The bloodiest military campaign you've never heard of

The Courland Pocket was a large scale blockade of Nazi German forces in Northern Europe during the ending stages of World War II. It lasted 7 months (Oct 1944 - May 1945), in what became one of the strangest and bloodiest military campaigns in the history of organized warfare. (Pictured: Courland Peninsula, just East of the coast of Sweden, during a frigid Baltic winter)

With Allied forces rapidly advancing forwards both on the Western and Eastern fronts, German Army Group North, consisting of over 30 divisions and numbering over 200,000 men, was cut off from the rest of German forces and trapped on a small Latvian peninsula the size of New Jersey (upper right corner).

As the Third Reich was crumbling in late 1944-45, and German-controlled cities fell to Allied forces one by one, Adolf Hitler was growing increasingly detached from the bitter reality around him. The delusional dictator was convinced the Courland Bridgehead could serve as a springboard for a future invasion into the Russian mainland. Courland was now the last Nazi hope.

Hitler was further encouraged by Karl Dönitz, the Commander in-Chief of the German Navy, or Kriegsmarine, who vainly hoped the new Wunderwaffe - Type XXI Electric Submarines - would bring victory to Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic, forcing the Allies out of Western Europe. As such, Dönitz considered the Baltic submarine bases and the Baltic training grounds of Kriegsmarine to be of great strategic importance. (Pictured: blueprint of a Type XXI U-Boat)

Thus, despite the objections of Führer's advisors, which included Heinz Guderian, the Chief of the German General Staff, Hitler laid the groundwork for the effective abandonment, isolation and encirclement of several hundred thousand of his own men, as well as over 10,000 Latvian soldiers. Instead of reconnecting with German units in East Prussia, they were now surrounded by the freezing waters of the Baltic Sea to the West, North and East, and a gargantuan amassment of Red Army divisions to the South.

For the Germans trapped in Courland, the war had already been lost. Yet desertion was still dealt with by capital punishment. Surrendering to the Soviets, on the other hand, meant being sent to forced labour camps in Siberia, where most perished. Whatever happened, they were doomed. On the other side of the trenches, Joseph Stalin insisted on the complete annihilation of the encircled German units. In Stalin's eyes, capturing Courland was also important in order to avoid the repeat of a post-WW I scenario, in which the Germans and Latvians successfully used Courland as a beachhead in recapturing the rest of Latvian territories from the Bolsheviks.

During the course of 7 months, Stalin launched 6 massive invasions led by General Ivan Bagramyan. The Soviets sent human wave after human wave in desperate attempts to take the bridgehead, only for them to be slaughtered en masse by the well-fortified German artillery, tanks and machine guns. Amazingly, aided by the harsh climate and terrain, as well as the unwavering German and Latvian discipline despite the overwhelming odds and little hope of returning home alive, the frontline didn't move by more than a couple of miles at any given time.

At the peak of the 2nd Grand Battle of the Courland Pocket, the Soviet Command had 80 divisions at its disposal on the frontlines of the Courland Pocket. By comparison, the US military had only 69 divisions stationed in the entire European and Mediterranean theaters of operation combined. In what seems like a perfect example of the absurdity of war and the dangers of authoritarian rule, the Soviets alone lost nearly 400,000 men in a pointless campaign that would have never taken place were it not for Hitler's delusions and Stalin's complete disregard for human life. The total losses amounted to 2,651 tanks, 900 artillery pieces, 1,440 machine guns with over 550,000 casualties on both sides combined.

Berlin fell and Nazi Germany finally surrendered on May 8th, 1945. Yet, unlike elsewhere in Europe, the units stationed in Courland were still battle-ready and fully operational. Western Latvia had become the last Nazi stronghold (unless you're into the whole Moon base theory). It wasn't until May 12th when most units had surrendered to the Soviets. Most remaining Latvians joined the anti-Communist national resistance, or Forest Brothers, which used the remaining depot of arms and ammunition and continued to be a fighting force for almost 10 years into the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States. The surrendered Wehrmacht soldiers were sent to Soviet camps in Valdai Hills, where nearly a third of them died, awaiting repatriation to their homeland.