Introduction

The Great Patriotic War began very unsuccessfully for our country. Having treacherously attacked the USSR on June 22, 1941, the troops of Nazi Germany and its allies immediately dealt a terrible blow to the Soviet armed forces and their bases, as well as to transport hubs, cities and other settlements of our country. Surpassing in forces and means, taking advantage of the element of surprise and other favorable circumstances, the aggressor troops occupied vast territories of the European part of the USSR in just a few months, creating a real threat of capturing the capital of our Motherland - Moscow. At the same time, the Red Army suffered heavy human and material losses, which far exceeded the losses of the invaders. At the same time, the enemy quite quickly and easily captured, destroyed or destroyed a significant part of the economic potential of the USSR. As a result, the advantage of Germany and its allies over our country in total military and economic resources, which, taking into account the resources of the European countries occupied and dependent on it, was already very significant, has increased even more.
However, despite these great setbacks at the beginning of the war, the USSR, fighting almost alone for a long time and receiving relatively little economic assistance from its allies, was able to turn its course in its favor, and then, together with them, eventually win a complete and crushing victory. Of course, one cannot underestimate the contribution of the United States, Great Britain and other countries and peoples to the fight against Nazi Germany and its allies, which became more and more important every year of the war, but our country and its army inflicted the most powerful blows and large-scale defeats on the German troops, up to until their complete defeat and unconditional surrender, as well as the fall of the Nazi regime.
What are the reasons for the metamorphoses that took place during the Great Patriotic War? Why did the Red Army lose the 1941 campaign so easily? How did the USSR manage to survive the most difficult first year and a half of the war, noticeably inferior to the enemy in forces, means and resources, losing most of the battles, losing its territory, and with it the population and resources? Why, despite heavy losses, was the USSR able to win the decisive battles of the war, turn the tide in its favor, forcing many of the allies of Nazi Germany to leave it and even come over to our side? What role did the allies of the USSR and Germany play in this war? What are the actual scales, price and significance of the Victory achieved in this war? The search for and understanding of answers to these and other related questions are chosen as the main objectives of this study.
A lot of time has passed since the end of this war. A huge number of works of a very different nature and orientation have been written about it, both in our country and abroad: scientific papers, encyclopedias and reference books, memoirs, scientific journalism and journalistic works, not to mention fiction. The war, of course, is not ignored by the authors of numerous textbooks and other educational literature, who devote entire chapters and sections to it.
It would seem that the events and results of the war are studied thoroughly and in detail in them. To a large extent this is true, but most of the published work is mainly descriptive, reference or polemical. And here we are talking not only about journalism, memoirs or encyclopedias. In the same scientific papers, other research papers, as well as in textbooks, we will mainly find a description and chronicle of the events that took place, various data on their participants, the military and other equipment and weapons used. It is much more difficult to find in them a comprehensive analysis of the facts, attempts to give a truly scientific, objective explanation of the course and content of the events of the war, their results, and even more so to reveal their root causes, the dialectic of objective and subjective factors.
It should also be noted the frank ideological partiality and politicized approach of the authors of most works to the events studied and described. There is also a lot in these works of an emotional attitude to the historical figures of wartime, which, however, is quite difficult to avoid for obvious reasons. The methodology of most studies, and even many scientific works, is also doubtful, in particular because of its subjectivism and dogmatism.
In addition, quite a few historical books have been published recently, the authors of which take a sharply tendentious position, trying to cast doubt or even refute the obvious facts of the war. Some of them go as far as presenting in a sharply negative form not only the Soviet political and military leadership of that time, but also the Red Army and our country as a whole, as well as actually justifying many actions of Nazi Germany and glorifying the Wehrmacht. To some extent, this applies to such authors as V. Suvorov, B. Sokolov, M. Solonin, I. Bunich and some others.
In his desire to overcome these and other typical and widespread shortcomings of works on the history of the war, the author tried to consistently observe the methodological principles of objectivity, completeness and comprehensiveness of the study. His method was based on a dialectical and systematic approach to considering the events and outcomes of the war, and determining their causes. In his judgments and conclusions, the author relied on facts, focusing on their logical analysis, generalization and evaluation, in their entirety and taking into account their systemic connections. Particular importance was attached to the most significant and indisputable of them.
Determining the ratio of forces, means and resources of the parties, as well as their losses, the author proceeded from the fact that historians and other specialists failed to carry out their calculations with sufficient accuracy and reliability. This is primarily due to the fact that they are based on subjective data presented by the opposing sides, as well as the imperfection of the method of the social sciences and the humanities. Therefore, they can and should be questioned, and the author determined his own estimates of these data, taking into account their correspondence with more reliably established facts of the war.
However, the work performed is not formally scientific, and as a whole it should be recognized as a scientific journalistic study. In particular, the author did not seek to ritually support each of his judgments with quotations and other references to historical works. The empirical base of the study, which consists of data drawn from publicly available sources, may also seem not quite traditional for scientific and historical work. This is due to the scale and general nature of the questions posed in the work, the answer to which requires, first of all, a comprehensive understanding of the most important, well-known facts and statistical information.
Many provisions of this work are to some extent hypothetical or evaluative. Moreover, there are reasons to assert that it cannot be otherwise, due to at least the enormous complexity and scale of most of the events under consideration. Even with all the desire, they could not always be correctly reflected and accurately recorded, described and measured, and even more so if officials during the war often did not have such a desire at all. Yes, and not often before. Recall that practically no accurate accounting of Soviet military losses at the beginning of the war, under the conditions of an unexpected German invasion and the rapid retreat of the Red Army, was ever established. However, it is unlikely that he was so accurate and further, as well as accounting for the losses of our enemy.
Finally, for the most part, the work has an openly journalistic appearance. Thus, the author did not hesitate to use emotional remarks, rhetorical figures, ironic phrases, idiomatic expressions, etc. in it. It seems that direct statements and sincere opinions can help rather than hinder the understanding of the ideas expressed in the book.
At the same time, it also has a partly philosophical character, expressed primarily in the scale of the research tasks posed and the breadth of view on them using the approaches and data of various sciences, and also in the fact that its main research technique used the analysis of many of the most important and general facts of the Great Patriotic War.
Thus, this work is a completed attempt to conduct an independent systematic study of most of the most important and general issues in the history of the Great Patriotic War in the context of the entire Second World War: about the alignment of forces of the parties on the eve of its start, about the reasons for the military failures of the Red Army and the USSR in its first months and the stability of the Soviet state, despite the heavy losses, retreats and defeats of its army during this period, about the ratio of forces, means and resources used in it, about the reasons for the overall victory of the USSR and its allies in this war, about its main results, losses in it USSR and their relationship with the losses of the enemy. At the same time, the author tried not to delve into the course of individual battles and other events of the war, but to consider the events as a whole, in their main manifestations and their interrelationships. Of course, these battles and other events are very important in themselves, but they are quite well considered in many works, and, moreover, on the scale of the questions posed in the work, they are rather private, relatively small phenomena.
One of the obligatory principles of historical works is the observance of fundamental moral, ethical and legal norms. Particularly relevant for works on the Great Patriotic War are the corresponding requirements to exercise caution in an effort to revise traditional ideas about this period of history full of extreme tragedy. Attempts to move away from formulaic views on the events of the war can in themselves be productive, and the courage shown in this case can actually lead to new research results. However, in this case, there is a risk of conflict with the basic facts of the war, as well as legal and moral norms, which cannot be justified either by pluralism of opinions, or by the freedom to seek the truth, or by the most positive goals and motives.
No search for truth can justify the perversion of the causes, course and results of the events of the war, turning into disrespect for their victims and heroes, or the rehabilitation of aggressors and war criminals. Particularly dangerous and cynical at the present time are the attempts by some authors to actually justify the perfidious, insidious, unprovoked, sudden, aggressive attack of Hitler Germany and its allies in 1941 on the USSR, committed with criminal goals and ultimately brought many millions of victims and colossal destruction and destruction. suffering.
The decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal and other international legal documents, in which Nazism, the governing bodies of Nazi Germany, the aggressive and inhuman actions of the leaders of this state and many German military leaders during the Second World War, including those against the USSR, were recognized as criminal and condemned, more no one canceled, just as there is not the slightest reason to cancel them. But there is also the moral judgment of the Russian and other peoples of the USSR over a cruel enemy, there is the memory of millions of war and home front veterans, their children and other descendants, in which Nazism, the actions of A. Hitler and other leaders of Nazi Germany, its armed forces against our country and its citizens appears as a monstrous evil that has no justification.
Similar crimes were committed by puppets of Nazi Germany, especially the pro-fascist nationalist forces in Croatia and Western Ukraine. Moreover, the terrible atrocities of the Ustashe in Yugoslavia, as well as the Bandera in Ukraine and elsewhere, have not yet received due condemnation, which is due to the special political circumstances that developed after the war and still persist.
It is also unacceptable under any pretext, including such popular ones for many years as “de-Stalinization”, “fight against Bolshevism”, “national revival” or “recognition of all totalitarian regimes as criminal”, justification of traitors to our Motherland, those citizens of the USSR and others our compatriots who went over to the side of the enemy, or those who in one way or another collaborated with the criminal Nazi regime and its satellites, were their accomplices. The political or ideological conjuncture, the scientific paradigm may change, but betrayal and participation in bloody atrocities do not cease to be so.
One can argue about whether the USSR, the Bolshevik Party, the Soviet system, the Stalinist regime were fair, legitimate or unfair, illegitimate, whether they suppressed the people or contributed to the improvement of their lives, brought more good or harm to the country, etc., but regardless of the solution of these questions, the criminal essence of the Hitler regime and its policy, the fact that the Nazis and their allies committed predatory aggression against our country cannot change and cease to be such. Therefore, those who helped the Nazis in their struggle against the USSR did not so much fight against the Stalinist regime or Bolshevism, even if such a struggle can be considered fair in itself, but in one way or another participated in the monstrous crimes of Nazi Germany directed against the USSR and many others. countries, against the peaceful peoples of Europe, for which there can be no justification. You can, of course, say that someone probably didn’t know or didn’t understand something then, and even on this basis reduce the degree of their guilt, but don’t we really know about the criminal plans and actions of the authorities and other structures Nazi Germany and its allies?
However, moral and ethical restrictions should not lead the researcher to primitivization or demonization of the enemy, a biased view of his forces and actions, a clear exaggeration of the number of his victims, and generally hinder or hinder the establishment of the truth. In addition, it is necessary to distinguish between the degree of responsibility of the organizers and participants in the Nazi-fascist atrocities and their accomplices, many of whom were forced to become such.
In the course of the study, an attempt was made to substantiate many of the provisions of the work by a fairly representative range of literary and other sources. Whenever possible, the author tried to use works published in different periods of post-war history, including recent years, and at the same time rely on sources that are alternative in terms of the views of the authors presented in them, their citizenship, type, nature and direction of the relevant works. At the same time, references to well-known, practically indisputable facts in this work, as a rule, were made without reference to any sources. The author did not seek to frequently appeal to the ideas of authoritative scientists, as set forth in widely recognized works, to quote various sources in detail, to give the impression of high objectivity and great thoroughness of the study by frequent references to them. Such attempts seem to be nothing more than scientism and formalism, and even due to a lack of their own ideas.
Achieving success in the study of the questions posed in the work can be positive in a variety of ways. First, it will help develop a fair attitude towards the events and results of this war, towards its main participants. Secondly, it will allow a better understanding of the events of this and adjacent epochs. Thirdly, our ability to better reveal and understand the patterns of world and national history depends on it. Fourthly, this knowledge increases our ability to correctly understand the current situation in the development of the country and mankind and the ability to correctly predict their future. Fifthly, a correct understanding of the essence of the most important events that took place in the life of the country, which were the tragic and great events of the war under study, provides important information for reflection on the essence of society and man.
But before starting the main part of the work, I would like to clarify the meaning of the names (concepts) "Great Patriotic War" and "World War II". According to the prevailing views of politicians, historians and scientists, World War II took place from 1939 to 1945, starting with the attack of Nazi Germany on Poland and joining Great Britain and France on the side of Poland and ending with the defeat of the aggressor and his allies in Europe, and then the main their ally in Asia - Japan from the coalition of the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and their allied states. The Great Patriotic War is the main component of the Second World War, which began with the attack of Germany and its allies on the USSR in June 1941 and ended with their defeat of the USSR and its allied countries in May 1945. The main military events of the Great Patriotic War consisted in the military confrontation between the USSR, on the one hand, and Germany and its European allies, on the other hand. The battles that took place at the same time on other European fronts and territories, being an integral part of the Second World War, were closely connected with the Great Patriotic War. A certain influence on the development of the Great Patriotic War was also exerted by battles and battles outside the European continent. At the same time, the Soviet-German confrontation became decisive not only for her, but for the Second World War as a whole.
Thus, the Second World War consisted of 3 of its main periods (parts):
1) from the generally recognized moment of its beginning in 1939 until the moment of the attack of Germany and its allies on the USSR in 1941, representing at that time a series of local, as a rule, interconnected military clashes and battles that took place with significant interruptions, that is, the initial, sluggish, sporadic part of it;
2) the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and other military clashes and battles that took place during this period, both closely related to it and having a rather distant connection with it, that is, its main, most intense, continuous and bloody part;
3) the defeat of Japan and its allied forces in the Far East in the summer of 1945, that is, its final, almost local part, as if the events were after the fact.
At the same time, a broader understanding of these names is also common in the literature. So, the main idea was and remains that the participation of the USSR in the war in the Far East was a continuation of the Great Patriotic War, or sometimes there are statements that the Second World War began with Italy's attack on Ethiopia in 1935 or even Japan's attack on China in 1931, etc. However, the author considers it more true, on the contrary, to narrow the concept of "Second World War". In fact, on September 1, 1939, only the German attack on Poland took place. But even with the declaration of war on Germany on September 3, 1939 by Great Britain and France, a pan-European war began, and a “strange”, limited one, which was then accompanied by a number of local wars and clashes in some regions of Asia and Africa, as well as at sea off the coast of different continents. But there have been many such local wars and military conflicts in the world before. Moreover, even with the German attack on the USSR, nothing more than an all-out all-European war began, and for our country it became the Great Patriotic War. And only with the Japanese attack on the United States on December 7, 1941, the world war really began, since now all the leading world powers were involved in it, which directly clashed in military confrontation on many continents and oceans.
Nevertheless, such a narrower understanding of the military-political events of the period under study requires a detailed justification, and this is not among the tasks of this work, therefore, in order to avoid confusion and unproductive discussion, the author will adhere to the understanding of the content and structure of the Second World War and related her events of traditional ideas.
So, the book consists of an introduction and 2 main, relatively independent parts. As an appendix, a list of references to the sources of various quotations and other data given in the book is attached to it.
The 1st part of the book consists of 9 chapters, which are unequal in size, written in a different style and have a different nature of content. Thus, the 1st chapter is a brief overview of the widespread, resonant or other relevant opinions of various authors about the reasons for the military failures of the USSR at the beginning of the war, saturated with rather sharp or ironic criticism of the most strange and absurd of them. Chapter 2 provides a scientific and philosophical substantiation of the nature of the reasons for the military failures of the Red Army in 1941, as well as the subsequent results of the battles of the war, which, in the author's opinion, are primarily objective and logical. Chapters 3 and 4 contain a detailed analysis of the correlation of forces, means and resources of the belligerents with the active use of various sources. Almost in the same spirit, Chapter 5 is written, in which the question of the significance of the German surprise attack on the USSR is discussed in detail, with detailed citations from documents and other important sources. In the 6th chapter, on the basis of the analysis carried out mainly in the previous chapters, an attempt is made to determine in a systematic way the main factors of the defeats of the Red Army in 1941. The next chapter is close in character to it, only it already contains a list of factors for the collapse of Hitler's blitzkrieg. In the 8th chapter, the author, on the basis of his own understanding of the facts presented in the previous chapters, tried to identify the main culprits for the defeats of the Red Army at the beginning of the war. Finally, the 9th chapter contains the author's judgments about the typical mistakes of the researchers of this war.
The 2nd main part of the work has much in common with its 1st part in terms of its structure, composition and style. It is dedicated to the results of the Great Patriotic War, as well as the Second World War as a whole. Especially a lot is said in it about the demographic and other losses of the USSR and other warring countries, as well as about the reasons for the victory of the USSR in it.

