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

Fedorov’s tanks had to march 30km to reach Alytus and a number of tanks fell out due to mechanical problems, so by the time his lead elements reached Alytus, Rothenburg’s Panzer-Regiment 25 was already crossing the Neman. Leytenant Ivan G. Verzhbitsky, leading the 2nd Battalion/9th Tank Regiment, was the first to arrive, with forty-four T-34 tanks. One T-34, commanded by a Sergeant Makogan, engaged the German column and destroyed a Pz.38(t) tank crossing the northern bridge. This action was the very first German contact with the T-34 – less than ten hours after the start of Barbarossa. Although the T-34 was vastly superior to the Pz.38(t), the Soviet tanks only had a few rounds of AP ammunition and the drivers had no experience with their new tanks. Verzhbitsky decided to deploy his tanks in defilade and await reinforcements, which soon arrived with the twenty-four T-28 medium tanks of the 1st Battalion/9th Tank Regiment. The German panzers could not close to effective range of their 3.7cm cannon and were effectively blocked by Federov’s tanks. While Rothenburg was temporarily stymied, he called up the Luftwaffe, who blasted the Soviet positions with high explosive. Meanwhile, a smaller kampfgruppe from the 7.Panzer-Division seized the southern bridge, but was blocked by the Soviet 10th Tank Regiment, equipped with forty-five BT-7 tanks.

Fedorov launched three counterattacks during the day, which inflicted some damage on 7.Panzer-Division, but his own forces were rapidly depleted. Unlike the Germans, Federov had minimal infantry and artillery support and no air support, as well as far less fuel and ammunition for his tanks. Schmidt, the XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) commander, directed the lead kampfgruppe from the 20.Panzer-Division toward the northern bridgehead and it arrived around 1930 hours.⁷ With the III/Pz.Regt 25 in the lead, the 7.Panzer-Division broke out of the bridgehead and began to roll up Federov’s tired tankers. By nightfall, Federov had to break off the action. The Battle of Alytus cost the 5th Tank Division seventy-three tanks (sixteen T-28, twenty-seven T-34 and thirty BT-7) against the 7.Panzer-Division’s loss of eleven tanks (seven Pz.38(t) and four Pz.IV). Most of the T-34s were lost due to crew errors, including two sunk in the Nemen River and others toppled into ditches or craters. According to Soviet sources, German tank losses at Alytus numbered about thirty, but this included armoured cars and tanks that were only damaged. It also appears that a single Soviet T-34, commanded by Sergeant Makogan, may have been responsible for nearly half the German losses; in tank combat, it is not uncommon that much of the damage is inflicted by a few highly-skilled crews.

After seizing Alytus, the 7 and 20.Panzer-Division brushed aside the remnants of Federov’s division on 23 June and advanced quickly upon Vilnius, while 12.Panzer-Division advanced from the Merkine bridgehead as well. Hoth’s rapid exploitation from the Alytus bridgehead prevented the Soviet 11th Army from establishing a new front, so opposition in front of Panzergruppe 3 was weak and scattered. Amazingly, a 3,000-man battle group from the 5th Tank Division evaded pursuit and managed to escape toward Pskov. The 7.Panzer-Division’s Kradschützen-Abteilung entered the outskirts of Vilna at dawn on 24 June. Hoth’s defeat of the left wing of the Northwest Front put the neighboring Western Front forces in the Bialystok salient at risk of envelopment from the north.

The Destruction of Pavlov’s Armour in the Bialystok Salient

General Dmitry Pavlov had not increased the alertness of his Western Front forces, as Kuznetsov had done, and he was committed to a virtually static defense of the Bialystok salient. Much of Pavlov’s armour was still stationed in its peacetime garrisons and ill-prepared to transition immediately to mobile wartime operations. He did have more infantry on the border than Kuznetsov had, which briefly gave him the illusion that a coherent defense could be established around Bialystok.

Von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) crosses the Bug River and defeats Oborin’s 14th Mechanized Corps, 22–23 June.

German intelligence estimates of the strength of Pavlov’s armour were wildly inaccurate and assessed that the Red Army had about 1,000 tanks in the area, instead of the actual number of 2,251. The Germans had correctly identified the 6th Mechanized corps at Bialystok, but were unaware of the existence of the 11th and 14th Mechanized Corps on the flanks. However, the general excellence of the German operational plan for an armoured double envelopment of the Bialystok salient, along with Pavlov’s failure at battle command, was sufficient to hand the Wehrmacht its first major victory on the Eastern Front.