Manstein's troops attacked the Stalin Line on 6 July and found themselves locked in a bitter struggle. The Totenkopf Division was to spearhead the attack, which soon became bogged down in bloody hand-to-hand fighting of a type never before encountered by the SS men. Rather than running away, the Soviets disappeared underground into a series of bunkers and trench lines that each had to be cleared by assault teams armed with pistols, grenades and bayonets. The Soviet artillery then started bombarding their own positions as the SS men were fighting inside them, creating a horrendous slaughterhouse. Only the personal example of Eicke, who spent all day with his assault regiments, kept the advance moving forward. As he was returning from the front during the evening, his staff car drove over a mine and he had to be evacuated from the front for several weeks with severe injuries. For another three days the fighting raged over the Stalin Line as a storm drenched the battlefield in rain. A huge artillery barrage and non-stop air strikes eventually broke the back of the Soviet 182nd Rifle Division, but most of the surviving defenders eventually slipped away into the forests. The SS men were too tired by the battle to pursue them immediately. Some 82 officers and 1626 soldiers from the SS division had been killed or wounded in the 16 days since it had crossed the border.

The Totenkopf on the Luga Line

Manstein's panzer corps now raced ahead towards Lake Ilmen and, as it tried to ford a river, it was hit by two fresh Soviet divisions, backed by a strong force of tanks. The Soviet counterattack cut Manstein's supply route. The Totenkopf Division was ordered to restore the front, and after heavy fighting it drove a corridor through to the trapped troops.

During the first two weeks of August, the Totenkopf Division was thrown into the battle of the Luga Line, the last Soviet defensive position south of Leningrad that had been built through a heavily wooded and swampy region. During daytime the SS men used artillery and airpower to take Soviet strongpoints, but at night hordes of Russian infantry would emerge from the thick forests to launch relentless human-wave attacks on the Totenkopf's lines. The German advance ground to a halt as the soldiers in the frontline infantry regiments reached the limit of their endurance.

Just as Manstein was trying to smash his way through the Luga Line, the Soviets unleashed a force of eight infantry divisions and a cavalry corps around the southern fringe of Lake Ilmen. The 8th Panzer Division was temporarily surrounded and several other German divisions forced back. Manstein had to cease his northward attack and deal with the threat to his right flank. First on the scene to restore the line was the Totenkopf, which had to pull out of the line quickly and swing south. In a move that would become a Manstein trademark, the cunning German general did not immediately commit the SS division in the path of the Soviet advance. He held it on a flank and waited until the Soviet assault troops were fully committed to battle.

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