MINSK 1941 DEATH IN THE POCKET

During the early days Operation Barbarossa, Army Group Centre's rapid advance surrounded hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers in the Białystok-Minsk area. What ensued was a catastrophic defeat for the Soviet defenders

- RICHARD HARGREAVES

Over ten days spanning June and July 1941, a European army suffered a defeat in the field which, at the time, was the greatest in the history of modern warfare. As many men were encircled in the woods, forests, clearings and small towns of eastern Poland and western Belarus as had been trapped between the Channel and German lines outside Dunkirk the previous summer. But while a 'miracle of deliverance' saved the bulk of the cut-off British and French troops, no such salvation awaited the men of the Red Army in the Białystok-Minsk pocket.

Dunkirk is a household name in the English-speaking world. The idea of the 'Dunkirk spirit' is seared into the British national psychology and mythology, a defeat turned victory. Beyond the realm of military historians, Białystok-Minsk is barely known - and it is certainly not eulogised or memorialised in modern-day Russia.

What is given the name the Białystok-Minsk pocket (the Belostoksko-Minskoye otrazheniye in Russian and Kesselschlacht bei Białystok und Minsk in German) in fact comprised two pockets. This is why, more accurately, some German accounts refer to it as the Doppelschlacht, or Double Battle. Both pockets were created by a combination of factors: geography, the disposition of forces, surprise, experience on one side and inexperience on the other.

The partition of pre-war Poland under the Nazi-Soviet pact created a frontier between the two totalitarian states through the east of the country, from East Prussia in the north to the frontier with Slovakia in the south.