The military turning point of the Second World War was long before the summer of 1944. The last and particularly costly phase of the war began in it. After the defeat in Stalingrad at the latest, a German defeat was inevitable. Germany’s best strategist Erich von Manstein defeated the Soviets again in the winter of 1943 in the Battle of Kharkov, but when the German offensive in the Kursk Arc failed in the spring of 1943, it was finally clear that Berlin could only delay the inevitable.
The Germans’ greatest military defeat
On June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy. The only hope of the German military was to drive these troops into the sea immediately after landing. That did not succeed, in France a two-month-long attrition battle began, which the Germans could only lose.
The “D-Day” is well known, the operation “Bagration”, which starts on June 23, 1944, is hardly known. But it brought the Germans the greatest military defeat of all time. Half a million German soldiers died and the entire Central Army Group practically ceased to exist. It was not by chance that the red storm began almost on the same day as the German attack on the USSR. The historian Karl-Heinz Friese told the “Welt”: “That was on purpose. The Red Army had the peculiarity of orienting itself on memorial days when scheduling operations.” The operation was named after Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration. He commanded the left wing in the Battle of Borodino when the Russians tried to stop Napoleon outside Moscow. Bagration fell in battle. He was popular with his soldiers. They called him “Bogration” – the god of the army.
The massive ground offensive in the summer of 1944 was intended as a revenge for the devastating offensives of the Germans in 1941, and at the end its result exceeded the high expectations of the Soviet high command.
In terms of numbers, the Red Army outnumbered the Germans. For the first onslaught, the Stawka, the Soviet high command, provided 14 armies and a tank army. Altogether about 1.6 million men. Nominally, the superiority of the Soviets did not look so oppressive, the Germans had about 850,000 men on paper. And an at least partially well-developed defense system. But many German associations were below their nominal strength, the real balance of power was far more oppressive than on paper.
Blitzkrieg like the Soviets
In addition, the Red Army was better positioned in the central moments of the Blitzkrieg concept in 1944. The Germans believed that they invented the concept of Blitzkrieg on their own. But in the USSR, Vladimir Triandafillov and Mikhail Tukhachevsky developed the concept of “deep surgery” in the 1920s and 1930s. Their strategy was to have large military formations attack in different locations and in waves. In the face of chaos, the enemy had no way of knowing where the decisive attacks would take place. Specially assembled armored “shock armies” should then force the decisive breakthroughs.
In the summer of 1944, Soviet troops were far more mobile than the German infantry divisions and they were massively supported by their own aircraft. The German air force had also lost the battle for air superiority in the east. The Wehrmacht was now waging the “poor man’s war”, as the historian Karl-Heinz Frieser put it. The 3rd Panzer Army no longer had a single battle tank, but instead had 60,000 horses.
So the Soviets had the initiative and could focus their attacks almost at will. At these decisive breakthroughs, the German forces were actually vastly inferior. In addition, the German enemy reconnaissance took a different direction of the Soviet offensive and ignored all indications of the real intentions of the Stawka.
Breakthroughs in many places on the front
The Soviets broke through the German front in six places. The major offensive forecast by the Germans with the goal of Berlin did not take place; instead, a large number of attacks took place along the front. In addition, 150,000 partisans were operating in the German hinterland, paralyzing the railway network with 10,000 explosions two days before the attack. It was the greatest sabotage of the war. The partisans destroyed “more than a thousand traffic junctions,” wrote military historian David Glantz. The loss of the railway system made “the German withdrawal, resupply and lateral troop movements impossible”. At the height of the offensive, more than four million soldiers, 62,000 guns, 7,500 tanks and over 7,100 aircraft took part in the fighting. The strongest forces in Army Group Center were encircled in Minsk and destroyed. It was difficult for the German high command to withdraw troops from the west, so reinforcements would have to be taken from other parts of the Eastern Front. The result was further breakthroughs by the Soviets.
The chaos was indescribable. The exertions of the marches and the lack of supplies meant that young recruits broke down near Tarnopol and simply died of exhaustion. The Wehrmacht soldier Heinz Fiedler from the 134th Infantry Division reported in a TV documentary: “So we were locked in and those who were in front screamed ‘Pak and Flak forward!’ and the one from behind: ‘We have run out of fuel. We have run out of ammunition.’ And so it went on and on. It was all shit. ”
The Soviet journalist Wassili Semjonowitsch Grossman recalled: “The men run over the corpses of German soldiers. Corpses, hundreds and thousands cover the street, lie in trenches, under the pine trees, on the still green fields of grain. In some places vehicles have to pass over the bodies drive because they are so close to the ground. ”
“Fixed places” were supposed to hold the Soviets back
In France, after the Allies broke out of the Normandy bridgehead, the Germans achieved a feat: They were able to save a large part of their troops by withdrawing faster than the Allies could advance. That didn’t work in the east. The great distances in the east and the high speed of advance of the Russian armored troops prevented an orderly retreat. In addition, there were attempts by Hitler to prevent a retreat with orders to hold out. Hitler had the fixed idea to defend selected places as a fortress. The garrisons of these “permanent places” should defend them until “their last breath” and thus take their momentum as “breakwaters” of the red tide. The soldiers had to be surrounded voluntarily and should be cut out in the coming counter-offensive. Nothing worked with this concept. The places chosen were by no means developed in a fortress-like manner, nor was it possible to gather sufficient troops for their defense – the planned counter-offensive never came about. The biggest problem: the breakwaters could not significantly inhibit the advance of the Red Army. The Stawka deployed several waves of attack formations in 1944, just as the doctrine of “deep operation” envisaged. So she could enclose the permanent places and at the same time continue the advance with fresh troops.
The drama in Warsaw
In the middle of the offensive, a drama loomed in Warsaw. On July 27th, the 2nd Panzer Army was to advance with 800 tanks and take the Warsaw district of Praga. Shortly thereafter, advance detachments of the Red Army crossed the Vistula. They formed a bridgehead north of Warsaw. But the German field marshal Walter Model proved to be a master of defense. His paratroopers stopped the Soviets in Praga. The counterattack by his troops cost the 2nd Panzer Army 550 of their tanks. On August 4th the 2nd Panzer Army was practically wiped out and the assault on Warsaw failed.
But when the Soviet tanks reached Praga on August 1st, the Polish government in exile gave the signal for a major uprising in Warsaw to bring the city under their control. The capital was supposed to be liberated before the Russians could occupy it. But after the loss of the 2nd Panzer Army, Stalin made no effort to come to the aid of the western-oriented insurgents. He blocked help from the air by the Western Allies. The Warsaw Uprising was crushed by the Germans with incredible cruelty. The failure of the attack by the 2nd Panzer Army on Warsaw was not planned, but Stalin undoubtedly intended to use the failed uprising for himself.
The storm on the empire followed
At the end of August 1944, the advance of the Red Army came to an end. 17 German divisions were completely destroyed. 50 divisions had lost more than half of the soldiers. In two months the Red Army had advanced 600 kilometers west. Huge areas of Belarus, parts of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland were liberated from Germans. At least for Poland and the Baltic States, it must be noted that with this “liberation” they came under the reign of terror of Stalin. At the end of August the Soviets stood directly in front of East Prussia and thus in front of the Reich territory. Shortly afterwards they succeeded in cutting off the German Army Group North in the Baltic States. After that, the Germans could no longer oppose the Red Army. The military historian Hermann Gackenholz wrote that the “agony of the German warfare in the east” began.
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
