Konstantin Rokossovsky was the guy that planned Operation Bagration and insisted for multiple breakthroughs. The rest of the Soviet high command was against this, but Stalin went with Rokossovsky's plan after telling him to think about it three times. On the fourth time, Stalin said "your confidence speaks for your sound judgement".
Rokossovsky gets no love from popular military history. That guy had balls of neutron star material. I wish I could get my hands on his book, 'A Soldiers Duty.' Old dusty copies are going for like, $600.
Troops from the following fronts took part in Operation Bagration: General I. Kh. Bagramyan, commander of the 1st Baltic Front, General I. D. Chernyakhovsky, commander of the 3rd Belorussian Front, General G. F. Zakharov, commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front, Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Marshal G.K. Zhukov coordinator of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts, Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky coordinator of the 3rd Belorussian and 1st Baltic Fronts, general A.I. Antonov representative of the Supreme High Command Headquarters - development of an operation plan. Marshal Rokossovsky was a talented military leader, his front played an important role in the defeat of the Germans in Belarus, but he only carried out the plan that was developed by Headquarters. Victory always has many faces.
This is a myth from Rokossovsky memoirs. No other evidence about it. The latest declassified documents confirms that A.I.Antonov was the main figure that planned Bagration.
This story is Rokossovsky's own self-aggrandizement post war that he wrote into his memoirs. Records of military councils on planning operation 'Bagration' show entirely opposite story where Rokossovsky was arguing for a single powerful attack by his front but was forced to change his mind during the debates on the subject.
The irony being that you can make a case that when the Soviets rolled over the Japanese in Manchuria in August 1945 that that was the greatest military defeat of all time in a single contained battle. The Soviets conquered an area the size of Western Europe in 10 days while suffering almost no discernible casualties. Getting back to Bagration and the destruction of Army Group Centre, the Soviets had the Germans so confused it took the Germans four days to realize that Minsk was the key objective. By then their front had been shattered.
And during that entire operation, the Soviets destroyed and captured the entire Kwantung Army, the general and largest Army Group in the Imperial Japanese Army, with more than 700,000 soldiers.
The Kwantung Army was stripped of air support and supplies which were needed in the Pacific and Japan. The Japanese navy had ceased to exist and no supplies could be shipped back from Japan.
I would think losing your entire Army twice in 6 months as the Soviet Union did in 1941 would trump this minor skirmish. Russia lost more troops in WWII than all the Axis countries, the US, the British commonwealth and France combined. Never let anyone tell you Russia won WWII. At the start of that war Russians made up 7% of the world population. Now they are little more than 1%. They have never recovered from the war they helped start.
The German dispositions were the greatest reason for this catastrophic defeat. By holding themselves deep inside Belorussia, with their AG South already pushed into Poland and Romania, the entire front of AG Center screamed "encirclement". Hitler rejected a repeat plan from early 1943, Operation "Buffel" (Buffalo), where Ninth Army had successfully pulled out of the Rzehv salient, freeing some twenty-five divisions and considerably shortening their front. This plan would have withdrawn almost all of AG Center behind the Berezina River; leaving only a screening force that would have orders to "bug out" once the Soviets struck, having them waste their artillery on "hitting air", blown all bridges, and waited for the Soviets to cross, counter-attacking their bridgeheads as they formed. The eventual plan would have been to make a fighting withdraw towards the Bug and Niemen rivers, taking the sting out of the Soviet's overwhelming superiority in men, artillery, and armor. This might have saved enough men and equipment to hold the "Ostwall", and have the Soviet Army exhaust itself trying to invade Central Europe. At this point, all hope of a strategic victory that'd restore the initiative to the Germans was gone; all they could do was hold out and sue for a favorable peace, and hope the Allied-Soviet alliance would fall apart. It should be kept in mind that the Allied forces in "Overlord" were largely contained in Normandy, the going through the "Bocage country" was slow and COSTLY. The Soviet success in Bagration meant that all reserves left, and there weren't a lot, had to go East in order to stop the Soviets from stomping right through Poland and onto Berlin itself right then and there; NONE could go to the West! Of course, between Monty and Bradley, the German forces of OB West were finally ground down, and even a desperate counter-attack at Mortain, in response to Patton's breakthrough into Brittany once US Third Army was ineffectual; only HASTENING their own catastrophe in France. It should be kept in mind that the follow-up from Bagaration could, in theory, have ended up with the Soviet forces in eastern Germany itself by autumn of 1944. There were several problems with that: (1) The doomed forces in the various "fortresses" did, in general, hold out until their supplies were exhausted, before what was left surrendered, denying critical road junctions that hampered the Soviet advances more than German resistance on the front itself. (2) Many German soldiers did manage to escape both the Soviet Army and the numerous partisans; capture by the former meant going to a POW camp with a poor chance of survival; survival of capture by Soviet partisans meant almost certain death. Still, it took awhile before these men could be restored to health and assigned to a combat unit; many were no longer fit for front-line duty. (3) The Soviet army had still not entirely solved its ineffectiveness in sustaining the logistics of a long drive, despite them now having American-made Dodge and Studebaker trucks as well as M4 medium tanks. Many Soviet tank divisions were stalled for lack of fuel and shells with practically no Germans in front of them. (4) General Model was expert at defensive warfare; he held back his panzers until the lines stabilized, then used them for counter-attacks which typically caught the Soviets off-balance. Indeed, just as they were about to take Warsaw on July 31, 1944, three SS-panzer divisions launched a riposte from the Narew river, and forced Zhukov to withdraw his main forces about thirty-five miles to meet them. This was part of WHY the Soviets "betrayed" the Polish Home Army that rose up against the Germans that day; they were afraid of their over-extension costing them dearly, as similar experience had revealed previously. Letting the Germans deal with those "pesky" Poles of the AK, who the Soviets didn't want in power after the war anyway, was also a factor. (5) The progress against Army Group North, in trying to break into the "Baltic States", was unsatisfactory. Also, and infuriatingly, the main defenders weren't German at all, being a hodgepodge of European, East, West, and North volunteers, led primarily by German officers, but, again, many non-German "Nazis" were in charge of their countrymen. Their motivation wasn't so much Nazism as it was to keep the Soviets out of THEIR respective countries, especially the Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. This Stalin would NOT tolerate; he wanted the Baltic states back, and was willing to commit whatever it took, which took nearly a whole year as AG North held out in "Kurland" until war's end. (6) There were political and ECONOMIC objectives to the South, particularly to take Romania, which had long been a thorn in the Soviet side, out of the war, and establish Soviet hegemony in the Balkans before the British could come back. Most of Yugoslavia was effectively under control of Tito's partisans anyway, with Germany having a grip on the larger cities and desperately trying to hold the rail lines and roads. The anti-partisan work was so bad that German soldiers had the option of requesting a transfer, to the EASTERN front, and there was a WAITING LIST. This would also strip the Germans of their supplies of petroleum; which, of course, would fairly much doom their war effort. So, taking Romania out of the war, and entering Hungary, and linking up with Tito's forces, was a higher priority than further advances in Poland. The Soviets facing AG Center contended themselves with building their supply network, including converting the rail lines to the broad Russian gauge, and reinforcing their numerous bridgeheads over the Vistula, Narew, and San rivers, which would help them in the "VIstula-Oder" offensive of January 1945.
@@Thompson123-ih4uh Not many empires would last long when the forces of international finance are able to manipulate the worlds most powerful countries into fighting against their own interests
Always remember the man who wasn’t there. General Heinrici, the defensive specialist, warned that a major offensive was coming, and he wanted to shorten his lines and form reserves for counterattacks. For this, he was relieved by the Grofaz, and would only be brought back at the end to try and save Berlin.
To be fair, when was the last summer without ANY major offensive by either sides on Eastern Front? Given that German had lost the initiative in the East after Kursk, it didn't take a "defensive specialist" to say the Soviets were going to attack. And when an offensive was coming, the last thing the German commanders need was their infantries leaving their trenches, turning around with their back facing Soviet tanks and troops. Secondly, shortening the lines for the German defenders also shortened the lines for the Soviets as well, and in strategic sense, the Germans giving up a major Soviet city would allow the Soviets to take and expand massively their own manpower with the free cities without any causalties while the German got nothing in return. Any potential defensive advantages in terms of less thinner lines would be offset by the same offensive advantage Soviet would received, in the end achieving little in strategic sense while only running the risks of surprise attack and wasting time and fuel during moving the German troops.
@@sthrich635 i think the point was that this specific “defensive specialist” wanted to focus on counter attacking breakthroughs instead of holding firm. German doctrine and supply heavily favored this type of strategy and it had a lot of success for them previously. Although they may not have had all the personnel or resources to do this imo it would have been a better method to slow the soviets down. High command never wanted to give up ground however and fighting to the last man had some strategic success but over time it decimated their numbers
@@zoogie980 Except during summer 1944 Army Group Center didn't have sufficient proper counter-attacking forces available - most Panzer forces were in the West, and it mostly contains unmotorized infantry divisions - they were simply too slow to react to the mechanized Soviet tank armies breaking through their lines, imagine foot soldiers with a bunch of horses trying to catch up platoons of T-34. And such tactics would decimate the German forces even more - rather than German infantries fighting tooth and nails in the trenches and taking a few Soviets with them, they would be charging and dying in open fields in pure WW1 style. And how would German doctrine and supply possibly even favor such strategy? In 1944 the biggest bottleneck on German operations/tactics were fuel, and fuel translate to mobility. In other words, German doctrine favor LESS mobility operations instead of mobility-heavy ones such as giving ground then counterattacking to take back (that would be a two way trip, imagine the fuel cost - if it succeed at all). Not surprising that High Command got better awareness on the economy and supply of their own country that a general spending most of his time looking at maps.
Ya know what's crazy? Growing up in America, in school we were always taught that the Soviets "contributed" to Nazi Germany's defeat, but it was always assumed America and the Western Allies did the most work. The Eastern front is basically just mentioned and I never fathomed just how monumental and important the war in the east was. They, by far, played the biggest role in Germany's defeat.
And the 14,000 airplanes donated to the Soviets? What impact would you evaluate it had for the soviets? Or the 13,000 tanks? or the 400,000 jeeps and trucks? There's more, you can look up the rest yourself if you want.
@@Marcelo_DBZ_Music The irony is that the Soviets and their Nazi friends literally initiated WW2 when they invaded Poland and split it between them. The Soviets planned and started WW2 along side Hitler and the Nazi's, they were partners in crime.
Another thing to note about the casualties is that whilst they were a lot higher for the Soviets, the majority of these men could be treated and returned to the frontline. Of the 700,000 casualties, many would’ve been caused by sickness from the swampy conditions of the Pripyat Marshes, and these men would quickly get better with rest and treatment. For the Germans however, most casualties were suffered through the encirclements, meaning even if lightly wounded a soldier would be captured and thus couldn’t return to the fight later on. These German losses were permanent, whereas soviet losses were often temporary.
Most of the Soviet deaths were not in battlefields, but from starvation, torture and execution as prisoners, including the civilians murdered in occupied and besieged areas. There's a very simple reason why Stalin got his way without a societal collapse and that was the fact a much worse fate awaited in the other side.
@@naervern2107 And that Stalin was actually a very well liked leader and very competent at his job. The soviet peoples were on board with the project that was the USSR. Do not mistake western anti-communist propaganda with actual history... Ludo Martens "Antoher View of Stalin" is pretty elightening.
@@Agtsmirnoff The rollout of the t-34 was a big deal at the time, although I agree that by 1944 it was old news. Don't forget that the true genius of the t-34 was the ease of production... so while the sloped armor wasn't technically new, the production techniques that allowed the soviets (and the USA) to produce thousands of them was more unexpected. It was enough to cause alarm in the Nazi ranks and an immediate switch to the design for future production.
@@SuperNintendawg the T34 wasn't particularly cheap or easy to make, but the soviets managed to make an expensive tank cheaply by making it very poorly. The T34s that fought in ww2 were absolutely terrible
The chap doing the main narration is an excellent choice for the work, and having a little accent certainly adds to the nature of the intentionality of the topic. The presentation of the on camera person is also top quality. Another solid video.
The transformation of the Red Army showed after early 1942 is fantastic. Their "deep battle" operations have always fascinated me. "Blitzkrieg" stopped working after the dashing victories of the 1939-41; Soviet deep battle tactics marked the period of war between 1942-45. Also, thanks to all Soviet soldiers for their sacrifices fighting fascism and imperialism. And thanks the Museum for this informative video!
