The inadequacy of German power, in fact, now sparked the first signs of disagreement among Hitler and his generals. Bock and his panzer commanders had always favored a deep envelopment, such as achieved in France, while Hitler preferred the certain destruction of enemy forces in small, tighter, tactical envelopments, fearing that, otherwise, the encircled area would be so large that German forces would be insufficient to destroy the trapped Russians. Halder vacillated, at first accepting Hitler’s argument, then, when he became convinced that Soviet forces were not attempting a strategic withdrawal, expressing the hope that the field commanders would on their own initiative “do the right thing [i.e., advance toward Smolensk] even without express orders.” As Halder struggled to this conclusion, however, Bock fumed, “We are unnecessarily throwing away a major success.” The battles at Bialystok-Minsk tied down roughly half the strength of Army Group Center in the effort to destroy enemy forces that refused to surrender. Previous experience with blitzkrieg, when an enemy maneuvered into a trap lost the will to fight, was turned upside-down as Soviet troops fought on even in hopeless conditions. The German attack was, thus, constrained by the new reality on the ground. Tactics that had proved successful in France failed against the much less compliant adversary in the east. By themselves, the panzer units had insufficient forces with which to seal off an encirclement totally, and, since poor roads, lack of motorization, and the fierce fighting delayed the Landsers, the gap between the slogging infantry and the driving panzers widened. The result was that, in the trackless spaces of Russia, large numbers of Soviet troops slipped through encirclements.20
The problem, then, stemmed not so much from Hitler’s meddling as from the unexpectedly strong Russian resistance. After the chaotic first days of the invasion, the Soviets succeeded in regaining a measure of control over their units and in bringing up reinforcements. In some areas, they even launched vigorous counterattacks using reserve divisions equipped with armor. The encircled Soviet units also fought with a disconcerting fury while inflicting heavy losses on the attacking German infantry. From the outset, the Germans encountered sharp, fierce fighting that unnerved even veterans of the previous campaigns, accustomed as they were to an enemy who would give up when surrounded, not one who put up a stubborn defense, refusing to surrender while inflicting not inconsiderable casualties. Goebbels admitted with some amazement that Soviet troops fought courageously while worrying about growing illusions of a quick, easy victory among the German people. This continuing Russian resistance, despite the sledgehammer blows of the first days, faced the Germans with a dilemma. To accomplish the main task of the first phase of the campaign, the destruction of Soviet forces west of the Dnieper, the armored formations needed to race eastward toward Smolensk in order to maintain the momentum of the attack, but the presence of large numbers of Red Army soldiers continuing to resist tied down precisely these mobile forces until the slower advancing infantry units arrived. As would become increasingly apparent, the Germans lacked sufficient strength, a weakness that operational skill could mask only so long. Still, on 30 June, Goebbels noted exultantly the fall of Minsk, the enemy loss of over 2,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft, the enormous booty, and lines of prisoners without end. Nor did he exaggerate as the double envelopment of Bialystok-Minsk, within which the fighting concluded only on 9 July, resulted in 324,000 Red Army prisoners, 3,300 tanks, and 1,800 artillery pieces captured or destroyed.21
In the north, the forces of Army Group North under Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb had achieved similar success. Attacking northeastward from East Prussia, his three armies aimed at a rapid movement through the Baltic states, an area in which the population to be freed from recent Soviet rule was assumed to be friendly, in order to seize the Dvina River crossings before large numbers of Red Army troops could escape. Colonel-General Erich Hoepner’s Fourth Panzergruppe, consisting of Colonel-Generals Hans Reinhardt’s and Erich von Manstein’s Forty-first and Fifty-sixth Motorized Corps, ripped apart the Soviet frontier defenses in a rapid and violent assault, quickly building momentum that the Russians could not stop. Although Soviet resistance stiffened steadily, by 1 July the Germans had crushed Soviet defense lines, were across the Dvina, had seized Riga, and had begun advancing into Estonia and the Leningrad region. With shorter supply lines, better railroads, and the quick capture of Baltic seaports, Army Group North also enjoyed better logistic support. The fact that German forces captured large quantities of Soviet supplies and that numerous bridges and rail lines were seized intact also aided the German invaders. In the opening battles, the Soviets had lost almost 100,000 soldiers, more than 1,000 tanks, 4,000 guns, and over 1,000 aircraft and still had not been able to slow the German advance, let alone establish a credible defensive line. As in the center, Russian troops had begun to fight stoutly, but the initial defeats threatened Leningrad with disaster.22
Only in the south had the Germans experienced less initial success. Halder’s original plan for a large envelopment operation from Rumania and southern Poland had been abandoned for lack of reliable allied forces. Army Group South under the command of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt thus faced the task of destroying Soviet forces in Galicia and western Ukraine in a single thrust from Lublin to Kiev, then driving down the Dnieper River to the southeast to prevent Red Army troops in the west from escaping. Rundstedt’s undertaking was made difficult by a number of factors, of which two were most critical. First, the terrain, and especially the vast tract of the Pripet Marshes, impeded his initial assault and provided the Soviets valuable time to react. Second, since Stalin and his military advisers assumed that the goal of any German attack would be to seize the economic riches of Ukraine, Soviet forces in the area were not only more numerous but also better trained, equipped, led, and prepared for the German onslaught. Although the German attack achieved a relative degree of tactical surprise, therefore, enemy resistance stiffened almost immediately as their actions indicated clearly that the Soviets meant to fight stubbornly along the borders. Counterattacks with large forces slowed the German advance, as did heavy rains that turned the primitive road system into muddy quagmires and impeded supply efforts. Fierce fighting at Lvov as well as furious Soviet counterattacks to the northeast at Rovno and Dubno, along the main axis toward Kiev, slowed the German advance for a week while creating a crisis on his southern flank that, ultimately, tempted Hitler to redirect forces from Army Group Center away from Moscow in order to secure Ukraine. Significantly, this energetic and stubborn Soviet defense came in the area that held the most important objectives of Operation Barbarossa, the raw materials and industrial centers of Ukraine and the oil fields of the Caucasus. The border battles in Ukraine also clearly demonstrated that, given time and leadership, Red Army soldiers were capable of effective resistance, but the price paid was dear. The Soviets lost 242,000 soldiers, over 4,300 tanks, 5,800 guns, and 1,200 combat aircraft.23
Hitler’s crusade in Russia had, thus, begun spectacularly. Displaying operational skill, superb training and leadership, excellent coordination between ground and air forces, and high morale, German forces had in the first three weeks of the war thrust some three hundred miles into the Soviet Union, swallowing up Belorussia and the Baltic states, seizing large swaths of Ukraine, and advancing to the Dnieper River along the road to Moscow. The Wehrmacht had demolished the Red Army’s border defenses and ripped apart numerous frontline Soviet formations. Red Army losses had been staggering: by mid-July over 1 million men killed, wounded, missing, or captured and roughly 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft destroyed. The Soviet mechanized forces that had initially engaged the Germans had been reduced to perhaps 10 percent of their original strength. Although not inconsiderable, German losses from 22 June to 16 July totaled a little over 100,000 men killed, wounded, and missing, a figure one-third lower than that for a comparable period in the French campaign a year earlier. By any measure, the German victory appeared both astounding and complete.24