The widespread collaboration with the Nazis in the Baltic did not necessarily mean that the Balts contributed more to the German war effort than to the Soviet one. In 1941–1942, the Soviets raised an Estonian and a Latvian rifle corps and a Lithuanian division from loyalists who had evacuated with the Red Army, those Balts who permanently lived in the Soviet Union and workers of the Baltic labor battalions. While Baltic police battalions raised by Germans with the help of self-administrations engaged mainly in counterinsurgency, the Soviet Baltic divisions were frontline formations from the start. Defections of Baltic soldiers from the Red Army were common in 1941–1942 but stopped later. Most senior officers in these formations were from the disbanded national territorial rifle corps. The 201st Latvian Rifle Division, with volunteers making up 70 percent of its strength, went first in battle in December 1941 and earned a “Guards” title for its outstanding performance in the summer of 1942; the 308th Latvian Rifle Division was awarded a Red Banner Order for the fights in Riga in the fall of 1944. The 16th Soviet Lithuanian Rifle Division was praised for its actions in the battle of Kursk. By March 1945, 99,974 Lithuanians were drafted into the Red Army – almost three times as many as those who served in the German-sponsored police battalions. The 8th Estonian Rifle Corps , with 88.5 percent of Estonians among its personnel, engaged Germans first in December 1942 at Velikie Luki, where it lost half its soldiers owing to battle attrition and defections, but then it fought well against the Germans and Baltic Waffen-SS divisions in 1944 and took Tallinn in September of that year, for which its 249th Rifle Division received a Red Banner Order. About 25,000 Estonians, 5,000 Latvians, and 20,000 Lithuanians died in the ranks of the Red Army and labor battalions.

Many more Ukrainians fought for the Soviets than against them. In 1941– 1945, 3,184,726 Ukrainians enlisted in the Red Army, including 750,000 from the western regions. Twice as many West Ukrainians served in the Red Army as contributed to anti-Soviet resistance in 1944–1950. In addition, tens of thousands of Ukrainians fought as partisans. The number of Belorussians who collaborated with the Germans was negligible compared with those who fought for the Soviets.

Left - Rottenfuhrer, 15th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division (Latvian No. 1), 1945 Middle - Latvian volunteer in the ranks of the Reicharbeitsdienst (RAD), 1944 Right - Obersturmbannfuhrer, 19th SS Waffen-Grenadier Division, 1945

All major nationalist groups, except Armija Krajowa (AK), hoped the Germans would allow them to organize their national armies, which would fight the Soviet Union as Axis members. Thousands volunteered to join the police battalions – the first collaborator military units organized by the Germans. However, the German administration did not allow collaborators to pursue any other agenda but its own and often sent these units to fight outside their native regions, where their soldiers could not even entertain the thought that they defended the interests of their nations. The Germans disbanded Nachtigall and Roland battalions in August 1941 and afterward moved their personnel, containing many OUN members, to Belorussia, where they fought partisans. These soldiers faithfully served Germany for 17 months after the arrest of the top OUN-B leaders until Germans disbanded them. In 1943, the Germans raised the Ukrainian Waffen-SS Galizien Division with the help of OUN-M. It was crushed three weeks after its arrival at the front in June 1944, and then its remnants suppressed insurgencies in Slovakia and Slovenia. 66 Himmler officially forbade reference to Galizien as Ukrainian, and only on 19 April 1945 did that word become a part of its title.

Most Balts preferred the Germans to the Soviets as an occupying force, and many wholeheartedly collaborated. The Baltic police battalions consisted mainly of nationalist volunteers. Latvia and Estonia gave Germany many more collaborators per capita than other borderland regions. Latvian units fought around Lake Il’men’ in Russia, in Ukraine, and in Crimea; Estonians did the same in Belorussia, Ukraine, and Stalingrad; and Lithuanians did so in Belorussia and Ukraine. 68 The Latvian administration raised 48 police battalions, some of which were later reorganized into two Waffen-SS divisions. By 1 July 1944, 85,550 Latvians were enlisted in the SS, with another 61,060 as auxiliaries in the German forces, which constituted 8 percent of Latvian population, a top proportion among the countries that supplied German collaborators. 69 Three times as many Latvian citizens fought for the Germans as for the Soviets; only 57,470 Latvians joined the Red Army.  In Estonia, the self-administration organized a Waffen-SS legion in October 1942, transformed into a Waffen-SS division in May 1944. Along with police battalions that operated since the beginning of the German occupation, the Estonian collaborators numbered between 50,000 to 60,000 men at that time, five times larger than the regular army of independent Estonia. After the influx of volunteers dried up, the Germans resorted to conscription, and the self-administrations obediently drafted Balts, threatening those who failed to report with “punishment according to martial law.” Yet many Latvian and Estonian soldiers fought for the Axis with enthusiasm. Indeed, the Latvian 19th Waffen-SS Division stubbornly defended Courland until Germany surrendered; whereas a unit from the Latvian 15th Waffen-SS Division guarded Hitler’s bunker in Berlin during his last days. About 50,000 Latvians died while fighting on German side, 10 times as many as the number of those who died fighting for the Soviets.  Lithuanian nationalists, by contrast, called on recruits to evade German conscriptions. No unit larger than a police battalion was ever organized. By January 1945, 36,800 Lithuanians organized in 21 police battalions fought for the Germans.  The largest Baltic state thus gave the Germans the smallest number of collaborators.

Apart from the Holocaust, Baltic police battalions performed mainly counterinsurgency missions. They conducted these operations in the style set by the Nazis. Of 48 Latvian police battalions, 26 engaged in counterinsurgency in Belorussia and “have remained in the historic memory of the Belorussian people … as members of punitive expeditions … conspicuous by their ruthlessness.” In an operation called “Winter Magic,” they burned down between 15 and 26 Belorussian villages and executed scores of civilians, some of them burned alive in locked buildings. 88 Latvian police units also killed all 235 inhabitants of the Latvian village of Audrini and 47 persons in the village of Morduki in retaliation for sheltering partisans.  Friedrich Schwung , Gebietskommissar in Latgale , commented: “Latvian policemen almost all have a bit of sadism in their blood.”  The Estonian self-administration raised over 20 police battalions. Of them, 7 were guarding Estonian concentration camps; 12 engaged in antipartisan operations in Russia, Belorussia, and Poland; and 3 conducted deportations to Germany and Estonia and food requisitions. During a counterinsurgency campaign in the Russian Pskov Province, the 37th and 40th Estonian Police Battalions were parts of the 207th German Security Division. Its reports state that it executed 93 percent of the arrested partisan suspects and suspected partisan sympathizers among civilians in 1942 and 81 percent in 1943 – in total, 541 persons. The 288th Estonian Police Battalion burned down 30 Belorussian villages.  

Unlike many Balts and West Ukrainians, West Belorussians mostly abstained from collaboration. Rosenberg observed that “no positive elements with whom we could cooperate exist in Belorussia.” Ordnungsdienst, the German auxiliary police, resorted to a compulsory draft of Belorussians, enforced by taking hostages from the families of eligible men. The police units so organized were fused into the least enthusiastic of all Waffen-SS divisions.

The development of a staff study by Group XXI (Army of Norway) for operations in Finland based on Directive 21. The study was expanded by Marshal von Brauchitsch on January 16 to include examining the feasibility of a German–Finnish southeast drive in the area of Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega, and the White Sea. The Army of Norway was asked to make recommendations for supply operations and command relationships. This study, begun in late December, was completed on January 27, 1941, and given the code name Silberfuchs (Silver Fox).

The Finnish Army would carry the main burden of the attack. The bulk of their forces would be concentrated in the southeast for an attack east of Lake Ladoga towards the Svir River. The Finnish Army was to defend the frontier north of Lake Ladoga with relatively weak forces, and additionally was responsible for the security of the coast and the Åland Islands. The staff study assumed that the overall command in Finland would be given to the Finns because they were providing the preponderance of forces.

The planning and preparation for Renntier was not wasted, but expanded by making it part of the operations assigned to Mountain Corps Norway. The main German attack was a drive from Rovaniemi through Salla to Kandalaksha on the White Sea. This drive would cut the Murmansk Railroad and sever lines of communication between Soviet forces in Murmansk and on the Kola Peninsula from the rest of the Soviet Union.

The forces allocated to the main drive consisted of one German and one Finnish corps. The German corps—XXXVI Corps—consisted of two infantry divisions and SS Kampfgruppe Nord reinforced by a tank battalion, a machinegun battalion, an antitank battalion, an artillery battalion, and engineers. Kampfgruppe Nord would provide security for the assembly of the two infantry divisions. Part of the German forces would turn north when they reached Kandalaksha. In conjunction with one reinforced mountain division advancing from Pechenga towards Murmansk, the forces that turned north would destroy the Soviet forces on the Kola Peninsula and capture Murmansk.

The Finnish corps—III Corps—consisted of two divisions (3rd and 6th) plus border guards. Its main mission was to launch a secondary attack on the German right flank against Ukhta (Uhtua) and then on towards Kem (Kemi) on the White Sea. This drive, if successful, would also cut the Murmansk Railroad. The bulk of the German forces advancing on Kandalaksha would turn south after reaching that town and link up with the Finns in the Kem area for a joint drive southward behind the left wing of the main Finnish Army.

