From the OKH’s viewpoint, both options available to the enemy had much to recommend them since, if executed properly, either could lead to a decisive, war-ending victory for the Soviets. Here, perhaps, German analysts were guilty of a bit of hubris since they thought that the Soviets would act as they would in a similar situation—to seek to win the war in one bold, decisive blow. OKH staffers originally believed that the Soviets would push the so-called Balkan solution since Ukraine had been the focal point of enemy action for the past year, the bulk of Red Army tank units remained in the south, and Stalin was known to have a desire to get his forces into the Balkans before his Western allies could get a foot in the door. In addition, Southeastern Europe and the Dardanelles had been the traditional focal point of Russian expansion, while the Germans feared that the loss of Rumanian oil would cause a quick end to the war. Much, then, supported the notion of a push to the southwest. By spring 1944, however, many in German intelligence had begun to favor the Baltic solution, not only because of reported enemy troop movements, but also because it was the sort of operation that appealed to German sensibilities. If the Soviets broke out at Kovel and raced to the northwest, they could, in a single bold stroke reminiscent of the brilliant German victory in France four years earlier, end the war by trapping Army Groups Center and North against the Baltic Sea. Not only were distances short and the eastern Polish countryside ideal for mobile warfare, but the exposed Soviet left flank would also be partly covered by the Vistula River. The irony, that spring, was that, while the OKW hoped to prepare a second Dunkirk for the Western allies along the Channel coast, the OKH feared its own Dunkirk along the Baltic.2
Anticipating a bold Soviet stroke whichever way they decided to turn, neither the OKH nor Foreign Armies East initially paid much attention to the possibility of a frontal offensive against the Belorussian balcony. Indeed, much spoke against it; an attacker here would have to fight through the endless forests and swamps of Belorussia just to reach the Vistula, almost five hundred miles to the west. In addition, an offensive north of the Pripet struck the Germans as implausible since, even if operationally successful, it would not likely be decisive in a strategic, war-winning sense. Moreover, the OKH misinterpreted the ability of Army Group Center to maintain its front through the winter as indicative of German strength and Soviet weakness. Instead, it resulted from a combination of factors that would be absent in the summer. The Germans had fended off Soviet attacks by using nimble, flexible defensive tactics reminiscent of World War I, in which defenses in depth were prepared so that, when faced with an attack, German forces could withdraw to rear positions, allowing the enemy to punch into air. Then, at the proper moment, counterattacks would snap the Germans back to their approximate original positions. In the summer, however, Hitler would insist on an inflexible, static defense of forward positions that would deny the use of such tactics. More to the point, German troops, dispersed thinly among scattered strongpoints that often could not maintain contact with each other, had neither the front strength nor the reserves necessary to contain enemy breakthroughs. In addition, a good bit of German defensive success in the center had been the result, as Evan Mawdsley put it, of the Stavka reinforcing success and starving failure. In the winter of 1943–1944, Soviet armies in other sectors, especially in Ukraine, had performed much better and, thus, had been given priority in men and equipment. Red Army forces in the center, achieving fewer results, had simply not been reinforced. With the focal point of the Soviet summer offensive in the center, however, this would no longer be the case.3
Ironically, however, despite the earlier Soviet willingness to gamble on large, war-winning offensives, and just as the Germans had begun to credit the Soviets with the ability to execute such operations, Stalin himself had decided that such grandiose schemes were beyond Soviet capabilities. Rather than summon its courage, then, in early spring 1944, the Stavka rejected both the Balkan and the Baltic solutions in favor of a third option: use the overwhelming Soviet preponderance in strength to launch a series of staggered offensives, starting from north to south, that would force the Germans to fight everywhere at once and, thus, be unable to concentrate their scarce resources. The initial blow would fall on the Finnish army in Karelia, to be followed in succession by attacks in Belorussia and in northern and southern Ukraine. In effect, there would not be a single Schwerpunkt, although the attack against Army Group Center would form the main effort. Here, the Soviets hoped to pull off a complicated plan that envisaged, in rapid pincer movements, a quick initial encirclement of Vitebsk and Bobruisk, the German anchor positions at the northern and southern ends of the salient, even as mobile units moved quickly west in a deep envelopment centered on Minsk. Even then, Soviet forces were not to stop but to thrust beyond Minsk on either side, with forces on the right flank hoping to trap as much of Army Group North as possible, while the southern thrust, aided by units shoving through Kovel, would seize Brest-Litovsk before converging on Warsaw. This was not a typical Soviet mass attack across a broad front but one based on the German model that concentrated overwhelming force in key sectors to achieve a breakthrough, then aimed to exploit it through rapid movement to encircle and destroy the enemy defenders. Stalin, suspicious of overly complicated maneuver schemes, initially opposed the idea but was, ultimately, persuaded to accept it. An ambitious plan, although not the war-winning Baltic solution feared by the Germans, it proposed in one leap the liberation of Belorussia and a sweep to the Vistula.4
Given the serious German weaknesses and lack of mobility on the Ostfront, the key to Hitler’s strategy of holding on in the east and striking in the west was to identify the Soviet Schwerpunkt correctly. Since the Ostheer had neither the mobility nor the operational reserve to pinch off a Soviet breakthrough and, thus, prevent it from turning into a catastrophe, all depended on blunting the Soviet attack at the outset and successfully defending German frontline positions. Since no reinforcements could be expected from the west until the defeat of the Western allies’ invasion, the only chance for successful static operations was to identify correctly the Schwerpunkt of the enemy offensive and prepare adequate defenses and forces to counter it. Despite differences in opinion as to the ultimate direction of the enemy summer offensive, the OKH and Foreign Armies East could agree on at least one thing: regardless of whether the Soviets headed for the Balkans or the Baltic, the focal point of their attack would be Kovel. This assessment played into the hands of Field Marshal Model, the aggressive and predatory commander of Army Group North Ukraine, whose units defended the Kovel area, and who now saw a chance to strengthen his forces at the expense of his passive colleague to the north, Ernst Busch. Not surprisingly, on 20 May, Hitler yielded to Model’s urging and ordered the powerful Fifty-sixth Panzer Corps transferred to Army Group North Ukraine. At one blow, Army Group Center thus lost 88 percent of its tanks, 50 percent of its tank destroyers, and 33 percent of its heavy artillery.5