Operation Bagration

22nd June 1944: The Red Army begins its revenge exactly three years after Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa

‘Stalin organs’, the Soviet Katyusha rockets were a part of the massive opening artillery barrage along the line

Heavy Artillery was a strength of the Red Army.

Only three years before Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Soviet Russia. The Germans had been told they only had to 'kick in the door' and the whole corrupt communist regime would collapse, victory would be theirs within a matter of a couple of months.

As I recall, the hurricane broke at 3.05am, on the dot, just as it had in 1941.

It hadn't worked out like that. In late 1941, Barbarossa stalled far short of Moscow. In 1942, the new German offensive was sidetracked into the Stalingrad offensive, ending in catastrophe. And in 1943, the last major German offensive at Kursk had achieved nothing. They had been falling back ever since.

The sustained Red Army barrage would shatter German ‘Army Group Centre’.