Rare photos of Crimea during the Great Patriotic War. Crimea during the Great Patriotic War

I don't want to incite hatred and discord. But if someone wants to remember about May 18 and speculate on this topic, then let them remember why it happened. So, in the Sudak region in 1942, a group of self-defense Tatars liquidated a reconnaissance landing of the Red Army, while the self-defenses caught and burned alive 12 Soviet parachutists. On February 4, 1943, Crimean Tatar volunteers from the villages of Beshui and Koush captured four partisans from S.A. Mukovnin’s detachment. Partisans L.S. Chernov, V.F. Gordienko, G.K. Sannikov and Kh.K. Kiyamov were brutally killed: stabbed with bayonets, laid on fires and burned. Particularly disfigured was the corpse of the Kazan Tatar Kh.K. Kiyamov, whom the punishers apparently mistook for their fellow countryman. The Crimean Tatar detachments dealt equally brutally with the civilian population. As noted in the special message of L.P. Beria to the State Defense Committee addressed to I.V. Stalin, V.M. Molotov and G.M. Malenkov No. 366/b dated April 25, 1944: “Local residents say that they were persecuted more from the Tatars than from the Romanian occupiers.” It got to the point that, fleeing from reprisals, the Russian-speaking population turned to the German authorities for help - and received protection from them! Here is what Alexander Chudakov writes, for example: “My grandmother in forty-three was almost shot by Crimean Tatar punitive forces in front of my mother - at that time a seven-year-old girl - just because she had the misfortune of being Ukrainian, and her husband was mine grandfather - worked before the war as chairman of the village council and at that time fought in the ranks of the Red Army. Grandmother was saved from a bullet then, by the way... by the Germans, who were amazed at the degree of brutality of their lackeys. All this happened a few kilometers from Crimea, in the village of Novodmitrovka, Kherson region of Ukraine.” Beginning in the spring of 1942, a concentration camp operated on the territory of the Krasny state farm, in which at least 8 thousand residents of Crimea were tortured and shot during the occupation. According to eyewitnesses, the camp was guarded by Crimean Tatars from the 152nd auxiliary police battalion, whom the head of the camp, SS Oberscharführer Speckmann, recruited to perform “the dirtiest work.” After the fall of Sevastopol in July 1942, the Crimean Tatars actively helped their German masters catch the soldiers of the Sevastopol garrison trying to get through to theirs: “In the morning, five small boats of various types (torpedo carriers, and Yaroslavchiki) of the 20th air base of the Black Sea Fleet Air Force left Krugloya Bay heading for Novorossiysk . In the raid area of ​​the 35th battery, they were joined by the sixth boat, which left Cossack Bay on the evening of July 1 at about 11 p.m. In total, these six boats carried about 160 people - almost the entire group of 017 paratroopers of the Special Forces group of the Black Sea Fleet (about 30 people) and Red Navy machine gunners from the security battalion of the 35th battery. Everyone was armed. At sunrise, a group of boats heading into the wake with a distance of 150-200 meters between the boats was discovered by enemy aircraft. Airplane attacks began. The boats' engines overheated and often stalled, as the boats were overloaded. According to the commander of group 017, senior lieutenant V.K. Kvariani, group members senior sergeant A.N. Krygin, N. Monastyrsky, sergeant P. Sudak, enemy planes, setting from the direction of the sun, began to bomb them and fire at them with machine guns of their choice. Two boats were immediately sunk by a direct hit from bombs. The boat on which Kvariani and Sudak were located received holes in the hull and began to settle from the water it received. One engine stalled, and the boat had to turn to the shore occupied by the Nazis. All this happened in the coastal area near Alushta. On the shore there was a battle between the paratroopers and an armed group of Tatars. As a result of the unequal battle, all those who survived were captured. The wounded Tatars shot at point-blank range. The Italian soldiers arrived in time and sent some of the prisoners by car and some by boat to Yalta.” “After July 5, the enemy withdrew his troops from the Heraclean Peninsula and left reinforced posts along the entire coast from the Chersonesus lighthouse to the St. George Monastery. On the night of July 6, when Ilyichev’s group was making their way along the shore of the 35th battery towards the lighthouse, they suddenly saw Red Army soldiers and commanders climbing a rope up the cliff wall. As it turned out, it was a group of signalmen from the 25th Chapaev Division. They decided to climb after them. They lay down at the top. A patrol located about forty meters away discovered them, fired rockets and opened fire. Ilyichev and Koshelev ran along the bank towards Balaklava, and Lynchik and another group of signalmen ran to the left along the bank. Many died, but a small group of 6 people, in which Linkik found himself, managed to break through the upper reaches of Cossack Bay and go into the mountains. This group, as it later turned out when we met, was led by the communications chief of the 25th Chapaev Division, Captain Muzhailo. He had a compass and knew the area well. The group also included an assistant prosecutor of the Primorsky Army, a senior sergeant and two Red Army soldiers. The last two later left, and the group of four continued on their way into the mountains. At the end of July, in the mountains, somewhere above Yalta, they were captured at dawn while resting by Tatar traitors in German uniforms and taken to the commandant’s office of Yalta.” With special pleasure future " innocent victims Stalin's repressions" abused defenseless prisoners. This is what M.A. Smirnov, who participated in the defense of Sevastopol as a military paramedic, recalls: “The new transition to Bakhchisarai turned out to be even more difficult: the sun burned mercilessly, and there was not a drop of water. We walked about thirty-five kilometers. Even now I can’t imagine how I was able to overcome this march. At this crossing we were escorted by Crimean Tatars, dressed entirely in German uniforms. In their cruelty they resembled the Crimean horde of the distant past. And, having mentioned the uniform, I want to emphasize the special disposition of the Germans towards them for their devoted service. Vlasovites, policemen and other henchmen were given German military uniform from the First World War, lying in the warehouses of Kaiser Germany. In this transition we lost most of our comrades. The Tatars shot those who tried to draw water from the ditch, and those who were at least a little behind or were wounded and could not keep up with everyone else, and the pace of the march was accelerated. There was no need to rely on the local population of the villages to get a piece of bread or a mug of water. Crimean Tatars lived here, they looked at us with contempt, and sometimes threw stones or rotten vegetables. After this stage, our ranks thinned noticeably.” Smirnov’s story is confirmed by other Soviet prisoners of war who were “lucky enough” to encounter the Crimean Tatars: “On July 4, he was captured,” wrote Red Navy radio operator from the Black Sea Fleet training detachment N.A. Yanchenko. On the way we were escorted by traitors from the Tatars. They beat the medical staff with batons. After prison in Sevastopol, we were escorted through the Belbek Valley, which was mined. A lot of our Red Army and Red Navy soldiers died there. In the Bakhchisarai camp they packed us in, there was nowhere for an apple to fall. Three days later we drove to Simferopol. We were accompanied not only by Germans, but also by traitors from the Crimean Tatars. I once saw a Tatar cut off the head of a Red Navy man.” “V. Mishchenko, who walked in one of the columns of prisoners, testifies that out of three thousand of their column, only half of the prisoners reached the “potato field” camp in Simferopol, the rest were shot along the way by a convoy of Germans and traitors from the Crimean Tatars.” In addition, the Crimean Tatars helped the Germans look for Jews and political workers among prisoners of war: “At Belbek, the German translator announced that the commissars and political officers should go to the indicated place. Then the commanders were called. And at this time, traitors from the Crimean Tatars walked among the prisoners and looked for the named people. If they found someone, they immediately took away another 15-20 people lying nearby.” “All prisoners of war first underwent preliminary filtration at the place of captivity, where commanders, privates, and wounded were separated separately, who were subject to treatment and transportation or destruction. In the field camp near Bakhchisarai, filtration was more thorough. G. Volovik, A. Pochechuev and many others who passed through this camp note that there units of traitors from the Crimean Tatars, dressed in German uniforms, agitated the entire mass of prisoners of war, looking for Jews, trying to find out who would point