History of Russia from ancient times to the present day Sakharov Andrey Nikolaevich
Chapter 5. USSR AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR
§ 1. "Great game"
On the way to war. Hitler's coming to power in Germany on January 30, 1933 and his intention to throw off the Versailles order increased the danger of a new war in Europe. Speculating on the need to bring the Versailles system in line with the principles proclaimed by it, already in the summer of 1933 at the International Economic Conference the German delegation demanded that the lifeless space of "new territories" be made available to the people. Western democracies did not interfere with the militarization of Germany. The encouragement of Hitler's actions by the countries of Western Europe and the United States led to the fact that in March 1935, having unilaterally terminated the military articles of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany introduced universal military service in the country, and in the spring of 1936 German troops entered the demilitarized Rhine zone and reached the border France.
In December 1933, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR M. M. Litvinov announced the new goals of Soviet foreign policy. Its main priority is the creation of a system of collective security in Europe. Soon the Comintern received the task of launching a struggle against fascism in Europe. In 1933 the USSR establishes diplomatic relations with the USA. In September 1934, at the request of France, the Soviet Union was admitted to the League of Nations and immediately became a permanent member of its Council. However, the proposals of the USSR to conclude the so-called "Eastern Pact", and then the "Pacific Pact" did not find support among European leaders. Only in 1935 was the Franco-Soviet agreement on mutual assistance in the event of aggression in Europe concluded. In October 1936, Germany and Italy entered into an agreement on military-political cooperation, creating the so-called Berlin-Rome axis. Then Germany united in a military-political bloc (the Anti-Comintern Pact) with Japan, which Italy joined a year later. The alliance formed under the flag of the fight against communism launched active preparations for a war for a new redivision of the world. The first step in this direction was the annexation by Germany in March 1938 of Austria. The aggressive actions of Germany aroused concern in many European capitals, but the governments of England and France, seeking to direct Hitler's aggression to the East, limited themselves to formal condemnation of this unprecedented action. Relying on the irreconcilability of the ideological confrontation between Stalin and Hitler, the leaders of England and France hoped to push Nazism against Bolshevism and thereby avert the threat of aggression from their own countries. The culmination of the policy of open connivance of German aggression was the Munich Agreement of 1938.
Munich agreement. On September 30, 1938, at a conference of heads of government and foreign ministers in Munich, representatives of England, France and Italy - Chamberlain, Daladier and Mussolini, satisfying Hitler's demand, ordered Czechoslovakia, under the pretext of protecting the rights of the German population, to transfer the Sudetenland to Germany within 10 days and a number of other regions of the country that belonged to Germany before the Versailles decisions. In exchange for this agreement, two days later, Germany signed with Great Britain and on December 6 with France declarations on the resolution of disputes between them through peaceful negotiations, which were in fact non-aggression pacts.
The USSR was the only state that refused to recognize the seizure of Czechoslovakia by Germany. The Western powers again ignored the proposals of the Soviet side for the joint defense of Czechoslovakia, not without reason believing that at that moment this could end in the fall of the fascist regime in Germany, in which they were not interested. As a result, less than six months later, Germany, without receiving any rebuff, completely occupied Czechoslovakia, violating the now Munich agreements. Thus, the Munich agreement destroyed the hard-won collective security system in Europe and ultimately led to the Second World War. The aggressive actions of Nazi Germany unleashed the hands of fascist Italy, which in April 1939 captured Albania, and in 1936-1939. together with Germany participated in the intervention against the Republican Spain. Munich confirmed the old fears of the Soviet side about the real intentions of the Western countries. Realizing that a new world war was inevitable, Stalin hoped to benefit from it without participating in it. To do this, first of all, it was necessary to ensure maximum freedom for the USSR in choosing allies, and ultimately, in the event of a conflict between capitalists, neutrality. By June 1939, Stalin was no longer a secret about the existence of a German plan to attack Poland (Plan Weiss) in the fall of that year, but he did not realize the nature and extent of the threat from Nazi Germany, which claimed world domination.
The collapse of collective security. In the spring and summer of 1939, the political field of Europe was a highly intimidated tangle of interests of various countries. In April 1939, in the face of a growing military threat, the USSR began negotiations with Britain and France on mutual obligations to provide assistance in the event of aggression in Europe against any of the contracting parties. However, these negotiations have stalled. Their failure was virtually a foregone conclusion. Its main reason was rooted in the deep distrust of Western leaders in the USSR. This was facilitated by the "great terror" unleashed by Stalin in the country. Stalin, in turn, also could not overcome the negative attitude towards his ideological opponents. In order to prevent a real threat of war in the current situation, the Soviet government decides to start negotiations with Germany - in response to its proposals to improve state relations. Negotiations with Germany made it possible for the Soviet leader to split the participants in the Munich agreement into two camps, and he hoped to outwit Hitler. To seek rapprochement with Germany, Stalin was also forced by the difficult situation in the east of the country. The growing aggressiveness of Japan quite realistically outlined the prospects for a Soviet war on two fronts.
Japanese aggression. On July 29, 1938, having captured Manchuria, Northern and Central China, Japan invaded Soviet territory in the area of Lake Khasan. On August 6–9, 1938, as a result of fierce fighting, the Soviet territory was cleared of the Japanese invaders. However, the Japanese militarists continued their provocations. On May 11, 1939, Japan began hostilities in the region of the Khalkhin-Gol River, trying to seize the territory of the Mongolian Republic. According to the 1936 Protocol on Mutual Assistance between the USSR and Mongolia, the first joint army group of Soviet and Mongolian troops under the command of G.K. Zhukov was created to repel the aggressor. In mid-September, the aggressor suffered a crushing defeat. The events near the Khalkhin Gol River were one of the reasons for the non-participation of Imperial Japan in the war against the USSR on the side of Nazi Germany, neither in 1941 nor in 1942.
Conspiracy of two dictators. The alliance with Great Britain and France did not give Stalin the opportunity to implement his doctrine of the country's security, based on the expansion of spheres of influence and territorial acquisitions, and most importantly, it did not provide the much-desired neutrality and non-participation in a possible European conflict. And Stalin undoubtedly wanted to delay the start of the war in order to build up military and industrial muscles and enter the battle only when the belligerents weaken each other.
Economic motives played an important role in the Soviet-German rapprochement, although each side pursued directly opposite goals. Soviet-German negotiations began on August 15, 1939, and already on August 23, when the ongoing military negotiations of the USSR with England and France had not yet been formally completed, German Foreign Minister A. Ribbentrop and V. M. Molotov, in May 1939 who replaced the retired M. M. Litvinov as head of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow for a period of 10 years. At the same time, a secret additional Protocol was signed, which delineated the spheres of interest of Germany and the USSR in relation to neighboring sovereign states (Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bessarabia). The treaty dealt a blow to the international prestige of the USSR, which had previously actively opposed fascism. To a certain extent, he disoriented the Soviet people on the eve of the formidable test.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact delayed the entry of the USSR into World War II, changed the balance of power in Europe and the world, undermined Japan's confidence in Germany as its ally, and allowed the USSR to avoid a war on two fronts. However, the main goal that Stalin counted on when concluding the treaty - to rise above the fight, to remain an observer of the battle and enter into it at the most favorable moment for himself, the agreement did not achieve.
§ 2. USSR on the verge of war
Beginning of World War II. In the early morning of September 1, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein, which arrived at the Polish coast in advance, fired at the Westerplatte suburb of Gdansk. Then the ground forces of the Wehrmacht invaded Polish territory from three different directions. Two days later, England and France, connected with Poland by allied relations, were forced to declare war on Germany. They were joined by the British dominions - Australia, New Zealand, India, the Union of South Africa and Canada. Thus began a new world war. The Polish army offered stubborn resistance to the aggressor. However, by September 5, German troops had broken through the Polish front in the main directions. Exactly one month later, the last pockets of resistance were crushed. France and England actually waited, waging a "strange war". The Red Army, taking advantage of this situation and guided by the agreements of the secret Protocol, crossed the Polish-Soviet border along its entire length under the pretext of "providing assistance to Ukrainian and Belarusian blood brothers." The resistance of the Polish army, for which hostilities with the Russians were a surprise, which arose in certain areas, was crushed. At the same time, the remnants of the Polish army fell partly into German captivity, partly into Soviet captivity. A significant part of the Polish captured officers (more than 21 thousand people) on March 5, 1940 was shot in Katyn by the NKVD troops. As a result of a military operation in September 1939, the Soviet Union annexed the areas that had been ceded to Poland under the 1921 treaty. The city of Vilnius, which was part of Western Belarus, was transferred to Lithuania. The regions of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine joined with Belarus and Ukraine. In November 1939, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were legally incorporated into the USSR. The border of the USSR was pushed to the west by 200–250 km. On September 27–28, 1939, negotiations between Molotov and Ribbentrop were again held in Moscow on the conclusion of a new friendship and border treaty between the USSR and Germany. In accordance with the treaty signed on September 28, the border passed approximately along the "Curzon Line". A secret protocol was also attached to the agreement, according to which part of Lithuania was included in the sphere of interests of the USSR, and part of Poland - Germany. The conclusion of the Soviet-German treaty of friendship and border between the USSR and Germany is now assessed as Stalin's major strategic mistake in the prewar period.
