All language subtitles for Soviet Storm WWII in the East Series 1 1of9 Operation Barbarossa 1080p.eng

Spring 1941. Nazi Germany
dominates Europe. Poland and
France have been occupied.

Only the British
Commonwealth fights on.

Hitler now turns east
to the Soviet Union,

where Nazi dreams of a new land
empire are to be fulfilled.

Episode 1 - Barbarossa

April 1941. In a field in
western Ukraine, a satisfied
Soviet pilot

counted bullet holes in the
aircraft he d just shot down.

The twin-engined German aircraft
had civilian markings.

But the military bearing
of the pilots was obvious.

The smell of burning plastic was
further cause for suspicion.

It came from a smouldering
pile of photographic film,

which the Germans
had hurriedly tried to destroy.

In the spring of 1941 Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union
were allies.

But everyone knew
it could not last.

German reconnaissance aircraft,
flying 33,000 feet above the
Soviet Union,

usually passed unnoticed.
But on 15th April 1941,

engine trouble forced
one Junkers 86 to lose altitude.

It was quickly intercepted
and shot down.

Under interrogation, the Junkers
pilots said they d lost their
way

flying to Krakow in
German-occupied Poland. It
wasn t very convincing.

They d been shot down near
Rovno, more than 200 miles from
Krakow

deep inside the Soviet Union.

The pilots were from the elite
Rowel high-altitude
reconnaissance squadron.

They had been secretly
photographing Soviet territory
for months,

in preparation for the German
invasion of the Soviet Union.

Ten days later, a top-secret
report arrived in Moscow from
Major General Tupikov,

the Soviet military
attaché in Berlin.

His report made two conclusions.
Number One

The Germans are planning war
with the Soviet Union. Number
Two

They plan to attack soon
definitely before the end of the
year.

In the spring of 1941, neither
Tupikov nor other Soviet agents

could say exactly when
the German invasion would come.

Stalin s best spy,
Richard Sorge,

had claimed that the invasion
would begin around March,

after the harvest was sown.
Then, he said the end of May.

When that passed,
he said the second half of June.

The reports from Soviet agents
were confused and contradictory.

In short, no one in Moscow was
certain if or when the Germans
would invade.

In later years it was rumoured
that the German invasion plans
were on Stalin s desk

almost as soon as they were
signed. But in reality, no such
plans were stolen.

Masses of information was
received from the Soviet
intelligence network.

But only a few reports
received proper analysis.

Many valuable ones got lost
in the Soviet bureaucracy.

5 months earlier, in December
1940, Hitler had issued Fuehrer
Directive 21.

It ordered German forces to
prepare for the invasion of the
Soviet Union

codename: Operation Barbarossa.

Now, German troops
were streaming eastwards,

taking up position
along the Soviet frontier.

Hitler would later claim that
the Red Army had been massed
along the border,

poised to invade Germany. Thus
he claimed Operation Barbarossa

was a pre-emptive strike a
legitimate act of self-defence.

But this was classic Nazi
propaganda. Hitler wanted
others,

particularly in the neutral
countries, to believe his
invasion was justified.

But few were fooled.

In private, Hitler was more
candid about his reasons for
invading the USSR.

It is only the possibility of
Russia entering the war , he
said,

that now gives the English
hope. If that hope is ruined,

the English would
have to make peace.

Operation Barbarossa was
an ambitious invasion plan,

relying on the blitzkrieg
tactics that had proved so
effective against the French

and British the previous year.

The attack was to be spearheaded
by 4 Panzer Groups.

Their tank and motorised
infantry divisions would seek to
make rapid advances deep

into enemy territory,
leading to the encirclement

and destruction of enemy armies
on the frontier.

The four panzer groups were
commanded by generals von
Kleist

Hoepner Guderian and Hoth.

The ultimate goal was the
capture of Moscow, and the whole
of European Russia.

German strategists believed
that their military superiority

would lead to victory
in 3 to 4 months.

For the invasion, German forces
were divided into three
formations.

Army Group North was to advance
towards Leningrad

Army Group Centre
towards Moscow

and Army Group South towards
Kiev and the Donets Basin.

Army Groups North and South
each had one panzer group.

Army Group Centre had two,
including Third Panzer Group
commanded by Hoth.

Colonel-General Herman Hoth
had distinguished himself

in the campaigns against
Poland and France.

