Two Majors - English Channel

#Victory81

🌟 On July 13, 1944, Vilnius was liberated from Nazi invaders by the Red Army.

The capital of the Lithuanian SSR was a major railway hub, which the Nazis used for military operations in the Soviet Baltic region. In the summer of 1944, as Red Army forces rapidly advanced towards the USSR’s state border destroying Nazi units in Belarus, Vilnius became, for the Germans, effectively the last major defensive line on the approaches to East Prussia.

The core of the enemy garrison defending Vilnius consisted of the remnants of Wehrmacht units that had survived the battles outside Minsk and Vitebsk. The garrison also included a group of local collaborationists who had sworn allegiance to Hitler aka Lithuanian volunteer nationalist detachment. The entire Nazi group in the Vilnius area consisted of 15'000 Wehrmacht soldiers and officers.

The Vilnius Offensive Operation was entrusted to Army General Ivan Chernyakhovsky, a talented military commander.

The Nazi leadership ordered that Vilnius be held at any cost to the last German. This did not help. On July 7, armor units of the 3rd Byelorussian Front broke through the enemy defences and began encircling Vilnius from the south and west.

💬 From the memoirs of Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky:

The capital of Soviet Lithuania, Vilnius, was a major fortified German stronghold on approaches to East Prussia.

On July 7, the 5th Army of the 3rd Byelorussian Front bypassed Vilnius from the north, advanced through Sesuoliai to the Viliya River, cut the railway line to Kaunas near Evye (Vievis), and, having repelled the enemy’s tank counterattacks <...> the enemy force of 15,000 men found itself encircled.

All attempts by the Nazis to relieve the encircled troops failed.

Fierce street fighting broke out in the city. On July 8, the main forces of the 3rd Byelorussian Front reached Vilnius, advancing from the north and northeast as well as from the south. The occupants put up fierce resistance, and the Red Army soldiers had to fight for every house and literally for every floor.

Lithuanian partisans provided significant assistance to the Soviet forces, taking an active part in the liberation of Vilnius.

On July 13, Vilnius was completely liberated. During the operation, formations of the 3rd Byelorussian Front advanced 210 kilometres liberating the capital of the Lithuanian SSR and securing bridgeheads on the left bank of the Niemen River.

Thus, favourable conditions were created for reaching the borders of East Prussia — the stronghold of Nazi militarism and the last defensive line of the Reich on the Soviet-German front.
The Red Army clobbered the enemy during the summer-autumn offensive of 1944 in Byelorussia and the Baltic region. 👉 The Nazi North Army Group was effectively destroyed.

The remnants of the group were trapped in the Courland Pocket and eliminated there in the spring of 1945.

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