Could Bagration have rolled further with more supplies and whatnot?

Nightingale

Nightingale

Operation Bagration was one of the most successful, if not the most successful and largest offensive in history. It completely wiped out Army Group Center and Army Group North was knocked out cold.

So if the Soviets had more supplies, trucks, hence better logistics, etc. Could they have rolled further, thereby liberating many concentration camps much earlier (yay Anne Frank lives: no offense but I'm correct).
 

lucaswillen05

EcoBOOM said:
Operation Bagration was one of the most successful, if not the most successful and largest offensive in history. It completely wiped out Army Group Center and Army Group North was knocked out cold.

So if the Soviets had more supplies, trucks, hence better logistics, etc. Could they have rolled further, thereby liberating many concentration camps much earlier (yay Anne Frank lives: no offense but I'm correct).
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Model brought up many of the Panzer divisions on the Russian Front and fought Bagration to a standstill by early August. Then the Red Army mounted the Lvov Operation in Romania. In this respect Bagratin did "g further" For the Red Army to batter away at the strongest German positions would have been a costly error. A lesson they had learned by 1944.
 
NORGCO

NORGCO

EcoBOOM said:
So the Soviets couldn't have gone further in the north and the center even with the supplies (and whatnot)?
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Shifting effort to Romania was the smart move is what the man is saying. Bagration drew in the Panzer divisions to stop it, leaving other areas of the front open.

That is my reading of the situation.

It reminds me of descriptions of the situation in Normandy during the final breakout. There were eight Panzer divisions present, six and a half of another had been drawn east to face the British. It had been necessary to do that to block various of Montgomery's offensives.

So Patton was facing what was officially one and a half Panzer divisions, and one of them was actually Panzer Grenadier. Which made the breakout a lot easier than it otherwise would have been.

That the Nazi's had lost over a thousand tanks since D Day and only received seventeen replacement vehicles also helped. Similar issues would have been a factor in Eastern Europe.

Strategy and teamwork. Good ideas even if the Generals egos get bruised in the process.
 

ObssesedNuker

Largely echoing lucawillens here: unlike the Germans, the Soviets tended to recognize when an advance was about to reach it's culmination point and hence reign the it in. They learned that lesson at Third Kharkov.
 

lucaswillen05

EcoBOOM said:
So the Soviets couldn't have gone further in the north and the center even with the supplies (and whatnot)?
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It would cost them a lot. By 1944 theuy had the strategy worked out. Hit thw Germans where they are weak, not where they are strong. In the spring of 1944 the Red Army launched the first invasion of Romania which convinced the German High Command thet the summer offensive would fall in the south threateninng the oil fields. Which is why most of the available Panzer Division were down in Army Grop South. When the real summwer offnsive began the Red Army desroyed a large part of Army Group Cenre and tearing a 200 mile hole in the German lines. Model had to move the Panzer Divisions up to shore up the German positions. Wghich he did but then the Red Army attacked in Romania knocking that country out of the Axis and invading Hungary. From that point on the Germans ould never quite stabilize he situation. That could not have happened if the Red Army kept battering away at Poland.

This does not mean they could not have gon further into Poland in late August/September 1944. It is just that the offensive in the south kept he Wehrmacht effecively on the ropes. When the Germans shifted forces south the Red Army hit them in Poland again
 
Nightingale

Nightingale

lucaswillen05 said:
It would cost them a lot. By 1944 theuy had the strategy worked out. Hit thw Germans where they are weak, not where they are strong. In the spring of 1944 the Red Army launched the first invasion of Romania which convinced the German High Command thet the summer offensive would fall in the south threateninng the oil fields. Which is why most of the available Panzer Division were down in Army Grop South. When the real summwer offnsive began the Red Army desroyed a large part of Army Group Cenre and tearing a 200 mile hole in the German lines. Model had to move the Panzer Divisions up to shore up the German positions. Wghich he did but then the Red Army attacked in Romania knocking that country out of the Axis and invading Hungary. From that point on the Germans ould never quite stabilize he situation. That could not have happened if the Red Army kept battering away at Poland.

