[8] The creation of LIV Army Corps was part of the immediate preparation for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, Unternehmen Barbarossa.

[10][11] It was the task of Army Group South to advance eastward from occupied Poland and northeastward from northern Romania into the Ukrainian SSR.

The Soviet forces, overestimating the strength of the German attack, promptly fell back to the Dniester river line before realizing their mistake.

The Romanian Third Army (Dumitrescu) was on defensive duty on the Ukrainian mainland to plug holes left open by German troops moving into Crimea.

At this point, with Bessarabia reclaimed, the Romanians were politically and militarily careful to overcommit to the Ukrainian campaigns now that their principal war aim was fulfilled.

[26] Although Manstein would in his memoirs blame this setback on the Third Romanian Army and specifically the 4th Mountain Brigade,[27] the forces of both Romania and Germany were heavily affected by the Soviet push.

[29] After the close call at the Sea of Azov, it was now clear that the previously ambivalent command direction of the 11th Army, which had been essentially required to push both east towards Rostov and south towards Sevastopol was unacceptable.

The Germans proved the experience they had with infantry attacks under artillery cover from previous campaigns, whereas the Soviet defenders were less effective at utilizing their own guns.

[34] Although Manstein had called to carry the momentum straight into a penetration of Sevastopol's defenses, rains and poor road condition slowed LIV Army Corps so much that its infantry contingents could not keep up with the mobile advance detachments.

[36] Manstein would single out the bravery and excellence displayed by the forces of the 22nd Infantry Division during the December 1941 activities in his memoirs,[37] but the attack was nonetheless very likely to fail.

[39] In spite of the Soviet activity at the Kerch peninsula, Hitler insisted that the attack of Sevastopol should be continued, in the hopes of scoring a politically valuable victory to improve German military and civilian morale.

[41] On 26 December 1941, the Soviet forces used their naval supremacy provided by the Black Sea Fleet to make several landings on the Kerch peninsula.

Nonetheless, the sheer numerical force of the Red Army allowed the Soviet Union to recapture the Kerch Peninsula with the threat to regain control of Crimea as a whole.

[43] The situation was now in a stalemate, as the Germans held the vast majority of the Crimean peninsula as well as the bottleneck that connected it to mainland Ukraine, but the two objectives that the Wehrmacht had invaded Crimea for in the first place, Sevastopol and Kerch, were in the hands of the Red Army.

By 13 June, forward elements of the 22nd Infantry Division reached the north shore of the bay, clearing out Fort Stalin, the fortification against which the attack of December 1941 had failed.

[51] Just after midnight in the early hours of 29 June 1942, elements of the 50th Infantry Division under LIV Corps carried out an amphibious crossing of Severnaya Bay on assault boats.

Some 30,000 Soviet troops awaited evacuation by the Black Sea Fleet on the Chersonese Peninsula, but were captured by the Germans before the promised ships arrived.

[56] Army Group North had been decisively weakened by Soviet attacks as well as troop transfers away from the northern sectors to other parts of the Eastern Front.

On 12 February, the 90th Rifle Division attacked across Lake Peipus and seized the island of Piirissaar in the hopes of establishing an outpost with which the Red Army could outflank the Germans in the south.

[60] The Red Banner Fleet attempted to outflank the German positions in the north by amphibiously deploying two Soviet infantry brigades on 13 February, but happened to drop their forces directly in front of the Panther Line's artillery fortifications.

The Germans, supported by Tiger tanks of the 502nd Heavy Panzer Battalion, dislodged the Soviet siege ring the following day and restored contact to the forces trapped in the village.

Further southwest, the Soviet 30th Guards Rifle Corps managed to advance against Auvere and secure the town's railway station before falling under attack by Feldhernhalle units on 17 February.

[71] On 6 August, Schörner repeated the suggestion of his predecessor Frießner and argued for the evacuation of Army Detachment Narva, still stuck in Estonia, from Tallinn.

In response, Hitler ordered the rapid deployment of the 31st Infantry Division, using Junkers Ju 52 transport planes, to Army Group North.

A significant political change was brought about when, in preparation for the Moscow Armistice, the government of Finland announced its withdrawal from the alliance with Germany on 2 September 1944.

The Finnish government was unwilling to carry on the Continuation War with German defeat evidently inevitable, and thus prepared to make peace with the Soviet Union and the Allied Powers.

The effect of the Finnish withdrawal from the war was twofold: On the one hand, Estonia was no longer required as a German anchor to the Gulf of Finland, as this body of water had now lost its significance without a German-Finnish alliance.

On the other hand, the Soviet forces in Karelia, no longer bound by Finnish troops, would now be free to swing south and crush the Baltic Wehrmacht positions.

[73] On 5 September, Heinz Guderian, acting chief of staff of OKH, informed Army Group North that the evacuation of the Baltic area could not be avoided and would be needed very soon.

Guderian specifically instructed the army group's leaders to make preparations for retreat in a camouflaged manner, likely to avoid detection by Hitler.