Courland Pocket

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Battles of the Courland Bridgehead
Part of the Eastern Front of World War II
Soviet advances from 1 September 1943 – 31 December 1944, the Courland Pocket is the white area west of the Gulf of Riga
Date 31 July 1944 – 10 May 1945 Location Courland Peninsula, Latvia 57°0′0″N 22°0′0″E Result Soviet victory German forces in Courland surrender after the general German surrender
Belligerents
Germany	Soviet Union Free Germany[1][2][3] Kurelis group [lt; lv; pl; ru]
Commanders and leaders
Ferdinand Schörner Lothar Rendulic Heinrich von Vietinghoff Carl Hilpert Walter Krüger	Ivan Bagramyan Andrey Yeryomenko Leonid Govorov
Units involved
Army Group North (prior to 25/01/1945) Army Group Courland (from 25/01/1945 onwards until surrender)	1st Baltic Front 2nd Baltic Front
Casualties and losses
October 1944–8 May 1945 117,871 combat casualties (39,537 in February–March 1945)[4] 189,112 captured on 9 May 1945[4]	16 Feb – 8 May 1945 30,501 killed, 130,447 wounded or sick[5] Total: 160,948

The Courland Pocket^[a] was an area of the Courland Peninsula where Army Group North of Nazi Germany and the Reichskommissariat Ostland were cut off and surrounded by the Red Army for almost a year, lasting from July 1944 until 10 May 1945.

The pocket was created during the Red Army's Baltic Offensive, when forces of the 1st Baltic Front reached the Baltic Sea near Memel (Klaipėda) during its lesser Memel Offensive Operation phases in October 1944. 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.

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