In June 1941, the border battle of the Western Front ended in a terrible disaster, which almost led to the loss of the entire war. Three of our armies were killed in the Bialystok cauldron, irretrievable losses exceeded 300 thousand people, hundreds of aircraft, thousands of armored vehicles. However, the true scale of this tragedy was never truly comprehended - Soviet military historians, as a rule, limited themselves to only a brief overview of the events, according to opportunities by avoiding specific numbers, estimates and conclusions. Serious studies of the destruction of the Western Front can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And in these rare works, the authors preferred to write about the actions of regiments and divisions, rather than about the tragic fates of individual soldiers and commanders who fell victim to a sudden enemy attack and the helplessness of their own command. In this book, the tragedy of the Bialystok cauldron is shown for the first time from all sides - from the truth of the trenches ordinary soldiers to the dry directives of the General Staff. For the first time, unique memoirs of participants in the events and declassified archival documents are published. This book is a monument to everyone who died in the forests of Belarus in the first days of the Great Patriotic War.