This week, seventy years ago, the 29th Motorized Infantry Division from General Heinz Guderian’s Second Panzergruppe entered the city of Smolensk, and captured it after three days of house-to-house fighting. The Soviets did not concede that the city had fallen for another 29 days. Smolensk is one of the oldest cities in Russia and is located 224 miles west/southwest of Moscow, on the east side of the Dniepr River, between the Russian capital and the Belorussian capital of Minsk. Today it has a population of 325,000.
    In July 1941, Smolensk lay directly in the path of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s onrushing Army Group Center, whose objective was the capture of the Soviet capital. General von Bock had commanded Army Group North during the Polish Campaign and Army Group “B” during the campaign in the West. He was among the nine Army generals to receive the field marshal’s baton after the successful Western Campaign, which resulted in the conquest of France, Belgium and The Netherlands.
    Army Group Center consisted of Second, Fourth and Ninth Armies, commanded by Baron Maximilian von Weichs, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge and General Adolf Strauss, respectively, together with Second and Third Panzergruppes commanded by Generals Heinz Guderian and Hermann Hoth, respectively, and Luftflotte 2, commanded by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, Army Group Center numbered more than 1,000,000 soldiers, supported by 14,000 guns and 1,700 tanks.
    By the time of the Battle of Smolensk, the Red Army was reeling, desperately trying to slow the Axis advance. Vilnius, Riga and Minsk, the capitals of Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus, respectively, had been captured, and the Soviet Air Force - Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily (VVS) - virtually destroyed. The Red Army was a shambles. Commanders were being shuffled. New divisions were hastily being created to replace those destroyed by the onrushing enemy. Because of its lack of air cover, the Red Army didn’t know the location of enemy units and was unprotected from the ravages of the Luftwaffe.
    In 1941, Smolensk had a population of 140,000 and was an important port on the Dniepr River. The city was founded  1000 years ago, and for most of that millenium had been a part of Russia. The last time the city had faced such a trial was in 1812, when Le Grande Armeé of the great Napoléon had invaded the Russian Empire.
    Facing Army Group Center were three Fronts, or Army Groups - Western, Reserve and Central. They were commanded by, respectively: Hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko; NKVD General Ivan A. Bogdanov; and General Fyodor Isidorovich Kuznetsov.
    As they had at Minsk, the Germans intended that the two Panzergruppes would advance around the enemy’s flanks, while the infantry advanced up the middle. The two Panzergruppes would then meet in the rear of the enemy, surrounding and annihilating it. Although this tactic had worked to perfection against the Belorussian capital, it was contrary to the advice of General Guderian and others. More than 300,000 Soviet troops were captured, and the Third, Tenth and Thirteenth Soviet Armies of the Western Front destroyed. Of course, that was in the first days of the blitzkrieg and the Red Army was in a state of shock. Nevertheless, the Front’s commander, Dimitri Pavlov, together with his staff, was recalled to Moscow and shot. Two days later, Andrey Yeremenko was given his command, which held until wounded. In August he was given command of the newly created Briansk Front.
    General Guderian believed that once the Panzer units had broken through the Soviet lines, they should make straight for the Soviet capital of Moscow, instead of encircling the Soviet troops. This was the tactic that had been used with devastating success in France. Once the Panzer units had broken through at Sedan, and crossed the Meuse River, they headed straight for the English Channel. Of course, the spatial differences between France and the Soviet Union were enormous. More importantly, Hitler, mindful of the disaster that befell Napoléon’s Grande Armée when it captured Moscow but failed to destroy the Imperial Russian Armies in the field, decreed that the Wehrmacht’s objective would be the destruction of the Red Army.
    By the end of June, German troops were crossing the Berezina River. On July 3, 1941, the same day that Comrade Stalin addressed the Soviet nation and urged its citizens to fight a “Great Patriotic War” against the invaders, German Army Commander-in-Chief, Franz Halder wrote in his diary, that, “...the objective to shatter the bulk of the Russian Army this side of the Dvina and Dniepr Rivers has been accomplished. East of these rivers, we will encounter nothing more than partial forces. It is probably no overstatement to say that the Russian Campaign has been won in the space of two weeks.” (Emphasis supplied.)
    On July 6, the Soviets hurled 700 tanks from Lt. General Pavel Kurochkin’s 20th Army at Third Panzergruppe’s XXXIX Panzerkorps, commanded by Rudolf Schmidt, in an effort to blunt the northern pincer’s advance. This was repulsed, after three days, with the loss of much of the Soviet armor. But the advance was becoming more difficult for the invaders as bridges were blown, mines laid and resistence stiffened.
