Today, it is often argued that since the Stalin Line failed to stop the Germans and they entered Minsk on only the seventh day of the war, its construction must have been a pointless waste of money.
However, these defensive structures were not built to provide protection against Germany, with which the USSR did not even share a border in the 1930s. At that time, the USSR bordered only Poland and Latvia in Belarus. The principal purpose of the fortified regions of that period was to hold the border areas until the main forces could be mobilised, rather than to halt and defeat the enemy completely, as many mistakenly believe.
In 1939, Poland ceased to exist as a state, and the USSR acquired a common border with Germany, albeit 500 km west of the former border. The old defensive structures were now deep in the rear of the Red Army. Construction began on a new ‘line’ along the new border, to which covering troops were transferred and weapons and specialist equipment were transported, some of it removed from the old border.
It is worth recalling the enemy that had reached the gates of our country. On 10 May 1940, Germany invaded Belgium. That same day, the whole world was astonished by the ease with which just 78 German paratroopers captured the seemingly impregnable Fort Eben-Emael, defended by a garrison of 650 men. No one expected the Germans simply to descend silently from the sky in unpowered gliders, landing directly within the fort, and in just 15 minutes destroy six of Eben-Emael’s seven principal structures using shaped charges and explosives. The Belgians lost 69 men killed, while the Germans lost only six. The capture of the fort and two bridges across the River Meuse opened the way for the Wehrmacht into the heart of Belgium.
The Wehrmacht employed the same astonishing tactics against our army. On 24 June 1941, after taking Vilnius, three entire German panzer divisions turned towards Molodechno and advanced on Minsk. When the commander of the Western Front, Pavlov, was informed of this, he did not believe it. Considering such a deep armoured encirclement sheer madness, he sent the anti-tank guns towards Lida, where they became bogged down fighting Wehrmacht infantry divisions that did not have a single tank. Meanwhile, the German 7th, 12th and 20th Panzer Divisions left Vilnius and continued their advance into… an operational void. Despite encountering fierce resistance from Soviet units near Molodechno, by the evening of 25 June the German tanks had nevertheless reached the boundaries of the Minsk Fortified Region. In the fighting near Radoshkovichi, our reconnaissance troops managed to capture enemy maps that gave 27 June as the date for the German capture of Minsk. Yet here too, rather than becoming embroiled in prolonged fighting, the enemy units swept around Minsk in a wide arc from the north. Their sudden appearance near Ostroshitsky Gorodok even gave rise to a legend that the Germans had established a landing ground there and were airlifting troops to it. On 27 June, having severed the road to Moscow, units of the Wehrmacht’s 7th Panzer Division entered Smolevichi. Minsk was trapped. Meanwhile, far to the west, Red Army units had only just abandoned Białystok. They could not have imagined that, 400 km to their east, deep in their rear, the enemy had already cut off their line of retreat along the Moscow road.
Our Historical and Cultural Complex is located near Zaslavl and occupies only a tiny part of the Minsk Fortified Region, whose defensive belt extended for 140 km. By April 1941, only one of the six machine-gun and artillery battalions remained in the fortified region. Captain A. Sugakov was appointed to command it. However, the battalion barely had enough personnel to perform guard duties. Although some weapons and equipment were still held in storage, much of it was incomplete or unserviceable. Communications and power supplies were already out of operation in some pillboxes. Nor was it possible to fire from casemates with defective ventilation: the troops would have suffocated from the propellant gases.
Arseny Sugakov himself described the situation as follows: ‘When I took command of the machine-gun battalion in April 1941, I found the following deficiencies:
Discipline in the battalion had deteriorated beyond all bounds, and the men complained of disruptions to food supplies. There was a food shortfall amounting to 10,500 roubles.
All weapons had been removed from the pillboxes and taken to depots in Zelyonoye; the artillery barrels had been piled two tiers high in the open, the optical equipment had been smashed, the machine guns were covered in rust, and the pillboxes’ underground communications and water-supply systems were completely inoperative.
On 28 May, I received orders from District Commander Pavlov to begin repairing and camouflaging the pillboxes.
