Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive

by Prit Buttar

Overview

A fascinating history of the great summer offensive launched by the Red Army in 1944 which turned the tide of the war.

Throughout the war on the Eastern Front, there were two consistent trends. The Red Army battled to learn how to fight and win, while involved in a struggle for its very survival. But by 1944 it had a leadership that was able to wield it with lethal effect and with far more effective equipment than before. By contrast, the Wehrmacht had commenced a slow process of decline after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler became increasingly unwilling to delegate decision-making to commanders in the field which had been crucial to earlier success. The long years of fighting had also taken a heavy toll. Thousands of irreplaceable junior officers and NCOs were dead, wounded or prisoners.

Renowned Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar expertly brings these contrasting fortunes to life, trends which culminated in the huge battles of Bagration. As this masterful study conclusively shows, in 1944 the Red Army finally put together a campaign that utterly destroyed the German Army Group Centre. The Wehrmacht suffered the loss of over 300,000 men killed, wounded or taken prisoner and the Red Army rolled forward across Belarus to the outskirts of Warsaw. The end of the war was still many months away, and the Germans managed to reconstruct their line on the Eastern Front, but final victory for the Soviet Union was now only a matter of time as a direct consequence of Bagration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472863515
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	03/11/2025
Pages:	488
Sales rank:	98,815
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Prit Buttar studied medicine at Oxford and London before joining the British Army as a doctor. After leaving the army, he worked as a general practitioner. An established expert on the Eastern Front in 20th-century military history, his most recent titles include the critically acclaimed new history of the siege of Leningrad: To Besiege A City: Leningrad 1941–42 and Hero City: Leningrad 1943–44. He lives in Kirkcudbright, Scotland.

Table of Contents

(Subject to confirmation)

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Dramatis Personae

Introduction: Tehran

Chapter 1: Fritz and Ivan: The State of the Armies of the Eastern Front

Chapter 2: The Front Behind the Front: Partisans in Belarus

Chapter 3: Preparing the Blow

Chapter 4: Waiting For the Hammer to Fall

Chapter 5: A Fateful Anniversary: 22–24 June

Chapter 6: The Floodgates Open: 25–28 June

Chapter 7: Exploitation: 29 June–3 July

Chapter 8: The Surge to the Frontier: 4–8

Chapter 9: Vilnius: 9–14 July

Chapter 10: Fire Brigades: The Panzer Divisions and the Red Army, 9–19 July

Chapter 11: Interlude: 'Make Peace, You Fools! What Else Can You Do?'

Chapter 12: High Tide for the Red Army

Chapter 13: Praga and Warsaw

Chapter 14: The Third Reich on the Brink

Notes

Bibliography

Index