He was 56 years old,
and referred to affectionately

by his soldiers as Papa Hoth.

Unlike Russia, where many senior
officers had been killed in
political purges,

Germany could call on a wealth
of experienced commanders.

Most Soviet generals were in
their 40s. In contrast, Guderian
was 53...

Hoepner 55... and von Kleist 60.

Panzer Group command staffs
arrived at the Soviet frontier
during the winter of 1940.

At first only staff officers
and signals troops were sent.

The tanks were not to arrive
until the very eve of the
attack.

By keeping his
tanks in the west,

Hitler wanted it to look like he
still planned to invade Britain,

and prepared only defensive
operations in the east.

And so an invasion army quietly
assembled on Russia s doorstep.

In 1941, the Wehrmacht was
at the height of its power.

Its divisions had been
brought to full strength.

Morale was high after
victory in the west.

The last few months had been
spent in intensive training

for blitzkrieg operations.

In contrast, the Red Army was
dispersed across the Soviet
Union,

with many of its units still
at peacetime strength.

The forces at the border spent
much of their time listening to
political lectures.

It would take two or three weeks
of redeployment to properly
reinforce them.

And there was little preparation
for defence after all,

the Red Army always
expected to attack.

Furthermore, Stalin was in no
rush to fight a war against Nazi
Germany.

He knew the Soviet
Union was not ready.

In 1939 Nazi Germany and the
Soviet Union had signed an
alliance.

But Stalin harboured
no illusions.

Intensive military construction
was under way in the USSR.

The Red Army had grown from
strength of one and a half
million troops,

to five million.
In the summer of 1941,

Soviet armed forces were still
in the midst of reorganisation
and expansion.

Fortifications were still being
built, airfields overhauled, and
new units formed.

Until these preparations
were complete,

Stalin was desperate to stave
off any conflict with Hitler s
Germany.

But the reports from Soviet
intelligence were becoming more
ominous.

In early June 1941, the Germans
started moving armoured

and motorized divisions
towards the frontier.

This no longer looked like
preparations for a defensive
operation.

8 days before the invasion, the
Soviet state news agency, TASS,

printed a report in one
of its newspapers.

It read, In the British
and foreign press in general,

there are rumours circulating
about an imminent war

between the Soviet
Union and Germany.

Soviet official circles believe
that these rumours are
absolutely groundless.

It was an invitation
from Stalin to Hitler

to settle their differences
through negotiation.

But in reply,
there came only deathly silence.

Stalin finally ordered
reinforcements sent to the
frontier.

Even now, three days
after the TASS message,

Soviet spy Richard
Sorge reported:

The invasion has been delayed
until the end of June.

Stalin hoped once more
that war could be put off.

But it was too late: the
invasion was now less than one
week away.

On 22nd June the Red Army
was formed in three echelons,

stretching from Poland
to the Dnieper River.

Most Soviet troops were only
just beginning to move west to
face the Nazi threat.

In contrast German forces were
massed on the frontier, ready to
strike.

At the start of the invasion,

in the Baltic republics 21
Soviet divisions would face 34
German divisions.

In Byelorussia, 26 Red Army
divisions faced 36 German
divisions.

In Ukraine 45 Soviet divisions
would meet 57 Wehrmacht
divisions.

The Red Army was outnumbered,
and although it had more tanks
and aircraft,

they would prove to
be of little value.

On 21st June, German high
command transmitted the signal
Dortmund .

It confirmed Operation
Barbarossa for the next morning.

Tanks, armoured vehicles and
trucks moved to jumping-off
positions.

That evening, German officers
summoned their men,

to read them a proclamation
from Adolf Hitler to his troops.

It declared, The fate of the
German Reich is now in your
hands.

In the days to come, German
soldiers were to be guided by
directives such

as those from General Hoepner:

Your struggle must pursue the
objective of turning today s
Russia into ruins,

and must be carried out
with extreme severity.

But not all soldiers wanted to
be part of this so-called
crusade for civilization .

Sapper Alfred Liskow, a secret
communist, made for the border.

He crossed the Bug River, and
surrendered to Soviet border
guards.

Stammering with excitement, he
told them that at dawn the next
day,

the Nazis would attack.

Before the sapper was dry his
words were on their way to
Stalin.

Similar information came from a
Soviet agent in the German
Embassy, Gerhard Kegel.

