The defenders managed to slow the Soviet advance sufficiently for Army Detachment Narwa to be evacuated from mainland Estonia in an orderly fashion.

Attacks by the Leningrad Front had pushed Army Group North west of Lake Peipus, resulting in a series of operations around Narva.

[2] In the south, Soviet forces had advanced towards the Baltic coast at the end of Operation Bagration the Belorussian strategic offensive (June–August 1944) against Army Group Centre.

[2] Stavka began an intricate supply and transport operation, to move the 2nd Shock Army from the Narva front to the Emajõgi river on September 5, 1944.

Forty-six vessels worked 24 hours a day to carry 135,000 troops, 13,200 horses, 9,100 lorries, 2,183 artillery and 8,300 tons of ammunition across the lake.

In the Estonian section, from the Valga railway junction to Lake Võrtsjärv, the Soviet 3rd Baltic Front attacked the German XXVIII Army Corps.

[2][page range too broad] The German and Estonian Omakaitse units held their positions and prevented the Army Detachment Narwa from being encircled in Estonia.

The next day, Generaloberst Heinz Guderian suggested that it would not be possible to hold Ostland and ordered plans for the evacuation operation, codenamed Königsberg, to be drawn up.

Hitler, however, declared that Ostland must not be given up at any cost, since doing so would provide support to those Finns that did not favour the new course of the government, and would influence Sweden to maintain its current foreign policy.

On 15 September, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army Group, Generaloberst Ferdinand Schörner, requested that Guderian convince Hitler to order the evacuation of German troops from the continental part of Estonia, codenamed Operation Aster.

The withdrawal was to be backed mainly by the units consisting of Estonians, who, by the estimates of the German army command, would not have wanted to leave Estonia anyway.

[8] The 15,000 strong III SS (Germanic) Panzer Corps stood against the Soviet 8th Army numbering 55,000 troops at the Narva front.

General Ferdinand Schörner ordered II Army Corps to abandon the defence of the Emajõgi and to move quickly around the northern tip of Lake Võrtsjärv to Latvia.

[8] Estonians of the Soviet rifle corps murdered their compatriots that had been taken prisoner at Porkuni and the wounded sheltering in the Avinurme Parish church.

On 24 September near Ikla on the Latvian border the rearguard of the "Nederland" carried out its final battle on Estonian ground, destroying 12–15 Soviet tanks.

[12] The Government of Estonia had failed to concentrate the Estonian soldiers retreating from the Narva and Emajõgi fronts, as the units were scattered and mixed with the German detachments withdrawing towards Latvia.

The government managed to establish contact with a group of Estonian SS troops retreating from Narva front, but those were dispersed in the Battle of Porkuni.

By the time the advance units of the Leningrad Front arrived at Tallinn early on 22 September, German troops had practically abandoned the city[2] and the streets were empty.

Before embarkation, all stationary artillery and armaments, special equipment, guns that could not be evacuated, ammunition, the telephone exchange, the radio broadcast house, locomotives and railroad cars, and the railway were destroyed.

Army Group North's plans had paid off and both the Soviets and the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (German High Command) was surprised and impressed by the speed of the evacuation.

The punitive actions decreased rapidly after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953; from 1956 to 1958, a large part of the deportees and political prisoners were allowed to return to Estonia.