Thursday 11 June 2015

WWII: Estonia; Brutal Battle of Tannenberg Line

"The Battle of Tannenberg Line was a military engagement between the German Army Detachment "Narwa" and the Soviet Leningrad Front. They fought for the strategically important Narva Isthmus from 25 July to 10 August 1944. The battle was fought on the Eastern Front during World War II. The strategic aim of the Soviet Estonian Operation was to reoccupy Estonia as a favourable base for the invasions of Finland and East Prussia. Several Western scholars refer to it as the Battle of the European SS for the 24 volunteer infantry battalions from Denmark, East Prussia, Flanders, Holland, Norway, and Wallonia within the Waffen-SS. Roughly half of the infantry consisted of local Estonian conscripts motivated to resist the looming Soviet re-occupation. The German force of 22,250 men held off 136,830 Soviet troops. As the Soviet forces were constantly reinforced, the casualties of the battle were 150,000–200,000 dead and wounded Soviet troops and 157–164 tanks."

Battles like this have been overlooked by the West until recently partly because the Soviet Union did not want to talk about the horrendous casualty rate and this campaigns lack of success. It was quite simply brutal. Some of the Estonians kept on resisting the Soviet Union until the late 1970's . Amazing.

Source: Wikipedia - This is a sub-article to the Battle of Narva (1944).

There is a recent film about it - https://youtu.be/O9tQKOIQ1vQ

 

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