The defence of Narva-the final countdown of army group NORTH

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Doppleganger
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#31

Post by Doppleganger » 29 Jan 2006, 13:18

Andreas wrote:I have yet to come across a single military historian who thinks that leaving AG North/Kurland in the baltics was a good idea. As always, the force their could be neutralised by much lower numbers of Soviet soldiers, because they no longer posed an operational threat. It was clear they would never attack again.

German generals such as Guderian argued with Hitler to have the forces withdrawn from the peninsula. Inserting the divisions into the Vistula defenses may well have prevented the total rout that ensued after the launch of the Vistula-Oder operation, and enabled the Wehrmacht to hold some of the intermediate defensive lines (see e.g. Magenheimer 'Abwehrschlacht an der Weichsel 1945' or Duffy 'Red Storm on the Reich' for the problems the Wehrmacht had in manning the defenses between the Vistula and the Oder.

A total waste of lives and combat power.
Agreed. When Guderian was Chief of the OKH he argued passionately with Hitler to have those forces withdrawn so that they could be used more productively. The Red Army by this point was beginning to run low on manpower. Although it was far, far too late for any kind of victory, a slowing down of the Red Army advance may have meant a more favourable post-war position for Germany.

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#32

Post by Terranix » 29 Jan 2006, 18:53

Doppleganger wrote:
Andreas wrote:I have yet to come across a single military historian who thinks that leaving AG North/Kurland in the baltics was a good idea. As always, the force their could be neutralised by much lower numbers of Soviet soldiers, because they no longer posed an operational threat. It was clear they would never attack again.

German generals such as Guderian argued with Hitler to have the forces withdrawn from the peninsula. Inserting the divisions into the Vistula defenses may well have prevented the total rout that ensued after the launch of the Vistula-Oder operation, and enabled the Wehrmacht to hold some of the intermediate defensive lines (see e.g. Magenheimer 'Abwehrschlacht an der Weichsel 1945' or Duffy 'Red Storm on the Reich' for the problems the Wehrmacht had in manning the defenses between the Vistula and the Oder.

A total waste of lives and combat power.
Agreed. When Guderian was Chief of the OKH he argued passionately with Hitler to have those forces withdrawn so that they could be used more productively. The Red Army by this point was beginning to run low on manpower. Although it was far, far too late for any kind of victory, a slowing down of the Red Army advance may have meant a more favourable post-war position for Germany.
For a military historian that sees value in the Kurland bridgehead I would again point to Franz Kurowski. As for the issue of slowing the Red Army and it being low on manpower etc.: five Soviet army groups were held up trying (and failing) to capture Kurland. If that manpower had not been needed there, it would have been directed against Germany and Silesia.

This is what I posted on the previous page in response to the guy you quoted:

Donitz, after being asked by Hitler what the effect of a Bolshevik breakthrough to the Baltic would be, said that "control of the Baltic Sea is essential for the importation of Swedish ore which we urgently need for our armament production."

He then said that "In addition, it is critical for the rebuilt submarine forces. The most westward position that still allows us to screen the Gulf of Finland against the Russian fleet is east of Reval. Enemy strongpoints on the Baltic in our immediate proximity in Lithuania or East Prussia would threaten the shipment of ore from Norway and Sweden and, ultimately, stop it completely."

His conclusion was that with the enemy threatening their flanks in the Baltic from Lithuanian airfields it would be completely impossible to supply Heeresgruppe Nord and the Lappland-Armee. Looking at long term strategic things like the viability of forces in Finland and ore for the armaments industry dosen't seem terribly important when we look back and see how little time the war had left to run, but it might have gone even quicker had such manufacture ceased. Similarly it seems a little off to say that the army group in Kurland would have been better off in Germany--some five Soviet army groups (about ten armies, right?) were involved in six large-scale conflagrations trying to seize the area. Nord's diverting these forces (which were by no means merely attempting to contain the area) probably slowed things up just as much as its presence on the front-line would have. Perhaps more so.

