Myths about the war 1941 1945. Theories and myths about the beginning of the Great Patriotic War
It was not by chance that we chose such a title; we will talk about the mysteries of the Second World War, and not the Great Patriotic War. Sometimes during a war such strange and contradictory events occur that they are difficult to believe. Especially considering that the archives are still classified and there is no access to them. What kind of secrets does the history of those years keep, from the point of view of the allies of the USSR?
Let's try to figure it out.
15. The mystery of Netaji's death
Subhas Chandra Bose, also known as Netaji, is a Bengali by birth and one of the leaders of the Indian independence movement. Today Bose is revered in India on a par with Nehru and Gandhi. To fight the British colonialists, he collaborated with the Germans and then with the Japanese. He headed the collaborationist pro-Japanese administration “Azad Hind” (“Free India”), which he proclaimed “the government of India.”
From the Allies' point of view, Netaji was a very dangerous traitor. He communicated with both German and Japanese leaders, but at the same time was on friendly terms with Stalin. During his life, Bos had to run a lot from various foreign intelligence services, he hid from British surveillance, was able to change his identity and begin building his Empire of Revenge. Much in Bose’s life remains a mystery, but historians still cannot find an answer to the question - whether he died or is quietly living out his life somewhere in Bengal. According to the officially accepted version, the plane on which Bos tried to escape to Japan in 1945 suffered a plane crash. It seems that his body was cremated, and the urn with the ashes was transported to Tokyo to the Renkoji Buddhist Temple. Both before and now there are many people who do not believe in this story. So much so that they even analyzed the ashes and reported that the ashes belonged to a certain Ichiro Okura, a Japanese official.
It is believed that Bos lived out his life somewhere in strict secrecy. The Indian government admits that they have about forty secret files on Bose, all sealed, and they refuse to divulge the contents. It is said that the release will have detrimental consequences for India's international relations. In 1999, one file surfaced: it was related to the location of Netaji and the subsequent investigation that took place in 1963. However, the government refused to comment on this information.
Many still hope that one day they will be able to find out what really happened to Netaji, but this is definitely not going to happen anytime soon. The National Democratic Union in 2014 refused a request for publication classified materials Bosa. The government is still afraid to publish even those documents that have been declassified as secret. According to official information, this is due to the fact that the information contained in the documents could still harm India's relations with other countries.
14. Battle of Los Angeles: Air defense against UFOs
Just don't laugh. Hoax or mass psychosis? Call it what you want, but on the night of February 25, 1942, all Los Angeles air defense services bravely - and absolutely unsuccessfully - fought a UFO.
"It happened in the early morning hours of February 25, 1942; just three months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States had just entered World War II and the military was on high alert when the attack took place over the sky California. Witnesses reported seeing a large, round object glowing pale orange in the skies of Culver City and Santa Monica, along the entire Pacific coast."
Sirens wailed and searchlights began scanning the sky over Los Angeles, and more than 1,400 shells from anti-aircraft guns pelted the mysterious object, but it, calmly moving across the night sky, disappeared from view. No aircraft were shot down, and in fact, no satisfactory explanation has ever been found. The Army's official statement was that "unidentified aircraft" had allegedly entered Southern California airspace. But later the secretary Navy US Frank Nose canceled the reports and called the incident a "false alarm."
13. Die Glocke - Nazi bell
Work on Die Glocke (translated from German as “bell”) began in 1940, and was managed from the “SS brain center” at the Skoda factory in Pilsen by designer Hans Kammler. Kammler's name is closely associated with one of the Nazi organizations involved in the development different types“miracle weapons” - by the Ahnenerbe occult institute. At first, the “miracle weapon” was tested in the vicinity of Breslau, but in December 1944, a group of scientists was transported to an underground laboratory (with a total area of 10 km²!) inside the Wenceslas mine. The documents describe Die Glocke as "a huge bell made of solid metal, about 3 m wide and approximately 4.5 m high." This device contained two counter-rotating lead cylinders filled with an unknown substance codenamed Xerum 525. When turned on, the Die Glocke illuminated the shaft with a pale purple light.
In the throes of the Reich, the Nazis seized every chance, hoping for a technological miracle that could change the course of the war. At that time, vague hints of some unusual engineering developments began to be found in documents. Polish journalist Igor Witkowski conducted his own investigation and wrote the book “The Truth about Wunderwaffe”, from which the world learned about the top-secret project “Die Glocke”. Later, a book by British journalist Nick Cook, “The Hunt for Point Zero,” appeared, which explored similar matters.
Witkovsky was absolutely sure that Die Glocke was destined to be a breakthrough in the field space technology, but was intended to produce fuel for hundreds of thousands of flying saucers. More precisely, disc-shaped aircraft with a crew of one or two people. They say that at the end of April 1945, the Nazis planned to use these devices to carry out Operation “Spear of Satan” - to strike Moscow, London and New York. About 1,000 finished “UFOs” were allegedly subsequently captured by the Americans - in underground factories in the Czech Republic and Austria. Is it true? Maybe. After all, the US National Archives declassified documents from 1956, which confirm that the development of the “flying saucer” was carried out by the Nazis. Norwegian historian Gudrun Stensen believes that at least four Kammler flying disks were “captured” by the Soviet army from a factory in Breslau, however, Stalin did not pay enough attention to the “saucers”, since he was more interested in the nuclear bomb.
There are even more exotic theories about the purpose of Die Glocke: according to the US writer Henry Stevens, author of the book “Hitler's Weapons - Still Secret!”, the bell was not a spacecraft, it worked on red mercury, and was intended for time travel .
Polish intelligence services neither confirm nor deny Witkowski’s research: the interrogation protocols of SS Gruppenführer Sporrenberg are still classified. Vitkovsky insisted on this version: Hans Kammler took the “Bell” to America, and no one knows where it is now.
12. Nazi "golden train"
World War II documents prove that in 1945, during the retreat, the Nazis removed from Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) an armored train loaded with valuables and tons of gold confiscated from the governments of occupied countries and seized from people who ended their lives in concentration camps. The train was 150 meters long and could contain up to 300 tons of gold!
Allied forces recovered some of the Nazi gold at the end of the war, but most of it, apparently loaded onto a train, disappeared into oblivion. The train was carrying precious cargo from Wroclaw to Walbrzych, however, it disappeared on the way, under still unclear circumstances - as it fell into the ground. And since 1945, no one has seen the train again, and all attempts to find it have been unsuccessful.
In the vicinity of Walbrzych there is an old tunnel system built by the Nazis, in one of which, according to local legends, the missing train stands. Locals believe that the train may be in an abandoned tunnel that existed on railway between Walbrzych and the town of Swiebodzice. The entrance to the tunnel is most likely somewhere under an embankment near the Wałbrzych station. From time to time, this same Walbrzych begins to feel feverish from the next message about the discovery of treasures from the time of the Third Reich.
Specialists of the Mining and Metallurgical Academy named after. Stanislav Staszic in 2015 seemed to have completed the operation to search for the ghostly “golden train”. Apparently, the search engines were unable to make any grand discoveries. Although during the work they used modern technology, for example, a cesium magnetometer, which measures the level magnetic field land.
According to the laws of Poland, if a treasure is discovered, it must be handed over to the state. Although what a treasure this is...obviously part of captured property! The chief custodian of Polish antiquities, Piotr Zuchowski, recommended refraining from searching for treasures on his own, since the missing train could be mined. So far, Russian, Polish and Israeli media are closely following the search for the Nazi armored train. Theoretically, each of these countries can lay claim to part of the find.
11. Planes are ghosts
Phantoms of crashed planes are a sad and beautiful legend. Specialists in anomalous phenomena know of many cases of aircraft appearing in the sky, which date back to the time of the last war. They are seen in the skies over British Sheffield, and over the notorious Peak District in the north of Derbyshire (more than five dozen planes crashed there), and in other places.
Richard and Helen Jason were among the first to report such a story when they spotted a World War II bomber in the skies of Derbyshire. They remembered that he was flying very low, but surprisingly quietly, silently, without making a single sound. And the ghost just disappeared at some point. Richard, being an Air Force veteran, believes it was an American Bi-24 Liberator bomber with 4 engines.
They say that such phenomena are observed in Russia. As if in clear weather in the sky above the village of Yadrovo, Volokolamsk region, you can hear the characteristic sounds of a low-flying plane, after which you can see a slightly blurred silhouette of a burning Messerschmitt trying to land.
10. The story of the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg
The story of the life, and especially the death, of Raoul Gustav Wallenberg is one of those that is interpreted completely differently by Western and domestic sources. They agree on one thing - he was a hero who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. Tens of thousands. He sent them so-called protective passports of Swedish citizens awaiting repatriation to their homeland, and thereby saved them from concentration camps. By the time Budapest was liberated, these people were already safe, thanks to papers from Wallenberg and his associates. Raoul also managed to convince several German generals not to carry out Hitler's orders to transport Jews to death camps and he prevented the destruction of the Budapest ghetto in last days before the advance of the Red Army. If this version is correct, then Wallenberg managed to save at least 100 thousand Hungarian Jews! But what happened to Raul himself after 1945 is obvious to Western historians (rotted by the bloody KGB in the dungeons of the Lubyanka), but for ours it is not so clear.
According to the most common version, after the capture of Budapest by Soviet troops on January 13, 1945, Wallenberg, along with his driver, was detained by a Soviet patrol in the building of the International Red Cross (according to another version, he himself came to the location of the 151st Infantry Division and asked for a meeting with the Soviet command; according to the third version, he was arrested by the NKVD in his apartment). After this, he was sent to the commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, Malinovsky. But on the way he was again detained and arrested by military counterintelligence officers SMERSH. According to another version, after his arrest at Wallenberg’s apartment, he was sent to headquarters Soviet troops. On March 8, 1945, Budapest Radio Kossuth, which was under Soviet control, reported that Raoul Wallenberg had died during street fighting in Budapest.
Western media consider it proven that Raoul Wallenberg was arrested and transported to Moscow, where he was kept in the internal MGB prison at Lubyanka. The Swedes tried unsuccessfully for many years to find out the fate of the arrested man. In August 1947, Vyshinsky officially stated that Wallenberg was not in the USSR and that the Soviet authorities knew nothing about him. But in February 1957, Moscow no less officially informed the Swedish government that Wallenberg had died on July 17, 1947 in a cell in the Lubyanka prison from a myocardial infarction. No autopsy was performed, and the story about the heart attack did not convince either Raul’s relatives or the world community. Moscow and Stockholm agreed to investigate the case within the framework of a bilateral commission, but in 2001 the commission concluded that the search had reached a dead end and ceased to exist. There are unconfirmed reports that refer to Wallenberg as “Prisoner No. 7,” who was interrogated in July 1947, a week (!) after he allegedly died of a heart attack.