>fighting fascism and imperialism >turns all of eastern Europe into a collection of satellite states and force them to use centrally planned economies hindering their development by decades loool
Well... the Soviets were and pretty much still are very aimed at conquest and empire building. And fascists and communists come from pretty much the same background. The war was not over in '41, but after Hitler betrayed the Russians (with whom he invaded Poland and started WW2 with) and certainly when Hitler declared war on the USA following Pearl Harbor, the Germans were doomed. No more blitzkrieg when you don't have fuel for the army. Plus the overstretched logistics.
The Russians basically had unlimited manpower and materials. In pretty much every battle, the casualty rate was around 4-1. The German Generals and Field Marshalls were the real geniuses, and it would've been scary to think what they would've been capable of if men, materials, and fuel weren't always huge issues. These so called amazing Russian offensives were just German tactics with overwhelming amounts of everything.
It's a shame the Red Army's capabilities late in the war get completely overshadowed by earlier disasters. They sure proved able to re-learn their trade.
Kursk and Stalingrad take all the Eastern Front's attention. You'll be lucky to find someone that even knows about the multiple battles for Kharkov. Army Group Center's devastation was a sucking chest wound. Anyways, Operation Overlord went down and very soon after, Bagration. Axis losses piling up from the disasters in France and out East, on top of the Italian meat grinder, and a bloody partisan war in Yugoslavia (over 100k German troops were there in 1944), it was just too much. There were still scores of German troops in places like Norway. The Allies had true strategic coordination and mutually supported each other, not just with material aid. The Axis never stood a chance.
Or was it that the Germans and Japanese were unsupplied, deprived of air support and stretched too thin by allied air superiority. Imagine if all those tens of thousands of 88s defending Germany's skies were shredding T34s like they did in 1941 and 42.
It's also a misconception that red army was complete disaster. Hitler started the invasion of USSR the same day Napoleon did when he invaded Russia a century before because he wanted to prove the world he was the greatest military leader in modern history. The USSR did the same thing to the nazis as Russia did to Napoleon troops. Stalin had the decision to let nazis sink in their territory to stretch german front lines and supply lines. They knew they were inferior in technology and their aim was to use overwhelming firepower and manpower to overcome the nazis after they were deep in USSR territory. Hitler himself had that conversation with Finland leader recorded in a train when he confesses that he would not imagine USSR had industrial facilities pouring out tanks in a scale no other country could do at that time. Stalin was doing it in the Urals, at the far east and german intelligence only knew athat after Stalingrad and Kursk. From the strategic sphere Stalin had control over the war against Germany. It was Germany that got frustrated with their advance in soviet territory had not major gains, because soviets were evacuating their cities and burning it to the ground. It was the only way the soviets could win the war was to handle huge losses. It was USSR plan since the begining. Their stretegic plan worked as they thought...because when nazis got into Stalingrad Stalin said to fight until the last man...and all after that is history!
11:58 Apparently 5th Panzer Division claimed 295 Soviet AFVs destroyed including 128 by the 505th Heavy Panzer Battalion Tigers, while losing basically all the 29 Tigers they had there plus 107 of 125 Panzer IVs and Panthers. Actual soviet losses are unknown though, and according to armor historian Steve Zaloga, rampant overclaim and double counting in such battles led to Fremde Heere Ost (German Eastern Intelligence Branch) usually reduced such claims by about 50% to get a better picture of enemy losses. 15:20 That Lvov-Sandomierz offensive in the south deserves just as much attention as Bagration IMO. Even reduced, AG North Ukraine still had far more formidable artillery, arnor, and air support than AG Centre and as such, was a more formidable threat. 1st Ukrainian Front had to pull out all the stops, including some very unorthodox uses of infantry and armor, to win the day. 17:30 It should be noted that the Soviet number includes 300000-500000-ish wounded or ill but not taken out of action. Total permanent losses (killed and missing) was roughly 180000. High losses but compared to the German loss of150000 captured and 150000-225000 killed or missing, the numbers were definitely in the Soviet favor by this point in the war.
those tanks were not lost as Soviet tanks from prior years were "lost". Thing is that Germans had been able to control the battlefield in previous battles (many of them). That meant only the crews had been lost and the tanks were salvaged and repaired. In this battle USSR controlled the battlefield and restored a lot of the tanks.
@@maxmagnus777And for Germany it was reversed, their previous losses were oftentimes recoverable as long as they controlled the battlefield and when the red army started pushing faster and faster it went down the drain, many German tanks were immobilized, abandoned and captured during their retreats.
@@Levon_RnD Yes, if you've watched ANNA TV from Syria. Tanks with GoPro. They are clearing areas from ISIS. They've lost some tanks and used them later on. Even today, when the tech is far more advanced salvaged tanks can be brought back to life. That is why in Ukraine they use artillery to "double tap" the damaged tanks all the time.
It's 2024, 80 years since all this happened. Can I ask, why bother? Why bother with accuracy? Your estimate of Soviet wounded has a variation of 200,000. History when at war is bollocks and wars are too. Every Soldier alive only want to salute the real men who stop war from ever happening. All the other salutes are forced salutes.
@@burtlangoustine1 Historical accuracy always matters. Would you write, "Why bother about accuracy," if the video presentation discussion was on D-Day? Or about Vietnam?
Yes, it is very strange that the Soviet-German battlefield, which was the main battlefield of World War II, is almost never mentioned by Western media.
With huge forests and swamps.The terrain was very difficult.I would imagine that many German Units just panicked.Either they couldn't put up resistance or escape was difficult because of the terrain.Most German Units at this point of the war had fewer vehicles.So escape on foot would be the only option with Partisans everywhere.
Just one small additional tidbit...... sometime toward or at the end of Bagration a flask or two of sea water was flown back to Moscow and presented to Stalin. He was incredulous and overjoyed when told the flask(s) contained seawater from the Baltic.
Shortly after the Soviets reached the Baltic Sea, the Germans counter attacked and drove the Soviet forces off the Baltic coast which was also around the time the bottles reached Stalin; he then requested that the generals pour the water back in the same spot they collected it :)
yes, I heard they did that because Stalin refused to believe they were on the coast, (I heard it was 3 bottles,..but who will really know after all these years)
The follow-up operations would be as devastating. Group North would be cut off and isolated for the rest of the war in the baltic states. Group South would be encircled and destroyed, enabling Romania and Bulgaria to swap sides against Germany and cutting their access to Romanias oil.
We have to start calling the "Soviet Union" for what it really was -- the combination of the greatest contributors, Ukraine and Belarus, with the Canada/USA supported Russians a tier below, and the other unfortunately dominated republics as well. You know this is true.
@@MultiCappie ukraine and Belarus were occupied for 3 years. The bulk of ukrainian and belarussian casualties were civilians killed by nazis. This does not make even sense, the russians were 75% of the red army, the majority of the industry was in the RSFSR. Saying that Ukraine and Belarus were the real "heroes" is pure historical revisionism. On lend lease, sure it was really useful al togistical level and not letting the population starve but the main part started arriving late, in 1943. And the USSR exported tons and tons of materials to the Allies. And the only reason the japanese army surrendered was for the invasion of Manchuria (japanese army, not the japanese state)
@@MultiCappieIf it was just Ukraine and Belarus the war would have been lost never mind the fact that most Ukrainian and Belarusian land was occupied by the Germans for a good chunk of the war the USSR was a union of states and everyone had to give something for the war effort even Mongolia which was not part of the USSR sent thousands of soldiers and tons of foodstuffs to the USSR for the war so no neither Ukraine nor Belarus get so say that did most since the entire union was doing something for the war.
@@AMERICAN_CAESAR First, thanks for straw-manning my argument, that just never gets old, but second: And if it were "only Russia" - no input from USA/Canada, Ukraine, and Belarus? What then? Go ahead, embarrass yourself.
I know right, can never get enough of learning more about ww2. The scale of the war is just completely mind boggling. A million soldiers here a million soldiers there etc.
Maskirovka is not only camouflage , that's only half , the other half is reinforcing them in their illusions of where the major blow would fall the German could see that four full tank armies were in south Ukraine , which they were , that was a very obvious threat they didn't see that there was a massive secret build up in Belorussia
I'm absolutely loving these videos! Great work IWM for putting together such professional documentaries and involving actual members of staff in the presenter roles.
It must be noted however that the plot of the operation was developed by colonel-general Antonov. He was the true mastermind of Bagration. Antonov was the deputy head of the General Staff. Nominally the head of the General Staff was Marshal Vasilevskiy but he was mainly one of Stavka's representatives at the frontline (it was a unique post not comparable to any of the western armies). And the bulk of the work in the General Staff was done by Antonov.
Hard to feel sorry for those Nazi PoW's considering the vile, horrible treatment of Soviet PoWs already in 1941, when they were deliberately starved in open air concentration camps without access to any amenities. 1 million Soviets starved in those first 6 months of the invasion. Backe's Hunger Plan was truly despicable.
"Hard to feel sorry for those Nazi PoW's considering the vile, horrible treatment of Soviet PoWs already " 1st) Soviets usually were not vaccined which is one big factor for the high death rate of Soviet PoWs. 2nd) The USSR didn´t sign the Geneva convention. It´s a bit stupid to complain about my enemy didn´t abide by the rule of law while myself ignoring the rule of law.
@@kodor1146 What utter nonsense. You can't vaccinate against starvation, or exposure. Try vaccinating against dysentry. Further, are you saying Germany hadn't signed? Because if they had, they were obligated. Additionally, the Soviets offered to abide by the Hague Convention, if Germany did. The Finns managed to treat Soviet prisoners better, and they didn't have the whole of Europe to plunder for food. The OKW suggested they abide by the Hague Convention during the planning, but Hitler intervened. Thereof the Hunger Plan. So your argument falls very flat. It was a deliberate act to starve, actually murder, by a despicable regime. Please stop making excuses for them.
@@kodor1146 the Soviets offered to abide by the Geneva protocols, but Germany declined.... The OKW suggested in the planning stage, but Hitler thought better. Thereof the despicable hunger plan.
@@bastikolaski8111 "the Nazis were warcriminals. The Soviet Union was to nice to them" That´s not entirely true in fact most of the stuff the Germans did during WW2, for example mass shootings in the context of partisan warfare were in fact in accordance with the rule of law by that time.
I studied in Minsk in 1977, and our group visited the Great Patriotic War Museum there. Some earlier versions of the T-34 were more square-on at the front. The improvements came later.
(11:27) Huh, interesting to hear the Berezina river and Barysaw (Borisov) mentioned. This was the site of a famous battle in November 1812, between Napoleon's Grande Armée and the Imperial Russian Army, as Napoleon was retreating. It was a disaster. Lots of people and materiel fell into the icy waters as pontoons and bridges collapsed or thin ice cracked. Napoleon's army took 20-30k casualties, the Russians ~10k, and maybe 30k more non-combatants casualties were also recorded. There are famous paintings about it, like _Crossing the Berezina River_ by Peter von Hess. At least in 1944 the battles in this area happened during the summer, but I wonder how many of those fighting there realized what had happened close by 132 years earlier.
You are wrong. The Battle of the Berezina River was a French victory that allowed Napoleon and many of his troops to escape to the west. In fact, los_ses were heavy on both sides (especially for the Grande Armée).
I love your content. With great respect to both narrators, could it be possible if you only keep one narrator? I feel in between narration breaking the immersion and feeling a bit weird.
We also have to start calling the "Soviet Union" for what it really was -- the combination of the greatest contributors, Ukraine and Belarus, with the Canada/USA supported Russians a tier below, and the other unfortunately dominated republics individually as well. You know this is true.
Great video! Sadly, most Americans are clueless about the sacrifices Russia made during WWII. I'd never heard of operation Bagration, and I've been a WWII scholar since childhood and a collector of Soviet militaria and esoterica for the last 30 years-John in Texas
The Soviets would not have had to make such sacrifices if they had not allied with the Germans from 1939 through 1941, if they had not cynically rampaged over Poland and the Baltics, if they had not attempted to bully the Finns, and above all if the paranoid and murderous Dzhugashvili had not slaughtered so many in his own military AND ignored all the warning signs that Operation Barbarossa was on the way! It's just sickening that so many individuals paid for the Red Czar's follies with their own lives while he endured...
@@ColinWrubleski-eq5shPoland mistake was to occupy russian land at the time of russian civil war. They later got the bill for that. The finnic dictator had big country fantasies, and were lucky the Soviet Union made peace with them
@@ColinWrubleski-eq5sh Stalin would not have done this if Britain had not told Stalin to fk off when Stalin wanted to made this arrangement with Britain first !
