Tank mysteries of the Great Patriotic War. German soldiers lifted the veil of secrecy over the history of the Great Patriotic War. Secrets of the Second World War 1941 1945

Each soldier had his own path to Victory. Guard Private Sergei Shustov tells readers about what his military path was like.

I was supposed to be drafted in 1940, but I had a deferment. Therefore, he joined the Red Army only in May 1941. From the regional center we were immediately taken to the “new” Polish border to a construction battalion. There were an awful lot of people there. And right before the eyes of the Germans, we all built fortifications and a large airfield for heavy bombers.

It must be said that the “construction battalion” of that time was no match for the current one. We were thoroughly trained in sapper and explosives. Not to mention the fact that shooting took place constantly. As a city guy, I knew the rifle inside and out. Back in school, we shot a heavy combat rifle and knew how to assemble and disassemble it “for a while.” The guys from the village, of course, had it more difficult in this regard.

From the first days in battle

When the war began - and on June 22 at four o'clock in the morning our battalion was already in battle - we were very lucky with our commanders. All of them, from company commander to division commander, fought during the Civil War and did not suffer repression. Apparently, that’s why we retreated competently and didn’t get surrounded. Although they retreated fighting.

By the way, we were well armed: each fighter was literally hung with pouches with cartridges, grenades... Another thing is that from the very border to Kyiv we did not see a single Soviet aircraft in the sky. When we, retreating, passed by our border airfield, it was completely filled with burnt planes. And there we came across only one pilot. To the question: “What happened, why didn’t they take off?!” - he replied: “Yes, we are still without fuel! That’s why half the people went on leave over the weekend.”

First big losses

So we retreated to the old Polish border, where we finally got hooked. Although the guns and machine guns had already been dismantled and the ammunition removed, excellent fortifications remained there - huge concrete pillboxes into which the train could freely enter. For defense then they used all available means.

For example, anti-tank posts were made from tall thick pillars around which hops curled before the war... This place was called Novograd-Volynsky fortified area. And there we detained the Germans for eleven days. At that time this was considered a lot. True, most of our battalion died there.

But we were lucky that we were not in the direction of the main attack: German tank wedges were moving along the roads. And when we had already retreated to Kyiv, we were told that while we were sitting in Novograd-Volynsk, the Germans had bypassed us further south and were already on the outskirts of the capital of Ukraine.

But there was a General Vlasov (the same one - author) who stopped them. Near Kiev, I was surprised: for the first time in our entire service, we were loaded onto cars and driven somewhere. As it turned out, it was urgent to plug the holes in the defense. This was in July, and a little later I was awarded the medal “For the Defense of Kyiv.”

In Kyiv, we built pillboxes and bunkers in the lower and basement floors of houses. We mined everything we could - we had mines in abundance. But we did not fully participate in the defense of the city - we were transferred down the Dnieper. Because they guessed: the Germans could cross the river there.

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From the very border to Kyiv we did not see a single Soviet aircraft in the sky. We met the pilot at the airport. To the question: “Why didn’t they take off?!” - he replied: “Yes, we are still without fuel!”

Timeline of the Great Patriotic War

As soon as I arrived at the unit, I was armed with a Polish carbine - apparently, during the hostilities of 1939, the trophy warehouses were captured. It was our same “three-line” model of 1891, but shortened. And not with an ordinary bayonet, but with a bayonet-knife, similar to a modern one.

The accuracy and range of this carbine was almost the same, but it was much lighter than its “ancestor”. The bayonet-knife was generally suitable for all occasions: it could be used to cut bread, people, and cans. And during construction work it is generally indispensable.

Already in Kyiv I was given a brand new 10-round SVT rifle. At first I was happy: five or ten rounds in a clip - that means a lot in battle. But I fired it a couple of times and my clip jammed. Moreover, the bullets flew anywhere but to the target. So I went to the foreman and said: “Give me back my carbine.”

From near Kyiv we were transferred to the city of Kremenchug, which was completely on fire. We set a task: to dig a command post in a coastal cliff overnight, camouflage it and provide communications there. We did this, and suddenly there was an order: straight off-road, through a corn field - to retreat.

Through Poltava to Kharkov

We went, and the entire - already replenished - battalion went to some station. We were loaded onto a train and driven inland from the Dnieper. And suddenly we heard an incredible cannonade to the north of us. The sky is on fire, all the enemy planes are flying there, but there is zero attention to us.

So in September the Germans broke through the front and went on the attack. But it turns out that we were taken out on time again, and we didn’t get surrounded. We were transferred through Poltava to Kharkov.

Before reaching it 75 kilometers, we saw what was happening above the city: anti-aircraft fire “lined” the entire horizon. In this city, for the first time, we came under heavy bombing: women and children rushed about and died before our eyes.

There we were introduced to engineer-Colonel Starinov, who was considered one of the main specialists in the Red Army in laying mines. Later, after the war, I corresponded with him. I managed to congratulate him on his centenary and receive an answer. And a week later he died...

