The most famous case of a voluntary transition in order to fight on the side of the USSR is the story of the German corporal Fritz Hans Werner Schmenkel
Fritz was born on February 14, 1916 in the town of Varzovo near the town of Stettin, now Szczeci, his father, a communist, was killed in 1923 in a skirmish with the Nazis. In November 1941, F. Schmenkel deserted from the ranks of the German army and near the city of Bely, Kalinin (now Tver) region, intending to cross the front line in order to join the Red Army, but ended up with the Soviet partisans on February 17, 1942, he was accepted into a partisan detachment "Death to fascism", and from that time to March 1943 he was a scout, machine gunner, participant and leader of many military operations on the territory of the Nelidovsky and Belsky districts of the Kalinsk (now Tver) region and in the Smolensk region. The partisans gave him a name "Ivan Ivanovich".

From the testimony of partisan Viktor Spirin: - At first, they did not trust him and did not give him weapons. They even wanted to shoot if the situation was difficult. Local residents interceded, whom he helped with the housework while he wandered in the autumn and winter of 1941. At the end of February, we were attacked and fired upon by a German reconnaissance detachment. Schmenkel had only one pair of binoculars through which he watched the fight. Noticing a German hiding behind a Christmas tree and conducting aimed fire at the house, he asked for a rifle. He was allowed to take it - they lay in a heap in the passage, but I did not give him mine. He killed the German with one shot. After that, we began to trust him(although from the testimony of another partisan, they did not trust him for a long time - "They appointed him on patrol, and put their man in the shelter") they gave him the dead man's rifle and a Parabellum pistol.
May 6, 1942 on the road Dukhovshchina - White detachment collided with a German tank column and was forced to retreat in battle. We were already leaving when Shmenkel ran up to Vasiliev, the assistant commander of the detachment, and said that there were barrels of fuel on the tanks and that they should be shot at. After that, we opened fire with incendiary cartridges and burned five tanks.
Soon Fritz-Ivan became an irreplaceable and authoritative fighter in the detachment. The partisans fought mainly with captured weapons captured from the Germans. However, no one except Fritz-Ivan knew how to handle a machine gun, and he willingly helped the partisans master the technique. Even the commander of the detachment consulted with him when carrying out this or that operation.

From the testimony of partisan Arkady Glazunov: - Our detachment was surrounded by the Germans, and we fought back for about two weeks. Then everyone dispersed into small groups and made their way out of the encirclement. Schmenkel was with us and left the encirclement with one of our partisans. About a month later, our detachment gathered in the forest. Schmenkel also sought us out. He was severely frostbite, but again fought against the Germans. All partisans treated him like their own person and respected him..
The German command found out which German soldier under the pseudonym " Ivan Ivanovich" fighting on the side of the Soviet partisans, an announcement was circulated in the villages and among the German soldiers "Whoever catches Schmenkel is rewarded: for a Russian 8 hectares of land, a house, a cow, for a German soldier - 25 thousand marks and 2 months of vacation."

At the beginning of 1944, Shmenkel was captured by the Nazis and, by order of a military court, was shot in Minsk on February 22 of the same year. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of October 6, 1964, for active participation in the partisan movement, exemplary performance of combat missions of the command during the Great Patriotic War and the heroism and courage shown at the same time, German citizen Schmenkel Fritz Paul was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

There is information about another German soldier who fought as part of the partisan raid formation "13" under the command of Sergei Grishin, who operated on the territory of 19 districts of the Smolensk, Vitebsk and Mogilev regions. In March and April 1943, south - west of Smolensk, units of the German army carried out a major operation against Grishin's detachment. Below are excerpts from the materials of two interrogations by the Germans of a girl and a defector from this partisan detachment:

Those who joined the partisans: one gypsy; one German soldier who joined the partisans after being wounded; about 200 Ukrainian deserters in German uniforms, including a major, whose name I do not know, but he works at headquarters. A German soldier fights alongside partisans against the Germans; speaks Russian badly.

There is a German soldier in the group, he deserted and joined us near the village of Kolyshki. We call him Fedya, I don't know his German name. A section of partisans ambushed a group of 10 Russian POWs and two German soldiers; one soldier was killed. Ten prisoners of war are now fighting on our side. A German soldier was shot from a machine gun by Fedya, who asked for it. He is very active and has been nicknamed "the hero". Verbal portrait of Fedya: 19 years old, medium height, thin, dark blond hair; dressed: German uniform without insignia, white fur hat with a red star"

There were 30 men in our cavalry platoon, including one German soldier named Fedya. His real name is Friedrich Rosenberg or Rosenholtz. He lived near Hamburg. As far as I know, he deserted. He is respected, but the group does not trust him and is constantly watched.

It is quite possible that we are talking about the same Fritz Schmenkel, the area of ​​\u200b\u200baction of the detachments approximately coincides, although there was no Death to Fascism detachment in the regiment "13". The name Fedya looks like Fritz, on the other hand, Fedya's age is indicated as 19 years old, and Fritz was already 27 years old at that time, plus discrepancies in the place of birth.

In the book "Notes of a military translator" Vernik S.M. again tells about Belarus in 1943, where in the town of Ostryn he met with an Austrian from Vienna named Kurt, who fought on the side of the partisans.
...Kurt comes from a suburb of Vienna. His father is a worker. Kurt remembers well the year 1934, the revolutionary battles with the Austrian fascists on the working outskirts of Vienna. Although he was not yet ten years old, he and his comrades brought cartridges to the workers. ... when I was drafted into the army and was supposed to be sent to the Eastern Front, my father said during our last conversation: "Kurt, you should not fight for the Nazis."
In Belarus, the train in which Kurt and the soldiers of his regiment were traveling to the Eastern Front was raided by Soviet aircraft during which Kurt deserted. A couple of days later, partisans detained him, after which, having joined the partisan detachment, he fought against German troops for two years.

If anyone has more information about these German soldiers or similar cases, please share.

They were not mentioned in Soviet sources. At least for the general public, not for professional historians. They even recognized the existence of the post-war resistance of Bandera, forest brothers in the Baltic states and Polish AKovtsy, but not a word about the Germans. And it looked like they didn't exist. And they were. Naturally, the Nazis. True, most of them were Octobrists with ears.

In May 1945, Nazi Germany signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender. The Second World War ended, but the troops of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition continued to suffer losses (and not for a year or two, but until the end of the 60s). The fighting was continued by members of the underground organization Werwolf.

