Liberation - Part 3 : Direction of the Main Blow

Liberation: Direction of the Main Blow (1971) is the third chapter of Yuri Ozerov's Soviet war epic, and you can watch online on iFILM. Its subject is Operation Bagration, the summer 1944 offensive that drove German forces out of Belarus.

Ozerov tells it from two heights at once: the command rooms where Zhukov, Rokossovsky and the high command argue over where to strike, and the mud where soldiers pay for that decision. Mikhail Ulyanov plays Zhukov, Vasily Shukshin plays Konev, and Nikolai Olyalin's fictional Captain Tsvetaev ties the big maps to ordinary men. Marsh crossings, pontoon bridges, columns of tanks — it was all staged on a scale only a state could fund.

Made with Polish and East German support, using real period hardware and crowds of extras no studio could afford today, the film carries the full weight of its era's official view — and, underneath the pageantry, the arithmetic of an advance measured in lives. For viewers who want wartime history at genuine scale, it's worth the runtime. Stream Liberation: Direction of the Main Blow (1971) online on iFILM.