A pair of the 30 Panzer Ivs in the 8th Panzer Division advancing through Lithuania. Each pulls a trailer with extra fuel, perhaps suggesting that the supply lines were already feeling the strain. The exposed position of both tank commanders indicates that they are not expecting action. (HITM)
A key to the blitzkrieg was sending the enemy into “systems overload” from the very first shot. From the youngest soldier holding the frontlines to opposing political leadership in the national capital, no defender would be given the opportunity to get his bearings or a take moment’s pause. As Zhukov observed, the German forces attacked northeast, east, and southeast in seemingly equal strength all along the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop demarcation line. Panzer spearheads and fast reconnaissance units showed up dozens of miles behind the front, where defenders expected friendly reinforcements to be. Headquarters of Soviet tactical and operational commands were overrun, captured, or otherwise rendered ineffective. Communications were cut, interdicted, or delayed to the point where instructions reached units that were already destroyed, in headlong flight, or in some other fashion completely unable to comply.
From Memel to L’vov the Wehrmacht command system, German units in contact with the enemy, and Luftwaffe CAS overwhelmed the defenders. Everywhere they operated within the Boyd Loop of the Red Army.21 Coherent defenses occasionally sprang up under competent commanders almost despite the actions of higher headquarters. Soviet defenders fought to the death, surrendered in droves, melted into the countryside to later become partisan bands, or retreated – sometimes in good order and other times in panic. No one would confuse Poland or France with the Soviet Union, but Germany had basically defeated the first two nations by the time the 1939 and 1940 campaigns were a fortnight old. Military experts around the globe assumed the outcome would be the same for the USSR, even if the country’s size doubled or tripled the required timeframe.
The deadly dance began on that Sunday morning and would not end for nearly four years. In many places the initial breakthroughs were as easy, the river crossings as quick, and the exploitation sprints as deep as initially expected. But the defenders were tougher, the roads alternately dustier or muddier, and the distances longer than previously assumed. Yet within mere days the German forces breached the Dvina River line, a key to the entire Soviet plan, and began to form the Minsk pocket on the critical Moscow axis. In the Ukraine, mechanized corps threw themselves piecemeal against the panzer thrust. Soon no coherent opposition stood in the panzers’ way and the first pockets began to close.
The encirclements were not so watertight, however, and executing them cost more in losses and time than the German commanders would have liked. Ammunition and petroleum usage far exceeded prewar logistics estimates but the count of vaporized Soviet formations mounted. Leningrad, Smolensk, and Kiev all seemed within the German forces’ grasp. Meanwhile between the Gulf of Finland and the Arctic Circle Axis and Soviet forces fought bitterly in their short campaign season. Hitler, Stalin, and their staffs understood the strategic importance of the USSR’s northern lifeline to the outside world.
The Lithuanian Frontier
On April 22 von Leeb’s headquarters moved from Dresden to Waldfrieden, barely 50 miles from Hitler’s Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair). However, this proximity did not engender conceptual closeness between the two men. On May 30, regimental commanders received their attack orders. Officers in troop units still spoke of “bluff” and “demonstration” against the USSR and an invasion of Great Britain instead. Reality intruded at 1300hrs on June 21 when Army Group North received the codeword “Düsseldorf,” indicating Barbarossa would start the next morning, and passed down its own codeword, “Dortmund.”
Surprise attacks, without declarations of war, were central to Soviet military theory. Yet one hour before the Germans’ artillery preparation, Red Army High Command signaled its armies: “No provocations will be made which could lead to complications… Meet a German surprise attack with all forces available.” Stalin might have been worried about “victory-drunk German generals” but seemed more concerned about not provoking a war than preparing for one.
Panzer Thrust to the Dvina River
Von Leeb’s units moved into jumping-off positions in the crowded Memelland on June 18. Leaders reconnoitered the front dressed as East Prussian farmers. At around 0345hrs on June 22 their artillery preparation began, lasting between 45 minutes and three hours. Irregular Soviet artillery defensive fire began within an hour, followed by Red Army Air Force attacks a further hour later, both indicating at least a degree of preparedness. Thick fog confused the situation until about 0500hrs and advancing Landsers immediately encountered the swamps and marshes that characterized the campaign in the north. Although Kuznetsov defended with only one regiment per division forward, already on the first day older German officers noted they faced stiff defenses and “a different enemy than in 1914.”
Generals Hoepner, seen here on a field telephone, and Reinhardt led the main panzer drive toward Leningrad. Reinhardt’s XI Panzer Corps bore the brunt of the fighting for the city while von Manstein struggled on a more easterly bearing. (Scharnhorst Verlag)
Long days and short nights meant hard marching and fighting, and little rest for either side. On June 22 the 291st Infantry Division advanced 40 miles, while the 8th Panzer Division covered nearly 50 miles to capture a crossing of the Dubysa River’s deep ravine at Ariogala. In some locations Soviet defenders fought bitterly, elsewhere the Germans reported “the enemy is not to be seen.” It took 18 days for Stavka to receive a situation report from the Northwest Front. Stalin’s High Command ordered Königsberg and Memel bombed, and the 3rd and 12th Mechanized Corps to occupy attack positions. Kuznetsov was relatively lucky that he faced only one panzer group. However, his advancing 2nd Tank Division (which included 55 T-34 and KV tanks out of a total of 200, but was separated from the remainder of the 3rd Mechanized Corps) missed the 8th Panzer Division like two ships passing in the night.
German intelligence misinterpreted the enemy’s tactical retreats as a general withdrawal. The Soviet High Command had different, aggressive plans. On the morning of June 23 Sobennikov ordered the 3rd Mechanized Corps to attack northwest and the 12th Mechanized Corps to advance southeast by noon. Their objective: blunt XLI Panzer’s thrust. To get to their assembly areas the 3rd and 12th Mechanized marched 60 and 50 miles respectively while both corps had less than one and a half hours to prepare. Therefore Soviet counterattacks against General of Panzer Troops Georg-Hans Reinhardt began slowly on the 23rd, but intensified over the next two days.
Sobennikov’s target was spread out. The 1st Panzer Division had fought its way through Taurage, where the Soviet forces had turned every building into a small fort. By the evening of June 23, with the assistance of the Brandenburger’s Wachkompanie, 1st Panzer captured a critical 300-yard-long railroad bridge at Tytuvenai. To the southeast the 6th Panzer Division outran its logistical support on the first day and desperately needed ammunition. The division failed to achieve its initial mission, another Dubysa crossing, and now assumed an Igel (hedgehog or all-round defensive position) defense near Raseiniai as over 100 Red Army tanks struck. Its motorcycle infantry battalion survived barely 20 minutes. General Reinhardt sensed danger, and ordered the 1st Panzer to halt and turn east in support. Panzers and KV-1s engaged at ranges of 30–60 yards. Sunlight illuminated the slaughter for 18 hours a day.
The XLI Panzer Corps battled to save its spearhead. With its PzKpfw 35(t)s the 6th Panzer Division appeared isolated and overwhelmed. The 2nd Tank Division smashed its 114th Motorized Infantry Regiment, crushing vehicles and mutilating German wounded. For the first time in the accompanying infantry divisions, the cry went out “Panzerjäger to the front!”
Briefing armored car crewmen of the 12th Mechanized Corps during the battles against the XLI Panzer Corps at Raseiniai. Parked in the tree line are BA-6 or BA-10 scout cars. (HITM)
The 25th was the critical day of the armor battle. Soviet tanks and infantry ambushed the 1st Panzer Division’s command post, where General Kirchner and his staff defended themselves with their individual weapons. However Kuznetsov forfeited mass and concentration by ordering his mechanized formations to “operate in small columns to avoid enemy aircraft.” The 1st Panzer made slow progress through the sand and moorland, but soon arrived to help the beleaguered 6th. Together these two units averted the crisis and actually trapped much of the 3rd Mechanized Corps; the 12th Mechanized Corps was destroyed soon after.
The 12th Mechanized had mustered 690 tanks on June 22. A week later it counted 50 operational tanks. Tanks that ran out of fuel became pillboxes, which German sappers had to take out in difficult and time-consuming individual actions. I Fliegerkorps alone claimed over 200 tanks destroyed on the Raseiniai battlefield. David Glantz considers the Soviet 28th Tank Division’s losses of 198 out of 220 tanks to be typical. Now free to advance, and with a contingent of Brandenburger commandos, the 1st Panzer Division gained its own Dvina bridgehead at Jekolopils to bring it up alongside with the LVI Panzer Corps. For Reinhardt’s men Barbarossa had had a very rocky beginning.
To their southeast, Army Group North achieved greater success with von Manstein’s rush to the critical Dvina crossing at Dünaburg. After seizing the bridge at Ariogala, his three divisions stretched along the single suitable road like an “armored centipede.” In 100 hours they covered 200 miles, the same distance as from the western German border to Dunkirk. Luftwaffe reconnaissance could see no enemy forces to their front. The LVI Panzer Corps had exploited an 80-mile gap created in the Soviet defenses when the Sixteenth Army and Hermann Hoth’s Third Panzer Group pushed the 11th Army east, instead of north along with the remainder of Kuznetsov’s Front.
