"The beginning of a catastrophe you can understand is a matter of a couple of days…"
Major General V. I. Tupikov, 1941
The catastrophe of the Western Front in June 1941 still stirs the mind. The almost complete absence of documents from the Soviet side on this question gives rise to versions and suppositions, and creates room for speculation. The fact of the complete defeat, examples of which one would still have to search for in military history, is not subject to doubt, but what are its causes?..
The greater part of the material presented below has already been published, including by me (Chapter 1), but it seems to me insufficiently thought through. Because a book about the catastrophe of the entire Western Front is one thing, while each fragment of this defeat requires separate study.
The Belostok salient did not arise of itself - it is the result of the new border of September 1939, agreed with Germany after the partition of Poland. For some reason Germany agreed to give it to the USSR, and the USSR for some reason found it necessary to obtain it.
And already in 1940-41 the Soviet command placed in it (of its own accord, without any compulsion) the main forces of the Western Special Military District (ZapOVO), including the notorious 6th Mechanized Corps with a thousand tanks, the "bogatyr of bogatyrs" of the Red Army.
On the eve of June 22, 1941, the disposition of all the corps headquarters of the 10th Army turned out to be west of the meridian of Belostok:
• 1st Rifle Corps - Belostok → Vizna
• 5th Rifle Corps - Belsk → Zambrow
• 6th Mechanized Corps - Belostok
• 13th Mechanized Corps - Belsk
• 6th Cavalry Corps - Lomza.
And the cover plan of the ZapOVO envisaged an even greater concentration of troops in the very salient: thus, the 29th Motorized Division of the 6th Mechanized Corps before the war went from Slonim to Belostok, to the area of Sokolka.
The northern face of the Belostok salient (the area of Grodno) was covered by the 3rd Army: the 4th Rifle and 11th Mechanized Corps (3 rifle divisions, 2 tank and 1 motorized divisions), the 6th Anti-Tank Brigade, as well as the 11th Mixed Aviation Division and the 86th Border Detachment.
In the spring of 1941 the creation of the Belsk covering sector on the southern face of the Belostok salient was begun, for which in May 1941 in Mogilev the formation of the administration of the 13th Army began, which it was then planned to transfer to Belsk. To the headquarters of the 13th Army were to be transferred in subordination the administration of the 2nd Rifle Corps with corps units (from Minsk), two rifle divisions (the 113th Division in May 1941 was transferred from Slutsk to the area of Semyatichi, the 49th Division had been in the area of Vysokoye since July 1940), the 13th Mechanized Corps from the 10th Army (the 25th and 31st Tank Divisions, the 208th Motorized Division) and the 311th Gun Artillery Regiment of the Reserve of the High Command, as well as the 43rd Mixed Aviation Division and the 88th Border Detachment.
The boundary with the 10th Army (inclusive for the new 13th Army): Slonim, (excl.) Svisloch, (excl.) Surazh, (excl.) Chezhuw, (incl.) Zuzel, (excl.) Vyshkuw (northeast of Warsaw).
According to the cover plans of the ZapOVO known to us now, in the event of a breakthrough from the direction of Sokolow, Sedltse on Belsk, Gajnowka, Volkovysk, to the two divisions of the 2nd Rifle Corps was to join the 100th Rifle Division from Minsk, which after the Finnish War was maintained on wartime tables. It was planned to be transferred first of all by motor transport (by two motor transport regiments) with arrival in the area of concentration of the first echelon not later than M-3 (the 3rd day of mobilization).
By the way, the 113th and 49th Divisions also participated in the Finnish War and further in the occupation of the Baltic countries (the 113th Division - of Lithuania, the 49th Division - of Estonia); it is not excluded that they too retained wartime tables, but we have no precise information.
And then the war began, and the transfer of the 100th Division… was immediately cancelled. How is that? That is, the 100th Rifle Division was to be transferred to the southern face of the Belostok salient only if the war was not started by the enemy?
At the beginning of 1941 the headquarters of the 5th Rifle Corps of the 10th Army was located in Belsk. However, shortly before the beginning of the war it moved to Zambrow, much further west, to the very tip of the Belostok salient. And in its place in Belsk the headquarters of the 2nd Rifle Corps from Minsk was to arrive.
Besides the informative memoirs of L. M. Sandalov (in 1941 - colonel, chief of staff of the 4th Army, subsequently - colonel general), we also have another interesting memoir of a participant in those events - this is the memoir of L. A. Pern (in 1941 - colonel, chief of staff of the 2nd Rifle Corps, subsequently - lieutenant general; Pern called his 2nd Rifle Corps Special). In them are described, among other things, the last pre-war days: "The corps administration and all corps units were fully manned according to wartime tables. Of the rifle divisions, the 100th Division, which had participated in the battles on the Karelian Isthmus, was maintained on wartime tables. It was also stationed in Minsk. The remaining rifle units and formations, quartered in Bobruisk, were in the stage of being brought up to strength.
In May the troops went out to the summer camp, the artillery units - to the artillery range, the sapper units - to special assemblies.
The corps was intended for combat operations on the Belsk direction (between Belostok and Kobrin).
…From June 13 to 20 in the area of Belostok, according to the summer plan of the training of headquarters, staff exercises took place, to which the headquarters of three armies and our corps administration were drawn. The exercises were directed by the headquarters of the Western Special Military District. The themes of the initial period of the war were worked out, and moreover the real enemy was had in mind, concentrated on the Minsk-Belostok direction.
The exercises ended on June 20. In the first half of June 21 a critique of the exercises took place, after which all the participants dispersed - the district headquarters to Minsk, the army headquarters - to their units at their places of disposition. Our headquarters received an order not to return to Minsk but to relocate to the city of Belsk (60 km from the border). There the corps units were to arrive by echelons by June 25.
The corps commander, Major General A. N. Ermakov, with the chiefs of the arms of the service and services on the day of June 21 left for Minsk to direct the transfer of the corps units to Belsk. On the same day at one o'clock in the afternoon I also arrived in Belsk with the operational group and the means of communication. There our group occupied the designated barracks premises, I myself settled in the hotel (a two-story wooden house with 20 rooms). To the officers of the headquarters and the commanders of the communications units I allowed rest until the morning of June 23 (Monday), after which I appointed a reconnaissance around Belsk for the disposition of the corps units arriving from Minsk.
Before leaving for Belsk I stopped by the headquarters of the 10th Army, located in Belostok. The commander of the army, Major General K. D. Golubev, with whom we had studied together at the Academy of the General Staff, informed me in detail what were the latest data on the enemy, characterized the state of his troops…"
Thus, the first echelon of the administration of the 2nd Rifle Corps found itself at the beginning of the war on the southern face of the Belostok salient, in the area of Belsk. L. A. Pern described the beginning of the war as follows: "At 2 o'clock in the morning of June 22 I was awakened by a telephone call. The duty officer at the corps headquarters asked permission to report an important message personally. After 15-20 minutes Lieutenant Colonel Pochema came and reported that the headquarters of the 13th Mechanized Corps, which was also located in Belsk, was by morning relocating to a command post in the forest, 15 km southwest of Belsk. Our corps was ordered to immediately occupy the premises of this headquarters. Moreover, by morning the units and formations of the mechanized corps would leave the city…
At 3 o'clock in the morning there was a knock at the door. Again Lieutenant Colonel Pochema. Because of a break in the telephone line he could not call and therefore came personally with a new report. By the instruction of the district headquarters the troops of the border zone were ordered to begin moving out to the prepared positions. The remaining troops and headquarters of the armies (the 3rd, 10th, 4th) were ordered to be at full combat readiness. On this night, - the district headquarters warned, - a provocative raid of fascist bands on our territory is expected. Do not give in to provocation. Do not cross the state border".
At 4 in the morning the war began…
L. A. Pern described the events of June 22 as follows: "At 7.30 I finally received a radiogram from the commander of the 10th Army, General Golubev: "Concentrate where you were on Saturday". This meant: the headquarters was to move to the previously prepared command post, where on Saturday, June 21, the staff exercise had ended. This point was located 15 km southwest of Belostok, in a forest. About 10 km from us, also in a forest, was the command post of the 10th Army…"
Having arrived at Major General K. D. Golubev, Colonel L. A. Pern received an order to set out as a liaison delegate from the 10th Army to the headquarters of the 4th Army, because communication with the front headquarters was already being maintained with interruptions. During this time Golubev promised to clarify what the headquarters of the 2nd Rifle Corps should do.
"Communication with the front headquarters (the former district) and with our corps continued to be maintained with great interruptions. What was happening in Minsk it was not possible to find out. The army commander said that the front commander Pavlov had promised at about eight o'clock in the evening to give concrete instructions for the night and for the next day. Then, he said, the question of the headquarters of our corps would also be decided.
...At 3 o'clock in the morning of June 23, finally, an instruction arrived from Minsk, according to which I was to arrive with the headquarters in Minsk.
…We entered Minsk only toward the end of June 24".