On the morning of 21st June he
reported that the war would
begin within 48 hours.

In the Kremlin, General Zhukov,
Marshal Timoshenko and General
Vatutin

managed to persuade Stalin
that action was needed.

A directive placed all troops
in a state of readiness,

but with a warning that the
Germans may be trying to provoke
them.

The orders reached front line
units just after one o clock in
the morning.

In Minsk, General Pavlov,
Commander of the Byelorussian
Military District,

arrived at his headquarters
in the middle of the night.

Waiting for him was a report
from the town of Grodno near the
frontier. It read,

Ammunition has been
distributed. We re taking up
defensive positions.

Commander of the 3rd Army,
Vasiliy Kuznetsov.

Vasiliy Ivanovich Kuznetsov had
been conscripted to fight in the
First World War.

He later rose to command a rifle
regiment in the Russian Civil
War.

When the Second World War began,
he was 47 years old,

and would endure its hardships
from the first day, to the very
last.

The warnings about an invasion
didn t surprise Kuznetsov.

His troops had been listening
to the roar of engines

from across the border for many
hours. It could mean only one
thing.

The first Germans to cross the
border were from the Brandenburg
Regiment,

an elite German
special forces unit.

With a mixture of trickery,
stealth and surprise,

the German commandos secured key
bridges across the Bug River.

The Luftwaffe was
already airborne.

They were heading for major
Soviet cities in the west,

and airfields identified
by German air reconnaissance.

The Soviet Air Force, its
aircraft parked in neat rows,

had no idea of what was about to
hit it. As German pilots made
their final approach,

they were the first to see the
sun rise on that fateful day.

At 4am their bomb doors opened
and destruction rained from the
sky.

Russia's Great Patriotic
War had begun.

Dawn on the 22nd June 1941.
Soviet airfields were under
attack.

One squadron commander, Captain
Berkal, was quick to act,

ringing the alarm and getting
his men into the air as fast as
possible.

Where Soviet fighters did manage
to get airborne,

they found the unmanoeuvrable
German dive bombers were easy
prey.

Mlynuv airfield in Ukraine
became a graveyard for German
bombers.

Here the German Edelweiss
squadron lost 7 aircraft.

But these were token victories
in a disastrous day for the Red
Army Air Force.

Some airfields survived
the first German strikes.

But then the Luftwaffe
hit them again, and again.

In the course of five
or six German air raids,

most Soviet air bases in the
west had been put out of action.

In the air, although the Soviets
had many good combat aircraft,

their pilots lacked the combat
experience of the Messerschmitt
fighter-pilots.

Major General Kopets, Air
Commander of the Western Front,

made an aerial inspection
of the damage to his airfields.

After landing, he shot himself.

By the end of the first day, the
Soviet Air Force had lost 700
aircraft

in Byelorussia,
half its strength.

In Ukraine, 300 planes
were lost one sixth.

And in the Baltic, about
a hundred planes, or one tenth.

The first German onslaught
was overwhelming.

The Red Army Air Force
had been decimated.

It would be many months before
it was able to play its part
effectively in the war.

German ground troops began
their advance at 4.15 am.

Hoth s tanks advanced between 50
and 70 km on the Baltic front,

capturing key bridges
at Alytus and Merkine.

Hoth wrote: All three bridges
across the Niemen River were
captured intact.

This was completely unexpected.

German generals quickly began
to dream of the great prize.

Hoth recalled: Everyone longed
to get on the road to Moscow as
soon as possible.

For the moment, Hoth s panzer
group attacked in the direction
of Vilnius.

The aim was to envelope Soviet
armies in Byelorussia from the
north.

But not everything went
according to plan for the
Germans on the first day.

At one point
on the frontier in Byelorussia,

events took an unexpected
turn for both sides

at the 19th century
Russian fortress of Brest.

The fortress was supposed to
have a garrison of just one
battalion.

But units from two Soviet
divisions, totalling about 7,000
soldiers,

were stationed here
when the invasion began.

On the morning of 22nd June the
fortress came under sustained
air and artillery attack.

Many soldiers took shelter
within its walls,

where they became trapped
by the bombardment.

The Germans had expected the
fort to be taken in just a few
hours.

But instead a bloody siege began
which was to last several days.

The fortress garrison defended
every inch of ground,

fighting on in small isolated
groups some of them refusing
to surrender.

