitank gun commander who had already established a reputation for coolness under fire. On 26 July he helped repel the Soviet tank advance, and a few days later he found himself the sole survivor of his antitank company. Although wounded, he continued to fire his gun single-handedly against another assault, and in a David-versus-Goliath encounter he knocked out at least eight Soviet tanks before he and his gun were put out of action by a direct hit. Although severely wounded, Schrijnen survived to receive the Knight’s Cross—one of twenty-seven such medals to be awarded during the Narva campaign.
For several days it seemed that the Tannenberg Line would fall to the Red Army. On 27 July Scholz was hit in the head by a shell splinter while supervising his division’s defense of Orphanage Hill; the Austrian commander—known to his men as “Old Fritz”—died the following day. Crisis point was reached on the twenty-ninth, with the Germans thrown back to Tower Hill, the last line of defense. It was then that Steiner committed his final reserve, led by the seven remaining tanks from Nordland’s panzer battalion.
The attack was sufficient to catch the advancing Soviet troops unawares, and their confusion was exploited by an ad hoc Kampfgruppe led by Estonian officer Hauptsturmführer Paul Maitla. The Estonians helped regain the key Grenadier Hill and bring the Red Army attack to a standstill. Maitla became another Knight’s Cross winner. On 10 August the Red Army called a halt to its offensive operations.
The German defense along the Estonian border—lasting more than seven months—was one of the few success stories for German arms during 1944, much of the credit due to Steiner’s sure handling of his III SS Panzer Corps. Events elsewhere, however, made the German position untenable. As a result of the destruction of Army Group Center in June–July, the Red Army advanced into Latvia with the intention of cutting off all German forces in Estonia. Farther north, Soviet pressure on Finland had led its government to sue for peace. On 4 September 1944 Finland agreed to a cease-fire with the Soviet Union, which opened Finnish waters to Soviet naval forces and gave them free access to the Baltic Sea.
On 14 September Army Detachment “Narwa” abandoned its positions and retreated through Estonia into Latvia, where it subsequently withdrew into the Courland Peninsula. A substantial force remained there until the end of the war, although other troops were evacuated by sea to Germany, including III SS Panzer Corps, shipped out in January 1945. They were joined by the remnants of the 15th Latvian Division and much of the Estonian Division. Some Estonians and Latvians returned to their homelands but others fought on, even though their hopes of national independence had been brutally dashed as, once more, the Soviet Union took control of the Baltic States.
THE GERMANS HAD made a significant military contribution to Finland in its war against the Soviet Union, but little had come of it after the capture of a thin strip of Soviet territory in 1941. By 1944 some 200,000 German troops of the 20th Mountain Army were stationed in Finland, but, as was the case with the Leningrad front, it had become another military sideshow. The Waffen-SS contribution to this force came from 6th SS Mountain Division Nord, deployed as part of the XVIII Mountain Corps in central Finland. The Finnish-German armies lacked the strength and will to sever the supply link from the northern ports of Murmansk and Archangel to the rest of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, they were strong enough to repel the series of relatively minor Soviet assaults made along their front during 1942–1943.
For the men of the Nord Division, this was a war of patrols and trench raids, fought across a terrain dotted with a multitude of lakes and covered by thick birch forests. In winter the troops were snowbound in their trenches and shelters, daylight lasting just a few hours at most. With the advent of spring, the melting snows turned naturally marshy ground into an impassable quagmire; in the short summers, the relief of warmer weather and firmer ground was tempered by the clouds of mosquitoes that swarmed over the landscape.
Movement over this terrain was always difficult. During the winter skis and snowshoes were essential, while in summer the men had to fight their way through thick forests. Johann Voss, a machine gunner in the division’s 11th Mountain Infantry Regiment, described a reconnaissance mission through virgin forest during the summer of 1944:
It was considered impenetrable for any substantial force. The Jägers are said to be a quick-moving unit in difficult terrain; but this terrain beat all we had experienced. The woods were full of all sorts of obstacles; trunks lying all over the ground; underbrush, rocky barriers, water and bogs, which, again and again, posed new problems for our progress. Except for the steady rumble of the artillery, the area was eerily still. The complete absence of darkness and the bizarre light of the sun lingering about the horizon for hours and hours added to the awe most of us felt as we penetrated this unknown wild.6
After their disgrace at the battle of Salla in July 1941, Waffen-SS troops in Finland were provided with reinforcements of a higher quality than the partially trained policemen and concentration-camp guards of the original Kampfgruppe Nord. The Nord Division improved sufficiently for the German Army leadership to consider it a combat-ready formation that could confidently take up its position on the front line.7 Soviet attacks during the winter of 1943–1944 were repulsed, and the division did well in holding its section of the line against the major Red Army offensive of June 1944. But it was this offensive that forced the Finnish government to conclude its previously long-drawn-out peace negotiations with the Soviets.
