Glantz, David M. Barbarossa Derailed. The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941. Band 4: Atlas

This volume, which serves both as a supplement to the three previous text volumes of this monumental study of the Battle of Smolensk July-September 1941 and as a battlefield atlas in its own right, contains over one hundred specially commissioned colour maps tracing the course of the campaign, each with a detailed caption.

At dawn on 10 July 1941, tanks and motorised infantry of the 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups of Army Group Centre crossed the Dnieper and the western Dvina, beginning what Adolf Hitler and most German officers and soldiers thought would be a victorious march on Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union. Less than three weeks earlier, on 22 June, Hitler had launched the massive invasion of the Soviet Union by his Wehrmacht, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, aimed at defeating the Red Army, conquering the country and overthrowing the communist ruler Josef Stalin. Between 22 June and 10 July, the Wehrmacht advanced up to 500 kilometres into Soviet territory, killing or capturing up to a million Red Army soldiers and reaching the western banks of the Dwina and Dnepr rivers. It thus fulfilled the first assumption of the "Barbarossa" plan, that the Third Reich would emerge victorious if it could defeat and destroy the bulk of the Red Army before it retreated behind these two rivers. With the Red Army now crushed, Hitler and most Germans expected complete victory within a few weeks. The ensuing fighting in the Smolensk region dashed German hopes of a quick victory. After crossing the Dvina and the Dnepr, the surprised Wehrmacht encountered five new Soviet armies. Although two of these armies were completely destroyed, two others severely damaged and the remnants of three of them encircled in the Smolensk area, the Germans were denied a quick victory. Instead, the Soviet forces encircled in Mogilev and Smolens stubbornly refused to surrender, and while they continued to fight, first five and then a total of seven newly mobilised Soviet armies struck back at the advancing Germans in July, August and early September, conducting several counter-attacks and counter-attacks that culminated in two major counter-offensives that weakened German strength and will. Despite immense losses in men and material, these desperate Soviet actions brought down Operation Barbarossa. Faced with the countless wounds inflicted on his vaunted Wehrmacht, Hitler postponed his march on Moscow even before the fighting in the Smolensk region was over and instead turned his troops south to attack "softer targets" in the Kiev region. The Wehrmacht's "derailment" at Smolensk eventually became the decisive turning point of Operation Barbarossa.