BWPicSU76Minsk1944

Once Stavka's attempt to guarantee Soviet political primacy over the
Balkans had failed during April-May 1944, German Army Group Center
offered the next greatest opportunity for the Red Army to produce
and exploit a strategic success in 1944. The plan put together by the
professional and experienced Russian officers, codenamed Bagration,
embodied a classic example regarding how to employ mechanized
armies. In short, multiple powerful Russian mechanized pincers set to
rip open Army Group Center by attacking the face of the salient held
by the German Army Group, surrounding the front line German
defenders and driving west deep into Army Group Center's rear. The
resultant operation would bag the bulk of Army Group Center, if
successful. Conferences late in May resulted in the finishing touches
on the plans for Bagration with the Front Commanders' final staff work
finished up by June 15th.

Bagration's design incorporated everything the Red Army had learned
to date by the spring of 1944, at such great expense, and
represented the Red Army's maturation into a world-class army.
Planning for Bagration occurred on both a massive and yet also
intricate scale. For instance, Bagration's preparation involved moving
nearly every available artillery piece, mortar or rocket launcher into
position opposite Army Group Center. The Red Army concentrated
hundreds of artillery pieces and mortars for each mile of front line. In
total, the Soviet armies assembled 24,000 artillery pieces and mortars
with an additional 2,306 Katyusha rocket launchers providing even
more firepower. In addition, the Red Army Air Force marshaled four air
armies with 5,327 frontline aircraft supported by an additional 700
bombers from the Long Range Bomber Force.

Front commanders concentrated tremendous ammunition stocks in
depots behind the lines, and shifted resources on a never before seen
scale in the Russo-German war. The Red Army amassed over 70,000
trucks to support the four fronts massing for Bagration. The trucks,
largely lend-lease Ford built trucks from the United States, help
illustrate the enormous support to the Red Army provided by
Lend-Lease. By the war's end, Lend-Lease from America had supplied
two thirds of all Soviet motor vehicles in service. Nearly 100 trains per
day deposited stocks of food, ammunition, fuel and other needs
behind the front.

In addition, the Red Army's Maskirovka efforts in preparation for the
summer 1944 offensives stood among the best of the War. Soviet
officers deployed imitation tanks, assault guns, gun batteries, and
even field kitchens to confuse the Germans as to the Soviet tank and
mechanized armies' location. Common deception tactics included false
radio communications and the use of real tanks and artificial smoke to
simulate greater numbers of tanks in areas where the Soviet officers
sought to misdirect German attention. Actual units moved into
different positions under strict radio security, at night, and remained
under cover during the day.

Invariably German intelligence officers took the bait, one of the
Wermacht's great faults was its woefully under resourced and
marginalized intelligence arm, and thus in early June of 1944 the
Germans believed there were 4,000 fewer tanks and assault guns
opposing Army Group Center then there were in reality. The Red Army
reinforced the Germans misguided beliefs as to Soviet armored
concentrations by leaving nearly all the Red Army's Tank Armies to the
south. To mass armored support for Bagration, while deceiving the
Germans as to the location of their tank heavy units, what the Red
Army did was to cleverly build up smaller brigade and regimental and
sized assault gun and tank units, typically numbering 60 tanks or
assault guns and 20 respectively, and use these units to support
Bagration's assault armies. In addition, for the breakthrough role the
Red Army assigned select larger armored heavy formations including;
the 1st Tank Corps, 1st and 2nd Guard Tank Corps, 9th Tank Corps,
and the Oslikovskiy and Pliev Horse-Mechanized Groups.

With the German Army High Command, OKH, completely fooled as to
Stavka's intent, and considering the machinery and manpower Stavka
had assembled to achieve its goals, Bagration began in earnest and
with success on June 22-23, 1944 when the Red Army smashed into
German Army Group Center's defenses at six points in it's long and
winding front. In the mere two weeks that followed the Russian
Front's involved in Bagration reduced Army Group Center from a still
dangerous presence in the front's center, to a loose collection of
shell-shocked survivors stumbling west. The Red Army had inflicted
the war's greatest defeat upon the German army; having obliterated
twenty-eight Axis divisions in a disaster for the German army dwarfing
Stalingrad, the surrender in North Africa, or the casualties incurred
before Moscow in December 1941. Overall, Army Group Center lost
350,000 men captured or killed, with 31 of 47 German Generals
involved in the fighting either killed or captured. Great German army's
of the Second World War, such as the German Fourth Army were
decimated; Bagration left the Fourth Army with only 35,000 men from
it's 165,000-man pre-Bagration size. Meanwhile, the German Ninth
Army, once one of Germany's strongest, had been annihilated; only
10,000-15,000 men survived the slaughter. Bagration, not the vastly
more famous D-Day landings in Normandy earlier that same June, was
what broke the Second World War German army's back.