Bobruysk offensive

Bobruysk offensive
	Part of Operation Bagration
	; Development of the Bobruysk operation during soviet offensive Operation Bagration from June 24, 1944, 4:00 AM to June 27, 1944, 9:00 PM
Date	23–28 June 1944
Location	Belorussian SSR53°06′N 29°12′E / 53.1°N 29.2°E
Result	Soviet victory
Belligerents
Germany	Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Hans Jordan; (Ninth Army)	Konstantin Rokossovsky; (1st Belorussian Front)
Strength
90,000-100,000	90,000-95,000 ; [citation needed]
Casualties and losses
50,000 killed, 20,000 captured, 12,000 escaped encirclement	7,061 killed and missing

The Bobruysk offensive (

Bobruysk

under constant aerial bombardment.

Up to 70,000 Axis soldiers were killed or taken prisoner. Bobruysk was liberated on 29 June after intense street fighting.

Role in the conflict

Planning

Operational goals

The operational goals of the Bobruysk offensive within the context of Operation Bagration were twofold:

To break through the defensive positions of
Bobruysk
.
Commit motorised / cavalry exploitation forces through the gap opened, opening the way for a major encirclement of much of the remainder of Army Group Centre in the Minsk offensive.

German intelligence

Ninth Army headquarters had argued particularly strongly that a major attack against Army Group Centre was imminent, and General Jordan had bitterly complained about the high command's refusal to sanction tactical withdrawals, but the Army Group commander, Field Marshal

35th and 41st Guards Rifle Corps opposite; each of the three regiments of the German divisions was faced with a full-strength Soviet rifle division of 7,200 men.^[3]

The Ninth Army was, in general, made up of lower quality divisions than Fourth Army to its north; this may have reflected a belief on the part of the OKH that the terrain in Ninth Army's sector was more easily defensible.[4]

Deployments

Wehrmacht

Ninth Army (General Hans Jordan)
- XXXV Corps (Lieutenant-General Kurt-Jürgen Freiherr von Lützow)
- XXXXI Panzer Corps (Lieutenant-General Edmund Hoffmeister
  )
- LV Corps (General Friedrich Herrlein)
- Reserve:
  707th Infantry Division (Major General Gustav Gihr
  )

The city of Bobruysk had been designated a Fester Platz, or fortified area to be held at all costs, under the command of Major-General Adolf Hamann.

The above units were under the overall command of

Ernst Busch

).

Red Army

1st Belorussian Front (Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky)
- 3rd Army (General Alexander Gorbatov)
- 28th Army
- 48th Army
- 65th Army (General Pavel Batov
  )
- 16th Air Army
- Cavalry mechanized group under command of Lieutenant-General Issa Pliyev (KMG Pliev), including 1st Mechanised Corps, 4th Guards Cavalry Corps

The above units were under the command of the special representative to Stavka, Marshal Georgy Zhukov.

The offensive

In the southern sector of operations, where the

Pripet Marshes, but this area was largely bypassed by the Soviet offensive.) Rokossovsky had bravely staked his reputation on a plan for a complex double-envelopment of the German forces at Babruysk, in opposition to Joseph Stalin's preferred plan of a single breakthrough in the sector.^[5]

Rokossovsky's attack, as with the other initial offensive operations of Operation Bagration, was preceded by a heavy artillery bombardment. The first assault, against strong German defences, was however repulsed with heavy casualties. Rokossovsky ordered further artillery preparation for June 24, which eventually resulted in a collapse of the

65th Army under Batov.^[6]

The encirclement of the German corps

For the offensive, Rokossovsky's

Parichi. Inevitably, a rivalry had developed between the two generals, as both competed to be the first to crack the defence lines of the Ninth Army. On 24 June 1944, an earth-shaking artillery barrage consisting of 7000 guns, mortars and BM-13 Katyusha rocket launchers began in an attempt to annihilate the Germans. However, the northern sector of the front under Zhukov was met with stiff resistance and there was not much breakthroughs in the Rogachyov direction. Rokossovsky encountered less difficulties with the Germans and was able to make rapid advancements in his area. In what was considered to be an old fashion Russian offensive, Issa Pliev's Cavalry-Mechanized Group(KMG), consisting of the mighty 4th Guards Cavalry Corps and the 1st Mechanised Corps

, was the spearhead of the assault, with the 28th Army and 65th Army securing its flanks.

