Interesting facts about the Great Patriotic War. History of the Second World War

On the radio July 2, 1941. In this speech I.V. Stalin also used the terms “Patriotic War of Liberation”, “National Patriotic War”, “Patriotic War against German Fascism”.

Another official approval of this name was the introduction of the Order of the Patriotic War on May 2, 1942.

1941

On September 8, 1941, the siege of Leningrad began. For 872 days the city heroically resisted the German invaders. He not only resisted, but also worked. It should be noted that during the siege, Leningrad provided weapons and ammunition to the troops of the Leningrad Front, and also supplied military products to neighboring fronts.

On September 30, 1941, the Battle of Moscow began. The first major battle of the Great Patriotic War in which German troops suffered a serious defeat. The battle began as the German offensive Operation Typhoon.

On December 5, the Red Army's counteroffensive began near Moscow. The troops of the Western and Kalinin fronts pushed the enemy back in places more than 100 kilometers from Moscow.

Despite the victorious offensive of the Red Army near Moscow, this was only the beginning. The beginning of the great battle against fascism, which will last another 3 long years.

1942

The most difficult year of the Great Patriotic War. This year the Red Army suffered very heavy defeats.

The offensive near Rzhev resulted in huge losses. More than 250,000 were lost in the Kharkov cauldron. Attempts to break the blockade of Leningrad ended in failure. The 2nd Shock Army died in the Novgorod swamps.

Key dates of the second year of the Great Patriotic War

From January 8 to March 3, the Rzhev-Vyazma operation took place. The final stage of the Battle of Moscow.

From January 9 to February 6, 1942 - Toropetsko-Kholm offensive operation. The Red Army troops advanced almost 300 kilometers, liberating many settlements.

On January 7, the Demyansk offensive operation began, as a result of which the so-called Demyansk cauldron was formed. Wehrmacht troops totaling more than 100,000 people were surrounded. Including the elite SS division “Totenkopf”.

After some time, the encirclement was broken, but all the miscalculations of the Demyansk operation were taken into account when eliminating the encircled group at Stalingrad. This particularly concerned the interruption of air supplies and the strengthening of the defense of the outer ring of encirclement.

On March 17, as a result of the unsuccessful Lyuban offensive operation near Novgorod, the 2nd Shock Army was surrounded.

On November 18, after heavy defensive battles, the Red Army troops went on the offensive and surrounded the German group in the Stalingrad area.

1943 - the year of turning point during the fighting of the Great Patriotic War

In 1943, the Red Army managed to wrest the initiative from the hands of the Wehrmacht and begin a victorious march to the borders of the USSR. In some places, our units have advanced more than 1000-1200 kilometers in a year. The experience accumulated by the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War made itself felt.

On January 12, Operation Iskra began, as a result of which the blockade of Leningrad was broken. A narrow corridor up to 11 kilometers wide connected the city with the “Mainland”.

On July 5, 1943, the Battle of Kursk began. A turning point battle during the Great Patriotic War, after which the strategic initiative completely passed to the side of the Soviet Union and the Red Army.

Already during the Great Patriotic War, contemporaries appreciated the significance of this battle. Wehrmacht General Guderian said after the Battle of Kursk: “...there were no more calm days on the Eastern Front...”.

August - December 1943. Battle of the Dnieper - left-bank Ukraine is completely liberated, Kyiv is taken.

1944 is the year of the liberation of our country from fascist invaders

In 1944, the Red Army almost completely cleared the territory of the USSR from the Nazi invaders. As a result of a series of strategic operations, Soviet troops came close to the borders of Germany. More than 70 German divisions were destroyed.

This year, Red Army troops entered the territory of Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Norway, Romania, Yugoslavia and Hungary. Finland emerged from the war with the USSR.

January - April 1944. Liberation of right-bank Ukraine. Exit to the state border of the Soviet Union.

On June 23, one of the largest operations of the Great Patriotic War began - the offensive Operation Bagration. Belarus, part of Poland and almost the entire Baltic region were completely liberated. Army Group Center was defeated.

On July 17, 1944, for the first time during the war, a column of almost 60,000 German prisoners captured in Belarus was marched through the streets of Moscow.

1945 - the year of victory in the Great Patriotic War

The years of the Great Patriotic War, spent by Soviet troops in the trenches, made their presence felt. The year 1945 began with the Vistula-Oder offensive operation, which would later be called the most rapid offensive in human history.

In just 2 weeks, the Red Army troops covered 400 kilometers, liberating Poland and defeating more than 50 German divisions.

On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler, Reich Chancellor, Fuhrer and Supreme Commander of Germany, committed suicide.

On May 9, 1945, at 0:43 a.m. Moscow time, the unconditional surrender of Germany was signed.

On the Soviet side, the surrender was accepted by Marshal of the Soviet Union, Commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.

4 years, 1418 days of the most difficult and bloody war in the history of Russia have ended.

At 22:00 on May 9, to commemorate the complete victory over Germany, Moscow saluted with 30 artillery salvoes from a thousand guns.

On June 24, 1945, the Victory Parade took place in Moscow. This solemn event marked the end of the Great Patriotic War.

It should be noted that on May 9, the Great Patriotic War ended, but the 2nd World War did not end. In accordance with allied agreements, on August 8, the USSR entered the war with Japan. In just two weeks, Red Army troops defeated Japan's largest and most powerful army, the Kwantung Army, in Manchuria.

Having almost completely lost its ground forces and the ability to wage war on the Asian continent, Japan capitulated on September 2. September 2, 1945 is the official date of the end of World War II.

Interesting fact. Formally, the Soviet Union was at war with Germany until January 25, 1955. The fact is that after Germany surrendered, a peace treaty was not signed. Legally, the Great Patriotic War ended when the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a decree. This happened on January 25, 1955.

By the way, the United States ended the state of war with Germany on October 19, 1951, and France and Great Britain on July 9, 1951.

On Sunday, June 22, 1941, at dawn, the troops of Nazi Germany, without declaring war, suddenly attacked the entire western border of the Soviet Union and carried out bombing airstrikes on Soviet cities and military formations.

The Great Patriotic War began. They were waiting for her, but still she came suddenly. And the point here is not a miscalculation or Stalin’s distrust of intelligence data. During the pre-war months, different dates for the start of the war were given, for example May 20, and this was reliable information, but due to the uprising in Yugoslavia, Hitler postponed the date of the attack on the USSR to a later date. There is another factor that is extremely rarely mentioned. This is a successful disinformation campaign by German intelligence. Thus, the Germans spread rumors through all possible channels that the attack on the USSR would take place on June 22, but with the main attack directed in an area where this was obviously impossible. Thus, the date also looked like misinformation, so it was on this day that the attack was least expected.
And in foreign textbooks, June 22, 1941 is presented as one of the current episodes of the Second World War, while in the textbooks of the Baltic states this date is considered positive, giving “hope for liberation.”

Russia

§4. Invasion of the USSR. Beginning of the Great Patriotic War
At dawn on June 22, 1941, Hitler's troops invaded the USSR. The Great Patriotic War began.
Germany and its allies (Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia) did not have an overwhelming advantage in manpower and equipment and, according to the Barbarossa plan, relied mainly on the surprise attack factor, the tactics of blitzkrieg (“lightning war”). The defeat of the USSR was planned within two to three months by the forces of three army groups (Army Group North, advancing on Leningrad, Army Group Center, advancing on Moscow, and Army Group South, advancing on Kiev).
In the first days of the war, the German army caused serious damage to the Soviet defense system: military headquarters were destroyed, the activities of communications services were paralyzed, and strategically important objects were captured. The German army was rapidly advancing deep into the USSR, and by July 10, Army Group Center (commander von Bock), having captured Belarus, approached Smolensk; Army Group South (commander von Rundstedt) captured Right Bank Ukraine; Army Group North (commander von Leeb) occupied part of the Baltic states. The losses of the Red Army (including those who were surrounded) amounted to more than two million people. The current situation was catastrophic for the USSR. But Soviet mobilization resources were very large, and by the beginning of July 5 million people had been drafted into the Red Army, which made it possible to close the gaps that had formed at the front.

