Operation Bagration
Operation Bagration was the codename for the 1944 Soviet Byelorussian strategic offensive operation, a military campaign fought between 22 June and 19 August 1944 in Soviet Byelorussia in the Eastern Front of World War II, just over two weeks after the start of Operation Overlord in the west. It was during this operation that Nazi Germany was forced to fight simultaneously on two major fronts for the first time since the war began. The Soviet Union destroyed 28 of the divisions of Army Group Centre and completely shattered the German front line. The overall engagement is the largest defeat in German military history, with around 450,000 German casualties, while setting the stage for the subsequent isolation of 300,000 German soldiers in the Courland Pocket.
On 22 June 1944, the Red Army attacked Army Group Centre in Byelorussia, with the objective of encircling and destroying its main component armies. By 28 June, the German 4th Army had been destroyed, along with most of the 3rd Panzer and 9th Armies. The Red Army exploited the collapse of the German front line to encircle German formations in the vicinity of Minsk in the Minsk Offensive and destroy them, with Minsk liberated on 4 July. With the end of effective German resistance in Byelorussia, the Soviet offensive continued on to Lithuania, Poland and Romania over the course of July and August.
The Red Army successfully used the strategies of Soviet deep battle and maskirovka to their full extent for the first time, albeit with continuing heavy losses. Operation Bagration diverted German mobile reserves from the Lublin–Brest and Lvov–Sandomierz areas to the central sectors, enabling the Soviets to undertake the Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive and Lublin–Brest Offensive. This allowed the Red Army to reach the Vistula River and Warsaw, which in turn put Soviet forces within striking distance of Berlin, conforming to the concept of Soviet deep operations—striking into the enemy's strategic depths.
Background
Germany's Army Group Centre had previously proven difficult to counter, as the Soviet defeat in Operation Mars had shown. However, by June 1944, despite shortening its front line, it was exposed following the defeats of Army Group South in the Battle of Kursk, the Battle of Kiev, the Dnieper–Carpathian offensive and the Crimean offensive in the late summer, autumn, and winter of 1943–44. In the north, Army Group North was also pushed back, leaving Army Group Center's lines protruding towards the east and at risk of losing contact with neighbouring army groups.The German High Command expected the next Soviet offensive to fall against Army Group North Ukraine, and it lacked the necessary intelligence capabilities to discover the Soviets' true intentions.
The Wehrmacht had redeployed one-third of Army Group Centre's artillery, half of its tank destroyers, and 88 per cent of tanks to the south. The entire operational reserve on the Eastern front was deployed to Model's sector, leaving Army Group Centre with a total of only 580 tanks, tank destroyers, and assault guns. German lines were thinly held; for example, the 9th Army sector had 143 soldiers per km of the front.
A key factor in the subsequent collapse of Army Group Center during Operation Bagration was the Soviet Dnieper–Carpathian offensive in Ukraine. The success of this Soviet offensive had convinced the Oberkommando des Heeres that the southern sector of the Eastern Front would be the staging area for the main Soviet summer offensive of 1944. As a result, German forces stationed in the south, panzer divisions in particular, received priority in reinforcements. Furthermore, during this Soviet offensive in the spring of 1944, aimed at the city of Kovel, Army Group Center was significantly weakened by being forced to transfer nine divisions and numerous independent armored formations from its main front to its far right flank, located deep in the rear at the junction with Army Group South. These forces would then be attached to Army Group North Ukraine, the successor to Army Group South. This meant that Army Group Center was effectively deprived of well over 100,000 personnel and 552 tanks, assault guns and self-propelled guns at the start of Operation Bagration.
Operation Bagration, in combination with the neighbouring Lvov–Sandomierz offensive, launched a few weeks later in Ukraine, allowed the Soviet Union to recapture Byelorussia and Ukraine within its 1941 borders, advance into German East Prussia, but more importantly, the Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive allowed the Red Army to reach the outskirts of Warsaw after gaining control of Poland east of the Vistula river. The campaign enabled the next operation, the Vistula–Oder Offensive, to come within sight of the German capital. The Soviets were initially surprised at the success of the Byelorussian operation which had nearly reached Warsaw. The Soviet advance encouraged the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupation forces.
The battle has been described as the triumph of the Soviet theory of the "operational art" because of the complete coordination of all the strategic front movements and signals traffic to fool the enemy about the target of the offensive. The military tactical operations of the Red Army successfully avoided the mobile reserves of the Wehrmacht and continually "wrong-footed" the German forces. Despite the massive forces involved, Soviet front commanders left their adversaries completely confused about the main axis of attack until it was too late.
