MINSK

By Peter Ayers Wimbrow, III

    This week, seventy years ago, Minsk, the capital of Belarus, fell to the onrushing German Wehrmacht. When hostilities opened Minsk had a population of 300,000.  By the time the Red Army liberated the city, in 1944, its population had shrunk to 50,000. Today it has a population of more than six times its pre-war size. At the time of the invasion the city was almost 900 years old.
    Minsk was the immediate target of Army Group Center, commanded by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock. Army Group Center numbered more than 750,000 soldiers spread among Second, Fourth and Ninth Armies under the commands of, respectively: Colonel-General Baron Maximilian von Weichs; Field Marshal Günther von Kluge and Colonel-General Adolph Strauss; Panzer Groups Two and Three, commanded by, respectively, Generals Heinz Guderian and Herman Hoth; and supported by Luftflotte Two, commanded by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring.
    Opposing Army Group Center was the Western Front commanded by General Dmitri Pavlov, and numbering 675,000 soldiers. A “Front” in Soviet parlance was roughly the equivalent of an Army Group.  The Western Front included the Third, Fourth and Tenth Armies commanded by, respectively: Generals Vasily Ivanovich Kuznetsov, A. A. Khorobkov and Konstantin Dmitrievich Golubev. 13th Army commanded by Pyotr Filatov was held in reserve. General Filatov would die of wounds received during the battle.
    Army Group Center launched its assault on the Soviet Union from Poland, aiming towards Moscow. The Germans sent the two Panzer Groups around each side of the Western Front as the infantry smashed through the center. By the time the Soviets knew what had hit them, the Luftwaffe had destroyed the Soviet Air Force and Special German Forces had parachuted or infiltrated into the Soviet rear areas, cutting telephone lines, seizing bridges, and generally causing problems for the Red Army. Communication with Moscow was almost non-existent so that the Soviet General Staff, Stavka, had no understanding of the terrible situation at the front. Stavka continued to issue orders that reflected their misunderstanding.  
    Panzergruppe 3 crossed the Nieman River, in the north, midday of June 23rd, while Panzergruppe 2 crossed the River Bug, in the south. Three days later General Hoth’s Panzers were 18 miles north of Minsk, with Seventh Panzer Division (General Rommel’s “Ghost Division” of the French Campaign) cutting the highway to Moscow. That afternoon Field Marshal von Bock ordered General Guderian to turn his Panzers towards General Hoth to close the pincers. That same day, General Pavlov warned Moscow that, “...up to 1,000 tanks are enveloping Minsk from the northwest.  There is no way to oppose them.” Any attempted counterattacks by the Red Army were destroyed by the Luftwaffe which had achieved undisputed mastery of the air, when it destroyed the VVS on the ground on the first day of the war. By June 27th, the Panzers had crossed the Berezina River, meaning they had covered 400 miles in six days. Second and Third Panzergruppes closed the trap on June 27th, bagging Third, Tenth, Thirteenth and part of the Fourth Soviet Armies and surrounding Minsk. Two days later, the Belorussian capital fell.
    In this battle, not only was Minsk captured, but 417,000 Soviet soldiers were either captured or killed.  In addition to the soldiers that were captured 3,332 Soviet tanks and 1,809 artillery pieces were taken or destroyed. General Pavlov, and his staff, were relieved of command, arrested, transported to Moscow where they were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, and executed on July 22, 1941. Their property was confiscated and their bodies were burned in a land fill near Moscow. General Khorobkov suffered the same fate on the same day.
    This had been a stunning German success, leading them to believe that the War would end shortly in their favor. The Panzer Commanders, especially General Guderian, were chaffing at the bit, because they were ordered not to advance until the pocket was eliminated, thereby giving the Red Army time to recover and establish additional defenses.
    Finally, on July 3rd, resistence inside the pocket was ended. German Army Commander-in-Chief, Franz Halder wrote in his diary, that, “...the objective to shatter the bulk of the Russian Army this side of the Dvina and Dniepr Rivers has been accomplished. East of these rivers, we will encounter nothing more than partial forces. It is probably no overstatement to say that the Russian Campaign has been won in the space of two weeks.”
    Most of the Soviet soldiers captured during this campaign did not survive German “hospitality.” Even if they did, they would find an unpleasant welcome on their return to the Soviet State. Stalin did not look kindly on soldiers who surrendered.
    In order to facilitate a more conservative attitude, on the part of the Panzer commanders, the two Panzergruppes, on July 3rd, were placed under the command of Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, and were finally ordered to resume their advance. Panzergruppe Two headed towards Yelnya on the Desna River, and Panzergruppe Three headed north of Smolensk.  In all, the German Armor had waited six days while the encircled Soviet soldiers were brought to heel. During that time, Hero of the Soviet Union Marshal Semyon Timoshenko was moved from Commissar of Defense to command of the reeling Red Army in front of Army Group Center and used that time to stiffen Soviet resistence.  Mines were laid, trenches were dug, anti-tank obstacles were installed.
    Behind the Wehrmacht came the Einsatzgruppen. Einsatzgruppe B, commanded by Arthur Nebe, was attached to Army Group Center, with its headquarters, first at Minsk, and, after August 5, at Smolensk. Its mission was to kill Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and undesirable Slavs. Nebe was later implicated in the failed July 1944 plot to kill Hitler, was tried by the “People’s Court,” convicted (of course), and sentenced to die by hanging from a meat hook by piano wire, which sentence was executed on March 21, 1945 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.
    As they did in most captured large eastern cities, the Germans, on July 20, 1941, established a Jewish Ghetto, into which over 100,000 Jews were crammed, most of whom were eventually murdered.  In November the Ghetto was subdivided into three sections: 1) the main Ghetto for unskilled Jews; 2) the section for skilled workers; and 3) the section housing the German, Austrian and Czech Jews - about 35,000 -  that had been shipped there. By July 3, 1944, when the Red Army liberated the city, there were few Jews left.
    On September 18, 1943 the Germans sent some Jewish Soviet soldiers who had been captured, from Minsk to a camp outside the small town of Sobibór in Eastern Poland near the River Bug. One of those soldiers was Lieutenant Alexander Pecherski. “Sasha” soon led a revolt and escaped on October 14, 1943, which later became the subject of a 1987 TV movie - “Escape from Sobibór” staring Rutger Hauer as Lieutenant Percherski, and Alan Arkin as Leon Feldhendler, a Jew from Poland. Ukranians were often used as guards at the camps. One, John Demjanjuk, was, in May of this year, convicted of complicity in the deaths of 23,000 people killed at Sobibór, by a Munich court. He had emigrated to the U.S. after the war and worked at an auto plant in Ohio, before being deported, first to Israel where he was ultimately acquitted and then to Germany where he wasn’t.
    Belarus lost between 25 & 40 percent of its pre-war population - between 2.2 million and 3,650,000 - and did not reach its pre-war level until 1971. 1,000,000 buildings and 85 percent of its industry was destroyed.
    The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet designated Minsk a “Hero City” on June 26, 1974. Minsk joined Hero Cities Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Odessa, Kiev, Moscow, Kerch and Novorossiysk. Later, Tula, Murmansk and Smolensk would be so honored.
    On October 8, 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin conferred the status of “City of Military Glory” on Yelnya.

NEXT WEEK: FINLAND AND HUNGARY JOIN THE ATTACK

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.