Table Of ContentT
THE BLOODY
RI A N G L E
T
THE BLOODY
RI A N G L E
The DefeaT of SovieT armor in The Ukraine, JUne 1941
Victo r J. Kameni r
I think that those who never experienced
all the bitterness of the summer of 1941 will never be
completely able to appreciate the joy of our victory.
—Vassiliy Grossman, Soviet writer
Contents
Preface
ix
Part I: OPPOsIng fOrces
1. German Plans, Dispositions, and Organization 1
2. Soviet Military on the Eve of War 9
3. Dispositions of Kiev Special Military District 29
4. Organization and Strength of Kiev Special 33
Military District
5. Creeping up to War 51
Part II: the BOrder Battle
6. We Are Under Attack! What Should We Do? June 22 75
7. Creaking to the Sound of the Guns, June 22 109
8. Hold What You’ve Got! June 23–24 125
9. Piecemeal Forward, June 25 159
10. Battle for Dubno, June 26–27 175
11. Continue Mission, June 28 213
12. Fall Back to Old Border, June 29–30 229
13. The Last Convulsion, July 1–2 245
cOnclusIOn
255
aPPendIces
A. Abridged Order of Battle: Army Group South 263
B. Kiev Special Military District Order of Battle 265
C. Order of Battle of Soviet Mechanized Corps 271
D. Organization of German Motorized Infantry Division 275
E. Organization of German Panzer Division 275
F. Organization of Soviet Antitank Artillery Brigade 276
G. Organization of Soviet Mechanized Corps 277
and Tank Division
H. Organization of Soviet Motorized Rifle Division 278
I. Organization of Soviet Rifle Division 278
J. Unit Symbols 279
K. Comparative Strength of Armored Units 280
L. German Armored Vehicles 282
M. Soviet Armored Vehicles 284
MaPs
288
nOtes
301
BIBlIOgraPhy
307
Index
311
viii
Preface
As the years go by, the white areas on a historical map of World War II
continue shrinking. However, to most Western military history enthusiasts,
the four bloody years of struggle on the Eastern Front continue to be terra
incognita. Most people have only heard about the Siege of Leningrad, the
slaughter of Stalingrad, and, of course, the Battle of Kursk.
The weeklong armored clash near the Russian city of Kursk in 1943 has
been widely known as the largest tank battle in history, involving over six
thousand armored combat vehicles on both sides. During this bloody battle,
the backbone of the German Panzer Corps was broken forever, leaving it
unable to mount significant operations for the rest of the war. However, this
was not the first large-scale armored struggle on the Eastern Front. Another
weeklong conflict featuring massive tank formations took place immediately
following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
Just two days after launching Operation Barbarossa, from June 24 to July 1,
roughly 650 German tanks and 180 assault gun and tank destroyers fought over
1,500 Soviet tanks in a roughly triangular area of approximately 1,800 square
miles between the northwestern Ukrainian towns of Lutsk, Dubno, and Brody.
The fighting in Ukraine did not parallel fighting in Byelorussia, where
the armored warfare on the Eastern Front became associated with exploits of
the most famous German panzer leader—Heinz Guderian. Instead of heady
dashes by “Hurrying Heinz’s” armored spearheads, the difficult terrain of
northwestern Ukraine limited German advances to a grinding series of battles
along a miserable road network.
Events that took place there, when covered by Western historians, are
usually glossed over by an encompassing title of “border battles.” Yet, here, in the
swampy and marshy terrain, the German blitzkrieg was for the first time slowed
The Bloody Triangle
down to a crawl and even halted for several crucial days. The Soviet side lost the
battle. However, even in defeat, the Red Army demonstrated that the vaunted
German Wehrmacht could be stopped and bloodied, even if only for a time.
This experience was costly for the Soviet Union. Numerically superior
mechanized forces of the Red Army were savaged by the smaller, more profi-
cient and professional German opponents. In this, and similar border battles,
the Soviet armored force, larger than all other armored forces in the world
combined, melted away under the relentless assault of the German combined-
arms style of warfare.
Describing the events above, this work relied heavily on numerous
memoirs of Soviet and, to a lesser extent, German participants in the conflict.
These first-hand accounts provide genuine insights into the unfolding events.
While some of them cover the same events, no two of them are exactly alike,
each man’s own personality coming through in his interpretation of the events.
I intentionally weighted my research towards the Soviet/Russian sources
because I wanted to present this conflict from the Soviet point of view.
Starting shortly before the war, the Soviet officers, their reports and
memoirs describe, often in minute detail, the condition, preparedness, and
morale of the Red Army at the outbreak of the conflict. I was not the first
writer to rely on these works, and, like others, I drew my own conclusions.
Russian writer and former military intelligence officer Vladimir Rezun
(pen name Viktor Suvorov) helped fuel the debate whether Soviet Union was
planning to attack Germany first. Very persuasively, albeit not very convinc-
ingly, Rezun argued that presence of certain types of weapons or personnel
in large quantities was the indicator of immediate Soviet aggressive inten-
tions. I found his claim that the Soviet Union had one million paratroopers by
the start of the war preposterous. While parachute jumping was immensely
popular among Soviet youth before the war, a teenager who has several jumps
off a tower under his belt does not a trained airborne soldier make.
While I do not dispute Stalin’s aggressive intentions overall (it is hard
to argue with this, knowing of his swallowing up the three tiny Baltic states
and chunks of Finland, Poland, and Rumania), I do not believe that the Red
Army was in any shape to conduct major offensive operations in July 1941,
as advocated by Rezun/Suvorov. On a much more personal note, I find him
usurping the venerated surname of Suvorov as an insult to Russian and
Soviet history.
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