Several documentaries and feature films have been made about the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, but none of them reveals the mystery of his death.
9. The Fuhrer's missing globe
The "Führer's Globe" is one of the giant models of the "Columbus Globe", released for leaders of states and enterprises in two limited batches in Berlin in the mid-1930s (and in the second batch, adjustments were already made to the world map). The same Hitler globe was commissioned for the headquarters of the Reich Chancellery by the architect Albert Speer. The globe was huge; it can be seen in the newsreel of the opening of the new Reich Chancellery building in 1939. Where exactly that globe went from the headquarters is unknown. At auctions here and there, from time to time another “Hitler’s globe” is sold, thousands of them for 100 euros.
American World War II veteran John Barsamian found the globe a few days after the surrender of Nazi Germany, in the bombed alpine residence of the Fuhrer, the Eagle's Nest, in the mountains above Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. The American veteran also sold at auction a package of military documents from those years that allowed him to take the globe to the United States. The permit states the following: "One globe, language - German, origin - Eagle's Nest residence."
Experts note that in different collections there are several globes that allegedly belonged to Hitler. However, the globe found by Barsamyan has the best chance of being considered real: its authenticity is confirmed by a photograph showing Lieutenant Barsamyan with a globe in his hands - in the Eagle's Nest.
Once upon a time, Charlie Chaplin in his film “The Great Dictator” showed Hitler’s globe as his main and favorite accessory. But Hitler himself hardly particularly valued the globe, because not a single photograph of Hitler with its background has survived (which, in general, is pure speculation and assumptions).
Before Barsamyan’s discovery, Western media categorically stated that Lavrentiy Beria personally stole the globe, apparently believing that he had captured not only Berlin, but the entire globe. Well, we cannot deny that it is likely that the Fuhrer’s personal globe still stands in one of the offices at Lubyanka.
8. Treasures of General Rommel
Nicknamed the “Desert Fox,” Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was undoubtedly the outstanding commander of the Third Reich; he confidently won the First World War, his name inspired horror and fear in the Italians and British. In World War II he was less fortunate: the Reich sent him to lead military operations in North Africa. SS-Sturmbannführer Schmidt led a special “division-Schutzkommando” in the Middle East: following in the footsteps of Rommel’s army, this team robbed museums, banks, private collections, libraries and jewelry stores in the cities of North Africa. They mainly took gold, currency, antiques and art treasures. The looting continued until Rommel's corps began to suffer defeats and the Germans began to retreat, suffering losses under continuous British bombing.
In April 1943, the allies of the anti-Hitler coalition landed in Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, and pressed the Germans to Cape Bon Peninsula, along with all the looted belongings (none of this, by the way, is “Rommel’s gold”, rather these are African SS treasures) . Schmidt found an opportunity to load valuables into 6 containers and went out to sea on ships towards Corsica. Further opinions differ. They say that the SS men reached Corsica, but American aircraft swooped in and destroyed them. There is also the most beautiful version that Sturmbannführer Schmidt managed to hide or drown treasures near the Corsican coast, which was replete with hiding places, grottoes and underwater caves.
"Rommel's treasures" have been searched for all these years and are still being sought. At the end of 2007, Briton Terry Hodgkinson said that he knew exactly where to dig - at the bottom of the sea at a distance of just under a nautical mile from the Corsican city of Bestia. However, nothing has happened so far and the treasure has not been found.
7. Foo fighters are UFOs
No, we're not talking about Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters, but the World War II phenomenon that his band was named after. The term Foo Fighters is taken from the slang of Allied pilots - this is how they called unidentified flying objects and strange atmospheric phenomena that they saw in the skies over Europe and the Pacific Ocean.
Coined by the 415th Tactical Fighter Squadron, the term "pho fighters" was subsequently officially adopted by the US military in November 1944. Pilots flying at night over Germany began reporting sightings of fast-moving luminous objects following their aircraft. They have been described in various ways: usually as balls of red, orange or white who performed complex maneuvers and then suddenly disappeared. According to the pilots, the objects followed the planes and generally behaved as if they were being controlled by someone, but did not show hostility; It was not possible to break away from them or shoot them down. Reports about them appeared so often that such objects received given name- foo fighters, or, less commonly, kraut fireballs. The military took observations of these objects seriously, as they suspected that they were a secret weapon of the Germans. But it later turned out that German and Japanese pilots had observed similar objects.
On January 15, 1945, Time magazine published a story entitled "Foo Fighter", which reported that US Air Force fighters had been chasing "fireballs" for more than a month. After the war, a group was created to study such phenomena, which proposed several possible explanations: it could be electrostatic phenomena similar to St. Elmo's fire, or optical illusions. In general, there is an opinion that if the term “flying saucers” had already been coined then, in 1943-1945, foo fighters would have fallen into this category.
6. Where did the "Bloody Flag" go?
The Blutfahne or "Blood Flag" is the first Nazi shrine to appear after the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich (an unsuccessful attempt to seize government power by the National Socialist Workers' Party led by Hitler and General Ludendorff; they and about 600 supporters were defeated in Munich beer pub "Bürgerbräukeller", where the Prime Minister of Bavaria gave a speech). Approximately 16 Nazis died, many were wounded, and Hitler was arrested and convicted of treason. By the way, he spent his time in Landsberg prison under very lenient conditions, and it was there that most of his main book was written.
The Nazis who died during the Beer Hall Putsch were later declared martyrs, and the events themselves were declared the National Revolution. The flag under which they marched (and which, according to official version, dropped drops of the blood of the “martyrs”), was later used in the “blessing” of party banners: at party congresses in Nuremberg, Adolf Hitler attached new flags to the “sacred” banner. It was believed that its touch to other flags endowed them with divine power, and SS officers swore allegiance exclusively to this banner. The "Bloody Flag" even had a keeper - Jacob Grimminger.
The flag was last seen in October 1944, during one of Himmler's ceremonies. It was initially believed that the Allies destroyed the flag during the bombing of Munich. Nobody knows what happened to him next: whether he was saved and taken out of the country, or whether he was thrown to the walls of the mausoleum in Moscow in 1945. The fate of Jacob Grimminger, unlike the “Bloody Flag,” is known to historians. He not only survived the war, but also took up a minor post as a representative of the city administration in Munich.
5. The Ghost of Pearl Harbor - P-40
One of the most intriguing ghost planes of World War II was the P-40 fighter that crashed near Pearl Harbor. Doesn't sound too mysterious, does it? Only this plane was later seen in the sky - a year after the Japanese attack.
On December 8, 1942, American radar detected a plane heading directly for Pearl Harbor from Japan. Two fighter jets were tasked with checking and quickly intercepting the mysterious aircraft. It was a P-40 fighter that had been used in the defense of Pearl Harbor the year before. What was even stranger was that the plane was on fire and the pilot was apparently killed. The P-40 dived to the ground and crashed.
Rescue teams were sent immediately, but they were unable to find the pilot - the cabin was empty. There was no sign of the pilot! But they found a flight diary, which reported that the specified plane was on the island of Mindanao, 1,300 miles in the Pacific Ocean. But if he was the wounded defender of Pearl Harbor, how did he survive on the island for a year, how did he lift the crashed plane into the sky? And where did he go? What happened to his body? This remains one of the most baffling mysteries.
4. Who were the 17 British from Auschwitz?
In 2009, historians conducted excavations on the territory of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. They discovered a strange list that contained the names of 17 British soldiers. Opposite the names there were some signs - ticks. Nobody knows why this list was created. Also, several German words were written on the paper, but these words did not help in solving the mystery (“since then,” “never,” and “now”).
There are several assumptions about the purpose of this list and who these soldiers were. The first assumption is that British prisoners of war were used as skilled workers. Many were housed in Auschwitz in camp E715, where they were assigned to lay cables and pipes. Another theory is that the names of British soldiers on the list are the names of traitors who worked for the CC unit during the war - they may have been part of the secret British Schutzstaffel (SS) brigade that fought for the Nazis against the Allies. None of these theories have been proven to date.
3. Who betrayed Anne Frank?
The diary of a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Anne Frank, made her name famous throughout the world. In July 1942, with the beginning of the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands, the Frank family (father, mother, older sister Margot and Anna) took refuge in a secret room in the office of their father's company in Amsterdam, at 263 Prinsengracht, along with four other Dutch Jews. They hid in this shelter until 1944. Friends and colleagues delivered food and clothing to the Franks at great risk to their lives.
Anna kept a diary from June 12, 1942 to August 1, 1944. At first she wrote for herself, but in the spring of 1944 the girl heard on the radio a speech by the Minister of Education of the Netherlands: all evidence of the period of occupation should become public domain. Impressed by his words, Anna decided after the war to publish a book based on her diary. And from that moment she began to write not only for herself, but thinking about future readers.
In 1944, the authorities received a denunciation of a group of Jews hiding, and the Dutch police with the Gestapo came to the house where the Frank family was hiding. Behind a bookcase they found the door where the Frank family had been hiding for 25 months. Everyone was immediately arrested. An informant who made an anonymous phone call, which led to the Gestapo, but has not yet been identified - the informer's name was not in the police reports. History offers us the names of three alleged informers: Tonny Ahlers, Willem van Maaren and Lena van Bladeren-Hartoch, all of whom knew the Franks, and each of them could have feared arrest for failure to inform. But historians do not have an exact answer as to who betrayed Anne Frank and her family.
Anna and her sister were sent for forced labor to concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany. Both sisters died from a typhoid epidemic that broke out in the camp in March 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated. Their mother died in Auschwitz in early January 1945.
Otto, Anna's father, was the only one in the family to survive the war. He remained in Auschwitz until its liberation by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. After the war, Otto received from a family friend, Miep Heath, who helped them hide, Anna’s notes that she had collected and saved. Otto Frank published the first edition of these notes in 1947 in the original language under the title “In the Back Wing” (a shortened version of the diary, with notes of a personal and censorship nature). The book was published in Germany in 1950. The first Russian edition, entitled “The Diary of Anne Frank,” in a magnificent translation by Rita Wright-Kovaleva, was published in 1960.
2. Amber room
Treasures that have mysteriously disappeared are doubly attractive. The Amber Room - “the eighth wonder of the world” - has always been the object of desire for rulers and kings. They say that Peter I literally begged her from Frederick during a meeting in November 1716, when an alliance between Russia and Prussia was concluded. Peter I immediately boasted of the gift in a letter to Catherine: “... he gave me... the Yantarny office, which has long been desired.” The Amber Cabinet was packed and transported with great precautions from Prussia to St. Petersburg in 1717. Amber mosaic panels were installed in the lower hall of the People's Chambers in the Summer Garden.
