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Germany Russia Livland 1917 ▶ Kaiserliche Marine "Unternehmen Albion" (Part 1/2) Island Ösel Saaremaa
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"Unternehmen Albion" was an amphibious landing operation of the German Empire during World War I, carried out jointly by the Army and Navy in September and October 1917 to occupy the Baltic islands of Saaremaa (Ösel), Hiiumaa (Dagö) and Muhu (Moon). The three islands were part of the Russian Empire and strategically dominated the central and northern Baltic Sea. The naval war in the Baltic Sea had been rather unspectacular so far. Immediately before the outbreak of war, the Imperial Russian Navy was still in the first stages of rebuilding after the Tsarist Empire had lost almost its entire Baltic and Pacific fleets in the lost Russo-Japanese War. The few remaining units were mostly small or obsolete, leaving Russian naval forces in the Baltic very weak. Moreover, the defensive position of the Gulf of Finland to protect the capital St. Petersburg, the naval fortress of Emperor Peter the Great, was also only partially completed. Its outermost western defense belt included both the Baltic islands and the Aland Islands. The German Imperial Navy, on the other hand, seemed to be able to draw from its full resources, but the strategic focus of operations was clearly in the North Sea, where the superiority of the British Royal Navy threatened. Therefore, the Commander-in-Chief of the Baltic Forces (OdO), Grand Admiral Prince Henry of Prussia, had only relatively few and mostly obsolete units at his disposal, mainly older ships of the line, armored cruisers and small cruisers, and torpedo boats. Mutual weakness, as well as the impossibility of navigation during the icy winter months, determined strategy; both sides made only brief forays into enemy territory, and engagements between randomly encountered battle groups usually ended in a draw. However, the Russians captured the codebook of the German naval forces early in the war, which allowed both them and the British to decode German radio messages. The Russians, in particular, took advantage of their experience with naval mines gained in the previous war and interspersed the shallow Baltic Sea with extensive minefields. The Germans had also set themselves up for mine warfare and followed suit, making the Baltic an exceptionally dangerous body of water. Both sides also dabbled in submarine ambushes. A decisive influence on naval warfare was the situation on land. The Germans advanced inexorably along the Baltic coast during the course of the war and gradually captured Russian naval bases in the Baltic, shrinking the radius of action of Russian ships. Soon the fighting was concentrated in the Gulf of Riga, where the Germans sought to support and supply their attacking forces from the sea. The Russians sought to prevent this and concentrated their fleet in this area. They also received strong support from their bases in the Gulf of Finland, Hangö, Helsinki, Reval and Kronstadt. The three Baltic islands belonged to Russia since the Great Northern War and were assigned to the Livonia Governorate. The land is flat and interspersed with forests and bogs, interrupted by numerous clearings and clearings, where individual farms, no less than 131 manors of the German Baltic nobility and small villages are located. By far the largest settlement was already at that time Arensburg, where also the administration had its seat. The majority of the population of 50,000 to 60,000 people, who made their living mostly as farmers and fishermen, consisted of Estonians, while the administration, upper class and intelligentsia consisted almost exclusively of Baltic Germans and some Russians. During the course of the enterprise, the population adopted a wait-and-see attitude and did not take sides.
history, ww2, Germany, Россия, Russland, Livland, Marine, Navy, Ösel, Sareemaa, marina, Kaiserliche Marine, Baltic
#history #ww1 #Baltic #Navy #Livland #Россия #Germany #military #worldwar #Estonia #Ösel #Sareemaa #simplehistory