Operation Bagration was a massive campaign and rather prominent (in academic history rather than popular culture), so it's quite surprising you never heard of it if you were really a WW2 "scholar" from young.
13:45 The apartment building in the center of Moscow, where I live, was built shortly after the war in 1949 by German POWs. The quality of construction is outstanding, the brick building has fantastic soundproofing and insulation and very issues despite being over 75 years old today.
@DinkyDoughnut Not only in Britain. Due to the Cold War, the West was uneducated about the Soviet sacrifices. For instance, so little is still being taught about the battle of Stalingrad.
There's no question that the Soviets contributed greatly to allied victory, but lets not pretend that the western allies didn't do the bulk of the work, not always on the frontlines, but in logistics, intelligence and other support.
I did a tour of the wider area in September 2018. Minsk, Belarus was amazing with some great museums. The Khatyn Memorial Complex was a sombre experience.
A great video, despite some minor details (T-34 front armor was sloped since it was initially designed), about the worst defeat the german army suffered in the II World War, and the greatest victory for the Red Army. It was a masterclass in war tactics (the greatest maskirovka operation in history), organization and strategic planning, and the ultimate victory in military doctrine for the soviets. Glory for the soldiers and the armies of generals and marshals like Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Vasilievsky and others.
Finally a detailed video about Soviet operations of WW2 without the cold war era propaganda stuffed in every 30 seconds (human wave myth, treating the soviet troops as mindless slaves etc.) Very rare these days to see an actual objective view of the Eastern front that is also this well researched and narrated.
The only disagreement I had with this was I would have put the battle of Kursk as the battle that turned the tide of war in Europe. The single largest battle in history and the biggest tank battle in history also the biggest loss of aircraft. It was the last offensive the German army had before being forced into defensive positions. Operation Bagration would never been achievable if the soviets had not won the battle of Kursk. That’s just my opinion and I also wanted to say I thoroughly enjoyed this video and the history behind it.
We have to start calling the "Soviet Union" for what it really was -- the combination of the greatest contributors, Ukraine and Belarus, with the Canada/USA supported Russians a tier below, and the other unfortunately dominated republics as well. You know this is true.
@@lyndoncmp5751 75% of the German army was in the east, Rommel was using cobbled together tanks from Italy and what was left of his panzers. I don’t think hitler gave a damn about the afrika corp. Good call on Stalingrad. I forgot it took place a year before Kursk.
@@ericnickerson1060British and Commonwealth forces winning at El Alamein ensured Germany and Italy could not take the Suez Canal and Middle East oil and decided that Turkey would not join the Axis. North Africa was crucial geographically and resources. Germany spent 2/3 of its WW2 expenditure and material resources on its air and sea forces and these were largely in the west. Already by the end of 1942 only 25% of German fighters were on the Eastern Front. The overwhelming vast majority of German Army divisions on the Eastern Front were second rate, non mechanised, poorly equipped horse drawn rabble because Germany pumped most of its resources into the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. The USSR would probably have lost in 1942 without the west.
Thanks Helen for an excellent podcast. The graphics, narrative and footage worked very well. Also, a useful reminder of the sacrifices made by the Red Army in defeating the Wehrmacht. For most of the war they were up against 75% of it. It is shocking that so little is known about this battle in the West. 1:53
Very professional and profound review of the Battle. It's like a sip of fresh air in swamp cold war era stamps of mindless human waves, etc. Red Army indeed suffered heavy losses in 1941-42, but they learned hard and it started to show in Stalingrad and Kursk. Bagration "deep warfare" and Manchuria encirclement operation were nothing but brilliant, where Soviet commanders planned and masterfully executed and exploited every opportunity, while being flexible and creative. Bravo!
16:10 The lack of support had more reasons. Yes Stalin did not want Home army to have an influence in post war Poland. Another reason, as you the video later states was Exhaustion. Soviets DID want the uprising to happen but when they were ready for it Home army didn't want to wait because they coordinated with the soviets in Livov and then the soviets detained the home army members
The success of Bagration depended just as much on the Wehrmact's operational and logistical shortcomings as well as Hitler's micromanagement as it did on it's strategic ingenuity. I think if Operation Bagration had been tried against the German Army of 1940/41, it would've been a massive failure. As it was, Germany was more or less already defeated by 1944.
It is odd that the standard narrative includes Stalingrad, El-Alamein and D-day, but leaves out the single most decisive operation in the war, Bagration. I cannot say that I am too happy with Stalin ending up dominating Eastern Europe, including Poland(!), but the fact remains. This video is very enlightening, historically speaking.
I would say the standard narrative was Stalingrad, El Alamein, and Midway/Guadalcanal. By the time Operation Bagration rolled around, the Axis powers had long lost any hope of claiming victory. So no, it's not the most decisive battle of the war.
@@lowdpacks7874 Perhaps, but I meant the list of battles I mentioned to be more of a visible turning point in the war; an indicator the tide had turned against the Axis powers, not necessarily the scale or impact the battles had on the war.
most decisive? Lol. they were already being invaded from the west. even if the soviets collapsed there wasnt good hope for them at this point late in the war
Tim Bouverie, "The opening months of Operation Barbarossa (the code name for the invasion of the Soviet Union) produced some of the most spectacular victories in German history. Vast territories were conquered; whole armies captured. Yet by the end of it the Red Army had not been destroyed and Russia remained undefeated. This was the crucial point. Hitler’s plan rested on bringing the Soviet Union to its knees in one swift summer campaign. His failure to achieve this meant not only doom for his Russian adventure but, ultimately, for the Nazi state itself. As the leading German industrialist Fritz Todt explained to the Führer on November 29, 1941: “This war can no longer be won by military means.”
Poland did not asked Soviet Union for help. They've prepared a rebellion keeping it in secret from Soviets. Only after rebellion in Warsaw has begun and germans enter Warsaw with 2 armored divisions to smash it, Churchill called Stalin and asked Soviets to help polish rebellion in Warsaw. It was 36 hours in. Soviet army just advanced 500 km, had tired divisions on the edge and no supply lines. Warsaw was still away from russian front line and well-protected by germans with 5 armored divisions. 500 km is too long to quickly deliver the reinforcements and start the assault of Warsaw. Soviet Union atm didn't even had a signed plan for it. But Soviets immediately launched a supply operation. Soviet planes did 2500 flights with food and weapons and 2000 flights to cover planes and suppress the anti-air defence of germans to support the rebellion, but it just had no enough forces and was defeated by germans before Soviet Army can help them. No one even asked Soviets when the time will come to rise the rebellion. And now you're telling us Soviets are "failed to support the rebellion". Terrible lies.
i agree. Different thing did the allied in italy, when advancing from rome they stopped in the appennini and let the partisans believe they were arriving.. and then letting them die by hand of the nazi reprisal operations...
There is no such thing as soviet help. Why would the soviets even care about helping a nation that they stole land from along with the germans? We saw how much the soviets cared about poles with the Katyn massacre.
Not a lie, Stalin didn’t want to support the Poles and ordered the halting of the Red Army to let the Germans finish them off. Stalin always wanted Poland as a puppet / buffer state against Germany, and didn’t want free Poles to get in the way of it post war.
@@pault3945 Nah, even if Stalin didn't want to support the Poles, the Red Army was actually halted from its tracks in the Battle of Radzymin, where the 3rd Guards Tank Corps was encircled and destroyed by a Nazi counter-attack in its drive to encircle Warsaw, and all tank formations were ordered on the defensive. 5 hours later the Warsaw Uprising begins.
What the germans did to the people of the places they occupied in Eastern Europe is beyond imagination, they were not treated like France. I missed you talking about that. It is necessary to educate people about the sacrifices they made. I worry about the relativization of this sacrifice by the western media, relativizing the sacrifice of the soviets is relativizing the evil they faced. Their victory was good for humanity.
Nice try pushing Soviet propaganda. The Soviet regime was solely responsible for the suffering of the Soviet citizens. Their huge casualties happened thanks to Soviet regime incomplete leadership
@cachorrovinagre2979 honestly do you think any big army was nice during wars? The british, usa, russia germany, ottomans, mespotamians, romans, french, spanish (lets not forget what they did in south america) all were brutal unfortunately that is part of war it is either conquer or be conwuered. People like you are so soft these days life is way to good and comfortable for you. Really always about educate go do your own research and see if your country has a clean bum or not.
Soviet’s did not face “75% of the German army alone”; they had absolutely massive materiel support from USA without which they could not have prevailed
My great granduncle took part in the liberation of Minsk under the 48th Army. By this point in the war, he was a brigade commander. Meanwhile, my great grandfather on my mothers side was fighting under the 40th Army of the Second Ukrainian Front
It's so good to see the IWM give such recognition to Bagration, to the USSR/Stalin and most of all to the doctrine of Deep Battle / Operational Art. I was born in 1961, the year the Berlin Wall was raised. I was a reserve officer towards the end of the Cold War, and I remember the fear of MAD. Now, as time has passed, as the Berlin Wall crumbled and Soviet archives were (too briefly) opened, I followed the evolution of historiography, and discovered the magnitude of the USSR's role in WW2. This does not prevent me from being firmly in favour of Ukraine today. I hope we in the West remain their strong support, until they are ready for peace. I write from Belgium, the old "Battleground of Europe".
Anything to do with Operation Bagration without the mention of Rokossovsky is unfair. He had to fight his way to get approval for the operation. The entire General Staff at Stavka was apprehensive of his plans presented on a few papers carried by Rokossovsky in his pocket to get his approvals. One man's determination and belief changed history.
You could add that Hitler's orders to hold out until the last man weren't completely bonkers. The German divisions lacked the vehicles to effectively pull back and marching backwards on horse drawn carriages leaving behind all heavy weaponry was even more futile (as you said, the soviets were advancing at breakneck speed). Even if it was successful the result was a few hundred, maybe thousand lightly armed broken soldiers. The "reasonable" thing to do was to fight until they ran out of ammunition trying to buy time for the rest of the army. Like it or not, those divisions were lost the moment the Soviets decided to go around them. There could have been no organized retreat, even if it was permitted. Fighting to the death was also not something out of the ordinary on the Eastern front, any captured troops risked execution on the spot, deportation to Siberia was a sure thing. If you got deported, you most likely died anyways. The Soviets were extremely vengeful on the Germans as the Germans gave no quarter when they were advancing, they received none the other way around. If anything the Eastern Front was a "kill or be killed" place.
We have to start calling the "Soviet Union" for what it really was -- the combination of the greatest contributors, Ukraine and Belarus, with the Canada/USA supported Russians a tier below, and the other unfortunately dominated republics as well. You know this is true.
Amazing informative video. An interesting followup video could be the Siege of Budapest, again not something that is often talked about and an interesting microcosm of the eastern front.
Just finished watching the video on the Falaise Pocket. It mentions there that the Western Allies were facing just 25% of Germany's armed forces while the Soviets were facing the other 75%.
I was very familiar with this WWII history since I was a subscriber to the magazine "Strategy & Tactics" when I was younger. One of the featured games was "Destruction of Army Group Center" and no matter what approach I tried, the Germans always lost in the game.
"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me." -Nikita Khrushchev
@MrVlad12340 In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the Americans didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own. Ridiculous, we would have been overwhelmed by Hitler."
@MrVlad12340 Without U.S. supplies, the Soviet war effort would have been futile. America supplied Stalin with 400,000 trucks, 2,000 locomotives, more than 10,000 rail rolling stock and billions of dollars' worth of warplanes, tanks, food and clothing. At the same time, the U.S. also supplied nearly a quarter of Britain’s munitions. “We were lucky to have America as an ally,” Russian historian Anatoly Razumov told VOA recently. He said American technology and supplies formed the base of Russia’s war effort. “And we want to close our eyes to that. It’s shameful! Sometimes I talk to ordinary people who don’t want to understand. We were together during the war. Americans saved us from Hitlers push. How would it be if we hadn’t had this help? It was not a victory of just one country over Hitler. It was a victory of the whole world over him.”
