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p In 1944 and the spring of 1945 the Soviet Armed Forces carried out a series of brilliant offensive operations to complete the defeat of Hitler Germany. All Germany’s satellites laid down their arms. Soviet territory was completely cleared of the enemy, and so were many adjoining countries. The long-awaited peace came to nazi-ravaged Europe.

p By the beginning of 1944 the Soviet-German Front stretched from the Barents Sea along the river Svir to Lake Ilmen, then west of Velikiye Luki, east of Vitebsk and Orsha, west of Gomel and farther on from Kanev through Zhitomir, Cherkassy, Zaporozhye and Kherson to the Black Sea. The Crimea was still held by the enemy. As before, Germany’s main forces were committed along the Eastern Front, consisting of 236 divisions, including 25 panzer and 8 motorised, and 18 brigades. Of this total, 38 divisions and 12 brigades were troops of the satellite countries. The total strength was 4,906,000, with 54,570 guns and mortars, 5,400 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 3,073 planes. Soviet strength was 5,568,000, with 92,650 guns and mortars, 5,357 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 8,506 planes.  [152•1 

p The advancing Red Army was only slightly superior in numbers. Success, therefore, depended chiefly on superior warcraft. Numerical superiority was achieved by skilful manoeuvres, regrouping forces and massing them in narrow sectors, with non-active sectors giving up part of their strength for this purpose.

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p Planning the 1944 operations, the Soviet Supreme Command took account of the existing situation and mounted the offensive with all the ten fronts (army groups) operating on a long line of more than 2,500 km, from Leningrad to the’ Black Sea in succession, not simultaneously. Having a single operational aim, these operations were to break up the front sector by sector in considerable depth, committing troops from other fronts to reinforce the assault group. The enemy’s acute shortage of manpower was taken into account, and his transport difficulties were fully exploited.

p "The realities of the war,” wrote General S. M. Shtemenko  [153•1  in his memoirs, "compelled us to abandon simultaneous offensives in favour of powerful consecutive operations or, as we used to say and write in those days, strategic blows which would be more suited to the new situation.” In other words, the Soviet Command opted for a system of alternate strikes, and if the Germans had guessed the secret, it would have been in difficulties. But ingenious tactics were adopted to cover the assault preparations and assure the surprise element.

p In January-February 1944 a large offensive was mounted near Leningrad and Novgorod with the purpose of fully relieving Leningrad. Though disrupted a year earlier, the enemy blockade had in a way continued, with barbarous artillery bombardments harassing the city population. The destruction of the strong enemy strategic group on the northern flank of the Soviet-German Front was to spark drives all along the line.

p The Leningrad, Volkhov and and Baltic Fronts were pitted against the nazi Army Group North and a Finnish operational group, "Karelian Isthmus”. Running through woods and swamps, the enemy defences were well equipped, well built and well echeloned (230-260 km in depth).

p With Baltic Fleet warships taking part, the offensive jumped off on January 14, 1944. The enemy resisted fanatically. Not until the fourth day did the Red Army manage to breach the German tactical defence zone, smashing its powerful fortifications. Troops of the Leningrad Front tore through the enemy armies, while Volkhov Front units surrounded and destroyed a large nazi force and took Novgorod. On January 21, the offensive got moving along the 154 entire front from the Bay of Finland to Lake Ilmen. The army co-operated closely with the Navy and the local partisans, who in the first six weeks of the offensive blew up more than 58,000 rails and 300 bridges, destroying 133 nazi troop trains.  [154•1 

p The offensive did not cease until the end of February, when the German fascist armies had been flung back 220-280 km from Leningrad, with the major part of Leningrad Region cleared of the enemy. The powerful enemy fortified defences, known as the "Northern Wall”, were torn down. Three enemy divisions were totally wiped out and 23 partly destroyed. This was the culmination of the Leningrad exploit, the siege that had lasted 900 days and nights. Then followed’ the liberation of Soviet Estonia.

