To the Question about the Reasons of the Western Front’s Disaster at Initial Stage of the Great Patriotic War

Abstract

The subject is the causes of the disaster of the Soviet Western front, defeated by Germans in the first days of the Great Patriotic war. Everybody knows: the beginning of war in June 1941 resulted into shattering defeat of Russia. And the events for the Soviets developed especially adversely in the Western direction, where the enemy destroyed the main forces of the first echelon of the Red army.  Thereby, Wehrmacht got not only an opportunity to capture Belarus, but also to escape to the scope in the course of its assault toward Moscow. It is not surprising that these events continue to attract the attention of both Russian and foreign historians. Unfortunately, some of them, trying to determine the prerequisites for the tragedy of June 22, allow themselves to present ambiguous versions. Among them, the judgment about the discrepancy between the realities of war and the Soviet war planning. A good example here is the article by I.A. Basyuk, Professor from Grodno «“Lead troops on the  battlefield, abandoning the stupid and harmful linear tactics”: the main reason for the military disaster of 1941 in Belarus» in the magazine “Russian history” in 2015.  According to him, the Soviet command was unable to learn from the experience of war in Europe and continued to demonstrate its commitment to linear tactics, neglecting of strike groups. The result was the development of plans to cover the borders of the USSR with evenly placed along the front troops, who had no facilities to counter the offensive of superior enemy forces. Really?

Keywords:

Great Patriotic War, Western front, 1941, Belorussia, Red Army, Army Group Centre, People’s Commissariat of Defense, Red Army General Staff, war planning, the Border battles