When I began taking over the pillboxes, I discovered that their documentation had been removed, mixed up and stored in that state at battalion headquarters, while landmarks used as reference points (individual trees) had been felled by collective farms for their own needs.
I decided to submit a memorandum to the District Commander detailing these and many other shortcomings.
On 3 June, the district commander, Pavlov, convened a meeting at which he ridiculed my comments on the condition of the pillboxes set out in my memorandum. He even reproached me, saying that while in the reserve I had fallen behind as a commander. These were his exact words: ‘Captain Sugakov does not know that we have built a different defensive line along the new border. The collective farms will use the old pillboxes to store potatoes.’
On 15 June 1941, I received orders to reinstall the weapons in the pillboxes. Even ten days would not have been enough to complete such a task. Moreover, military engineering specialists were needed. I therefore sought assistance from the First Secretary of the Zaslavl District Party Committee, who provided me with 85 two-horse carts for three days. Day and night, we transported the weapons to the pillboxes. The sector extended from Dzerzhinsk to Pleshchenitsy. There were only enough weapons to equip 105 of the 242 machine-gun pillboxes. District headquarters did not send any engineers to restore the pillboxes’ life-support systems. We had to restore the power supply and ventilation ourselves.’
On 30 May 1941, in addition to Sugakov’s battalion, another three artillery and machine-gun battalions arrived in the Minsk Fortified Region, together with the fortified region headquarters and a signals platoon, 18 caponier artillery platoons armed with 76 mm guns, and nine anti-tank artillery sections equipped with 45 mm guns. Colonel Sergei Filippovich Lyalkov was appointed commandant of the Minsk Fortified Region, while Captain Ivan Kuzmich Yukhimets became its chief of staff. Thus, on the eve of war, the fortified region began to come back to life, although it was still two battalions short of its full complement.
Many may wonder: ‘Would it really have been so difficult simply to bring the missing guns and machine guns into the pillboxes and use regular troops to delay the enemy?’ But only someone who has never been inside a pillbox could reason that way. In fact, a standard heavy machine gun had to be mounted on a special casemate mounting inside a pillbox.
With this type of mounting, the machine gun was traversed not by the gunner’s hands, but by his feet. The machine gunner sat on a seat rigidly attached to the mounting and used the force of his legs to rotate the entire assembly to the left or right.
In addition, the machine gun in the pillbox was connected to a special system for extracting propellant gases. Without it, the gunner could simply be overcome by fumes accumulating in the casemate.
Installing a gun in a pillbox required a special caponier mounting and particularly powerful ventilation because of the much greater volume of propellant gases produced.
Despite all these difficulties, the Minsk Fortified Region nevertheless saw action.
The Wehrmacht’s 7th, 20th and 12th Panzer Divisions advanced on Minsk from the direction of Vilnius. Only our 64th Rifle Division stood in their way. Its front extended for approximately 50 km rather than the prescribed 12 km. Consequently, the divisional artillery found it difficult to provide fire support for its rifle units, let alone the pillboxes of the fortified region.
The German 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions advanced on Minsk from the direction of Baranovichi. The 108th Rifle Division, whose front extended for 40 km, stood in their path. Both our rifle divisions were supported by the pillboxes of the Minsk Fortified Region. The 100th Rifle Division was stationed in the settlement of Uruchye, east of Minsk, while the 161st Rifle Division was held in reserve.
The daily Wehrmacht operational reports provide the clearest evidence of the growing resistance from our troops in the Minsk Fortified Region. The report of the German 12th Panzer Division for 26 June states:
‘The resistance of the Soviet troops has grown stronger than on the previous days of fighting. This is particularly true of the fortifications along the old Russian border north-east of Rakov. Heavy Russian fire from wooded areas and settlements has also been reported. The Russians now have snipers as well: in one infantry platoon, 12 of its 45 soldiers were killed by shots to the head!’
The following day, the division was reinforced with a motorised infantry battalion and a tank regiment, and ordered to capture Minsk by evening. However, it still failed to enter the city on 27 June. Throughout that day and even the next, the Wehrmacht’s 12th Panzer Division fought extremely fierce battles against the defenders of the Soviet pillboxes. The Russians’ fierce resistance is documented in a detailed report on the fighting of 27 and 28 June, which describes the experience of overcoming Soviet pillboxes:
‘West of Zaslavl, the division had to spend two full days destroying 26 Russian bunkers.