After four days the Germans had
captured the outlying
fortifications.

The Red Army garrison
retreated to the citadel.

400 survivors, led by Major
Gavrilov, fought off 7 or 8
attacks a day.

On 29th June the Germans began a
two-day assault on the fortress,

and finally captured
the citadel.

By now the defenders were
running out of food and water.
But still they fought on.

It was a full month
after the invasion

when the Germans finally
captured Major Gavrilov.

The doctor who treated him
recalled that he was almost
unconscious with exhaustion,

without even the strength
left to swallow.

But an hour before, Gavrilov
had been fighting furiously,

throwing grenades that killed
and wounded several Germans.

Despite the heroic resistance
of Major Gavrilov and his men,

it was simple enough
for Guderian s panzer group

to bypass the Brest Fortress
and cross the Bug River.

One advantage held by the Red
Army seemed to lie in their huge
number of tanks.

They had about 10 thousand tanks
in the western military
districts.

But for Red Army light tanks
like the T-26 and BT-7,

it was to be a very short,
and very bloody war.

The T-26 s front armour
was just 15 millimetres thick.

The BT-7 s was not much better
at just 22 millimetres.

Both were extremely
vulnerable to German guns.

What s more, their 45 millimetre
guns weren t powerful enough

to pierce the armour of modern
German tanks except at
point-blank range.

The poor design of Soviet shells

meant many simply shattered
on contact with German armour.

For the Red Army, the first tank
battles were a terrible shock.

On the second day of the war,

Red Army tanks met a German
panzer division near Pruzhany.
(PROO-SHAN-NYE)

The battle turned
into a massacre.

More than a hundred T-26 tanks
were destroyed in just a few
hours of combat.

On the third day of the war,
in a battle near Voynitsa,

about 150 T-26 tanks
were destroyed.

The next day, Soviet T-26 tanks
counterattacked near the town of
Po ilé,

in the Baltic. (PORSHH-EE-LAY)

At the start of the day the
Soviet 28th Tank Division had
130 tanks.

By its end, just 50 remained.

The pride of the Red Army lay
wrecked and smoking across the
German invasion route.

The German army had 4,000 tanks
and self propelled guns for the
invasion of Russia.

Half of them were the virtually
obsolete Panzer I and II light
tanks.

Only 1,400 of them were the new
Panzer 3 and Panzer 4 tanks.

Each German panzer
division had 200 tanks

and more than 2,000 command
and support vehicles.

A Soviet tank division had
almost twice as many tanks, but
fewer support vehicles.

Events would prove that the
Germans had got it right.

Without enough support vehicles
to keep them supplied with fuel,

ammunition and spare parts,
hundreds of Soviet tanks

would be abandoned
en route to the battlefield.

German tank crews went into
combat convinced of their own
superiority.

But a nasty surprise
lay in store.

German tanker Gustav Schrodek of
the 11th Panzer Division was in
action near Radekhov.

He recalled: We sent the first
shell into them. It struck the
turret.

The second shot was another hit.
But the lead enemy tank kept
advancing.

What was going on?! We had
always joked that all we had to
do was spit

at a Russian tank, and
it would blow up!

Other reports began to arrive of
a new model of Soviet tank

that seemed to be
immune to German guns.

Near Raseiniai, these new Soviet
heavy tanks shrugged off
multiple hits,

before bursting into the German
position and crushing guns,
trucks and vehicles.

The only effective way to stop
these monsters

was with the powerful 88mm
antiaircraft guns.

The new Soviet tanks
were called T-34 and KV-1.

They were names German soldiers
would come to dread.

As fighting raged along the
frontier, Kuznetsov s 3rd Army
near Grodno

was the only one
that managed to bring artillery

to bear on the advancing
German troops.

Kusnetsov s troops fought the
German 9th Army to a standstill.

German General Ott wrote:
Stubborn resistance by the
Russians

has forced us to fight
by the rule-book once more.

We could afford to take certain
chances in Poland and in the
West, but not now.

Kuznetsov was also
the first Soviet commander

to launch an armoured
counter-attack.

The Soviet 6th Mechanized Corps
had almost 1,000 tanks,

including 350 of the
new T-34s and KV-1s.

The decision on where to
counter-attack had to be made
very quickly.

