«OPERATION BAGRATION», Summer 1944HAVING LIBERATED BELORUSSIA, THE RED ARMY NEARED THE FRONTIERS OF HITLER’S REICH OF THE WAR
History and Modernity
Great Patriotic War
Konstantin Rokossovsky, Marshal of the Soviet Union: “In terms of its depth, Operation Bagration has no analogue. On the right flank of the First Belorussian Front, the Soviet troops advanced by over 600 kilometers. This cost a lot of effort and blood...”
In the summer of 1944, the Red Army conducted 10 large-scale offensive operations, which later were named “Stalin’s ten blows”. The most significant of them was the operation to liberate Belarus and the Baltic states, entitled Bagration in honor of Pyotr Bagration, a Russian commander of Georgian origin, a glorified hero of the 1812 war against Napoleon.
During that large-scale offensive, the German Army Group Center was almost fully routed.
A total of 1,200,000 people (without account for logistic units) took part in the operation from the Soviet side. Germany used some 900,000 people as part of the Army Group Center.
The Red Army activities were supported by the long-awaited landing of Western allied troops in Normandy June 6, 1944. Developing an offensive, the coalition forces defeated Hitler’s forces in France.