p Beginning with the end of December 1943 the troops of the four Ukrainian fronts, and then those of the 2nd Byelorussian Front, mounted a series of related operations in the Ukraine west of the Dnieper against a large force of 93 divisions, including 18 panzer and four motorised, and two brigades, and cleared the Crimea, smashing eight infantry and two cavalry divisions.  [154•2 

p In January and February 1944, Soviet thrusts cleared Zhitomir, Berdichev, Kirovograd, Korsun-Shevchenkovsky, Rovno, Lutsk, Nikopol and Krivoi Rog. The partisan support was highly effective, with partisans capturing towns and villages on their own. In the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky area troops of the ist and 2nd Ukrainian fronts surrounded ten enemy divisions and one brigade. These were wiped out. Thus, the nazis were pushed away from the middle reaches of the Dnieper, which drew a line through the German plan of restoring the defence .along the river bank.

p The ist Ukrainian Front routed German troops at Rovno and Lutsk, enveloping the flanks of Army Group South. In the Nikopol-Krivoi Rog operation, the 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts smashed a large nazi force in heavy fighting that lasted all February, eliminating an enemy bridgehead on the east bank of the Dnieper south of Nikopol. All this favoured a Soviet drive towards the cities of Nikolayev and Odessa.

p The next stage of the Soviet offensive in the Ukraine began 155 with a simultaneous lunge by all the four fronts west of the Dnieper—the ist, 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian, and the 2nd Byelorussian. First came the Proskurov_rChernovtsy operation, and on its heels the Uman-Botoshany and BereznegovatayaSnigiryovka.

p The nazis were pushed across the Dniester to the Carpathian foothills, the Soviet Army reaching the border of Czechoslovakia and Rumania along a more than 2OO-km frontage, after which the 2nd Ukrainian Front drove ahead into Rumanian territory.

p The regrouping of many partisan units west of the Dnieper, effected before the operations were mounted, coupled with the quickly growing partisan movement in that part of the Ukraine, were of immense help. Co-operating closely with the Soviet troops, the partisans hit out with devastating effect behind the enemy lines.

p The Soviet offensive was on a giant scale, along a i,4oo-km frontage and some 500 km in depth. As a result, with the Ukraine, west of the Dnieper completely cleared of the enemy, 66 nazi divisions were routed.

p With the Red Army driving into Rumanian territory, the Soviet Government on April 2, 1944 issued a statement that it would pursue the enemy until total defeat and surrender. It stressed that it had no intention of acquiring any part of Rumania or of changing the existing social system, pointing out that the Soviet drive was motivated exclusively by the exigencies of the war and the enemy’s continued resistance. The statement said the Red Army would continue its drive west until the aims of the just war of liberation were totally attained.  [155•1 

p The Red Army’s entry into neighbouring countries was an important political and military development, dispelling the nazi hope, and that of reactionaries in other countries, that the Soviet troops would terminate their drive west on reaching the frontier and would make no effort to crush nazism. Each metre of territory taken by the Red Army as it drove forward brought closer the destruction of fascism and the liberation of the peoples from German imperialist slavery, opening up for them welcome prospects of free, independent and democratic development.

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p It was the first time that foreign peoples had contacts with Soviet people, the Soviet soldiers, and they displayed trust and affection. The working people in foreign countries learned from their own experience of the fair and progressive foreign policy of the Soviet Communist Party, its national programme, its war aims and its sincere desire to liberate all peoples from foreign enslavement. The masses, headed by the working class and its vanguard, the Communist and Workers’ Parties, redoubled their efforts to overthrow the fascist regimes in their’ countries, to regain independence, carry forward radical democratic reforms and assure a close alliance and friendship with the Soviet Union. People’s democratic revolutions were about to take place in the nazi-occupied East and South-East European countries.