to the commissar. All those identified were concentrated in a special barbed wire fence measuring 8x10. In the evening they were taken away to be shot. Pochechuev writes that during the six days of his stay in this camp, every day 200 people gathered in this fence were shot.” Akhmed Gabulaev, a volunteer of the 49th watch battalion of the German army, arrested by the NKVD, during interrogation on April 23, 1944, testified as follows: “In the Tatar detachment, which joined the 49 watch battalion, there were Tatar volunteers who dealt especially cruelly with Soviet people. Ibraimov Aziz worked as a security guard in a prisoner of war camp in the cities of Kerch, Feodosia and Simferopol, systematically engaged in the execution of Red Army prisoners of war, I personally saw how Ibraimov shot 10 prisoners of war in the Kerch camp. After we were transferred to Simferopol, Ibraimov was specially involved in identifying and searching for hiding Jews; he personally detained 50 Jews and took part in their extermination. The SD platoon commander, Tatar Useinov Osman, and volunteers Mustafaev, Ibraimov Dzhelal and others actively participated in the executions of prisoners of war.” As you know, the Germans widely used our prisoners for mine clearance work in Sevastopol and its environs. And here it could not have happened without Crimean Tatar assistants: “Foreman 1st Article A.M. Voskanov from the 79th Marine Brigade took part in the same demining, but near Balaklava and miraculously survived. There was one peculiarity. Behind them, 50 meters away, was a line of Tatars with sticks, and behind them at a distance were Germans with machine guns.” Such zeal did not go unrewarded. For their service to the Germans, many hundreds of Crimean Tatars were awarded special insignia approved by Hitler - “For courage and special merits shown by the population of the liberated regions who participated in the fight against Bolshevism under the leadership of the German command.” Thus, according to the report of the Simferopol Muslim Committee for 12/01/1943 - 01/31/1944: “For services to the Tatar people, the German command was awarded: a sign with swords of the 2nd degree, issued for the liberated eastern regions, Chairman of the Simferopol Tatar Committee Mr. Cemil Abdureshid, sign of the 2nd degree Chairman of the Department of Religion Mr. Abdul-Aziz Gafar, employee of the Department of Religion Mr. Fazil Sadyk and Chairman of the Tatar Table Mr. Tahsin Cemil. Mr. Cemil Abdureshid took an active part in the creation of the Simferopol Committee at the end of 1941 and, as the first chairman of the committee, was active in attracting volunteers into the ranks of the German army. Abdul-Aziz Gafar and Fazil Sadyk, despite their advanced years, worked among volunteers and did significant work to establish religious affairs in the [Simferopol] region. Mr. Tahsin Cemil organized the Tatar Table in 1942 and, working as its chairman until the end of 1943, provided systematic assistance to needy Tatars and volunteer families.” In addition, the personnel of the Crimean Tatar formations were provided with all sorts of material benefits and privileges. According to one of the resolutions of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKB), “every person who actively fought or is fighting the partisans and Bolsheviks” could submit a petition for “the endowment of land or payment to him monetary reward up to 1000 rubles.” At the same time, his family had to receive a monthly subsidy from the social security departments of the city or district administration in the amount of 75 to 250 rubles. [Photo: Crimean Tatar “volunteer”; In the photo: a guy in a new military uniform and a skullcap, showing off a bandage on his right hand] After the Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Regions published the “Law on the New Agrarian Order” on February 15, 1942, all Tatars who joined volunteer formations and their families began to be given full property of 2 hectares of land. The Germans provided them with the best plots, taking land from peasants who did not join these formations. As noted in the already cited memorandum of the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, State Security Major Karanadze, to the NKVD of the USSR “On the political and moral state of the population of Crimea”: “Persons included in volunteer detachments are in a particularly privileged position. All of them receive wages, food, are exempt from taxes, received the best plots of fruit and grape gardens, tobacco plantations, taken away from the rest of the non-Tatar population. Volunteers are given items looted from the Jewish population. The vineyards, orchards, and livestock that previously belonged to them are returned to the kulaks at the expense of the collective farms, and they estimate how many offspring this kulak would have had during the collective farm system, and are given back from the collective farm herd.” It is very interesting to leaf through the file of the newspaper “Azat Krym” (“Free Crimea”), published from January 11, 1942 until the very end of the occupation. This publication was the organ of the Simferopol Muslim Committee and was published twice a week in the Tatar language. At first, the newspaper's circulation was small, but due to the directives of the German command to strengthen the propaganda impact on the local population in the summer of 1943, it reached 15 thousand copies. Here are some typical quotes: March 3, 1942: “After our German brothers crossed the historical ditch at the gates of Perekop, the great sun of freedom and happiness rose for the peoples of Crimea.” March 10, 1942: “Alushta. At a meeting organized by the Muslim Committee, Muslims expressed their gratitude to the Great Fuhrer Adolf Hitler Effendi for the free life he had given to the Muslim people. Then they held a service for the preservation of the life and health of Adolf Hitler Effendi for many years.” In the same issue: “To the Great Hitler - liberator of all peoples and religions! 2 thousand Tatar village. Kokkoz and the surrounding area gathered for a prayer service...in honor of the German soldiers. We made a prayer to the German martyrs of the war... The entire Tatar people prays every minute and asks Allah to grant the Germans victory over the whole world. Oh, great leader, we tell you with all our hearts, with all our being, believe us! We, Tatars, give our word to fight the herd of Jews and Bolsheviks together with German soldiers in the same ranks!.. May God thank you, our great Master Hitler!” March 20, 1942: “Together with the glorious German brothers who arrived in time to liberate the world of the East, we, the Crimean Tatars, declare to the whole world that we have not forgotten the solemn promises of Churchill in Washington, his desire to revive the Jewish power in Palestine, his desire to destroy Turkey, capture Istanbul and the Dardanelles, raise an uprising in Turkey and Afghanistan, etc. etc. The East is waiting for its liberator not from lying democrats and swindlers, but from the National Socialist Party and from the liberator Adolf Hitler. We took an oath to make sacrifices for such a sacred and brilliant task." April 10, 1942. From a message to Adolf Hitler, received at a prayer service by more than 500 Muslims in Karasu Bazar: “Our liberator! It is only thanks to you, your help and thanks to the courage and dedication of your troops that we were able to open our houses of worship and perform prayer services in them. Now there is not and cannot be such a force that would separate us from the German people and from you. The Tatar people swore and gave their word, having signed up as volunteers in the ranks of the German troops, hand in hand with your troops to fight against the enemy to the last drop of blood. Your victory is a victory for the entire Muslim world. We pray to God for the health of your troops and ask God to give you, the great liberator of nations, long life. You are now a liberator, the leader of the Muslim world - gases Adolf Hitler." And here is a congratulation from the members of the Simferopol Muslim Committee to Hitler in honor of his birthday on April 20, 1942: “Liberator of oppressed peoples, faithful son of the German people to Adolf Hitler. To you, the great leader of the German people, the liberated Crimean Tatar people turn their eyes today from the threshold of the Muslim East and send their heartfelt greetings on your birthday. We remember our history, we also remember that our peoples will continue

1. War came to Crimea.

2. Heroic defense of Sevastopol.

3. Partisan and underground movement.

4. Liberation of Crimea.

5. Crimea after liberation from the occupiers.

6. Negative manifestations of Stalin’s personality cult.

7. Deportation of the peoples of Crimea.

The problems of the Great Patriotic War are at the center of discussions among historians today. It is generally accepted that many pages of the history of the war were previously falsified. For this reason, previously published fundamental works are now being criticized, many assessments of the events of the war are being revised, and the publication of a new multi-volume history of the Great Patriotic War is being prepared.

