Page 453 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

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stages of the operation. They were especially effective as maneuver task forces in the
operational depth. That contributed greatly to increasing the scale of the Army and Front
offensive operations and achieving decisive success.
At the same time during that Operation all the Fronts suffered great difficulties in lo-
gistics and maintenance. Not only maneuver task forces but also regular infantry troops
moved so fast that maintenance teams could not restore the destroyed railroads on time.
That greatly impeded the flow of necessary expendables to the frontline.
The Operation “Bagration” was not a pleasant walking-tour. The overall Soviet loss-
es were about 765,815 men, including 178,507 KIA and MIA. Among the four Fronts
the 1 Belorussian Front sustained the biggest losses – 281,394 men or 37 % of the total
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losses.
However, unlike the German losses that were mostly unrecoverable because of mul-
tiple encirclements, Soviet soldiers wounded in action (about 600,000 men) in many
cases recovered after proper treatment and took part in the fights again.
On the whole, the successful Soviet offensive in summer 1944 radically changed the
situation on the entire Soviet-German front, and sufficiently reduced the Wehrmacht
battle capacity. The defeat of the Army Group “Center” made it possible for the Soviet
Command to conduct further successive offensive operations that finally crushed first
the defense of the German Army Group “South” and then Army Group “North”.
Elimination of the Belorussian Protrusion also denied the threat of German flank
strikes from the north on the armies of the 1 Ukrainian Front advancing to Lvov.
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The beach-heads captured on the western bank of Vistula in the area of Pulava and
Magnushev were very important for further operations aimed at the final liberation of
Poland and defeat of Nazi Germany.

Key words: Belorussian Protrusion, Operation “Bagration”, encirclement, breach-
head, Army Group “Center”, “Barbarossa” Plan.

Bibliography
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History. In 4 vols. Moscow, 1999. Vol. 3. Liberation).
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1941-1945. In 2 vols. Moscow, 2010. Vol. 1).
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