Who and how got into the German partisan movement? Were these people fanatics, drugged by twelve years of Nazi propaganda, or unwitting participants who failed to choose a peaceful life? These and other questions are answered by the historian, author of the book “Werewolf. Fragments of the brown empire ”Andrey Vasilchenko.

The article is based on the material of the program "The Price of Victory" of the radio station "Echo of Moscow". The broadcast was conducted by Vitaly Dymarsky and Dmitry Zakharov. You can read and listen to the original interview in full here.

Until the autumn of 1944, talking about the need to create some kind of base in order to defend against the troops that entered Germany was considered defeatism, almost a criminal offense. At best, all operations were considered as small sabotage attacks. When, by the end of 1944, it became clear that the entry of Allied troops into Germany was just a matter of time, chaotic attempts began to create some kind of sabotage army. As a result, the main task was assigned to the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. He decided to entrust this task to police units, namely the Prützmann Bureau. During his tenure, SS Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prutzmann distinguished himself by similar bloody actions in occupied Ukraine. It was believed that he understood the partisans better than others, since he himself fought with them.

At this time, saboteur No. 1 Otto Skorzeny developed a feeling of jealousy, and he did everything possible to sabotage the organization of the Werewolf movement, believing that at some point he himself would lead the sabotage army. All this discord led to the fact that the German partisan movement was not ready to meet the enemy: tactics were not developed, personnel were not trained, bases were created in a hurry.

But nevertheless, after May 1945, the "werewolves" continued to conduct their operations. What's this? Some kind of "wild army", "wild army"? Several factors come together here. Firstly, this is the reaction of the local population, especially the national outskirts, which for centuries walked from country to country. These are Silesia, Sudetes, Alsace, Lorraine. That is, when new authorities appeared, what is called a “wild eviction” of the Germans took place. That is, the Soviet authorities tried to create a certain barrier, the French did the same, and this caused dissatisfaction with the local population, which, naturally, willy-nilly tried to somehow resist, including by armed means.

The second constituent component is the remains of the Wehrmacht units. This was especially pronounced on the Western Front. The fact is that the allies tried to capture as much territory as possible. As a result, they resorted to tactics that were very detrimental to them - they tried to repeat the blitzkrieg, tank wedges, but they did not have the required number of motorized infantry. As a result, huge gaps arose between tanks and infantry, almost tens of kilometers. And in these gaps, quite calmly, freely felt the remnants of the parts. Some wrote that at that moment the Wehrmacht on the Western Front generally turned into a bunch of small partisan detachments. What to talk about if Wenck's army calmly walked along the western rear. This is not a battalion, not a company - this is a whole tank army. As a result of this, the so-called "Kleinkrig", that is, a small guerrilla war, was also ranked by the Allies and our Soviet units as part of the Wehrmacht.

Reichsugendführer Arthur Axman (left) and graduates of the Hitler Youth

And there was also the plan of Arthur Axman, the head of the Hitler Youth, which involved the mobilization of young people to create a whole network of partisan detachments and sabotage groups. By the way, Axman is the only one of all Nazi bosses who already in 1944 not only thought about the occupation of Germany, but began to actively prepare for it. Moreover, he even tried to knock out funding.

The fact is that the "werewolves" from the youth environment, from the "Hitler Youth" (the militia included not only teenagers, there were also quite mature functionaries), received a fair amount of funding, amounting to millions of Reichsmarks, and after the establishment of the occupation authorities had to create their own business - transport companies, which would allow them to operate mobile. That is, in fact, a widely ramified underground organization was created, which had its own funding, and not some kind of conditional, but rather large. And the failure of this organization was due to the fact that the economic wing, which at a certain moment was quite well settled, began to fear the paramilitary wing of the youth "werewolves", which, naturally, endangered their well-being. They did not want to end their days in prison or against the wall.

As for the quantitative composition of the Werewolf, it is rather difficult to establish the exact number of the militia. At least it's not dozens of people, we are talking about several thousand. The predominant action is still the western and southern territories of Germany. The bulk of the "werewolves" concentrated in the Alps. The fact is that a plan was hatched to create an Alpine citadel, which the Allies (the Alps went to mainly the Americans) had to take for a long time. That is, in the end, the Alps served as the starting point for the creation, relatively speaking, of the Fourth Reich.

On the Eastern Front (meaning the territory of Germany), the "werewolves" acted in small groups of 10 - 15 people. Basically, these were sporadic, frivolous detachments, which were quickly calculated and cleaned up. Here one cannot write off the experience of the NKVD, and, of course, the fact that we still had a solid front, and not some wedges, like our Western allies.

Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler (left) and Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann. Ukraine, 1942

The first sortie of the Werwolf took place in September 1944 against the advancing units of the Red Army. In fact, it was a classic sabotage activity, no different from previous sabotage groups, except that it was already carried out within the Werewolf. As a result, two bridges were blown up. However, this group was quickly identified and liquidated. In this situation, the Soviet army had no sentiments, however, like the Western allies.

By the way, the topic of the relationship between the local population and the occupation authorities, which is voluntarily or involuntarily connected with the theme of "werewolves", is also very interesting. We have already said that the national outskirts of Germany were teeming with detachments for a long time (let's conditionally call them "werewolves"), but for the most part this was caused by tough politics. And the most paradoxical thing is that the Soviet occupation policy was not the most ruthless. If you look at what the Americans or the French did, then the actions of the Red Army and the Soviet occupation authorities were not so terrible. By the way, this is connected with the fact that in the Soviet zone of occupation the problem of "werewolves" was dealt with fairly quickly, with the exception of a few cases, which, in particular, are associated with the Sudetenland and Silesia. The fact is that mass eviction and deportation of Germans were undertaken there, and some of them raided back. The motivations were very different: personal revenge, the need to take property, and so on.

If we talk about the French, then they generally found themselves in a very difficult situation. The fact is that France was one of the few victorious countries that had lost the war to Germany before that. Therefore, as a result, the French occupation authorities openly took revenge on the Germans, despite the fact that they did not know such atrocities as, for example, in Belarus and Ukraine. Nobody hid this revenge, cruel actions. There were official hostages, which, by the way, was not in the Soviet zone of occupation. And these actions caused dissatisfaction with the local population, which sooner or later led to the emergence of such independent detachments, which were automatically enrolled in the "Werewolf".

