Jean,

try to get " Stalin´s folly" by Constantine Pleshakov. I think the book has quite good information on the reasons why things went the way they did for the Red Army. Of course not everyone agrees but I found the book very good.

For instance

" Minsk area June 24-26

the counteroffensives ordered by Stalin and supported by his yes men were not simply a failure, they were an utter catastrophe. The Tenth Army was now surrounded at Belostok, the Third had virtually disappeared , and the Fourth had suffered staggering casualties and had been forced to withdraw. The gap between the Western and Northwestern Fronts had grown to 60 miles. The opening contained the highway to Minsk, and German tanks were now rolling speedily along it, approaching the Byelorussian capital.The frontier battle had been lost.

....

Moscow´s response was equally farcical.Timoshenko magnanimously allowed Pavlov to evacuate the units, but the troops were to relocate not to Minsk but to the Lida-Slonim line, 80 miles west of the city. Timoshenko did not know that on June 25 the Red Army was already leaving Slonim, having been overwhelmed by the pincer strike of Guderian and Hoth.However, he should have admitted tha the Third and the Tenth Army had by then practically ceased to exist. Instead, the people´s commissar of defence was sending ghost armies to nonexistent trenches.

The Western Front has just one Army unscathed by fighting-the Thirteenth, located in the rear, at Moghiley.The defenders of Minsk eagerly awaited its arrival. ( The Thirteenth Army, commanded by General Peter Filatov, was barely six weeks old. When the war started, it was still being formed....) "

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