From the wooded area north of Kharkov we were thrown into one of the first serious counter-offensives in that war. There were heavy rains, which was to our advantage: aircraft could rarely take off. And when it rose, the Germans dropped bombs anywhere: visibility was almost zero.

Offensive near Kharkov - 1942

Near Kharkov, I saw a terrible picture. Several hundred German cars and tanks were stuck tightly in the soggy black soil. The Germans simply had nowhere to go. And when they ran out of ammunition, our cavalry cut them down. Every single one of them.

On October 5 the frost had already hit. And we were all in summer uniform. And they had to turn their caps inside their ears - that’s how they later portrayed prisoners.

Less than half of our battalion was left again - we were sent to the rear for reorganization. And we walked from Ukraine to Saratov, where we arrived on New Year’s Eve.

Then, in general, there was a “tradition”: from the front to the rear they moved exclusively on foot, and back to the front - in trains and in cars. By the way, we almost never saw the legendary “one and a half” at the front: the main army vehicle was the ZIS-5.

We were reorganized near Saratov and in February 1942 we were transferred to Voronezh region- no longer as a construction battalion, but as a sapper battalion.

First wound

And we again took part in the offensive on Kharkov - that infamous one, when our troops fell into a cauldron. However, we were missed again.

I was then wounded in the hospital. And a soldier came running to me right there and said: “Get dressed urgently and run to the unit - the commander’s order! We are leaving". And so I went. Because we were all terribly afraid of falling behind our unit: everything was familiar there, everyone was friends. And if you fall behind, God knows where you’ll end up.

In addition, German planes often targeted red crosses specifically. And in the forest there was even more chance of survival.

It turned out that the Germans had broken through the front with tanks. We were given an order: to mine all bridges. And if they show up German tanks, - explode immediately. Even if our troops did not have time to retreat. That is, leaving your own people surrounded.

Crossing the Don

On July 10, we approached the village of Veshenskaya, took up defensive positions on the shore and received a strict order: “Don’t let the Germans cross the Don!” And we haven't seen them yet. Then we realized that they weren’t following us. And they scampered across the steppe at great speed in a completely different direction.

However, a real nightmare reigned at the crossing of the Don: she physically could not let all the troops through. And then, as if ordered, German troops arrived and destroyed the crossing on the first pass.

We had hundreds of boats, but they were not enough. What to do? Cross with available means. The forest there was all thin and not suitable for rafts. Therefore, we began to break down gates in houses and make rafts from them.

A cable was stretched across the river, and improvised ferries were built along it. Another thing that struck me was this. The entire river was strewn with caught fish. And local Cossack women caught this fish under bombing and shelling. Although, it would seem, you need to hide in the cellar and not show your nose from there.

In Sholokhov's homeland

There, in Veshenskaya, we saw Sholokhov’s bombed house. They asked the locals: “Is he dead?” They answered us: “No, just before the bombing he loaded the car with children and took them to the farm. But his mother remained and died.”

Then many wrote that the entire yard was strewn with manuscripts. But personally, I didn’t notice any papers.

As soon as we crossed, they took us into the woods and began to prepare us... back for the crossing to the other side. We say: “Why?!” The commanders replied: “We will attack in another place.” And they also received an order: if the Germans were crossing over for reconnaissance, do not shoot at them - only cut them, so as not to make a noise.

There we met guys from a familiar unit and were surprised: hundreds of fighters had the same order. It turned out that it was a guards badge: they were one of the first to receive such badges.

Then we crossed between Veshenskaya and the city of Serafimovich and occupied a bridgehead, which the Germans could not take until November 19, when our offensive near Stalingrad began from there. Many troops, including tanks, were transported to this bridgehead.

Moreover, the tanks were very different: from brand new “thirty-fours” to ancient, unknown how surviving “machine gun” vehicles produced in the thirties.

By the way, I saw the first “thirty-four”, it seems, already on the second day of the war, and then I first heard the name “Rokossovsky”.

There were several dozen cars parked in the forest. The tankers were all perfect: young, cheerful, perfectly equipped. And we all immediately believed: they’re about to go crazy and that’s it, we’ll defeat the Germans.

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A real nightmare reigned at the crossing of the Don: she physically could not let all the troops through. And then, as if ordered, German troops arrived and destroyed the crossing on the first pass.

Hunger is not a thing

Then we were loaded onto barges and taken along the Don. We had to eat somehow, so we started lighting fires on the barges and boiling potatoes. The boatswain ran and shouted, but we didn’t care - we wouldn’t die of hunger. And the chance of burning from a German bomb was much greater than from a fire.

Then the food ran out, the soldiers began to board boats and sail away for provisions to the villages we were sailing past. The commander again ran with a revolver, but could not do anything: hunger was no problem.

And so we sailed all the way to Saratov. There we were placed in the middle of the river and surrounded by barriers. True, they brought packed rations for the past time and all our “fugitives” back. After all, they were not stupid - they understood that the matter smelled of desertion - an execution case. And, having “fed up” a little, they showed up at the nearest military registration and enlistment office: they say, I fell behind the unit, I ask you to return it back.

