Operation Bagration

Overview

Operation Bagration (Russian: Операция «Багратион») was the Red Army's strategic offensive in Soviet Byelorussia, fought from 22 June to 19 August 1944. It began just over two weeks after Operation Overlord opened in the west and forced Nazi Germany to fight on two major fronts simultaneously for the first time since the war began. The Soviet Union destroyed 28 of Army Group Centre's 34 divisions; the campaign cost roughly 450,000 German casualties and is recorded as the greatest defeat in German military history. Its success set the stage for the isolation of 300,000 German soldiers in the Courland Pocket.

Background

By June 1944 Army Group Centre was exposed after the successive defeats of Army Group South at Kursk, Kiev, the Dnieper–Carpathian offensive and the Crimean offensive in 1943–44. In the north Army Group North had also been pushed back, leaving Army Group Centre's line protruding eastward and at risk of losing contact with its neighbours. The German Army High Command (OKH) expected the next Soviet offensive against Army Group North Ukraine under Field Marshal Walter Model. The Wehrmacht redeployed one third of Army Group Centre's artillery, half its tank destroyers and 88 percent of its tanks to the south and moved the Eastern Front's 18 Panzer and mechanised reserve divisions to Model's sector. Army Group Centre was left with only 580 tanks, tank destroyers and assault guns, and the 9th Army's sector was held by 143 soldiers per kilometre of front.

The Stavka had fixed the June–August timetable by 28 April 1944. Offensives in the Lvov and Yassy-Kishinev sectors were rejected because of powerful enemy mobile forces; of four remaining options, the two Romanian and western Ukrainian variants were judged too ambitious and open to flank attack, the Baltic variant was rejected because the enemy was too well prepared, and only an offensive into Byelorussia remained safe. The Stavka directive of 31 May limited immediate front assignments to a depth of 48–64 km and wider objectives to 160 km, a departure from earlier and more ambitious directives.

Forces and deception

The Stavka committed roughly 1,670,300 combat and support personnel, 32,718 artillery pieces and mortars, 5,818 tanks and assault guns, and 7,799 aircraft. Army Group Centre's strength was 486,000 combat personnel (849,000 including support), with 3,236 field guns, only 495 operational tanks and assault guns, and 920 available aircraft, of which 602 were operational. It was seriously short of mobile reserves: the demotorized 14th Infantry Division was its only substantial reserve, with the 20th Panzer Division (56 tanks) near Bobruisk. The relatively static Byelorussian lines let the Germans build extensive field fortifications with multiple trench lines and heavily mined belts.

The Soviet maskirovka was a double bluff. The Soviets left four tank armies in the L'vov–Przemyśl area and let the Germans know it; the attack in the south kept German attention fixed on Romania and southern Poland, while the calculation was that a crisis in the central sector would pull German armoured forces north from Poland and Romania. The Soviet order of battle in fact shows that the main blow was aimed at the Vistula: twelve tank and five mechanised corps, including six guards tank corps, went to the Lvov–Przemyśl operation, while Bagration's Baltic and Byelorussian Fronts received just eight tank and two mechanised corps. Of 54 anti-tank regiments allocated to the Byelorussian–Baltic–Ukrainian operations, 38 went to the 1st Ukrainian Front. Behind the Byelorussian front, Soviet partisans began attacking railways and communications from 19 June.

Phase one: tactical breakthrough

The operation opened on a staggered schedule. Partisan attacks behind German lines began on 19–20 June; on the night of 21–22 June the Red Army mounted probing attacks and bombed lines of communication. The main offensive began in the early morning of 22 June with an artillery bombardment of unprecedented scale and achieved breakthroughs almost everywhere. In the Vitebsk–Orsha sector the 1st Baltic and 3rd Belorussian Fronts cut the defences north and south of the Vitebsk salient and encircled the city. LIII Corps tried to break out, but Vitebsk fell on 29 June and its 28,000 men were removed from the German order of battle. Orsha was liberated on 26 June.

In the central sector the 2nd Belorussian Front pinned the 4th Army near Mogilev while the 3rd Belorussian Front drove on the Moscow–Minsk highway. The bombardment of 22 June destroyed defensive positions and bunkers, and the 11th Guards Army and others broke the first defensive belt. The 4th Army commander, Tippelskirch, requested permission to withdraw on 25 June; when it was refused he authorised a retreat to the Dnieper, which Army Group commander Busch countermanded. Busch obtained Hitler's authorisation on 26 June to pull back to the Berezina, but no cohesive front line remained. At Bobruisk, Rokossovsky insisted on and won approval for a two-pronged attack, and on 24 June 7,000 guns, mortars and rocket launchers of the 1st Belorussian Front opened fire on the 9th Army. The cavalry-mechanised group from the Parichi sector seized Slutsk and severed the 9th Army's escape routes, and the 65th Army took Bobruisk on 29 June, destroying the 9th Army. Busch was dismissed on 28 June and replaced by Model.

