Battle of Riga

1917 CE.

Shown on the map at 56.969°, 24.323°.

The Riga offensive (Russian: Рижская операция), also called the Jugla offensive or the Battle of Riga (German: Schlacht um Riga), took place in early September 1917 and was the last major campaign on the Eastern Front of World War I before the Russian Provisional Government and its army began disintegrating. The battle was fought between Oskar von Hutier's German Eighth Army and Dmitri Parsky's Russian Twelfth Army. The Russian forces in Latvia were under the command of Vladislav Klembovsky's Northern Front, tasked with guarding the approaches to the Russian capital Petrograd. The Imperial German Army advanced through most of Lithuania and southern Latvia during the Russian Great Retreat in the summer of 1915, putting them in the vicinity of one of the largest industrial cities of the Russian Empire. The Twelfth Army was then tasked with defending Riga, though the situation on the northern frontier of the Eastern Front remained static until early 1917. German quartermaster-general Erich Ludendorff gave the order for an offensive in the direction of Riga in early August 1917, shortly after defeating the Kerensky offensive, with the goal of pressuring Russia to accept a peace deal.

Text from the Wikipedia article Riga offensive (1917), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

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