[1] Bagramyan's experience in military planning as a chief of staff allowed him to distinguish himself as a capable commander in the early stages of the Soviet counter-offensives against Nazi Germany.

[2] For his contributions during the war, he was widely regarded as a national hero in the Soviet Union,[3] and continues to hold such esteemed status among Armenians and Russians today.

[6] Graduating in 1912, Bagramyan, whom everyone affectionately called Vanya, followed his father and his brothers in a path in rail work, attending the three-year railway technical institute located in Tiflis.

Bagramyan also began reading harrowing reports in the Russian press of what was taking place against his fellow kinsmen across the border: the Committee of Union and Progress-led government had embarked on a campaign to carry out a genocide of the Ottoman Armenians.

[9] Learning about the exploits of the men in the outfit, the chief of staff of the regiment, General Pavel Melik-Shahnazarian, advised Bagramyan to return to Tiflis to enroll in the Praporshchik Military Academy.

[12] Three years after the toppling of the Provisional Government by the Bolsheviks in October 1917, the Red Army invaded the southern Caucasus republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

[2][15] As life in Armenia grew relatively more stable under Soviet rule, Bagramyan sought to locate a woman he had met several years earlier, Tamara Hamayakovna.

Tamara, who was at this time living in Nakhichevan with her family, had been married to an Armenian officer who had been killed during the Turkish-Armenian War, leaving her with their one-year-old son, Movses.

Unlike many of the border troops who were caught off guard by the offensive, Bagramyan and his commander, General Mikhail Kirponos, believed an invasion by Germany was inevitable.

[21] Since the winter of 1939–40, Bagramyan had been busy devising a battle plan that would counter threats from the direction of western Ukraine, which was approved after numerous revisions on 10 May 1940.

Bagramyan took part in the great tank battles in western Ukraine and the defensive operation around Kiev, in which Kirponos was killed and the entire Front captured by the Germans.

[24] Bagramyan was then appointed chief of staff to Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and along with future Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, then a political officer, coordinated the fighting around Rostov.

"[25] Khrushchev went on to detail an account where Marshal Semyon Budyonny, sent by the chief of the operations department from Moscow as a representative of Stavka, arrived in Kiev to preside over Bagramyan's court-martial.

[30] Soviet losses were heavy as the 6th, 9th and 57th armies (approximately 18–20 divisions) comprising a large portion of the Southwestern Front, were all destroyed and Bagramyan was removed from his post on 28 June by Stavka.

"[33] British military historian John Erickson contends that Bagramyan was unfairly scapegoated by Stalin in his attempts to "hunt for [the] culprits" of the mismanagement of operations.

[20] Though he had never led a fighting unit prior to the war, he was given his first command of an army in the Western Front as his superiors, and particularly Marshal Zhukov were impressed with his skills and capabilities as a staff officer.

[33] With the rest of the Eastern Front battles almost entirely focused on Stalingrad and the Germans' attempts to advance into the Caucasus, the 16th Army was not called up to action until February 1943.

[35] As the battle of Stalingrad marked the turning point of the war, German forces reorganized for a new offensive in the summer of 1943 to attack the Soviet held Kursk salient in Russia.

The German High Command was to deploy veteran units to destroy the salient, including the Ninth Army and the II SS Panzer Corps.

Stavka, already informed of the impending offensive, called for an advance toward the German defenses positioned near the town of Kozelsk, which would drive south with the help of the armies of the Central Front.

In November, Stalin offered Bagramyan the position of head commander of the First Baltic Front which had the similar objectives of the Second but was making little headway in its attempts to advance northwards.

One of the key elements to Bagramyan's success was that many of the soldiers were part of veteran units that had been trained in the Arctic regions of Siberia,[40] enabling them to easily push through entrenched defenses the Germans had spent months preparing.

They provided vital intelligence, including information on the location of bridges and troop movements, and launched attacks against German logistic lines.

[45] Stalin agreed to send a tank corps to reinforce Bagramyan's forces but ordered him to capture Polotsk, which would sever Army Group North's communication lines and open up a route towards the central Baltic.

[45] As the First Baltic began moving towards Lithuania and into eastern Latvia, it became clear that Army Group North would attempt to outflank Bagramyan's forces near Daugavpils, as he had previously predicted.

Taking advantage of this, Bagramyan worked with other Front commanders to attack the rear guard of Army Group Center but poor coordination between the units led a stall in the advance.

He attempted to convince them otherwise, citing the numerically deficient forces in the two Fronts, but was rebuffed and ordered to drive towards a road connecting the Lithuanian city of Šiauliai to Riga, resulting in its capture in late July.

On 30 July, his forces finally reached the seaside city of Tukums, near the Bay of Riga,[46] thereby cutting off a total of 38 German infantry and armored divisions in Latvia.

On 9 May 1945, he accepted the surrender of the German forces penned up in Latvia, capturing a total of 158 aircraft, 18,000 vehicles, 500 tanks and assault guns among other weaponry.

[7] In August 1967, Bagramyan accompanied General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Alexei Kosygin to North Vietnam, where they met with Vietnamese leaders to arrange the transfer of arms and supplies in advance of the Tet Offensive.