Smolensk, battle of

Smolensk, battle of. Having demolished the Soviet West front (army group) in the Białystok–Minsk encirclement, and covered 475 km. (295 mi.) in two weeks at the start of the German–Soviet war (see also BARBAROSSA), the German Second and Third Panzer Groups arrived on 6 July 1941 at the historic gateway to Moscow, the gap 80 km. (50 mi.) wide between the Dnieper and Western Dvina rivers. Their next objective was Smolensk, at the eastern exit from the gap. Opposite them, Marshal Timoshenko had, on 2 July, taken command of a new West front, five armies that had originally been scheduled to sustain a drive towards Germany. The panzer group commanders, Generals Guderian (Second) and Hermann Hoth (Third), knew when they began receiving counter-attacks on 3 July that they were going to meet more determined resistance than they had encountered thus far.

By 11 July, with support from Löhr's Fourth Air Fleet, Hoth had a spearhead directed along with Dvina on the north side of the gap and Guderian had thrust across the Dnieper on the south. On 16 July, Guderian's tanks seized Smolensk by a coup de main. By 20 July, Hoth's and Guderian's armoured spearheads had both gone 200 km. (124 mi.) deep; but the Soviet troops between them were holding fast and others were attacking their outer flanks, particularly Guderian's, into which two Soviet corps had driven west to the Dnieper. The pocket around Smolensk could not be closed completely until 5 August. Timoshenko kept his troops fighting to the last but lost them in the end. The Smolensk pocket yielded 310,000 prisoners and one around the corps further south another 38,000.

Earl Ziemke