What Halder thought would largely be a mopping-up operation, however, was turning into something else entirely as the Soviets scrambled furiously to bring new forces into play. Clinging to the doctrine of an active defense in order to blunt the enemy attack and regain the initiative, the Stavka in early July ordered a series of counterattacks near Smolensk in order to slow German momentum, gain time to mobilize Soviet resources and build defenses, and ensnare the enemy in a series of costly tactical engagements. In the race to assemble forces, the Soviets enjoyed the advantage. While the Germans neared the limits of their logistic abilities, Smolensk, as a key rail and transportation hub, enabled the Soviet High Command to feed fresh forces into the area in a timely manner. Thus, although Hoth had, despite stiff resistance, seized Vitebsk on 9 July and Guderian the next day threw units across the Dnieper both north and south of Mogilev, the supply system to Army Group Center was already beginning to display an advanced case of sclerosis. In addition, a serious gap had opened between the German infantry and the mechanized divisions, while large Soviet forces in the Pripet Marshes posed an increasing danger both for the stretched German supply lines and for the flanks of Army Groups Center and South. These exposed flanks were a persistent cause of concern, especially to Hitler, influencing both decisionmaking and subsequent actions.81
By 10 July, the Soviet leadership had also begun to recover from the initial paralyzing shock of the German invasion and had regained control over its battlefield units. The Stavka, in fact, now planned an ambitious series of coordinated counterattacks that would not only halt the German advance but also allow them to encircle exposed enemy forces. Furious attacks on Hoth, to the north, on 6 July had succeeded in blunting his assault and forcing him to divert units in a northeasterly direction. On 13 July, it was the turn of Guderian’s forces to absorb the Soviet blow as they were the target of a fierce attack from the area around Gomel. Forays from the enemy bridgeheads at Orsha and Mogilev accompanied this assault, and, although the Germans successfully fought off the Soviets, Guderian was forced to change the direction of advance of some of his units. As ferocious Soviet attacks continued over the next few days, the Germans began to realize that, because of the diversion of panzer units to the north and south, they lacked the combat power to close the pocket east of Smolensk. They also recognized that the Soviets had now consciously begun to use encircled forces as a means to tie down German units, inhibit their freedom of action, and disrupt the pace of the enemy advance.82
With their infantry units trailing far behind, the Germans had little choice but to throw the armored divisions into a furious attempt to close the Smolensk pocket. In ten days of savage fighting between 10 and 20 July, however, the Germans failed to close the hole east of Smolensk or prevent the timely withdrawal of strong enemy forces. The struggle was, marveled one Landser, “madness, total madness. They fought like wild animals—and died as such.” Bock simply noted in his diary, “Hell was let loose.” The fierce Russian attacks of 13–16 July, dubbed the “Timoshenko Offensive” by Guderian, also led the Germans to rethink their assumptions about the second phase of the campaign. Substantial Soviet combat power still confronted Army Group Center, a recognition that sparked a crisis mood in the OKH. After noting the difficulties and slow pace of progress of Army Group South, Halder on 20 July admitted of the central front: “The costly battles involving some groups of our armored forces, in which the infantry divisions arriving from the west can take a hand only slowly, together with loss of time due to bad roads which restrict movement and the weariness of the troops marching and fighting without a break, have put a damper on all higher HQ. Its most visible expression is the severe depression into which [Brauchitsch] has been plunged.” The next day, Bock grudgingly acknowledged the effect of the Soviet pressure on the Germans, “a quite remarkable success for such a badly battered opponent!” Two days later, as large numbers of Soviet troops fought their way out, he complained, “We have still not succeeded in closing the hole at the east end of the Smolensk pocket.”83
After ten days of fighting, the Germans desperately needed to regroup, reorient, and concentrate their scattered armored formations in order to continue the advance against an enemy that clearly had not been destroyed. The Soviets, however, refused to grant a respite. Instead, on 20 July, Stalin telephoned Marshal Timoshenko to inform him that the time had come for a Soviet counteroffensive that would regain the initiative. The plan, as envisioned by the Stavka, entailed three simultaneous blows from the south directed at Smolensk, with the aim of cutting off both German pincers east of the city and transforming the would-be encirclers into the encircled. Although the Soviets hoped with this attack to orchestrate a major turnabout in the war, because of command and control problems the counteroffensive that began on 21 July unfolded in a piecemeal fashion. Nonetheless, over the next few days, the Soviets did achieve some successes, most notably in delaying the closing of the Smolensk pocket until 27 July. The relentless Soviet counterstrokes—“astonishing for an opponent who is so beaten,” Bock admitted on 26 July; “they must have unbelievable masses of materiel”—also put intense pressure on the seriously overextended German panzer units. Even though these attacks ultimately failed owing to poor coordination, the Russians continued to resist through August in intense fighting that resulted in frightful casualties to both sides. The Battle of Smolensk thus came to a close with neither side having achieved a decisive result. Despite their repeated, fierce assaults, the Soviets failed to destroy the main forces of Army Group Center, which crossed the Dnieper on a broad front and advanced some 100–150 miles to the east. However, having had to repel these vigorous enemy attacks, it had been so weakened that a direct thrust on Moscow was out of the question until the precarious supply situation had been remedied. As one Landser noted perceptively, “The faces of the youngsters exude the same image as First World War veterans…. Despite the pleasure at sudden Russian withdrawals, one notes this change in the faces of the soldiers.”84
The Germans netted well over 300,000 prisoners and destroyed over 3,000 tanks at the Battle of Smolensk and had by early August in Army Group Center’s sector alone taken over 600,000 prisoners and destroyed or captured over 6,000 tanks. Still, despite losses of over 2 million men, the Red Army showed no sign of slackening their stubborn resistance or that their vital strength had been broken. The way to Moscow was still not open, while the deterioration of the Germans’ combat power, especially among the armored units, was causing mounting anxieties and gradually curtailing their available options. By late July, the OKH estimated the combat power of the panzer and motorized infantry divisions to be only about half of what it had been at the start of the campaign. The deficiencies were so serious, in fact, that, even after a ten-day pause to resupply and reequip, the goal was merely to bring the armored divisions up to 60–70 percent of their former strength. Both Hoth’s and Guderian’s Panzergruppen were badly overextended, with their thinly stretched front lines covered by few strategic reserves. Halder himself on 26 July noted the danger that German forces were being drawn into a series of minor successes that would lead only to positional warfare, while on 5 August he fretted that present developments were leading to a solidification of the fronts like World War I. Bock, too, lamented the Führer’s suggestion, as a result of Smolensk, that “for the moment we should encircle the Russians tactically wherever we meet them… and then destroy them in small pockets,” an idea Bock thought would reduce grand blitzkrieg sweeps to mere tactical actions.85 Although the Soviets had not reclaimed the strategic initiative, they had broken the momentum of the German offensive. Once again, as in the border battles, the Germans failed to concentrate their forces and gain a swift, crushing victory, a pattern that would continue with regularity through 1942. Major disputes about the Schwerpunkt of the attack, which had receded in the earlier glow of success, now erupted with a fury in late July and August as the Germans struggled to prevent their Blitzfeldzug from deteriorating into a war of attrition.