The 2nd Belorussian Front was created in February 1944 as the Soviets pushed the Germans back towards Byelorussia. General Colonel Pavel Kurochkin became its first commander. On hiatus in April 1944, its headquarters were reformed from the army headquarters of the disbanding 10th Army. [1]
Operations
On January 2, 1944, 2BF entered the former Polish territories.
On June 26,1944, the Front's forces captured Mogilev in the Mogilev Offensive. On July 4, 2BF was tasked with mopping up the remains of Army Group Centre's Fourth Army under the command of General von Tippelskirch and the remains of the Ninth Army in a large pocket southeast of Minsk. On July 9, the 2BF attacked northwest from Vitebsk as part of a major Soviet offensive east of Riga towards Rezekne in order to cut off the German Army Group North. On July 29, Soviets reach the coast, cutting Army Group North off in Estonia and Eastern Latvia. On September 13, 2BF captured Oma, west of Biaystok. In November 1944, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky was appointed commander of 2BF, just in time for its last two great offensives of World War II. As part of a massive attack by four Fronts on January 14, 1945, 2BF attacked East Prussia (East Prussian Offensive) and later Pomerania (East Pomeranian Offensive).
27 July 1944: Liberation of Bialystok
On January10, 2BF attacked Neustettin but was halted by German counterattacks.
On April 9, 1945, Königsberg, in East Prussia, finally fell to the Red Army. This freed up 2BF to move west to the east bank of the Oder River. During the first two weeks of April, the Soviets performed their fastest Front redeployment of the war. General Georgy Zhukov concentrated his 1st Belorussian Front (1BF), which had been deployed along the Oder river from Frankfurt in the south to the Baltic, into an area in front of the Seelow Heights. The 2BF moved into the positions being vacated by the 1BF north of the Seelow Heights. While this redeployment was in progress, gaps were left in the lines, and the remnants of the German II Army, which had been bottled up in a pocket near Danzig, managed to escape across the Oder.
In the early hours on April 16, the final offensive of the war to capture Berlin and link up with Western Allied forces on the Elbe started with attacks by 1BF and, To the south, General Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front (1UF). On April 20, the 2BF joined in the attack. By April 25, 2BF broke out of its bridge head south of Stettin and had, by the end of the war captured all of Germany north of Berlin, as far west as the front lines of the British 21 Army Group, which had advanced over the river Elbe in some places.
Atrocities
In Demmin on and around May 1, 1945, members of the 65th Army of the 2nd Belorussian Front first broke into a distillery and then rampaged through the town, committing mass rapes, arbitrarily executing civilians, and setting fire to buildings. Many Demmin civilians committed suicide. [2][3][4]
Post-war
The Headquarters of the 2nd Byelorussian Front became the Headquarters of the Northern Group of Forces (NGF), the Soviet occupation force in Poland, effective June 10, 1945. [5] Most of the NGF's forces were drawn from the 2nd Belorussian Front, along with some elements of the 1st Byelorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts.
Component armies
The Armies that were part of the 2nd Belorussian Front included:
^Bscheid, Andrea Karoline (2009). "Das Nürnberger Bündnis gegen Depression. Prä/Post-Vergleich eines depressions- und suizidpräventiven Programms nach 2 Jahren Intervention"(PDF) (in German). University of Munich. p. 19. Die bislang größte bekannte Massenselbsttötung in der deutschen Geschichte ereignete sich im Mai 1945 in Demmin. Ca. 900 Einwohner nahmen sich vor und nach dem Einmarsch der Roten Armee das Leben, indem sie sich selbst in der Peene ertränkten (lit.: The greatest mass suicide that is known in the history of Germany so far took place in May 1945 in Demmin. About 900 citizens took their lives before, and after the Soviet invasion [of the town] by drowning themselves in the Peene river).
^Zimmer, Gisela. "Kriegsende in Demmin" (in German). NDR. p. 1. Retrieved 16 August 2010. Die Schreckensbilanz am Ende: fast tausend Frauen und Kinder begehen Selbstmord (lit.: The horrible outcome: almost a thousand women and children commit suicide).[permanent dead link]
^Craig Crofoot, document on Northern Group of Forces accessible at www.microarmormayhem.com, including Conventional Forces in Europe data exchange material