Almost all the pillboxes in the division’s line of advance were well camouflaged, without exception,
had extensive, overlapping fields of fire that effectively covered the roads and approaches to the fortifications themselves.
Almost all the bunkers were found to have three embrasures.
Observation from the pillboxes was carried out using periscopes. Some of the bunkers had casemates that were completely isolated from one another, meaning that each had to be destroyed separately.
To locate the carefully camouflaged pillboxes, a detachment from the tank regiment outflanked the front from the north and drew the fortifications’ fire onto itself. The detachment suffered heavy losses, but succeeded in identifying all the enemy firing positions. Heavy mortars and indirect fire from 105 mm guns were used to finish off the Russians defending their pillboxes. Once the garrisons had largely been dealt with, direct fire was brought to bear. The 37 mm anti-tank guns penetrated the armoured embrasure shutters, while rapid-firing 20 mm anti-aircraft guns completed the destruction of the fortifications’ defenders.
As soon as the pillboxes had been suppressed, assault groups mounted on Panzer IV tanks broke into the Russian positions and completed their defeat.
Russian resistance varied and may have depended on the individual commander. Some pillbox garrisons fought to the last man. Others closed their embrasures at the first direct-fire shot and came out to attack. Others abandoned their casemates and took up positions in the forward zone, where they defended themselves with exceptional tenacity. There were also silent bunkers that showed no signs of life. Yet just when the assault groups thought the Russians had been dealt with, they would suddenly open up with devastating point-blank fire. These ‘resurrected’ pillboxes caused us considerable trouble on the evening of 27 June and slowed the division’s advance. It is therefore recommended that every bunker, without exception, be destroyed by special combat engineer teams.”
As this report shows, the German army, then in its second year of war, already had experience of destroying pillboxes. Following a well-established method, the Germans sent tanks into battle to draw fire. When our pillboxes opened fire, the enemy marked these firing positions on their maps, after which their suppression was only a matter of time. It was not difficult to hit the embrasure of a stationary pillbox. The embrasure of an artillery pillbox was therefore protected by an armour plate, which was lowered only while the gun was firing and then raised again.
It was enough to sever the special, though not particularly thick, cables used to lower the armour plate, leaving the gun defenceless. Its spherical mantlet could protect the gun crew only from shell fragments, while the gun itself would be put out of action after just a few minutes of intense fighting.
Today, the road from Molodechno to Minsk passes near the village of Loshany, beside which the Stalin Line Historical and Cultural Complex is located. When visitors descend into our Artillery Half-Caponier No. 134 and see its gun pointing towards the road with its brightly coloured cars, they may imagine that it was from this very position that our troops fired on German tanks advancing towards Minsk.
In 1941, however, the road ran beyond the forest, further to the right, near the villages of Matski and Boubli.
По ней к Минску рвалась 20-я танковая дивизия вермахта. Путь ей преградили части 64-й стрелковой дивизии, которые опирались на доты Минского укрепрайона. Дорога на Минск здесь была в секторах обстрела артиллерийского капонира № 06, полукапонира №02 и нескольких пулемётных дотов.
Сохранились воспоминания бывшего заместителя политрука Филиппа Рябова об обороне капонира № 06 у деревни Мацки:
«26 июня 1941 года в доте нас было 22 человека. Двадцать воинов и две женщины, жёны наших командиров. Дот представлял собой четырехпушечную батарею 76-миллиметровых орудий, т. е. два огневых взвода, командирами которых были участники финской кампании младшие лейтенанты Петрочук и Рощин. Помню, накануне первого боя позвонили из штаба и предупредили, чтобы гарнизон был готов к возможной схватке с фашистами. Могут атаковать и танки. Поэтому с самого рассвета мы внимательно следили за местностью. У перископа постоянно дежурили то младший лейтенант Рощин, то я, то рядовой Женжеро (в начале войны ему было присвоено звание младшего сержанта, а мне – заместителя политрука). Все воины нашего небольшого гарнизона были в готовности номер один.