Pliev's KMG was able to travel across the adverse terrain of the marshes without much challenges, and struck the Ninth Army's southern flank. The KMG then cut south towards Slutsk in order to prevent the Ninth Army from retreating towards the south. By then, the Ninth Army had been cut off and it was doomed to be destroyed.

By June 27, Soviet forces were converging near Bobruysk, trapping the five divisions of

XXXXI Panzer Corps were also trapped, along with the 20th Panzer Division. The disorganised German divisions commenced a series of desperate attempts to escape the pocket, which stretched for several kilometers along the river's eastern bank: the Soviets reported large fires on 27 June as the Germans destroyed their heavy equipment and attempted to break out, but Soviet air attack and artillery inflicted appalling casualties on the encircled forces.^[7] In the meantime, Hitler had relieved Jordan of command due to his confusing instructions to 20th Panzer; Ninth Army was dealt another blow when its main communications headquarters was destroyed by bombing. On the following day, reinforcements arrived behind German lines in the form of 12th Panzer Division, whose commander was greeted by Ninth Army's chief of staff with the words "Good to see you — Ninth Army no longer exists!"^[8]

On 28 June 1944, the

20th Panzer Division

as the reinforcement.

The breakout of XLI Panzer Corps

Faced with Ninth Army's imminent collapse,

Svislach River to meet the retreating troops. Though a breakout was achieved through positions held by the Soviet 356th Rifle Division of 65th Army, the German forces were again subjected to intense artillery bombardment and air attack as they attempted to make their way along the roads south of Minsk.^{[citation needed}

]

The 65th Army takes Bobruysk

Batov's 65th Army now fought their way into Bobruysk street by street against stiff resistance from the German rearguard. Bobruysk, in ruins and with much of its population killed during the German occupation, was liberated on June 29, the 383rd Infantry Division commencing withdrawal towards dawn: no further elements of Ninth Army would escape from east of the Berezina. The German breakout had allowed around 12,000 troops - mostly demoralised and without weapons - from the pocket east of Bobruysk to get out, but the Soviets claimed 20,000 taken prisoner. A further 50,000 were dead: Soviet accounts speak of the area being carpeted with bodies and littered with abandoned materiel. The Soviet writer, Vasily Grossman, entered Bobruysk shortly after the end of the battle:

"Men are walking over German corpses. Corpses, hundreds and thousands of them, pave the road, lie in ditches, under the pines, in the green barley. In some places, vehicles have to drive over the corpses, so densely they lie upon the ground [...] A cauldron of death was boiling here, where the revenge was carried out"^[9]

Ninth Army had been decisively defeated, and the southern route to Minsk was open.

Accounts, further reading

In addition to Vasily Grossman, the writer and future dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was present at Babruysk as an artillery officer; the experience is mentioned in The Gulag Archipelago.

Gerd Niepold, the 1st Staff Officer of 12th Panzer Division, later wrote a comprehensive account of Operation Bagration, Mittlere Ostfront Juni 1944.

Citations

^ ЦАМО РФ ф. 233, оп. 2356, д. 256, л. 282-284
^ Dunn, pp.181-83
^ Dunn, p.181
^ Dunn, pp.188-9
^ Sebag-Montefiore, pp.483-4
^ Zaloga, pp.61-61
^ Glantz, pp.104-105; the Soviet analysis claims that von Lützow, realising the seriousness of the situation, gave his unit commanders authority for independent action in attempting to break out northwards or towards Babruysk. It states that many men even attempted to swim across the Berezina in an effort to escape.
^ Adair, p.135
^ Beevor and Vinogradova, p.273