Eastern Front
1944: The Red Army’s summer offensive
June – August 1944 · 3 battles
On the third anniversary of the German attack on the USSR the Red Army struck in Belorussia. Operation Bagration shattered the German Army Group Centre – the greatest defeat the Wehrmacht suffered in the whole war. Within a few weeks Soviet fronts liberated Minsk, Wilno and Lwów, entered Polish territory, seized bridgeheads on the Vistula and reached the approaches to Warsaw, where the uprising broke out on 1 August. In August the Jassy–Kishinev offensive shattered the German-Romanian front and led Romania to change sides. In the summer of 1944 Germany lost more men in the east than at Stalingrad, and the Red Army stood on the borders of East Prussia, on the Vistula and at the gates of the Balkans.
- 22 June – 29 August 1944Key battleOperation BagrationFrom 22 June to 29 August 1944 four Soviet fronts destroyed Army Group Centre in Belarus and reached the Vistula, the Narew and East Prussia.
- 13 July – 29 August 1944Lwów–Sandomierz offensiveFrom 13 July to 29 August 1944 Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front destroyed a German corps at Brody, took Lwów and Przemyśl and won a bridgehead across the Vistula.
- 20–29 August 1944Key battleJassy–Kishinev offensive20–29 August 1944. Malinovsky's and Tolbukhin's fronts trapped the German Sixth Army near Iași and Chișinău; a coup in Bucharest took Romania out of the Axis.