by Prit Buttar
4th and 5th Panzer Divisions continued to struggle forward. 4th Panzer Division was ordered to deploy its southern battlegroup in support of 5th Panzer Division, which allowed the latter to reach the outskirts of Žagarė, but at the cost of slowing down 4th Panzer Division’s own advance. As darkness brought a pause in the fighting, there were yet more discussions between higher commands. Generaloberst Heinz Guderian, chief of staff at OKH, remained confident that there would soon be a major breakthrough towards Jelgava. By contrast, the local commanders were far gloomier. Grossdeutschland remained bogged down in heavy Soviet counter-attacks, and Saucken estimated that it would take his corps at least five more days to reach Jelgava. New orders were therefore issued overnight: Grossdeutschlamd was to be pulled out of line as previously planned, and would move to the north of 4th and 5th Panzer Divisions, which would continue their attack towards Jelgava.
Confusion remained in the far north of the battle, with a battlegroup from the German 52nd Security Division in Tukums, and some Soviet units withdrawing towards the south, while others continued to try to hold their positions. On 21 August, whilst the rest of 52nd Security Division attempted to establish a stronger connection between Army Group Centre and Army Group North, 4th Panzer Division resumed its attacks, pushing forward north of Žagarė in conjunction with elements of 12th Panzer Division, under almost constant attack from the air. Near the village of Bagaci, about five miles north-west of Žagarė, 4th Panzer Division had its first encounter with heavyweight Josef Stalin tanks. A unit of about 15 such tanks attempted to halt the German advance, and in a brisk action, seven Stalins were knocked out.27
By the end of the day, Saucken felt that there was the possibility of turning south with at least part of 4th Panzer Division to attack towards Žagarė, in order to allow 5th Panzer Division to resume its advance. However, it became clear by mid-morning on 22 August that the Soviet defences were far too strong. Numerous Soviet attacks forced 4th Panzer Division onto the defensive, with little ground being gained by either side. Towards the end of the day, Raus had a radio conversation with Saucken, and they agreed to shift the emphasis of the attack to the north: rather than continue along the original axis of advance towards the still-distant Jelgava, 4th Panzer Division would join Grossdeutschland and attack through Auce. Raus then discussed this with Reinhardt, commander of Army Group Centre, with much of the conversation centred on the issue of timing. Finally, they agreed that Saucken would attack Auce as soon as possible, rather than waiting for the full weight of Grossdeutschland and 4th Panzer Division to assemble.
Soviet reconnaissance flights spotted the redeployment of Grossdeutschland and 4th Panzer Division, and advised Bagramian that two panzer divisions were moving from the Žagarė area towards Auce. He decided therefore to attack from Žagarė with 51st Army, and from Šiauliai with 2nd Guards Army. 19th Tank Corps supported 51st Army in driving back elements of 12th Panzer Division, but was then pulled out of line and sent north to counter the German build-up at Auce. As Grossdeutschland pulled out of its positions, 2nd Guards Army reported that it had advanced perhaps seven miles; the reality was that the Germans had intentionally pulled back to a stronger defensive position.
The corridor that Strachwitz had established to Army Group North was slowly being consolidated, helped considerably by Bagramian’s decision to withdraw 1st Guards Rifle Corps to the south. The German units cautiously probed south, with 81st Infantry Division from 16th Army occupying Dzukste, about 16 miles south of Tukums, early on 23 August. At midday – far earlier than Saucken had anticipated when he opposed the redeployment of divisions to the north – the first redeployed elements of Grossdeutschland and 4th Panzer Division attacked towards Auce under the aegis of XXXIX Panzer Corps, and although 4th Panzer Division’s battlegroup was held up by tough resistance at the western edge of the town, Grossdeutschland made better progress a little to the north, penetrating the second line of Soviet defences in the early evening. Plans to replace 5th Panzer Division in the sector to the south of Žagarė with 201st Security Division were delayed by a Soviet attack on Kruopiai by 1st Tank Corps and 103rd Rifle Corps, which took the town in heavy fighting. A German counter-attack was launched, using the elements of 5th Panzer Division that had been extracted from the front line as part of the plan to withdraw the entire division, and fighting continued in the area for several days, effectively tying down the German forces and preventing their redeployment elsewhere, though the price for the Red Army was high, with over 50 tanks being destroyed by 5th Panzer Division in and around Kruopiai.28
After regrouping overnight, 4th Panzer Division attacked Auce at first light on 24 August, taking the town by 0800hrs. From here, the division attempted to push on to Bene, in order to protect Grossdeutschland’s exposed southern flank, but progress was slow along narrow, heavily mined roads. Grossdeutschland made better headway, penetrating the Soviet defences to the north-east of Bene, but Saucken was increasingly worried that a gap was opening up between his two assault divisions. Raus urged him to continue to bypass Soviet defences by edging ever further to the north, and orders were sent to XXXIX Panzer Corps to this effect in the afternoon – Raus was determined that the tough defences facing 4th Panzer Division should be outflanked and then destroyed by envelopment from the north, rather than by further frontal assaults.
Both sides had suffered heavy losses in the fighting. In previous battles on the Eastern Front, the advantage in such combat had usually been with the side that controlled that battlefield at the end of the day – it had the opportunity to recover damaged vehicles and restore them to service, something that the Wehrmacht in particular had done to good effect. For example, despite heavy fighting, 4th Panzer Division’s operational tank strength at the end of 25 August was 41, compared to only 21 two days earlier.29 During Doppelkopf, though, the balance of power remained relatively unchanged. Although the Red Army continued to lose tanks at a steady rate, and German possession of the battlefield prevented their recovery, a constant stream of reinforcements kept the front-line units – particularly 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps and 19th Tank Corps – from having to be withdrawn; on 14 August alone, trains brought 60 new tanks to the Šiauliai area.30 Nevertheless, Grossdeutschland continued to advance, reaching a point about five miles to the south-west of Dobele on 25 August. On its southern flank, 4th Panzer Division laboured towards Bene, and as a further development in the steady northward drift of the German point of effort, Raus ordered that 14th Panzer Division be extracted from the front line south of Auce and transferred to the northern flank of XXXIX Panzer Corps.
During the night, 4th Panzer Division once more reorganised its forces, and early on 26 August attacked south from its positions to the north-west of Bene. As before, progress was minimal, and a simultaneous attack towards Bene from the south-west by 12th Panzer Division also foundered in the face of strong resistance. Grossdeutschland continued its advance, making contact with elements of 81st Infantry Division advancing south from Dzukste, immediately to the north of Dobele. Saucken described the situation of his corps in a report to Raus:
So far, we have destroyed over 800 enemy anti-armour guns [i.e. tanks, assault guns and anti-tank guns] and have thus ensured that the enemy has had to deplete his other front lines almost completely … artillery ammunition is short. We have had to pull our heavy field howitzers out of the firing line, as they only have a few rounds left for self-defence.31
A further attempt was made by 4th and 12th Panzer Divisions to take Bene on 27 August, but, as before, the attacks faltered in the face of the Soviet defences. Towards the end of the day, Generalleutnant Clemens Betzel, the commander of 4th Panzer Division, reported to Saucken, his corps commander (and a former commander of the division):
The tough, constant and extremely costly fighting of the last few days against a determined enemy, who in terms of weapons and men has a relatively large superiority, has left the troops so exhausted that a pause of one or two days is urgently needed before a resu
mption of attacks.32
The divisions of Army Group North were weak in armour, and there had been recurrent discussions about the transfer of some of 3rd Panzer Army’s panzer divisions to 16th Army once contact between Army Group Centre and Army Group North had been re-established. With little prospect of Doppelkopf achieving its original objective, i.e. establishing such contact via the capture of Jelgava, and in any case with clear contact having been established along the coast, 3rd Panzer Army sent a new order to XXXIX Panzer Corps late on 27 August, bringing Doppelkopf to an end:
14th Panzer Division [which had now been extracted from the front line] is to be dispatched for use by Army Group North at Jelgava. As the attack by the corps’ left flank is not to be continued, as part of the increased defensive preparation on the entire corps front against expected enemy armoured attacks, the attack on the inner wings of 12th and 4th Panzer Divisions is to be resumed, with the intention of throwing the enemy out of the salient to the south and west of Bene, and thus release forces from the front. Contact by the left flank with 81st Infantry Division is to be strengthened.33
