The Belarusian operation is a strategic offensive military operation of the USSR troops against Germany at the final stage of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, named after the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, commander P. I. Bagration. By June 1944, a bulge of German troops had formed on the front line in Belarus (the Vitebsk - Orsha - Mogilev - Zhlobin line), facing east. In this wedge, the German command created a deeply layered defense. The Soviet command set its troops the task of breaking through the enemy’s defenses on the territory of Belarus, defeating the German Army Group Center and liberating Belarus.
Operation Bagration began on June 23, 1944. It developed on a 400 km front line (between German Army Groups North and South), Soviet troops of the 1st Belorussian (Army General K.K. Rokossovsky) were advancing, 2nd Belorussian (Army General G.F. Zakharov), 3rd Belorussian (Colonel General I.D. Chernyakhovsky) and 1st Baltic (Army General I.Kh. Bagramyan) fronts. With the support of partisans, they broke through the defenses of the German Army Group Center in many areas, surrounded and eliminated large enemy groups in the areas of Vitebsk, Bobruisk, Vilnius, Brest and Minsk.
By August 29, 1944, German Army Group Center was almost completely defeated; Army Group North found itself cut off from all ground communication routes (until the surrender in 1945, it was supplied by sea). The territory of Belarus, a significant part of Lithuania and the eastern regions of Poland were liberated. Soviet troops reached the Narew and Vistula rivers and the borders of East Prussia.
Orlov A.S., Georgieva N.G., Georgiev V.A. Historical Dictionary. 2nd ed. M., 2012, p. 33-34.
Belarusian operation - offensive June 23 - August 29, 1944 by Soviet troops in Belarus and Lithuania. 4 fronts took part in the offensive: 1st Baltic (General I.Kh. Bagramyan), 1st Belorussian (General K.K. Rokossovsky), 2nd Belorussian (General G.F. Zakharov) and 3rd Belorussian ( General I.D. Chernyakhovsky). (Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945). The troops were equipped with vehicles, tractors, self-propelled artillery and other types of equipment. This significantly increased the maneuverability of Soviet formations. Three years after the start of the war, a completely different army returned to Belarus - a battle-hardened, skillful and well-equipped army. She was opposed by Army Group Center under the command of Field Marshal E. Bush.
The balance of forces is shown in the table.
Source: History of the Second World War: In 12 vols. M., 1973-1979. T. 9. P. 47.
In Belarus, the Germans hoped to stop the Soviet onslaught with the help of a pre-prepared and deeply echeloned (up to 270 km) defense, which relied on a developed system of field fortifications and convenient natural boundaries (rivers, wide swampy floodplains, etc.). These lines were guarded by the highest quality military contingent, which retained many veterans of the 1941 campaign in its ranks. The German command believed that the terrain and powerful defense system in Belarus precluded the Red Army from successfully carrying out a major offensive operation here. It expected that the Red Army would deliver its main blow in the summer of 1944 south of the Pripyat marshes, where the main German tank and motorized forces were concentrated. The Germans hoped that the main target of the Soviet onslaught would be the Balkans, a traditional zone of Russian interests.
However, the Soviet command developed a completely different plan. It sought first of all to liberate its territories - Belarus, Western Ukraine and the Baltic states. In addition, without eliminating the northern ledge, called the “Belarusian Balcony” by the Germans, the Red Army could not effectively advance south of the Pripyat marshes. Any breakthrough from the territory of Ukraine to the west (to East Prussia, Poland, Hungary, etc.) could be successfully paralyzed by a blow to the flank and rear from the “Belarusian Balcony”.
Perhaps none of the previous major Soviet operations had been prepared with such care. For example, before the offensive, sappers removed 34 thousand enemy mines in the direction of the main attack, made 193 passages for tanks and infantry, and established dozens of crossings across the Drut and Dnieper. On June 23, 1944, the day after the 3rd anniversary of the start of the war, the Red Army struck Army Group Center with an unprecedented blow, fully paying for its humiliating defeat in Belarus in the summer of 1941.
Convinced of the ineffectiveness of individual offensive operations in the central direction, the Soviet command this time attacked the Germans with forces on four fronts at once, concentrating up to two-thirds of its forces on the flanks. The first strike involved the bulk of the forces intended for the offensive. The Belarusian operation contributed to the success of the Second Front in Europe, which opened on June 6, since the German command could not actively transfer troops to the west to contain the onslaught from the east.
The operation can be divided into two stages. During the first of them (June 23 - July 4), Soviet troops broke through the front and, with the help of a series of enveloping maneuvers, surrounded large German groups in the area of Minsk, Bobruisk, Vitebsk, Orsha and Mogilev. The Red Army's offensive was preceded by a massive artillery barrage (150-200 guns and mortars per 1 km of the breakthrough area). On the first day of the offensive, Soviet troops advanced 20-25 km in some areas, after which mobile formations were introduced into the breakthrough. Already on June 25, in the area of Vitebsk and Bobruisk, 11 German divisions were surrounded. Near Bobruisk, Soviet troops for the first time used a massive air strike to destroy the encircled group, which disorganized and scattered the German units going for a breakthrough.
Meanwhile, the 1st and 3rd Belorussian Fronts launched deeper flank attacks in converging directions towards Minsk. On July 3, Soviet troops liberated the capital of Belarus, encircling a 100,000-strong German group to the east. Belarusian partisans played a huge role in this operation. Actively interacting with the advancing fronts, the people's avengers disorganized the operational rear of the Germans, paralyzing the latter's transfer of reserves. In 12 days, Red Army units advanced 225-280 km, breaking through the main lines of German defense. A peculiar result of the first stage was the procession through the streets of Moscow of over 57 thousand German soldiers and officers captured during the operation.
So, at the first stage, the German front in Belarus lost stability and collapsed, allowing the operation to move into the maneuver stage. Field Marshal V. Model, who replaced Bush, was unable to stop the Soviet offensive. At the second stage (July 5 - August 29), Soviet troops entered the operational space. On July 13, troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front struck south of the Pripyat marshes (see Lvov-Sandomierz operation), and the Soviet offensive unfolded from the Baltic states to the Carpathians. At the beginning of August, the advanced units of the Red Army reached the Vistula and the borders of East Prussia. Here the Soviet onslaught was stopped by the approaching German reserves. In August - September, Soviet troops, who captured bridgeheads on the Vistula (Magnuszewski and Pulawski) and Narew, had to fight off strong German counterattacks (see Warsaw III).
During the Belarusian operation, the Red Army made a powerful push from the Dnieper to the Vistula and advanced 500-600 km. Soviet troops liberated all of Belarus, most of Lithuania and entered Polish soil. For carrying out this operation, General Rokossovsky received the rank of marshal.
The Belarusian operation led to the defeat of Army Group Center, whose irretrievable losses amounted to 539 thousand people. (381 thousand people killed and 158 thousand captured). This success of the Red Army was paid at a high price. Its total losses amounted to over 765 thousand people. (including irrevocable - 233 thousand people), 2957 tanks and self-propelled guns, 2447 guns and mortars, 822 aircraft.
The Belarusian operation was distinguished by the largest loss of personnel of the Red Army in strategic operations of 1944. The average daily losses of Soviet troops were also the highest in the 1944 campaign (over two thousand people), which indicates the high intensity of the fighting and stubborn resistance of the Germans. This is evidenced by the fact that the number of killed Wehrmacht soldiers and officers in this operation is almost 2.5 times higher than the number of those who surrendered. Nevertheless, this was one of the largest defeats of the Wehrmacht in the Great Patriotic War. According to the German military, the disaster in Belarus put an end to the organized resistance of German troops in the East. The Red Army's offensive became general.
Book materials used: Nikolay Shefov. Battles of Russia. Military-historical library. M., 2002.
Vitebsk-Orsha operation 1944, offensive operation of the troops of the 1st Baltic and 3rd Belorussian fronts in the Great Patriotic War, carried out on June 23 - 28 during the Belarusian operation.
| In the Soviet Union, over the years of industrialization, several dozen new sectors of the national economy were created that did not exist in 1913. But at the same time, people have never seen part of the products produced at the newly built enterprises in everyday life. During the war, the troops were equipped with tractors, self-propelled artillery and other types of equipment that the soldier, a former peasant, had never seen before. It’s a different matter now: everyone can buy at least a KAMAZ, even a Shaanxi or HOWO tractor. Chinese tractors have become more accessible than all those miracles of domestic heavy industry that we were proud of throughout the world. And now everyone can be proud of their own (from the word “property”) iron construction or transport monster. |
In the summer of 1944, Soviet troops carried out a cascade of powerful offensive operations all the way from the White to the Black Seas. However, the first place among them is rightfully occupied by the Belarusian strategic offensive operation, which received a code name in honor of the legendary Russian commander, hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, General P. Bagration.
