The Red Army successfully used the strategies of Soviet deep battle and maskirovka (deception) to their full extent for the first time, albeit with continuing heavy losses.

The battle has been described as the triumph of the Soviet theory of the "operational art" because of the complete coordination of all the strategic front movements and signals traffic to fool the enemy about the target of the offensive.

The military tactical operations of the Red Army successfully avoided the mobile reserves of the Wehrmacht and continually "wrong-footed" the German forces.

Despite the massive forces involved, Soviet front commanders left their adversaries completely confused about the main axis of attack until it was too late.

During World War II the term was used by Soviet commanders to describe measures to create deception with the goal of inflicting surprise on the Wehrmacht forces.

[42] The target for this operation was the Vistula bridgehead and the enormous anti-tank artillery forces helped repulse big counter-attacks by German armoured formations in August–October 1944.

[49] The start of Operation Bagration involved many Soviet partisan formations in the Byelorussian SSR, which were instructed to resume their attacks on railways and communications.

Besides the pro-German and pro-Soviet forces, some third-party factions were also involved in the fighting during Operation Bagration, most notably several resistance groups of the Polish Home Army.

[52] Some Home Army partisan factions regarded the Soviet Union as the greater threat, however, and negotiated ceasefires or even ad-hoc alliances with the German occupation forces.

The Wehrmacht's forces were based on logistic lines of communications and centres, which on Hitler's orders were declared Feste Plätze (fortified towns to be held at all costs) by OKH.

On the night of 21–22 June, the Red Army launched probing attacks on German frontline positions, combined with bombing raids on Wehrmacht's lines of communication.

Abandoning its heavy equipment, the corps began a breakout attempt in the morning of 26 June but quickly ran into Soviet roadblocks outside the city.

By far the most important Soviet objective, however, was the main Moscow–Minsk road and the town of Orsha, which the southern wing of Chernyakhovsky's 3rd Belorussian Front was ordered to take.

[66] The Soviet assault on this sector opened on 22 June with a massive artillery barrage that destroyed defensive positions, flattened bunkers, and detonated ammunition stores.

The German deployment of its only reserve division was met the next day with the insertion of the massed Soviet tank brigades, which achieved the operational breakthrough.

[68] Achieving complete success, the operation effectively ceased with the arrival of 5th Guards Tank Army's forward units at the Berezina River on 28 June.

[69] East of Mogilev, General Robert Martinek's XXXIX Panzer Corps attempted to hold its lines in the face of an assault by the 49th Army during which the latter suffered heavy casualties.

[71] With the front collapsing, Busch met with Hitler on 26 June and received the authorisation to pull the army back to the Berezina River, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Mogilev.

[72] The 49th Army forced the Dnieper crossings on the evening of 27 June and fought its way into the city during the night, while mobile units enveloped the garrison from the northwest.

The Cavalry-Mechanised Group (KMG) under the command of Lieutenant General Issa Pliev, consisting of the 4th Guards Cavalry Corps and the 1st Mechanised Corps, swept hastily across the edge of the Pripyet Marshes, subduing the German 9th Army troops defending Feste Plätz Slutsk, cutting through the fortress, effectively hindering the bulk of the 9th Army's ability to flee through the south and ultimately sealing the fate of the unit.

The success of the Bobruysk Offensive was significant enough that Joseph Stalin began addressing Rokossovsky as Konstantin Konstantinovich as a sign of respect, a privilege that was only bestowed upon one other military officer, Boris Shaposhnikov.

The vital victory at the crucial railway junction of Bobruysk also earned Konstantin Rokossovsky the title of the Marshal of the Soviet Red Army, bringing the position and reputation of the former Gulag prisoner along those of Zhukov and Ivan Konev.

[79] The Germans brought back the 5th Panzer Division into Byelorussia to cover the approaches to Minsk, while the units of 4th Army began to withdraw over the Berezina crossings, where they were pounded by heavy air bombardment.

The 2nd Guards Tank Corps was the first to break into the city in the early hours of 3 July; fighting erupted in the centre, which was finally cleared of German rearguards by the following day.

German forces attempted to organise a defense using rear-area support units and several divisions hurriedly transferred from Army Group North.

Soviet forces then fought their way into the city in intense street-by-street fighting (alongside an Armia Krajowa uprising, Operation Ostra Brama).

On 23 July, the 4th Army commander, Hoßbach, in agreement with Model, committed the newly arrived 19th Panzer Division into a counter-attack with the intention of cutting off the Soviet spearheads in the Augustow Forest.

The Lublin–Brest offensive was carried out by Rokossovsky's 1st Belorussian Front between 18 July and 2 August, and developed the initial gains of Operation Bagration toward eastern Poland and the Vistula.

The operation ended with the defeat of German Army Group North Ukraine and Soviet bridgeheads over the Vistula River west of Sandomierz.

To show the outside world the magnitude of the victory, some 57,000 German prisoners, taken from the encirclement east of Minsk, were paraded through Moscow: even marching quickly and twenty abreast, they took 90 minutes to pass.