We've all heard of the Dunkirk evacuation, but did you know the Soviets had a "Dunkirk" too?
While not quite as many as 338,000 soldiers were evacuated from the Estonian port city of Tallinn,
the lesser-known Soviet Dunkirk was still of tremendous importance
to the Soviet war effort. If the Germans and Finns had obliterated the Baltic Fleet here,
in the Gulf of Finland, it would have shifted the weight of the entire war. In this video,
we're going to shed some light on this desperate operation; it's in sore need of it.
Before they sandwiched poor Poland in September 1939, Germany and the USSR looked to the
sovereign states of Europe with hungry eyes. In August, they signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,
which stipulated that Estonia, along with the rest of the Baltic, belonged to the Soviets.
When the war kicked off, Estonia didn't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole, declaring itself
neutral. Stalin didn't give a crap. Estonia could give up the goods or suffer the consequences.
In mid-1940, some 160,000 Soviet troops marched into the country, and the Soviet Baltic Fleet
set up a blockade. Hardly a shot was fired. The Baltic Fleet consumed Estonia's navy.
Operating out of the capital of Estonia, the port city Tallinn, the Baltic Fleet now had a
more westward naval base in the Gulf of Finland. Good stuff, right? Not for Estonia. In the first
year of the Soviet occupation, around 8,000 Estonians were arrested. Over a quarter of them
were executed inside the country; others went to prison camps—which was as good as a death sentence
in itself. Stalin's grip on Estonia wouldn't last forever, though. In June 1941, Hitler broke the
terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by launching Operation Barbarossa, his invasion of the USSR.
Stalin wept. He wept even harder when he started losing ground to the Germans.
After losing Lithuania and Latvia, a large portion of the Baltic Fleet concentrated in the port of
Tallinn. We're talking between 190 and 225 vessels of various sizes, including the Kirov-class
cruiser of the same name. The fleet was under the command of one Admiral Vladimir F. Tributs,
while the Red Army ground forces in Estonia were led by the fanatical Marshal Kliment Voroshilov.
By early August, Tallinn was well behind the German front lines, and the noose was closing. A
large-scale land-based withdrawal from Estonia was virtually impossible. The 10th Rifle Corps—which
was not even at full strength—and an NKVD division were the only ground-based Soviet
units ready to go toe to toe with the advancing Germans. To supplement these units, some 10,000
sailors of the Baltic Fleet took up arms, becoming naval infantry detachments. It wasn't really
what they'd been trained to do, and they suffered because of it. In terms of artillery, the Baltic
Fleet stepped up and filled that role, with Kirov and the fleet's destroyers laying waste to the
Germans from the port. The Soviets had some air support at the start of the fight, but the Germans
snatched all of Tallinn's airbases as they closed in. With nowhere to land, the planes had no choice
but to fly away from this already grave situation. To make matters worse, the Germans and Finns—now
teaming up against the USSR—had been sowing the Gulf of Finland with mines like mines were
going out of fashion. Of note, they concentrated some 2,000 mines in the waters off Cape Juminda,
to the east of Tallinn. A more aggressive naval operation would have been foolish.
Compared with the Baltic Fleet, German and Finnish naval forces in the area were pretty minimal.
They had some torpedo boats, minesweepers, and subs, but nothing bigger than that.
By the 25th of August, Admiral Tributs was well and truly feeling the heat,
and wanted to get the Baltic Fleet out of Tallinn. He had no effective means
of staving off the damn Luftwaffe, and German field artillery was now in range of the port.
Tributs wanted Voroshilov's permission to pack everyone onto the ships and give it legs,
but he also feared the fanatical marshal would think he was being a coward and throttle him dead.
Instead, he broke the chain of command, asking for permission directly from the chief of the navy.
He got it on August the 26th. Now they just had to figure out how to get more than 200
vessels and some 40,000 people, military and civilian to safety in the armpit of
the gulf. More specifically, we're referring to the island of Kronstadt, off the coast of
Leningrad. The Soviets had a lot to contend with, and a lot could (and did) go wrong.
