Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941 - Volume 1: The German Advance, The Encirclement Battle And The First And Second Soviet Counteroffensives, 10 July-24 August 1941

Smolensk’s defiant resistance, forged by Soviet forces amid relentless German pressure from July through September 1941, halted the Blitzkrieg’s advance and reshaped the course of Operation Barbarossa.

At dawn on 10 July 1941, massed tanks and motorized infantry of German Army Group Center’s Second and Third Panzer Groups crossed the Dnepr and Western Dvina Rivers, beginning what Adolf Hitler, the Führer of Germany’s Third Reich, and most German officers and soldiers believed would be a triu...