Western Front (Soviet Union)
The Western Front was a front of the Red Army, one of the Red Army Fronts during World War II.
The Western Front was created on 22 June 1941 from the Western Special Military District. The first Front Commander was Dmitry Pavlov.
The western boundary of the Front in June 1941 was long, from the southern border of Lithuania to the Pripyat River and the town of Włodawa. It connected with the adjacent North-Western Front, which extended from the Lithuanian border to the Baltic Sea, and the Southwestern Front in Ukraine.
Operational history
Front dispositions 22 June 1941
The 1939 partition of Poland according to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact established a new western border with no permanent defense installations, and the army deployment within the Front created weak flanks.At the outbreak of war with Germany, the Western Special Military District was, in accordance with Soviet pre-war planning, immediately converted into the Western Front, under the District's commander, Army General Dmitry Pavlov. The main forces of the Western Front were concentrated forward along the frontier, organized in three armies. To defend the Białystok salient, the front fielded the 10th Army, under Lieutenant General Konstantin Golubev, supported by the 6th Mechanized Corps and 13th Mechanized Corps, under Major Generals Mikhail Khatskilevich and Pyotr Akhliustin. On the 10th Army's left flank was 4th Army, under Lieutenant General Aleksandr Korobkov, supported by the 14th Mechanized Corps, under Major General Stepan Oborin; and on the right the 3rd Army, under Lieutenant General Vasily Kuznetsov supported by the 11th Mechanized Corps, under Major General Dmitry Karpovich Mostovenko. To the rear was the 13th Army, under Lieutenant General Pyotr Filatov. This army initially existed as a headquarters unit only, with no assigned combat forces.
Among forces of Frontal designation were the 2nd Rifle Corps, 21st Rifle Corps, 44th Rifle Corps, 47th Rifle Corps, 50th Rifle Division, 4th Airborne Corps commanded by Alexey Zhadov at Minsk, and the 58th, 61st, 63rd, 64th and 65th Fortified Regions. Mechanised forces in reserve included the 20th Mechanized Corps under Major General Andrey Nikitin at Minsk and the 17th Mechanized Corps, under Major General Mikhail Petrov, slightly further forward at Slonim. Altogether, on 22 June the Western Special Military District fielded 671,165 men, 14,171 guns and mortars, 2,900 tanks and 1,812 combat aircraft.
The Western Front was on the main axis of attack by the German Army Group Centre, commanded by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock. German plans for Operation Barbarossa called for the Army Group Centre's Second Panzer Group, under Colonel General Heinz Guderian, to attack south of Brest, advance through Slonim and Baranovichi, turning north-east towards Minsk where it would be met by Colonel General Hermann Hoth's Third Panzer Group, which would attack Vilnius, to the north of the Białystok salient, and then turn south-east. In addition to the two panzer groups. The Army Group Centre also included Field Marshal Günther von Kluge's Fourth Army and Colonel General Adolf Strauss' Ninth Army. Air support was provided by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring's Luftflotte 2 which contained more than half the German aircraft committed to the attack on the Soviet Union.
Defeat on the Frontiers 22–28 June
The war started disastrously for the Western Front with the Battle of Białystok-Minsk. The German Ninth and Fourth Armies of Army Group Centre penetrated the border north and south of the Białystok salient. The Front's tanks and aviation at airfields were annihilated by German air strikes.Soviet command and control suffered almost complete breakdown. Worst hit was the 4th Army, which failed to establish communications with headquarters both above and below it. Attempts to launch a counter-attack with the 10th Army on 23 June were unsuccessful. That same day the German Third Panzer Group captured Vilnius after outflanking the 3rd Army. On 24 June, Pavlov again attempted to organize a counter-attack, assigning his deputy Lieutenant General Ivan Boldin the command of the 6th and 11th Mechanized Corps and the 6th Cavalry Corps, commanded by Major General Ivan Semenovich Nikitin. With this mobile force Boldin was to attack northward from the Białystok region towards Grodno to prevent encirclement of Soviet forces in the salient.
This attempted counter-attack was also fruitless. Almost without any interference from Soviet fighters, the close support aircraft of Germany's 8th Air Corps were able to break the backbone of Western Front's counter-attack at Grodno. The 6th Cavalry Corps was so badly mauled by this aerial onslaught against its columns that it was unable to deploy for attack. Jagdgeschwader 53's Hermann Neuhoff recalled:
Of the 6th Mechanized Corps' 1,212 tanks, only about 200 reached their assembly areas due to air attacks and mechanical breakdowns, and even they ran out of fuel by the end of the day. The same fate awaited the 243 tanks of the 11th Mechanized Corps, ordered to attack towards Grodno on 25 June. The 6th Cavalry Corps suffered 50% casualties and its commander, Nikitin, was captured. The attempted attack allowed many Soviet forces to escape from the Białystok region towards Minsk, but this brought only temporary relief. With both the German Second and Third Panzer Groups racing towards Minsk on the Western Front's southern and northern flanks, a new encirclement threatened.
In the evening of 25 June, the German 47th Panzer Corps cut between Slonim and Vawkavysk, forcing the attempted withdrawal of troops in the salient to avoid encirclement and opening the southern approaches to Minsk.