Hoepner’s panzer group had not been associated with an infantry army as the others had on Barbarossatag, primarily so it could race for Dünaburg unencumbered. But with Reinhardt struggling around Raseiniai, Hoepner shifted his Schwerpunkt to the more successful von Manstein. For his part Kuznetsov ordered the 27th Army, augmented by the 21st Mechanized Corps, to make for the fortified city but von Manstein got there first. A flying column, led by Brandenburgers riding in captured Soviet trucks followed by pioneers and the 29th Motorized Infantry Regiment, streaked across the countryside in the early morning of June 26, watched passively by awakening Red Army soldiers. By 0800hrs, first the Brandenburgers then the other German elements arrived at Dünaburg in 15–20-minute intervals capturing one vehicle and one railroad bridge. The Soviet forces attempted to torch the latter, but were thwarted by German pioneers.
To his credit Kuznetsov initiated counterattacks in the evening of June 27. Though Landsers marched quickly to close the 75-mile gap to von Manstein’s position, for three days the isolated LVI Panzer Corps’ only outside assistance came from Luftwaffe CAS. The Red Army Air Force flew 2,100 sorties against von Manstein’s men, and the Luftwaffe Bf-109s of Jagdgeschwader 54 went on a killing spree. Zerstörergeschwader 26 alone destroyed over 200 tanks.
On June 25 Timoshenko ordered Kuznetsov to hold the Dvina but he failed to do so. To compound the error of allowing the 11th Army to slip eastward from the border battles toward Opochka (above), Kuznetsov now ordered the remnants of the 27th Army to do the same. The 8th Army made matters worse by slipping north toward Riga, leaving von Leeb’s men an almost open field. If giving the German forces a clear run to Dünaburg was not bad enough, Kuznetsov had now opened the Ostrov–Pskov road to Leningrad. On June 29, Stavka instructed him to defend the Stalin Line, another mission in which he would soon fail. Stalin relieved Kuznetsov and his political officer the next day for having “failed to organize a stable front.” Sobennikov was promoted to command of the hapless front, and General F.S. Ivanov in turn took command of the 8th Army. A beneficial side effect of these changes was that the Northwest Front received a new and energetic chief of staff tasked to master the situation “at all cost” and halt the Germans, Lieutenant General N.F. Vatutin.
A medic attends to a wounded soldier fighting in the Dünaburg bridgehead in late June. The capture of the bridge after just four days represented a major coup for von Manstein although his men then had to fight hard to hold it. (HITM)
Infantry Armies on the Flanks
As Eighteenth Army advanced through the Baltic States, on Barbarossa’s second day elements of its 291st Infantry Division neared Liepaja on the coast, ably defended by the 67th Rifle Division. Inland the 11th Infantry Division fought past trenches and fortifications dating from 1915–17. Siauliai fell on June 26. Ventspils in Courland was soon flying a white flag and the 61st Infantry Division, destined to play crucial roles in the story of this campaign, crossed the Dvina on June 30 to capture Riga against minimal resistance a day later. Von Küchler’s men covered over 150 miles in ten days. To avoid marching in the worst of the heat, the general often limited movement to 0300–0800hrs and 1800–2200hrs.
Soviet 8th Army attempts to break out, Dünaburg bridgehead, June 28, 1941: the Germans considered the Dvina–Dnepr River line the Red Army’s last, best hope at halting Barbarossa early. If their panzers could rush the rivers and establish bridgeheads on the far bank they believed they could unhinge the Soviets’ defenses and prevent a withdrawal. (1) Dünaburg, the massive 17th-century brick fortress faced the invaders; (2) German heavy weapons from the fortress fired down in support; (3) Soviets picked their way forward, in this case with a Maxim 1911 machine gun; (4) a Panzer Mark II has been destroyed by a shot to the turret; (5) the battlefield is littered with death and destruction and the sky is criss-crossed with the smoke of falling Soviet aircraft. (© Osprey Publising, Peter Dennis)
Southeast of Riga and by now surrounded on three sides by Fourth Panzer Group and the Eighteenth Army, the Soviet 8th Army was threatened with destruction. Both I and XXVI Infantry Corps amalgamated all their trucks with their assault guns to create fast detachments in an attempt to encircle the 8th Army. Von Küchler led from the front but after three days he feared his small mobile groups would be crushed by the mass of Soviet troops and so slowed the chase; the Soviet forces escaped the parallel pursuit.
The Sixteenth Army simultaneously tried to stay close behind Hoepner, cover von Leeb’s eastern flank and maintain contact with Army Group Center. Within two days its 121st Infantry Division reached the fortress city of Kaunas, the interwar Lithuanian capital, and 11th Army headquarters. Red Army defenders had destroyed the Neman and Neris River bridges but X Corps engineers rebuilt them by June 25. The Soviet forces launched fierce counterattacks on the 26th but General Busch’s men used every infantry weapon at their disposal plus assault guns and Lithuanian “activists” to hold their bridgehead.
On the army group right the Sixteenth Army then maintained the pursuit through two weeks of heat and dust interrupted by an occasional day of rain. Marching was tough but morale remained high. Brandenburgers captured 24 intact bridges throughout the army’s area. By the night of July 3/4 the 30th Infantry Division captured Busch’s first crossing of the Dvina near Livani. The II Corps fell in behind Hoepner’s panzers. The Sixteenth Army relied on aerial resupply and captured Soviet stocks as late as mid-July due to the interdiction of German convoys by Red Army groups still operating behind their lines.
However, a growing major concern of Army Group North (and Halder) was its boundary with von Bock. Busch dedicated an entire corps to maintaining contact with the latter’s Ninth Army. This became more difficult when the Ninth veered south to the Bialystok Kessel. As the two army groups subsequently diverged toward individual objectives the gap would widen and became even more dangerous. By July 4 Halder noted threatening Soviet movement to Velikie Luki, “between Hoth and Hoepner.”
Two German M-class minesweepers tied up under the medieval spire of Riga’s Lutheran cathedral on September 10. With Luftwaffe assistance the small Kriegsmarine detachment in the Baltic kept the larger Red Banner Fleet bottled up at Kronshtadt. (Corbis)
The Twin Battles of Bialystok and Minsk
The last few weeks of peace in the east passed quickly for the German forces. The code words alerting them of an imminent Soviet invasion, “Achtung Berta,” never came. By May 30, German units in occupied Poland learned of their change of mission: they were no longer on the defensive, but were preparing to invade the USSR. Among the German troops rumors circulated that Red border guards would give them free passage to the Persian Gulf oilfields. Headquarters of all echelons completed preparations; new units arrived constantly from the Reich, France, and the Balkans, some rolling off rail cars to their final assembly areas even after June 22. Besides practicing long marches, conducting marksmanship training, and checking equipment, some soldiers marked their final days of occupation duty with soccer games and unit equestrian competitions. The Ostheer waited for the unusually high, fast-flowing rivers of that spring to subside. During the night of June 20–21, von Bock’s men moved their heavy weapons forward. The next night was dark with only a faint crescent of the waning moon. Austrians of the 137th Infantry Division watched their Soviet counterparts across the border working to improve their positions under illumination provided by their vehicle headlights. In Minsk, General Pavlov returned from the theater, but was kept from his bed by reports of increased German activity. Sunrise came at 0410hrs on that Sunday of June 22, but by that time Barbarossa was already an hour old.
A good idea of the complexity of bridge-building in order to cross Russia’s many and often wide rivers can be gained from this collection of combat vehicles, trucks and trailers, timber, and watercraft photographed by the Bug River in June 1941. (HITM)
Breakthrough
Sunday, June 22, 1941 was one of those incredibly eventful days common in history. After numerous requests, Timoshenko finally allowed Pavlov to alert his troops at 0300hrs, but this was generally a futile gesture. The Ninth Army and Third Panzer Group attacked at 0305hrs in coordination with Army Group North, while Fourth Army and Second Panzer Group moved out at 0315hrs, as did von Rundstedt to their south. As the mission and enemy situation dictated, certain units enjoyed massive artillery preparatory fire while others did without. A member of the 87th Infantry Division called the bombardment “a macabre salute to death and destruction.”
In some places along the River Bug, Guderian’s men captured bridges intact by ruse; elsewhere they used assault boats covered by StuG fire to force their way across. In the 18th Panzer Division sector, 80 specially modified submarine tanks of I/Panzer Regiment 18 crossed under water. Hoth’s men faced a dry front, but would encounter three rivers within a little over 40 miles of the frontier. In the former Soviet zone many Polish peasants naively greeted the German troops with salt and bread, their traditional gifts to travelers.
Pavlov’s men offered little or no resistance for hours. Since mid-June he had been asking in vain for permission to occupy forward positions. Timoshenko telephoned for a fourth time on Barbarossatag to tell Pavlov’s deputy Boldin, “No action is to be taken against the Germans without our knowledge… Tell Pavlov that Comrade Stalin has forbidden artillery fire against the Germans.” The front commander requested permission to employ his infantry, artillery, and armor to which the marshal replied, “Nyet.” Pavlov meekly concluded in true Soviet-speak that “some kind of devilry” by German “provocationists” must be going on.
