1944 tannenberg line
The Soviet Marshall Leonid Govorov considered Tannenberg Line as the key position of the 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. On the hills, the formations of Gruppenführer Felix Steiner's III SS (Germanic) Panzer Corps halted their withdrawal and fell into defensive positions. The hills are less than imposing and resemble gently sloping mounds rather than defensible heights. The eastern hill was known to Estonians as the Lastekodumägi, Kinderheimhöhe in German (Orphanage Hill), the central hill was the Grenaderimägi or Grenadierhöhe (Grenadier Hill) and the westernmost as the Tornimägi or 69.9 Höhe (Tower Hill, also known in German as Liebhöhe or Love Hill). The three hills are running east to west.
View from the summit of the Grenaderimägi towards the hill of LastekodumägiĪfter defending the Narva bridgehead for six months, the German forces fell back to the Tannenberg Line at the hills of Sinimäed ( Russian: Синие горы) on 26 July 1944. As the Soviet forces were constantly reinforced, the casualties of the battle were 150,000–200,000 wounded and dead Soviet troops and 157–164 Soviet tanks. The German force of 22,250 men held off the Soviet advance of 136,830 troops. Roughly a half of the infantry consisted of the local Estonian conscripts motivated to resist the looming Soviet re-occupation. 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. The strategic aim of the Soviet Estonian Operation was to reoccupy Estonia as a favourable base for invasions of Finland and East Prussia. The battle was fought on the Eastern Front during World War II.
The Battle of Tannenberg Line ( German: Die Schlacht um die Tannenbergstellung Estonian: Sinimägede lahing Russian: Битва за линию «Танненберг») was a military engagement between the German Army Detachment "Narwa" and the Soviet Leningrad Front fought for the strategically important Narva Isthmus from 25 July to 10 August 1944. This is a sub-article to Battle of Narva.