"Winter War". In November 1939, relying on Germany's agreement, set out in a secret Protocol, to respect its disinterest in the Baltic region, the USSR proposed to Finland to move the border away from Leningrad beyond the range of long-range artillery and establish Soviet military bases on Finnish territory. Instead, they offered twice as much land in Karelia. In fact, Stalin's plans were much broader. The Finnish government rejected all proposals from the USSR. Both states took a course to solve the problem by military means. With the assistance of Western states, the Finns created a powerful system of long-term fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus - the Mannerheim Line - 135 km long, up to 90 km deep. November 30, 1939 Soviet troops crossed the border. However, instead of a blitzkrieg, stubborn battles had to be waged for 105 days. It was not until March 13 that the Mannerheim Line was broken through. Contrary to calculations, the losses of Soviet troops in the "winter war" were significant. More than 126 thousand people were killed, missing and died from wounds. The Finns lost about 23 thousand people killed, more than 43 thousand wounded. The threat of intervention from England and France forced Stalin to abandon part of his plans. Finland retained its independence, avoiding the fate of its southern neighbors. In accordance with the Soviet-Finnish treaty of March 12, 1940, the Karelian Isthmus with Vyborg and the Vyborg Bay, the western and northern coasts of Lake Ladoga, part of the territory in the north of Karelia, part of the Rybachy and Sredny peninsulas on the coast of the Arctic Ocean withdrew to the USSR. The Finns also agreed to the lease of the Hanko Peninsula for the creation of a Soviet naval base there. The military actions of the USSR in Finland caused a storm of protests in Western countries. On December 14, 1940, the USSR was recognized as an aggressor and expelled from the League of Nations.
In new frontiers. Secret Protocols with Germany paved the way for the expansion of the Soviet Union's borders to the west. Virtually without active hostilities, the USSR managed to annex the territories of the former Russian Empire, lost in 1918–1920. In 1939, under pressure from the USSR, the governments of the Baltic republics were forced to accept proposals to conclude mutual assistance pacts. In accordance with these treaties, Soviet troops were brought into the territory of these countries and the creation of military bases began. In 1940, pro-Soviet "people's governments" were formed in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, headed by anti-fascists who sought an alliance with the Soviet country. The elections in June - July 1940 to the People's Seimas of Latvia and Lithuania and to the State Duma in Estonia were won by the Communists, who proclaimed the restoration of Soviet power in these republics and asked the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to accept Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the Soviet Union. Union. In August 1940 this request was granted. This act was regarded by Western countries as an annexation. On June 26, 1940, the Soviet government, in an ultimatum form, demanded that Romania return Bessarabia, which had been torn away by the Romanians back in 1918. In the summer of 1940, the territory of the Karelian ASSR was expanded at the expense of the lands that had ceded to the USSR after the Finnish war. The autonomous Karelian Republic was transformed into the Karelian-Finnish Union Republic. Thus, in 1940, the formation of the new state border of the Soviet Union was completed.
Preparation for war. In the context of the growing military confrontation in Europe in March 1939, the government of the USSR took measures to build up the military and economic potential of the country. Allocations for military needs were sharply increased. In 1939 they amounted to 25.6% of the total state budget, in 1940 - 32.6% and in 1941 - 43.4%. Annual increase in defense production in 1938-1940. amounted to 39%, which is approximately three times higher than the overall growth rate of industrial output. In the eastern regions, in case of war, the construction of new enterprises of the metallurgical and coal industries was begun. Since the beginning of 1939, 17,745 aircraft have been produced. Since 1940, mass production of new combat aircraft has been mastered: the Yak-1, MiG-3, LaGG-3 fighters, the Pe-2 dive bomber, the Il-2 attack aircraft, the T-34 medium tank and the heavy tank, which have no equal for their time, have been created KV. The production of artillery pieces, mortars, small arms, and ammunition developed. In June 1941, a decision was made to start mass production of BM-13 rocket artillery installations (“Katyushas”). To provide the army with food, significant state stocks of rye, wheat, oats, flour, and cereals were created. In order to strengthen labor discipline in June 1940, the government decided to switch to an 8-hour working day and a 7-day working week, and unauthorized leaving of workers and employees from enterprises and institutions was prohibited. For being late for work and absenteeism, criminal liability was introduced. Immediately after the signing of the friendship treaty with Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, an extraordinary session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a new Law "On universal military duty", which established only the personnel principle of building the army (abolishing the previously applied and territorial formation). The draft age was lowered from 21 to 18 years, the term of military service was increased to 3–5 years, and the term of state in the reserve was extended from 40 to 50 years. This made it possible to quickly increase the size of the army (from 1939 to mid-1941, 125 new divisions were formed). The shortage of commanders, which arose, among other things, due to mass repressions, was partially compensated by the return to the army of part of the previously repressed officer cadres (12,000 commanders). In connection with the preparations for the war, the personnel policy of military development was changing. After the failures in the Finnish war, K. E. Voroshilov was removed from the leadership of the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense in May 1940, he was replaced by the younger Marshal S. K. Timoshenko. On February 1, 1941, General of the Army G.K. Zhukov, who proved himself at Khalkhin Gol, was appointed Chief of the General Staff.
The start of the war by the leadership of the country, and above all by Stalin, was predicted no earlier than 1942, so the USSR did not have time to complete the process of rearmament of the army by June 22, 1941. The Soviet High Command had information about Hitler's plan of attack on the USSR (Plan Barbarossa) already at the end of December 1940, but the strategy of response was chosen incorrectly. Stalin was captivated by the idea of a preemptive strike, and defensive actions were not seriously considered. By June 22, 1941, there was no operational and mobilization plan completed and approved by the government.
A turning point in relations with Germany. In June 1940, France capitulated. In fact, England was left face to face with Germany. Negotiations between the USSR and Germany in November 1940 on spheres of influence under the new conditions ended in vain. Hitler did not now make any concessions, and from this period both sides took a course in preparation for war. The plan of attack and lightning defeat of the USSR was prepared for the winter of 1940-1941. and approved by Hitler on December 18, 1940 in Directive No. 21. In accordance with the Barbarossa plan, "The German armed forces must be ready to defeat Soviet Russia during a short campaign even before the war with England is over ...". At the same time, disinformation was launched by Hitler that he was preparing an invasion of England, and was not going to attack the USSR. In fact, the preparations for Operation Barbarossa were in full swing. The invasion of the USSR was planned for April 1941, but the events in the Balkans pushed this date back to June.
§ 3. Disruption of lightning war plans
Beginning of the Great Patriotic War. By the summer of 1941, Nazi Germany and its allies had concentrated 190 divisions (5.5 million men), nearly 4,000 tanks, 5,000 combat aircraft, and over 47,000 guns and mortars along the borders of the Soviet Union.
On June 22, 1941, her troops invaded Soviet territory. The most difficult, most bloody war in the history of our Fatherland began. At 4 am, German aviation began to bomb Soviet cities - Smolensk, Kyiv, Zhitomir, Murmansk, Riga, Kaunas, Liepaja, military bases (Kronstadt, Sevastopol, Izmail), railway lines and bridges. During the first day of the war, June 22, the enemy destroyed 66 airfields and 1,200 aircraft, 800 of them on the ground. By the end of June 22, enemy groupings had advanced to a depth of 50–60 km. By the time the Germans attacked, the strategic deployment of Soviet troops had not been completed. The military potential of the Red Army, in principle, was not much lower than the German one. 170 divisions (2.9 million men) were concentrated in the western border military districts. In terms of the number of military equipment, armored vehicles and aviation, the Soviet troops were not inferior to the German ones, but a significant part of the tanks and especially aircraft were of obsolete types, new weapons were only being mastered by personnel, many tank and aviation formations were in the process of formation. On June 22, Molotov spoke on the radio with a call to repulse the aggressor. Stalin's speech took place only on 3 July. The fascist command organized an offensive in three strategic directions: Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev. The Soviet command expected the main blow in the southwest, but Hitler delivered it in the center, in the western direction. The advance of the Germans forward in all directions, contrary to their expectations, was accompanied by fierce fighting. From the very beginning of the war, Soviet troops put up serious resistance to the enemy. For the first time since 1939, the Germans began to suffer tangible losses. Despite the mass heroism and self-sacrifice of the Soviet soldiers, the results of the initial stage of the war were disastrous for the Red Army. By mid-July 1941, out of 170 Soviet divisions, 28 were completely defeated, 70 divisions lost over 50% of their personnel and equipment. Particularly heavy losses were suffered by the troops of the Western Front. During several weeks of fighting in different directions, German troops advanced 300–500 km inland. About 23 million Soviet people fell into the occupation. By the end of 1941, the total number of prisoners of war had reached 3.9 million.
The occupation of a significant part of the Soviet territory was assessed by the Nazi command as a decisive success in the war, but the Red Army turned out to be much stronger than the fascist strategists expected.
Organizational events. In the very first days of the war, the country's leadership took a number of measures to organize a rebuff to the enemy: general mobilization was announced, and the Headquarters of the High Command of the Armed Forces of the USSR was created. In a secret directive dated June 29, 1941, the leadership of the country spoke for the first time about the scale of military defeats to party and Soviet organizations in the front-line regions. The directive contained a strict requirement to defend every inch of Soviet land, leave nothing to the enemy in the event of a forced withdrawal, destroy valuable property that cannot be taken out, organize partisan detachments and sabotage groups in the occupied territory, and create unbearable conditions for the enemy.
