Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1943-1945: Red Steamroller

By the time Model took command, Heeresgruppe Mitte was a broken, routed force that had almost no intact units left and was running for the rear. Reinhardt’s PzAOK 3 was a loose fragment, gravitating toward the northwest, without connection to either Heeresgruppe Nord’s AOK 16 or the rest of Heeresgruppe Mitte. Bagramyan’s 1st Baltic Front pursued Reinhardt and, if it had possessed a tank army, the pursuit could have been decisive. In the centre, the remnants of AOK 4 and AOK 9 fell back toward the Berezina at Borisov then to Minsk, where Generalleutnant Karl Decker’s 5.Panzer-Division and the attached s.Pz.Abt.505 (29 Tigers) were just arriving by rail from Kovel; this division had been recently rebuilt and had 55 Pz IVs and 70 Panthers.⁴⁷ Generalleutnant Dietrich von Saucken, a solid Prussian cavalry officer, was put in charge of Decker’s division and a few other rear detachments and was given the difficult mission of holding the crossings over the Berezina as long as possible in order to save the two retreating armies.

One company of Tigers from s.Pz.Abt.505 detrained near Krupki, 36km northeast of Borisov, on the evening of 27 June and found itself immediately in contact with the lead elements of Vovchenko’s 3 GTC from Rotmistrov’s 5 GTA. Vovchenko’s corps was primarily equipped with Lend-Lease tanks: 110 M4A2 Shermans 70 Valentine Mk IX and 16 T-34s.* On 28 June, the Tigers tried to make a stand against the mass of the 3 GTC, but it was like a rock against the sea; the Tigers knocked out 34 tanks but the Shermans flowed around both flanks and six damaged Tigers have to be abandoned. The next day, the Tigers knocked out another 21 enemy tanks but were quickly threatened with encirclement once their ammunition was nearly exhausted and they were forced to retreat. Reaching the Berezina River, the Tigers could not cross the bridge and had to await engineer support to reinforce the structure. Once across the Berezina on 30 June, the Tigers conducted a mobile delay action to slow 5 GTA while 5.Panzer-Division deployed.

Decker’s Panzer-Pioniers wired the bridges over the Berezina for detonation while the divisional reconnaissance battalion screened along the river. However, the lead elements of the 5 GTA reached the Berezina and decided to bypass the 5.Panzer-Division roadblock at Borisov by gaining a small crossing north of the city. Several Soviet rifle divisions were right behind 5 GTA and also got troops across the river. No more German troops were coming, so Decker blew the bridges over the river. Once Rotmistrov reached the Berezina, he pushed the 29 TC across north of Borisov while the 2 GTC crossed south near Berezino. Since Decker’s 5.Panzer-Division did not yet have its Panzer-Regiment on the Berezina, he was only able to fight a delaying action before abandoning Borisov on the evening of 30 June. By 1 July, Rotmistrov was across the Berezina in force and Heeresgruppe Mitte rear elements began to evacuate Minsk. Rotmistrov decided to conduct a double envelopment of the city, sending 2 GTC as the southern pincer and 29 TC and 3 GMC as the northern pincer. Once Panzer-Regiment 31 reached the front, Decker and von Saucken elected to fight a tank battle near Pleshchenitsy, 55km northeast of Minsk, to stop the northern pincer. The battle was fought in an area covered by forests and peat bogs, which complicated tactical mobility and reduced engagement ranges to under 500 metres. Decker’s 5.Panzer-Divison fought a bitter action on 1–2 July and succeeded in stalling the northern pincer and inflicting considerable losses, but his own losses were heavy as well. On 5 July, the s.Pz.Abt.501 blew up its last Tiger and was withdrawn to Germany to refit.

However, 5.Panzer-Division could not hold off a tank army on its own and Burdeiny’s 2 TC slipped around south of Minsk virtually unopposed and began entering the city early on 3 July. A brisk fight followed but the Germans could not hold the city and Minsk was liberated by the end of the day. Burdeiny’s capture of Minsk isolated the remnants of AOK 4 and AOK 9 which were still east of the city and these formations were annihilated over the next few days. A breakout was attempted but very few units escaped the pocket and another 100,000 German troops were lost. Decker’s 5.Panzer-Division fought a brilliant delaying action but after losing more than 80 per cent of its tanks, it was compelled to retreat. Model literally had nothing left to work with – three of Heeresgruppe Mitte’s armies had been destroyed and the remaining fragments were too weak to hold anywhere. Without authorization from Hitler or the OKH, Model ordered his troops to fall back into Poland, realizing that his only option now was to trade space for time.