The reasons for our failures at the beginning of the war: the economy was not rebuilt for the expanded production of weapons and military equipment, a plan for the strategic deployment of troops was not developed, the army was not reorganized and re-equipped, the deployment of armed forces was not carried out in a timely manner, the western military districts were not included in combat readiness, the direction of the enemy's main attacks is determined incorrectly. There were significant shortcomings in the captive theory: headquarters and troops were focused on defeating the enemy little blood and on foreign territory, no strategic, deeply standardized defense was provided for. Numerous repressions of the Stalinist regime against the command and political cadres of the Red Army took their toll. Use new publications to confirm these conclusions.

As throughout the country, military mobilization began in Crimea. In an atmosphere of high patriotic enthusiasm, many, without waiting for summons, went to military registration and enlistment offices and asked to be sent to military units. Volunteers joined the 51st Army stationed on the peninsula. In addition, 155 units were formed to combat saboteurs and spies people's militia, 628 self-defense groups, 70 fire protection platoons, 30 fighter battalions, consisting of 166 thousand people.

Perestroika began urgently in Crimea national economy in a military way. Mortars were made in the locomotive depots of Simferopol and Feodosia, and the Khimchistka artel in Simferopol equipped mines and grenades. At the Kerch plant named after. Voikov launched the production of anti-tank incendiary mixture, manufactured sea barriers against submarines, metal caps for pillboxes, mortars and armored trains. Instead of beds, axes, and frying pans, the plant of the Sevastopol promartel “Molot” began producing grenades.

As throughout the country, thousands of women of Crimea, replacing husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons who had gone to the front, mastered specialties that were new to them. Nine women's brigades were organized on fishing collective farms. At the metallurgical plant in Kerch, training courses for assistant steelworkers, furnaces, crane operators and others have opened. 1,500 collective farmers took accelerated courses and replaced tractor drivers mobilized into the army. With the help of students, schoolchildren, and housewives, a bountiful harvest in 1941 was harvested.

The population of Crimea took an active part in the nationwide movement to create a defense fund. This fund received money, bonds, and jewelry. We can give the following example: Agafonova, a worker at one of the factories in Sevastopol, was one of the first to pass: “a wedding ring of 84 standard; silver glass holder, a birthday present for my husband; a gilded watch with a chain, named after his son for the Osoaviakhim Prize; earrings and a gold bracelet with stones, for my daughter’s wedding...”

To save the lives of wounded soldiers, thousands of people donated blood; in Sevastopol alone, 2,500 women did so. Sanatoriums and rest homes on the South Coast became the basis for the creation of hospitals.

Everyone who could hold a shovel took part in the construction of defensive structures that unfolded throughout the peninsula. It was especially important to strengthen the Perekop Isthmus and Sevastopol. In a very short time, anti-tank obstacles, long-term firing points, and machine gun nests appeared here.

As enemy troops approached, the evacuation began. They exported livestock, grain, factory equipment, a precious collection of Massandra wines, and cultural values. About 200 thousand people were evacuated to the rear in an organized manner. The evacuation took place in very difficult conditions - with bombings, shelling and an acute shortage of transport.

With heavy fighting, under the blows of superior enemy forces, the Red Army retreated. By mid-September, fascist troops approached the gates of Crimea - Perekop. The Nazis attributed the capture of the peninsula great value. After all, it was from the Crimean airfields that Soviet aviation destroyed the oil regions of Romania. The Germans sought to take Crimea, since from here a direct route to the Caucasus, to Baku oil, opened through the Kerch Strait. In one of the conversations, Hitler said: “We will completely turn southern Ukraine, in particular Crimea, into a German colony.” The Nazis planned to set up a German resort area here, where high-ranking Nazis would relax. It was planned to build the capital of the “imperial region of Gotenland” in the Yalta region; Simferopol and Sevastopol were to be renamed Gothenburg and Theodorichshafen. At the same time, Hitler promised to give Crimea to the Romanians, and he also promised Turkey if it entered the war.

The 11th Nazi Army and the Romanian Mountain Corps tried to rush into Crimea. The soldiers of the undeformed and weakly armed 51st Army stood in their way. Bloody battles began. In the second half of October, the remnants of the Primorsky Army, which had previously defended Odessa, departed by sea to the Crimea. The Nazis, having a significant superiority in manpower and equipment, pressed back our heroically fighting troops. The battles on Perekop, Chongar, and the Arabat Spit were so exhausting and desperate that they deserve special mention.

51st Army under the command of Lieutenant General P.I. Batova retreated to the Kerch Peninsula. After grueling battles on November 16, 1941, she was forced to leave Kerch and cross to the Taman Peninsula. At the same time, saving the artillery, so needed for further battles, led by General I.E. Petrov, the Primorsky Army fought a retreat along mountain roads and paths to Sevastopol. In November, the entire Crimea, except Sevastopol, was occupied by the invaders. The partisan and underground movement developed, and the heroic defense of Sevastopol began.

The defense of the city began on October 30, 1941 and continued until July 1942. During these eight months, the Nazis carried out three major offensives: in November and December 1941 and in June 1942.

The leadership of the Sevastopol defensive region (SOR) was entrusted to the commander of the Black Sea Fleet F. S. Oktyabrsky. His deputy for ground defense was I.E. Petrov.

On November 2, the enemy approached the forward line of defense and tried to break into the city on the move. His path was blocked by regiments of marines, soldiers of the Primorsky Army, battalions of sailors disembarked from ships and militias. Here it is appropriate to talk about the feat of five Red Navy men. On November 7, a group of sailors took up defensive positions on a hillside near the highway near the village. Duvankoy (Verkhnesadovoe). It was headed by political instructor N.D. Filchenkov. Armed with rifles, a machine gun, grenades and Molotov cocktails, five brave sailors entered into battle with an enemy tank column. First, seven enemy tanks broke through to the heights. Machine gunner Vasily Tsybulko opened fire at point-blank range at the viewing slots of the tanks, grenades and Molotov cocktails flew. Having lost three vehicles, the Nazis retreated. Soon 15 enemy tanks moved towards the sailors’ position. With well-aimed throws of Molotov cocktails, Ivan Krasnoselsky set two tanks on fire and fell in mortal combat. The mortally wounded Tsybulko froze at the machine gun. Now there were only three of them left: Filchenkov, Odintsov, Parshin. The ammunition is spent, only a few grenades are in hand. And then communist Nikolai Filchenkov with a bunch of grenades threw himself under the tracks of an enemy tank and blew it up. Daniil Odintsov and Yuri Parshin fell under other tanks. 10 damaged fascist cars blocked the road. Soon, fighters from the reserve thrown into battle found the seriously wounded Tsybulko, who, before his death, barely had time to talk about how his friends fought and died. For this feat, all five were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In November, the SOR troops numbered 52 thousand people, had 170 guns and up to 100 aircraft. Possessing a significant superiority in manpower and technology, on November 11 the Nazis launched a massive offensive. but, having lost about five thousand soldiers and officers, many tanks, 131 aircraft, stop the attacks by the end of November 21. During these battles, fighter pilot Yakov Matveevich Ivanov accomplished the same feat as Viktor Talalikhin in the skies of Moscow. Twice, having used up his ammunition, he shot down enemy bombers with a ram and died a heroic death. Ya.M. Ivanov was the first among the Black Sea pilots to be awarded the title of Hero Soviet Union.

