The 80th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy – D-Day, on 6 June 1944 – was commemorated earlier this month. It was an epic operation in men, machines, and planning.

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But the beginning of the great assault on Hitler’s ‘Fortress Europe’ was not just a military success, it had been one supported with subterfuge on a grand scale. To confuse German military intelligence, fake armies, radio communications and orders of battle were created to convince Hitler that the allies were planning to cross the English Channel to attack the Pas-de-Calais. Operation ‘Fortitude’ would deceive and force him to divert precious German units guarding Normandy prior to D-Day.

While all eyes were on the battle in France, another bigger assault on the Third Reich began, just over two weeks after D-Day. It was the offensive Joseph Stalin had promised to Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference in 1943; a spectacular assault on the eastern front that would destroy all hopes Hitler had of keeping the Red Army at bay in 1944.

The so-called Operation Bagration would see the Red Army race across eastern Europe. Within a matter of weeks, Soviet tanks were positioned outside the gates of Warsaw. Historically, it was a pivotal moment in the Second World War that all but guaranteed Nazi defeat in the ruins of Berlin ten months later.

The build up

Since Adolf Hitler’s gamble to launch the greatest land invasion in history on 22 June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), the fighting on the eastern front had been brutal – almost a war of extermination. Hitler’s grand plans of conquest had been stopped by the Russian winter and the limitless supply of fresh Soviet troops that would replace each titanic defeat the Germans enjoyed in the first year of the war. Though several million Red Army troops had been killed or captured – and millions more civilians killed or imprisoned under German occupation – by the summer of 1944, the tide had turned in Joseph Stalin’s favour.

The cataclysmic Axis surrender at Stalingrad in southern Russia in early 1943 had been followed almost five months later by a second defeat at the great tank battle of Kursk. The Soviet counter offensive after their victory at Kursk drove the German Wehrmacht back several hundred kilometres over the following months. All along the 1,500-mile eastern front, Germany and her allies had attempted to stabilise their positions: Army Group North had protected the path towards the Baltic states and eastern Prussia; Army Group Centre, the biggest formation numbering over several hundred thousand men, had been set up to guard Belarus against any threat into central Europe; but it was Army Group South that had suffered the biggest reverse, driven further back into Ukraine, and thus leaving a salient which the advancing Soviet assault occupied.

Strategically, the Wehrmacht expected the summer offensive would come from the south, where they were weakest and thus sent what spare divisions it could, including armour, to beef up its defences. Army Group Centre, commanded by Field Marshal Ernst Busch, defending a geographical 600-mile-long line above it, was thought to be secure behind extensive fortifications and in-depth minefields. The Soviet military command (Stavka), however, ignored such logic, and instead pinpointed this formation for attack and the destruction of the four German formations occupying it: the 3rd Panzer Army, the 2nd, 4th and 9th armies.

By the summer of 1944, the Red Army had perfected the art of strategic deception, or maskirovka. It had proved highly successful at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 (Operation Uranus) and was enhanced at the battle of Kursk in 1943. In both cases, the Soviets had hidden the build-up of fresh armies and armoured divisions, as well as vast lines of defences to trap advancing German columns. It had inflicted devastating losses on Hitler’s forces and tipped the balance in the east. Ahead of Operation Bagration, General Reinhard Gehlen, the head of German army intelligence in the east, had analysed what he thought was in front of Army Group Centre that summer and reassured them the main thrust of the Red Army would come from the south in Ukraine.

Just as the Germans had fallen for the allied ruse to attack the Pas-de-Calais to begin the landings in France, the Soviets duped Gehlen into believing further offensives would be conducted from Ukraine. The salient the Soviets occupied was instead a perfect launch pad, and the topography of the flat terrain enabled mobile armies to move at speed. The Red Army was also, by now, virtually motorised, thanks to American Lend Lease supplies of trucks, jeeps, and tanks. It was the Germans who resembled the horse-drawn columns of the First World War – although what they lacked in vehicles and tanks, they made up for with professionalism. The Red Army was still ostensibly a militia force, with the bulk of their troops learning the art of war on the job (hence the continuing heavy losses). Across the whole of the conflict, the Red Army would be rebuilt five times over.

