June 22, 1944 – World War II: Soviet forces launch Operation Bagration into Byelorussia
By June 1944, the Red Armyhad massed four Army Groups (1st, 2nd, and 4th,Belorussian Fronts, and 1st Baltic Front) for the recapture of Belorussia. The offensive was codenamed OperationBagration[1]and had a combined force of 2 million troops, 5,800 tanks, 33,000 artillerypieces, and 7,800 planes. Opposing thisforce was German Army Group Center, with 600,000 troops, 500 tanks, 2,600artillery pieces, and 600 planes – with reinforcements later arriving, thesenumbers would rise to 1 million troops, 1,300 tanks, 10,000 artillery pieces,and 1,200 planes.
On June 22, 1944, Soviet forcesattacked, and broke through the German lines all across the front, encirclingGerman units in several areas, including Minsk,the Belorussian capital, where 100,000 German troops were trapped, of which60,000 were captured and 40,000 killed. The German difficulties were further compounded because Hitler forbadeany retreat, and ordered that all positions be held at all costs, and turnedinto “fortresses” even if they fell behind enemy lines. By mid-July 1944, the Red Army had seized allof Belarus,pushing back the Germans 450 miles to the 1941 border. More critically, the Soviets establishedbridgeheads across the Vistula River leading to the outskirts of Warsaw, Poland’scapital. This Soviet victory was emphatic, thorough, and complete, and itsstrategic implications were wide-ranging: the German frontlines in the EasternFront from north to south were broken permanently; the German Army Groups lostphysical connections with each other; German Army Group North faced the dangerof being cut off in the Baltic region; and the regions comprisingGerman-controlled Poland, East Prussia, and even Germany itself, were nowthreatened. The Red Army suffered heavylosses: 770,000 troops (180,000 killed or missing, 340,000-590,000 wounded andsick), 2,900 tanks, 2,500 artillery pieces, and 800 planes. German manpower losses totaled 400,000 troops(26,000 killed, 110,000 wounded, and 264,000 missing and captured). However, Red Army formations could easily berestored to full strength, because of the Soviet Union’snumerical superiority and industrial capacity, while German material losseswere becoming difficult to replace because of increasing difficulty inprocuring raw materials.
(Taken from Soviet Counter-attack and Defeat of Germany – Wars of the 20th Century – Twenty Wars in Europe – Vol. 6)
In support of OperationBagration, in mid-July 1944, Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front launched theLvov-Sandomierz Offensive in the south, whichcaptured Lvov and the whole northwest Ukraine, and thrust to the VistulaRiver at Sandomierz, establishing abridgehead and threatening to advance to Warsawfrom the southeast. The Wehrmacht thuslost all its territories in the Ukraine.
Baltic StatesWith its capture of Belarus,the Red Army was poised to recapture the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia,and Lithuania. The Soviet position in the Baltic region wasgreatly enhanced during the course of Operation Bagration, when in July 1944,the 1st Baltic Front, holding the northern flank, recaptured much ofLithuania and then reached the Gulf of Riga on the Baltic Coast. This feat effectively cut off German ArmyGroup North in Estonia and Latvia.
In September 1944, threeSoviet Army Groups (1st, 2nd, and 3rd BalticFronts) opened the Baltic Offensive: Tartu and southeast Estonia were retaken, and another Soviet advancereached Riga, Latvia’s capital. German forces,which still held much of Latviaand Estonia,including the region west of Narva, faced the danger of being outflanked andcut off. In September 1944, in OperationAster carried out by the German Navy, German Army Group North was evacuatedfrom Estonia and Latvia, and landed in the CourlandPeninsula south of Riga. Here, the German force, which Hitler soon renamed Army Group Courland,resisted successive Red Army offensives until the end of World War II in Europe. It wouldonly be on May 9, 1945, one day after Germany’s unconditional surrenderto the Allies, that the 200,000 German troops in the “Courland Pocket” surrendered to the Red Army.
The Balkans and Eastern and Central Europe With its advance into western Ukraine in April 1944, theRed Army, specifically the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts,including the 1st and 4th Ukrainian Fronts, was poised toadvance into Eastern Europe and the Balkans to knock out Germany’s Axis alliesfrom the war. In May 1944, a Red Armyoffensive into Romania was stopped by a German-Romanian combined force, but asubsequent operation in August broke through, and the Soviets captured TarguFrumus and Iasi (Jassy) on August 21 and Chisinau on August 24. The Axis defeat was thorough: German 6thArmy, which had been reconstituted after its destruction in Stalingrad, wasagain encircled and destroyed, German 8th Army, severely mauled,withdrew to Hungary, and the Romanian Army, severely lacking modern weapons,suffered heavy casualties. On August 23,Michael I, King of Romania, deposed the pro-Nazi government of Prime MinisterIon Antonescu and announced his acceptance of the armistice offered by Britain,the United States, and the Soviet Union. Romania then switchedsides to the Allies and declared war on Germany. The Romanian government thereafter joined thewar against Germany, andallowed Soviet forces to pass through its territory to continue into Bulgariain the south.