‘I can see German tanks on the old Minsk–Vilnius road,’ Zhenzhero reported. ‘Six vehicles in all. Reference point: the map symbol on the right and the outermost tree at the edge of the wood on the left.’
‘Guns one and two! Armour-piercing rounds! Load!’ ordered Junior Lieutenant Petrochuk, who commanded the gun crews. The gunners quickly brought the leading vehicles into their crosshairs.
The pillbox shook as both guns fired simultaneously and filled with propellant smoke.
‘Well done!’ Zhenzhero shouted. ‘Both rounds hit the target.’
The first rounds set two enemy tanks ablaze.
Less than ten minutes later, another two tanks came to a halt on the road with their tracks disabled. With their next salvo, the gunners blew the turret off one of them and set the other on fire. The remaining tanks turned back and withdrew into cover.
That day, we repelled several German attacks. Not a single enemy vehicle made it along the road towards Minsk.
On the morning of 27 June, following an artillery bombardment, the Germans launched an attack. But as soon as we opened fire, they immediately withdrew and sent their bombers against the pillbox.
The intense air raid destroyed the kitchen, the food store, the commander's hut, the ‘Red Corner’, the power unit that supplied the pillbox with electricity, and the fuel stocks for the engine. Hard times followed for the garrison: the ventilation stopped working and the water supply was cut off. The garrison had to fight in pitch darkness, without water or food, apart from a sack of rusks and half a sack of sugar. So much propellant gas accumulated in the upper casemates that the men began to suffocate. Junior Lieutenant Petrochuk ordered everyone who was not firing at the enemy to remain in the lower casemates. But even there, there was no escape from the smoke. To make matters worse, the shells were running out.
When darkness fell and the enemy attacks eased somewhat, Junior Lieutenant Petrochuk sent Privates Myshak, Sinitsyn and Dergachev, together with me, to the village of Matski to obtain paraffin lamps or lanterns, food and dressings from the villagers, as there were now wounded men in the pillbox.
We cautiously crawled towards the outermost houses in the village, but they were empty. We moved on to the next ones, but they too were deserted. The entire village seemed lifeless. How relieved we were to find an old woman in one of the houses! She told us that all the villagers had gone into hiding in shelters, and with her help we found the collective farm foreman. We told him that the pillbox had no lighting or food, the ventilation system was not working, our ammunition was running low, and there were wounded men but no dressings. The foreman listened carefully and promised to help. About an hour and a half later, the residents of Matski had collected around a dozen kerosene lamps and ‘Bat’ lanterns, bread, lard, several bedsheets for use as bandages, and cans of milk. All this was delivered to the pillbox. Meanwhile, collective farmer Nikolai Stasevich spent the entire night helping our men transport shells by horse from the reserve depot to the pillbox.
Seeing how the local residents cared for them, our men vowed to fight the enemy to the last shell and the last round, and not to let the German forces reach Minsk.
During the night, we tried switching the ventilation system to battery power, but the batteries were too weak. To clear at least some of the powder smoke from the casemates, we once again had to operate the ventilation unit by hand.
On the morning of 28 June, the Germans once again opened artillery fire on the pillbox, but it did us no harm. The walls and ceiling of our fortress were solid. When Zhenzhero reported the approach of tanks, Myshak and Lutsenko raised the armoured shutters. Taking careful aim, gunners Vasilyev and Butromenko knocked out two German tanks. The Germans then opened fire on the pillbox’s embrasures. An enemy shell damaged the mechanism for raising the armour plate. Junior Lieutenant Petrochuk and Private Gafiz Zainutdinov volunteered to repair it themselves. They attempted to fix the mechanism under enemy fire, but a shell exploded nearby, killing Gafiz and wounding Petrochuk in the arm.
During the next attack, a German shell pierced the spherical mantlet of the casemate gun
and killed the gunner and loader with shell fragments. Four soldiers and Junior Lieutenant Petrochuk were wounded. The wounded men were bandaged by Roshchin’s and Petrochuk’s wives.