When a concentration of German
tanks was reported near Grodno,

where Kuznetsov s Third
Army was fighting,

General Pavlov decided that
that was the place to strike.

It was a catastrophe. The 6th
Mechanized Corps was virtually
wiped out.

Most tanks ran out of
fuel or broke down,

because supply depots had been
destroyed by air attack.

When the remaining tanks
were encircled by the Germans,

the crews blew up their
vehicles and retreated.

It also became clear that there
was only German infantry near
Grodno.

So while the 6th Mechanized
Corps made its doomed
counterattack,

Hoth s panzers advanced
unhindered on Vilnius.

German control of the air meant
Soviet commanders in Byelorussia

had no access to air
reconnaissance. So largely
working in the dark,

Pavlov estimated that he faced
only one or two German tank
divisions.

But on the third day of the war,

a German reconnaissance unit
was ambushed near Slonim.

After the battle
a German staff officer s map

was found and sent
to Pavlov s headquarters.

After one glance at the map,
Pavlov realised his terrible
mistake.

Instead of one or two tank
divisions, the whole of
Guderian s Second Panzer Group

five panzer divisions and 2
motorised infantry divisions,

was advancing on
Minsk and Bobruisk.

All of Pavlov s forces were
about to be encircled.

Pavlov immediately ordered all
his troops to retreat eastwards,
but it was too late.

Guderian s panzers
burst into Slonim,

blocking the only good road
from Bia ystok back to Minsk.

In Byelorussia s landscape
of marshland and dense forest,

controlling a single road like
this could be decisive.

Other lines of retreat
simply didn t exist.

German panzer groups
seemed to be advancing at will.

Their commanders tried to find
weak points in the enemy line,
and burst through them,

moving fast and threatening
the enemy with encirclement.

To maintain momentum they simply
bypassed areas of stubborn
resistance.

These were dealt with by
infantry divisions that followed
in their wake.

Armoured cars
and motorised infantry in trucks

and motorcycles accompanied
the panzer columns.

Reconnaissance units led the
way, and were the first to
engage the enemy.

Finally, close co-operation with
Luftwaffe ground attack aircraft
made this,

in 1941, an unparalleled
offensive force.

Guderian and Hoth, commanding
2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups,

were advancing on Moscow. But
now they received new orders

Minsk was the new priority.
Both generals were outraged,

they saw Moscow as
the grand prize.

But both reluctantly diverted
their tanks towards Minsk,

to help complete the
encirclement of Pavlov s doomed
army.

Minsk had been bombed since
the first day of the war.

From its ruins, huge columns of
black smoke rose, obscuring the
sun.

Now Hoth's tanks were
approaching to seal its fate.

First they would have to fight
their way through a line of
Soviet fortifications.

But when one of Hoth s divisions
broke through the line,

it was immediately
counterattacked and its forward
units cut off.

Hoth s panzer group,
as he later described,

had to break though Soviet
fortified positions situated on
the highway,

amidst heavy fighting .

But the tried-and-tested tactics
of the Wehrmacht now proved
their worth.

A German tank platoon normally
deployed in a V-formation,

with its two prongs
facing the enemy.

This allowed German tanks to
attack on a narrow front

50 or 60 tanks
across 1000 metres.

In 1941, a Soviet division s
orders stated that anti-tank
guns

should be spread evenly
along the front.

This meant 50 German tanks would
only face between 5 and 10
anti-tank guns.

The German tanks overwhelmed
these guns by weight of numbers,

then turned right and left to
attack the rest of the line from
the side and rear.

What made the situation even
worse for Soviet troops was
their inadequate weaponry.

Their staple 45 millimetre
antitank gun could only
penetrate the front armour

of German tanks at
very close range.

Using superior tactics
and weaponry,

the Germans broke through the
Red Army defences around Minsk

after two days of fighting.

As German trooped entered
the city, Dmitry Pavlov,

Commander of the Soviet Western
Front, could only watch
helplessly as the trap closed.

Like British and French
generals before him, Pavlov,

had been overwhelmed by the
speed and fury of the German
blitzkrieg.

But he did get
one important decision right.

As soon as he saw the German
plans for encirclement,

he ordered a retreat to the east
as fast as possible.

It gave many soldiers
a fighting chance of escape.

It was with that hope that his
men now fell back towards Minsk.

But for most, there was
to be no salvation.

