Concerning the Reasons for the Defeat of the Western Front during the Initial Stage of the Great Patriotic War

Abstract

The paper looks into the causes of the disaster of the Soviet Western front defeated by Germans in the first days of the Great Patriotic war. It is a well-known fact that the beginning of the war in June 1941 brought about a shattering defeat of Russia. The situation was most adverse in the Western direction where the enemy destroyed the main forces of the first echelon of the Red army. Thereby, Wehrmacht not only received an opportunity to capture Belarus but also to break out 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 present ambiguous versions. Among them, there is a statement about the discrepancy between the realities of war and the preparedness and military defense planning of the Soviet army. An illustrative example is the article by I. A. Basyuk, Professor from Grodno, “‘Leading troops on the battlefield abandoning stupid and harmful linear tactics’: the main reason for the military disaster of 1941 in Belarus” published 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 strike groups. It led to the development of plans to cover the borders of the USSR with evenly distributed troops along the front with no means to counter the offensive of superior enemy forces. But was it really so?