New life of Karl Marx's Capital

And then a real flea market formed on our barges. They made pots out of tin cans and exchanged, as they say, “sewn for soap.” And Karl Marx’s “Capital” was considered the greatest value - its good paper was used for cigarettes. I have never seen such popularity of this book before or since...

The main difficulty in the summer was to dig in - this virgin soil could only be taken with a pickaxe. It’s good if you managed to dig a trench at least half its height.

One day a tank passed through my trench, and I was just thinking: will it hit my helmet or not? Didn't hit...

I also remember back then that the German tanks didn’t “take” our anti-tank rifles at all - only sparks sparkled across the armor. That’s how I fought in my unit, and I didn’t think that I would leave it, but...

Fate decreed differently

Then I was sent to study to become a radio operator. The selection was strict: those who did not have an ear for music were rejected immediately.

The commander said: “Well, to hell with them, these walkie-talkies! The Germans spot them and hit us directly.” So I had to pick up a spool of wire and off I went! And the wire there was not twisted, but solid, steel. By the time you twist it once, you’ll rip off all your fingers! I immediately have a question: how to cut it, how to clean it? And they say to me: “You have a carbine. Open and lower the aiming frame - that's how you cut it. It’s up to her to clean it up.”

We were dressed in winter uniform, but I didn’t get felt boots. And how ferocious she was - a lot has been written.

There were Uzbeks among us who literally froze to death. I froze my fingers without felt boots, and then they amputated them without any anesthesia. Although I kicked my feet all the time, it didn’t help. On January 14, I was wounded again, and that was the end of my Battle of Stalingrad...

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Karl Marx's "Capital" was considered the greatest value - its good paper was used for cigarettes. I have never seen such popularity of this book before or since.

Awards have found a hero

The reluctance to go to the hospital came back to haunt many front-line soldiers after the war. No documents have been preserved about their injuries, and even getting disability was a big problem.

We had to collect testimonies from fellow soldiers, who were then checked through the military registration and enlistment offices: “Did Private Ivanov serve at that time together with Private Petrov?”

For his military work, Sergei Vasilyevich Shustov was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Patriotic War of the first degree, medals “For the Defense of Kyiv”, “For the Defense of Stalingrad” and many others.

But he considers one of the most expensive awards to be the “Front-line Soldier” badge, which began to be issued recently. Although, as the former “Stalingrader” thinks, now these badges are issued to “everyone who is not too lazy.”

DKREMLEVRU

Incredible incidents in war

Despite all the horrors of the war, the most memorable episode in his epic was the incident when there was no bombing or shooting. Sergei Vasilyevich talks about him carefully, looking into his eyes and, apparently, suspecting that they still won’t believe him.

But I believed it. Although this story is both strange and scary.

— I already told you about Novograd-Volynsky. It was there that we fought terrible battles, and most of our battalion died there. Somehow, during breaks between battles, we found ourselves in a small village near Novograd-Volynsky. The Ukrainian village is just a few huts, on the banks of the Sluch River.

We spent the night in one of the houses. The owner lived there with her son. He was ten or eleven years old. Such a skinny, always dirty boy. He kept asking the soldiers to give him a rifle and shoot.

We only lived there for two days. On the second night we were awakened by some noise. Anxiety is a common thing for soldiers, so everyone woke up at once. There were four of us.

A woman with a candle stood in the middle of the hut and cried. We were alarmed and asked what happened? It turned out that her son was missing. We calmed the mother down as best we could, said that we would help, got dressed and went out to look.

It was already dawn. We walked through the village, shouting: “Petya...” - that was the boy’s name, but he was nowhere to be found. We returned back.

The woman was sitting on a bench near the house. We approached, lit a cigarette, and said that there was no need to worry or worry yet, it was unknown where this urchin could have run away.

When I was lighting a cigarette, I turned away from the wind and noticed an open hole in the back of the yard. It was a well. But the log house disappeared somewhere, most likely, it was used for firewood, and the boards that covered the hole were moved.

With a bad feeling, I approached the well. I looked in. The body of a boy was floating at a depth of about five meters.

Why he went into the yard at night, what he needed near the well, is unknown. Maybe he took out some ammunition and went to bury it to keep his childhood secret.

While we were thinking about how to get the body, while we were looking for a rope, we tied it around the lightest of us, while we were raising the body, at least two hours passed. The boy's body was twisted and stiff, and it was very difficult to straighten his arms and legs.

The water in the well was very cold. The boy had been dead for several hours. I saw many, many corpses and I had no doubt. We brought him into the room. Neighbors came and said that everything would be prepared for the funeral.

In the evening, the grief-stricken mother sat next to the coffin, which a neighbor carpenter had already managed to make. At night, when we went to bed, behind the screen I saw her silhouette near the coffin, trembling against the backdrop of a flickering candle.