The German forces made several attempts to block the Artillery Caponier, but each time it was saved by a three-embrasure Machine-Gun Pillbox, which cut off the German infantry. In turn, our caponier supported the machine-gunners by destroying the tanks with artillery fire.
Soon afterwards, following a heavy artillery bombardment, the Germans launched an attack from the direction of the village of Krinitsy.
The forest offered cover, allowing them to approach the caponier undetected, as it began only a few metres away. However, the German forces were spotted from the Machine-Gun Pillbox, and the artillerymen in the caponier were immediately warned.
Junior Lieutenant Roshchin ordered Privates Lutsenko and Bobkov to man one machine gun, and Sinitsyn and Dergachyov the other. Having allowed the German troops to approach at close range, they opened point-blank fire on command. The Germans had not expected machine-gun fire from our positions and tried to change position. As soon as they moved elsewhere, however, the Machine-Gun Pillboxes opened fire on them.
Of course, this attack was repulsed, but the overall situation in our artillery pillbox was deteriorating. We were running out of ammunition, and by then we could only fetch water at night. The last time, I volunteered to go myself. I took a vacuum flask, covered it so that it would not rattle, attached several water bottles to my belt and crawled out of the pillbox. On the way to the river, I came under fire several times and had to remain hidden for long periods. Eventually, I reached the river, filled the flask and bottles, drank some water myself and, moving like a lizard and trying to make no noise, began the return journey. It took me about two hours to deliver the water to the pillbox.”
The recollections of A. I. Abakunchik, Chairman of the Matski Village Council, have also survived:
“Whenever a German air raid ended, the people of our village would listen with bated breath to the sounds of battle. Was the garrison still alive? Were they still firing at the enemy? But the pillbox lived on and continued to fight. It was not until 29 June, when not a single shell remained, that the defenders disabled all the equipment, removed the breechblocks from the guns and left the pillbox late in the evening. Several days after their departure, Filipp Ivanovich Ryabov suddenly returned to Matski. He had been badly beaten and was exhausted. There were no Germans in the village that day, so the villagers came to hear his story.”
Filipp Ivanovich then gave the following account of the final days of the fighting:
“By the end of 29 June, two of the caponier’s guns had already been destroyed. Wounded men from the garrison, other pillboxes and field units had gathered in the pillbox. We had no doctor; his duties were performed by a medical orderly who had arrived from Minsk. It was difficult to hold the pillbox. Previously, we had been supported by artillery fire from the 64th Rifle Division, but on the afternoon of 28 June it ceased firing.
It turned out that by the evening of 26 June, the artillery was already running short of shells, as no supplies had arrived from the rear. The commander of the 64th Division sent 15 vehicles to Minsk to collect shells, but they never returned. The shortage of 152 mm shells was particularly acute, while there were no 122 mm howitzer shells at all.
Gunfire could be heard to the east of us, but then the fighting died down. Petrochuk summoned Private Yurov and me and ordered us to find the Smolensk Regiment of the 64th Division and tell its commander to have his artillerymen begin shelling the area around our pillbox when they saw the signal of a red flare. It would not matter if they hit the pillbox—it could withstand the fire. They should bring up shells from the fortified region or from the depot at Zelyonoye.
We did not find the regiment at the designated location, but we came across a captain who, together with a group of soldiers, was preparing two heavy guns for evacuation. According to him, the Germans had surrounded the Smolensk Regiment, and headquarters had ordered the batteries to change their firing positions.
Without wasting any time, we hurried back. On the way, we spotted a group of Red Army soldiers, assumed they were from the Smolensk Regiment and approached them. But they immediately twisted our arms behind our backs: they turned out to be fascists in disguise.
That was how we ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp. Later, when we were put to work clearing rubble in Minsk, I managed to escape. I knew no one here except the residents of Matski, so I returned, hoping to recover a little and then make my way back to our forces.”