Three years after the start of the war, Soviet troops were determined to take revenge for the heavy defeats in Belarus in 1941. In the Belarusian direction, the Soviet fronts were opposed by 42 German divisions of the 3rd Panzer, 4th and 9th German field armies, about 850 thousand in total . Human. On the Soviet side there were initially no more than 1 million people. However, by mid-June 1944, the number of Red Army formations intended for the attack was increased to 1.2 million people. The troops had 4 thousand tanks, 24 thousand guns, 5.4 thousand aircraft.
It is important to note that the powerful operations of the Red Army in the summer of 1944 coincided with the beginning of the landing operation of the Western Allies in Normandy. The attacks of the Red Army were, among other things, supposed to draw back German forces and prevent them from being transferred from east to west.
Myagkov M.Yu., Kulkov E.N. Belarusian operation of 1944 // Great Patriotic War. Encyclopedia. /Ans. ed. ak. A.O. Chubaryan. M., 2010
According to General Headquarters, the main actions in the summer campaign of 1944 were to take place in Belarus. To carry out this operation, troops of four fronts were involved (1st Baltic Front - commander I.Kh. Bagramyan; 3rd Belorussian - commander I.D. Chernyakhovsky; our right neighbor 2nd Belorussian Front - commander I.E. Petrov, and , finally 1st Belarusian)...
We prepared for the battles carefully. The drawing up of the plan was preceded by a lot of work on the ground. Especially at the forefront. I literally had to crawl on my stomach. Studying the terrain and the state of the enemy’s defense convinced me that on the right wing of the front it would be advisable to launch two strikes from different areas... This ran counter to the established view, according to which during an offensive one main strike is delivered, for which the main forces and means are concentrated . Taking a somewhat unusual decision, we resorted to a certain dispersion of forces, but in the swamps of Polesie there was no other way out, or rather, we had no other way to the success of the operation...
The Supreme Commander-in-Chief and his deputies insisted on delivering one main blow - from the bridgehead on the Dnieper (Rogachev area), which was in the hands of the 3rd Army. Twice I was asked to go into the next room to think over Stavka’s proposal. After each such “thinking through”, I had to defend my decision with renewed vigor. Having made sure that I firmly insisted on our point of view, I approved the operation plan as we presented it.
“The persistence of the front commander,” he said, “proves that the organization of the offensive was carefully thought out.” And this is a reliable guarantee of success...
The offensive of the 1st Belorussian Front began on June 24. This was announced by powerful bomber strikes on both sections of the breakthrough. For two hours, the artillery destroyed the enemy's defensive structures at the front line and suppressed his fire system. At six o'clock in the morning, units of the 3rd and 48th armies went on the offensive, and an hour later - both armies of the southern strike group. A fierce battle ensued.
The 3rd Army on the Ozeran and Kostyashevo front achieved insignificant results on the first day. The divisions of its two rifle corps, repelling fierce counterattacks by enemy infantry and tanks, captured only the first and second enemy trenches at the Ozeran-Verichev line and were forced to gain a foothold. The offensive also developed in the 48th Army zone with great difficulties. The wide swampy floodplain of the Drut River extremely slowed down the crossing of infantry and especially tanks. Only after a two-hour intense battle did our units knock the Nazis out of the first trench here, and by twelve o’clock in the afternoon they captured the second trench.
The offensive developed most successfully in the 65th Army zone. With the support of aviation, the 18th Rifle Corps broke through all five lines of enemy trenches in the first half of the day, and by mid-day it had gone 5-6 kilometers deep... This allowed General P.I. Batov to bring the 1st Guards Tank Corps into the breakthrough.. .
As a result of the first day of the offensive, the southern strike group broke through the enemy’s defenses at a front of up to 30 kilometers and a depth of 5 to 10 kilometers. The tankers deepened the breakthrough to 20 kilometers (Knyshevichi, Romanishche area). A favorable situation was created, which we used on the second day to bring General I.A. Pliev’s cavalry-mechanized group into battle at the junction of the 65th and 28th armies. She advanced to the Ptich River west of Glusk and crossed it in places. The enemy began to retreat to the north and northwest.
Now - all forces for a rapid advance to Bobruisk!
Rokossovsky K.K. Soldier's duty. M., 1997.
After breaking through the enemy defenses in Eastern Belarus, the Rokossovsky and Chernyakhovsky fronts rushed further - along converging directions towards the Belarusian capital. A huge gap opened in the German defenses. On July 3, the Guards Tank Corps approached Minsk and liberated the city. Now the formations of the 4th German Army were completely surrounded. In the summer and autumn of 1944, the Red Army achieved outstanding military successes. During the Belarusian operation, the German Army Group Center was defeated and driven back 550 - 600 km. In just two months of fighting, it lost more than 550 thousand people. A crisis arose in the circles of the top German leadership. On July 20, 1944, at a time when the defenses of Army Group Center in the east were bursting at the seams, and in the west Anglo-American formations began to expand their bridgehead for the invasion of France, an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate Hitler.
With the arrival of Soviet units on the approaches to Warsaw, the offensive capabilities of the Soviet fronts were practically exhausted. A respite was required, but it was at that moment that an event occurred that was unexpected for the Soviet military leadership. On August 1, 1944, at the direction of the London exile government, an armed uprising began in Warsaw, led by the commander of the Polish Home Army, T. Bur-Komarovsky. Without coordinating their plans with the plans of the Soviet command, the “London Poles” essentially took a gamble. Rokossovsky's troops made great efforts to break through to the city. As a result of heavy bloody battles, they managed to liberate the Warsaw suburb of Prague by September 14. But the Soviet soldiers and soldiers of the 1st Army of the Polish Army, who fought in the ranks of the Red Army, failed to achieve more. Tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers died on the approaches to Warsaw (the 2nd Tank Army alone lost up to 500 tanks and self-propelled guns). On October 2, 1944, the rebels capitulated. The capital of Poland was liberated only in January 1945.
Victory in the Belarusian operation of 1944 came at a high cost to the Red Army. Only irretrievable Soviet losses amounted to 178 thousand people; more than 580 thousand military personnel were wounded. However, the general balance of forces after the end of the summer campaign changed even more in favor of the Red Army.
This evening I asked Stalin how satisfied he is with the ongoing battles for Warsaw by the Red Army. He replied that the ongoing battles had not yet brought serious results. Due to heavy German artillery fire, the Soviet command was unable to transport its tanks across the Vistula. Warsaw can only be taken as a result of a wide encircling maneuver. However, at the request of General Berling and contrary to the best use of the Red Army troops, four Polish infantry battalions nevertheless crossed the Vistula. However, due to the heavy losses they suffered, they soon had to be withdrawn. Stalin added that the rebels were still fighting, but their struggle was now causing the Red Army more difficulties than real support. In four isolated areas of Warsaw, rebel groups continue to defend themselves, but they have no offensive capabilities. Now in Warsaw there are about 3,000 rebels in arms in their hands, in addition, where possible, they are supported by volunteers. It is very difficult to bomb or shell German positions in the city, since the rebels are in close fire contact and mixed with German troops.
For the first time, Stalin expressed his sympathies for the rebels in front of me. He said that the Red Army command has contacts with each of their groups, both by radio and through messengers making their way to and from the city. The reasons why the uprising began prematurely are now clear. The fact is that the Germans were going to deport the entire male population from Warsaw. Therefore, for men there was simply no other choice but to take up arms. Otherwise they faced death. Therefore, the men who were part of the rebel organizations began to fight, the rest went underground, saving themselves from repression. Stalin never mentioned the London government, but said that they could not find General Bur-Komarovsky anywhere. He had apparently left the city and was “commanding through a radio station in some secluded place.”
Stalin also said that, contrary to the information that General Dean has, the Soviet Air Force was dropping weapons to the rebels, including mortars and machine guns, ammunition, medicine, and food. We receive confirmation that the goods arrive at the designated location. Stalin noted that Soviet aircraft drop from low altitudes (300-400 meters), while our Air Force drops from very high altitudes. As a result, the wind often blows our cargo to the side and it does not reach the rebels.
When Prague [a suburb of Warsaw] was liberated, Soviet troops saw the extreme extent to which its civilian population was exhausted. The Germans used police dogs against ordinary people in order to deport them from the city.
The Marshal showed in every possible way his concern for the situation in Warsaw and his understanding of the actions of the rebels. There was no noticeable vindictiveness on his part. He also explained that the situation in the city would become clearer after Prague was completely taken.
Telegram from the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union A. Harriman to US President F. Roosevelt on the reaction of the Soviet leadership to the Warsaw Uprising, September 23, 1944.
US. Library of Congress. Manuscript Division. Harriman Collection. Cont. 174.
(photo from waralbum.ru)
Suvorov, Rumyantsev, Kutuzov - it was in honor of these commanders that a number of offensive operations carried out by the Red Army in 1943 were named. They decided not to change the tradition at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command - the operation, during which it was supposed to defeat one of the largest Wehrmacht army groups "Center" and liberate the territory of the Belarusian SSR, they decided to name it in honor of the commander of the 2nd Western Army during the Patriotic War of 1812, Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration.
