Operation Bagration
1944 saw the 4th Army still holding defensive positions east of Orsha and Mogilev in the Belorussian SSR. The first Soviet summer offensive of that year, Operation Bagration, proved disastrous for the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht), and especially so for the Fourth Army. Commencing on 22 June, an overwhelming Soviet assault saw nearly the entire army trapped in a pocket east of Minsk and destroyed during the first week of July. Very few units were able to escape westwards; those that did so were involved in desperate attempts to stabilise the German lines for the remainder of the summer, after which the Fourth Army required complete rebuilding.
Read more about this topic: 4th Army (Wehrmacht)
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)