This does not mean they could not have gon further into Poland in late August/September 1944. It is just that the offensive in the south kept he Wehrmacht effecively on the ropes. When the Germans shifted forces south the Red Army hit them in Poland again
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Wow, the Soviets really are good in diverting the Germans.
 
NORGCO

NORGCO

pattersonautobody said:
I think that's Operation Barbarossa.
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First step in Socratic Method, define your terms.

Definition of Victory: "Victory is attaining your objectives." From 'On War' by Clausewitz if I remember correctly.

Arguments resulting from above:

Bagration attained its objective, the destruction of Army Group Centre, and is therefore a success.

Barbarossa failed to attain its objective, the defeat of the USSR, and is therefore a failure.
 

ObssesedNuker

NORGCO said:
First step in Socratic Method, define your terms.

Definition of Victory: "Victory is attaining your objectives." From 'On War' by Clausewitz if I remember correctly.

Arguments resulting from above:

Bagration attained its objective, the destruction of Army Group Centre, and is therefore a success.

Barbarossa failed to attain its objective, the defeat of the USSR, and is therefore a failure.
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Alex1guy said:
How was that successful if it failed in it's objective to defeat or bring the USSR to terms? :confused:
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He might mean just be focusing on the "largest" part of that sentence and ignoring the "successful and" part.

Although if one were to instead say "the Soviet summer offensive campaign of June-July 1944 was the largest offensive in history", then that would be quite accurate as that also encompasses the subsidiary operations in the Baltic and Ukraine that were pursued in parallel to Bagration.
 
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ObssesedNuker

pattersonautobody said:
TBecause it was an impossible, unrealistic goal?
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One of the key hallmarks in whether a campaign is successful or not is whether the goals that are set are realistic and possible. To say Barbarossa had impossible, unrealistic goals only reinforces the claim that it was a less successful operation.

he result was obviously more one sided in favor of the Germans, transversed greater distances, included more men, etc.
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If we are to compare like-to-like, then we need to compare the Soviet summer campaign in 1944 (which included Bagration) to the German summer campaign in 1941 (which was really just Barbarossa). I have noticed the habit of people using the term "Bagration" interchangeably with "the Soviet summer campaign of 1944", just as sometimes people talk about the Kiev Operation or Operation Typhoon as part of Barbarossa when in reality those occurred after Barbarossa had ended. In terms of men employed by the attacker, the Soviet campaign of '44 involved nearly 5 million men while the German campaign of '41 involved 3.2 million Germans plus another 600,000 minor Axis allied troops.

In terms of distances transversed, the results are actually quite similar. It is a similar distance from the D'niepr to the Vistula as it is from the Soviet-German '41 border to Smolensk. In terms of damage done, in absolute numbers obviously Barbarossa did more damage but then the Germans in '44 neither had as many men as the Soviets at any point in the war nor did they ever perform quite as poorly as the Soviets in '41 (except maybe for a few points in 1945). In terms of proportional damage, the results are again actually similar: both German casualty rates in 1944 and Soviet casualty rates in 1941 were generally 50+% of the forces involved.

A further point is to be made about the decisiveness of the damage done: in the case of Barbarossa, the damage done was not decisive. The Soviets replaced their losses, fought the Germans to a standstill, and then drove them back from Moscow. In 1944, the Germans never managed to replace their losses, in either men or equipment, and there is no indication that they could have done so even without their other commitments at the time... German irrecoverable losses in 1944 were ~3-4 times greater then the entire German force committed to the Battle of Normandy and total casualties were more then six-and-a-half times greater.

TL;DR: yes, Bagration was definitely the more successful operation then Barbarossa. So was the overall Soviet summer campaign of 1944. Bagration by itself was not larger then Barbarossa, but the overall Soviet summer campaign was.
 
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