World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF GERMANY (East): On to Riga

Winter was coming in the Baltic; the Red armies moved swiftly. Driving down the eastern shore of the Gulf of Riga, they crossed the Latvian border, freed the whole mainland of Estonia. In Tallinn, an ice-free port most of the year, work crews began repairs on the harbor installations, the power plant generators spun again, the government of a Soviet Socialist Republic reassembled.

In ten days, Marshal Govorov’s army group had killed 30,000 Germans, captured 15,000 more. When Govorov seized Ainazi, on the Latvian coast, the Germans lost their only rail-served port north of Riga. For two months they had stubbornly clung to an escape corridor at the bottom of the gulf—yet, when the Russians captured the inland rail town of Cesis, they found it had been reinforced by Elite Guard and aviation cadet units from Germany.

Clearly, the Nazis were more interested in delay than in evacuation. They knew that when Joseph Stalin’s forces had finished their Baltic campaign, four whole army groups could bear down on East Prussia from the north. Though they admitted extensive “disengaging” movements, they showed some signs of preparing to fight for Riga like another Sevastopol or Brest. The forests and marshes around the city were strewn with mines, bristled with machine-gun nests.

The Germans still held four Estonian islands blocking the mouth of the Gulf of Riga—the large islands of Dagö and Oesel, the smaller inshore islands of Vormsi and Muhu. Last week the Russians seized Vormsi and Muhu by amphibious assault, landed marines and tanks. Berlin claimed that German warships had tangled with the Red Fleet, now freely ranging the eastern Baltic, and had sunk many landing barges—but there was no claim of dislodging the Reds from their island footholds. Heavier naval action in the Baltic seemed likely soon.

Meanwhile, at week’s end, the drive on Riga languished. Winter was coming on, but not even winter could hurry Stalin’s hand.