Having received Hitler's personal order to capture Sevastopol as soon as possible, having almost double superiority in men and equipment, the Nazis launched a second offensive in December. Under continuous enemy fire, attacked by German submarines, and repelling air attacks, the ships of the Black Sea Fleet urgently transferred reinforcements from the Caucasus. Having lost more than 70 thousand killed and wounded, on January 2, 1942, the Nazis stopped their assault on the city.

A glorious example of heroism is the feat of the defenders of the 11th bunker (near the village of Dalnee). Fighting to the last drop of blood, seven sailors held off the enemy for three days. When our units pushed back the Nazis, the bodies of dead heroes were found in the ruins. A note was found in the gas mask bag of Alexei Kalyuzhny, which he wrote in blood on a piece of paper: “My Motherland is Russian Land! I am the son of Lenin’s Komsomol, his pupil, I fought as my heart told me... I’m dying, I don’t know that we will win. Black Sea sailors! Hold on tight, destroy the fascist mad dogs. I kept my warrior's oath. Kalyuzhny."

Please note that the failure of the second German offensive contributed to the Kerch-Feodosia landing operation that began in December 1941. This was the largest landing operation during all the years of the Great Patriotic War. By January 2, 1942, the entire Kerch Peninsula was liberated by paratroopers and the Crimean Front was formed, the main task of which was to create a bridgehead for the liberation of Crimea. The Germans diverted part of their divisions from near Sevastopol, as a result of which the defenders of the city received a respite.

In May, the Crimean Front was defeated. The mistakes of our command (the front was commanded by Lieutenant General Kozlov) were that the offensive was carried out separately along the entire front line instead of creating strike groups in separate directions. The fascist troops in Crimea had a single command in the person of the commander of the 11th Army, Manstein, and the Soviet troops on the Kerch Peninsula did not have a single leadership. The incompetent bearer of the Headquarters L. 3. Mehlis interfered in all actions. There was a lack of technical equipment for the troops, and the lack of combat experience in a number of military formations was hampered. Mehlis, in order to force him to go on the offensive, forbade the soldiers to dig trenches for self-defense.

Our troops, abandoning the wounded and losing equipment, were forced to retreat and evacuate to the Taman Peninsula under enemy fire. The units that did not have time to cross the strait went to the Adzhimushkai quarries. Thousands of civilians, the sick and wounded, and staff of army hospitals also took refuge there. The heroic and at the same time tragic struggle of the underground garrison lasted for five and a half months, until the fascist monsters gassed the Soviet patriots. The feat of the defenders of Adzhimushkai can be compared with the heroic defense of the Brest Fortress.

The third, bloody assault, ended in victory for the Nazis. Not many managed to evacuate to the Caucasus.

After the abandonment of Sevastopol in the first ten days of July 1942, the entire Crimea was occupied. The Nazis pursued a sophisticated policy of genocide, sought to sow discord among representatives of different nationalities, and weaken the resistance of the local population. For this purpose, attempts were made to create various kinds of nationalist committees. Punitive and security battalions were formed from former Russian White Guards, Tatar nationalists and criminals. However, a small part of the renegades took the path of betrayal.

The fight against the occupiers continued.

Moving on to the third question, you can ask students to remember the forms and methods of struggle Soviet people in temporarily occupied territory. Having summarized the answers, note that the struggle against the occupiers that unfolded in Crimea had common features with the patriotic movement in other regions of the country. There were also some peculiarities.

When it became clear that the enemy could enter Crimea, preparations began for the fight behind Nazi lines. Warehouses of weapons, ammunition, and food were created, and a regional underground center was established, headed by P. A. Kozlov, a party member since 1905. 183 communists were selected for underground work. Volunteers formed 28 partisan detachments, the core of which were over 800 communists and Komsomol members. A.V. Mokrousov was appointed commander of the partisan detachments.

Through numerous atrocities and mass executions, the enemy failed to break the will of the Soviet people to resist. It should be emphasized that the struggle in Crimea was fraught with enormous difficulties. The geographical position of the peninsula made communication with the mainland difficult. The Crimean forests are small in area and cut up by roads, which allowed the Nazis to transfer not only troops, but also equipment into the mountains, keep garrisons around the forests in all populated areas, burn them out. They burned the village of Laki along with its inhabitants. Groups of Tatar bourgeois nationalists and other traitors actively collaborated with the Nazis, who, knowing the area well, actively participated in punitive expeditions against the partisans and blocked the partisans’ communication routes with the population. Some partisan bases fell into the hands of the enemy due to their unfortunate location and betrayal. Soon the partisans began to experience a shortage of food and ammunition.

Along with this, it is important to note the international nature of resistance to the fascist regime. Representatives of 35 nations took part in the partisan movement, especially at the final stage of the armed struggle for the liberation of Crimea. In connection with the complete rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatars, who were forcibly evicted from Crimea to other regions of the country in May 1944, it is advisable to discuss with the guys the issue of the groundlessness of accusing all Crimean Tatars of treason.

The problem of the participation of the Crimean Tatars in the Great Patriotic War is still one of the “blank spots” for local historians of the Crimea. An objective historical assessment will require considerable archival research. Crimean Tatars, as well as Germans, Bulgarians, Armenians, Greeks with the stigma of traitors were evicted from Crimea and subjected to numerous humiliations. But it is clear to everyone that the entire people cannot be declared a traitor by the people because of Bendera, Vlasov, and in this case the Tatar traitors. Many Crimean Tatars, together with other peoples, selflessly fought the fascists at the fronts, in the partisans and underground. Two of them, Ismail Bulatov and Ablyakim Gafarov, received general ranks, six people were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and Amet-Khan Sultan was twice a hero. Partisan commissars Mustafa Solimov and Refat Mustafayev, the leader of the underground group “Uncle Volodya” is Abdulla Dagji. This list can be continued with hundreds of other names.

The underground movement began in the first days of the fascist occupation and then grew steadily. By the beginning of 1942, 33 underground groups united about 400 patriots. By the summer of 1942, 63 groups and organizations had already been created, which included approximately 600 underground workers. By the beginning of 1943, 1342 people were united in 106 groups and organizations, and throughout the war there were 220 underground groups and organizations in which over 2500 underground fighters fought.

The underground organized the people to fight the enemy and liaised between the leadership and the population. The population sabotaged work for the occupiers, and they were forced to transfer foreign workers to Crimea.