V.L.Kheifets, L.S. Kheifets, K.M. Severinov. General history. 9th grade. Ed. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences V.S. Myasnikov. Moscow, Ventana-Graf Publishing House, 2013.

Chapter XVII. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders
The treacherous attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR
While fulfilling the grandiose tasks of Stalin's third five-year plan and steadily and firmly pursuing a policy of peace, the Soviet government did not for a minute forget about the possibility of a new "attack by the imperialists on our country. Comrade Stalin tirelessly called on the peoples of the Soviet Union to be in mobilization readiness. In February 1938 in his response to a letter from Komsomol member Ivanov, Comrade Stalin wrote: “Indeed, it would be ridiculous and stupid to turn a blind eye to the fact of capitalist encirclement and think that our external enemies, for example, the fascists, will not try to carry out a military attack on the USSR on occasion.”
Comrade Stalin demanded strengthening the defense capability of our country. “It is necessary,” he wrote, “to strengthen and strengthen our Red Army, Red Navy, Red Aviation, and Osoaviakhim in every possible way. It is necessary to keep our entire people in a state of mobilization readiness in the face of the danger of a military attack, so that no “accident” and no tricks of our external enemies can take us by surprise...”
Comrade Stalin's warning alerted the Soviet people, forced them to more vigilantly monitor the machinations of their enemies and strengthen the Soviet army in every possible way.
The Soviet people understood that the German fascists, led by Hitler, were seeking to unleash a new bloody war, with the help of which they hoped to win world domination. Hitler declared the Germans to be the “superior race”, and all other peoples to be inferior, inferior races. The Nazis treated the Slavic peoples with particular hatred and, first of all, the great Russian people, who more than once in their history fought against the German aggressors.
The Nazis based their plan on the plan for a military attack and lightning defeat of Russia developed by General Hoffmann during the First World War. This plan provided for the concentration of huge armies on the western borders of our homeland, the capture of the vital centers of the country within a few weeks and a rapid advance deep into Russia, right up to the Urals. Subsequently, this plan was supplemented and approved by the Nazi command and was called the Barbarossa plan.
The monstrous war machine of the Hitlerite imperialists began its movement in the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine, threatening the vital centers of the Soviet country.

Textbook “History of the USSR”, 10th grade, K.V. Bazilevich, S.V. Bakhrushin, A.M. Pankratova, A.V. Fokht, M., Uchpedgiz, 1952

Austria, Germany

Chapter “From the Russian Campaign to Complete Defeat”
After careful preparation that lasted many months, on June 22, 1941, Germany began a “war of total annihilation” against the Soviet Union. Its goal was to conquer a new living space for the German Aryan race. The essence of the German plan was a lightning attack, called Barbarossa. It was believed that under the rapid onslaught of the trained German military machine, Soviet troops would not be able to provide worthy resistance. Within a few months, the Nazi command seriously expected to reach Moscow. It was assumed that the capture of the capital of the USSR would completely demoralize the enemy and the war would end in victory. However, after a series of impressive successes on the battlefields, within a few weeks the Nazis were driven back hundreds of kilometers from the Soviet capital.

Textbook “History” for grade 7, team of authors, Duden publishing house, 2013.

Holt McDougal. The World History.
For Senior High School, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pub. Co., 2012

Hitler began planning an attack on his ally the USSR in the early summer of 1940. The Balkan countries of Southeastern Europe played a key role in Hitler's invasion plan. Hitler wanted to create a bridgehead in Southeastern Europe for an attack on the USSR. He also wanted to be sure that the British would not interfere.
In preparation for the invasion, Hitler moved to expand his influence in the Balkans. By early 1941, by threat of force, he persuaded Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to join the Axis powers. Yugoslavia and Greece, ruled by pro-British governments, resisted. In early April 1941, Hitler invaded both countries. Yugoslavia fell 11 days later. Greece surrendered after 17 days.
Hitler attacks the Soviet Union. By establishing tight control over the Balkans, Hitler could carry out Operation Barbarossa, his plan to invade the USSR. Early on the morning of June 22, 1941, the roar of German tanks and the drone of airplanes signaled the beginning of the invasion. The Soviet Union was not prepared for this attack. Although he had the largest army in the world, the troops were neither well equipped nor well trained.
The invasion progressed week after week until the Germans were 500 miles (804.67 kilometers) inside the Soviet Union. Retreating, Soviet troops burned and destroyed everything in the enemy's path. The Russians used this scorched earth strategy against Napoleon.

Section 7. World War II
The attack on the Soviet Union (the so-called Barbarossa plan) was carried out on June 22, 1941. The German army, which numbered about three million soldiers, launched an offensive in three directions: in the north - towards Leningrad, in the central part of the USSR - towards Moscow and in the south - towards Crimea. The onslaught of the invaders was swift. Soon the Germans besieged Leningrad and Sevastopol and came close to Moscow. The Red Army suffered heavy losses, but the main goal of the Nazis - the capture of the capital of the Soviet Union - was never realized. Vast spaces and the early Russian winter, with fierce resistance from Soviet troops and ordinary residents of the country, thwarted the German plan for a lightning war. At the beginning of December 1941, units of the Red Army under the command of General Zhukov launched a counteroffensive and pushed back enemy troops 200 kilometers from Moscow.

History textbook for the 8th grade of primary school (Klett publishing house, 2011). Predrag Vajagić and Nenad Stošić.

Never before had our people reacted to a German invasion except with determination to defend their land, but when Molotov, in a trembling voice, reported the German attack, the Estonians felt everything but sympathy. On the contrary, many have hope. The population of Estonia enthusiastically welcomed the German soldiers as liberators.
Russian soldiers aroused hostility among the average Estonian. These people were poor, poorly dressed, extremely suspicious, and at the same time often very pretentious. The Germans were more familiar to the Estonians. They were cheerful and passionate about music; laughter and playing musical instruments could be heard from the places where they gathered.

Lauri Vakhtre. Textbook “Turning moments in Estonian history.”

Bulgaria

Chapter 2. Globalization of the conflict (1941–1942)
Attack on the USSR (June 1941). On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a major offensive against the USSR. Having begun the conquest of new territories in the east, the Fuhrer put into practice the theory of “living space”, proclaimed in the book “My Struggle” (“Mein Kampf”). On the other hand, the termination of the German-Soviet Pact again made it possible for the Nazi regime to present itself as a fighter against communism in Europe: aggression against the USSR was presented by German propaganda as a crusade against Bolshevism with the aim of exterminating “Jewish Marxists.”
However, this new blitzkrieg developed into a long and exhausting war. Shocked by the surprise attack, drained of blood by Stalin's repressions and ill-prepared, the Soviet army was quickly driven back. In a few weeks, German armies occupied one million square kilometers and reached the outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow. But fierce Soviet resistance and the rapid arrival of the Russian winter stopped the German offensive: the Wehrmacht was unable to defeat the enemy in one campaign. In the spring of 1942, a new offensive was required.