In April 1944, the General Staff began to develop an operation plan for the liberation of Soviet Belarus. Initially, an option was considered that almost completely repeated the Battle of Kursk. But already during development we had to change plans radically. When repeating the scenario of the Battle of Kursk, there could be no talk of encircling an entire group of armies with the aim of further defeating it, and on the territory of the Belarusian SSR there was an almost million-strong Wehrmacht group, which included a tank army and the 6th Air Fleet of the Luftwaffe. The troops commanded by Bush and Model were faced with the task of holding, first of all, the so-called “Belarusian Balcony” - a huge protrusion with an area of more than 250,000 square kilometers, which was of enormous strategic importance. The Germans, who held the ledge, were confident in the safety of the approaches to East Prussia and Poland, and also had the possibility of operational control over the territory of Western Ukraine and the Baltic states.
At the time when the Supreme Command Headquarters began developing Operation Bagration, in Berlin, if they did not weaken Army Group Center, they were in no hurry to strengthen it. Hitler believed that a strike should be expected anywhere - on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR in the direction of Poland, or in the north - in the Leningrad region. On the territory of the Belarusian SSR, the Nazis expected, albeit powerful, but still local operations of the Red Army, which they planned to repel in the same way as was done in the winter of 1943-1944.
While Berlin was preparing for local battles, a truly ambitious plan for a new strategic offensive operation had already been approved at the Supreme Command Headquarters.
It was assumed that the forces of four Soviet fronts - the 1st Baltic and three Belarusian - would strike in six directions at once, first break through the defenses, then surround scattered enemy groups and begin to eliminate them.
As with the development of other operations, the General Staff decided that there can never be too much secrecy. That is why all preparations took place in complete radio silence. German intelligence, actively working in the areas of the future operation, could see only one thing - the movement was moving from the front to the rear. In Berlin, such information was given great importance - Hitler turned out to be right, which means that there was no need to expect an offensive in Belarus. Only at night did the situation change radically: along the same railway, along which during the day mock-ups of tanks and guns went to the rear, a huge number of personnel and equipment were transferred from the rear to the front. The transfer took no more than 4-5 hours - all movement stopped exactly at 4 am. Every day about a hundred trains arrived at the front, delivering fuel, equipment, ammunition, and food.
A huge amount of work was done by the partisan formations operating on the territory of Belarus - in addition to reconnaissance and sabotage, the partisans erected dozens of false crossings and laid kilometers of roads that were not intended to be used for transporting troops.
A few days before the start of the operation, partisans blew up more than 40,000 rails, which paralyzed German transportation.
All positions of the Soviet troops were carefully camouflaged. At the same time, they monitored the events from the air - if the positions were noticeable, the pilot gave a signal. At the same time, commanders at any level had to take all measures to improve camouflage at the same moment.
By June 22, the Soviet side was able to concentrate forces that had not been involved in any of the operations before: 1.2 million people, 34,000 guns, more
4.000
tanks and self-propelled guns. The Red Army's superiority was overwhelming. We outnumbered the Nazis by 1.5 times in manpower, by 4.5 times in guns and tanks, and by four times in aircraft.
On the anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, Soviet artillery unleashed a powerful artillery strike on the Nazi positions, followed by an air strike, and in the early morning of June 23, according to eyewitnesses, “... the roar of volleys of Soviet artillery heralded the beginning of the battle for the liberation of Soviet Belarus.”
On June 23, 1944, the 1st Baltic and 2nd and 3rd Belorussian fronts simultaneously went on the offensive. Exactly one day later, the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front entered the battle.
Speaking about the beginning of the operation, it should be noted that the actions of all the troops that took part in the operation from the very beginning were absolutely consistent with the concept of the operation and the assigned tasks. During the first 12 days of the operation, the Red Army, advancing at a speed of 30 kilometers per day, liberated most of the Byelorussian SSR, defeating the main forces of Army Group Center. Already on July 3, the first Soviet tanks burst into the capital of Belarus, Minsk.
By this time, the troops of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts had already managed to cut off the enemy’s retreat routes to the west; Soviet aviation, which maintained air superiority, not only delivered powerful blows, but also prevented all attempts to break out of the encirclement.
By mid-July, the Red Army was able to accomplish what the Wehrmacht failed to do in 1941: “during the retaliatory blitzkrieg” the million-strong Wehrmacht group was practically destroyed.
The troops of the 1st Baltic Front, having completely cut off Army Group North, began the liberation of the Baltic states, the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front, having crossed the Bug, entered the territory of Poland, and the troops of the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian fronts reached the borders of East Prussia.
Only on August 29, 1944, Soviet troops, having received an order from the Supreme Command Headquarters, went on the defensive along the entire front line.
The results of Operation Bagration cannot be overestimated: Army Group Center was completely destroyed - only the irretrievable losses of the Nazis amounted to more than 380,000 people, over 112,000 soldiers, officers and generals were captured - they were the ones who marched in the “Great Waltz” in Moscow. In addition to the fact that Soviet troops created favorable conditions for new attacks on enemy groups stationed in East Prussia and Poland, conditions were created for the offensive of the allied forces that landed in Normandy
Operation Bagration and Normandy
June–August 1944
While the High Command of the Ground Forces and the Fuhrer's headquarters rejected any possibility of an offensive by the Red Army in Belarus, gloomy forebodings grew among the units of Army Group Center on the front line. On June 20, 1944, these expectations were reinforced by “hot midsummer days, with distant rumbles of thunder,” and increasing partisan attacks in the rear of German troops. Ten days earlier, a German radio interception station had read a Soviet radiogram ordering partisan units to increase activity in the rear of the Fourth Army. Accordingly, the Germans launched a major operation against the partisans called "Kormoran". It involved the notorious Kaminsky Brigade, whose exceptional cruelty towards civilians seemed medieval, and whose violent indiscipline offended German officers who respected military traditions.
Moscow's instructions to large partisan formations in the forests and swamps of Belarus were very clear. They were ordered to first blow up railways, and after the start of the Soviet offensive, attack Wehrmacht units. This meant seizing bridges, disrupting communications by blocking roads with trees, and launching attacks to delay the delivery of reinforcements to the front.
At dawn on June 20, the German 25th Motorized Division was subjected to an hour of artillery fire and a short attack. Then everything became quiet again. This was either reconnaissance in force, or an attempt to unsettle the Germans. The Fuhrer's headquarters did not believe that the Soviet summer offensive would be directed against Army Group Center. They expected a major offensive north of Leningrad, against the Finns, and another massive attack south of Pripyat, towards southern Poland and the Balkans.
Hitler was convinced that Stalin's strategy was to hit Germany's satellites - the Finns, Hungarians, Romanians and Bulgarians - by forcing them to withdraw from the war like the Italians. His suspicions seemed to be confirmed when first the Leningrad and then the Karelian fronts launched an offensive. Stalin, who now felt confident enough to choose a pragmatic approach over revenge, had no intention of completely crushing Finland. This would divert too much effort needed elsewhere. He simply wanted to force the Finns into submission and retake from them the lands he had captured in 1940. As he had hoped, these operations in the north diverted Hitler's attention from Belarus.
The Red Army successfully carried out an operation to disinformation the enemy, creating the appearance of preparing a major offensive in Ukraine, while in fact tank and combined-arms armies were secretly deployed to the north. The task was made easier by the fact that Luftwaffe aircraft had practically disappeared from the skies on the Eastern Front. The Allied strategic bombing of Germany, and now the invasion of Normandy, had reduced the number of Luftwaffe aircraft supporting troops on the Eastern Front to catastrophically low levels. Complete Soviet air superiority made it almost impossible for the Germans to conduct any reconnaissance flights, so the headquarters of Army Group Center, located in Minsk, received very little information about the enormous concentration of Soviet troops that was taking place in the rear of the Red Army. In total, the Supreme Command Headquarters concentrated up to fifteen armies with a total number of 1,607 thousand people with 6 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, more than 30 thousand artillery pieces and heavy mortars, including a large number of Katyushas. They were supported by more than 7,500 aircraft.
For some time now, Army Group Center has become a “poor relative” in the Wehrmacht. Some areas in its defensive zone were so poorly staffed that sentries had to stand six-hour shifts every night. Neither they nor the officers had the slightest idea of the enormous and intense work that was taking place behind the Soviet positions at that time. Forest clearings were widened to allow the passage of a large number of armored vehicles, roads for tanks were laid across the swamps, pontoons were brought closer to the front line, the river bottom was strengthened at ford crossings, bridges were built across the rivers, hidden under the surface of the water.
This huge redeployment delayed the start of the offensive by three days. On June 22, the third anniversary of the start of Operation Barbarossa, the First Baltic and Third Belorussian Fronts conducted reconnaissance in force. Operation Bagration itself, which Stalin personally named in honor of the Georgian prince, hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, truly began the next day.
