The recovering wounded and new recruits were organized into a new 31st Division in Germany in the fall of 1944; initially designated the 31st Grenadier Division, it was later merged with the newly created 550th Grenadier Division to form the 31st Volksgrenadier Division. In September 1944 this division successfully participated in the early battles to defend the Courland Peninsula, (Latvia). In early 1945 the division was evacuated by sea to northern Germany where it fought its last campaigns with Army Group Vistula. In late January 1945 it was part of the garrison defending the East Prussian city of Thorn on the Vistula from the Red Army. After destroying the bridges over the river at Thorn, the division fought its way west and north in an attempt to breakout from Soviet encirclement. When it reached a crossing point about south of Kulm in early February, the ice was melting and the Red Army was closing in. In May 1945 it surrendered to Russian troops on the Hel Peninsula, a 35-km-long sand bar peninsula in Northern Poland that separates the Bay of Puck from the Baltic Sea. Ochsner remained a Soviet prisoner until 1955.
