Riga offensive (1944)

The Riga offensive (Рижская наступательная операция) was part of the larger Baltic offensive on the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place late in 1944, and drove German forces from the city of Riga. Operation Bagration and Tartu offensive Soviet forces had advanced towards the Baltic coast in the beginning of their Tartu offensive and at the end of the highly successful Belorussian offensive (Operation Bagration), during July and August 1944, and at one point had broken through to the Gulf of Riga. The victories in July were highly unexpected, and at one point on July 31, the commander of the 8th mechanized brigade communicated with corps headquarters to notify them that its tanks had reached the beach. In an unusual act, they were ordered to fill several bottles of sea water, have them signed, and flown to The Kremlin as proof that Army Group North had been cut off from the Reich. During August, the German 18th Army had mounted a counter-attack, Operation Doppelkopf. Simultaneously the German Valga–Võrtsjärv line, supported by the local Estonian Omakaitse militia battalions, repelled the heavy pressure of the Soviet 3rd Baltic Front's Tartu offensive. The German Army Group North's commander, Ferdinand Schörner designed Operation Aster to pull his troops out of mainland Estonia. The parallel Riga offensive would see Soviet forces apply further pressure on Army Group North, which still held much of Latvia and Estonia. Elements of: 1st Baltic Front (General Ivan Bagramyan) 2nd Baltic Front (General Andrei Yeremenko) 22nd Army 3rd Baltic Front (General Ivan Maslennikov) Army Group North (General Ferdinand Schoerner) Sixteenth Army (General Carl Hilpert) Eighteenth Army (General Ehrenfried-Oskar Boege) Elements of Army Group Centre temporarily reassigned to Army Group North Third Panzer Army (General Erhard Raus) Omakaitse The Soviet forces launched a ferocious attack on the Riga axis on September 14, 1944. Within 4 days, the German 16th Army had suffered serious damage, while in the 18th Army's sector, ten of the eighteen German divisions had been reduced to the Kampfgruppe level.