LiberationTurning point
· Day 1098 of 1418
Operation Bagration
Belarus
- the width of the attack front
- ≈ 1,100 km
- the width of the attack front
- the advance to the west
- up to 600 km
- the advance to the west
On 23 June 1944 the liberation of Belarus began. The operation was named after General Bagration, a hero of the 1812 war. Belarusian partisans gave the army enormous help. In two months the front moved hundreds of kilometres west.
The enemy expected the main blow in Ukraine, but it was being prepared in secret in Belarus. On the eve of the offensive partisans blew up thousands of rails behind enemy lines. Soldiers crossed swamps the enemy thought impassable, on log walkways and in home-made “swamp shoes”.
Within a few weeks Army Group Centre was destroyed. It was one of Germany's biggest defeats of the whole war.
See it on the map