One of the Soviets' earliest mistakes took place in the planning stage.
In short, they could sail to Kronstadt along the north shore of the Gulf of Finland,
flipping the Finns off on the way; along the south shore, flipping off the Germans in Estonia
along the way; or just straight down the middle, flipping off only themselves. There were no mines
on the north shore, but they were worried that the Germans would attack them with capital ships,
even though they had been informed by the Brits that the Germans did not, in fact,
have any capital ships in the gulf—which was true. The south shore option was equally a no-go.
The Germans might have hit them with their field artillery and captured batteries,
and the Estonians crewing the Baltic Fleet might have steered their ships towards the coast and
tried to defect. Going down the guts of the gulf was seeming like a pretty solid option, so that's
what they did. Only, if you recall, the Germans had Finns had mined the frak out of those waters.
One of the Soviets' earliest mistakes took place in the planning stage. In short, they could sail
to Kronstadt along the north shore of the Gulf of Finland, flipping the Finns off on the way;
along the south shore, flipping off the Germans in Estonia along the way; or just straight down the
middle, flipping off only themselves. There were no mines on the north shore, but they were worried
that the Germans would attack them with capital ships, even though they had been informed by the
Brits that the Germans did not, in fact, have any capital ships in the gulf—which
was true. The south shore option was equally a no-go. The Germans might have hit them with
their field artillery and captured batteries, and the Estonians crewing the Baltic Fleet might have
steered their ships towards the coast and tried to defect. Going down the guts of the gulf was
seeming like a pretty solid option, so that's what they did. Only, if you recall, the Germans
had Finns had mined the frak out of those waters. "The whole town appeared to be engulfed in flames;
burning and exploding." The chaos didn't end once the fleet set sail, though. The Soviets had
very few minesweepers, and all the other vessels had to stay behind them
while they did what they were designed to do. This slowed the convoy to a speed of around 10 knots.
They were easy pickings for the Luftwaffe, and the minesweepers could deal with only so many mines.
Some ships freaked out and steered out of the minesweepers' wakes,
only to run straight into the surrounding mines. Some made it through the chaos by pushing the
mines away with poles or even jumping into the water and guiding them away by hand.
Admiral Tributs recalled the destruction of the destroyer Yakov Sverdlov, a veteran Great War
vessel: "A column of fire and smoke 200 to 250 meters high burst out from under Yakov Sverdlov’s
body and settled down hissing, burying the surviving crew members … Only several dozens of
men were saved." This was just one tragedy among many. Another befell the transport ship Ella,
which, carrying over 1,000 passengers, ran into mine and started sinking. The tugboat
S-101 attempted a rescue but steered right into another mine and fell to pieces instead.
Everyone who had been on the tugboat perished, while just 100 of Ella's passengers were rescued
in the end. As with far too many evacuees over that five-day period, many of them froze to death
or drowned. Others were crushed by friendly ships trying to squeeze through the floating wreckage.
On at least one occasion, word got around that German and Finnish torpedo boats were in the area.
Highly strung, the fleet opened fire on a friendly detachment, thinking they were
the so-called torpedo boats. Even when the fleet had made it through the minefields,
the Luftwaffe didn't let up. They made the rest of the journey to Kronstadt absolute hell.
For example, when the Soviets tried to deposit some evacuees on the island of
Gogland (which was about halfway), hoping the Germans would target the boats and not the people,
the Luftwaffe strafed the island anyway. It seems they had a strict "no mercy" policy that day.
In the end, while some 12,400 perished running the so-called gauntlet to Kronstadt,
as many as 28,000 survived the ordeal. The Soviets also managed to get 163 to 165 vessels to safety,
including the carrier Kirov. If she, and the fleet's other capital ships,
hadn't reached the waters off Leningrad, the brutal siege of that city might have been even
more brutal. The entire war might have been more brutal.
What do you think, though? Had you heard of the Soviet Dunkirk before this video?
How do you think the war might have been different if the Baltic Fleet was destroyed in Tallinn?
And lastly, do you know anything about the evacuation that we didn't touch on?
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.