Eastern Front

1944: The fighting for the Baltic states

February – November 1944 · 2 battles

After the siege of Leningrad was lifted, the Red Army stood on the borders of Estonia and Latvia. The German Army Group North stopped it on the narrow isthmus at Narva, between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Peipus, where volunteers from all over Europe and mobilised Estonians fought alongside the Germans. The front held there until the summer of 1944. Only when the offensive in Belorussia had shattered Army Group Centre did Soviet forces advance on Riga, Tallinn and the Estonian islands; Army Group North was cut off in Courland, where it held out until the end of the war. For Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians the end of German occupation meant the return of Soviet rule, deportations and the flight of tens of thousands of people to the West.

2 February – 10 August 1944Battle of Narva (1944)From February to August 1944 Germans, Waffen-SS volunteers and Estonian conscripts held the Narva isthmus against the Leningrad Front. The city fell in July.
14 September – 24 November 1944Baltic offensive (1944)From 14 September to 24 November 1944 four Soviet fronts drove the Germans from Estonia, Lithuania and most of Latvia and cut off Army Group North in Courland.