Plausibility of evacuating Courland

One of the big issues of disagreement between Hitler and Guderian in the closing months of WW2 was Hitler's refusal to permit the evacuation of the remains of Army Group North that had been bottled up in the Courland Peninsula, some 15-20 divisions IIRC. Guderian wanted to use these men for the defence of the Reich.

But realistically how effective an evacuation could the Germans have managed? I assume it would have been a Dunkirk with all the heavy equipment abandoned but the Germans wouldn't have had the naval superiority that the British had in 1940 and I doubt Stalin would have allowed the operation to proceed unmolested. While even a partially successful operation would have givennthe Wehrmacht several thousand more highly eexperienced but poorly equipped soldiers to use in the final battles I'm assuming that the fully equipped Red Army units that were assigned to containing Courland would have been released for operations in Germany.

My own reading of it is even if Hitler had agreed to Guderian it may well have been a fiasco that would have had little impact on the outcome of the War, is this correct?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Soviet subs interdicted the German evacuation of civilians from East Prussia, but IIRC the large majority of ships still got through. If they had decided to evacuate the troops in Courland, we could expect the Germans to have another 100,000 troops or so to play with. But this would be compensated for by the fact that the Soviets no longer have to deploy troops against them and can redirect those troops to the main front.
 
Soviet subs interdicted the German evacuation of civilians from East Prussia, but IIRC the large majority of ships still got through. If they had decided to evacuate the troops in Courland, we could expect the Germans to have another 100,000 troops or so to play with. But this would be compensated for by the fact that the Soviets no longer have to deploy troops against them and can redirect those troops to the main front.

Indeed. Perhaps the troops in Courland, even tied up more troops there, than they could "have fought off" in Germany proper.
 
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