Soviet soldiers and civilians walked past the bodies of three German soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the 27th Infantry Regiment, who had died in hand-to-hand combat in the city of Mogilev in Belarus, which was then part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, ignoring them.

　　Soviet soldiers and civilians walked past the bodies of three German soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the 27th Infantry Regiment, who had been killed in hand-to-hand combat on the streets of Mogilev in Belarus, which was then part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. The city was liberated by the 2nd Belorussian Front, led by Major General I.D. Chernyakhovsky, on June 28th 1944. Mogilev, defended by the 39th Army, part of the German Army's 4th Army, was overwhelmed by the “Bagration Operation”, a large-scale summer offensive by the Soviet Army. The German Army's Central Group lost more than 30 divisions in this operation, and it became the largest defeat of the German Army in World War II.

　　Mogilev was badly destroyed, and everything was dead. The main streets were filled with the bodies of German soldiers. The German soldiers, who had fallen into a panic, retreated as they passed by. From the ambulances, the cries and groans of the wounded German soldiers could be heard. In the ruins of the city along the road, the corpses were scattered on the road, trampled on, and desperate cries could be heard. Hitler had ordered that Mogilev be defended to the last man.

　　The Mogilev Offensive by the Soviet Red Army on the Eastern Front of World War II was part of the Belorussian Strategic Offensive, and was called Operation Bagration. By capturing the city of Mogilev in Belarus, it overwhelmed a large part of the German 4th Army. The Mogilev Offensive began on the morning of June 23rd with heavy artillery fire from the Soviet Red Army against the German defensive line. Operation Bagration was the codename for the Soviet Union's strategic offensive in Belarus in 1944. It took place from June 22nd to August 19th, 1944. Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front of World War II occurred just over two weeks after the Normandy Landings on the Western Front, and for the first time since the start of the war, the German army encountered two major fronts simultaneously. The Soviet Red Army completely shattered the German army front line by destroying 28 of the 34 divisions of the German Army Group Center. The overall engagement was the greatest defeat in the history of the German army, with approximately 450,000 German casualties. Meanwhile, another 300,000 German soldiers were cut off in the Kursk Pocket.

　　On June 22, 1944, the Soviet Red Army attacked the German Army Group Center in Belarus, encircled and destroyed its main component forces, and by June 28, the German Army's 4th Army, along with the bulk of the 3rd Panzer and 9th Armies, had collapsed. The Soviet Red Army, taking advantage of the collapse of the German front line, surrounded the German formation near Minsk with the Minsk Offensive, and Minsk was liberated on July 4th. With the effective resistance of the German army in Belarus over, the Soviet Red Army's offensive continued into Lithuania, Poland and Romania from July to August.