Battles of the Courland Bridgehead: Casualties and losses

Men of the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS

19.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (lettische Nr. 2)

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ordered repeated attacks into the Courland cauldron, disregarding heavy losses. Soviet launched six major offensives against the Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS and Latvian forces entrenched in the pocket between October 15 1944 and April 4 1945. According to a communiqué from Heeresgruppe Kurland of March 16 1945, the Soviets lost 320,000 soldiers, 2,388 tanks, 659 planes, 900 cannons, through the first five battles for Courland. The Soviets are estimated to have lost an additional 74,000 in the sixth and last battle, as waves of tens of thousands of Soviet attackers were slaughtered at Liepāja. According to German historian Karl-Heinz Frieser, Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS units suffered 118,000 killed, wounded and missing during the Soviet offensives in Courland. All units of Heeresgruppe Kurland were ordered to surrender by the capitulated Wehrmacht command on May 8 1945. According to recent scholarship, a total of about 181,000 German and Latvian troops were taken into captivity from the whole Baltic area and taken to camps in the USSR interior and imprisoned for years. The Soviets detained all males between the ages of 16 and 60 in Latvia. Soldiers of the Latvian Legion who surrendered along with the Germans or were captured were treated as traitors under the pretext that Latvia was part of the Soviet Union and many summarily executed. Top image: an SS-Standartenoberjunker of the Latvian Legion. Bottom image: men of the Latvian 19.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS in 1944-45. Credit: Johannes Dorn. Netwerk Oorlogsbronnen. FU.