As for East Prussia, there were no such large-scale acts of sabotage as in the western region of Germany. This is due to some effective civil policy measures. What is the difference between Western and Soviet troops when they entered German territory? In the official installation, albeit not always shared. Soviet troops liberated the German people from fascism, the Western allies - from the Germans. And in the second case, no distinction was made between social democrats, anti-fascists, just civilians who sympathized with the Nazis. An example can be given that may seem creepy today. In the summer of 1945, in Cologne, the Anglo-Americans quite harshly, even cruelly, dispersed an anti-fascist demonstration of concentration camp prisoners. “They were simply afraid of any crowd of people,” many will think. The Allies were generally afraid of any activity among the Germans. A German is an enemy in any capacity, even if he is a communist or a social democrat.

And from this point of view, the Soviet occupation administration cooperated much more actively with the Germans. Both the creation of the GDR in 1949 and the actual transfer of power to the Germans in 1947, naturally under patronage, in the American and French zones of occupation were simply unthinkable phenomena.

Berlin Commandant Nikolai Berzarin talking to Trummerfrau, 1945

Since we have touched on the post-war page of history, we note that if at first the main activity of the "werewolves" was a military confrontation, that is, in an attempt to stop the advancing Red Army, as well as the Allied armies (by the way, it is quite naive to believe that such small detachments could to do this), then somewhere in 1945-1946 these were small sorties, mainly boiled down to blowing up bridges, cutting off communication lines, and killing individual policemen. There are interesting statistics that show that in 1946-1947, in percentage terms, Polish and Czech policemen suffered more from the hands of "werewolves" than standing alone Soviet soldiers.

If we talk about some major actions at the end of the war and the post-war period, then we should recall the murder of the mayor of Aachen, Franz Oppenhof, appointed to this post by the Americans. The whole paradox lay in the fact that Oppenhof insisted on the active involvement of the Germans in the administration, even though they were members of the Nazi Party in their time.

According to American and British sources, the assassination of General Berzarin, the commandant of Berlin, is also nothing more than an action by Werwolf; we have a car accident. Neither the first nor the second versions are ruled out, but still we note that the ruins of Berlin, which it was in the summer of 1945, were simply created for sabotage attacks.

We have already said that the Werwolf was turned not only against the Allied and Soviet troops, but also against the Germans themselves. One of the functions of the organization was to intimidate the local population. Here you can give a lot of examples of how they dealt with alarmists and defeatists in the territory still controlled by the Nazis. There was one paradoxical case when in one small town a local burgomaster tried to hide from the advancing Soviet units and was caught by "werewolves", the same ones that he himself recruited into the team, following orders from above.

As far as is known, during the creation of the Werewolf, teenagers were actively armed with faustpatrons. There are records, evidence that the young partisans gave quite a lot of headaches to our tankers, and not only to ours. Catch a "werewolf" soldier - he immediately had a dilemma: how to perceive him - as a child or still as a Nazi accomplice? Naturally, there were reprisals against such malefactors (not only on our part, but also on the part of the allies), and attempts to break the stereotypes of young people regarding the new authorities, especially when it became clear that all this was not a chaotic movement, but behind it there were some strength.

After the war, somewhere until the end of 1946, the "werewolves" operated in central Germany. On the outskirts of their sorties continued for another year, until the end of 1947. And the longest, where they existed, is South Tyrol - the German-speaking territory, which went to Italy. Here "werewolves" fought until the end of the 60s.

Few people know, but Soviet historiography sinned in that it significantly underestimated the degree of resistance on the part of the German population. But still, one should pay tribute to those who worked with the Soviet occupation administration. These people did not rely solely on violence; nevertheless, there were some measures of social influence. In particular, work with German anti-fascists. With the exception of the British, the Americans, Canadians, French were afraid to do this, suspecting that among the anti-fascists there were secret agents of the Werwolf who were trying to get into the new administration in order to use their position to continue sabotage and terror. By the way, there were examples of this. A certain “werewolf” Yarchuk, a Polish Volksdeutsche, was identified, whom they even tried, due to a very loyal attitude, to appoint mayor of a small town. But then it turned out that he, it turns out, was specially sent by the Werewolf. That is, the Western allies had a rather cautious attitude towards anti-fascists, because they saw German partisans in any attempt at social and political activity.

I recall a note in which it was urged not to enter into relationships with German girls. This was motivated by the fact that women would specifically infect American soldiers with syphilis in order to help the activities of the Werewolf, an organization in which her brother, her son, and so on are members. That is, the Americans and the British took this threat quite seriously. Why? Because nothing could oppose her. They did not have the practice of conducting guerrilla warfare and counteracting it. The French had some experience, but, again, this experience was associated with the urban environment, not with the ruins. The French resistance operated under completely different conditions.

Adolf Hitler greets the youths of the Hitler Youth. Berlin, 1945

As for the main tactics of the "werewolves", it was terribly primitive: the partisans dug into the bunker (whether it was a forest gatehouse, a cave, some other shelter), let the advanced units of the "enemy" troops forward and then struck at the rear. Naturally, under these conditions, they were quickly identified and eliminated.

But the "werewolves" were supplied with weapons centrally. The only thing that the German authorities managed to do was to create huge secret warehouses, which were revealed almost until the mid-50s. At the last moment, when the Nazis already understood that everything would collapse soon, they made such an amount of supplies that more than one army could be supplied with them. Therefore, in May 1945, the "werewolves" had toxic substances, several types of explosives, and special cylinders for poisoning water sources. And there was simply no need to talk about machine guns, grenades, small arms.

Well, finally, a few words about the fate of the Werewolf. Most of the saboteurs were caught, and since they did not fall under the Geneva Convention, were not prisoners of war, they were shot on the spot. And only in special cases, as already mentioned, with teenagers, they still tried to do some work.

How did the Germans fight the partisans?

It was easier for the Germans to fight the partisans if they united in large groups. To this end, German special agencies even distributed fake leaflets on behalf of the Soviet command. Corresponding denials appeared in the partisan press. Thus, the bulletin of the Selyanskaya Gazeta on May 7, 1943 warned:

“Recently, the Nazis concocted a leaflet and scattered it in some regions of Ukraine and Belarus. In this leaflet, allegedly on behalf of the Soviet military authorities, the partisans are invited to stop their actions alone and in small detachments, unite in large detachments and fulfill the order to jointly march with the regular units of the Red Army. This order, says the Hitler hoax, will follow as soon as the harvest is in the barns and the rivers and lakes are covered with ice again.

The purpose of this provocation is obvious. The Germans are trying on the eve of the decisive spring-summer battles to delay the actions of the partisans. The Nazis want the partisans to stop fighting and take a wait-and-see position.