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Despite all the horrors of the war, the most memorable episode in my epic was the incident when there was no bombing or shooting

Scary unexplained facts

Later I woke up to whispers. Two people spoke. One voice was female and belonged to the mother, the other was childish, boyish. I don't know Ukrainian language, but the meaning was still clear.
The boy said:
“I’ll leave now, they shouldn’t see me, and then, when everyone has left, I’ll come back.”
- When? - Female voice.
- The day after tomorrow night.
-Are you really coming?
- I’ll come, definitely.
I thought that one of the boy’s friends had visited the hostess. I got up. They heard me and the voices died down. I walked over and pulled back the curtain. There were no strangers there. The mother was still sitting, the candle was dimly burning, and the child’s body lay in the coffin.

Only for some reason it was lying on its side, and not on its back, as it should be. I stood there in a daze and couldn’t figure anything out. Some kind of sticky fear seemed to envelop me like a cobweb.

I, who walked under it every day, could die every minute, who tomorrow would again have to repel the attacks of an enemy who was several times superior to us. I looked at the woman, she turned to me.
“You were talking to someone,” I heard my voice hoarse, as if I had just smoked a whole pack of cigarettes.
- I... - She somehow awkwardly ran her hand over her face... - Yes... With herself... I imagined that Petya was still alive...
I stood there a little longer, turned around and went to bed. All night I listened to sounds behind the curtain, but everything was quiet there. In the morning, fatigue finally took its toll and I fell asleep.

In the morning there was an urgent formation, we were again sent to the front line. I came in to say goodbye. The hostess was still sitting on the stool... in front of the empty coffin. I again experienced horror, I even forgot that there was a battle in a few hours.
-Where is Petya?
- Relatives from a neighboring village took him at night, they are closer to the cemetery, we will bury him there.

I didn’t hear any relatives at night, although maybe I just didn’t wake up. But why didn’t they take the coffin then? They called me from the street. I put my arm around her shoulders and left the hut.

What happened next, I don’t know. We never returned to this village. But the more time passes, the more often I remember this story. After all, I didn’t dream it. And then I recognized Petya’s voice. His mother couldn't imitate him like that.

What was it then? Until now, I have never told anyone anything. Why, it doesn’t matter, either they won’t believe it or they’ll decide that in his old age he’s gone crazy.

He finished the story. I looked at him. What could I say, I just shrugged my shoulders... We sat for a long time, drinking tea, he refused alcohol, although I suggested going for vodka. Then they said goodbye and I went home. It was already night, the lanterns were dimly shining, and the reflections of the headlights of passing cars flashed in the puddles.

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With a bad feeling, I approached the well. I looked in. A boy's body was floating at a depth of about five meters.

Victory Day was not celebrated in the Soviet Union for 17 years. Since 1948, for a long time, this “most important” holiday today was not actually celebrated and was a working day (instead, January 1 was made a day off, which had not been a day off since 1930). It was first widely celebrated in the USSR only almost two decades later - in the anniversary year of 1965. At the same time, Victory Day again became a non-working day. Some historians attribute the cancellation of the holiday to the fact that the Soviet government was pretty afraid of independent and active veterans. Officially, it was ordered: to forget about the war, to devote all efforts to restoring the national economy destroyed by the war.

80 thousand Soviet officers during the Great Patriotic War were women.

In general, at the front in different periods, from 600 thousand to 1 million representatives of the fairer sex fought with weapons in their hands. For the first time in world history, women's military formations appeared in the Armed Forces of the USSR. In particular, 3 aviation regiments were formed from female volunteers: the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment (the Germans called the warriors from this unit “night witches”), the 125th Guards Bomber Regiment, the 586th fighter regiment Air defense. A separate women's volunteer rifle brigade and a separate women's reserve rifle regiment were also created. Women snipers were trained by the Central Women's Sniper School. In addition, a separate female company of sailors was created. It is worth noting that the weaker sex fought quite successfully. Thus, 87 women received the title “Hero of the Soviet Union” during the Great Patriotic War. History has never known such massive participation of women in the armed struggle for the Motherland as was shown soviet women during the Great Patriotic War. Having achieved enrollment in the ranks of the soldiers of the Red Army, women and girls mastered almost all military specialties and, together with their husbands, fathers and brothers, carried military service in all branches of the Soviet Armed Forces.

Hitler viewed his attack on the USSR as " Crusade", which should be carried out using terrorist methods. Already on May 13, 1941, he freed military personnel from any responsibility for their actions during the implementation of the Barbarossa plan: "No actions of Wehrmacht employees or persons acting with them in the event of hostile actions by civilians against to them, are not subject to suppression and cannot be considered as misdemeanors or war crimes...”

During World War II, over 60 thousand dogs served on various fronts. Four-legged saboteurs derailed dozens of enemy trains. More than 300 enemy armored vehicles were destroyed by tank destroyer dogs. Signal dogs delivered about 200 thousand combat reports. On ambulance sleds, four-legged assistants carried about 700 thousand seriously wounded Red Army soldiers and commanders from the battlefield. With the help of sapper dogs, 303 cities were cleared of mines and settlements(including Kyiv, Kharkov, Lvov, Odessa), an area of ​​15,153 square kilometers was surveyed. At the same time, over four million units of enemy mines and landmines were discovered and neutralized.