Someone mentioned earlier that no military historian saw the sense in the having forces there--Franz Kurowski contends in Bridgehead Kurland that without them Kurland would have fallen rapidly and the Red Army "would have been in a position to close the ring around Konigsberg (Kaliningrad), destroy Memel and Danzig (Gdansk) and, above all, prevent the evacuation of German formations and civilians from the Hela peninsula long before it finally did. The defence of Kurland created the prerequisite for saving 2.5 million Germans from the eastern part of Germany and allowing the transportation of a number of German formations back to the homeland. Hundreds of thousands of wounded and nearly 3.5 million German soldiers would have been lost - perhaps forever - in the vast expanse of Russia had not the defenders of Kurland held out for so long. These facts alone prove the value of having created a ''Fortress Kurland''."


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#33

Post by Andreas » 30 Jan 2006, 14:45

Terranix wrote:For a military historian that sees value in the Kurland bridgehead I would again point to Franz Kurowski.
You can point to Frnaz Kurowski as much as you like, but that won't ever make him a military historian. He is a writer about military history who specialises in ra-ra books on German military exploits (Tank Aces, anyone?). When I say 'historian', I mean serious scholars. If Franz Kurowski qualifies for the title, I am going to qualify for a PhD in the topic of military history based on my posts here.
Terranix wrote:As for the issue of slowing the Red Army and it being low on manpower etc.: five Soviet army groups were held up trying (and failing) to capture Kurland. If that manpower had not been needed there, it would have been directed against Germany and Silesia.
Five Army Groups? Which ones would those be, in 1944/5? In any case, I never heard of Soviet 'Army Groups'. They had armies, and then they had fronts, but no Army Groups. The Fronts were the formations roughly comparable to a German Army Group in terms of mission and level in the hierarchy, but normally not in size and geographical coverage, for most of the war. At most you would have three Fronts involved, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Baltic. As this map ( http://www.military.com/Resources/Resou ... erview.htm ) shows, 1st Baltic also was not fully committed against AG Kurland. As this map ( http://www.military.com/Resources/Resou ... _map31.htm ) shows, in late 44 there were at most six-eight Armies directly committed against AG North in late 1944. A Soviet Army at this stage is probably comparable to a German Armeekorps - it really depends on its allocated resources. As is well-known, the Red Army could be very frugal when it came to allocating resources, preferring to give lavishly to those formations on a critical axis, while others received much less. So unless someone can show us some numbers here, I will work from an assumption that the armies in the Baltic sector were resource-starved in terms of non-organic support and replacements, compared to those in Poland/Germany, from late 1944 when the cutting off of AG North had succeeded. So, please show some numbers on the actual manpower of the Soviet formations engaged against AG Kurland.

Edit: Just thought of Qvist's excellent thread regarding Soviet Front strengths at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=83300 - it indicates the following:

1) Only 1st & 2nd Baltic were engaged against AG North after October 1945, when 3rd Baltic was dissolved
2) There was still a Leningrad Front with 607,000 men in 1945. I thought that had been dissolved earlier and find this surprising, but according to this website with Sovinform bulletins ( http://eng.9may.ru/15.05.1945/eng_inform/ ) the Leningrad Front received the POWs of AG Kurland - note that there is no mention of any Baltic Fronts. What happened to them? Is Leningrad Front additional, or a renamed 1st/2nd Baltic Front?
3) The combined average annual strength of 1st & 2nd Baltic in 1945 was 562,000 men.
4) POWs received were 190,000, give or take. Add to this formations that were sent back to Germany in 1945, and German soldiers who escaped to Sweden, to arrive at German strength numbers.

As for the idea that the Baltic Sea was needed to train submarines - that was the argument advanced by Dönitz. Guderian did not buy it then, and I see no reason to doubt his judgement now. The U-Boats had become a liability following 1943, not an asset. To waste scarce manpower on protecting their training ground was madness, especially if that left the central axis towards Berlin dangerously exposed. Dönitz argument was about what was best for his arm of service, not about what was best for Germany.