It turns out that with the beginning of the war that actually happened (and for which the Soviet command turned out to be clearly unprepared), the headquarters of the 2nd Corps in Belsk had nothing to do. Instead of accelerating the transfer of the corps units and the 100th Division to the area of Belsk, as was proper according to the cover plan "in the event of a breakthrough from the direction of Sokolow, Sedltse on Belsk, Gajnowka, Volkovysk" , the headquarters of the 2nd Corps was returned to Minsk, and the 100th Division remained in Minsk. This decision was taken on the night of June 22/23, when there was not yet any question of a breakthrough of German tank divisions to Minsk and Slonim. How is this to be understood?
And yet it was precisely in the zone of responsibility of the 2nd Corps that the German 4th Army delivered its main blow with its infantry divisions. What did the refusal to reinforce the "Belsk covering sector" of the Soviet Western Front immediately after the unexpected German attack mean?
The city of Belsk is 45 km south of Belostok, that is, it is the very Belostok salient. It was the place of disposition of several higher headquarters at once: first the headquarters of the 5th Rifle Corps of the 10th Army (departed to Zambrow), then, according to plan, the headquarters of the 13th Army (did not arrive) and the 2nd Rifle Corps (departed after June 22), as well as the 13th Mechanized Corps (moved to a field CP 15 km southwest of Belsk) - all these movements were within the framework of the now-known process of the advance of the main forces of the Western Front to the west into the Belostok salient in the pre-war days-weeks (to it also belonged the movement of the headquarters of the 1st and 5th Rifle Corps of the 10th Army to Vizna and Zambrow) and even in the last hours (the movement of the headquarters of the 13th Mechanized Corps to a CP southwest of Belsk).
A peculiarity of the "cover plan" of the ZapOVO - the rifle divisions of the southern face of the Belostok salient (the 86th, 113th and 49th) ALSO shifted to the right, to the west, that is, they were disposed not where they were planned to be used in battle. The headquarters of the 86th Rifle Division was located in Tsekhanovets, that is, in the "covering zone" of its left neighbor - the 113th Rifle Division. With the beginning of the war the 86th Division according to plan went to the west, while the 113th Division, having come under the first crushing blow, did not reach Tsekhanovets. As a result the Tsekhanovets left without a fight was occupied by a German platoon that had come on bicycles from the settlement of Nur.
And the 49th Rifle Division was to move out to the area of Semyatichi - the place of disposition of the headquarters of the 113th Division… In this sense a very strange "cover plan" has been presented to us, which raises more questions than it gives answers. The main thing: did it really not envisage a sudden attack by the enemy at all?
D. Egorov in his book "The Defeat of the Western Front" (2008) described the events of the first day of the war in the zone of the 86th Division as follows: "The commander of the 86th Red Banner Rifle Division named after the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Tatar ASSR of the 5th Rifle Corps <of the 10th Army> Colonel M. A. Zashibalov acted contrary to the instructions "not to give in to provocations", having received at 2 o'clock in the morning a report from the border guards about the Germans' laying of crossings at Drokhichin * and to the south. Having notified the higher command, he raised the division on alarm and brought it out to the border line determined by the self-opened "red packet". At 4 hours 05 minutes its regimental artillery opened return fire on the enemy troops. It should be noted that the divisional defense line had been equipped as early as April 1941, the commanders of the regiments and other subunits knew their tasks for the defense of the state border in detail. But alas, no other examples of such courageous, independent decisions at the level of corps-division have been identified.
…at 21 o'clock the corps commander, Major General A. V. Garnov, transmitted by telephone: Major Ivanov had left for the division with an order - from 23:30 to leave the occupied positions, withdraw beyond the Narew River and take up a firm defense there".
As can be seen on the map, both artillery regiments of the 86th Division (as of most other divisions of the 10th Army) were at the district artillery range in Chervony Bor; it is also important that the anti-aircraft artillery battalions of the divisions (at least of the 86th and 49th) were far from their divisions, at the training ground in Krupki east of Minsk.
The 86th Rifle Division had above it a higher corps headquarters giving orders. As a result the 86th Division withdrew by order to the line Lapy, Surazh on the Narew River. An order to take up the defense along the Narew River was also given to other units of the 10th Army. Thus, next to it from June 23 the motorized rifle regiments of the 4th and 7th Tank Divisions and the artillery regiment of the 4th Tank Division (all - from the composition of the 6th Mechanized Corps) took up positions.
The withdrawal of the 86th Division to the line of the Narew River, among other things, opened the Belsk direction from the west, from which the divisions of the German 7th Army Corps advanced on Belsk.
(The further fate of the 86th Division turned out to be as sad as that of the other divisions of the Belostok salient. As V. S. Stepanov wrote in his article, "On June 26 and 27 in the area of the city of Mosty <this is on the Neman River, already in the zone of the 3rd Army> the 86th RD suffered heavy, irrecoverable losses and in fact ceased to exist. From the battles came out the wounded commander of the division, Colonel M. A. Zashibalov, with a handful of officers and soldiers. On the first day of the war the chief of staff of the division, Colonel V. I. Kirinsky, the commissar of the division V. Davydov, went missing…")
The divisions of the former 2nd Rifle Corps, which had come under the first crushing blow of the Wehrmacht, had no communication with the higher command and had to act independently. They did not get either the divisions of the second echelon, which could have propped them up and reinforced them, or the means of reinforcement (corps artillery regiments and so on).
D. Egorov wrote in his book: "…The greatest damage was inflicted on the 113th Rifle Division (commander Major General Kh. N. Alaverdov). Its field camp, spread out on open ground 4-6 km from the border, was shelled from beyond the Bug by artillery fire. The hurricane of explosions swept away the tents, the Red Army men and commanders fled wherever they could from the zone of the shelling. The division commander was seriously wounded in the thigh, and it was possible to gather the regiments mixed up in the flight only after two hours…
When the 113th Rifle Division, severely damaged by the first blow from air raids and artillery fire, was gathered and brought into relative order, its units set out to the northwest to take up the defense according to their plan of covering the state border. Despite the serious wound, the division commander, Major General Kh. N. Alaverdov, displayed composure and will. He was a literate, well-trained commander, who shortly before the war had graduated with honors from the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. But several hours later, on the march, his division was suddenly attacked on the flank by the forward units of the 9th Army Corps of the Wehrmacht. It had to deploy in combat order under extremely unfavorable conditions. The 113th suffered a severe defeat and, as a single organism, ceased to exist. Its individual detachments continued to fight the enemy on the southern edges of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha for several more days. Having crushed and dismembered the Soviet division, the vanguard of the 9th Corps moved on and came out to the line of the Nuzhets River".
D. Egorov used this strong formulation: "the division ceased to exist as a single organism" already on June 22. Indeed, one of its rifle regiments (the 679th) immediately found itself in encirclement together with the reconnaissance battalion south of the Nuzhets River, while another (the 725th) was cut off from the main forces and subsequently acted together with the neighboring left-flank 49th Division. That is, already in the first days of the war the division was dismembered into several detachments, the commander of the 113th Division, Major General Kh. N. Alaverdov, as already mentioned, was wounded and on July 1 was taken prisoner on the southern edge of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha (shot in captivity in 1942).
The 49th Rifle Division also entered the war heavily. D. Egorov wrote: "From the 49th Division came fragmentary and contradictory information; the information was supplemented by a liaison officer who had returned from Vysokoye. According to him, the commander of the 49th RD, Colonel K. F. Vasilyev, was gathering the units of the division under artillery fire and was to set out for the border to occupy the forward zone of the 62nd Fortified Region. The commandant of the fortified region, Puzyrev, assured him that all the pillboxes had been brought to combat readiness.
On receiving information that the enemy, having broken through between Vysokoye and Brest, was spreading toward Vidoml, the commander of the 4th Army, A. A. Korobkov, sent to the 49th Rifle Division the chief of the army staff, Colonel L. M. Sandalov. On arrival at the command post of the division commander it was established that the 49th continued to hold the line along the fortified region, but behind its left flank, where the scattered battalions of the division of the 28th Corps were defending, the enemy with considerable forces had broken through to Motykaly <this refers to the breakthrough of two tank divisions of the German 47th Corps north of Brest - in the direction of the main blow of the 2nd Tank Group of G. Guderian>. Having acquainted K. F. Vasilyev with the situation and given the coordinates of the 30th TD <of the Soviet 14th Mechanized Corps >, the chief of staff set out for the left-flank 15th Rifle Regiment. The regiment was holding the defense on the line Nemiruw-Volchin-Motykaly (excl.) and had already suffered serious losses. The commander of the regiment, Major K. B. Nishchenkov, reported that he was being unsuccessfully attacked by units of two enemy divisions. As Lieutenant N. Z. Khairullin recalled, to support the subunits of the 15th RR the commander of the 121st Anti-Tank Battalion, Captain S. A. Nikiforov, sent the 1st and 2nd batteries of Senior Lieutenants Sipovich and Karandashov. Major Nishchenkov also confirmed that an hour before, in two points between Volchin and Brest, the Germans had managed to break through the defense of the neighbors, capture Motykaly and advance to the east. The main forces of the division continued to advance to the northwest, to the southern tip of the Belostok salient. As the former chief of staff of the division, Major S. I. Gurov, recalled, in the course of following the route Nuzhets, Semyatichi, the 212th Rifle (commander Major N. I. Kovalenko) and the 166th Howitzer-Artillery Regiments came into contact with the enemy 25-30 km west of Nuzhets and entered battle, without communication with the neighbors and the division headquarters. The 222nd RR (commander Colonel I. M. Yashin) was approaching the forests north of Semyatichi.
On the arrival of two anti-tank batteries the position of the 15th Rifle Regiment stabilized, and the artillery moved to the line Volchin-Vidoml to close the gap between the 30th Tank Division and the rifle subunits and to support the counterattacks on the broken-through enemy troops. The breakthrough was temporarily localized, the anti-tank men put out of action five tanks and up to ten motor vehicles and artillery prime movers. Besides the artillery, the "Komsomolets" artillery prime movers, armed with tank machine guns, also took an active part in the battle.
Returning from the regiment, L. M. Sandalov again stopped at the CP of Colonel Vasilyev; there was already a liaison officer from the 30th Tank Division. The latter reported that at about 11 o'clock the enemy's tanks had broken through from Motykaly to Vidoml and entered battle with the forward units of the 30th TD. Sandalov advised the commander of the 49th Division to send several subunits with anti-tank artillery to the line Volchin-Vidoml, to close the gap between his and the tank division and to support the latter in the counterattack on the broken-through enemy troops.
In the course of the meeting engagement that began, the enemy occupied Vidoml, the battles went on the approaches to the village of Pilishchi…"
The breakthrough of the German 47th Motorized Corps to Vidoml and, further, to Pruzhany, and the defeat of the Soviet 30th Tank Division - all this contributed to the isolation of the 49th Division from the main forces of the 4th Army, to which it was formally subordinated. Very quickly the 49th Division by order was transferred to the 10th Army, on June 23 the front commander, General of the Army D. G. Pavlov, gave the order to the commander of the 10th Army, Major General K. D. Golubev: "...Find where the 49th and 113th Rifle Divisions are and bring them out".
It was not possible to bring these divisions out and take control over them.
For a complete understanding of the picture there is still lacking a description of one more important "element" of the Soviet defense on the southern face of the Belostok salient - the 42nd Rifle Division, which on June 22 was stationed for the most part in the Brest Fortress, while some of its units - a little north of Brest (until April 1941 its former disposition was Bereza-Kartuzskaya). According to the cover plan it was precisely this division that was to move out from Brest to the area of Vysokoye and occupy the zone in which on June 22 the 49th Rifle Division was stationed (which was leaving for the area of Semyatichi). As a result of the sudden enemy attack the main forces of the 42nd Division found themselves blockaded in the fortress, and the commander of the 44th Rifle Regiment, Major P. M. Gavrilov, became a hero of the defense of the fortress, and not of the southern face of the Belostok salient.
The thought thrown in several years ago that the cause of the crowding of the Soviet divisions in the Brest Fortress was the availability of barracks space is not without foundation in the sense that it works if we move the chess pieces without thinking that the enemy will also make his moves, and that the "blacks" may make their move first.
The impossibility of the main forces of the 42nd Division leaving the fortress with the beginning of the war is one of the factors of the breakthrough of the Soviet defense in its sector. The defeat of the Soviet divisions of the 4th Army in the Brest Fortress (the 6th and 42nd) - this is minus two rifle divisions in the "thin thread of border divisions" opposing the Wehrmacht.
The thin line became even more rarefied.
The German troops, having broken through in the Belsk direction the defense of the "thin thread of border divisions", already on the first day encountered the 13th Mechanized Corps in the initial stage of formation (formation begun in March 1941):
• 25th Tank Division - the most combat-capable division of the corps, formed on the basis of the 44th Light Tank Brigade (on June 22 the division had in service 226 light T-26 tanks and five tankettes); headquarters - Lapy.
• 31st Tank Division was formed on the basis of the 1st Tank Brigade (not the one that participated in the Finnish War, but a new formation of the autumn of 1940), by the beginning of the war only one tank regiment had been formed with a small amount of armored vehicles (39 T-26 tanks of various modifications and 18 armored cars); headquarters - Botski.
• 208th Motorized Division - Gajnowka; according to the report of the division commander, Colonel V. I. Nichiporovich, the tank regiment of the division had not been formed (in all in the division there were 16 light tanks, 11 tankettes and 12 armored cars), moreover, the division had 2 thousand unarmed soldiers; knowing the history of the 17th Mechanized Corps (see Chapter 8), we now already know what this means (most likely, we are talking about conscripts from the western regions of Belarus).
For a full-fledged Soviet mechanized corps there is quite little armored vehicles, for one division, but when we are told about the "lack of equipment" in the mechanized corps and so on - this is not about the lack of armored vehicles in the Red Army, but about Stalin's gigantomania. As of December 1, 1940, in the USSR there were 9 mechanized corps and 45 tank brigades, and in January-February 1941 a decision was taken to form an additional 21 mechanized corps (that is, in all they were to become 30). It was precisely these "supernumerary mechanized corps" that lacked equipment: tanks (in 30 mechanized corps according to the tables there would have to be 1031 tanks x 30 = almost 31 thousand tanks!), guns and so on. It was precisely these supernumerary new formations and units that lacked prime movers, tractors and motorcycles.
In the USSR mechanized corps were not created (formed) on the basis of the available armored vehicles, but first mechanized corps were created (an order was given for their formation), and then they were pumped up with armored vehicles. That is how "socialist realism" looks. This theme was first raised by Marshal K. K. Rokossovsky in his memoirs (on June 22, 1941 - Major General, commander of a mechanized corps on the Southwestern Front): having opened the "red packet", he saw with surprise that he was given tasks as for a full-fledged mechanized corps, and not for the one that was at his disposal in reality.
Stalin's Red Army lacked control and organization, and not "iron". There was much "iron" in the Red Army in general and in the Belostok salient in particular; all the roads of retreat to Volkovysk and Zelva were strewn with it. It seems that if the divisions of the 10th Army had all the prime movers and tractors assigned to them by the tables - they too would all have remained on the retreat routes.
And the Germans had enough for the achievement of Moscow and Leningrad with their wretched couple of thousand tanks without a single heavy one, in any way comparable to the KV.
By noon on June 22 the German 263rd Infantry Division of the 9th Corps through the first line of the Soviet defense broke through to Bransk (Bryansk), where it encountered the reconnaissance battalion of the 25th Tank Division. Soon the 18th Motorcycle Regiment of the 13th Mechanized Corps entered the battle for Bransk.
By the end of June 22 the German 263rd Infantry Division had driven the Soviet troops out of Bransk, while its forward detachment managed to capture intact the bridge over the Nuzhets River. The commander of the German 9th Army Corps, General of Infantry H. Geyer, wrote in his memoirs * : "It was a brilliant success - considering that a significant part of the march from the Bug fell on the night of June 23, and also that in Bransk these units had to withstand a heavy night and morning battle.
When I appeared in Bransk early in the morning, there was still great confusion there. I myself had to encounter two Russian tanks that had broken into the city. However, they felt uncomfortable in the narrow barricaded streets. We attacked the tanks from three sides, and they tried to break through to freedom. More than 60 Russian tanks had already been destroyed…"
More than 60 knocked-out Soviet tanks in Bransk - this is not just a reconnaissance battalion, this is the level of at least a tank regiment. It seems that already on the first day of the war the main forces of the Soviet 25th Tank Division were drawn into the battles for Bransk, and moreover the division was inflicted a heavy defeat.
By the beginning of June 23 the German 268th Infantry Division of the 7th Army Corps also broke into Bransk from the west.
It is known that from June 23 in the area of Bransk the 760th Motorized Regiment of the 208th Motorized Division also fought, subsequently it acted separately from its division.
Units of the 31st Tank Division blocked the road from Drogichin to Belsk, Belostok, but by noon on June 23 they were driven back from Botski 10 km to Belsk.
On the left flank of the corps operated units of the 208th Motorized Division.
That is, on June 23, having broken through the "thin thread of border divisions" on the southern face of the Belostok salient, the German units came out to the line: north of Bransk, north of Botski (here the line of the Nuzhets River had already been overcome), Nuzhets, Kleshchele, Cheremkha, north of Vysokoye.
The horror of the first day of the war, however dramatically that day may have looked, decides far from everything. The first day of a sudden enemy attack for the ordinary participants in the events always looks terrible and bloody. But this emotional description should not confuse and deceive us: there are experienced commanders, there is the control of troops, there are plans of action in case of the beginning of a war with a probable enemy. An army is a large military organism, very stable. A defeat is not when some of its units come under a blow (as is indicated in the interrogation of the commander of the Western Front, General of the Army D. G. Pavlov: "the communications battalion of the 113th Rifle Division was defeated"), but when control is lost, which is built from the top. To the aid of the covering divisions must come the divisions of the second echelon, and then the main forces of the Red Army.
L. A. Pern wrote in his memoirs: "In the sense of awareness my position was somewhat different <from other commanders>: by the nature of my service even on the eve of the war I knew in general terms what formations the border troops of the district had, what groupings of German-fascist troops were concentrated in this direction. I was also aware of the results of the battles of two border armies (the 4th and 10th). In the first two days of the war I assumed that our covering troops would have to retreat with fighting for several more days. Apparently, I thought, during the night the sides would put themselves in order and on the morning of June 23 decisive clashes would take place. But since the enemy on the main directions had a clear superiority in manpower and equipment, the counterattacks of the 4th Army would hardly be successful. To defend would also not succeed, since up to the old state border there were no prepared defensive lines. Even if in the next two or three days fresh units appeared from the depth, they because of their small numbers would not "make the weather". Divisions from other military districts (Moscow, Oryol) could appear not earlier than the 5-6th day. Hence the conclusion suggested itself that the enemy must be delayed only by defense on a previously equipped line, which would be a serious obstacle first of all for the fascist tanks. To knock down the pace of the enemy's advance, it was necessary to go over to mass destruction and obstacles of the main main roads along which the German tanks, transport vehicles were advancing, to deliver only short counterattacks mainly at night and to conduct stubborn battles in conditions of encirclement, which, as we now know, was basically what was carried out in the first days of the war by the units of the border districts.
For every retreat and defense there must always be a limit, that is, a designated withdrawal line, from which after the defensive battles a large, general counteroffensive of our troops must begin. I believed that such a line, on which the enemy would be delayed, could be the meridian west of Minsk, where there were old border fortifications. Although they had been abandoned in their time, they were well thought out in the sense of the organization of defense and the conduct of fire even in the pre-war years, and moreover were familiar to many commanders. At worst, I thought, the last lines of defense could be the Berezina and Dnieper Rivers. Then the radical turning point would come here on the 10th-15th day.
I think that in those days no one supposed that we would have to wage war on the approaches to Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad…"
What the officer of the General Staff understood on June 22 was then understandable to many military specialists (I deliberately use here this term, as a memory of the Civil War, with its enormous difference between the political leaders-political instructors and the military specialists, the possessors of knowledge in military art; by 1941 this difference was no longer so great, of the "tsarist generals" and senior officers in the Red Army practically none remained, but still this difference between "commanders" and "commissars" was noticeable). That is, when the sudden attack of Germany confused all the plans of the Soviet military-political leadership, for the military specialists the further catastrophe of the troops of the Western Front became understandable. Although no one then supposed that the catastrophe would continue right up to Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad (that is, up to the second half of 1942).
But the catastrophe, understandable to military specialists, the military-political leadership of the USSR (more political than military) was not capable of admitting. On the eve of the war it had managed by mass repressions to completely break the will of the military, to force them to carry out unquestioningly any, the most incomprehensible and even dangerous for the defense capability of the country orders. Over all the military leaders hung the fear of accusations of exaggerating the forces of the enemy, of various other sins. Right up to 1942, even the materials of the old interrogations of 1937-38 were used (some military leaders who survived the meat-grinder of 1941 were in the following years repressed precisely on "old" cases, for example, the deputy chief of staff of the Western Front, Brigade Commander / Major General V. S. Golushkevich).
But power over the military did not give the Soviet political leaders expertise in military questions. As a result - catastrophe after catastrophe in 1941-42.
Let us recall the emotional report of Major General V. I. Tupikov, chief of staff of the Soviet Southwestern Front, to the Stavka and personally to Marshal B. M. Shaposhnikov in September 1941 about the threat of the encirclement of the main forces of the front in the Kiev "cauldron": "The beginning of a catastrophe you can understand is a matter of a couple of days".
Marshal B. M. Shaposhnikov, as was proper to him, gave a rebuke, but everything happened as V. I. Tupikov had foreseen / predicted: the Southwestern Front was encircled, the Kiev "cauldron" became one of the largest in the whole war, and the command of the front almost entirely perished while coming out of the encirclement, including V. I. Tupikov himself. But what kind of "foresight" is this? Is this a "prediction"?! This is knowledge understandable to a professional.
The catastrophe of the Soviet troops of the Belostok salient was programmed by the very disposition of the troops and the readiness (unreadiness) of the defensive lines. And this became clear to many commanders of the Western Front already on June 22. Here the best of them had been gathered, they had an academic education. It seems that this strongly influenced their subsequent decisions.
Unexpected for them was the absence of defensive lines not only on the old border, but also the unreadiness for defense on the lines of the Berezina and Dnieper Rivers, which became the cause of new catastrophes. But about this L. A. Pern and other Soviet commanders did not know then.
Whatever the present official historians may say, no "regulation density of the border divisions stretched into a thread" decides anything. In any case the enemy will create on the chosen directions a great superiority and mass artillery. No one keeps all forces at the border, and the Border Battle is intended to cover the mobilization and the pulling up of the main forces to the sectors of the enemy's main blow. For this there exist cover plans, covering sectors, which someone controls. And when the control of the covering sector is lost - this is a unique situation.
In June 1941 the German command created powerful strike groupings. The Soviet troops on the southern face of the Belostok salient (the 86th, 113th and 49th Rifle Divisions and the under-formed * 13th Mechanized Corps in the second echelon) were attacked by 4 German army corps of the 4th Army (the 7th, 9th and 43rd plus the 13th in the second echelon; in all 12 infantry divisions plus 2 security divisions "in the train").
A peculiarity of this sector of the German offensive: it went in the style of the First World War, with infantry alone, minimally mobile, with horse trains, and throughout the whole battle practically without the support of aviation. Mobility in the German infantry divisions was usually had only by the reconnaissance units, the anti-tank battalions (they were most often used as forward detachments sent to help in crisis points) and part of the artillery.
The participants in those events on the Soviet side often recalled the struggle with tanks, however now we know that we are talking about German assault guns - a separate branch of the armed forces in the artillery, but from the point of view of the defenders in June 1941 the difference between assault guns and tanks was practically impossible to feel.
To Army Group "Center" on June 22 were subordinated 4 battalions of self-propelled guns (Sturmgeschűtz-Abteilung) of 3 batteries each, in each battalion 18-21 self-propelled guns:
• to the 9th Army were attached the 184th Battalion (was attached to the 8th Army Corps: first it operated in the area of Grodno * , then it supported the 28th Infantry Division in the battles for Mosty) and the 210th Battalion (played an important role in repelling the Soviet counterattack near Grodno on June 24-25, supporting the 256th Infantry Division, which was "almost burned to ashes");
• to the 4th Army were attached the 192nd Battalion (first it supported the 12th Army Corps in the area of Brest, then the 131st Infantry Division of the 43rd Corps) and the 226th Battalion (supported the offensive of the 9th Corps * ).
The first blow of the Wehrmacht on the southern face of the Belostok salient was crushing. The chief of staff of the Western Front, Major General V. E. Klimovskikh, described the situation as of 18.00 on June 22: "…On the front of the 10th Army the enemy has taken possession of the line Grajevo (Grajewo), Kolno, Lomza, Petkovo, Chizhev, Tsekhanovets. Of the situation west of Belsk, southwest and south there are no data". - That is, information was absent precisely there where the enemy delivered the main blow from the southern face. That is how the defeat of the flank of an army looks. But information was also absent because the Soviet divisions that had come under the first blow had no higher headquarters (of the corps, the army) which would have collected it and transmitted it further to the front headquarters (let me remind you, according to the regulations of the Red Army communication in the troops was built from the top down).
The distance from Drogichin to Belsk through Botski is about 60 km, from Tsekhanovets to Belsk - 50 km. All this constitutes two days of march on foot. From Bransk to Belsk - 25 km (one day). The German offensive proceeded at this pace.
The 263rd Infantry Division of the 9th Army Corps, having broken the resistance of the units of the 13th Mechanized Corps and captured Bransk, continued the offensive on Belsk. On June 23 another division of the 9th Corps, the 137th Infantry Division, occupied Botski and also aimed at Belsk.
From the west the 268th Infantry Division of the 7th Army Corps was approaching Belsk.
As a result by noon on June 24 the enemy captured Belsk and continued the offensive toward the Narew. In the operational summary No. 6 of the headquarters of the Soviet Western Front as of 10:00 on 25.06.1941 it was said:
"First. Of the actions and position of the troops of the front during the night of 24-25.6.41 there have been no reports. I am specifying the situation on the left flank of the front by the end of 24.6.41.
Second. The 10th Army by the end of the day of 24.6.41 conducted battles on the line:
a) the 1st RC - the situation without changes.
b) the 5th RC - along the eastern bank of the Narew River. The 13th RD - Gura, Batsyuty; the 86th RD - Ukhovo, Doktortsy. The corps headquarters - forest east of Levitske <a little south of Belostok>.
c) The enemy by the end of 24.6.41 broke through the front of the 13th MC, which ran along the Orlyanka River <a tributary of the Narew River> in the direction of Belsk-Podlyaski, Narew and on Zabludow.
d) Of the remaining units of the army there have been no reports…"
From Belsk to Volkovysk there remained a little more than 100 km. "The beginning of a catastrophe you can understand is a matter of a couple of days".
On June 26 the rapid German advance to the east made it possible to move the headquarters of the German 4th Army to Pruzhany. However soon a crisis set in in the German offensive on the southern face of the Belostok salient. The commander of the 9th Army Corps, General H. Geyer, wrote about June 27: "This day can without exaggeration be called decisive…" His corps had for several days boldly advanced to the east, as planned, "without looking back at the neighbors", but when it obtained the possibility to assess the operational situation as a whole, there was revealed to it: "Finally, we met a flyer - a staff officer of artillery. He brought with him maps which reflected the position of the troops today. And then there was revealed to us the terrible truth: we together with the 263rd and 137th Divisions were alone on a vast space.
The maps showed that the XXXXIII Corps in the near future could in no way come out to the highway Volkovysk-Zelva…
…While we were assessing our position and the position of the XXXXIII Corps as critical…"
About the crisis in the zone of the 43rd Corps wrote in his diary the commander-in-chief of Army Group "Center", Field Marshal F. von Bock. For several days after the breakthrough of the Soviet defense on June 22 the German 43rd Army Corps advanced through the Belovezhskaya Pushcha practically without encountering resistance. But in the morning of June 27 the combat groups of the 134th and 131st Infantry Divisions of the corps, advancing in the direction of Zelva, were subjected to an attack by Soviet troops on a wide front Porozovo, Novy Dvor, who strove to break out of the "Belostok trap". According to German data, here operated the "corps group Akhlyustin", in the composition of which are listed units of the 31st Tank and 208th Motorized Divisions (the 25th Tank Division was no longer mentioned), here too parts of the 49th Rifle Division were breaking through (to which the 725th Rifle Regiment of the 113th Division had joined), as well as some units of the 4th Tank and 6th Cavalry Divisions.
The modern historian A. Isaev, who set himself the task of "normalizing" the catastrophe of 1941, including of the Western Front, in his book "The Halted Blitzkrieg" (2010) assessed these actions not as a desperate breakthrough from encirclement, but precisely as a counterattack, and moreover by order of the commander of the 10th Army, Major General K. D. Golubev - that is, as a meaningful action of the command. Where did he get this from?
In general, from where is it known that Major General P. N. Akhlyustin headed the counterattack of "his corps group" on June 27-28?
The chief of staff of the corps communications battalion of the 13th Mechanized Corps, Captain S. Z. Kremnev, recalled: "On the night of June 23 to 24 an order arrived to withdraw in the direction of Gajnowka * , since our defense on the flanks had been broken through by superior enemy forces and we found ourselves in encirclement. The subunits of the corps, breaking out of the encirclement, entered the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Here, having gathered the remnants of the personnel, General Akhlyustin gave the order to the commanders of the units and subunits to come out of the Pushcha by two routes: the 31st Tank Division with the remnants of the equipment in the direction of Novy Dvor, Porozovo and further across the Zelvyanka River to the east, and the remaining subunits with the corps headquarters and the communications battalion, having united into one combat group, to move through the small town of Svisloch, Mstibovo, south of Volkovysk, Zelva and further to the east. On the approaches to the small town of Svisloch we were fired upon by a German landing. After a short battle we entered the small town, but here again we were met by a hurricane of fire from heavy and light machine guns, submachine guns and a mortar. The fire was conducted from the attics of the buildings, and along the street a heavy machine gun uninterruptedly poured fire, mines exploded. At this time there were moving with us two 45-mm guns with their crews that had joined us back in the Pushcha. On the command of Akhlyustin they opened fire on the bell tower and some tower at the end of the street and these two firing points fell silent. Then the remaining firing points were liquidated and the column moved on to Mstibovo and Zelva.
Near Mstibovo on the edge of a small forest we dug trenches of full profile and gained a foothold. The attempt of the Germans to drive us out of this forest was unsuccessful and then the fascists threw aviation at us, bombed the forest, and then sent tanks. But the deep trenches saved us - we had no losses, except for a few wounded. With the onset of dusk we were ordered to withdraw to the line of the Zelvyanka River. The bridge on the road through the small town of Zelva had already been blown up, the houses in the small town were burning. We had to look for a crossing north of Zelva. In the area of the villages of Likhinichi and Samoylovichi on the swampy floodplain of the Zelvyanka some kind of crossing of wooden decking was discovered. We with the remnants of the vehicles forced it and moved on…"
From this fragment of memoirs one can understand that soon after receiving the order to withdraw (June 23/24) the 13th Mechanized Corps ceased to exist as a single organizational structure. The "combat group" of the headquarters and the communications battalion of the 13th Mechanized Corps together with the command of the corps retreated from the Belostok salient by the "northern" route (through the retreat zone of the 3rd Army): after the crossing of the Zelvyanka River it moved along the route Kabaki (where it crossed the Shchara River), Kozlovshchina (north of Slonim), Gorodishche (north of Baranovichi), and on June 29 it crossed the Neman River at Eremichi (between Novogrudok and Stolbtsy) into the Naliboki Pushcha. Early in the morning of June 30 the commanders of the 13th Mechanized Corps fell into an ambush of German saboteurs near Rubezhevichi (this is a little further west, halfway to Dzerzhinsk), and the deputy commander of the corps, Major General V. I. Ivanov, was killed. - For many the "northern" route became saving, although ahead there were still many deadly obstacles. Thus, the commander of the 13th Mechanized Corps, Major General P. N. Akhlyustin, perished while coming out of the encirclement much further east and much later, on July 28 on the Sozh River in the area of Propoisk * (when the Smolensk Battle was in full swing).
About the chief of staff of the 13th Mechanized Corps, Colonel I. I. Gryzunov, in the registration card of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR there is an entry about death with the mark VMN (the highest measure of punishment, obviously, by the verdict of a Military Tribunal) and the date 4/XI-41.
But the "northern" route was not accessible to all; there were so many troops in the Belostok salient that they could not squeeze through the "bottleneck" of the "northern" route (which remained after the blocking of the road Volkovysk-Zelva-Slonim), and many units, especially those defending on the southern face of the Belostok salient, broke through by the "southern" route, the most fatal, through numerous enemy cordons, through its main forces, which did not allow counting on coming out in any organized order.
In the memoirs of S. Z. Kremnev the 25th Tank Division of the corps was no longer mentioned (apparently, the units that had fought earlier for Bransk were cut off from the other units of the 13th Mechanized Corps and from Volkovysk). There is also no 208th Motorized Division in them; in the report of the commander of the 208th Division, Colonel V. I. Nichiporovich, it was said that his 208th Motorized Division "held Volkovysk until July 1, 1941 to the last cartridge and shell, having on its right the 29th Motorized Division. Near Volkovysk it was possible to defeat a German motorcycle regiment, after which on the part of the enemy there was no particularly strong pressure, except for strong bombing from the air. I did not manage to establish communication with the headquarters of the 13th Mechanized Corps or the 10th Army near Volkovysk, despite repeated sending of delegates, I did not receive an order to withdraw. On the night of June 31 to July 1, 1941 I withdrew to the Zelva River…" *
And now also the 31st Tank Division was directed to act separately from the command of the corps. D. Egorov wrote about this in his book: "The 31st Tank Division after the disintegration of the corps split into two groups and withdrew into the depths of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha, having put out a covering detachment. One group was led by the division commander himself, S. A. Kalikhovich, the second - by the chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel V. V. Lebedev. To command the covering detachment volunteered the battalion commissar D. I. Kochetkov. Subsequently the covering force joined one of the groups, but after a strong shelling they again disintegrated. Colonel Kalikhovich managed to break away from the enemy with his people and go into the depths of the Pushcha. Here he began to subordinate to himself all who were still capable of fighting. From the residual groups of the 49th and 113th Rifle Divisions there was soon gathered a motley but numerous host. On June 28 the division commander made a desperate attempt to break through to the southeast, into the Pinsk marshes, through the former covering sector of the defeated 4th Army. Having headed the first wave of the attackers, he led them into battle "for the Motherland, for Stalin" (this slogan is not a legend, whatever the present quasi-fighters against "totalitarianism" may say) * Then, on the 7th day of the war, these words were enough to throw hungry, exhausted people into the hurricane of shrapnel from guns placed for direct fire and into the rapid-fire MG-34 machine guns. The Germans, unable to withstand the fury of the hand-to-hand battle, fled, leaving at the place of the breakthrough three artillery batteries, more than 100 motor vehicles, many mortars and motorcycles. Porozovo was abandoned by them. It seemed that a little more, one more onslaught, and the way was free. The German command envisaged the possibility of a breakthrough of the Soviet troops in these places, but such an outcome it nevertheless did not expect. In their headquarters there arose some confusion. The attacks of the units striving to break through from the encirclement in the area south of Porozovo and Novy Dvor, as well as north of Lyskovo (here, as it seemed to the Germans themselves, they were attacked with the support of a large amount of artillery) forced the units of the 43rd Army Corps of the 4th Field Army of the Wehrmacht to withdraw. Having withdrawn from Podorosi and Porozovo to the heights north of Lyskovo and Novy Dvor, they went over to the defensive. The troops moving in marching columns from Brest to Minsk were also stopped and deployed with the front to the north. The area of the breakthrough of Kalikhovich's group was subjected to massive bombing from the air and artillery shelling. The former cadet of the regimental school of the 148th Tank Regiment, A. Titov, wrote: "The battles went on everywhere: on the highway, for the heights, for the villages. Fires blazed everywhere. On the 27th we crossed the then dirt road Grodno-Brest. And the whole mechanized column ran into the Ruzhany forest. What to do? Not to abandon the equipment, not to run into the thicket, not to leave the families of the command staff in the truck bodies? We decided in the morning to move on Ruzhany, to crush the fascists and come out to the highway Brest-Baranovichi. Naive, we did not suspect that the Germans had already entered Minsk... The battle went on all day. Artillery pounded us, aviation bombed, submachine gunners poured fire from the hills…"
In the evening of June 28 the commander of the 31st TD, Colonel S. A. Kalikhovich, was seriously wounded, he was carried out of the battle on himself by the plenipotentiary of the 3rd Department, Gorenin. The leadership of the group was taken over by the commander of the 62nd Tank Regiment, Colonel I. A. Shapovalov, by this time already three times wounded. The breakthrough did not succeed, the attackers suffered heavy losses in killed and wounded, the remnants returned to the starting positions. Then a decision was taken: to break up into small groups and come out to the east through the Ruzhany Pushcha…"
Thus, instead of the mythical "corps group of Akhlyustin", which A. Isaev "sang" in his book (which supposedly delivered a meaningful counterattack "by order of the headquarters of the 10th Army"), we see the scattered detachments of the 31st Tank Division breaking through to the east, to which the remnants of the already defeated 113th and 49th Rifle Divisions joined.
In the book of F.-D. Heidorn * it is told that at an interrogation in captivity a certain "commander of the tank troops of the 10th Army" * told about the operational order to both tank divisions of the 6th Mechanized Corps of June 27: to reach the line of the Zelvyanka on June 28, the line of the Shchara on June 29. And further: "An attempt to break through to the east, moving from the Shchara in a northeasterly (7th TD) and southeasterly (4th TD) direction. The last refueling in Volkovysk; here half of the supplies perished under bombs".
To the Shchara one still had to find one's way; everything ended already on the line of the Zelvyanka River (and for some formations even on the line of the Ros River). But here too there are indicated "northern" and "southern" routes of retreat to the east (only as a bifurcation point is indicated the line of the Shchara River).
Possibly the command did not imagine the difference in the prospects of these two routes of retreat, but for some reason the whole command of the 10th Army and the corps administrations of the army moved precisely by the "northern" route. But if the administration of the 10th Army managed to slip out of the Belostok "bag" (it was defeated a little later, already while coming out of the Naliboki "bag", and further the high commanders came out one by one), and the administration of the 3rd Army managed to come out almost in an organized manner (true, only on July 28), and in such a way that it could be used for the command of troops (about this - in my Chapter 5), then all the corps administrations, retreating a day or two later, were already awaited by an unenviable fate.
Important: all the higher commanders of the Red Army retreated to the east separately from the troops entrusted to them. Marshal G. I. Kulik came out separately, the deputy front commander, Lieutenant General I. V. Boldin, came out separately, the command of the armies came out separately and the command of the corps came out separately. There was no question of the direction of the coming out of their troops. On the contrary, there was a gradual fragmentation of the Soviet troops: the structure first of the armies, then of the corps, then of the divisions disintegrated, which broke up into detachments. There were many Soviet troops, there was a great deal of armament, but not a single Soviet formation and unit managed to break out of the Belostok "cauldron" in an organized manner; all the units and formations of the 10th Army were defeated and ceased to exist.
By the way, the breakthrough to the east of part of the Soviet 4th Tank Division in the sector south of the highway Volkovysk-Zelva explains the description by the Germans of battles here with Soviet heavy tanks (after all, the hypothesis about the presence of modern heavy and medium tanks in the 13th Mechanized Corps does not find confirmation).
It is also interesting that the commander of the 4th Tank Division, Major General A. G. Potaturchev, who was taken prisoner, denied his participation in the attempts to break through.
The 6th Cavalry Division together with the headquarters of its 6th Cavalry Corps on June 22 was stationed in Lomza (at the very western tip of the Belostok salient). From the first day of the war it participated in the defense of Lomza, but very soon it became clear that the enemy was conducting there only demonstrative actions, and it was decided to use the 6th Cavalry Division in another place. Although it was not listed in the order for the formation of the Mechanized Cavalry Group (MCG), it was drawn into the offensive in the area of Grodno. Just like the headquarters of the 6th Cavalry Corps and the other division of the corps, the 36th Cavalry (from Volkovysk).
The chief of staff of the 94th Cavalry Regiment of the 6th Division, V. A. Grechanichenko, recalled that the division concentrated by 17.00 on June 23 in the area 2 km north of Belostok, and by evening it moved another 35 km and occupied a zone on a wide front along the railway from Sokolka to Belostok. The turret gunner of the armored car of the commander of the reconnaissance squadron of the 35th Tank Regiment of the 6th Cavalry Division: "On June 23 the regiment concentrated in the forest northeast of Belostok. Here there were also other tank units. The forest was systematically bombed by enemy aviation, inflicting great damage on our units…"
Judging by the reconstruction of the events of the Soviet counterattack near Grodno on June 24-25, the 6th Cavalry Division suffered heavy losses. In the order for the 6th Cavalry Corps as of 24.00 on June 25 it was said: "…The 6th CD is to gather and put itself in order in the main area Shidzel, Lebedin, the colony Zasnyanki (all points 3-5 km west of Bogushi), in the additional area Verkholessye, Laznisk, the colony Rovek (all points 10-14 km south of Sokolka)…"
One document of the headquarters of the Western Front (published as official, but without signatures, date and time; apparently prepared by the chief of staff of the front, V. E. Klimovskikh) deviates somewhat from the picture known to us:
"…The 6th Cavalry Division on 24.6.41 is to be concentrated in the area of Svisloch in readiness on 25.6.41 to conduct with it a decisive offensive in the direction of Pruzhany".
However the orders of the headquarters of the Western Front of this period raise only questions: what did the 6th Cavalry Division represent on June 25 and to what extent was this order brought to the executors? Possibly this order, like many subsequent ones, remained on paper.
About the further fate of the units of the 6th Cavalry Division little is known: D. Egorov described the battle of the 48th Cavalry Regiment of the 6th Cavalry Division on June 28 in the area of Ivashkovichi (south of Zelva, between Kosheli and Karolin, on the western bank of the Zelvyanka River) - this is precisely on the "southern" route and may explain the attacks of a mass of cavalry on the retreat routes from the Belostok salient described by the enemy.
At the same time it is known that the commander of the 6th Cavalry Division, Major General M. P. Konstantinov, was wounded on June 29 in the area of the small town of Ros (this is north of Volkovysk). He was lucky to avoid captivity, he was hidden by the local population, later he went over to partisan actions, then returned to the Active Army, and after the war reached the rank of colonel general.
The enemy in the end managed to cope with the crisis of June 27. The fact that the Soviet troops of the southern face of the Belostok salient had no single command, and that the divisions by this time had turned into a set of detachments which fought on their own, only favored this. The headquarters of the 13th Mechanized Corps could hypothetically have taken upon itself the command of the Soviet troops on the southern face of the Belostok salient, but on the contrary, itself beginning from June 23 with each day lost control even of its own units, and then altogether moved to the east through the zone of the neighboring army separately from them. At the moment of the battles most important for the breakthrough of the German encirclement, the Soviet troops on the southern face of the Belostok salient were commanded by no one.
The German command, on the contrary, firmly held the control of the troops in its hands. General H. Geyer wrote about the outcome of June 27 for his 9th Corps: "Finally, we received good news. The front of the 263rd and 137th Divisions remained wide and rather thin. The enemy attacked them with heavy tanks, but our divisions managed to deploy self-propelled artillery mounts <it was precisely this episode that D. Egorov cited in his book>. The army sent at night the 17th Division <of the 13th Army Corps> in the direction from the Narew to Svisloch, to fill the gap between the 263rd and 268th Divisions <between the 9th and 7th Army Corps>…"
And to the aid of the combat groups of the 131st and 134th Divisions of the 43rd Corps were sent units of the 252nd Division, which was advancing in the second echelon of the corps. Considering that the 43rd Corps did not have time to support the actions of the 29th Motorized Division (of the 47th Motorized Corps), which had already occupied positions with the front "to the west" (the eastern bank of the Zelvyanka River opposite Zelva, headquarters - Ozernitsa), the 12th Army Corps was sent to this area: the 31st Infantry Division that had come out to Ruzhany was sent to occupy positions along the road from Ruzhany to Kosheli on the western bank of the Zelvyanka.
On June 28 units of the German 9th Army Corps captured Volkovysk, and almost took prisoner the headquarters of the Soviet 10th Army. And units of the German 43rd Corps, attacked the day before in the area of Porozovo, Novy Dvor, withdrew to the east and took up the defensive.
On this same day the divisions of the German 7th Army Corps without a fight occupied Belostok.
General H. Geyer wrote further in his memoirs: "On June 29 it was still impossible to say precisely whether Zelva was in our hands or still belonged to the enemy… A reinforced clearing subunit <such is the wondrous Russian translation of the general's memoirs> of the 292nd Division solved this riddle by noon on June 30. They withstood a long and heavy battle and destroyed the Russians entrenched in the city".
The small town of Zelva was located on the western bank of the Zelvyanka River, while the eastern bank from June 25 was controlled by the 29th Motorized Division of the Wehrmacht. It is clear that one German division was not enough here (moreover, a motorized division of the Wehrmacht surpassed an ordinary infantry division in mobility, but significantly inferior to it in firepower), therefore the German command hastily reinforced this sector between the Zelvyanka and Shchara Rivers (Zelva (excl.) and Slonim). First the 10th Tank Division had to be transferred here (thus in the battles with the Soviet troops in the Belostok salient there appear for the first time real German tanks, and not only assault guns), then the infantry divisions began to approach. From June 28 the command of the units in this area was entrusted to the headquarters of the 12th Army Corps, to which were also subordinated (besides its own 31st and 34th Infantry Divisions) the 29th Motorized Division and the 10th Tank Division.