An underground organization led by Guard Sergeant Major Vasily Dmitrievich Ryavkin successfully operated in Sevastopol. In July 1942 In the last battles for the city, he was captured, but escaped on the same day. The organization he created, in addition to sabotage, sabotage, and reconnaissance, began publishing the newspaper “For the Motherland” in May 1943. The underground printing house operated in. a small cellar next to house No. 46 on Laboratory Highway, where V. Revyakin lived. The newspaper's circulation reached 500 copies. With the help of a traitor, the fascists managed to arrest Revyakin and about 20 underground members. On April 14, 1944, when the residents of Sevastopol heard the cannonade of Soviet guns, those arrested were shot at the anti-tank ditch on the Balaklava highway.

A large organization, which included about 300 people, was created by Feodosian patriots headed by the head. kindergarten N. Listovnichi.

It should be noted that not only in cities, but... and in the villages people waged an underground struggle. In addition to reconnaissance and sabotage, they were engaged in supplying the partisans with food. In the Krasnopereksky district, the patriotic organization was headed by veterinarian Nikolai Nikolaevich Prigorin, in the village. In Marfovka, Primorsky (Leninsky) district, the underground youth group “Young Guard” operated. The chairman of the district executive committee, I. Dyachenko, created an underground group in the Nizhnegorsky district. There was practically not a single city, not a single large settlement in Crimea where underground fighters were active.

During the battles for the liberation of Crimea, combat squads of underground fighters destroyed fascist subversives, caught traitors, and took under protection the people's property.

More than four thousand partisans and underground fighters gave their lives in the struggle for the happiness and independence of our Motherland. Among them are Hero of the Soviet Union V.D. Revyakin, N.M. Listovnichaya, N.I. Tereshchenko, 3. Zhiltsova, husband and wife Voloshinov, A. Kasyanov, A. Dgadzhi and others. People remember their heroes. And streets, schools, pioneer camps are named after them. A museum was created in the apartment where V.D. Revyakin lived. Pioneers and Komsomol members of many schools are conducting search work and creating museums of military glory. One of the best partisan museums was created in Zavetnenskaya high school Sovetsky district, and the best museum named after the 51st Army is in the Kalininsky school in Krasnogvardeysky district

When moving on to the discussion of the fourth question, students should be reminded that 1943 was the year of a radical turning point in the course of the Great Patriotic War. After the defeat of the fascists in the Kursk Bulge and Right Bank Ukraine, our troops seized a bridgehead on Perekop, Sivash and the Kerch Peninsula, which marked the beginning of the liberation of Crimea.

The main blow to the enemy was delivered on April 8 from Perekop and Sivash by troops of the 4th Ukrainian Front (51st Army, 2nd Guards Army, 19th tank corps). In the morning, the troops read out an order to go on the offensive: “We are fighting on the ground, watered with the blood of our fathers and brothers in 1920... but our heroism will increase the world glory of Frunze’s soldiers, the glory of Russian weapons.” During the fighting, the platoon commander, Komsomol member of the guard, Lieutenant Pyotr Karelin, repeated the feat of Alexander Matrosov, covering the embrasure of the enemy bunker with his body. After three days of stubborn battles, the German defenses were broken through, and Soviet troops entered the steppe expanses of the Crimea. On April 13, Simferopol was liberated. Brave tankers were among the first to rush here. In memory of them, in the Victory Park, a T-34 tank No. 201 was installed on a pedestal, and parts and connections are listed on the front side of the pedestal; liberated Simferopol.

The Crimean operation, which lasted a total of 36 days, ended in victory Soviet troops. Moscow saluted the liberators of Crimea six times. Many formations and units received the honorary names of Perekop, Sivash, and Kerch. Evpatoria, Feodosia, Simferopol, Yalta, Sevastopol. Tens of thousands of soldiers were awarded orders and medals, 350 soldiers and officers became Heroes of the Soviet Union.

Assessing the moral superiority of the Soviet troops, the English journalist Alexander Werth, who visited liberated Sevastopol on May 14, 1944, in his book “Russia in the War of 1941-45.” wrote: “You can ask yourself the question why, despite the overwhelming superiority of the German-Romanian troops in aviation tanks, as well as a significant superiority in manpower, Sevastopol was able to hold out in 1941-1942. 250 days, and in 1944 the Red Army captured it in 4 days. German authors now explain this fact simply by the enormous superiority of secular troops in manpower, aviation and other military equipment. But didn’t the German-Romanian troops have the same superiority in 1941-1942? The fact is that in 1941-1942. The Russians were truly ready to defend the city of Russian glory, Sevastopol, to the last drop of blood, and in April 1944, the morale of the Germans, at least in such a remote place from Germany as Crimea, could no longer be at the proper height.”

Speaking about the significance of the liberation of Crimea, it should be noted that the Crimean operation of 1944 is one of the outstanding operations of the Great Patriotic War. Its characteristic feature is the well-organized interaction between the army, navy and partisans of Crimea. In 36 days of fighting, the 17th German Army was completely defeated. This means that everything was lost military equipment, and 100 thousand soldiers and officers died or were captured. Last Stand occurred on May 12, 1944. “Gotland” for the Nazis ended with the loss of 300 thousand soldiers.

We would not exist today if our fathers and grandfathers, at the cost of their lives, bloody torment and suffering, had not saved us, and perhaps the whole world, from the brown plague. The Motherland, having united all the peoples of the USSR, again took upon itself, as in the 13th century, the most enormous burden.

The restoration of the Crimean economy began already during the liberation of the peninsula. In two and a half years, the population of the peninsula decreased almost three times, from 1,126 thousand to 379 thousand people. More than 135 thousand Soviet people were shot and tortured by the Nazis, 85.5 thousand were driven into German captivity. Sevastopol and Kerch lay in ruins, 127 Crimean villages and hamlets were completely burned by the Nazis. Over 300 industrial enterprises, 37 thousand residential buildings, 15 museums, 590 clubs, cultural centers and theaters were destroyed or damaged. The occupiers plundered collective farms, state farms, MTS, and sent hundreds of thousands of heads of livestock to Germany. They even exported black soil. The total material losses of Crimea amounted to 20 billion rubles (in pre-war terms). To eliminate the consequences of the war, enormous funds and the selfless labor of people were needed. And the war still continued.

The whole country provided assistance in the revival of Sevastopol, Kerch and the entire Crimea.

On May 11, 1944, the State Defense Committee adopted an inhumane discriminatory resolution on the eviction of all Tatars, Armenians, Bulgarians, and Greeks from Crimea. This measure was justified by the facts of betrayal of representatives of these peoples during the occupation of Crimea by German troops.

Taking into account the relevance of the problem of interethnic relations in Crimea, it is advisable to pay attention to the disclosure of their network.

Remind students that Crimea was the site of the Third Conference of Heads of State anti-Hitler coalition- USSR, USA, England. The Crimean Conference, along with the Tehran and Potsdam ones, is one of those events that largely determined and determines the international political appearance of the modern world. In the Livadia Palace of Yalta, decisions were made that expressed the desire of the peoples of the allied countries to unite forces in the name of a speedy victory over the organizers of the Second World War. Emphasize that adherence to the principles of interstate relations developed on February 4-11, 1945 at the Crimean Conference is still the foundation for maintaining peace and preventing World War 3.

When characterizing the selfless labor of the Soviet people during the restoration period, it is necessary to again touch upon the manifestations of Stalin’s personality cult in economics, politics, and culture. At the same time, show, using specific examples from the life of the country and Crimea, the negative consequences of command-administrative management methods, mass repressions that continued

until the death of Stalin in March 1953, the adoption and implementation of immoral decisions on the problems of cultural development in the country

The region's agriculture was in a difficult situation. Most of the orchards and vineyards perished or fell into disrepair. Hundreds of thousands of livestock were destroyed or taken to Gemania.