@MrVlad12340 Without U.S. supplies, the Soviet war effort would have been futile. America supplied Stalin with 400,000 trucks, 2,000 locomotives, more than 10,000 rail rolling stock and billions of dollars' worth of warplanes, tanks, food and clothing. At the same time, the U.S. also supplied nearly a quarter of Britain’s munitions. “We were lucky to have America as an ally,” Russian historian Anatoly Razumov told VOA recently. He said American technology and supplies formed the base of Russia’s war effort. “And we want to close our eyes to that. It’s shameful! Sometimes I talk to ordinary people who don’t want to understand. We were together during the war. Americans saved us from Hitlers push. How would it be if we hadn’t had this help? It was not a victory of just one country over Hitler. It was a victory of the whole world over him.”
@MrVlad12340 Without U.S. supplies, the Soviet war effort would have been futile. America supplied Stalin with 400,000 trucks, 2,000 locomotives, more than 10,000 rail rolling stock and billions of dollars' worth of warplanes, tanks, food and clothing. At the same time, the U.S. also supplied nearly a quarter of Britain’s munitions. “We were lucky to have America as an ally,” Russian historian Anatoly Razumov told VOA recently. He said American technology and supplies formed the base of Russia’s war effort. “And we want to close our eyes to that. It’s shameful! Sometimes I talk to ordinary people who don’t want to understand. We were together during the war. Americans saved us from Hitlers push. How would it be if we hadn’t had this help? It was not a victory of just one country over Hitler. It was a victory of the whole world over him.”
The biggest Soviet asset was Hitler. His preoccupation and obsession with non-strategic targets and objectives (Stalingrad) and his absolute refusal to allow his generals to make strategic retreats sped up Germany's inevitable defeat.
and there was a neo natzee yt natioalist dude larping on tiktok that how great of a commander Hitler was, bro was convinced by someone that Hitler is in top 10 list of greatest generals
@@maniac3449 I think it was Operation Foxley, where the British Special Operations Executive thought about trying to assassinate Hitler with a German-speaking sniper, who'd shoot him when he was taking one of this walks in the Bavarian Alps. The British ultimately decided against the operation, because Hitler was doing such a good job at losing the war and thus was more valuable to the Allies alive.
Good to see 5th Panzer Division being mentioned - taking on a whole Guards Tank Army by themselves and only being forced to withdraw due to their flanks collapsing. Afterwards the russians paid credit to them and told future commanders to avoid trying to go through 5th Panzers and instead to try and go around. Fun Fact: The russian advance was so fast that when 5th Panzer's initial trains arrived at their staging area the russians were so close the German tanks directly engaged the russians while still loaded on their flatbeds. They had to clear the area so the rest of the division could arrive.
The Soviets didn't stop outside of Warsaw due to logistical problems, that was a deliberate halt by Stalin in order to weaken free Polish forces, which aided his goal of subjugate the Poles, a nation that he hated.
Stalin had a vendetta to pick with the poles due to the defeat that the nascent USSR suffered at the hands of Poland during the Soviet polish war a defeat which a certain Mikhail Tukhachevsky put squarely on Stalin for his decision to siege Lviv instead of covering the southern flank which cause what became known as the miracle on the Vistula , Stalin would later execute tukhachevsky and many thousands of polish people in the USSR ( communist or not) this is also a factor for his decision to sign the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Germany.
That's what they got for siding with Western allies that was nowhere near them and freely antagonizing both Germany and USSR. In the end they got gutted, blasted, wrecked, and subjugated by both sides in turns without a single French or British soldier defending their land.
@@sthrich635 So the Fascists and the Communists destroyed Poland because they had the audacity to want to be a free and independent nation? Yep. That sounds about right.
The soviets were allied with and helping supply Germany as they threw the west off of continental Europe An amphibious invasion is very difficult and the soviets took the brunt ofbthe fighting because of their own actions
Stalin: "Konstantin Konstantinovich, would you please step out of the room and re-think your reckless proposal? Your plan is outrageous, and you will be held responsible. You've been in prison before, haven't you?" Rokossovsky returns as adamant as before. Stalin "Comrades, shall we go with his plan?" The rest is history...
Forget about the SS and Waffen SS and the high position people, those were megalomaniacs. But I dont think people realize just how insane the Wehrmacht was. In my opinion the greatest army the world has ever seen, they were literally fighting the whole world pretty much by themselves in an obviously doomed scenario and still inflicted enormous losses. As for the Red Army, not only did it have unfathomable amount of numbers in every department but also gained a lot of experience throughout the war. Towards the end of the war it was the best army in the world by far.
@12:20 the presenter states that the "upgraded T-34 had sloped frontal armour". What is she speaking about? The T-34 always had sloped frontal armour. It is the upgraded three-man turret and it's 85mm gun that gave the T34/85 the upgrade she should have been talking about.
It was a disaster because Hitler made it one. Guderian, Manstein, Rundstedt....ALL of the generals and field marshals pleaded with Hitler to allow a tactical withdrawal to more secure lines but they were ignored like so many other times during the war in Russia. Hitler's obsession with "no retreat" and "fight to the last man" cost Germany everything. Stalin had made the same decrees throughout the first 2 years of the war, but the Soviet Union was able to absorb those losses and conscript new armies almost overnight while Germany couldn't.
Stalin learnt from his mistakes and as is mentioned in the video, allowed his generals autonomy and let them plan the operation without his interference. There was an incident when Rovnossky, with great courage argued with Stalin about his strategy to beat the enemy and Stalin sent him out of the room twice “to think things over”. But on coming into the room for a third time with Stalin, Rovnossky was successful in persuading Stalin to adopt his battle plans and as a result won a great victory. Hitler very rarely if ever was persuaded by his generals to adopt their battle plans, with disastrous results, notably at Stalingrad. Stalin was more clever than Hitler, one main reason why the Soviet dictator defeated the German one.
Just reminds me how silly it is that we Americans say that WE won the war for the allies. Yet our efforts were relatively small compared to what was happening on the Eastern Front.
Like it or not the US was the economic and production engine behind the whole allied war effort including the USSR. Without the Americans supplied and fighting in WWII, the western allies are defeated and the USSR would lose large parts of its territory and probably be pushed well back from Moscow and be forced to retreat to central and eastern Russia.
@@burrellbikes4969 It‘s not that silly. British and american air power smashed the german economy to pieces by destroying industrial capacity and logistic capabilities. Additionally they pulled the Luftwaffe away from the eastern front and cleared the skies for the Soviets to smash the Wehrmacht on the Ground. The Soviets defeated Germany on the ground, anglo-american Bombers defeated them in the air and destroyed the economy. It‘s kind of silly to look for what single event or theater of war was decisive, when everything played a part. „Big Week“, Operation Overlord and Operation Bagration are focus points, but they do not stand alone.
fascinating presentation. Where were the t-34s and other hardware produced? It is one challenge to mobilise the man-power but where did the tanks/artillery all come from in such a short time? I assume the factories in Western USSR cities were previously bombed out by the German air forces...meaning the materiel had to be mfr'd and then shipped across huge distances. I've always wondered how were they able to outpace the Germans in that capacity?
380.000 as well as 1.000.000 dead prisoners "throughout the war". Both numbers don't tell the full story, as german soldiers were held captive until 1955.
Konstantin Rokossovsky was the guy that planned Operation Bagration and insisted for multiple breakthroughs. The rest of the Soviet high command was against this, but Stalin went with Rokossovsky's plan after telling him to think about it three times. On the fourth time, Stalin said "your confidence speaks for your sound judgement".
Rokossovsky gets no love from popular military history. That guy had balls of neutron star material. I wish I could get my hands on his book, 'A Soldiers Duty.' Old dusty copies are going for like, $600.
Troops from the following fronts took part in Operation Bagration: General I. Kh. Bagramyan, commander of the 1st Baltic Front, General I. D. Chernyakhovsky, commander of the 3rd Belorussian Front, General G. F. Zakharov, commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front, Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Marshal G.K. Zhukov coordinator of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts, Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky coordinator of the 3rd Belorussian and 1st Baltic Fronts, general A.I. Antonov representative of the Supreme High Command Headquarters - development of an operation plan. Marshal Rokossovsky was a talented military leader, his front played an important role in the defeat of the Germans in Belarus, but he only carried out the plan that was developed by Headquarters. Victory always has many faces.
This is a myth from Rokossovsky memoirs. No other evidence about it. The latest declassified documents confirms that A.I.Antonov was the main figure that planned Bagration.
Vassilevsky was the Chief of Staff and a logistics god. He was the one who truly "planned" all the Soviet operations from Moscow to Manchuria.
This story is Rokossovsky's own self-aggrandizement post war that he wrote into his memoirs. Records of military councils on planning operation 'Bagration' show entirely opposite story where Rokossovsky was arguing for a single powerful attack by his front but was forced to change his mind during the debates on the subject.
The irony being that you can make a case that when the Soviets rolled over the Japanese in Manchuria in August 1945 that that was the greatest military defeat of all time in a single contained battle. The Soviets conquered an area the size of Western Europe in 10 days while suffering almost no discernible casualties. Getting back to Bagration and the destruction of Army Group Centre, the Soviets had the Germans so confused it took the Germans four days to realize that Minsk was the key objective. By then their front had been shattered.
And during that entire operation, the Soviets destroyed and captured the entire Kwantung Army, the general and largest Army Group in the Imperial Japanese Army, with more than 700,000 soldiers.
The Kwantung Army was stripped of air support and supplies which were needed in the Pacific and Japan. The Japanese navy had ceased to exist and no supplies could be shipped back from Japan.
I would think losing your entire Army twice in 6 months as the Soviet Union did in 1941 would trump this minor skirmish. Russia lost more troops in WWII than all the Axis countries, the US, the British commonwealth and France combined. Never let anyone tell you Russia won WWII. At the start of that war Russians made up 7% of the world population. Now they are little more than 1%. They have never recovered from the war they helped start.
The German dispositions were the greatest reason for this catastrophic defeat. By holding themselves deep inside Belorussia, with their AG South already pushed into Poland and Romania, the entire front of AG Center screamed "encirclement". Hitler rejected a repeat plan from early 1943, Operation "Buffel" (Buffalo), where Ninth Army had successfully pulled out of the Rzehv salient, freeing some twenty-five divisions and considerably shortening their front. This plan would have withdrawn almost all of AG Center behind the Berezina River; leaving only a screening force that would have orders to "bug out" once the Soviets struck, having them waste their artillery on "hitting air", blown all bridges, and waited for the Soviets to cross, counter-attacking their bridgeheads as they formed. The eventual plan would have been to make a fighting withdraw towards the Bug and Niemen rivers, taking the sting out of the Soviet's overwhelming superiority in men, artillery, and armor. This might have saved enough men and equipment to hold the "Ostwall", and have the Soviet Army exhaust itself trying to invade Central Europe. At this point, all hope of a strategic victory that'd restore the initiative to the Germans was gone; all they could do was hold out and sue for a favorable peace, and hope the Allied-Soviet alliance would fall apart. It should be kept in mind that the Allied forces in "Overlord" were largely contained in Normandy, the going through the "Bocage country" was slow and COSTLY. The Soviet success in Bagration meant that all reserves left, and there weren't a lot, had to go East in order to stop the Soviets from stomping right through Poland and onto Berlin itself right then and there; NONE could go to the West! Of course, between Monty and Bradley, the German forces of OB West were finally ground down, and even a desperate counter-attack at Mortain, in response to Patton's breakthrough into Brittany once US Third Army was ineffectual; only HASTENING their own catastrophe in France.
It should be kept in mind that the follow-up from Bagaration could, in theory, have ended up with the Soviet forces in eastern Germany itself by autumn of 1944. There were several problems with that:
(1) The doomed forces in the various "fortresses" did, in general, hold out until their supplies were exhausted, before what was left surrendered, denying critical road junctions that hampered the Soviet advances more than German resistance on the front itself.
(2) Many German soldiers did manage to escape both the Soviet Army and the numerous partisans; capture by the former meant going to a POW camp with a poor chance of survival; survival of capture by Soviet partisans meant almost certain death. Still, it took awhile before these men could be restored to health and assigned to a combat unit; many were no longer fit for front-line duty.
(3) The Soviet army had still not entirely solved its ineffectiveness in sustaining the logistics of a long drive, despite them now having American-made Dodge and Studebaker trucks as well as M4 medium tanks. Many Soviet tank divisions were stalled for lack of fuel and shells with practically no Germans in front of them.