Colonel General Heinz Guderian and subordinates at an impromptu commanders’ conference. Usually leading from the front, the headstrong Guderian had to defend himself with his personal weapon to avoid capture on several occasions, including June 24. On the same day the future Field Marshal Walter Model, commanding 3rd Panzer Division, narrowly survived the destruction by gunfire of his armored vehicle. (HITM)
At 0200hrs on June 22, West Front air commander Colonel I.I. Kopets reported to Pavlov that his forces were “at full readiness.” By nightfall he had lost 738 aircraft – 40 percent of his strength; he would commit suicide shortly afterward. His pilots essentially did the same, flying hopeless counterattacks with their SB and DB-3 medium bombers.
German radio intercepts overheard Soviet transmissions asking, “The Germans are attacking, what should I do?” The Third Panzer Group captured all three essential bridges on their assault axis, the final one when they arrived at Altyus ahead of the 1900hrs demolition time when the Soviet engineer officer had been instructed to detonate the demolition charges. Two thousand vehicles of VIII Fliegerkorps intermingled with Hoth’s armor on the few decent roads in their sector. Traffic jams were his biggest headache until 7th Panzer Division encountered 5th Tank Division’s hull-down T-34s guarding the east bank of the 150-yard-wide Neman River. A day later the 5th numbered only 15 functioning tanks and XXXIX Panzer Corps marched on. Operationally Hoth pulled off a major coup by splitting asunder the boundary between the Northwest and West Fronts. He would cause Stavka continued headaches.
By 1500hrs on that first day Guderian’s 3rd Panzer Division, followed by the 4th Panzer, had worked their way around the fortress of Brest, on to the Panzerstrasse (so called because its use was dedicated to mobile units only) and into the open country near Kobrin. But no sooner did the German forces cross the border than they hit sandy terrain that multiplied their fuel consumption. They also learned quickly that the Soviet soldiers fought better in the woods than they did.
Pavlov had no idea of conditions at the front but nevertheless went about issuing attack orders to imaginary shock groups. Although his 3rd and 4th Armies began to fall back on their own initiative, the 10th remained close to the border. German ground and air attacks had scattered the headquarters of both 3rd and 4th Armies; Kuznetsov at the 3rd managed to send one signal that entire day, “We are through.” Meanwhile Pavlov sent his deputy Boldin to the command post of the 10th Army to assess the situation. In fact, its commander Golubev had already ordered his 13th Mechanized Corps to counterattack.
Soviet T-26 tanks move out as dug-in infantry look on. Not considered to be the USSR’s likely main defensive effort, the West Front had to make do with second-rate equipment and weaker numbers – a fact that spelled doom for many of Pavlov’s counterattacks. Later in the campaign the T-26 was often still the only tank type available. (Elukka)
Zhukov and the High Command knew less about the front than Pavlov and what they did know paled in comparison to the reality. In many cases Moscow depended on local Party officials to confirm army information. Conflicting stories describe Stalin as suffering a nervous breakdown and disappearing from the Kremlin for the remainder of June. He is famously quoted as having said at the time, “Lenin created our state and we have fucked it up.” However, historian David Murphy has written that at 1300hrs that terrible Sunday did Stalin “begin to act as a commander.”22He dispatched Chief of Staff Shaposhnikov to the West Front headquarters, a useless gesture given the chaos and misinformation that reigned there.
In the north of the army group sector, within 24 hours Hoth had broken through the main defensive belt and von Bock rewarded his achieving operational freedom by releasing Third Panzer Group from Ninth Army control. Hoth’s advance widened the gap between 3rd Army (Western Front) and 11th Army (Northwestern Front) to nearly 100 miles. All did not go well on the 23rd, however. The 20th Panzer Division, which had been competing with 7th Panzer for the same road, had to delay its 0900hrs attack on Vilnius because of continuing a lack of fuel. This trend did not bode well for Barbarossa. Also that day, the Red Army Air Force made a feeble ten-aircraft bombing raid on Königsberg in accordance with the USSR’s Red Folder prewar offensive plans.
A heavily laden group of infantry occupy the burning village of Lutky, near Vitebsk, on July 15. The spare barrels, ammunition boxes, and sustained-fire tripod for the MG34 squad machine gun are recognizable among their burdens. (MHI)
Von Bock’s reported advance looked incredible from Rastenburg and by the second day of Barbarossa German plans were already beginning to fray. First, Hitler wanted to halt the armor in order to eliminate the developing Bialystok Kessel. Halder resolutely fought this idea and ordered von Bock to create successive inner infantry and outer armored encirclements all the way to Minsk. Von Bock protested this interference, but ultimately obeyed orders. To soften the blow, von Brauchitsch intervened and allowed von Bock to send Hoth’s “strong security forces” (“reconnaissance in force” in military parlance) toward Vitebsk and Polotsk while Guderian made for Slutsk, Bobruisk, and Rogatchev.
Hoth’s arrival in Vitebsk and Polotsk unhinged the Soviet defense; having a panzer group running loose deep in the defender’s rear area was one of von Bock’s operational goals and a blitzkrieg staple. However, less than 48 hours into the campaign, the dispersal of the army group’s panzer forces began, tactically prudent but operationally fatal. A lack of consensus between the supreme warlord, the army commander-in-chief, his chief of staff, and the field generals was already developing.
Meanwhile Pavlov too tried to launch counterattacks as demanded by naive plans. The Soviet High Command instructed him on the 23rd to “use all measures to defend Grodno.” But Strauss’ 8th Infantry Division continued to pound that town with 29 batteries of artillery. Pavlov still had virtually no communications with his field armies and therefore had little command and control over them. In any event they were sorely pressed on all sides and in no position to launch the called-for counteroffensives. Pavlov therefore sent Boldin to assemble an attack force and move on Grodno, theoretically to threaten Hoth’s southern flank and restore the situation.
Grodno
As would be the case throughout Barbarossa this comic opera at the strategic level did not equate to inactivity farther down the chain of command. Hoth’s tanks were advancing at a tremendous rate and already threatened Minsk from the north. The Soviet forces were not idle, however; following Pavlov’s orders Boldin’s shock group, basically the 6th (with over 1,000 tanks) and 11th Mechanized and the 6th Cavalry Corps, advanced toward Grodno in a counterclockwise arc with an ultimate objective of Augustovo. Luftwaffe reconnaissance had been looking deep in the Soviet rear and missed this build-up, so Boldin initially surprised Strauss. But he completely missed Hoth, his primary target, who was already far to the east.
In common with Soviet attacks all along the front during those early days, Boldin’s suffered from poor command and control, no effective air support, weak combined-arms tactics, and insufficient logistics. Approximately half of the 6th Mechanized Corps’ tanks were modern T-34s and KVs, but these had only been received a month earlier, so the crews were unfamiliar with them. Likewise a Luftwaffe attack savaged the 6th Cavalry Corps, destroying 70 percent of its 36th Cavalry Division in 24 hours. Boldin’s assault created a small tactical crisis among the German 256th Infantry Division around Grodno, but could not distract Third Panzer Group. Since these early battles were principally meeting engagements they all heavily favored the more experienced German units.
Soviet 6th Rifle Division defend Brest Fortress, June 22–30, 1941. In this scene, Soviet infantrymen, led by Lieutenant Kizhevatov of the NKVD Frontier Guards (1), take up firing positions in a fort archway after overrunning an emplacement formerly occupied by a German MG34 crew (2); their weapons include a Maxim M1910 machine gun (3). The combination of bunker-busting German heavy howitzers and mortars, flamethrowers, and the sheer exhaustion of relentless close-quarter fighting took their toll by June 29 and 30. The final blow fell on the 29th, when seven Junkers Ju 88 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 3 dropped 2-ton bombs on the last pockets still holding out. (© Osprey Publishing, Peter Dennis)
Pavlov’s counterattacks had shot their bolt by June 25, one mile shy of Grodno’s center, low on fuel and ammunition and with little to show for their efforts. The 11th Mechanized Corps lost all but 30 of its 305 tanks and melted away from 32,000 men to 600 in four days. Caught behind enemy lines near the western edge of the front, Boldin and about 2,000 of his men began a 45-day exodus that would eventually lead them to freedom east of Smolensk.
Conflict raged over the battlefield as well. More than 200 of von Richthofen’s aircraft had a field day destroying Boldin’s stranded, often outof-fuel tanks. The Bf-110, which could make 340mph and take heavy punishment but was outclassed in air-to-air combat over Great Britain, began to enjoy a new lease of life as a ground-attack aircraft in the east. As soon as the panzer troops captured Soviet airfields the Luftwaffe fighter squadrons, led by battle-proven veterans of Spain, Poland, France, and the Battle of Britain, began operating from them against their comparatively inexperienced opponents. Nevertheless, within three days of the invasion the first of the formidable Il-2 Sturmovik ground-attack aircraft, fresh from the Voronezh factory, appeared in the Army Group Center sector.
