On the 22nd of June 1944, Operation Bagration began. Three years after Operation Barbarossa, Russia was taking the fight to the Germans. The operation was named after Pyotr Bagration, a general of the Russian Imperial Army and a war hero.
The operation resulted in heavy German losses, with the Army Group Centre’s Fourth Army, Third Panzer Army, and Ninth Army decimated. It is considered one of the worst defeats experienced by the German armed forces during the Second World War.
Russian soldiers advance with fixed bayonets, Operation Bagration. 22 June 1944 [via]
Battle of Vilnius. Soviet Red Army and Polish Soldiers of the Home Army patrolling along the Large Street. The orthodox church of Vilnius is visible in the background. 16 July 1944 [via]
Soldiers of the 1st Baltic Front in action. Jelgava, 16 August 1944 [via]
Chief marshal of the armored troops Pavel Alexeyevich Rotmistrov. Borisov, 1 July 1944 [via]
Generalleutnant Alfons Hitter, standing, is publicly interrogated by General Ivan Chernyakhovsky and Marshal of the Soviet Union Aleksandr Vasilevsky after the battle of Vitebsk [via]
German convoy under attack Il-2 near Vitebsk. Because of absence of the Luftwaffe, such convoys were helpless [via]
Destroyed German armour litter the fields all over the way [via]
5th Guards advance during Operation Bagration. 1944 [via]
Panther Ausf. G destroyed during Operation Bagration. 1944 [via]
Destroyed German armour somewhere in Belarus. 1944 [via]
Soviet infantry supported by tanks T-34 is fighting for one of the settlements in the direction of Lviv [via]
Two destroyed Panzer IV tanks belonging to the 20th Panzer Division. June 1944 [via]
Soviet tanks T34-85 entering Minsk in early july 1944 [via]
Soviet soldiers in Polotsk, Berlarus. Propaganda poster celebrating the reconquest of the city and urging the liberation of the Baltic from Nazi German occupation. 4 July 1944 [via]
Civilians carry belongings out of burning houses. Minsk, July 1944 [via]