Šiauliai operation

After the liberation of Polotsk , the 1st Baltic Front I.Kh. Baghramyan was given the task of attacking in the north-west, towards Dvinsk and the west, to Kaunas and Sventsyan , taking an advantageous covering position in relation to the Army Group “North” . The general plan was to break through to the Baltic and cut off Army Group North from the other Wehrmacht forces. To prevent front troops from stretching across different operational lines, the 4th shock army was transferred to the 2nd Belorussian Front . In return, the 39th Army was received from the 3rd Belorussian Front . Reserves were also transferred to the front: it included the 51st Army of Lieutenant General Ya. G. Kreizer and the 2nd Guards Army of Lieutenant General P.G. Chanchibadze . These rearrangements caused a short pause, since on July 4 only two of the front armies had an enemy in front of them. The reserve armies marched to the front, the 39th was also on the march after the defeat of the Vitebsk "boiler" . Therefore, until July 15, the battle went on without the participation of the armies of J. G. Kreiser and P. G. Chanchibadze.

Expecting an attack on Dvinsk, the enemy transferred some of the forces of Army Group North to this area. The Soviet side evaluated the enemy forces near Dvinsk in five fresh divisions, as well as a brigade of assault guns, security, sapper and penal units. Thus, the superiority of forces over the enemy, the Soviet troops did not have. In addition, interruptions in the supply of fuel forced Soviet aircraft to greatly reduce activity. Because of this, the offensive, which began on July 5 by the 7th, stalled. Moving the direction of the blow only helped to move forward a little, but did not create a breakthrough. On July 18, the operation in the Dvina direction was suspended. According to I. Kh. Baghramyan, he was ready for such a development of events ^[1] :

For me, in general, the slow progress of Chistyakov’s army was not unexpected. What I was afraid of began: the enemy was trying to organize a strike on the flank of the main forces of our front, and for this he began to send new troops in the Daugavpils area, where it is so convenient to join the forces of the Army Group Center.

The advance to Sventsyany was much easier, since the enemy did not throw such significant reserves in this direction, and the Soviet group, on the contrary, was more powerful than against Dvinsk. On the offensive, the 1st Panzer Corps cut the Vilnius-Dvinsk railway. By July 14, the left flank advanced 140 km, leaving south of Vilnius and moving to Kaunas.

Local failure did not affect the overall course of the operation. The 6th Guards Army went on the offensive again on July 23 , and although its advance was slow and difficult, on July 27 Dvinsk was cleared in cooperation with the forces of the advancing on the right of the 2nd Baltic Front . After July 20, the introduction of fresh forces began to take effect: the 51st Army reached the front line and immediately liberated Panevezys , after which it continued to move towards Šiauliai . On July 26, the 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps was put into battle in its lane, which reached Siauliai on the same day. The enemy’s resistance was weak, from the German side there were mainly separate task forces ^{[1] [2]} , so Šiauliai was already taken on July 27.

The enemy clearly understood the intention of the Supreme High Command Headquarters to cut off the North group. J. Frisner , the commander of the army group, on July 15 drew A. Hitler's attention to this fact, arguing that if the army group does not reduce the front and is not withdrawn, it will face isolation and, possibly, defeat ^[2] . However, there was no longer time to withdraw the group from the planned “bag”, and on July 23 G. Frisner was removed from his post and sent south to Romania.

The common goal of the 1st Baltic Front was to reach the sea ^[3] , therefore the 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps as a mobile group of the front was turned almost at right angles from west to north. I. Kh. Baghramyan designed this turn by order of the following content ^[3] :

Thank you for Siauliai. Stop the battle in the Šiauliai area. Quickly concentrate on the Meshkuchai metro station and strike north along the highway by the end of 07/27/1944 to dominate Ioniskis, and Bauska and Jelgava to take strong advanced detachments.

By July 30, it was possible to separate two army groups from each other: the vanguards of the 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps cut the last railway between East Prussia and the Baltic in the Tukums region. On July 31, after a rather intense assault, Jelgava fell. Thus, the front went to the Baltic Sea. According to A. Hitler, a “gap in the Wehrmacht” arose ^[2] . At this stage, the main task of the front of I. Kh. Baghramyan was to maintain what was achieved, since an operation to a greater depth would lead to a stretching of communications, and the enemy was actively trying to restore land communications between army groups.

The first of the German counterattacks was the attack near the city of Birzai . This town was at the junction between the 51st Army breaking through to the sea and the ledge of the 43rd Army following it to the right. The idea of ​​the German command was to, through the positions of the flank of the 43rd Army, go to the rear of the 51st Army running towards the sea. The enemy used a fairly large group from the Army Group North. According to Soviet data, five infantry divisions ( 58th , 61st , 81st , 215th and 290th ), the Nordland motorized division , the 393rd assault gun brigade and other units participated in the battle ^[4] . On August 1, having gone on the offensive, this group managed to encircle the 357th Infantry Division of the 43rd Army. The division was rather small (4 thousand people) ^[4] and was in a difficult situation. However, the local “cauldron" was not subjected to serious pressure ^[4] , apparently, due to a lack of strength in the enemy. The first attempts to unlock the encircled unit failed, but the connection remained with the division, it had air supply ^[1] . The situation was reversed by the reserves thrown by I. Kh. Bagramyan. On the night of August 7, the 19th Panzer Corps and the encircled division, beating from the inside of the "boiler", joined. The exchange was also withheld. The losses were moderate - out of 3,908 people who were surrounded, 3,230 went into service and about 400 wounded.

However, counterattacks by German troops continued. On August 16, attacks began in the area of Raseiniai and west of Šiauliai. The German 3rd Panzer Army tried to push the Red Army away from the Baltic Sea and reestablish ties with Army Group North. Units of the 2nd Guards Army were pushed back, as were units of the neighboring 51st Army. By August 18, the 7th , 5th , 14th Panzer Divisions and the Great Germany Panzer Division (erroneously “SS Division” in the document) were installed in front of the 2nd Guards Army ^[5] . The situation near Šiauliai was stabilized by the introduction of the 5th Guards Tank Army ^[1] . However, on August 20, the offensive began from west and east on Tukums. Tukums was lost, and for a short time the Germans restored land communications between Army groups Center and North. The attacks of the German 3rd Panzer Army in the Šiauliai region failed ^[5] . At the end of August there was a break in the battles. The 1st Baltic Front completed its part of Operation Bagration.

As a result of the Šiauliai operation, the troops of the 1st Baltic Front advanced to a depth of 100 to 400 km, defeated the enemy in the Šiauliai direction and liberated a significant part of the territory of Latvia and Lithuania. Cutting off Army Group North from East Prussia, the front forces forced the enemy to transfer large forces to restore their communications, which contributed to the successful completion of the Belarusian operation. The ten most distinguished units and formations during the operation were given the honorary names of the Shavlinsky.

• Siauliai offensive operation (July 5 - 31, 1944) on the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense