12 kilometers west of Grodno
April 3, 1942
Semen Timoshenko leaned over the map table, his eyes tracing the movement of entire armies as they fought their inertia and groaned into motion. The offensive into Lithuania was quite simple; the three Baltic Fronts would crush the region from the north as two Belorussian Fronts swept westward and cut it off. Timoshenko nodded to himself, if it worked correctly it would cut off thirty Anglo-British divisions and they could then be easily destroyed. Even taking the shortening of the frontline into consideration, this was likely a loss that the enemy could not afford and would have difficulty recovering from. Timoshenko scratched his neck before sliding his hand up to rub his chin with a palm. The weather was unseasonably cold, he had taken the reports coming up from Romania as an aberration but in the past two days reports were coming back from the frontlines in Lithuania confirmed that there was a freeze across the entirety of the ground and was slowing operations down.
Timoshenko sighed and grimaced; nothing in war ever went according to forecast—not operational plans and not the weather either. Nevertheless, he had ordered the attacks to commence, it was important to throw the Anglo-German strategy off balance from the very beginning. Intelligence reports all pointed to massive armored formations which would, if used properly, be very hard hitting and could likely rupture the Soviet line. Timoshenko, as the chief of army staff as well as the commander of the 1st Belarussian Front, could not allow that to happen. His career depended upon it, and the survival of the Soviet Union as an independent state.
Thus, the offensive into Lithuania began on the 2nd of April as Lieutenant General Malinovskij’s 3rd Baltic Front attacked from Wilno toward Kaunas with its eighteen frontline divisions. They began pushing forward through the frost and the swamp, opposed by two corps of Anglo-German troops, of which the British were of far inferior quality and were quickly being overwhelmed despite Malinovskij’s inability to command large troops due to his limited staff size.
The attack toward Kaunas has begun.
Realizing that Malinovskij could use some support, however, to limit casualties, Timoshenko ordered Major General Antonov’s 2nd Baltic Front and his own 1st Belarussian Front into the fray, hitting the beleaguered defenders from two more axes. Under such pressure, despite the innate advantages of the defense, the terrain and the weather, the three British divisions quickly began crumbling and the resistance of the German corps began weakening as well. Air support by the sturmovik ground-attack planes was proving itself valuable in levering the defenders out of exposed positions. Timoshenko was confident that the battle was decisively going his way and turned his attention to another battle to the south.
The greater attack upon the Anglo-German positions in front of Kaunas.
To the south, Field Marshal Fedorenko’s 2nd Belarussian Front was beginning to perform its sickle cut toward the Baltic coast by attacking from the region of Bialystok toward Suwalki. It was a situation similar to that at Kaunas; eighteen Soviet divisions attacking against six Anglo-German divisions, evenly split. The British were inferior to both the Germans and the Soviets. Within two hours of the beginning of the battle, Fedorenko launched a furious assault that took the commanding general, a British officer, by surprise and caused him to lose some grip on the battle he was attempting to conduct. As at Kaunas, the British began crumbling quickly. It was only shortly after the assault that the entire Anglo segment of the defensive line was collapsed and its soldiers streaming westward in disarray. The Germans, now alone and terribly outnumbered, quickly began crumbling as well.
The battle of Suwalki, at 0700 and 2300 of the 3rd.
Timoshenko smirked; the British did not worry him at all. Their tactical leadership was poor, their troops poorer and their presence in the theater of war bordering on negligible when it came to efficiency, if not in numbers. When his thoughts turned to the Germans, however, Timoshenko bit his lip lightly. They were fine soldiers, better even than their Soviet counterparts, and well led. Their infantry was performing well and their armored units were supposed to be even better, though they had not yet made an appearance. Timoshenko stared at the map, wondering whether he would succeed in encircling the Anglo-German forces in Lithuania. He was also wondering where the main German blow would fall. It could be anywhere.
April 3, 1942
Semen Timoshenko leaned over the map table, his eyes tracing the movement of entire armies as they fought their inertia and groaned into motion. The offensive into Lithuania was quite simple; the three Baltic Fronts would crush the region from the north as two Belorussian Fronts swept westward and cut it off. Timoshenko nodded to himself, if it worked correctly it would cut off thirty Anglo-British divisions and they could then be easily destroyed. Even taking the shortening of the frontline into consideration, this was likely a loss that the enemy could not afford and would have difficulty recovering from. Timoshenko scratched his neck before sliding his hand up to rub his chin with a palm. The weather was unseasonably cold, he had taken the reports coming up from Romania as an aberration but in the past two days reports were coming back from the frontlines in Lithuania confirmed that there was a freeze across the entirety of the ground and was slowing operations down.
Timoshenko sighed and grimaced; nothing in war ever went according to forecast—not operational plans and not the weather either. Nevertheless, he had ordered the attacks to commence, it was important to throw the Anglo-German strategy off balance from the very beginning. Intelligence reports all pointed to massive armored formations which would, if used properly, be very hard hitting and could likely rupture the Soviet line. Timoshenko, as the chief of army staff as well as the commander of the 1st Belarussian Front, could not allow that to happen. His career depended upon it, and the survival of the Soviet Union as an independent state.
Thus, the offensive into Lithuania began on the 2nd of April as Lieutenant General Malinovskij’s 3rd Baltic Front attacked from Wilno toward Kaunas with its eighteen frontline divisions. They began pushing forward through the frost and the swamp, opposed by two corps of Anglo-German troops, of which the British were of far inferior quality and were quickly being overwhelmed despite Malinovskij’s inability to command large troops due to his limited staff size.
The attack toward Kaunas has begun.
Realizing that Malinovskij could use some support, however, to limit casualties, Timoshenko ordered Major General Antonov’s 2nd Baltic Front and his own 1st Belarussian Front into the fray, hitting the beleaguered defenders from two more axes. Under such pressure, despite the innate advantages of the defense, the terrain and the weather, the three British divisions quickly began crumbling and the resistance of the German corps began weakening as well. Air support by the sturmovik ground-attack planes was proving itself valuable in levering the defenders out of exposed positions. Timoshenko was confident that the battle was decisively going his way and turned his attention to another battle to the south.
The greater attack upon the Anglo-German positions in front of Kaunas.
To the south, Field Marshal Fedorenko’s 2nd Belarussian Front was beginning to perform its sickle cut toward the Baltic coast by attacking from the region of Bialystok toward Suwalki. It was a situation similar to that at Kaunas; eighteen Soviet divisions attacking against six Anglo-German divisions, evenly split. The British were inferior to both the Germans and the Soviets. Within two hours of the beginning of the battle, Fedorenko launched a furious assault that took the commanding general, a British officer, by surprise and caused him to lose some grip on the battle he was attempting to conduct. As at Kaunas, the British began crumbling quickly. It was only shortly after the assault that the entire Anglo segment of the defensive line was collapsed and its soldiers streaming westward in disarray. The Germans, now alone and terribly outnumbered, quickly began crumbling as well.
The battle of Suwalki, at 0700 and 2300 of the 3rd.
Timoshenko smirked; the British did not worry him at all. Their tactical leadership was poor, their troops poorer and their presence in the theater of war bordering on negligible when it came to efficiency, if not in numbers. When his thoughts turned to the Germans, however, Timoshenko bit his lip lightly. They were fine soldiers, better even than their Soviet counterparts, and well led. Their infantry was performing well and their armored units were supposed to be even better, though they had not yet made an appearance. Timoshenko stared at the map, wondering whether he would succeed in encircling the Anglo-German forces in Lithuania. He was also wondering where the main German blow would fall. It could be anywhere.