About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Battle of the Baltic (1944)

Encyclopedia : B : BA : BAT : Battle of the Baltic (1944)

Axis-Soviet War
Barbarossa – Finland 1941-44 – Leningrad and Baltics 1941-1944 – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Bagration – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans 1944 – Hungary 1944-1945 – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague – Manchuria 1945

Leningrad and Baltics 1941 - 1944
Toropets-Kholm – Demyansk Pocket – Spark – Polar Star – Krasny Bor – Lenino– Leningrad Approaches – Narva – Vilnius – Baltic

Contents

Overview

The Battle of the Baltic, called the Baltic Operation by the Red Army who undertook it, denotes combat operations between the German Wehrmacht and the Red Army in the Baltic region during late summer and autumn of 1944. The Red Army's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Baltic Fronts engaged German Army Group Centre and Army Group North. The result of the series of battles was a permanent loss of contact between Army Groups North and Centre, and the creation of the Courland Pocket in Latvia.

Setting the stage

During 1944, the Wehrmacht was pressed back along its entire frontline in the east. In February 1944 it had to retreat from the approaches to Leningrad to the prepared Panther Line in Estonia. In June and July, Army Group Centre was thrown back into Poland by Operation Bagration. This created the opportunity for the Red Army to attack towards the Baltic Sea, thereby splitting the land connection between the German Army Groups.

By 5 July 1944, the Siauliai Operation commenced, as a follow-on from Operation Bagration. Soviet Forty-Third, Fifty-First, and Second Guards Armies attacked towards Riga on the Baltic coast with Third Guards Mechanized Corps in the van. By 31 July 1944 the coast on the Gulf of Riga had been reached. Sixth Guards Army covered Riga and the extended flank of the penetration towards the north. The German reaction was rapid, and initially successful. With some independent armoured formations it was possible to cut off the Soviet troops on the coast, and re-establish a tenous 30-km wide corridor connecting Army Groups Centre and North. A second attack, code-named Operation Doppelkopf, was attempted from 16 August 1944 by XXXX. and XXXIX. Panzerkorps under the command of 3. Panzerarmee. This attack was to re-take the key road-junction of Siauliai/Schaulen. This attack ran head-on into an in-depth defensive by the 1st Baltic Front, and by 20 August 1944 the attack had stalled with heavy losses. A follow-on attack code-named Operation Cäsar failed in the same manner. After a brief period of respite, the STAVKA ordered to conduct the Baltic Operation, which lasted from 14 September to 24 November 1944.

Multiple Battles

The Battle of the Baltic covers a number of smaller battles. These include the battle for the Panther Line, a line of German fortifications extending south from Lake Peipus, the campaign for Narva, including the Battle for the Narva Bridgehead (1944), and the Battle of the Tannenbergstellung (1944), as well as the German Panzeroperationen Doppelkopf and Cäsar in September/October 1944, which were aiming at the restoration of contact between Army Groups Centre and North. A further notable operation was the amphibious attack on the Estonian islands of Dagö, Ösel, and Moon (German spelling), which block access to the Gulf of Riga.

Consequences

The Soviet fronts involved in the battle lost a total of ca. 260,000 men to all causes (killed, missing, wounded, sick). As a result of the battle the Germans were driven out of Estonia and Lithuania taken over by Soviet forces.

German Army Group North was permanently cut off from its land-based connections to the remainder of the Eastern Front, and occupied a bridge-head in Latvia. It was eventually renamed Heeresgruppe Kurland. This left the Red Army free to disregard it as a major threat and to focus on operations on its northern flank that were now aiming at East Prussia. Nevertheless, offensive action by the Red Army against the Courland Pocket continued until the surrender of the Army Group on 9 May 1945, when close to 200,000 Germans went into Soviet captivity.

Some German soldiers, and many soldiers of the Estonian and Latvian Waffen-SS divisions evaded capture and joined the "Forest Brothers" resistance that waged unsuccessful guerilla warfare against Soviet occupation for several years after the war.

Formations and units involved

Soviet

German

Sources

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: