In a decisive Soviet assault on 19 January, two regiments of the XXX Guards Corps' 63 rd Guards Division seized German positions to the front of Krasnoye Selo. Not composed of first-rate ground troops, the two ex-Luftwaffe formations broke rapidly, and Heeresgruppe 'Nord' was soon compelled to fall back toward new positions around the Narva river in Estonia. By the third day of the offensive, the 2 nd Shock Army had broken through the German line in a penetration some 14.25 miles (23 km) wide. The hardest-hit sector, which was attacked by the 2 nd Shock Army and 42 nd Army, was that of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS Felix Steiner’s III SS Panzerkorps (germanisch), within which the formations which bore the brunt of the Soviet offensive were Generalmajor Ernst Michael’s (from 22 January Generalmajor Heinrich Geerkens’s) 9 th Felddivision (L) and Generalleutnant Hermann von Wedel’s 10 th Felddivision (L). Korovnikov’s 59 th Army of the Volkhov Front. Roginsky’s 54 th Army and General Leytenant Ivan T. Starikov’s 8 th Army, General Leytenant Sergei V.
Roginsky’s 57 th Army of the Leningrad Front and farther to the south by General Leytenant Filipp N. Maslennikov’s 42 nd Army from the area to the east and south of Leningrad, supported on its left by General Leytenant Sergei V. Alferov’s CIX Corps) fell on the 18 th Army from the Oranienbaum lodgement on the south shore of the Gulf of Finland in the area to the west of Leningrad, and other advances were made by General Leytenant Ivan I. Andreyev’s XLIII Corps and General Major Ivan P. Simoniak’s XXX Guards Corps, General Major Anatoli I. Artyushenko’s XIV Corps, General Leytenant Nikolai P. Fedyuninsky’s 2 nd Shock Army (Major General Pavel A. In the process, the attack was expected to encircle Lindemann’s 18 th Army. On 14 January 1944, the Leningrad Front and Volkhov Front launched the 'Leningrad-Novgorod Strategic Offensive Operation', and within this the 'Krasnoye Selo-Ropsha Offensive Operation' (otherwise 'Neva-2' and 'Yanvar' Grom') designed specifically to force Heeresgruppe 'Nord' from its positions near Oranienbaum and then, in the main offensive part of the strategic plan, out of the area of the USSR lying to the south and south-west of Leningrad, and thence back into Estonia. The primary transportation routes, a road and a railway, ran east/west near to and parallel with the coast, and there were no other east/west transport routes capable of sustaining major troop movements. The area between the northern end of Lake Peipus and the Gulf of Finland constitutes a natural chokepoint: this 28-mile (45-km) strip of land is bisected into eastern and western halves by the Narva river, and in 1944 was also characterised by large areas of wilderness. The effect of the terrain on operations in 1944 was to channel the fighting into the less low-lying areas, and as a result of the numerous swamps only certain areas were suitable for large-scale troop movements. Most of the region is forested, and large swamps soak the lower areas. The land near Narva rarely rises to a height of anything more than 330 ft (100 m) above sea level, and is cut by numerous waterways including the Luga, Narva and Plyussa rivers. Terrain played a more than normally significant role in the operation, especially round Narva on the Narva river connecting Lake Peipus with the Gulf of Finland in the area to the south-west of Leningrad. The German forces, it is worth noting, included a major component of Estonian conscript and volunteer formations of the Waffen-SS defending their country against the possibility of Soviet reoccupation.
Meretskov’s Volkhov Front and Marshal Sovetskogo Soyuza Leonid A. The operation thus took place on the northern sector of the Eastern Front between Generalfeldmarschall Water Model’s (from 31 March Generaloberst Georg Lindemann’s, from 4 July Generaloberst Johannes Friessner’s and from 25 July Generalfeldmarschall Ferdinand Schörner’s) Heeresgruppe 'Nord' and General Kirill A. The 'Narva Offensive Operation' was a Soviet sub-operation within the 'Leningrad-Novgorod Strategic Offensive Operation' to drive the Germans from the approaches of Leningrad and then to expel them from the north-western USSR along the coast of the Baltic Sea (2 February/26 July 1944).
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