Battle of Heiligenbeil

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The Battle of Heiligenbeil was one of the last major battles on the Eastern Front during the final weeks of the Second World War . The boiler was located near Heiligenbeil in East Prussia, south of Königsberg . The battle was part of a larger Soviet offensive in the East Prussia region and lasted from January 26 to March 29, 1945.

prehistory

The German 4th Army under General Hoßbach was surrounded by the Soviet Army during the Battle of East Prussia with their backs to the frozen Frischer Haff in the area between Braunsberg and Königsberg . As a result of the Soviet advance to the Baltic Sea , most of East Prussia was cut off from the German Empire on January 25th, supply and withdrawal ran via Königsberg and the port of Pillau, which was supplied by the Navy . A German counterattack by VI, which was regrouped on the Wormditt - Guttstadt line . Army Corps tried on January 26th with the 131st and 170th Infantry Divisions and the 28th Jäger Division on January 26th to open a corridor to the west in the direction of Elbing . Around 150,000 German soldiers and many refugees were trapped in the boiler, and the connection to the Königsberg fortress, which was also enclosed, remained up until mid-March.

On January 30th, General of the Infantry Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller took over the command of the troops huddled in the Heiligenbeil area . The command post of AOK 4 was in Zinten , which was vacated on February 25th. After the death of General Ivan Chernyakhovsky at Mehlsack in February 1945, General Vasilevsky took over the command of the 3rd Belarusian Front. The Gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch , flew several times to coordinate various defensive measures from the besieged Koenigsberg into the basin to call for perseverance, but in the end preferred to leave for the west in good time before the impending catastrophe. The final crushing of the encircled troops by the Soviets did not begin until March 13 in the so-called Braunsberg attack operation.

Units involved

Red Army

Wehrmacht

course

Marshal Wassilewski deployed a full 6 armies to smash the approximately 16 enclosed German divisions: On the left, against Braunsberg , the 48th Army was turned against the VI. Army corps scheduled. Between Breitlinde and Zinten the 3rd, 50th and 31st Armies were against the section of the XX. Army Corps concentrated. The front right to the north-west then extended the 28th Army the Kesselfront opposite the XXXXI. Panzer Corps up to the height of Kreuzburg . Closing north to Königsberg, the 5th Army, approaching between Kobbelbude and Altenberg, tried again to cut off the land connection to Königsberg.

On March 13th, a strong artillery strike from the 3rd Belarusian Front opened the attack. On March 14, the 131st Infantry Division on the southern front gave up Breitlinde. The troops of the advancing 48th Army were able to conquer Braunsberg on March 20, the basin was further narrowed. The connection with Königsberg, which was still maintained in the north by the Panzer Grenadier Division "GD" , was cut off by the Soviet 5th Army at Heide-Maulen. By March 23, the boiler front was narrowed to the Alt-Passarge - Preussisch Bahnau - Schirten - Wollitta line . On March 25, the 48th Soviet Army took the city of Heiligenbeil in heavy fighting. The remnants of the 4th Army and many refugees were crowded together in the narrowest space on the narrow coastal spur of the coastal nose of Natangen between Balga and Kahlholz and lay in the direct fire area of ​​the Soviet artillery. General Müller had already had himself transferred to Pillau , but demanded that the rest of the crew persevere in order to be able to evacuate as many refugees as possible across the sea.

On March 27, the Soviets built a battery with 17 cm cannons between Rosenberg and Follendorf and took every berthing ship under fire. The Navy, on the other hand, used several destroyers, which briefly held down the Soviet battery with their fire. Until March 29th, parallel to the last dramatic fighting in the cauldron, the drama of the refugees was running, who desperately tried to get a place on the ferries for the transfer to Pillau. Soviet attack pilots intervened in the extremely loss-making event, and completely confused German combat troops tried to get onto the catwalks until the end.

consequences

In the cauldron, around 80,000 German soldiers died or were seriously wounded in the roughly two-month fighting; 50,000 were taken prisoner by the Soviets . Around the same time, Gotenhafen and Danzig were lost to the 2nd Belarusian Front in West Prussia in the area of ​​the 2nd Army . The Soviets then gathered all their forces for the battle for Koenigsberg .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in World War II 1939–1945 . 2nd Edition. tape 7 . The Land Forces 131–200 . Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1979, ISBN 3-7648-1173-0 .
  2. ^ A b Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in World War II 1939–1945 . 2nd Edition. tape 11 . The Land Forces 501–630 . Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1980, ISBN 3-7648-1181-1 .