By Newell Durnbrooke
June 6, 2024, marked the 80th anniversary of the Allied landings on the beaches of Normandy, commonly known as the D-Day landings. There was commemorations and remembrances for the brave soldiers who fought and died there, but little is known in the West of the gargantuan Soviet offensive that began shortly after D-Day and that which crushed the Germans in the east.
The D-Day landings were part of Operation Overlord, the architect of which was US General Dwight Eisenhower. Contrary to popular belief,D-Day was not the largest military seaborne operation ever attempted. That honour goes to the 1943 Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily. That landing was the largest with 160,000 allied troops involved. The D-Day landings being the second largest with 156,000 men and 10,000 vehicles successfully landed on five beaches: the Americans landed at Utah and Omaha, the British landed at Gold and Sword and the Canadians landed at Juno Beach. Operation Overlord did eventually involve more men in total with over 2 million allied troops having arrived in Normandy by the end of August 1944.. Most importantly, it marked the start of the campaign to liberate Nazi-occupied north-west Europe.
Around 14,000 Canadians of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and 2nd Armoured Brigade were involved in Operation Overlord, either landing on Juno Beach or being parachuted in. That day alone there were over 1,000 Canadian combat casualties, with 359 of those men being killed.
But it was not Operation Overlord alone that broke the Nazi war machine. It was the monstrous battles on the Eastern Front that accomplished that. Operation Bagration – named after the Georgian Prince Pyotr Bagration, a Czarist general who had fought against Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812 – involved more than 2.3 million men and was the largest Allied operation of the war. It began on June 22, and culminated on August 19. The operation was designed to support Allied operations in France, while liberating Belarus and breaking the back Hitler's Wehrmacht in the east. The blitzkrieg operation was highly successful: in less than 2 months, the Soviets destroyed three Axis armies and opened up the Eastern Front, allowing Soviet forces to exhaust Germany's defences and bring about the end of the war eight months later.
While the Western Allies faced fierce resistance and a well-entrenched enemy on the beaches of Normandy, the Soviet forces confronted an equally formidable challenge in the dense forests and swamps of Belarus. The coordination and scale of the Soviet offensive required meticulous planning and logistical support, which included the movement of millions of troops, thousands of tanks, artillery pieces, and aircraft.
The battle-lines stretched from the Baltic republics in the north to the western borders of Ukraine in the south. The Soviets faced Germany’s Army Group North in the Baltics, Army Group Centre in Belarus and Army Group South in Ukraine.
To prepare for such a large offensive, the Red Army assembled 2.3 million frontline and support troops in 118 rifle divisions, eight tank and mechanized corps, 13 artillery divisions and six cavalry divisions. They stockpiled 1.2 million tons of ammunition and supplies for the millions of men, 2,715 tanks, 1,355 assault guns, 10,563 heavy artillery pieces and 2,306 Katyusha multiple rocket launchers. Air cover was provided by 2,318 fighters, 1,744 Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik ground-attack planes, 655 medium bombers and 431 night bombers. During the operation a further 1,007 medium bombers were drawn from the Soviet strategic bomber reserve.
Bagration was originally timed for June 14 – just over a week after the D-Day landings– but it was delayed because of rail congestion. Moving that number of troops and materiel was no easy task. It was also important to prevent the Germans from knowing where the hammer blow would fall.
Both operations relied on extensive deception, known by the Soviets as Maskyrovka. Ahead of the Normandy landings, US General GeorgePatton assembled a ghost army in East Anglia, UK to convince the Germans that the allied landing would be at the Pas de Calais rather than Normandy beaches. At the same time, the Soviet leadership ordered their forces in Ukraine to appear as though they were concentrating for an offensive. The Red Army Air Force suppressed Luftwaffe reconnaissance missions along the front, only allowing German reconnaissance planes that would spot the Red Army troops positioned to assault Ukraine. They also made more use of telephone lines which were more secure than radio communications. Both offensives successfully deceived the German High Command (OKH) which meant important units and equipment were not in a position to slow down the Allied offensives.
In the days leading up to the Bagration offensive, coordinated partisan attacks on German supply lines were ratcheted up. Tens of thousands of demolition charges were set and detonated between June 19 and 23 - 10,500 demolition charges during the night of June 19-20 alone. As a result, German ammunition, food and reinforcements struggled to get to the front.