Plan for a “lightning war” against the USSR
The German command expected to approach Moscow by August 15, to end the war against the USSR and create a defensive line against “Asian Russia” by October 1, 1941, and to reach the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line by the winter of 1941.
On June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began with the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union. Mobilization was announced in the USSR. Voluntary joining the Red Army became widespread. The people's militia became widespread. In the front-line zone, fighter battalions and self-defense groups were created to protect important national economic facilities. The evacuation of people and material assets began from territories threatened by occupation.
The military operations were led by the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, created on June 23, 1941. The headquarters was headed by J. Stalin. Italy
June 22, 1941
Giardina, G. Sabbatucci, V. Vidotto, Manuale di Storia. L "eta`contemporanea. History textbook for graduating 5th grade of high school. Bari, Laterza. Textbook for 11th grade of high school "Our New History", Dar Aun Publishing House, 2008.
With the German attack on the Soviet Union in the early summer of 1941, a new phase of the war began. A broad front opened in eastern Europe. Britain was no longer forced to fight alone. The ideological confrontation was simplified and radicalized with the end of the anomalous agreement between Nazism and the Soviet regime. The international communist movement, which after August 1939 took an ambiguous position of condemning “opposing imperialisms,” revised it in favor of an alliance with democracy and the fight against fascism.
The fact that the USSR represented the main target of Hitler’s expansionist intentions was not a mystery to anyone, including the Soviet people. However, Stalin believed that Hitler would never attack Russia without ending the war with Great Britain. So when the German offensive (codenamed Barbarossa) began on June 22, 1941, along a 1,600-kilometer front from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the Russians were unprepared, a lack of preparedness reinforced by the fact that the 1937 purge had deprived the Red Army of the army of its best military leaders, initially made the task of the aggressor easier.
The offensive, which also included the Italian expeditionary force, which was sent in great haste by Mussolini, who dreamed of participating in a crusade against the Bolsheviks, continued throughout the summer: in the north through the Baltic states, in the south through Ukraine, with the aim of reaching the oil regions of the Caucasus .

Looking back, these events seem to be centuries old. Life is in full swing around, everyone is fussing, in a hurry, and sometimes even the events of a year ago have no meaning and are ingloriously covered with dust in memory. But humanity has no moral right to forget the 1418 days of the Great Patriotic War. Chronicles of the war 1941-1945. - this is just a small echo of that time, a good reminder to the modern generation that war has never brought anything good to anyone.

Causes of the war

Like any armed confrontation, the reasons for the outbreak of the war were very banal. The chronicle of the Great 1941-1945 states that the battle began because Adolf Hitler wanted to lead Germany to world domination: to seize all countries and create a state with pure races.

Years later he invades the territory of Poland, then goes to Czechoslovakia, conquers more new territories, and then violates the peace treaty concluded on August 23, 1939 with the USSR. Intoxicated by his first successes and victories, he developed the Barbarossa plan, according to which he was supposed to capture the Soviet Union in a short time. But it was not there. From this moment begins a four-year chronicle of the events of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945).

1941st. Start

In June the war began. During this month, five defense fronts were formed, each of which was responsible for its own territory:

• Northern front. Defended Hanko (from 22.06 to 02.12) and the Arctic (from 29.07 to 10.10).
• Northwestern Front. Immediately after the attack, he began to carry out the Baltic strategic defensive operation (06.22-09.07).
• Western Front. The Bialystok-Minsk battle took place here (06.22-07.09).
• Southwestern front. The Lviv-Chernivtsi defensive operation was launched (06.22-06.07).
• Southern front. Founded 25.07.

In July, defensive operations continued on the Northern Front. On the Northwestern Front, the Leningrad defensive operation began (from 10.07 to 30.09). At the same time, the Battle of Smolensk begins on the Western Front (10.07-10.09). On July 24, the Central Front was founded and took part in the Battle of Smolensk. On the 30th the Reserve Front was formed. The Kiev defensive operation began in the South-West (07.07-26.09). The Tiraspol-Melitopol defensive operation begins on the Southern Front (07.27-28.09).

In August the battles continue. The forces of the Reserve Front join the Battle of Smolensk. On the 14th, the Bryansk Front was founded, and the city was defended in the Odessa defensive region (05.08-16.10). On August 23, the Transcaucasian Front is formed, two days later the Iranian operation begins.

Entries for September in documentary chronicles of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) indicate that most defensive battles have ended. The forces of the Soviet Union changed their location and began new offensive operations: Sumy-Kharkov and Donbass.

In October, the Sinyavskaya and Strelninsk-Peterhof operations were carried out on the Leningrad Front, and the Tikhvin defensive operation began (from October 16 to November 18). On the 17th, the Kalinin defensive front was formed, and the defensive operation of the same name began. On the 10th, the Reserve Front ceased to exist. The Tula defensive operation began on the Bryansk Front (10.24-05.12). Crimean troops began a defensive operation and entered the battle for Sevastopol (10.10.1941-09.07.1942).

In November, the Tikhvin offensive operation began, which ended by the end of the year. The battles went on with varying degrees of success. On December 5, the Kalinin offensive operation began, and on the 6th, the Klin-Solnechnaya and Tula offensive operations began. On December 17, the Volkhov Front was formed. The Bryansk Front was formed again, and the Kerch landing operation began in the Transcaucasus (December 26). The defense of Sevastopol continued.

1942 - a brief military chronicle of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945)

On January 1, 1942, an anti-German bloc was formed, which included 226 countries. Meanwhile, on January 2, the city of Maloyaroslavets was liberated, on the 3rd, near the city of Sukhinichi, the Russian army defeated the Germans, and on January 7, German shock groups were defeated near Moscow.

New offensive operations begin. On January 20, Mozhaisk was completely liberated. At the beginning of February, the entire Moscow region was liberated from the Germans. Soviet troops advanced 250 km in the Vitebsk direction. On March 5, long-range aviation was created. On May 8, the German offensive in Crimea begins. Fighting is underway near Kharkov, and on June 28 a large-scale offensive by German troops begins. The forces were mainly directed to the Volga and the Caucasus.

On July 17, the legendary Battle of Stalingrad begins, which is mentioned in all chronicles of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 (photos of the confrontation are attached). On August 25, a state of siege was introduced in Stalingrad. On September 13, fighting begins at Mamayev Kurgan. November 19 The Red Army begins an offensive operation near Stalingrad. On December 3, a group of German troops was defeated in the Shiripin area. On December 31, troops of the Stalingrad Front liberated the city of Elista.

1943

This year has become a turning point. On January 1, the Rostov offensive operation began. The cities of Mozdok, Malgobek, and Nalchik were liberated, and Operation Iskra began on January 12. The military personnel who took part in it must have been in Leningrad. Five days later, the city of Velikiye Luki was liberated. On January 18, it was possible to establish contact with Leningrad. On January 19, an offensive operation began on the Voronezh Front and managed to defeat a large enemy military group. On January 20, enemy troops were defeated near the city of Velikoluksk. On January 21, Stavropol was liberated.

On January 31, German troops surrender at Stalingrad. On February 2, it was possible to liquidate the army at Stalingrad (almost 300 thousand fascists). On February 8, Kursk was liberated, and on the 9th, Belgorod. The Soviet army advanced towards Minsk.

Krasnodar liberated; 14th - Rostov-on-Don, Voroshilovgrad and Krasnodon; On February 16, Kharkov was liberated. On March 3, Rzhevsk was liberated, on March 6, Gzhatsk, and on March 12, the Germans abandoned their positions in Vyazma. On March 29, the Soviet flotilla caused significant damage to the German fleet off the coast of Norway.

On May 3, the Soviet army won the air battle, and on July 5, the legendary Battle of Kursk began. It ended on August 22, during the battle 30 German divisions were defeated. By the end of the year, successful offensive operations were carried out, one after another, the cities of the Soviet Union were liberated from the invaders. fails.

1944

According to the chronicle of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), the war took a turn favorable for the USSR. Offensive operations began on all fronts. Ten so-called Stalinist strikes helped completely liberate the territory of the USSR; military operations were now carried out in Europe.

Way to victory

The German command understands that it cannot seize the strategic initiative and begins to take defensive positions in order to preserve at least those territories that they managed to capture. But every day they had to retreat further and further.

On April 16, 1945, Soviet troops surround Berlin. The Nazi army is defeated. April 30 Hitler commits suicide. On May 7, Germany announced its surrender to the Western Allied forces, and on May 9, it capitulated to the Soviet Union.

