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Operation Northwind (Unternehmen Nordwind) was the last major German offensive of World War II on the Western Front. Northwind was launched to support the German Ardennes offensive campaign in the Battle of the Bulge, which by late December 1944 had decisively turned against the German forces. It began on 31 December 1944 in Rhineland-Palatinate, Alsace and Lorraine in southwestern Germany and northeastern France, and ended on 25 January 1945. The German offensive was an operational failure, with its main objectives not achieved.

Hastily conceived as an alternative to the Ardennes Offensive or in support of it, the operation commenced well after the German offensive there had come to a halt and German forces had already largely been expelled from the Ardennes. Concurrently, Soviet forces were about to capture Warsaw and were making significant inroads into East Prussia. A substantial portion of the engagement unfolded between January 8th and 20th, 1945, in the region spanning from Hagenau to Weissenburg. However, the battles along the Vosges ridge and the establishment of a German bridgehead on the Upper Rhine had a greater influence on the course of the offensive. Ultimately, the offensive concluded following the withdrawal of American forces to the Moder line near Hagenau, and their successful repulsion of the final German attacks on January 25th.

Similar to the Ardennes Offensive, the Nordwind offensive was hampered by lack of fuel, insufficient artillery support and insufficient reconnaissance. Above all, a lack of personnel as well as stubborn Allied resistance are considered to be the decisive reasons for the failure of Nordwind. The units deployed in this section of the front, which had been weakened by the previous retreat, were inadequately staffed, a shortcoming that was only belatedly compensated for by the deployment of reserves. Operational control was made even more difficult by the fragmented command structure, as the offensive not solely under the purview of Army Group G. The 19th Army was separated from Army Group G and formed the newly established Army Group Upper Rhine commanded by Heinrich Himmler, who had no military experience or staff officer training.

Operation Nordwind is one of the lesser-known and sometimes even misrepresented major operations of the Second World War; public perception is dominated by the simultaneous battles in the Ardennes, in the Hürtgen Forest and the Vistula-Oder Offensive on the Eastern Front.

Background
On November 12, 1944, the 6th US Army Group, consisting of the 7th US Army and the French 1st Army, launched an offensive on both sides of the Vosges supported by the 3rd US Army. The Allied armies soon broke through the Saverne Pass and the Belfort Gap, reaching the Upper Rhine near Mulhouse on November 19. On November 23, they neared Strasbourg. On the direct orders of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied units did not cross the Rhine, but drove north. In early to mid-December, they had largely pushed the German 1st Army north from Lower Alsace and pinned significant parts of the 19th Army in the Colmar Pocket. 19th Army was then separated from Army Group G on December 2nd, and transferred to the newly formed Army Group Upper Rhine. Supreme command of Army Group Upper Rhine was then given to Heinrich Himmler on December 10, Himmler bypassed typical Wehrmacht chain of command and was directly subordinate to Führer's headquarters. At the end of December 1944, after initial successes, the German Ardennes Offensive ground to a halt. In order to free up forces for an American counterattack in the Ardennes, the 7th US Army took over large parts of the 3rd US Army's sector of the front in Lower Alsace and Lorraine. With the US 7th Army stretched thin, the section thus became the weakest part of the American front. On the other hand, the German forces in the West still had several divisions available as reserves that could be deployed in mid-January 1945.

Allied planning
As the 3rd US Army was reorganizing for a counteroffensive against the Germans in the Ardennes, SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force) became aware of the challenges that faced the 6th US Army Group with its now over-extended section of the front. In a meeting on December 26, 1944, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had recently been promoted to General of the Army, informed the commander of the 6th US Army Group, Jacob L. Devers, that in order to shorten the more vulnerable front of the 6th US Army Group, he wanted it to be withdrawn from the Upper Rhine to the Vosges ridge. Neither this discussion nor SHAEF's subsequent urging were interpreted by Devers as formal commands. Devers had serious doubts about the Allied military intelligence system and SHAEF's assessment of the situation after the Ardennes fiasco, he therefore did not see a withdrawal as urgent. Devers planned a withdrawal, but did not carry it out. According to his assessment, which was also shared by the commander of the 7th US Army Alexander Patch, a German attack on the Saar was more likely. This view was reinforced by a spoiling attack there by Panzer Lehr Division in November 1944. Another possibility, considered less likely because of the terrain, was an attack along the Vosges ridge. A German attack in the Upper Rhine plain was considered implausible because of the sections of strong Maginot Line defenses held by the Americans.