All the best

Andreas

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#34

Post by Terranix » 30 Jan 2006, 16:10

Andreas wrote:You can point to Frnaz Kurowski as much as you like, but that won't ever make him a military historian. He is a writer about military history who specialises in ra-ra books on German military exploits (Tank Aces, anyone?). When I say 'historian', I mean serious scholars. If Franz Kurowski qualifies for the title, I am going to qualify for a PhD in the topic of military history based on my posts here.
Fair enough. I'm just trying to play Devil's Advocate a bit, here.
As for the idea that the Baltic Sea was needed to train submarines - that was the argument advanced by Dönitz. Guderian did not buy it then, and I see no reason to doubt his judgement now. The U-Boats had become a liability following 1943, not an asset. To waste scarce manpower on protecting their training ground was madness, especially if that left the central axis towards Berlin dangerously exposed. Dönitz argument was about what was best for his arm of service, not about what was best for Germany.
I had thought the notion that Admiral Dönitz demanded the Baltic kept for a U-boat training ground was a myth? His position had a lot more, as I understood it, to do with the area needing so be secured to that coastal evacuations of formations on East Prussia and the Baltic could continue to be carried out safely and the Swedish iron ore vital to the armaments industry could continue to ship. He only spoke about the U-boats in the context of their being needed to screen the Gulf of Finland.

Could you provide us with any economic statistics showing the effect of these imports being stopped around the time the abandonment of Kurland would have been likely to occur without orders to hold it? It seems unlikely that they would have been tenable if the Baltic became as dangerous as the Black Sea.

Also, Kurowski (I leave it to you to discredit this because I lack the knowledge myself) puts forward the claim that without any presence in Balticum the defence of East Prussia would have gone a lot worse, a lot of the German formations that retreated to Konigsberg, Danzig etc. to later be largely evacuated being cut off etc.

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#35

Post by Andreas » 30 Jan 2006, 16:47

Terranix wrote:Could you provide us with any economic statistics showing the effect of these imports being stopped around the time the abandonment of Kurland would have been likely to occur without orders to hold it? It seems unlikely that they would have been tenable if the Baltic became as dangerous as the Black Sea.
No I can not, but a quick look at a map of the Baltic should show that the western part of Baltic would have been relatively easy to defend, even if the Kurland pocket had been given up. A very different proposition from the Black Sea. This would have covered routes to western/southern Sweden and Norway. The route to Stockholm was in any case under threat because of the loss of Estonia in 1944. So I really do not see what difference holding Kurland made, except that it made the route of Soviet vessels and subs into the Baltic longer (since they could not easily use the western-most harbours along the coast). It did not block them. The second map I linked to shows this very clearly. The islands of Dagö, Ösel and Moon were lost in July 1944, and they were the block on the Riga naval base.
Terranix wrote:Also, Kurowski (I leave it to you to discredit this because I lack the knowledge myself) puts forward the claim that without any presence in Balticum the defence of East Prussia would have gone a lot worse, a lot of the German formations that retreated to Konigsberg, Danzig etc. to later be largely evacuated being cut off etc.
All this happened in the last few days, and considering the way it went, I am not sure how much worse it could have been. In any case, if we are talking about a retreat from the Kurland pocket in late 1944, after the land-bridge was lost, I can see no reason why this should have led to any cutting off, since the units defending East Prussia had to cover their own flanks - AG Kurland was not doing it for them, after autumn 1944.

All the best

Andreas

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Qvist
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#36

Post by Qvist » 02 Feb 2006, 12:28

As for the issue of slowing the Red Army and it being low on manpower etc.: five Soviet army groups were held up trying (and failing) to capture Kurland. If that manpower had not been needed there, it would have been directed against Germany and Silesia.
One thing that is important to bear in mind with "tying-down" arguments is that this is very difficult to turn into a winning proposition for an army that is strongly outnumbered overall. In very simple terms, at this point in the war, the Red Army fielded forces 3 to 4 times stronger than the Germans. As long as they could keep the Kurland bridgehead pinned with forces less disproportionately large than that (which I presume they did, though I have never seen any specific strength figures), it was in practice the Germans who were being tied down.

The Kurland bridgehead was a stronger (relative) drain on the German strength than it was on the Soviet, and if both sides had transferred their forces there to the main front, the result would have been a more favorable force situation for the Germans. Hence, the "tying-down" argument seems essentially self-defeating.

It seems this kind of argument are bandied about somewhat lightly by many historians. With the Italian campaign, one (rather absurdly) frequently come across the argument applied to both combatants - the allied campaign in Italy was justified because it tied down such large German forces, and the German defence of Italy had an element of success because it tied down such large allied forces. That doesn't work - "tying down" enemy forces is only an advantage if it is achieved to a disproportionate degree (ie, more enemy forces engaged by fewer of your own than can generally be reckoned with considering the overall relation of forces, so that the result is better odds elsewhere) and this is something that can benefit only one side, or alternatively, neither side.

