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It was here for the first time in the Great Patriotic War that the Germans were stopped in the fall of 1941 on the distant approaches to Murmansk, which they were going to take in a matter of days. (In the pockets of the killed Nazis, they even found pre-printed invitations to a banquet in the Murmansk Arktika hotel).
By the way, the Soviet government also admitted the idea that it would not be possible to keep the city. We know Stalin's secret order on the evacuation of enterprises in case of impossibility to hold Murmansk. The front line, however, stopped on the banks of the Zapadnaya Litsa River, in places that are now called the Valley of Glory, and during the war years were called the Valley of Death.
The Nazis were stopped here thanks to a counterstrike from the Polar Division, more than half of which were prisoners. The Germans, including the rangers from the vaunted Edelweiss Mountain Rifle Division, were terrified during the bayonet attacks of the soldiers of this military unit. And that is why she received the name "wild" from them. For more than three years of the war, the Germans were not able to approach Murmansk even a meter from the lines at which they were stopped by the polar "wild division".

Moreover, on the Soviet-Finnish border in the Arctic there was a section where it was possible to push back the Finnish units advancing on Murmansk and the Kirov railway to their original positions. And at the border sign number 1 on the Kola Peninsula, the Germans could not cross the border. We can say that it was in the Arctic that the Blitzkrieg was first thwarted.

Rebellious Admiral
There were several explanations for this. First, the Germans in the Arctic did not have a surprise effect. The offensive here began a few days after the German attack on the USSR. In the first days of the war, the Germans even, flaunting, went to fetch water in front of Soviet soldiers. Before the start of active fighting, Soviet servicemen did not always dare to open fire. Not everyone could still put in their minds that a war had begun. A positive role was played by the courageous position of the admiral, the permanent commander of the Northern Fleet Arseniy Golovko during the war years. It was he who, at his own peril and risk, gave the order to bring the fleet into combat readiness on June 21, 1941. Thanks to this, the enemy bombing did not cause significant damage to the fleet, and he took an active part in supporting the ground forces with naval artillery fire. Nevertheless, at the end of the summer of 1941, the Germans managed to break through our defenses. A critical situation developed at the front, which could lead to the defeat of the 14th Army and the fall of Murmansk. On September 5, 1941, the formation of the Polar Division of the People's Militia began in Murmansk. It was enrolled in ordinary workers, port movers, fishermen, ship repairmen. Most of them had no military experience, and some were holding weapons for the first time in their lives. There were party and Komsomol workers in the division. But most of all they enrolled in the Polar Division ... political prisoners and criminals. If there were 5715 people liable for military service, then there were 7,650 prisoners. According to the memoirs of the veterans, there were no traitors among the volunteers from among the prisoners. They fought desperately with the enemy, many died in battles. It was the strike of the Polar Division on the flank of the advancing German forces that stopped their advance on Murmansk.

Source: Why Hitler never managed to capture Murmansk
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