Part 1
Reasons for the failures of the Red Army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War

1. Traditional and new ideas about the causes of the failures of the Red Army in 1941 and their criticism

The reasons for the military failures of the Red Army in 1941 in the literature on the Great Patriotic War are called very different, both objective and often subjective. Even if we recall here only the most widely known of them, even then a detailed review of them would hardly be possible in the present work. Therefore, the author will limit himself mainly to a brief designation of most of them, without going into the specifics of the positions of certain researchers.
For convenience of perception, these reasons, called by different authors, can be grouped as follows:
1) the initial superiority of the enemy troops in numbers, thanks to the mobilization carried out in advance; Germany's lead in deploying its invasion forces; better staffing of military units and subdivisions of the German army with personnel, weapons and equipment;
2) the greater experience of German generals in command and control in modern warfare, gained by them in the successful campaigns of 1939-1941; their ability to strike unexpected blows; better training and greater combat experience of German soldiers and officers;
3) the best average quality of German equipment and weapons; their capture of a large number of Czech, French, British, Belgian tanks, cars and other captured equipment, weapons and other materiel; the much better radio communication that the German troops were equipped with, especially their planes and tanks;
4) a successful general plan for the conduct of the war, which the Germans and their allies largely succeeded in implementing; quick and firm capture of the strategic initiative by them;
5) miscalculations of the military and political leadership of the USSR in planning the development of the armed forces and preparing for war, in particular, manifested in disproportions in the structure of troops and equipping them with various types of equipment and weapons, in errors in their deployment, in overestimating their own forces and underestimating the forces of the enemy;
6) the timing of the start of the war, which was successful for the Germans and their allies, due to a combination of circumstances that was mostly favorable for them, when the defensive structures on the new Soviet border (1939) were still far from being ready, and a significant part of the weapons had already been removed on the old border, a large the number of Soviet troops were in the process of reorganization and redeployment, etc.;
7) the confusion of many of our commanders after the first powerful blows of the enemy and the major lost battles that followed them, turning into panic; the loss in the first days of the war of control over the troops of the Western Front;
8) weakening of the command staff of the Red Army by pre-war repressions; moral and political instability of many Soviet commanders and fighters.
However, some modern authors explain the reasons for our military failures in 1941 even more simply. For example, the opinion is still quite popular that there were too many political instructors, special officers and commissars in the Red Army at that time, who interfered with command and control. At the same time, the author of several sensational historical books, Yu. Mukhin, believes that the Soviet armed forces during this period were led by bad, unprofessional generals, many of whom not only did not know how, but also did not want to fight selflessly. In turn, this was due primarily to the lack of positive officer traditions, and he discovers the origins of this problem in various historical circumstances, up to the negative social reforms and processes of the end of the 18th century. Close to him in these views is A. Ivanovsky, who sees the main reason for our defeats in 1941 in the constant mistakes of Soviet military leaders, ranging from the unsuccessful deployment of troops and bases on the eve of the war and ending with the wrong choice of directions of attacks on the enemy after it began. A. Bolnykh directs his gaze in the same direction, who sees the main reason for the embarrassment of the Red Army that occurred at the beginning of the war in the military-theoretical superiority of the enemy and his better readiness for maneuver warfare, the successful development and use by the Germans of the operational art of blitzkrieg. But he also notes "the utter helplessness of the Soviet command."

June 22 marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War. The glory of other "great achievements" of the Soviet era - the October Socialist Revolution, collectivization, industrialization and the construction of "developed socialism" - has long faded, and the unparalleled feat of the people in the brutal war against Nazi Germany remains the subject of its legitimate pride.

However, it is time to realize that the Great Victory does not need the lies that have stuck to it thanks to Soviet agitprop and continue to be broadcast in the post-Soviet space until now, and to understand that clearing the history of the Great Patriotic War from insinuations will not belittle the feat of the people, will reveal the true, and not exaggerated, appointed heroes and show all the tragedy and greatness of this epoch-making event.