There can of course be other advantages involved, such as buying time (Stalingrad) or maintaining political face (the Crimea) or knocking Italy outof the war (Italian campaign). But that's a different matter. And it is perhaps rather telling that the "tying down enemy forces" argument is usually invoked in cases where it is difficult to see other kinds of justification, and then often without being accompanied by the kind of analysis that this line of argument requires.

Finally, the notion that HG Kurland could in any sense pose a meaningful flank threat that the soviets could not easily find the means to contain ignores the basic realities of both the vast gap in forces and capabilities between the two combatants at this point, and also of the state and strength of the forces bottled up in Kurland. And then we haven't even started talking about the surrealistic nightmare inherent in a logistic buildup across the Baltic sea, at a time when Germany was falling to pieces in terms of infrastructure and material resources.

cheers
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#37

Post by Qvist » 02 Feb 2006, 13:39

His conclusion was that with the enemy threatening their flanks in the Baltic from Lithuanian airfields it would be completely impossible to supply Heeresgruppe Nord and the Lappland-Armee. Looking at long term strategic things like the viability of forces in Finland and ore for the armaments industry dosen't seem terribly important when we look back and see how little time the war had left to run, but it might have gone even quicker had such manufacture ceased.
One should take care about taking this sort of argument at face value. It is clear that the loss of the whole Eastern Baltic seaboard would have adverse effects on Dönitz' area of competence in many ways, and he can be expected to have employed every argument he could think of to maximum effect. None of his arguments here seem very relevant to the issue at large. The Soviets did get the use of the lithuanian airfields - Kurland is in Latvia. The Lappland-Armee had to withdraw into Norway in any case when the Finns withdrew from the war in 1944 (which they did at about the same time as the operations leading to the bridgehead being formed), after the which the Baltic was irrelevant to its supply. And it is hard to see how the Kurland bridgehead had any really fundamental effect on the iron ore issue.

In fact, Dönitz' comments do not appear to pertain to the issue of the Kurland bridgehead at all, but rather to the wider issue of the importance of keeping control over the Baltic seaboard. But that was already lost during the early autumn, and was not reversed by holding on to Kurland.
Similarly it seems a little off to say that the army group in Kurland would have been better off in Germany--some five Soviet army groups (about ten armies, right?) were involved in six large-scale conflagrations trying to seize the area. Nord's diverting these forces (which were by no means merely attempting to contain the area) probably slowed things up just as much as its presence on the front-line would have. Perhaps more so.


Six fronts? Sorry, but that is very definitely not the case. I have unfortunately never seen any very specific Soviet strength figures, but HG Kurland was apparently opposed by 2nd Baltic Front (the soviet equivalent to an Army Group, more or less), who appears to have deployed 5-6 armies, and during the Baltic offensive itself (ie, until late november 1944) also by 3rd Baltic Front. 2BF and 3BF started the Baltic operation with roughly 340,000 men apiece. However, 3BF was dissolved in October, and from that time on, it would appear that HG Kurland was opposed only by 2BF. 2BF had an average strength of 562,000 during 1945, but I do not know if all of the Front's forces were engaged against the Kurland bridgehead. They suffered some 191,000 killed, wounded, missing and sick during that year. According to a report submitted by HG Kurland, it had some 257,000 men on 21 February 1945 (including the Latvians 19.SS and all German SS personnell, but not Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine or OT personnell). At capitulation, OKH estimated its strength at 200-220,000 (but that includes the categories of personnell omitted in the February report). Prior to late February, the HG was very likely considerably stronger. Haupt apparently gives figures of 4-500,000 for the earlier Kurland battles, but that may again include the force types not encompassed in teh February figure.

This would appear to indicate that the Red army may have deployed against HG Kurland roughly twice the manpower they themselves possessed, a relation that makes sense in light of the fact that the Red Army was strong enough to attack them, but not strong enough to succeed. Along the Eastern Front as a whole, the Soviets deployed 3 to 4 times larger forces. If so, then the maintenance of the Kurland peninsula could not be justified in terms of tying down Soviet forces. That would rather be a clear argument against it - the overall effect on the force situation would have been more favorable to the Germans if both HG Kurland and 2BF had been on the main front. See however below post.

