The Moscow Armistice of 1944 and the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947 ceded Petsamo and other Finnish areas to the USSR. During Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II, northern Norway served as the staging area for the German attack on Murmansk. The Soviet Union made an excursion over the border in 1944 in the Petsamo–Kirkenes Offensive which aimed to extinguish the German military forces in the area. Soviet forces took the town of Kirkenes, which had been evacuated by the Germans who used scorched earth tactics, on 24 October 1944. Soviet troops continued west to Tana, but withdrew in September 1945.