Tanks in Operation Bagration 1944

A new study of tank warfare used in the Soviet offensive of Operation Bagration, which destroyed Army Group Center.

Operation Bagration, the 1944 summer campaign on the Russian Front, has been called ¿Hitler''s Greatest Defeat.¿ The operation involved substantial tank and armored vehicles on both sides but the German forces were severely hampered by the transfer of dozens of Panzer divisions to France to repel an expected Allied invasion. Forced to make hard decisions, German tank forces in the central Belarus sector were weak compared to the heavy concentration of Panzers in northern Ukraine. The Red Army exploited this vulnerability, crushing Army Group Center, and pushing beyond the Soviet frontier into Poland and East Prussia. With this crucial victory secured, the Red Army conducted successive offensives beyond the Carpathian Mountains, arriving at the Vistula river in Poland, and forcing Romania to switch sides.

The Red Army had embarked on