Battle of the European ϟϟ (Battle for Narva Bridgehead)

Waffen-SS sentry of the III. (germanisches) SS-Panzerkorps

Danish SS tanker of SS-Pz.Abt.11 Hermann von Salza

Several Western scholars refer the Battle of Narva to as the Battle of the European SS because the majority of the defenders were European Waffen-SS volunteers. The battle took place between February 2 and August 10 1944. Joining the Scandinavian and Dutch 11.SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Division Nordland were formations from all over Europe. SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS Felix Steiner's III. (germanisches) SS-Panzerkorps consisted of 24 volunteer battalions from Denmark, East Prussia, Flanders, Holland, Norway and Wallonia as well as the local Estonian conscripts motivated to resist the looming Soviet re-occupation. The Soviet operation were exhausted by the SS-Panzerkorps in ferocious battles. The first Soviet Narva Offensive, the Battle for Narva Bridgehead, was halted on February 20 1944. Altogether, the defenders of the Narva River line amounted to 50,000 men. Against them, the Soviets threw 200,000 men of Marshall Leonid A. Govorov's Leningrad Front. But the Waffen-SS corps held, and the stand of the Narva SS troops holding off eleven divisions and six tank units of the Soviet Second Shock and Eighth Armies received great publicity in war propaganda. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was personally interested in taking Estonia, viewing it as a precondition of forcing Finland out of the war. Left image: an unidentified SS volunteer of the III. Germanic SS Panzer Corps during the Battle for Narva Bridgehead in February 1944. Commons: Bundesarchiv. Right image: the Dane SS-Sturmmann Kurt Tebring inside a Panther commanded by SS-Oberscharführer Philipp Wild during the Battle of Narva in 1944. Tebring served as a tank driver in the SS-Panzer-Abteilung 11 Hermann von Salza of the Nordland Division. The National Library of Denmark. Fair use.