Pavlov dispatched orders to disengage and withdraw into new defences behind the Shchara River, but the few units receiving the orders were unable to break contact with the enemy. Hounded by constant air attacks, Pavlov's forces fled eastward on foot. Most of the 10th Army was not able to cross the river because the bridges over the Shchara were destroyed by air attacks. Further east, the 13th Army, which had received orders to assemble various withdrawing forces into the defence of Minsk, had its headquarters ambushed by German spearheads and its defence plans captured. Pavlov then ordered his 20th Mechanized and 4th Airborne Corps, until then held in reserve, to halt the Germans at Slutsk. However the 20th Mechanized Corps had only 93 older tanks and the 4th Airborne had to deploy on foot from lack of aircraft. Neither proved any threat to the advancing Second Panzer Group.
On 27 June 1941, the German Second and Third Panzer Groups striking from south and north linked up near Minsk, surrounding and eventually destroying the Soviet 3rd, 10th and 13th Armies, and portions of the 4th Army, in total about 20 divisions, while the remainder of the 4th Army fell back eastwards toward the Berezina River. On 28 June 1941, the Ninth and Fourth German Armies linked east of Białystok splitting the encircled Soviet forces into two pockets: a larger Białystok pocket containing the Soviet 10th Army and a smaller Navahrudak pocket.
In the first 18 days of the war, the Western Front had suffered 417,790 casualties, lost 9,427 guns and mortars, 4,799 tanks and 1,777 combat aircraft, and practically ceased to exist as a military force.
The Front commander, General of the Army Dmitry Pavlov, and the Front Staff were recalled to Moscow. There they were accused of intentional disorganization of defense and retreat without battle, sentenced as traitors, and executed. The families of the traitors were repressed according to NKVD Order no. 00486. This order dealt with families of traitors of the Motherland.
Western Front reorganized 28 June – 2 July
Furious over the loss of Minsk on 28 June, Stalin replaced the disgraced Pavlov with Colonel General Andrey Yeryomenko as commander of the Western Front. Arriving at Front headquarters at Mogilev on the morning of 29 June, Yeryomenko was faced with the daunting task of restoring order to the Western Front's defences. To accomplish this task he had initially only the remnants of the 4th and 13th Armies, of which the former had been reduced to the equivalent of a division in strength. On 1 July, he ordered the 13th Army to fall back to the Berezina River and defend the sectors between the towns of Kholkolnitza, Borisov and Brodets. Further south, the 4th Army were to defend the Berezina from Brodets through Svisloch to Bobruisk. To reinforce the Front's defences the elite 1st Moscow Motor Rifle Division was rushed from Moscow Military District to Borisov. This division, commanded by Colonel Yakov Kreizer, was at full strength with two motorized regiments, one tank regiment and 229 tanks. However, by that date Yeryomenko's defense line on the Berezina had already been rendered obsolete by Guderian's Panzer Divisions. On 29 June, the 3rd Panzer Division captured a bridgehead at Bobruisk from the 4th Army's 47th Rifle Corps, and on 30 June, the 4th Panzer Division seized the railroad bridge at Svisloch from the 4th Airborne Corps, cutting off one of that corps' three brigades and most of the 20th Mechanized Corps.Then on 2 July Stalin appointed Semyon Timoshenko, Marshal of the Soviet Union and People's Commissar for Defence, to command the Western Front, with Yeryomenko and Marshal Semyon Budyonny as his deputies. At the same time Stalin transferred four armies, the 19th Army, 20th Army, 21st Army and 22nd Army, from Marshal Budyonny's Group of Reserve Armies to the Western Front. After a telephone conversation with Timoshenko, Stalin added a fifth reserve army, the weak 16th Army, as well.
Timoshenko's orders were to defend the Western Dvina River-Dniepr River line. To this end the front deployed on its northern flank the 22nd Army under Lieutenant General Filipp Yershakov to defend the sector from Sebezh southward to the Western Dvina, and then south along that river from north of Polotsk to Beshenkovichi. South of the 22nd Army, the 20th Army, under Lieutenant General Pavel Kurochkin, was to defend the gap between the rivers from Beshenkovichi on the Western Dvina to Shklov on the Dnepr, supported by the 5th Mechanized Corps, under Major General Ilya Alekseyenko, and the 7th Mechanized Corps, under Major General Vasilii Ivanovich Vinogradov. The 19th Army, under Lieutenant General Ivan Konev, that time regrouping northward from the Kiev region, was to defend the Vitebsk region to the rear of 22nd and 20th Armies. The 19th Army included the 23rd Mechanized Corps under Major General Mikhail Akimovich Miasnikov. On the front's southern flank the 21st Army, under Lieutenant General Vasyl Herasymenko, including the 25th Mechanized Corps under Major General Semyon Krivoshein, was to defend the sector from Rogachev to Rechitsa. The remnants of the 4th and 13th Armies were to fall back and regroup at the Sozh River at the rear of the 21st Army. In early July Stalin relieved Korobkov, the commander of the 4th Army, and had him executed for treason. He was replaced by Colonel Leonid Sandalov Finally the 16th Army, under Lieutenant General Mikhail Fedorovich Lukin, was kept in reserve in the Smolensk region.