Barbarossa Visualized: The Battle of Bialystok-Minsk [June 1941] [Episode 2] 

Hard for commanders to learn from mistakes if you shoot them.

@1:50 Panzergruppe 3 was commanded by Hoth -- Panzergruppe 2 was commanded by Guderian.

I love both Beethoven and the conflict on Eastern Front, thanks for this very well made video. I am reading "Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt" by Robert Forscyk now but it is not easy to follow along for the untrained mind such as mine, video makes it a lot simpler.

The fact that the Soviet Union even recovered at all from this is amazing at that they did go on to win the war even more so. They built over 50,000 T-34 alone in the war and it was probably the best tank of the world in the timeframe of Operation Barbarossa. Really mindblowing. Great Work!

Well paced, appropriate level of detail and nice clear graphics. Thanks for posting.

This is excellent, thank you. I am currently reading Alan Clark's 'Barbarossa' but with my poor geographical knowledge, the lack of detailed battle maps in the book and the amount of space given over to discussing the friction taking place in the German chain of command (which is very interesting) in between the details of troop movements, I was finding it difficult to visualise exactly what was happening on the ground. This was just what I needed.

At 0:20 it should be 3.8 MILLION axis personnel. If you say 3.8 it sounds like 4 person invaded.

3rd panzer group was commanded by hoth. 2nd panzer was the one in the southern side of the central front. thats why guderian was ordered to encircle kiev, it wouldnt be possible or plausible to order him to do that if he was commanding the panzer group in the northern side

« one of the largest military encirclement in history » . Eastern front : do you have the slightest idea how little that narrow it down ?

Good video! Love that color footage too! Very nice visuals and vocals.

Great work Jack

Thanks for the video, it helped a lot with an assignment for history class.

My grandfather was in the Wehrmacht in Minsk! And of an injury, he came home, and after, he went as a cook on the Lazarett train! Thank God!! he came home after the war!!

Great content, you inspired me to create ww2 map videos! Cheers, awesome work!

Magnificent WW2 Series

Keep the great job. Salute from Brasil.

I think Guderian was in charge of 2nd Pz group , not 3 rd

Your animated maps are brilliant, but they'd be even better with a miles / kilometres scale.

Is that the 'Glory of General' music at the background of your video? If yes, then that's cool!

Commander of Panzer Group 3 was Herman HOTH and the ccommander of Panzer Group 2 was Heinz GUDERIAN

Reason 1a: Stalin's purge of all remotely experienced commanders and their replacement with political hacks.

i wish you would use NATO standard unit symbols. it would be consistent with the rest of the video, which is excellent.

I think the unit of my grandfather, Sicherungsdivision from Breslau, was part of the panzer division Hoth between Bialystok and Smolensk.

Nope. Great viddy, but Guderian commanded Gruppe 2 in the South. Hoth commanded Gruppe 3 in the North Of the Minsk Pocket.

Hoth was in charge of Panzer Group 3. Guderian was in charge of Panzer Group 2.

This channle is awesome where is the new video, I wait the new video from the channel owner

If you want to wage a movement warfare you need to mechanize your infantry first. That was a major drawback for the Germans that they did not have their infantry fully mechanized and had to constantly wait for them to walk the distances. Also: the Germans could have used at least some of the Russian POWs (those willing) as replacements with the rest used to rebuild the infrastructure in the occupied parts. Their horrible treatment of the POWs and population just gave the will for the Soviets to fight indefinitely. The racial difference is nonsense: Germans and Russians are both a germanic(viking)/slavic mixture, it would have been easy to see the Russians as a kin viking tribe from the East that needed liberation from bolshevism instead of designating them untermensch. Then again, the best move for Germany would have been to not attack at all.

Btw, Guderian led the 2nd panzergruppe, not the third

The pocket west of Minsk was closed on June 26th, not June 27th.

Please explain why encircling is sth bad at all, and show the routes of supply on your maps. It took me a lot of videos and reading to understand this aspect, that nobody seems to explain somehow. Very different from ancient warfare where commanders were actually trying to let the enemy flee rather than catching them

Panzergruppe 2 was commanded by Heinz Guderian. Panzergruppe 3 was commanded by Hermann Hoth. They forgot to mention the German "Brandenburgers" (Special Forces), dressed in Soviet uniforms were reeking havoc in the Soviet rear areas, before the opening of hostilities even commenced. They were sabotaging communication lines, seizing bridges, etc. This contributed mightily to the confusion and disorder within the Soviet ranks.

