his army group as the encirclements closed on his forward echelon, and he had no
reserves to stop the attack towards Minsk. On 28 June, Field Marshal Model
replaced the unlucky Busch. Panzer units were moved from Army Group North
and Army Group North Ukraine’s forces to try to close the developing gap in
Army Group Centre’s lines. By 4 July, Minsk was encircled. Model’s attempt to
create a stable defensive line failed, and the Soviets moved forward in pursuit and
deep exploitation. By mid-July, Bagration had achieved its objectives and effec-
tively destroyed Army Group Centre. Pursuit would continue into August with
Vilnius, Kaunas, Grodno, and Bailystok in Soviet hands. By that point, Soviet
forces had outrun their own logistics and had to pause to regroup and resupply
and await the movement of their railheads forward to the fronts’ immediate rear.
German losses have been estimated, with the casualties totalling 300,000 dead,
250,000 wounded, and about 120,000 captured. 58 Gerd Niepold, who served as
the G3 of the 12th Panzer Division and took part in the fighting, estimated that
Army Group Centre had twenty-eight divisions destroyed and that Bagration had
brought about ‘the destruction of Army Group Centre’. 59 General Makhmut
Gareev in looking at the lessons and conclusions from Bagration drew attention
to the heavy losses suffered by Soviet forces—765,813 killed, wounded, missing in
action, or ill of which 178,507 died. 60 What Gareev saw as new in the area of
operational art was the very scale of the operation. It involved four fronts and the
well-developed echelonment of forces, which allowed for mechanized units to
conduct deep exploitation after breakthroughs. Reserve formations were available
to harass retreating German units trapped in large encirclements. Trying to
escape, they disintegrated as combat units. As Gareev points out, Soviet opera-
tional and tactical commanders now possessed a sound common understanding
of their craft and could make use of opportunities as they developed in battle. 61
In May, Konev, who had been in command of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, was
posted to command the 1st Ukrainian Front. He was told to begin preparations
for an offensive operation to destroy Army Group North Ukraine, complete the
liberation of the Soviet Ukraine, that is, the territories of eastern Poland occupied
by the Red Army in 1939, and begin the liberation of Poland, that is, those
territories which the Soviet government considered to be Polish territory. 62
Zhukov assumed the role of Stavka representative to the 1st Ukrainian Front.
Konev’s operational design involved elements of the 1st Ukrainian Front advanc-
ing on two diverging axes towards Lvov–Przemysl–Sandomierz and Lublin,
where they would then support the 1st Belorussian Front in an advance on
Pulawy–Demblin with the objective of seizing bridgeheads across the Vistula.
His proposal for two major axes met with resistance from Stalin who saw it as too
ambitious. He, however, justified his course of action and Stalin agreed but put
the responsibility on Konev’s shoulders if his innovation did not work. To ensure
it did, Konev devised a robust deception plan to demonstrate a major concentra-
tion of armour on the front’s left flank while he concealed the movement of tank
and mechanized forces to the centre and right flanks from which they could
advance against Lvov and Rava-Ruska. 63 The deception worked and German
84 The Evolution of Operational Art