Original subtitles

In June 1941, the German Blitz Creek was

supposed to be unstoppable. But at 3:00

a.m. near the Latvian town of Groinya, a

panicked voice crackled over the region.

We are being totally obliterated.

A veteran German infantry regiment's

advance had been instantly paralyzed,

its men pinned to the ground and facing

total annihilation.

In this episode, we learn how a

masterclass in warfare turned into a

localized nightmare.

To find out exactly what happened, I

have gone back to the primary sources,

the microfilm war diaries of the German

291st Infantry Division. What I found

was 24 hours of absolute tactical

madness, a missing 30 km armored column,

a daring plot to hijack a Soviet

passenger train, and a deadly game of

cat and mouse with the Eastern Front's

largest guns. These are the stories that

don't make the history books. So, let's

rewind the clock and see how this chaos

started.

Just 2 days earlier on June the 22nd,

Germany unleashed Operation Barbarasa,

igniting the largest military invasion

in history. On the northern flank of

this invasion, Army Group North were

smashing through the Baltics, driving

hard towards the Soviet Union's second

city of Leningrad.

But in the wake of this rapid advance,

problems were emerging. The German 291st

Infantry Division were tasked with

seizing Labauo, modern-day Leapaya, a

heavily fortified Soviet naval base that

was the home of the Soviet Baltic fleet.

To secure this valuable prize, German

forces had to lock down the bottleneck

town of Grabinia and the vital rail hub

of Priyakle to protect their flank from

a potential counterattack, allowing them

to focus entirely on crushing the Soviet

forces within the city's defenses.

Reading the 291st typewritten war diary,

however, reveals a shocking reality. The

Germans were advancing blindly. Their

breakthrough had been so fast that they

had not only outrun their own supply

lines, but had also completely lost

track of what lay ahead and what might

be hunting them from behind. Just 20

minutes into June the 24th, the diary

records that the German momentum had

already hit a brick wall in this sector.

The 504th Infantry Regiment's push from

Scoos to Prioule was abruptly halted and

they were ordered not to move again

until 7 later that morning. An enforced

stop of more than 7 hours. The order was

triggered by a frantic radio report that

had been received at 900 p.m. the

previous evening. A German scout patrol

had been decimated in the dark by two

motorized Soviet companies. Chillingly,

German intelligence couldn't pinpoint

their location.

Two entire enemy motorized companies had

slipped into the vast Latvian forests,

their whereabouts completely unknown.

To push forward blindly in the dark was

a risk that General Loinet Kurt Herzog,

commander of the 291st Infantry

Division, deemed entirely unacceptable.

While the 504th had been ordered to

halt, the story was entirely different

for the 505th Infantry Regiment. Their

orders were to strike west towards Liba

as quickly as possible. By half

midnight, their light reconnaissance

units had already bypassed the village

of Gerbina and reached a nearby canal.

In the eerie midsummer twilight, they

were probing for a bridge head across

the water, racing against the clock as

their order stated that a major assault

was scheduled to be launched at 2:00 in

the morning, barely 2 hours later. But

the Soviets weren't falling back. They

were preparing their defenses whilst

also marching out to flank the Germans.

But speaking of the defenses, let's zoom

down on the location of Libauo and break

down the obstacles that the 291st

Infantry Division would have to overcome

to capture the city. The geography

itself had formed a natural watery trap

for the invaders. To the northeast lay

the dark waters of Lake Tasmare, while

to the southeast loomed Lake Leapaya,

effectively severing the vital port city

from the mainland. This left only a

perilous swampy corridor of land barely

2 and a half kilometers wide as the sole

eastern avenue of approach. Because of

this suffocating bottleneck, the Germans

were utterly stripped of their ability

to execute wide flanking maneuvers or

deploy their superior numbers. They were

forced instead to funnel blindly down a

narrow strip of land, driving headon

into a highly predictable, concentrated

killing zone.

Recognizing this trap, the German

command sought to split their advance by

sending elements sweeping along the

narrow coastal routes to the north and

south of the lakes to cut off the city

from the rest of the coastline and

prevent any Soviet escape.

