Eastern Front · Germany vs Soviet Union
Battle of Bialystok-Minsk
22 June 1941 – 9 July 1941
The opening encirclement of Barbarossa. Panzer Groups 2 and 3 swept around the Soviet Western Front, meeting east of Minsk, while infantry closed a smaller pocket at Bialystok. The Western Front lost around 420,000 men and its commander Pavlov was shot.
Explore Battle of Bialystok-Minsk on the interactive map · Wikipedia
Day by day
— The salient
The Western Front stands in a salient round Bialystok that pushes 150 kilometres into German-held Poland, with the Suwalki triangle above it and Brest below. Hoth's Panzer Group 3 attacks out of Suwalki at 03:15 and Guderian's Panzer Group 2 over the Bug at Brest, both aimed 300 kilometres behind at Minsk. Pavlov has 44 divisions and loses most of his aircraft and his signals in the first hours.
— Grodno
Pavlov is ordered to counterattack and sends the 6th and 11th Mechanised Corps and the 6th Cavalry Corps at Hoth's flank near Grodno. They go in piecemeal, without fuel, air cover or reconnaissance, and are destroyed in two days. Six hundred Soviet tanks are lost for nothing and the northern jaw closes on Vilnius the same day.
— Minsk
The 7th Panzer Division coming down from Molodechno and the 17th Panzer coming up through Slutsk meet east of Minsk and shut the ring. The city has been burned out by bombing since the 24th. Four Soviet armies are now inside a pocket 250 kilometres from the frontier they were holding six days ago.
— Two pockets
The infantry armies have made a second, smaller ring at Bialystok and finished it on 3 July; the Novogrudok pocket in the Naliboki forest is sealed the same week. The panzer groups have already gone on east to the Berezina, leaving the pockets to the marching divisions behind them. That gap between armour and infantry is the pattern of the whole summer.
— The pocket ends
Organised resistance in the Minsk pocket stops on 9 July: 290,000 prisoners, 2,500 tanks and 1,400 guns, and with the Bialystok haul the Western Front has lost around 420,000 men. Pavlov, his chief of staff and his signals chief are tried and shot on 22 July. Army Group Centre is on the Berezina and the Dnieper, and Smolensk is a week away.