On June 29-30 the intensity of the battles with the breaking-through Soviet troops did not subside; as the modern Russian historians write, for a time the German defense on the Zelvyanka even "lost stability" (that is, the continuous line of defense was broken through, and the German subunits went over to focal defense). But in the end some German units (the 43rd and 12th Army Corps) stopped and defeated the retreating Soviet detachments and composite groups, while other (the 7th and 9th Corps) at this time were able to continue the offensive and break through to Volkovysk and Zelva from the west. The 13th Army Corps following in the second echelon finally cleared the territory of the remnants of the Soviet troops.
On July 1 units of the German 9th Army finally came into contact with units of the German 4th Army in the area north of Slonim. Thus, the troops of the Western Front that had retreated from the Belostok salient but had not managed to cross the Zelvyanka and Shchara Rivers found themselves in complete encirclement. The vast area between Mosty, Berestavitsa, Volkovysk, Slonim and Ruzhany became, in fact, the "Belostok bag" (this is how many years ago the Belarusian searcher A. Dudarenok outlined these boundaries for me); on the German map (on the site Lexicon-wehrmacht the date 1.08.1941 is erroneously indicated - in fact it is July 1) this "bag" was no longer so "vast" (from Zelva to Ruzhany).
On the map are presented almost all the infantry divisions of the German 4th Army: the 7th, 23rd, 268th and 258th of the 7th Corps, the 137th, 292nd and 263rd of the 9th Corps, the 34th and 31st of the 12th Corps, the 131st, 134th and 252nd of the 43rd Corps and, finally, the 17th and 78th of the 13th Corps.
The 167th Infantry Division shown on the map on June 22 was subordinated to the 47th Motorized Corps of the 2nd Tank Group of G. Guderian, then resubordinated to the headquarters of the 53rd Corps (from the reserve).
In the lower left corner is indicated the 197th Infantry Division of the reserve of the OKH (the High Command of the Ground Forces), which would enter battle only in August 1941 near Roslavl.
A more complete map as of July 1 is available on the resource https://maps.ruzhany.info/1941_07_01.html
On this more complete map are visible the mobile formations of the Wehrmacht: the southern contour of the new Novogrudok "cauldron" was held by the formations of the 2nd Tank Group of G. Guderian: the 10th Motorized Division (with the 4th Tank Brigade from the composition of the 10th Tank Division, soon it, according to the arrow on the German map, moved to Slutsk), the Leib Regiment "Grossdeutschland", part of the 29th Motorized Division and the 17th Tank Division occupying a very wide front. The advance to the east was continued only by the 18th Tank (of the 47th Motorized Corps) in the direction of Borisov, the 10th Tank Division (without its tank brigade) and the SS division "Das Reich" (of the 46th Motorized Corps) to the Berezina south of Borisov, as well as the 3rd and 4th Tank Divisions (of the 24th Motorized Corps) in the direction of Bobruisk.
The northern contour of the "cauldron" was ensured by the 19th Tank Division, which was being replaced by the 161st Infantry Division (the 19th Tank Division soon began its advance in the direction of Polotsk), the 14th Motorized Division and the 12th Tank Division - all from the composition of the 3rd Tank Group of H. Hoth.
By this time the Soviet troops of the Belostok salient represented separate detachments. The further it went, the more the situation turned into "every man for himself", and commanders not infrequently abandoned their subordinates. Coming out in small groups promised more success. It seems that it was precisely in this period that the soldiers abandoned by their commanders began to surrender in captivity en masse.
D. Egorov described the disintegration of the 49th Division in his book as follows: "The 49th Rifle Division of the 4th Army after fierce battles disintegrated and split into four detachments, which, without communication with each other, retreated through the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. One detachment was personally led by the commander of the division, K. F. Vasilyev, the second - by the chief of staff, Major S. I. Gurov. The two other detachments were headed by the commanders of the 212th and 222nd Rifle Regiments, Major N. I. Kovalenko and Colonel I. M. Yashin".
The commander of the 49th Division, Colonel K. F. Vasilyev, was taken prisoner in the area of Baranovichi (he escaped from captivity, subsequently was convicted and died in 1944 in a Soviet camp); the chief of staff, Major S. I. Gurov, was also taken prisoner; after his liberation he received in 1947 the Order of the Red Banner.
The fate of the commanders of the divisions of the 13th Mechanized Corps: the commander of the 25th Tank Division, Colonel N. M. Nikiforov, was long listed as missing, but now it is known that he was taken prisoner on July 7 and died in a German camp (executed in September 1944).
The commander of the 31st Tank Division, Colonel A. S. Kalikhovich, was wounded, but managed to come out of the encirclement. He perished in battle in the summer of 1942, commanding a tank brigade; D. Egorov established that at that same time there also perished the former chief of staff of the 31st Division, V. V. Lebedev, and the one who, after the wounding of Kalikhovich, took command of the group coming out of the encirclement, Colonel I. A. Shapovalov, commander of the 62nd Tank Regiment of the 31st Division; in the summer of 1942 all three commanded tank brigades (Lebedev perished on July 5, Shapovalov - on July 11) * .
The fate of the commanders was greatly influenced by "geography" - how deeply in the Belostok salient their formations were at the beginning of the war and whom the higher command detailed to the rearguard battles. The commander of the 208th Motorized Division, Colonel V. I. Nichiporovich, not having managed to break through to the east (only by July 16 he came out to the area of Fanipol, southwest of Minsk), went over to partisan actions and organized a detachment, in 1943 was summoned to the Active Army, received the rank of major general. But further everything went not as with the commander of the 6th Cavalry Division, Major General M. P. Konstantinov: Nichiporovich was soon arrested and died in the NKVD prison in January 1945; his fate rather resembles the fate of the commander of the 38th Rifle Division, the hero of the battles near Yartsevo, Colonel M. G. Kirillov.
The Belostok "bag", greatly narrowed after the closing of the encirclement on July 1, 1941, was cleared by the superior German troops in a day or two (different German commanders dated the end of the battles in the Belostok "bag" to July 2 or 3). Part of the Soviet troops managed by this time to break through to the east and found themselves in the much more vast Novogrudok "bag", which was held by the German mobile formations of the 3rd and 2nd Tank Groups.
A. Isaev cited in his book data on prisoners and trophies from the operational report of Army Group "Center" of July 2, 1941: 116,100 prisoners taken, 1505 guns, 1964 tanks and armored cars, 327 aircraft destroyed or captured. In the report it was especially emphasized: "The losses of the enemy in killed, by unanimous assessments, are extraordinarily great".
The commander-in-chief of Army Group "Center", Field Marshal von Bock, in his diary described his conversation with the chief of the General Staff F. Halder of July 2: "Halder said that he adhered to a similar point of view <that the enemy, in the opinion of von Bock, had been dealt a heavy blow>, and added that as a result of the success achieved by us the enemy would not succeed in creating an organized front against us. The Fuhrer is more skeptical. He asked: "Where, in that case, are the prisoners?" I said that 100,000 men is also not bad. Especially considering that with every day there are more and more prisoners. Surely the Fuhrer has not been informed of this? Besides, much military property has been captured…"
What did Hitler's question "where are the prisoners?" mean? He was troubled that the Soviet troops for a long time did not surrender in mass quantities but continued to fight fiercely.
The prisoners began soon and began in huge, cyclopean quantities. Already on July 4 von Bock wrote in his diary: "The resistance in the eastern "cauldron" is weakening. Near Minsk 50,000 men surrendered to the servicemen of the 12th Tank Division <on the northern sector of the Naliboki Pushcha / Novogrudok "bag">…"
On July 11 in the summary of the German High Command the results of the battles of Army Group "Center" were summed up: in the Belostok-Minsk battle 328,898 people were taken prisoner, including several major generals, 3332 tanks, 1809 guns and other numerous military trophies were captured.
Almost 329 thousand prisoners - this is perhaps half of the listed strength of the Soviet Western Front on June 22 (671 thousand).
A catastrophe.
Let me repeat the "simple-hearted" admission of the pre-war chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, G. K. Zhukov (I cited it in my Chapter 1): "On the eve of the war the 10th Army and a number of other units of the Western District were located in the Belostok salient, bulging out toward the enemy. The 10th Army occupied the most unfavorable position. Such an operational configuration of the troops of this army created a threat of a deep envelopment and encirclement of them from the side of Grodno and Brest by a blow to the flanks. Meanwhile the disposition of the troops of the front on the Grodno-Suwalki and Brest directions was insufficiently deep and powerful to prevent here a breakthrough and the envelopment of the Belostok grouping.
