The Rout of the German-Fascist Troops in Belorussia in 1944 covers the Red Army's Belorussian strategic operation: the linchpin of the 10 major Soviet offensive efforts launched that year to clear the country of the invader. During the course of this operation, the German position along the western strategic direction was destroyed and the stage was set for an advance into Poland and Germany. The success of this operation also set the stage for the Red Army's subsequent advance into the Baltic and South-Eastern Europe. Like most works generated by the General Staff, the Belorussian study divides the operation into two parts: preparation and conduct. The first deals with the massive efforts by the First Baltic and the First, Second and Third Belorussian Fronts to accumulate the men and materiel to break through the German defenses in the swampy and forested terrain of Belorussia. This section contains valuable information on the overall correlation of forces, equipment and troops' densities along the breakthrough sectors and Soviet plans for supplying the offensive, as well as detailed information regarding the employment of the various combat arms. The second part deals with the actual conduct of the several front operations that comprised the overall effort. This section covers the initial breakthrough battles and the encirclement of the Vitebsk and Bobruisk garrisons, followed by the capture of Minsk and the encirclement of sizeable German forces east of the city. The narrative then continues with the follow-on operations to cut off German forces in the Baltic States and to seize crossings over the Vistula River in Eastern Poland. Compiled and written by professional staff officers, this study provides a detailed look at the conduct of one of the major operations of the Second World War. This latest work, along with other studies in this series, offers another insight into the Red Army's conduct of the war at the operational-strategic level.

This illustrated WII history provides a vivid account of the Red Army’s devastating offensive against the invading German army. In the summer of 1944, the Soviet Army launched Operation Bagration. This massive offensive led to the destruction of the German Army Group Center and was the greatest military defeat ever experienced by the German Army during World War Two. With rare and previously unpublished photographs, this book provides an absorbing insight into one of the most pivotal episodes on the Eastern Front. With detailed captions and text together with twenty artist profiles and maps, the book shows how German Army Group Center tried to counter the overwhelming assault before it was forced to retreat. But the Russian offensive was so quick that many German units were encircled and destroyed. In a cataclysm bigger than Stalingrad, the Germans lost more than 300,000 men. Though Operation Bagration was even more devastating to the Germans than the D-Day campaign in Normandy, comparatively little is written about it. This book reveals the lesser-known battle in the East and shows how the German forces fought and lost against overwhelming odds.

On June 22, 1944, three years to the day after the beginning of the German invasion of Russia, the Red Army launched a massive offensive in Byelorussia. Code named Operation Bagration, it proved to be one of the most destructive battles of the Second World War.

Two weeks after the Americans, British, and Canadians invaded Western Europe on D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Soviet Union launched Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front, its massive attempt to clear German forces from Belarus. In one of the largest military campaigns of all time, involving 2 million Soviets and 800,000 Germans, the Red Army advanced 170 miles in two weeks and destroyed German Army Group Center. Using recently declassified Soviet documents as well as German and Soviet unit histories, Dunn recounts this landmark operation of World War II.

In the summer of 1944 the Red Army crushed Army Group Centre in one of the largest offensives in military history. Operation Bagration - launched almost exactly three years after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union - was Stalin's retribution for Hitler's Operation Barbarossa. Earlier battles at Stalingrad and Kursk paved the way for Soviet victory, but as Anthony Tucker-Jones demonstrates in this fascinating study, Bagration ensured that the Germans would never regain the strategic initiative. In one fell swoop the Wehrmacht lost a quarter of its strength on the Eastern Front. And in a series of overwhelming assaults, the Red Army recaptured practically all the territory the Soviet Union had lost in 1941, advanced into East Prussia and reached the outskirts of Warsaw. As he reconstructs this massive and complex battle, Anthony Tucker-Jones assesses the opposing forces and their commanders and gives a vivid insight into the planning and decision-making at the highest level. He recreates the experience of the soldiers on the battlefield by using graphic contemporary accounts, and he sets the Bagration offensive in the wider context of the Soviet war effort. He also asks why Stalin's road to retribution proved to be such a long and bloody one - for the Germans, despite their crippling losses, managed to resist for another ten months.

A new study of tank warfare used in the Soviet offensive of Operation Bagration, which destroyed Army Group Center. Operation Bagration, the 1944 summer campaign on the Russian Front, has been called “Hitler's Greatest Defeat.” The operation involved substantial tank and armored vehicles on both sides but the German forces were severely hampered by the transfer of dozens of Panzer divisions to France to repel an expected Allied invasion. Forced to make hard decisions, German tank forces in the central Belarus sector were weak compared to the heavy concentration of Panzers in northern Ukraine. The Red Army exploited this vulnerability, crushing Army Group Center, and pushing beyond the Soviet frontier into Poland and East Prussia. With this crucial victory secured, the Red Army conducted successive offensives beyond the Carpathian Mountains, arriving at the Vistula river in Poland, and forcing Romania to switch sides. The Red Army had embarked on a major tank modernization after the Kursk battles of 1943 and as a result, Operation Bagration saw the first widespread use of T-34-85 and IS-2 tanks as well as self-propelled guns. Germany's Panther tank finally reached technical maturity in the summer of 1944 but small numbers weakened its battlefield impact, while other innovations such as the Tiger II heavy tank failed to leave their mark. Using new photos and a fascinating selection of color illustrations explaining the camouflage and markings of these tanks, this book describes how the tanks and AFVs on both sides contributed to the eventual defeat of Army Group Center.