Concept
Tallinn offensive
Related concepts (5)
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.
Omakaitse
The Omakaitse ('home guard') was a militia organisation in Estonia. It was founded in 1917 following the Russian Revolution. On the eve of the occupation of Estonia by the German Empire, the Omakaitse units took over major towns in the country allowing the Salvation Committee of the Estonian Provincial Assembly to proclaim the independence of Estonia. After the German Occupation the Omakaitse became outlawed. The Estonian Defence League was dissolved in 1940 after the Soviet occupation of Estonia.
Tartu offensive
The Tartu offensive operation (Тартуская наступательная операция), also known as the Battle of Tartu (Tartu lahing) and the Battle of Emajõgi (Emajõe lahingud, Schlacht am Embach) was a campaign fought over southeastern Estonia in 1944. It took place on the Eastern Front during World War II between the Soviet 3rd Baltic Front and parts of the German Army Group North. The Soviet tactical aim was to defeat the 18th Army and to capture the city of Tartu. The strategic goal was a quick occupation of Estonia.
Guerrilla war in the Baltic states
The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian) partisans against the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known alternatively as the "Forest Brothers", the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars" (metsavennad, mežabrāļi, žaliukai), these partisans fought against invading Soviet forces during their occupation of the Baltic states during and after World War II. Similar insurgent groups resisted Soviet occupations in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.
Occupation of the Baltic states
The three independent Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – were invaded and occupied in June 1940 by the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Stalin and auspices of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact that had been signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in August 1939, immediately before the outbreak of World War II. The three countries were then annexed into the Soviet Union (formally as "constituent republics") in August 1940. The United States and most other Western countries never recognised this incorporation, considering it illegal.