In 1743, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna instructed Master Martelli, under the supervision of Chief Architect Rastrelli, to expand the office. There were clearly not enough Prussian panels for the large hall, and Rastrelli introduced gilded wooden carvings, mirrors and mosaic paintings of agate and jasper into the decoration. And by 1770, under the supervision of Rastrelli, the office was transformed into the famous Amber Room of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, adding in size and luxury.
The Amber Room was rightfully considered the pearl of the summer residence Russian emperors in Tsarskoe Selo. And this famous masterpiece disappeared without a trace during World War II. Well, not completely without a trace.
The Germans purposefully went to Tsarskoe Selo for the Amber Room, it seems that even before the start of the war, Alfred Rohde promised Hitler to return the treasure to its historical homeland. There was no time to dismantle and evacuate the room, and the invaders took it to Königsberg. After 1945, when the Nazis were driven out of Königsberg by Soviet troops, traces of the Amber Room were lost. Some of its fragments pop up around the world from time to time - for example, one of the four Florentine mosaics was found. It was believed that the room burned down in the ruins of Königsberg Castle. It is believed that the room was discovered by special units of the American army searching for art objects stolen by the Nazis, and secretly taken to the United States, after which it fell into the hands of private collectors. It was also assumed that the Amber Room was sunk along with the steamship Wilhelm Gustloff, or it could have been on the cruiser Prinz Eugen transferred to the United States as part of reparations.
They were looking for the Amber Room during the times Soviet Union carefully, and the search was supervised by the State Security Committee. But they didn’t find it. And three decades later, in the 1970s, it was decided to start restoring the Amber Room from scratch. Mainly Kaliningrad amber was used. And today an accurately recreated copy of the lost treasure can be seen in Tsarskoye Selo, in the Catherine Palace. Perhaps she is even more beautiful than before.
1. Link No. 19
This is perhaps the most widely circulated of the mystical stories of the Second World War. Flight 19 (Flight 19) of five Avenger torpedo bombers, which performed a training flight on December 5, 1945, which ended in the loss under unclear circumstances of all five vehicles, as well as the PBM-5 Martin Mariner rescue seaplane sent in search of them " This miracle is considered one of the strangest and most unusual not only in the history of US Navy aviation, but also in the history of all world aviation.
This happened a few months after the end of the war. On December 5, 1945, as part of flight No. 19, a flight of 4 Avenger torpedo bombers, controlled by US Marine Corps and Fleet Aviation pilots, who were undergoing a retraining program for this type of aircraft, led by the fifth torpedo bomber, piloted by Marine Corps instructor pilot Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor was required to complete a routine exercise from the refresher program course. “Navigation Exercise No. 1” was a typical one - it involved flying over the ocean along a route with two turns and training bombing. The route was a standard one, and this and similar routes in the Bahamas area were systematically used for naval pilot training throughout World War II. The crew was experienced, the flight leader, Lieutenant Taylor, had flown about 2,500 hours on this type of torpedo bomber, and his cadets were also not beginners - they had a total flight time of 350 to 400 hours, of which at least 55 hours on “Avengers” of this type.
The planes took off from the Navy base in Fort Lauderdale and successfully completed training task, but then some nonsense begins. The flight goes off course, Taylor turns on the emergency radio beacon and finds himself in direction finding - within a radius of 100 miles from the point with coordinates 29°15′ N. w. 79°00′ W d. Then they change course several times, but cannot understand where they are: Lieutenant Taylor decided that the planes of the flight were over the Gulf of Mexico (it seems that this error was a consequence of his belief that the islands over which they flew were the Florida archipelago Keys, and a flight to the northeast should take them to the Florida peninsula). The fuel runs out, Taylor gives the command to splash down, and...there is never any more news from them. The PBM-5 Martin “Mariner” rescue seaplane that took off found no one and nothing, and itself also disappeared.
Later, a large-scale operation was carried out to search for the missing aircraft, involving three hundred army and navy aircraft and twenty-one ships. National Guard units and volunteers scoured the Florida coast, Florida Keys and Bahamas for debris. The operation was terminated without success after a few weeks, and all the lost crews were officially declared missing.
The Navy investigation initially placed the blame on Lt. Taylor; however, they later changed the official report and the loss of the link was described as occurring for "unknown reasons." Neither the pilots' bodies nor the aircraft were ever found. This story seriously added to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle legend.
These 15 facts are considered mystical and mysterious by the media of those countries that during World War II called themselves allies of the USSR. Whether to share their views on that war and their ability to list many facts, but never mention the USSR as the winner of Nazism, is a personal matter for everyone. What is certain is that any war gives rise to myths and legends that will survive for many more generations.
Introduction to the essence of the problem
As soon as the threat disappeared due to the collapse of the USSR great war", in the CIS countries the degradation of power structures has begun. Every official at his workplace has turned into a little president. And all that today connects big and small presidents with each other is the struggle to maintain the stability of existing political regimes, by which they mean the preservation of the system of their personal power.
Communities of officials are exclusively engaged in enrichment, primarily through theft state budgets all levels. But something must be offered to the people, too? In conditions of a serious economic crisis, such a role could be played by an ideology like “we are building new life" But the current ruling elites, both in Russia and Belarus, are unable to formulate an image of the future that is attractive to the “people.” So they are trying to privatize the past. They chose victory in the Great Patriotic War as their central symbol.
After all, what is the “Great Victory” of 1945 for those in power? This is an understanding of the fact that the peoples of the Soviet Union, at the cost of colossal sacrifices at the front and colossal tension in the rear, saved the pyramid of power of party-Soviet officials, crowned by a dictator, from destruction. Despite the collapse of the USSR, this pyramid has largely been preserved, only it is called differently today. Aren’t Putin, Lukashenko, Nazarbayev dictators? In Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, are leaders at any level (“little presidents”) elected by citizens or employees of enterprises, and not appointed by “big presidents”? Are the elections of “big” presidents somewhere just elections, and not grandiose machinations? Do authorities anywhere in the post-Soviet space take public opinion into account? Is the opposition and the means mass media are not persecuted everywhere for criticizing the mistakes, stupidities and crimes of the authorities?
That is why the “Great Victory” for the ruling regimes in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan is “our Victory”, which “we will not give up to anyone,” despite the fact that none of the current officials of any rank have any the slightest relation to her.
This is precisely where the persistent calls of rabid court demagogues stem from introducing criminal liability for falsifying the history of the Great Patriotic War. At the same time, falsification is understood as any assessments that contradict the opinions of “big” and “small” presidents. Hence the replacement true history wars with myths. There are thousands of them - big and small. I will mention just nine myths as an example.
Joint Soviet-German parade in 1939
Myth 1. National Socialist Germany attacked the peace-loving Soviet Union without any reason.
In August 1939, the USSR agreed with Germany on the division of spheres of influence in Eastern Europe (secret protocols attached to the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact). According to this agreement, the sphere of influence of the USSR included Finland, the three Baltic republics (without the western half of Lithuania), Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, the eastern voivodeships of ethnic Poland, and Bessarabia.
Three days after the signing of the Pact, Germany attacked Poland. After waiting two and a half weeks, the USSR also invaded its territory, grossly violating the terms of the Treaty of Riga of 1921, and three other treaties with Poland, including non-aggression. And he captured (we officially say and write “annexed”) Western Belarus and Western Ukraine.
And at the end of November 1939, the USSR attacked Finland under the ridiculous pretext that the border with this country was too close to Leningrad. As a pretext, a provocation was staged in the Karelian village of Mainila (a Soviet artillery battery shelled the village, which caused destruction and casualties; Moscow blamed the Finns for this crime). However, it was not possible to establish the power of the councils in Finland: the entire Finnish people, including the communists, came out to defend the Fatherland and inflicted major losses on the Red Army.
In 1940, the USSR ceded “its” part of Poland to Germany in exchange for the western part of Lithuania, with an additional payment to the Germans in gold. Then he provoked uprisings of communist elements in the Baltic countries and immediately “came to their aid” - much like today in the Donbass. As a result, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and then Bessarabia in the summer of 1940, became victims of Moscow’s aggression.
Further, in November of the same 1940, Molotov came to Berlin on an official visit to negotiate the entry of the USSR into the war against England and France on the side of Germany. On behalf of the Soviet government (in fact, on behalf of Stalin), he demanded, as payment for alliance, to include in the sphere of influence of the USSR (that is, to give full control) Romania (from where the Germans received oil), Bulgaria (a source of food and tobacco for the Wehrmacht) and Turkey (Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, Turkish part of Armenia). Stalin was sure that Hitler, having broken down for the sake of decency, would accept these conditions. However, Hitler already knew from his intelligence that the USSR was developing a plan for a surprise attack on Germany (Operation Thunderstorm), troops were being massed to the western border of the country, and staff games were being held to signify a “deep breakthrough.” He decided that the most reasonable thing was to launch a pre-emptive strike, especially since the war with Finland showed: the Red Army (Red Army) is not nearly as strong as it seems. The German attack preceded the USSR attack by a month or two at most.
So there was a reason for the supposedly “unprovoked” attack; its name was the aggressiveness of Stalin and his gang of accomplices. Another thing is that Hitler and his entourage were no better than Stalin. In general, two poisonous reptiles were worth each other.
Myth 2. The German attack came as a complete surprise to the Soviet military-political leadership.
In fact, Stalin received about 80 messages from Soviet agents about the impending attack and its timing. Churchill also warned him about the imminent invasion. Another thing is that Stalin did not trust either his intelligence or Churchill. He thought that he had outwitted Hitler and that he would not dare to fight on two fronts, that the Germans were preparing a landing in England (Operation Sea Lion), and the transfer of part of the troops to the East was a diversionary maneuver to mislead the British. Stalin even placed at Germany's disposal over 20 transport ships, which stood in German ports under Soviet flags and with Soviet crews, awaiting the loading of German troops. On the morning of June 22, the Germans captured these ships without firing a shot.
It is no coincidence that at the first meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks after the attack, Stalin gave an extremely rude assessment of what happened: “they screwed up!”
Myth 3. The armed forces of Germany and its allies were many times superior to the armed forces of the USSR in the European part of the country.
The Red Army in the number of troops located in the western border districts was inferior to the troops of the Wehrmacht and Germany's allies by 1.3 times (not at all multiple) - 3 million 290 thousand people. against 4 million 306 thousand people. But the Red Army had enormous superiority in tanks and self-propelled guns (15,687 against 4,170 German ones, i.e. 3.76 times more), in aviation (10,742 aircraft against 4,642, 2.32 times more) and in artillery (59,787 guns and mortars against 42600, 1.4 times more). At the same time, the bulk of Soviet light tanks (T-26, BT-5, BT-7) were armed with a 45-mm or 37-mm cannon, and the German ones were armed with a 20-mm cannon or machine gun. As for the engines, gasoline engines did not interfere with the German tankers fighting, but the Soviets constantly complained that they had few new T-34 tanks with diesel engines.
