Ivan Fedyuninsky, commanding the 2nd Shock Army. Additional 122nd, 124th Rifle Corps and divisions from 117th Rifle Corps were subordinated to Gen. The Soviet Marshal Leonid Govorov considered the Tannenberg Line as the key position of Army Group North and concentrated the best forces of the Leningrad Front. Another front section manned by the East Prussians of the 11th Infantry Division was situated a few kilometres further south, against the 8th Army in the Krivasoo bridgehead. The 4th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Brigade Nederland started digging in on the left (north) flank of the Tannenberg Line, units of the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) in the centre, and the 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Nordland on the right (south) flank. The formations of Gruppenführer Felix Steiner's III SS Panzer Corps halted their withdrawal and moved into defensive positions on the hills. The heights have steep slopes and rise 20–50 m above the surrounding land. The central was the Grenaderimägi (Grenadier Hill Grenadierhöhe) and the westernmost was the Tornimägi (Tower Hill, also known in German as or 69.9 or Liebhöhe (Love Hill)). The eastern hill was known to Estonians as the Lastekodumägi (Orphanage Hill Kinderheimhöhe in German). View from the summit of the Grenadier Hill towards the Orphanage HillĪfter defending the Narva bridgehead for six months, the German forces fell back to the Tannenberg Line in the hills of Sinimäed ( Russian: Синие горы) on 26 July 1944. As the Soviet forces were constantly reinforced, their overall casualties are estimated by Estonian historian Mart Laar to be 170,000 dead and wounded. The German force of 22,250 men held off 136,830 Soviet troops. Roughly half of the infantry consisted of the personnel of the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian). Waffen-SS forces included 24 volunteer infantry battalions from the SS Division Nordland, the SS Division Langemarck, the SS Division Nederland, and the Walloon Legion. The strategic aim of the Soviet Estonian Operation was to reoccupy Estonia as a favorable base for the invasions of Finland and East Prussia. The battle was fought on the Eastern Front during World War II. They fought for the strategically important Narva Isthmus from 25 July–10 August 1944. The Battle of Tannenberg Line ( German: Die Schlacht um die Tannenbergstellung Russian: Битва за линию «Танненберг») or the Battle of the Blue Hills ( Estonian: Sinimägede lahing) was a military engagement between the German Army Detachment Narwa and the Soviet Leningrad Front.
This is a sub-article to Battle of Narva (1944).
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