What war are we in?

According to the official version, the war for the USSR began on June 22, 1941. In a speech on the radio on June 3, 1941, and then in a report on the occasion of the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution (October 6, 1941), Stalin named two factors that , in his opinion, led to our failures in the early stages of the war:

1) The Soviet Union lived a peaceful life, maintaining neutrality, and the German army, mobilized and armed to the teeth, treacherously attacked a peace-loving country on June 22;

2) our tanks, guns and planes are better than the German ones, but we had very few of them, much less than the enemy.

These theses are cynical and impudent lies, which does not prevent them from moving from one political and "historical" work to another. In one of the last Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionaries published in the USSR in 1986, we read: “The Second World War (1939-1945) was prepared by the forces of international imperialist reaction and began as a war between two coalitions of imperialist powers. In the future, it began to accept from all states that fought against the countries of the fascist bloc, the nature of a just, anti-fascist war, which was finally determined after the USSR entered the war (see the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945). The thesis about the peaceful Soviet people, the gullible and naive Comrade Stalin, who was first “thrown” by the British and French imperialists, and then vilely and treacherously deceived by the villain Hitler, remained almost unchanged in the minds of many inhabitants and the works of post-Soviet “scientists” in Russia, Belarus, and also Ukraine.

Throughout its, fortunately, relatively short history, the Soviet Union has never been a peace-loving country in which "children slept peacefully." Having failed in their attempt to fan the fire of the world revolution, the Bolsheviks made a conscious bet on the war as the main instrument for solving their political and social tasks both within the country and abroad. They intervened in most major international conflicts (in China, Spain, Vietnam, Korea, Angola, Afghanistan...), helping the organizers of the national liberation struggle and the communist movement with money, weapons and so-called volunteers. The main goal of the industrialization carried out in the country since the 1930s was the creation of a powerful military-industrial complex and a well-armed Red Army. And it must be admitted that this goal is perhaps the only one that the Bolshevik government managed to achieve. It is no coincidence that, speaking at the May Day parade, which, according to the "peace-loving" tradition, opened with a military parade, People's Commissar of Defense K. Voroshilov said: "The Soviet people not only know how, but also love to fight!"

By June 22, 1941, the “peace-loving and neutral” USSR had been participating in World War II for almost two years, and participated as an aggressor country.

Having signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on August 23, which divided most of Europe between Hitler and Stalin, the Soviet Union launched an invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939. At the end of September 1939, 51% of the Polish territory was "reunited" with the USSR. At the same time, a lot of crimes were committed against the servicemen of the Polish army, bled white by the German invasion and practically did not resist parts of the Red Army - Katyn alone cost the Poles almost 30 thousand officers' lives. Even more crimes were committed by the Soviet invaders against civilians, especially Polish and Ukrainian nationalities. Before the start of the war, the Soviet authorities in the reunified territories tried to drive almost the entire peasant population (and this is the vast majority of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine and Belarus) into collective farms and state farms, offering a “voluntary” alternative: “collective farm or Siberia”. Already in 1940, numerous echelons with deported Poles, Ukrainians and somewhat later Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians moved to Siberia. The Ukrainian population of Western Ukraine and Bukovina, which at first (in 1939–40) greeted Soviet soldiers en masse with flowers, hoping for liberation from national oppression (by the Poles and Romanians, respectively), experienced all the delights of Soviet power from their own bitter experience. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that in 1941 the Germans were already met with flowers here.

On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union started a war with Finland, for which it was recognized as an aggressor and expelled from the League of Nations. This "unknown war", hushed up in every possible way by Soviet propaganda, lays down an indelible shame on the reputation of the Land of Soviets. Under the far-fetched pretext of a mythical military danger, Soviet troops invaded Finnish territory. “Sweep the Finnish adventurers off the face of the earth! The time has come to destroy the vile booger who dares to threaten the Soviet Union! - so wrote on the eve of this invasion, journalists in the main party newspaper Pravda. I wonder what kind of military threat to the USSR could this "boat" with a population of 3.65 million people and a poorly armed army of 130 thousand people.

When the Red Army crossed the Finnish border, the ratio of forces of the warring parties, according to official data, was as follows: 6.5:1 in personnel, 14:1 in artillery, 20:1 in aviation and 13:1 in tanks in favor of the USSR. And then the "Finnish miracle" happened - instead of a quick victorious war, the Soviet troops in this "winter war" suffered one defeat after another. According to the calculations of Russian military historians (“The classification of secrecy has been removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and conflicts” ed. G. Krivosheev, M .: Voenizdat, 1993), the minimum losses of the Red Army during the Finnish campaign amounted to 200 thousand people. The Finnish war was the first wake-up call that showed the rottenness of the Soviet empire and the complete mediocrity of its party, state and military leadership. Everything in the world is known in comparison. The ground forces of the Soviet allies (England, the USA and Canada) in the battles for the liberation of Western Europe - from the landing in Normandy to the exit to the Elbe - lost 156 thousand people. The occupation of Norway in 1940 cost Germany 3.7 thousand dead and missing soldiers, and the defeat of the army of France, Belgium and Holland cost 49 thousand people. Against this background, the horrendous losses of the Red Army in the Finnish war look eloquent.

Consideration of the "peace-loving and neutral" policy of the USSR in 1939-1940. raises another serious question. Who studied from whom in those days the methods of agitation and propaganda - Stalin and Molotov from Hitler and Goebbels, or vice versa? The political and ideological closeness of these methods is striking. Hitler's Germany carried out the Anschluss of Austria and the occupation first of the Sudetenland, and then of the entire Czech Republic, reuniting the lands with the German population into a single Reich, and the USSR occupied half of the territory of Poland under the pretext of reunification into a single state of the "fraternal Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples." Germany seized Norway and Denmark in order to protect itself from the attack of the "English aggressors" and ensure an uninterrupted supply of Swedish iron ore, and the Soviet Union, under the same pretext of border security, occupied the Baltic countries and tried to capture Finland. This is how the peaceful policy of the USSR looked in general terms in 1939-1940, when Nazi Germany was preparing to attack the “neutral” Soviet Union.

Now about one more thesis of Stalin: "History did not give us enough time, and we did not have time to mobilize and prepare technically for a treacherous attack." It's a lie.

Documents declassified in the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR convincingly show the true picture of the country's "unpreparedness" for war. At the beginning of October 1939, according to official Soviet data, the fleet of the Soviet Air Force was 12677 aircraft and exceeded the total number of military aviation of all participants in the outbreak of the world war. By the number of tanks (14544), the Red Army at that moment was almost twice as large as the armies of Germany (3419), France (3286) and England (547) combined. The Soviet Union significantly outnumbered the warring countries not only in quantity, but also in quality of weapons. In the USSR, by the beginning of 1941, the best MIG-3 fighter-interceptor in the world, the best guns and tanks (T-34 and KV), and already from June 21, the world's first multiple launch rocket launchers (the famous Katyushas) were produced.

Nor is the assertion that by June 1941 Germany had secretly sent troops and military equipment to the borders of the USSR, providing a significant advantage in military equipment, preparing a treacherous surprise attack on a peaceful country, is also not true. According to German data, confirmed by European military historians (see World War II, ed. R. Holmes, 2010, London), on June 22, 1941, a three million army of German, Hungarian and Romanian soldiers prepared for an attack on the Soviet Union, at the disposal which had four tank groups with 3266 tanks and 22 fighter air groups (66 squadrons), which included 1036 aircraft.

According to declassified Soviet data, on June 22, 1941, on the western borders, the aggressor was opposed by the three and a half millionth Red Army with seven tank corps, which included 11,029 tanks (more than 2,000 tanks were additionally brought into battle near Shepetovka in the first two weeks, Lepel and Daugavpils) and with 64 fighter regiments (320 squadrons) armed with 4200 aircraft, to which 400 aircraft were transferred already on the fourth day of the war, and by July 9 - another 452 aircraft. Outnumbering the enemy by 17%, the Red Army on the border had an overwhelming superiority in military equipment - almost four times in tanks and five times in combat aircraft! The opinion that the Soviet mechanized units were equipped with obsolete equipment, and the Germans with new and effective ones, is not true. Yes, at the beginning of the war, there were really a lot of tanks of obsolete BT-2 and BT-5 designs, as well as light T-37 and T-38 tankettes in the Soviet tank units at the beginning of the war, but at the same time, almost 15% (1600 tanks) accounted for the most modern medium and heavy tanks - T-34 and KV, which the Germans had no equal at that time. Out of 3266 tanks, the Nazis had 895 tankettes and 1039 light tanks. And only 1146 tanks could be classified as medium. Both tankettes and light German tanks (PZ-II of Czech production and PZ-III E) were significantly inferior in their technical and tactical characteristics even to obsolete Soviet tanks, and the best German medium tank PZ-III J at that time could not be compared with the T-34 (it's pointless to talk about comparison with the heavy KV tank).

The version about the surprise attack of the Wehrmacht does not look convincing. Even if we agree with the stupidity and naivete of the Soviet party and military leadership and Stalin personally, who categorically ignored intelligence data and Western intelligence services and overlooked the deployment of a three-million enemy army on the borders, even then, with the military equipment available to the opponents, the surprise of the first strike could ensure success in within 1–2 days and a breakthrough to a distance of no more than 40–50 km. Further, according to all the laws of hostilities, the temporarily retreating Soviet troops, using their overwhelming advantage in military equipment, were supposed to literally crush the aggressor. But events on the Eastern Front developed according to a completely different, tragic scenario ...

Catastrophe

Soviet historical science divided the history of the war into three periods. Least of all attention was paid to the first period of the war, especially the summer campaign of 1941. It was sparingly explained that the successes of the Germans were due to the suddenness of the attack and the unpreparedness of the USSR for war. In addition, as Comrade Stalin put it in his report (October 1941): “The Wehrmacht paid for every step deep into Soviet territory with gigantic irreplaceable losses” (the figure was 4.5 million killed and wounded, two weeks later in an editorial Pravda newspaper, this figure of German losses increased to 6 million people). What actually happened at the beginning of the war?