If we take into account the second-echelon Soviet troops located in the western regions of the RSFSR adjacent to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine (and this is more than a million people), then the superiority in the number of personnel was also on the side of the Red Army.
Myth 4. The garrison of the Brest Fortress bravely resisted for about 2 months, pinning down significant Wehrmacht forces.
The Germans occupied the city of Brest by 12 noon on June 22. The fortifications (forts) of the Brest Fortress, which is located west of the city, were stormed by the 45th Wehrmacht Infantry Division, consisting of Austrians. Those Soviet troops that were stationed in the fortress left from there on June 22 to the combat deployment area east of Brest, and then retreated. Officers of headquarters and departments, commandant and economic units from the 6th and 42nd rifle divisions, border guards, members of officer families - up to 5 thousand people in total - remained in the fortress. These disparate groups are called “garrison” by Soviet and now Russian and Belarusian propagandists, which is a deliberate lie. The defenders of the fortress capitulated on June 30.
From June 24, a group of soldiers (up to 400 people) led by Major Pyotr Gavrilov concentrated in the Eastern Fort. They had several 45mm cannons. But on the evening of June 29, as a result of a large-caliber bomb hitting the central part of the fort, an ammunition depot exploded. Almost all the soldiers were killed or wounded. Gavrilov with the remnants of the group (12 people) hid in the casemates for several more days. Then he was left alone and was captured only on July 23.
Could this desperate resistance of a handful of people have any strategic significance? In general, only two enemy infantry divisions out of 166 that participated in the invasion (31st and 45th) were engaged in Brest. So there can be no talk of “fettering” significant enemy forces.
Myth 5. Under pressure from superior enemy forces, the Red Army systematically retreated, exhausting the enemy with defensive battles.
This lie was first voiced by Stalin back in the summer of 1945, trying to somehow explain the defeat of the summer of 1941. In reality, Soviet commanders at all levels, in accordance with the pre-war doctrine and regulations of the Red Army, did not think about defense. Everywhere they tried again and again to launch counteroffensives, while suffering huge losses and, as a result, rolling back further and further to the east. Let me remind you that before the evening of June 26 (on the fifth day of the war!) the Germans completely occupied Minsk. And today they lie to us about the heroic resistance on Stalin’s line.
The Party-Soviet leadership of the BSSR fled in panic from Minsk to Mogilev on the afternoon of June 24, having previously managed to pass a resolution on the destruction of “political” prisoner camps and strictly forbade the residents of Minsk to evacuate. The entire western part of the BSSR (including the Bialystok region, which today they prefer not to remember at all) was occupied in less than a week, the eastern part - in the next month.
The retreat of the Red Army in most cases resembled a stampede. This flight stopped only on the approaches to Leningrad, Moscow and Kyiv.
Myth 6. The soldiers and commanders of the Red Army from the beginning to the end of the war fought to the last opportunity, preferring death to the shameful surrender.
How did it happen that, according to today’s official data, 4 million 559 thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army surrendered?! This is the number of everyone ground forces USSR from Brest to Vladivostok in June 1941! According to unofficial data (according to estimates by independent historians), there were one million more Soviet prisoners - one million three hundred thousand people!
Myth 7. In the temporarily occupied territory, ALL PEOPLE rose up in guerrilla warfare against the occupiers.
And that's a lie! According to official Soviet data, inflated in the BSSR by at least 2 times, and in Ukraine and the RSFSR inflated by at least 5 times, no more than 5% of the population of the occupied territories participated in the partisan movement. But these data are relatively correct only for the second half of 1943 - the first half of 1944. In 1941-42 The partisans consisted of the party-Soviet nomenklatura of the district and partly of the regional level, urgently formed detachments of NKVD employees and fighters from defeated units of the Red Army who found themselves surrounded. There were few of them; until the spring of 1943, the partisans did not inflict any noticeable damage on the Wehrmacht armed forces. Tales about the incredible exploits of Father Minai’s detachment, Danukalov’s detachment, Zaslonov’s group in Orsha and other stories of this kind, they are fairy tales.
During the entire war, as a result of the actions of the partisans, the Germans and their allies lost only 35 thousand people, and not a million, as the former “chief partisan commander P.K. Ponomarenko. The Wehrmacht's sanitary losses far exceeded this figure. In general, Soviet partisan movement– one huge myth!
Myth 8. From the beginning to the end of the war, the Soviet armed forces fought better than the Germans - on land, in the air, and at sea, but were forced to systematically retreat under pressure from many times superior enemy forces.
And this is a lie. The Germans always and everywhere fought competently and skillfully. The ratio of human losses in the first half of the war (before the Battle of Kursk) was 1 to 10 in favor of the Germans, in the second half 1 to 3-4, also in favor of the Germans. But the USSR had huge human reserves, while Germany had none.
The defeat of Germany was due to three main factors. Firstly, there is a lack of human resources. Secondly, the great superiority of the volumes of total military production of the USA, Canada, Great Britain and the USSR. Thirdly, these two reasons were aggravated by the insane racial policies of the Nazis. They could well have made the bulk of the population of the occupied territories of the USSR their friends and allies (let me remind you that the Germans in the Baltic states, Western Belarus and Western Ukraine were greeted everywhere as liberators, the same thing happened in a number of regions of the RSFSR), but they managed to turn a significant part of these people into their enemies.
The total number of Red Army soldiers killed during the war was 11 million 520 thousand people. The Germans fought on two fronts for a year and a half more, but lost 4.3 million less. So who fought better? The Reds won precisely by overwhelming the enemy with mountains of corpses of their fighters.
And more on this topic. Only 7 Soviet pilots - Kozhedub, Pokryshkin, Rechkalov and others - shot down more than 50 German aircraft each. And the number of German aces who shot down 80 or more aircraft exceeds three hundred! The best German ace Erich Hartmann arrived on the eastern front only in the spring of 1943 and before the end of the war (in two years) he shot down 352 Soviet aircraft. So whose pilots were better?! The same can be said about tank crews, artillerymen, snipers, military reconnaissance officers, and in general about representatives of all military specialties.
Myth 9. Material assistance from the Allies (USA, Canada and England) provided under the Lend-Lease program did not play any significant role in the victory of the USSR.
In reality, Allied assistance was decisive.
Firstly, by the end of 1941, almost all factories producing gunpowder and explosives were lost in the USSR. If the Allies had not started supplying both, the Red Army would have already by the end of the winter of 1941/42. There simply wouldn’t be anything to fight with! Explosives alone in 1942-43. 344 thousand tons were received from the allies.
Secondly, Soviet industry and transport were saved from shutdown. The Allies supplied 1,980 steam locomotives and more than 11 thousand freight cars, this is 90% of the total rolling stock used during the war. 477,785 trucks were received. This is 70% of all Red Army vehicles during the entire war. In addition, several tens of thousands of light Willys-type vehicles were received, which were used by Soviet commanders at all levels by the end of the war.
In the first 6 months of 1942 alone, the USSR received almost 3 thousand metal processing machines, which is equal to pre-war Soviet production per year. Deliveries of telephone wire (1 million 78 thousand km) is the volume of wire production in the USSR over three years.
Deliveries of rails exceeded 56% of their production in the USSR; supplies of tin (without which it is impossible to manufacture primers and fuses for cartridges and shells) - 223% of Soviet production; cobalt supplies – 138%; aluminum supplies – 106%; copper supplies – 77%; tires - 73%, etc.
The USSR received 20,130 military aircraft (bombers, fighters, seaplanes, transport vehicles) from the allies. Let me remind you for comparison that the air forces of Germany and its allies, concentrated in June 1941 against the USSR, numbered 4,642 aircraft. 9816 tanks were received (the Germans had 3844 tanks in 1941). In the spring of 1943, many Soviet units were equipped with 65-70% Western-made tanks. Armored personnel carriers (which were not produced in the USSR) received 9,740 units. This number of armored personnel carriers was enough to staff 40 motorized rifle divisions.
But the most important thing is not the quantity, although it is very large. The main thing is that all this equipment and weapons were received at that critical time, when their tanks (28 thousand by the end of 1941), their planes, their industry and their railway fleet were lost, and the factories evacuated to the East had not yet been started working. A spoon is expensive not in itself, but for dinner!
The fleet received 210 warships, 267 combat boats, 106 landing ships (which were not built at all in the USSR), 33 heavy-duty transport ships.
And finally, food. The Allies supplied 4.8 times more cans of canned meat than were produced in the USSR during the war. Figuratively speaking, the entire Red Army ate the famous American pork stew. Sugar was delivered from the USA 66% of the volume of its production in the USSR for the period 1941-1945. It is now estimated that the USSR received so much food from the allies that it was abundantly enough to feed an army of 10 million for 56 months. Meanwhile, the war with Germany and Japan took 50 months.
These are the facts that today are either hushed up or distorted by Russian propagandists and the Belarusian propagandists who echo them.
During the period from 1991 to 2014, dozens of books were published, hundreds of articles were published, exposing large and small myths about the past war. But this truth, collected by honest researchers of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and other post-Soviet countries, is drowning in an ocean of lies spread by the gigantic machine of Russian state propaganda, as well as “official” historical science, fiction, cinema, theater, painting.
And yet, lies will not save officials who are plundering national property under the guise of jingoistic fabrications. “No matter how much you shout halva, it won’t be sweet in your mouth,” says an Eastern proverb.
Anatol Taras, scientific secretary of the public Institute of Belarusian History and Culture
Let's look at the main false myths about the Great Patriotic War, purposefully invented or resulting from illiterate reasoning of people who do not know or are trying to denigrate the history of our country.
1. The USSR fought against Nazi Germany and its few allies
In fact, the entire united Europe fought against the USSR. European Union.
The countries occupied by Hitler always presented themselves as victims. Like, evil invaders came, what could we do against them? It was impossible to fight. They were forced to work on pain of death, starved and tortured. However, in reality it turns out that in the West under the Germans everything was not so bad. It was our troops, retreating, who blew up industrial enterprises so that they would not fall to the enemy. Partisans and residents of territories occupied by the Nazis carried out sabotage and sabotage. In most occupied European countries workers worked diligently, receiving their salaries and drinking beer after work.
Just one fact: the weapons that Germany captured from the defeated countries were enough to form 200 divisions. No, this is not a mistake: 200 divisions. We had 170 divisions in the western districts. To provide them with weapons, the USSR needed several five-year plans. In France, after its defeat, the Germans immediately seized up to 5,000 tanks and armored personnel carriers, 3,000 aircraft, and 5,000 steam locomotives. Belgium appropriated half of the rolling stock for the needs of its economy and the war.
