So what if they fell back to the Berezina?
There is even less difference. The Berezina is an off-shoot of the D'niepr and only 50-70 kilometers to it's west. The distance is trivial from an operational-strategic perspective. In fact, Pliev's Mechanized-Cavalry Group (which formed the southern pincer for both the encirclement of 9th Army and the drive on Minsk) began it's assault west of it from the center of the Pripyet Marshes.
EDIT: Also, minor nitpick, but in your OP you said "What if the Germans withdrew from Belarus and the expose areas of the Baltic states before the Soviets launched Bagration in
July 1944?" Bagration was launched on June 21-23rd. The Soviets were already most of the way to Minsk by the time July rolled around (and indeed, the city was captured on July 3rd).
It would take a lot longer than 1 month to rebuild the infrastructure given scorch earth, and convert any rail lines and move up a major force of 2 million men plus all their supplies, then build up the roads and do recon of new German positions, plus move up the VVS.
The Soviets had already done it before (see below).
Right, because German reserves were rushed back and forth and the Soviets have vast numerical and firepower advantages of their foe.
None of which will change.
By stepping back to free up reserves and make sure there was only one offensive faced at the same time
A fantasy: the Soviets will simply delay L'vov-Sandomierz until Bagration can be executed. At which point the offensives will occur in parrallel (rather then sequentially like OTL). This was basic Soviet operational-strategic practice: multiple offensives executed in parallel and/or sequentially as part of a larger offensive. They didn't really do singular offensives...
would mean they have all reserves ready to intervene in North Ukraine rather that diverted to Belarus as per OTL,
They had considerable reserves left behind anyways.
leaving AG- North Ukraine seriously outnumbered and gunned.
It still will be. Since the Germans have pulled back and generously shortened the line, the Soviets can condense 1st Ukrainians frontage and slot in the left wing of 1st Belarussian Front, adding a ~500-600,000 men and 1,500 AFVs.
Its not like it was any special military skill to be able to mass overwhelming forces along the entire front and launch two massive offensive simultaneously, overwhelming the enemy.
To the militarily ignorant. In reality the preparation, supply, coordination, and maneuvering of such forces is immensely complicated and massive undertaking that requires considerable amount of talent to do.
Deceiving the Germans about which would come first was the icing on the cake, but the fact was they were able to launch two huge offensives at the same time with over 3 million men between them;
3.5 million men, actually.
the scenario I'm proposing is that the Germans step back to ensure they face only one and can focus their full reserves in the East against that one instead of having to try and fight both simultaneously.
A preposterous scenario which relies on both the Soviets abandoning their own SOP on such matters and that the freed up forces on the Soviet side means they don't reinforce to their own offensives.
Sanitary includes wounded and disabled. We don't know how many were recoverable.
No, disabled are included under irrecoverable. That's why their called
irrecoverable losses: their casualties that the army cannot recover.
On the German side there were wounded that were recoverable too, we don't know how many though without looking into the medical records.
Oh, yes. But they were in the vast minority. A simple glance at wikipedia shows that they made up ~100,000 of the 400K lost in Bagration.
The thing is without Hitler's meddling in 1944 they could have exacted an even higher price.
The disasters of summer 1944 were not solely the result of Hitler's meddling. The German military leadership bear just as much responsibility for once again failing to accurately judge the Soviets intentions and capabilities while overestimating their own. And once the Soviet assault had begun, it unfolded with such speed and power that there was nothing they could have done any more then what they did IOTL: even those formations which disobeyed or didn't wait for orders to withdraw and attempted to retreat were still encircled and annihilated. The only difference was it was less costly for the Soviets to destroy those formations since they had left their fortifications and were now in the open, exposed to the full-force of the Red Army's firepower. Once more you unthinkingly regurgitate the "blame Hitler" myth.
I mean, looking at your posts in the rest of your thread, one thing that leaps out at me is that you are positing the Germans perform this withdrawal at just precisely the right time
and pace before the Soviets begin the attack: not so early that the Soviets can't simply occupy the ground and begin their offensive roughly on-time (or at least with much less then a month's delay) from further west and not so late that the Soviets don't just launch the offensive and roll over the Germans while their still in the process of withdrawing, catching them in the open. That kind of timing presumes they know precisely when the Soviet offensive is... something not a single German at any level of the Ostheer, from the lowliest landser up to Hitler, had the slightest clue about (beyond the obvious answer of "some time in the summer).
But then I go back up and look at your OP and you say:
What if he [Hitler] was successfully removed or just died of heart failure or something a few months before and whomever replaced him was more rational and said abandon Belarus and pull back the lines to straightening things and save on manpower?