The Bagration offensive commenced on June 22 at 5 a.m. with an artillery barrage. Each Soviet artillery piece was allotted around six tons of ammunition to fire during the barrage. The two-hour barrage was conducted in a rolling manner to destroy forward German trenches and pillboxes, then catch the Wehrmacht soldiers as they retreated in the open to their next lines of defence. Katyusha rockets – much less precise – were fired at the forward zone to eliminate anyone still alive. German survivors described it as the most intense and destructive barrage they had ever witnessed. That night, Soviet medium bombers flew 1,000 sorties to further soften up the German line.
The following day, June 23, the assault began in force. This was not the Red Army of 1941 with its costly human-wave tactics. The Red Army concentrated fire on tactically significant ground, seized it and then brought in tanks and reinforcements to achieve a breakthrough. By the end of the second day, the Third Panzer Army’s lines were penetrated after multiple divisions had attacked it.
Over the first week of the offensive, the German Fourth Army was destroyed, and the Third Panzer and Ninth army were crippled. After the initial artillery barrage, Soviet brigade-sized raids were launched which gathered intelligence on German positions and fixed enemy troops in place.
By July, Bagration's success was evident, with the entire German Army Group Centre broken. To the north, Army Group North was at risk of being cut of from retreat in the Baltics. The 3rd Guard Mechanised Corps (3-y Gvardeyskiy Mechanizirovanniy ‘Stlingradsko-Kirvorozhskiy’ Korpus) was one of the leading elements of the northern spearhead of the Soviet breakthrough towards Minsk and the Šiauliai offensive. The Corps was part of the Oslikovskiy Cavalry- Mechanised Group – a formation created for high speed and mobility – which teamed the Corps with the 3rd Guard Cavalry Corps.
In 1944, in preparation for Bagration, this Soviet Corps had received lend-lease M4A2 Sherman and Valentine tanks. These Valentine medium tanks were supplied by Canada and manufactured under licence in Montreal. During WW@ Canada would send some 1400 Valentines to the SovietUnion. For their role in Operation Bagration, the Oslikovskiy Group was given the task of leading the drive through the gap created by the 3rd Byelorussian Front at Bogushevsk, in northern Belarus. It was tasked with securing bridgeheads over the Berezina River in the vicinity of Borisov, fighting as a small tank army with the mobility of mounted cavalry providing mobile infantry support to the fight in the Byelorussian marshlands.
During the operation, they thrust through the German lines on 23 June and made for the important bridgeheads, defeating or bypassing German blocking forces, before taking Molodechno on 4 July.
The Germans counterattacked with Panzergruppe Hoppe from the north as the Group reached Senno, but the anti-tank guns of the 3rd Soviet Corps held them off, destroying 4 Panthers. Early in the morning of the 24th, the Corps clashed with the German 95th Infantry Division, but by the end of the day the Soviet 5th Army’s infantry pushed the Germans back, allowing the Corps to push on.
On 25 June the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps overran the German 299th Infantry Division. By 0700, the Oslikovskiy Group had moved 120 tanks (among them Canadian Valentines) 4km to the west of Bogushevsk. In the evening tanks and cavalry attacked Smolyany, which was defended by the German 2nd Security Regiment, 30km west of Senno. The Oslikovskiy Group pushed through the gap at Boguvesk and cut the Lepel-Orsha rail line. Senno and Cherekhya were cleared of Germans on 26 June. The 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps had advanced 35km during the day to clear the town.
By 28 June the 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps had chased the German 201st Security Division to the Berezina River, crossing the river at 0900 – the first Soviet unit to do so. Two bridges were built over the Berezina River, allowing light trucks and the heavier tanks and towed guns to cross. In five days, the Corps had advanced 180km. The next day, the remainder of the Corps crossed the river and assaulted the west bank, advancing 10km south to Belgomli. Crossing the river meant Minsk was no longer separated from Soviet forces by any significant bodies of water.
By July 4, the Oslikovskiy Cavalry-Mechanised Group had reached the limits of their advance and needed rest and supplies. The mechanized and tanks forces were short of fuel and were over 250km away from their supply depots.
Over the rest of July and culminating on 19 August, the Soviet Union inflicted crushing defeats on German forces. The Wehrmacht experienced their greatest military defeat of the entire war, suffering around 450,000 casualties and the destruction of 28 of the 34 divisions that comprised Army Group Centre. German lines were so thoroughly destroyed that the Red Army reached the Vistula River and Warsaw, bringing Berlin itself within striking distance.
Despite the immense impact on the course of the Second World War, Operation Bagration is obscure to Westerners and is always overshadowed by the American, British and Canadian efforts during D-Day and the fight in Normandy. Both the efforts on the Western and Eastern Fronts led to the destruction of Nazi Germany, and the monumental struggle and sacrifice by the Soviet peoples should not be forgotten by Westerners as they commemorate D-Day.