Without the Czech military industry and Czech tanks, we would not have four tank divisions, which would make an attack on the Soviet Union impossible,” admitted Lieutenant Colonel of the Wehrmacht tank forces Helmut Ritgen. Strategic raw materials, weapons, materials, equipment - united Europe provided the Nazis with everything they needed. Including human resources: about 2,000,000 people volunteered for Hitler’s army.
2. Soviet soldiers fought only because there were barrage detachments behind them, who shot the retreating ones with machine guns
Since the losses of German troops, even at the beginning of the war, despite the retreat of the Red Army, were unprecedentedly high, and in some places some units were completely defeated, the opponents Great Victory I had to come up with a myth that Soviet soldiers were forced to fight under machine guns, shooting those retreating. To make the theory sound more convincing, executions from machine guns were attributed to special NKVD barrage detachments, which allegedly hid behind the soldiers and simply shot all those retreating. In reality, NKVD detachments did exist, and their duty was to protect the rear of the Soviet armies, as well as other military police in any army in the world. These units played a significant role in restoring order in the Red Army. Take for example the data on the “Battle of Stalingrad”:
For August and September 1942, barrage detachments Stalingrad Front 36,109 people were detained. Of these: 730 people. was arrested. Of these 730 arrested, 433 were shot; 1056 people were sent to penal companies; 33 people in penal battalions; 33,851 people were sent to their units for further service. That is, out of 36 thousand people, only 433 people were shot for serious crimes, which is a little more than one percent. And these data refer to the time when the “atrocities of the barrage detachments” allegedly occurred. Perhaps, among the 433 executed, not all were so guilty that they should have been executed, but based on the difficult situation at Stalingrad, this was a necessary measure. In addition, there is no need to talk about any execution from machine guns by our own people, and all those detained were first arrested and sentenced by a military tribunal. Later, when the front was stabilized, such harsh measures were no longer resorted to.
3. The USSR filled the Nazis with corpses
IN recent years 15-20 one often hears that the ratio of losses of the USSR and Germany with their allies in World War II was 1:5, 1:10, or even 1:14. Then, naturally, a conclusion is drawn about “being littered with corpses,” inept leadership, and so on. However, mathematics is an exact science. For example, the population of the Third Reich at the beginning of World War II was 85 million people, of which more than 23 million were men of military age. The population of the USSR is 196.7 million people, of which 48.5 million are men of military age.
So, even without knowing anything about the real numbers of losses on both sides, it is easy to calculate that victory through the complete mutual destruction of the male population of military age in the USSR and Germany is achieved by a loss ratio of 48.4/23 = 2.1, but not 10.
By the way, here we do not take into account the German allies. If you add them to these 23 million, then the loss ratio will become even smaller. It should be taken into account that at the very beginning of the war, the Soviet Union lost large densely populated territories, so the actual number of men of military age was even smaller. However, if, in fact, for every killed German the Soviet command would sacrifice 10 Soviet soldiers, then after the Germans would have killed 5 million people, the USSR would have died 50 million - that is, we would have no one else to fight , and in Germany there would still be as many as 18 million men of military age left.
4. We won in spite of Stalin
All these myths add up to a global statement, expressed in one phrase: “We won in spite of.” Despite illiterate commanders, mediocre and bloodthirsty generals, the totalitarian Soviet system and Joseph Stalin personally. History knows many examples when a well-trained and equipped army lost battles due to incompetent commanders. But for a country to win a global war of attrition in defiance of state leadership is something fundamentally new. After all, war is not only the front, not only questions of strategy, and not only problems of supplying troops with food and ammunition. This and the rear, this Agriculture, this is industry, this is logistics, these are issues of providing the population with medicines and medical care, bread and housing. Soviet industry from the western regions was evacuated beyond the Urals in the first months of the war. Was this titanic logistics operation really carried out by enthusiasts against the will of the country's leadership? In new places, workers stood at their machines in an open field while new workshop buildings were being laid out - was it really only out of fear of reprisals? Millions of citizens were evacuated beyond the Urals, in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the residents of Tashkent in one night dismantled everyone who remained on the station square to their homes - was it really contrary to the cruel morals of the Soviet country? Is all this possible if society is disunited, if it lives in a state of cold civil war with the authorities, if he doesn’t trust the leadership? The answer is actually obvious.
The myth that the Soviet Union won the war solely with the help of severe frosts, mud and snowstorms is the leading one in the list of myths about the war.
If you look at the plans of the German command to attack the USSR, it becomes clear that victory over the main forces of the Soviet army should have happened during the summer or, at most, the summer-autumn campaign. That is, Hitler did not initially plan to conduct active fighting during the cold season. But as a result of powerful attacks and the capture of key cities of the USSR, the defense of the Red Army did not break, and the German units suffered losses that they had never experienced before.
Up to five German divisions were defeated, and the attack on Moscow stopped for a long time. It is worth noting that all these events took place in the summer and early autumn. At the same time, weather conditions in the summer of 1941, as is known, turned out to be almost ideal for the German offensive.
It is known that, hoping to end the war before winter, the German command did not bother with the timely purchase of winter clothing and other necessary equipment.
In addition, we should not forget that the muddy roads that slowed down the German offensive near Moscow affected both sides. Moreover, its effect on the retreating Red Army was in some respects even more negative than on the Wehrmacht: for the advancing side, a tank stuck in the mud is just some fuss of engineering units to pull it out, but for the retreating side, a tank stuck in the mud is equal to a tank lost in battle.
Fans of this myth spread it strictly to the 41st and 42nd years, but do not talk about subsequent years. For example, the Great Battle of Kursk or Operation Bagration are kept silent. These battles took place exclusively in the summer.
6. The decisive importance of the second front and Lend Lease supplies
From the first days of Hitler’s aggression against the USSR, the “Allies” did not at all hide their unfriendly attitude towards the Soviet Union. And participation in the war was motivated only by selfish interests. Suffice it to recall a quote from an article by the future US President Truman, which was published in the “central” American newspaper “New York Times” on June 24, 1941, that is, the day after Germany attacked the Soviet Union: “If we see that Germany is winning, then we should help Russia, and if Russia wins, then we should help Germany, and thus let them kill as many as possible”... Just one fact: their financial tycoons financed both sides - nothing personal, just business ! By the way, the United States became the most rich country the world, having previously robbed, robbed and enslaved a significant part of the world. Today, some American-loving historians speak breathlessly about Lend-Lease (American supplies of equipment and weapons to the USSR during the war). But, firstly, this is a drop in the ocean (only 4 percent of what was produced during the war in our country), and secondly, this is again a business. Few people know that the USSR and then Russia paid the Yankees for these “friendly” supplies until 2006! Nobody today remembers that there were so-called “reverse” Lend-Lease agreements, according to which “brothers in arms” were supposed to provide the US Army with goods, services, transportation services after the war, and even allow the use of military bases. By the way, the “reverse Lend-Lease” of the USSR amounted to $2.2 million. Another unfavorable aspect for the USSR in connection with “allied help”. Having waited until 1944 to open the second front, the USA and England received a bone-chilling blow in the first serious battle with an already weakened Hitler. The Red Army had to save its “allies” at the cost of additional losses. In January 1945, English Prime Minister Churchill plaintively requested help from I.V. Stalin, and he replied: “We are preparing for
offensive, but the weather now is not favorable for our offensive. However, given the position of our allies in western front“The Headquarters of the Supreme High Command decided to complete preparations at an accelerated pace and, regardless of the weather, to open broad offensive operations against the Germans along the entire central front no later than the second half of January.” So the opening of a second front resulted in “extra” losses for our troops.
7. Allies. Operation Unthinkable
Not only did the “allies” constantly delay the supply of weapons, delay the opening of the second front, and opened it when the outcome of the war was a foregone conclusion, but they also planned a military operation unprecedented in its cynicism.
At the beginning of April 1945, just before the end of the Great Patriotic War, W. Churchill, the Prime Minister of our ally, Great Britain, gave an order to his chiefs of staff to develop a surprise attack on the USSR - Operation Unthinkable. It was provided to him on May 22, 1945, containing 29 pages.
According to this plan, the attack on the USSR was to begin following Hitler's principles - with a surprise attack. On July 1, 1945, 47 British and American divisions, without any declaration of war, were supposed to deal a crushing blow to the naive Russians who did not expect such boundless meanness from the allies. The strike was supposed to be supported by 10-12 German divisions, which the “allies” kept unformed in Schleswig-Holstein and southern Denmark, they were trained daily by British instructors: they were preparing for the war against the USSR. The war was supposed to lead to the complete defeat and surrender of the USSR.
The Anglo-Saxons were preparing to break us with terror - the savage destruction of large Soviet cities with crushing blows from waves of “flying fortresses”. Several million Russian people were supposed to die in “fire tornadoes” worked out to the smallest detail. This is how Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo were destroyed... Now they were preparing to do this to us, the allies.
However, on June 29, 1945, the day before the planned start of the war, the Red Army unexpectedly changed its deployment for the insidious enemy. This was the decisive weight that moved the scales of history - the order was not given to the Anglo-Saxon troops. Prior to this, the capture of Berlin, which was considered impregnable, showed the power of the Soviet Army and the enemy’s military experts were inclined to cancel the attack on the USSR.
Myth 1.
The greatest Battle of Good and Evil in History is called the “Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People against the Nazi Invaders” and lasted 4 years, from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945.
Reality.
The Second World War - under this name great battle known to the rest of the world - lasted from September 1, 1939 with the joint attack of Germany and the USSR on Poland (the USSR joined on September 17) until September 2, 1945 (the surrender of the Japanese Empire). In many countries, local military conflicts within the Second World War have their own names, but nowhere except the Soviet Union did the name PART of the war replace the name of the WHOLE war.
The reason that forced the Soviet leadership to create their own historiography on this matter was the fact that the Soviet Union de facto took part in the Second World War from September 17, 1939 on the side of the Third Reich (for more details, see Myth No. 2) ( September 17, 1939CCThe SR, in prior agreement with Germany, attacked Poland. The red-browns celebrated their joint victory in Brest. – ER)
That is why the calculation of the war from June 22, 1941, the moment when the Soviet Union was forced to start fighting AGAINST the Third Reich, was fundamental for Soviet historiography.
The land war between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich on the territory of Eastern Europe is the largest, but still an episode (i.e., one of a number of episodes) of the global conflict that took place between the Allies (later the Anti-Hitler Coalition) on the one hand and the Axis Powers on the other. another (for more details, see Myth No. 5).
Moreover, there is only 1 (one) country on the planet that participated in the Second World War from its very beginning to the very end, that is, it rattled off the entire war from bell to bell. This country is the British Empire (the author forgot about the USSR, which began drumming from Khalkhin Gol and Spain and continues to drum to this day - ER).
Myth 2.
Soviet Ideology was the principled opponent of Fascism, and the Soviet Union was the principle enemy of Nazi Germany. All fascist accomplices are our enemies, all collaborators are traitors.