The headquarters planned to first encircle Vitebsk on the northern ledge of the Army Group Center front and Bobruisk on the southern flank, then strike diagonally from these two points to encircle Minsk. On the northern flank, the First Baltic Front of Marshal I. Kh. Bagramyan and the Third Belorussian Front of the young Colonel General I. D. Chernyakhovsky very quickly, so that the Germans did not even have time to react, carried out an offensive to encircle the Vitebsk ledge. They even refused artillery bombardment if it did not seem absolutely necessary in certain sectors of the front. Their columns of tanks rushing forward were supported by waves of attack aircraft. The German Third Panzer Army was completely taken by surprise. Vitebsk was in the very middle of a vulnerable salient, the central part of which was defended by two weak divisions recruited from Luftwaffe soldiers. The corps commander was ordered to hold Vitebsk at all costs as a stronghold for the entire German defense in this sector, although his forces were completely insufficient to complete this task.
On the central sector of the front, from Orsha to Mogilev, where the Russian Tsar’s headquarters was located during the First World War, Infantry General Kurt von Tippelskirch with his Fourth Army also did not expect such a powerful offensive by the Red Army. “We had a truly dark day,” one non-commissioned officer of the 25th Motorized Division wrote home, “a day that I will not soon forget. The Russians began with the most powerful artillery bombardment possible. It lasted about three hours. With all their might they tried to suppress our defenses. Their troops were inexorably approaching us. I had to run headlong to avoid falling into their hands. Their tanks with red flags were quickly approaching.” Only the 25th Motorized and 78th Assault Divisions, supported by self-propelled artillery, fiercely repulsed the Soviet advance east of Orsha.
The next day, Tippelskirch requested permission to withdraw troops to the northern part of the Dnieper, but the Fuhrer's headquarters refused. When some divisions were already completely destroyed, and the surviving soldiers and officers were at the limit of their strength, Tippelskirch decided not to carry out any more insane orders to hold out to the end, which were repeated word for word by the obsequious commander of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Ernst Busch from its headquarters in Minsk. Many German unit commanders understood that the only way to save their troops at this moment was to give false reports about the combat situation and entries in combat logs in order to justify their retreat in the face of higher command.
The German 12th Infantry Division, located in front of Orsha, withdrew just in time. When one major asked a sapper officer why he was in a hurry to blow up the bridge after his battalion had passed. The sapper handed him his binoculars and pointed across the river. Looking through binoculars, the major saw a column of T-34s that were already within firing range. Orsha and Mogilev on the Dnieper were surrounded and taken three days later. The Germans had to abandon several hundred wounded. The general, who was ordered to hold Mogilev to the last, was on the verge of madness.
In the rear of the Soviet troops, the biggest problem was created by the huge traffic jams of military vehicles on the roads. It was not easy to get around the broken tank because of the swamps and the forest that rose on both sides of the road. The chaos was such that “sometimes even a colonel could regulate traffic at intersections,” one Red Army officer later recalled. He also noted how good it was for the Soviet troops that there were so few German planes in the air - after all, all these aircraft, standing one after another, would have been easy targets for them.
On the southern flank, the First Belorussian Front of Marshal Rokossovsky began an offensive with massive artillery bombardment at 04.00. Explosions raised fountains of earth. All the land in a vast area was plowed up and pitted with craters. Trees fell with a crash, and German soldiers in pillboxes instinctively curled up and shook as the ground shook.
The northern wing of Rokossovsky’s troops, which were enveloping enemy positions with pincers, wedged themselves into the junction between the Fourth Army of Tippelskirch and the Ninth Army, which defended Bobruisk and the adjacent area. The commander of the Ninth Army, Infantry General Hans Jordan, brought all his reserves into battle - the 20th Panzer Division. In the evening, a German counterattack began, but soon the 20th Panzer Division was ordered to withdraw and move south of Bobruisk. The offensive of the other flank of the "pincers", in the vanguard of which was the 1st Guards Tank Corps, turned out to be much more dangerous for the German troops. It threatened to encircle the city and could cut off the left flank of the Ninth Army. Rokossovsky’s unexpected offensive along the edge of the Pripyat marshes was no less successful than the Germans’ passage through the Ardennes in 1940.
Hitler still did not allow a retreat, so on June 26, Field Marshal Busch flew to Berchtesgaden to report to the Fuhrer at the Berghof. With him was General Jordan, to whom Hitler had questions about how he used the 20th Panzer Division. But while they were absent from the headquarters of their troops, reporting the situation to Hitler, almost the entire Ninth Army was surrounded. The next day, both Bush and Jordan were removed from their positions. Hitler immediately resorted to the help of Field Marshal Model. But even after such a catastrophe and the threat that loomed over Minsk, the Supreme High Command of the Wehrmacht had no idea about the scope of the plans of the Soviet headquarters.
Model, one of the few generals who could convince Hitler, managed to carry out the necessary withdrawal of German troops to the line along the Berezina River, in front of Minsk. Hitler also authorized the 5th Panzer Division to take up defensive positions at Borisov, northeast of Minsk. The division arrived at the front on June 28, and was immediately attacked from the air by Soviet attack aircraft. Reinforced by a battalion of "tigers" and SS units, the division took up positions on both sides of the Orsha-Borisov-Minsk road. Neither officers nor soldiers had any idea about the general state of affairs at the front, although they heard that the Red Army had crossed the Berezina a little to the north.
That night, the vanguard of the Soviet 5th Guards Army engaged the motorized infantry of the 5th Division. The German command brought up another battalion of Panther tanks to strengthen its positions in this sector, but at that very moment Chernyakhovsky’s troops broke through to the north, at the junction of the positions of the German Third Tank Army and the Fourth Army. Here the disorderly flight of the Germans began under the incessant attacks of attack aircraft and the unabating fire of Soviet artillery. Horror-stricken German truck drivers raced at full speed toward the last remaining bridge over the Berezina, overtaking each other to get to the other side before the bridge was blown up. In these same places, a little north of Borisov, Napoleon crossed after his catastrophic defeat in 1812.
Vitebsk was already burning as German troops of the LIII Corps retreated in a futile attempt to break through the encirclement and link up with the Third Panzer Army. Warehouses and gas storage facilities were burning, spewing clouds of thick black smoke into the sky. German troops lost almost 30 thousand people killed and captured. This catastrophic defeat undermined many people's faith in the Fuhrer and in the victorious outcome of the war. “This morning the Ivans broke through,” a non-commissioned officer of the 206th Infantry Division wrote home. – A short pause allows me to write a letter. We have orders to break away from the enemy. My dears, the situation is desperate. I don’t trust anyone anymore if everywhere is the same as here.”
To the south, the troops of Marshal Rokossovsky surrounded almost the entire German Ninth Army and the city of Bobruisk, which they soon captured. “When we entered Bobruisk,” wrote Vasily Grossman, who was then part of the 120th Guards Rifle Division, which he knew from Stalingrad, “some houses in the city were burning, others were in ruins. The road of revenge brought us to Bobruisk. Our vehicle makes its way with difficulty between burnt and mangled German tanks and self-propelled guns. Soldiers walk over German corpses. Corpses, hundreds and hundreds of corpses litter the road, lie in roadside ditches, under pine trees, in green fields of barley. In some places, equipment has to drive over corpses, they lie so densely on the ground. People are always busy burying the dead, but there are so many of them that this work cannot be completed in a day. The day is terribly hot, windless, and people pass and drive by, holding their noses with handkerchiefs. A hellish cauldron of death was boiling here - terrible, merciless revenge on those who did not lay down their arms and did not break through to the west.”
After the defeat of the Germans, the townspeople took to the streets. “Our people, whom we liberated, talk about themselves and cry (they are mostly old people),” a young Red Army soldier wrote home. “And the young people are so happy that they laugh all the time - they laugh and talk incessantly.”
For the Germans, this retreat was catastrophic. We had to abandon a huge amount of a wide variety of equipment because the fuel ran out. Even before the Soviet offensive, everyone was limited to ten to fifteen liters a day. General Spaatz's strategy of bombing oil refineries provided the Red Army with real help on the Eastern Front, as did the Allied actions in Normandy. Wounded Germans who were lucky enough to be evacuated suffered terribly on horse-drawn carts that rattled, shook and swayed. Many died from loss of blood before reaching the dressing stations. Due to the fact that first aid at the front was almost no longer provided due to losses among medical personnel, serious injuries meant almost certain death. Those who managed to be taken from the front line were sent to hospitals in Minsk, but now Minsk was already at the forefront of the main attack of the Red Army.
The remnants of the German troops made their way through the forests to the west, trying to get out from under the attack of the Soviet troops. They did not have enough water, and many soldiers suffered from dehydration due to the heat. Everyone was in terrible nervous tension, fearing an ambush by partisans or that they would be taken prisoner by the Red Army. The retreating fighters were driven forward by bombers and artillery; trees fell under the bombs and shells, showering the Germans with a hail of splinters. The intensity and scale of the battle were so great that at least seven German generals of Army Group Center were killed in the battles.