From the dawn of June 22, Wehrmacht troops poured across the border along almost its entire length - 3000 km from the Baltic to the Black Seas. Armed to the teeth, the Red Army was defeated in a few weeks and driven back hundreds of kilometers from the western borders. By mid-July, the Germans occupied the whole of Belarus, capturing 330 thousand Soviet troops, capturing 3332 tanks and 1809 guns and numerous other war trophies. In almost two weeks, the entire Baltic was captured. In August-September 1941, most of Ukraine was in the hands of the Germans - in the Kiev pocket, the Germans surrounded and captured 665 thousand people, captured 884 tanks and 3718 guns. By the beginning of October, the German Army Group Center had almost reached the outskirts of Moscow. In the cauldron near Vyazma, the Germans captured another 663,000 prisoners.

According to German data, scrupulously filtered and refined after the war, in 1941 (the first 6 months of the war) the Germans captured 3,806,865 Soviet soldiers, captured or destroyed 21,000 tanks, 17,000 aircraft, 33,000 guns and 6, 5 million small arms.

The military archives declassified in the post-Soviet period generally confirm the volumes of military equipment abandoned and captured by the enemy. As for human losses, it is very difficult to calculate them in wartime, moreover, for obvious reasons, in modern Russia this topic is almost taboo. And yet, a comparison of data from military archives and other documents of that era allowed some Russian historians striving for the truth (G. Krivosheev, M. Solonin, etc.) to determine with a sufficient degree of accuracy what for 1941, except for surrender 3 8 million people, the Red Army suffered direct combat losses (killed and died from wounds in hospitals) - 567 thousand people, wounded and sick - 1314 thousand people, deserters (who evaded captivity and the front) - from 1 up to 1.5 million people and missing or wounded, abandoned during a stampede - about 1 million people. The last two figures are determined from a comparison of the personnel of Soviet military units on June 22 and December 31, 1941, taking into account accurate data on the personnel replenishment of units for this period.

On January 1, 1942, according to Soviet data, 9147 German soldiers and officers were captured (415 times less than Soviet prisoners of war!). German, Romanian and Hungarian losses in manpower (killed, missing, wounded, sick) for 1941 amounted to 918 thousand people. - most of them occurred at the end of 1941 (five times less than Comrade Stalin announced in his report).

Thus, the first months of the war on the Eastern Front led to the defeat of the Red Army and the almost complete collapse of the political and economic system created by the Bolsheviks. As the numbers of casualties, abandoned military equipment and vast territories captured by the enemy show, the size of this catastrophe is unprecedented and completely dispels the myths about the wisdom of the Soviet party leadership, the high professionalism of the officer corps of the Red Army, the courage and stamina of Soviet soldiers and, most importantly, devotion and love for the Motherland ordinary Soviet people. The army practically crumbled after the very first powerful blows of the German units, the top party and military leadership became confused and showed their complete incompetence, the officer corps was not ready for serious battles and the vast majority, having abandoned their units and military equipment, fled from the battlefield or surrendered to the Germans ; abandoned by officers, demoralized Soviet soldiers surrendered to the Nazis or hid from the enemy.

Direct confirmation of the painted gloomy picture are the decrees of Stalin, issued by him in the first weeks of the war, immediately after he managed to cope with the shock of a terrible catastrophe. Already on June 27, 1941, a decree was signed on the creation of the notorious barrage detachments (ZO) in the army units. In addition to the existing special detachments of the NKVD, the ZO existed in the Red Army until the autumn of 1944. The barrage detachments that were in each rifle division were located behind the regular units and detained or shot on the spot the soldiers who had fled from the front line. In October 1941, the 1st Deputy Head of the Department of Special Departments of the NKVD, Solomon Milshtein, reported to the Minister of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria: "... from the beginning of the war to October 10, 1941, special departments of the NKVD and the ZO detained 657,364 servicemen who had fallen behind and fled from the front." In total, during the war years, according to Soviet official data, military tribunals convicted 994,000 servicemen, of which 157,593 were shot (in the Wehrmacht, 7,810 soldiers were shot - 20 times less than in the Red Army). For voluntary surrender and cooperation with the invaders, 23 former Soviet generals were shot or hanged (not counting dozens of generals who received camp terms).

Somewhat later, decrees were signed on the creation of penal units, through which, according to official data, 427,910 military personnel passed (penal units lasted until June 6, 1945).

Based on real figures and facts preserved in Soviet and German documents (decrees, secret reports, notes, etc.), we can draw a bitter conclusion: in no country that became a victim of Hitler's aggression, there was such moral decay, mass desertion and cooperation with the occupiers, as in the USSR. For example, by the middle of 1944, the number of personnel of military formations of "voluntary assistants" (the so-called Khivs), police and military units from Soviet military personnel and civilians exceeded 800 thousand people. (more than 150 thousand former Soviet citizens served in the SS alone).

The scale of the catastrophe that befell the Soviet Union in the first months of the war came as a surprise not only to the Soviet elite, but also to the leadership of Western countries and, to some extent, even to the Nazis. In particular, the Germans were not ready to "digest" such a number of Soviet prisoners of war - by mid-July 1941, the flow of prisoners of war exceeded the Wehrmacht's ability to protect and maintain them. On July 25, 1941, the command of the German army issues an order for the mass release of prisoners of a number of nationalities. Until November 13, 318,770 Soviet prisoners of war (mainly Ukrainians, Belarusians and Balts) were released by this order.

The catastrophic extent of the defeats of the Soviet troops, accompanied by mass surrender, desertion and cooperation with the enemy in the occupied territories, raises the question of the causes of these shameful phenomena. Liberal-democratic historians and political scientists often note the abundance of similarities in the two totalitarian regimes - Soviet and Nazi. But at the same time, one should not forget about their fundamental differences in relation to their own people. Hitler, who came to power democratically, led Germany out of devastation and post-war humiliation, eliminated unemployment, built excellent roads, and conquered a new living space. Yes, in Germany they began to exterminate Jews and Gypsies, persecute dissidents, introduce the most severe control over the public and even private lives of citizens, but no one expropriated private property, did not massively shoot and imprison aristocrats, the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, did not drive them into collective farms and did not dispossess the peasants - the standard of living of the vast majority of Germans increased. And, most importantly, with their military, political and economic successes, the Nazis managed to inspire the majority of Germans with faith in the greatness and invincibility of their country and their people.

The Bolsheviks who seized power in tsarist Russia destroyed the best part of society and, having deceived almost all sectors of society, brought famines and deportations to their peoples, and forced collectivization and industrialization to ordinary citizens, which grossly broke the habitual way of life and lowered the standard of living of most ordinary people.

In 1937–1938 1345 thousand people were arrested by the NKVD, of which 681 thousand were shot. On the eve of the war, in January 1941, according to official Soviet statistics, 1930 thousand convicts were kept in the camps of the Gulag, another 462 thousand people. were in prisons, and 1200 thousand - in "special settlements" (total 3 million 600 thousand people). Therefore, the rhetorical question: “Could the Soviet people living in such conditions, with such orders and such power, massively show courage and heroism in battles with the Germans, defending with their breasts“ the socialist fatherland, their own communist party and the wise comrade Stalin? “- hangs in air, and a significant difference in the number of surrendered prisoners, deserters and military equipment abandoned on the battlefield between the Soviet and German armies in the first months of the war is convincingly explained by the different attitudes towards their citizens, soldiers and officers in the USSR and Nazi Germany.

Fracture. We do not stand up for the price

In October 1941, Hitler, anticipating the final defeat of the Soviet Union, was preparing to receive the parade of German troops in the citadel of Bolshevism - on Red Square. However, events at the front and in the rear already at the end of 1941 began to develop not according to his scenario.

German losses in battles began to grow, logistical and food assistance from the allies (mainly the United States) to the Soviet army increased every month, military factories evacuated to the East began mass production of weapons. First, the autumn thaw, and then the severe frosts of the winter of 1941-1942, helped to slow down the offensive impulse of the fascist units. But most importantly, a radical change was gradually taking place in the attitude towards the enemy on the part of the people - soldiers, home front workers and ordinary citizens who found themselves in the occupied territories.

In November 1941, in his report on the occasion of the next anniversary of the October Revolution, Stalin said a significant and this time absolutely truthful phrase: "Hitler's stupid policy turned the peoples of the USSR into sworn enemies of today's Germany." These words formulate one of the most important reasons for the transformation of the Second World War, in which the Soviet Union participated from September 1939, into the Great Patriotic War, in which the leading role passed to the people. Obsessed with delusional racial ideas, narcissistic paranoid Hitler, not listening to the numerous warnings of his generals, declared the Slavs "subhuman", who should free up living space for the "Aryan race", and at first serve the representatives of the "master race". Millions of captured Soviet prisoners of war were driven like cattle to huge open areas, entangled with barbed wire, and starved and cold there. By the beginning of the winter of 1941, out of 3.8 million people. more than 2 million from such conditions and treatment were destroyed. The previously mentioned release of prisoners of a number of nationalities, initiated by the army command on November 13, 1941, was personally forbidden by Hitler. All attempts by anti-Soviet national or civil structures that collaborated with the Germans at the beginning of the war (Ukrainian nationalists, Cossacks, Balts, white émigrés) to create at least semi-independent state, military, public or regional structures were nipped in the bud. S. Bandera with part of the leadership of the OUN was sent to a concentration camp. The collective farm system was practically preserved; the civilian population was forcibly driven to work in Germany, massively taken hostage and shot on any suspicion. The terrible scenes of the genocide of Jews, the mass death of prisoners of war, the shooting of hostages, public executions - all this in front of the eyes of the population - shocked the inhabitants of the occupied territories. During the first six months of the war, according to the most conservative estimates, 5-6 million Soviet civilians perished at the hands of the occupiers (including about 2.5 million Soviet Jews). Not so much Soviet propaganda as news from the front, the stories of those who escaped from the occupied territories and other methods of “wireless telephone” of people's rumors convinced the people that the new enemy was waging an inhuman war of complete annihilation. An increasing number of ordinary Soviet people - soldiers, partisans, residents of the occupied territories and home front workers began to realize that in this war the question was posed unequivocally - to die or win. This is what transformed the Second World War into the Great Patriotic (People's) War in the USSR.