The operation had lasted 12 days, and the German divisions had advanced perhaps 30 miles. They had been stopped about 20 miles short of Jelgava, but despite failing to achieve this, the operation had restored contact with Army Group North. The divisions of XXXIX and XL Panzer Corps could claim with some justification that their assaults tied down sufficient Soviet forces to allow Strachwitz and his diminutive division adequate freedom of manoeuvre to reach Army Group North. Nevertheless, Doppelkopf represented a rare concentration of German armour in any part of the front in this stage of the war, and in almost any other period of the conflict, success for the attackers would have been almost guaranteed. On this occasion, despite the overstretched Soviet supply lines and the casualties suffered by Bagramian’s armies during their long advance, the Red Army retained its numerical superiority throughout the operation, and made particularly good use of defence-friendly terrain to hold up the German attacks. Another factor identified by the Germans was the failure of the panzergrenadiers in the assault formations to attack with the same vigour as in previous years. As Gerd Niepold, the chief of staff of 12th Panzer Division during the operation, concluded several years later, over three years of fighting on the Eastern Front had lowered the quality of the personnel of the panzergrenadier regiments, whose replacement drafts were far inferior in terms of training to the men who had led the Wehrmacht’s advance into the Soviet Union in 1941. Whilst this may seem like a harsh judgement on the men who fought so hard to reach Jelgava, the after-action reports of every division showed that the loss of key veteran officers often resulted in attacks faltering in a manner that would not have occurred in earlier years. NCOs were meant to take over in such circumstances, but by late 1944, few had the experience or training to cope with the demands of Auftragstaktik.34
Bagramian later claimed that his front accounted for over 15,000 German casualties during the operation, and knocked out 380 tanks and assault guns.35 German records show that at the beginning of the operation, the German divisions had a total of only 281 operational tanks and assault guns between them, and though replacement vehicles arrived during the course of the operation, the Soviet figures seem unrealistically high; inevitably, both sides were prone to exaggerate the losses of their enemies. The true number of casualties on both sides during this operation will never be known with any degree of accuracy.
During this entire period, there was more heavy fighting further north. In 1941, when the Wehrmacht had advanced apparently irresistibly towards Leningrad, there had been no significant fighting around Narva, unlike the Soviet efforts in 1944. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, the Red Army in 1941 was in complete retreat, and simply lacked the forces to contest the Narva region. Secondly, even if an attempt had been made, it would have been rendered irrelevant by the swift advance of German forces to the east of Lake Peipus. In 1944, the Red Army had tried in vain to batter its way into Estonia via the Narva positions, but now that the entire Eastern Front was hugely weakened, there was a possibility of outflanking the German defences, by invading Estonia from south of Lake Peipus, much as the Wehrmacht had used this route to bypass the Narva in 1941.
In the area south of Lake Peipus, Maslennikov’s 3rd Baltic Front enjoyed a substantial advantage over the German defences, and as a result of German transfers of forces to the stricken Army Group Centre outnumbered them over 4:1 in terms of men and armour, and over 14:1 in terms of artillery. To make matters worse, these ratios included large numbers of poorly equipped and poorly trained Estonian militia amongst the ranks of the German forces.
The Soviet forces launched their attack on 10 August. Hans Gollnick’s XXVIII Corps immediately came under pressure, and by the end of the day, the Soviet 67th Army had broken through the German lines. Pechory, the last major town on the Soviet side of the old border, fell to 67th Army the following day, while the neighbouring 1st Guards Army pushed on towards Voru, reaching and capturing the town on 13 August. It was clear that the weakened southern flank of the German 18th Army could not continue to hold the front line. Schörner therefore ordered that the sector from Lake Võrtsjärv to Lake Peipus was to be covered by Army Detachment Narva, allowing 18th Army to concentrate its limited forces between Lake Võrtsjärv and the Latvian border. Hastily, a defensive line was established to prevent a swift Soviet advance to the Baltic coast.
