Courland Pocket
In 1944 some 200,000 German soldiers at the Eastern Front were trapped in the Courland Pocket by the Red Army of the Soviet Union. They were besieged with their backs to the Baltic Sea until the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945.
Background
At the start of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, Courland, along with the rest of the Baltic eastern coast, was overrun by Army Group North headed by Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb. In 1944, the Red Army lifted the siege of Leningrad and in Operation Bagration re-conquered the Baltic area along with much of Ukraine and Belarus.
Isolation of Courland
Towards the end of Operation Bagration, on Tuesday 10 October 1944 the Red Army reached the Baltic near Memel and cut off Army Group North (26 divisions, some 200,000 men) for the rest of the war in the Courland Pocket[1].
Battles of the Courland Pocket
There were 6 major battles in the Courland Pocket between 15 October 1944 and 4 April 1945:
- The first from 15 October to 22 October
- The second from 27 October to 25 November
- The third from 23 December to 31 December
- The fourth from 23 January to 3 February
- The fifth from 12 February to 19 February
- The sixth from 17 March to 4 April
No Evacuation and Final Surrender
Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, the Chief of the German General Staff, insisted to Adolf Hitler that the troops in Courland should be evacuated by sea and used for the defense of the Third Reich. However, Hitler refused and ordered the German forces in Courland to hold out. He believed them necessary to protect German submarine bases along the Baltic coast.
On January 15, 1945, Army Group North was renamed Army Group Courland (Heeresgruppe Kurland) under Colonel-General Dr. Lothar Rendulic. Until the end of the war, Army Group Courland (including divisions such as the Latvian Freiwilligen SS Legion) successfully defended the Latvian peninsula. It held out until May 9, 1945, when it surrendered under Colonel-General Carl Hilpert, the army group's last commander. He surrendered to Marshal Leonid Govorov, the commander of opposing Soviet forces on the Courland perimeter. At this time the group still consisted of some 31 divisions of varying strength.
Aftermath
After May 9, 1945 approximately 203,000 troops of Army Group Courland began moving to Soviet prison camps in the East. The majority of them never returned to Germany[citation needed].
Soviet forces lost approximately 390 000 dead, wounded or captured, 2700 tanks, 720 aircraft, 1120 artilery items and more than 1500 small arms.
A number of German, Estonian and Latvian soldiers evaded capture and joined the Forest Brothers resistance that waged guerrilla warfare against the Soviets for several years after the war.