page_title: Defense of Brest Fortress
section_title: Siege
hierarchical_section_title: Defense of Brest Fortress / Siege
caption_attribution_description: English: Development of German losses of men killed in action and Soviet losses of POWs in the battle for the Brest fortress in June 1941, based on primary sources as indicated in my publications. In the diagram about 52 German soldiers are missing. These died in the lazarets and the day they were wounded is unknown. In cases that day is known these are counted as losses of that day. On the basis of the known primary sources it was not always possible to establish the exact number of Soviet POWs for every day. For these reasons the diagram gives merely an orientation about the losses and, subsequently, about duration and intensity of the battle.
context_page_description: The defense of Brest Fortress was the first major battle of Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union launched on 22 June 1941, lasting from 22 to 29 June. The defenders had received no warning of the attack, and the German Heer expected to take Brest on the first day using only infantry and artillery. The defense of the fortress by the Red Army lasted for several days; the defenders lost many men killed and captured and German ground forces took the fortress only after two bombardments by the Luftwaffe.
context_section_description: The fortress had no warning when the Axis invasion began on 22 June 1941 and it became the site of the first fighting between Soviet forces and the Wehrmacht. The attack started with a 29-minute bombardment by artillery and Nebelwerfer. Many of the Soviet survivors of the fighting wrote after the war that the fortress was bombed by German aircraft. Due to the simultaneous artillery fire, tank support against the fortress made this not possible. Only two air raids took place on June 29, 1941 but then only the East Fort on the northern island of the fortress was bombed by the Luftwaffe. The initial artillery fire took the fortress by surprise, inflicting heavy material and personnel casualties. The first German assault groups crossed the Bug river four minutes after the bombardment had started; the surprised Soviet defenders were unable to form a solid front and instead defended isolated strongpoints–the most important of which was the fortress.
  Some Soviet troops managed to escape the fortress but most were trapped inside by the encircling German forces. Despite having the advantage of surprise, the attempt by the Germans to take the fortress with infantry quickly stalled with high losses: about 281 Wehrmacht soldiers died the first day in the fighting for the fortress. Fighting continued two more days. By the evening of June 24, 1941, some 368 Germans had been killed and 4,000–5,000 Red Army soldiers in captivity. On June 25 and June 26, 1941, local fighting continued mainly in the citadel. In the evening of June 26, 1941, most of the northern Kobrin fortification, except the East Fort, was captured.
  Of the fighting around East Fort, the commander of the 45th Infantry Division, Generalmajor Fritz Schlieper, wrote to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, German armed forces high command) 
  It was impossible to advance here with only infantry at our disposal because the highly-organised rifle and machine-gun fire from the deep gun emplacements and horse-shoe-shaped yard cut down anyone who approached. There was only one solution - to force the Soviets to capitulate through hunger and thirst. We were ready to use any means available to exhaust them... Our offers to give themselves up were unsuccessful...
  Although the Soviet soldiers in the opening hours of the battle were stunned by the surprise attack, outnumbered, short of supplies and cut off from the outside world, many of them held out much longer than the Germans expected. The Germans used artillery, rocket mortars 15 cm Nebelwerfer 41 and flame throwers. The civilians inside the fortress tended the wounded, reloaded the machine-gun drums and belts and took up rifles to help defend the fortress. Children brought ammunition and food supplies from half-destroyed supply depots, scavenged weapons and watched enemy movements.
  Schlieper wrote in his detailed report that,
  ...the 81st Combat Engineer Battalion was given the task of blowing up a building on the Central Island ... in order to put an end to the Russian [sic - Soviet] flanking fire on the North Island. Explosives were lowered from the roof of the building towards the windows, then the fuses were lit. When they exploded, we could hear the Soviet soldiers screaming and groaning, but they continued to fight.
  Chaplain Rudolf Gschöpf wrote,
  We only gradually managed to take one defensive position after another as a result of stubborn fighting. The garrison of the so-called "Officers' House" on the Central Island only ceased to exist with the building itself ... The resistance continued until the walls of the building were destroyed and razed to the ground by more powerful explosions.
  On 24 June, with Germans having taken most parts of the fortress, some Soviet troops were able to link up and coordinate their actions under the command of Captain Ivan Zubachyov; his second in command was Regimental Commissar Yefim Fomin. On 26 June small Soviet forces tried to break out from the siege but failed and suffered many casualties; that day Zubachyov and Fomin were captured. Zubachyov was sent to a POW camp in Hammelburg where he di
caption: Development of losses in the battle for the Brest fortress in June 1941
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