The enemy was strong. The German army was distinguished by the stamina and courage of the soldiers, good weapons and a highly qualified general and officer corps. For another long three and a half years, stubborn battles continued, in which at first the Germans won local victories. But an increasing number of Germans began to understand that they would not be able to contain this impulse of almost universal popular fury. The rout at Stalingrad, the bloody battle on the Kursk Bulge, the growth of the partisan movement in the occupied territories, which, from a thin stream organized by the NKVD, turned into mass popular resistance. All this produced a radical change in the war on the Eastern Front.

Victories were given to the Red Army at a high price. This was facilitated not only by the bitterness of the resistance offered by the Nazis, but also by the "military skill" of the Soviet commanders. Brought up in the spirit of the glorious Bolshevik traditions, according to which the life of an individual, and even more so of a simple soldier, was worth nothing, many marshals and generals in their careerist rage (get ahead of a neighbor and be the first to report on the quick capture of another fortress, height or city) did not spare their lives soldier. Until now, it has not been calculated how many hundreds of thousands of lives of Soviet soldiers were worth the "rivalry" of Marshals Zhukov and Konev for the right to be the first to report to Stalin about the capture of Berlin.

From the end of 1941, the nature of the war began to change. The terrible ratio of human and military-technical losses of the Soviet and German armies have sunk into oblivion. For example, if in the first months of the war there were 415 Soviet prisoners of war per captured German, then since 1942 this ratio has approached one (out of 6.3 million captured Soviet soldiers, 2.5 million surrendered in the period from 1942 . to May 1945; during the same time, 2.2 million German soldiers surrendered). The people paid a terrible price for this Great Victory - the total human losses of the Soviet Union (10.7 million combat losses and 12.4 million civilians) in World War II amount to almost 40% of the losses of other countries participating in this war (considering and China, which lost only 20 million people). Germany lost only 7 million 260 thousand people (of which 1.76 million were civilians).

The Soviet government did not count military losses - it was unprofitable for it, because the true dimensions, first of all, of human losses, convincingly illustrated the "wisdom and professionalism" of Comrade Stalin personally and his party and military nomenklatura.

The last, rather gloomy and poorly clarified chord of the Second World War (still hushed up not only by post-Soviet, but also by Western historians) was the issue of repatriates. By the end of the war, about 5 million Soviet citizens who found themselves outside the Motherland remained alive (3 million people in the zone of action of the allies and 2 million people in the zone of the Red Army). Of these, Ostarbeiters - about 3.3 million people. out of 4.3 million driven by the Germans for forced labor. However, about 1.7 million people survived. prisoners of war, including those who entered the military or police service with the enemy and voluntary refugees.

The return of repatriates to their homeland was not easy, and often tragic. About 500 thousand people remained in the West. (every tenth), many were returned by force. The allies, who did not want to spoil relations with the USSR and were bound by the need to take care of their subjects who found themselves in the zone of action of the Red Army, were often forced to yield to the Soviets in this matter, realizing that many of the forcibly returned repatriates would be shot or end their lives in the Gulag. In general, the Western allies tried to adhere to the principle - to return to the Soviet authorities repatriates who have Soviet citizenship or who committed war crimes against the Soviet state or its citizens.

The topic of the “Ukrainian account” of the Second World War deserves special discussion. Neither in Soviet nor post-Soviet times was this topic seriously analyzed, with the exception of ideological swearing between supporters of the pro-Soviet "unrecorded history" and adherents of the national-democratic trend. Western European historians (at least, English ones in the previously mentioned book “The Second World War”) determine the loss of the civilian population of Ukraine at 7 million people. If we add here about 2 million more combat losses (in proportion to the part of the population of the Ukrainian SSR in the total population of the USSR), then we get a terrible figure of military losses of 9 million people. - This is about 20% of the total population of Ukraine at that time. None of the countries participating in the Second World War suffered such terrible losses.

In Ukraine, disputes between politicians and historians about the attitude towards the soldiers of the UPA do not stop. Numerous "admirers of the red flag" proclaim them traitors to the Motherland and accomplices of the Nazis, regardless of facts, documents, or the opinion of European jurisprudence. These fighters for "historical justice" stubbornly do not want to know that the vast majority of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and the Baltic states, who found themselves outside the zone of the Red Army in 1945, were not handed over to the Soviets by the Western allies because, according to international laws, they were not citizens of the USSR and did not commit crimes against a foreign homeland. Thus, out of 10,000 SS Galicia fighters captured by the Allies in 1945, only 112 were handed over to the Soviets, despite the unprecedented, almost ultimatum, pressure from representatives of the USSR Council of People's Commissars for repatriation. As for the ordinary soldiers of the UPA, they courageously fought against the German and Soviet invaders for their lands and independent Ukraine. The height of cynicism and shame is the situation with war veterans that has developed in modern Ukraine, when tens of thousands of true heroes and soldiers of the UPA cannot receive the status of "war veteran", and hundreds of thousands of people from 1932-1935. born, who were part of the special units of the NKVD, who fought with the UPA fighters or the "forest brothers" in the Baltic until 1954 or "obtained certificates of their participation in the 9-12-year-old childhood in valiant labor in the rear or in mine clearing in April 1945. various objects”, have such a status.

In conclusion, I would like to return once again to the problem of historical truth. Is it worth disturbing the memory of the fallen heroes and searching for the ambiguous truth in the tragic events of World War II? The point is not only and not so much in historical truth, but in the system of “Soviet values” that has been preserved in the post-Soviet space, including Ukraine. Lies, like rust, corrode not only history, but all aspects of life. "Unrewritten history", inflated heroes, "red flags", pompous military parades, renewed Leninist subbotniks, envious aggressive hostility towards the West lead directly to the preservation of the miserable unreformed "Soviet" industry, unproductive "kolkhoz" agriculture, "the most just", legal proceedings that are no different from Soviet times, the essentially Soviet ("thieves") system for the selection of leadership personnel, the valiant "people's" police and the "soviet" education and healthcare systems. The preserved system of perverted values ​​is largely to blame for the unique post-Soviet syndrome, which is characterized by the complete failure of political, economic and social reforms in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

The 74-year history of building socialism in the USSR convincingly showed the absolute collapse of the political and economic ideas of Marxism, especially in the Bolshevik version. The 20-year post-Soviet history of the states that were formed on the ruins of the Soviet empire refuted yet another, this time Marx's philosophical thesis: "Being determines consciousness." It turned out that it is the perverted historical, political, economic, social, and individual consciousness (mentality) of society that largely determines its wretched existence (standard of living). The peoples whom history teaches nothing (and even more so those who use a perverted system of values ​​and false alien history) are doomed to remain on the sidelines of history.

What images arise in a Russian citizen who is told about the beginning of the Great Patriotic War? Most likely - downcast columns of prisoners, wandering under the protection of German machine gunners, Soviet tanks broken and stuck in the mud on the roadsides and in the field, planes burned at airfields ... The series can be continued.

Most of these images came from photographs taken in the summer of 1941. Almost all of these photos, and even the documentary chronicle, were taken after the battles, when days and weeks had passed. There are relatively few pictures taken in battle, not before. In addition, most of the pictures were taken on busy highways, where huge masses of Nazis walked and drove back and forth. But not all battles, the battles took place along the main roads, a significant number of equipment knocked out in battle could be found near thousands of villages, villages, in copses, on country roads.

Therefore, there was the myth of the small-scale mechanization of the Red Army, parts of which allegedly moved only on foot or with the help of horses, and the Wehrmacht only by car. Although if we compare the states of the infantry division of the Wehrmacht and the motorized rifle division of the Red Army, then there is no lag, the mechanization is almost equal. The Red Army had plenty of mechanized corps and tank brigades.

Against the background of such a picture was created the myth of the unwillingness of Soviet soldiers to fight for the Bolsheviks, Stalin. Although even in Soviet times, enough materials were published that tell about the difficult battles of the initial stage of the war, mass heroism, the exploits of border guards, pilots, tankers, artillerymen, and infantry.

These myths and other similar conjectures are born due to a lack of understanding of the real picture of the life of the country in the pre-war period and at the beginning of the war, or, even worse, they are created deliberately, waging an information war against our country and people. It must be understood that even the richest state cannot keep a multimillion-strong army under arms in a period when there is no war, tearing off millions of healthy men from real production. In the borderlands there are troops that will become the basis of the grouping for the first operation of the war, only with the declaration of war is the gigantic mechanism of mobilization launched. But even potential military personnel, who are mobilized in the first place, do not gather in peacetime in a zone of 50-300 km from the enemy, they are mobilized where they live and work. Even the current conscription and officers may not be on the border with the enemy, but in the Caucasus, in Siberia, in the Far East. That is, there are very limited troops on the border, far from the entire payroll of the peacetime army. Only in the case of mobilization, the troops are increased to wartime states, huge masses of people and equipment are being transported to the front, perhaps only still potential.

Mobilization can be launched even before the start of hostilities, but this requires very important reasons, a political decision by the country's leadership. At this point created the myth that "intelligence reported", but the tyrant was stupid ... The beginning of mobilization is not just an internal event, but a step of great political importance, causing a huge resonance in the world. It is almost impossible to conduct it covertly, a potential enemy can use it as a pretext for war. Therefore, in order to actually start a war, very weighty, reinforced concrete grounds are needed. Starting a war, from a political and military point of view, was unreasonable, the main plans for defense construction were to be completed in 1942. The basis for such a decision could be intelligence or analysis of the political situation. But, despite the widespread opinion about the power of Soviet intelligence, the actual intelligence was highly inconsistent. Crumbs of important and useful information simply sank in a mass of gossip and outright misinformation.

From a political point of view, relations between the Reich and the Union were quite normal, there was no threat: financial and economic cooperation, the absence of territorial disputes, a non-aggression pact, delimitation of spheres of influence. In addition, which also played a crucial role in assessing the date of the start of the war, the Kremlin understood that it was very likely in the short term, the Third Reich was associated with a war with England. Until the issue with Britain was resolved, fighting the Soviet Union was an extremely adventurous step, beyond normal logic. Berlin did not send any diplomatic signals that usually start a war - territorial claims (as to Czechoslovakia, Poland), demands, ultimatums.