During the first 30 days of the war, the Moscow Kremlin “disappeared” from the face of Moscow. Probably the fascist aces were quite surprised that their maps were lying, and they could not detect the Kremlin while flying over Moscow. The thing is that, according to the camouflage plan, the stars on the towers and the crosses on the cathedrals were covered, and the domes of the cathedrals were painted black. Three-dimensional models of residential buildings were built along the entire perimeter of the Kremlin wall; the battlements were not visible behind them. Parts of Red and Manezhnaya Squares and the Alexander Garden were filled with plywood decorations of houses. The mausoleum became three-story, and from the Borovitsky Gate to the Spassky Gate a sandy road was built to resemble a highway. If earlier the light yellow facades of the Kremlin buildings were distinguished by their brightness, now they have become “like everyone else” - dirty gray, the roofs also had to change their color from green to the general Moscow red-brown. Never before has the palace ensemble looked so democratic.

During the Great Patriotic War, V.I. Lenin’s body was evacuated to Tyumen.

According to the description of the feat of Red Army soldier Dmitry Ovcharenko from the decree awarding him the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, on July 13, 1941, he was delivering ammunition to his company and was surrounded by a detachment of enemy soldiers and officers numbering 50 people. Despite the fact that his rifle was taken away, Ovcharenko did not lose his head and, grabbing an ax from the cart, cut off the head of the officer who was interrogating him. He then threw three grenades at the German soldiers, killing 21 people. The rest fled in panic, except for another officer, whom the Red Army soldier caught up with and also cut off his head.

Hitler considered his main enemy in the USSR not Stalin, but the announcer Yuri Levitan. He announced a reward of 250 thousand marks for his head. The Soviet authorities carefully guarded Levitan, and disinformation about his appearance was launched through the press.

At the beginning of the Second World War, the USSR experienced a great shortage of tanks, and therefore it was decided to convert ordinary tractors into tanks in emergency cases. Thus, during the defense of Odessa from the Romanian units besieging the city, 20 similar “tanks” lined with sheets of armor were thrown into battle. The main emphasis was placed on the psychological effect: the attack was carried out at night with the headlights and sirens on, and the Romanians fled. For such cases and also because dummies of heavy guns were often installed on these vehicles, the soldiers nicknamed them NI-1, which stands for “For Fright.”

Stalin's son Yakov Dzhugashvili was captured during the war. The Germans offered Stalin to exchange Yakov for Field Marshal Paulus, captured by the Russians. Stalin said that a soldier cannot be exchanged for a field marshal, and he refused such an exchange.
Yakov was shot shortly before the Russians arrived. His family was exiled after the war as a prisoner of war. When Stalin was informed about this exile, he said that tens of thousands of families of prisoners of war were being deported and he could not make any exception for the family of his own son - there was a law.

5 million 270 thousand soldiers of the Red Army were captured by the Germans. Their content, as historians note, was simply unbearable. Statistics also testify to this: less than two million soldiers returned to their homeland from captivity. In Poland alone, according to Polish authorities, more than 850 thousand Soviet prisoners of war who died in Nazi camps are buried.
The main argument for such behavior on the part of the German side was the refusal of the Soviet Union to sign the Hague and Geneva conventions on prisoners of war. This, according to the German authorities, allowed Germany, which had previously signed both agreements, not to regulate the conditions of detention of Soviet prisoners of war with these documents. However, in fact, the Geneva Convention regulated the humane treatment of prisoners of war, regardless of whether their countries signed the convention or not.
The Soviet attitude towards German prisoners of war was radically different. In general, they were treated much more humanely. Even according to the standards, it is impossible to compare the calorie content of the food of captured Germans (2533 kcal) versus captured Red Army soldiers (894.5 kcal). As a result, out of almost 2 million 400 thousand Wehrmacht fighters, just over 350 thousand people did not return home.

During the Great Patriotic War, in 1942, the peasant Matvey Kuzmin, the oldest holder of this title (he accomplished the feat at the age of 83), repeated the feat of another peasant - Ivan Susanin, who in the winter of 1613 led a detachment of Polish interventionists into an impenetrable forest swamp.
In Kurakino, the home village of Matvey Kuzmin, a battalion of the German 1st Mountain Rifle Division (the well-known “Edelweiss”) was quartered, which in February 1942 was tasked with making a breakthrough, going to the rear of the Soviet troops in the planned counter-offensive in the Malkin Heights area. The battalion commander demanded that Kuzmin act as a guide, promising money, flour, kerosene, as well as a Sauer “Three Rings” hunting rifle for this. Kuzmin agreed. Having warned the military unit of the Red Army through his 11-year-old grandson Sergei Kuzmin, Matvey Kuzmin led the Germans for a long time along a roundabout road and finally led the enemy detachment to an ambush in the village of Malkino under machine-gun fire from Soviet soldiers. The German detachment was destroyed, but Kuzmin himself was killed by the German commander.