Already in the fall of 1944. Pedagogical, medical and agricultural institutes and technical schools began their studies.

Industrial production capacity in 1945 They were only 10% of the 1941 level.

First of all, in Crimea it was necessary to restore the destroyed railway, bridges, and lay rails. The forces of the military construction and railway units of the civilian population were directed towards this. On April 24, 1944, past the bombed and burned stations and stops, the first freight train slowly approached the blown-up building of the Simferopol station. On November 5, ships of the Black Sea Navy returned to Sevastopol from the ports of the Caucasus coast.

A list of objects was outlined that needed to be restored first: the metallurgical plant named after. Voikova, Kamysh-Burunsky iron ore plant, Balaklava Mining Department named after. Gorky and others.

The shipyard in Kerch has begun repairing ships. The extraction of building materials, stone, sand, gravel, and the production of bricks began, the needs for which were limitless. The Beshuya coal mines, now mothballed for future generations, were restored and produced the first coal. In October 1944, the Simferopol plant named after. Kuibyshev, the car repair plant began work. Sevastopol GRES-2 provided electricity to Simferopol. In the autumn of the same year, the first products of the cannery named after. Kirov. In 1945, the plant produced 600 thousand cans of canned food. “Everything for the front - everything for victory” - Crimea, crippled by the war, did everything it could.

The working people of Moscow, Gorky, Saratov, Kuibyshev, Tashkent and other cities and villages of the country, tearing away from themselves what they themselves needed, sent here food, clothing, shoes, medicines, machines, cars and more. For example, the workers of Dagestan, at the initiative of the collective farmer Magomet Abakarov from the village of Karsha, Laksky district, collected dogs from the households and sent 13 wagons of food, livestock, medicine and drink to the residents of Sevastopol, millions of rubles. This is not an isolated example of brotherhood once again testifies to the high moral qualities, selflessness and mutual assistance of the peoples of our country.

Patriotism became popular not only during the Great Patriotic War, but also in peacetime after the war. How can one now look at interethnic bloodshed without shuddering, without sorrowful bewilderment?

Most industrial enterprises were restored and put into operation. In 1955, the region collected a million tons of bread for the first time in its history. Cultivated areas increased by 30% Many farms achieved high yields of fruits, grapes, and vegetables. Thus, in the state farms “Koktebel” and “Sudak” they collected 150 centners of grapes per hectare, and in the unit of the Hero of Socialist Labor M.A. Bryntseva - 305 centners per hectare. We were pleased with the success of livestock breeders. The region has taken second place in the republic and fifth in the country in terms of milk yield per feed cow. The number of sheep reached 680 thousand heads.

However, since the development of agriculture followed an extensive path, it was hampered by a lack of labor, irrigation, and the necessary equipment. Therefore, significant efforts and funds were aimed at increasing the area of ​​irrigated land. On December 26, 1955, the Simferopol hydroelectric complex came into operation, providing water to 10 thousand hectares of land. The Starokrymskaya irrigation system was also put into operation.

On February 19, 1954, during the nationwide celebration of the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to transfer the Crimean region to the Ukrainian SSR. This was done in the classic style of the administrative-bureaucratic system without taking into account the opinions of the Crimeans themselves. Official references were made to the fact that the peninsula is economically closely linked to the economy of Ukraine. The ore mined in the Crimea was smelted at the metallurgical plants of the Ukrainian SSR, and the fluxing limestones of Balaklava were also exported there. Crimea is closely connected with the republic through a single network of sea, railway and road routes.

DEPORTATION of the peoples of Crimea

Historical background of deportation. The origins of deportation have their roots in complex relationships Russian state with the Crimean Khanate. Claiming the territory of the former Golden Horde, Russia back in the 16th century. conquered the Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberian khanates, Nogai Horde. And only at the end of the 18th century. The Russian Empire managed to annex the Crimean Khanate. As an option, the tsarist government repeatedly considered the possibility of a wholesale eviction of the indigenous population, but it was decided to pursue a policy of gradually ousting them from the peninsula. The “black century” begins in the fate of the Crimean Tatar people, during which their numbers decrease fivefold due to forced emigration, from more than 500 thousand in 1778 to 103 thousand in 1870.

The fall of tsarism and the establishment of Soviet power in Crimea did not change the situation. On the contrary, military operations, predatory confiscations and surplus appropriation, the famine of 1921-1923, collectivization, repression, and an increased influx of migrants from Russia and Ukraine aggravated the lack of rights of the Crimean Tatar people and led to a reduction in their numbers.

Preparation and implementation of deportation.

The communist Soviet government decided to implement the idea of ​​“Crimea without Crimean Tatars”. For him, this became possible with the outbreak of war between the USSR and Germany. Failures in the defense of Crimea, which by the fall of 1941 was completely occupied by the Germans, the failure of the partisan movement, and the renewal of the traditionally suspicious attitude towards “foreigners” among the Russian part of the population contributed to the creation of the myth about the supposed total cooperation of the Crimean Tatars with the occupiers. In July 1942, the leaders of the Crimean partisan movement A.N. Mokrousov and A.V. Martynov sent a report to the country’s leadership with misinformation that “the overwhelming majority of the Crimean Tatars in the mountain and foothill parts followed the fascists.”

In the spring of 1944, in Crimea, which had just been liberated from the occupiers, various measures were actively carried out to “cleanse the territory of anti-Soviet elements,” undertaken by the NKVD and the NKGB*. An additional 20 thousand soldiers were mobilized to Crimea. On May 10, Beria reported to Stalin: “Taking into account the treacherous actions of the Crimean Tatars against the Soviet people and based on the undesirability of further residence of the Crimean Tatars on the border outskirts of the Soviet Union, the NKVD of the USSR is submitting for your consideration a draft decision of the State Defense Committee on the eviction of all Tatars from the territory of Crimea.” On April 2 and May 11, 1944, signed by Stalin, special resolutions were adopted on the eviction of all Crimean Tatars from Crimea to Uzbekistan, and an additional resolution of May 21, 1944 ordered their resettlement to some regions of Russia.

In Crimea, in April and then at the beginning of May, two censuses of Crimean Tatars were urgently carried out. On May 10, unsuspecting residents of many mountain and foothill villages were driven to repair roads, where they worked for a whole week. On May 18, they will all be taken out of their homes along these roads. On the eve of the deportation in April - the first half of May, a campaign to form a labor army began to be carried out among the Crimean Tatars. People, among whom were many teenagers, were sent, without asking their consent, to labor camps in the North and the Urals, where their labor was used in the construction of roads, factories, and logging. There were about 2 thousand people in the camps of Rybinsk (Russia), a whole train of Crimean Tatars was sent to Kazakhstan to camps near the city of Guryev. In the Kuibyshev region (Russia), Crimean Tatars were kept in active forced labor camps, where they, weakened and half-starved, were abused by criminals.

If the mobilization of 1941 deprived the Crimean Tatar families of their support - men of the most working age, and the occupation radically undermined the material foundations of existence, then the labor army cleared out from the Crimea those remaining men and teenagers who somehow supported large, usually large families. Crimean Tatar families. Therefore, the average family faced the deportation action already exhausted, incapable of survival, economically and morally oppressed and helpless to the limit.