When Berlin did not react in any way to the TASS message of June 14 (it said that reports published abroad about the impending war between the USSR and Germany had no basis), Stalin began mobilization processes, but without announcing it: they advanced to the border from the depths of the border military districts of the division, the movement of non-mobilized troops by rail from the internal districts to the border of the Western Dvina and Dnieper rivers began. There were other events that completely reject the speculation on the topic: "Stalin did not believe."

The Red Army actually entered the war without completing the mobilization, so at the beginning of the war it had 5.4 million people, and according to the mobilization plan of February 1941 (MP-41) in wartime states, it was supposed to be 8 .68 million people. That is why in the border divisions, when they entered the battle, there were approximately 10 thousand people, instead of the prescribed St. 14 thousand. Even worse was the situation in the rear units. The troops of the border and internal military districts were divided into three operationally unrelated parts - units directly at the border, units at a depth of about 100 km from the border, and troops about 300 km from the border. The Wehrmacht got the opportunity to take advantage of the number of personnel, the number of pieces of equipment and destroy the Soviet troops in parts.

By June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht was completely mobilized, its number was increased to 7.2 million people. Strike groups were concentrated on the border and crushed the Soviet border divisions before the Red Army could change the balance of power. Only in the process of the battle for Moscow could the situation be changed.

The myth of the superiority of defense over attack, on the new western border of the USSR in 1940-1941 they built a line of fortifications, fortified areas (URs), they are also called the "Molotov line". By the war, many structures were unfinished, uncamouflaged, without communications, and so on. But, most importantly, there were not enough forces on the border to hold back the blow of the German army, even relying on the URs. The defense could not hold back the onslaught of the Wehrmacht, the German troops had vast experience in breaking the lines of defense since the First World War, applying it in 1940 on the border with France. For a breakthrough, assault groups with sappers, explosives, flamethrowers, aircraft, and artillery were used. For example: on the 22nd, near the city of Taurage in the Baltic States, the 125th Infantry Division took up defensive positions, but the Wehrmacht broke through it in less than a day. The divisions and units covering the border could not provide the necessary density of defense. They were sparse over a vast area, so the German strike groups quickly broke into the defenses, though not at the pace they expected.

The only way to stop the enemy's breakthrough was counterattacks with their own mechanized corps. The border districts had mechanized corps, where new types of tanks, the T-34 and KV, were sent in the first place. On June 1, 1941, the Red Army had 25,932 tanks, self-propelled guns and tankettes (although some of them were in combat readiness (as at the present time, there are a certain number of units in the parks, and 60 percent ready to go into battle immediately), in western special districts had 13 981. The mechanized corps were "hostages" of the general unfavorable situation, due to the collapse of the defense in several directions at once, they were forced to scatter between several targets. In addition, the mechanized corps were inferior in the organizational part, the German tank groups numbered 150-200 thousand .people from several motorized corps, reinforced by artillery, motorized infantry and other units.The Soviet mechanized corps numbered about 30 thousand people.Wehrmacht tank units, having fewer tanks than the Red Army, reinforced them with more powerful motorized infantry and artillery, including anti-tank.

The general strategy of the leadership of the Red Army was absolutely correct - operational counterattacks, only they could stop the enemy strike groups (there was no tactical atomic yet). Unlike France, the Red Army, with its fierce counterattacks, was able to buy time, inflict heavy losses on the enemy, which ultimately led to the failure of the "blitzkrieg" plan, and hence the entire war. Yes, and the leadership of the Wehrmacht drew conclusions, became more cautious (not Poland and France), began to pay more attention to the defense of the flanks, slowing down the pace of the offensive even more. It is clear that the organization of the counterattacks was not up to par (but it is not for us to judge, the current cabinet prosecutors could not organize their similarities), the concentration was weak, there was not enough air cover, units rushed into battle from the march, units. The mechanized corps were forced to go on the attack without suppressing the enemy's defenses with artillery, it was not enough, and the one that was behind. There was not enough of their own infantry to support the tank attack. This led to heavy losses of armored vehicles, the Germans quite easily burned old types of tanks. Tanks of new types were more effective, but they could not replace a full-fledged attack with the support of aviation, artillery and infantry. The myth of the invulnerability of tanks T-34, KV for the Wehrmacht just another guess. Like, if Stalin had ordered them to be “riveted” in sufficient quantities, then the enemy would have been stopped at the border. The Wehrmacht had 50 mm PAK-38 anti-tank guns that could penetrate even KV armor using sub-caliber shells. In addition, the Wehrmacht had anti-aircraft guns and heavy field guns, which also pierced the armor of the latest Soviet tanks. These tanks still required fine-tuning, were technically unreliable, for example, the V-2 diesel engine, in 1941, its passport resource did not exceed 100 engine hours on the stand and an average of 45–70 hours in the tank. This led to the frequent failure of new tanks on marches for technical reasons.

PAK-38

But it was the mechanized corps that saved the infantry from complete annihilation. They delayed the movement of the enemy, saved Leningrad from being captured on the move, and held back the advance of the German tank group E. von Kleist in the South-West direction.

The myth about the decrease in the combat capability of the command corps due to repression does not stand up to criticism. The percentage of those repressed from the general command staff is very small, the decline in the quality of training of command personnel is associated with the rapid growth of the armed forces of the USSR in the pre-war period. If in August 1939 the Red Army numbered 1.7 million people, then in June 1941 - 5.4 million people. In the high command, a number of commanders came to the top, who later became the best commanders of the Second World War. A significant role was also played by the lack of combat experience among a significant part of the Red Army, and the Wehrmacht was already an army that “tasted blood” and won a number of victories, the French army, for example, was then considered the best in Europe.

We must also understand the fact that the huge columns of prisoners of war, which are often shown on TV, may not be military personnel at all. The Wehrmacht in cities and other villages drove to the camps all those liable for military service from the age of 18. In addition, one must understand that not all front-line fighters are in the division - about half of them. The rest are artillerymen, signalmen, there were many builders (before the war, large-scale work was carried out to strengthen the border), military rear services. Getting into the environment, the units fought, tried to break through, while there was fuel, ammunition, food. The operational summary of Army Group Center for June 30 stated: “A lot of trophies, various weapons (mainly artillery guns), a large number of various equipment and a lot of horses were captured. The Russians are suffering huge losses in the dead, there are few prisoners. The "rear guards" were less trained, their mental training was also worse than that of the front line fighters, who mostly died with weapons in their hands. Or were injured. An impressive newsreel column of grooms, signalers and builders could easily be recruited from one corps, and entire armies were surrounded.

The Wehrmacht crushed the border divisions, the so-called "deep" corps 100-150 km from the border, they could not stop the enemy, the "weight categories" were too different, but they did the maximum - they won time and forced the enemy to throw into battle the units that they planned to introduce into fight in the second stage of the "blitzkrieg". A huge minus was the fact that the retreating Soviet units had to abandon a huge amount of equipment that ran out of fuel and which could, under other conditions, be restored. The mechanized corps burned down in the fire of war, and so far there was nothing to restore them - if in June and early July 1941 the Soviet command had mechanized corps in the hands, then by August - October they were gone. This was one of the causes of other disasters in the first year of the war: the Kyiv "boiler" in September 1941, the Vyazemsky, Bryansk and Melitopol "boilers" in October 1941.

German soldiers inspect the damaged and burnt-out T-20 Komsomolets artillery tractor. A burnt driver is seen, killed while trying to get out of the car. 1941

Sources:
Isaev A.V. Antisuvorov. Ten myths of World War II. M., 2004.
Isaev A.V., Drabkin A.V. June 22. Black day of the calendar. M., 2008.
Isaev A. V. Dubno 1941. The greatest tank battle of World War II. M., 2009.
Isaev A.V. "Boilers" of the 41st. WWII, which we did not know. M., 2005.
Isaev A.V. Unknown 1941. Stopped blitzkrieg. M., 2010.
Pykhalov I. The Great Slandered War. M., 2005.
Pykhalov I., Dyukov A. et al. Great slanderous war-2. We have nothing to repent of! M., 2008.

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on the book of memoirs of Nikolai Nikolaevich Nikulin, a researcher at the Hermitage, a former font specialist. I strongly recommend to all those who sincerely want to know the truth about the Patriotic War to get acquainted with it.
In my opinion, this is a unique work, it is difficult to find the likes of it in military libraries. It is remarkable not only for its literary merits, which I, not being a literary critic, cannot objectively judge, but for the descriptions of military events that are accurate to the point of naturalism, revealing the disgusting essence of war with its brutal inhumanity, filth, senseless cruelty, and criminal disregard for the lives of people by commanders of all ranks. from battalion commanders to supreme commander in chief. This is a document for those historians who study not only the movements of troops in the theaters of operations, but are also interested in the moral and humanistic aspects of the war.

In terms of the level of reliability and sincerity of the presentation, I can only compare it with Shumilin's memoirs "Vanka company".
Reading it is as hard as looking at the mutilated corpse of a person who had just stood nearby ...
While reading this book, my memory involuntarily restored almost forgotten analogous pictures of the past.
Nikulin "drank" in the war disproportionately more than I did, having survived it from beginning to end, having visited one of the bloodiest sections of the front: in the Tikhvin swamps, where our "glorious strategists" laid down more than one army, including the 2nd Shock. .. And yet I dare to say that many of his experiences and sensations are very similar to mine.
Some statements of Nikolai Nikolaevich prompted me to comment on them, which I do below, quoting from the book.
The main question that arises explicitly or implicitly when reading books about the war is what made companies, battalions and regiments resignedly go towards almost inevitable death, sometimes even obeying the criminal orders of their commanders? In numerous volumes of jingoistic literature, this is explained in an elementary simple way: inspired by love for their socialist homeland and hatred for the perfidious enemy, they were ready to give their lives for the victory over him and unanimously went on the attack at the call “Hurrah! For motherland for Stalin!"

