Battle of Białystok–Minsk

Battle of Białystok–Minsk
	Part of Operation Barbarossa during the Eastern Front of World War II
	; Ruins of Minsk, July 1941
Date	22 June – 9 July 1941
Location	Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union
Result	German victory
Belligerents
Germany	Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Fedor von Bock; Hermann Hoth; Günther von Kluge; Heinz Guderian; Adolf Strauss; Maximilian von Weichs;	Dmitry Pavlov ; Vladimir Klimovskikh ; Ivan Boldin; Vasily Kuznetsov; Aleksandr Korobkov ; Pyotr Akhlyustin †; Pyotr Filatov †;
Units involved
Army Group Center	Western Front
Strength
750,000; 1,938 tanks and 1,500 aircraft	671,165; 4,522 tanks; 14,171 guns/mortars and 2,100 aircraft
Casualties and losses
12,157 ; 101 tanks destroyed; 276 aircraft destroyed	Modern Western estimate: ; 397,000 KIA and WIA, ; 77,000 WIA ; Total: 474,000; Krivosheev's official soviet data: 420,000 total, including 341,073 killed, missing or captured; 4,799 tanks destroyed or abandoned; 9,427 guns/mortars lost; 1,669 aircraft destroyed

The Battle of Białystok–Minsk was a German strategic operation conducted by the Wehrmacht's Army Group Centre under Field Marshal Fedor von Bock during the penetration of the Soviet border region in the opening stage of Operation Barbarossa, lasting from 22 June to 9 July 1941.

The Army Group's 2nd Panzer Group under Colonel General Heinz Guderian and the 3rd Panzer Group under Colonel General Hermann Hoth decimated the Soviet frontier defenses, defeated all Soviet counter-attacks and encircled four Soviet Armies of the Red Army's Western Front near Białystok and Minsk by 30 June. The majority of the Western Front was enclosed within, and the pockets were liquidated by 9 July. The Red Army lost 420,000 or 474,000 men against Wehrmacht casualties of over 12,157.

The Germans destroyed the Soviet Western Front in 18 days and advanced 460 kilometers into the Soviet Union, causing many to believe that the Germans had effectively won the war against the Soviet Union.

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