Hello, and thank you for listening to The History of World War II podcast, Episode 143,

The Road to Moscow.

When we left off from Army Group Center, its more northern Panzer units had attacked and

subdued Polotsk and Vitebsk on July 8th along the Davina River from the rear as they

had crossed the waterway further up river.

While Army Group Center's more center thrust, having left Minsk, then crossed the Berazina

River and moved on after bloodying most of the Moscow First Mechanized Division at Borosov.

Guderian had been impressed with the large Russian KV tanks and sent a few back to Berlin

to be copied.

But any concrete result from that would be a few years down the road.

Guderian then moved to East, slowly but steadily.

This was not his nature, but there had always seemed to be more and more Soviet forces

before him.

Guderian had been expected after leaving Minsk.

As for Army Group Center's southern or right flank, the German units there found less

resistance but had to deal with Russian roadways that were anything but.

Bridges were either destroyed by the Russians as they retreated, but equally so, the wooden

structures simply collapsed after trying to accommodate the heavy weapons.

So the German soldiers and tanks of Army Group Center moved on, ever eastward.

Stalin still believed that the best defense was offence, but he found himself instead of

ordering bold counterattacks, sending his armies in almost piecemeal just to keep a defensive

cohesion to the west and east of Smolensk as it was on the path to Moscow.

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