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On 30th June General Potaturchev (Commander of the Soviet 4th Armored Division) and a few officers broke away from their men. They intended to make their way on foot to Minsk and fight their way through from there to Smolensk. Potaturchev walked until his feet were sore, and, because he did not want to be seen on the roads as a shambling, bedraggled general, he got some civilian clothes from a farm.

Nevertheless, he was intercepted by the Germans near Minsk and put in a POW cage. There he revealed his identity to the officer of the guard.

POTATURCHEV'S information surprised his captors: they had had no idea of the division's fire power. The Soviet 4th Armored Division had 355 tanks and 30 armored scout-cars; the tanks included 21 T-34s and 10 huge 68-ton KV models with 15.2-cm. guns. The artillery regiment was equipped with 24 guns of 12.2- and 15.2-cm. calibre. A bridge-building battalion had pontoon sections for bridges 60 yards long and capable of carrying 60-ton tanks.

Not a single German Panzer division in the East in the summer of 1941 was so well equipped. Guderian's entire Panzer Group with its five Panzer divisions and three and a half motorized divisions had only 850 tanks. But then, on the other hand, no German Panzer division was so badly led or so senselessly sacrificed as Potaturchev's 4th. It was against the remnants of this division that the German units were engaged in such fierce fighting in the forest of Bialowieza.

"That damned forest of Bialowieza!" the men grumbled. The whole of Germany made the acquaintance of this terrible virgin forest, the last surviving one in Europe. Bavarians and Austrians, men from Hesse, the Rhineland, Thuringia, and Pomerania, fought in this green hell. The forest of Bialowieza meant ambush. It was a natural strongpoint in the rear and on the flank of the German forces. There was the village of Staryy Berezov, and, even better remembered, the village of Mokhnata.
Cossack squadrons were galloping across the open country, desperately anxious to gain the cover of the forest. The outposts of 508th Infantry Regiment were trampled down by them. Hooves pounded; sabres flashed. "Urra! Urra!" They got within a hundred yards of the village. Then the 2nd Battery, 292nd Artillery Regiment, smashed the attack with direct fire.
The 78th Infantry Division from Württemberg, the same which later received the title 78th Assault Division, was ordered to break into the green hell of Bialowieza, to comb the forest, and to drive the Russians out towards the intercepting line established by 17th Infantry Division along the northern edge of the huge forest.

The Russians were past masters of forest fighting. The German troops, by way of contrast, had little experience at that time of this difficult form of operation in the uninhabited, swampy forests of Eastern Poland and Western Russia. Forest fighting had been the poor relation of German Army training, for the German Forestry Commission kept a jealous eye on its woods and plantations. They could only be used with great care. As for virgin forests, the Wehrmacht had none at all for training purposes. The Russians, on the other hand, had practiced this type of fighting extensively. Unlike the German infantry, they did not take up position in front of a wood, or on the wood's edge, but invariably right inside it, preferably behind swampy ground. Behind their all-round positions they kept their tactical reserves. In forest fighting, too, the Red Army men preferred the close combat in which they had been trained.

A particular feature of these Soviet defense positions were infantry foxholes which were unidentifiable from the front and provided a field of fire only to the rear; they were intended for picking off the enemy from behind after he had pushed past. Whereas the German infantry would clear lanes of fire for themselves, if necessary by considerable telling of trees— which, of course, meant they were easily spotted from the air —the Russians worked like Red Indians. They would cut down the undergrowth only up to waist-height, creating tunnels of fire both forward and towards the sides. This gave them cover and a clear field of fire at the same time. The German divisions had to pay a heavy toll before they mastered this kind of fighting. Some of their costliest lessons they learned in the forest of Bialowieza.

On 29th June the 78th Infantry Division moved off in three columns of march—215th Infantry Regiment on the right, 195th Infantry Regiment on the left, and 238th Infantry Regiment in the rear, in echelon. Contact was made with the enemy near the village of Popelevo. Here the last formations of General Potaturchev's scattered 4th Armoured Division, together with parts of three other divisions, brigades, and artillery detachments, had been re-formed into a new regiment, brilliantly led by Colonel Yashin. It was a case of hand-to-hand fighting—man stalking man with hand-grenade, pistol, and bayonet. The artillery was unable to intervene because friend and foe were too closely interlocked. Only the mortars were useful.
The afternoon of 29th June saw a massacre. The 3rd Battalion, 215th Infantry Regiment, succeeded in engaging the Russians in the flank and in the rear. Panic broke out. The Russians fled. Colonel Yashin lay dead by a road-block made of tree-trunks. Popelevo was again silent.

On the following day the division was more careful. The gunners pounded each patch of forest before the companies moved in. "Infantry will enter platoon by platoon!" A white Very light meant: Germans here. Red meant: Enemy attack. Green meant: Artillery fire to be moved forward. Blue meant: Enemy tanks. Yes, tanks—even in the forest the Russians employed individual tanks for infantry support.

By evening 78th Infantry Division was at last through that accursed forest of Bialowieza. The Russians had left behind 600 dead. The regiments had taken 1140 prisoners. Some 3000 Soviet troops were being pushed towards the interception line of 17th Infantry Division. In its two days of fighting in the forest of Bialowieza the 78th Infantry Division lost 114 killed and 125 wounded, an appalling killed/wounded ratio for the division thus far in the war.

Two shots of vehicles entering Minsk. Both photos were taken on the same street within a few minutes of each other. They show a Pz.Kpfw.38(t) with fuel trailer and a Sd.Kfz.251, which is carrying a German national flag for air recognition. The half track is equipped with a “Stuka zuB” frame (?)

Captured Soviets beings marched to a POW enclosure near Slonim in late June.

German wounded brought into a regimental clearing station for treatment. June 41-Somewhere near Lemberg.