I would appreciate any corrections, confirmations or modifications to the above, which is somewhat circumstantial.
Someone mentioned earlier that no military historian saw the sense in the having forces there--Franz Kurowski contends in Bridgehead Kurland that without them Kurland would have fallen rapidly and the Red Army "would have been in a position to close the ring around Konigsberg (Kaliningrad), destroy Memel and Danzig (Gdansk) and, above all, prevent the evacuation of German formations and civilians from the Hela peninsula long before it finally did. The defence of Kurland created the prerequisite for saving 2.5 million Germans from the eastern part of Germany and allowing the transportation of a number of German formations back to the homeland. Hundreds of thousands of wounded and nearly 3.5 million German soldiers would have been lost - perhaps forever - in the vast expanse of Russia had not the defenders of Kurland held out for so long. These facts alone prove the value of having created a ''Fortress Kurland''."
This appears to confuse issues a little. AFAICS, Kurowski is addressing the importance of defending the Baltic during the autumn of 1944, relative to which his comments at least make some sense. But a different issue is the decision to hang on to the small Kurland bridgehead with a whole Army Group after Memel had already fallen, and the Red army was moving up to attack Danzig and Königsberg in any case. Whatever complications the Kurland peninsula created for that operation can't have been very major compared to the extent to which they could have strengthened the HG Nord if they had been evcuated in a timely fashion, (ie, some time between the fall of Memel and the onset of the East Prussian operation).

That defending the Baltic coast enabled saving 3.5 million German soldiers is utterly nonsensical - this is more than a million more than the strength of the whole Ostheer during any point in the second half of 1944. And I do not quite see how the continued defense of Kurland delayed anything whatsoever, quite frankly.

cheers
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#38

Post by Qvist » 02 Feb 2006, 14:38

Edit: Just thought of Qvist's excellent thread regarding Soviet Front strengths at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=83300 - it indicates the following:

1) Only 1st & 2nd Baltic were engaged against AG North after October 1945, when 3rd Baltic was dissolved
2) There was still a Leningrad Front with 607,000 men in 1945. I thought that had been dissolved earlier and find this surprising, but according to this website with Sovinform bulletins ( http://eng.9may.ru/15.05.1945/eng_inform/ ) the Leningrad Front received the POWs of AG Kurland - note that there is no mention of any Baltic Fronts. What happened to them? Is Leningrad Front additional, or a renamed 1st/2nd Baltic Front?
3) The combined average annual strength of 1st & 2nd Baltic in 1945 was 562,000 men.
4) POWs received were 190,000, give or take. Add to this formations that were sent back to Germany in 1945, and German soldiers who escaped to Sweden, to arrive at German strength numbers.
2) LF is additional to 1 and 2BF, all three of whom existed until April 45 (and LF until the end of the war), as far as I can make out. However, it does not appear to have committed more than a part to its forces to the Baltic battles, at least through November 1944. Krivosheev does not mention its involvement in any major operations after the Baltic offensive up to 24 November 1944, where it contributed with two of its armies (2SA and 8A). These had a strength of some 195,000, and incurred just below 30,000 casualties. Also, none of the operations against HG K after that time is covered by his list of operations. LF had an average strength of about 607,000 in 1945, and incurred some 49,000 casualties. It is quite possible that at least part of its strength were deployed against HG Kurland.

All in all, this is a formation whose role and involvement is very difficult to make sense of from the data provided in Krivosheev. After the Leningrad defensive operation in the fall of 1941, it is identified as taking part in seven major offensives or operations for the rest of the war, and in every single one of them, it is only committing a limited part of its strength.

Re LF receiving all the German POWs from HG K in May, note that both 1 and 2BF were dissolved in April. It seems probable then that LF assumed overall responsibility for this sector after that time, taking over significant forces previously directed by the these two baltic fronts.

3) 1st and 2nd BF had a combined average strength in 1945 of almost 900,000. We know however that at least part of 1 BFs forces were deployed elsewhere. According to Krivosheev, it contributed 43A for the East Prussian operation. Your map however identifies two other formations.

