The War in Earnest
In a bit of irony, on July 4th the city of Paris finally fell to the United States VI Corps under Gen. Marshall. Since their landings in Normandy nearly a month ago, the Allies were finding a very difficult time of, as the Germans were reluctant to give up any ground. They were however able to continue their gains up the Italian peninsula, working up past Rome.
Group Green
After completing the conquest of Lwow, Blucher's Army Group turned north to assault Rowne, the next target in the outer thrust from the south. Like the previous battles, it was very one sided. Rowne fell before an absolutely massive force coming from Zjitomir and Lwow, 16 German divisions were put to flight with hardly a fight. The main thrust of what was the outer of the two thrusts from the south, it was well head of its inner counterpart who was still slogging it through the swamps before it met its first battle in Pinsk. To the north, Katukov's 42d Army continued its march down the Baltic coast, capturing Liepaja and working its way towards an undefended Memel, with the 30th Guards Armored Corps protecting its eastern flank.
By the evening of July 14th, it was becoming apparent to the staff that the main objective of Operation Titan was beginning to take a back seat to its periphery operations. While the main north and south pincer thrusts to encircle the Germans in Minsk was being bogged down by slow and difficult terrain, the outer forces were having a much quicker and successful go of it, and even threatened to complete a much larger encirclement than the main thrusts into Pinsk and Wilno.
While there was debate on whether to complete the encirclement with the outside forces, and then move in for the kill on the much larger entrapped contingent, there had been too much put in motion to stop the inner thrusts. Nearly a hundred divisions were days from attacking Pinsk and Wilno, with hundreds of planes in support in the midst of several days of continued bombing. It was ordered thus to have a double encirclement, with the outer ring free to seize what ground it may from the little defended Polish interior.
Group Blue
In Romania, Field Marshal Tiulenev felt the need to protect the flank of the Chisinau force as it assaulted the heavily defended coast at Constanta. To do so it meant attacking and driving out the defenders in Iasi. After continued aerial bombardment, 31 divisions under Tiulenev from Beltsy and Lwow as well as the 3rd Tank Army from Chisinau entered Iasi. The size of the defense continued to grow before the battle, and by the mid month when the hostilities broke out, 22 combined divisions of Germans and Romanians guarded the area, with Antonescu in command. Despite one of the more numerically equal battles of the offensive, hounded by the air, the defenders of Iasi were having a very rough go of it.
The Day the Earth Shook
July 15th was a very important day for Operation Titan. State Radio in Moscow proudly announced this day as the "biggest day of the war against the German menace." And so it was. While a million man battle raged on in Romania between Tiulenev and Atonescu over the city of Iasi, major fighting erupted along the entire front. Long awaited engagements began in Pinsk, Wilno, and Talinn. Russia's first invasion of Finland since the Winter War also began, as Ryhlov's 7th Army moved into Sortavala north of Leningrad. As one English historian wrote in later years, it was "The day the earth shook. All the battles in Normandy and Italy were mere skirmishes compared to the enormity of the July 15th clashes on the Eastern front." In mere ground divisions alone, an estimated 180 Axis and Russian divisions were engaged in the fighting over six different battlefields, as well as an enormous array of fighters and bombers over each war zone. The amount of bullets, bombs and artillery shells spent in one day will probably never be equaled, nor perhaps the cost of life from conventional warfare.
While the other battles were just beginning, the fight against the Romanians in Iasi was wrapping up. By noon of the 15th, Antonescu called the general retreat back across the Siret. It was a surprise to the Russians that the enemy had fled the battlefield so quickly, as it left the Russians in considerably better position to support the Chisinau front and descend towards Bucharest. The forces were ordered to halt in Iasi to resupply, as new recruits were brought in to fill out the ranks. Quite a few divisions had felt the sting of battle, and needed to be brought back up to proper fighting strength before moving on to the next objective.
With troops in command of Iasi and the Chisinau force firmly on the Romanain's front step poised for drives towards Bucharest, Tiulenev felt confident he had more than enough manpower for the job of knocking Romania out of the war. Consequently, Shtern's 32nd Army in Beltsy was transferred to middle theatre command and Group Green. One of Stalin's main wishes, aside from destruction of the German army, was to beat his western "allies" to Berlin. He knew Berlin and the German heartland was a great bargaining chip for post war spheres of influence. While small armored groups were moving up towards Poland, there was very light Soviet strength in this area, and with the arrival of Dietrich's 11 divisions in southern Poland, the 32nd Army was immediately sent out to secure the flank of the forces heading towards Warsaw.