On the southern side of the bulge Guderian’s tanks neared Baranovichi, site of Grand Duke Nicholas’ Stavka headquarters in 1914. The 22nd Tank Division attempted to bar the way of the 3rd and 18th Panzer Divisions; its commanding general became one of the battle casualties on the war’s second day. Equally futile, the 14th Mechanized Corps next tried to halt the panzer general; it counted 478 operational tanks on June 22, but against Guderian’s veterans that number shrank to 250 two days later and to only 30 on the 26th.
By the 25th Timoshenko bowed to the inevitable and instructed the West Front to withdraw to the Lida–Slonim–Pinsk line. Pavlov tried to establish an additional defensive position slightly to the north near Radun, with 21st Rifle Corps supported by 8th Antitank Brigade. These maneuvers had already been overcome by events and besides, Pavlov could not disengage quickly enough to make them effective.
A German soldier with his plunder following the surrender of fortress Brest: a banner – possibly Red Army unit colors – with an image of Lenin. (Topfoto)
Completing the Minsk Encirclements
On the Molotov–Ribbentrop line fortress Brest still held out despite the pounding of 12 210mm howitzers, two 600mm “Karl” siege guns, and 2,880 Nebelwerfer rockets. Elsewhere, both High Commands hummed with activity. The Bialystok salient had been custom-made for a huge Kessel, a weakness Hitler and the Wehrmacht wanted to exploit as quickly as possible. Von Bock was already thinking past that, past even Minsk and the Vitebsk–Orsha land bridge and on to Moscow. True to Barbarossa’s objectives, higher headquarters still thought in terms of exterminating Red Army units before reaching the Dnepr, so Army Group Center slowly began to squeeze the life out of Pavlov’s trapped West Front as ordered.
Marshal S.M. Budenny had few qualifications for high-level command except for personal friendship with Stalin. His mediocre performance commanding the Reserve Front and subsequent disaster at Kiev quickly relegated him to secondary and ceremonial posts, as a new generation of combat-tested generals took over to defeat the Wehrmacht. His long survival was probably due to his stupidity – he could never be considered as a rival even during Stalin’s worst fits of paranoia. (David Glantz)
In Moscow, on June 25 the newly-formed Stavka was also considering the next move and ordered a 1st Cavalry Army crony of Stalin’s, Marshal S.M. Budenny, to create the Reserve Front using 19th, 20th, 21st, and 22nd Armies, on exactly the same Vitebsk–Orsha line for which von Bock aimed. Luftwaffe reconnaissance noticed this development beginning to take shape on July 1. In Stalin’s personal study a day later, Zhukov drew two arcs on a map where 24th and 28th Armies (13 rifle, six tank, and three motorized divisions) would establish a second defensive line centered on Yelnia and a third stretching from Viazma to Kaluga. All these towns would play critical roles in the days to come. The Red Army would soon begin to occupy row after row of defensive fortifications between Smolensk and Moscow; the German forces would have to fight for every step along the way to the USSR’s capital.
On June 27, Zhukov ordered the embattled Pavlov to: 1) achieve positive control over front units; 2) not abandon tanks and artillery; 3) evacuate Minsk and Bobruisk; 4) counterattack to separate the German armor from the slower infantry; and 5) detach cavalry into the Rokitno Marshes to initiate partisan warfare there. He did not clarify the apparently contradictory nature of items 3 and 4, and, anyway, West Front forces were still too decisively engaged to withdraw and too overwhelmed to follow Stavka’s instructions.
Also on the 27th Voroshilov arrived at Pavlov’s headquarters to prop up the West Front commander; “the main thing is to overcome the panzer phobia,” he advised. On that same day Shaposhnikov received captured German maps indicating that their Schwerpunkt lay in the direction of Moscow and not the Ukraine as the Soviet leaders had previously assumed. A blind man could see what was about to happen to the West Front’s entire first echelon but the chief of staff demurred at recommending the full-scale withdrawal that could have saved some of Pavlov’s command – after all, Stalin was still thinking offensively. However, it seems that the Western Front was indeed a sacrificial speed bump.
On June 25, von Kluge, still unable to close the trap on Pavlov, took the 29th Motorized Division away from a protesting Guderian in order to establish a blocking position at Volkovysk. The division’s position divided two of the three Minsk pockets – Bialystok to the west and Novogrudek to the east. The 29th held until June 29 against numerous Soviet breakout attempts by cavalry, tanks, and human-wave assaults four men deep. However, on the northern edge of the pocket Ninth Army and Third Panzer Group’s hammer struck before Fourth Army or Second Panzer Group’s anvil was in place to the south, thereby allowing many Soviets to escape to the southeast.
The Minsk Encirclement
After the initial border battles the Second and Third Panzer Groups raced east past Minsk and on 27 June slammed the door shut on Army Group Center’s first Kessel. Actually a number of smaller encirclements, the Minsk pocket meant the Western Front’s initial defense lasted only two weeks.
Note: Gridlines are shown at intervals of 50km/31miles
EVENTS
1. 24 June: Guderian almost becomes casualty at Slonim on second day of Barbarossa when Soviets ambush his conference with XXIV Panzer Corps commanders.
2. 25 June: Pavlov orders new defense line: Lida–Slonim–Pinsk. Germans had passed that line in force the day before.
3. 26 June: First of many encirclement closed around noon when 29th Motorized Division arrives at Volkovysk. Division has to defend against determined Red Army break-out attempts. Soviet escape routes in north (3rd Army) and South (10th Army) through porous German cordon. Red Army escapees join growing bands of partisans mainly hiding in wilderness areas.
4. 26 June: 12th Panzer Division drives through old Stalin Line at Rakuv. Fortifications only lightly defended.
5. 27 June:12th Panzer enters Minsk. Hoth’s men have to wait for Guderian’s 17th Panzer to come up later from south. Soviets take advantage of open door to escape eastwards.
7th Panzer Division continues toward Smolensk.
6. 28 June: 3rd Panzer reaches Bobruisk on Berezina River.
7. 3 July: Fighting basically ends in Minsk Kessel. Germans claim 342,000 POWs, 3,332 tanks and 1,809 guns destroyed or captured. Western Front suffered nearly one million casualties.
A temporary transfer of power in Belorussia: on July 10, German troops pass the Minsk “House of Soviets” with its statue of Lenin. The Soviet emblem would soon be replaced with SS runes. (NARA)
Climate and terrain assisted the Soviet defenders further. Extreme heat dried up various watercourses. While this made fording easier for the advancing Germans, thirst caused hardships on men and horses. Flies and mosquitoes tormented everyone regardless of uniform. With their armies no longer effective fighting forces Red Army soldiers melted away into “ancient” forests that were so thick they seriously degraded German lines of sight and fields of fire. The sandy soil slowed the Germans further; moving an artillery piece often required 12–16 horses (of which a standard infantry division had about 6,000). Commandeered Russian panje pony-wagons and captured Soviet farm tractors used as artillery prime movers added to the shabby, gypsy-caravan aspect of their columns. Three days after Barbarossa began many trailing units of the lead corps had yet to cross the frontier, daily widening the gap between them and the slashing panzer divisions far to the front.
Guderian raced east, seemingly oblivious to the German goal of closing encirclements with which to destroy the Red Army, the prime directive of Barbarossa. Neither was “Fast Heinz” overly concerned with his personal safety; some of Korobkov’s troops almost captured him on June 24. The same day the 3rd Panzer commander and future field marshal Walter Model escaped death when his armored car was “shot out from under him” by Red Artillery. The 17th Panzer Division took Slonim from the 4th Army, uncovering the southern route to Minsk, but was in turn surrounded and had to be saved by its sister division 18th Panzer.
On June 25, thee days into Barbarossa, Hitler worried that the impending Minsk pocket was too large. On that same day 19th Panzer’s motorcycle battalion led Hoth’s panzer group to Minsk with its commanding general Otto von Knoblesdorff at the point. Naturally this small formation received considerable attention from the Soviet defenders. Guderian’s advanced units closed on the flaming town of Slutsk, which two days later Pavlov would futilely order the 20th Mechanized and 4th Airborne Corps to recapture. The Second Panzer Group had now left Belorussia and entered into Russia. By the 28th, von Kluge considered that Guderian had also achieved operational freedom and cut him loose from Fourth Army control.
In the north Hoth continued to exploit the gaping hatchet wound in the Soviet defenses represented by growing separation between the Northwest and West Fronts. He too would rather have headed due east than have to worry about closing encirclements, but Hoth was less blatant in his obstinacy than Guderian. His LVII Panzer Corps took Vilnius, “Jerusalem of the North,” on the 24th, while XXXIX Panzer Corps drove on Minsk itself. That same day Pavlov ordered 13th Army, “a mishmash of troops,” to attack the latter city. However, a day later the 13th evacuated Molodechno opening the way to Minsk for the ever-opportunistic 7th Panzer Division. General Filatov, the harried commander of the 13th Army, wanted to give up Minsk: after all the Communist Party fled the city on June 25. Reflecting the continuing confusion resulting from Zhukov’s instructions that day, Pavlov ordered Filatov of 13th Army to stand fast instead. Meanwhile, Hoth received Lehr Brigade 900 to reinforce his over-extended panzer group.
