D-Day From the East: The Soviet Operation Bagration Crippled the Wehrmacht in Late 1944

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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.

Today’s guest is Prit Buttar, author of “Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive.” We look at these trends, which culminated in the huge battles of Bagration. 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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Scott here with another episode of the History and Plug podcast.
0:07.1	The Red Army of 1944 was completely unrecognizable compared to its 1941 counterpart.
0:14.0	1941 was when Germany nearly destroyed the Soviet Empire Operation Barbarossa.
0:18.7	By 1944, the Red Army was able to move the Eastern Front Line
0:22.6	over 600 kilometers west in the space of less than a month, twice as far as the Allies were
0:27.7	able to push the frontline east during Operation Overlord. How did the Red Army learn how to
0:32.7	fight and win so quickly and be much stronger on strategy when the Vermacht, which was the
0:37.2	envy of the world in the early 1940acht, which was the envy of the world
0:38.1	in the early 1940s, become much worse in all the same ways. In today's episode, I'm speaking to
0:43.7	Prit Bhutar, author of Bagratian, or Bagration, 1944, the Great Soviet Offensive. We look at the
0:50.0	trends which culminated the huge battles of Bagration, how the Red Army finally put together
0:54.0	a campaign that utterly destroyed the German army Group Center, eventually killing 300,000
0:58.1	men, and how the Red Army rolled forward across Belarus to the outskirts of Warsaw. This
1:02.7	operation arguably laid the foundations of the post-war borders and the Cold War and caused many
1:07.9	effects that were still being felt today. Hope we enjoy this discussion on Prit Bouter.
1:14.5	And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for a word from our sponsors.
1:19.3	If you're like me, you never have as much time to read as you want to.
1:22.4	Honestly, it's hard to sit down and carve out the time to read a book.
1:25.5	That's why I love Audible. It has over a million
1:27.6	audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, and one easy app, so you can consume audiobooks on the go. One title
1:32.9	I'm enjoying right now is 1177 BC, the year civilization collapsed. Basically explains why the ancient
1:38.3	world went downhill after the time of the Trojan War. Audible includes gripping titles that
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 25 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Unplugged, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Unplugged and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.