Well then, this means the withdrawal is taking place a few months
before Bagration since a more rational actor having no clue when the Soviet attack is coming isn't going to wait until the last minute in the vague of hope of finding out, meaning the Soviets have a ton of time to occupy the abandon territory, get their logistics in order, and prepare to start the operation with only a few days delay at most.
But then you go and say:
With a step back in say June after the Normandy landings to converse manpower and shorten the line they would disjoint Soviet offensive plans so that offensive against AG-South in July is not deprived of Panzers to support AG-Center as per OTL, so they'd be far more able to resist, while the Soviets move up in Belarus and aren't able to attack while they get their logistics in order.
Which is you just hand waving in, since a more rational actor willing to withdraw forces in order to conserve manpower isn't going to wait for Normandy either, but it means the Germans are withdrawing around June 6th. That means the Soviet offensive is going to kick off sometime in the first half of July.
Not really, the Germans destroyed all the rails and burned down many towns and villages, the Russians had to truck in all their supplies.
In Eastern Ukraine in 1943 when the Soviets reached the D'niepr at the end of September: the Germans had conducted a fighting withdrawal (as opposed to just giving up the ground entirely, meaning the Soviet advance was considerably slowed) and systematically destroyed almost everything in their retreat including the entire rail network. Yet the Soviets rapidly rebuilt the rails over the 350 kilometers from their starting point (roughly the same distance as Wiking's proposed withdrawal) during the course of Octobe and at the start of November were already poised to begin a series of offensives which would go through the winter of 1943-44 and straight on into the Spring of '44, carrying them the rest of the way across Western Ukraine. So the Soviets
have demonstrated the requisite logistical capability and acumen to do it. They just chose not to exercise it in the autumn of 1944 in favor of supporting the drive through the Balkans.
In fact, given the rate of Soviet advance between August 1943 and August 1944, the Soviets should have been in Berlin by mid-December. That they were not was a function of Stalin's choice to pursue the political objective of conquering the Balkans over ending the war as quickly as possible.
Yes really. Wiking is proposing evacuating the Belarussian Balconey, not falling back all the way to the Vistula and the outskirts of Warsaw. That is a difference of 200 kilometers.
EDIT: Actually, now that I went and measured out, it's more like 250-300 kilometers East of where the Soviets were in August 1944.
IOTL they reached the outskirts of Warsaw on Aug 2 1944. They did not take Warsaw until January 17 1945.
Because they chose not too. With the Germans cleared from the European USSR, Stalin reassigned the bulk of STAVKA's logistical assets (which most notably included the Soviet NKPS rail repair corps) to 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Ukrainian Fronts for their offensive into the Balkans. Those assets would slowly be reassigned during the course of autumn 1944 as Soviet objectives in the Balkans were satisfied. The offensive which took Warsaw began some weeks ahead of the original plan. Stalin advanced the schedule because... well, because he could.
However, the point is that the Germans were still ale to throw a few punches as the Titanic is sinking.
Those casualties meant nothing to the Soviets. They replaced them almost instantly. When it comes to equipment, the losses the Germans inflicted were even more inconsequential: for example the Soviet tank inventory actually
grew by 4,000 vehicles over the course of 1944.
So sure, Germany was able to throw a few punches while getting totally hammered. But that doesn't mean anything if they aren't capable of actually hurting your opponent.
Which they couldn't if the Germans had another 1-2 million men in reserves, which IOTL were tied up in France and Italy.
What nonsense numbers. Total German forces committed to the Western Fronts (both the Italian and Normandy fronts) on July 1st 1944 comes out too 892,000 men. Those forces getting sent eastward wouldn't even be enough to make up for their losses over the course of that summer (which come out to some 2 million total casualties, of which nearly half were irrecoverable). The same is true for equipment: as an example the Germans committed 2,200 AFVs to Normandy and a few hundred in Italy. They lost 3,000 in the east during the same period.
The Russians had 1 million more men in Belarus in 1944. No western front, now all of the sudden they are equal.
I don't know what you hit your head upon: the total number of men deployed across the four Army Fronts committed to Bagration comes out too 2.3 million against 700,000 men in Army Group Center (
Soviet Blitzkrieg: The Battle for White Russia, 1944). If we pull back to account for the entire Soviet Summer Strategic Offensive Operation, the number jumps to nearly 5 million men against 1.5 million Germans deployed between the Northern Carpathians and the Baltic Sea. And if we pull back once more and look at the entirety of the Eastern Front, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the numbers were 6.5 million against 2.16 million. Adding those 892,000 men still leaves the Soviets with more then 2:1 superiority in manpower and nearly 4:1 superiority in armor.