Early July: a Nebelwerfer battery with 7th Panzer Division preparing to fire. Projectiles can be seen protruding from the rear of the launcher’s lower tubes. Note that the crewmen are wearing protective overalls. (NARA)
Beyond Minsk
Third Panzer Group broke through the Stalin Line on June 26–27; XXXIX Panzer Corps radioed, “7th Panzer Division, Halt!” to which Rommel’s old outfit irreverently replied, “Say again?” and kept plunging forward. By 1600hrs on the 28th, 12th Panzer Division entered Minsk, but the Kessel remained only half closed, since the willful Guderian headed east for Moscow rather than northeast toward Minsk and a rendezvous with Hoth. Soviet units trickled out southeastward for another two days. To the west, while his infantry marched in the heat and dust on poor roads unwanted by the panzers, von Kluge dallied by methodically lining up his corps for the final assault on Minsk. Actual occupation of the city would have to wait until fires begun by Luftwaffe bombs on June 24 had died down.
The advancing Guderian soon discovered what Korobkov had learned the hard way when earlier ordered to occupy and defend the Stalin Line: in many places it existed in name only. This was a good thing, too, since during Barbarossa’s first week his personnel losses had been double those of Hoth. Guderian’s 18th Panzer Division finally closed the Minsk Kessel on the afternoon of June 29. The entire trap consisted of three main pockets, including those at Bialystok and Novogrudek. In places Red Army soldiers escaped through Guderian’s weak southeastern cordon, while others fought to the last bullet or attacked in suicidal waves (especially at night), forcing many German units to form defensive Igel. Hunting down and capturing Soviets in dark forests, occupying and securing rear areas, and inventorying booty took until July 23.
With the Sturmgeschütz armored assault gun the Germans realized the Napoleonic dream of having artillery able to accompany infantry in the attack. Here a group of pioneers hitch a ride on a StuG III near Minsk on July 17. (NARA)
By June 29, Stalin realized that Belorussia was lost; Lieutenant General V.I. Kuznetsov’s failure against Army Group North had contributed mightily to this disaster. The next day Lieutenant General Yeremenko finally arrived at West Front headquarters with orders relieving Pavlov from command. Stalin made an example by executing the hapless Pavlov, so that all commanders “know defeatist behavior will be punished mercilessly.” Yeremenko knew the terrain well, having led 6th Cavalry Corps into Poland in 1939 and to Kaunas in 1940, but he would hold command for only three days before becoming Marshal Timoshenko’s deputy. On the other side of the lines, also on the 30th, Guderian flew to the Third Panzer Group command post to coordinate with Hoth on future operations (but also to conspire with him to defy von Kluge by their selective disobedience). While Hoth welcomed the gesture, a more sincere visit a couple of days earlier would have made a better encirclement of Minsk.
The German leadership had long anticipated that capturing Minsk would mark a watershed. At that point Hitler and OKH were to decide if von Bock’s panzers would turn north toward Leningrad, continue east, or execute some other course of action. With Rastenburg growing indecisive, Hoth and Guderian awaited instructions. While visiting Hoth, Guderian gave lip service to their cooperation in completing the Minsk Kessel but Luftwaffe reconnaissance had earlier noticed that the road to Bobruisk was unprotected and it was there that Guderian next directed his attention. Ever aggressive, these two generals would not wait long before going back into action.
By early July both panzer groups were approaching the River Berezina (“River of Birches” and site of Napoleonic drama in 1812) whose defenders proved only a minor hindrance. Swampy headwaters in Hoth’s area and along much of its east bank plus the numerous, long, wooden bridges proved to be worse obstacles. It was here that Yeremenko vainly sought to make his first stand. Trying simultaneously to contain the Minsk pocket and also stretch toward Smolensk robbed the panzer groups of any coherent formation. This was especially true for Guderian’s Second Panzer Group, which sprawled back over 150 miles, aiming for Yelnia. Hoth’s Third meanwhile had to contend with terrible weather and terrain. Worst of all, his panzer group was also becoming spread out with units sacrificing mutual support and other benefits of concentration.
Once again free to maneuver, 3rd Panzer Division made straight for Bobruisk. General Model escaped serious injury yet again as the Soviet forces fought hard to hold the Bobruisk citadel and river crossing site. Between June 30 and July 1, 18th Panzer Division made a 60-mile raid to Borisov (originally Hoth’s objective). 17th Panzer followed in support, both violating specific orders from von Kluge but securing yet another breach in the Soviet wall. The willful attitudes of Guderian and Hoth prompted von Kluge to threaten both with courts martial. After a harrowing journey, the newly arrived 1st Moscow Motorized Division, with 1,000 tanks (including T-34s and KVs) and 500 guns, reached Borisov the next day and launched immediate counterattacks; these all failed versus Hoth’s spearhead.
A tank unit with mixed Czech and German vehicles – thus probably from 6th, 7th, or 12th Panzer Division – is towing its own fuel trailers as it drives through Minsk. German logistics often failed even with such a basic requirement as getting fuel forward to keep the panzers rolling; Hoth was halted by such a shortage on October 4 during the Viazma/Bryansk battles. (HITM)
Stavka tried to adjust to these new developments. Budenny’s and Yeremenko’s commands barely lasted a few days; Timoshenko took over leadership of the West and Reserve Fronts with Yeremenko as his deputy while Stalin sent Budenny to Kiev. The Soviet leaders had blundered through one crisis at Minsk and were about to face another, more severe one at Smolensk. For their part, the German commanders reorganized their armored forces effective midnight July 2/3, when OKH created Fourth Panzer Army, formally subordinating Hoth and Guderian under von Kluge (and soothing Hitler’s nerves). It simultaneously assigned the latter’s infantry to von Weichs thereby essentially creating the Second Army. Von Bock now had de facto command of two separate armies, one fast and mechanized, the other slow and marching, each with very different missions and often little contact between them.
A welcoming arch greets a German column early during Barbarossa. Galicia had been part of Austria since the partitions of Poland and had many settlements with a German heritage. Stalin had deported many, but not all, Volksdeutsche from Soviet border regions. (Nik Cornish at www.Stavka.org.uk)
Back where Army Group Center’s war began, at Brest, the Soviet defenders held out until the end of June. The garrison commander and commissar committed suicide but 400 POWs marched into captivity. The conquering 45th Infantry Division buried 414 of its dead at a ceremony on July 1 and then moved out to catch up with the rest of von Bock’s command, nearly 150 miles east. While the tankers received much of the glory, German infantry did yeoman service as the massive shaft behind the blitzkrieg’s armored spearhead.
The Galacian and Volhynian Frontiers
At 0300hrs on June 22 the last train out of the USSR crossed the San River at Przemysl into Greater Germany. From his new command post at Ternopol, Kirponos ordered units forward under the cover of darkness. Significantly these included the 37th Rifle Corps “training” in and around Przemysl. NKVD border troops moved from their barracks to their advanced positions. In Germany the Führer told his men “German soldiers! You’re entering a hard struggle, heavy with responsibility. The success of Europe, the future of the German Reich, the existence of our people lies in your hands alone.”
Rubber rafts of Infantry Regiment 222 crossing the Bug River on Barbarossatag. Many eastern European rivers were at high flood late into spring 1941, mitigating the significance of the delay caused by the Balkan campaign. (NARA)
Main Axis
Reconnaissance troops of the 101st Light Infantry Division and commandos from Infantry Regiment 800 – Brandenburgers – rushed the Przemysl bridge over the San that morning. They failed in the face of alerted Soviet defenses but regular infantry secured the crossing later in the day. Opposite L’vov assault guns supported the 1st Mountain Division’s attack against the 97th Rifle Division. Further north the III Panzer Corps opened the invasion with a barrage by 300 artillery pieces.
Kirponos reacted immediately by ordering the 15th and 8th Mechanized Corps against the XLVIII Panzer Corps. Their reaction was piecemeal; 8th Corps units were garrisoned up to 300 miles from the fighting. The Southwest Front put the 22nd Mechanized in motion while the commander of the 9th Mechanized, Rokossovsky, moved on his own initiative. Kirponos’ best hope on Barbarossatag was pairings such as the 87th Rifle Division and 1st Antitank Brigade at Vladimir-Volynskiy.
At 1300hrs on June 22 Stalin dispatched Zhukov to Ternopol. Luftwaffe air superiority that day meant he had to drive much of the way and did not arrive until late in the night. Fortuitously Zhukov gave Kirponos on-the-spot approval to the latter’s counterattack plan to blunt the German assault. Army Group South’s relative slowness would allow him and Kirponos time to fine tune their defenses.