Soviet plans
Strategic aims and deception
The Russian maskirovka is roughly equivalent to the English camouflage, but it has broader application in military use. During World War II the term was used by Soviet commanders to describe measures to create deception with the goal of inflicting surprise on the Wehrmacht forces.File:George Dawe - Portrait of General Pyotr Bagration - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|left|The Soviet operation was named after the Georgian prince Pyotr Bagration, a general of the Imperial Russian Army during the Napoleonic Wars.The OKH expected the Soviets to launch a major offensive in the summer of 1944. The Stavka considered a number of options. The timetable of operations between June and August had been decided on by 28 April 1944. The Stavka rejected an offensive in either the L'vov sector or the Yassy-Kishinev sectors owing to the presence of powerful enemy mobile forces equal in strength to the Soviet strategic fronts. Instead they suggested four options: an offensive into Romania and through the Carpathian Mountains, an offensive into the western Ukrainian SSR aimed at the Baltic coast, an attack into the Baltic, and an offensive in the Byelorussian SSR. The first two options were rejected as being too ambitious and open to flank attack. The third option was rejected on the grounds the enemy was too well prepared. The only safe option was an offensive into Byelorussia which would enable subsequent offensives from Ukraine into Poland and Romania.
The Soviet and German High Commands recognised western Ukraine as a staging area for an offensive into Poland. The Soviets, aware that the enemy would anticipate this, sought to deceive the Germans by creating a crisis in Byelorussia that would force the Germans to move their powerful armoured forces, fresh from their victory in the First Jassy–Kishinev Offensive in April–June 1944, to the central front to support Army Group Centre. This was the primary purpose of Bagration.
In order to maximize the chances of success, the maskirovka was a double bluff. The Soviets left four tank armies in the L'vov-Peremyshl area and allowed the Germans to know it. The attack into Romania in April–June further convinced the Soviets that the Axis forces in Romania needed removing and kept the Germans concerned about their defences there and in southern Poland, while drawing German forces to the L'vov sector. Once the offensive against Army Group Centre, which lacked mobile reserves and support, had been initiated, it would create a crisis in the central sector that would force the German armoured forces north to Byelorussia from Poland and Romania, despite the presence of powerful Soviet concentrations threatening German-occupied Poland.
The intent of the Soviets to strike their main blow towards the Vistula can be seen in the Red Army's order of battle. The Soviet general staff studies of both the Byelorussian and L'vov-Sandomierz operations reveal that the L'vov-Przemyśl operation received the overwhelming number of tank and mechanized corps. Six guards tank corps and six tank corps along with three guards mechanized and two mechanized corps were committed to the L'vov operation. This totaled twelve tank and five mechanized corps. In contrast, Operation Bagrations Baltic and Byelorussian Fronts were allocated just eight tank and two mechanized corps. The 1st Byelorussian Front is not mentioned on the Soviet battle order for the offensive. It contained a further six armies and was to protect the flank of the Lublin–Brest Offensive as well as engage in offensive operations in that area.
The bulk of tactical resources, in particular anti-tank artillery, was allocated to the 1st Ukrainian Front, the spearhead of the Vistula, L'vov-Premyshl operation. Thirty-eight of the 54 anti-tank regiments allocated to the Byelorussian-Baltic-Ukrainian operations were given to the 1st Ukrainian Front. This demonstrates that the Soviet plans for the L'vov operation were a major consideration and whoever planned the offensive was determined to hold the recently captured territory. The target for this operation was the Vistula bridgehead and the enormous anti-tank artillery forces helped repulse big counter-attacks by German armoured formations in August–October 1944. One American author suggests that these Soviet innovations were enabled, in part, by the provision of over 220,000 Dodge and Studebaker trucks by the United States to motorize the Soviet infantry.
The basic directive from Stavka of 31 May for Bagration embodied a relatively new direction in Soviet strategic planning: for the Belorussian operation, immediate Front assignments were limited to a depth of 30-40 miles, and wider objectives were set at a range not exceeding 100 miles. The original timetable was 15-20 June but Stalin agreed to a four-day postponement, and told Kaganovich to investigate and to speed up rail movements after complaints from Zhukov and Vasilevsky.
Most of the aviation units, fighter aircraft and assault aviation were given to the L'vov operation and the protection of the 1st Ukrainian Front. Of the 78 fighter and assault aviation divisions committed to Bagration, 32 were allocated to the L'vov operation and contained more than was committed to the Byelorussian operation. This concentration of aviation was to protect the Vistula bridgeheads against air attack and to assault German counteroffensives from the air.