Osprey's overview of the most calamitous defeat of the German armed forces in World War II (1939-1945). On 22 June 1944, three years to the day after Germany's 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, the Red Army launched a massive offensive in Byelorussia. Codenamed 'Operation Bagration', this campaign climaxed five weeks later with the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw. The Wehrmacht's Army Group Centre was routed, a total of 17 Wehrmacht divisions were utterly destroyed, and over 50 other German divisions were shattered. It was the most disastrous defeat suffered by the Wehrmacht in World War II and cost it more men and materiel than the defeat at Stalingrad.