In the chronicles (1941-1945), the war is presented to the reader as a list of dates and events. But we must not forget that behind every date there are hidden human destinies: unfulfilled hopes, unfulfilled promises and unlived lives.

We have collected for you the best stories about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. First-person stories, not made up, living memories of front-line soldiers and witnesses of the war.

A story about the war from the book of priest Alexander Dyachenko “Overcoming”

I was not always old and frail, I lived in a Belarusian village, I had a family, a very good husband. But the Germans came, my husband, like other men, joined the partisans, he was their commander. We women supported our men in any way we could. The Germans became aware of this. They arrived in the village early in the morning. They kicked everyone out of their houses and drove them like cattle to the station in a neighboring town. The carriages were already waiting for us there. People were packed into the heated vehicles so that we could only stand. We drove with stops for two days, they gave us no water or food. When we were finally unloaded from the carriages, some were no longer able to move. Then the guards began throwing them to the ground and finishing them off with the butts of their carbines. And then they showed us the direction to the gate and said: “Run.” As soon as we had run half the distance, the dogs were released. The strongest reached the gate. Then the dogs were driven away, everyone who remained was lined up in a column and led through the gate, on which it was written in German: “To each his own.” Since then, boy, I can't look at tall chimneys.

She exposed her arm and showed me a tattoo of a row of numbers on the inside of her arm, closer to the elbow. I knew it was a tattoo, my dad had a tank tattooed on his chest because he is a tanker, but why put numbers on it?

I remember that she also talked about how our tankers liberated them and how lucky she was to live to see this day. She didn’t tell me anything about the camp itself and what was happening in it; she probably pitied my childish head.

I learned about Auschwitz only later. I found out and understood why my neighbor couldn’t look at the pipes of our boiler room.

During the war, my father also ended up in occupied territory. They got it from the Germans, oh, how they got it. And when ours drove a little, they, realizing that the grown-up boys were tomorrow’s soldiers, decided to shoot them. They gathered everyone and took them to the log, and then our airplane saw a crowd of people and started a line nearby. The Germans are on the ground, and the boys are scattered. My dad was lucky, he escaped with a shot in his hand, but he escaped. Not everyone was lucky then.

My father was a tank driver in Germany. Their tank brigade distinguished itself near Berlin on the Seelow Heights. I've seen photos of these guys. Young people, and all their chests are in orders, several people - . Many, like my dad, were drafted into the active army from occupied lands, and many had something to take revenge on the Germans for. That may be why they fought so desperately and bravely.

They walked across Europe, liberated concentration camp prisoners and beat the enemy, finishing them off mercilessly. “We were eager to go to Germany itself, we dreamed of how we would smear it with the caterpillar tracks of our tanks. We had a special unit, even the uniform was black. We still laughed, as if they wouldn’t confuse us with the SS men.”

Immediately after the end of the war, my father’s brigade was stationed in one of the small German towns. Or rather, in the ruins that remained of it. They somehow settled down in the basements of the buildings, but there was no room for a dining room. And the brigade commander, a young colonel, ordered the tables to be knocked down from shields and a temporary canteen to be set up right in the town square.

“And here is our first peaceful dinner. Field kitchens, cooks, everything is as usual, but the soldiers do not sit on the ground or on a tank, but, as expected, at tables. We had just started having lunch, and suddenly German children began crawling out of all these ruins, basements, and crevices like cockroaches. Some are standing, but others can no longer stand from hunger. They stand and look at us like dogs. And I don’t know how it happened, but I took the bread with my shot hand and put it in my pocket, I looked quietly, and all our guys, without raising their eyes to each other, did the same.”

And then they fed the German children, gave away everything that could somehow be hidden from dinner, just yesterday’s children themselves, who very recently, without flinching, were raped, burned, shot by the fathers of these German children on our land they had captured.

The brigade commander, Hero of the Soviet Union, a Jew by nationality, whose parents, like all other Jews of a small Belarusian town, were buried alive by punitive forces, had every right, both moral and military, to drive away the German “geeks” from his tank crews with volleys. They ate his soldiers, reduced their combat effectiveness, many of these children were also sick and could spread the infection among the personnel.

But the colonel, instead of shooting, ordered an increase in the food consumption rate. And German children, on the orders of the Jew, were fed along with his soldiers.

What kind of phenomenon do you think this is - the Russian Soldier? Where does this mercy come from? Why didn't they take revenge? It seems beyond anyone’s strength to find out that all your relatives were buried alive, perhaps by the fathers of these same children, to see concentration camps with many bodies of tortured people. And instead of “taking it easy” on the children and wives of the enemy, they, on the contrary, saved them, fed them, and treated them.

Several years have passed since the events described, and my dad, having graduated from military school in the fifties, again served in Germany, but as an officer. Once on the street of one city a young German called out to him. He ran up to my father, grabbed his hand and asked:

Don't you recognize me? Yes, of course, now it’s hard to recognize that hungry, ragged boy in me. But I remember you, how you fed us then among the ruins. Believe me, we will never forget this.

This is how we made friends in the West, by force of arms and the all-conquering power of Christian love.

Alive. We'll endure it. We will win.

THE TRUTH ABOUT WAR

It should be noted that not everyone was convincingly impressed by V. M. Molotov’s speech on the first day of the war, and the final phrase caused irony among some soldiers. When we, doctors, asked them how things were at the front, and we lived only for this, we often heard the answer: “We are scuttling. Victory is ours... that is, the Germans!”

I can’t say that J.V. Stalin’s speech had a positive effect on everyone, although most of them felt warm from it. But in the darkness of a long line for water in the basement of the house where the Yakovlevs lived, I once heard: “Here! They became brothers and sisters! I forgot how I went to jail for being late. The rat squeaked when the tail was pressed!” The people were silent at the same time. I have heard similar statements more than once.

Two other factors contributed to the rise of patriotism. Firstly, these are the atrocities of the fascists on our territory. Newspaper reports that in Katyn near Smolensk the Germans shot tens of thousands of Poles we captured, and that it was not us during the retreat, as the Germans assured, that were perceived without malice. Anything could have happened. “We couldn’t leave them to the Germans,” some reasoned. But the population could not forgive the murder of our people.

In February 1942, my senior operating nurse A.P. Pavlova received a letter from the liberated banks of the Seliger River, which told how, after the explosion of a hand fan in the German headquarters hut, they hanged almost all the men, including Pavlova’s brother. They hung him on a birch tree near his native hut, and he hung for almost two months in front of his wife and three children. The mood of the entire hospital from this news became menacing for the Germans: both the staff and the wounded soldiers loved Pavlova... I ensured that the original letter was read in all the wards, and Pavlova’s face, yellowed from tears, was in the dressing room before everyone’s eyes...

The second thing that made everyone happy was the reconciliation with the church. The Orthodox Church showed true patriotism in its preparations for the war, and it was appreciated. Government awards showered on the patriarch and clergy. These funds were used to create air squadrons and tank divisions with the names “Alexander Nevsky” and “Dmitry Donskoy”. They showed a film where a priest with the chairman of the district executive committee, a partisan, destroys atrocious fascists. The film ended with the old bell ringer climbing the bell tower and ringing the alarm, crossing himself widely before doing so. It sounded directly: “Fall yourself with the sign of the cross, Russian people!” The wounded spectators and the staff had tears in their eyes when the lights came on.

On the contrary, the huge money contributed by the chairman of the collective farm, it seems, Ferapont Golovaty, caused evil smiles. “Look how I stole from the hungry collective farmers,” said the wounded peasants.

