A weakened Army Group North

No amount of ornately titled units could compensate for the fact that the army group was a wasting force, denied replacement troops, supplies and new equipment. So when the Soviets launched their new offensive in January, the Red Army soon gained tactical and operational advantage. A build-up of troops was first detected on the eastern sector and the Polizei Division battlegroup was rapidly deployed as a reserve to the threatened sector. Then, on 14 January, the Soviets launched a massive coordinated offensive along the length of Army Group North's front. The Second Shock Army burst out of the Oranienbaum bridgehead and rolled over the 9th and 10th Luftwaffe divisions on the extreme right of III SS Panzer Corps. They were literally crushed by artillery barrages, waves of T-34s and infantry assaults. The two units ceased to exist as fighting formations. Huge columns of Russian tanks were now streaming southwards, and driving a wedge between Steiner's Waffen-SS men and the rest of the army group. Steiner ignored orders by Hitler for his troops to fight to the last man, and he ordered a retreat. Bowing to the inevitable, Hitler agreed to allow the army group to withdraw to the Panther Line, which was being built either side of Lake Peipus, 100km (62 miles) to the rear. Hitler's orders were largely academic. The Soviet offensive was so overpowering, though, that there was little chance of it being halted east of the Panther Line.

The SS in retreat

Steiner and his men kept one step ahead of the Soviets and conducted a skilful retreat. As heavy weapons and vehicles were pulled back west, Waffen-SS detachments, such as the 23rd Panzergrenadier Regiment Norge, blew up bridges, mined roads and sabotaged any military equipment that could not be evacuated, such as dug-in Panther tanks. By the end of January the corps was safely behind the Narva sector of the Panther Line, between the Baltic Sea and Lake Peipus. Soviet troops of the Forty-Seventh, Second Shock and Eighth Armies attempted to outflank the Narva defences by landing at Mereküla in February, but the Waffen-SS men were ready for them and the Soviet landing force was devastated with 350 Russians killed and 200 captured. The 2nd SS Brigade, 15th Division and the Polizei Division battlegroup were less lucky and spent six weeks retreating to Pskov with the remnants of the German Eighteenth Army. The "roving pocket" was almost surrounded near Luga, but dodged past the Soviet spearheads to make it back to the Panther Line by the beginning of March. As well as keeping one step ahead of the pursuing Soviet tanks, the German troops had to battle past moving bands of Soviet partisans who ambushed them in the huge forests that dominated the region.

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