Reality.
Soviet ideology became a principled opponent of Fascism mainly since 1938, and only fully since 1941. Propaganda of this time (1933-1939) depicts the German regime and life in Germany in general in much the same way as the social structure and life in the USA, France or the British Empire. That is, this country is ruled by bourgeois forces that are fundamentally opposed to truly popular power - the power of workers and peasants.
Now this fact seems surprising, but at first fascism (if we are talking about German fascism, then the more correct term is “Nazism”, because in the narrow sense the concept of “fascism” applies only to the Italian fascist party) did not seem evil to anyone. The whole history of the global struggle against fascism is a story of gradual epiphanies, and a gradual transition to anti-fascism of countries, peoples and individual groups. Even the British Empire, which can boast of the most principled and consistent anti-fascist position, professed appeasement tactics for a long time.
On September 30, 1938, in Munich, Prime Minister of the British Empire Neville Chamberlain and Prime Minister of France Edouard Daladier signed an agreement with Reich Chancellor of the Third Reich Adolf Hitler and Prime Minister of Italy Benito Mussolini, according to which Germany's right to occupy part of Czechoslovakia was de facto recognized. This fact, called the “Munich Agreement,” is considered a shameful stain on the reputation of Britain and France, who at that moment were trying to come to an agreement with Hitler and not bring the matter to conflict.
As for the Soviet Union, its cooperation with Germany from 1922 to 1939 was extremely large-scale. Before the Nazi Party came to power in the USSR, Germany was considered as the closest candidate for committing socialist revolution, and then - as a strategic ally in the fight against Western capitalism. The USSR and Germany traded a lot, exchanged technology, and actively cooperated in the military (and) sphere (in 1920-30 in the USSR there were at least three large centers for training German military personnel and developing military technologies, which certainly violated the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty). In many ways, the USSR laid the foundations for the iron machine of the Wehrmacht, which captured most of Europe and fell on the USSR itself on June 22, 1941.
A fragment from Molotov’s report to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR at the end of 1939, which is little known:
Recently, the ruling circles of England and France have been trying to portray themselves as fighters for the democratic rights of peoples against Hitlerism, and the British government has announced that for them the goal of the war against Germany is, no more and no less, the “destruction of Hitlerism.” It turns out that the English, and with them the French, supporters of the war declared something like an “ideological war” against Germany, reminiscent of the old religious wars. Indeed, at one time religious wars against heretics and infidels were in vogue. As is known, they led to the most dire consequences for the masses, to economic ruin and cultural savagery of peoples. These wars could not give anything else. But these wars took place during the Middle Ages. Is it not to these times of the Middle Ages, to the times religious wars, superstition and cultural savagery are the ruling classes of England and France dragging us down again? In any case, under the “ideological” flag a war has now been launched on an even larger scale and with even greater dangers for the peoples of Europe and the whole world. But this kind of war has no justification. The ideology of Hitlerism, like any other ideological system, can be recognized or denied; this is a matter of political views. But any person will understand that ideology cannot be destroyed by force, it cannot be ended by war. Therefore, it is not only senseless, but also criminal to wage such a war as the war for the “destruction of Hitlerism,” covered by the false flag of the struggle for “democracy.”
Britain declared war on Germany at 9 a.m. on September 3, 1939. On the same day, September 3, the German submarine U-30 sank the English passenger liner Athenia - thus began the grandiose multi-year Battle of the Atlantic. 5 and 6 September were drowned"Bosnia", "Royal Setre" and "Rio Claro", on October 14, a German submarine sank the battleship Royal Oak right in Scapa Flow, the fleet base - and by December 1939, Britain had lost 114 ships, and in 1940 .another 471 vessels. By the summer of 1941, a third of the merchant fleet's tonnage had already been lost, which created a serious threat to the economy of the country, which was fighting Hitler one-on-one.
And what was the USSR doing at this time, having let the Fuhrer off the leash? He stabbed Poland in the back by attacking her on September 17
At 5 o'clock in the morning on September 17, 1939, troops of the Belorussian and Ukrainian fronts crossed Polish-Soviet border along its entire length and attacked KOP checkpoints. Thus, the USSR violated at least four international agreements:
- Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 on Soviet-Polish borders
- The Litvinov Protocol, or the Eastern Pact of Renunciation of War
- Soviet-Polish non-aggression pact of January 25, 1932, extended in 1934 until the end of 1945
- London Convention of 1933, which contains a definition of aggression, and which the USSR signed on July 3, 1933
The governments of England and France presented notes of protest in Moscow against the undisguised aggression of the USSR against Poland, rejecting all of Molotov’s justifying arguments. On September 18, the London Times described this event as “a stab in the back of Poland.”
"Brothers in Arms"
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 de facto entered the war on the side of the Third Reich, invading 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.
Brest was occupied on September 22. Two armies at once. From the eastern side, the vanguard 29th Tank Brigade under the command of Semyon Krivoshein entered the city. According to the secret protocol, Brest became Soviet territory. And the next day German troops had to leave the city. But to demonstrate Soviet-German friendship, the military leaders decided to part beautifully. And since the two armies met as friends, as allies who together carried out a successful military operation, then according to all traditions this should have been celebrated. And they decided to hold a joint parade. Farewell - the Germans were leaving. Not far, on the other side of the Bug.
The celebrations began the day after the arrival of Soviet troops, September 23, at 16.00. Usually parades are hosted by one person. This time there were two hosts. Two commanders rose to the wooden platform in the center of Brest. full dress uniform: graduate of the Kazan Tank School Heinz Guderian and graduate of the Frunze Military Academy Semyon Krivoshein.
It was a sincere celebration. Soldiers of the two armies exchanged cigarettes on the streets of Brest, officers treated each other to beer.
Testimonies from eyewitnesses of the parade:
“We stood in the crowd on the square, approximately opposite the church. A lot of Brest residents had gathered. No one officially announced the parade, but the “heel post” worked flawlessly: already in the morning everyone in the city knew that troops would march across the square. We saw the Germans They hastily built a platform near the voivodeship."“First the Germans marched. A military band played a march unfamiliar to me. Then German planes appeared in the sky. The Red Army soldiers followed the Germans. They were completely different from them: they walked more quietly and did not stamp their steps with forged boots, since they were shod in canvas boots. They also had canvas belts, not leather, like the Germans. The horses that pulled the Soviet guns were small and unsightly, as long as they had some kind of harness... Behind the Soviet artillery were caterpillar tractors, which pulled guns of larger caliber, and behind them were three tank..."
In the USSR everyone knew that Brest was a hero fortress, but not everyone knew why everyone else settlements, who distinguished themselves in the first days of the war, were called “Hero-Cities”, and only Brest - “Hero-Fortress”. The answer is quite banal: the residents of Brest did not show themselves in any way during the Third Reich’s attack on the USSR. They did not at all consider themselves citizens of the country that had just been attacked, because two years ago they were citizens of Poland, which the USSR divided with the Third Reich, jointly celebrating this event with a solemn parade. A military garrison based near Brest, in an old fortress, resisted the German attack. Naturally, it consists entirely of Soviet troops who arrived here quite recently. That is why only the fortress is the hero - and not the city (by the way, before this, in 1939, the Brest Fortress was defended from Nazi troops by the Poles and we must give them credit - ER).
Also, few people know about the heroic defense of some cities (for example, Lvov) from the Nazi invaders in September 1939. The defense of Lvov was not bloody, but was extremely dramatic - the Germans entered the outskirts of the city (as well as later on the outskirts of Moscow) on September 12, and then Polish troops drove them out for ten days, until the Red Army approached from the other side and offered the garrison surrender the city.
Only on June 22, 1941, with the attack of the Third Reich on the USSR, the Eternal Principled Enmity of Workers and Peasants with the Nazis, which we know so well from Soviet textbooks, begins. As Orwell wrote about this, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
It is no coincidence that Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union was always called not just an attack, but a treacherous attack. Perfidy is a breakdown, an undermining of faith, when they believed so much in a partner, but he...
But how many more “glorious” things could they have accomplished together...
Myth 3.
The Soviet people, in a single impulse, fought against the Nazi Invaders, some in the ranks of the Red Army, some in the ranks of the partisans, and some simply doing little harm. Only traitors and other collaborators did not fight.
Reality.
Let's start with the fact that a significant part of the people who later belonged to part of the “Soviet people”, at the very least, did not identify themselves with it.
We have already written above about the Brest Fortress, but most people do not imagine the scale of the phenomenon. As a result of the Polish campaign of the Red Army in 1939, the Soviet Union occupied a territory of almost 200 thousand square kilometers, which included Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, Eastern Poland and Southwestern Lithuania. In total, 13 million people lived in this territory. In a matter of months, the Soviet authorities organized a “popular will” in this territory and annexed them to the corresponding Soviet republics. In June-July 1940, the Red Army occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina virtually without a fight: a territory of 50 thousand square kilometers, where 3 million 776 thousand people lived (since August 2, 1940 - the Moldavian SSR). In June 1940, the USSR occupied Estonia, Latvia and part of Lithuania, which, after the “elections”, became the corresponding Soviet republics on July 21-22. In total, the territories occupied by the USSR at this time were approximately equal in size and population to, for example, a country like Italy.
At the same time, in the occupied territories, the Soviet government carries out mass repressions, clearing them of unreliable and class-alien elements to the workers and peasants. These elements were arrested without trial, imprisoned, exiled to Siberia, and in extreme situations, shot. The most famous are the deportation operations of residents of the Baltic states (Operation 1940, during which up to 50,000 people were evicted, and Operation Surf in 1949, during which more than 100,000 were evicted), and mass executions of Polish military personnel (in the Katyn Forest, in Starobelsky camp, in Ostashkovsky camp and other places, a total of 22,000 people).
It is easy to imagine that the population of all these territories was not eager to defend the USSR from anyone, even from the bald devil. But even in that part of the Soviet Union that was Soviet until 1939, to put it mildly, not everyone supported Soviet power.
Nationalist sentiments were strong in Belarus and Ukraine, because with the composition of the Soviet Union (just as previously as part of the Russian Empire), both nations were actually asked to forget their culture, completely replacing it with Russian. In addition, in Ukraine the memory of the 1933 famine was still too fresh. 1941 is separated from the Holodomor by some 8 years - this is as much as separates us from the Orange Revolution, and 5 years more than separates us from Yeltsin’s departure, that is, in 1941 the ENTIRE adult population of Ukraine remembered well - not from stories, but from my own experience - the greatest tragedy that has befallen this country in its entire history. Therefore, the words “let there be Germans, but not advice - IT WILL NOT BE WORSE” for Ukrainians not only sounded psychologically convincing, but are also (as we see now) an objective truth.