The activities of the fifth column, that is, internal enemies, also caused enormous indignation among the population. I myself saw how many of them there were: German planes were even signaled from the windows with multi-colored flares. In November 1941, at the Neurosurgical Institute hospital, they signaled from the window in Morse code. The doctor on duty, Malm, a completely drunken and declassed man, said that the alarm was coming from the window of the operating room where my wife was on duty. The head of the hospital, Bondarchuk, said at the morning five-minute meeting that he vouched for Kudrina, and two days later the signalmen were taken, and Malm himself disappeared forever.

My violin teacher Yu. A. Aleksandrov, a communist, although a secretly religious, consumptive man, worked as the fire chief of the House of the Red Army on the corner of Liteiny and Kirovskaya. He was chasing the rocket launcher, obviously an employee of the House of the Red Army, but could not see him in the darkness and did not catch up, but he threw the rocket launcher at Alexandrov’s feet.

Life at the institute gradually improved. The central heating began to work better, the electric light became almost constant, and water appeared in the water supply. We went to the movies. Films such as “Two Fighters”, “Once Upon a Time There Was a Girl” and others were watched with undisguised feeling.

For “Two Fighters,” the nurse was able to get tickets to the “October” cinema for a show later than we expected. Arriving at the next show, we learned that a shell hit the courtyard of this cinema, where visitors to the previous show were being released, and many were killed and wounded.

The summer of 1942 passed through the hearts of ordinary people very sadly. The encirclement and defeat of our troops near Kharkov, which greatly increased the number of our prisoners in Germany, brought great despondency to everyone. The new German offensive to the Volga, to Stalingrad, was very difficult for everyone. The mortality rate of the population, especially increased in the spring months, despite some improvement in nutrition, as a result of dystrophy, as well as the death of people from air bombs and artillery shelling, was felt by everyone.

My wife’s food cards and hers were stolen in mid-May, which made us very hungry again. And we had to prepare for winter.

We not only cultivated and planted vegetable gardens in Rybatskoe and Murzinka, but received a fair strip of land in the garden near the Winter Palace, which was given to our hospital. It was excellent land. Other Leningraders cultivated other gardens, squares, and the Field of Mars. We even planted about two dozen potato eyes with an adjacent piece of husk, as well as cabbage, rutabaga, carrots, onion seedlings, and especially a lot of turnips. They planted them wherever there was a piece of land.

The wife, fearing a lack of protein food, collected slugs from vegetables and pickled them in two large jars. However, they were not useful, and in the spring of 1943 they were thrown away.

The ensuing winter of 1942/43 was mild. Transport no longer stopped; all wooden houses on the outskirts of Leningrad, including houses in Murzinka, were demolished for fuel and stocked up for the winter. There was electric light in the rooms. Soon the scientists were given special letter rations. As a candidate of science, I was given a group B ration. It included monthly 2 kg of sugar, 2 kg of cereal, 2 kg of meat, 2 kg of flour, 0.5 kg of butter and 10 packs of Belomorkanal cigarettes. It was luxurious and it saved us.

My fainting stopped. I even easily stayed on duty all night with my wife, guarding the vegetable garden near the Winter Palace in turns, three times during the summer. However, despite the security, every single head of cabbage was stolen.

Art was of great importance. We began to read more, go to the cinema more often, watch film programs in the hospital, go to amateur concerts and artists who came to us. Once my wife and I were at a concert of D. Oistrakh and L. Oborin who came to Leningrad. When D. Oistrakh played and L. Oborin accompanied, it was a little cold in the hall. Suddenly a voice said quietly: “Air raid, air alert! Those who wish can go down to the bomb shelter!” In the crowded hall, no one moved, Oistrakh smiled gratefully and understandingly at us all with one eye and continued to play, without stumbling for a moment. Although the explosions shook my legs and I could hear their sounds and the barking of anti-aircraft guns, the music absorbed everything. Since then, these two musicians have become my biggest favorites and fighting friends without knowing each other.

By the autumn of 1942, Leningrad was greatly deserted, which also facilitated its supply. By the time the blockade began, up to 7 million cards were issued in a city overcrowded with refugees. In the spring of 1942, only 900 thousand were issued.

Many were evacuated, including part of the 2nd Medical Institute. The rest of the universities have all left. But they still believe that about two million were able to leave Leningrad along the Road of Life. So about four million died (According to official data, about 600 thousand people died in besieged Leningrad, according to others - about 1 million. - ed.) a figure significantly higher than the official one. Not all the dead ended up in the cemetery. The huge ditch between the Saratov colony and the forest leading to Koltushi and Vsevolozhskaya took in hundreds of thousands of dead people and was razed to the ground. Now there is a suburban vegetable garden there, and there are no traces left. But the rustling tops and cheerful voices of those harvesting the harvest are no less happiness for the dead than the mournful music of the Piskarevsky cemetery.

A little about children. Their fate was terrible. They gave almost nothing on children's cards. I remember two cases especially vividly.

During the harshest part of the winter of 1941/42, I walked from Bekhterevka to Pestel Street to my hospital. My swollen legs almost couldn’t walk, my head was spinning, each careful step pursued one goal: to move forward without falling. On Staronevsky I wanted to go to a bakery to buy two of our cards and warm up at least a little. The frost penetrated to the bones. I stood in line and noticed that a boy of seven or eight years old was standing near the counter. He bent down and seemed to shrink all over. Suddenly he snatched a piece of bread from the woman who had just received it, fell, huddled in a ball with his back up, like a hedgehog, and began greedily tearing the bread with his teeth. The woman who had lost her bread screamed wildly: probably a hungry family was impatiently waiting for her at home. The queue got mixed up. Many rushed to beat and trample the boy, who continued to eat, his quilted jacket and hat protecting him. "Man! If only you could help,” someone shouted to me, obviously because I was the only man in the bakery. I started shaking and felt very dizzy. “You are beasts, beasts,” I wheezed and, staggering, went out into the cold. I couldn't save the child. A slight push would have been enough, and the angry people would certainly have mistaken me for an accomplice, and I would have fallen.

Yes, I'm a layman. I didn't rush to save this boy. “Don’t turn into a werewolf, a beast,” our beloved Olga Berggolts wrote these days. Wonderful woman! She helped many to endure the blockade and preserved the necessary humanity in us.

On their behalf I will send a telegram abroad:

“Alive. We'll endure it. We will win."

But my unwillingness to share the fate of a beaten child forever remained a notch on my conscience...

The second incident happened later. We had just received, but for the second time, a standard ration and my wife and I carried it along Liteiny, heading home. The snowdrifts were quite high in the second winter of the blockade. Almost opposite the house of N.A. Nekrasov, from where he admired the front entrance, clinging to the lattice immersed in the snow, a child of four or five years old was walking. He could hardly move his legs, his huge eyes on his withered old face peered with horror at the world around him. His legs were tangled. Tamara pulled out a large, double piece of sugar and handed it to him. At first he didn’t understand and shrank all over, and then suddenly grabbed this sugar with a jerk, pressed it to his chest and froze with fear that everything that had happened was either a dream or not true... We moved on. Well, what more could the barely wandering ordinary people do?

BREAKING THE BLOCKADE

All Leningraders talked every day about breaking the blockade, about the upcoming victory, peaceful life and restoration of the country, the second front, that is, about the active inclusion of the allies in the war. However, there was little hope for allies. “The plan has already been drawn up, but there are no Roosevelts,” the Leningraders joked. They also remembered the Indian wisdom: “I have three friends: the first is my friend, the second is the friend of my friend and the third is the enemy of my enemy.” Everyone believed that the third degree of friendship was the only thing that united us with our allies. (This is how it turned out, by the way: the second front appeared only when it became clear that we could liberate all of Europe alone.)

Rarely did anyone talk about other outcomes. There were people who believed that Leningrad should become a free city after the war. But everyone immediately cut them off, remembering “Window to Europe”, and “The Bronze Horseman”, and the historical significance for Russia of access to the Baltic Sea. But they talked about breaking the blockade every day and everywhere: at work, on duty on the roofs, when they were “fighting off airplanes with shovels,” extinguishing lighters, while eating meager food, going to bed in a cold bed, and during unwise self-care in those days. We waited and hoped. Long and hard. They talked about Fedyuninsky and his mustache, then about Kulik, then about Meretskov.

