Although he temporarily managed to persuade the furious Grubyev to calm down, Pavlov's mood did not improve in the slightest.
The greatest problem caused by the destruction of the communications command system had emerged. As the commander-in-chief of the Western Front Army, Pavlov had no way of learning the full situation across the entire Western Front Army.
Without knowing the army's specific circumstances, he could not deploy a corresponding battle strategy based on them. For Pavlov, the commander-in-chief of the Western Front Army, this was equivalent to stripping him of his command over the war.
After all, if Pavlov did not even know the specific situation of each army, how was he supposed to arrange a battle plan? If he issued orders recklessly, the final result would probably be little different from the Supreme Command's Order No. 3.
The Supreme Command was far from the front-line battlefield, but Pavlov's General Headquarters was not far from the army groups' operational command posts.
If he angered the commanders of those army groups and triggered a military mutiny, he would truly be lifting a rock only to drop it on his own feet.
Yet, in order to fulfill his role as commander-in-chief of the Western Front Army, Pavlov still issued his first countermeasure order of the war when he returned to Grodno. He ordered the army groups to converge on the Białystok salient and ordered the reserve forces to be ready to support Białystok at any time.
Białystok was not only a salient along the German-Russian border; it was also Brest's protective umbrella. If Białystok were lost, Brest would truly face a large-scale assault by the German Army.
By then, no matter how many troops Russia had, they would be unable to withstand a large-scale attack by the German Army. The terrain would