A Festering Wound - The Matrix Games version of East Front II

Wolomin, 20Km NE of Warsaw: (Designed as a Team Game - Version 3) As part of Operation "Bagration", the great Soviet summer offensive of 1944, on 18th July Marshal Rokossovskii set in motion the left flank armies of his 1st Belorussian Front. With his right flank armies already hanging menacingly over Brest-Litovsk, a vital German rail and communications center, the left flank armies were tasked with slicing into the left flank of 4th Panzer army in direction of Siedlce and Lublin and encircling the German 2nd Army around the city of Brest. At 0530 hours, after a preliminary 30 minute barrage, the breakthrough 47th, 69th and 8th Guards Armies quickly penetrated the thin German defences east of Kovel. At 1300 hours on July 20th, 20th Tank Brigade of 11th Tank Corps (8th Guards Army) already reported reaching the western bank of river Bug before Germans could fall back behind the river. Ordered that night to move out towards Bug, Lt. Gen. Bogdanov's 2nd Tank Army reached the western end by noon on July 21st. On morning the next day, his Army was ordered to attack towards Lublin and then north-west toward Pulawy and Deblin taking bridgeheads on the Vistula to prepare for a further advance on Warsaw. After a viscious fight to take Lublin, during which Bogdanov himself was wounded relinquishing command to his Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Radzievsky, Rokossovskii ordered 2nd Tank Army to move towards Praga, the part of Warsaw on eastern bank of Vistula. Giving his army a couple of days to rest and refit, Radzievsky's troops pushed towards Praga from Deblin area on morning of July 27th. Because of low fuel and amunition, the attack gained little ground. Undaunted, his army reorganized and struck back on July 29th, cutting through the German lines and drawing up to Radzymin and Okuniew (located north-east of Warsaw) two days later. However, by now things were brewing on the German side and Soviet command suspected by the evening of the same day that 2nd Tank had stumbled into a heavy concentration of German armor in the Praga sector. Their suspicions proved correct. Responding to the the crisis, Hitler and OKW began to move division after division from Western Europe and Balkans to Eastern Front to reinforce the remnants of three German armies. Thus, with newly reconstituded XXXIX Panzer Corps, Model, new commander of Army Group Center, was orchestrating a series of successive armored counterattacks designed to halt and destroy the Soviet tank army advancing north-east of Warsaw towards Vistula. For Germans, after more than a month of headlong retreat, it was a time to finally strike back and heal the festering wound that was Army Group Center. Thus, the stage was set for a vicious week-long clash between four Panzer Divisions of XXXIX Panzer Corps (4th, 19th, "Herman Göring" and "Wiking") and three Tank Corps of 2nd Tank Army (3rd, 16th and 8th Guards) and elements of Mobile Group Kryukov (11th Tank Corps with 2nd and 7th Guards Cavalry Corps) of 47th Army. Any questions or comments email me at [email protected] or Steve (Tiger 88) [email protected] or Mike (The General) [email protected]