Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive

Prit Buttar is a former British Army physician who has written several excellent books on eastern European warfare in both world wars. I have found his work to be very well-researched, accessible to a general audience and engaging. 

Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive is a new work covering the summer 1944 offensive in what is now Belarus, Ukraine and Poland. In 1944 of course, most of this land was part of the USSR or Poland. If you've been in modeling or military history for a few decades you probably recall book and gaming titles such as "The Destruction of Army Group Center" back in the day when all these histories had a German-centric viewpoint. "Operation Bagration" was the Red Army's code name for its major summer 1944 offensive aimed at destroying as many German forces as possible, setting the stage for the final offensives to defeat Germany. No one expected that this operation would end the war, but it was hoped that it would damage the Germans enough to make subsequent operations feasible.  

By the way, "Bagration" is pronounced like "Bag RAH Tea Own" not "Bag Ration", in case you wonder. 

Bagration 1944 is firmly in the camp of post-Cold War histories. During the Cold War, most western histories of the fighting on the Soviet-German front were based almost entirely on German sources, and tended to be very German-centric as a result. Almost unconsciously, authors adopted a German point of view, since few good sources were available on the Soviet side. That changed after the fall of the USSR, so that in the last few decades we have been treated to much higher-quality scholarship. In the post-Cold War era it is possible to find plenty of good sources. Buttar's book is, firstly, a good balance of writing covering both sides in essentially equal detail. 

The author does a great job at setting the stage, both in the highest-level political realm and in the military strategic context. The writing and organization here is frankly superb, with just the right level of detail to set the stage for what follows. The joint effort to defeat Nazi Germany was never smooth or easy; the relationships between the powers (USA, Britain and the USSR) were often characterized by distrust, even as they tried to cooperate. All the powers were simultaneously trying to win the war and also gain the greatest postwar advantage. By the spring of 1994, however, it was clear that both the west and the USSR would be mounting huge efforts that would have major results. In the west, of course, the Allies would finally engage the Germans in the decisive theater in northern Europe. In the east, the Soviets would launch a huge, multi-Army Group offensive in the central part of the front. 

Bagration, like OVERLORD, was not intended to win the war in one operation. It was primarily intended to engage and destroy as many German units as possible, while seizing terrain that could be exploited later in subsequent offensives. 

This is a hardcover, 480 page book with a handful of B&W photos and 30 maps. So, while it is not a pictorial modeling reference, it is a very good campaign history indeed. I was especially pleased to see 30 maps included in the book, since maps are critical to understanding any campaign. Unfortunately, the maps here are extremely simple, offering only very basic information. That said, the text is excellent.   

Buttar begins with an introductory chapter on the 1943 Teheran conference between the "Big Three" of FDR, Stalin and Churchill. This is by way of introducing the complex international issues of fighting coalition warfare. I felt he provided just the right amount of political context here; enough to cover the essentials but not so much as to make a military history book a political one. 

He moves on to chapters setting the military stage, describing the state of the two armies as 1944 began. We also get a very good chapter on partisan warfare in the theater and on the planning of the offensive and the defense. We all know now that the offensive was planned for the central part of the front, but Soviet deception operations convinced the Germans pretty firmly that the offensive would hit in the south.

As an aside, it is remarkable how poor German intel operations were in WW2. In the summer of 1944 German intelligence staffs failed in their two most basic tasks: anticipating the locations of *both* the Soviet summer offensive *and* the western allied landings in Normandy. 

Buttar then describes the initial operations to achieve a tactical breakthrough in the German lines. Much like COBRA in Normandy a few weeks later, the initial tactical zone breakthrough took only a few days. And again like COBRA, but of course on a much larger scale, the exploitation phase, achieving operational freedom and driving into the depths of the German-held regions, was a much longer phase. By July the Red Army crossed the pre-war border and was driving into Poland. By August, some units had crossed the pre-war German border. For a brief period, prior to successful German counterattacks, German forces in Courland were cut off as a few Soviet units reached the Baltic shore.  

Eventually Bagration stalled out, more from logistics strain than anything the Germans did. But in those few weeks, the Red Army tore apart a German army group and inflicted massive losses the Germans could not replace. Bagration destroyed approximately 22 German divisions at the same time as the Germans were losing Normandy and then most of France. By late summer 1944, both in Poland and in France, Germany was on the brink of utter defeat. How they managed to hang on for a few more months, and even mount major offensives on both fronts, is a story for another book. 

My only criticism of this book is that the story of the July 20 Hitler assassination plot is given an entire chapter, which is probably not really justified here. The failed plot had little effect on the course of the campaign. The fact that it happened in the same time period is not reason enough to give it so much space. 

Conclusion

Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive is an accessible, well-written account of one of the more important operations of the war. We in the west sometimes think of the Eastern Front as "Barbarossa-Stalingrad-Berlin" . Of course it is far more complex than that. Prit Buttar's book is a great one-volume history of the 1944 offensive. It is accessible enough for someone who knows nothing about the offensive, but detailed enough for more experienced readers to still learn more. I really enjoyed it. 

Very Highly Recommended for all modelers.

Thanks goes out to Osprey Publishing for this review sample.

Reviewed by Dan Egan

 

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