General Gehlen held the view that any major offensive would come from the south, with the weight of German armour and aircraft allocated to this sector. Hitler had dismissed Field Marshal Busch’s requests for his units to withdraw back to the Dnieper River, to shorten their lines, deny the Soviets the salient in the south, and offer more strength in depth. Hitler’s confidence to remain lay in Army Group Centre’s formidable layers of defences it had constructed and the rigidity of his tactics in not giving up any ground to the enemy. He pointed to its southern flank right, protected he believed, by the swampy wooded Pripyat Marshes, where mobile warfare would be difficult. Any threat towards Army Group Centre was therefore judged to be a feint to mask the real campaign from the direction of Ukraine.

Preparation and deception

To reinforce German opinion, every effort was made by Soviet forces to make it appear as if the southern front was indeed the main point of attack. In Belarus, Red Army units could be seen by German observers digging trenches and constructing fortifications along their front. The Stavka had imposed complete radio silence with Soviet radio stations close to the frontline shut down. As the allies had done with Operation Fortitude, in the Baltic to the north, and in southern Russia, the Red Army built entire dummy armies of fake tanks and artillery parks. Despite Soviet air superiority German air reconnaissance managed to gain entry to their aerospace and photograph the fake forces. It was part of the plan, as Soviet anti-aircraft units fired live rounds to convince the German pilots what they could detect was real. It worked. Hitler ordered fresh armour and infantry formations north and south to shore up potential threatened positions, further weakening Army Group Centre’s resources. Over one hundred thousand troops, one third of its artillery and more than three quarters of its armour was now moved to the south. Of the 4,740 tanks and assault guns situated along the eastern front, only 533 were left with Army Group Centre, approximately eleven percent of the total. It would be a fateful decision.

Deception was one success; internal security was another. From the top-down, information as to the summer offensive was watertight. Stalin intrusted just four commanders with the plans in full: Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the chief of staff Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, his deputy General Alexei Antonov, and the chief of operations General Konstantin Rokossovsky. Each was forbidden to discuss the coming operation by telegram, telephone, or simple correspondence. Stalin stipulated no date be confirmed for the offensive with senior staff invited in small groups to headquarters for briefings; all were on a need-to-know basis for their respective areas. Very few knew the bigger goal – to annihilate Army Group Centre as quickly as possible, break the eastern front wide open and pour into central Europe.

Under cover of darkness, and in great secrecy, hundreds of thousands of men, million tonnes of supplies and three-hundred-thousand tonnes of oil were moved into place

Four army groups were designated for the operation: 1st, 2nd and 3rd Byelorussian Fronts and the 1st Baltic Front (their strength equivalent to a western army group). As they had perfected at Stalingrad and then Kursk, under cover of darkness, and in great secrecy, hundreds of thousands of men, a million tonnes of supplies and three-hundred-thousand tonnes of oil were moved into place. The vast lines of railway wagons taking men and machinery to their assembly areas, were taken by drivers who had no idea what their destination was. Any passengers who had ideas to get out of their carriages when the trains had periodical stops were quickly placed under arrest by Red Army military police guarding every station.

To the south of Army Group Centre were the vast swamps of the Pripyat Marshes. The German intelligence had concluded these marshes were impenetrable to vehicles, but Soviet engineers set about constructing platforms and wooden causeways for their armour to navigate onto dry land. The sudden appearance of T-34 tanks out of this watery wilderness, like German panzers sweeping out of the Ardennes Forest in 1940, would be a critical feature of the battle to come in terms of breaking the enemy’s morale and willingness to fight.

The battle begins

By early June the offensive had been codenamed ‘Bagration’, in honour of the Georgian General Pyotr Bagration. He had died a hero defending Moscow against Napoleon at the battle of Borodino in 1812. The eventual start date, just over two weeks after the allied landings on the Normandy coastline, was laced with historical symbolism. It would be three years to the day that Hitler had first launched his surprise attack against the people of the Soviet Union to start the war. Many millions of men, women, the elderly, and children had died up until this point. Thousands of their cities, towns and villages had been reduced to rubble, their centres of culture reduced to ashes, and their way of life wiped away.

Operation Bagration would repay all that had gone before

Operation Bagration would repay all that had gone before. Army Group Centre – comprising of 849,000 men in 38 divisions (of which only 482,000 were combat formations) – were about to be struck by a juggernaut of steel. Four army groups: two led by Zhukov and two by Vassilevsky, whose combined strength broke down to 118 rifle divisions, eight tank and mechanised corps, six Cossack cavalry divisions, 13 artillery divisions, and 14 air defence divisions.

