‘Moscow announced this morning that Soviet planes had made a heavy raid on German military trains in the railway centre and port of Tallinn.’

Manchester Guardian, 14 March 1944.

Early in the evening of 9 March 1944, the Soviets began to bomb Estonia’s capital, Tallinn. The skyline turned dark; clouds of cinders, lit red by the blaze, floated down over churches, medieval towers, stone-flagged streets. The mile-high roar of magnesium incendiary flames created a firestorm in which 600–700 civilians died (the final count is uncertain), some 20,000 were made homeless and over 600 left wounded. Tallinn had been bombed a total of sixteen times by the Soviets between 1942 and 1943, and more attacks were expected – but not one of this magnitude.

Life as Tallinners had known it came to an end that March night. In a matter of hours, residential districts, hotels, cinemas, factories, hospitals and warehouses were obliterated. The medieval church of St Nicholas was reduced to a hacked-out shell billowing smoke, the synagogue on Maakri Street turned to rubble. In this, the third and final year of the Nazi German occupation, few Tallinners could endure more blackout, bombs and sirens; those who could, left – on lorries, on foot, on over-crowded trains. Among them was my mother, who would not see her hometown again for over half a century.

Today, the unsuspecting tourist can have little idea how close Tallinn came to destruction. At the war’s end, St Nicholas was reconstructed with the help of Soviet Estonian and other ...