p On April 8 the 4th Ukrainian Front moved to liberate the Crimea, co-operating with the Black Sea Fleet and the Crimean partisans. The drive developed at an extraordinary pace. It took the Soviet troops only a few days to reach the approaches to Sevastopol. Preparations were begun to assault the city, which Hitler intended to hold at any cost.

p The storm of Sevastopol began on May 5-7. On May "7 the enemy was expelled from the Sapun-Gora, the key to the city, and on May 9 the battle was over. Sevastopol was stormed by the enemy twice in its history—in the Crimean war of 1853-56, and again in 1942. On both occasions the battle lasted many months. Yet the Red Army expelled the enemy in a matter of days—a legendary and unparalleled exploit.

p The results of the Soviet 1944 winter and spring offensive were impressive: 30 enemy divisions were wiped out and 142 badly battered, with nazi casualties exceeding one million. The enemy also.lost vast quantities of arms.  [156•1  Threequarters of nazi-occupied Soviet territory was recaptured. Besides, the- Red Army reached the Soviet frontier along a frontage of some 400 km. The Communist Party and Soviet Government worked out a plan to complete the defeat of the enemy and liberate the European peoples from the nazi occupation. For the Hitler Reich retribution was now close.

p The nazi leaders dreaded the coming of the summer of 1944. They did not conceal their fears. But the facts were grimmer still than their nightmares.

p The first of the Red Army summer offensives was mounted 157 on the Karelian Isthmus and in South Karelia. The offensive began on June 21 and ended on August 29, with the Leningrad and Karelian Fronts aided by the Baltic Fleet and the Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega flotillas crushing the strongly fortified enemy, liberating most of the Karelo-Finnish Republic and all.of the Leningrad Region. Hitler’s Finnish ally was all but beaten. Soviet troops reached the Finnish frontier. The time had come to put Finland out of the war.

p The Soviet operation distracted German attention from other sectors. The nazi generals expected the next Soviet stroke in the southwest. They did not think likely an assault on the powerful Army Group Centre of 63 divisions.  [157•1  In fact, however, four Soviet fronts —the ist, 2nd and 3rd Byelorussian and the ist Baltic—had been priming since spring 1944 for the biggest offensive operation of the year in Byelorussia. At Stalin’s suggestion it was given the code name of Bagration in tribute to the distinguished 1812 Patriotic War general.  [157•2 

p Considerable forces were deployed, totalling 166 divisions (numerically, however, the Soviet divisions were considerably smaller than the German). This produced a numerical advantage of 2:i.  [157•3  In tanks and self-propelled artillery the advantage was 4.3:1 and in planes 4.5:i.  [157•4  The effects of the Soviet economic victory, conclusively secured, were becoming obvious. Numerous Byelorussian partisan units co-operated closely with the advancing troops.

p Success in the Byelorussian operation Bagration depended essentially on how well the jump-off could be concealed from the enemy. This was the biggest problem, for the forces involved were huge. The enemy had to be -made to think that troops were being massed elsewhere along the front—in the north (the Baltic area) and the south. The commanders there were ordered to simulate arrivals of infantry divisions, backed by tanks and artillery.  [157•5  The ruse worked: the nazi generals were convinced no offensive would be mounted in Byelorussia.

p Secrecy was also secured by using the services of only a few people in the operational planning. Only five men knew the 158 extent of the operation. All correspondence and all telephone and telegraph communications on the matter were prohibited. The strictest controls were established.

p Operation Bagration went off to a start on June 23-24. In the first several days the Red Army surrounded and crushed the Vitebsk enemy group. Among the highlights of the thrust was the exploit of Engineer-Sergeant F. T. Blokhin, who, at a risk to his life, leaped on to the bridge across the Western Dvina and prevented its demolition by pulling out the detonator of an about-to-explode mine.