On June 30, 1941, the State Defense Committee (GKO) was created - the highest state emergency body of the USSR, headed by I.V. Stalin. The GKO concentrated all power in the country during the war years. His Decree of June 26, 1941 "On the working hours of workers and employees in wartime" established a working day of 11 hours, introduced mandatory overtime work, and canceled holidays. Since the autumn of 1941, a rationing system for distributing products among the population was reintroduced. The Soviet totalitarian system, which was ineffective in civilian life, turned out to be effective in wartime conditions. Over 5 million people were mobilized in a week since the beginning of the war. The call "Everything for the front, everything for victory!" was accepted by all the people. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens voluntarily went into the army. During the first six months, more than 1,500 large industrial enterprises were moved to the east from areas threatened by occupation, many educational institutions, research institutes, libraries, museums, theaters were evacuated, more than 10 million people were sent (according to some sources, 17 million people). By the middle of 1942, the restructuring of the economy on a war footing was basically completed. The eastern regions of the country became the main arsenal of the front and the main production base of the country.
Defensive battles of summer - autumn 1941 Soviet troops not only defended themselves, but also delivered retaliatory strikes to the enemy. Moving towards Moscow, the enemy met fierce resistance during the capture of Smolensk, the battle under which lasted two months (from July 10 to September 10, 1941). The Soviet command in its course for the first time used the famous "Katyusha". On July 30, the Germans were forced to go on the defensive for the first time. On September 5, 1941, the troops of the Reserve Front formed on July 30 under the command of G.K. Zhukov broke through the enemy defenses during the counteroffensive and liberated Yelnya.
The enemy lost several divisions (more than 50 thousand soldiers). The battle near Smolensk allowed the Soviet command to gain time to prepare the defense of Moscow. On September 10, the enemy was stopped 300 km from Moscow. Hitler's "blitzkrieg" was dealt a serious blow.
Hitler's strategic failures near Smolensk forced him to change the direction of the main attack and move it from the center to the south - to Kyiv, Donbass, Rostov. Significant forces were concentrated near Kyiv, both from the German and from the Soviet side. The Germans managed to enter the rear of the 6th and 12th armies and surround them. In fact, both armies were lost. With the capture of Kyiv by the enemy, the road to Moscow opened through Bryansk and Orel. At the same time, the Germans were advancing on Odessa, an important base of the Black Sea Fleet. The legendary defense of Odessa lasted more than two months. On October 16, in connection with the threat of the seizure of the Crimea, by order of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, the defenders of Odessa left the city. A significant part of the participants in the defense of Odessa was transferred to Sevastopol. On its defensive lines, the soldiers of the Primorsky Army (commander General I. E. Petrov) and the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet, led by Vice Admiral F. S. Oktyabrsky, destroyed almost as much enemy manpower as the Nazi army lost in all theaters of operations before the attack on the USSR. The enemy tried more than once to take the city by storm, but Sevastopol stood firm.
Army Group "North", having captured Pskov on July 9, advanced close to Leningrad. According to the plans of the German command, its fall should have preceded the capture of Moscow. However, despite repeated attempts, the Germans and the Finns acting together with them failed to take the city. On September 8, 1941, a 900-day siege of Leningrad began. For 611 days, the city was subjected to intense artillery shelling and bombardment. Thus, by the autumn of 1941, the German army had not achieved decisive successes in any of the three main strategic directions of the offensive.
Disruption of Operation Typhoon. On September 30, 1941, a new German operation to capture Moscow began on the Central Front, called "Typhoon". The tank army of General Guderian sent a blow along the Orel - Tula - Moscow line and captured Orel and Bryansk.
On October 12, the Western Front was created under the command of General G.K. Zhukov, and the armies of the Reserve Front were also transferred to it. Particularly fierce battles broke out in the Moscow direction in mid-October. On October 15, 1941, the State Defense Committee decides to evacuate part of the government and party institutions, the diplomatic corps to Kuibyshev, prepare for the destruction of 1119 industrial enterprises and facilities in Moscow and the region. A state of siege was declared in Moscow. 50,000 militia fighters came to the aid of the front. An invaluable contribution to the defense of Moscow was made by the defenders of Tula, who stopped Guderian's army. Moscow was also reliably protected from air attacks. Protecting the skies of Moscow, pilot V.V. Talalikhin was one of the first to use a night air ram. As a result of the measures taken in late October - early November, the Nazi offensive was stopped. Operation Typhoon has been thwarted. Nevertheless, in mid-November, German troops launched a new offensive against Moscow. The Germans managed to approach Moscow at 25–30 km. By heroic efforts, the Nazi troops were stopped practically at the walls of the capital.
Soviet counteroffensive near Moscow. In early December 1941, the Soviet command, in secrecy, prepared a counteroffensive near Moscow. Such an operation became possible after the formation of ten reserve armies in the rear. The enemy retained superiority in the number of troops, the number of artillery and tanks, but it was no longer overwhelming. In early December, the Germans launched another offensive against Moscow, but in the course of it, on December 5-6, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive along the entire front - from Kalinin to Yelets. This offensive was a complete surprise for the German command. It turned out to be unable to repel the powerful blows of the Red Army. By the beginning of January 1942, Soviet troops pushed the Nazis back from Moscow by 100–250 km. The winter offensive of the Red Army continued until April 1942. As a result, the Moscow and Tula regions, many areas of the Smolensk, Kalinin, Ryazan and Oryol regions were completely liberated. Near Moscow, the strategy of "blitzkrieg" finally collapsed. The failure of the offensive against Moscow prevented Japan and Turkey from entering the war on Germany's side. The victory of the Red Army prompted the United States and Britain to create an anti-Hitler coalition.
As a result of the general winter offensive of the Red Army, up to 50 German divisions were destroyed. Hitler faced the fact of a protracted war. Taking advantage of the absence of a second front in Europe, by the spring of 1942, Germany had transferred fresh divisions from Western Europe to the Eastern Front. Now the Nazi command considered its main task to be the capture of the southern regions of the USSR rich in strategic raw materials, primarily the oil regions of the Caucasus. The Soviet General Staff, in order to prepare the conditions for the subsequent offensive of the Red Army, proposed a deep defense plan for the summer campaign of 1942. But Stalin's strategic mistake was the concentration of large forces near Moscow, while Hitler delivered the main blow in the southern direction. In May 1942, the enemy strike force captured the Kerch Peninsula. Our troops, having suffered serious losses, were forced to evacuate from the central part of the Crimea to the Taman Peninsula. In the summer and autumn of 1942, the Soviet troops suffered a number of serious defeats due to the strategic miscalculations of the high command, as well as due to the numerical superiority of the German troops. In May 1942, an attempt to break the blockade of Leningrad ended in failure. On July 4, 1942, after a 250-day heroic defense, Soviet troops left Sevastopol. The attack on Kharkov ended with the defeat and encirclement of 20 Soviet divisions; attempts by individual units to break out of the encirclement were unsuccessful. The 2nd Army of the Volkhov Front was also surrounded and defeated. The commander of the army, General A. A. Vlasov, went over to the side of the Nazis and subsequently organized the so-called Russian Liberation Army (ROA), which fought on the side of the Nazis. In the summer of 1942, the leadership of the Wehrmacht began to create Russian military formations. A Special Cossack Corps was formed in the Kuban. The basis for the formation of such units were anti-Soviet sentiments associated with the repressive policy of the Soviet government in relation to class enemies, the conduct of forced collectivization. An even more significant mass of Soviet collaborators was formed from among the prisoners of war. For most of them, this was the only chance to break out of the camps. The total number of armed formations created as part of the Wehrmacht (excluding the police) reached 900 thousand people.
In the summer of 1942, the Nazi troops, developing the offensive of the 4th German tank army, captured the right bank of Voronezh. At the same time, Army Group B launched an attack on Stalingrad. Heading in a southeasterly direction, they broke through the Soviet defenses and captured the right-bank lands of the Don and the eastern industrial regions of the Donbass. On July 24, Rostov was occupied and there was a threat of capturing the Caucasus. At the end of July 1942, the battle for the Caucasus began. The enemy managed to capture a significant part of the North Caucasus. Only after five months of hardest fighting was the enemy stopped at the passes of the Main Caucasian Range.
§ 4. Decisive battles
Defense of Stalingrad. The fascist command attached particular importance to the capture of Stalingrad. Access to the Volga allowed the enemy to cut off the central regions of the USSR from the supply of grain and oil and transfer their armies to supply these most important resources from the occupied lands. The 6th Army of General F. Paulus, the 4th Tank Army of General G. Hoth, supported from the air by a large military aviation formation, which included 1200 aircraft, was rapidly advancing towards Stalingrad. On July 17, fighting began on the outskirts of the city. On July 12, the Soviet command created the Stalingrad Front. The advancing units of the 6th Army of Paulus numbered 270 thousand soldiers (against 160 thousand Soviet), 3 thousand guns and mortars (against 2200 Soviet), 500 tanks (against 400 Soviet). The troops of the 62nd and 64th armies, led by generals M.S. Chuikov and M.S. Shumilov, thwarted the plans of the fascist command by stubborn defense, pinning down the best divisions of the Wehrmacht in the Stalingrad region. By mid-November, the Germans had lost 700,000 killed and wounded, more than 1,000 tanks and over 1,400 aircraft in the battles for the city. The losses of the Soviet army were also great. At the end of October, the German offensive was stopped on the entire front. During the defensive battles for Stalingrad, the Soviet command developed a counteroffensive plan, called "Uranus". The counteroffensive of the Soviet troops, unexpectedly for the Germans, began on November 19, 1942. The defense of the enemy troops was broken through by strikes from the Southwestern and Don fronts. On November 20, the offensive of the troops of the Stalingrad Front began. On November 23, the enemy grouping with a total number of 330 thousand people was completely surrounded. Keeping the Germans in the “cauldron” near Stalingrad, the Soviet army developed an offensive on the Caucasian front. On December 12, in the area of the village of Kotelnikovsky, the Germans made an attempt to break through the encirclement with a blow from the outside. This attempt was repulsed. On January 10, 1943, Soviet troops went on the offensive, which ended with the capture of more than 91 thousand enemy soldiers, including 2.5 thousand officers led by Field Marshal Paulus. On February 2, Paulus signed the act of surrender. The Battle of Stalingrad was the largest military and political defeat of German fascism. The victory in the Battle of Stalingrad predetermined the outcome of the battles in the North Caucasus. As a result of the offensive operation that began on January 1, 1943, most of the North Caucasus was liberated by mid-February 1943. Another offensive operation - Voronezh-Kastorenskaya - completed the defeat of Army Group "B". In its course, most of the Voronezh and Kursk regions and the city of Voronezh were liberated. In the general strategic offensive of the Soviet troops in the winter of 1942-1943. a special place was occupied by the Shlisselburg offensive operation. In just a few days (from January 12 to January 18, 1943), the ring of the German blockade of Leningrad was broken and Shlisselburg was completely cleared of enemy troops. South of Lake Ladoga, a corridor was formed 8-11 km, through which Leningrad and the troops defending it received direct communication with the center.