After a brief pause, Maslennikov’s armies had resumed their advance on 16 August, forcing back the weak 207th Security Division. There was a clear threat to the city of Tartu, and Army Detachment Narva now hurried to restore the front. Brigadeführer Jürgen Wagner was dispatched from III SS Panzer Corps with the last tanks and assault guns from the Nordland division and the Nederland brigade, a battalion of 5th SS Volunteer Assault Brigade Wallonien, artillery support, and an infantry regiment from 11th Infantry Division. The units began to arrive at the front late on 16 August, and swiftly incorporated local Estonian Omakaitse into their ranks. It remained to be seen how well this new defensive line would withstand the Soviet forces.
Earlier in the summer, Govorov’s Leningrad Front had laid plans for an amphibious assault across Lake Peipus to outflank the stubborn defences of Army Detachment Narva. Now, the flotilla that had been designated for the operation, commanded by Captain Arzhavkin, was assigned to Maslennikov, with a view to carrying out a crossing of the lake in conjunction with 3rd Baltic Front’s attack into southern Estonia. The flotilla consisted of about 40 small vessels, many of them armed, and in order to improve the chances of success of any amphibious operation, Soviet aircraft carried out repeated attacks against the port of Mustvee, on the north-west shore of Lake Peipus, from which the Germans operated a number of gunboats, and by the beginning of August, most of the German vessels had been sunk or damaged. Lieutenant General Alexei Aleksandrovich Grechkin, deputy commander of the 3rd Baltic Front, was given command of a mixed force, comprised mainly of 128th and 191st Rifle Divisions, and on 16 August, elements of 191st Rifle Division, covered by artillery on the east bank, crossed the narrow strait that divided Lake Peipus from Lake Pskov and landed at Mehikoorma, rapidly establishing a substantial bridgehead.
The local defences consisted merely of poorly armed Estonian Omakaitse fighters, who could do little to stop the Soviet landings. However, several squadrons of Stuka dive-bombers from Hans-Ulrich Rudel’s Schlacht-Geschwader 2 attacked in the late morning, just as the second wave of Soviet troops was being ferried across the strait, inflicting heavy casualties. A third wave of troops was also bombed later in the day. It appears that Soviet planners had not anticipated any significant threat from the air, and it was not until 17 August that Soviet fighters put up serious resistance to German attacks. Despite the dive-bomber attacks, some 7,000 men were landed at Mehikoorma, where they gradually enlarged their foothold, linking up with 67th Army’s 86th Rifle Division late on 17 August.36
Pressure on the German line was unremit
ting. A mixed force of Estonians and a battalion from 11th Infantry Division came under heavy assault on 20 August on the approaches to Tartu, and despite powerful artillery support, the German troops pulled back to Melliste, barely five miles from the city outskirts. Further west, the battalion from Wallonien drove Soviet spearheads from Kambja, but on 23 August, elements of 1st Guards Army resumed their drive towards Tartu. There were heavy losses on both sides before the Walloons gave up Kambja, pulling back to the west of Tartu. A little further west, a battalion from the 45th SS Grenadier Regiment (1st Estonian) was in the village of Nöo. The main defences stopped the Soviet drive, but the 282nd Rifle Division discovered a thinly manned stretch of front line west of the village. Accompanied by a tank brigade, the division bypassed the Estonian defences and pushed north five miles to Kärevere, seizing the vital bridge over the River Emajõgi.
With a serious threat developing to Tartu from the south-east, south and now the west, Army Group North attempted to restore the situation with an armoured counter-attack. Hyazinth von Strachwitz’s armoured group, fresh from its triumph in Doppelkopf, was hurried north to launch an attack from near the southern point of Lake Võrtsjärv, marching north-east to strike the 1st Guards Army in its flank. The intention was to thrust through Elva to Nöo, but the operation suffered a disaster on 23 August. Whilst driving to his headquarters, Strachwitz was involved in a serious car crash; the small Kubelwagen (amphibious vehicle, the German equivalent of a jeep) he was travelling in left the road and rolled over several times, killing both the driver and Strachwitz’s orderly officer. The Panzergraf himself suffered a fractured skull, fractured ribs, and injuries to arms and legs. He was fortunate to survive, and there was no question of him continuing in command of his tanks.