Apparently, 1BF was engaged in the drive towards the coast and in capturing Memel, while 2 and 3 BF engaged theGerman forces further north (ie, those that would retreat into the Kurland peninsula). This according to Glantz as quoted here:
http://www.ww2forums.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi ... 7;t=000072
It does not seem clear if any forces from 1BF were engaged against HG Kurland after October. The generalinfo quoted above is also not entirely without contradictions.

This website however http://kurlandkessel.cybton.com/default.html provides considerable detail, and seems fairly reliable, being based on Haupt. Unfortunately, it provides almost no detail on the Soviet forces engaged,. It does refer to 1BF on a couple of occasions.

The first Kurland battle (in October 1944) is encompassed in the baltic Offensive operation, and if this is viewed as a whole, it did include all three baltic Fronts as well as elements of Leningrad Front. It also however included wider German force elements than those who later comprised HG Kurland. As for which Soviet formations were involved in the five subsequent Kurland battles, the information appears scattered and in part contradictory, and I haven't the resources to clear it up, for my part. Hence, the argument remains tentative.

cheers

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#39

Post by Andreas » 07 Feb 2006, 14:22

Thanks for the clarifications and corrections Qvist.

All the best

Andreas

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#40

Post by pavle » 09 Feb 2006, 10:49

Andreas good opinion about the waste of man and material on the kurland front.
But do you also think that it was a waste of the lapland army to be withdrawn from finland with all its mountain divisions,
to fight the americans in the west during operation Nordwind, while they could had been much better deployed in the defences of the vistula and oder in the beginning of 45?.

Thanks Pavle.

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#41

Post by Andreas » 09 Feb 2006, 10:53

pavle wrote:Andreas good opinion about the waste of man and material on the kurland front.
But do you also think that it was a waste of the lapland army to be withdrawn from finland with all its mountain divisions,
to fight the americans in the west during operation Nordwind, while they could had been much better deployed in the defences of the vistula and oder in the beginning of 45?.

Thanks Pavle.
Yes. :)

All the best

Andreas

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#42

Post by Benoit Douville » 10 Dec 2006, 05:47

One of the amazing feat during the several Battles of Narva, this time by the Dutch:

On the night of 6/7 March 1944, the Red Air Force made a huge bombing raid on Narva, flattening the city. As the bombing finished, the Soviet artillery began bombarding the town. All surviving civilians fled to the west, leaving the city to the defenders.

The Soviets made an all out assault on the Nederland's 48.SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Regiment General Seyffardt commanded by SS-Standartenführer Wolfgang Jörchel. Taken by surprise, the Dutchmen were forced from their positions. Jörchel quickly rallied his men and led a ferocious counterattack. In intense hand to hand fighting, Jörchel's men regained their positions and annihilated the Soviet attack force!

Source: Tragedy of the Faithful by Wilhelm Tieke. A History of III Germanisches SS-Panzer-Korps

Regards

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#43

Post by martin13666 » 13 Dec 2006, 20:26

I think that the reason of so hard battles to defend Narva (actually all nothern part of Estonia) was combined of different reasons. Many of these are mentioned above. The one ,I would like to add is taken from the memoirs of Leon Degrelle. He has mentioned in his book the oil factory situated not far westward from Narva. The trick was that the oil produced there was used by U-boats. It was heavier than water and did not leave any trace of oil.
And for estonians it was a personal thing- they had already seen soviet commies before on their land.

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#44

Post by Benoit Douville » 14 Dec 2006, 04:49

That's a good point that you mentioned the oil factory situated near from Narva that was produced by the U-boat, it is often forgotten when we think about that Battle and your other point and I also totally agree with you is the fact that for the Estonians, they wanted to defend their land at all cost against the Soviets.

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#45

Post by John T » 20 Oct 2007, 19:56

Andreas wrote:
No I can not, but a quick look at a map of the Baltic should show that the western part of Baltic would have been relatively easy to defend, even if the Kurland pocket had been given up. A very different proposition from the Black Sea. This would have covered routes to western/southern Sweden and Norway. The route to Stockholm was in any case under threat because of the loss of Estonia in 1944.
...
All the best

Andreas
I Agree and can add that Sweden stopped own ships to trade with Germany in August 1944 and did not allow German ships to enter Swedish harbours after September 44.

Cheers
/John T.

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