For the aforementioned reasons, Patch planned a defence in depth with the following defensive lines:

1.  The Maginot Line

2.  Bitche – Niederbronn – Moder

3.  Bitche – Ingweiler – Strasbourg

4.  Eastern foothills of the Vosges

Allied forces
On paper, the Allies had fewer divisions than the Germans, but they were better manned and supplied. Levels of experience and training varied significantly from division to division; some units had been fighting since the Italian campaign, while others had just been organized and deployed in November 1944. The latter was particularly true of the French units, many of which were only recently recruited from the Resistance. Some individual American divisions were still in the formation phase: their infantry regiments had only recently arrived, while artillery and logistics units were still being attached.

Objectives
By 21 December 1944, the German momentum during the Battle of the Bulge had begun to dissipate, evident that the operation was on the brink of failure. It was believe that an attack against the the Vistula-Oder Offensive on the Eastern Front.h ht. extended its lines and taken on a defensive posture to cover the area vacated by the United States Third Army (which turned north to assist at the site of the German breakthrough), could relieve pressure on German forces in the Ardennes. In a briefing at his military command complex at Adlerhorst, Adolf Hitler declared in his speech to his division commanders on 28 December 1944 (three days prior to the launch of Operation Nordwind), "This attack has a very clear objective, namely the destruction of the enemy forces. There is not a matter of prestige involved here. It is a matter of destroying and exterminating the enemy forces wherever we find them."

The goal of the offensive was to break through the lines of the U.S. Seventh Army and French 1st Army in the Upper Vosges Mountains and the Alsatian Plain and destroy them, as well as seize Strasbourg, which Himmler had promised would be captured by 30 January. That would leave the way open for Operation Dentist (Unternehmen Zahnarzt), a planned major thrust into the rear of the U.S. Third Army, intended to lead to the destruction of that army.

Offensive
On 31 December 1944, German Army Group G (commanded by Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz) and Army Group Upper Rhine (commanded by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler) launched a major offensive against the thinly stretched, 110 km front line held by the U.S. 7th Army. Operation Nordwind soon had the overextended U.S. 7th Army in dire straits; the 7th Army (at the orders of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower) had sent troops, equipment, and supplies north to reinforce the American armies in the Ardennes involved in the Battle of the Bulge.

On the same day that the German Army launched Operation Nordwind, the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) committed almost 1,000 aircraft in support. This attempt to cripple the Allied air forces based in northwestern Europe was known as Operation Bodenplatte. It failed without having achieved any of its key objectives.

The initial Nordwind attack was conducted by three corps of the German 1st Army of Army Group G, and by 9 January, the XXXIX (39th) Panzer Corps was heavily engaged as well. By 15 January at least 17 German divisions (including units in the Colmar Pocket) from Army Group G and Army Group Oberrhein, including the 6th SS Mountain, 17th SS Panzergrenadier, 21st Panzer, and 25th Panzergrenadier Divisions were engaged in the fighting. Another smaller attack was made against the French positions south of Strasbourg, but it was finally stopped. The U.S. VI Corps—which bore the brunt of the German attacks—was fighting on three sides by 15 January.

The 125th Regiment of the 21st Panzer Division under Colonel Hans von Luck aimed to sever the American supply line to Strasbourg, by cutting across the eastern foothills of the Vosges at the northwest base of a natural salient in a bend of the River Rhine. Here the Maginot Line, running east–west, was used by Allied forces, and "showed what a superb fortification it was". On January 7 Luck approached the line south of Wissembourg at the villages of Rittershoffen and Hatten. Heavy American fire came from the 79th Infantry Division, the 14th Armoured Division, plus elements of the 42nd Infantry Division. On January 10 Luck reached the villages. Two weeks of heavy fighting followed, Germans and Americans each occupying parts of the villages while civilians sheltered in cellars. Luck later said that the fighting around Rittershoffen had been "one of the hardest and most costly battles that ever raged".

Eisenhower, fearing the outright destruction of the U.S. 7th Army, had rushed already battered divisions hurriedly relieved from the Ardennes, southeast over 100 km, to reinforce the 7th Army. But their arrival was delayed, and on 21 January with supplies and ammunition short, Seventh Army ordered the much-depleted 79th Infantry and 14th Armored Divisions to retreat from Rittershoffen and fall back on new positions on the south bank of the Moder River.

On 25 January the German offensive was halted, after the US 222nd Infantry Regiment stopped their advance near Haguenau, earning the Presidential Unit Citation in the process. The same day reinforcements began to arrive from the Ardennes. Although Strasbourg had been successfully defended, the Colmar Pocket had not yet been eliminated.

