#Battle of tannenberg location series

The Red Army artillery and air forces began bombing the Sinimäed Hills on 25 July. In reserve was the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps, which was not sent into battle. On the attacking side were the rifle corps and divisions subordinate to the 2nd Shock Army (Commander Ivan Fedjuninski) and 8th Army (Commander Filipp Starikov) of the Leningrad Front (Commander Leonid Govorov), along with independent cannon and armoured vehicle units. In the front from Putki along the Narva River to Lake Peipsi – the 300th Special Duty Division Staff, under which were subordinated the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th Estonian Border Defence Regiments.In the Sirgala-Putki front – the 11th East Prussian infantry division (3 regiments) and its subordinates the 113th Security Regiment and the 288th and 292nd Estonian Police Battalions.In the Sinimäed Hills – the III German Panzer Corps (Commander Felix Steiner), including the 11th SS Division Nordland (where the main force were the regiments Norge and Danmark, made up of Norwegians and Danes), the 20th Estonian SS Division, the 4th SS Brigade Nederland (made up of Dutch soldiers), the Flemish SS Battalion Langemarck and the Walloon SS Battalion Wallonien, and the navy infantry battalion Ostland, along with other smaller units and support units subordinated to the army groups.

The defensive position were occupied by the following units of the army group Nord, subordinated to the army group Narwa (Commander-in-Chief Anton Grasser): During World War II the German army built up powerful defensive positions in the Sinimäed Hills. During World War I the fortifications at the hills were part of Petrograd’s first line of defence. The first defensive structures at Sinimäed were built as early as during the Great Northern War (1700-1721). The Sinimäed Hills were a good defensive position, since the fortifications there enabled to control the Narva-Tallinn road on the isthmus between the sea and the great bogs to the south. At the same time the German military leaders decided to abandon Narva in order to organize its front and strengthen its forces on other battlefronts, first and foremost in Belarus, where the Red Army was crushing the Mitte army group. The Battle of Tannenberg Line is important to local history because of the large number of Estonians fighting on the front lines the battle has been considered as defending the whole of Estonia against the Red Army.Īt the end of July 1944, the Red Army was preparing a larger attack on the Narva battlefront in order to break the line of the German forces and seize Estonia. The battle that occurred from 24 July to 10 August 1944 on the Sinimäed Hills in Vaivara parish, about 20 km west of Narva, was one of the most casualty-heavy to ever take place on Estonian soil. Although the battle actually took place near Allenstein, Hindenburg named it after Tannenberg, 30 km to the west, in order to avenge the defeat of the Teutonic Knights 500 years earlier at the Battle of Grunwald by Poland-Lithuania. It brought considerable prestige to Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his rising staff-officer Erich Ludendorff. The battle is particularly notable for fast rail movements by the Germans, enabling them to concentrate against each of the two Russian armies in turn, and also for the failure of the Russians to encode their radio messages.

#Battle of tannenberg location series

A series of follow-up battles destroyed most of the First Army as well and kept the Russians off balance until the spring of 1915. The battle resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army and the suicide of its commanding general, Alexander Samsonov. The Battle of Tannenberg, also known as Second Battle of Tannenberg, was fought between Russia and Germany between 26 and 30 August 1914, the first month of World War I.