The beginning of the Great Patriotic War is a surreal event, during which the Red Army mainly... does not even retreat, but rather crumbles into dust. Later, the Germans would remember June-July 1941 with the words “there is no enemy ahead, and no rear behind” (because the convoy could not keep up with the German units rapidly moving deeper into Soviet territory and not encountering resistance). The soldiers do not want to fight, do not understand what they are fighting for, and desert en masse. Cases of rare heroism these days look as surreal as the mass exodus of Red Army soldiers. Konstantin Simonov’s book “100 Days of War,” dedicated to the chaos of the first days of the Great Patriotic War, was never published in the USSR (it was published only in 1982 in a heavily revised form under the title “ Different days war"). Only with the advent of barrier detachments and penal battalions was discipline established in the troops, and finally a “united impulse” was achieved, during which the Soviet people... and so on.
Myth 4.
All Germans during the war were fascists, every German soldier was an SS man.
Reality.
This is not the biggest problem associated with the war (I would call it a “minor myth”), but my sense of justice requires me to put in a good word for the Germans. They did not deserve the place in history that they occupy today. Of all great history and a thousand-year-old culture, grandiose in scale (which gave us modern structure cities and principles of trade, many crafts and religious reformation, a significant part of classical music and philosophy, and much, much more) we remember today “Hyundai Hoch” and “Hitler - Kaput”.
Germany after the collapse of the “Second Reich” was the ruins of a huge state with rich cultural and, importantly, military traditions. The Wehrmacht was initially created as an organization devoid of any political coloring; This was the color of the opponents of the Wehrmacht, the “assault troops” (“stormtroopers” or “brownshirts”). After the Night of the Long Knives, stormtroopers (like other German paramilitary organizations) became part of the Wehrmacht, but they did not play leading roles there. Almost the entire leadership of the Wehrmacht remained out of politics until 1939, and a significant part of the leadership remained non-party until July 20, 1944, when, after the famous assassination attempt on Hitler, organized by high-ranking military opponents of Nazism, Hitler actually forced all the generals to join the party under threat of death.
According to the court verdict, one field marshal, 19 generals, 26 colonels, 2 ambassadors, 7 diplomats of other levels, 1 minister, 3 secretaries of state and the chief of the Reich criminal police were shot for conspiracy on July 20 (a total of 200 people according to the verdict and about 5,000 without trial, more about 7,000 were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps). Among others, Admiral Canaris (hanged in a steel collar) and Rommel (left in his office with a pistol, committed suicide) died.
There were almost no members of the NSDAP among the rank and file of the Wehrmacht until the very end of the war: they were more common among officers and their number did not exceed 5% of the total number of the Wehrmacht. “Party” conscripts and volunteers tried to get into the SS Troops, which, on the one hand, were considered more privileged, on the other, were much more politicized, and carried out almost all the tasks of clearing the civilian population, executing commissars, Jews, etc. But even the SS troops often resisted particularly cannibalistic party orders.
For ordinary Germans, the rise to power of the Nazis was a spontaneous phenomenon: the same as the rise to power in Russia of a small and unpopular Bolshevik party. The desire of the Germans to cleanse themselves of the Nazi past after defeat in the war (denazification, banning nationalist political forces, etc.) certainly deserves respect, and serves as an example for other nations that have gone through similar stages in their history.
Myth 5.
Nazi Germany was defeated by the Soviet Union.
Reality.
Generally speaking, it is incorrect to talk about the victory of COUNTRY over COUNTRY in a global military conflict between large coalitions of states. It is incorrect not only terminologically, but also purely humanly: dividing such an orange as “Victory” between those who made a “larger” contribution and those who, from our point of view, made a “smaller” contribution, is simply ugly: all coalition soldiers are comrades in arms, and everyone’s contribution was invaluable. The soldiers died in the same way, on land, at sea and in the air, and their victory was, as the famous song sang, “one for all.”
As I already wrote in the analysis of Myth No. 1, the only country that fought the entire war from start to finish was the British Empire. Today, most people think of the island of the same name when they hear the word “Britain,” but in 1939 Britain was the largest nation ever to exist, occupying a quarter of the Earth’s landmass, and was home to 480 million people (a quarter of the Earth’s population). The British Empire included Britain itself, as well as Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Canada, India (modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka), Guyana (British Guiana), about a quarter of the African continent (vertical strip from Egypt to South Africa plus the central Atlantic coast areas) and large parts of the Middle East (modern Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates). The sun never truly set on the British Empire.
The economic and military power of this state significantly exceeded the forces of the Third Reich - however, the fact that it was “scattered” around the world, and the main hostilities took place in Europe, significantly worsened the capabilities of the British in the fight against Germany, which was completely located in Europe. After the German Blitz Krieg in Poland, and then in the Benelux countries and France, a long trench war begins between the Germans and the British, taking place mainly at sea, and called the “Battle of the Atlantic”. This battle lasted almost the entire 6 years of the war and cost the lives of approximately 100,000 people, turning the Atlantic Ocean into one of the main theaters of combat.
Other significant theaters of war were North Africa, where German forces fought British forces on land, China (and southeast Asia), where the Japanese Empire fought a long list of countries, most of which it captured, then - Pacific Ocean, where the Empire of Japan and the United States fought a naval war in 1941-1945, and, of course, the “Eastern Front” - a land theater of military operations in Eastern Europe, where the Third Reich and the USSR fought.
The last theater was the most significant in terms of the volume of military efforts and the number of losses, and the most important for all allies without exception. Therefore, starting from June 22, 1941, the United States included the USSR in a program of transferring weapons, materials and supplies to the warring party “on credit,” under which they had already supplied weapons to Britain. In total, goods worth 11 billion dollars (140 billion in modern prices), about 17 and a half million tons of various goods, were supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease. These were weapons (small arms, tanks, explosives, ammunition), airplanes, locomotives, cars, ships, machinery and equipment, food, non-ferrous and ferrous metals, clothing, materials, chemical reagents and so on.
In a number of areas, Lend-Lease accounted for a significant share of the total volume of goods used in the USSR during the war: for example, about a third of all explosives used in the USSR in 1941-1945, about 40% of copper and more than 50 % aluminum, cobalt, tin, wool, railway rails, etc. The number of locomotives delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease was 2 and a half times greater than what was produced by Soviet industry during the war years, most of the Katyushas were on Studebaker chassis, and almost all the canned meat that reached the front was American-made. (By the way, the USSR’s debt for Lend-Lease has not yet been repaid, unlike all other participating countries).
As for official Soviet propaganda, it preferred to downplay the importance of American assistance in every possible way, or even to ignore it altogether. In March 1943, the American ambassador in Moscow, without hiding his resentment, allowed himself an undiplomatic statement: “The Russian authorities apparently want to hide the fact that they are receiving outside help. Obviously, they want to assure their people that the Red Army is fighting in this war alone." And during the Yalta Conference of 1945, Stalin was forced to admit that Lend-Lease was Roosevelt’s remarkable and most fruitful contribution to the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition.
P-63 to be sent to the USSR
Bell P-39 Airacobra before shipment from Edmonton to the USSR. Citizens of Western countries wholeheartedly tried to use supplies to the USSR to support Soviet soldiers, at least with some pleasant little thing, a gift from the heart. Soviet propaganda boorishly ridiculed this; it tried to prevent friendship and mutual understanding between people in private - only through the state and only in the way the state decides. Like in prison - only in the presence of a warden.
American and Soviet pilots next to the P-39 Airacobra fighter, supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease.
Preparation of British Spitfire fighters, delivered under Len-Lease, for transfer to the Soviet side.
Assembly shop for Bell P-39 Airacobra aircraft in the USA for the USSR
Mk II "Matilda II";, Mk III "Valentine" and Mk IV "Valentine"
M4 "General Sherman" as part of the Red Army
Studebakers in Iran on the way to the USSR. If it were not for the Western countries, the Red Army would have entered Berlin on horseback (if it had entered). Before Lend-Lease deliveries, the entire Red Army was horse-drawn.
However, the official point of view of the USSR on Lend-Lease was expressed in the following lines: “The Soviet Union was left to its own devices, did not receive help from the West, in particular from the USA, precisely at that time, which was the most desperate for it, when the issue was being resolved, to be or not to be for the Soviet state." Political and civil brutality has always been our distinguishing feature.
It is not surprising that when the American film “The Unknown War” was shown in cinemas across the country in the 80s, many were shocked: ace Pokryshkin told how he flew the American Airacobra fighter throughout the war. About northern caravans with aid supplies. About many other things that turned everything upside down and therefore were not perceived - this cannot happen, “we know the truth from school.” Is it true?
Phrases like “we would have won without it” or “they would have lost if it weren’t for us” are fantastically amateurish. But since the conversation is often and purposefully diverted in this direction, I must express my personal opinion: “From my (humble) point of view, without the six years of heroic efforts of the British in the Battle of the Atlantic, without the four years of colossal injections of American money into Lend-Lease, which saved hundreds thousands of lives of Soviet citizens, without many other small and medium-sized victims and pockets of resistance from other countries and peoples, the Soviet Union had too slim a chance of winning the war against the Third Reich; with a high degree of probability, the Soviet Union would have lost it.”
Since without the assistance of England and the USA the USSR could not have waged a war against Germany, the assertions of Soviet propaganda about the economic victory of socialism in the Great Patriotic War and the ability of the USSR to independently defeat Germany are nothing more than a myth. Unlike Germany, in the USSR, the goal that was outlined in the early 1930s to create an autarkic economy capable of providing the army in wartime with everything necessary for waging a modern war was never achieved. Hitler and his advisers miscalculated not so much in determining the military-economic power of the USSR, but in assessing the ability of the Soviet economic and political system to function in conditions of severe military defeat, as well as the ability of the Soviet economy to effectively and quickly use Western supplies, and for Great Britain and the United States to implement such supplies in the required quantity and on time.
“Now it’s easy to say that Lend-Lease meant nothing. He stopped having great importance much later. But in the fall of 1941 we lost everything, and if it weren’t for Lend-Lease, weapons, food, warm clothes for the army and other supplies, the question is how things would have turned out.”
(Berezhkov V.M. How I became a translator of Stalin. M., 1993. P. 337)
And, by the way, there is no doubt that if the Soviet Union had been defeated, the Allies would still have won the war - the power of the British Empire and the wealth of the United States would still have done their job.
Three photographs showing the reaction of a 16-year-old German soldier when he was captured by the Americans. Germany, 1945.
View from the roof of the Dresden Town Hall after the Allied bombing of the city from February 13 to 15, 1945. About 3,600 aircraft dropped 3,900 tons of conventional and incendiary bombs on the city. The fire destroyed about 25 square kilometers of the city center, killing more than 22,000 people. (Walter Hahn/AFP/Getty Images)
American soldiers on a landing boat cross the Rhine under fire from German troops.