Finland’s cease-fire with the Soviet Union—confirmed by an armistice on 19 September—placed the German forces in Finland in an impossible position. The German high command briefly considered the idea of forming a redoubt in northern Finland but discarded it in favor of withdrawing to friendly territory in northern Norway. The transfer to Norway was made more difficult b
y the Finnish demand—in accordance with the terms of the Finnish-Soviet agreement—that all German troops must leave the country or lay down their arms by 15 September. The deadline was clearly impossible to fulfill, with conflict inevitable.
As 6th SS Mountain Division Nord vacated its frontline positions on 8 September, relations between Germans and Finns remained at a friendly level. In the village of Kuusamo, SS engineers helped bury the bells from the local church to prevent them from being stolen or destroyed by oncoming Soviet forces.8 For their part, Finnish troops helped the Germans with transportation. The chief concern faced by the retreating Germans was shrugging off roving Soviet armored columns, but after a few days of skirmishing the Nord Division was clear of the Red Army.
A mountain infantry division like Nord had limited motor transport, most troops forced to proceed on foot, and with the Norwegian border nearly 450 miles away, the march would be an epic undertaking by any standards. During September the division made good progress without opposition, but in October Finnish attitudes toward the retreating Germans became increasingly hostile. The Soviet liaison officers who had entered Finland to supervise the armistice pressured the Finnish government to make good its agreement to disarm all Germans in their country. Finnish troops began to attack German columns, while the Germans adopted a rigorous scorched-earth policy to retard the progress of those coming after them.
The town of Rovaniemi was reached on 14 October, at which point the SS troops changed direction to march due north. They crossed the Arctic Circle, and with winter on its way the struggling troops had to endure freezing winds and falling temperatures. By the end of October the division’s two infantry regiments were marching along separate roads that converged on Muonio, which from a Finnish perspective was the last point to trap the Germans before they could make their getaway into Norway. On 26 October Finnish units attacked the SS columns in strength, wiping out a supply train and killing one of the German regimental commanders. The Nord soldiers, desperate and angry, flung themselves at the Finns, who were thrown back into the woods. Muonio was held by Nord to allow all retreating Germans to begin the final leg of their march to the border undisturbed by any Finnish intervention.
Johann Voss recalled the sense of betrayal felt by his commander—called the “battalioner”—toward his former Finnish comrades in arms. A fellow soldier pointed out the village sign to Voss: “What I saw were several Finnish medals nailed to the sign, while above the word ‘Muonio’ the words ‘Das war . . . ’ (‘That was . . . ’) were crudely painted in black letters. Seeing my puzzled face he explained. It was the battalioner who had nailed up his Finnish decorations first, his officers following his example.” The order was given to destroy the village. As he marched away, Voss paused: “Standing on a spot high above Muonio, we had a view of the village, which was on fire. When the flames would eventually go out, only the church and the town sign would be left of the village on the river.”9
The division continued its northerly march without interference, finally crossing the border into Norway in the first week of November. But for the exhausted troops, their ordeal was far from over. There was no rail or motorized road transport, and the men had to march—mainly in the freezing dark—down the coastal roads of northern Norway before they reached the railhead at Mo i Rana on 10 December. There, at last, they could rest, having spent more than three months covering a total distance of just under 1,000 miles in the most arduous conditions. From Mo i Rana they traveled by rail and ship to refit in Denmark as Christmas approached. But they would have little time to rest. Their next assignment would be on the Western Front in a last-ditch attempt to repel the advancing U.S. Army.
Chapter 22
SHORING UP THE LINE
OPERATION BAGRATION—the Red Army’s offensive in Belorussia—was launched on 22 June 1944 (the third anniversary of Barbarossa) and in a matter of weeks destroyed Army Group Center, the Germans suffering 400,000 casualties. The German disaster sucked in all available reserves, including Totenkopf and Wiking, to help fill the gap created by the Soviet breakthrough. In July the Red Army extended the scope of the offensive to include northern Ukraine, a blow directed at the German line in front of Lemberg (L’viv). As a consequence of the emergency in Belorussia, the defenders had few tanks and virtually no air cover. Holding the area around the Ukrainian town of Brody was the German XIII Army Corps, which had recently been joined by the Ukrainian 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.
In April 1944 the Ukrainian Division had a strength of 14,000 officers and men, slightly under the regulation figure for a 1944-pattern infantry division. It comprised three infantry regiments (Waffen Grenadier Regiments 29, 30, and 31), an artillery regiment, and some basic support services, although the latter contained just a single antitank company. Under the command of Brigadeführer Fritz Freitag, the bulk of the division (11,000 strong) was committed to positions just south of Brody.
