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Sunday blow - Minsk direction

At 3.15 AM, the German guns on the front facing the Bug opened fire. There was a simple plan worked out to eliminate the possibility of the Russians having time to recover themselves between the air and artillery blows. German bombers operating against the Byelorussian airfields had made high-altitude approaches under the cover of night, betraying no mass movement of aircraft over the Soviet frontiers; they were already sweeping down with open bomb-doors to obliterate at the first light Soviet fighters - massed on their sixty-six aerodromes - with one savage blow (to noon 22 June Western district lost 528 planes on the ground and 210 in the air).

Even before the German guns opened fire the railway bridge at the Brest and bridge at the Koden, which was vital for the rapid deployment of German armour, in the sector of 4th Army were quickly seized. In Minsk, amidst communications which worked only fitfully, Army General D.G.Pavlov (Commander of Western Military District immediately converted into Western Front) heard the commanders of the 3rd (Lieutenant-General V.I.Kuznetsov), 10th (Major-General K.D. Golubev) and 4th (Major-General A.A.Korobkov) Armies report German penetrations of the frontiers at Sopotskin and Augustovo, continued German bombing, and the fracture of signals lines: two radio stations on which army commanders might have relied had also been put out of action. German bombers hammered Bialostok, Grodno, Lida, Volkovysk, Brest and Kobrin. At 5.30 AM, HQ of 4th Army located in Kobrin was blew to pieces. Around 5.000 AM Tymoshenko instructed Lieutenant-General Boldin (Pavlov's deputy) - "I�m telling you this and wish you to pass it to Pavlov" - that no operations against the Germans were to be undertaken without Moscow�s permission. After 5.00 AM fierce fighting began to develop in the area of Brest fortress; the fire form Russian guns denied the Germans effective use of railway bridges - the Brest bridge came under fire from the fortress, the bridge at Semyaticha was covered by machine guns of the "fortified district". By 6.00 AM, south of Brest German armour crossed over captured and newly built pontoon bridges; to the north of it first pontoon bridge was finished in the 4th Army area. Pavlov, who lost the contact with 10th Army, send Boldin to restore it. 3rd Army commander Kuznetsov with its telephone lines gone and its radio communications knocked out, without information from his neighbours (10th and 11th Armies) fighting blind and only he can do is to commit 11th Mechanized Corps ( Major-General D.K. Mostovenko, 290 tanks including 24 T-34s, 3 KVs) to a counter-attack from the Grodno area, but only the 29th Tank Division was on spot; the 33rd Tank Division was 35 Luftwaffe-dominated kilometres away and corps staff and the 204th Motorised Rifle Division even further - at Volkovysk, 70 km away.

In the afternoon 22 June Pavlov ordered to 4th Army to attack to clear the enemy from the Brest and Boldin to assemble a "cavalry-mechanized shock group"; the force would attack on the Grodno-Bialostok line to prevent German troops penetration to Volkovysk. Boldin had a coming night in which to prepare. With 10th Army aviation and AA guns had been destroyed; the fuel dumps had been bombed and fuel tanks at Bialostok rail station destroyed, the armoured divisions were immobilized and the cavalry wiped out, this "shock group" did not and could not exist. By night Boldin hoped 10th Army units were to take up defensive positions behind the river Narev.

Army group Centre success to seize the Niemen bridges, simultaneously threatened Pavlov's right flank 3rd Army. Sixteen hours after the opening of Operation "Barbarossa" the junction between Western and North-Western Fronts (3rd an 11th Armies respectively) had been battered to pieces. On the 23 June the gap torn by Panzer Group 3 between Western and North-Western Fronts had already widened to almost 150 km and grew by the hour as 11th Army (North Western Front) fell back in disorder to the north-east and 3rd Army by 23 June in spite of furious resistance was pushed out of Grodno and behind the Niemen: this prised open way to Minsk. On the left flank of the Western Front the Soviet 4th Army was in no position to offer any effective defence and was pushed back from Yaselda to the Schara river, faced a critical situation on 24 June, when shortly after dawn Korobkov and his stuff learned of German penetration to Slonim and the threat to Baranovichi. He moved two divisions from Slutsk and Bobruisk in attempt to protect Baranovichi. During the night of 24-25 June Korobkov was ordered by Pavlov to defend Schara line.