During the first two years of the war, captured partisans were usually shot on the spot by the Germans and the police after a short interrogation. Only on October 5, 1943, a special order “Treatment of captured bandits” was issued, according to which captured partisans and defectors should henceforth be considered not only as a source of intelligence information and manpower for Germany, but also as a possible replenishment of the increasingly thinning collaborationist formations. In July 1943, the Western Headquarters of the partisan movement was forced to admit that the partisans captured during military operations were saved life, more or less tolerable living conditions were created:

“The command of the fascist army allocates horses to the families of partisans for the cultivation of estates. At the same time, these partisan families are required to ensure that their father, son or brother, etc. return to the house, leave the partisan detachment ...

This tactic of the German fascist invaders has some effect on the weak partisans. There are cases of a single transition of partisans to the side of the enemy.

“Instead of the usual executions on the spot, they (the Nazis. - B. C.) a partisan who is captured or goes over to their side is enrolled in the police, they are given rations for a family, even a cow is given for 2-3 families. Newly captured or crossed are placed separately. They are not even allowed to communicate with the policemen who have transferred to the service of the Nazis in the winter. Of these, separate groups are created and sent to catch small groups of partisans.

The Nazis specially send wives of partisans to the forests so that they persuade their husbands and bring them to the Germans, promising them good rations. This fascist propaganda and the method of their struggle had some influence on cowards, morally unstable, who, due to isolation from the command of the detachments, weak educational work, being in small groups and alone, went over to the side of the enemy.

For the month of May, from the detachments of Gukov and Kukharenko, who until the end of the month were in a triangle (Vitebsk - Nevel - Polotsk. - B.S.) and were subjected to continuous raids by the Nazis and the police, went over to the side of the enemy up to 60 people, mostly from the former Zelenovites (“greens”, or “wild partisans”, who had not previously been subordinate to Moscow. - B.S.) and deserters from the Red Army...

In the description of the German actions, which gave the command of the Okhotin brigade, one feels respect for the formidable enemy that the Wehrmacht was:

“German tactics in a surprise attack on partisans always boiled down to one thing: shelling from all types of available weapons, followed by an attack. But the enemy never used relentless pursuit tactics. Having achieved success from the first attack, he stopped there. This was one of the weaknesses of German tactics.

During the defense, in cases of partisan attacks, the enemy turned around quickly and, turning around, assuming battle formation, fought very stubbornly, always almost to the point of complete exhaustion of his forces (loss of people and expenditure of ammunition). This was one of the strengths of the enemy, but it led him to heavy losses in people.

There was not a single case that the enemy did not accept the battle imposed on him. Even having run into a partisan ambush, he never fled in a panic, but, retreating with a fight, took his dead, wounded and weapons. In such cases, the enemy did not consider losses, but did not leave his dead and wounded.

The weak side of German tactics was that the Fritz were afraid of the forest. They ambushed partisans only in settlements. There was not a single case of the Germans ambushing partisans in the forest.

The strength of German tactics was defensive tactics. Wherever the Germans went, and if they had to stop even for a short time, they always dug in, which the partisans never used against themselves.

Partisan methods of struggle (hidden concentration of forces in the forest at night, in order to surprise partisans at dawn, ambushes, mining partisan roads, etc.) the enemy began to use only recently.

In addition, since August 1943, continuous bombing of the partisan zone by aircraft began. “Almost not a single village in the Ushachsky and Lepelsky districts, occupied by partisans, has not been attacked by fascist vultures. In this case, German students also practiced (students-pilots. - B. FROM.)".

Indeed, according to German sources, the last year and a half of the war, the Luftwaffe used the Eastern Front as a kind of training ground for graduates of flight schools. Freshly minted pilots had to get comfortable in the air and gain experience in the fight against the weaker enemy in the face of the Soviet Air Force, before entering into a deadly battle with the much more formidable enemy - the Anglo-American "flying fortresses". Partisan zones, on the other hand, were an ideal target for training. The partisans, of course, did not have either fighters or anti-aircraft guns, and it was possible to shoot down an aircraft from a rifle or machine gun only at a very low altitude. Young German pilots were hardly worried about the fact that their bombs fall primarily on the heads of civilians in villages and towns, who, by the will of fate, ended up on the territory of the partisan region. However, the pilots of the "flying fortresses" also did not think about the life and death of the German burghers, bringing down the bomb load on the cities of Germany ...

In the struggle in the occupied territory, all sides widely used the traditional methods of guerrilla warfare, including disguise as the enemy. So, on June 16, 1944, the order for the 889th German security battalion noted: “Recently, partisans have been trying to capture more prisoners (a few days remained before the start of the general Soviet offensive in Belarus - Operation Bagration. - B.S.). FROM For this purpose, they drive in German uniforms in trucks along the main highways and, picking up German soldiers who ask for a ride, deliver the latter to their camp. A similar incident took place on June 2, 1944 on the highway Bobruisk - Starye Dorogi. All soldiers are pointed out the danger of driving in unfamiliar vehicles. Drivers are forbidden to take unfamiliar soldiers with them.

The Germans also resorted to a masquerade, in particular, they created false partisan detachments from policemen or Vlasovites dressed in Red Army uniforms or civilian clothes. They made contact with small groups or single partisans, encouraged them to join the detachment, and then, after waiting for an opportune moment, they destroyed or captured them. The Germans even introduced special distinctive headdresses for their partisans. Such false detachments often robbed the population in order to later shift the blame on real partisans. However, the latter also sometimes thoroughly robbed the population, dressed in German or police uniforms.

But it happened that false partisan detachments turned into real ones. This happened, for example, with a detachment of 96 people led by ROA officers Captain Tsimailo and Senior Lieutenant Golokoz. The latter, instead of fighting the partisans, established contact with the Zakharov brigade operating in the Vitebsk region and revealed the truth to him. As a result, on July 17, 1943, 55 false partisans, led by Golokoz, joined the real ones, having previously killed the Germans who were with them - two radio operators and a captain. The remnants of the detachment, together with Tsimailo, managed to escape.

