Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt

By 28 June, the Northwest Front was in full retreat from Lithuania, although the German pursuit failed to catch any large units. Kuznetsov briefly tried to form a defense along the Dvina with the remnants of the 12th Mechanized Corps and the rifle divisions of the 27th Army, but Manstein had already breached the river line on 26 June and Reinhardt’s corps crossed the Dvina near Jekabpils on 29 June. With the river line defense collapsing, Kuznetsov ordered his forces to fall back toward the Stalin Line positions at Pskov and Ostrov, but on 30 June he was relieved of command. The next day, Kampfgruppe Lasch from the 1.Infanterie-Division, supported by five StuG-III assault guns, entered Riga.

Höpner pushed Panzergruppe 4 north toward Ostrov, about 200km distant, with Reinhardt’s corps on the left and Manstein’s on the right. Despite the outward appearance of success, Panzergruppe 4’s performance in Lithuania was sub-par. Aside from the 2nd Tank Division and parts of one rifle division, the bulk of the Northwest Front escaped.

Time and again during Barbarossa, local German commanders became so impressed with seizing territory that they missed golden opportunities to encircle and eliminate Red Army units. One of the iron rules about armoured warfare on the Eastern Front was not to commit one’s best armoured units until the enemy’s strength had been located. Höpner went into Lithuania fairly ignorant about the location of opposing Soviet armoured units and then he mistakenly committed all three of his panzer divisions before any of Kuznetsov’s armour had been located. He foolishly committed 1.Panzer-Division to a street battle for Taurogen, tying down his best mobile unit for a full day, and failed to coordinate the actions of Manstein’s and Reinhardt’s corps.

Panzergruppe 3 and the Crossing of the Neman, 22–24 June

Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock, commander of Heeresgruppe Mitte, intended to pulverize the Soviet Western Front forces in the Bialystok salient with a powerful armoured pincer attack from both north and south, then continue on to finish any remnants around Minsk. The northern pincer was formed by Generaloberst Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3, which fielded four panzer divisions and three motorized infantry divisions in the XXXIX and LVII Armeekorps (mot.). The initial objective for both corps was to crash through the Soviet 11th Army border defenses and advance 45–65km to seize crossings over the Neman River at Alytus and Merkine. Following this, both corps would drive due east across Lithuania and Belarus and then envelop Minsk from the north. Hoth’s initial attack benefited from striking near the boundary between the Northwestern and Western Fronts, but the terrain was more heavily wooded than the area that Höpner had to traverse. The Luftwaffe’s VIII Fliegerkorps, which included 158 Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers from St.G. 1 and St.G. 2 and seventy-eight Bf-110 fighter-bombers from ZG 26, was assigned to provide close support to Hoth’s Panzergruppe.

The Soviet 11th Army had eight infantry regiments screening a 170km-long sector along the southern Lithuanian border. Kurkin’s 3rd Mechanized Corps was in reserve, on the east side of the Neman River. When Panzergruppe 3 attacked across the border at 0405 hours on 22 June, both German armoured corps advanced abreast and easily bypassed the bulk of the 128th Rifle Division and pushed on to the Neman. A strong kampfgruppe from 7.Panzer-Division, led by Oberst Karl Rothenburg, reached the outskirts of Alytus at 1240 hours and was soon able to seize the two bridges over the Neman intact from an unprepared NKVD guard detachment. Kuznetsov, the Northwest Front commander, had already stripped the 3rd Mechanized Corps of the 2nd Tank Division to support his counterattack at Raseiniai, leaving only Polkovnik Fedor Fedorov’s 5th Tank Division in a position to stop Rothenburg’s kampfgruppe.