The dragon's teeth of the Lõpe-Kaimri anti-tank line, a remnant of World War II in Estonia

On August 23, 1939, Germany and the USSR signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, with a secret protocol that was revealed years later.

The Estonian War Museum, a century-old center with very good historical pieces
A former secret submarine base in Estonia and its important role in the Cold War

Under this secret protocol, the nazi dictatorship and the communist dictatorship shared out Poland (which they jointly invaded in September of that year) as well as Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Romanian regions of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. These last territories were assigned to the Soviet sphere of influence. After the Soviet failure in the Winter War against Finland, the USSR invaded Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in June 1940 and annexed them. It took half a century for these countries to regain their independence.

A year after the invasion of the Baltic republics, in June 1941 Hitler broke his alliance with Stalin and Germany invaded the USSR. The invasion, dubbed by the Germans as Operation Barbarossa, took the Soviets by surprise. The Germans reached Latvia in July 1941. Trying to improvise a defence to stop the German advance, on 16 September 1941 the Red Army built an anti-tank line on the Estonian peninsula of Sõrve, a decisive point for controlling the exit to the sea from the Gulf of Riga.

This line, known as the Lõpe-Kaimri anti-tank line, used a narrow point in the isthmus of that peninsula, 3.2 kilometers wide, to prevent the passage of the Germans. Two rows of 900 meters long were built made of lion's teeth, a type of pyramid-shaped obstacle built of reinforced concrete. The dragon's teeth of the Lõpe-Kaimri line were 0.8 meters high. This area was the scene of fierce fighting, which finally ended with the complete domination of Estonia by Germany. The Germans ended up penetrating through several places of this anti-tank line, leaving the rest of the dragon's teeth intact.

Paradoxically, the Lõpe-Kaimri line was used by the Germans at the end of the war, when 200,000 soldiers of the German Army entrenched themselves in the Latvian region of Courland, where they resisted from January 1945 until the German surrender on May 8 of that year.

The war took a dramatic toll on Latvia. About 200,000 Latvians were drafted into both the German and Soviet occupation armies, with half of them dying in combat. After the Soviet invasion in 1940, 60,000 Estonian citizens were deported to Siberia, and after the new Soviet occupation in 1945, 20,000 more Estonians were sent to the Gulag. In turn, the Germans murdered 90,000 Estonians, 70,000 of them Jews. After the war, about 150,000 Estonians went into exile, seeking refuge in Western countries. In the following decades, the country was subjected to a process of forced Russification, the effects of which are still felt today.

Today, many dragon's teeth from the Lõpe-Kaimri anti-tank line have survived as witnesses of that tragic time. It is possible to visit them in the place where they were built. This Friday, the channel Dimidrone has published a video showing that anti-tank line:

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Photos: Ungru-Pagila tankitõrjeliin.