The rapid collapse of Axisforces in Romania led topolitical turmoil in Bulgaria. On August 26, 1944, the Bulgarian governmentdeclared its neutrality in the war. Bulgarians were ethnic Slavs like the Russians, and Bulgaria did not send troops to attack theSoviet Union and in fact continued to maintain diplomatic ties with Moscow during thewar. However, its government waspro-German and the country was an Axis partner. On September 2, a new Bulgarian government was formed comprising thepolitical opposition, which did not stop the Soviet Union from declaring war onBulgariathree days later. On September 8, Sovietforces entered Bulgaria,meeting no resistance as the Bulgarian government stood down its army. The next day, Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, was captured,and the Soviets lent their support behind the new Bulgarian governmentcomprising communist-led resistance fighters of the Fatherland Front. Bulgariathen declared war on Germany,sending its forces in support of the Red Army’s continued advance to the west.
The Red Army now set itssights on Serbia,the main administrative region of pre-World War II Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia itself had beendismembered by the occupying Axis powers. For Germany, the lossof Serbia would cut off itsforces’ main escape route from Greece. As a result, the German High Commandallocated more troops to Serbiaand also ordered the evacuation of German forces from other Balkan regions.
Occupied Europe’s mosteffective resistance struggle was located in Yugoslavia. By 1944, the communist Yugoslav Partisanmovement, led by Josip Broz Tito, controlled the mountain regions of Bosnia, Montenegro,and western Serbia. In late September 1944, the Soviet 2ndand 3rd Ukrainian Fronts, thrusting from Bulgariaand Romania, together withthe Bulgarian Army attacking from western Bulgaria,launched their offensive into Serbia. The attack was aided by Yugoslav partisansthat launched coordinated offensives against the Axis as well as conductingsabotage actions on German communications and logistical lines – the combinedforces captured Serbia, mostimportantly the capital Belgrade,which fell on October 20, 1944. Germanforces in the Balkans escaped via the more difficult routes through Bosnia and Croatia in October 1944. For the remainder of the war, Yugoslavpartisans liberated the rest of Yugoslavia;the culmination of their long offensive was their defeat of the pro-NaziUstase-led fascist government in Croatiain April-May 1945, and then their advance to neighboring Slovenia.
The succession of Red Armyvictories in Eastern Europe brought great alarm to the pro-Nazi government in Hungary, which was Germany’s last European Axispartner. Then when in late September1944, the Soviets crossed the borders from Romaniaand Serbia into Hungary, Miklos Horthy, the Hungarian regent andhead of state, announced in mid-October that his government had signed anarmistice with the Soviet Union. Hitler promptly forced Horthy, under threat,to revoke the armistice, and German troops quickly occupied the country.
The Soviet campaign in Hungary, which lasted six months, provedextremely brutal and difficult both for the Red Army and German-Hungarianforces, with fierce fighting taking place in western Hungary as the numerical weight ofthe Soviets forced back the Axis. InOctober 1944, a major tank battle was fought at Debrecen, where the panzers of German ArmyGroup Fretter-Pico (named after General Maximilian Fretter-Pico) beat backthree Soviet tank corps of 2nd Ukrainian Front. But in late October, a powerful Sovietoffensive thrust all the way to the outskirts of Budapest, the Hungarian capital, by November7, 1944.
Two Soviet pincer arms thenadvanced west in a flanking maneuver, encircling the city on December 23, 1944,and starting a 50-day siege. Fierceurban warfare then broke out at Pest, the flat eastern section of the city, andthen later across the Danube River at Buda, thewestern hilly section, where German-Hungarian forces soon retreated. In January 1945, three attempts by Germanarmored units to relieve the trapped garrison failed, and on February 13, 1945,Budapest fellto the Red Army. The Soviets thencontinued their advance across Hungary. In early March 1945, Hitler launchedOperation Spring Awakening, aimed at protecting the Lake Balaton oil fields insouthwestern Hungary, whichwas one of Germany’slast remaining sources of crude oil. Through intelligence gathering, the Soviets became aware of the plan,and foiled the offensive, and then counter-attacked, forcing the remainingGerman forces in Hungaryto withdraw across the Austrian border.
The Germans then hastened toconstruct defense lines in Austria,which officially was an integral part of Germany since the Anschluss of1938. In early April 1945, Soviet 3rdUkrainian Front crossed the border from Hungaryinto Austria, meeting onlylight opposition in its advance toward Vienna. Only undermanned German forces defended theAustrian capital, which fell on April 13, 1945. Although some fierce fighting occurred, Viennawas spared the widespread destruction suffered by Budapest through the efforts of the anti-NaziAustrian resistance movement, which assisted the Red Army’s entry into thecity. A provisional government for Austriawas set up comprising a coalition of conservatives, democrats, socialists, andcommunists, which gained the approval of Stalin, who earlier had planned toinstall a pro-Soviet government regime from exiled Austrian communists. The Red Army continued advancing across otherparts of Austria,with the Germans still holding large sections of regions in the west and south.By early May 1945, French, British, and American troops had crossed into Austria from the west, which together with theSoviets, would lead to the four-power Allied occupation (as in post-war Germany) of Austria after the war.
[1] Named after Russian General Pyotr Bagration, who fought againstNapoleon’s invasion of Russiain 1812. The operation on Belaruswas conceived during Allied talks in the Teheran Conference (November-December1943), by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister WinstonChurchill, and Stalin. The “Big Three”Allied Powers agreed to launch a coordinated simultaneous attack from west andeast of Germany, which wasrealized with Operation Overlord, the Anglo-American amphibious landings in Normandy, Franceon June 6, 1944, and Operation Bagration two weeks later.