The operations proposed in the Silberfuchs staff study assumed that Sweden would allow German troops and supplies to cross its territory from Norway to Finland. It was planned that five divisions (later increased to seven) would be left in Norway for its defense and that the Army of Norway would supply all German units. This would involve large supply, construction, and transportation assets and many of these would have to come from Germany.

The OKH Operation Order

The German Army issued an operation order at the end of January for operations in Finland using the Army of Norway staff study as its basis. Hitler approved the order on February 3, 1941.

The OKH order assigned the defense of Norway as the highest priority of the Army of Norway. Only forces over and above the requirement for the priority mission would be used in Finland where the mission of German forces was limited to the defense of the Pechanga area until Finland entered the war. At that time the order laid out two possible courses of action. The first was that proposed in the Army of Norway staff study, while the second would come into being if Sweden refused transit of troops. If this materialized, the Germans would launch an attack through Pechenga with the mission of capturing Murmansk.

As far as the mission of the Finnish Army, some disagreements had developed and certain things remained unresolved. Finnish participation in the planning had been indirect and remained so because Hitler’s order on February 3, 1941 specified that all potential allies should be brought into the planning process only when German intentions could no longer be disguised. The Army order gave the Finnish Army the mission of covering German deployments in central Finland and the capturing of Hanko. The Germans wanted the bulk of the Finnish Army to undertake offensive operations towards the southeast when German Army Group North crossed the Dvina River. The Germans accepted offensives on both sides of Lake Ladoga as long as the main effort was made on the east side of that lake. The Finnish Army was expected to make a sweep around the eastern shore of the lake and isolate Leningrad by affecting a junction with Army Group North in the Tikhvin area.

Finnish infantry adopt defensive positions on the Mannerheim Line as Russian pressure increased.

The OKW was given the responsibility under the Barbarossa Directive to make the necessary arrangements to put Romanian and Finnish contingents under German command. There is no evidence that this was seriously tried with respect to Finland. Command and command relationships were discussed during the Finnish delegation’s visit to Germany in May 1941. The Germans wanted General Falkenhorst to command the forces in north and central Finland while Mannerheim would command in the south.

German planners had previously assumed that Mannerheim would be given overall command in Finland. This is reflected in the OKW directive on April 7, 1941. That idea was now dropped, and their chance of bringing Mannerheim, a rather independent individual, under their control was lost as well. In doing so the Germans disregarded another well-known warning of their military philosopher and theorist Clausewitz that the worst situation is where two independent commanders find themselves operating in the same theater of war.

Ziemke and Erfurth speculate that this change came about because of an OKW desire to command in an active theater of operations. There was probably another and more practical reason. Hitler became exceedingly worried about the security of northern Norway and the iron and nickel mines in Sweden and Finland after the British raid on the Lofoten Islands in March 1941, and began a major force build-up. Mountain Corps Norway was an integral part of the defense of north Norway and Hitler and the OKW may well have been reluctant to place a good part of this area under Finnish command. Falkenhorst was still the German armed forces commander in Norway and it made some sense to also have him as commander in central and northern Finland.

Mannerheim wrote after the war that he received indirect feelers—from General Erfurth to General Heinrichs—about assuming overall command in Finland. There is some confusion in the sources as to when these feelers were made. Mannerheim gives the time of the offer as June 1941 while Erfurth places it in June 1944. Mannerheim writes about the 1941 offer that he was not attracted by the idea and gives as his reason a reluctance to become too dependent on the German High Command. Mannerheim does not mention the 1944 offer in his memoirs but Erfurth writes that Mannerheim replied to it on June 29, 1944, with the statement that he was too old to take over the additional responsibilities that the position of commander in chief of all forces in Finland would entail. The 1944 offer, if made, was probably an attempt to tie Finland firmly to Germany at a time when it was beginning to go its own way.

In addition to failing to settle on an overall commander, operations in Finland came under two separate German headquarters. The German commander in chief in northern and central Finland, whose main focus was on isolating Murmansk, reported to the OKW after Hitler’s changes to the command structure following the Lofoten raid in March 1941. OKH—responsible for operations on the Eastern Front—was left to deal with operations in southern Finland. The axiomatic belief in both Germany and Finland that the looming war would be short was probably the greatest contributing factor to this deficient command arrangement. This short-war scenario undoubtedly made many feel that no elaborate command structure or long-range plans were necessary.

There was no joint German–Finnish campaign plan much beyond the initial attacks. The loose and informal nature of the coalition, the lack of long-range planning, and an ineffective command structure posed increasing problems as the war dragged on. These massive violations of long-standing military principles could have been rectified by Hitler and the OKW, but they failed to act.