N.N. Nikulin:

“Why did they go to death, although they clearly understood its inevitability? Why did they go, although they did not want to? They walked, not just fearing death, but terrified, and yet they walked! Then there was no need to think and justify their actions. It wasn't before. They just got up and walked, because it was NECESSARY!
They politely listened to the parting words of the political instructors - an illiterate transcription of oak and empty newspaper editorials - and walked on. Not at all inspired by some ideas or slogans, but because it is NECESSARY. So, apparently, our ancestors also went to die on the Kulikovo field or near Borodino. It is unlikely that they thought about the historical prospects and greatness of our people ... Having entered the neutral zone, they did not at all shout “For the Motherland! For Stalin!”, as they say in novels. A hoarse howl and thick obscene language were heard over the front line, until bullets and shrapnel plugged the screaming throats. Was it before Stalin when death was near. Where, now, in the sixties, did the myth again arise that they won only thanks to Stalin, under the banner of Stalin? I have no doubts about this. Those who won either perished on the battlefield or drank themselves, overwhelmed by the post-war hardships. After all, not only the war, but also the restoration of the country took place at their expense. Those of them who are still alive are silent, broken.
Others remained in power and retained their strength - those who drove people into camps, those who drove them into senseless bloody attacks in the war. They acted in the name of Stalin, and they are now shouting about it. Was not at the forefront: "For Stalin!". The commissars tried to hammer it into our heads, but there were no commissars in the attacks. All this scum ... "

And I remember.

In October 1943, our 4th Guards Cavalry Division was urgently moved to the front line in order to close the gap that had formed after an unsuccessful attempt to break through the front by infantry. For about a week, the division held the defense in the area of ​​the Belarusian city of Khoiniki. At that time I worked at the divisional radio station "RSB-F" and I could judge the intensity of hostilities only by the number of wounded people riding in carts and walking to the rear of the wounded.
I am receiving a radiogram. After a long cipher-tsifiri in plain text the words "Change of linen." The encoded text will go to the headquarters cipher, and these words are intended by the corps radio operator for me, who is receiving the radiogram. They mean that the infantry is coming to replace us.
And indeed, rifle units were already walking past the walkie-talkie standing on the side of the forest road. It was some kind of battle-worn division, withdrawn from the front for a short rest and replenishment. Not observing the formation, soldiers walked with the floors of their overcoats tucked under the belt (there was an autumn thaw), which seemed humpbacked because of raincoats thrown over knapsacks.
I was struck by their downcast, doomed appearance. I realized that in an hour or two they would be at the forefront ...

Writes to N.N. Nikulin:

“Noise, roar, rattle, howl, bang, hoot - a hell of a concert. And along the road, in the gray haze of dawn, the infantry wanders to the front line. Row after row, regiment after regiment. Faceless figures hung with weapons, covered with humpbacked capes. Slowly but inexorably they marched forward to their own destruction. A generation going to eternity. There was so much generalizing meaning in this picture, so much apocalyptic horror, that we acutely felt the fragility of being, the pitiless pace of history. We felt like pitiful moths destined to burn without a trace in the hellish fire of war.

The dull obedience and conscious doom of Soviet soldiers attacking fortified positions inaccessible to a frontal assault amazed even our opponents. Nikulin cites the story of a German veteran who fought on the same sector of the front, but on the other side.

A certain Mr. Erwin X., whom he met in Bavaria, says:

What kind of strange people? We laid a rampart of corpses about two meters high under Sinyavino, and they keep climbing and climbing under the bullets, climbing over the dead, and we keep hitting and hitting, and they keep climbing and climbing ... And what dirty prisoners were! Snotty boys are crying, and the bread in their bags is disgusting, it is impossible to eat!
And what did yours do in Courland? he continues. - Once the masses of Russian troops went on the attack. But they were met with friendly fire from machine guns and anti-tank guns. The survivors began to roll back. But then dozens of machine guns and anti-tank guns hit from the Russian trenches. We saw how rushing about, dying, in the neutral zone of the crowd of your soldiers distraught with horror!

This is about detachments.

In a discussion at the military-historical forum "VIF-2 NE "None other than V. Karpov himself - the hero of the Soviet Union, in the past ZEK, a penal scout, the author of well-known biographical novels about commanders, said that there were no and could not be cases of shooting retreating Red Army soldiers by detachments. “Yes, we would shoot them ourselves,” he said. I had to object, despite the high authority of the writer, referring to my meeting with these warriors on the way to the medical squadron. As a result, he received a lot of offensive remarks. You can find a lot of evidence of how courageously the NKVD troops fought on the fronts. But about their activities as detachments, it was not necessary to meet.
In the comments to my statements and in the guest book of my site ( http://ldb1.people. en ) often there are words that veterans - relatives of the authors of the comments categorically refuse to remember their participation in the war and, moreover, write about it. I think the book of N.N. Nikulina explains this quite convincingly.
On the website of Artem Drabkin "I remember" ( www.iremember.ru ) a huge collection of memoirs of war veterans. But it is extremely rare to find sincere stories about what a comfrey soldier experienced at the forefront on the verge of life and inevitable, as it seemed to him, death.
In the 60s of the last century, when N.N. Nikulin, in the memory of the soldiers who miraculously survived after being at the forefront of the front, the experience was still as fresh as an open wound. Naturally, remembering this was painful. And I, to whom fate was more merciful, was able to force myself to take up a pen only in 1999.

N.N. Nikulin:

« Memoirs, memoirs... Who writes them? What memoirs can those who actually fought have? Pilots, tankers and, above all, infantrymen?
Wound - death, wound - death, wound - death and all! There was no other. Memoirs are written by those who were near the war. In the second echelon, at headquarters. Or corrupt hacks who expressed the official point of view, according to which we cheerfully won, and the evil fascists fell by the thousands, slain by our well-aimed fire. Simonov, "honest writer", what did he see? They took him for a ride in a submarine, once he went on the attack with infantry, once with scouts, looked at the artillery preparation - and now he “saw everything” and “experienced everything”! (Others, however, did not see this either.)
He wrote with aplomb, and all this is an embellished lie. And Sholokhov's "They fought for the Motherland" is just propaganda! There is no need to talk about small mongrels. ”

In the stories of real comfrey front-line soldiers, there is often a pronounced hostility, bordering on hostility, towards the inhabitants of various headquarters and rear services. This is read by both Nikulin and Shumilin, who contemptuously called them "regimental".

Nikulin:

« A striking difference exists between the front lines, where blood is shed, where there is suffering, where there is death, where one cannot raise one's head under bullets and shrapnel, where there is hunger and fear, overwork, heat in summer, frost in winter, where it is impossible to live, and the rear. Here, in the rear, another world. Here are the authorities, here are the headquarters, there are heavy guns, warehouses, medical battalions are located. Occasionally, shells fly here or a plane drops a bomb. The dead and wounded are rare here. Not a war, but a resort! Those on the front line are not residents. They are doomed. Their salvation is only a wound. Those in the rear will remain alive if they are not moved forward when the ranks of the attackers dry out. They will stay alive, come home, and eventually form the backbone of veterans' organizations. They will grow bellies, get bald heads, decorate their chests with commemorative medals, orders and will tell how heroically they fought, how they defeated Hitler. And they themselves will believe in it!
It is they who will bury the bright memory of those who died and who really fought! They will present a war about which they themselves know little, in a romantic halo. How good everything was, how wonderful! What heroes we are! And the fact that war is horror, death, hunger, meanness, meanness and meanness will fade into the background. The real front-line soldiers, of which there are one and a half people left, and even those crazy, spoiled ones, will be silent as a rag. And the authorities, who will also largely survive, will be mired in squabbles: who fought well, who fought badly, but if only they had listened to me!

Harsh words, but largely justified. I had to serve for some time at the headquarters of the division in the communications squadron, I had seen enough of smart staff officers. It is possible that due to a conflict with one of them, I was sent to the communications platoon of the 11th cavalry regiment (http://ldb1.narod.ru/simple39_.html )
I have already had to speak on a very painful topic about the terrible fate of women in the war. And again, this turned out to be an insult to me: the young relatives of the mothers and grandmothers who fought, felt that I had outraged their military merits.
When, even before leaving for the front, I saw how, under the influence of powerful propaganda, young girls enthusiastically enrolled in courses for radio operators, nurses or snipers, and then at the front - how they had to part with illusions and girlish pride, I, a boy inexperienced in life it hurt a lot for them. I recommend M. Kononov's novel "The Naked Pioneer", it's about the same thing.

And here is what N.N. Nikulin.

“This is not a woman's business - war. No doubt, there were many heroines who can be set as an example for men. But it is too cruel to force women to suffer the torment of the front. And if only this! It was hard for them to be surrounded by men. True, the hungry soldiers had no time for women, but the authorities achieved their goal by any means, from rough pressure to the most exquisite courtship. Among the many cavaliers there were daredevils for every taste: to sing, and to dance, and to talk eloquently, and for the educated - to read Blok or Lermontov ... And the girls went home with the addition of a family. It seems that this was called in the language of the military offices "to leave by order of 009." In our unit, out of fifty who arrived in 1942, only two soldiers of the fair sex remained by the end of the war. But “leave on order 009” is the best way out.
It's been worse. I was told how a certain Colonel Volkov lined up female reinforcements and, passing along the line, selected the beauties he liked. Such became his PPZH (Field mobile wife. The abbreviation PPZH had a different meaning in the soldier's lexicon. This is how hungry and emaciated soldiers called an empty, watery stew: “Goodbye, sex life”), and if they resisted - on the lip, in a cold dugout, on bread and water! Then the baby went from hand to hand, got to different mothers and deputies. In the best Asian traditions!”

Among my brother-soldiers was a wonderful brave woman medical officer of the squadron Masha Samoletova. About her on my website is the story of Marat Shpilyov “Her name was Moscow”. And at a meeting of veterans in Armavir, I saw how the soldiers she pulled from the battlefield were crying. She came to the front at the Komsomol call, leaving the ballet, where she began to work. But she also could not resist the pressure of the army Don Juan, as she herself told me.

And the last thing to talk about.

