From June 22 to July 9, 1941, in just 17 days, the Soviet Union ushered in an unprecedented rout, and the Western Front under the command of Soviet General Pavlov totaled 675,000 people, and the loss exceeded 420,000 in ten days! It is no exaggeration to say that it is the beginning of the collapse! Is it because Pavlov's command was improper? Who is responsible for this fiasco?
Distribution in the Soviet-German theater
01. Pavlov and Butan synergy
Soviet General Pavlov
First of all, Pavlov, who took part in the Spanish War in 1936 as a military adviser, advocated the tactics of rifle-tank coordination that easily overwhelmed the independent Italian light tank group. Upon his return to China, he was awarded the title of "Hero of the Soviet Union". Pavlov's step-tank coordination tactic, which advocated tank support for infantry, was endorsed by most Soviet generals and Stalin. Later it turned out that the conclusion of the step-tan synergy was correct, but Pavlov's theory was wrong. There is a huge speed difference between mechanical force and manpower, and this speed difference can tear open huge openings, so it is urgent for infantry to enter motorization to fill the gap, and it is not necessary for tanks to cooperate with infantry to reduce speed.
And after the death of General Tukhachevsky, who was proficient in the theory of the depth of the armored corps in 1937, the Soviet Union's theory of the depth of the armored corps was far behind by Germany. After World War II, the German panzer division was invincible in the European battlefield, and the red-eyed Soviet Union rushed to form an independent tank division on a large scale, at this time the Soviet tanks had been reduced to the vassals of the armored forces because of Pavlov's step-tank coordination tactics. Pavlov, the former "hero of the Soviet Union", commanded the Soviet Western Front, was almost completely destroyed in 17 days. General Pavlov and many senior generals of the Western Front were shot by the Internal Affairs Committee on charges of "cowardice and incompetence", and the body of Commander-in-Chief Pavlov was tragically thrown to the garbage dump. But was this fiasco really Pavlov's personal fault?
02. 6 hours in the early stages of the war
How exactly did the Western Front fight the Battle of Minsk? On the night of June 21, 1941, Soviet soldiers in Brest were resting, and while these Soviet soldiers were giggling and playing volleyball, they did not know that on the other bank of the Burg River, 3 million German panzer divisions were ready and staring at them. At 9:00 p.m., Lisk, an ordinary German soldier belonging to the Sixth Army of the German Army Group South, infiltrated the Soviet position of Sokal and informed the Soviet military that Germany would attack around 4 a.m. Stalin was still fantasizing about peace with Germany at this time, and when he learned of this news, he immediately thought that he was a German spy who delivered false news. After a two-hour interrogation, the Soviets believed that Lysk was not a spy, and that the Germans were most likely to launch an offensive at four o'clock in the morning on the 22nd, so they informed the western theaters of war to enter a state of war immediately, but could not provoke the war, because the Soviet communication efficiency was already low, coupled with the order was issued too late, until two o'clock in the morning only a few troops received orders one after another, most of the Soviet troops did not know this news after the German attack.
Lisk
03. War breaks out
For this attack, the Germans gathered three army groups on the border, including 13 army groups, 39 armies, and 125 divisions. The main force was Army Group Center, commanded by Marshal Bock. It has two field armies and two armored groups, with a total of 16 armies and 50 divisions, with a total strength of 750,000 people. Army Group Center was the first to attack the Second Panzer Group under the command of Admiral Guderian of the Soviet Union and the Third Panzer Group under the command of General Hoth, in addition to the Army Unit and the German Second Air Force to provide air support and tactical bombardment to the German Army Group Center. The strategic goal of the German Army Group Center was to attack moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, along the Białystok-Minsk line, with the Orsha Land Bridge as a springboard and then Smolensk as a base. Facing Army Group Center was the Western Front, commanded by General Pavlov, which consisted of four armies, with a total of 45 divisions and a total strength of 675,000 men, including 4,522 tanks of various types. Of these, 582 were T34 tanks, which seriously threatened the Germans. Minsk was a very important transportation hub between Moscow and Poland during World War II, and its importance can be seen.
T34 tank
At 3:15 a.m. on June 22, 1941, the Germans launched a massive shelling of the Soviet western fortifications, and the Soviet-German War broke out. At the same time, the German Second Air Force carried out heavy bombardment of the headquarters, dispatch centers, supply bases, and airfields that the intelligence services had identified in advance. Because the superiors conveyed that "no fire shall be fired at German aircraft crossing the border unless ordered by a high command". This left the German bombers with little interception and the bombing went exceptionally smoothly.
German Second Air Force
04. The shock of Moscow
Stalin
In Moscow, Stalin could not believe what was in front of him, and by 7 a.m., the war had been going on for 4 hours, when Stalin believed the fact of the German invasion, and at 9:15 stalin ordered his troops to launch a full-scale counterattack "regardless of the borders." By this time the war had been going on for 6 hours, and the Soviet Union's western front had been completely routed, and it was no longer possible to launch a counterattack position. Stalin's orders were already doomed to be unattainable. This is not a simple friction, nor is it a war of equal strength. The war ended with a full Soviet defense and Nazi Germany achieved a temporary victory. This fiasco should not be blamed on General Pavlov, but on the mistakes of the Soviet Union's overall decision-making.