The D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 were a momentous military accomplishment. However, it should be remember that the largest military operation in history was Operation Bagration, the Russian army’s offensive in Byelorussia that commenced two weeks after the Normandy landings, on 22 June 1944.

Operation Bagration was named after a Russian hero of the war against Napoleon in 1812. It involved 2½ million troops, 8,000 tanks and assault guns, 28,000 guns and mortars and 7,000 aircraft. Operation Bagration was one of a series of Summer offensives by the Russians which recaptured the Ukraine , and including those towards Finland and Galicia . They were launch concurrently with the Normandy landings following an agreement between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin at meeting in Teheran on 28 November 1943.

The Byelorussia offensive was overwhelmingly successful and resulted in the destruction the German Army Group Centre and the death and capture of an estimated 300,000 German soldiers. The Russian Army advanced nearly 600km in two months, retaking most of the territory lost in 1941 and reaching the German boarder. The Byelorussia offensive is often recalled in West for the Russian army’s failure to secure Warsaw, whose citizens rose up only to be brutally crushed by the Germans.  

Russian commemorations of Operation Bagration are very sombre. No grand ceremonies and certainly no state visits from the German Chancellor. Too many families simply never heard from husbands, sons again. Russian brides still leave their bouquets at the local war memorial on their wedding day.  

Published in the Australian and Age on 7 June 2004

Originally published in the Asia Pacific Defence Reporter August- September 1994 at the time of the 50th anniversary of the famous WW2 operations.