Even Hitler had to refuse to necessarily designate cities that were completely unsuitable for such a purpose as fortresses. For the same reasons, his commanders now tried to avoid defending cities. By the end of June, the 5th Guards Tank Army had broken through and began to encircle Minsk from the north. Chaos reigned in the city: the headquarters of Army Group Center and rear institutions fled. The seriously wounded in hospitals were abandoned to their fate. On July 3, Minsk was taken by a blow from the south, and almost the entire Fourth Army was surrounded in the area between the city and the Berezina River.
Even the chief corporal of the medical service, who did not have access to staff cards, was well aware of the bitterness of the situation. “The enemy,” he wrote, “is doing what we did in 1941: encirclement after encirclement.” A Luftwaffe chief corporal noted in a letter to his wife in East Prussia that he was now only 200 km away from her. "If the Russians continue to advance in the same direction, they will soon be at your door."
In Minsk, they took revenge on those captured, especially former Red Army soldiers who went to serve in the auxiliary units of the Wehrmacht. They took revenge for the brutal massacres in Belarus, the victims of which were a quarter of the republic’s population. “A partisan, a little man,” wrote Grossman, “killed two Germans with a wooden stake. He begged the column guard to give him these Germans. He convinced himself that it was they who killed his daughter Olya and two sons, still just boys. The partisan broke their bones, fractured their skulls, and while he beat them, he kept crying and shouting: “Here's to you for Olya! Here’s to Kolya!” When they were already dead, he leaned their bodies against a tree trunk and continued beating them.”
The mechanized formations of Rokossovsky and Chernyakhovsky rushed forward while the rifle divisions behind them destroyed the encircled German troops. By this time, the Soviet command understood very well all the advantages of continuous pursuit of the retreating enemy. The Germans could not be given time to come to their senses and gain a foothold on new frontiers. The 5th Guards Tank Army moved towards Vilnius, other formations moved towards Baranovichi. Vilnius was taken on July 13 after heavy fighting. The next goal was Kaunas. And behind it lay the territory of Germany - East Prussia.
The Supreme High Command headquarters now planned a strike towards the Gulf of Riga in order to encircle Army Group North in Estonia and Latvia. This Army Group fought desperately to hold the passage to the west while fending off eight Soviet armies in the east. South of the Pripyat marshes, on July 13, units of Marshal Konev’s First Ukrainian Front went on the offensive, which later became known as the Lvov-Sandomierz operation. Having broken through the German defense line, Konev’s troops began to develop a general offensive with the goal of encircling Lvov. In the operation to liberate the city, which began 10 days later, they were assisted by 3 thousand Home Army soldiers under the command of Colonel Wladyslaw Filipkowski. But as soon as the city was taken, NKVD officers, who had already captured the local Gestapo and all the documents located there, arrested the AK officers, and the soldiers were forced to join the First Army of the Polish Army, which was commanded by the communists.
After the capture of Lvov, Konev’s First Ukrainian Front continued its offensive to the west, reaching the Vistula, but at this time the greatest fear in the hearts of the Germans was the thought of Soviet troops approaching East Prussia - the territory of the “old Reich”. As in Normandy, the German command now placed all its hopes on the V-Au, especially the V-2 missiles. “Their effect must be many times more powerful than that of the V-1,” one Luftwaffe chief corporal wrote home, but he, like many others, feared that the Allies would respond with gas attacks. Some even advised families in Germany to buy gas masks if possible. Others began to fear that their own side "might use gas as a last resort."
Some German units retreated from one line of defense to another in the vain hope of stopping the enemy onslaught. “The Russians attack constantly,” wrote the corporal of a construction company attached to an infantry unit. – The shelling has been going on since 5 o’clock in the morning. They want to break through our defenses. Their attack aircraft coordinate their actions with artillery fire. Blow follows blow. I’m sitting in our strong dugout and writing, probably, my last letter.” Almost every soldier prayed to himself to get home alive, although he no longer believed in it.
“Events are developing so quickly,” as one chief corporal noted, who found himself in a unit hastily put together from the remnants of various formations, “that it is no longer possible to talk about any coherent front. - And he continued. “I can only tell you that now we are not far from East Prussia, and then the worst will probably come.” In East Prussia itself, the local population looked with growing horror at the roads clogged with retreating troops. A woman who lived near the eastern border saw “columns of soldiers and refugees from Tilsit, which was heavily bombed,” passing by her porch. Soviet bomber raids forced townspeople to seek refuge in basements and board up broken windows. Factories and factories practically stopped because only a few women went to work. Traveling over distances of more than 100 km was prohibited. The Gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch, did not want the population to flee to the west, as this would be “defeatism.”
Konev's offensive developed quickly and the Majdanek concentration camp was discovered outside Lublin. Grossman at this time was already moving with General Chuikov, whose Stalingrad army, now the 8th Guards, took the city. Chuikov's main concern was not to miss the attack on Berlin, which was as important to him as Rome was to General Mark Clark. “This is absolutely logical and common sense,” Chuikov reasoned. “Just imagine: the Stalingraders are advancing on Berlin!” Grossman, who was indignant at the vanity of the commanders, was himself very unhappy that it was not him, but Konstantin Simonov, who was sent to cover the Majdanek topic. Then he went north to Treblinka, which had just been discovered.
Simonov and a large group of foreign correspondents were sent to Majdanek by the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army to witness the crimes of the Nazis. Stalin’s position: “There is no need to separate the dead,” was clear. When it comes to suffering, there is no need to mention Jews as a special category. Majdanek's victims were primarily Soviet and Polish citizens. Hans Frank, head of the Nazi-created General Government, was horrified when details of the massacre at Majdanek appeared in the foreign press. The speed of the Soviet advance caught the SS by surprise, preventing them from destroying incriminating evidence. For the first time, it dawned on Frank and the others that a noose awaited them at the end of the war.
At Treblinka the SS had a little more time. On July 23, when Konev’s artillery was already heard, the commandant of Treblinka received an order to liquidate the surviving prisoners. The SS and Ukrainian camp guards were given schnapps, after which they proceeded to execute the few remaining prisoners who were part of the various work teams. Max Levit, a carpenter from Warsaw, was the only survivor of this massacre. Wounded by the first salvo, he fell and was covered by the bodies that fell on him. He managed to crawl into the forest, from where he listened to indiscriminate shooting. “Stalin will avenge us!” – shouted a group of Russian youths before being shot.
Shortly before Operation Bagration began, which resulted in the complete defeat of German troops in Belarus, Hitler transferred the II SS Panzer Corps from the Eastern Front to Normandy. The corps consisted of two divisions: the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen(Hohenstaufen) and the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg(“Frundsberg”). Interceptions Ultra warned the Allied command in Normandy that these divisions were already on their way. Eisenhower was seething with impatience because Montgomery's next offensive against Caen and Villers-Bocage was delayed in preparation until 26 June. This is unlikely to have been Montgomery's fault, as the concentration of forces for Operation Epsom was hampered by a severe storm. Montgomery intended to strike again west of Caen and thus, bypassing the city, encircle it.
On June 25, a diversionary strike was launched even further to the west. There, the XXX Corps resumed battle with the Wehrmacht's elite Training Panzer Division. The British 49th Division, nicknamed the "Polar Bears" because of the division's polar bear patches, was able to push the Armored Training Division back to the villages of Tessel and Roray, where the fighting began particularly fiercely. Since the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend began to kill prisoners, both sides did not show much pity. Before the attack on Tessel Forest, Sergeant Kuhlman, commander of a mortar platoon of the King's Own Yorkshire Guards Light Infantry, recorded the orders he received in a field journal. At the end it was written: “ NPT below the rank of major,” which meant “do not take prisoners below the rank of major.” Others also recalled receiving "take no prisoners" orders and claimed that it was because of this that German propaganda began calling the 49th Division the "Killer Polar Bears." Interceptions Ultra confirmed that the Tank Training Division had suffered "heavy losses."
Montgomery reported Operation Epsom to Eisenhower as “decisive,” although he clearly intended to conduct the battle cautiously, as usual. The official history of the Italian Campaign later noted that Montgomery "had an unusual gift for convincingly combining very loud statements with very cautious actions." This was especially true during the Normandy campaign.
The newly arrived British VIII Corps launched a major offensive with the 15th Scottish Division and the 43rd Wessex Division advancing in the first echelon, and the 11th Armored Division in the second echelon, ready at any moment to enter the gap created by the first echelon divisions. Artillery preparation was carried out jointly by divisional and corps artillery, as well as by the main caliber guns of the battleships of the Allied fleet stationed off the coast. The 15th Scots advanced quite quickly, but the 43rd Division on the left flank had to repel a counterattack by the 12th SS Panzer Division. By nightfall the Scots reached the valley of the Odon River. Although further progress was slowed by the dangerous accumulation of equipment on the narrow roads of Normandy, it still continued. The next day the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Regiment, wisely disregarding the tactical doctrine then in force, crossed the River Odon in small groups and captured the bridge.