In the republics where the Crimean Tatars were to be sent, preparations were underway to receive them. Beria received a report from the leadership of Uzbekistan that “preparations for the reception and distribution of special settlers in the Uzbek SSR are basically completed.”

This is how one of the executors of this operation, A. Vesnin, describes the events:

“... On May 9, 1944, in a letter train (without stopping anywhere), our part of the troops arrived in Crimea... On the night of May 18, we were raised in the “gun” and walked somewhere along the endless steppe for several hours. At 3:30 a.m. In the morning we approached the steppe village of Oysul, only then were we told the purpose of our operation - the eviction of the Tatars. The light machine gunners remained in the cordon, and the rest were formed into troikas led by sergeants, officers and... operatives. At 4.00 the operation began. We entered houses and announced: “In the name of Soviet power! For treason against the Motherland, you are deported to other regions of the Soviet Union.” The operation was prepared brilliantly: so many new American Fords and Studebakers arrived in the village that they took the entire population in one trip to the nearest railway station... The old woman, mad with grief and surprise, rushed to run into the steppe and was cut off machine gun fire; a legless disabled person, who recently returned home from the hospital and declared his rights, was dragged to the car and, like a sack of flour, thrown into the back... 20 minutes to get ready and loads - whatever you can carry in your hands. In addition, a competition was organized between the groups: who would finish their section first...”

R. Eminov. From a series dedicated to deportation

An eyewitness to this tragic day says: “People were driven into a cemetery, cordoned off on all sides by machine guns. They began to take children away from their parents, saying that the elders would be shot and the children would be sent to orphanages. They were kept like this (separately) for 3-3.5 hours. During this time, some mothers lost their minds. One woman, who had three children each (the eldest was 11 years old), took a rope and tied the children by the hands so that they would fall into one orphanage and did not scatter." “Often, during preparations before departure, women fainted from images of abuse of children and the elderly. Then they, young and old, were dragged through the streets in morbid excitement by young guys - soldiers, and then, grabbing their arms and legs, they threw them, cackling, into the back of the car - this happened not only in Uzundzhi, Balaklava region...” All this happened simultaneously throughout Crimea.

The operation was successfully completed by 16:00 on May 20: 67 trains, chock-full of Crimean Tatars, were sent east, to Central Asia and the Urals. Pasha Khalid, who was 8 years old at the time of the deportation, recalls how the people were sent: “During loading, families were separated. Everyone who was in the carriages was stunned by what was happening, no one understood anything... In the carriages there were mainly women, old people, and children. In Saratov we were transferred to barges. For five days no one had poppy dew in their mouths - they didn’t feed them until they brought them to the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.”

I. Nafiev. Return

Residents of a remote fishing village on the Arabat Spit of the Crimean Peninsula were “forgot” to be deported along with all the people. Having come to their senses after some time, without thinking twice, since the report on the successful completion of the operation had already been submitted to senior management, they were loaded into barges and, towed far out to sea, were sunk.

According to the final data of the NKVD, 191,014 Crimean Tatars were deported from Crimea, according to party sources - 194,111. 47 thousand families of Crimean Tatars planned for deportation left Crimea. After the war, demobilized men and those Crimean Tatars who lived in other republics were sent to them.

The tragedy of May 18, 1944 forever entered the history of the nation as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Deportation of the Crimean Tatar People, celebrated annually since the second half of the 1960s.

SPECIAL CONTINGENT

The special operation that began on May 18, 1944 to evict all Crimean Tatars from Crimea, prepared and carried out by the NKVD and NKGB of the USSR led by Beria, ended by the beginning of July of the same year. Accused of treason and deported from their homeland, the Crimean Tatar people with the special status of a “special contingent” were ordered to senior management countries in places of deportation under harsh conditions of a curfew regime.

Crimean Tatars were sent to the following republics: Uzbekistan - 37,046 families, which amounted to 151,086 people (according to the archives of the 9th department of the KGB and the 4th special department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the UzSSR, on July 1, 1944, 35,750 families in the amount of 151,424 people arrived in the republic), Kazakhstan - 2426 families (1666 adults), Bashkiria - 284 families, Yakutia - 93 families, Gorky region of Russia - 679 families (2376 people), Molotov region - 2342 families (10002 people), Sverdlovsk - 902 families (3591 people), Ivanovo - 157 families (548 people), Kostroma - 1957 families (6338 people), Mari Republic - 2291 families (9178 people). After the end of hostilities, they were joined by demobilized Crimean Tatars. Most of the Crimean Tatar people were sent to Uzbekistan, since the republic’s growing production was in dire need of cheap labor.

People who did not understand what was happening, sick and exhausted by the grueling, long journey and hunger, mostly women, disabled people, old people and children, were dropped off at railway stations on a hot summer day, where they were met by the local population, who had been prepared in advance and were hostile against those traveling to him "traitors to the socialist homeland."

Upon arrival, the Crimean Tatars in the places of deportation found themselves under a strict commandant regime, violation of which was very severely punished. The commandant regime became one of the forms of comprehensive control and discrimination of the Crimean Tatar people, who were outlawed by the will of the Soviet leadership. Here are some memories of eyewitnesses: “The Tatar did not have the right to visit the neighboring area, even if his mother died there. If caught at a funeral, 25 years of hard labor, people never returned. A resident of Ai-Vasil, former partisan Emir, was deported to the village of GES-1 in the Tashkent region. His bride lived nearby, in GES-3. Because he visited her, he was given 20 years in the camps, and there he perished. For visiting a neighboring village (in the same area!), 18-year-old P. Shabanova was sentenced to 25 years in prison” (V. Vozgrin, “Link”, newspaper “Voice of Crimea”, 2000, No. 21-23).

Discrimination was also manifested in the fact that the majority of Crimean Tatar children and youth, due to the restrictions of special settlements and the commandant regime, could not exercise their right to education. Although this contradicted the points of the so-called resettlement program for migrants, adopted by a special resolution of the country’s leadership.

In fact, the program for the resettlement of the resettled Crimean Tatars, according to which they were to be provided with housing, food, materials for building houses and furnishings, financial assistance and many others, at the expense of everything left at home, was absent locally and, if implemented, it was with great violations. Everything was left to chance in the spirit of the Soviet party nomenklatura.

If the so-called aid reached the Crimean Tatars, it was in scanty quantities. Only those working in production were provided with food (several tens of grams of bread). Unemployed children, frail old people, disabled people, women with small children were left to their own devices and died of starvation. The same situation occurred with medicines, which were sorely lacking in areas of compact settlement of Crimean Tatars affected by epidemics of typhus, malaria, dysentery, and hepatitis.

Leaders at various levels reported to the center about providing the exiles with housing, but in reality these were corners in barracks, buildings without windows and doors, without stoves and necessary furniture, dugouts, which often exhausted women and children had to dig themselves.

DEPORTATION OF THE POPULATION OF THE CRIMEA ON NATIONAL BASIS IN 1941 and 1944.

In the pre-war years, fascist intelligence really sought to use the large German population of the USSR for agent and sabotage work in favor of Germany. These efforts did not bring the desired result. However, in the conditions of widespread spy mania and mutual suspicion fueled by the Stalinist regime, the attitude towards citizens of German nationality as a whole gradually changed. By accusing them of “sabotage,” the authorities tried to create in the public consciousness the idea that all Germans are potential traitors and | spies whose hostile activities should be suppressed by any means. For this reason, in 1938, German national districts and village councils were liquidated, and German schools were closed. Many representatives of the German creative intelligentsia, military leaders, and economic managers were subjected to repression. The Crimean Germans also experienced all this on the eve of the war. With the German attack on the USSR, these actions received documentary documentation.