    The Western Dvina River was crossed, on July 7. Vitebsk was captured on July 9. On July 11, the Dnieper River was crossed by the Second Panzergruppe and Marshal Timoshenko was given command of all forces facing Army Group Center. Two days later Mogilev was encircled, trapping two corps of the Soviet 13th Army. The 29th Motorized Infantry Division was only 11 miles from Smolensk. On July 16, it entered the city. Its commander was Walter von Boltenstern, who would be awarded the Knight’s Cross in August and die in a Soviet prison in 1952.
    That same day, the Soviet dictator’s son, Lt. Jacob Djugashvili, was captured near Vitebsk. After Field Marshal Frederic Paulus was captured at Stalingrad, Hitler suggested an exchange. Stalin replied that he wasn’t going to trade a Field Marshal for a Lieutenant! His son died in a German POW camp.
    By July 18, the two German pincers were only ten miles from closing. The gap would not close for another eight days, thanks to the tenacity of troops under General Konstantin Rokossovsky, and General Guderian’s rush to get to the next objective - Yelnya. In that time, through that gap, 200,000 Soviet soldiers escaped.
    On July 20, the U.S.S.R. designated a new People’s Commissar for Defense - Joseph Stalin. Three days later, General Kurochkin’s 20th Army launched a futile attack against General Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2.
    Mogilev finally fell on July 26. Today, it is the third largest city in Belarus, with a population of 367,000.
    The next day, XXXIX Panzerkorps, of  Panzergruppe 3, joined with XXXXVII Panzerkorps of Panzergruppe 2, east of Smolensk. Trapped were the 16th, 19th and 20th Soviet armies, commanded by Mikhail K. Lukin, Ivan Koniev, and Pavel Kurochkin. An additional ten days would be needed to liquidate the pocket, in which, at least, 300,000 Soviet soldiers were captured and 3400 tanks and 3000 guns captured or destroyed.
    Despite the apparent successes of the German blitzkrieg, with enormous numbers of prisoners taken, equipment captured and territory occupied, the invaders were suffering significant casualties. And the enemy had the space and soldiers to trade. Eighteenth Panzer Division’s commander, Maj. Gen. Walther K. Nehring, observed that the heavy casualties must stop, “...if we do not intend to win ourselves to death.”
    The combination of the stubborn Soviet resistance and the German decision to concentrate on the Soviet forces defending Kiev, bought the Red Army a precious month to prepare and strengthen the defenses of the Soviet capital.
    On August 11, General Halder noted in his diary, that,
“The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian Colossus. Soviet divisions are not armed and equipped according to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But there they are, and after smashing dozens of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen. They are near their own resources, while we are moving further and further away from ours. And so our troops, sprawled over an immense front line, without any depth, are subjected to the incessant attacks of the enemy.”
    By now, General Guderian’s XLVI Panzerkorps had captured Yelnya, but found themselves on the defensive, trying to hold, until the infantry arrived.
    Five days later, Stalin, in his role as Commissar of Defense, issued Order #270, which prohibited the surrender of Soviet soldiers. The penalty was death. Stalin commented, “There are no Soviet prisoners-of-war, only traitors.” This order would have serious repercussions on those Soviet POWs who survived German captivity and returned to the postwar Soviet state. As Stalin observed, “It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army!”
    Gomel fell on August 21. The 850-year-old city is the second largest in Belarus with a population of 480,000 and is located in the eastern part of the country near Ukraine.
    Beginning August 30, the Red Army’s Reserve Front, now commanded by Georgy Zhukov, began counterattacking the new German positions, eventually forcing the invaders to abandon the bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Desna River at Yelnya. The 1000 year-old village, whose name means “Spruce Grove,” had less than 10,000 population. It is 40 miles southeast of Smolensk. On September 6, it was recaptured. German casualties numbered 45,000. It was the first successful Soviet counteroffensive and the first time the vaunted Wehrmacht had been forced back. Several Soviet divisions were honored for their effort by being designated as “Guards” divisions. It was the first time that a division in the Red Army had received that honor. It was also the first time that the Red Army unveiled its mobile, multiple rocket launcher known as “Katyusha.” They were later dubbed “Stalin’s Organs.”  
    The first snow fell on September 12.  General “Winter” was on his way to rescue the Red Army!
    The time bought at Yelnya and Smolensk was used to fortify the Soviet capital for the coming battle. Two years later the Wehrmacht and the Red Army would again fight for Smolensk and Yelnya.
    Minsk was designated a “Hero City” on June 26, 1974. Smolensk and Murmansk became the last two, of twelve Hero Cities, when they were so designated by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. on May 6, 1985.  They joined Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Odessa, Kiev, Moscow, Kerch, Tula and Novorossiysk.
    On October 8, 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin conferred the status of “City of Military Glory” on Yelnya.
    Smolensk was the destination of the Polish military plane, carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and many other Polish officials, which crashed on April 10, 2010. They were traveling to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Massacre at Katyn.

NEXT: SIEGE OF BREST

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.