The draft commissions took almost everyone to the front. I was sent there from the hospital. I remember that I gave liberation to only the two-armed man, being surprised at the wonderful prosthetics that hid his handicap. “Don’t be afraid, take those with stomach ulcers or tuberculosis. After all, they will all have to be at the front for no more than a week. If they don’t kill them, they will wound them, and they will end up in the hospital,” the military commissar of the Dzerzhinsky district told us.

And indeed, the war involved a lot of blood. When trying to get in touch with the mainland, piles of bodies were left under Krasny Bor, especially along the embankments. “Nevsky Piglet” and Sinyavinsky swamps never left the lips. Leningraders fought furiously. Everyone knew that behind his back his own family was dying of hunger. But all attempts to break the blockade did not lead to success; only our hospitals were filled with the crippled and dying.

With horror we learned about the death of an entire army and Vlasov’s betrayal. I had to believe this. After all, when they read to us about Pavlov and other executed generals of the Western Front, no one believed that they were traitors and “enemies of the people,” as we were convinced of this. They remembered that the same was said about Yakir, Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, even about Blucher.

The summer campaign of 1942 began, as I wrote, extremely unsuccessfully and depressingly, but already in the fall they began to talk a lot about our tenacity at Stalingrad. The fighting dragged on, winter was approaching, and in it we relied on our Russian strength and Russian endurance. The good news about the counteroffensive at Stalingrad, the encirclement of Paulus with his 6th Army, and Manstein’s failures in trying to break through this encirclement gave the Leningraders new hope on New Year’s Eve 1943.

I celebrated the New Year with my wife alone, having returned around 11 o’clock to the closet where we lived at the hospital, from a tour of evacuation hospitals. There was a glass of diluted alcohol, two slices of lard, a 200 gram piece of bread and hot tea with a lump of sugar! A whole feast!

Events were not long in coming. Almost all of the wounded were discharged: some were commissioned, some were sent to convalescent battalions, some were taken to the mainland. But we didn’t wander around the empty hospital for long after the bustle of unloading it. Fresh wounded came in a stream straight from the positions, dirty, often bandaged in individual bags over their overcoats, and bleeding. We were a medical battalion, a field hospital, and a front-line hospital. Some went to the triage, others went to the operating tables for continuous operation. There was no time to eat, and there was no time to eat.

This was not the first time such streams came to us, but this one was too painful and tiring. All the time, a difficult combination of physical work with mental, moral human experiences with the precision of the dry work of a surgeon was required.

On the third day, the men could no longer stand it. They were given 100 grams of diluted alcohol and sent to sleep for three hours, although the emergency room was filled with wounded people in need of urgent operations. Otherwise, they began to operate poorly, half asleep. Well done women! Not only did they endure the hardships of the siege many times better than men, they died much less often from dystrophy, but they also worked without complaining of fatigue and accurately fulfilled their duties.

In our operating room, operations were performed on three tables: at each table there was a doctor and a nurse, and on all three tables there was another nurse, replacing the operating room. Staff operating room and dressing nurses, every one of them, assisted in the operations. The habit of working many nights in a row in Bekhterevka, the hospital named after. On October 25, she helped me out in the ambulance. I passed this test, I can proudly say, as a woman.

On the night of January 18, they brought us a wounded woman. On this day, her husband was killed, and she was seriously wounded in the brain, in the left temporal lobe. A fragment with fragments of bones penetrated into the depths, completely paralyzing both of her right limbs and depriving her of the ability to speak, but while maintaining the understanding of someone else's speech. Women fighters came to us, but not often. I took her to my table, laid her on her right, paralyzed side, numbed her skin and very successfully removed the metal fragment and bone fragments embedded in the brain. “My dear,” I said, finishing the operation and preparing for the next one, “everything will be fine. I took out the fragment, and your speech will return, and the paralysis will completely disappear. You will make a full recovery!”

Suddenly my wounded one with her free hand lying on top began to beckon me to her. I knew that she would not start talking any time soon, and I thought that she would whisper something to me, although it seemed incredible. And suddenly the wounded woman, with her healthy naked but strong hand of a fighter, grabbed my neck, pressed my face to her lips and kissed me deeply. I couldn't stand it. I didn’t sleep for four days, barely ate, and only occasionally, holding a cigarette with a forceps, smoked. Everything went hazy in my head, and, like a man possessed, I ran out into the corridor to come to my senses at least for one minute. After all, there is a terrible injustice in the fact that women, who continue the family line and soften the morals of humanity, are also killed. And at that moment our loudspeaker spoke, announcing the breaking of the blockade and the connection of the Leningrad Front with the Volkhov Front.

It was deep night, but what started here! I stood bleeding after the operation, completely stunned by what I had experienced and heard, and nurses, nurses, soldiers were running towards me... Some with their arm on an “airplane”, that is, on a splint that abducts the bent arm, some on crutches, some still bleeding through a recently applied bandage . And then the endless kisses began. Everyone kissed me, despite my frightening appearance from the spilled blood. And I stood there, missing 15 minutes of precious time for operating on other wounded in need, enduring these countless hugs and kisses.

A story about the Great Patriotic War by a front-line soldier

1 year ago on this day, a war began that divided the history of not only our country, but the whole world into before And after. The story is told by Mark Pavlovich Ivanikhin, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, Chairman of the Council of War Veterans, Labor Veterans, Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies of the Eastern Administrative District.

– – this is the day when our lives were broken in half. It was a nice, bright Sunday, and suddenly they announced war, the first bombings. Everyone understood that they would have to endure a lot, 280 divisions went to our country. I have a military family, my father was a lieutenant colonel. A car immediately came for him, he took his “alarm” suitcase (this is a suitcase in which the most necessary things were always ready), and we went to the school together, me as a cadet, and my father as a teacher.

Immediately everything changed, it became clear to everyone that this war would last for a long time. Alarming news plunged us into another life; they said that the Germans were constantly moving forward. This day was clear and sunny, and in the evening mobilization had already begun.

These are my memories as an 18-year-old boy. My father was 43 years old, he worked as a senior teacher at the first Moscow Artillery School named after Krasin, where I also studied. This was the first school that graduated officers who fought on Katyushas into the war. I fought on Katyushas throughout the war.

“Young, inexperienced guys walked under bullets. Was it certain death?

– We still knew how to do a lot. Back in school, we all had to pass the standard for the GTO badge (ready for work and defense). They trained almost like in the army: they had to run, crawl, swim, and also learned how to bandage wounds, apply splints for fractures, and so on. At least we were a little ready to defend our Motherland.

I fought at the front from October 6, 1941 to April 1945. I took part in the battles for Stalingrad, and from the Kursk Bulge through Ukraine and Poland I reached Berlin.

War is a terrible experience. It is a constant death that is near you and threatens you. Shells are exploding at your feet, enemy tanks are coming at you, flocks of German planes are aiming at you from above, artillery is firing. It seems like the earth turns into a small place where you have nowhere to go.

I was a commander, I had 60 people subordinate to me. We must answer for all these people. And, despite the planes and tanks that are looking for your death, you need to control yourself and the soldiers, sergeants and officers. This is difficult to accomplish.

I can’t forget the Majdanek concentration camp. We liberated this death camp and saw emaciated people: skin and bones. And I especially remember the children with their hands cut open; their blood was taken all the time. We saw bags of human scalps. We saw torture and experiment chambers. To be honest, this caused hatred towards the enemy.

