Company Doppelkopf
During the Second World War, the Doppelkopf company was the code name of an offensive by the Wehrmacht that took place in Courland from August 16 to 27, 1944 . Its aim was to restore the land connection , which had been interrupted by the Red Army , between the cut-off Army Group North on the territory of Latvia and Estonia and the rest of the area held by the Wehrmacht, and to recapture the strategically important locations of Schaulen and Mitau . On the German side, it was characterized by a very short planning phase, excessive expectations of the German high command of the Wehrmacht and the lack of necessary reserves. The Doppelkopf company was the necessary strategic prerequisite (construction of the Kemmeri land corridor) for carrying out the Aster company (the evacuation of Estonia and Latvia north of the Daugava River ).
prehistory
As a result of Operation Bagration , the remnants of the German 3rd Panzer Army from the Vitebsk area were pushed back to the west by troops from the 3rd Belarusian Front south of the Daugava .
The front of the German IX. Army corps (General Wuthmann ) was rolled up in the direction of Tetscha through opposing encirclement operations. The breakthrough of the Soviet 5th Guards Panzer Army ( Solomatin Group ) aimed directly at Vilna . The retreat of the IX. Army Corps ( 201st Security , 212th and 252nd Infantry Divisions ) took place via Plissa - Koziany and reached Ukmerge in mid-July . After the breakthrough of the Soviet 51st Army in the so-called "Baltic Hole" (between Schaulen and Bauske ), the IX. Army corps pushed south on Kelmė and Raseinen. The 212th Infantry Division (Lieutenant General Sensfuss ) had been pushed back from the Lepel area in July and had to flee via Vilna to Olita , where it was wiped out.
At the end of July 1944, the attack of the Soviet 51st Army with the 3rd mechanical corps under General Obuchow reached the breakthrough to the Baltic Sea near Tuckum . Colonel General Raus , the new commander of the 3rd Panzer Army , received significant reinforcements in order to counter-attack the large gap in the front at Schaulen. The counterattack, scheduled in mid-August, tried to break through on Mitau (Jelgava) via Schaulen. The aim of Colonel General Raus was to restore the land connection to the Army Group North, which had been cut off in the Riga area .
course
The XXXIX. Panzer Corps (General Dietrich von Saucken ) opened the attack from the Moscheiken area on August 16 with the Mäder combat group . The eastward attack of the 4th and 5th Panzer Divisions (General Karl Decker ) threw back the Soviet 51st Army (General Kreiser ) and reached Autz , but then ran up against Doblen and Schagarren at the Soviet 6th Guards Army (General Tschistjakow ).
The attack of the XXXX scheduled to the south . Panzer Corps (General Otto von Knobelsdorff ) tried to penetrate Schaulen with the Panzergrenadier Division Greater Germany , the 7th Panzer Division and the 14th Panzer Division , but was already on the Kursenai - Kelme line by the Soviet 11th and 13th Guard rifle corps of the 2nd Guard Army (General Tschantschibadze ) stopped. Marshal Hovhannes Baghramjan , the Commander-in-Chief of the 1st Baltic Front , reinforced the threatened section west of Schaulen by bringing in the 1st Panzer Corps and the 103rd Rifle Corps.
The attack from the north to the south by the combat group under General Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz , which was set up on the left wing , was covered from the Gulf of Riga by the fire of the cruiser Prinz Eugen of the combat group Thiele . By August 20, he reached through Tuckum the connection to the corps group of General Philipp Kleffel of the 16th Army . The Soviet 43rd Army (General Beloborodow ) had to stop its attack on Riga for the time being and withdraw its 19th Panzer Corps to Mitau . The deployment of the Soviet 5th Guards Panzer Army under General Wolski on August 17th at Schaulen stabilized the front there.
By August 27, the corridor between the 3rd Panzer Army and the 16th Army could be enlarged to about 20 kilometers in width, although this section had come under pressure from fresh Soviet reserves again.
consequences
The attack ended with the limited tactical success of restoring a land connection to Army Group North near the Latvian town of Tuckum, without further goals - such as the retaking of Mitau - could be achieved. The 3rd Panzer Army lost around 15,500 soldiers and 80 tanks at Doppelkopf. During the Baltic operation , the 1st Baltic Front (Army General Baghramian ) was able to break through again to the Baltic Sea near Memel on October 9 , so that the connection between the 3rd Panzer Army and Army Group North was lost again. The 16th and 18th Armies gave up Riga between October 13th and 15th and retreated to Courland .
See also
literature
- Karl-Heinz Frieser (Ed. On behalf of MGFA ): The German Reich and the Second World War . Volume 8: Karl-Heinz Frieser, Klaus Schmider , Klaus Schönherr , Gerhard Schreiber , Krisztián Ungváry , Bernd Wegner : The Eastern Front 1943/44 - The War in the East and on the Secondary Fronts . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2 .
- Erhard Raus , Steven H. Newton (eds.): Panzer Operations: The Eastern Front Memoir of General Raus 1941-1945 . Stackpole-Verlag, Harrisburg PA 2007, ISBN 0-811-73371-8 .
- Rolf Hinze: Eastern Front Drama 1944 - Army Group Center retreat fights . Motorbuchverlag, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-613-01138-7 .
- Gerd Niepold : Tank operations "Doppelkopf" and "Caesar" . Mittler-Verlag, Herford 1987, ISBN 978-3-813-20259-5 .
- Anton Detlev von Plato : The history of the 5th Panzer Division . Walhalla and Praetoria Verlag, Regensburg 1978.