It transpired that Ryabov had developed an ulcer. He was sheltered first by Anna Ignatyevna Krivonos and then by Zinaida and Vasily Kushner. His condition began to improve, but a traitor informed the fascists that a political commissar was hiding in Matski. Ryabov was sent back to the camp. One night, the prisoners were taken to a cemetery to be shot. Taking advantage of the darkness, however, Filipp Ivanovich managed to escape. The owner of a farmstead near Zhdanovichi provided him with clothes and food, but Ryabov was soon captured again. Throughout the war, his escapes were followed by confinement in one camp after another, until he was liberated by the British in 1945. After the war, Filipp Ivanovich returned to his native Kazakhstan.
Another road ran east of Matski through Kozekovo towards Minsk. Units of the Wehrmacht’s 20th Panzer Division advanced along it, sweeping around Minsk in a wide arc.
Map showing the pillboxes along this road
Arseny Sugakov described how he experienced the outbreak of war here in his memoirs:
“At noon on 22 June, the radio announced that the enemy had crossed the border and treacherously attacked our Motherland.
On the morning of 24 June, our infantrymen opened fire with several machine guns on an aircraft that had appeared unexpectedly. Alexander Ivanovich Yefremov, commander of the 30th Rifle Regiment, rushed out to the edge of the forest, where a quadruple anti-aircraft machine-gun mount was positioned, and also opened fire. The aircraft immediately began to descend and disappeared behind the treetops. It soon emerged that, in the heat of battle, no one had noticed the stars on the aircraft, and it had indeed been shot down. There were two servicemen in the cockpit. They were wearing the uniforms of a Soviet major and senior lieutenant. Their documents identified them as ‘inspectors authorised to assess the readiness of any military unit to repel the enemy’. The document bore the signature and seal of the Belarusian Military District. They were detained because they resisted when searched. Maps of the Minsk Region printed in Germany were found on them, along with documents sewn into a tunic. During interrogation, I asked, ‘What orders did you receive from the German command?’ The major replied, ‘To kill people like you!’ I sent them to the NKVD in Zaslavl and reported the incident to the district air defence headquarters.
On 25 June 1941, the enemy reached the defensive line, and fighting broke out near the village of Kozekovo. The enemy was driven back. All its attacks that day were repulsed. On 26 June, the enemy resumed its offensive against the caponier artillery. I gave the order to open fire with every gun and machine gun. During the fighting, we disabled about 30 tanks. When I reported this to the district headquarters, they replied, ‘Where did the Germans get so many tanks?’
On 27 June, the fascists launched an offensive along the battalion’s entire defensive sector. Enemy tanks blocked one pillbox after another. The pillboxes called for assistance, but I had none to give. I tried to contact the district headquarters, but communications had been cut. I telephoned Zaslavl, but the Germans were already there. Despite its selfless resistance, our battalion was defeated by the enemy’s superior forces. I remained in the pillbox with five men. We resolved not to surrender and began withdrawing towards Minsk. We reached the Degteryovka farmstead and, together with a group of retreating soldiers who had joined us, engaged the enemy there. Almost all the soldiers were killed in the fighting. The Germans surrounded the farmstead. Its owner gave us some old civilian clothes, while I buried my Party membership card, award record booklet and other documents in the ground. We headed towards Minsk, which was very close, but the Germans nevertheless captured us on the way.’
Let us now turn to the German sources that covered these battles.
The nature of the fighting near Minsk can be judged from the account by W. Straub, who was serving at the time in the Wehrmacht’s 20th Panzer Division:
‘On 27 June, after passing Radoshkovichi, the tank battalion unexpectedly encountered a strong enemy force near Pilnitsa.
We suffered our first killed and wounded. Four Panzer IV tanks went into action around the high ground near Pilnitsa. As they approached, the tanks came under heavy anti-tank and artillery fire. Despite this, the platoon continued its advance. After a brief engagement, the platoon commander’s tank sustained three penetrations from Russian guns, and both he and his crew were wounded. They were sent to the field hospital, and Lieutenant Winneknecht assumed command of the platoon. Under his command, the platoon destroyed two anti-tank guns with certainty and probably two more. Lieutenant Seiffer’s tank knocked out an enemy tank.
After an hour and a half of artillery bombardment, Pilnitsa was captured, but we were unable to continue the advance owing to a shortage of fuel and ammunition.