This erroneous disposition of the troops, permitted in 1940, was not eliminated right up to the very war…"
Not simply "was not eliminated"! - the "erroneous disposition of the troops" was aggravated right up to the very beginning of the war, right up to June 22 more and more Soviet troops were driven into the westernmost tip of the Belostok salient.
| Combat experience (1940) | Disposition in 1939/1940-1941 | |
| 56 RD | Winter War, Estonia | Lida, Ivye (1940), from December 1940 - Lida, Shchuchin, Grodno → Sopotskin, Gozha, Grodno (from May 1941) |
| 27 RD | Sopotskin, Grodno (1939) → Augustow, Grajevo (from May 1941) | |
| 85 RD | Minsk (from summer 1940) → Grodno (from May 1941) | |
| 2 RD | Osowiec (1939) | |
| 8 RD | Winter War, Southern Front | Lomza (1940) → Stawiski 30 km north of Lomza (1941) |
| 13 RD | Zambrow (1939) | |
| 86 RD | Winter War, Southern Front | Tsekhanovets (1940) |
| 29 RD / MD | Lithuania | Slonim (1940, re-formed as MD) → Sokolka (in June 1941, immediately before the war) |
| 113 RD | Winter War, Lithuania | Slutsk (1940) → Semyatichi (from May 1941) |
| 49 RD | Winter War, Estonia | Vysokoye (1940) |
| 6 RD | Brest Fortress (1939) | |
| 42 RD | Winter War, Estonia | Bereza-Kartuzskaya (1940) → Brest Fortress (from April 1941) |
| 75 RD | Winter War | Mozyr (1940) → Malorita (from April-May 1941) |
| 55 RD* | Lithuania | Brest Fortress (1940) → Slutsk (from the end of 1940) |
The defeat of the Western Front in June 1941 had as its main cause the very "disposition of the chess pieces on the board". But this does not explain the question why the 10th Army during the retreat to the east did not come out to the Zelvyanka River with at least part of its forces in a more or less organized form, but represented a set of detachments, poorly controlled. Three rifle divisions (the 2nd, 8th and 13th, that is, half of all the rifle divisions of the 10th Army), located at the very tip of the Belostok salient, did not play any role at all in the battle.
The loss of control on the part of the higher headquarters, the fragmentation of the troops of the Western Front - this is the second cause. Why did this happen?
The Soviet command of the Western Front was surprised, addressing the subordinate commanders: why did you fall apart so quickly? - and gave orders to already non-existent formations. And we now are surprised how they could give their troops these impossible orders.
This mutual misunderstanding needs to be understood.
The significance of the breakthrough of the enemy on the southern face of the Belostok salient and in general on the southern flank of the Soviet Western Front was understood by those who had all the necessary competences to understand it. Let me repeat: the sudden German attack of June 22 clearly confused the plans of the Soviet leadership; the strategic vulnerability and uselessness of the Belostok salient in a "sacred defensive war" was obvious: no one conducted any defensive games, they turned out to be unprepared for a sudden enemy attack, and the "red packets" did not correspond to the situation. In the configuration that had taken shape the Soviet troops simply could not defend it! and first of all this was understandable to the graduates of the Soviet military Academies, of whom among the commanders of the troops of the Western Front in the Belostok salient there were not a few.
The strike forces of the Soviet Western Front received the order for a counterattack near Grodno in accordance with Directive No. 3, which already by the evening of June 22, when it was signed, did not correspond to the situation. By June 24, when it was possible to form the Mechanized Cavalry Group and it was to go over to the offensive with the most decisive aims, the counterattack was not simply "hasty" - the non-correspondence to the situation became blatant: the enemy had won complete supremacy in the air, the commanders of the Red Army had not managed to assemble an artillery group for the support of the counterattack, had not managed to organize the rear, had not even managed to establish communication with all their strike formations, and most importantly: by this time the enemy had broken through the Soviet defense on the flanks of the Western Front, and the MCG was to attack the "bottom" of the already emerging "cauldron".
In these conditions to organize a counterattack and even a counteroffensive in earnest, "with full commitment", did not work out: to the military specialists-"academicians" who had special knowledge - to them everything was already clear: the Belostok salient is a "trap", from which it was necessary to get out urgently. Maybe this is another reason that the powerful offensive fist (in the form of the MCG) literally crumbled in the hands.
But this still does not fully explain why the Soviet troops, especially the strike formations, turned during the retreat into poorly controlled detachments and little detachments, and the higher headquarters in fact withdrew from the command of their troops.
Possibly some explanation can be found in the psychology of Stalin's promoted men. They had all survived a great career rise after 1937-38, they went from victory to victory (the Polish campaign of 1939, the Winter War, the occupation of the Baltic countries and Bessarabia), they were entrusted with high posts in the Red Army. Ahead was yet another victorious campaign.
The outstanding researcher of the initial period of the war, Colonel L. N. Lopukhovsky (the son of the commander of the 120th High-Power Howitzer Artillery Regiment of the Reserve of the High Command, who perished in October 1941 in the Vyazma "cauldron") recalled: "Let me remind you that before the war our family lived in the small town of Kossovo, Brest region, where the 120th HAR was stationed. The servicemen and members of their families associated with the local inhabitants and knew their moods well. And they had preserved close ties with their relatives and acquaintances on the other side of the border. From the beginning of June among the command staff of the regiment rumors of an impending war intensified. Anxious moods also grew in their families, the women were tormented by bad forebodings. In the border garrisons they knew that the local inhabitants, who had quite strong ties with their relatives on the other side of the insufficiently arranged border, said directly that war would soon begin and the "German" would come here. They tried to get rid of Soviet money and snatched up everything: flour, sugar, salt, kerosene, soap, matches. Queues formed in the shops (an unprecedented thing before). The owners of small private enterprises willingly accepted orders (especially from the military) for the making of clothes, footwear and so on, but did not hurry to fulfil them.
In the middle of June the command staff were cancelled their leaves. Then, in order to cut short "panic moods", by a directive of the People's Commissar of Defense the command staff were forbidden to send their families into the depth of the country. Having learned of this, the priest of Kossovo said directly to the lieutenant Alekseev who was renting from him, that on Sunday, June 22, the war would begin. And he advised him to send his pregnant wife to give birth to her mother in Leningrad. Alekseev managed to send his wife a day before the beginning of the war. Looking ahead, I will note that later this woman after the war found me. I informed her that her husband had gone missing. In 2011 I was in Kossovo and learned that this priest was shot by the Germans for helping wounded Red Army men.
A negative role in the assessment of the situation was also played by the notorious Statement of TASS (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union) of June 13. This was an attempt to find out Hitler's intentions in connection with the concentration of German troops at our border. But the Germans did not react in any way to the Soviet sounding, leaving the leadership of the USSR in complete ignorance of what was happening. But this Statement, published in the Soviet newspapers on June 14, disoriented the army, contributed to the weakening of the vigilance of the personnel of the troops.
The wives of the command staff of the regiment, alarmed by all these rumors <thus in the text>, the military commissar of the 120th HAR, Battalion Commissar G. A. Rusakov, decided to calm the wives of the command staff:
- Well, why are you worried? Is it bad for you to live here? Well, a scrap will begin, you will live in Warsaw or in Berlin!". And the "scrap" began, such that it is frightening to recall - for 4 years!.."
Another sketch: D. Egorov wrote (my late comrade was a fierce fighter against "Rezunism", but he inserted this fragment in his book) that the commander of a platoon of the 13th Tank Regiment, B. A. Borodin, was one of those who in the first days of the war helped Marshal G. I. Kulik to get to the headquarters of the 10th Army. He recalled that he drove the marshal to the commanders on his T-34 tank. "Kulik, dressed in a tank overall, transferred to the T-34. He demanded of Borodin a map, but on the one he had there was only the terrain from Belostok to Berlin. Borodin wrote: "I tried to justify myself: they issued only such a one. The marshal only grunted strangely".
The sudden attack of Germany on June 22 confused all the plans. The command of the Western Front was caught unawares. It did not know / ignored the information about the concentration of the main forces of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, and moreover the higher the level of the commanders, the less they "knew" and the more they were compelled to take into account the "political directive" and the less to believe their own eyes. The memoirs of the participants in those events show a paradoxical situation: the commanders of regiments or divisions understood the proximity of the German attack (they were reported, for example, how the Germans removed the wire obstacles or placed a bridge park and other crossing means on the bank of the Bug River), while commanders of a higher level already "could not afford" to admit it. The "correct understanding of the situation" was carefully watched by the "commissars" and "special officers", with whom the entire Red Army was permeated.
Now let us imagine: no defensive games and exercises were conducted on the eve of the war, therefore the commanders of the Red Army had to improvise, they quickly lost communication with the higher command, and moreover they were not accustomed to independent actions in a complex changing situation - they knew perfectly well only how to carry out orders, no more. And then there were also the first "reflex" Directives, which precisely were brought to the executors and which completely did not correspond to the operational situation and only worsened the situation!
All the hastily promoted men are full of self-confidence; it was precisely such psychological types in the conditions of a catastrophe who found it easy to give in to panic, to go over to a regime of self-survival. In such a regime commanders easily abandoned their subordinates, and the huge powerful army quickly underwent defragmentation and turned into "detachments and little detachments".
The study of the catastrophe of the Soviet Western Front cannot be finished. Many fragments require clarification, and this may yet change our understanding of those events. "History is known only in details". No broad strokes!
We will continue…
Date of publication of this page - June 24, 2026.
Last update - September 19, 2026.