N.N. Nikulin:

“Everything seemed to be tested: death, hunger, shelling, overwork, cold. So no! There was something else very terrible, almost crushing me. On the eve of the transition to the territory of the Reich, agitators arrived in the troops. Some are in high ranks.
- Death for death! Blood for blood!!! Let's not forget!!! We won't forgive!!! Let's take revenge!!! - and so on...
Prior to this, Ehrenburg had thoroughly tried, whose crackling, biting articles everyone read: “Dad, kill the German!” And it turned out Nazism on the contrary.
True, they behaved outrageously according to plan: a network of ghettos, a network of camps. Accounting and compilation of lists of loot. A register of punishments, planned executions, etc. With us, everything went spontaneously, in the Slavic way. Bay, guys, burn, wilderness!
Spoil their women! Moreover, before the offensive, the troops were abundantly supplied with vodka. And it's gone, and it's gone! As always, the innocent suffered. The bosses, as always, fled ... Indiscriminately burned houses, killed some random old women, aimlessly shot herds of cows. A joke invented by someone was very popular: “Ivan is sitting near a burning house. "What are you doing?" they ask him. “Yes, the footcloths had to be dried, the fire was lit” ... Corpses, corpses, corpses. The Germans, of course, are scum, but why be like them? The army has humiliated itself. The nation has humiliated itself. It was the worst thing in the war. Corpses, corpses...
At the railway station of the city of Allenstein, which the valiant cavalry of General Oslikovsky captured unexpectedly for the enemy, several echelons with German refugees arrived. They thought they were going to their rear, but they got there ... I saw the results of the reception that they received. The station platforms were covered with heaps of gutted suitcases, bundles, trunks. Everywhere clothes, children's things, ripped pillows. All this in pools of blood...

“Everyone has the right to send a parcel home once a month weighing twelve kilograms,” the authorities officially announced. And it's gone, and it's gone! Drunk Ivan burst into the bomb shelter, fucked the machine on the table and, terribly bulging eyes, yelled: “URRRRR! ( Uhr- hours) Reptiles! Trembling German women carried watches from all sides, which they raked into the "sidor" and carried away. One soldier became famous for forcing a German woman to hold a candle (there was no electricity) while he rummaged through her chests. Rob! Grab it! Like an epidemic, this scourge swept over everyone ... Then they came to their senses, but it was too late: the devil flew out of the bottle. Kind, affectionate Russian men have turned into monsters. They were terrible alone, but in the herd they became such that it is impossible to describe!

Here, as they say, comments are superfluous.

We will soon celebrate a wonderful national holiday, Victory Day. It carries not only joy in connection with the anniversary the end of a terrible war that claimed every 8th inhabitant of our country (on average!), but also tears for those who did not return from there ... I would also like to remember the exorbitant price that the people had to pay under the "wise leadership" of the greatest commander of all times and peoples " . After all, it has already been forgotten that he endowed himself with the title of Generalissimo and this title!

"Those who lie about the past war bring the future war closer."

"We won this war only because we filled the Germans with corpses." Viktor Astafiev.

It is no secret that in the USSR, and now in Russia, it is customary to glorify the Second World War and distort the facts about it. Few people know that 2,000,000 people died near Stalingrad. These are soldiers of the Soviet army, civilians and fascists with allies. At school, we were taught to think that it was such and such a turning point, a convenient location of troops, and so on. But in fact, they simply threw a lot of people to their deaths, just because behind them was a city called Stalingrad. They surrendered Kyiv, but they did not surrender another city so valuable for the Soviet ideology with the name of the leader - Leningrad, they simply allowed people to starve to death. Communist idols were above everything.

There are several videos in this post. They shed light on the true events of the war and pre-war times. In the first video, the Russian writer talks about how the Soviets treated their soldiers, in fact, they kept them like cattle.

You bastards are proud of such a "Victory"

Here the veteran tells in brutal detail about the rapes and murders of German women. Not so long ago, a film shot on this topic was not even close to the truth.

Veteran of the 2nd World War about how our soldiers raped German women. Bitter truth

A Russian war veteran tells how he was driving through Western Ukraine and how his documents were checked by "Bandera". We drove up, checked the documents of the Soviet soldier and left. It turns out there was.

Russian veteran about Bandera

Here, a resident of Lvov tells how she was tortured by the NKVD officers. They destroyed so many people in the USSR that their number can probably be compared with the population of a small country, several million. For all the years of repression, according to various historians, from 23 to 40 million people were destroyed. It is probably not surprising that the Galicians, who survived the famine and repression, did not fall in love with the Soviet regime.

Lvov 1939 The interrogations NKVD torture women

I liked the comment under one of the videos, "some Russians will soon agree that they won in the Second World War only thanks to Putin."

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Liked: 6 users

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To complete the picture, we need to add more interviews of German veterans, how many Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Polish women were raped by the Germans during the Second World War. How many villages, along with the inhabitants, were burned. How many died in concentration camps.
Unfortunately, history has no subjunctive mood and wars do not go according to the rules of chess games.
By and large, mere mortals do not have much choice,
one burns prisoners in an oven at Dachau to survive, the other with a rifle goes to the tank.
But if 22 million died during the Second World War, 40 million, according to
the author, the NKVD froze, this is already 62 million. How many people were in the USSR if, having lost more than 60 million able-bodied population in the main population, if the factories worked, cities and villages were restored?
Also, the quote
08/14/42: An unsent letter to his sister Sabina was found with a German soldier Josef.
The letter says: “Today we organized 20 chickens and 10 cows. We are removing the entire population from the villages - adults and children. No amount of prayer helps. We can be ruthless. If someone does not want to go, they finish him off. Recently, in a village, a group of residents became stubborn and did not want to leave for anything. We went berserk and immediately shot them down. And then something terrible happened. Several Russian women stabbed two German soldiers with pitchforks... They hate us here. No one in the homeland can imagine what fury the Russians have against us.”
Corporal Felix Kandels writes to a friend: “Having rummaged through the chests and organized a good dinner, we began to have fun. The girl got angry, but we also organized her. It doesn't matter that the whole squad... Don't worry. I remember the advice of the lieutenant, and the girl is dead as a grave ... ".
07/24/42: Mathias Zimlich writes to his brother Corporal Heinrich Zimlich: “There is a camp for Russians in Leiden, you can see them there. They are not afraid of weapons, but we talk to them with a good whip ... "

"From 23 to 40 million" is for all the years of repression from 1917 to 1953, this is almost 2 generations, people were born and died, and not at once in one fell swoop.
I do not approve the figures, but explain what is written. 40 million - counting the unborn.
In only two Holodomors, about 10 million people were killed.
Compare how Germany was restored and you will be horrified at the insignificance of the Soviet "restoration" that has not yet been completed.

Let's calculate: since 1914 there was the first world, mass epidemics - typhus, Spanish flu, since 1917 a civil war, which included the Entente countries, mass emigration. That is, the initial correct number of the population simply does not exist. Further, speaking of the unborn during the period from 1917 to 1953, you inevitably (you just can’t count it differently) include the unborn due to the unborn due to the civil war and the Second World War, epidemics, etc. What reliability of figures can we talk about in this case at all? Regarding the restoration of Germany, I can only say that having visited Austria, Switzerland and Germany, I clearly realized that the Eastern Slavs are not Germans and Austrians. Unfortunately, from the global questions of mankind "Who is to blame?" and "What to do?", we cycle and look for the guilty everywhere, but not in ourselves. our roads were built not by Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, but by people like you and me. You are old enough not to expect some sort of mythical truth. War always highlights the true character of a person, and it is foolish to expect from a person who shoots another, the "pink snot" of the supposedly racial intelligentsia. Sorry. We were not there, so we are not supposed to judge. You can also talk about the indigenous population of America, I wonder where most of them have gone, do you know? About the Great Depression, when almost 1,000 people died of starvation per day in the United States, and much more. Life is pretty cruel, actually. The main misfortune of socialism is a generation of people who can only whine that he was not provided with communism and look for someone to blame. A mother is loved by both the rich and the poor. Motherland in general, too

QUOTE]and]Original message story_angelo_rosso /i]

"Those who lie about the past war bring the future war closer."

"We won this war only because we filled the Germans with corpses." Viktor Astafiev.

It is no secret that in the USSR, and now in Russia, it is customary to glorify the Second World War and distort the facts about it. Few people know that 2,000,000 people died near Stalingrad. These are soldiers of the Soviet army, civilians and fascists with allies. At school, we were taught to think that it was such and such a turning point, a convenient location of troops, and so on. But in fact, they simply threw a lot of people to their deaths, just because behind them was a city called Stalingrad. They surrendered Kyiv, but they did not surrender another city so valuable for the Soviet ideology with the name of the leader - Leningrad, they simply allowed people to starve to death. Communist idols were above everything.

There are several videos in this post. They shed light on the true events of the war and pre-war times. In the first video, the Russian writer talks about how the Soviets treated their soldiers, in fact, they kept them like cattle.

You bastards are proud of such a "Victory"

Iflash=560,315,https://www.youtube.com/embed/u5twLGb9HE4]

Here the veteran tells in brutal detail about the rapes and murders of German women. Not so long ago, a film shot on this topic was not even close to the truth.

Veteran of the 2nd World War about how our soldiers raped German women. Bitter truth
iflash=560,315,https://www.youtube.com/embed/aav3dvegRtw]

A Russian war veteran tells how he was driving through Western Ukraine and how his documents were checked by "Bandera". We drove up, checked the documents of the Soviet soldier and left. It turns out there was.

Russian veteran about Bandera
iflash=560,315,https://www.youtube.com/embed/n6dOwU7ewx8]

Here, a resident of Lvov tells how she was tortured by the NKVD officers. They destroyed so many people in the USSR that their number can probably be compared with the population of a small country, several million. For all the years of repression, according to various historians, from 23 to 40 million people were destroyed. It is probably not surprising that the Galicians, who survived the famine and repression, did not fall in love with the Soviet regime.

Lvov 1939 The interrogations NKVD torture women

Iflash=560,315,https://www.youtube.com/embed/1i4cUPVN1RY]

I liked the comment under one of the videos, "some Russians will soon agree that they won in the Second World War only thanks to Putin."
/ QUOTE] We did not surrender the city to the Nazis.