Germans occupy Libau

On the evening of 7 May 1915 German troops entered Libau (Liepāja), a Russian naval port on the coast of Courland. The town was taken by a small detachment, supported from the sea by cruisers of the German Baltic forces. The Russian garrison put up no serious defence. It withdrew northwards, blowing up forts, ammunition dumps and bridges on its way. The Germans took full control of the town and its surroundings on the morning of 8 May, and that day the German war communiqué announced the capture of Libau. According to Latvian studies, German cavalry also occupied Kuldīga, further inland, on 7 May.

The raid into Courland

The capture of Libau was part of an operation that General Otto von Lauenstein’s army group had begun in Lithuania at the end of April. It was meant to draw Russian reserves northwards while the great blow that was launched on 2 May at Gorlice was being prepared in Galicia. The Germans advanced quickly and took Shavli on 30 April, but their attempt to reach Mitau, today’s Jelgava, failed at the beginning of May. Libau, on the western flank, threatened them with a blow in the back. The German command estimated its garrison at 6,000–8,000 men, but did not know the state of the fortifications surrounding the town between lakes and marshes.

Modest forces were assigned to the attack: Colonel Schulenburg’s 3rd Cavalry Brigade, a few infantry battalions and heavy artillery. Men were short, so Lauenstein asked the navy for help. Rear-Admiral Albert Hopman (PL), commanding the reconnaissance forces in the Baltic, assembled the coastal defence ship Beowulf, the armoured cruisers Roon, Prinz Heinrich and Prinz Adalbert, several light cruisers, including Augsburg and Lübeck, two torpedo-boat flotillas, minesweepers and seaplane tenders. From 5 May the minesweepers cleared the approaches to the port, and aircraft from the seaplane tenders reconnoitred the Russian positions.

Attack from land and sea

On the morning of 7 May Schulenburg’s cavalry set off from Preekuln (today Priekule) and, by way of Grobiņa, approached the town from the east, driving off Russian Cossack sotnias on the way. From the south, along the coast, a second detachment advanced, covered by the cruisers’ fire. The ships shelled the coastal batteries, the trenches in front of the forts and targets in the town. In the afternoon the army’s artillery near Grobiņa joined the bombardment. The Russian minefields took their toll: in the morning the stern of the torpedo boat S 128 was blown off by a mine and she was towed with difficulty to Memel, and the next day the torpedo boat V 107 sank on a mine as she entered the port.

In the afternoon a white flag appeared over the southern forts, and according to the German official history 6 officers and about 500 men surrendered on the coast. Explosions rang out in various parts of the town all day. The retreating Russians were destroying what was left of the fortifications and depots. By dusk the Germans had reached the canal that cuts through the town, and after dark their advance guard cut through the wire on the road from Grobiņa and entered Libau from the east. At 10.30 a.m. on 8 May Schulenburg reported by radio that the town had been finally taken. The German war communiqué of 8 May spoke of 1,600 prisoners, twelve guns and four machine guns, and the next day of large stocks of war materiel seized in the town. The German history of operations in the Baltic, on the other hand, states that the main body of the garrison left without abandoning a single gun.

A port without defenders

So easy a victory was largely the result of Russian pre-war plans. The Russians had long considered Libau, lying only a few dozen kilometres from the border with East Prussia, impossible to hold. In accordance with the mobilisation plan, in the first days of August 1914 they had already taken their ships out of it and begun disarming and blowing up the forts. The garrison left in the town was above all to complete the demolitions and prevent the port being captured intact. The Germans themselves had blocked the harbour entrances in November 1914 by sinking old ships in them. According to a German account, one of the captured Russian officers said that the garrison had been counting on help from the Baltic Fleet, and when German warships appeared in the roads instead, a general retreat began.

For the inhabitants an occupation began that lasted until the end of the war. According to accounts cited by Latvian historians, after a few days the new authorities demanded from the town a contribution of half a million gold roubles, later reduced to 300,000, as well as the daily supply of two thousand labourers, horses and carts. The German navy quickly set about clearing the harbour entrances of wrecks and mines. Libau, the former Russian base with the Emperor Alexander III naval port, today’s district of Karosta, became a forward base of the German fleet in the eastern Baltic.