During the second day, on von Kleist’s critical left the 44th and 298th Infantry Divisions smashed a hole for the III Panzer Corps in the north along the Lutsk–Rovno axis while the 57th and 75th Infantry Divisions opened the way for the XLVIII Panzer Corps on the Dubno–Ostrog road to the south. However, between Vladimir-Volynskiy and Lutsk the 14th Panzer hit the 1st Antitank Brigade and stalled. Only after the Landsers outflanked the antitank gunners did the Soviet troops conduct a fighting withdrawal closely pursued by the 14th Panzer.
On June 24, 4th Mechanized Corps assaulted the “Lucky” 71st Infantry Division’s antitank battalion. Quickly reinforced by bicycle infantry the Germans waited. The first wave of 20 Soviet tanks got stuck in the marketplace of Niemerov, northwest of L’vov, where they could not fight well, maneuver effectively, or retreat. Disaster awaited successive groups of ten or a dozen tanks until 50 sat destroyed or abandoned. Overall slow progress near L’vov caused some at army group headquarters to advocate sending the XIV Panzer Corps to support Seventeenth Army. Cooler heads prevailed and a dangerous precedent, breaking up panzer groups at every minor crisis, was avoided.
On Lieutenant General Eberhard von Mackensen’s right, arriving piecemeal, the 15th Mechanized lost ground against the XLVIII Panzer Corps. In all during in their first major armor battle von Mackensen’s men destroyed 267 enemy tanks. The following day the III Panzer Corps forced the 27th Rifle Corps out of Lutsk and threw a bridgehead across the Styr River. Greim’s V Fliegerkorps flew 1,600 sorties, attacked 72 airfields, destroyed 774 Soviet aircraft, and interdicted untold convoys in three days. The 15th and 22nd Mechanized had been fighting since June 23 and 24 respectively and were either decisively engaged or mired in swamps. Seemingly just in time, following march and countermarch covering over 100 miles, the 8th, 9th, and 19th Mechanized Corps arrived near the front, albeit at greatly reduced strengths mainly due to mechanical breakdown.
A Soviet mechanized corps, consisting here mainly of T-26 tanks, heads for the front on Barbarossatag. These organizations proved to be too inexperienced, untrained, and unwieldy to confront the blitzkrieg head on. (Corbis)
To simplify command and control of the northern pincer Southwest Front placed the 9th and 19th Mechanized Corps under the 5th Army. Their mission was to assault von Mackensen’s left at Rovno. Although ordered by Stavka, the attacks lacked synchronization and the 13th Panzer defeated each portion in detail. The 1st Antitank Brigade halted the 14th Panzer again, this time near Klevan.
The corresponding Soviet attack on the south flank near Dubno began poorly when the Luftwaffe bombed the 15th Mechanized headquarters, wounding Karpezo. Soon it and the 8th Mechanized were holding their own against the 11th and 16th Panzer Divisions. The 8th, “reduced [by losses] to a manageable size” according to Rokossovsky, even worked its way behind the two panzer formations. Northern and southern pincers stood barely 6 miles apart with the 16th Panzer holding a division-sized Igel in-between. But initial gains abruptly fell afoul of poor Soviet communications and mutual support. The 75th Infantry and 16th Panzer Divisions soon restored the German situation with Luftwaffe help. Kirponos heard only the bad news from the northern sector so called off his offensive. Stavka, trying to manage the counterattacks from Moscow, had even less visibility on the situation. Together they missed a golden opportunity to give von Rundstedt a stinging reverse.
Kirponos ordered his remnants to make one last attack on June 30, but lacked sufficient strength. Political Commissar N.N. Vashugin, overruling the commander, personally led the 8th Mechanized Corps’ tank division directly into a swamp, losing all its tanks. Vashugin promptly committed suicide. Zhukov, present on the scene, called the swirling battle around Dubno the toughest fighting in the Ukraine. Soon First Panzer Group prepared to exploit the hard-won gap between the 5th and 6th Armies. Potapov fell back northward toward the Rokitno Marshes, unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory for the German forces.
Destroyed Soviet T-26 tanks at Ostrov, part of the counterattacks Kirponos ordered in accordance with the Red Army strategy. A mere 6 miles separated his pincers but poor communications meant he knew nothing of his successes. (NARA)
Starting the spiral of genocide by both sides. Ten days into Barbarossa Germans discovered Volksdeutsche murdered by Soviet state police in L’vov. SS Division Viking initiated a vengeful rampage. Pogroms by the Germans at Kiev and the Rumanians at Odessa followed. (NARA)
One situation mastered, von Rundstedt now worried that the Seventeenth Army lagged behind the panzers. Until Axis forces in Rumania moved out, Army Group South labored with an exposed right face. The LII Corps had the overall mission of protecting von Stülpnagel’s southern flank. It was here that Barbarossa’s author, Erich Marcks, now commanding the 101st Light Infantry Division, suffered severe wounds near Prezmysl resulting in an amputated leg just four days into the campaign.
The 6th Army held a dangerously extended line, however. German signals-deception units in the Carpathians tied down many Soviet units needlessly along the Hungarian frontier. Musychenko resolved to hold L’vov. Although it initially did not face any panzers, this sector’s defense possessed the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Antitank Brigades. At one point the German leadership considered pivoting First Panzer Group formations south to attack L’vov from the rear. Von Rundstedt would not hear of splitting his main offensive force. He feared a huge enemy logjam in L’vov that would defy either speedy maneuver or encirclement. However, just then the newly committed 9th Panzer Division achieved a breakthrough and threatened the city from behind.
Kirponos decided on June 26 that his border fight was over and began to withdraw on the 27th. Two days later the 1st Mountain Division occupied L’vov without a fight. To cover the retreat Vlasov’s 4th Mechanized Corps counterattacked to regain the city the next day. At times German and Red Army troops were only paces apart. In the cemetery 71st Infantry Division Landsers fought from headstone to headstone. German troops eventually took the city for good, after which Einsatzgruppen went on a violent ten-day pogrom.
On July 1 SS Division Viking took up the pursuit but the Soviet withdrawal went smoothly. The Hungarian VIII Corps took the field on the 2nd, soon crossing the Dniestr near Stanislav. The Seventeenth Army had ripped a 20-mile hole between the 6th and 26th Armies. Soon these German and Hungarian units met at Ternopol. Von Rundstedt pushed his men to occupy the Stalin Line before the Red Army could. In turn Kirponos instructed his men to occupy the Stalin Line by July 9.
Back in the northern portion of the sector von Kleist’s tankers spread out with the 11th Panzer in the lead. First Panzer Group had destroyed 1,200 Soviet tanks in about ten days. Southwest Front’s initial armored vehicle superiority dwindled; Red Army battlefield tank losses were permanent while the German troops, in possession of the battlefields, recovered and repaired damaged panzers. During the same period Red Army Air Force elements supporting Kirponos admitted to losing a similar number of aircraft. Their commander, Major General Ptukhin, a Spanish Civil War veteran, was relieved on July 1 and executed.
A German inspects a KV-2 helplessly mired in a swamp south of Ostrov in early July. Kirponos’ counterattacks during Barbarossa’s first weeks came to naught mainly due to incompetence and poor maintenance. (NARA)
Gebirgsjäger on outpost duty near the Arctic Circle. What the Lapland theater lacked in mountainous altitude it made up in northern latitude. Dietl, in common with von Leeb, also fought a “poor man’s war” in the far north. (HITM)
The Arctic
German strategic overstretch during Barbarossa is perhaps best seen in the far north. Hitler had excellent reasons for wanting Murmansk and for cutting its rail connections to the heart of the Soviet Union. It was the one Soviet connection to the rest of the world that he could reasonably interdict: both overland routes to Persia and Vladivostok were clearly beyond his grasp. As much elsewhere during the campaign his commanders would have to fight a war on the cheap and depend primarily on such intangibles as will and luck. But inadequate resources, underdeveloped infrastructure and unsure allies conspired against German success.
Operation Platinfuchs
On Barbarossatag von Falkenhorst ordered the Mountain Corps Norway to attack in one week. Dietl had 27,500 men in two divisions plus an engineer and signal battalion, half a Flak battalion, a panzer company, and a Nebelwerfer battery. Preparatory to the general assault the 2nd Mountain Division moved from Kirkenes to Petsamo and the 3rd Mountain marched from Narvik to Loustari. Colonel Andreas Nielsen, who had been present at Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, led Luftwaffe forces consisting of 36 Stukas, 11 Ju-52s, ten bombers, and ten fighters. Dietl’s mission was to attack to Motovka on the Litsa River and then press on to Murmansk. He placed the 2nd Mountain Division, which was to constitute the Schwerpunkt, on German maps ceased to exist. on the left, and 3rd on the right. His armored reserve, 1/Panzer Battalion 40, waited at Petsamo. The Soviet forces defended with their 14th Rifle Division forward while the 52nd Rifle moved up from near Murmansk.
The assault began as planned on the 29th, and with panzer support a Kampfgruppe (“Battle Group,” in this case an ad hoc formation) of the 3rd Mountain reached the Titovka River the next day. At that point roads shown on German maps ceased to exist. Dietl therefore pulled the 3rd out of the line and placed it behind the 2nd. Events had derailed his plans in less than 24 hours and within a week Northern Fleet warships landed Red Army soldiers behind German lines. Between July 7 and 8, Dietl’s men crossed the Litsa River but Soviet counterattacks pushed them back.