In Finland, the two divisions of defenders proved no match for the 7 divisions of Ryhlov's 7th Army, retreating inland after a token fight. Encouraged, he ordered 11th Corps inland to Mikkili, while the 32nd Army was ordered to attack Joensuu to the north.
Talinn had been cut off when Voronov's forces broke off from the main assault to capture the Baltic ports. A submarine net had been sent out to cut off supplies via sea, as well as the naval fleet stationed in Leningrad. The able minded Tukhachevsky led the assault based primarily out of Novgorod, which consisted of the 8th, 22nd, 67th and 2nd Shock Armies. Kesselring commanded the sixteen entrapped divisions, many of which had retreated there after being decimated or cut off in the previous battles for Pskov, Rezekne and Riga. Consequently half of his divisions were either unfit for battle, or barely existed except in name. Surrounded by water on two sides, with Russians approaching from three more, his chances were grim before the battle even started.
After a quick and decisive battle at Pskov in late June, the encirclement thrust out of the north know as White hit a roadblock. Wilno being the next target on their agenda, it required a coordinated attack from the considerable forces in Pskov under Zhukov, as well as a large contingent from Timoshenko's army in Vitebsk. The fog of war happens not only to platoons and regiments, but at the theatre level as well. Because of various factors, including supply difficulties, blown bridges, and mis-communication on a grand scale, Zhukov's force was delayed by nearly a week, while Timoshenko's forces hit Wilno on the 15th on schedule. The result is that less than half of the planned force arrived on the battlefield. Complicating the matter , the Germans had heavily reinforced Wilno in recent weeks, relocating many divisions from the "pocket" in Minsk and Mogiljov. Perhaps sensing the coming encirclement and wishing to escape, or deeming Wilno as a "last line", Witzelben had over 30 divisions stationed in Wilno as the battle began. Timoshenko found himself outnumbered, his 6th and 4th Shock Armies comprised of merely 22 divisions. Realizing the critical error in their planning, theatre commander Zhukov ordered around the clock bombing with every bomber in the area to help weaken the enemy.
In the battle of Pinsk, the much awaited southern thrust to encircle the Germans in Minsk, two full Army groups were sent into the battle, as Egorev led an enormous force consisting of the 1st, 3rd, 38th, 47th, 61st and 69th Armies. A much larger German force had originally been stationed there, but as the bodies were needed elsewhere they had been removed. By time the Russians arrived, Rundstedt had merely 13 divisions defending the area. The troops, like many on the eastern front had begun to feel the pinch of continued shortages from the continued bombing of production centers, and a vastly overextended army.
Nearly missed on this day of large scale clashes was the fact that Memel fell to Katukov's 42nd Army after a brief fight with a single weakened German division. With the Axis tied up in such large battles elsewhere, he was given immediate permission to continue south and capture Konigsberg: the first Russian army to enter pre war German holdings!
Despite all the major battles going on all over the front, the one at Wilno was the one most focused on by Army staff. A major screw up in communication, logistics and mobility had resulted in Zhukov's forces in Pskov from missing the battle entirely. Outnumbered, Timoshenko's Army Group had the toughest go of any of the campaigns that week. Despite this fact, and the fact that the Axis defenders in Wilno were the best equipped and supplied in any of the battles, on July 16th the Army staff could not believe their ears when Timoshenko relayed that Witzelben's entire defense was falling back towards Minsk, still in good condition. What was considered an extremely illogical retreat, it paved the way for Timoshenko to move his entire Army group towards their main objective: Grodno.
The size of the Russian force was overwhelming on all fronts. As calamitous a day as July 15th was for so many men engaging in battle up and down the front, the next day proved even more important. Mere hours after Wilno fell to Timoshenko's undersized force, what was thought to be the toughest nut to crack, the Pripet Marshes around Pinsk, fell to Egorev's forces with very light casualties to the Russians. Rundstedt's men were too ill supplied to fight a battle, and most were out of ammunition just a few hours into the battle. With in minutes of Egorev's proud dispatch to Moscow, Tukhachevsky radioed announcing the surrender and capture of Kessilring's forces in Talinn. 13 German divisions with their backs against the Gulf of Finland laid down their arms and became prisoners of war of the Soviet Union.
It was a grand 48 hours for Stalin's Red Army, with 5 major battles won, each very convincingly. It was an equally disastrous day for the Germans on the eastern front. They had lost 17 divisions in Talinn, and had been beaten back into the "pocket" from the north/south thrusts of the inner encirclement of Timoshenko and Egorev. As the jaws of these thrusts headed off to meet at the Niemen River, whatever German troops that lay to their east, including those retreating from Wilno and Pinsk, would be completely encircled by an unrelenting sea of red, left to starve in the marshes, to be finished off and destroyed at Stalin's whim when the time was right.