Sometimes false underground centers were created, with the help of which the secret field police caught real underground workers. According to this scheme, a "military council" operated in Minsk, consisting of German agents - the former commanders of the Red Army Rogov and Belov (he was eventually killed by partisans) and the former secretary of the Zaslavl district committee of the party Kovalev, who "concurrently" was a member of the genuine Minsk Underground Committee . At first, the "military council" was a real underground organization, headed by commanders and commissars of the Red Army, who, unfortunately, were not familiar with the rules of conspiracy. The organization has grown too much, almost half of Minsk knew about its activities. It got to the point that at the house where the headquarters of the "military council" was located, guards were openly posted, who checked the documents of ordinary underground workers who came there. Very quickly, they learned about the organization in the Minsk GUF. The leaders of the "war council" were arrested and bought their lives at the cost of betrayal. Now, under the control of the Gestapo, they sent underground fighters allegedly to a partisan detachment, on the way the police stopped trucks, and their passengers ended up in a concentration camp. As a result, hundreds of underground workers were arrested and shot and several partisan detachments were defeated.

Sometimes pseudo-partisan detachments were created by the locals themselves - after they had been liberated by the Red Army. The goal here was one and rather mundane - to receive an indulgence for being under occupation, and at the same time "legally" profit from the good of former German accomplices. The history of one such detachment, discovered by the Special Department of the 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps in the Konyshevsky District of the Kursk Region, was told by the head of the Special Department of the Central Front, L.F. Tsanava, in a letter to Ponomarenko dated March 13, 1943: Ryzhkov Vasily Ivanovich, born in 1915, native and resident of B. Gorodkovo, non-partisan, with a secondary education, former junior commander of the 38th separate battery of the headquarters of the 21st Army, in October 1941 voluntarily surrendered to captured by the Germans. The “commissar” of this detachment was a resident of the village of Maloye Gorodkovo, Summin Tikhon Grigoryevich, a former Red Army soldier, who returned to the village after being occupied by the Germans. Ryzhkov V.I. On March 2, Special Correspondent (Special Department of the Corps. - B.S.) arrested. Summin T. G. has fled, is currently being sought.

The investigation into the Ryzhkov case and the activities of the detachment established the following. On February 8, 1943 B. Gorodkovo and M. Gorodkovo were liberated from the Germans by the Red Army units; Ryzhkov and Summin organized a false partisan detachment on February 12, 1943. The specified detachment, under the guise of fighting German accomplices, carried out round-ups and searches in adjacent settlements, took away property and livestock from some former elders and policemen. Part of the selected was distributed to passing military units, and part was appropriated.

Hiding behind the name of the commander of the partisan detachment, Ryzhkov contacted the advancing units, misleading them with the fictitious actions of the “partisan detachment”.

On November 20, 1943, Ryzhkov and Summin gathered the members of the detachment and, threatening with weapons, offered to go to the regional center - Konyshevka, with the aim of allegedly organizing Soviet power there and heading the body of Soviet power in the region ... There are signals about the existence of several more such detachments " .

I don’t know if the KGB managed to find Summin and what was the fate of Ryzhkov - execution, penal battalion or Gulag.

Often the Germans defeated the partisans, using their own methods of struggle. Thus, the commander of the Osipovichi partisan unit, which included several partisan brigades, Hero of the Soviet Union, Major General Nikolai Filippovich Korolev, in the final report testified: “In Bobruisk, Mogilev, Minsk and other cities, “volunteer” battalions “Berezina”, “Dnepr” began to form, "Pripyat" and others that were intended to fight the partisans. To replenish these battalions and to train command personnel in Bobruisk, the "Eastern Reserve Regiment" was created.

I must say that some of these "volunteers", who completely sold out to the Germans, actively fought against the partisans. Using partisan tactics, they penetrated forests in small groups and organized ambushes on partisan roads. So, in March 1943, one of the battalions organized an ambush on the site of partisan days in the Zolotkovo forest, which was run into by the headquarters group of the partisan brigade "For the Motherland". During the battle, the commander of this brigade, Major Flegontov Alexei Kandievich, died (I note that Flegontov was not a simple major, but a major of state security, which was equated to an army general's rank. - B. FROM.)…

Later, with the liberation by the Soviet Army of a significant part of the Soviet territory occupied by the enemy, police and traitor garrisons were transferred to our region from the regions liberated by the Soviet Army. In October 1943, a regiment arrived in the village of Vyazye under the command of the former Dorogobuzh landowner and White émigré Bishler (isn't this Bishler the one who wrote the text of the leaflet about partisan cannibalism, which will be discussed below? - B. FROM). This regiment then took an active part in blocking the partisans of the Pukhovichi, Cherven and Osipovichi regions at the end of May 1944.

Korolev also wrote about the “traitorous battalion” of Major Buglai, who arrived in the Osipovichi region to fight the partisans and “settled in the villages located in close proximity to the partisan zone. Its personnel were well trained in the methods of fighting partisans and skillfully used the tactical blunders of individual detachments. He waged an active struggle by ambushes in forests, on partisan roads and at river crossings, by surprise attacks on partisan outposts in the villages ... "

The paradox was that as the Red Army successfully advanced to the west, the position of the partisans did not improve, but, on the contrary, worsened. The partisan territories now fell into the operational zone, and later into the front line of the Wehrmacht. The partisans increasingly had to engage in battle with regular army units, which were superior to them both in terms of weapons and combat training. Collaborationist formations fled from the regions liberated by Soviet troops moved to all the shrinking occupied territories. In these formations there were now people who, as a rule, vehemently hated the communists, did not count on the mercy of the Red Army and partisans, and had extensive experience in fighting the latter. At the same time, many other collaborators, hoping to earn forgiveness, joined the partisans by the hundreds and thousands. It is no coincidence that at the time of connection with the Soviet troops in the partisan brigades of Belarus, from a third to a quarter of the fighters were former policemen, Vlasovites and "volunteers" of the Wehrmacht. However, in practice, a sharp increase in numbers did not strengthen, but weakened the partisan detachments and formations. After all, no more ammunition was delivered to them, and the overgrown detachments became, as mentioned, less maneuverable and more vulnerable to attacks from the air and on the ground.

Complicated the situation and another circumstance. As stated in the report of the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement (end of 1942), “using the remnants of anti-Soviet formations and persons whose interests are infringed by the Soviet government, the German command is trying to impose a Civil War on us, forming combat military units from the dregs of human society ...” Indeed, on the occupied territories in 1941-1944 there was a real civil war, complicated by acute ethnic conflicts. Russians killed Russians, Ukrainians killed Ukrainians, Belarusians killed Belarusians. Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians fought Russians and Belarusians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians fought Poles, Chechens and Ingush, Karachays and Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Kalmyks fought Russians, etc. This situation, in principle, suited the Germans, because it allowed them to spend fewer own troops and police to fight various partisans.