One week after the German
invasion of the Soviet Union,

more than 300,000 Soviet
soldiers were encircled around
Bialystok and Minsk.

Some Red Army units were able to
fight their way out of the
pocket

through lightly-held German
positions to the southeast.

Others, including the remnants
of Kuznetsov s 3rd Army,

tried to make their way back to
Soviet lines through the swamps
and forests.

The rapid German advance meant
Red Army lines were now far to
the east.

Most would spend weeks walking
through the forests before they
reached their own lines.

Around Bia ystok and Minsk,
the many thousands

who did not make it out
faced death or captivity.

They fought on, launching
desperate counterattacks

in a bid to escape
the encirclement.

They inflicted heavy
casualties on the enemy.

But finally, two weeks after the
invasion, resistance in the
pocket came to an end.

290,000 Soviet soldiers entered
captivity, a fate from which few
would return.

General Pavlov,
Commander of the Western Front,

his Chief of Staff Major
General Klimovskikh,

and Commander of the 4th Army
General Korobkov, and several
other officers,

were all arrested on charges of
cowardice and criminal
incompetence.

Under NKVD interrogation
Pavlov denied his guilt,

citing the enormous difficulties
he had faced. But Stalin needed
scapegoats.

The trial s outcome was never in
doubt. They were all sentenced
to death.

Pavlov was shot on that same day
by the secret police.

To the south in Ukraine, the
Red Army s South-Western Front

managed to evade mass
encirclements in the first week
of the war.

The Germans advanced between
150 and 170 kilometres,

before the disaster at Minsk
forced the Red Army to pull back
to the Dnieper River.

German High Command was in high
spirits following these early
victories.

Surely, it was thought, the
Russians can t survive the loss
of so many men,

tanks and aircraft. Soviet
collapse had to be just around
the corner.

Franz Halder, Head of the
German General Staff, wrote,

It would be no exaggeration to
say that the war against Russia

has been won in the
first 14 days.

The Germans next objective was
Smolensk But this would not be
so straightforward.

For a start, German forces
had been concentrated

for the early battles
on the frontier.

Now their forces were spread out
from the Baltic to southern
Ukraine.

Secondly, Soviet reserve armies
had begun to reach the
battlefield.

They played no part in
the early fighting,

but now stood ready on the banks
of the Dnieper and the Dvina.

Guderian and Hoth s panzer
groups started rolling east once
more.

Their mission was to advance far
ahead of the main force and join
up east of Smolensk.

But soon Guderian s 2nd Panzer
Group came under attack

from fresh Soviet armies
arriving from the east. After
ferocious fighting,

Guderian was forced
onto the defensive.

Soon Hoth also had to
switch to defence.

A Soviet counterattack forced
his men to give up Velikiye
Luki.

It was the first Russian city to
be recaptured from the Germans.

The speed of their advance had
left the German panzer groups
isolated.

Not until the main force of the
German army caught up could
their advance resume.

Army Group North had
also run into trouble.

The assault on Novgorod
had ground to a halt.

Moreover, the German 8th Panzer
Division became encircled near
the city of Soltsy,

and had to fight its way out.

A German officer
recorded in his diary,

We have no sensation of
entering a defeated country, as
we had in France.

Instead we have resistance,
permanent resistance, no matter
how hopeless it is.

By August the Red Army had
somehow managed to stabilise the
situation.

A front line was re-established,

allowing thousands of stragglers
to catch up with the retreating
army.

After struggling through forests
and marshes for a month,

the remnants of Kuznetsov s army
finally reached their own lines.

There were many such stragglers
trekking east in the summer of
1941,

in groups of a dozen,
to a thousand or more.

Meanwhile Guderian was preparing
a fresh assault on Moscow.

On 21st August his units were at
their start positions near the
city of Starodub.

But the same day Hitler issued a
directive that shocked his army
group commanders.

General Halder would describe it
as the decisive moment of the
entire campaign.

Army Group Centre was refused
permission to advance on Moscow.

Instead, Hoth was ordered north
to reinforce the assault on
Leningrad.

Guderian was ordered south to
assist the encirclement of
Soviet troops in Ukraine.

Guderian immediately flew to
Berlin to demand an audience
with Hitler.

In person, he forcefully made
his case that now was the moment
to strike at Moscow.

In his memoirs Guderian wrote:

I pointed out the serious
consequences that would surely
arise

if operations in the south
dragged on too long. If that
happened,

then it would be too late
to assault Moscow that year.

