casualties, lost 9,427 guns and mortars, 4,799 tanks and 1,777 combat aircraft, and practically ceased to exist as a military force. The Front commander, General of the Army Dmitry Pavlov, and the Front Staff were recalled to Moscow. There they were accused of intentional disorganization of defense and retreat without battle, sentenced as traitors, and executed. The families of the traitors were repressed according to NKVD Order no. 00486. This order dealt with families of traitors of the Motherland. (They were rehabilitated in 1956.) Western Front reorganized 28 June – 2 July Furious over the loss of Minsk on 28 June, Stalin replaced the disgraced Pavlov with Colonel General Andrey Yeryomenko as commander of the Western Front. Arriving at Front headquarters at Mogilev on the morning of 29 June, Yeryomenko was faced with the daunting task of restoring order to the Western Front's defences. To accomplish this task he had initially only the remnants of the 4th and 13th Armies, of which the former had been reduced to the equivalent of a division in strength. On 1 July, he ordered the 13th Army to fall back to the Berezina River and defend the sectors between the towns of Kholkolnitza, Borisov and Brodets. Further south, the 4th Army were to defend the Berezina from Brodets through Svisloch to Bobruisk. To reinforce the Front's defences the elite 1st Moscow Motor Rifle Division was rushed from Moscow Military District to Borisov. This division, commanded by Colonel Yakov Kreizer, was at full strength with two motorized regiments, one tank regiment and 229 tanks. However, by that date Yeryomenko's defense line on the Berezina had already been rendered obsolete by Guderian's Panzer Divisions. On 29 June, the 3rd Panzer Division captured a bridgehead at Bobruisk from the 4th Army's 47th Rifle Corps, and on 30 June, the 4th Panzer Division seized the railroad bridge at Svisloch from the 4th Airborne Corps, cutting off one of that corps' three brigades and most of the 20th Mechanized Corps. Then on 2 July Stalin appointed Semyon Timoshenko, Marshal of the Soviet Union and People's Commissar for Defence, to command the Western Front, with Yeryomenko and Marshal Semyon Budyonny as his deputies. At the same time Stalin transferred four armies, the 19th Army, 20th Army, 21st Army and 22nd Army, from Marshal Budyonny's Group of Reserve Armies to the Western Front. After a telephone conversation with Timoshenko, Stalin added