On 13 July Soviet armored formations—supported by massed squadrons from the Red Air Force—drove into XIII Corps. The German line buckled on each side of Brody, and units from the Ukrainian 14th Division were deployed in a piecemeal fashion to reinforce the wavering army formations. On 15 July the 30th Waffen Grenadier Regiment was the first Ukrainian unit to be sent forward to aid the 349th Infantry Division, all the while coming under heavy artillery fire and repeated aerial attack.
On the following day a platoon commander described the chaotic scenes encountered by the 30th Regiment: “Towards morning it passed Sasiv and had to plough through German soldiers running away from the front. Some were without weapons, many shouting that the Russians were not far behind and that we should turn back, some were sitting and staring, some were even crying. This was a very demoralizing example, especially for our soldiers from the ‘Galician Division’ who had never seen real fighting and its cruelties.”1
On arrival at the front the 30th Regiment was immediately thrown into action without any preliminary reconnaissance. Advancing in the open, the regiment was caught by a Soviet tank attack and badly mauled, with command and communications breaking down irrevocably. The other two infantry regiments were then committed to battle, having some success in holding the Soviet advance. An NCO on the staff of the 29th Regiment took up a position with his men and a heavy-weapons company to fend off an attack that was headed by a Soviet penal battalion, emboldened by extra vodka rations:
From our concealed position we watched the Soviets attack, against all military training in tight formation stumbling and shouting obscenities. With cries of U-r-r-a! the drunken ranks of the Soviets were advancing one after the other not bothering to fall to the ground and take cover. We waited in silence until they got to within 100 meters of us and then opened fire from the flank with seven MG42s. They were taken completely by surprise and within minutes the remaining Soviets were fleeing in panic into the wood leaving some fifty corpses on the battlefield.2
This was an isolated success. The Red Army pushed onward, encircling 30,000 German and Ukrainian troops in the Brody pocket by 18 July. Attempts were made to relieve the pocket, but they were poorly handled, leaving the trapped soldiers to fend for themselves. Within the Ukrainian Division, Freitag and his staff found communications increasingly difficult, as Colonel Heicke, the chief operations officer, explained: “Telephone lines had been shredded so completely that only radios could be used. But the radio sets began to overload and would not function, so orders had to be transmitted by courier.”3
As Soviet pressure increased, the strain on the inexperienced Ukrainian soldiers began to reach breaking point. This was acknowledged by Heicke: “Reports kept coming in from unit commanders saying they could no longer hold their positions. It became apparent that the Ukrainians were not psychologically prepared for such heavy fighting. More could not be expected of them, since many German units had panicked as well.”4
On 19 July General Hauffe, the XIII Corps commander, made plans for a breakout on the following day and in the evening
radioed Freitag for a situation report. To Heike’s amazement—“I could hardly believe my ears”—Freitag calmly informed Hauffe that his troops were no longer under his control, and consequently he was resigning his command.5 Instead of having Freitag arrested for gross dereliction of duty, Hauffe tamely accepted the resignation and placed him on the corps staff. Leadership of the Ukrainian Division temporarily passed to Major General Lindemann of the 361st Division.
The scheduled breakout attempt on 20 July was repelled. On the following day a renewed attempt saw the breakup of the division, although this did allow small groups of Ukrainians to flee through the still fluid Soviet lines. The pocket was eliminated on 22 July, with 2,807 Ukrainians managing to reach safety, joined by a further 800 survivors over the next few days.
After the battle, recriminations began in earnest with General Lange, commander of the broken 349th Division, blaming the conduct of the Ukrainian Division in the strongest terms. His condemnations were joined by those of Freitag himself—much to Heike’s disgust.6 Himmler, however, rejected the complaints out of hand, relying on other, seemingly more reliable, sources that suggested the division had fought as well as possible in the circumstances. Freitag pleaded to be allowed to return to the SS Polizei Division, but Himmler reinstated him as commander of the Ukrainian Division and, by way of encouragement, cynically handed him a Knight’s Cross for his “leadership” at Brody.
Himmler was determined to rebuild the division, kick-starting the process with the dispatch of 1,000 German officers and NCOs. And the old idea that it was somehow not actually Ukrainian was abandoned (the official title of “Galician No. 1” was replaced by “Ukrainian No. 1”), and the troops were allowed to wear various Ukrainian national symbols. By 20 September 1944 it was on the way to reaching its authorized strength of 14,689 in all ranks, although weapons and heavy equipment remained in short supply.7 Training was still ongoing when the reconstituted division was ordered to Slovakia, its next battleground.
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