ground operation began, Soviet bombers from Long-Range Aviation started their
own attacks on German troop concentrations and artillery positions. Ground-
attack aviation worked in direct support of Soviet armoured formations.
Operation Bagration began on 22 June 1944, the third anniversary of the
German attack. The initial assaults were tactical probes to determine the exact
character of the German defence. On 23 June, the full weight of the offensive was
unleashed. The 1st Baltic Front, under General O. Kh. Bagramian, attacked with
the 4th Shock Army towards Nevel in the north at the seam between Army Group
North and Army Group Centre with the task of preventing the movement of
reinforcements from the north, and used the 43rd Army to seize Polotsk and
mount the northern envelopment of Vitebsk. The 2nd Guards and 51st Armies,
which formed the second echelon of the front, developed the attack, advancing
on the Western Dvina and seizing Dvinsk. General Ivan Cherniakovsky’s 3rd
Belorussian Front sent the 39th Army to envelop Vitebsk from the south to ensure
the encirclement of the city and its garrison. Once the 11th Guards Army had
broken through the tactical defences north of Smolensk, Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards
Tank Army advanced and took Orsha and enveloped Minsk from the north.
Georgiy Zakharov’s 2nd Belorussian Front, the weakest of the attacking fronts,
had the task of taking Mogilev and crossing the Dnieper and advancing towards
Minsk. Rokossovsky’s 1st Belorussian Front, by far the strongest operational
formation in Operation Bagration, sent its 3rd and 48th Armies to encircle the
German 9th Army from the north and put pressure on Minsk. The 65th Army
struck just north of the Pripiat Marshes and enveloped the 9th Army from the
south and sent forward detachments to envelop Minsk from the south.
Rokossovsky committed four armies (the 2nd Tank Army and the 8th Guards,
the 61st and 47th Armies) and General Pliev’s cavalry-mechanized group to
advance through the ‘impassable’ Pripiat Marshes and strike the Germans further
west in the direction of Brest and Lublin. Lublin fell to Soviet forces on 24 July, and,
on 25–6 July, they seized bridgeheads across the Vistula at Pulawy and Demblin.
Heavy fighting around Brest continued to slow the progress of the 47th Army.
During this period, General Radzievsky’s 2nd Tank Army advanced towards
Warsaw with the intent of cutting off German forces east of Vistula and then
developing a turning movement across the Bug to threaten the envelopment of
Warsaw from the north. However, he ran into the Herman Goering Division and
the 19th Panzer Division. Between 30 July and 3 August, new SS Panzer divisions,
brought up to bolster the 9th Army before Warsaw, joined the fight. The Soviet
2nd Tank Army was badly mauled, suffering such losses that it had to be
withdrawn when the 47th Army arrived. It should be noted that the Stavka had
committed no additional tank or mechanized forces on the Warsaw axis. And no
Stavka reserves were released to support operations by Rokossovsky’s 1st Belo-
russian Front during August and September 1944. Not until early September did
Rokossovsky take up positions in the suburb of Praga on the eastern bank of the
Vistula, opposite Warsaw. 57
The commander of Army Group Centre, Field Marshal Ernst Busch, watched
the speed and power of the Soviet offensive develop into an operational crisis for
The Tsarist and Soviet Operational Art, 1853–1991 83