In February - March 1943, as a result of successful battles, the threat to Moscow was finally eliminated, and the strategic initiative passed to the side of the Soviet troops. The cities of Rostov, Krasnodar, Kursk, Rzhev were liberated. The Red Army advanced 600-700 km to the West.
Battle on the Kursk Bulge. In the spring of 1943, the Nazi command hoped to take revenge for the defeat at Stalingrad and turn the tide of the war in their favor. To conduct a major offensive operation, called the "Citadel", the German command chose the Kursk salient, which was advanced far (up to 120 km) to the west. The Nazi offensive began on July 5, 1943. The battle immediately took on a large-scale character. The number of enemy tanks per kilometer of the front reached 100 vehicles. The Soviet command, unexpectedly for the enemy, conducted a powerful artillery preparation, as a result of which the enemy suffered tangible losses already in their original positions. On July 12, the largest tank battle in history took place in the Prokhorovka area, in which about 1,200 tanks participated on both sides. The heroism of the Soviet soldiers was massive, the enemy was stopped (he managed to advance only 12 km), and the Red Army launched a counteroffensive. On July 12, 1943, the second stage of the Battle of Kursk began - the counteroffensive of the Soviet troops in the Oryol direction. On August 5, 1943, Orel and Kursk were liberated. In honor of this victory, the first artillery salute was fired that day in Moscow. With the capture of Kharkov on August 23, the 50-day Battle of Kursk ended. During this time, the enemy lost the best mechanized formations of his army numbering more than 500 thousand people. The victory of the Red Army near Kursk consolidated the fundamental change that occurred during the war.
Forcing the Dnieper. The most important milestone of the summer-autumn campaign of 1943 was the crossing of the Dnieper. At the end of September, having liberated Left-bank Ukraine and Donbass, Soviet troops overcame this powerful waterway and captured bridgeheads on the right bank of the Dnieper. For the successful crossing of the Dnieper, about 2,500 soldiers and officers were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. On November 3, the attack on Kyiv began, and on November 6, 1943, the city was liberated. For more than two years, the capital of Ukraine was under occupation. The Nazis tortured more than 200 thousand Soviet people here. The place of death of over 100 thousand Russians, Ukrainians and Jews was a ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv - Babi Yar, where the Nazis carried out mass executions of people. The liberation of Kyiv was of great importance for the further advance of Soviet troops to the West. By the end of 1943, two-thirds of the territory temporarily occupied by the Nazis was liberated - 38 thousand settlements, including 162 cities. 118 enemy divisions were destroyed.
Fight behind enemy lines. Despite the terror unleashed by the Nazis, from the first days of the war in the occupied Soviet territory, the Germans faced active resistance from the inhabitants to the occupying authorities. By the end of 1941, 3,500 partisan detachments were operating behind enemy lines. To coordinate their activities in May 1942, the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement was created at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. In total, about 2.8 million people fought behind enemy lines with weapons in their hands against the German invaders. The partisans destroyed the work of the enemy rear, conducted continuous reconnaissance, and made it difficult to transfer troops. In the summer and autumn of 1942 alone, the Nazis had to withdraw 24 divisions of regular troops from the front to fight the partisans.
Rear - front. Decisive victories over the Nazis in 1942-1943. were achieved by the joint efforts of Soviet soldiers and home front workers. By the end of 1942, a well-coordinated military economy was gaining strength in the USSR. The total number of industrial workers and employees in 1943 amounted to about 19.4 million people. During the war years, the USSR surpassed Germany in the production of weapons. With the beginning of the liberation of Soviet territories from invaders by the end of August 1943, the Government of the USSR adopted a resolution "On urgent measures to restore the economy in areas liberated from German occupation." Workers, engineers, specialists were sent to the western regions of the country on special permits to restore the destroyed economy. By the end of 1943, 3.6 million square meters were restored and rebuilt in the liberated areas. m of living space in cities and 266,000 houses in rural areas. A feature of the Soviet military economy was the widespread use during the war years of the labor of prisoners in the production of ammunition and other military products. In 1942–1943 more than 150,000 of the 2.3 million Gulag prisoners were released early and sent to the army, where many of them fought valiantly against the enemy.
Opening of the second front. By the end of 1943, the combat power of the Red Army had increased significantly. It had more than 6 million soldiers and officers. Its strike force was about 5 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, 8.5 thousand aircraft and 91 thousand guns and mortars. The strengthening of the military power of our country was facilitated by the supply of military equipment and equipment by the allies, especially the United States, under Lend-Lease. The total cost of these deliveries was about $11 billion. In the total mass of Soviet military production, these supplies amounted to 7 to 10%.
On November 28 - December 1, 1943, a conference of the heads of government of the three allied powers - I. Stalin, F. Roosevelt and W. Churchill, was held in Tehran, which was preceded by the Moscow Conference of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain. At the conference, the allies managed to reach a compromise and agree on the opening of a second front, on which Stalin had insisted since 1941. The military successes of the USSR in 1943 (especially after Stalingrad and Kursk) forced the United States and Britain to change their previous position. In turn, meeting the insistent wishes of the allies, the USSR undertook to take part in the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany. On June 6, 1944, a second front was opened by the landing of Anglo-American troops in northern France. On August 18, 1944, an uprising of the Resistance forces began in Paris, four days later the entire city was in the hands of the rebels. By the end of 1944, the allied forces reached the borders of Germany.
Winter offensive of the Red Army. In December 1943, the Soviet command decides to launch a broad offensive along the entire front - from the Barents to the Black Sea. On January 14, 1944, the offensive of the Leningrad Front began under the command of General L. A. Govorov. In a short time, Soviet troops liberated Gatchina, Petrodvorets, Novgorod and other cities. On January 27, 1944, the blockade of Leningrad, which lasted 900 days and nights, was completely eliminated. The offensive of Soviet troops in the south began at the end of December 1943 in a huge (1400 km) strip from Polesie to the Black Sea coast and was carried out by the forces of four Ukrainian fronts. On January 28, 1944, the troops of the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts under the command of Generals N.F. Vatutin and I.S. Konev surrounded the enemy’s Korsun-Shevchenko grouping (80 km south of Kyiv), which offered stubborn resistance to the Red Army. 10 enemy divisions fell into the cauldron. Three weeks later, the enemy grouping was finally defeated.
§ 5. The victory of the anti-Hitler coalition
Complete expulsion of the Nazis from the territory of the USSR. On March 26, 1944, Soviet troops reached the State Border of the USSR. Having liberated the Right-Bank Ukraine, the Red Army proceeded to liquidate the enemy grouping in the Crimea. The offensive of our troops began on April 8, 1944. After the liberation of the Kerch Peninsula and Simferopol on May 5, the assault on Sevastopol began. After a five-day assault on May 9, the city of Russian glory was liberated. In the summer of 1944, in accordance with the plans of the Soviet command, the Red Army delivered the main blow in Belarus.
The operation, codenamed "Bagration", in which more than 160 Soviet divisions took part, began on June 23 and came as a complete surprise to the enemy. On July 3, 1944, Minsk was liberated, and another ring of encirclement was closed to the east of it, in which more than a million soldiers and officers of the Nazi army turned out to be. The offensive of the Soviet troops in Belarus developed into a general strategic offensive from the Baltic to the Carpathians, which continued until the end of August. As a result of the Belarusian operation, one of the strongest German groups, the Army Group Center, was destroyed. In September 1944, negotiations on a truce with the USSR and England, begun in March at the initiative of Finland, were completed. Under the terms of the signed agreement, the Soviet-Finnish border of 1940 was restored, in addition, Finland undertook to disarm the Nazi troops stationed on its territory. Simultaneously with the Belarusian operation, offensive operations were carried out to liberate Ukraine, Moldova (Yaso-Kishinevskaya) and the Baltic republics. Germany was ready to do everything to keep the strategically important Baltic states. Therefore, fierce battles on the territory of the Baltic States continued from July to mid-October. Only on October 13, 1944, Soviet troops entered the capital of Latvia, Riga. In the deep autumn of 1944, the Red Army cleared the Murmansk region of invaders and liberated ice-free ports in the Barents Sea. As a result of offensive operations in 1944, the entire territory of the USSR was liberated from the fascist invaders, the State border of the USSR was completely restored along its entire length.
