The fall of Narva

On the morning of 24 July 1944 Soviet artillery opened fire on the German positions near Auvere railway station, south-west of Narva. So began the Leningrad Front’s Narva operation – another attempt, after those of winter and spring, to destroy the German Army Detachment Narwa and open the way into the heart of Estonia. On the first day the Eighth Army’s attack broke down on the positions of an Estonian SS grenadier regiment and an East Prussian infantry regiment. The attack nevertheless forced the Germans to speed up the withdrawal Hitler had agreed to a few days earlier. On the night of 24–25 July the German troops began to leave the bridgehead at Ivangorod, on 25 July the Second Shock Army crossed the river north of the town, and on 26 July Soviet troops entered the ruins of Narva, where there was no longer any enemy.

Under 24 July chronologies record that at the start of the Soviet Narva offensive (24–30 July) the Estonian 45th Regiment and the East Prussian 44th Regiment defeated the Soviet Eighth Army, and that Army Detachment Narwa began its withdrawal to the Tannenberg Line; under 26 July, that the Leningrad Front’s offensive took the town. Both entries are broadly accurate. The word “defeated”, however, should be understood as “beat off with heavy losses”: the Eighth Army was not destroyed and was attacking again the very next day. Nor was the withdrawal a result of this fighting, but of an earlier decision – the fighting at Auvere merely meant that it began under fire.

Before the attack

Since February 1944 the Narva front had barely moved. In the spring the Leningrad Front held on to a large bridgehead on the western bank of the river, in the marshes near Krivasoo, south of the town, while the Germans held a bridgehead at Ivangorod on the eastern bank. The town itself, after the March air raids, was a sea of ruins from which the inhabitants had earlier been evacuated.

In the summer the situation on the northern flank of the Eastern Front changed fundamentally. The destruction of Army Group Centre in Belarus forced Army Group North to give up divisions to the threatened centre. Too few troops were left at Narva to hold the old line, and the German command prepared a shorter position in the Sinimäed hills, a dozen or so kilometres west of the town. Around 22 July Adolf Hitler, after long resistance, agreed to the withdrawal to the Tannenberg Line. The plan of General Felix Steiner, commander of the III SS Panzer Corps, provided for the Nordland division and the Nederland brigade to leave the Ivangorod bridgehead on the night of 25–26 July, covered by Estonian battalions on the north and by the regiments facing the Krivasoo bridgehead on the south.

The Soviet plan

Marshal Leonid Govorov’s Leningrad Front knew nothing of the German preparations. After concluding its offensive against the Finns on the Karelian Isthmus, it had moved experienced divisions and aircraft to Narva. The plan of the operation envisaged attacks from two directions. Lieutenant General Filipp Starikov’s Eighth Army was to attack north-west from the Krivasoo bridgehead towards Auvere station and the settlement of Sirgala and cut the Narva–Tallinn road behind the defenders. Once it reached the Auvere area, Lieutenant General Ivan Fedyuninsky’s Second Shock Army was to go over to the attack and cross the Narva north of the town. The two armies were to meet west of Narva and encircle the III SS Panzer Corps. The attack was supported by the 13th Air Army and ships of the Baltic Fleet.

The Second Shock Army included the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps, formed in the USSR from Estonians evacuated or mobilised in 1941. At Narva, then, Estonians fought on both sides of the front – some in German uniform, most of them drafted under a call-up announced by the occupier, others in the ranks of the Red Army.

According to figures cited in Estonian and English-language studies, the Leningrad Front concentrated more than 136,000 men, about 150 tanks, about 2,500 guns and more than 800 aircraft for the operation. In the Krivasoo bridgehead alone, 46,000 Soviet soldiers are said to have faced about 17,000 Germans and Estonians, with an eightfold Soviet superiority in artillery. These figures come largely from the work of the Estonian historian Mart Laar and should be treated as estimates; the Soviet superiority – of the order of four to one in men and equipment – is, however, beyond doubt.

The fighting at Auvere (24 July)

The attack began on the morning of 24 July. According to Estonian studies, 30–50 batteries fired some 17,000 shells at the positions of the 45th SS Grenadier Regiment (1st Estonian) on the Auvere estate and the 44th Infantry Regiment at Sirgala. After two hours of shelling, aircraft of the 13th Air Army appeared over the positions. The weather, however, upset some of the Soviet plans: according to a Soviet account, a group of bombers turned back because of low cloud, and the burden of support fell on the ground-attack aircraft.

Under cover of the fire the Soviet 122nd Rifle Corps, with a tank brigade, broke into the positions of the 44th Regiment, and the 117th Rifle Corps surrounded the 1st Battalion of the Estonian regiment. The Estonians formed an all-round defence and, after the arrival of a company from a German armoured group and rocket launchers, went over to the counter-attack. The East Prussian regiment was helped by quickly redeployed artillery, which cleared the enemy from its former positions. With the support of anti-tank weapons and units of the Nordland division, the defenders had regained their main line of defence by evening. Further attacks by the Eighth Army were beaten off in the same way.

According to figures cited in Estonian studies, the Eighth Army lost some 3,000 men and 18 tanks that day, and the German 11th Infantry Division, to which both regiments belonged, more than 800 soldiers. These figures come from the defending side and have no Soviet counterpart. Soviet historiography presented the day differently: as an attack that – by threatening to cut the lines of retreat – forced the enemy to withdraw from Narva. Both versions in fact describe the same thing from different sides: the Eighth Army did not break through, but its attack meant that the withdrawal planned for the following night had to begin at once.

The withdrawal from Ivangorod (24–25 July)

The attack at Auvere threatened that Soviet units would reach the Tannenberg Line before the retreating Germans. Steiner therefore speeded up the evacuation. On the night of 24–25 July the Nordland division and the Nederland brigade quietly left the Ivangorod bridgehead and crossed the bridge to the other bank. Soviet scouts noticed the withdrawal just as Nordland’s sappers were blowing the bridge; the charges had been badly placed and the bridge survived.

On the morning of 25 July the Second Shock Army went into the attack. According to Estonian studies, some 280,000 shells fell within a few hours on the positions of the two Estonian battalions defending the riverbank north of the town. Soviet divisions crossed the river in boats and on rafts, supported by the ships and artillery of the Baltic Fleet. The 2nd Battalion of the 46th Regiment (2nd Estonian) lost contact and fell back to the Peeterristi estate by the road; there Major Friedrich Kurg gathered about 180 men and counter-attacked. The 2nd Battalion of the 47th Regiment (3rd Estonian), commanded by Alfons Rebane, who the previous night had moved his men into new trenches and so saved them from the shelling, stopped the Soviet 191st Rifle Division on its way to Narva. The two battalions, at heavy cost, held the road along which the III SS Panzer Corps was withdrawing to the Sinimäed hills.

The heaviest price was paid by the Dutch 48th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment General Seyffardt, the last to leave the town, on the night of 25–26 July. By then Soviet units controlled the road, and tanks were crossing the surviving bridge. The regiment – some 700 men – became stuck in the marshes between the road and the railway and, under blows from ground-attack aircraft and the 191st Rifle Division, was almost completely destroyed. A battalion of the De Ruyter regiment covering its withdrawal was itself surrounded and had to be extricated by another battalion of the same regiment.

The capture of Narva (26 July)

On the morning of 26 July units of the Second Shock Army and the Eighth Army entered Narva. The town was empty: the inhabitants had been taken away earlier, and of the baroque Old Town, one of the most precious historic ensembles on the Baltic, only burnt-out walls remained. Narva, taken by the Germans on 17 August 1941, was in Soviet hands again after almost three years. An order of the day from Joseph Stalin of 26 July announced the thanks of the high command to the troops, and Moscow marked the victory with a salute – 20 salvoes from 224 guns. For Soviet propaganda this was the “liberation” of one of Estonia’s oldest towns; for many Estonians it was the beginning of the return of a regime from which they had fled, or against which they had fought, in 1941.

Strategically the success was only partial. The Leningrad Front had taken the town it had been fighting for since February, but it had not achieved the aim of the operation: the III SS Panzer Corps had not been encircled, and its units had occupied their new positions. The Dutch of De Ruyter took up the northern flank of the Tannenberg Line, the Estonian division the centre and Nordland the south. As early as 26 July the first Soviet divisions attacked the easternmost of the Sinimäed hills.

What followed

The Narva operation formally lasted until 30 July, but in practice it turned into the battle for the Tannenberg Line, which dragged on until 10 August. The Soviet armies, repeatedly reinforced, attacked the hills using the same methods and failed to take them; Govorov called off the attack on 10 August. The Germans abandoned the Tannenberg Line only on 18 September, when the offensive on Riga and in southern Estonia threatened to cut off their troops. On 22 September the Red Army entered Tallinn.

Narva never regained its former shape. After the war the Soviet authorities did not rebuild the Old Town – apart from the town hall, a few buildings and Hermann Castle – and the ruins were cleared away. According to Estonian historians, most of the former inhabitants were not allowed to return; the town was settled by newcomers from other parts of the USSR, mainly Russians. Narva, before the war an Estonian town with a strong Russian minority, became an almost entirely Russian-speaking town – and so it remains today, on the border between Estonia and Russia.