Compounding this brutal terrain was a

ghost from the region's imperial past.

Ringing the entire city was a massive

network of permanent concrete

fortifications built decades earlier by

the Russian Zars. Though all these heavy

redouts had survived the battles of the

First World War, their thick concrete

walls and subterranean galleries

remaining virtually indestructible.

I've marked them up on the map here to

give you an idea of how welldefended

this city was. Not just to the east, but

also to the north and south. To the

east, however, there were three primary

fortresses anchored along this narrow

land bridge. On the northern edge, right

on the shore of Lake Tasmare, sat the

left out. To the south beside Lake

Leapaya was the right redout. But the

true crown jewel of the defensive line

was the middle fort. A massive imposing

concrete labyrinth situated squarely in

the center of the gap to lock down the

main road and rail approaches. Elements

of the Soviet 67th Rifle Division and

Baltic Naval Personnel had dug deep into

these historic positions, turning the

Tsarist ruins into lethal force

multipliers. The reinforced embankments

provided the Red Army infantry with near

total immunity against standard German

field artillery, which would force the

attackers into costly close quarters

combat just to clear individual firing

points. Confined to the narrow causeway,

German tanks and infantry would be met

with a wall of pre-registered artillery

and overlapping machine gun fire. With

anti-tank ditches scoring the earth, the

bridges across the fortress canals

already blown. This formidable

combination of a natural choke point,

locked down coastal flanks, and

immovable concrete fortresses meant the

Germans were sure to have a battle on

their hands. At 2:00 a.m., the tone of

the diary shifted to absolute panic.

Just as the main body of the 505th

Infantry Regiment prepared to move west

to reinforce their forward

reconnaissance units, the darkness

erupted. From the northwest, the

heaviest Soviet force they had yet

encountered launched a fierce, chaotic

ambush from the cover of the treeine. As

the pre-dawn mist rolled in, the German

lines barely held on, caught in a

desperate, blind struggle against the

hidden enemy. As the sun rose over the

Baltic, the true scale of the Soviet

defense came into sharp focus. Just

before 7:00 a.m., a Lufafa aerial

reconnaissance pilot radioed in an

urgent report that would soon fracture

the confidence of the German command. A

massive enemy motorized column was

moving along the road linking Cordiga

and ice put. Any attempt by the pilot to

drop low and investigate further was

instantly met by a blistering wall of

heavy machine gun fire from the ground.

At the divisional command post, General

Liten Kurt Herzog scrambled to master

the chaos. He ordered his anti-tank

units to pivot to Prile to secure the

flank and commanded his artillery to

back up the 55th Infantry Regiment

holding the line northwest of Grabinia.

But time had run out. The heavy

artillery pieces were still limbered up

and dead in their tracks, entirely

unable to help. Desperate for a

lifeline, Herzog bypassed standard

channels and made a frantic appeal to

the 18th Army headquarters for immediate

air support. Ground reinforcements were

also in the move to bolster the 505th

Infantry Regiment, but their deployment

force an agonizing tactical decision for

command. Should they be diverted to

shore up the exposed flank at Priyakoule

in anticipation of an attack that may

actually never arrive or should they

push them forward directly into the

fighting at Gurabinya?

Ultimately, the decision was made to

keep them on their original axis. By

7:00 a.m., Marine Ser commando Beagler

marched straight through Pacoule,

continuing their urgent push westward

towards the ongoing battle. The

situation on the ground was now

unraveling by the minute. A Lufafa recon

plane flying a north to south pass over

Labau peered through the mist and

exposed the true skill of the threat

ahead of the infantry near Lake Tossari.

The Soviets had dug in a heavy artillery

battery. Worse still, at the airfield

near the northern tip of Lake Leapaya,

15 Soviet combat planes were lined up on

a tarmac, waiting for the order to take

flight.

The German regiments were losing

cohesion, pinned into isolated pockets.

At 7:30 a.m., the 505th Infantry

Regiment reported that while they had

managed to set up a command post in

Crobinia, the enemy attacks were

relentless. Their third battalion was

effectively stranded, and command was

urgently requesting trucks to move

forces out to the front. It was then the

situation grew even stranger.