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Key accomplice of the Nazis. How the USSR unleashed World War II.On June 1, 1939, the French ambassador in the Nazi capital, Coulondre, told Foreign Minister Bonnet that Hitler “would risk starting a war if he did not have to fight Russia. If he knows that he will have to fight with Russia, he will retreat so as not to expose the country, the party and himself to death.” Kulondre added that two of Hitler's top military leaders, OKW Chief of Staff Keitel and Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces Brauchitsch, told the Fuhrer that if Germany had to fight Russia, she would have little chance of winning the war. Initially, the success of the military campaign against Poland outlined in the "Weiss" plan was directly linked by the German leader with whether it would be possible to achieve the political isolation of Poland: ""The goal of our policy is to localize the war within Poland.""
In Russian history, a myth is now popular that the USSR was very afraid of a war with Germany and therefore concluded a pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop) in order to better prepare for this war. But this is a blatant lie. Now we can cite data on the Red Army: after the 1939 mobilization of the year. In September 1939, the payroll of the Red Army increased to 5.3 million people; it was armed with 43,000 guns, 18,000 tanks, and 10,000 aircraft. Data for the German Army as of September 1939, after mobilization: the entire army numbered 4,528 thousand people (of which 3.7 million were in the ground forces), there were 3195 tanks, including tankettes without guns and training vehicles (of which: 1145 - T-I, 1223 - T-II, 98 - T-III, 211 - TIV), were also armed with 4,500 aircraft, 27,000 artillery pieces and mortars. I won’t compare tanks and artillery now, but I speak with confidence in the USSR they are better, for example, one fact, the German T-I tank had no gun at all, the T-II tank had such a weak gun that it could not hit the Soviet at all armored vehicles, and only 300 T-III and T-IV tanks (about 10% of the total) were relatively combat-ready. So, at the time of the signing of the pact and the attack on Poland, the USSR had a superiority in people over Germany, in tanks more than four times, in artillery by 63%, in aircraft more than two times. In addition, Poland was between Germany and the USSR with an army of almost a million, and therefore, as of August 1939, the German invasion of the USSR did not threaten.
On August 23, Hitler's plan to partially isolate Poland was successful, the USSR and the Nazis signed a non-aggression pact, along with the non-aggression pact, a secret protocol was also signed according to which, when reorganizing the areas that make up the Polish state, the border of the spheres of interest of Germany and the USSR will approximately run along lines of the rivers Pissa, Nareva, Vistula and San. This marked the beginning of the aggressive war against Poland and the Second World War as a legal fact. But the signing of the non-aggression pact was also important because it removed the threat of war for Germany on two fronts. According to Article 3 of the Polish-Soviet non-aggression pact, the USSR undertook not to take part in any agreements that, from an aggressive point of view, are clearly hostile to the other side. Undoubtedly, the secret agreements concluded by the USSR and Germany regarding Poland in August-October 1939 were of a nature that clearly contradicted this article.
According to V.M. Molotov, uttered by him during negotiations in Berlin on November 12, 1940, the agreements of August 1939 were primarily "" in the interests of Germany "", which was able to "" get Poland "", and later seize France and start a serious war against Great Britain, having a "strong rear in the East". Later, in 1946, recalling this event at the Nuremberg Trials, Ribbentrop said: “When I arrived in Moscow in 1939 to Marshal Stalin, he discussed with me not the possibility of a peaceful settlement of the German-Polish conflict within the framework of the Briand-Kellogg pact, but made it clear that if he does not get half of Poland and the Baltic countries without Lithuania with the port of Libava, then I can immediately fly back.
Many accuse Britain and France also of supporting Hitler's aggressive plans in 1938, referring to the Munich Agreement of 1938 regarding Czechoslovakia's peaceful transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany. But there are cardinal differences here, firstly, England and France did not commit actions that could be interpreted as military aggression, secondly, they did not participate in hostilities on the side of the Nazis, and thirdly, they did not participate in the dismemberment of another state , with the addition of a part of it. They tried to make concessions to Germany in terms of joining it with ethnically German territories unfairly taken from the German nation, and preventing another world war in Europe. It was England and France that declared war on Germany after the German attack on Poland, but already on September 17 the USSR officially entered the war on the side of Germany, and on September 28 it began to publicly threaten its entry into the war against England and France if they did not stop all operations against the German army in the West. Now the passive war of the allies against Germany in the fall of 1939 is called strange, although if you look at it, everything is understandable, because they hoped that the military alliance between Germany and the USSR would quickly fall apart, which, in principle, happened.
Starting a war against Poland, Hitler wanted to return only the original German lands occupied by the Poles, according to the Treaty of Versailles. On the remaining territory, he allowed the existence of Poland as an independent state, even taking into account the transfer of Western Ukraine and Belarus to Russia. It would be a buffer between Germany and the USSR. But Stalin insisted on the complete liquidation of Poland. It was thanks to this decision of Stalin that Germany and the USSR received a common border. So, when concluding a pact with Germany and a secret protocol on the division of Poland and the Baltic states, Stalin acted not for defense purposes, but solely to seize new territories and unleash a war in Europe and its subsequent Sovietization.
On September 1, the Minsk radio station began to be used as a radio beacon to support Luftwaffe raids. This was a direct violation of the 5th Hague Convention on the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in the Event of a Land War of 1907, ratified by Russia. That is, already on the 1st day of the war, the USSR was not neutral, but supported the Nazis in the war against Poland.
September 3rd. Ribbentrop sends telegram No. 253 to the German Ambassador in Moscow:
“Please discuss this with Molotov immediately and see if the Soviet Union considers it desirable that the Russian army should move at the right moment against the Polish forces in the Russian sphere of influence and, for its part, occupy this territory. In our opinion, this not only helped would be for us, but also, in accordance with the Moscow agreements, it would be in the Soviet interests.4 September. All German ships in the North Atlantic were ordered "to proceed to Murmansk, adhering to the most northerly course possible." On September 8, Moscow gave permission for German ships to enter Murmansk and guaranteed the transportation of goods to Leningrad. In total, in the first 17 days of September, 18 German ships took refuge in a Soviet port.
8 September. Telegram from the German ambassador in Moscow, no. Please convey my congratulations and greetings to the government of the German Empire." Moscow gave permission for German ships to enter Murmansk and guaranteed the transportation of goods to Leningrad. In total, in the first 17 days of September, 18 German ships took refuge in a Soviet port.
11 September. Hysterical anti-Polish propaganda was unleashed in the Soviet media.
September 14th. Telegram from the German ambassador in Moscow No. 350, sent to the German Foreign Ministry: “In response to your telegram No. 336 dated September 13, Molotov called me today at 4 pm and stated that the Red Army had reached a state of readiness sooner than expected. Given the political motivation of the Soviet action (the fall of Poland and the defense of the Russian "minorities"), it would be extremely important [for the Soviets] not to start acting before the administrative center of Poland, Warsaw, fell. Molotov therefore asks that he be informed as precisely as possible when he can count on the capture of Warsaw.
September 17th. The Soviet grouping of about 600,000 people, about 4,000 tanks, more than 5,500 artillery pieces and 2,000 aircraft hit the rear of the Polish army fighting the Nazis, which was a direct violation of the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Poland (later Stalin would call it a treacherous violation of non-aggression pacts, actions Germany in June 1941). There were more than 300,000 Polish troops in the offensive zone of the Soviet troops.
September 25th. In telegram No. 442 from the German ambassador, he writes to the German Foreign Ministry: “Stalin and Molotov asked me to come to the Kremlin today at 8 pm. Stalin stated the following. In the final settlement of the Polish question, everything must be avoided that in the future may cause friction between Germany and the Soviet Union. From this point of view, he considers it wrong to leave the remnant of the Polish state independent. He proposes the following: from the territories to the east of the demarcation line, the entire Lublin Voivodeship and that part of the Warsaw Voivodeship that reaches the Bug should be added to our portion. For this, we renounce claims to Lithuania.
September 28, 1939. The Treaty of Friendship and Border between the USSR and Germany was concluded, by which the territory of Poland was divided between the two aggressors in accordance with the previously signed secret protocol of August 23, 1939. At the time of the conclusion of the treaty, Germany was militarily almost completely exhausted, almost all ammunition and fuel were used up in the troops. Germany had no opportunity to wage even a defensive war on the Western Front. In order to save his ally, Stalin speaks openly in support of Germany and threatens France and England with the support of the Nazis if the war continues. It was the possibility of a war against Germany and the USSR that kept France and England from attacking Germany in the autumn and winter of 1939 (Strange War).
The results of the military aggression of the USSR against Poland.
The combat losses of the Red Army during the Polish campaign of 1939, according to the Russian historian Grigory Krivosheev, amounted to 1173 people killed, 2002 wounded and 302 missing. Losses in the equipment of tank and mechanized brigades of the Red Army (including irretrievable) amounted to 42 armored units - 26 of them on the Belorussian front and 16 on the Ukrainian. Estimating the combat losses of the Polish Army in the battles with the Red Army, the Russian historian Mikhail Meltyukhov gives figures of 3,500 killed, 20,000 missing and 454,700 prisoners. According to the Polish Military Encyclopedia, 250,000 servicemen were taken prisoner by the Soviets. Almost all of the captured officers were subsequently shot by the NKVD, including about 14,000 captured officers who were killed by Soviet executioners near Katyn.