Lots of my great grandparents family died there

Read Suworow and Mark Solonin....

For the record, the only Russian ( Really he was Polish) General to stand up to Stalin to sell his idea of counterattack was General Konstantin Rokossovsky

I have a question how many german war prisoner came home after the war was ended i understand from stalingrad return 10% or 5% of the prisoner

80 years ago

Interesting how the Germans had complete air superiority at the time when the Soviets lost a total of 1700 aircraft. These planes must have put up some sort of a fight, or probably most might have been destroyed on the ground.

3,8 axis personall? im assuming you meant 3,8 million

and now I'll give you an archive reference.on June 22, 1941, on the Soviet-German front, the Germans and the Axis countries had 207 divisions, the average number of which was 15.2 thousand people, that is, fully equipped divisions.The Soviet side had 213 divisions, the average number of which was 7.5 thousand people.And Soviet tank divisions had an average strength of 3 thousand people.That is, the ssssr was not ready for war in military terms.There was a large shortage of personnel.I must say that both in terms of staffing and armament , the Soviet divisions were inferior to the German ones divisions.

A Russian war movie "BREST" has been made about the 9-day long siege of the Brest Fortress. It covers the entrapped Russian units against the assaulting 45th Austrian Wehrmacht infantry division, once the 4th Austrian Division. The Brest Fortress (Original Trailer Score) HD ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Rikv9fnNh_M.html Also, the losses taken by the 45th was in fact very high. More than 1000 men wounded or killed throughout the 9-day battle. So 1000 out of 17.000 men. Very high casualties, taking into account that the Wehrmacht had detailed maps of the Citadel (they captured it in 1939) and they had the element of surprise, support from the Luftwaffe, using 1000 kilogram bombs and of course heavy artillery as well. In terms of the brave Russian defenders, they were putting up strong resistance and actually won a tactical victory, forcing a Wehrmacht unit to retreat. The first Wehrmacht retreat in the war. Watch this movie, it pretty much sticks to historical facts and is just an awesome war movie.

0:20 "3.8 axis personell" lol

Add one more death as Pavlov was shot for this defeat.

8:09 Germans indeed did not sustain too many casualties. They lost About 1100 men and when fortress fell captured 1100 Soviet machine guns from it's arsenal. Never fired. Maybe only dropped once. Pls thousands of rifles.

6:36 , I beg to differ. There might have been SOME panzer 1 and 2 tanks in with the German tank forces but they were in the laughable minority with majority of German tanks being the medium panzer 3 and 4 tanks. The 4800 tank loss for the Soviets is also because the absolute majority of Soviet tanks in the Western front (about 97%) were the obselete T-26 and BT-5 light tanks which were no match for the German medium tanks. So it was catastrophic yes in the way that the Soviets got their 20,000 tank figure got wasted into the German inferno which costed the property of landowners and starving famine ridden Ukrainians. Otherwise, the unwanted purging of the light tanks actually helped the red army. Not to mention that the medium and heavy tanks of the Soviet Union performed extremely well even without infantry support (tanks are sitting ducks without infantry support).

Your video is unfortunately inacurate: Why don't you mention the german allies, who send hundred thousands of men: Italy, Romania, Finnland...

No, not 145000 men but (145000+50000) 195000 men was killed

Biyalostok is a Polish city, what the perpetually victimized Red Army was doing there in the first place is beyond me. Glorious hero of the Soviet union, occupying a sovereign nation.

How many panzer battalions /Italian battle lions / or divisions or just how dam many thanks did the 3rd reich have at minsk russkies had 5 thou

Bialystok was a site of two major battles during WWII. I grew up there and did not see many remnants of these battles. There were some bunkers left over, and we played war in them, but not much else. Most visible scars were mass graves of Jews murdered by the Germans.

3.8 germans vs 3 million Soviets. No wonder they lost.

