The Western Front commander, Lieutenant General D. G. Pavlov, was badly rattled, but on 24 June he attempted to organize a counteroffensive under his operations officer, Lieutenant General Boldin.
General Boldin was given nominal control of 6th and llth Mechanized Corps and 6th Cavalry Corps and ordered to attack northward, toward Grodno, to prevent an encirclement of the exposed Soviet units around Bialystok.
Without effective communications, air cover, logistical support, and sufficient modern tanks, this effort was doomed from the start. Soviet commanders encountered the standard German response to mechanized counterattacks: the leading German units gave ground quickly, luring the enemy tanks into antitank guns that always followed immediately behind the spearhead. By the end of 25 June, 6th Cavalry Corps had suffered more than 50 percent casualties (mostly from air attack), and one tank division was out of ammunition. Another division could muster only 3 tanks, 12 armored carriers, and 40 trucks.
Boldin's diversion allowed many units to escape from the Bialystok area eastward toward Minsk, but the relief was only temporary. With Third Panzer Group penetrating toward Minsk on the north flank of Soviet Western Front and Second Panzer Group advancing parallel to it in the south, Pavlov had to pull back.
On the night of 25 to 26 June, he attempted a general disengagement to withdraw behind the Shchara River at Slonim. Not all units received the order to withdraw, and most were unable to break contact. Pavlov's front had already lost much of its fuel and motor transportation, so that the troops withdrew on foot, under constant German air attack.
En route, the headquarters of Lieutenant General F.N. Remezov's 13th Army, which was in the process of deploying forward into front second echelon, was ambushed by leading German elements who captured various classified reports. With numerous bridges over the Shchara River destroyed, 10th Army was unable to get most of its units across.
On 26 June, a panicked Pavlov signaled Moscow that "up to 1,000 tanks [of Third Panzer Group] are enveloping Minsk from the northwest; . . . there is no way to oppose them."
A final effort near Slutsk by elements of 20th Mechanized Corps and 4th Airborne Corps failed to halt the advancing Germans. By 30 June, Second and Third Panzer Groups had closed their pincers around a huge pocket west of Minsk containing much of 10th, 3d, and 13th Armies. The Western Front had virtually ceased to exist as an organized force; it is not surprising that Pavlov was executed soon thereafter. His immediate successor, Colonel General A. I. Eremenko, had no time to organize the defense of the Berezina River east of Minsk, and the German armored spearheads pushed onward across the Berezina toward the Dnepr in early July.
When Titans Clashed-by David M. Glantz Jonathan M. House
Huge KV-2 found abandoned near Raseinai, Lithuania 6/26/41
German Souvenir hunters near Lvov, Poland-late June 41
German recce troops investigate Soviet tank outside Kobryn 6/27/41