I also remember that we went into a recaptured village, saw a church, and the Germans had set up a stable in it. I had soldiers from all the cities of the Soviet Union, even from Siberia; many had fathers who died in the war. And these guys said: “We’ll get to Germany, we’ll kill the Kraut families, and we’ll burn their houses.” And so we entered the first German city, the soldiers burst into the house of a German pilot, saw Frau and four small children. Do you think someone touched them? None of the soldiers did anything bad to them. Russian people are quick-witted.

All the German cities we passed through remained intact, with the exception of Berlin, where there was strong resistance.

I have four orders. Order of Alexander Nevsky, which he received for Berlin; Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, two Orders of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree. Also a medal for military merit, a medal for the victory over Germany, for the defense of Moscow, for the defense of Stalingrad, for the liberation of Warsaw and for the capture of Berlin. These are the main medals, and there are about fifty of them in total. All of us who survived the war years want one thing - peace. And so that the people who won are valuable.

Photo by Yulia Makoveychuk

On June 22, 1941, at 4 o’clock in the morning, Nazi Germany treacherously invaded the USSR without declaring war. This attack ended the chain of aggressive actions of Nazi Germany, which, thanks to the connivance and incitement of the Western powers, grossly violated the elementary norms of international law, resorted to predatory seizures and monstrous atrocities in the occupied countries.

In accordance with the Barbarossa plan, the fascist offensive began on a wide front by several groups in different directions. An army was stationed in the north "Norway", advancing on Murmansk and Kandalaksha; an army group was advancing from East Prussia to the Baltic states and Leningrad "North"; the most powerful army group "Center" had the goal of defeating the Red Army units in Belarus, capturing Vitebsk-Smolensk and taking Moscow on the move; army group "South" was concentrated from Lublin to the mouth of the Danube and led an attack on Kyiv - Donbass. The Nazis' plans boiled down to delivering a surprise attack in these directions, destroying border and military units, breaking through deep into the rear, and capturing Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and the most important industrial centers in the southern regions of the country.

The command of the German army expected to end the war in 6-8 weeks.

190 enemy divisions, about 5.5 million soldiers, up to 50 thousand guns and mortars, 4,300 tanks, almost 5 thousand aircraft and about 200 warships were thrown into the offensive against the Soviet Union.

The war began in extremely favorable conditions for Germany. Before the attack on the USSR, Germany captured almost all of Western Europe, whose economy worked for the Nazis. Therefore, Germany had a powerful material and technical base.

Germany's military products were supplied by 6,500 of the largest enterprises in Western Europe. More than 3 million foreign workers were involved in the war industry. In Western European countries, the Nazis looted a lot of weapons, military equipment, trucks, carriages and locomotives. The military-economic resources of Germany and its allies significantly exceeded those of the USSR. Germany fully mobilized its army, as well as the armies of its allies. Most of the German army was concentrated near the borders of the Soviet Union. In addition, imperialist Japan threatened an attack from the East, which diverted a significant part of the Soviet Armed Forces to defend the country's eastern borders. In theses of the CPSU Central Committee "50 years of the Great October Socialist Revolution" An analysis of the reasons for the temporary failures of the Red Army in the initial period of the war is given. They are due to the fact that the Nazis used temporary advantages:

• militarization of the economy and all life in Germany;
• long preparation for a war of conquest and more than two years of experience in conducting military operations in the West;
• superiority in weapons and numbers of troops concentrated in advance in border zones.

They had the economic and military resources of almost all of Western Europe at their disposal. Miscalculations in determining the possible timing of Hitler Germany’s attack on our country and the associated omissions in preparation for repelling the first blows played a role. There was reliable information about the concentration of German troops near the borders of the USSR and Germany’s preparations for an attack on our country. However, the troops of the western military districts were not brought to a state of full combat readiness.

All these reasons put the Soviet country in a difficult situation. However, the enormous difficulties of the initial period of the war did not break the fighting spirit of the Red Army or shake the fortitude of the Soviet people. From the first days of the attack, it became clear that the plan for a lightning war had collapsed. Accustomed to easy victories over Western countries, whose governments treacherously surrendered their people to be torn to pieces by the occupiers, the Nazis met stubborn resistance from the Soviet Armed Forces, border guards and the entire Soviet people. The war lasted 1418 days. Groups of border guards fought bravely at the border. The garrison of the Brest Fortress covered itself with unfading glory. The defense of the fortress was led by Captain I. N. Zubachev, regimental commissar E. M. Fomin, Major P. M. Gavrilov and others. On June 22, 1941, at 4:25 a.m., fighter pilot I. I. Ivanov made the first ram. (In total, about 200 rams were carried out during the war). On June 26, the crew of Captain N.F. Gastello (A.A. Burdenyuk, G.N. Skorobogatiy, A.A. Kalinin) crashed into a column of enemy troops on a burning plane. From the first days of the war, hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers showed examples of courage and heroism.

lasted two months Battle of Smolensk. Born here near Smolensk soviet guard. The battle in the Smolensk region delayed the enemy's advance until mid-September 1941.
During the Battle of Smolensk, the Red Army thwarted the enemy's plans. The delay of the enemy offensive in the central direction was the first strategic success of the Soviet troops.

The Communist Party became the leading and directing force for the country's defense and preparation for the destruction of Hitler's troops. From the first days of the war, the party took emergency measures to organize resistance to the aggressor; a huge amount of work was carried out to reorganize all work on a military basis, turning the country into a single military camp.

“To wage a war for real,” wrote V.I. Lenin, “a strong, organized rear is needed. The best army, the people most devoted to the cause of the revolution will be immediately exterminated by the enemy if they are not sufficiently armed, supplied with food, and trained” (Lenin V.I. Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 35, p. 408).

These Leninist instructions formed the basis for organizing the fight against the enemy. On June 22, 1941, on behalf of the Soviet government, V. M. Molotov, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, spoke on the radio with a message about the “robbery” attack of Nazi Germany and a call to fight the enemy. On the same day, a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was adopted on the introduction of martial law on the European territory of the USSR, as well as a Decree on the mobilization of a number of ages in 14 military districts. On June 23, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution on the tasks of party and Soviet organizations in war conditions. On June 24, the Evacuation Council was formed, and on June 27, the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On the procedure for the removal and placement of human contingents and valuable property” determined the procedure for the evacuation of productive forces and the population to the eastern regions. In the directive of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated June 29, 1941, the most important tasks for mobilizing all forces and means to defeat the enemy were outlined to party and Soviet organizations in the front-line regions.

“...In the war imposed on us with fascist Germany,” this document said, “the question of life and death of the Soviet state is being decided, whether the peoples of the Soviet Union should be free or fall into enslavement.” The Central Committee and the Soviet government called for realizing the full depth of the danger, reorganizing all work on a war footing, organizing comprehensive assistance to the front, increasing the production of weapons, ammunition, tanks, aircraft in every possible way, and in the event of a forced withdrawal of the Red Army, removing all valuable property, and destroying what cannot be removed. , in enemy-occupied areas to organize partisan detachments. On July 3, the main provisions of the directive were outlined in a speech by J.V. Stalin on the radio. The directive determined the nature of the war, the degree of threat and danger, set the tasks of transforming the country into a single combat camp, comprehensively strengthening the Armed Forces, restructuring the work of the rear on a military scale, and mobilizing all forces to repel the enemy. On June 30, 1941, an emergency body was created to quickly mobilize all the country’s forces and resources to repel and defeat the enemy - State Defense Committee (GKO) led by I.V. Stalin. All power in the country, state, military and economic leadership was concentrated in the hands of the State Defense Committee. It united the activities of all state and military institutions, party, trade union and Komsomol organizations.