How many people participated in the Soviet partisan movement? After the war, the writings of historians often featured a figure of more than a million people. However, familiarity with wartime documents forces us to reduce it by at least half.

Ponomarenko and his staff kept statistics, but the data received was far from always accurate. The commanders of partisan brigades and formations sometimes did not have information about the number of individual detachments, and sometimes, we repeat, they deliberately overestimated it, hoping to get more weapons and ammunition. True, they soon realized that supply from the center was limited by such objective factors as the weather, the availability of landing sites convenient and inaccessible to enemy fire weapons, and the number of transport aircraft. Therefore, they often began to underestimate the number of detachments in order to correspondingly underestimate the losses incurred and more freely report on the successes achieved.

In 1944, after the liberation of the republic, the Belarusian headquarters of the partisan movement compiled a final report, according to which there were 373,942 people in the ranks of the partisans. Of these, 282,458 people were in combat formations (brigades and separate partisan detachments), and more

79,984 people were used as scouts, liaison officers or were employed in the protection of partisan zones. In addition, about 12,000 people were members of the underground anti-fascist committees, especially in the western regions of the republic. In total, the underground in Belarus, as it turned out after the war, was more than 70 thousand people, of which over 30 thousand were considered liaison and intelligence agents of the partisans.

In Ukraine, the scope of the partisan movement was much smaller. Although after the war Khrushchev claimed that by the beginning of 1944 there were more than 220,000 Soviet partisans operating here, this figure looks absolutely fantastic. Indeed, by that time, the entire Left Bank of the Dnieper, where the most numerous partisan formations operated, had been liberated from the Germans. And on March 5, 1943, Ponomarenko, in a report to Stalin, estimated the total number of 74 partisan detachments in Ukraine at 12,631 people. Almost all of these detachments belonged to large formations of Kovpak, Fedorov, Naumov, and others. In addition, as the head of the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement pointed out, there were partisan reserves and detachments on the Right Bank and in the regions of Left-Bank Ukraine that had not yet been liberated, with which communication was lost, the general over 50 thousand people. During subsequent raids, the formations of Kovpak, Saburov and others increased two to three times due to local replenishment, but in any case, the number of Soviet partisans on the Right Bank was three to four times lower than the figure mentioned by Khrushchev. As noted in a certificate prepared on February 15, 1976 by the Institute of Party History under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, there. unlike other republics and regions, there were no registration cards at all, either for 220,000 or for any smaller number of partisans.

The relatively weak development of the pro-Soviet partisan movement in Ukraine compared to Belarus and the occupied regions of the RSFSR is explained by a number of factors. Historically, Ukrainian lands have always been richer than Belarusian ones, which means that the population is more prosperous. For this reason, it suffered more severely during the revolution, and later - from collectivization and the resulting famine. The famine in Ukraine turned out to be stronger than in Belarus, also because agriculture was more thoroughly undermined by the creation of collective farms. But by the beginning of World War II, it had partially recovered and, thanks to better climatic conditions, it still outperformed the agriculture of Belarus in terms of productivity. The last in the course of the war had to supply the Army Group Center - the most numerous of all the German army groups in the East. Therefore, food supplies for the occupiers caused especially strong discontent here. In addition, the natural conditions of Belarus, covered with forests and swamps, were ideal for guerrilla warfare.

Thanks to this, many more encircled Red Army soldiers settled in the Belarusian forests than in the Ukrainian steppes, which also created a massive base for the pro-Soviet partisan movement.

It should also be taken into account that in Western Ukraine the most influential among the local residents was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Nationalist organizations in Belarus have never been so popular, although here, as in Ukraine, a sharp confrontation with the Polish population continued. If in Galicia and Volyn the Ukrainians relied on the OUN and the UPA in this confrontation, then in Belarus Orthodox Belarusians (unlike Catholic Belarusians) saw Soviet partisans as their comrades-in-arms in the fight against the Poles.

In other occupied union republics, the scale of the partisan movement was even smaller than in Ukraine. By April 1, 1943, there were 110,889 partisans throughout the territory occupied by the Germans, located mainly in Belarus, Ukraine, the Crimea, as well as in the Smolensk and Oryol regions. At that time, three sabotage groups of 46 people were operating in Estonia, 13 groups with a total number of 200 people in Latvia, and 29 groups with 199 people in Lithuania. The overwhelming majority of the population of the Baltic states had no sympathy for the Soviet system and looked at the German occupation as a lesser evil. And in Moldova, out of 2892 ethnic Moldovan partisans, there were only seven, and the bulk were Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. The song about “a dark-skinned Moldavian woman gathering a partisan Moldavian detachment” is nothing more than a poetic fantasy. Moldovans clearly preferred to return to Romania after a year of Soviet domination.

The total number of participants in the Soviet partisan movement, assuming that about the same number of partisans operated on the rest of the lands as on the Belarusian one, can be estimated at about half a million people (only in combat units).

Collaborators among prisoners of war and residents of the occupied territories, I note, were much more than partisans and underground fighters. Only in the Wehrmacht, in the military and police formations of the SS and SD, according to various estimates, from one to one and a half million former Soviet citizens served. In addition, several hundred thousand people were in the local auxiliary police and peasant self-defense units, on the one hand, and served as elders, burgomasters and members of local governments, as well as doctors and teachers in schools and hospitals opened by the Germans, on the other hand. True, it is difficult to say how collaborators can be considered those who had to work in occupational institutions in order not to simply die of hunger.

Now about irretrievable losses. By January 1, 1944, they amounted to individual republics and regions (excluding Ukraine and Moldova): Karelian-Finnish SSR - 752 killed and 548 missing, and only 1300 (of this number, only 1086 had known the names and addresses of relatives); Leningrad region - 2954.1372.4326 (1439); Estonia - 19, 8, 27; Latvia -56, 50.106 (12); Lithuania - 101.4.115 (14); Kalinin region - 742.141, 883 (681); Belarus - 7814, 513, 8327 (389); Smolensk region - 2618, 1822, 4400 (2646); Oryol region - 3677, 3361, 7038 (1497); Krasnodar Territory - 1077, 335, 1412 (538); Crimean ASSR - 1076, 526, 1602 (176); total - 20 886, 8680, 29 566 (8487). These figures are certainly incomplete, but they illustrate quite well the relative intensity of guerrilla combat activity in various regions.