By 7:40 a.m., intelligence reports

delivered another blow to the German

timetable. Deep inside the thick forest

near Venode, Soviet troops were massing.

Crucially, the informant highlighted the

presence of political commissars driving

the red soldiers forward. Latvian

partisans had already tried to disrupt

this gathering, but were violently

repulsed. To track this hidden threat,

German staff relied on local networks,

instructing the Venote station master to

relay live updates on the Soviet columns

movements. This level of local

assistance was far from unusual. After

suffering under a brutal Soviet

occupation, a vast number of Baltic

civilians welcomed the German invasion

as an opportunity to purge their

homeland of communist control. Driven by

a desire for liberation, locals across

the region stood ready to assist the

German advance by any means necessary.

And at the Venote railway station, a

lone station master was about to do

exactly that.

But for now, the bad news for the

Germans kept on coming. At 8:10 a.m.,

more reports from the Lufafa filled the

airwaves. The Soviet column near Putout

wasn't a minor force. The pilot

estimated its length at a staggering 30

km.

Moving in tight armored groups of four

or five vehicles, a massive Soviet

sledgehammer was driving slowly through

Latvia aimed directly at the German

flank. It was during this highstake

standoff that a truly bizarre event

occurred. A story buried in the war

diary at around 10:00 a.m. While forces

scrambled across the sector, German

lookouts at Priacle made a startling

discovery. The sound of an approaching

steam train. It was a Soviet passenger

transport arriving from the east,

entirely blind to the Vermachar's

advance. Instantly, German staff

envisioned a brilliant tactical coup. By

utilizing a small force of motorcycle

dispatch riders and engineers, they

intended to seize the train at the

platform, load it with the infantry

reinforcements that had just passed

through the town, and run it directly

into the bottleneck at Gurabinya. It was

a stroke of tactical genius, utterly

ruined by the friction of combat.

Communication lines failed and frontline

troops were left completely in the dark.

Witnessing an enemy train entering their

sector, an isolated German platoon blew

the tracks to prevent a breakthrough.

The sudden detonation alerted the Soviet

engineer on the train, who immediately

threw the locomotive into reverse,

backing out of the ambush and slipping

away back over the eastern horizon. By

midm morning at 10:30 a.m., a briefing

by Admiral Classen brought a terrifying

update to the German command. Up at the

front in Gerbinia, the 505th Infantry

Regiment and its attached units were

completely pinned down. Stripped of all

offensive momentum, they had been forced

to dig in, forming a desperate all round

defensive hedgehog position. The cause

of the paralysis was no mystery. Between

the lakes guarding Leau, the Red Army

had anchored itself in a fortified choke

point, unleashing a devastating heavy

artillery barrage. The ground buckled

violently under the onslaught. In

Grabinia, buildings caught in the

crosshairs were simply blown apart,

leaving German infantrymen completely

exposed as high explosive shells churned

the earth. Yet elsewhere on the

battlefield, a lifeline arrived at 10:45

a.m. The Lufafa roared to the rescue of

Priakoule. A swarm of German bombers

thundered over ice putday, hammering

both the town and the massive 30 km long

Soviet column spotted earlier that

morning.

War Diaries noted that Ice Putday was

transformed into a raging inferno.

Crisis struck again at midday when the

radio linked to the 505th Infantry

Regiment went dead. Suspecting that the

heavy shelling had cut their

communication lines, engineers scrambled

in action, working tirelessly to restore

the link. German pilots watching from

above could see Soviet trucks racing

back and forth between Labau and

Grabinia, keeping the assault alive with

fresh reinforcements and supplies.

Desperate to keep their own faltering

momentum alive, Kurt Herzog began

pulling rear guard companies off

security detail, throwing them directly

into the meat grinder at the front just

to stop the drive on Leba from

shattering completely.

By midday, a bleak assessment was passed

up to Captain Billet at 18th Army

headquarters. The divisional staff

conceded that encircling the Soviet

defenders was now a total impossibility.