In war conditions, the restructuring of the entire economy on a war footing was of paramount importance. At the end of June it was approved “Mobilization national economic plan for the third quarter of 1941.”, and on August 16 “Military-economic plan for the IV quarter of 1941 and 1942 for the regions of the Volga region, the Urals, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia" In just five months of 1941, over 1,360 large military enterprises were relocated and about 10 million people were evacuated. Even according to the admission of bourgeois experts evacuation of industry in the second half of 1941 and early 1942 and its deployment in the East should be considered among the most amazing feats of the peoples of the Soviet Union during the war. The evacuated Kramatorsk plant was launched 12 days after arriving at the site, Zaporozhye - after 20. By the end of 1941, the Urals were producing 62% of cast iron and 50% of steel. In scope and significance this was equal to the largest battles of wartime. The restructuring of the national economy on a war footing was completed by mid-1942.

The party carried out a lot of organizational work in the army. In accordance with the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on July 16, 1941 “On the reorganization of political propaganda bodies and the introduction of the institution of military commissars”. From July 16 in the Army, and from July 20 in the Navy, the institution of military commissars was introduced. During the second half of 1941, up to 1.5 million communists and more than 2 million Komsomol members were mobilized into the army (up to 40% of the total strength of the party was sent to the active army). Prominent party leaders L. I. Brezhnev, A. A. Zhdanov, A. S. Shcherbakov, M. A. Suslov and others were sent to party work in the active army.

On August 8, 1941, J.V. Stalin was appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief of all the Armed Forces of the USSR. In order to concentrate all the functions of managing military operations, the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was formed. Hundreds of thousands of communists and Komsomol members went to the front. About 300 thousand of the best representatives of the working class and intelligentsia of Moscow and Leningrad joined the ranks of the people's militia.

Meanwhile, the enemy stubbornly rushed towards Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Odessa, Sevastopol and other important industrial centers of the country. An important place in the plans of fascist Germany was occupied by the calculation of the international isolation of the USSR. However, from the first days of the war, an anti-Hitler coalition began to take shape. Already on June 22, 1941, the British government announced its support for the USSR in the fight against fascism, and on July 12 it signed an agreement on joint actions against fascist Germany. On August 2, 1941, US President F. Roosevelt announced economic support for the Soviet Union. On September 29, 1941, the conference of representatives of the three powers(USSR, USA and England), at which a plan for Anglo-American assistance in the fight against the enemy was developed. Hitler's plan to isolate the USSR internationally failed. On January 1, 1942, a declaration of 26 states was signed in Washington anti-Hitler coalition about using all the resources of these countries to fight against the German bloc. However, the Allies were in no hurry to provide effective assistance aimed at defeating fascism, trying to weaken the warring parties.

By October, the Nazi invaders, despite the heroic resistance of our troops, managed to approach Moscow from three sides, while simultaneously launching an offensive on the Don, in the Crimea, near Leningrad. Odessa and Sevastopol defended themselves heroically. On September 30, 1941, the German command launched the first, and in November - the second general offensive against Moscow. The Nazis managed to occupy Klin, Yakhroma, Naro-Fominsk, Istra and other cities in the Moscow region. Soviet troops conducted a heroic defense of the capital, showing examples of courage and heroism. The 316th Infantry Division of General Panfilov fought to the death in fierce battles. A partisan movement developed behind enemy lines. About 10 thousand partisans fought near Moscow alone. On December 5-6, 1941, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive near Moscow. At the same time, offensive operations were launched on the Western, Kalinin and Southwestern fronts. The powerful offensive of Soviet troops in the winter of 1941/42 drove the Nazis back in a number of places to a distance of up to 400 km from the capital and was their first major defeat in the Second World War.

Main result Moscow battle was that the strategic initiative had been wrested from the hands of the enemy and the plan for a lightning war had failed. The defeat of the Germans near Moscow was a decisive turn in the military operations of the Red Army and had a great influence on the entire further course of the war.

By the spring of 1942, military production had been established in the eastern regions of the country. By the middle of the year, most of the evacuated enterprises were set up in new locations. The transition of the country's economy to a war footing was basically completed. In the deep rear - in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Siberia, and the Urals - there were over 10 thousand industrial construction sites.

Instead of the men who went to the front, women and youth came to the machines. Despite very difficult living conditions, Soviet people worked selflessly to ensure victory at the front. We worked one and a half to two shifts to restore industry and supply the front with everything necessary. The All-Union Socialist Competition developed widely, the winners of which were awarded a challenge Red Banner of the State Defense Committee. Agricultural workers organized above-plan plantings for the defense fund in 1942. The collective farm peasantry supplied the front and rear with food and industrial raw materials.

The situation in the temporarily occupied areas of the country was extremely difficult. The Nazis plundered cities and villages and abused the civilian population. German officials were appointed at the enterprises to supervise the work. The best lands were selected for farms for German soldiers. In all occupied settlements, German garrisons were maintained at the expense of the population. However, the economic and social policies of the fascists, which they tried to implement in the occupied territories, immediately failed. Soviet people, brought up on the ideas of the Communist Party, believed in the victory of the Soviet country and did not succumb to Hitler’s provocations and demagoguery.

Winter offensive of the Red Army in 1941/42 dealt a powerful blow to Nazi Germany and its military machine, but Hitler’s army was still strong. Soviet troops fought stubborn defensive battles.

In this situation, the nationwide struggle of the Soviet people behind enemy lines, especially partisan movement.

Thousands of Soviet people joined partisan detachments. Guerrilla warfare developed widely in Ukraine, Belarus and the Smolensk region, Crimea and a number of other places. In cities and villages temporarily occupied by the enemy, underground party and Komsomol organizations operated. In accordance with the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated July 18, 1941. “On the organization of the fight in the rear of German troops” 3,500 partisan detachments and groups, 32 underground regional committees, 805 city and district party committees, 5,429 primary party organizations, 10 regional, 210 inter-district city and 45 thousand primary Komsomol organizations were created. To coordinate the actions of partisan detachments and underground groups with units of the Red Army, by decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on May 30, 1942, a central headquarters of the partisan movement. Headquarters for the leadership of the partisan movement were formed in Belarus, Ukraine and other republics and regions occupied by the enemy.

After the defeat near Moscow and the winter offensive of our troops, the Nazi command was preparing a new major offensive with the goal of capturing all the southern regions of the country (Crimea, North Caucasus, Don) right up to the Volga, capturing Stalingrad and separating Transcaucasia from the center of the country. This posed an extremely serious threat to our country.

By the summer of 1942, the international situation had changed, characterized by the strengthening of the anti-Hitler coalition. In May - June 1942, agreements were concluded between the USSR, England and the USA on an alliance in the war against Germany and on post-war cooperation. In particular, an agreement was reached on the opening in 1942 in Europe second front against Germany, which would significantly speed up the defeat of fascism. But the Allies delayed its opening in every possible way. Taking advantage of this, the fascist command transferred divisions from the Western Front to the Eastern Front. By the spring of 1942, Hitler's army had 237 divisions, massive aviation, tanks, artillery and other types of equipment for a new offensive.

Intensified Leningrad blockade, exposed to artillery fire almost daily. In May, the Kerch Strait was captured. On July 3, the Supreme Command gave the order to the heroic defenders of Sevastopol to leave the city after a 250-day defense, since it was not possible to hold Crimea. As a result of the defeat of Soviet troops in the region of Kharkov and the Don, the enemy reached the Volga. The Stalingrad Front, created in July, took on powerful enemy attacks. Retreating with heavy fighting, our troops inflicted enormous damage on the enemy. In parallel, there was a fascist offensive in the North Caucasus, where Stavropol, Krasnodar, and Maykop were occupied. In the Mozdok area, the Nazi offensive was suspended.

The main battles took place on the Volga. The enemy sought to capture Stalingrad at any cost. The heroic defense of the city was one of the brightest pages of the Patriotic War. The working class, women, old people, teenagers - the entire population rose to defend Stalingrad. Despite the mortal danger, workers at the tractor plant sent tanks to the front lines every day. In September, battles broke out in the city for every street, for every house.

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