(4) General Model was expert at defensive warfare; he held back his panzers until the lines stabilized, then used them for counter-attacks which typically caught the Soviets off-balance. Indeed, just as they were about to take Warsaw on July 31, 1944, three SS-panzer divisions launched a riposte from the Narew river, and forced Zhukov to withdraw his main forces about thirty-five miles to meet them. This was part of WHY the Soviets "betrayed" the Polish Home Army that rose up against the Germans that day; they were afraid of their over-extension costing them dearly, as similar experience had revealed previously. Letting the Germans deal with those "pesky" Poles of the AK, who the Soviets didn't want in power after the war anyway, was also a factor.
(5) The progress against Army Group North, in trying to break into the "Baltic States", was unsatisfactory. Also, and infuriatingly, the main defenders weren't German at all, being a hodgepodge of European, East, West, and North volunteers, led primarily by German officers, but, again, many non-German "Nazis" were in charge of their countrymen. Their motivation wasn't so much Nazism as it was to keep the Soviets out of THEIR respective countries, especially the Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. This Stalin would NOT tolerate; he wanted the Baltic states back, and was willing to commit whatever it took, which took nearly a whole year as AG North held out in "Kurland" until war's end.
(6) There were political and ECONOMIC objectives to the South, particularly to take Romania, which had long been a thorn in the Soviet side, out of the war, and establish Soviet hegemony in the Balkans before the British could come back. Most of Yugoslavia was effectively under control of Tito's partisans anyway, with Germany having a grip on the larger cities and desperately trying to hold the rail lines and roads. The anti-partisan work was so bad that German soldiers had the option of requesting a transfer, to the EASTERN front, and there was a WAITING LIST. This would also strip the Germans of their supplies of petroleum; which, of course, would fairly much doom their war effort. So, taking Romania out of the war, and entering Hungary, and linking up with Tito's forces, was a higher priority than further advances in Poland. The Soviets facing AG Center contended themselves with building their supply network, including converting the rail lines to the broad Russian gauge, and reinforcing their numerous bridgeheads over the Vistula, Narew, and San rivers, which would help them in the "VIstula-Oder" offensive of January 1945.
@@johnmortin5603 Indeed the Soviets did win WW2. Tell me, what is is like to be an appologist for German fascism?
Stalin was very “fond” of Army Group Centre, having made a dash for Kremlin in 1941. Stalin wanted all of them to visit Siberia ski resorts.
Many of them never left the resorts, too comfy
And within a short 50 years afterwards Stalin's empire came crashing to the ground.
@@neilpk70 Short? It collapsed long after stalins death. You're not making much of a point here.
@@neilpk70 how long did hitler's empire last?
@@Thompson123-ih4uh Not many empires would last long when the forces of international finance are able to manipulate the worlds most powerful countries into fighting against their own interests
Somebody said: 'Those who once dreamed of marching on the streets of Moscow, now finally got to do it, defeated'
soviets: "do you want to reach Moscow"
german: "yes it's my dream"
soviets: "wish granted LOL"
BC HILTER WAS TO STUPID IF HE LET his comd to to the uss will easy defeated an germnay win the war
@@therearenoshortcuts9868 BC HILTER WAS TO STUPID IF HE LET his comd to to the uss will easy defeated an germnay win the war
@@KillerYoudieso-dd3bwBWAHAHAHA
@@KillerYoudieso-dd3bw to to the uss? wtf lol
Always remember the man who wasn’t there. General Heinrici, the defensive specialist, warned that a major offensive was coming, and he wanted to shorten his lines and form reserves for counterattacks. For this, he was relieved by the Grofaz, and would only be brought back at the end to try and save Berlin.
To be fair, when was the last summer without ANY major offensive by either sides on Eastern Front? Given that German had lost the initiative in the East after Kursk, it didn't take a "defensive specialist" to say the Soviets were going to attack. And when an offensive was coming, the last thing the German commanders need was their infantries leaving their trenches, turning around with their back facing Soviet tanks and troops.
Secondly, shortening the lines for the German defenders also shortened the lines for the Soviets as well, and in strategic sense, the Germans giving up a major Soviet city would allow the Soviets to take and expand massively their own manpower with the free cities without any causalties while the German got nothing in return. Any potential defensive advantages in terms of less thinner lines would be offset by the same offensive advantage Soviet would received, in the end achieving little in strategic sense while only running the risks of surprise attack and wasting time and fuel during moving the German troops.
Reserves from where? 😂
@@sthrich635Shortening the line isn’t useless when there is gaps to be exploited.
@@sthrich635 i think the point was that this specific “defensive specialist” wanted to focus on counter attacking breakthroughs instead of holding firm. German doctrine and supply heavily favored this type of strategy and it had a lot of success for them previously. Although they may not have had all the personnel or resources to do this imo it would have been a better method to slow the soviets down. High command never wanted to give up ground however and fighting to the last man had some strategic success but over time it decimated their numbers
@@zoogie980 Except during summer 1944 Army Group Center didn't have sufficient proper counter-attacking forces available - most Panzer forces were in the West, and it mostly contains unmotorized infantry divisions - they were simply too slow to react to the mechanized Soviet tank armies breaking through their lines, imagine foot soldiers with a bunch of horses trying to catch up platoons of T-34. And such tactics would decimate the German forces even more - rather than German infantries fighting tooth and nails in the trenches and taking a few Soviets with them, they would be charging and dying in open fields in pure WW1 style.
And how would German doctrine and supply possibly even favor such strategy? In 1944 the biggest bottleneck on German operations/tactics were fuel, and fuel translate to mobility. In other words, German doctrine favor LESS mobility operations instead of mobility-heavy ones such as giving ground then counterattacking to take back (that would be a two way trip, imagine the fuel cost - if it succeed at all).
Not surprising that High Command got better awareness on the economy and supply of their own country that a general spending most of his time looking at maps.
Ya know what's crazy? Growing up in America, in school we were always taught that the Soviets "contributed" to Nazi Germany's defeat, but it was always assumed America and the Western Allies did the most work. The Eastern front is basically just mentioned and I never fathomed just how monumental and important the war in the east was. They, by far, played the biggest role in Germany's defeat.
yea it seems that some schools like to twist the facts a little to make it seem like the country they are in did the most.
@@av812bb
In all fairness, Soviet media in the 50s said America and Britain straight-up helped Germany, so you're right. Everyone does it 😅
well its normal, in Japan they taugh in school they didnt nothing wrong, just enter china and the world was attacking them
And the 14,000 airplanes donated to the Soviets? What impact would you evaluate it had for the soviets? Or the 13,000 tanks? or the 400,000 jeeps and trucks? There's more, you can look up the rest yourself if you want.
@@Marcelo_DBZ_Music The irony is that the Soviets and their Nazi friends literally initiated WW2 when they invaded Poland and split it between them. The Soviets planned and started WW2 along side Hitler and the Nazi's, they were partners in crime.
Another thing to note about the casualties is that whilst they were a lot higher for the Soviets, the majority of these men could be treated and returned to the frontline. Of the 700,000 casualties, many would’ve been caused by sickness from the swampy conditions of the Pripyat Marshes, and these men would quickly get better with rest and treatment. For the Germans however, most casualties were suffered through the encirclements, meaning even if lightly wounded a soldier would be captured and thus couldn’t return to the fight later on. These German losses were permanent, whereas soviet losses were often temporary.
Soviets also had a larger death toll. 6.7 times higher than the Germans actually.
@@jonny2954where did you get this from?
Most of the Soviet deaths were not in battlefields, but from starvation, torture and execution as prisoners, including the civilians murdered in occupied and besieged areas. There's a very simple reason why Stalin got his way without a societal collapse and that was the fact a much worse fate awaited in the other side.
@@naervern2107 And that Stalin was actually a very well liked leader and very competent at his job. The soviet peoples were on board with the project that was the USSR. Do not mistake western anti-communist propaganda with actual history...
Ludo Martens "Antoher View of Stalin" is pretty elightening.
@@kazaddum2448Cannot believe the Ukrainians loved Stalin. He murdered millions of them in the prewar famine.
The quality of this content is phenomenal. Thank you all for the efforts you make.
@@K_-_-_-_K w pfp
except the maps... half of the names are misspelled
@@K_-_-_-_K It is a copy paste section of the "Soviet Storm" episodes with probably some errors
Pretty sure the T34 always had sloping armor
Yes, since the A-20 prototype tank actually
@@47ex1 well this documentary made it sound like it was a new innovation in 1944
@@Agtsmirnoff The rollout of the t-34 was a big deal at the time, although I agree that by 1944 it was old news. Don't forget that the true genius of the t-34 was the ease of production... so while the sloped armor wasn't technically new, the production techniques that allowed the soviets (and the USA) to produce thousands of them was more unexpected. It was enough to cause alarm in the Nazi ranks and an immediate switch to the design for future production.
@@SuperNintendawg the T34 wasn't particularly cheap or easy to make, but the soviets managed to make an expensive tank cheaply by making it very poorly. The T34s that fought in ww2 were absolutely terrible
@@SuperNintendawg Since when did Germany make an immediate switch to their designs because of T-34? Am I reading Soviet propaganda in 21st century?
Another excellent and informative video. Thank you very much. The narrator did an outstanding job in her explanation of the operation.
agree. excellent narration by both the on and off camera people.
The chap doing the main narration is an excellent choice for the work, and having a little accent certainly adds to the nature of the intentionality of the topic. The presentation of the on camera person is also top quality. Another solid video.
Everyone has an accent dude. You just cant imagine someone knows more.
@@Rusty_Gold85agree 100%. yanks refers to any foreign accent as an “accent”.
@@Rusty_Gold85to be fair, it is quite a nice accent. Can't pinpoint where it's from but it's very satisfying to hear.
@@Khookies-lp2luit’s British. This channel is the imperial war museum which is a UK institution.
@@Khookies-lp2lu sounds Scottish I’m pretty sure
The transformation of the Red Army showed after early 1942 is fantastic. Their "deep battle" operations have always fascinated me. "Blitzkrieg" stopped working after the dashing victories of the 1939-41; Soviet deep battle tactics marked the period of war between 1942-45. Also, thanks to all Soviet soldiers for their sacrifices fighting fascism and imperialism. And thanks the Museum for this informative video!
>fighting fascism and imperialism
>turns all of eastern Europe into a collection of satellite states and force them to use centrally planned economies hindering their development by decades
loool
Well... the Soviets were and pretty much still are very aimed at conquest and empire building. And fascists and communists come from pretty much the same background. The war was not over in '41, but after Hitler betrayed the Russians (with whom he invaded Poland and started WW2 with) and certainly when Hitler declared war on the USA following Pearl Harbor, the Germans were doomed. No more blitzkrieg when you don't have fuel for the army. Plus the overstretched logistics.
@@snapdragonzoroarksay hello to Gladio
The Russians basically had unlimited manpower and materials. In pretty much every battle, the casualty rate was around 4-1. The German Generals and Field Marshalls were the real geniuses, and it would've been scary to think what they would've been capable of if men, materials, and fuel weren't always huge issues. These so called amazing Russian offensives were just German tactics with overwhelming amounts of everything.
@@jeffreyval9665 you forgot to mention "cold" brah, russians won cuz of cold weather and unlimited manpower lol. Cope
It's a shame the Red Army's capabilities late in the war get completely overshadowed by earlier disasters. They sure proved able to re-learn their trade.
Kursk and Stalingrad take all the Eastern Front's attention. You'll be lucky to find someone that even knows about the multiple battles for Kharkov. Army Group Center's devastation was a sucking chest wound.
Anyways, Operation Overlord went down and very soon after, Bagration. Axis losses piling up from the disasters in France and out East, on top of the Italian meat grinder, and a bloody partisan war in Yugoslavia (over 100k German troops were there in 1944), it was just too much. There were still scores of German troops in places like Norway.
The Allies had true strategic coordination and mutually supported each other, not just with material aid. The Axis never stood a chance.
Or was it that the Germans and Japanese were unsupplied, deprived of air support and stretched too thin by allied air superiority. Imagine if all those tens of thousands of 88s defending Germany's skies were shredding T34s like they did in 1941 and 42.
Yeah, it’s freakin wild, to learn the Germans had over 400,000 fresh troops, stationed in Norway. From 1944-45.
It's also a misconception that red army was complete disaster. Hitler started the invasion of USSR the same day Napoleon did when he invaded Russia a century before because he wanted to prove the world he was the greatest military leader in modern history. The USSR did the same thing to the nazis as Russia did to Napoleon troops.
Stalin had the decision to let nazis sink in their territory to stretch german front lines and supply lines. They knew they were inferior in technology and their aim was to use overwhelming firepower and manpower to overcome the nazis after they were deep in USSR territory. Hitler himself had that conversation with Finland leader recorded in a train when he confesses that he would not imagine USSR had industrial facilities pouring out tanks in a scale no other country could do at that time. Stalin was doing it in the Urals, at the far east and german intelligence only knew athat after Stalingrad and Kursk.
