3. Baltic Offensive
After their stunning success in the summer in Byelorussia, in September the Soviets paused in the centre and started two simultaneous operations in the north and south: the aforementioned thrust into the Balkans to swing round up through Hungary and into Austria, and the second to forcibly reclaim the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that they had previously occupied and annexed in 1940 as per their share in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The battle for the Baltics isnt as glamorous or prestigious as the other areas of the Eastern Front, but its consequences helped to secure ultimate victory: for one, it created the Courland Pocket in western Latvia which trapped some 200,000 German troops that couldve been used to aid Berlin; due to Hitlers stubbornness, they were refused evacuation by sea and sat there uselessly until the very end of the war the following May. In terms of major attacks, there are three choices: the thrust to Riga, the approach to Tallinn, or the naval assault on the Estonian archipelago. The drive to Riga was brutal and bloody, resulting in the destruction of an entire German army and the destitution of many divisions of another. The battle for Tallinn involved a quick thrust to the west by Soviet forces from the direction of Leningrad that outnumbered their opponents by nearly 4:1. Perhaps most interesting from an interactive perspective is the fighting at Moon Sound, where Soviet and conscripted Estonian forces landed and faced hard resistance from German forces who had dug in along the very same lines the Soviets had used back in 1941. Weve seen island hopping before in many portrayals of the Pacific War, but transplanting the action to the Baltic and substituting the actors would be a change of pace for an overwhelmingly land-based campaign. And wed see some minor skirmishes between the Soviet Baltic Fleet and the remnants of the Kriegsmarine, giving us some potential sea action so long after Sevastopol.