On 28 June, Lieutenant General Sir Richard O'Connor, who had distinguished himself by escaping from a German prison camp in Italy and was now in command of the VIII Corps, wanted to make a push forward with the 11th Armored Division and seize a bridgehead on the Orne River, which was quite far beyond the Odon River. General Sir Miles Dempsey, commander of the British Second Army, knew from intelligence Ultra about the impending approach of the II SS Panzer Corps, but due to the fact that Montgomery was at his headquarters at that time, he decided not to risk it. Perhaps he would have behaved more decisively if he had known about the extraordinary events that were taking place on the German side at that time.
Hitler just at this time, in the midst of the most important battle, summoned Field Marshal Rommel to the Berghof, which was completely unusual. The resulting confusion was further complicated by the sudden death of the commander of the Seventh Army, Colonel General Friedrich Dollmann - according to the official version, from a heart attack, but many German officers suspected that it was suicide after the surrender of Cherbourg. Without consulting Rommel, Hitler appointed Obergruppenführer Paul Hausser, commander of the II SS Panzer Corps, as commander of the Seventh Army. Hausser, who had previously been ordered to counterattack the advancing British units with SS tank divisions Hohenstaufen And Frundsberg, had to surrender command to his deputy and rush to his new headquarters located in Le Mans.
On June 29, the vanguard of the British 11th Armored Division, commanded by the distinguished British military leader, Major General Philip Roberts (or Pip Roberts, as he was called), captured the key Hill 112, a crucial position between the Odon and Orne rivers. After this, the British division had to repel counterattacks of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, units of the 21st Tank Division and the 7th Mortar Brigade, which were armed with multi-barrel rocket mortars Nebelwerfer, when firing, they produce sounds similar to the braying of a donkey. Only now did the German command realize the importance of the British capturing Height 112. SS Gruppenführer Wilhelm Bittrich, who replaced Hausser as corps commander, was given an urgent order to attack enemy positions on the other flank within an hour with the forces of his II Panzer Corps, reinforced by a battle group of 2 1st SS Panzer Division Das Reich. The British Second Army thus found itself attacked by seven German tank divisions simultaneously, four of them were SS, and units of the 5th SS Division also took part in the attack on the British positions. At the same time, the entire German Army Group Center in Belarus had only three tank divisions at its disposal, and this was after the German troops in Belarus received reinforcements. So Ilya Ehrenburg’s sarcastic remark that the Allies in Normandy fought with the scum of the German army was very far from the truth.
Montgomery deployed his troops to face the bulk of the counterattacking German armored divisions for a very simple reason, which he had been warned about before the invasion began. The English Second Army on the eastern flank was closest to Paris. If the British and Canadians had managed to break through the German defenses, the Seventh Army, located to the west, and all German formations in Brittany would have been surrounded.
The stubborn resistance that German troops offered in the British offensive sector forced Montgomery to abandon the idea of capturing the plain south of Caen to create field airfields there. He tried to pass off the unpleasant truth as a calculated action, claiming that he was holding back the enemy's armored divisions to give the Americans the opportunity to break through the German defense line. But he failed to convince either the Americans or the Royal Air Force, which desperately needed runways.
Despite all the brave assurances given to Eisenhower, Montgomery made it clear to Major General George Erskine, commander of the 7th Armored Division, that he did not want any “decisive battles” at all. “As far as we are concerned, everything is changing,” an intelligence officer from General Erskine’s division noted in his diary shortly before the start of Operation Epsom, “because Monty doesn’t want us to advance. He is pleased that the Second Army has pulled over all the German tank divisions, and now in this section of the front he only wants Caen, and let the Americans continue to advance on the ports of Brittany. Therefore, the VIII Corps offensive will continue, but our goals are very limited.”
The German counter-attack on the afternoon of 29 June was aimed mainly at the 15th Scottish Division in the western part of the salient. The Scots fought well, but the greatest damage to elements of the newly arrived SS Panzer Corps was inflicted by Royal Navy artillery. Dempsey, fearing an even stronger German counterattack to the southwest of Hill 112, ordered O'Connor to withdraw his tanks and abandon the hill. The next day, Montgomery called off the general offensive because the VIII Corps had lost more than 4,000 men. The British command was again unable to quickly build on its success. Unfortunately, in the battles for Hill 112 over the next few weeks, many more soldiers and officers died than the British would have lost if they had been able to hold the height and continued to defend it.
Both Field Marshal Rommel and General Geir von Schweppenburg were shocked when they saw the results of the shelling of division units on the march. Hohenstaufen And Frundsberg artillery of the allied fleet from a distance of almost 30 km. The shell craters were four meters wide and two meters deep. The need to convince Hitler that it was necessary to withdraw troops across the Orne River became absolutely urgent. Geir von Schweppenburg was shocked by the losses his troops suffered in this defensive battle, although he would have preferred to use the armored divisions for a powerful counterattack. His divisions were brought into battle to serve as a strengthening "corset" for the weak infantry divisions defending this section of the front. But now it turned out that the infantry units arriving as reinforcements at the front were clearly not enough to hold positions and thereby give him the opportunity to withdraw battered tank formations to the rear for reorganization. Thus, although Montgomery did not “call the tune” on the battlefield, as he liked to claim, he actually found himself embroiled in a war of extermination, which was inevitably due to the internal problems of the German army.
Geir von Schweppenburg wrote an extremely critical report about the strategy of the German command in Normandy, in which he substantiated the need for a more flexible defense and the withdrawal of troops across the Orne River. His comments about the interference of the Wehrmacht Supreme High Command in the command and control of troops, which clearly alluded directly to Hitler, led to the general's immediate resignation. He was replaced by Panzer General Hans Eberbach. The next high-ranking victim was Field Marshal Rundstedt himself, who told Keitel that the German army would not be able to stop the Allied forces in Normandy. “You must stop this war,” he told Keitel. Rundstedt, who also approved of von Schweppenburg's report, was replaced by Field Marshal Hans von Kluge. Hitler wanted to replace Rommel as well, but this would have made an undesirable impression on many both in Germany and abroad.
Kluge arrived at Rommel's headquarters, located in a magnificent chateau in the town of La Roche-Guyon on the Seine River, and began to mock the way the troops entrusted to Rommel were conducting combat operations. Rommel exploded and advised him to first go to the front and personally familiarize himself with the situation. Kluge spent the next few days at the front and was horrified by what he saw. It was strikingly different from the picture that was painted for him at the Fuhrer’s headquarters, where they believed that Rommel was overly pessimistic and overestimated the strength of Allied aviation.
A little further west, the US First Army, under the command of General Bradley, was mired in heavy, bloody fighting in the swamps south of the Cotentin Peninsula and in the rural areas north of Saint-Lo. Constant and numerous attacks by battalion-sized American infantry on the German II Parachute Corps position resulted in numerous casualties among the advancing Americans. “The Germans don’t have much left,” the American division commander noted with grim respect, “but damn it, they know how to use it.”
Using the lessons of the battles on the Eastern Front, the Germans managed to compensate for their small numbers and lack of artillery, and especially aircraft. They dug small dugouts on high ground at the base of impenetrable hedges. It was labor-intensive work, given the centuries-old plexus of ancient roots. Thus, they equipped machine gun nests on the front line of defense. Behind the front line was the main line of defense, on which there were enough troops for a swift counterattack. A little further, behind the main line, usually on high ground, 88-mm guns were placed, which fired at the advancing Shermans supporting the advance of the American infantry. All positions and equipment were carefully camouflaged, which meant that Allied fighter-bombers could not help the advancing troops much. Bradley and his commanders relied heavily on artillery, and the French reasonably believed that the Americans relied on it too much.
The Germans themselves called the fighting in Normandy, between the endless hedgerows, “a dirty war in the bush.” They placed mines at the bottom of shell craters in front of their positions so that American soldiers who jumped there as if for cover would have their legs blown off by the explosion. Many of the trails were lined with booby traps, which American soldiers called “castrating mines” or “galloping Bettys”: they bounced and exploded at groin height. German tank crews and artillerymen became experts at “tree bombing,” where a shell exploded in the canopy of a tree so that branches and wood chips would fly away from the explosion and injure those who were taking cover under it.
American tactics were based primarily on “strike-as-you-go” infantry advances, which meant constantly bombarding every possible enemy position. As a result, the Americans wasted an incredible amount of ammunition. The Germans had to be more thrifty. A German rifleman tied to a tree waited for American infantrymen to pass by, then shot one of them in the back. This forced everyone else to lie flat on the ground while the German mortar crews closed in on them, lying at full length and completely exposed to shrapnel. The orderlies who came to their aid were deliberately shot. Quite often, a lone German soldier would rise from the ground with his hands raised, and when the Americans approached him to take him prisoner, he would fall to the side, and the hiding machine gunners would shoot the Americans. It is clear that few Americans took prisoners after such incidents.
