Soviet infantry on a SU-76 self-propelled gun in Minsk, Belarus during Operation Bagration. Date: July 3,1944
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 during 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 umbering 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. Some of the most legendary German army's of the Second World War, such as the German Fourth Army were simply 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.
(Photo courtesy of The Russian State Archives)
