Białystok–Minsk

Białystok–Minsk. On 22 June 1941, the day the German invasion of the USSR was launched (see BARBAROSSA) at the start of the German–Soviet war, German armoured forces began their first true pincers movement (Zangenangriff), a double envelopment designed to be executed from an initially relatively straight front. From positions 250 km. (155 mi.) apart on the flanks of the Soviet West front (army group) (four armies under General D. G. Pavlov), the Second and Third Panzer groups struck eastwards on at first parallel courses which they would later bend inwards to close an encirclement east of Białystok. The pincers movement could have been quite easily frustrated by a retreat, but Pavlov's orders were to defend the border and they prohibited evasive manoeuvres of any kind; moreover, Soviet doctrine declared the Red Army impervious to blitzkrieg tactics.

Aware by the fourth day that the Soviet forces between them were in turmoil, the panzer group commanders, Generals Hermann Hoth (Third) and Guderian (Second), decided to press eastwards and let the infantry armies following behind them close the Białystok pocket. By now Pavlov had lost contact with his own commands and with Moscow, and by 29 June, having gone 325 km. (200 mi.), Hoth's and Guderian's tanks had formed a second pocket around Minsk. The twin pockets yielded 328,000 prisoners and 3,300 tanks and eliminated organized Soviet resistance forward of the western banks of the upper Dnieper and Dvina rivers, which the panzer groups reached on 6 July. Stalin had Pavlov recalled to Moscow on 30 June, where, after a brief investigation, he, his chief of staff, and his artillery and intelligence chiefs were executed.

Earl Ziemke