Hitler and the Army High Command
remained adamant.

Summer was already drawing to a
close as Guderian s panzer group
struck south,

against the flank of the Soviet
South-Western Front.

If he could reach the
German-held bridgeheads across
the Dnieper River,

the Red Army forces defending
Kiev would all be trapped.

After his escape
from the Minsk encirclement,

General Kuznetsov had been put
in command of the 21st Army.

His troops were right in the
path of Guderian s 2nd Panzer
Group.

The Soviet High Command
had to make a choice:

to fight it out along the
Dnieper River, and risk further
massive encirclements

if the line was breached
or retreat further east

to buy their troops
some breathing space.

In the end, it was decided the
Dnieper was too strong a
position

to abandon without a fight.

A close watch was kept on
the German panzer divisions.

But in August,
they seemed bound for Moscow.

The main threat to the
South-Western and Southern
Fronts

seemed to be from
von Kleist s 1st Panzer Group,

far to the south on the lower
reaches of the Dnieper.

By August 1941, the Red Army
was chronically short of tanks.

Its mechanized units had been
annihilated in the opening
battles of the campaign.

Kuznetsov s 21st Army, for
example, had just 16 tanks
remaining.

Kuznetsov s weakened 21st Army
was brushed aside by Guderian s
troops,

as they smashed their way
towards Lokhvitsa 125 miles
east of Kiev.

Guderian was about to cut off
all the Soviet troops defending
the Ukrainian capital.

It seemed high time to order the
troops of the Soviet
South-Western Front into
retreat.

But the Soviet High
Command hesitated,

waiting for the latest
information from the front.

The Germans meanwhile
strengthened their bridgehead
over the Dnieper River

near the city of Kremenchuk.

There they built an enormous
floating bridge half a mile
long.

Von Kleist s 1st Panzer Group
raced to Kremenchuk at full
speed.

The tanks crossed the Dnieper
under the cover of darkness and
rain,

and joined up with Guderian s
forces at Lokhvitsa.

The Soviet High Command
had hesitated too long.

All troops of the South-Western
Front in the Kiev area were now
trapped.

For the Red Army the unfolding
disaster at Kiev set a bleak
record

it was the largest encirclement
in the history of warfare.

An estimated 532,000 troops
were encircled at Kiev.

Only 15 to 20,000 would escape.

The fighting in the Kiev pocket
dragged on until the end of
September.

The Red Army s chronic
shortage of tanks was revealed

by how many were captured
at Kiev just 50.

Meanwhile German
Army Group Centre,

having been stripped
of Guderian and Hoth s tanks,

fought off large-scale Soviet
counter-attacks near Smolensk.

In these desperate battles the
Red Army Guards units were born.

For the bravery shown amidst
heavy fighting around Yelnia,

the 100th Rifle Division was
awarded the title of 1st Guards
Rifle Division.

General Hoth later wrote:
We sustained heavy casualties,

especially amongst
the junior officers.

The losses were higher
than during previous attacks,

and were only partially
recovered through replacements.

According to the German
General Staff s timetable,

the Soviet Union was supposed to
collapse in just one more month
of fighting.

But to exhausted German units
on the frontline,

their final objectives
seemed more and more remote.

The Red Army was also desperate.
With the encirclement of so many
troops at Kiev,

the Soviet High Command was
forced to throw every available
unit into the front line.

And now, with the final
crushing of the Kiev pocket,

Guderian, Hoepner and Hoth s
panzer groups once more turned
towards Moscow.

Of these panzer generals,
Guderian would be removed from
command in just a few months.

Hoepner would be dismissed by
Hitler for cowardice and
disobeying orders .

Only Papa Hoth would
keep his job.

Meanwhile offensives near
Moscow battles around
Stalingrad

and a return to Byelorussia, all
lay in store for General
Kuznetsov.

In 1945, his men would lead the
attack on Berlin,and on the
Reichstag itself.

And on 1st May 1945, soldiers of
the 150th Division of General
Kuznetsov s

3rd Assault Army Aleksey
Berest, Mikhail Yegorov and
Meliton Kantaria

would hoist the hammer
and sickle over the Reichstag.

But for now, the war was
just three months old.

And in a few days, the Battle
for Moscow would begin.

+++DRY'2020