Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Battle of Białystok-Minsk was a German strategic operation conducted by Army Group Center during the opening stage of Operation Barbarossa, lasting from the 22nd of June to the 9th of July 1941. In 18 days, the Wehrmacht destroyed the Soviet Western Front, advanced 460 kilometers into Soviet territory, and encircled four Soviet armies near Białystok and Minsk.
Army Group Center was commanded by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock. His two armored formations were led by Colonel General Heinz Guderian, commanding the 2nd Panzer Group, and Colonel General Hermann Hoth, commanding the 3rd Panzer Group.
Soviet official data recorded 417,729 personnel lost from the 22nd of June to the 9th of July 1941, including 341,012 killed or missing and 76,717 wounded or sick. Broader estimates of total Red Army losses in the operation range from 420,000 to 474,000 men.
General Dmitry Pavlov, commander of the Soviet Western Front, was recalled to Moscow after the defeat and accused of intentional disorganization of the defense and retreat without battle. He and his front staff were executed by the NKVD for cowardice and failure to perform their duties; they were pardoned in 1956.
Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia, fell to the Wehrmacht on the 26th of June 1941, four days after the German invasion began. The two German panzer groups closed their encirclement east of Minsk on the 29th of June.
The Soviet Western Front was positioned in a forward bulge around Białystok that planners intended as a launching pad for counterattacks into German-occupied Poland. This same configuration became a trap when Germany struck first, destroying much of the Red Air Force on its airfields and severing communications between the Western Front and neighboring Soviet commands before any counterattack could be organized.