The Russians selected their positions skilfully and defended them expertly, concealing themselves behind trees and bushes. As a rule, their chosen positions commanded the surrounding terrain and high ground. The enemy employed anti-tank guns, mortars, artillery and armoured cars.
To our right was marshland, while to our left the terrain was difficult to traverse. We were therefore unable to outflank the enemy. Until the artillery summoned by radio arrived, our battery maintained a methodical bombardment of identified targets while conserving shells. When the promised artillery arrived and opened heavy fire on the Russians, their resistance ceased and my tank battalion continued its advance. The bodies of fallen Soviet soldiers lay among the abandoned anti-tank gun, mortar and machine-gun positions. Their artillery and armoured cars managed to withdraw.’
Near Putniki, the tank battalion was attacked by Russian aircraft. That evening, the battalion encountered strong enemy resistance and could advance no further. Within a very short time, it lost four men killed, four wounded and no fewer than three tanks! We took up defensive positions for the night. However, nothing happened overnight, and everyone managed to get some rest. That day, the Russians again attacked our supply column, and we once more had to recapture it from them. Despite our continuing advance, the war behind our lines shows no sign of abating.
At 4:30 a.m. on 28 June, my tank battalion resumed its advance. Before long, however, we encountered strong Russian resistance. Even with the support of an infantry battalion, the resistance could not be broken, and our losses increased. Some of the disabled tanks had to be abandoned in the marshy floodplain of the stream near Ostroshitsky Gorodok. The advance was halted to avoid further losses. The infantry battalion commander conducted a reconnaissance in force using his own troops. From a wooded hill, he was able to observe the Soviet positions and assess their strength. He succeeded in persuading the brigade commander, Colonel von Bismarck, to open artillery fire on the Russian positions.
On 29 June, rapid progress was made towards Minsk. On reaching the airfield, a half-platoon came under fire from a Russian rearguard. Russian resistance had to be overcome by outflanking it on both sides. After crossing the stream near the village of Loshitsa, we established a bridgehead. At around 9:30 a.m., the tank regiment headquarters and our battalion entered the almost completely burnt-out city of Minsk. The tanks drove unopposed through streets entangled with hanging tram wires and other cables. On the outskirts of the city, near the airfield, the tank battalion again engaged the Russians. During the fighting, Soviet anti-aircraft guns fell into our hands. We fired on a retreating artillery battery with a 7.5 cm gun. The Russian units defending the city were later destroyed by the arriving infantry. That evening, we provided security for divisional headquarters. However, there was no further contact with the enemy. Meanwhile, east of Minsk, our 20th Division made contact with the 7th Panzer Division. In the city itself, we saw our first knocked-out T-34.
Many of us looked astonished at the sight of this armoured vehicle type, whose existence we had known nothing about. Unfortunately, we would encounter it all too often thereafter.”
Report from the war diary of the 20th Panzer Division:
27 June: fierce fighting continues north and east of Minsk. However, the enemy is unable to prevent the encirclement of the city. Under cover of rearguards, the Russians are attempting to withdraw as many troops as possible to the east.
28 June: during the rapid advance of the 7th Panzer Division towards Smolevichi, the Russian pillbox positions north of Minsk were only partially occupied by German troops, causing supply disruptions and even bringing the advance to a complete halt. Colonel Rothenburg, the tank regiment commander who had been wounded in the fighting, was killed while an attempt was being made to take him to a hospital in the rear. In light of this, the commanders of the 20th and 12th Panzer Divisions decided not to resume their offensives until the defenders of the Soviet pillboxes had been completely eliminated. The gap in the front around Volozhin remains a major breach in the German positions near Minsk.
Units of the 20th Panzer Division spend the entire day engaged in fierce fighting in the pillbox belt and suffer significant losses. The regimental commander and eight other officers are killed.
Headquarters receives a report that Minsk was captured by the 12th Panzer Division at 16:00.
29 June: only now, having overcome the Russian pillboxes, do units of the 20th Panzer Division reach the Minsk–Smolevichi road.