From the strategic sphere Stalin had control over the war against Germany. It was Germany that got frustrated with their advance in soviet territory had not major gains, because soviets were evacuating their cities and burning it to the ground. It was the only way the soviets could win the war was to handle huge losses. It was USSR plan since the begining. Their stretegic plan worked as they thought...because when nazis got into Stalingrad Stalin said to fight until the last man...and all after that is history!
@@johnnyflores5954they also had a couple 100, 000 in Prague up until the last day
11:58 Apparently 5th Panzer Division claimed 295 Soviet AFVs destroyed including 128 by the 505th Heavy Panzer Battalion Tigers, while losing basically all the 29 Tigers they had there plus 107 of 125 Panzer IVs and Panthers. Actual soviet losses are unknown though, and according to armor historian Steve Zaloga, rampant overclaim and double counting in such battles led to Fremde Heere Ost (German Eastern Intelligence Branch) usually reduced such claims by about 50% to get a better picture of enemy losses.
15:20 That Lvov-Sandomierz offensive in the south deserves just as much attention as Bagration IMO. Even reduced, AG North Ukraine still had far more formidable artillery, arnor, and air support than AG Centre and as such, was a more formidable threat. 1st Ukrainian Front had to pull out all the stops, including some very unorthodox uses of infantry and armor, to win the day.
17:30 It should be noted that the Soviet number includes 300000-500000-ish wounded or ill but not taken out of action. Total permanent losses (killed and missing) was roughly 180000. High losses but compared to the German loss of150000 captured and 150000-225000 killed or missing, the numbers were definitely in the Soviet favor by this point in the war.
those tanks were not lost as Soviet tanks from prior years were "lost".
Thing is that Germans had been able to control the battlefield in previous battles (many of them). That meant only the crews had been lost and the tanks were salvaged and repaired.
In this battle USSR controlled the battlefield and restored a lot of the tanks.
@@maxmagnus777And for Germany it was reversed, their previous losses were oftentimes recoverable as long as they controlled the battlefield and when the red army started pushing faster and faster it went down the drain, many German tanks were immobilized, abandoned and captured during their retreats.
@@Levon_RnD Yes, if you've watched ANNA TV from Syria. Tanks with GoPro. They are clearing areas from ISIS. They've lost some tanks and used them later on.
Even today, when the tech is far more advanced salvaged tanks can be brought back to life.
That is why in Ukraine they use artillery to "double tap" the damaged tanks all the time.
It's 2024, 80 years since all this happened. Can I ask, why bother? Why bother with accuracy? Your estimate of Soviet wounded has a variation of 200,000. History when at war is bollocks and wars are too. Every Soldier alive only want to salute the real men who stop war from ever happening. All the other salutes are forced salutes.
@@burtlangoustine1 Historical accuracy always matters. Would you write, "Why bother about accuracy," if the video presentation discussion was on D-Day? Or about Vietnam?
Its such a surprise there are not many more youtube videos on this very important battle. THanks for a great video
I’d suggest the Soviet Storm series on star media channel
Yes, it is very strange that the Soviet-German battlefield, which was the main battlefield of World War II, is almost never mentioned by Western media.
With huge forests and swamps.The terrain was very difficult.I would imagine that many German Units just panicked.Either they couldn't put up resistance or escape was difficult because of the terrain.Most German Units at this point of the war had fewer vehicles.So escape on foot would be the only option with Partisans everywhere.
Just one small additional tidbit...... sometime toward or at the end of Bagration a flask or two of sea water was flown back to Moscow and presented to Stalin. He was incredulous and overjoyed when told the flask(s) contained seawater from the Baltic.
Shortly after the Soviets reached the Baltic Sea, the Germans counter attacked and drove the Soviet forces off the Baltic coast which was also around the time the bottles reached Stalin; he then requested that the generals pour the water back in the same spot they collected it :)
yes, I heard they did that because Stalin refused to believe they were on the coast, (I heard it was 3 bottles,..but who will really know after all these years)
The follow-up operations would be as devastating. Group North would be cut off and isolated for the rest of the war in the baltic states.
Group South would be encircled and destroyed, enabling Romania and Bulgaria to swap sides against Germany and cutting their access to Romanias oil.
Sweet! germs are also idiots as a society! lol
We have to start calling the "Soviet Union" for what it really was -- the combination of the greatest contributors, Ukraine and Belarus, with the Canada/USA supported Russians a tier below, and the other unfortunately dominated republics as well.
You know this is true.
@@MultiCappie ukraine and Belarus were occupied for 3 years. The bulk of ukrainian and belarussian casualties were civilians killed by nazis. This does not make even sense, the russians were 75% of the red army, the majority of the industry was in the RSFSR. Saying that Ukraine and Belarus were the real "heroes" is pure historical revisionism.
On lend lease, sure it was really useful al togistical level and not letting the population starve but the main part started arriving late, in 1943. And the USSR exported tons and tons of materials to the Allies. And the only reason the japanese army surrendered was for the invasion of Manchuria (japanese army, not the japanese state)
@@MultiCappieIf it was just Ukraine and Belarus the war would have been lost never mind the fact that most Ukrainian and Belarusian land was occupied by the Germans for a good chunk of the war the USSR was a union of states and everyone had to give something for the war effort even Mongolia which was not part of the USSR sent thousands of soldiers and tons of foodstuffs to the USSR for the war so no neither Ukraine nor Belarus get so say that did most since the entire union was doing something for the war.
@@AMERICAN_CAESAR First, thanks for straw-manning my argument, that just never gets old, but second: And if it were "only Russia" - no input from USA/Canada, Ukraine, and Belarus? What then? Go ahead, embarrass yourself.
Thank you for covering this, I had no idea 💡🙏
Bloody amazing as always, love these documentaries. Thanks, IWM
I know right, can never get enough of learning more about ww2. The scale of the war is just completely mind boggling.
A million soldiers here a million soldiers there etc.
Maskirovka is not only camouflage , that's only half , the other half is reinforcing them in their illusions of where the major blow would fall
the German could see that four full tank armies were in south Ukraine , which they were , that was a very obvious threat
they didn't see that there was a massive secret build up in Belorussia
I'm absolutely loving these videos! Great work IWM for putting together such professional documentaries and involving actual members of staff in the presenter roles.
It must be noted however that the plot of the operation was developed by colonel-general Antonov. He was the true mastermind of Bagration. Antonov was the deputy head of the General Staff. Nominally the head of the General Staff was Marshal Vasilevskiy but he was mainly one of Stavka's representatives at the frontline (it was a unique post not comparable to any of the western armies). And the bulk of the work in the General Staff was done by Antonov.
Hard to feel sorry for those Nazi PoW's considering the vile, horrible treatment of Soviet PoWs already in 1941, when they were deliberately starved in open air concentration camps without access to any amenities. 1 million Soviets starved in those first 6 months of the invasion. Backe's Hunger Plan was truly despicable.
"Hard to feel sorry for those Nazi PoW's considering the vile, horrible treatment of Soviet PoWs already "
1st) Soviets usually were not vaccined which is one big factor for the high death rate of Soviet PoWs.
2nd) The USSR didn´t sign the Geneva convention. It´s a bit stupid to complain about my enemy didn´t abide by the rule of law while myself ignoring the rule of law.
@@kodor1146the Nazis were warcriminals. The Soviet Union was to nice to them
@@kodor1146
What utter nonsense. You can't vaccinate against starvation, or exposure. Try vaccinating against dysentry.
Further, are you saying Germany hadn't signed? Because if they had, they were obligated. Additionally, the Soviets offered to abide by the Hague Convention, if Germany did. The Finns managed to treat Soviet prisoners better, and they didn't have the whole of Europe to plunder for food. The OKW suggested they abide by the Hague Convention during the planning, but Hitler intervened. Thereof the Hunger Plan. So your argument falls very flat. It was a deliberate act to starve, actually murder, by a despicable regime. Please stop making excuses for them.
@@kodor1146 the Soviets offered to abide by the Geneva protocols, but Germany declined.... The OKW suggested in the planning stage, but Hitler thought better. Thereof the despicable hunger plan.
@@bastikolaski8111 "the Nazis were warcriminals. The Soviet Union was to nice to them"
That´s not entirely true in fact most of the stuff the Germans did during WW2, for example mass shootings in the context of partisan warfare were in fact in accordance with the rule of law by that time.
Falaise Pocket, Bulge, Stalingrad, Kursk….all big deals. Particularly the latter two.
12:18 Didn't all T34 have sloped armor? isn't that one of the things the tank is most known for?
I studied in Minsk in 1977, and our group visited the Great Patriotic War Museum there. Some earlier versions of the T-34 were more square-on at the front. The improvements came later.
@@liamgallagher6336 The earlier T34-76 also had sloped armour.
(11:27) Huh, interesting to hear the Berezina river and Barysaw (Borisov) mentioned. This was the site of a famous battle in November 1812, between Napoleon's Grande Armée and the Imperial Russian Army, as Napoleon was retreating. It was a disaster. Lots of people and materiel fell into the icy waters as pontoons and bridges collapsed or thin ice cracked. Napoleon's army took 20-30k casualties, the Russians ~10k, and maybe 30k more non-combatants casualties were also recorded. There are famous paintings about it, like _Crossing the Berezina River_ by Peter von Hess. At least in 1944 the battles in this area happened during the summer, but I wonder how many of those fighting there realized what had happened close by 132 years earlier.
fun fact berezina is featured in a roblox game lol (like the battle)
instead of france vs russia its France and Bavaria vs cannibals (zombies)
You are wrong. The Battle of the Berezina River was a French victory that allowed Napoleon and many of his troops to escape to the west. In fact, los_ses were heavy on both sides (especially for the Grande Armée).
@@desmond-hawkins I was thinking the very same thing.
@@desmond-hawkins I am from Borisov and used to swim in Berezina.
Stalin said it best. The Brits gave time, the US gave money and the Soviets gave blood
I love your content.
With great respect to both narrators, could it be possible if you only keep one narrator?
I feel in between narration breaking the immersion and feeling a bit weird.
Is documentary is awesome!
Please make a similar one about the Dnieper-Carpathian offensive or Jassy-Kishinev offensive in the south.
Thanks for this. I have been hearing about "Operation Bagration" and here is an appreciated explanation.
And thank you for not calling it "Operation Bag-Ration" as so many English speakers do.
Thats because the Red soldiers carried their rations in bags.
We also have to start calling the "Soviet Union" for what it really was -- the combination of the greatest contributors, Ukraine and Belarus, with the Canada/USA supported Russians a tier below, and the other unfortunately dominated republics individually as well.
You know this is true.
@@MultiCappie ?
@@LosPeregrinos51 Delusion.
@@300thNPC Yours? Hitler's? Mine? You lost me.
These videos are phenomenal! The IWM in person is equally impressive, I had the pleasure of visiting last month in London!
Great video! Sadly, most Americans are clueless about the sacrifices Russia made during WWII. I'd never heard of operation Bagration, and I've been a WWII scholar since childhood and a collector of Soviet militaria and esoterica for the last 30 years-John in Texas
The Soviets would not have had to make such sacrifices if they had not allied with the Germans from 1939 through 1941, if they had not cynically rampaged over Poland and the Baltics, if they had not attempted to bully the Finns, and above all if the paranoid and murderous Dzhugashvili had not slaughtered so many in his own military AND ignored all the warning signs that Operation Barbarossa was on the way! It's just sickening that so many individuals paid for the Red Czar's follies with their own lives while he endured...
@@ColinWrubleski-eq5shPoland mistake was to occupy russian land at the time of russian civil war. They later got the bill for that. The finnic dictator had big country fantasies, and were lucky the Soviet Union made peace with them
@@ColinWrubleski-eq5sh Stalin would not have done this if Britain had not told Stalin to fk off when Stalin wanted to made this arrangement with Britain first !
Operation Bagration was a massive campaign and rather prominent (in academic history rather than popular culture), so it's quite surprising you never heard of it if you were really a WW2 "scholar" from young.
@@ColinWrubleski-eq5shi think you may not be a native english speaker, you should look up the definition of alliance!
13:45 The apartment building in the center of Moscow, where I live, was built shortly after the war in 1949 by German POWs. The quality of construction is outstanding, the brick building has fantastic soundproofing and insulation and very issues despite being over 75 years old today.
