Attacking on 13 July, Major General Leonid Grigor’evich Petrovsky’s 63rd Rifle Corps assaulted across the Dnepr River and drove 8-10 kilometers into the defenses erected by forward elements of LIII Army Corps’ 52nd and 255th Divisions, captured Rogachev and Zhlobin, and forced the defending Germans to withdraw to the west. Simultaneously, Colonel Filipp Feodos’evich Zhmachenko’s 67th Rifle Corps, reinforced by 300 tanks from Major General Semen Moiseevich Krivoshein’s newly-arrived 25th Mechanized Corps, launched heavy but futile attacks against the right wing of Guderian’s forces south of Bykhov.⁵⁷

See Map 13. 21st Army’s counterstroke, 13-15 July 1941.

Further to the south, in tandem with 63rd and 67th Rifle Corps’ attacks, Major General Fedor Dmitrievich Rubtsov’s 66th Rifle Corps also crossed the Dnepr between Rechitsa and Loev, assaulted the defensive positions of the forward elements of Second Army’s XII Army Corps, and began exploiting northwestward toward Bobruisk, deep in the Germans’ rear area. During this attack, Major General Sergei Ivanovich Nedvigin’s 232nd Rifle Division succeeded in advancing 80 kilometers to the west and capturing bridges over the Berezina and Ptich’ Rivers before being contained by 112th Infantry Division, which Army Group Center committed from its portion of the OKH reserves. After seizing Rogachev and Zhlobin, the advancing forces of Petrovsky’s 63rd Rifle Corps were finally halted by the main forces of LIII Army Corps’ 52nd and 255th Infantry Divisions, which managed to erect a credible defensive line in this threatened sector. Although 63rd Rifle Corps’ success was unique during this period of the war, it was also fleeting, since Second Army’s LIII Corps recaptured both Rogachev and Zhlobin within a week.

The series of counterattacks conducted by Kuznetsov’s 21st Army posed so serious a threat to Guderian’s right wing that Bock, Army Group Center’s commander, was forced to commit his reserve XXXXIII Army Corps, with 131st and 134th Infantry Divisions, to deal with the threat. While these reserves managed to restore the situation and, ultimately, drove Kuznetsov’s forces from both Rogachev and Zhlobin, the premature commitment of this force temporarily deprived von Kluge’s Fourth Panzer Army of the infantry forces it critically needed for subsequent struggle in the vicinity of Smolensk proper. This shortage of infantry, in turn, forced Hoth’s and Guderian’s panzer and motorized divisions to become decisively engaged in costly frontal fighting that deprived them of their advantage of maneuver and seriously eroded their combat strength. Although these panzer forces ultimately prevailed at Smolensk in July and August, the debilitating effects of a shortage of infantry would become far more pronounced and the consequences far more critical in the climactic operations along the Moscow axis during October and November.

During this frenzy of offensive activity around Rogachev and Zhlobin, a three-division cavalry group subordinate to Kuznetsov’s 21st Army, commanded by Colonel General Oka Ivanovich Gorodovikov, raided deep into the German rear area southwest of Bobruisk from Rechitsa in conjunction with 66th Rifle Corps’s 232nd Rifle Division, which was continuing its advance northwestward along the Berezina River from Parichi.⁵⁸ Gorodovikov’s cavalry group consisted of 32nd, 43rd, and 47th Cavalry Divisions. Although led by one of the most prestigious Red Army cavalry leaders during the Russian Civil War, who was now the Inspector and Commander of Red Army Cavalry Forces, this attempt to disrupt German command, control, communications, and logistics along Guderian’s lines of communications proved only partially successful. The subsequent German advance to the gates of Smolensk rendered it, as well as 21st Army’s temporary successes at Rogachev and Zhlobin, utterly superfluous.

Army Group Center’s crossing of the Dnepr River and deep advance into the Smolensk region was a fitting sequel to the army group’s dramatic victories in the border region and its rapid advance to the Western Dvina and Dnepr Rivers. From Bock’s perspective, the relative ease with which 7th and 18th Panzer Divisions defeated the Soviet 5th and 7th Mechanized Corps in the Lepel’ and Senno region was equally encouraging since it scarcely delayed the advance of Hoth’s and Guderian’s panzer groups. However, in no case did these victories compensate for the shock created in German headquarters, if not in Berlin, over the appearance of five fresh Soviet armies in defenses on the Western Dvina and Dnepr Rivers’ eastern bank. According to the assumptions of Plan Barbarossa, this was not supposed to occur. Moreover, when it did, it also indicated that more fighting would be required for Barbarossa’s objectives to be achieved. Making matters worse, the aggressive reaction by Timoshenko’s armies when German forces reached these river lines also came as a surprise to German commanders. As clumsy and ineffective as Timoshenko’s “counteroffensive” was, it still made an impression on German commander and soldier alike. However, at this point, as indicated by Hoth’s and Guderian’s subsequent easy advance to the Smolensk region, most in the Wehrmacht still considered the fighting west and east of the Dnepr River, as mere inconvenient “bumps in the road” en route to Moscow and victory.

From the Soviet perspective, with his defenses along the Dnepr River irreparably torn asunder and his Western Front in complete disarray, Timoshenko now faced the Herculean task of saving his armies and restoring a stable front somewhere in the Smolensk region, which he could only do with the Stavka’s active assistance. Intuitively, Timoshenko understood the Battle for Smolensk would likely decide not only the Western Direction’s fate but possibly also the fate of the Soviet Union.