With instructions to Korobkov to hold the Schara, Pavlov might have thought he had averted disaster in the south-west. Now he had to deal with a threat to Minsk from the north-west, as a Panzer Group 3 swept down on Molodechno. He had 13th Army (Colonel-General P.M. Filatov) as his second echelon, responsible for the defence of Minsk "fortified district". This was a new formation which had only taken shape in May. 24 June at 21.00 hours, Pavlov assigned 13th Army the 21st Rifle Corps (Major-General B.B. Borisov) and ordered a left-flank counter-stroke with, to "co-ordinate" with General Boldin�s units attacking near Grodno-Merech. This was sheer fantasy. General Filatov meanwhile gathered up the remnants of the 5th Tank Division and Armoured Train N5 standing at Molodechno station. Having made some disposition to cover the Molodechno, during the night of 25 June Filatov and his staff was caught, shot up and dispersed by German tank column. With half of his staff killed Filatov and the survivors arrived at Zhdanovich about 10 kilometres north-west of Minsk. 21st Rifle Corps had already tried to carry out "offensive design" to "co-ordinate" with General Boldin but at 13.00 hours, 26 June, General Borisov discendered that he was alone - to the right no Soviet units, to the left no contact with never existed Boldin�s force. General Borisov went on the defensive, with a corps short of fuel and ammunition.

On 25 June Tymoshenko ordered Army General Pavlov to withdraw his armies from Bialostok salient and pull back to the line running from Lida-Slonim-Pinsk: with this formations plus 13th Army, Pavlov was to hold the Minsk and Slutsk "fortified districts". But it was already to late. Pavlov was all but overwhelmed, as Panzer Group 3 on its northerly encircling sweep to Minsk through Vilno-Molodechno sliced through Soviet units and from the south-west Guderian's Panzer Group 2 swung towards Minsk through Baranovichi. To hold off this claws, Pavlov issued on 25 June withdrawal orders to his four cover Armies: 13th Army would take the line Ilia-Molodechno-Listopad-Geranon, 3rd Army Geranon-Lida, 10th Army Slonim-Byten, and 4th Army Byten-Pinsk. The withdrawal was to begin on the night of 25-26 June. This plan however was doomed to failure as his first counter-offensive designs had met. By the evening 25 June , 3rd and 10th Armies, withdrawing on Minsk, had only a narrow corridor around 50 kilometres between Skidel and Volkovysk left for them.

Boldin, propping up Golubev at 10th Army, faced a grave situation as the flank armies (3rd and 4th) ware smashed in; Khaskilevich, commander of once powerful 6th Mechanized Corps (with over 1000 tanks, many of them T-34s and KVs), reported that ammunition and fuel running desperately low. On 26 June, with its main stocks of ammunition spent, 10th Army was no longer an organized fighting force and its units melted into the thick woods south of Minsk.

At 19.00 hours, 25 June, 2nd Rifle Corps staff reported an enemy tank column moving unhidered fifty kilometres north-west of Minsk. During the night, 100th Rifle Division, without piece of artillery, was ordered to take up a blocking position. In the morning 26 June Pavlov evacuated himself and his staff to Mogilev. North and south of Minsk German spear-head raced for the Berezina. In the afternoon of 27 June, 4th Army staff retired to Bobruisk, and in the evening Soviet units also fell back on the eastern bank of the Berezina. By 28 June, 3rd Army was fully split up and cut off: very shortly, the left flank units of 10th Army near Volkovysk were sealed off, and the tally of trapped divisions mounted as the trap sprang shut at 28 June. 29 June Pavlov was replaced by Lieutenant-General A.I. Yeremenko. The Soviet formations and units trapped west of Minsk (were Germans clamed the capture of 287704 POW and 2585 tanks) thrashed about as they broke up or broke out: on 9 July, German "mopping up" operations come to an end. The columns of Soviet prisoners moved back to the rear but some of the commanders like Boldin manage to link up with the main body of Red Army. Fighting his way steadily eastwards he had successfully brought 1654 armed men and officers back to the Soviet lines in 45-day break-out march. Others, like Colonel Nichiporovich used their shattered units as a basis for organizing partisan regiments in the enemy rear.