The Luftwaffe caught the enormous frontline Red air force on the ground and wiped it out in a few hours. In the center and in the north our armored pincers advanced by timetable, with the infantry roiling forward in their support. Six days saw us in Minsk and at the Dvina, bagging nearly half a million prisoners and thousands of guns and tanks. Only in the south did Rundstedt encounter some real resistance. Elsewhere, the Red Army was like a huge thrashing body without a head. Stalin was invisible and silent, paralyzed in the throes of melancholia.