We were always told in the UK, ‘How Britain won the War’, but it was the Soviets that broke the back of HitLer’s regime.
Maybe that’s why the current U.S. government is so vile in its attitudes towards Russia while sponsoring the spawn of ideological Nazis.
@DinkyDoughnut Not only in Britain. Due to the Cold War, the West was uneducated about the Soviet sacrifices. For instance, so little is still being taught about the battle of Stalingrad.
@@johnnyplatis20th century history books omit this and many other Soviet offences. This needs to be addressed in the 21st century.
There's no question that the Soviets contributed greatly to allied victory, but lets not pretend that the western allies didn't do the bulk of the work, not always on the frontlines, but in logistics, intelligence and other support.
@UzumakiNaruto_ This is correct.
I did a tour of the wider area in September 2018. Minsk, Belarus was amazing with some great museums. The Khatyn Memorial Complex was a sombre experience.
Minsk is a beautiful city, very clean and safe. I’ve been there numerous times.
Thank you for your excellent documentary! Great job!
❤❤❤❤❤
A lot of people today try to downplay or simply don't mention the eastern front when discussing WW2 So videos like these are appreciated!
Americans were fighting the Japanese , not only the Germans
Only the most ignorant
@@AnthonyOMulligan-yv9cg you'd be surprised how many people don't even know that soviets were the one who captured Berlin
@@AnthonyOMulligan-yv9cg Not at all. Most if not all of the ignorant, of which there are many are Americans
@@PeoplecallmeLucifer Did Soviet citizens in the 80:s even know about the western front?
A great video, despite some minor details (T-34 front armor was sloped since it was initially designed), about the worst defeat the german army suffered in the II World War, and the greatest victory for the Red Army. It was a masterclass in war tactics (the greatest maskirovka operation in history), organization and strategic planning, and the ultimate victory in military doctrine for the soviets. Glory for the soldiers and the armies of generals and marshals like Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Vasilievsky and others.
Finally a detailed video about Soviet operations of WW2 without the cold war era propaganda stuffed in every 30 seconds (human wave myth, treating the soviet troops as mindless slaves etc.) Very rare these days to see an actual objective view of the Eastern front that is also this well researched and narrated.
The Soviets were heroes. Cold war propaganda is trash.
the soviets were pretty mindless and remain so.. a godless country
i don't think it's rare tbh
@@AlexSwePR I respectfully disagree, most big channels aren't this objective.
@@afs6596 what do you mean by saying mindless and godless?
The only disagreement I had with this was I would have put the battle of Kursk as the battle that turned the tide of war in Europe. The single largest battle in history and the biggest tank battle in history also the biggest loss of aircraft.
It was the last offensive the German army had before being forced into defensive positions.
Operation Bagration would never been achievable if the soviets had not won the battle of Kursk.
That’s just my opinion and I also wanted to say I thoroughly enjoyed this video and the history behind it.
The Germans had already lost at Stalingrad and El Alamein before Kursk. The result had already been decided.
We have to start calling the "Soviet Union" for what it really was -- the combination of the greatest contributors, Ukraine and Belarus, with the Canada/USA supported Russians a tier below, and the other unfortunately dominated republics as well.
You know this is true.
@@MultiCappiekhokhol spamming the same comment all the time lmfao. Off to the front with you oinker
@@lyndoncmp5751 75% of the German army was in the east, Rommel was using cobbled together tanks from Italy and what was left of his panzers. I don’t think hitler gave a damn about the afrika corp.
Good call on Stalingrad. I forgot it took place a year before Kursk.
@@ericnickerson1060British and Commonwealth forces winning at El Alamein ensured Germany and Italy could not take the Suez Canal and Middle East oil and decided that Turkey would not join the Axis. North Africa was crucial geographically and resources.
Germany spent 2/3 of its WW2 expenditure and material resources on its air and sea forces and these were largely in the west. Already by the end of 1942 only 25% of German fighters were on the Eastern Front.
The overwhelming vast majority of German Army divisions on the Eastern Front were second rate, non mechanised, poorly equipped horse drawn rabble because Germany pumped most of its resources into the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine.
The USSR would probably have lost in 1942 without the west.
Great video on the Great victory of the Soviet army in the most existential war of all times! Thank you!
At 16:01, the Soviets halted because they were halted. The entire Second Tank Army was torn apart by strong counter-attacks.
Thanks Helen for an excellent podcast. The graphics, narrative and footage worked very well. Also, a useful reminder of the sacrifices made by the Red Army in defeating the Wehrmacht. For most of the war they were up against 75% of it. It is shocking that so little is known about this battle in the West. 1:53
Very professional and profound review of the Battle. It's like a sip of fresh air in swamp cold war era stamps of mindless human waves, etc. Red Army indeed suffered heavy losses in 1941-42, but they learned hard and it started to show in Stalingrad and Kursk. Bagration "deep warfare" and Manchuria encirclement operation were nothing but brilliant, where Soviet commanders planned and masterfully executed and exploited every opportunity, while being flexible and creative. Bravo!
A great and informative overview of Bagration. Thank you.
The lady speaking is so well mannered and articulated, congrats!
@@MR-xw7mc Hear, hear!
She knows her subject well!
Stalin said it best. The Brits gave time, the US gave money and the Soviets gave blood
Us trucks came near the end@@heavyartillery-qm5hu
@@heavyartillery-qm5huno
16:10 The lack of support had more reasons.
Yes Stalin did not want Home army to have an influence in post war Poland. Another reason, as you the video later states was Exhaustion.
Soviets DID want the uprising to happen but when they were ready for it
Home army didn't want to wait because they coordinated with the soviets in Livov and then the soviets detained the home army members
There are ton of good Soviet era movies on this battle.. A lot of them are surprisingly good (and have sub titles)
Can you Name a few?
@@haldir3120 no he cant...theyre in his delusions only
@@afs6596 idiot. My favourite is Zvezda (The Star), also Liberation part 3 is awesome.
Fortress of war is a good russian film about ww2
@@WilliamKing-hf8lc Great Patriotic War, English subtitles
Great stuff, I really hadn't seen much about this in the more traditional documentaries - Nice Job on the research.
The success of Bagration depended just as much on the Wehrmact's operational and logistical shortcomings as well as Hitler's micromanagement as it did on it's strategic ingenuity. I think if Operation Bagration had been tried against the German Army of 1940/41, it would've been a massive failure. As it was, Germany was more or less already defeated by 1944.
Excellent video & presentation!!
It is odd that the standard narrative includes Stalingrad, El-Alamein and D-day, but leaves out the single most decisive operation in the war, Bagration. I cannot say that I am too happy with Stalin ending up dominating Eastern Europe, including Poland(!), but the fact remains. This video is very enlightening, historically speaking.
I would say the standard narrative was Stalingrad, El Alamein, and Midway/Guadalcanal. By the time Operation Bagration rolled around, the Axis powers had long lost any hope of claiming victory. So no, it's not the most decisive battle of the war.
@@timothy740 El Alamein is a skirmish compared to the eastern front
@@lowdpacks7874 Perhaps, but I meant the list of battles I mentioned to be more of a visible turning point in the war; an indicator the tide had turned against the Axis powers, not necessarily the scale or impact the battles had on the war.
@@lowdpacks7874 A battle with 311,000 soldiers is not a skirmish
most decisive? Lol. they were already being invaded from the west. even if the soviets collapsed there wasnt good hope for them at this point late in the war
Tim Bouverie, "The opening months of Operation Barbarossa (the code name for the invasion of the Soviet Union) produced some of the most spectacular victories in German history. Vast territories were conquered; whole armies captured. Yet by the end of it the Red Army had not been destroyed and Russia remained undefeated. This was the crucial point. Hitler’s plan rested on bringing the Soviet Union to its knees in one swift summer campaign. His failure to achieve this meant not only doom for his Russian adventure but, ultimately, for the Nazi state itself. As the leading German industrialist Fritz Todt explained to the Führer on November 29, 1941: “This war can no longer be won by military means.”
Excellent presentation. Thx for sharing
Poland did not asked Soviet Union for help. They've prepared a rebellion keeping it in secret from Soviets. Only after rebellion in Warsaw has begun and germans enter Warsaw with 2 armored divisions to smash it, Churchill called Stalin and asked Soviets to help polish rebellion in Warsaw. It was 36 hours in. Soviet army just advanced 500 km, had tired divisions on the edge and no supply lines. Warsaw was still away from russian front line and well-protected by germans with 5 armored divisions. 500 km is too long to quickly deliver the reinforcements and start the assault of Warsaw. Soviet Union atm didn't even had a signed plan for it. But Soviets immediately launched a supply operation. Soviet planes did 2500 flights with food and weapons and 2000 flights to cover planes and suppress the anti-air defence of germans to support the rebellion, but it just had no enough forces and was defeated by germans before Soviet Army can help them.
No one even asked Soviets when the time will come to rise the rebellion. And now you're telling us Soviets are "failed to support the rebellion". Terrible lies.
The uprising happened prematurely because the Poles wanted to prevent the Soviets from capturing it.
i agree. Different thing did the allied in italy, when advancing from rome they stopped in the appennini and let the partisans believe they were arriving.. and then letting them die by hand of the nazi reprisal operations...
There is no such thing as soviet help. Why would the soviets even care about helping a nation that they stole land from along with the germans? We saw how much the soviets cared about poles with the Katyn massacre.
Not a lie, Stalin didn’t want to support the Poles and ordered the halting of the Red Army to let the Germans finish them off. Stalin always wanted Poland as a puppet / buffer state against Germany, and didn’t want free Poles to get in the way of it post war.
@@pault3945 Nah, even if Stalin didn't want to support the Poles, the Red Army was actually halted from its tracks in the Battle of Radzymin, where the 3rd Guards Tank Corps was encircled and destroyed by a Nazi counter-attack in its drive to encircle Warsaw, and all tank formations were ordered on the defensive.
5 hours later the Warsaw Uprising begins.
Thanks for good spelling "Bagration", difficult for part of English speakers
What the germans did to the people of the places they occupied in Eastern Europe is beyond imagination, they were not treated like France. I missed you talking about that.
It is necessary to educate people about the sacrifices they made.
I worry about the relativization of this sacrifice by the western media, relativizing the sacrifice of the soviets is relativizing the evil they faced. Their victory was good for humanity.
Nice try pushing Soviet propaganda. The Soviet regime was solely responsible for the suffering of the Soviet citizens. Their huge casualties happened thanks to Soviet regime incomplete leadership
Was it? Most people died at the gulags...
Because this was a video about a specific battle, not the entire war or the thing that happened outside of it.
Wait till you hear about Gaza
@cachorrovinagre2979 honestly do you think any big army was nice during wars? The british, usa, russia germany, ottomans, mespotamians, romans, french, spanish (lets not forget what they did in south america) all were brutal unfortunately that is part of war it is either conquer or be conwuered. People like you are so soft these days life is way to good and comfortable for you. Really always about educate go do your own research and see if your country has a clean bum or not.
Soviet’s did not face “75% of the German army alone”; they had absolutely massive materiel support from USA without which they could not have prevailed
Yep, $250 billion dollars worth the US gave Russia
@@Alifarliam how did this material get to Russia? Did all of it go via Artic convoys?
See Hollywood, we as audience loves and respect great work by Women who present their work with great quality & confidence.
Learn.
Never heard of this. Great job of explaining!
u from murica bro?
@@karlscher5170 Nailed it bro!
@@jcsrst ur iducation sistem scks bro
@@karlscher5170 Says the bro who can't spell.
Stalin said it best. The Brits gave time, the US gave money and the Soviets gave blood
So, we are just ignoring the importance of Kursk?
My great granduncle took part in the liberation of Minsk under the 48th Army. By this point in the war, he was a brigade commander. Meanwhile, my great grandfather on my mothers side was fighting under the 40th Army of the Second Ukrainian Front
Thanks to the Red Army !
wonderful, succinct, well presented
This is a top class content.
It's so good to see the IWM give such recognition to Bagration, to the USSR/Stalin and most of all to the doctrine of Deep Battle / Operational Art.
I was born in 1961, the year the Berlin Wall was raised. I was a reserve officer towards the end of the Cold War, and I remember the fear of MAD.
Now, as time has passed, as the Berlin Wall crumbled and Soviet archives were (too briefly) opened, I followed the evolution of historiography, and discovered the magnitude of the USSR's role in WW2.