In a statement made in October 1939, Molotov gave the following figures for the captured military property: “over 900 guns, over 10 thousand machine guns, over 300 thousand rifles, over 150 million rounds of ammunition, about 1 million shells and up to 300 aircraft.” So the Soviet invasion of Poland was an aggressive military operation, not a liberation campaign.
JOINT STATEMENT OF THE SOVIET AND GERMAN GOVERNMENTS OF SEPTEMBER 28, 1939
After the German government and the government of the USSR, by the treaty signed today, finally settled the issues that arose as a result of the collapse of the Polish state, and thus created a solid foundation for a lasting peace in Eastern Europe, they mutually agree that the elimination of a real war between Germany, on the one hand, and by England and France, on the other hand, would meet the interests of all peoples. Therefore, both governments will direct their common efforts, in case of need, in agreement with other friendly powers, in order to achieve this goal as soon as possible. If, however, these efforts of both governments remain unsuccessful, then the fact will be established that Britain and France are responsible for the continuation of the war, and in the event of a continuation of the war, the governments of Germany and the USSR will consult each other on the necessary measures.
If we turn to the notes of the conversation with Ribbentrop and Stalin dated September 28, 1939, then Stalin in his (first after long reasoning by Ribbentrop) statement (according to the German record) stated his point of view as follows: “The point of view of Germany, which rejects military assistance, is worthy of respect . However, a strong Germany is a necessary condition for peace in Europe - therefore, the Soviet Union is interested in the existence of a strong Germany. Therefore, the Soviet Union cannot agree to the Western Powers creating conditions that could weaken Germany and put her in a difficult position. This is the commonality of interests between Germany and the Soviet Union.
September 30, 1939. Ribbentrop's statement was published in the newspaper Pravda: “... Both states want peace to be restored and that England and France stop the absolutely senseless and hopeless struggle against Germany. If, however, warmongers take over in these countries, then Germany and the USSR will know how to respond to this.
The USSR, not only in word, but in deed, helped the Nazis not only in September 1939, hitting the rear of the Polish army, which accelerated the transfer of German units to the West. The “anti-fascist” socialist state did everything to weaken the trade blockade of Nazi Germany and help it as much as possible in the war against England and France, for which on February 11, 1940, an economic agreement between the USSR and Germany was signed in Moscow. It provided that the Soviet Union would supply Germany with the following goods:
1,000,000 tons of feed grains and legumes, worth 120 million Reichsmarks
900,000 tons of oil worth about 115 million Reichsmarks
100,000 tons of cotton worth about 90 million Reichsmarks
500,000 tons of phosphates
100,000 tons of chromite ores
500,000 tons of iron ore
300,000 tons of iron scrap and pig iron
2,400 kg of platinum
"Commodity turnover between Germany and the USSR in the first year of the agreement will reach a volume exceeding the highest levels ever achieved since the World War" [Pravda, 02/13/1940].
In 1940, open pro-Nazi propaganda was also conducted in the USSR. Articles published in the Soviet press, including in the official Soviet newspapers Pravda and Izvestiya, were used by Dr. Goebbels' department for his propaganda purposes. Propaganda speeches were reproduced in the German press, including Hitler's direct speeches. At the same time, a special place was occupied by information messages from the front of the war in the West, mainly about the successes of the Luftwaffe in the "battle for England". According to radio broadcasts in the "Latest News" programs, the losses of British aviation and the destruction of English cities were called a feeling of deep satisfaction. Every day, radio stations played Wagner's music, which was very popular among the NSDAP leadership.
The following facts are also in no way incompatible with the neutral status of the state: the transit through the entire territory of the USSR from the Far East to Germany of a large group of officers from the German cruiser Graf Spee sunk in the Pacific Ocean. No circumstances can justify the consent of the Soviet leadership to serve Nazi warships in Soviet ports in the Barents Sea basin (in October 1939, the Soviet Union agreed to the use by the German Navy of the port of Teriberka east of Murmansk as a repair base and ship supply point and submarines operating in the North Atlantic).
Molotov's note on Stalin's meeting with the British Ambassador Stafford Cripps in July 1940: "Stalin does not see any threat to hegemony from any country in Europe, and he is even less afraid that Europe might be absorbed by Germany. Stalin follows the policy of Germany and is well knows several German figures. He did not detect any desire on their part to swallow the European countries. Stalin does not consider that the military successes of Germany pose a threat to the Soviet Union and its friendly relations with it ... ".
It is no coincidence that already after the Second World War, at the end of November 1945, the list of issues not subject to discussion at the Nuremberg trials, approved by the Soviet delegation at the Nuremberg trials, in order to prevent counter-accusations of defense against the governments of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, the first paragraph provided for a ban on discussing the attitude of the USSR to the Treaty of Versailles , and the ninth point - the question of Soviet-Polish relations.
With the defeat of Poland by German and Soviet troops, only the first act of World War II ended. Almost immediately after the end of hostilities in Poland, the "peaceful" socialist state begins a war against Finland. Military operations, which were a completely failed blitzkrieg attempt with huge losses and ended after 3.5 months of fierce fighting with a Pyrrhic victory (on the Soviet side, up to 960 thousand people participated in them, and the irretrievable losses of the Red Army amounted to over 131 thousand, and according to Russian military historian Krivosheev, the total sanitary losses amounted to 264 908. That is, the losses of a neutral state, which allegedly did not participate in the outbreak of the world war, many times exceeded the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht in the first two years of World War II.
Many argue that the USSR did not carry out military aggression against Poland in September 1939, but carried out some kind of liberation campaign with the aim of reuniting Belarusians and Ukrainians or even restoring the historical borders of the Russian Empire. But these arguments are without foundation. Firstly, Belarusians and Ukrainians in the territories that are part of Poland did not ask the USSR for such a liberation campaign, moreover, 400 thousand people were repressed in the first two years after the Soviet occupation. Secondly, according to existing international treaties, the invasion of the territory of a foreign state was aggression.
According to Art. 2 of the Convention on the Definition of Aggression, concluded in London on July 3, 1933 by the USSR with other states, aggression is recognized not only as a declaration of war on another state (this case is provided for in paragraph 1 of Article 2), but also an invasion of armed forces, even without a declaration of war , on the territory of another state (paragraph 2 of article 2), an attack by land, sea or air armed forces, even without a declaration of war, on the territory, sea or aircraft of another state (paragraph 3 of article 2). At the same time, according to Art. 3 of the said convention, no considerations of a political, military, economic or other nature can excuse or justify the attack provided for in article two 3. As an example of such "" considerations "" the signatories of the convention, in paragraph three of the Annex to article 3 of the convention called the internal situation of any state, the imaginary shortcomings of its administration.
In a conversation with the chairman of the Comintern, Dimitrov, Stalin declared: “The destruction of this state [Poland] in the current conditions would mean one less bourgeois fascist state! What would be bad if, as a result of the defeat of Poland, we extended the socialist system to new territories and populations. (Diary of G. Dimitrov, entry 09/07/1939).
The attack on Finland led to the fact that in December 1939 the USSR, as a military aggressor, was expelled from the League of Nations. The immediate reason for the expulsion was the mass protests of the international community about the systematic bombing of civilian targets by Soviet aircraft, including with the use of incendiary bombs.
In the period between June 15 and June 20, 1940, the “peace-loving” Soviet Union takes decisive steps and forces the Baltic countries to create pro-Soviet governments by threatening military force, violating previously signed agreements. After suppressing the press, arresting political leaders, and outlawing all parties except the Communists, the Russians staged mock elections on July 14 in all three states. After the "elected" parliaments thus voted for the accession of their countries to the Soviet Union, the Supreme Council (parliament) of Russia accepted them into their fatherland: Lithuania - August 3, Latvia - August 5, Estonia - August 6.
But how did it happen that between the two allies - the Nazis and the Communists in June 1941, a military conflict began, which grew into the so-called Great Patriotic War.
The Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces (OKH), Colonel-General F. Halder, analyzing the situation in 1940 after the war, believed that at that time Hitler believed it was possible to avoid a war with Russia if the latter did not show expansionist aspirations in a western direction. To do this, Hitler "considered it necessary to divert Russian expansion to the Balkans and Turkey, which would certainly lead to a conflict between Russia and Great Britain."
In early 1940, Romania agreed to transfer to the use of the Germans its oil fields in Ploiesti (the only explored fields in Europe at that time) in exchange for political and military protection. On May 23, in the midst of the battle for France, the Romanian General Staff sent an SOS signal to the OKW, informing the Germans that Soviet troops were concentrating near the Romanian border. The next day, Jodl summed up the reaction to this message at Hitler's headquarters: "The situation in the East is becoming threatening because of the concentration of Russian forces near the borders of Bessarabia." However, the USSR, threatening with military aggression, forced Romania to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, and the latter was not included in the circle of areas of Soviet interests agreed with Germany. Under the influence of these steps, a threat was created for the Romanian region of Ploiesti - the only serious source of oil supplies for Germany, which could paralyze the German economy and army.
