For three long years from 1941 to 1944, the Belarusian land suffered the atrocities of the invaders. The Nazis ravaged Belarusian cities, burned down more than a million houses in villages and villages, and turned 7,000 schools into ruins. The enemy destroyed more than 2 million prisoners of war and civilians: concentration camps, prisons, ghettos operated in almost every district of Belarus.
There was no family that did not suffer at the hands of the Nazis, because they chose the policy of genocide and mass terror as the main means of imposing the "new order." However, the fascists failed to break the will of the people and their willingness to defend their homeland. "Belarusian balcony" After the defeat of the German troops on the Kursk Bulge, the main focus of the fighting on the Soviet-German front shifted southward, to the territory of Ukraine and the Black Sea region. It was there that the main military battles of late 1943 and early 1944 took place. By the spring of 1944, the entire left-bank and most of right-bank Ukraine had been liberated. In January 1944, the Red Army delivered a powerful blow in the north-western direction. It is known as the "first Stalinist strike", as a result of which Leningrad was unblocked. However, the situation in the central sector of the front was not so good. German troops still firmly held the Vitebsk-Orsha-Mogilev-Zhlobin line. Thus, a huge salient, with an area of about 250 thousand km2, was formed on the Soviet-German front, aimed at the central regions of the USSR. This section of the front was named the "Belarusian ledge" or "Belarusian balcony". Disinformation and the underground The German headquarters believed that the Red Army troops would try to build on the spring success achieved in southern Ukraine and strike either at the Romanian oil fields or from south to north, trying to cut off army groups Center and North. It was in these areas that the main attention of the top military leadership of the Wehrmacht was focused. Thus, the German command made erroneous assumptions about the direction of the Soviet offensive during the summer-autumn 1944 campaign. Disinformation played a huge role in this conviction of the German command. The primary task for the front commanders was also to ensure the secrecy of the preparation of the future offensive. For this purpose, the construction of defensive structures, the construction of fortified areas, and the preparation of cities for all-round defense began in the areas of the future offensive. Front-line, army and divisional newspapers published materials only on defensive topics, which created the illusion that troops in this area were preparing only for defense, but not for an offensive. At the stops, the troop trains were immediately cordoned off by patrols. Railway employees were not informed about these trains, except for the numbers. Therefore, for German intelligence, exactly the picture that the Wehrmacht's military leadership wanted to see emerged: the Red Army in the area of the Belorussian Balcony was not going to take active offensive actions and was preparing an offensive on the flanks of the Soviet-German front, where the greatest results had been achieved during the spring military campaign. To ensure even greater secrecy, only a few people knew the full plan of the operation, and all orders and orders were delivered only in written or oral form, without the use of telephone and radio communications. At the same time, the buildup of strike groups on all four fronts took place only at night and in small groups; tank armies were left in the south-western direction for additional disinformation. The enemy's intelligence was vigilantly monitoring everything that was happening in the Soviet troops, and this fact further convinced the Nazi command that the offensive was being prepared here. The measures to disinform the German leadership were so successful that the commander of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Ernst Busch, went on vacation 3 days before the start of the operation.
The guerrilla movement also played a huge role in the operation. By the summer of 1944, approximately 140,000 partisans were operating on the territory of Belarus. The general leadership of the partisans was carried out by underground organizations of the Communist Party of the BSSR headed by Panteleimon Kondratievich Ponomarenko, who was also the head of the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement of the USSR. Looking ahead, it is worth saying that the partisan detachments, interacting with regular units of the Red Army, destroyed over 15,000 and captured more than 17,000 enemy soldiers and officers. Many partisans and underground fighters were awarded orders and medals, and 87 particularly distinguished became Heroes of the Soviet Union. Operation Bagration On the morning of June 23, 1944, the operation to defeat the Nazi troops in Belarus, called "Bagration", began. The troops of the 1st Baltic (Commander General of the Army Ivan Baghramyan), the 3rd (Commander Colonel General Ivan Chernyakhovsky), the 2nd (Commander Colonel General Georgy Zakharov) and the 1st Belorussian fronts (Commander General of the Army Konstantin Rokossovsky), Long-range aviation, the Dnieper military the flotilla, as well as the Belarusian partisans. The plan of the operation was to use deep strikes from 4 fronts to break through the enemy's defenses in six directions, encircle and destroy enemy groups on the flanks of the Belorussian salient in the Vitebsk and Bobruisk areas, and then, advancing in converging directions towards Minsk, encircle and eliminate the main forces of Army Group Center. In the future, increasing the impact force, it was planned to reach the Kaunas–Bialystok–Lublin line. However, the Germans, using the terrain advantageous for defense, created a large-scale system of fortifications with a total depth of up to 250 km. The cities of Vitebsk, Orsha, Mogilev, Bobruisk, Borisov, Minsk were turned into powerful fortresses.
