Chapter 168
< World War II - The Accelerating War (6) >
January 25, 1941
Kulik's Army Group Center collapsed catastrophically.
A sudden retreat order sent over a million troops flocking to the railroads, and when the Luftwaffe began bombing them, the Soviet Army fell into great confusion.
More men were crushed to death in the panicked stampede than were killed by the small number of Luftwaffe planes, but the headquarters meant to resolve the chaos was already empty.
The forces that had crossed the Vistula River to capture Warsaw couldn't even manage that.
There was no way for hundreds of thousands of troops to cross the river again at once, and when Warsaw's forces launched a counterattack before they could cross, they resisted for a short while before immediately surrendering.
The moment the armored unit arrived behind the Soviet Army, which was already suffering losses from the mere act of retreating, let alone resisting, a one-sided pursuit and annihilation followed.
Realizing that Army Group Center, which had been advancing on Warsaw, was nearly disintegrating, Zhukov assigned its command authority to General Rokossovsky and hastily ordered Shaposhnikov's Army Group South to retreat.