Only 30 minutes were allocated by the Wehrmacht command to suppress the resistance of the border guards. However, the 13th outpost under the command of A. Lopatin fought for more than 10 days and the Brest Fortress for more than a month. The first counterattack was carried out by border guards and units of the Red Army on June 23. They liberated the city of Przemysl, and two groups of border guards broke into Zasanje (Polish territory occupied by Germany), where they destroyed the headquarters of the German division and the Gestapo, and freed many prisoners.

At 4:25 a.m. on June 22, 1941, pilot Senior Lieutenant I. Ivanov carried out an aerial ramming attack. This was the first feat during the war; awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Lieutenant Dmitry Lavrinenko from the 4th Tank Brigade is rightfully considered the number one tank ace. During three months of fighting in September-November 1941, he destroyed 52 enemy tanks in 28 battles. Unfortunately, the brave tankman died in November 1941 near Moscow.

It was only in 1993 that official figures for Soviet casualties and losses in tanks and aircraft during the Battle of Kursk were published. "German casualties on the entire Eastern Front, according to information provided to the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW), in July and August 1943 amounted to 68,800 killed, 34,800 missing and 434,000 wounded and sick. German losses on Kursk arc can be estimated at 2/3 of the losses on the Eastern Front, since during this period fierce battles also took place in the Donetsk basin, in the Smolensk region and in the northern sector of the front (in the Mgi region).Thus, German losses in Battle of Kursk can be estimated at approximately 360,000 killed, missing, wounded and sick. Soviet losses exceeded German ones in a ratio of 7:1,” writes researcher B.V. Sokolov in his article “The Truth about the Great Patriotic War.”

At the height of the battles on the Kursk Bulge on July 7, 1943, machine gunner of the 1019th regiment, senior sergeant Yakov Studennikov, alone (the rest of his crew died) fought for two days. Having been wounded, he managed to repel 10 Nazi attacks and destroyed more than 300 Nazis. For his accomplished feat, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

About the feat of the soldiers of the 316th SD. (divisional commander, Major General I. Panfilov) at the well-known Dubosekovo crossing on November 16, 1941, 28 tank destroyers met the attack of 50 tanks, of which 18 were destroyed. Hundreds of enemy soldiers met their end at Dubosekovo. But few people know about the feat of the soldiers of the 1378th regiment of the 87th division. On December 17, 1942, in the area of ​​the village of Verkhne-Kumskoye, soldiers from the company of senior lieutenant Nikolai Naumov with two crews of anti-tank rifles, while defending a height of 1372 m, repelled 3 attacks by enemy tanks and infantry. The next day there were several more attacks. All 24 soldiers died defending the heights, but the enemy lost 18 tanks and hundreds of infantrymen.

During the battles near Lake Khasan, Japanese soldiers generously showered our tanks with ordinary bullets, hoping to penetrate them. The fact is that Japanese soldiers were assured that tanks in the USSR were made of plywood! As a result, our tanks returned from the battlefield shiny - to such an extent they were covered with a layer of lead from bullets that melted when they hit the armor. However, this did not cause any harm to the armor.

In the Great Patriotic War, our troops included the 28th Reserve Army, in which camels were the draft force for the guns. It was formed in Astrakhan during the battles of Stalingrad: a shortage of cars and horses forced wild camels to be caught in the vicinity and tamed. Most of the 350 animals died on the battlefield in various battles, and the survivors were gradually transferred to economic units and “demobilized” to zoos. One of the camels named Yashka reached Berlin with the soldiers.

In 1941-1944, the Nazis exported thousands of small children of “Nordic appearance” aged from two months to six years from the USSR and Poland. They ended up in the nursery concentration camp“Kinder CC” in Lodz, where their “racial value” was determined. Children who passed the selection were subjected to “initial Germanization.” They were given new names, falsified documents, forced to speak German, and then sent to Lebensborn orphanages for adoption. Not all German families knew that the children they adopted were not of “Aryan blood” at all. Pafter the war, only 2-3% of the abducted children returned to their homeland, the rest grew up and grew old, considering themselves Germans. They and their descendants they do not know the truth about their origin and, most likely, will never know.

During the Great Patriotic War, five schoolchildren under the age of 16 received the title of Hero: Sasha Chekalin and Lenya Golikov - at 15 years old, Valya Kotik, Marat Kazei and Zina Portnova - at 14 years old.

In the battle of Stalingrad on September 1, 1943, machine gunner Sergeant Khanpasha Nuradilov destroyed 920 fascists.

In August 1942, Hitler ordered “no stone left unturned” in Stalingrad. Happened. Six months later, when everything was already over, the Soviet government raised the question of the inexpediency of rebuilding the city, which would cost more than building a new city. However, Stalin insisted on rebuilding Stalingrad literally from the ashes. Thus, so many shells were dropped on Mamayev Kurgan that after the liberation, grass did not grow on it for 2 whole years. In Stalingrad, both the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, for an unknown reason, changed their methods of warfare. From the very beginning of the war, the Red Army used flexible defense tactics with withdrawals in critical situations. The Wehrmacht command, in turn, avoided large, bloody battles, preferring to bypass large fortified areas. In the Battle of Stalingrad, both sides forget about their principles and embark on a bloody battle. The beginning was made on August 23, 1942, when German aircraft carried out a massive bombing of the city. 40,000 people died. This exceeds the official figures for the Allied air raid on Dresden in February 1945 (25,000 casualties).
During the battle, the Soviet side used revolutionary innovations of psychological pressure on the enemy. Thus, from the loudspeakers installed at the front line, favorite hits of German music were heard, which were interrupted by messages about the victories of the Red Army in the areas Stalingrad Front. But the most effective means was the monotonous beat of the metronome, which was interrupted after 7 beats by a commentary on German: “Every 7 seconds one German soldier dies at the front.” At the end of a series of 10-20 “timer reports,” a tango sounded from the loudspeakers.

