Tank Battle at Raseiniai - June 1941

The German plan for Operation Barbarossa, the surprise attack on the Soviet Union, depended on very rapid, deep penetration by mechanized and motorized forces in the first days of the invasion. On the Soviet side, the Red Army deployed its mechanized corps behind its front lines, ready to counter-attack any German breakthroughs. That set the stage for tank battles to occur just behind the German-Soviet frontier, though in many places the Soviets were caught off-guard and unable to follow through on their pre-wear doctrine.

In Lithuania, the Baltic Special Military District – which would become Northwest Front once the war began - fielded three armies, with sixteen rifle divisions and a separate rifle brigade between them (two of those rifle divisions consisted of troops from the former Lithuanian Army, forcibly incorporated into the Red Army the previous summer and none too willing to die for the dialectic). In support, the District had two mechanized corps, each with one motorized infantry and two tank divisions. Altogether, District commander Gen. Fyodor I. Kuznetsov had just under 370,000 men with 3,500 guns and over 1,500 tanks.

Opposing them, Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb’s German Army Group North brought two armies and an army-sized “panzer group,” with nineteen infantry divisions, three panzer divisions and two motorized infantry divisions, plus one SS motorized division of rather dubious combat value. Those totaled 562,000 men with just over 600 tanks, another 600 armored vehicles and almost 4,000 artillery pieces.