An American soldier from the 12th Armored Division next to a group of German prisoners somewhere in the forest in Germany
Soviet officers and American soldiers during a meeting on the Elbe in April 1945.
Soviet soldiers are fighting in the suburbs of Konigsberg, East Prussia, April 1945.
A Czech woman kisses a Soviet soldier-liberator, Prague, May 5, 1945. This woman doesn't know about 1968 yet.
The New York City subway came to a standstill during rush hour on May 1, 1945, as news of Hitler's death was received. The leader of Nazi Germany shot himself in a bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945. His successor, Karl Doenitz, announced on the radio that Hitler had died a heroic death and the war against the Allies must continue.
British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (right) reads the surrender pact in the presence of German officers(from left to right): Major Friedel, Admiral Wagner, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg in the headquarters tent of the 21st Army Group, Luneburg Heath, 4 May 1945. The pact provided for a cessation of hostilities on the fronts in northern Germany, Denmark and Holland from 8 a.m. on May 5. German forces in Italy surrendered earlier, on April 29, and the remnants of the army in Western Europe– May 7th, on Eastern Front- 8th. The five-year war in the vastness of Europe was over.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signs the Act of Unconditional Surrender of Germany, Berlin. May 8, 1945
Soviet soldiers and officers drink with the Americans for Victory
In Dusseldorf, Germany, on May 8, American troops held a Victory Parade. Local residents preferred to watch him from afar. Not so much because of the bitterness of defeat, but because of a complete lack of understanding of how to continue to live in a country destroyed, mutilated by bombing and captured by the allies.
A huge crowd of people in central London on May 8, Victory in Europe Day, listens to the Prime Minister's announcement of Germany's unconditional surrender. About a million people took to the streets of London that day.
Employees of the Toronto (Canada) telegraph office poured out into the street. For them, the time is over when every day they had to send out dozens of telegrams with news of the deaths of husbands, brothers, and fathers.
In Philadelphia, on May 8, 1945, everything stopped. Trams did not run, banks did not work, construction projects froze.
Times Square in New York City is filled with people celebrating victory over Germany on May 7, 1945. In Europe at this moment it is May 8th (it’s already dark), but they celebrate there too, with the exception of the USSR, which chose a separate date for its own war. To justify this fact, many Soviet historians foam at the mouth with far-fetched arguments, but the truth is extremely simple - for many decades we have never bothered to celebrate Victory Day with the whole world. Even former enemies have long become friends, but only we, the last of Soviet propaganda, have still not been able to reconcile... no, not with enemies, but with our former allies, who helped us a lot in difficult times and fought side by side together with us against a common enemy.
Another myth: The act of surrender was signed not during the day, but on the night of May 8-9, because the allies could not agree on the exact text. There are different dates in the Act because in Western Europe it was still May 8, and in Moscow it was already the 9th. And Moscow time had already been introduced in Berlin.
In fact: The postponement of the signing of the Act from afternoon to night was not due to any political motives. The basis is purely technical reasons. only English text surrender. The Russian translation of the document was transferred to Berlin incompletely. It took several hours to get the full version. The instrument of ratification was signed at approximately 00.15 Central European Time. By that time, the basic terms of surrender had been in effect for more than an hour. Moscow time was introduced in Berlin by order of the city commandant, General Berzarin, only on May 20 and was in effect for only a few weeks.
Thus, at the time of signing the final act (or rather its peculiar ratification), it was 23.15 in Western European time, 00.15 in Central European time, and 02.15 in Moscow time. The fact that for the USSR the date of surrender is considered May 9 is not related to the time of its signing, but to the time of its announcement to the Soviet people. This was another manifestation of Stalin’s will: in the USSR there appeared its a date that was not yet a holiday. For the first time, Victory Day was widely celebrated in the USSR only two decades later under Brezhnev. In the same anniversary year of 1965, Victory Day became a non-working day.
Two years after the end of World War II in the USSR there were two holidays Victory. Over fascist Germany on May 9 and over militaristic Japan on September 3. It is difficult to say why the second Victory Day was celebrated on the 3rd. The Japanese Surrender Act was signed on September 2, 1945 at 9:02 am Tokyo time on board the American battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. On behalf of the USSR, the document on the end of WWII was signed by Lieutenant General Kuzma Derevianko. At this time, the 2nd, but not the 3rd, of September had already arrived throughout the entire territory of the Soviet Union.
The leapfrog with dates reflected the emerging contradictions between the USSR and the other victorious powers.
We, like rednecks, have set ourselves apart and are celebrating some kind of our own separate war, perverted by propaganda myths, outright lies and patriotic pathos. In it, we are GREAT heroes who won a GREAT victory in a GREAT war, but never received it. Every year we are smeared with this victory on our lips from the rostrum of the mausoleum by those who appropriated it for themselves and we smack our lips enthusiastically - we are heroes.
May 9, 1945, Moscow, Red Square
Military correspondent Alexander Ustinov wrote: “On the night of May 9, 1945, Muscovites did not sleep. At 2:10 a.m., announcer Yuri Levitan read the Act of Military Surrender of Nazi Germany.”
The words of B.N., who spoke on Poklonnaya Hill in the year of the 50th anniversary of the Victory. Yeltsin:
“in the history of the war there are still unwritten and torn out pages.” Many of them are unfinished to this day.
For those who are interested in this and similar topics, we recommend watching the film by Vladimir Sinelnikov "The last myth " . This is an 18-episode film, long, but worth watching.
And here's another video, shorter:
Quote:
70 years have passed since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Even by historical standards, this is a considerable period. There are fewer and fewer living witnesses of those heroic years among us. This means you can fantasize and rewrite history as much as you like. Apparently, this is the opinion of some activists and memoirists, who in their judgments reach the point of outright absurdity, distorting facts and real events. NG tried to debunk the most common and ridiculous myths about that war.Myth one
Intelligence reported exactly the timing of the start of the war, but Stalin did not believe its reports.
In fact. Our station in Berlin actually found out that the German command was preparing for an attack on the USSR, but our Stirlitz could not find out the name of this plan (“Barbarossa”), its details, or, most importantly, the timing of the proposed attack. The information was very contradictory: March 41st, mid-May, end of May, July... June 22nd was mentioned several times, but why did Stalin need to believe this particular date if the previous ones turned out to be false? According to the deputy director of the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Marat Zhilinsky, even the famous Richard Sorge did not name the exact date. He reported from Tokyo: the war is expected to begin in May - late June.
Stalin more than once asserted in his circle: war is inevitable, but we must delay it by any means in order to rearm the army.Myth two
Stalin was preparing a pre-emptive strike against Hitler.
In fact. There is not a single document on this subject, including operational plans, presented to Stalin (and accordingly signed by G.K. Zhukov or S.K. Timoshenko) and approved by him. Also, there is not a single document from border military districts containing such plans, says the candidate historical sciences, Deputy Head of the Russian Institute military history Ivan Basik. According to him, supporters of the theory of preventive war, analyzing the Soviet plans and regulations in force at that time, do not want to notice that they talk about decisive offensive actions of the Red Army after the words “if” or “in the event of a war breaking out.”Myth three
From the moment of the attack of Nazi Germany, the Red Army did not offer any resistance and “fled” to Moscow, panic and confusion reigned among the troops, soldiers
and the commanders were unable to repel the invaders.
In fact. The implementation of the plans of the Nazi command was hindered primarily by the resilience and mass heroism of Soviet soldiers, says Boris Dolgotovich, associate professor of the history department of BNTU.
“Yes, all sorts of things happened, our troops ended up in pockets, there were alarmists, cowards and traitors, but it was not these phenomena and facts that determined the nature of the war,” the historian notes. “Already in the first hours, days, weeks of fighting, the Red Army made it clear to the enemy: on our soil he will not have an easy walk with a harmonica.” Did the Wehrmacht generals think that the Brest Fortress, which took an hour or two to capture, would hold out for a month? On the first day of the war, the enemy disabled 738 Soviet aircraft at airfields and seized air supremacy, but our pilots were not at a loss. On June 22, they flew 1,900 sorties and shot down more than a hundred German aircraft. Even the top of the Wehrmacht recognized the unprecedented resistance of the Red Army. After three days of fighting, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Field Marshal General Walter von Brauchitsch, wrote that this was “the first serious enemy,” and the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, Franz Halder, noted that the enemy “is fighting fiercely and fanatically. The tank formations suffered significant losses in personnel and equipment.”
By mid-July 1941, the aggressor had lost about 100 thousand soldiers and officers, almost half of the armored vehicles and 1284 aircraft. The fascist army did not know such losses during all the fighting in the West. And if there had been the “flight” that false historians talk about, then there would have been no major victories at Smolensk, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk. There would have been no Great Victory, summarizes Boris Dolgotovich.Myth four
The USSR won not by skill, but by the number and great bloodshed of its soldiers.
In fact. According to the most recent data, 26.6 million Soviet citizens died during the war. Germans - 7.3 million. Both of these figures included both civilians and soldiers. If we count only soldiers, then Germany lost about 5.2 million, the USSR - 8,668,400 people, of which 2.5 million died in captivity. It turns out that our combat losses are approximately equal. The remaining 18 million Soviet citizens died as a result of Hitler's genocide.
The Nazis were engaged in the targeted extermination of the population of the USSR, shooting and burning entire cities, deporting them to concentration camps and forced labor, and from German captivity Only every second person managed to return alive.Myth fifth
The war was won by the USA and Great Britain, and the USSR fought only with American aid - Lend-Lease.
In fact. “The contribution of Lend-Lease to the USSR economy during the war was only four percent; of the 50 billion dollars at which all US supplies are estimated, the USSR received less than ten percent. But Great Britain received 31 billion,” says MGIMO professor Vladimir Medinsky.
We must not forget: Lend-Lease was not free. We paid for everything with caviar, fur and gold. And the United States grew fat in this war. In 1940, there were 8 million unemployed in America. In 1942 - not a single one.Myth six
If we had lost that war, we would now live like in Germany.
In fact. “Only those people who either don’t know history at all or simply hate their country can say this,” Vladimir Medinsky is convinced. — The common saying “If we surrendered to the Germans, we would drink beer” is criminal. Hitler clearly did not intend to give us German beer, because the Slavs in Hitler’s hierarchy stood exactly half a step lower than the Jews. This meant that the Jew went to the gas chamber first, and the Slav immediately after him.” But this is the instruction that Nazi ideologist Goebbels wrote for Wehrmacht soldiers: “For your personal glory, you must kill 100 Russians... kill every Russian; don’t stop - the old man in front of you, a woman, a girl or a boy. Kill!..” The memo to an ordinary soldier, not a punitive officer or an SS man, called for killing not commissars and Jews, but women and children.” And this is the whole essence of Nazism.
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