Phase two: destruction of Army Group Centre

The second phase's central objective was Minsk, capital of the Byelorussian SSR. From 28 June the 3rd Belorussian Front's 5th Guards Tank Army and attached formations secured crossings of the Berezina, while the 1st Belorussian Front closed the lower pincer in the south. The 2nd Guards Tank Corps was the first into Minsk in the early hours of 3 July, and German rearguards in the centre were cleared by the next day. The 5th Guards Tank Army and 65th Army closed the encirclement west of Minsk, trapping the whole German 4th Army and many remnants of the 9th. About 100,000 soldiers were in the pocket east of Minsk and only a fraction escaped. Between 22 June and 4 July Army Group Centre lost 25 divisions and 300,000 men; in the following weeks the Germans lost another 100,000. Polotsk was cleared of German forces by 4 July.

Phase three: the north and Poland

As German resistance collapsed, the Stavka issued objectives beyond Minsk. The 1st Baltic Front reached the Gulf of Riga in the Šiauliai offensive of 5–31 July, and German attempts to retake the town in August failed. The 3rd Belorussian Front encircled Vilnius on 8 July and took the city on 13 July after street fighting. The 2nd Belorussian Front took Białystok on 27 July; the 1st Belorussian Front took Lublin on 24 July and Brest on 28 July and seized bridgeheads over the Vistula by 2 August, effectively completing the operation, after which the rest of the summer was given to defending those bridgeheads against German counter-attacks. Kaunas came under Soviet control on 31 July, and the German defence line along the Narew held until the East Prussian offensive of January 1945.

Results and costs

The Red Army recaptured Byelorussia and advanced into parts of the Baltic states and Poland. Advancing Soviet troops found destroyed cities and depopulated villages, with much of the population killed or deported by the occupiers. Some 57,000 German prisoners taken in the encirclement east of Minsk were marched through Moscow, later known as the Parade of the Vanquished. The German army never recovered from the materiel and manpower lost, having lost about a quarter of its Eastern Front manpower, exceeding the proportion lost at Stalingrad (about 17 divisions). According to German sources, 27 Army Group Centre divisions were badly mauled, 19 disbanded and 7 amalgamated into just two divisions. Of the 47 German divisional or corps commanders involved, 31 were killed or captured.

Exact German losses are unknown; newer research indicates around 400,000–540,000 killed, missing or wounded. Soviet losses were also substantial: 180,040 killed and missing, 590,848 wounded and sick, along with 2,957 tanks, 2,447 artillery pieces and 822 aircraft. German figures specify divisional losses but their precision for combat strength is debated, while Russian figures rest on front-by-front returns. One American author suggests the Soviet innovations were enabled in part by over 220,000 Dodge and Studebaker trucks supplied by the United States. The offensive cut Army Group North and Army Group North Ukraine off from each other and drew off their reserves to the central sector, forcing both to withdraw from Soviet territory much faster when the following Soviet offensives hit their sectors. The end of Bagration coincided with the destruction of German units in the Falaise Pocket in Normandy. With 2.3 million troops engaged, it was one of the largest Soviet operations of the war and was listed in Soviet propaganda as one of Stalin's ten blows.

Clashes with the Polish Home Army

Several Polish Home Army resistance groups also fought during Operation Bagration. Some Home Army partisan factions regarded the Soviet Union as the greater threat and negotiated ceasefires or ad-hoc alliances with the German occupiers; the Home Army leadership condemned such deals and officers who cooperated with the Germans were court-martialled. In most cases, however, the Home Army supported the advancing Soviets and attacked German troops under the plan of Operation Tempest, which aimed to cooperate tactically with the Red Army while Polish civil authorities came out of hiding to take power in Allied-controlled territory. The plan failed when Soviet troops attacked Home Army groups after cooperation against the Germans. Many Home Army soldiers were killed, conscripted into the Soviet-controlled Polish People's Army, murdered, imprisoned or deported.

Name

The operation's codename came from Pyotr Bagration (1765?–1812), a hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, general of infantry of the Russian Empire and commander-in-chief of the 2nd Western Army. Sources differ on his birth year and birthplace.