Kurland: The Last Stand
In the middle of October 1944, about 500,000 soldiers -- 32 German divisions and the 20,000 men of the Latvian Nineteenth Division of the Waffen–SS -- were cut off from the rest of the German army and encircled. To the east and the south was the Soviet army, to the north and the west -- the Baltic Sea. The Latvians called it Kurzemes katls, the Kurland kettle; the Germans called it Festung Kurland, Fortress Kurland.
The Latvians trapped in Kurland were in a tragic situation. Besides the soldiers, there were also about 500,000 local inhabitants and civilian refugees from Riga and Vidzeme, altogether about a million people encircled by the Bolsheviks. Food and other supplies were scarce, and winter was approaching. Civilians and soldiers, both Latvian and German, understood that Hitler was defeated, that the Nazi Reich would soon collapse, and nothing good could be expected from the Bolsheviks.
For the Nineteenth Division Kurland was truly the last stand. They took part in six major battles between October 12, 1944, and April 3, 1945. Together with the German army units they on the whole held the front line, keeping the Bolsheviks out of Kurland, until May 8, 1945, when Germany capitulated. These soldiers remained undefeated until the final moments of the war, im Felde unbesiegt, as the Germans say. In one of the last battles, Captain Miervaldis Adamsons' company in a single 24-hour period repelled seven attacks by the Russians, and after the battle the bodies of 400 fallen Soviet soldiers could be counted in front of the Latvians' unconquered positions.
Soviet war historians have also written about the stubborn resistance put up by the defenders of Fortress Kurland, especially by the Latvians. Using these Soviet sources, Gershon Shapiro, a veteran of the Soviet-German war who emigrated to Israel, writes in his document collection Jews -- Heroes of the Soviet Union (in Russian, Tel Aviv 1982, pp. 359-360) that the Soviet High Command asked the commanders of the First and Second Baltic Fronts to take forceful action in Kurland, in order to drive the enemy from the northern sector of the Baltic Sea and free their units for more important positions on the Soviet-German front. The first attempt occurred on October 16, 1944, but was stopped in the area around Tukums. The next Soviet offensive took place on October 27, but met with strong resistance from the outset and did not result in any gains. November 20 saw another offensive, but the Germans and Latvians stabilized their defensive line, utilizing favorable geographic features. Equally unsuccessful were the final attempts of the First and Second Baltic Front Armies to liquidate the German Army Group "Kurland" in December of 1944 and February and April of 1945.
Soviet documents show that Stalin threw division after division into the Kurland inferno, disregarding the appallingly high losses. According to German estimates, the Soviet army lost 320,000 soldiers -- including those fallen, wounded, and taken prisoner -- and 2388 tanks, 659 planes, 900 cannons, and 1440 machine-guns.
When the 33 divisions (32 German and one Latvian) were forced to capitulate on May 8, 1945, some of the Latvian legionnaires refused to submit as prisoners of war and fled into the forest of Kurland, to continue fighting the Bolsheviks as partisans, or guerrillas. Knowing what dismal fate awaited them, they decided to fight until their bullets ran out, or until the international situation changed. There were those who hoped that the United States and England would finally see the situation clearly and would turn against Stalin. The Latvian national partisans, like those in Estonia, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, continued armed resistance in complete isolation until 1952, when Bolshevik "punitive expeditions" liquidated the last of the "forest brothers," as they were called.
A few years later, around 1954, the US military command sought to compile a list of Latvian soldiers in exile who would be ready to parachute into Latvia, in case World War III were to start (newspaper Laiks, May 8, 1985). The British went further and trained Latvian soldiers, who then parachuted into Russian-occupied Latvia. Unfortunately, as was later disclosed in spy trials in England, these plans had reached Soviet intelligence in advance, and the parachutists were met at the drop locations by KGB agents.