German Foreign Minister I. Ribbentrop: “On June 23, 1940, a telegram from our ambassador in Moscow arrived in Berlin: the Soviet Union intends to occupy the Romanian province of Bessarabia in the coming days, and they are only going to inform us about it. Adolf Hitler was then amazed by the rapid Russian advance without prior consultation with us. The fact that, at the same time, the predominantly German-populated Northern Bukovina, the ancestral land of the Austrian crown, was subject to occupation, especially stunned Hitler. He took this move by Stalin as a sign of Russian pressure on the West. The large concentration of Soviet troops in Bessarabia aroused serious fears in Adolf Hitler from the point of view of the further conduct of the war against England: under no circumstances could we refuse the Romanian oil that was vital to us. If Russia had advanced further here, we would have found ourselves in the further conduct of the war dependent on the good will of Stalin. During one of our conversations in Munich, he told me that, for his part, he was considering military measures, because he did not want to be taken by surprise by the East.
So let's give another word to the second person in Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels, the imperial minister of public education and propaganda:
06/25/40 Stalin informs Schulenburg that he intends to act against Romania. This again contradicts our agreement.
06/29/40 Romania lost to Moscow. Bessarabia and S. Bukovina will go to Russia. For us, this is by no means pleasant. The Russians are taking advantage of the situation.
5/07/40 Slavism is spreading throughout the Balkans. Russia seizes the moment.
07/11/40 There is some unease in the [German] people about Russia.
07/17/40 Russians continue to gather troops [to Romania]. We are no less. King Carol wants a German military occupation. It doesn't matter when and where. Fear of Moscow.
07/19/40 The Russians have become quite cocky."
And, finally, the Fuhrer of the German people himself, Adolf Hitler (in a conversation with Mussolini on 01/19/41): "Previously, Russia would not have posed any danger to us at all, because it was unable to threaten us. Now, in a century aviation, the Romanian oilfields can be turned into smoking ruins as a result of an air attack from Russia or the Mediterranean region, and yet the very existence of the Axis powers depends on these oilfields "(B. Liddell-Gart." World War II "M. AST 2002).
German Foreign Minister I. Ribbentrop: “...Molotov's visit to Berlin (November 12-13, 1940 - Comp.) did not stand under a lucky star, as I wished. From these conversations with Molotov, Hitler finally got the impression of a serious Russian desire for the West. The next day, Jodl summed up the reaction to this message at Hitler's headquarters: "The situation in the East is becoming threatening because of the concentration of Russian forces near the borders of Bessarabia."
From a speech by Stalin to graduates of military academies in May 1941 “... Our policy of peace and security is at the same time a policy of preparing for war. There is no defense without attack. We must educate the army in the spirit of the offensive. We must prepare for war." (Diary of G. Dimitrov, entry 05/05/1941).
Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov at a meeting of the Main Military Council of the Red Army on June 4, 1941, said: “We have become stronger, we can set more active tasks. The wars with Poland and Finland were not defensive wars. We have already embarked on the path of an offensive policy... There is only one step between peace and war. That is why our propaganda cannot be peaceful... We had an offensive policy before. This policy was determined by Lenin. Now we are only changing the slogan. We have begun to implement Lenin's thesis."
Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union N. G. Kuznetsov (in 1941 - Admiral. People's Commissar of the Navy of the USSR, member of the Central Committee, member of the Headquarters of the High Command from the moment it was created): "For me, one thing is indisputable: J. V. Stalin not only did not rule out the possibility of war with Hitler's Germany, on the contrary, he considered such a war ... inevitable ... J. V. Stalin was preparing for war - broad and versatile preparations - based on the dates he had outlined ... Hitler violated his calculations "(On the eve pp. 321).
A small touch to the big picture. 13-14/05/40. Moscow. Meeting on military ideology. Chief of the General Staff Meretskov speaks: "We can say that our army is preparing for an attack, and we need this attack for defense. Based on political conditions, we must attack, and the Government will tell us what we need to do."
So, after all, Hitler was the "icebreaker" of the world socialist revolution for the communists, who had been arming Germany since the 20s. It was the fighting of the Nazis that gave grounds for the subsequent entry into Western Europe of the red liberators. And you can't get away from it. But he dealt a preemptive blow to Bolshevism, this blow, despite the defeat of Germany and the temporary victory of the Communists, turned out to be fatal for communism in Europe.
See also.
Soviet Union during World War II
World War II was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. It involved 61 states, over 80% of the world's population. For six whole years (from September 1, 1939 to September 2, 1945) the most bloody and destructive war in the history of mankind lasted. She claimed over 50 million lives. The material damage amounted to 316 billion dollars.
Secret negotiations between Germany and the Soviet Union led to the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact on 23 August 1939 in Moscow. The additional secret protocol attached to the Pact delimited the "spheres of interest" of Germany and the USSR in Eastern Europe. According to this protocol, Poland (with the exception of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus) became the German "sphere of interest", and the Baltic states, Eastern Poland, Finland and Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, which were then part of Romania, became the "sphere of interest" of the USSR, i.e. The Soviet Union got the opportunity to return the lost in 1917-1920. territory of the former Russian Empire.
The Second World War began on September 1, 1939 with the attack of fascist Germany on Poland. Poland's allies - England and France - September 3, 1939 declared war on Germany. The US declared its neutrality.
Having overcome the defense, the fascist German troops rushed to the territory of Poland and by September 17, 1939, captured the main regions of the country. More than 100 thousand Polish soldiers and officers were taken prisoner. England and France did nothing real to protect Poland. The USSR, in accordance with the Soviet-German secret protocol, sent its troops into Eastern Poland, which, from September 17 to September 28, 1939, occupied the regions of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. Poland ceased to exist as an independent state. On September 28, 1939, the USSR and Germany signed a new treaty "On Friendship and Borders", according to which the western border of the Soviet Union was established approximately along the "Curzon Line". At the same time, the new secret agreements on borders not only secured the accession to the Soviet Union of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, but also made it possible to conclude agreements "On Mutual Assistance" with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Soviet Union received the right to deploy its troops in the Baltic republics and create naval and air bases on their territories.
On October 12, 1939, the Soviet government offered Finland to move the state border away from Leningrad, providing in return a much larger territory north of Lake Ladoga, to conclude an agreement on mutual assistance, but the Finnish leadership refused this. In response, on November 28, 1939, the USSR unilaterally denounced the non-aggression pact with Finland, concluded in 1932.
On November 26, 1939, the Soviet government announced the shelling of Soviet territory by Finnish artillery and, in an ultimatum, demanded that Finnish troops be withdrawn from the border. After Finland's refusal to comply with this demand, the troops of the Leningrad District were ordered to cross the border and defeat the Finnish troops. On November 30, 1939, the Soviet-Finnish war began.
On November 30, 1939, the troops of the Leningrad Military District, without sufficient preparation, stormed the deeply echeloned defensive Mannerheim Line. In difficult off-road conditions, wooded and swampy terrain, the Red Army suffered heavy losses. For 105 days (from November 30, 1939 to March 12, 1940), she lost 289,510 people, of which 74 thousand were killed and about 200 thousand were wounded and frostbite.
The Finns lost 23 thousand people - killed and missing and about 44 thousand wounded.
The Soviet command, having regrouped and significantly strengthened the troops, launched a new offensive on February 11, 1940, which this time ended with a breakthrough of the fortified areas of the "Mannerheim Line" on the Karelian Isthmus and the retreat of the Finnish troops. The Finnish government agreed to accept the conditions previously offered to it.
On March 12, 1940, a peace treaty was signed in Moscow, according to which the border on the Karelian Isthmus was moved beyond the Vyborg Kexholm line. Part of the Rybachy and Sredny peninsulas was transferred to the Soviet Union, in addition, the Khanko peninsula in the Gulf of Finland was leased for 30 years with the right to create a naval base on it. The distance from Leningrad to the new border increased from 32 to 150 km.
In the spring of 1940, Nazi Germany captured Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Luxembourg. German troops, bypassing the defensive line of France "Mozhino" from the north, entered Paris on June 10, 1940. June 22, 1940 France signed the act of surrender. Its territory was occupied. In the south of France in the city of Vichy, a puppet "government" of Marshal A. Peten was created.
In June 1940, the government of the USSR in an ultimatum demanded from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia consent to the immediate entry of Red Army units into their territory to ensure the safety of the contingent of Soviet troops. The Baltic republics agreed to fulfill these requirements. A few days later, "people's governments" were created there, which soon established Soviet power in the Baltic states, at the request of which the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in August 1940 accepted Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into the Soviet Union. On June 28 - 30, 1940, at the request of the USSR, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, occupied by Romania in 1918, were returned to it. In August 1940, the Moldavian SSR was formed, which included Bessarabia, and Northern Bukovina was included in the Ukrainian SSR. As a result of all the territorial acquisitions mentioned above, the borders of the USSR were pushed westward by 200-300 km, and the country's population increased by 23 million people.
In the meantime, Nazi Germany at the end of 1940 achieved accession to the Triple Alliance of Hungary and Romania, in March 1941 it captured Bulgaria, in April it occupied Yugoslavia and Greece. In preparation for the war, Germany involved Norway and Finland.
Fascist Germany launched a systematic and multilateral preparation for a war against the USSR. The number of armed forces is growing: from 1940 to May 1941. it increased from 3,750 thousand to 7,330 thousand people.
The German General Staff worked out in detail a plan for a lightning war against the USSR - "blitzkrieg", the victory over the USSR was planned in the course of one short-term campaign. On December 18, 1940, Hitler signed the Barbarossa plan, which provided for the lightning defeat of the main forces of the Red Army west of the Dnieper and Zapadnaya Dvina rivers and access to the Arkhangelsk-Volga-Astrakhan line. The war was supposed to be won within 2-3 months.
