Operation Overlord began on June 6th 1944 with D-Day invasions of Normandy Beaches. Two weeks later the allied armies were still bottled up in Normandy attempting to take Caen. Summer storms destroyed landing facilities and limited the amount of war materiel that could be landed. There was a very real risk that the “Hammer Blow” from the West was in danger of faltering.
It was at this juncture, on June 22nd, that Stalin launched operation Bagration. From June 22nd to August 19th the restructured Soviet Military system demonstrated the true might of Russia. The casualties suffered by the Germans on the Eastern Front were double what they suffered on the Western Front. A quarter of a million in the West and just under half a million in the East.
Over the course of operation Bagration the Red Army chewed its way through 28 of the 34 divisions of army group centre. In the retaking of Byelorussia they trapped another 300,000 german troops in the Courland Pocket on the Baltic Sea. These troops played no further active role in the war.
The Russian operation forced the Germans to divert resources to shore up the situation in the East. In the West the allies were eventually able to break out from Normandy. They almost trapped the Germans in the Falaise Gap. In Paris the French Resistance rose up to take the capital and the Germans were forced to withdraw to the East of the River Seine. From Gold Beach to Rouen is 155 km. While the allies travelled that distance though the bocage country of Normandy the Russians battled through 500 km of more open country from Mogilev to Grodno.
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