Bagration 1944

A fascinating history of the great summer offensive launched by the Red Army in 1944 which turned the tide of the war. Throughout the war on the Eastern Front, there were two consistent trends. The Red Army battled to learn how to fight and win, while involved in a struggle for its very survival. But by 1944 it had a leadership that was able to wield it with lethal effect and with far more effective equipment than before. By contrast, the Wehrmacht had commenced a slow process of decline after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler became increasingly unwilling to delegate decision-making to commanders in the field which had been crucial to earlier success. The long years of fighting had also taken a heavy toll. Thousands of irreplaceable junior officers and NCOs were dead, wounded or prisoners.Renowned Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar expertly brings these contrasting fortunes to life, trends which culminated in the huge battles of Bagration . As this masterful study conclusively shows, in 1944 the Red Army finally put together a campaign that utterly destroyed the German Army Group Centre. The Wehrmacht suffered the loss of over 300,000 men killed, wounded or taken prisoner and the Red Army rolled forward across Belarus to the outskirts of Warsaw. The end of the war was still many months away, and the Germans managed to reconstruct their line on the Eastern Front, but final victory for the Soviet Union was now only a matter of time as a direct consequence of Bagration .>

Auteur

Prit Buttar studied medicine at Oxford and London before joining the British Army as a doctor. After leaving the army, he worked as a GP, first near Bristol and then in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. He is extensively involved in medical politics, both at local and national level, and served on the GPs' Committee of the British Medical Association. He has appeared on national TV and radio, speaking on a variety of medical issues. He contributes regularly to the medical press.

An established expert on the Eastern Front in 20th-century military history, his previous books include the critically acclaimed Battleground Prussia: The Assault on Germany's Eastern Front 1944-45 (Osprey 2010) and Between Giants: The Battle for the Baltics in World War II (Osprey 2013) and a definitive four-part series on the Eastern Front in World War I which concluded with The Splintered Empires: The Eastern Front 1917-21 (2017). He now lives in Kirkcudbright in Scotland.

Contenu

(Subject to confirmation) List of Illustrations List of Maps Dramatis Personae Introduction: Tehran Chapter 1: Fritz and Ivan: The State of the Armies of the Eastern Front Chapter 2: The Front Behind the Front: Partisans in Belarus Chapter 3: Preparing the Blow Chapter 4: Waiting for the Hammer to Fall Chapter 5: A Fateful Anniversary: 22-24 June Chapter 6: The Floodgates Open: 25-28 June Chapter 7: Exploitation: 29 June-3 July Chapter 8: The Surge to the Frontier: 4-8 July Chapter 9: Vilnius: 9-14 July Chapter 10: Fire Brigades: The Panzer Divisions and the Red Army, 9-19 July Chapter 11: Interlude: 'Make Peace, You Fools! What Else Can You Do?' Chapter 12: High Tide for the Red Army Chapter 13: Praga and Warsaw Chapter 14: The Third Reich on the Brink Notes Bibliography Index