In many countries, including France, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy and several other countries named Battle of Stalingrad streets, squares and squares were named. Only in Paris is the name “Stalingrad” given to a square, a boulevard and one of the metro stations. In Lyon there is the so-called “Stalingrad” bracant, where the third largest antique market in Europe is located. Also, the central street of the city of Bologna (Italy) is named in honor of Stalingrad.

The original Victory Banner rests as a sacred relic in the Central Museum of the Armed Forces. It is prohibited to store it in a vertical position: the satin from which the flag is made is fragile. Therefore, the banner is laid horizontally and covered with special paper. Nine nails were even pulled out of the shaft, with which the panel was nailed to it in May 1945. Their heads began to rust and damage the fabric. Recently, the original Victory Banner was shown only at a recent congress of Russian museum workers. We even had to call an honor guard from the Presidential Regiment, explains Arkady Nikolaevich Dementyev. In all other cases, there is a duplicate, which repeats the original Victory Banner with absolute accuracy. It is displayed in a glass showcase and has long been perceived as a real Victory Banner. And even the copy is aging just like the historical heroic banner erected 64 years ago over the Reichstag.

Within 10 years after Victory Day Soviet Union was formally at war with Germany. It turned out that, having accepted the surrender of the German command, the Soviet Union decided not to sign peace with Germany, and thus

In fact, all Soviet historiography about the war of 1941-1945 is part of Soviet propaganda. It was so often mythologized and changed that the real facts about the war began to be perceived as a threat to the existing system.

The saddest thing is that today's Russia has inherited this approach to history. The authorities prefer to present the history of the Great Patriotic War as it is beneficial to them.

Here are 10 facts about the Great Patriotic War that are not beneficial to anyone. Because these are just facts.

1. The fate of 2 million people who died in this war is still unknown. It is incorrect to compare, but to understand the situation: in the United States the fate of no more than a dozen people is unknown.

Most recently, through the efforts of the Ministry of Defense, the Memorial website was launched, thanks to which information about those who died or went missing has now become publicly available.

However, the state spends billions on “patriotic education”, Russians wear ribbons, every second car on the street goes “to Berlin”, the authorities are fighting “counterfeiters”, etc. And, against this background, there are two million fighters whose fate is unknown.

2. Stalin really did not want to believe that Germany would attack the USSR on June 22. There were many reports on this matter, but Stalin ignored them.

A document has been declassified - a report to Joseph Stalin, which was sent to him by the People's Commissar of State Security Vsevolod Merkulov. The People's Commissar named the date, citing a message from an informant - our agent at Luftwaffe headquarters. And Stalin himself imposes a resolution: “You can send your source to your *** mother. This is not a source, but a disinformer.”

3. For Stalin, the start of the war was a disaster. And when Minsk fell on June 28, he fell into complete prostration. This is documented. Stalin even thought that he would be arrested in the first days of the war.

There is a log of visitors to Stalin’s Kremlin office, where it is noted that the leader is not in the Kremlin for a day, and not for the second, that is, June 28. Stalin, as it became known from the memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Anastas Mikoyan, as well as the manager of the Council of People's Commissars Chadayev (later the State Defense Committee), was at the “nearby dacha,” but it was impossible to contact him.

And then his closest associates - Klim Voroshilov, Malenkov, Bulganin - decide to take a completely extraordinary step: to go to the “nearby dacha”, which was absolutely impossible to do without calling the “owner”. They found Stalin pale, depressed and heard wonderful words from him: “Lenin left us great power, and we screwed it up.” He thought they had come to arrest him. When he realized that he was called to lead the fight, he perked up. And the next day it was created State Committee defense

4. But there were also opposite moments. In October 1941, which was terrible for Moscow, Stalin remained in Moscow and behaved courageously.

Speech by I.V. Stalin at the parade Soviet army on Red Square in Moscow on November 7, 1941.

October 16, 1941 - on the day of panic in Moscow, all barrage detachments were removed, and Muscovites left the city on foot. Ashes flew through the streets: secret documents and departmental archives were burned.

The People's Commissariat of Education hastily burned even Nadezhda Krupskaya's archive. At the Kazansky station there was a train under steam for the evacuation of the government to Samara (then Kuibyshev). But

5. In the famous toast “to the Russian people,” said in 1945 at a reception on the occasion of the Victory, Stalin also said: “Some other people could say: you did not live up to our hopes, we will install another government, but the Russian people will not accept this.” did not go".

