The 3rd Baltic Front (russian: 3-й Прибалтийский фронт) was a front of the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. It was set up on 21 April 1944 and disbanded on 16 October that year after a series of campaigns in the

Baltic states The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone ...

that culminated with the capture of

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the ...

October 13–15, 1944. During 179 days of existence, the 3rd Baltic Front suffered 43,155 killed and missing in action as well as 153,876 wounded, sick, and frostbitten personnel. The sole commander of the 3rd Baltic Front was Ivan Maslennikov. The headquarters of the 3rd Baltic Front was formed from that of the disbanded 20th Army, and the field armies subordinated to the front were taken from the left (south) wing of the Leningrad Front. Operations that the 3rd Baltic Front took part in include the Pskov-Ostrov Operation and the Tartu Operation. Upon the capture of Riga, the Soviet high command disbanded the 3rd Baltic Front as a headquarters and reassigned its component armies.John Erickson, ''The Road to Berlin'', p. 420, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Citations and Sources

Baltic 3 {{Soviet-stub