The Erna long-range reconnaissance group (Estonian : Erna luuregrupp) was a Finnish Army unit of Estonian volunteers that fulfilled reconnaissance duties in Estonia behind Red Army lines during World War II. The unit was formed by Finnish military intelligence with the assistance of German military intelligence for reconnaissance operations. [1]
After the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940 hundreds of Estonian men went to Finland rather than accept Soviet rule. The Estonian military attaché in Finland, Major Aksel Kristian, in the spring of 1941 compiled a list of Estonians in Finland who wanted to liberate their homeland. Finnish intelligence subsequently recruited 15 volunteers and began training them on the island of Staffan in Soukka, Espoo.
On 22 June 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. [2] Finland re-entered the war in alliance with Germany in the Continuation War. Estonians living in Finland were assembled in Helsinki to establish a voluntary unit to go to Estonia. [2] The platoon commander was Colonel Henn-Ants Kurg [2] of the Estonian Army, who had been the last Estonian military attaché to France.
The Germans gave the group the name "Erna". [2] Two German liaison officers, Oberleutnant Reinhardt and Sonderführer Schwarze, also joined the group. [2] Erna was armed by and wore the uniform of the Finnish Army. [3] The two Germans in charge wanted Erna to pledge allegiance to the Führer. However, Colonel Kurg strongly opposed this; [2] he insisted that they were not Germans but Estonian volunteers, ready to co-operate, but without any commitments to Hitler. [2] An agreement was reached that being in the service of the Finnish Army, Erna should give the oath of loyalty to Finland. Accordingly, on 24 July 1941, the 15 specially trained men and 52 volunteers took an oath of allegiance to Finland. [2]
On the night of 10 July the platoon made a seaborne landing on the northern coast of Estonia with 42 men arriving onshore and hiding in the Kautla Marshes 60 km south east of Tallinn. Another 17 team members were parachuted in on 28 July. The group's task was to perform reconnaissance deep behind Red Army lines for the Finnish Army but it turned to saving around 2,000 civilians hiding in the Kautla woods by allowing them to escape while the outnumbered Erna force engaged Soviet NKVD Destruction Battalions in a fierce battle on 31 July to 1 August 1941. [4] On 4 August, the platoon was ordered to cross the frontline and terminate their activities. A total of 32 men were lost, either killed or missing in action. [5]
A battalion attached to the German 311th Infantry was formed from the remnants of the original Erna platoon, with an additional 400 men, and dubbed "Erna II", but it was disbanded on 10 October 1941.[ citation needed ] With the end of the war a number of the original members of Erna continued guerrilla activities against Soviet forces, becoming Forest Brothers. [6] The Erna Raid (Estonian: Erna retk) was an annual international military exercise and competition, commemorating the action of 1941 and held from 1995. [7]
Soviet propagandists[ according to whom? ] claimed the original Erna team participated in the mass murder of Soviet political activists.[ citation needed ] These claims were revived in the 1980s as a way of distracting historians analysing the Kautla massacre, and have been repeated in Russian media in the 2000s. [8] Russian authorities regard the commemorative Erna Raid as "heroizing fascism". [9]
The Battle of Narva Bridgehead was the campaign that stalled the Soviet Estonian operation in the surroundings of the town of Narva for six months. It was the first phase of the Battle of Narva campaign fought at the Eastern Front during World War II, the second phase being the Battle of Tannenberg Line.
The Battle of Narva was a World War II military campaign, lasting from 2 February to 10 August 1944, in which the German Army Detachment "Narwa" and the Soviet Leningrad Front fought for possession of the strategically important Narva Isthmus.
The Battle of Tannenberg Line or the Battle of the Blue Hills was a military engagement between the German Army Detachment Narwa and the Soviet Leningrad Front. They fought for the strategically important Narva Isthmus from 25 July–10 August 1944. The battle was fought on the Eastern Front during World War II. The strategic aim of the Soviet Estonian Operation was to reoccupy Estonia as a favorable base for the invasions of Finland and East Prussia. Waffen-SS forces included 24 volunteer infantry battalions from the SS Division Nordland, the SS Division Langemarck, the SS Division Nederland, and the Walloon Legion. Roughly half of the infantry consisted of the personnel of the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. The German force of 22,250 men held off 136,830 Soviet troops. As the Soviet forces were constantly reinforced, their overall casualties are estimated by Estonian historian Mart Laar to be 170,000 dead and wounded.
In the course of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany invaded Estonia in July–December 1941, and occupied the country until 1944. Estonia had gained independence in 1918 from the then-warring German and Russian Empires. However, in the wake of the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Stalinist Soviet Union had invaded and occupied Estonia in June 1940, and the country was formally annexed into the USSR in August 1940.
Infantry Regiment 200 or soomepoisid was a unit in the Finnish army during World War II made up mostly of Estonian volunteers, who preferred to fight against the Soviet Union in the ranks of the Finnish army instead of the armed forces of Germany.
During World War II, the Estonian capital Tallinn suffered from many instances of aerial bombing by the Soviet air force and the German Luftwaffe. The first bombings by Luftwaffe occurred during the Summer War of 1941 as part of Operation Barbarossa. A number of Soviet bombing missions to then German-occupied Tallinn followed in 1942–1944.
Aili Jõgi was an Estonian schoolgirl who on the night of 8 May 1946, together with her school friend Ageeda Paavel, blew up a Soviet War reburial monument : the preceding monument to the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn. She was born in Tallinn.
Ülo Jõgi was an Estonian war historian who was active in the Estonian resistance against the Soviet occupation of Estonia.
Estonia declared neutrality at the outbreak of World War II (1939–1945), but the country was repeatedly contested, invaded and occupied, first by the Stalinist Soviet Union in 1940, then by Nazi Germany in 1941, and ultimately reinvaded and reoccupied in 1944 by the Soviet Union.
Erna Raid was an annual international military exercise and competition, one of the longest and most difficult in the world, held every August from 1995 to 2011 in Estonia. It was organised by the Erna Society and commemorates the actions of the long-range reconnaissance group 'Erna' in the summer of 1941.
The 8th Estonian Rifle Corps was a formation in the Red Army, created on 6 November 1942, during World War II.
The Battle of Kautla took place between Soviet destruction battalions and Estonian Forest Brothers in Kautla, Estonia in July 1941. It included series of murders of civilians committed by destruction battalions, known as Kautla massacre.
Destruction battalions, colloquially istrebitels abbreviated: istrebki (Russian), strybki (Ukrainian), stribai (Lithuanian), were paramilitary units under the control of NKVD in the western Soviet Union, which performed tasks of internal security on the Eastern Front and after it. After the Fall of the Soviet Union the battalions were deemed by the Riigikogu to be a criminal entity.
This is a sub-article to Leningrad–Novgorod Offensive and Battle of Narva.
The Narva offensive was an operation conducted by the Soviet Leningrad Front. It was aimed at the conquest of the Narva Isthmus from the German army detachment "Narwa". At the time of the operation, Joseph Stalin, the supreme commander of the Soviet Armed Forces, was personally interested in taking Estonia, viewing it as a precondition to forcing Finland out of the war.
This is a sub-article to Battle of Narva.
This is a sub-article to Battle of Narva (1944).
The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic partisans against the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known alternatively as the "Forest Brothers", the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars", these partisans fought against invading Soviet forces during their occupation of the Baltic states during and after World War II. Similar insurgent groups resisted Soviet occupations in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.
The Summer War was the occupation of Estonia during the Second World War. It was fought between the Forest Brothers (Metsavennad), the Omakaitse, and the Wehrmacht's 18th Army against the forces of the 8th Army of the USSR and the NKVD.
Henn-Ants Kurg was an Estonian Colonel and a diplomat.