Between September 14 and November 24, 1944, the Red Army carried out a massive counteroffensive in the Baltic region, with the operation involving some 1.5 mln troops, 17,500 guns and heavy mortars, 3,000+ tanks and self-propelled artillery pieces, and over 2,600 aircraft.
Arrayed against them was Nazi Germany’s battle-hardened Army Group North, including over 571,500 troops, 7,000 guns and mortars, 1,200+ tanks and assault guns and 400 aircraft, plus 43,000 Hiwi SS auxiliary volunteers recruited among the local population.
In battles stretching across a front up to 1,000 km in length and 400 km in depth, forces from the Leningrad Front, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Baltic Fronts, the 3rd Belorussian Front and the Baltic Fleet smashed through heavily echeloned and fortified defenses, with the main thrust of the operation initially directed toward Riga, Latvia before being redirected toward the strategic Lithuanian Baltic Sea port of Klaipeda – a move which surprised Wehrmacht commanders and ultimately led to the pocketing of as many as 200,000 German troops from the 16th and 18th Armies in the so-called Courland Pocket, western Latvia, where they would remain trapped until the end of the war in May 1945.
Soviet map of the Baltic Operation showing its progression between September and November 1944. Note the formation of the so-called Courland Pocket, which trapped hundreds of thousands of Wehrmacht troops in western Latvia.
© Photo : Ministry of Defense of the USSR
The Estonian capital of Tallinn was liberated on September 26, with Riga taken on October 22. Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, had been freed earlier in mid-July 1944 as part of the third phase of the Operation Bagration summer counteroffensive. From September 29-November 24, Soviet forces engaged the Nazis in fierce fighting for the west Estonian archipelago of Moonsund.
Overall German losses included over 200,000 troops, 33,500 of whom became POWs. 61,648 Soviet troops were killed, with left 218,622 injured or sick. 112 Red Army servicemen and officers were awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union title. 332,000 received other medals and orders.
Ruins in the ancient Latvian capital of Riga, which suffered greatly in fierce street-to-street and house-to-house fighting between German and Soviet forces in September and October 1944. Significant resources were committed toward painstakingly rebuilding the Old City after the war.
© Sputnik / Yan Tichonov
Why Was the Baltic Operation Important?
The German defeat in the Baltics opened the door to East Prussia, cut off key transport arteries and deprived Berlin of farmland, and oil shale processing plants in Estonia which provided the Nazis some 500,000 tons of petroleum products per year.
Soviet and Russian historians have dubbed the Baltic Operation the eighth of “Stalin’s Ten Blows” – ten strategic offensives carried out in 1944 which culminated in the liberation of the western Soviet Union, and pushed the front into eastern Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Hungary.
The defeat also had important ideological implications, not least of which being Adolf Hitler’s plans to resettle the Baltics with ethnic Germans, and deport or exterminate the local population. These ambitions were based in Nazi lore of the ancient German knights’ conquest of the region in the 13th century, which reduced local populations to serfdom status. The Baltics were also key to Hitler’s “Final Solution” for Jews, Roma, Russians, and local antifascist fighters, with Latvia alone home to 23 concentration camps and 18 ghettos.
Wehrmacht troops surrender en masse during the operation to liberate Vilnius. 1944.
© Sputnik
How is the Baltic Operation Remembered Today?
While more than 200,000 ethnic Balts served in the Red Army during WWII (including over 108,000 Lithuanians, 85,000 Latvians, and up to 30,000 Estonians), their heroism, and that of the other Soviet troops who liberated the Baltics from the Nazis, has largely been forgotten by the three countries’ modern governments, whose nationalism and lionization of local SS volunteers, rewriting of history books and demolition of monuments to the Red Army have echoed processes taking place in Ukraine following the 2005 color revolution and the 2014 coup.
The modern-day Baltic states’ political class has been characterized by unparalleled disdain for Russia within the EU and NATO, and cheerleading for Kiev in the NATO-sponsored proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
Their efforts have taken a heavy toll on the three nations’ welfare and even basic demographic viability, with the Baltics suffering among the highest rates of deindustrialization and depopulation among the post-Soviet republics. Between 1991 and 2023, the populations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania dropped from 1.5 to 1.3 mln (14%), 2.6 to 1.8 mln (31%) and 3.7 to 2.8 mln (25%), respectively.