p Simultaneously, Soviet troops lunged at and routed the Orsha group and invested a nazi force at Bobruisk. A tank crew under Lt. P. N. Rak raced across the Berezina River into Borisov during the fighting for that city, crossing a mined bridge that blew up seconds later. For 16 hours the crew battled the enemy alone in the city streets, bombarding the town Kommandatur, wiping out the headquarters of a German unit and throwing the fascist garrison into panic.

p Minsk, the capital of Soviet Byelorussia, was liberated at dusk on July 3. East of the city 30 enemy divisions were tightly surrounded, with the mopping up taking nearly a week.

p In a mere eleven days the Soviet Army smashed the main forces of Army Group Centre and liberated most of Byelorussia. The offensive was high-powered, with advances of 20 to 25 km being registered daily. Many villages, towns, even cities, were liberated by partisans—either on their own or in co-operation with the regular army.

p The Lublin-Brest Operation by the ist Byelorussian Front, July 18-August 29, 1944, was part of Bagration. On July 21 its troops arrived on the border with Poland. By then the Soviet-Polish frontier was also reached by troops of the 1st Ukrainian and and Byelorussian Fronts. The Polish towns — Chelm, Lublin, and others—were liberated. The ist Polish Army, activated in the USSR, fought splendidly beside the Soviet troops. Polish partisans, too, took part in the fighting. On July 31, ist Byelorussian Front troops reached Praga-, Warsaw’s suburb across the Vistula, while more troops battle-crossed the Niemen to the frontier of Eastern Prussia.

p Operation Bagration covered with new glory the hero of the 1812 War. It was titanic in scale, audacious in design and brilliant in execution. One stroke of immense force flung the enemy out of the Byelorussian Republic, driving far west and 159 creating an immediate threat to Germany proper—a threat the German Command could no longer parry. The German defence system proved a total failure. It was clear that nothing on earth could now stem the Soviet offensive against the fascist Reich.

p Army Group Centre was beaten to tatters. Seventeen divisions were completely wiped out and another 50 lost 60 to 70 per cent of their personnel.  [159•1  Apart from Byelorussia, a large section of Soviet Lithuania was cleared. The impression in Germany was staggering. Hermann von Gackenholz, a West German war historian, writes: "The summer 1944 developments had a still greater impact (than the Stalingrad defeat— Deborin) on the general German war situation: the breakdown of Army Group Centre affected the entire German eastern front, enabling the Russian Command to drive the Germans back in the middle up to the Vistula and the borders of Eastern Prussia, to cut off the German forces in the Baltic countries and virtually eliminate the German positions in the Balkans militarily and politically."  [159•2 

p The nazi generals, officers and soldiers captured in the Byelorussian operation were shipped under guard via Moscow far behind the lines. German troops that had strained to enter Moscow did indeed pass through it—but under military guard. Jean-Richard Bloch, the French progressive writer, expressed the feelings of his brother Europeans on this score as follows: "I have just seen them—all 57,600 of them! The remnants of Army Group Centre—soldiers .captured at Vitebsk, Bobruisk and Minsk. I, who had seen the Germans marching into our country and making themselves at home in our towns, was filled with indescribable joy.

p "I was present at the crime and now relished the retribution — Yes, my friends, these tens of thousands of Germans captured in the recent battles and marching through Moscow produced a striking, indescribable spectacle. The column of men shuffling past us in solemn silence was, in a way, a living symbol of the turning wheel of fortune that history will remember.

p "But that turn of the wheel was not accidental. It was brought into motion by the mammoth energy of the Russians, 160 their marvellous perseverance, brilliant foresight and unexampled will power."  [160•1 

p The Byelorussian Operation was timed to coincide with the opening of the second front in Europe by the Allies, showing that the Soviet people never failed to honour their international commitments. It enfeebled German strength even in the West and created a favourable situation for the Anglo-American landing in Northern France.

As for the retribution mentioned by Jean-Richard Bloch, it was hurtling down on Hitler Germany from land, sea and air.