Combat fatigue was not recognized by the Germans as any special condition. She was considered cowardice. Soldiers who wanted to avoid participating in hostilities by crossbow were simply shot. In this sense, the American, Canadian and British armies were too civilized. Most psychoneurotic casualties occurred as a result of hedgerow fighting, and most of these casualties were replacement soldiers thrown into battle ill-prepared. By the end of this campaign, approximately 30,000 U.S. First Army troops were recorded as psychological casualties. The US Army Surgeon General estimates that in front-line units, psychological losses amounted to up to 10 percent of personnel.
After the war, both British and American army psychiatrists wrote that they were amazed at how few cases of battle fatigue they noted among German prisoners of war, even though they suffered much more from Allied bombing and shelling. They concluded that the propaganda of the Nazi regime from 1933 apparently contributed to the psychological preparation of soldiers. It can also be noted that the hardships of life in the USSR hardened those who served in the ranks of the Red Army. Soldiers in Western democracies could not be expected to withstand the same hardships.
Rommel and Kluge assumed that the main breakthrough in Normandy should be expected on the Anglo-Canadian sector of the front near Caen. They also believed that the American advance would go along the Atlantic coast. But Bradley concentrated on Saint-Lo, at the eastern end of his front, to concentrate his forces before the big offensive.
After the pitiful results of Operation Epsom, Montgomery did not devote Eisenhower to the details of what was happening anymore - he was increasingly irritated by the Englishman’s undisguised complacency. Montgomery never admitted that any operation was not going according to the “master plan” he had approved. But he knew that there was growing dissatisfaction both on Eisenhower's staff and in London over his lack of progress moving forward. He also knew about the acute shortage of human resources in England. Churchill was afraid that if his military power faded, Britain would have too little weight in deciding questions of the post-war system.
In an attempt to break through the German defenses without great loss of life, Montgomery was ready to consign one famous saying to oblivion. Last fall, at a briefing for war correspondents in Italy, he categorically stated that “heavy bombers cannot be used in ground battles close to the front line.” But on July 6 he requested just such support from the Royal Air Force to take Caen. Eisenhower, who really wanted to achieve success on this sector of the front and to do it as quickly as possible, fully supported him and the next day met with Air Chief Marshal Harris. Harris agreed and that evening he sent 467 Lancaster and Halifax bombers to the northern suburbs of Caen, which were defended by the 12th SS Division. Hitlerjugend. But this raid failed due to “overshooting the target.”
Just as during the raid in the Omaha sector, the navigators delayed the release of bombs for a second or two so as not to hit their advanced units. As a result, the bulk of the bombs fell on the center of the ancient Norman city. The Germans suffered few casualties compared to the French civilian population, which remains unsung in the Normandy battles. This campaign presented a paradox: in an attempt to reduce their losses, Allied commanders killed large numbers of civilians through the excessive use of powerful landmines.
The advance of British and Canadian troops began the next morning. This delay gave the division Hitlerjugend more than twenty hours to strengthen the defenses and restore strength. Her fierce resistance resulted in heavy casualties for the advancing Allied forces. Then the SS men suddenly disappeared, having received orders to withdraw south of the Orne River. The British quickly occupied northern and central Caen. But even this partial success did not solve the key problem of the Second Army. There was still not enough space to build the required number of field airfields, and the Allied command was still unable to deploy the rest of the First Canadian Army, which was languishing in England awaiting landing.
With great reluctance, Montgomery agreed to Dempsey's plan to use three armored divisions - the 7th, 11th and the newly arrived Guards - to break out towards Falaise, from a bridgehead east of the Orne River. Montgomery's doubts were more likely caused by his prejudices against tank formations, "which are of no use." In the minds of this inveterate military conservative, the plan was not the correct offensive, but he could not afford even greater infantry losses, and in any case, something had to be done urgently at that time. The complaints and ridicule came not only from the Americans. The Royal Air Force command was beside itself with anger. Calls for Montgomery's resignation were now heard from Eisenhower's deputy, Air Chief Marshal Tedder, and from Air Marshal Conyngham, who never forgave Montgomery for shamelessly taking credit for the victory in North Africa while barely mentioning the Air Force.
Operation Goodwood, which began on July 18, proved to be an outstanding example of Montgomery's "very militant statements and very cautious actions." He argued so strongly to Eisenhower for the possibility of a decisive offensive that the Supreme Commander responded: “I view these prospects with exceptional optimism and enthusiasm.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to see you achieve a victory that makes the "classic victories of old" look like a simple clash between two recon squads. Montgomery left the same impression on Field Marshal Brooke in London, but the very next day he presented Dempsey and O’Connor with more modest goals. It all came down to advancing a third of the distance to Falaise and testing the situation. Unfortunately, there were hints in officer briefings that this would be a larger offensive than Alamein. Correspondents were told of a “Russian style” breakthrough that could advance the Second Army a hundred miles. Amazed journalists noted that “a hundred miles ahead” is the entire distance to Paris itself.
The Royal Air Force, still desperately in need of forward airfields, was once again ready to provide its bombers to assist the advancing troops. Therefore, on July 18 at 05.30, 2600 bombers of the British and American Air Forces dropped 7567 tons of bombs on a front section of only 7 thousand meters in length. Unfortunately, Second Army reconnaissance failed to discover that the German defensive positions here had five lines extending as deep as Bourgby Ridge, which would have had to be overcome if the Second Army had moved towards Falaise. To further complicate the situation, the three armored divisions had a very difficult route of advance, which took them over pontoon bridges over the Caen Canal and the River Orne to a small bridgehead across the river, captured by elements of the 51st Scottish Division, where the engineers had laid a very dense minefield. Fearing to alert the enemy, O'Connor only at the very last moment ordered passages to be made in it instead of removing the entire minefield. But the Germans were well aware of the upcoming attack. They observed the preparations from tall factory buildings further east in their location, and also received their aerial reconnaissance data. One of the transcripts Ultra gave confirmation that the Luftwaffe knew about the operation, but the command of the Second Army did not change its plans.
The soldiers climbed onto the armor of the tanks and looked with delight at the destruction from the bomber raids, but the congestion of the equipment caused by the narrow passages in the minefield led to a fatal slowdown in the advance. The delays were so great that O'Connor stopped the movement of infantry on trucks to allow the tanks to pass first. Having passed this bottleneck, the 11th Panzer Division began to advance quickly, but was soon ambushed, finding itself under heavy fire from enemy anti-tank guns well camouflaged on stone farms and in villages. Such targets were supposed to be dealt with by the infantry, but the tanks found themselves without infantry cover and suffered huge losses. In addition, at the very beginning of the battle, the division lost the officer responsible for communications with aviation, and therefore could not call for help from the “typhoons” circling in the sky. Then the division came under heavy fire from 88-mm guns on the Barzby ridge and was counterattacked by the 1st SS Panzer Division. The 11th and Guards Tank Divisions together lost more than 200 vehicles that day.
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During the course, several large-scale military offensive campaigns by Soviet troops were carried out. One of the key ones was Operation Bagration (1944). The campaign was named after the Patriotic War of 1812. Let us next consider how Operation Bagration (1944) took place. The main lines of advance of the Soviet troops will be briefly described.
On the third anniversary of the German invasion of the USSR, the Bagration military campaign began. year was carried out on the Soviet troops managed to break through the German defenses in many areas. The partisans provided them with active support in this. The offensive operations of the troops of the 1st Baltic, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Belorussian fronts were intensive. The military campaign "Bagration" - operation (1944; leader and coordinator of the plan - G.K. Zhukov) began with the actions of these units. The commanders were Rokossovsky, Chernyakhovsky, Zakharov, Bagramyan. In the area of Vilnius, Brest, Vitebsk, Bobruisk and east of Minsk, enemy groups were surrounded and eliminated. Several successful offensives were carried out. As a result of the battles, a significant part of Belarus was liberated, the capital of the country - Minsk, the territory of Lithuania, and the eastern regions of Poland. Soviet troops reached the borders of East Prussia.
(operation of 1944) involved 2 stages. They included several offensive campaigns by Soviet troops. The direction of Operation Bagration of 1944 at the first stage was as follows:
This stage took place from June 23 to July 4. From July 5 to August 29, the offensive was also carried out on several fronts. At the second stage, operations were planned:
In this sector, the defense was occupied by the 3rd Panzer Army, commanded by Reinhardt. Its 53rd Army Corps was stationed directly near Vitebsk. They were commanded by Gen. Gollwitzer. The 17th Corps of the 4th Field Army was located near Orsha. In June 1944, Operation Bagration was carried out with the help of reconnaissance. Thanks to her, Soviet troops managed to break into the German defenses and take the first trenches. On June 23, the Russian command dealt the main blow. The key role belonged to the 43rd and 39th armies. The first covered the western side of Vitebsk, the second - the southern. The 39th Army had almost no superiority in numbers, but the high concentration of forces in the sector made it possible to create a significant local advantage during the initial stage of the implementation of the Bagration plan. The operation (1944) near Vitebsk and Orsha was generally successful. We managed to break through the western part of the defense and the southern front quite quickly. The 6th Corps, located on the southern side of Vitebsk, was cut into several parts and lost control. Over the following days, the commanders of the divisions and the corps itself were killed. The remaining units, having lost contact with each other, moved in small groups to the west.