Their 1.7 million men under arms was roughly double that of Army Group Centre. Crucially, Soviet armour and artillery would overwhelm German defnces. The combined strength of Soviet armoured units contained 2,715 tanks and 1,355 assault guns, giving them a ratio advantage of six to one. Soviet tank crews had the added firepower of the longer ranged T-34/85 as well as taking delivery of Lend Lease M4 Sherman tanks. The Soviets had built up their artillery parks, which now fielded 10,563 pieces, 2,306 rocket launchers, and 4,230 anti-tank guns. Overwhelming Soviet air forces would clear the skies above the battlefield, with their squadrons enjoying a seven to one numerical advantage over the Luftwaffe.

On the eve of the offensive, Red Army sapper units, including T-34 tanks with anti-mine clearing attachments, sweeped away lanes within the layers of German minefields, allowing shock troops to infiltrate and eliminate enemy lookouts in their forward observation posts. Meanwhile, and mirroring the French resistance in Normandy, Soviet partisans destroyed the German rail network behind their lines while, from the air, waves of Soviet bombers appeared along the front to decimate enemy bases, communication centres, and supply dumps. Then the Soviet artillery and regiments of Katyusha rockets opened all along the frontline, tearing great holes in the German defences. The survivors, that were determined to defend their positions, soon heard the familiar clanking of Russian tank tracks as a tidal wave of armour now struck.

All Soviet forces were under the directive to maintain momentum of the advance. Using the German tactics of strike and mobility against them, Red Army columns would engage, whilst others sped round the flanks of German pockets of resistance, to envelope and destroy. They would employ for the first time a new tactic known as the ‘rolling double-barrage.’ Where German forward and rear defensive positions would be simultaneously suppressed by artillery and air strikes to suppress what anti-tank defences remained intact. A more daunting tactic now employed for the first time by Soviet mechanised units was deep penetration into the enemy’s rearmost positions. Bagration would not be a classic frontal offensive whose momentum would be blunted by German counterattacks. This time, they would not let the enemy pause for breath. They would simply overrun and outgun him.

From retreat to rout

To add to the confusion of many desperate German frontline commanders contending with the sudden breakthroughs all along their lines, to the south, emerging from the Pripyat Marshes was Marshal Rokossovsky’s first Belorussian Front. What was once a retreat soon turned into a rout.

Such was the destruction of rear echelon units and communications centres that German units now fought for their survival rather than in a coordinated front. Troops trains carrying the wounded to the west were overtaken and destroyed by Soviet tank formations. Soviet ground-attack aircraft roamed at will over the disintegrating front to pick off fleeing enemy units or those trying to make a stand. Field Marshal Busch’s attempts to persuade Hitler to allow a coordinated retreat ended in his sacking on the 28 June to be replaced by Field Marshal Model. A commander willing to not only obey the Fuhrer, but even outshine him in the failed doctrine of fight to the last bullet.

Like the orders he had given to the doomed Sixth Army at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942, Hitler issued directives that the four principal cities in the path of the Soviet advance should be held as special fortified pockets, or ‘Fester Platz’. All would be encircled and captured as tens of thousands of Germans were decimated, and the survivors marched into captivity. By 3 July, the city of Minsk fell along with what remained of the German Fourth Army. Despite his repeated requests, Field Marshal Model lacked sufficient reinforcements to remedy the situation. The problem worsened on 13 July, when the Soviet Southern Front unleashed its own campaign towards Lvov, the gateway to central Europe. The offensive’s objectives were now all but won. Some 300,000 German soldiers were killed or captured. The battered remnants of Army Group Centre now fought a hap-hazard retreat westwards in the hope of establishing a new defensive line along the River Vistula in Poland.

The Red Army had pushed relentlessly westwards 500 kilometres (300 miles) in just six weeks since Bagration had started. The allies slogging their way through the bocage of Normandy against far lesser German forces paled in comparison, according to Soviet propagandists who made sure they knew of it. On 17 July, Stalin’s press corps recorded the incredible sight of 19 captured German generals leading the 57,000 men who had been taken in Minsk, through the streets of Moscow. They were marching solemnly into captivity, but not before the thousands of Muscovites lining the streets had baited and mocked them. The spectacle completed by the perfect metaphor of dozens of trucks following in the column’s wake to spray the street with disinfectant. Next stop: Berlin...

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Iain MacGregor is a publisher and author of history, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has specialised in World War Two and the war on the Eastern Front for many years. His latest book is The Lighthouse of Stalingrad (Constable).

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