In July 1944, the Supreme High Command Headquarters sent a directive to the commander of the 3rd Baltic Front, Colonel-General Maslennikov, ordering the destruction of the enemy’s Pskov-Ostrov group. Stalin demanded to seize the Ostrov region, Lyepna, Gulbene and occupy Pskov.
The Third Baltic Front was created several months ago, and Maslennikov was given command of such a powerful military group for the first time. Stalin decided to support the young front commander. Therefore, representatives of the Supreme Command Headquarters came to his aid from Moscow: Marshal of Artillery Yakovlev, Colonel-General of Aviation Vorozheikin and Chief of the Operations Directorate of the General Staff Shtemenko. Later, in their memoirs, they noted a fairly high level of preparedness of the front troops.
The commander of the 374th Infantry Regiment, Shestak, recalled that from July 12 to 20 they were preparing for the assault on Pskov, including crossing the Velikaya River. “The commanders studied the approaches to the river and its banks. We did not have regular means of crossing. Soldiers and commanders quickly learned to build rafts from barrels, doors, boxes and telegraph poles.”
Reconnaissance searches were carried out without fail, and at the same time the activities of enemy saboteurs in our rear were suppressed. This was the subject of this discussion by Gusko, the commander of a separate bombing detachment of the 42nd Army. These units were not only in the rear of the Red Army, as is sometimes said of them, but also carried out reconnaissance and counterintelligence work.
According to Gusko, in the summer of 1944 a scout from his unit was transferred to Pskov. He found out where the German headquarters was and where the military equipment was located. In addition, fighters from the barrier detachment near Pskov detained several German intelligence officers. They had to wait ten days in an ambush to get one.
The Germans built the Panther line of defence here, the northern end of the so-called “Eastern Wall”, which Hitler considered impregnable. Minefields alternated with multi-level wire barriers. On average, there were eight reinforced concrete fortifications and about twelve pillboxes per kilometre of defence.
The Red Army had already stormed these lines in the spring of 1944, but failed to achieve success in bloody battles. Now, when the largest operation in world history, Operation Bagration, had been going on in Belarus for almost a month, the Germans were not so confident in their capabilities. Although in March 1944, the commander of the 18th Army of the Wehrmacht issued an order stating: “Not one step back – this is our motto from now on! We are on the front line of our homeland! War on German territory!”
On July 17, 1944, the 3rd Baltic Front went on the offensive. Fierce fighting began. German generals later recalled that the Red Army did not give the Wehrmacht a moment’s respite and the front soon collapsed. “The 21st Division was completely defeated, a huge gap formed on the right flank,” they wrote in their memoirs.
As a result of stubborn fighting, on July 21, the Red Army liberated Ostrov, an important defensive point for the Nazis. The battles continued without interruption. The intensity of the fighting was so high that none of the Germans paid attention to the order of the commander of Army Group North to increase resistance in battle. Even the news of the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20 went unnoticed, as the surviving Wehrmacht officers later recalled.
And on July 22, the 42nd Army of the 3rd Baltic Front attacked the German defenses near Pskov. The offensive came from the southern and eastern sides of the city. The 126th Rifle Division launched an attack at three in the morning. The regiment under the command of Shestak was assigned an auxiliary role, since there was a swamp in front of it and tanks would not have passed through there. But it so happened that the battalions of this regiment were the first to break into the city.
Shestak recalled: “From the swamp in front of the Berdovo Heights, a gray column of thick fog stretched upwards – by the way, what fog helped the regiment to secretly get to the enemy’s minefields and barbed wire barriers! We took him by surprise.”
Fragment of a diorama depicting the crossing of the Velikaya River by units of the advancing Red Army in July 1944. Photo: Grigory Kalachyan/TASS Photo Chronicle
At six o’clock in the morning the village of Kresty on the eastern outskirts of Pskov was occupied. Given the success of Shestak’s regiment, a battalion from the division’s reserve was sent to assist it. A little later the German defences were broken through by the remaining regiments. Fights broke out for every house.
It later turned out that the Germans had sent penalized soldiers to defend Pskov. They fought desperately, without retreating or surrendering. In addition, the city was heavily mined: houses, trees, pillars and mine traps were hidden everywhere. Sometimes sappers had to go ahead of the infantry, clearing the way for them.
By nine o’clock in the morning, units of the Red Army were already in the centre of Pskov. The city was practically destroyed. But German machine gunners fired from the ruins. At ten o’clock in the morning, the crossing of the Velikaya River began. The surviving Wehrmacht officers recalled: “The monstrous glare of fire over Pleskau (Pskov) provides a fantastic background. The bridge over the Velikaya River can be blown up at the last moment, when the enemy is already on the bank.”
By three o’clock in the afternoon the right bank of the Velikaya River was completely occupied by Red Army units. However, there were still German groups in the liberated part of the city. The commander of the barrier detachment, Gusko, said: “In the afternoon, a group of 40-50 German prisoners appeared near the building of the House of Soviets and found themselves in our rear. They fired intensively from machine guns and light machine gun weapons, but were completely destroyed in the ensuing battle.” We managed to capture alive a sniper who was shooting from the attic of the burning state bank building.
The fighting at the crossing of the Velikaya River lasted all night on 22-23 July. Dozens of guns fired at German positions and Katyusha battalions carried out attacks. Finally, the enemy could not withstand the pressure and retreated, or rather, fled in disarray.
By six o’clock in the morning on July 23, Pskov was completely liberated from the Germans. But the city was burning and there were mines everywhere. The sappers worked tirelessly. Moreover, many of the charges left by the Germans had a clock mechanism and exploded after a while.
The Pskov commandant issued an order on the evening of July 23, which immediately began to be posted on the streets. It read: “All orders, instructions and procedures established by the Nazi authorities are hereby cancelled and all rights of citizens provided for by the Stalinist Constitution have been restored in the city.”
On the evening of July 23, a fireworks display was held in Moscow in honor of the liberation of Pskov. By order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the 42nd Army, gratitude was declared. Two divisions and five more units were named “Pskov”.