Dietl developed a less ambitious plan that took account of terrain and logistics difficulties. He attacked the 205th Rifle Regiment on July 12 and had seven battalions across the Litsa the next day but the Soviet Navy landed 1,350 soldiers behind his lines again on July 14. Up to that point the small Jäger divisions had used one regiment to fight and the other to run supplies forward on mule trains. Increasingly, however, combat forces accumulated in the bridgeheads and logistics ground to a halt.
A week later von Falkenhorst and Dietl met and attempted, unsuccessfully, to persuade Hitler to release three regiments of the Norwegian garrison. On July 24 they decided it would be futile to continue the offensive unless they received reinforcements within one month. At the end of July Hitler relented, promising Schörner’s 6th Mountain Division by the second half of September. Prompted by Royal Navy attacks against Kirkenes and Petsamo, on August 12 the Führer also agreed to transfer the 9th SS and 388th Infantry Regiments from Norway.
A Red Army patrol in the Murmansk region. Stalin allocated just enough resources to the far-north theater to deny Hitler any success there. (Corbis)
With Allied ships outnumbering its five destroyers, two U-boats, and various smaller vessels around the North Cape, the Kriegsmarine was losing the battle at sea. Rear Admiral A.G. Golovko’s Northern Fleet mustered a cruiser, eight destroyers, three large and eight small torpedo boats, 27 submarines, and 45 other craft. Just as Dietl prepared to resume his attack Soviet submarines sank two German merchantmen full of reinforcements. On September 8 the Royal Navy chased other cargo ships into Norwegian fjords. British naval pressure delayed the 6th Mountain Division’s arrival for weeks.
The German forces suffered from a similar disadvantage in the air. Major General A. Kuznetsov commanded combined Red Army Air Force and naval air elements in the north. His 49 bombers, 139 fighters, and 44 floatplanes more than held their own against Nielsen’s tiny force.
After constant delays, Jodl visited Mountain Corps headquarters to investigate difficulties there. On September 5 Dietl told him Murmansk was out of the question even with the 6th Mountain’s help. Both agreed Schörner’s men would only further stress the logistics chain. In addition, the Soviet forces had by now reinforced their lines; the 14th and 52nd Rifle Divisions stood north and south of the Ura Gubo road and the Polyarnyy (Polar) Militia Division held the left flank.
Nevertheless Dietl attacked on September 8 and made good initial progress. In the 2nd Mountain’s southern sector, the inexperienced 388th Infantry Regiment bypassed part of the 14th Rifle Division, which promptly counterattacked into the Landsers’ rear; the same happened further north shortly thereafter to the untried 9th SS Regiment. Dietl suspended operations for 24 hours to stabilize the situation and bring up supplies. The 3rd Mountain struggled forward until September 16. On September 21 Dietl cancelled the assault and ordered his men to occupy good defensive positions.
German soldiers on the march behind the frontline near the Polar Sea in World War II. The aurora borealis scene was probably photographed in the area of Murmansk in 1941. (Topfoto)
The 6th Mountain arrived from Greece to relieve the 2nd and 3rd by mid-October. In two and a half months Dietl advanced 22 miles at a cost of 10,000 casualties with over 30 miles left to go. Terrain favored the defenders and Red Army supplies only had to travel 40–50 miles from Murmansk. For the Mountain Corps Barbarossa’s road to Murmansk had been anything but “laughable” as Hitler had stated dismissively before the campaign.23
Operation Polarfuchs
General Feige commanded the scaled-down attack toward Kandalaksha and the Soviet rail line. His XXXVI Corps consisted of the 169th Infantry Division, 6th Nord (minus the 9th Regiment sent to Dietl), two panzer, two motorized artillery, and two engineer battalions, half a Flak battalion, and a Nebelwerfer battery, totaling over 40,000 men. Its mission was to attack along the road from Rovaniemi to Kandalaksha, and later turn north to link up with Dietl. The Finnish III Corps, basically their 6th Division, added a supporting attack to Allakurtti. The Luftwaffe contributed 30 Stukas and ten bombers, ten fighters, and ten reconnaissance aircraft. German intelligence identified the Soviet defenders as the 122nd Rifle Division supported by approximately 50 tanks.
The Axis plan called for the 169th Infantry to encircle Salla with two-thirds of its strength while the remaining regiment made a frontal assault on the Red Army defenses. The two regiments of Nord would also attack south of Salla. With nearly 24 hours of daylight, the German troops attacked at “night” on July 1 with the sun to their backs.
Division Nord encountered stubborn resistance and very heavy defensive fire. On July 2 the attack was called off. Nord spent two days preparing to resume the attack but early on July 4 the Soviet forces launched a counterattack of their own. Although the attack was beaten back by army and Finnish units, SS troops streamed to the rear with tales of a breakthrough by Soviet tanks, demanding all bridges blown up behind them. Nord had been organized for police duty in Norway but nevertheless their poor conduct infuriated Hitler, who ordered the division back to the front. Luckily for the German forces the Red Army was unable to exploit its failings.
Two days later Feige reorganized and attacked again. Armored support consisted of Panzer Battalion 40 (less the company with Dietl) and Panzer Battalion 211 (equipped with captured French Hotchkiss and Somua tanks). Armor was restricted to traveling on main roads (minor roads were too poor) so those panzers actually in combat seldom amounted to more than two companies. With artillery support and CAS, five battalions of the 169th and the panzers advanced and attacked the town. The 122nd Rifle evacuated Salla, leaving behind 50 tanks. The next day Nord, the only motorized unit in the Army of Norway, took up the pursuit. The 122nd fell back through the 104th Rifle Division to refit.
General Feige sought to create a Kessel east of Apa Lakes with the XXXVI Corps, reinforced by Infantry Regiment 324, advancing around from the north and the Finnish 6th Division and Panzer Battalion 211 from the south. Major General H. Siilasvou’s Finnish III Corps made good progress using motti tactics (quick, small encirclements rather than the larger ones favored by the German commanders). At this point, August 22, the 169th Infantry and remainder of Nord broke free northeast of Salla, trapping the 104th and 122nd Rifle Divisions, who eventually fell back. The cordon in the German sector was especially porous and weather prevented a Luftwaffe vertical envelopment, with the result that the Red Army troops managed to escape the trap, albeit without their heavy equipment. The 6th Finnish and 169th Infantry Divisions pursued to Allakurtti without the panzers, which were too heavy for the soggy terrain and flimsy bridges in the area. The town was taken from the north on September 1. Remnants of the 104th and 122nd Rifle Divisions deployed along the Voytayoki River line, and eventually fell back along the Vermanyoki River. The front stabilized.
At the southern edge of the German area, slow German preparations gave the Soviet forces time to reinforce, angering von Falkenhorst. From July 16–23 he badgered Feige at the latter’s headquarters until the XXXVI Corps committed to attack down the Kasten’ga axis on July 26. The terrain rendered the panzers practically useless and with the Luftwaffe elements commanded from distant Oslo, their CAS was ineffective. As the Schwerpunkt shifted north and south the panzers marched and countermarched, engineers cutting new roads each time. Meanwhile, the Finns continued their advance augmented by elements of Nord, most of Panzer Battalion 40, and Stuka CAS, arriving at Kasten’ga on August 7. The Soviet commanders raced their 88th Rifle over from Belomorsk to halt them. By mid-month Group “J” (six battalions) and three battalions of Nord were exhausted. The Finns switched their main effort to Group “F,” which attacked in the rain on August 19 completely surprising the defenders.
Führer Directive 36 of September 22 ordered resumption of the Kandalaksha offensive. Delays hampered Feige until Führer Directive 37 (October 10) cancelled further attacks, stating that the Soviet position along the main front appeared to be on the point of imminent collapse. Hitler halted the assault just when the situation began to look bright and the Soviet forces were at the end of their endurance. Group “F” advanced until November 15. Five days later, still about 40 miles from the railroad, both sides halted and sought good defensive terrain. Barbarossa in central Finland was over as well.
Granted, as the defender the Soviet High Command arguably had an easier mission than that of the attacking Germans, but it is clear that Stalin resourced his Arctic forces for success while Hitler did not. Dietl always seemed to be one battalion or regiment short. Like the fighting at the other extreme of the Führer’s empire, North Africa, that in the far north was a slave to boring and unglamorous logistical masters such as port capacity and long lines of communications. It seemed that the Narvik shield on Dietl’s uniform bought him no special advantage and snatching victory at Murmansk eluded him.
Panzer troops interrogate a Soviet POW. The officer with his back to the camera wears a black panzer jacket while the German tank crewman center wears the mouse-gray “Trikot” shirt. The odds that the Red Army prisoner survived German captivity are very slim. (NARA)
Summary
Overall the German leaders had every reason to be satisfied with Barbarossa’s first two weeks. On July 3 Halder famously boasted in his diary, “It is very likely not saying too much when I observe that the campaign against the Soviet Union has been won in less than fourteen days.”