This does not prevent me from being firmly in favour of Ukraine today. I hope we in the West remain their strong support, until they are ready for peace.
I write from Belgium, the old "Battleground of Europe".
Ukraine is doomed, believe me. The day USA picked Ukraine as they puppet was the last day of independent Ukraine.
Stalin said it best. The Brits gave time, the US gave money and the Soviets gave blood
AH was the allies greatest asset with his veto of mobile defence
It was certainly easy for Hitler to tell his people to fight "to the last man."
Very well produced and narrated.
As a novice, I’m guessing, deep battle doctrine is only feasible, if you totally outnumber your opponent… any thoughts, anyone?
Always interesting. Thank you IWM 👍
Anything to do with Operation Bagration without the mention of Rokossovsky is unfair. He had to fight his way to get approval for the operation. The entire General Staff at Stavka was apprehensive of his plans presented on a few papers carried by Rokossovsky in his pocket to get his approvals. One man's determination and belief changed history.
You could add that Hitler's orders to hold out until the last man weren't completely bonkers. The German divisions lacked the vehicles to effectively pull back and marching backwards on horse drawn carriages leaving behind all heavy weaponry was even more futile (as you said, the soviets were advancing at breakneck speed). Even if it was successful the result was a few hundred, maybe thousand lightly armed broken soldiers.
The "reasonable" thing to do was to fight until they ran out of ammunition trying to buy time for the rest of the army. Like it or not, those divisions were lost the moment the Soviets decided to go around them. There could have been no organized retreat, even if it was permitted.
Fighting to the death was also not something out of the ordinary on the Eastern front, any captured troops risked execution on the spot, deportation to Siberia was a sure thing. If you got deported, you most likely died anyways. The Soviets were extremely vengeful on the Germans as the Germans gave no quarter when they were advancing, they received none the other way around. If anything the Eastern Front was a "kill or be killed" place.
We have to start calling the "Soviet Union" for what it really was -- the combination of the greatest contributors, Ukraine and Belarus, with the Canada/USA supported Russians a tier below, and the other unfortunately dominated republics as well.
You know this is true.
@@MultiCappie the Russians a tier bellow? Lmfao
@@dst4909 Ukraine, Belarus, Russia -- who contributed the least proportionally.
@@dst4909 Answer?
@@MultiCappiethey all contributed at their best plus Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians are one people they are all the same
Respect for reading "Bagration" correctly. A lot of people read "tion" like in English nouns.
Amazing informative video. An interesting followup video could be the Siege of Budapest, again not something that is often talked about and an interesting microcosm of the eastern front.
Very good content! Keep it up!
War is such a waste. But we need to prepare.
Top quality as always, thank you for you presentation.
Bagration was a brilliant Napoleonic Era commander.
Just finished watching the video on the Falaise Pocket. It mentions there that the Western Allies were facing just 25% of Germany's armed forces while the Soviets were facing the other 75%.
I was very familiar with this WWII history since I was a subscriber to the magazine "Strategy & Tactics" when I was younger. One of the featured games was "Destruction of Army Group Center" and no matter what approach I tried, the Germans always lost in the game.
Hah!
I played that too!
Exactly the same conclusion
That's the problem with games that are too realistic.
@@polarvortex3294 Well everyone knows that the second half of WW2 was lopsided. The Whole world vs Japan and Germany
@@heavyartillery-qm5huThat's what happens when you declare war on them.
"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me."
-Nikita Khrushchev
Khrusch was not an unbiased in his opinion and wanted to suck up to the Allies.
@MrVlad12340 In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the Americans didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own. Ridiculous, we would have been overwhelmed by Hitler."
@MrVlad12340 Without U.S. supplies, the Soviet war effort would have been futile. America supplied Stalin with 400,000 trucks, 2,000 locomotives, more than 10,000 rail rolling stock and billions of dollars' worth of warplanes, tanks, food and clothing. At the same time, the U.S. also supplied nearly a quarter of Britain’s munitions.
“We were lucky to have America as an ally,” Russian historian Anatoly Razumov told VOA recently. He said American technology and supplies formed the base of Russia’s war effort. “And we want to close our eyes to that. It’s shameful! Sometimes I talk to ordinary people who don’t want to understand. We were together during the war. Americans saved us from Hitlers push. How would it be if we hadn’t had this help? It was not a victory of just one country over Hitler. It was a victory of the whole world over him.”
@MrVlad12340 Without U.S. supplies, the Soviet war effort would have been futile. America supplied Stalin with 400,000 trucks, 2,000 locomotives, more than 10,000 rail rolling stock and billions of dollars' worth of warplanes, tanks, food and clothing. At the same time, the U.S. also supplied nearly a quarter of Britain’s munitions.
“We were lucky to have America as an ally,” Russian historian Anatoly Razumov told VOA recently. He said American technology and supplies formed the base of Russia’s war effort. “And we want to close our eyes to that. It’s shameful! Sometimes I talk to ordinary people who don’t want to understand. We were together during the war. Americans saved us from Hitlers push. How would it be if we hadn’t had this help? It was not a victory of just one country over Hitler. It was a victory of the whole world over him.”
@MrVlad12340 Without U.S. supplies, the Soviet war effort would have been futile. America supplied Stalin with 400,000 trucks, 2,000 locomotives, more than 10,000 rail rolling stock and billions of dollars' worth of warplanes, tanks, food and clothing. At the same time, the U.S. also supplied nearly a quarter of Britain’s munitions.
“We were lucky to have America as an ally,” Russian historian Anatoly Razumov told VOA recently. He said American technology and supplies formed the base of Russia’s war effort. “And we want to close our eyes to that. It’s shameful! Sometimes I talk to ordinary people who don’t want to understand. We were together during the war. Americans saved us from Hitlers push. How would it be if we hadn’t had this help? It was not a victory of just one country over Hitler. It was a victory of the whole world over him.”
The biggest Soviet asset was Hitler. His preoccupation and obsession with non-strategic targets and objectives (Stalingrad) and his absolute refusal to allow his generals to make strategic retreats sped up Germany's inevitable defeat.
Agreed 100%.
and there was a neo natzee yt natioalist dude larping on tiktok that how great of a commander Hitler was, bro was convinced by someone that Hitler is in top 10 list of greatest generals
@@maniac3449 I think it was Operation Foxley, where the British Special Operations Executive thought about trying to assassinate Hitler with a German-speaking sniper, who'd shoot him when he was taking one of this walks in the Bavarian Alps. The British ultimately decided against the operation, because Hitler was doing such a good job at losing the war and thus was more valuable to the Allies alive.
@@maniac3449 Some idiot once tried to tell me that Einstein wasn't that great of a scientist, but was only made famous by popular culture...
that just means you have a pop culture understanding of him.
Do a show on the supplies delivered as Lend Lease and how they were used.
I love your production
I very much enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
Good to see 5th Panzer Division being mentioned - taking on a whole Guards Tank Army by themselves and only being forced to withdraw due to their flanks collapsing. Afterwards the russians paid credit to them and told future commanders to avoid trying to go through 5th Panzers and instead to try and go around.
Fun Fact: The russian advance was so fast that when 5th Panzer's initial trains arrived at their staging area the russians were so close the German tanks directly engaged the russians while still loaded on their flatbeds. They had to clear the area so the rest of the division could arrive.
Just out of interest, could you provide the source? Sounds like a book I'd like to read.
The Soviets didn't stop outside of Warsaw due to logistical problems, that was a deliberate halt by Stalin in order to weaken free Polish forces, which aided his goal of subjugate the Poles, a nation that he hated.
yeah the Soviet apologists always claim it was all about supplies and so on; total Horse Crap.
Stalin had a vendetta to pick with the poles due to the defeat that the nascent USSR suffered at the hands of Poland during the Soviet polish war a defeat which a certain Mikhail Tukhachevsky put squarely on Stalin for his decision to siege Lviv instead of covering the southern flank which cause what became known as the miracle on the Vistula , Stalin would later execute tukhachevsky and many thousands of polish people in the USSR ( communist or not) this is also a factor for his decision to sign the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Germany.
That's what they got for siding with Western allies that was nowhere near them and freely antagonizing both Germany and USSR. In the end they got gutted, blasted, wrecked, and subjugated by both sides in turns without a single French or British soldier defending their land.
@@sthrich635 So the Fascists and the Communists destroyed Poland because they had the audacity to want to be a free and independent nation? Yep. That sounds about right.
The soviets were allied with and helping supply Germany as they threw the west off of continental Europe
An amphibious invasion is very difficult and the soviets took the brunt ofbthe fighting because of their own actions
Very impressive presentation so I subscribed.... and the narrator pronounced "Bagration" correctly.
Any good books on Operation Bagration :)?
This is a great channel.. Keep up the good work..🙏
Stalin: "Konstantin Konstantinovich, would you please step out of the room and re-think your reckless proposal? Your plan is outrageous, and you will be held responsible. You've been in prison before, haven't you?"
Rokossovsky returns as adamant as before.
Stalin "Comrades, shall we go with his plan?"
The rest is history...
Slava Krasnaya Armiya!
Forget about the SS and Waffen SS and the high position people, those were megalomaniacs. But I dont think people realize just how insane the Wehrmacht was. In my opinion the greatest army the world has ever seen, they were literally fighting the whole world pretty much by themselves in an obviously doomed scenario and still inflicted enormous losses.
As for the Red Army, not only did it have unfathomable amount of numbers in every department but also gained a lot of experience throughout the war. Towards the end of the war it was the best army in the world by far.
@12:20 the presenter states that the "upgraded T-34 had sloped frontal armour".
What is she speaking about?
The T-34 always had sloped frontal armour.
It is the upgraded three-man turret and it's 85mm gun that gave the T34/85 the upgrade she should have been talking about.
the whole video is full of misinformation actually, intended to make the russians look more competent than they were
It was a disaster because Hitler made it one. Guderian, Manstein, Rundstedt....ALL of the generals and field marshals pleaded with Hitler to allow a tactical withdrawal to more secure lines but they were ignored like so many other times during the war in Russia. Hitler's obsession with "no retreat" and "fight to the last man" cost Germany everything. Stalin had made the same decrees throughout the first 2 years of the war, but the Soviet Union was able to absorb those losses and conscript new armies almost overnight while Germany couldn't.
Stalin learnt from his mistakes and as is mentioned in the video, allowed his generals autonomy and let them plan the operation without his interference. There was an incident when Rovnossky, with great courage argued with Stalin about his strategy to beat the enemy and Stalin sent him out of the room twice “to think things over”. But on coming into the room for a third time with Stalin, Rovnossky was successful in persuading Stalin to adopt his battle plans and as a result won a great victory.
Hitler very rarely if ever was persuaded by his generals to adopt their battle plans, with disastrous results, notably at Stalingrad.
Stalin was more clever than Hitler, one main reason why the Soviet dictator defeated the German one.
Just reminds me how silly it is that we Americans say that WE won the war for the allies. Yet our efforts were relatively small compared to what was happening on the Eastern Front.
America won the war for allies. Without american lend-lease soviets would fall in 1943
Like it or not the US was the economic and production engine behind the whole allied war effort including the USSR. Without the Americans supplied and fighting in WWII, the western allies are defeated and the USSR would lose large parts of its territory and probably be pushed well back from Moscow and be forced to retreat to central and eastern Russia.
@@burrellbikes4969 It‘s not that silly. British and american air power smashed the german economy to pieces by destroying industrial capacity and logistic capabilities. Additionally they pulled the Luftwaffe away from the eastern front and cleared the skies for the Soviets to smash the Wehrmacht on the Ground. The Soviets defeated Germany on the ground, anglo-american Bombers defeated them in the air and destroyed the economy. It‘s kind of silly to look for what single event or theater of war was decisive, when everything played a part. „Big Week“, Operation Overlord and Operation Bagration are focus points, but they do not stand alone.
Sadly, Stalin also captured Eastern Europe.
Recaptured.
@@MarkHarrison733When did the USSR under Stalin previous to 1945 annexe Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary?
@@kdee8166 1939.
fascinating presentation. Where were the t-34s and other hardware produced? It is one challenge to mobilise the man-power but where did the tanks/artillery all come from in such a short time? I assume the factories in Western USSR cities were previously bombed out by the German air forces...meaning the materiel had to be mfr'd and then shipped across huge distances. I've always wondered how were they able to outpace the Germans in that capacity?
380.000 as well as 1.000.000 dead prisoners "throughout the war". Both numbers don't tell the full story, as german soldiers were held captive until 1955.