To this it must be added that in the seven months remaining until the end of the partisan movement, the Soviet partisans suffered the greatest losses caused by the large-scale punitive operations undertaken against them with the participation of army formations. Only in Belarus, the partisans then lost 30,181 people killed, missing and captured, that is, almost four times more than in the previous two and a half years of the war. The total irretrievable losses of Soviet partisans before the end of the war can be estimated at least 100 thousand people.

From the book What Soviet people fought for author Dyukov Alexander Reshideovich

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From the book Viktor Suvorov is lying! [Sink the Icebreaker] author Verkhoturov Dmitry Nikolaevich

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Conclusion. What were they fighting for?

The Zuev Republic was a configuration of Old Believer self-government in the territory occupied by the Germans. Zuevtsy fought back from the partisans, and from the Nazis, and from the Estonian police, but then they agreed to cooperate with the Reich.

Occupation of Belarus

P. Ilyinsky in his memoirs “Three years under German occupation in Belarus” describes how Belarusians cooperated with the German government. Whether the occupation was always the way it was presented by Soviet history books is an ambiguous question.

Historian A. Kravtsov believes that “that occupation was different. It so happened that the Germans went for help. For bread, for shelter. Sometimes even for weapons. We have the right to call some of those collaborators. But is it right to condemn?

In Belarus, as in other regions of the USSR, various partisan formations arose, speaking both for and against the Red Army.

Republic of Zueva

Describing the partisan movement in occupied Belarus, Ilyinsky tells about one of the newly formed republics during the war - the Republic of Zuev. From the studies of D. Karov and M. Glazka, back in Soviet times, it became widely known about other republics - the democratic Republic of Rossono, consisting of Red Army deserters, and fighting both against the Germans and against the Red Army, as well as about the so-called Lokot self-government - the republic the size of Belgium, located in the Bryansk region and on the shares of the modern Kursk and Oryol regions, with a population of 600 thousand people. However, much less has been written about the mysterious Republic of Zuev. Where did it come from and how long did it last?

Zuev's motives

In the book Partisanship: Myths and Realities, V. Batshev describes that since Polotsk, Vitebsk and Smolensk were taken by the Germans at the very beginning of the war, they needed their own people in the newly formed government of the occupied territories.

The Old Believer Mikhail Zuev, who had recently been imprisoned for anti-Soviet activities, became the burgomaster in the village of Zaskorka near Polotsk. He was loyal to the German occupiers - two of his sons were exiled by the NKVD to Siberia, and had long had scores with the Soviet authorities, so he met the Germans with great enthusiasm: “In the 1930s, he was imprisoned twice for anti-Soviet activities (5 and 3 years, respectively), and only in 1940 he returned from the dungeons of the NKVD to his village. Two of his sons were also arrested by the NKVD for armed struggle against the Soviet regime. One son eventually died in the Stalinist camps, the second managed to leave for Australia in the early 1960s.”

Ilyinsky says that at that time about three thousand Old Believers lived in the village, and it was located in swamps and forests, far from any road. According to D. Karov (who wrote the book "The Partisan Movement in the USSR in 1941-1945"), under the leadership of Zuev and with the support of the German government, the Old Believers lived quite calmly, enjoying self-government, the return of private property and the opening of Old Believer churches - but then something happened .

Zuev's war

In November 1941, seven partisans came to Zaskorka and asked for maintenance. Among them was an NKVD worker known to Zuev, who thundered with his cruelty. Having given the partisans shelter and food to disguise them, the village council soon secretly killed them and took away their weapons: “Zuev put the new arrivals in one hut, provided them with food, and he himself went to consult with the old people what to do. At the council, the old people decided to lay down all the partisans, and hide their weapons. When a new group of partisans soon arrived in the village, Zuev gave them food and asked them to leave their territory. When the partisans advanced once more, Zuev sent Old Believers armed with rifles to meet them. At night, the partisans returned again - only to retreat, stumbling upon the unexpectedly powerful resistance of the sleepless and armed Zuevites.

After these attacks, Mikhail Zuev allowed special paramilitary units to be organized in his and neighboring villages. They were armed with captured partisan weapons, organized night watch and repelled attacks. Until 1942, the Zuevites, according to Ilyinsky, broke off 15 partisan attacks. The most important problems began after - at the end of December, the Old Believers ran out of cartridges. Zuev had to go to the German commandant - and after the New Year, one of the German generals, taking advantage of the differences between the Old Believers and the Soviet government, decides to arm the Belarusian villages controlled by Zuev with fifty Russian rifles and cartridges. Zuev was ordered not to reveal where he got the weapons from and was denied machine guns, apparently for security reasons. Neighboring villages themselves sent their representatives to Zuev, asking for protection - this is how his "republic" expanded.

counteroffensive

In 1942, Zuev, with his detachments, launched a counteroffensive and drove the partisans out of the surrounding villages, and then introduced them into his republic. In the spring, he takes out four more machine guns (according to different versions, he buys from the Hungarians, from the Germans, he gets it in battles with partisans) and introduces the most severe discipline: for serious offenses, they were shot on the basis of the vote of the Veche of Old Believers.

In the winter of 1942-1943, Zuev broke off serious partisan attacks, and they began to stay away from his republic. He also drove out the Estonian police from his lands, who were looking for partisans and wanted to live in his village on the basis of this: “Zuev answered the Estonian officer that there were no partisans in the area. And consequently, the police have nothing to do here. While the matter was limited to words, the Estonian insisted, but as soon as Zuev’s own detachment approached the house and Mikhail Evseevich firmly stated that he would use force if the police did not leave, the Estonians obeyed and left. Zuev supplied Polotsk with resources - game, firewood, hay, and was very convenient for the German government, as he regularly paid the food tax. They did not even look into the Republic of Zuev and did not influence internal self-government in any way.

Cover of the Republic of Old Believers

Soon the German army retreated to the west. Zuev retreated after them: as the historian B. Sokolov writes, “Zuev with a share of his people went to the West. Other Old Believers remained and began a partisan struggle against the Red Army. For this target, the Germans supplied them with weapons and food. Partisan groups held out in the forests near Polotsk until 1947.
Ilyinsky scribbles that all the people were crying when they left their native villages, they were carrying the most valuable things on carts, they were saving old books and supplies. The German commandant, leaving the encircled Polotsk, allowed to break through to Zuev in order to leave the encirclement with him - only his people knew the forest like the back of their hand. With the help of Zuev, the German armies and the Old Believers marching with them (from one to two thousand - the information varies) managed to reach Poland, and from there - to East Prussia. A proportion of people really remained in their native lands and began to fight with the Red Army. Several hundred of the rest are taken to the camps, while sometimes the Old Believers who left with the Germans leave for South America from Hamburg in 1946 (some of them later, in the sixties, moved to the USA - where Ilyinsky, the author of the memoirs, also lived).

