“Operation Bagration”
(June 22, 1944)
During his summit with Churchill and Roosevelt In
Tehran at the end of 1943, Stalin promised to launch a major offensive
to coincide with the Allied invasion. Operation
Overlord went forward on June 6, and Stalin launched his own attack,
Operation Bagration (named after a czarist general), on the 22nd, the
third anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Russia. The invasion force consisted of 1,700,000 troops
supported by 6,000 aircraft, nearly 3,000 tanks, and 24,000 artillery
pieces. This attack destroyed Army Group Center and was the most disastrous
defeat suffered by the Germans in the war, costing the Wehrmacht more
men and material than the defeat at Stalingrad. Within a matter of weeks
afterward, the Red Army reached Warsaw in what became an inexorable march toward Berlin.
Click to see Operation
Bagration map.
Sources: Mitchell G. Bard, The
Complete Idiot's Guide to World War II. NY: MacMillan, 1998;
World
War 2 Timeline. |