Units of the 12th Panzer Division were forced to engage enemy groups in Minsk, which had been severely damaged by fires.
30 June: during the fighting to break through the line of pillboxes north-west of Minsk, the three Panzer divisions suffered such heavy losses that, when the offensive resumed as planned on 2 July, they would have only 70% of their tanks available.
These three divisions had a total of 784 tanks. The 30% of German tanks put out of action in the fighting for Minsk amounted to 210 vehicles — an entire division. Our reports list around 300 tanks. In this regard, Sergei Ivanovich Iovlev, commander of the 64th Rifle Division, wrote:
“As for the 300 tanks allegedly destroyed by our soldiers near Minsk, I believe that complete objectivity is required in this matter. After all, what does it mean to set fire to an enemy tank with a petrol bomb or blow it up with a bundle of grenades? It demonstrates the soldier’s supreme courage and the tremendous force of will he must summon to confront and defeat an armoured monster. Finally, it entails an immense psychological struggle with oneself and with the human instinct for self-preservation.
As for tanks destroyed by fire, the Germans lost no fewer than a hundred near Minsk. As many as two hundred may have been disabled. After all, once a tank’s track is broken, it immediately comes to a halt. Our soldiers quite reasonably regarded it as disabled. Yet, after a simple repair, the same tank could return to battle within an hour, only to be disabled again — and this could happen more than once. Tanks destroyed by fire, however, could not always be restored. In general, although the fighting near Minsk was brief, it was fierce.”
The ferocity of the fighting near Minsk is also evident from a comparison of German tank losses. In just three days of fighting for the capital of Belarus, three Panzer divisions lost 210 vehicles, while the entire Wehrmacht lost 640 tanks during the forty days of the French campaign.
The French Maginot Line — a twentieth-century engineering marvel built specifically to hold back the German army — did not delay the Wehrmacht’s advance by a single day. France’s mobilised army, brought up to its wartime establishment and at war with Germany since September 1939, was unable to offer the Wehrmacht effective resistance in May 1940 and lost the war.
Until 22 June 1941, the USSR was at peace with Germany, and many Soviet units were therefore maintained at peacetime establishment. The additional motor transport required by the army had not been requisitioned from the civilian economy, while ammunition was stored in military district depots. Consequently, when the 64th Rifle Division, arriving from Smolensk, began to unload west of Minsk at the outbreak of war, its artillery had only the shells carried in its limbers. The ammunition train following it failed to reach Minsk after being halted by a German air strike at Kolodishchi. The vast Belarusian Military District ammunition depot near Dzerzhinsk was already beyond the reach of Minsk’s defenders. The 100th Rifle Division, deployed east of Minsk, had not yet received even its full peacetime allocation of weapons and had no artillery. Nevertheless, the Minsk Fortified Region of the Stalin Line, built to hold back the Polish army and not fully manned, resisted the German advance for three days. The Polotsk Fortified Region held back the Germans for 20 days, and the Kyiv Fortified Region for more than two months. The stubborn resistance of the Red Army and the lengthy delays at Polotsk, and particularly at Kyiv, forced the Germans to halt their advance on Moscow and divert their tanks to Ukraine. As a result, the timetable for the offensive under Operation Barbarossa was disrupted, and Wehrmacht units were defeated near Moscow at the end of 1941. The Germans subsequently suffered defeat at Stalingrad, then at Kursk and in Ukraine, followed by Belarus and the Baltic states, until the war finally reached Berlin itself.
The value of constructing defensive lines should therefore be judged not by the opinions of laypeople, but by the historical results. The Finns built the Mannerheim Line and lost the war. The French, with their formidable Maginot Line, also surrendered. Our army, however, not only withstood the most powerful military machine in the world, but defeated it and raised the Victory Banner over the Reichstag.
It is this feat of the Soviet soldiers that our Historical and Cultural Complex, named Stalin Line, commemorates.
The intensity of the fighting in the Minsk Fortified Region is evidenced not only by the shell marks preserved on our pillboxes, but even by the remains of the shells themselves and the large fragments that can still be found there. We invite you to view a photo report on the pillboxes of the Minsk Fortified Region located near our complex.
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