| Baltic offensive (1944) (Baltic strategic offensive) | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of theEastern Front ofWorld War II | |||||||||
 Soviet advances on theEastern Front, 1 August 1943 – 31 December 1944 | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Soviet Union |  Germany | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Ivan BagramyanLeonid Govorov | Walter ModelJohannes Freißner | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 1,546,400 troops[1] 17,500 artillery pieces 3,080 tanks and assault guns 2,640 aircraft[2] | 342,742 troops[3] unknown artillery pieces 262 tanks; 299 assault guns 321 aircraft[4] | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 61,468KIA orMIA 218,622WIA or sick 522tanks 779aircraft[1] | October only: 30,834KIA,WIA andMIA[5] | ||||||||
TheBaltic offensive, also known as theBaltic strategic offensive,[6] was themilitary campaign between the northernFronts of theRed Army and the GermanArmy Group North in theBaltic States during the autumn of 1944. The result of the series of battles was the isolation and encirclement of the Army Group North in theCourland Pocket andSovietre-occupation of the Baltic States.[7] In Soviet propaganda, this offensive was listed as one ofStalin's ten blows.
By early 1944, theWehrmacht was pushed back along its entire frontline in the east. In February 1944, it retreated from the approaches toLeningrad to the prepared section of thePanther Line at the border ofEstonia. In June and July, Army Group Centre was thrown back from theByelorussian SSR intoPoland byOperation Bagration. This created the opportunity for the Red Army to attack towards theBaltic Sea, thereby severing the land connection between the German Army Groups in the east.
By 5 July, theŠiauliai offensive commenced, as a follow-up from Operation Bagration. The Soviet 43rd,51st, and2nd Guards Armies attacked towardsRiga on the Baltic coast with3rd Guards Mechanized Corps in the van. By 31 July, the coast on the Gulf of Riga had been reached;6th Guards Army covered Riga and the extended flank of the penetration towards the north.
The German reaction was rapid, and initially successful. A counterattack, code-namedOperation Doppelkopf, was conducted on 16 August byXXXX andXXXIX Panzer Corps under the command ofThird Panzer Army, Army Group Centre. Acting in coordination with armored formations from Army Group North, they initially cut off the Soviet troops on the coast, and re-established a tenuous 30-kilometer-wide corridor connecting Army Groups Centre and North. The main objective of the attack was to retake the key road junction ofŠiauliai (German:Schaulen), but the German tanks ran head-on into an in-depth defense by the1st Baltic Front, and by 20 August the German advance had stalled with heavy losses. A follow-up attack, code-namedOperation Cäsar, and launched on 16 September, failed in the same manner. After a brief period of respite,Stavka issued orders for the Baltic strategic offensive, which lasted from 14 September to 24 November.
In common with other Soviet strategic offensives, the Baltic offensive covers a number of operational level operations and individual Front offensive operations:[8]
From the German defensive perspective, the period included the following operations:
The Baltic offensive operation resulted in the expulsion ofGerman forces from Estonia andLithuania. The Soviet fronts involved in the battle lost a total of ca. 280,000 men to all causes (killed, missing, wounded, sick).
Communication lines betweenArmy Group North andArmy Group Centre were permanently severed, and the former was relegated to an occupied Baltic seashore area in Latvia. On 25 January,Adolf Hitler renamed Army Group North toArmy Group Courland implicitly recognising that there was no possibility of restoring a new land corridor betweenCourland andEast Prussia.[10] The Red Army commenced the encirclement and reduction of theCourland Pocket which retained a possibility of being a major threat, but were able to focus on operations on its northern flank that were now aiming at East Prussia. Operations by the Red Army against the Courland Pocket continued until the surrender of the Army Group Courland on 9 May 1945, when close to 200,000 Germans were taken prisoner there.
The German command released thousands of native conscripts from military service. However the Soviet command began conscripting Baltic natives as areas were brought under Soviet control.[7] While some ended up serving on both sides, many partisans hid in the woods to avoid conscription. (See alsoForest Brothers)
112Hero of the Soviet Union awards were given out during the offensive, of which three were given soldier's second award.[11]
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Soviet rule of the Baltic states was re-established by force, andsovietisation followed, which was mostly carried out in 1944–1950. The forcedcollectivisation of agriculture began in 1947, and was completed after themass deportation of civilians in March 1949. All private farms were confiscated, and farmers were made to join the collective farms. An armedresistance movement named the 'Forest Brothers' was active until the mass deportations. Tens of thousands participated or supported the movement; thousands were killed. The Soviet authorities fighting the Forest Brothers also suffered hundreds of deaths. Among those killed on both sides were innocent civilians. Besides the armed resistance of the Forest Brothers, a number of underground nationalist schoolchildren groups were active. Most of their members were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The punitive actions decreased rapidly afterJoseph Stalin's death in 1953; from 1956 to 1958, a large part of the deportees and political prisoners were allowed to return to their homelands. Political arrests and numerous other kinds ofcrimes against humanity were committed all through the occupation period until the late 1980s. Although the armed resistance was defeated, the populations remained anti-Soviet. This helped the Baltic citizens to organise anew resistance movement in the late 1980s and then rapidly develop a modern society after thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.[12]
Media related toBaltic Offensive at Wikimedia Commons
