Vilnius Offensive - Prelude

Prelude

From 23 June 1944, the Red Army conducted a major offensive operation under the code-name Operation Bagration, liberating Belarus, and driving towards the Polish border and the Baltic Sea coast. By the beginning of July the front line had been torn open at the seam of German Army Group Centre and Army Group North, roughly on a line from Vitebsk to Vilnius. While a large part of the Soviet force was employed to reduce the German pocket east of Minsk, following the Minsk Offensive Operation, the Soviet high command decided to exploit the situation along the breach to the north, by turning mobile formations towards the major traffic centre of Vilnius, in eastern Lithuania. For the German high command, it became imperative to hold Vilnius, because without it would become almost impossible to re-establish a sustainable connection between the two German army groups, and to hold the Red Army off outside East Prussia and away from the Baltic Sea shores.

Stavka issued a new order, number 220126, to the troops of the 3rd Belorussian Front on July 4. This required them to develop their offensive towards Maladzyechna and Vilnius, capturing the latter no later than 10 July, and to force crossings of the Neman River. The 33rd Army was transferred from the 2nd Belorussian Front in order to assist these objectives.

The German defenders were still in comparative disarray after the Minsk offensive. Remnants of the Fourth Army that had escaped the encirclement, and units of the 5th Panzer Division (reorganised into an ad-hoc Kampfgruppe, later redesignated XXXIX Panzer Corps, under General Dietrich von Saucken) fell back to form a defence before Maladzyechna, an important rail junction; but the 5th Guards Tank Army was able to cut the route between there and Minsk on July 3.