Much earlier, on June 24 von Leeb enthusiastically wrote in his diary that von Manstein’s Dünaburg bridgehead represented “A stake into the heart of the enemy.” Hoepner’s appropriate motto was “Surprise, then forward, forward, forward.” Yet Reinhardt wondered when the unified panzers would hit the Soviet divisions. However, Hoepner’s superiors seldom allowed the panzer group to fight as more than two separate corps. From the start, LVI Panzer Corps raced for Dünaburg while the XLI Panzer Corps fought for its life against the bulk of two mechanized corps. This disastrous trend continued beyond the Dvina River. Along the Baltic Sea coast the Eighteenth Army was too weak and too thinly spread to spring a trap on the Soviet 8th Army. Inland Sixteenth Army was unable to maintain a solid link with Army Group Center.
Overhead, in the first three days of the war I Fliegerkorps flew 1,600 sorties, bombed 77 airfields, shot down 400 aircraft, and destroyed a further 1,100 on the ground. By June 25 there were no more Red Army Air Force bases to attack and evidently few aircraft left to destroy. Therefore the Luftwaffe had little choice but to change missions from air superiority to CAS. Nevertheless, on the ground Landsers griped of aggressive and ubiquitous re-equipped Soviet flyers, while Luftwaffe generals complained about being nothing more than aerial artillery.
The United Kingdom’s Dominions and Barbarossa
Ironically the invasion Hitler meant to irretrievably separate the United Kingdom from its Soviet continental base of support brought the two nations closer together. On Barbarossatag Churchill broadcast a speech to his fellow Britons and members of the Dominions, saying although, “no one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I… Any man or state who fights against Nazism will have our aid… It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and to the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and Allies in every part of the world to take the same course and pursue it as we shall, faithfully and steadfastly to the end.” Barbarossa was a Godsend to the United Kingdom; it distracted Hitler while simultaneously earning him a huge and implacable enemy.
It had not always been that way; in the summer of 1939 the British and French clearly wanted an agreement more than Stalin did. Prior to Hitler’s invasion Stalin long distrusted British moves in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East areas. As the quotation above indicates, Churchill was under no illusions concerning Stalin and the USSR. He was a realist and helping the USSR was a key aspect of that realism. Another part was to see that Stalin at that point in time represented more of a Russian nationalist than a Communist ideologue. The dictator’s interests were largely traditional Russian interests which Churchill understood and respected, not doctrinal Communist interests which the prime minister hated.
Other moral support for the USSR followed quickly. A Soviet military mission arrived in London on July 9; the two nations concluded an agreement on future operations three days later and British representatives reported to Moscow on the 27th. Churchill received the same strongly positive opinion of Stalin and the USSR from Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s unofficial emissary to the prime minister, as the president did. A major objective of the Atlantic Conference between Churchill and Roosevelt in early August 1941 was aid for the USSR. A month later Stalin sent Churchill a letter stating that, “the Soviet Union is in a position of mortal peril.” Within days Churchill sent his Minister for Aircraft Production, the Canadian Lord Beaverbrook, to Moscow with Roosevelt’s envoy Averell Harriman.
British–Soviet military plans soon bore fruit when on August 25 both nations invaded Iran and marched into Teheran on September 16 (the same day Army Group South closed the Kiev pocket). The Dominion contingent consisted of six brigades, five of them Indian. This operation opened the Persian Corridor, in particular the Trans-Iranian Railroad; eventually one-quarter of the Lend-Lease aid to the USSR came via this route. Above the Arctic Circle, at the other great entrepot of Lend-Lease support on the White Sea, the first convoy from the UK, “Dervish,” arrived at Archangel on August 31. It carried 40 Hawker Hurricanes (two squadrons) with crews and support staff. Number 151 Wing was operational over the critical northern ports by September 11 and claimed its first victory the following day. Throughout 1941 six more of the famous PQ convoys would arrive there or Murmansk. During that time they delivered, among a great many other things, 487 British and 182 American tanks.
Stalin requested that Churchill open a second front in Western Europe as soon as possible, but this could not be done; aerial bombardment of Germany from Great Britain was the best he could do. Once the US entered the war, the issue of a second front would be one of the most contentious between the three allies. Stalin also requested that 25–30 Dominion divisions join the fighting in Russia, 30,000 tons of aluminum plus other material aid that Churchill could never hope to provide. Throughout Barbarossa Stalin pressed the UK to declare war on Finland, Hungary, and Rumania, which His Majesty’s Government finally did on the last day of the campaign, 5 December. Most ironically, however, Britain’s greatest contribution to Barbarossa probably came three months prior to Barbarossatag: in early March the Royal Navy plus commandos raided the Norwegian coast in Operation Claymore. Hitler’s exaggerated and irrational decision to keep more than a third of a million Wehrmacht men stationed in Norway in response to this raid severely hamstrung Barbarossa.
During the border battles, Kuznetsov lost 1,444 tanks and armored vehicles, nearly 4,000 guns, 90,000 men killed, but “only” 35,000 captured. He failed to defend his sector and lost his job. Hitler pushed for Hoepner to concentrate at Dünaburg and push northeast but von Brauchitsch and von Leeb dawdled until the Sixteenth Army arrived. This six-day pause to allow Busch to catch up with Hoepner killed Army Group North’s momentum and would allow the Northwest Front to avoid total destruction. On June 29 Hitler told his OKW Chief, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, to “concentrate Hoepner’s panzers at Dünaburg … and drive through Ostrov.” Both von Brauchitsch and von Leeb disagreed and did all they could to delay the panzers. Their willfulness and caution put “a stake into the heart” of their own chances of victory.
Von Bock’s early accomplishments were only slightly less spectacular than those in Lithuania. Although fortress Brest held out longer than desired, his two panzer groups lunged forward relentlessly. The well-resourced Guderian advanced recklessly on the right. But it was Hoth on the left who split two major Soviet command echelons on the more direct tack to Moscow that caused Stavka most concern. Demonstrating that he was not a completely inept commander, Pavlov managed to have his deputy Boldin launch a substantial counterattack against Grodno.
Between Grodno and Minsk the struggle did not slacken. Panzers headed east without looking back while Landsers trudged on to keep pace. Soviet mechanized corps and infantry armies initiated numerous counterattacks wherever and whenever possible. But the undeniable realities of Barbarossa’s opening weeks and the confluence of the vulnerable Bialystok salient and Army Group Center’s strengths lent an air of inevitability to the fighting. Besides the two prongs represented by the panzer groups, fighting centered on the struggles over the various pockets that made up the greater Minsk phenomenon.
At Minsk the Germans claimed to have taken 341,000 POWs and captured or destroyed 4,799 tanks, 9,427 guns, and 1,777 aircraft. By inflicting these losses, plus an estimated similar number of wounded and missing, in about ten days, Army Group Center had arguably achieved its goals as set out in the numerous orders for Barbarossa. By July 2, Stavka realized that the “disorganized and much weakened forces of the first echelon of the Red Army cannot halt the advance of the enemy.” However, German intelligence was already picking up indications of second- and third-echelon forces occupying successive defensive lines on the road to Moscow. As Hitler wrote Mussolini on June 30, “The might and resources of the Red Army are far in excess of what we knew or even considered possible.” These words are quite different from Halder’s of just three days hence. Even so, few observers envisaged any end to Barbarossa other than an overwhelming German victory.
Despite near-ideal tank country in his sector, von Rundstedt’s men endured slow going in the face of the Kirponos–Zhukov team and their steady defenses. The Soviet armor advantage in numbers and quality almost cancelled the twin disadvantages of overwhelmed tactical leadership and poor crew skills. In the south the German forces withstood fairly constant counterattacks like their comrades in the north and center theaters, only more concentrated and sustained. Army Group South had to fight earnestly for every yard; there were no gifts of geography, incompetence, or negligence here. However, von Kleist on the main Kiev axis and von Stülpnagel at L’vov strove hard at working their way around the initial Red Army defensive positions and would soon be rewarded by breaking into the open country.
But to achieve this they first had to overcome Kirponos’ resistance in the confined border area. Soviet countermoves were more successful than anyone in the Soviet hierarchy realized. Unfortunately for them the then common handicaps of questionable commanders, no air support, and inadequate support plus excessive distance between attacking units condemned their actions. On the other side of the frontlines German reactions were uniformly effective. However, breakout success for Army Group South would have to wait.
Soviet soldiers defend the village of Kamenka northwest of Moscow. Taken in early November before the snow built up, this photograph shows a mix of weapons. (Corbis)
21 USAF Colonel John Boyd developed the OODA loop to evaluate decision-making, initially for fighter pilots. Since then it has been used to evaluate leadership, especially in stressful situations like those found in war. The key components are Orientation, Observation, Decision, and Action. The side that cycles through this loop faster will usually be successful.
22 Murphy, What Stalin Knew, p.220.
23 Mann and Jogensen, Hitler’s Arctic War, p.70.