Russian troops held the islands of Khiouma and Sarema, which command the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, until October 19.
The garrison of the Soviet base on the Finnish peninsula of Hanko (west of Helsinki), which was surrounded , resisted the enemy for five months and was also successfully evacuated to Kronstadt and Leningrad.
The Baltic Fleet, after losing its bases, had established a system of barrages at the entrance from the Gulf of Finland. Surface units and German submarines were never able to cross it. The sailors of the Baltic Fleet also participated directly in the defense of Leningrad.
By early November, German and Finnish troops had blocked Leningrad on the ground and cut off all roads leading to this great industrial and cultural center. The siege of the city, which lasted nine hundred days and caused its three million inhabitants to endure unimaginable suffering, began. But the enemy could not capture Leningrad and all subsequent efforts to take the city or destroy it by combined artillery and air bombardment were in vain. Thus failed one of the fundamental operations of the "Barberossa" plan.
A fierce battle, which was to have consequences of exceptional importance, began in July- August in the I central and western sectors and in the Smolensk region, an important landing point on the route to Moscow.
By mounting its Smolensk operation, the German command intended to annihilate the main forces of the Red Army, then Smolensk taken to advance the Wehrmacht without obstacle to Moscow. But you were wrong again. In reality, at the beginning of July, 1 reserve armies sent by the Soviet command to the east of Sm lensk were already deployed. However, the enemy had a great numerical superiority:he had manpower one and a half times greater, twice as many planes and a hundred times as many armored vehicles.
On July 16, Wehrmacht forces occupied Smolensk after bloody fighting continued around the city. Repeated attacks by the Germans were followed by counter-attacks by the Red Army. On July 27, our troops had even taken over the northern part of the city. The enemy had. certainly not suffered a decisive defeat in the Smolensk region, as the high command expected, but its shock groups were exhausted.