Good Morning Midnight: Disaster in the North West, July 1941
The early July battles along the Dauga, at Wilno and the Minsk sector all led to setbacks. The net effect was that the north and centre of the Western Military District started to fragment into two separate battles.
(the map shows the front lines on 7 July, 22 July and 1 August)
The Baltic Campaign
First, the 27A had been badly mauled in the Riga-Daugavpils battles and had to pull back onto the positions of the 23A. Elements of 23A (originally holding the ports) in Estonia were committed to a series of small scale counterattacks which enabled a successful retreat by 24 and 29 Corps to positions guarding the crossings of the Narva river or at Narva itself.
In turn 22 Corps fell back onto the Pskov sector. This led to a series of reorganisations of the Soviet command in this region. First the Baltic Front was renamed the Leningrad Front and took responsibility for the defence of Leningrad itself from the Northern District. Less radically, 27A took control of the forces in the Narva sector and 23A took on Pskov-Novgorod, and, critically, of holding open a link to the forces of 8A and 13A now fighting at Velikiye Luki.
The result was that on the direct approach to Leningrad this sector stabilised. A series of German attacks on Pskov between 20 and 27 July were beaten off, first by the formations of 22 Corps and then by fresh forces moving up from the Leningrad reserve.
(Soviet riflemen, Pskov, July 1941)
In Estonia the defence of Narva itself was less successful. Here, pressed by 10 Panzer a fierce battle raged from 22 to 28 July before the Soviet defenders had to retreat leaving almost 1800 dead (and having killed almost 1400 Germans). The shock of the loss of the final gains of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact were profound, especially when combined the defeat at Velikiye Luki. The impression was that the entire Soviet regime was on the verge of collapse.
Velikiye Luki
At Velikiye Luki, Koniev’s 8 Army launched a major counterblow against the Germans pushing on from Daugavipils. This saw 5 German Panzer divisions in action and counterattacks by 2 Tank Corps (including the first combat use of the Zis-30).
(part of 2 Tank Corps, here a second Panzer division has moved to reinforce the original target)
(Destroyed Zis-30, Dagdaz)
As at Minsk, sometimes success was more dangerous than failure as it led to the fear of encirclement. Equally the impression was being formed that the Red Army would never hold the German offensive, with devastating effect on Soviet morale.
(Soviet armour wrecked at Velikiye Luki)
By the end of July, the 8 Army had been driven south and the vicious Smolensk battle was about to begin.
The Gap
If this litany of defeat was not serious enough, the worst problem was that with 23A pinned on a line from Pskov-Novgorod and 8A falling back SE to Smolensk, a dangerous gap opened up. The entire linking sector was held by battered rifle divisions and a huge German salient was starting to emerge. This threatened first to sever direct links between Leningrad and Moscow and then to allow the Germans to hook around the current Soviet strongpoints. Both the major cities of the USSR were now at risk.
Overall
By the end of July, the Western District had split into two distinct forces. Two armies covered the approaches to Leningrad and 3 (8A, 3A, 13A) those to Moscow. Finally the 10A was falling back on a weakly held front to the south of Smolensk. Thus the two ‘shields’ in the Soviet defence line were both at risk of encirclement. In addition to fending off the blows at Leningrad and Smolensk, STAVKA had to find reinforcements to shore up the Bryansk sector.
The direct combat losses told a tale of escalating intensity of combat. In this sector in June 16,069 Soviet soldiers had died in ground fighting (and around another 4000 due to air attacks), in July the toll was 36,465. German losses were equal, tribute to the intensity and inventiveness of the Soviet defence, they lost 13,701 and 37,635 respectively. In addition 2 Soviet rifle divisions had been lost in a pocket. Thus overall Soviet dead and captured came to some 75,000 for 53,000 Germans.
(although the VVS continued to contest air superiority, scenes such as this were all too common)
This butcher’s bill was to be more than matched in August as Soviet troops tried to halt, or at least slow, the German drives on Moscow and Leningrad.