← Previous Item

Tigers in the snow

Next Item →

http://wargame-scenarios.com/images/m44tigers.jpg
http://wargame-scenarios.com/images/m44logo.jpg

Title
Tigers in the snow
Description
Hot on the heels of their success in Operatsiya Bagration, Soviet forces struck deep towards the Baltic coast, rapidly severing communications between German Army Group North and what little was left of Army Group Center. By early October 1944, the …
Subject
Publisher
Date
1945-02-12
Scenario#
4708
Scenario Description
Hot on the heels of their success in Operatsiya Bagration, Soviet forces struck deep towards the Baltic coast, rapidly severing communications between German Army Group North and what little was left of Army Group Center. By early October 1944, the Soviets were in view of the Baltic Sea, near the port of Memel, definitively cutting off Army Group North from any retreat route through East Prussia. Despite Guderian's plea for an evacuation by sea and subsequent redeployment in Central Europe where forces were desperately needed to help stabilize an increasingly dicey situation, Hitler stubbornly refused. Instead, he ordered the 200,000+ German troops to entrench themselves, in the hope of using the Courland Pocket as a springboard for a future offensive. Little did the Führer realize that what he insisted on calling a bridgehead (the Kurland-Brückenkopf) would only become a bridge to oblivion for his haplessly trapped German divisions; They would go on to resist six major battles before finally surrendering to Marshal Govorov on May 8, 1945. The majority of the 200,000+ men of Army Group North would be marched into Soviet prison camps to the East, most of them never to return.
Location
Saldus, Latvia
Battle Name
Battle Narrative
The Courland Pocket was an area of the Courland Peninsula where a group of Nazi German forces from the Reichskommissariat Ostland was cut off and surrounded by the Red Army for almost a year, lasting from July 1944 until May 1945. The pocket was created during the Red Army's Baltic Offensive, when forces of theist Baltic Front reached the Baltic Sea near Memel during its lesser Memel Offensive Operation phases. This action isolated the German Army Group North from the rest of the German forces, having been pushed from the south by the Red Army, standing in a front between Tukums and Libau in Latvia, with the Baltic Sea in the West, the Irbe Strait in the North and the Gulf of Riga in the East behind the Germans. Renamed Army Group Courland on 25 January, the Army Group in the Courland Pocket remained isolated until the end of the war. When they were ordered to surrender to the Soviet command on 8 May, they were in "blackout" and did not get the official order before 10 May, two days after the capitulation of Germany. It was one of the last German groups to surrender in Europe.
Narrative Source
Wikipedia: Courland Pocket
Combatants
German
Russian
Additional Information
Game Type: Overlord
Board Type: Winter
Website Access: Available

Geolocation