By then it was too late to do anything for free Latvia. However, there had been time, there had been chances earlier to save Latvia from Soviet imperialism. But just as Hitler sold the Baltic states to Stalin in 1939, so Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill did exactly the same in 1943, 1944, and 1945, finally completely capitulating to Stalin at the Yalta Conference. As a Jew, I have to add that this was the same Roosevelt who did not raise a finger to provide asylum to Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and who refused to order the bombing of Auschwitz and the railroad lines leading to it to paralyze the gas chambers and crematoria. This was the same Churchill who did not allow Jewish refugees into Palestine, and who delayed for years sending the Eretz Israel Jewish brigade to the front to fight against the Germans.
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But let us return to the Latvians. Latvians also took part in World War II on the Western, democratic side. The Latvian ambassador in Washington, Alfreds Bilmanis, reached an agreement with US authorities turning Latvian merchant ships, which were not under communist control, over to the Western Allies. As reported in The New York Times, independent Latvia's merchant fleet played a significant role in war transports. More than half of these ships were torpedoed in the Atlantic within a year by German submarines.
Within Latvia itself, then occupied by German troops, were people who did not recognize the right of either the Nazis or the Bolsheviks to rule the country. They put their hopes in the United States and England, expecting that after the war the Western Allies would help Latvia regain its independence.
In the spring of 1943 the Latvian ambassador in Stockholm, Voldemars Salnais, sent a secret memorandum to Riga, which was received by Verners Tepfers, a general in the prewar Latvian army. On August 13 of that year, Konstantins Cakste, the son of Latvia's first president Janis Cakste, called together an illegal meeting to form the Latvian Central Council -- Latvijas Centrala Padome, LCP. Cakste was elected the first chairman of the LCP, which included representatives of the Latvian Social Democratic Party, the Democratic Center, the Christian Farmers' Union of Latgale, and the Latvian Farmers' Union. It included such prominent figures as Dr. Pauls Kalnins and his son Bruno Kalnins, J. Rancans, J. Breikss, V. Bastjanis, F. Cielens, A. Klive, L. Seja, and others.
The purpose of the LCP was to work for the re-establishment of the Latvian state, an independent, democratic Latvia, which would form friendly relations with the United States, England, and the Scandinavian countries, and promote the formation of a confederation of Baltic states. The LCP established contact with similar democratic organizations in neighboring lands, the Lithuanian Supreme Liberation Council and the Estonian Resistance Movement. With the knowledge and tacit approval of Colonel Janums of the Latvian Legion, the LCP actively worked with General Kurelis, whose group had continuous contact with the LCP through Captain Upelnieks. General Kurelis headed a group of armed men, a sort of Home Guard that had been formed with the initial approval of the Germans.
Unfortunately the Gestapo found out about these activities, arrested many of the leaders of LCP, surrounded a large part of the Kurelis group, and ordered them to surrender their arms. Konstantins Cakste died in the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944. Most of Kurelis' officers -- Captain Upelnieks, Colonel Liepins, Captain Mucenieks, First Lieutenant Gregors, and others -- were shot on November 20, 1944, in Liepaja, after a German court martial. General Kurelis himself was granted amnesty, but about 500 of his men were sent to the Stutthof concentration camp.
Lieutenant Rubenis' battalion, which included two heavy armor companies, one machine-gun company, and one riflemen's company with about 400 men, refused to surrender its arms and fought the Germans surrounding it for 25 days. Forty men lost their lives, including the commanding officer, Lieutenant Rubenis. The Germans also suffered heavy losses. On December 10 these Latvian soldiers broke up into small groups and dispersed into the forest (O. Freivalds, Kurzemes cietoksnis, Part 2, p. 75).
So ended the attempt to find a "third way" between the Nazis and the Bolsheviks.
And what was being done by the Western Allies?
Mr. Eden cannot incur the danger of antagonizing Stalin, and the British War Cabinet has consequently determined that they would agree to negotiate a treaty with Stalin which will recognize the 1940 frontiers of the Soviet Union.... He was fully aware, the President said
[Roosevelt at the Teheran Conference, November 1943], that the three Baltic Republics had belonged to Russia in the past and had once again been incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. He did not, he added with a smile, intend to go to war with the Soviet Union when the Red Army reoccupied these areas (W. Averell Harriman and Ellie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946, New York 1975, pp. 135, 278-279).
The opinion of the Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians evidently was of no interest to the Big Three.