On June 24, units of the 1st Baltic Front reached the Dvina. Army Group North tried to counterattack. However, their breakthrough was unsuccessful. Corps Group D was surrounded in Beshenkovichi. Oslikovsky's horse-mechanized brigade was introduced south of Vitebsk. His group began to move quite quickly to the southwest.
In June 1944, Operation Bagration was carried out quite slowly in the Orsha sector. This was due to the fact that one of the most powerful German infantry divisions, the 78th Assault Division, was located here. It was much better equipped than the others, and was supported by 50 self-propelled guns. Units of the 14th Motorized Division were also located here.
However, the Russian command continued to implement the Bagration plan. The 1944 operation involved the introduction of the 5th Guards Tank Army. Soviet soldiers cut the railway from Orsha to the west near Tolochin. The Germans were forced to either leave the city or die in the “cauldron.”
On the morning of June 27, Orsha was cleared of invaders. 5th Guards The tank army began advancing towards Borisov. On June 27, Vitebsk was also liberated in the morning. A German group defended itself here, having been subjected to artillery and air strikes the day before. The invaders made several attempts to break through the encirclement. On June 26, one of them was successful. However, a few hours later, about 5 thousand Germans were surrounded again.
Thanks to the offensive actions of the Soviet troops, the German 53rd Corps was almost completely destroyed. 200 people managed to break through to the fascist units. According to Haupt's records, almost all of them were wounded. Soviet troops also managed to defeat units of the 6th Corps and Group D. This became possible thanks to the coordinated implementation of the first stage of the Bagration plan. The 1944 operation near Orsha and Vitebsk made it possible to eliminate the northern flank of the “Center”. This was the first step towards further complete encirclement of the group.
This part of the front was considered auxiliary. On June 23, effective artillery preparation was carried out. The forces of the 2nd Belorussian Front began to cross the river. I'll get through it. The German defensive line passed along it. Operation Bagration in June 1944 took place with the active use of artillery. The enemy was almost completely suppressed by it. In the Mogilev direction, sappers quickly built 78 bridges for the passage of infantry and 4 heavy 60-ton crossings for equipment.
A few hours later, the strength of most of the German companies decreased from 80-100 to 15-20 people. But units of the 4th Army managed to retreat to the second line along the river. Basho is quite organized. Operation Bagration in June 1944 continued from the south and north of Mogilev. On June 27, the city was surrounded and taken by storm the next day. About 2 thousand prisoners were captured in Mogilev. Among them was the commander of the 12th Infantry Division, Bamler, as well as Commandant von Ermansdorff. The latter was subsequently found guilty of committing a large number of serious crimes and was hanged. The German retreat gradually became more and more disorganized. Until June 29, 33 thousand German soldiers and 20 tanks were destroyed and captured.
Operation Bagration (1944) assumed the formation of a southern “claw” of a large-scale encirclement. This action was carried out by the most powerful and numerous Belorussian Front, commanded by Rokossovsky. Initially, the right flank took part in the offensive. He was resisted by the 9th Field Army of General. Jordana. The task of eliminating the enemy was solved by creating a local “cauldron” near Bobruisk.
The offensive began from the south on June 24. Operation Bagration in 1944 assumed the use of aviation here. However, weather conditions significantly complicated her actions. In addition, the terrain itself was not very favorable for an offensive. Soviet troops had to overcome a fairly large swampy swamp. However, this path was chosen deliberately, since the German defenses on this side were weak. On June 27, roads from Bobruisk to the north and west were intercepted. Key German forces were surrounded. The diameter of the ring was approximately 25 km. The operation to liberate Bobruisk ended successfully. During the offensive, two corps were destroyed - the 35th Army and the 41st Tank. The defeat of the 9th Army made it possible to open the road to Minsk from the northeast and southeast.
This direction caused serious concern among the Russian command. Bagramyan began to fix the problem. In fact, there was no break between the Vitebsk-Orsha and Polotsk operations. The main enemy was the 3rd Tank Army, the forces of the “North” (16th Field Army). The Germans had 2 infantry divisions in reserve. The Polotsk operation did not end in such a defeat as at Vitebsk. However, it made it possible to deprive the enemy of a stronghold, a railway junction. As a result, the threat to the 1st Baltic Front was removed, and Army Group North was bypassed from the south, which implied an attack on the flank.
After the defeat of the southern and northern flanks near Bobruisk and Vitebsk, the Germans found themselves sandwiched in a rectangle. Its eastern wall was formed by the Drut River, the western by the Berezina. Soviet troops stood from the north and south. To the west was Minsk. It was in this direction that the main attacks of the Soviet forces were aimed. The 4th Army had virtually no cover on its flanks. Gene. von Tippelskirch ordered a retreat across the Berezina. To do this we had to use a dirt road from Mogilev. Using the only bridge, German forces tried to cross to the west bank, experiencing constant fire from bombers and attack aircraft. The military police were supposed to regulate the crossing, but they withdrew from this task. In addition, partisans were active in this area. They carried out constant attacks on German positions. The situation for the enemy was further complicated by the fact that the transported units were joined by groups from defeated units in other areas, including from near Vitebsk. In this regard, the retreat of the 4th Army was slow and accompanied by heavy losses.
The offensive was led by mobile groups - tank, mechanized and cavalry-mechanized formations. Part of Pliev quickly began to advance towards Slutsk. His group reached the city on the evening of June 29. Due to the fact that the Germans suffered heavy losses before the 1st Belorussian Front, they offered little resistance. Slutsk itself was defended by formations of the 35th and 102nd divisions. They put up organized resistance. Then Pliev launched an attack from three flanks simultaneously. This attack was successful, and by 11 am on June 30, the city was cleared of Germans. By July 2, Pliev’s cavalry-mechanized units occupied Nesvizh, cutting off the group’s path to the southeast. The breakthrough happened quite quickly. Resistance was provided by small unorganized groups of Germans.
Mobile German reserves began to arrive at the front. They were withdrawn mainly from units operating in Ukraine. The 5th Panzer Division arrived first. She posed quite a threat, considering that she had seen almost no combat over the past few months. The division was well equipped, rearmed and reinforced by the 505th Heavy Battalion. However, the enemy's weak point here was the infantry. It consisted either of security divisions or divisions that had suffered significant losses. A serious battle took place on the northwestern side of Minsk. Enemy tankers announced the destruction of 295 Soviet vehicles. However, there is no doubt that they themselves suffered serious losses. The 5th Division was reduced to 18 tanks, and all the Tigers of the 505th Battalion were lost. Thus, the formation lost the ability to influence the course of the battle. 2nd Guards On July 1, the corps approached the outskirts of Minsk. Having made a detour, he burst into the city from the northwestern side. At the same time, Rokossovsky's detachment approached from the south, the 5th Tank Army from the north, and combined arms detachments from the east. The defense of Minsk did not last long. The city was heavily destroyed by the Germans already in 1941. While retreating, the enemy additionally blew up structures.
The German group was surrounded, but still made attempts to break through to the west. The Nazis even entered into battle with knives. The command of the 4th Army fled to the west, as a result of which actual control was carried out by the head of the 12th Army Corps, Müller, instead of von Tippelskirch. On July 8-9, the German resistance in the Minsk “cauldron” was finally broken. The cleanup lasted until the 12th: regular units, together with partisans, neutralized small groups of the enemy in the forests. After this, military operations in the east of Minsk ended.
After the completion of the first stage, Operation Bagration (1944), in short, assumed the maximum consolidation of the achieved success. At the same time, the German army tried to restore the front. At the second stage, Soviet units had to fight with German reserves. At the same time, personnel changes took place in the leadership of the army of the Third Reich. After the expulsion of the Germans from Polotsk, Bagramyan was given a new task. The 1st Baltic Front was supposed to carry out an offensive to the north-west, towards Daugavpils, and to the west - to Sventsyany and Kaunas. The plan was to break through to the Baltic and cut off communications between Army North formations and the rest of the Wehrmacht forces. After flank changes, fierce fighting began. Meanwhile, German troops continued their counterattacks. On August 20, the attack on Tukums began from the east and west. For a short period, the Germans managed to restore communication between the “Center” and “North” units. However, the attacks of the 3rd Tank Army at Siauliai were unsuccessful. At the end of August there was a break in the fighting. The 1st Baltic Front completed its part of the offensive Operation Bagration.