The growing military threat put the USSR in front of the need to strengthen the Red Army. On September 1, 1939, the Law "On Universal Military Duty" was adopted, which removed class restrictions in military service. Under the new law, the terms of service of privates and sergeants were increased. This made it possible to increase the size of the army and navy from 1.7 million in 1937 to 5 million by June 1941. The growth in the size of the army and navy required an increase in the composition of command personnel. A number of military schools and schools were organized.
In March 1940, a plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was held, which discussed the results of the war with Finland, noted the shortcomings in the preparation of troops for conducting a modern war. The leadership of the Armed Forces was replaced.
Instead of K.E. Voroshilov, S.K. Timoshenko was appointed People's Commissar of Defense, and G.K. Zhukov was appointed Chief of the General Staff. The training of the troops had greatly improved, but there was little time for the full completion of this work.
On September 1, 1939, fascist Germany, dreaming of world domination and revenge for the defeat in the First World War, unleashed hostilities against Poland. Thus began the Second World War - the largest military clash of our century.
On the eve of these events, the USSR and Germany signed non-aggression and friendship treaties. There were also secret protocols that dealt with the division of spheres of influence between the two states, the contents of which became public knowledge only four decades later.
The signed documents promised benefits to both parties. Germany secured its eastern borders and could safely conduct military operations in the West, while the Soviet Union, relatively safely for its western borders, could concentrate its military power in the East.
Having divided spheres of influence in Europe with Germany, the USSR concluded agreements with the Baltic states, on whose territory the Red Army troops were soon introduced. Together with Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Bessarabia, these lands soon became part of the Soviet Union.
As a result of hostilities with Finland, which took place from November 30, 1939 to March 1940, the Karelian Isthmus with the city of Vyborg and the northern coast of Ladoga went to the USSR. The League of Nations, defining these actions as aggression, expelled the Soviet Union from its ranks.
A short military clash with Finland revealed serious miscalculations in the organization of the USSR Armed Forces, in the level of equipment available to them, as well as in the training of command personnel. As a result of mass repressions, many positions among the officers were occupied by specialists who did not have the necessary training.
Measures to strengthen the defense capability of the Soviet state
In March 1939, the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted the fourth five-year plan, which outlined grandiose, difficult-to-implement rates of economic growth. The main attention in the plan was paid to the development of heavy engineering, the defense, metallurgical and chemical industries, the increase in industrial production in the Urals and Siberia. Expenses for the production of weapons and other defense products increased sharply.
An even stricter labor discipline was introduced at industrial enterprises. Being late for work by more than 20 minutes threatened with criminal punishment. A seven-day work week was introduced throughout the country.
The military and political leadership of the country did not do everything possible in the strategic plan. The experience of military operations was insufficiently analyzed, many talented commanders of the highest rank and major military theorists were repressed. In the military environment of I.V. Stalin, the opinion prevailed that the coming war for the USSR would be only offensive in nature, military operations would only take place on foreign soil.
During this period, scientists developed new types of weapons, which were soon to enter the Red Army. However, by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, this process was not completed. Many samples of new equipment and weapons lacked spare parts, and the personnel of the armed forces had not yet mastered the new types of weapons to the proper extent.
The beginning of the Great Patriotic War
In the spring of 1940, the German military command developed a plan for attacking the USSR: the Reich army was supposed to defeat the Red Army with lightning strikes from tank groups in the North (Leningrad-Karelia), in the center (Minsk-Moscow) and in the South (Ukraine-Caucasus-Lower Volga). before the onset of winter.
By the spring of 1941, a military grouping of more than 5.5 million people and a huge amount of military equipment, unprecedented in scale, was pulled up to the western borders of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union knew about the desire of German fascism to start hostilities thanks to intelligence work. During 1940 - early 1941, the country's government received convincing information about the plans of a potential enemy. However, the leadership headed by I. V. Stalin did not take these reports seriously, until the last moment they believed that Germany could not wage war in the west and east at the same time.
Only at about midnight on June 21, 1941, People's Commissar of Defense S.K. Timoshenko and Chief of the General Staff G.K. Zhukov gave the order to bring the troops of the western military districts to full combat readiness. However, the directive came to some military units already at the moment when the bombardment began. Only the Baltic Fleet was put on full combat readiness, meeting the aggressor with a worthy rebuff.
guerrilla war
During the Great Patriotic War, a nationwide partisan struggle unfolded. Gradually, fighters and commanders from the encircled units and formations poured into the partisan detachments. In the spring of 1942, the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement was established in Moscow. With the expansion of offensive operations of the Red Army, joint combat operations of partisans and regular military units were carried out more and more actively.
As a result of the well-executed operation "rail war", partisan formations, incapacitating railways, disrupted the movement of enemy formations, and inflicted significant material damage on the enemy.
By the beginning of 1944, a large number of partisan detachments joined the army formations. The leaders of the partisan detachments S. A. Kovpak, A. F. Fedorov were twice awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Underground groups were active together with the partisans. They organized sabotage, carried out explanatory work among the inhabitants of the occupied regions. Numerous information about the deployment of enemy military formations, thanks to the actions of the underground, became the property of army intelligence.
The heroic work of the rear
Despite the sudden invasion of the enemy, thanks to the clear organization and heroism of millions of citizens of the country, a significant number of industrial enterprises were evacuated to the East in a short time. The main industrial production was concentrated in the Center and in the Urals. There was a victory there.
It took just a few months to not only start producing defense products in new areas, but also to achieve high labor productivity. By 1943, Soviet military production in terms of quantity and quality significantly surpassed the German one. A large-scale serial production of T-34 medium tanks, heavy KV tanks, IL-2 attack aircraft and other military equipment was launched.
These successes were achieved by the selfless labor of workers and peasants, most of whom were women, old people and teenagers.
High was the patriotic spirit of the people who believed in victory.
Liberation of the territory of the USSR and Eastern Europe from fascism (1944-1945)
In January 1944, as a result of the successful operation of the Leningrad, Volkhov and 2nd Baltic fronts, the blockade of Leningrad was lifted. In the winter of 1944, Right-bank Ukraine was liberated by the efforts of three Ukrainian fronts, and by the end of spring, the western border of the USSR was completely restored.
Under such conditions, at the beginning of the summer of 1944, a second front was opened in Europe.
The Headquarters of the Supreme High Command developed a grandiose in scale and tactically successful plan for the complete liberation of Soviet territory and the entry of the Red Army troops into Eastern Europe in order to liberate it from fascist enslavement. This was preceded by one of the major offensive operations - Belorussian, which received the code name "Bagration".
As a result of the offensive, the Soviet Army reached the outskirts of Warsaw and stopped on the right bank of the Vistula. At this time, a popular uprising broke out in Warsaw, brutally suppressed by the Nazis.
In September-October 1944, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia were liberated. The partisan formations of these states took an active part in the hostilities of the Soviet troops, which then formed the basis of their national armed forces.
Fierce battles flared up for the liberation of the lands of Hungary, where there was a large grouping of fascist troops, especially in the area of Lake Balaton. For two months, Soviet troops besieged Budapest, the garrison of which capitulated only in February 1945. Only by mid-April 1945 was the territory of Hungary completely liberated.
Under the sign of the victories of the Soviet Army, from February 4 to 11, a conference of the leaders of the USSR, the USA and England was held in Yalta, at which questions of the post-war reorganization of the world were discussed. Among them, the establishment of the borders of Poland, the recognition of the demands of the USSR for reparations, the question of the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan, the consent of the Allied Powers to the annexation of the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin to the USSR.
April 16 - May 2 - Berlin operation - the last major battle of the Great Patriotic War. It went through several stages:
- the capture of the Seelow Heights;
-fighting on the outskirts of Berlin;
-storming of the central, most fortified part of the city.
On the night of May 9, in the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst, the Act of unconditional surrender of Germany was signed.
July 17 - August 2 - Potsdam Conference of Heads of State - members of the anti-Hitler coalition. The main question is the fate of post-war Germany. Control- was created. ny council - a joint body of the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France for the exercise of supreme power in Germany for the period of its occupation. He paid special attention to the issues of the Polish-German border. Germany was subject to complete demilitarization, and the activities of the Social Nazi Party were prohibited. Stalin confirmed the readiness of the USSR to take part in the war against Japan.
The President of the United States, having received positive results from nuclear weapons tests by the beginning of the conference, began to put pressure on the Soviet Union. Accelerated work on the creation of atomic weapons in the USSR.
On August 6 and 9, the US bombed two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were of no strategic importance. The act was of a warning and threatening nature, primarily for our state.
On the night of August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union began military operations against Japan. Three fronts were formed: the Trans-Baikal and two Far Eastern ones. Together with the Pacific Fleet and the Amur Military Flotilla, the elite Japanese Kwantung Army was defeated and North China, North Korea, South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were liberated.
On September 2, 1945, the Second World War ended with the signing of the Japanese Surrender Act on the USS Missouri.
Results of the Great Patriotic War
Of the 50 million human lives claimed by the Second World War, about 30 million fell to the share of the Soviet Union. Huge and material losses of our state.
All the forces of the country were thrown to achieve victory. Significant economic assistance was provided by countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition.
During the Great Patriotic War, a new galaxy of commanders was born. It was rightfully headed by four times Hero of the Soviet Union, Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, twice awarded the Order of Victory.
Among the famous commanders of the Great Patriotic War, K. K. Rokossovsky, A. M. Vasilevsky, I. S. Konev and other talented military leaders who had to bear responsibility for the wrong strategic decisions made by the political leadership of the country and personally by I. V. Stalin, especially in the first, most difficult period of the Great Patriotic War.