When 300 aircraft is able to destroy 1,700 in a week to 10 days it's called kicking a$$ but air superiority would be given to the side with over 1,700 aircraft even if they are getting their butts whooped. Everyone says that the USSR wasn't ready for the War with over 35,000 tanks and as many aircraft but Germany with 10% of that was? Then they try, 35,000 but they was inferior tanks! Truth is they had the T-34 & KV1 heavy tanks that Germany had nothing to compare. Many stories of a single T-34 holding up a whole division for days because only the 88 anti-aircraft gun can destroy these monsters. The reason for Germany's great success in the beginning was because the Soviets were about to attack and was in jump off positions instead of defensive! Why do you think Stalin instantly called for a counteroffensive? It takes weeks to prepare a motorized army for a offensive, they was already set to begin when Hitler preemptively struck 1st

In a sense it was a pity that The Germans were so successful in first days of the conflict. Were they not maybe Germany and Russia would come to some sort of peace treaty. As it happened Hitler and his generals looked at Red Army as easy meat, similar to France. When they at the end realise the true potential and strength of the enemy it was too late - too much blood was spilled to have peace. Pity.

STUPID FUN - ABOUT AGGRESSION AGAIST RUSSIA - TALKING SOME ONE WHO LEARN from - COMPUTER GAMES.

Good videos. "Better Dead 💀 than Red!"

I am sorry but you seems not to had been updated about most recent studies of the russian situation before the invasion and therefore miss some important conclusions. Fist the russian army at the border was not battle ready. They were under preperation of a russian invasion of germany. It had been proved recently that all units at the german border only had maps over germany and not a single map over russia and next those units had distributed books of how to translate simple russia instruktions to pow of the german army and to german civilians into german language. However the preperation was on low level of preperation and all units suffered of lack of ammunition and no unit had more than 50% of fuel for just a single day of operation and some few units was so low of fuel that even getting the staff cars to work was a problem. So talking about them to redrawn out of problems was not an option at all. Not even on tactical level. The order of counter attack close to german was a desperate effort to see if the actual was able to go into germany and create some sort of panic on the german side. But as you seen even this failed. The major prove of this is that the only leading staff general on the russian side that did not recieved any critisme from Stalin was the russian general responsible for distribution of maps and therefore it must had been a proven and wellknow facts among all russian generalstaff generals that he had just followed his order to the last letter of what Stalin had ordered him. Next it could be of interest for people to tell that general Halder actual was ordered by Hitler to focus on the east to get the oilfieds and not to focus on Moscou. But as you see of the real situation general Halder chosed not to follow that order and went for Moscou.

Wow 3.8 Wehrmacht soldiers against millions of Soviets, very impressive.

mortarized infantry

OK, so 50% of the losers of this battle never saw home again. What percentage of the winners saw their homes? This is why I think the defeat of Nazi Germany was basically predetermined: their strategy seemed to be to keep picking more fights, not until strategic objectives were achieved, but until they suffered catastrophic defeat.

3.8 vs 3 million huh? Seems a little lop-sided

4 germans vs 3 million soviets 8 million soviets died

Enjoyed 👂 your🎙️but Gen. Pavlov shot himself in the head after losing 800+planes on the ground; the battle of Brest, the Germans lost 500ALONE in that Single battle to get that fort--took them 3weeks to a month; which was the worst loss of🇩🇪 soldiers in a SMALL campaign of that magnitude; kind regards & STILL like your📺/educational series🌵⚾🏘️🏈🏜️🕝🇺🇸📖⛷️🌲🎄🎅

Nothing but boring, simple maps

How did the German Army suffer comparatively high casualties, with total losses of ~15k, versus Soviet losses of ~416k (the casualty statistics as given in the video)? The ratio of Red Army personnel lost per each individual Axis loss is 28:1. Of the total losses suffered, 97% were Soviet losses and 3% were Axis losses. The German formations involved lost 2% of their personnel, while the Soviet formations lost 60% of their total strength. I can't come up with a way of breaking down the casualty figures which would indicate the comparatively high German losses alluded to in the video...just saying. I do appreciate the visual format of the content, as those less spacially-inclined (such as myself) find it difficult to envision many verbal or written descriptions of geography, troop movements and positions without visual context :)

4 germans vs 3 million soviets 8 million soviets died