Baltic Offensive The Baltic Offensive , also known as the Baltic Strategic Offensive , denotes the campaign between the northern Fronts of the Red Army and the German Army Group North in the Baltic States during the autumn of 1944 . The result of the series of battles was the isolation and encirclement of the Army Group North in the Courland Pocket and Soviet re - occupation of the Baltic States . Background . In 1944 , the " Wehrmacht " was pressed back along its entire frontline in the east . In February 1944 , it retreated from the approaches to Leningrad to the prepared section of the Panther Line at the border of Estonia . In June and July , Army Group Centre was thrown back from the Belorussian SSR into Poland by Operation Bagration . This created the opportunity for the Red Army to attack towards the Baltic Sea , thereby severing the land connection between the German Army Groups . By 5 July , the Shyaulyay Offensive Operation commenced , as a follow - on from Operation Bagration . The Soviet 43rd , 51st , and 2nd Guards Armies attacked towards Riga on the Baltic coast with 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps in the van . By 31 July , the coast on the Gulf of Riga had been reached ; 6th Guards Army covered Riga and the extended flank of the penetration towards the north . The German reaction was rapid , and initially successful . A counterattack , code - named Operation Doppelkopf , was conducted on 16 August by XXXX and XXXIX Panzer Corps under the command of Third Panzer Army , Army Group Centre . Acting in coordination with armored formations from Army Group North , they initially cut off the Soviet troops on the coast , and re - established a tenuous 30 - kilometer - wide corridor connecting Army Groups Centre and North . The main objective of the attack was to retake the key road junction of Šiauliai ( ) , but the German tanks ran head - on into an in - depth defense by the 1st Baltic Front , and by 20 August the German advance had stalled with heavy losses . A follow - on attack , code - named Operation Cäsar , and launched on 16 September , failed in the same manner . After a brief period of respite , STAVKA issued orders for the Baltic Strategic Offensive , which lasted from 14 September - 24 November . Battles . In common with other Soviet strategic offensives , the Baltic Offensive covers a number of operational level operations and individual Front offensive operations : From the German defensive perspective , the period included the following operations : Aftermath . Soviet victory . The Baltic Offensive operation resulted in the expulsion of German forces from Estonia and Lithuania . The Soviet fronts involved in the battle lost a total of ca . 260 , 000 men to all causes ( killed , missing , wounded , sick ) . Communication lines between Army Group North and Army Group Centre were permanently severed , and the former was relegated to an occupied Baltic seashore area in Latvia . On 25 January , Adolf Hitler renamed Army Group North to Army Group Courland implicitly recognising that there was no possibility of restoring a new land corridor between Courland and East Prussia . The Red Army commenced the encirclement and reduction of the Courland cauldron which retained a possibility of being a major threat , but were able to focus on operations on its northern flank that were now aiming at East Prussia . Operations by the Red Army against the Courland Pocket continued until the surrender of the Army Group Courland on 9 May 1945 , when close to 200 , 000 Germans were taken prisoner there . The German command released thousands of native conscripts from military service . However the Soviet command began conscripting Baltic natives as areas were brought under Soviet control . While some ended up serving on both sides , many partisans hid in the woods to avoid conscription . ( " See also Forest Brothers " ) 112 Hero of the Soviet Union awards were given out during the offensive , of which three were given soldier ' s second award . Reoccupation of the Baltic states . Soviet rule of the Baltic states was re - established by force , and sovietisation followed , which was mostly carried out in 1944 – 1950 . The forced collectivisation of agriculture began in 1947 , and was completed after the mass deportation of civilians in March 1949 . All private farms were confiscated , and farmers were made to join the collective farms . An armed resistance movement of ' forest brothers ' was active until the mass deportations . Tens of thousands participated or supported the movement ; thousands were killed . The Soviet authorities fighting the forest brothers suffered also hundreds of deaths . Among those killed on both sides were innocent civilians . Besides the armed resistance of the forest brothers , a number of underground nationalist schoolchildren groups were active . Most of their members were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment . The punitive actions decreased rapidly after Joseph Stalin ' s death in 1953 ; from 1956 – 1958 , a large part of the deportees and political prisoners were allowed to return to their homelands . Political arrests and numerous other kind of crimes against humanity were committed all through the occupation period until the late 1980s . After all , the attempt to integrate the Baltic societies into the Soviet system failed . Although the armed resistance was defeated , the populations remained anti - Soviet . This helped the Baltic citizens to organise a new resistance movement in the late 1980s , regain their independence in 1991 , and then rapidly develop a modern society .