In Prussia, the Zuev group broke up. He himself went to A. Vlasov and began to fight in the Russian Liberation Army. Further, traces of him are lost - according to various sources, Zuev either went to France, and from there left for Brazil in 1949, or fell in 1944 to the British. What happened to him next, no one knows. There is no reliable information about him, and there is not even a photograph of the ruler of the Republic of the Old Believers. Thus ended the age of the Republic of Zuev.

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• Partisan movement

Memories of the war and the occupation of the inhabitants of the Surazh village of Gudovka (recorded by Dmitry Karpov)

I am sitting in the tiny kitchenette of the Pivovarovs. I listen to their story and just can’t figure out why both Lidia Yakovlevna and Ivan Dmitrievich, who were ten years old in 1941, are convinced that the Germans were at their house almost a couple of weeks after June 22. It is known, after all, that the Bryansk region was occupied only in the autumn of 1941. And only then I understand why that first stage of the war seems so short to them.

There was no radio in the village, no telephone either. The roads are bad, and there was no time for traveling - for days on end the collective farmers disappeared in the field. The Gudovites learned about the attack of the "German" only a few days later, when the military registration and enlistment office commanders came from Surazh to fetch the peasants. They didn’t even have time to pick up everyone, only the first draft age. Fragmentary information about front-line affairs came through third parties. And then, streams of retreating Red Army soldiers suddenly poured along the previously empty country roads. From them they learned that Kyiv had fallen. That's when the war really looked into the village.

I hear about how German motorcyclists rushed by, and “from Belarus” the encircled people kept walking and walking, begging for at least some, even tattered, civilian clothes, so that, having changed clothes, to avoid captivity. How they shared simple peasant food with them. And here, as in hundreds of other places, our tankers drowned their tanks in the swamps, which were left without fuel, and no one even tried to evacuate the families of the village communists, and they, not knowing what to do, remained at home. So far, the headman, who for some reason was called the burgomaster in Gudovka, who quickly appeared after the arrival of the Germans, and the policemen did not hand them over to their owners. And after all, there were no aliens among the traitors - their own neighbors.

As ours returned, they were all imprisoned as accomplices, - says Ivan Dmitrievich. - And our fathers were immediately driven to the front. And beat them near Mogilev. The Germans were well fortified there. Many of our men died there. And these, I believe, were simply hidden from the war in the camps. Then they all came home. We know them all...

And the partisans appeared. It was here that the phrase dropped by Lydia Yakovlev-na struck me: “My younger brother was afraid of them at first more than the Germans. How so? I begin to question my interlocutor and find out the reason.

The occupiers did not commit atrocities at first. They would appear during the day from neighboring Dushatin, where they had a “bush”, pick up those who were shown by their assistants, and leave. Those food supplies that they demanded also did not differ from the pre-war peasant "quit". Even our captured soldiers, who were from these places, were first released to their homes. It was only later, when the partisans began to get them, and when things went wrong at the front, the Nazis became embittered.

And the partisans came at night. They had to be fed and given food with them. Until now, Lydia Yakovlevna bitterly recalls how, without ceremony, some "people's avengers" could take a glass of salt - the greatest value at that time. So-lew could get hold of only in the city by selling something grown in his household. In addition, the partisans did not forget about the traitors. They killed German servants and burned their huts. So the child was afraid of night shooting, screams and the glow of a fire.

And so it happened: at night, partisans come to deal with those who collaborated with the Germans, and during the day the invaders come for those who were visited by guests from the forest in a friendly way. True, the neighbors did not always denounce each other. Sometimes they risked their lives for the sake of fellow villagers.

So Sonya often comes to us, - Lidia Yakovlevna nods her head towards the window. She was then three years old. The old man left for the partisans, but her uterus, Lexa, remained at home with her. The policemen went to pick her up, people ran to tell her about it. She darted. She grabbed her daughter at an overnight stay (a dugout wooden trough) - and to the neighbors: save Christ for the sake of it. She shoved them into their hands, and she herself fell into the garden and fell into the potatoes. Feet could not run for fear. And they came and ransacked everything. They went out into the garden, and there, in the distance, someone ran to the barn. The policemen let them in. Then they returned to the neighbors; where, they say, did this partisan bitch go? And they went to that neighbor. And she is neither alive nor dead. Substitute your children for bullets! But Sonya was not given away. They stuffed me under the stove in the night, blocked it off. They prayed that she would not scream.

And she sleeps peacefully there. Didn't find her. They survived with their mother. Then they hid in the forest until ours came.

But not everyone is so lucky. The story of my interlocutors about the partisan Piskun was terrible. They still don’t know if this is a surname or a nickname - Piskun and Piskun.

When his family was taken away as a partisan and driven away "to Unecha", Piskun ended up in the city and accepted an execution worse than death. He saw how the executioners killed his children and wife and threw them into the ditch along with the other executed. And the little daughter of a non-human in an enemy uniform simply broke her spine with a blow to her knee ...

Piskun returned home and slaughtered the entire family of the traitor who betrayed his family - everyone, right down to his second cousins. In the villages at that time, almost all relatives lived nearby. The Pivovarovs do not condemn the partisan, although their words are still full of horror before that bloodshed when they remember how “terribly Piskun drove his horses” along Gudov’s sandy country road, having tracked down his enemy’s uncle. He, who looked into their village to visit a friend, found death here.

And then, in the spring of 1943, the invaders began to drive older teenagers to Nemetchyna. And the sixteen-year-old brother of Ivan Dmitrievich Fyodor had to go with his age to a partisan detachment in order to escape this scourge. The families of young partisans also had to hide in the forests "in Belarus" before the arrival of the Red Army. Everyone in the village knew who had gone "to the Russians." And the police knew - the locals. And they performed their service until the departure of their masters.

Retreating, the Germans on the move plundered what still survived in Gudovka, some of the houses were “burned down”. Not all, however, were in a hurry. The surviving residents, including Lydia Yakovlevna with her mother, brother and sisters, were "buried" in the trenches dug in the vegetable gardens from the bombings.

And then our soldiers appeared. My interlocutor still remembers with pity how dirty, tattered and mortally tired they were. But they got here and went further west. It is difficult for the Pivovarovs to even express the feelings that overwhelmed them then in words: “It was a terrible joy!”