Stalin's first reaction to the German attack was the desire to act according to previously developed plans. The troops were instructed to encircle and destroy the enemy grouping in the direction of Vladimir-Volynsky and capture the Lublin area. The Western and Northwestern Fronts were ordered to capture East Prussia. However, the forces of the Western Front, lacking accurate data on the enemy's forces, acted unsuccessfully. The forces of the North-Western Front fled in disarray to Pskov. The Southwestern Front, where the main forces of the Red Army were concentrated, was able to relatively safely retreat to the line of the old fortifications. Only after the fall of Minsk on June 28, the need for a transition to strategic defense was realized.

In his memoirs, Anastas Mikoyan claims that on the evening of June 29, having received news of the fall of Minsk, Stalin said: “Lenin left us a great legacy, and we, his heirs, fucked up everything,” after which he left for Blizhnyaya dacha without answering phone calls.

According to Mikoyan's memoirs, "in a day or two" Molotov invited him, Malenkov, Voroshilov, Voznesensky and Beria to his office. Beria put forward the question of creating the State Defense Committee (GKO), which would be given all the power in the country. Everyone believed that the leadership and authority of Stalin at the head of the GKO would facilitate the mobilization and the management of military operations.

Mikoyan claims that Molotov said that Stalin was so prostrate that he was not interested in anything. (According to the memoirs of Zhukov, Stalin during the first day could not really pull himself together and firmly lead the events. "The shock produced on Stalin by the attack of the enemy was so strong that his voice even dropped." Molotov himself, in a conversation with the writer Felix Chuev, recalled that Stalin was at the dacha for "two or three days" and did not show himself to his comrades-in-arms. However, according to him, Stalin was firm, but at the same time worried and "a little depressed.") Mikoyan claims that Voznesensky declared that if Stalin continued to behave in the same way, then Molotov should lead the country, but it was ignored by the rest of the Politburo.

Nikita Khrushchev, who was not present in Moscow on the indicated days, in his memoirs retells Beria's recollections that when the Politburo arrived at his dacha, Stalin was afraid that members of the Politburo had come to arrest him for doing nothing to organize a rebuff to the German invasion. Mikoyan also believed that Stalin expected to be arrested. However, when the Politburo began to beg him to concentrate power in his hands, Stalin calmed down and returned to state affairs, the GKO was immediately created and responsibilities were assigned.

Sources: Memoirs of Anastas Mikoyan: The Path of Struggle, Vol 2. [Mikoyan, A. I., Katherine T. O'Connor, Diana L. Burgin, 1988; Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics [Molotov, V. M., Chuev, Feliz, Resis, Albert], 2007; Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar 1918-1945 [Khrushchev N.S., George Shriver, Stephen Shenfield], 2004; Marshall of the Soviet Union - Reminiscences and Reflections - Volumes 2, [Zhukov, G. K], 1985.