It is important to note that the powerful operations of the Red Army in the summer of 1944 were timed to coincide with the start of the amphibious operation of the Western Allies in Normandy. The strikes of the Red Army were supposed, among other things, to pull back the German forces and prevent them from being transferred from east to west. In the 1.5 months preceding the operation, the number of Soviet troops in Belarus increased by more than 4 times in tanks, almost 2 times in artillery, and by two thirds in aircraft. By the beginning of hostilities, the Red Army consisted of 1.2 million people, 34 thousand guns and mortars, 4 thousand tanks and self-propelled artillery installations, and about 5 thousand combat aircraft. Army Group Center had 800,000 men, 7,600 guns and mortars, 900 tanks and assault guns, and more than 1,300 combat aircraft. Thus, the Soviet troops outnumbered the German group in manpower by 1.5 times, in guns and mortars by 4.4, in tanks and self–propelled artillery installations by 4.5 and in aircraft by 3.6 times.
According to the nature of the fighting and the content of the tasks, Operation Bagration was divided into two stages. During the first, from June 23 to July 4, 1944, 5 front–line operations were conducted: Vitebsk-Orsha, Mogilev, Bobruisk, Polotsk and Minsk. From July 5 to August 29, 1944, the second stage lasted, which included 5 more front-line operations: Siauliai, Vilnius, Kaunas, Bialystok and Lublin-Brest. The coordination of the actions of the troops of the fronts was entrusted to the representatives of the Headquarters – Chief of the General Staff, Marshal of the Soviet Union Alexander Vasilevsky and Deputy Supreme Commander, Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov. Liberation of Belarus On June 20, the third stage of the "rail war" began by the forces of the partisan detachments, which preceded the beginning of the offensive in Belarus. The partisans were tasked with disrupting the work of the enemy's rear, disrupting the supply of reserves, capturing important enemy defense lines, river crossings and holding them until the approach of the advancing Soviet troops. On June 23, the offensive of the 1st Baltic, 3rd and 2nd Belorussian fronts began. A day later, the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front went on the offensive.
During the 12 days of intense fighting in the first stage of the operation, the main forces of Army Group Center were defeated; the troops, having advanced by 225, and in some places by 280 km, liberated most of Belarus. A total of about 30 German divisions were surrounded and defeated in the Vitebsk, Bobruisk and Minsk regions. On July 3, tank units of the 1st and 3rd Belorussian fronts liberated Minsk, the capital of the BSSR. The achieved results created the conditions for a subsequent offensive in the Shauliai, Vilnius and Grodno directions. On July 28, the complete liberation of the BSSR ended with the expulsion of the fascists from Brest.
By the end of August 1944, the Red Army troops had advanced 550-600 km to the west, expanding the front of military operations to 1,100 km. A significant part of eastern Poland was cleared of the German invaders. Soviet troops reached the Vistula River, the approaches to Warsaw and the border with East Prussia.
During the operation, Army Group Center suffered a crushing defeat. German troops lost 289,000 people killed and captured, as well as 110,000 wounded. Almost all enemy equipment was destroyed or captured as trophies. But the implementation of Operation Bagration came at a high price. During the offensive, the troops of the four fronts lost 179,000 people killed and 587,000 wounded, as well as about 3,000 tanks, 2,500 pieces of artillery, and 822 aircraft.
Operation Bagration was the first major offensive operation of the Red Army, conducted during the period when the Allies began active hostilities in Western Europe, but 70% of the ground forces of the Wehrmacht continued to fight on the Soviet-German front. The disaster in Belarus forced the German command to transfer large strategic reserves from the west here, which, of course, created favorable conditions for the actions of the Allies after their landing in Normandy.
In the battle for Belarus, Soviet soldiers showed massive heroism and high combat skills. 1,500 participants of Operation Bagration became Heroes of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands were awarded orders and medals of the USSR. Dozens of military units of the Red Army received honorary names "Minsk", "Vitebsk", "Mogilev", "Orsha", "Rogachev", etc.
The Belarusian offensive operation Bagration became one of the most outstanding offensive operations not only of the Great Patriotic War, but also of the entire Second World War. Its distinctive feature is its huge spatial scope and impressive operational and strategic results. The success of the operation was ensured by the careful development of an offensive plan by the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, as well as secrecy measures during its preparation, thanks to which Operation Bagration became a complete surprise to the enemy. Of course, the offensive also owes its success to the high courage of Soviet soldiers and the active participation of Belarusian partisans and underground fighters, who were able to sow confusion on enemy communications and capture a number of strategically important bridgeheads for the advancing army.
In memory of the heroism of Soviet soldiers and officers during the offensive operation to liberate Belarus, the "Mound of Glory" was erected in 1969. More recently, in June 2014, the Operation Bagration memorial was also opened. Both memorials were erected in the places where the operation began on June 23, 1944.
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