Design
The Reichsmarine and Kriegsmarine needed appropriately equipped escort ships for the E-boats that were put into service from 1930 onwards. Special ships were necessary because every flotilla needed an tender ship that could serve as accommodation for the boat crews and as a fuel, ammunition, fresh water and food depot for the boats. Initially, the North Sea, a converted commercial steamer that ran a service to Heligoland, was used for this purpose, but due to its age and low speed it was not an ideal solution and was not built for this purpose. The Reichsmarine therefore ordered the Tsingtau as its first S-boat tender in 1933. She was similar in many ways to the U-boat tender Saar, built around the same time, and was smaller than the S-boat tender Carl Peters and Adolf Lüderitz, built after her.

The ship was commissioned as a fleet tender from Blohm & Voss in Hamburg in 1933 as a replacement for the outdated North Sea, was launched there on June 6, 1934, and was put into service on September 24, 1934. It was 87.46 meters long (waterline 85.00 m) and 13.5 m wide, had a draft of 4.01 m and displaced 1980 tons (standard) or 2490 t (maximum). Two MAN four-stroke diesels with a combined 4,100 hp gave her a top speed of 17.5 knots. The operating range was 8,500 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 15 kn. The ship was armed with two 8.8-cm L/45 guns and four (eight from February 1940) 2-cm anti -aircraft machine cannons. The crew numbered 149 men. As a training ship, the Tsingtau had up to 102 additional men on board.

Service History
After completing the test trips, the Tsingtau served from November 3, 1934 to February 1940 as an escort ship for the 1st Speedboat Half Flotilla with the first six new S-boats built since 1932. When the boat S 9 was added on June 12, 1935, it was renamed the 1st Speedboat Flotilla. With the commissioning of additional boats, the 2nd Speedboat Flotilla with the escort ship Tanga was set up on August 1, 1938. Both flotillas were commanded by the leader of the torpedo boats (FdT), who in turn reported to the commander of the reconnaissance forces (BdA).

The Tsingtau took part in the attack on Poland in September 1939 with six boats from the 1st Speedboat Flotilla. On January 6, 1940, she was replaced as the escort ship of the 1st Speedboat Flotilla by the new Carl Peters, and from mid-February 1940 she served as an anti-aircraft training ship, now with eight 2 cm anti- aircraft guns.

During the “Weserübung” operation, the Tsingtau brought army troops and soldiers from a naval artillery company to Kristiansand in Norway as an escort ship for the 2nd Speedboat Flotilla and thus as part of “Warship Group 4” to occupy the port there. Afterwards, she and the speedboats initially stayed in Norway to carry out patrol work in the fjords.

At the end of April, the ship returned to Germany with its S-boat flotilla, where it served as a cadet training ship for the inspection of the training system from May to July and then as a target ship for the 1st Torpedo Boat Flotilla until mid-August. On August 21, 1940, the Tsingtau moved to Rotterdam as an escort ship for the speedboats stationed there. From October 1940 she was an escort ship for the 4th Speedboat Flotilla.

In 1941 the Tsingtau was moved to the Baltic Sea, where she served as an escort ship for various flotillas until April 1944 - first the 5th, from February 15, 1942 the 6th, then the 7th, and in June/July 1942 the 8th speedboat -Flotilla. Then from July 1942 to April 1943 she was directly subordinate to the leader of the Schnellboote (FdS). In April 1943 she was assigned to the 9th Speedboat Flotilla, operating in the English Channel.

When the 2nd Speedboat School Flotilla was set up at the Speedboat Training Division in April 1944, the Tsingtau came to the 2nd Speedboat School Flotilla as an escort ship. It remained there until the end of the war, but was also available to the speedboat leader on several occasions during this time.

Towards the end of the war, numerous missions in the Baltic Sea followed in order to bring as many people as possible from East and West Prussia to the West. On the night of May 5, 1945, the Tsingtau and its speedboats evacuated 3,500 people from the Gotenhafen-Hexengrund torpedo weapons site in the Bay of Danzig. On May 8th, the Tsingtau was part of the very last convoy that once again evacuated soldiers from the Courland Pocket. As she entered the port of Libau, she was shot at by German tanks because no one there believed that German ships would appear for evacuation. On May 8, 1945, around 9:30 p.m., just a few hours before the official end of the war, the last convoy left Libau, with a total of around 15,000 people being brought to the west. Between 2,000 and 3,000 wounded were accommodated on the Tsingtau alone. An order received en route to enter Soviet-occupied Kolberg was ignored and on May 11th or 12th the convoy with the Tsingtau arrived in Kiel.

After the end of the war, the Tsingtau was transferred to the Britain as a war reparation on May 12, 1945. Until 1947 she served under British command with the German Mine Clearance Service, as a tender for the 4th Mine Clearance Division.

In February 1950 the ship was brought to England and scrapped at Clayton & Davie in Dunston on the Tyne (Northumberland).