Painting by Mikhail Khmelko. "For the great Russian people." 1947

6. Sexual violence in defeated Germany.

Historian Antony Beevor, while researching for his 2002 book Berlin: The Fall, found reports in the Russian state archives of an epidemic of sexual violence in Germany. These reports were sent by NKVD officers to Lavrentiy Beria at the end of 1944.

“They were passed on to Stalin,” says Beevor. - You can see by the marks whether they were read or not. They report mass rapes in East Prussia and how German women tried to kill themselves and their children to avoid this fate.”

And rape was not just a problem for the Red Army. Bob Lilly, a historian at Northern Kentucky University, was able to gain access to US military court records.

His book (Taken by Force) caused so much controversy that at first no American publisher dared to publish it, and the first edition appeared in France. Lilly estimates that about 14,000 rapes were committed by American soldiers in England, France and Germany from 1942 to 1945.

What was real scale rape? The most often cited figures are 100 thousand women in Berlin and two million throughout Germany. These figures, hotly disputed, were extrapolated from the scant medical records that survive to this day. ()

7. The war for the USSR began with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939.

The Soviet Union de facto took part in World War II from September 17, 1939, and not from June 22, 1941. Moreover, in alliance with the Third Reich. And this pact is a strategic mistake, if not a crime, of the Soviet leadership and Comrade Stalin personally.

In accordance with the secret protocol to the non-aggression pact between the Third Reich and the USSR (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), after the outbreak of World War II, the USSR invaded Poland on September 17, 1939. On September 22, 1939, a joint parade of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army was held in Brest, dedicated to the signing of an agreement on the demarcation line.

Also in 1939-1940, according to the same Pact, the Baltic states and other territories in present-day Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus were occupied. Among other things, this led to a common border between the USSR and Germany, which allowed the Germans to carry out a “surprise attack.”

By fulfilling the agreement, the USSR strengthened the army of its enemy. Having created an army, Germany began to conquer European countries, increasing its power, including new military factories. And most importantly: by June 22, 1941, the Germans had gained combat experience. The Red Army learned to fight as the war progressed and finally got used to it only towards the end of 1942 - beginning of 1943.

8. In the first months of the war, the Red Army did not retreat, but fled in panic.

By September 1941, the number of soldiers trapped in German captivity, equaled the entire pre-war regular army. MILLIONS of rifles were reportedly abandoned in the flight.

Retreat is a maneuver without which there can be no war. But our troops fled. Not all, of course, there were those who fought to the last. And there were a lot of them. But the pace of the German advance was staggering.

9. Many “heroes” of the war were invented by Soviet propaganda. So, for example, there were no Panfilov heroes.

The memory of 28 Panfilov men was immortalized by the installation of a monument in the village of Nelidovo, Moscow region.

The feat of 28 Panfilov guardsmen and the words “Russia is great, but there is nowhere to retreat - Moscow is behind » was attributed to the political instructor by employees of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, in which the essay “About 28 Fallen Heroes” was published on January 22, 1942.

“The feat of the 28 Panfilov guardsmen, covered in the press, is the invention of the correspondent Koroteev, the editor of the Red Star Ortenberg, and especially the literary secretary of the newspaper Krivitsky. This fiction was repeated in the works of writers N. Tikhonov, V. Stavsky, A. Bek, N. Kuznetsov, V. Lipko, Svetlov and others and was widely popularized among the population of the Soviet Union.”

Photo of the monument in honor of the feat of the Panfilov guards in Alma-Ata.

This is information from a certificate-report, which was prepared based on the investigation materials and signed on May 10, 1948 by the chief military prosecutor of the USSR armed forces, Nikolai Afanasyev. The authorities launched a whole investigation into the “feat of Panfilov’s men,” because already in 1942, fighters from the same 28 Panfilov men who were on the list of those buried began to appear among the living.

10. Stalin in 1947 canceled the celebration (day off) of Victory Day on May 9. Until 1965, this day was a regular working day in the USSR.

Joseph Stalin and his comrades knew very well who won this war - the people. And this surge of popular activity frightened them. Many, especially front-line soldiers, who lived for four years in constant proximity to death, stopped, tired of being afraid. In addition, the war violated the complete self-isolation of the Stalinist state.

Many hundreds of thousands Soviet people(soldiers, prisoners, “Ostarbeiters”) visited abroad, having the opportunity to compare life in the USSR and in Europe and draw conclusions. It was a deep shock for the collective farmer soldiers to see how Bulgarian or Romanian (not to mention German or Austrian) peasants lived.

Orthodoxy, which had been destroyed before the war, revived for a time. In addition, military leaders acquired a completely different status in the eyes of society than they had before the war. Stalin feared them too. In 1946, Stalin sent Zhukov to Odessa, in 1947 he canceled the celebration of Victory Day, and in 1948 he stopped paying for awards and wounds.

Because not thanks to, but despite the actions of the dictator, having paid an exorbitant price, he won this war. And I felt like a people - and there was and is nothing more terrible for tyrants.