At 9.30 p.m., Hamburg radio station warned the German people that a grave and important announcement was about to be made. Suitably funereal music from Wagner and Bruckner's Seventh Symphony was played to prepare listeners for Grand Admiral Donitz's address to the nation. He stated that Hitler had fallen, fighting `at the head of his troops', and announced his succession. Very few people in Berlin heard the news because of the lack of electric current.

Martin Bormann, meanwhile, was evidently impatient at having to wait for the Goebbels family drama to finish. Berlin Commandant General Weidling's surrender was to take place at midnight and the breakout northwards over the Spree was due to start an hour before. The personnel from the Fuhrer bunker, including Traudl Junge, Gerda Christian and Constanze Manzialy, had been told to assemble ready for departure. Generals’ Krebs and Burgdorf, who both intended to shoot themselves later, were not to be seen.

Krukenberg, who had been summoned earlier by Mohnke, encountered Artur Axmann and Ziegler, the previous commander of the Nordland. Mohnke asked Krukenberg whether, as the senior officer, he wished to continue the defence of the city centre. He added that General Weidling had given an order to break out of Berlin north-westwards through the Soviet encirclement, but that a cease-fire would come into effect around midnight. Krukenberg agreed to join the breakout. He and Ziegler left to rally the Nordland and other units in the area. Krukenberg sent one of his aides on ahead, with messages to outlying detachments to fall back. The group led by Captain Fenet, defending Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, heard nothing. Krukenberg's aide, who was never seen again, probably met his death before he reached them.

The scenes in the bunker were chaotic as Bormann and Mohnke tried to organize everybody into groups. In the end, they did not leave until nearly 11 p.m., two hours later than planned. The first group, led by Mohnke, set out through the cellars of the Reich Chancellery, and then followed a complicated route to the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof. The others followed at set intervals. The most difficult part was just north of the station, where they had to cross the Spree. This could not be done under cover of darkness because the flames from bombarded buildings lit up the whole area. The first group from the Reich Chancellery, which included Mohnke and the secretaries, wisely avoided the main Weidendammer Bridge. They used a metal footbridge 300 metres downstream and headed for the Charite hospital.

The Nordland Tiger tank and a self-propelled assault gun were to spearhead the main charge across the Weidendammer Bridge. Word had spread of the breakout and many hundreds of SS, Wehrmacht soldiers and civilians had assembled. It was a gathering which Soviet troops could not fail to miss. The first mass rush, led by the Tiger tank, took place just after midnight, but although the armoured monster managed to smash through the barrier on the north side of the bridge, they soon ran into very heavy fire in the Ziegelstrasse beyond. An anti-tank round struck the Tiger and many of the civilians and soldiers in its wake were mown down. Axmann was wounded, but managed to stagger on his way. Bormann and Dr Stumpfegger were knocked over by the blast when the tank was hit, but they recovered and went on. Bormann carried the last copy of Hitler's testament, and he evidently hoped to use it to justify his claim to a position in Donitz's government when he reached Schleswig-Holstein.

Another attack over the bridge was made soon afterwards, using a self-propelled 20mm quadruple flak gun and a half-track. This too was largely a failure. A third attempt was made at around i a.m., and a fourth an hour later. Bormann, Stumpfegger, Schwaegermann and Axmann kept together for a time. They followed the railway line to the Lehrterstrasse Bahnhof. There they split up. Bormann and Stumpfegger turned north-eastwards towards the Stettiner Bahnhof. Axmann went the other way, but ran into a Soviet patrol. He turned back and followed Bormann's route. Not long afterwards he came across two bodies. He identified them as Bormann and Stumpfegger, but he did not have time to discover how they had died. Martin Bormann, although not of his own volition, was the only major Nazi Party leader to have faced the bullets of the Bolshevik enemy. All the others - Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and Goring - took their own lives.

Krukenberg had meanwhile assembled most of his French SS escort. They joined up with Ziegler and a much larger group from the Nordland. Krukenberg estimated that there were four or five holders of the Knight's Cross among them. They managed to cross the Spree shortly before dawn. But they came under heavy fire just a few hundred metres short of the Gesundbrunnen U-Bahn station. Ziegler was hit by a ricochet and mortally wounded. Several others in their group also fell, among them Eugene Vanlot, the young French recipient of the Knight's Cross. He died in a nearby cellar three days later.

The Soviet forces in the area had been reinforced so strongly that Krukenberg and his remaining companions had no choice but to retreat the way they had come. At the top end of the Ziegelstrasse they saw the Tiger tank which Mohnke had taken from them. There was no sign of any of its crew. One of Krukenberg's officers had spotted a joinery workshop nearby and there they discovered some overalls to disguise themselves. Krukenberg managed to make his way to Dahlem, where he hid for over a week in the apartment of friends. Eventually he had no choice but to surrender.