Operation Bagration

Operation Bagration
Part of the Eastern Front of World War II
Deployments during Operation Bagration
Date 22 June – 19 August 1944 (1 month and 4 weeks) Location Soviet Union (present-day Belarus, Baltic states, and Ukraine), and Eastern Poland Result Soviet victory Territorial changes Red Army retakes all of Byelorussian SSR, most of the Lithuanian SSR and gains foothold in Eastern Poland.
Belligerents
Germany Hungary Romania	Soviet Union Poland Air support: France
Commanders and leaders
Ernst Busch  Walter Model  Hans Jordan  Georg-Hans Reinhardt  Kurt von Tippelskirch  Walter Weiß  Vincenz Müller (POW)	Konstantin Rokossovsky  Georgy Zhukov  Aleksandr Vasilevsky  Ivan Bagramyan  Georgiy Zakharov  Ivan Chernyakhovsky
Units involved
Army Group Center 9th Army 3rd Panzer Army 4th Army 2nd Army	1st Baltic Front 1st Belorussian Front 2nd Belorussian Front 3rd Belorussian Front 1st Polish Army Fighter Squadron 2/30 Normandie-Niemen
Strength
Initially: 486,493 combat personnel ~849,000 total 118 tanks 452 assault guns 3,236 field guns and howitzers 920 aircraft In total (Soviet sources): 1,036,760 personnel ~800 tanks 530 assault guns 7,760 field guns 2,320 anti-aircraft guns ~1,000–1,300 aircraft	Initially: 1,670,300 personnel 3,841 tanks and 1,977 assault guns 32,718 guns, rocket launchers and mortars 7,799 aircraft In total (Frieser): ~2,500,000 personnel ~6,000 tanks and assault guns ~45,000 guns, rocket launchers and mortars ~8,000 aircraft
Casualties and losses
Zaloga: 300,000–375,000 killed, missing or captured ~150,000–225,000 killed or missing ~150,000 captured Frieser: 399,102 26,397 killed 109,776 wounded 262,929 missing and captured Glantz and House: ~450,000 combat casualties Isayev: ~500,000 combat casualties Soviet sources: 539,480 killed, missing or captured ~381,000 killed 158,480 captured	Glantz and House: 770,888 (including ≈550,000 combat casualties) ~180,000 killed or missing ~340,000–590,848 wounded or sick 2,957 tanks and assault guns 2,447 guns 822 aircraft

Operation Bagration (Russian: Операция Багратион, romanized: Operatsiya Bagration) was an operation by the Red Army of the Soviet Union against the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany that happened on the Eastern Front of the European theatre of World War II and took place from June - August 1944. The operation was targeted at German army group center stationed in german occupied Soviet Byelorussia. Two weeks earlier Operation Overlord was started by the Western Allies restarting the Western Front and now germany and the other european axis powers had to fight on three fronts. the eastern front, the Italian Front, and the western front. It is to be considered to be one of the greatest military defeats in german history with 450,000 casualties.

Citations

Bibliography

• Adair, Paul (2004) [1994]. Hitler's Greatest Defeat: The collapse of Army Group Centre, June 1944. Weidenfeld Military. ISBN 1854092324.
• Citino, Robert (2017). The Wehrmacht's Last Stand: The German Campaigns of 1944–1945. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0700624942.
• Connor, William M. (1987). "Analysis of Deep Attack Operations: Operation Bagration, Belorussia, 22 June – 29 August 1944" (PDF). Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 November 2010. Retrieved 9 May 2017.
• Dunn, Walter S. (2000). Soviet Blitzkrieg: The Battle for White Russia, 1944. Lynne Riener. ISBN 978-1555878801.
• Erickson, John (1989) [1983]. The Road to Berlin, Stalin's War with Germany, Volume 2. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07813-7.
• Frieser, Karl-Heinz; Schmider, Klaus; Schönherr, Klaus; Schreiber, Gerhard; Ungváry, Kristián; Wegner, Bernd (2007). Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg: Die Ostfront 1943/44 – Der Krieg im Osten und an den Nebenfronten [Germany and the Second World War: The Eastern Front 1943/44 - The War in the East and on the Neighbouring Fronts] (in German). Vol. VIII. München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. ISBN 978-3421062352.
• Glantz, David M. (1989). Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War. London: Frank Cass. ISBN 071463347X.
• Glantz, David M. (2002). The Battle for L'vov, July 1944. Routledge Press. ISBN 978-0714652016.
• Glantz, David M.; House, Jonathan (1995). When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0700608990.
• Glantz, David; Orenstein, Harold S. (2004). Belorussia 1944. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-30920-9.
• Krivosheev, G. F. (1997). Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century. London: Greenhill Books. ISBN 1853672807.
• Liedtke, Gregory (2015), "Lost in the Mud: The (Nearly) Forgotten Collapse of the German Army in the Western Ukraine, March and April 1944.", The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 28: 215–238, doi:10.1080/13518046.2015.998134

• Niepold, Gerd (1987). Battle for White Russia: The Destruction of Army Group Centre June 1944. Translated by Simpkin, R. London: Brassey's. ISBN 008033606X.
• Watt, Robert N. (December 2008). "Feeling the Full Force of a Four Front Offensive: Re-Interpreting the Red Army's 1944 Belorussian and L'vov-Peremshyl' Operations". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 21 (4). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group: 669–705. doi:10.1080/13518040802497564. S2CID 143413006.
• Willmott, H. P. (1984). June, 1944. Blandford Press. ISBN 0713714468.
• Zaloga, S. (1996). Bagration 1944: The Destruction of Army Group Centre. Osprey. ISBN 978-1855324787.
• Ziemke, Earl F. (1969). Battle For Berlin: End of the Third Reich. London: Macdonald.
• Zimmerman, Joshua D. (2015). The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945. London & New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1108432740.

Further reading

• Beevor, Antony; Vinogradova, Luba, eds. (2006). A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army. Pimlico Books. ISBN 978-1845950156.
• Bruoygard, Terje (2013). Operation Art in Theory and War: A Comparison of Soviet Theory and the Red Army's Conduct in Operation Bagration 1944 (PDF) (Master's thesis). Quantico, VA: USMC Command and Staff College. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 December 2023. Retrieved 29 January 2017.
• Mazower, Mark (2008). Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0713996814.
• Merridale, Catherine (2006). Ivan's war: the Red Army 1939 - 1945 (Paperback ed.). London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-21809-7.
• Zetterling, Niklas; Frankson, Anders (March 1998). "Analyzing World War II eastern front battles 1". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 11 (1). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group: 176–203. doi:10.1080/13518049808430334. ISSN 1351-8046.

Other websites

• Operation Bagration: Soviet Offensive of 1944
• Operation Bagration (video) Archived 19 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine: lecture by the military historian Robert Citino at the 2014 International Conference on World War II, via the official Livestream channel of The National WWII Museum.