Defending the Panther Line

Once behind the Panther Line defences, the Waffen-SS units were in the forefront of efforts to drive off Soviet probing attacks that were launched with great regularity during March and April. The narrow Narva position was a natural defensive line, which the Soviets could not outflank, so the Waffen-SS defence held firm against repeated attacks.

Farther south, VI SS Corps was thrown into the line to take over command of the 1st SS Brigade and the Latvian 15th Division. It held out against two major Soviet attacks in March and sealed a dangerous penetration of the German front, supported by the Polizei Division battlegroup.

During the late spring and into the summer, Soviet forces were gathering their strength for a major offensive that would decisively defeat the German Army on the Eastern Front. In June the first phase unfolded with the launching of Operation Bagration, which swept all of Army Group Centre. In mid-July, Army Group North was hit. The forces south of Lake Peipus were forced to fall back when their southern flank was exposed.

The Narva position

In the Narva bridgehead, Steiner's Waffen-SS men had tried to build up their defences and had been reinforced with new Western European volunteers, including the Belgian Storm Brigade Wallonien. A dozen Panther tanks from the 11th SS Panzer Battalion bolstered the defence, as well as heavy guns from the 54th SS Heavy Artillery Regiment. When the Soviets threw a series of massive tank attacks against the Narva bridgehead in July, this engagement became known as the "Battle of the European SS" because so many foreign volunteer contingents were involved. What was left of the Nordland Division, plus the Dutch and Belgian brigades and the Estonians, all put up furious resistance. In one battle, for example, they knocked out more than 100 T-34s that charged the German lines.

While Steiner's men were holding their own, farther south Soviet spearheads were approaching Riga and threatening to cut off all of Army Group North from the main German forces in Lithuania and East Prussia. The situation looked desperate when Steiner was ordered to mobilize his motorized units and race from Narva to Riga to set up an improvised defensive line to hold open an escape corridor. On 16 September, Steiner's corps, with the Nordland Division in the lead, began its 250km (155-mile) forced march and arrived in Riga from the north as Soviet troops were entering the city from the east. Steiner and his men had arrived just in time to hold open the vital escape route. As the Waffen-SS corps withdrew, it again destroyed anything of military importance: railway lines, bridges and oil refineries.

The Courland Pocket

Along with the 14th Panzer Division, and the 11th and 225th Infantry Divisions, the 10,000 men of Steiner's corps defended Riga for two weeks against human-wave infantry attacks backed by heavy bomber raids. Steiner now led what was left of his corps into the Courland Peninsula to the west of Riga. It was trapped there with the rest of the army group when Soviet tanks reached the Baltic north of Memel at the end of October. A strong defensive corridor had been thrown up across the entrance to the peninsula and a large Soviet attack was driven back. In the Courland Pocket were III SS Panzer Corps and VI SS Corps. The latter comprised the 15th and 19th SS Divisions, while III SS Panzer Corps was made up of the Nordland Division and the 23rd SS Panzergrenadier Division Nederland.

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