They were entirely dependent on air

strikes to silence the coastal guns, but

the Soviet artillerymen were playing a

brilliant tactical game. The war diary

notes that the heavy batteries vanished

whenever German planes approached, going

silent, only to resume their punishing

barrage the moment the skies cleared.

The war diaries revealed the sheer

desperation gripping the German high

command by early afternoon on June the

24th. The directive was absolute.

halt all attempts to storm the bow until

3 p.m. Launching an uncoordinated

assault without artillery or air cover

would simply turn the city's outskirts

into a death zone. That restraint was

quickly vindicated as the afternoon

dissolved into a brutal firefight for

the western fringes of Grabinia. The

crisis deepened when Major General

Butcher of the artillery detachment

redoed in a frontic update. A reinforced

Soviet regiment had smashed into the

505th from the south. With the 505th

facing imminent encirclement, the 506th

Infantry Regiment was ordered to pivot

east immediately, locking down both

sides of Lake Durba to protect their

battle comrades to the west. But amid

the chaos, a glimmer of opportunity

emerged. Early that afternoon, German

listeners intercepted a frantic wave of

Soviet radio traffic, straining through

heavy statically pieced together

fragmented order. The Red Army was

allegedly retreating from the Siraa ice

putday sector. It was the first concrete

evidence that the Lufafa's brutal air

campaign was successfully breaking the

Soviet logistics network.

Spirits rose briefly when German

intelligence officer Gluger delivered a

highly optimistic update. German machine

gunners and engineers had successfully

fought their way into Luba southern

airfield. Even better, a scouting party

had uncovered a hidden path cutting deep

into the city's perimeter. Seizing the

moment the regiment drew up plans for a

massive coordinated infantry assault

from the south later that evening. Then

a final note in the diary brought their

momentum to a grinding halt. The entire

offensive was pushed back to the early

hours of June the 25th. The reason, a

critical ammunition crisis. The

division's heavy artillery had run

completely out of shells.

Throughout the late afternoon, supply

lines worked frantically to break the

deadlock. Reports finally filtered in

that the vital resupply routes cut off

by sporadic attacks from Soviet forces

trapped behind the front lines had been

cleared. The desperate flow of

ammunition resumed. But just as a crisis

on land was being managed, a lethal new

threat was brewing in the water. Three

Ju88 bombers launched a targeted strike

in the Soviet battery hidden in the

northern woods. Though the diary notes

with frustration that they missed,

leaving the Soviet guns to hammer German

positions unabated. But as the bombers

turned back over the port of Luba,

pilots spotted a massive shadow in the

water. A Soviet destroyer.

The ship was the Lenon. Though a relic

of the First World War, she was armed

with four 102 mm guns boasting a 16 km

range. For comparison, Gropinia and the

505th Infantry Regiment were a mere 10

km away. Sensing disaster, the

divisional commander fired off a

panicked high priority message to the

Creeks Marine demanding immediate naval

intervention. The Dari captures his

exact words, warning that if this

warship brought its guns to bear, the

entire operation to capture Libao could

collapse. While flying above the port,

Alufaf, a pilot spotted a Soviet

anti-aircraft battery firing wildly from

the eastern edge of the city, throwing

up a wall of flack to shield the

maneuvering destroyer. The coordinates

were instantly relayed to the German

artillery commander Butcher with strict

orders to silence the batteries with

heavy area fire. Nightfall of the 24th

brought no relief as the German command

scrambled to identify the exact forces

blocking their path. The war diary

reveals that intelligence officer Gluger

arrived with a sobering update pulled

from captured Soviet prisoners. The

Germans weren't just fighting

stragglers. They had run into the Soviet

67th Rifle Division. This was a powerful

force packed with three infantry

regiments, a light artillery regiment,

and a heavy howitzer regiment. The main

body of the division was fighting a rear

guard action as it retreated north. But

highly aggressive motorized Soviet

companies were continuously launching

spoiling attacks against the German

lines from the north and northeast. The

cover of darkness however also threw the

Lufafa lifeline. Free from the deadly

accuracy of daytime anti-aircraft fire.

Bombers executed relentless overlapping

raids in the bau. The low thunderous

thud of bombs detonating in the distance

echoed for miles, offering a massive

morale boost to German infantry,

desperately holding the line. Even under

the falling bombs, the Red Army dug in

its heels.

In the village of Croa, a German bicycle

squadron holding the gap between Lake

Durban and Priyakle was completely

blindsided by a savage night attack.

Shattered in the darkness, the cyclists

abandoned their positions and retreated

to the main road. With their flank

exposed, the German command fired off

desperate orders to the 504th Infantry

Regiment, launched an immediate

counterattack on Coute and secure Prile

at all costs.

Only as midnight neared did the savage

momentum of the battle finally burn out.

Exhausted soldiers on both sides

collapsed into the mud for a few hours

of uneasy sleep, leaving nervous

centuries to watch the tree lines. For

the Germans, it had been 3 days of

uninterrupted marching and relentless

combat. and the butcher bill for the

division was finally due. To tally the

cost of these opening days, we turned to

the war diaries of Army Group North.

Crucially, these casualty logs were

recorded in strict 24-hour blocks

running from 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. the

following day. The first block, covering

the initial 17 hours of the invasion on

June the 22nd, delivered a sharp baptism

of fire. The 291st infantry division

suffered 149 enlisted casualties with 47

killed and 102 wounded. The officer

corps took an immediate blow. Two were

wounded and four lay dead including

loitants spitz voit aer and uber loitin

and horn. The next 24 hours ending the

evening of June the 23rd saw the front

line shift. Enlisted losses dropped to

10 killed and 46 wounded. Though the

deadly nature of frontline leadership

was underscored by three more platoon

leaders falling wounded, including the

bicycle battalions Liton and Akler, who

would later succumb to his injuries. But

this lull was merely the cal before the

storm. The true cost arrived in the

final 24-hour window ending on the

evening of June the 24th. The leadership

of the 505th Infantry Regiment was

utterly devastated. An astonishing 11

officers were wounded and three were

killed, decimating entire company

commands. Among them were company

commanders overlit Kelner and Throder

alongside Liten Sebert, Jagodski and

Hoot. On the field over Loin Zidler and

Lit Spisk and Peter were killed

alongside 40 rank and file casualties.

In just 3 days, the onslaught cost of

291st a staggering 269 men while 71

enlisted troops were dead. It was a

shattering loss of 24 officers killed or

wounded that cut the deepest. In a mere

72 hours, entire companies have been

stripped of their leaders. A bloody

warning of a war that would consume men

at a rate never before seen in human

history.

As the first rays of sunlight began to

pierce the murky darkness, the thunder

of heavy artillery erupted once more.

Shells slammed relentlessly into the

positions of the 505th Infantry Regiment

at Groinya. Choking back the chaos, the

regimental commander, Colonel Lumire,

made a desperate radio call to

headquarters. We are being utterly

obliterated.

His men were being torn apart by the

colossal Soviet batteries. The sheer

concussive force of the giant shells

landing amongst his troops had

completely frozen their advance,

prompting Lumar to urgently beg for

bomber support to silence the monstrous

guns. For hours, the battle hung in a

bloody equilibrium. German spotter

planes circled through the morning air,

trying desperately to locate the flash

of the heavy artillery barrels. But the

Soviet gunners were clever. The moment

they heard planes overhead, they ceased

fire, refusing to give their positions

away. Once the Lufafa pilots caught on

to the trick, they turned it to their

advantage. By simply staying in the air

over the target area, the eyes in the

sky kept the mass of Soviet guns

completely neutralized.

With the artillery forced into silence,

the momentum swung decisively back to

the [music] Germans. By early morning,

the tactical outlook for the infantry

assault finally turned favorable.

Through the smoke, German troops had

breached the perimeter defenses at the

southern entrance to Labau.

Simultaneously, the 506th Infantry

Regiment initiated a massive enveloping

maneuver around the north, trapping the

Soviet defenders inside. With German

forces closing the vice from the north,

south, and east, the fall of the port

was now just a matter of time.