On July 4, 1941, a directive was issued by the NKVD and NKGB of the USSR “On measures to evict socially dangerous elements from territories declared under martial law.” This directive also implied the deportation of Germans from Crimea. When the formation of the 51st Army began in Crimea, a directive from the Supreme High Command on August 14, 1941 ordered it to “immediately clear the territory of the peninsula of local German residents and other anti-Soviet elements.”

The operation to evict the Germans from Crimea began on August 18, 1941 and ended on September 9. 61,184 people were deported: Germans, people of other nationalities and members of their families. They were sent to the Stavropol Territory, and then to Kazakhstan, the Novosibirsk and Omsk regions, the Altai Territory and some other regions of Siberia and the Far East. On August 28, 1941, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the resettlement of Germans living in the Volga region” appeared. The tragedy affected an ethnic group of one and a half million people, who made up about one percent of the population of the entire country.

The Germans taken to the settlement areas were partially housed in the houses of the local population. Thus, 2,628 people from Crimea were resettled in 23 districts of the Altai Territory. Many had to build houses or temporary barracks on their own. By the winter of 1941, there were 1 million 120 thousand Germans in the special settlement.

Before those deported in August 1941 had time to settle down in places of special settlements, by Order of the State Defense Committee of the USSR No. 1123 dated January 10, 1942, the Germans (men and women aged 17-50 years) fit for physical labor were united in work columns and transferred at the disposal of the People's Commissariats of Internal Affairs and Communications. Soon, additional mobilization of Germans aged 15-16 years and 51-55 years was carried out into work columns. They were used in the construction of the Bokalsky and Bogoslovsky plants, the railway lines Stalinsk - Abakan, Stalinsk - Barnaul, Akmolinsk - Pavlovsk and other objects. Crimean Germans also participated in the construction of the Solikamsk gunpowder plant and defense enterprises in the Volga region and Kazakhstan. Several such mobilizations were carried out between 1942 and 1944. Those mobilized were sent mainly to the extraction of coal and oil, as well as to the people's commissariats producing weapons, ammunition, non-ferrous and ferrous metals. In some places of settlement at the NKVD camps - Ivdellag, Bogoslovla, Sevurallag, Aktyubinlag - construction battalions were formed, which were later reorganized into work columns.

The State Defense Committee obliged the NKVD of the USSR to create not just working columns and detachments, but also to achieve high labor productivity and discipline in them. A special resolution of the NKVD instructed to bring the labor of army men to criminal liability for violation of discipline, refusal to work, desertion.

The deployment of labor columns and detachments was carried out in separate camp points, surrounded by wire fences and provided with security. A strict barracks regime was established, people were taken to work and returned in formation. Thousands of soldiers were subjected to severe punishment. During the three years of war, 7 thousand people were convicted. The most difficult working conditions and camp life, poor nutrition, moral depression - all this claimed the lives of many innocent people, among whom were thousands of Crimean Germans.

Since 1945, the labor mobilized were transferred to the position of special settlers. However, the change of regime did not solve the problem of the half-starved and powerless existence of German families, many of whom suffered deprivation and poverty for many years.

Crimean Tatars

In the first months of the Great Patriotic War, 93 thousand Crimeans, incl. about 20 thousand Crimean Tatars were drafted into the Red Army. Many of them heroically fought the enemy and died in battle. Their exploits were highly appreciated: six Crimean Tatars became heroes of the Soviet Union, and the pilot Amet Khan Sultan was awarded this title twice.

During the occupation of Crimea, the Nazi command tried to win over the Crimean Tatar population to its side. This policy was carried out not only in relation to the Crimean Tatars, but also towards representatives of a number of other nationalities. According to the German historian I. Hoffmann, by March 1942, 6 thousand volunteers were recruited from the Tatars in 203 villages and 4 thousand in prisoner of war camps in Crimea. In July 1942, eight Crimean Tatars were in the service of the Nazis.

battalions. At the same time, hundreds of Crimean Tatars fought in

partisan detachments, fought the enemy underground. An important role in the fight against the invaders was played by partisan formations, whose commanders and commissars were: Mustafa Selimov, Refat Mustafayev, Memet Appazov, Kurtmolla Mamutov, Ablyazis Osmanov, Emirkhon Yusupov; Osman Isaev, Izzat Khairullaev, Jabbar Kolesnikov and others.

The reprisal of the commander of the reconnaissance group of the 18th partisan detachment of the Northern Unit, Seidali Kurtseitov, testifies to how the Nazis dealt with the partisans - the Crimean Tatars - who fell into their hands. Without getting a single word from the wounded partisan, the Nazis carved a five-pointed star on his chest and crucified him on a tree. In 1975 An obelisk was erected at the site of the hero’s execution near Kolan-Bair.

In the village of Kara-Kiyat, three kilometers from Simferopol, there was the headquarters of one of the large underground organizations, led by Abdulla Dagji (“Uncle Volodya”). It consisted of 78 members, two thirds of whom were Tatars; it also included Russians and Jews. Patriotic groups operated at the plant named after. May 1, in electromechanical workshops, a hospital, a Crimean Tatar library, two Crimean Tatar volunteer battalions, at a leather factory, in the village of Sarly-Kiyat. Members of the underground organization committed acts of sabotage on railway, obtained valuable intelligence data, supplied the partisans with weapons, food, medicine, and freed Soviet prisoners of war from camps.

However, the provocateurs who penetrated the organization betrayed the patriots. In 1943 they were all arrested. The Nazis brutally dealt with the underground fighters - some were hanged, others were shot.

In April 1944, the Nazis captured 30 members of the Karasubazar underground organization, including its leader Ibraim Bosnaev (“Sorokin”). After severe torture they were shot in the Kaya-Asta area. This happened shortly before the liberation of Crimea.

The deaths of heroes in the dungeons of the Gestapo were underground workers - Crimean Tatars, members of the Simferopol underground organization Khaibulla and Aishe Izmailov, Khatice Chapchakchi, member of the Sevastopol underground organization "Alev" ("Flame") Asis Ametova, head of the underground organization of the village of Degirmenkoy, Yalta region Aishe Karaeva and others. Their names will forever remain in the memory of Crimeans.

Many researchers, subsequently trying to find an explanation for the actions of the Stalinist regime, proposed different versions of the motives for this and similar crimes, ranging from the desire to create a more “reliable” layer of the border population, citing as an example pre-war actions to evict Germans and Poles from the western regions of Ukraine, Koreans from the Far East and Finns from Karelia, to a kind of revenge for the unsuccessful experience of relations between the Crimean Tatars, Chechens and some other peoples with the Russian state in the past. “Of course, all these factors played a certain role, but complete disregard for the fate of peoples was generated not so much by strategic considerations as by complete confidence in the expediency and necessity of these measures in the name of the triumph of the idea.

The plan for the eviction of the Crimean Tatars was born long before the events of May 1944. To detail it, additional information was needed, which was received by the NKVD and NGKB after the expulsion of the occupiers. From the very first days, mass arrests began among the population, including Crimean Tatars, in the liberated territories of the peninsula. In a report to Stalin dated May 10, 1944, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L. Beria reports that 5,381 people were arrested. The same report noted: “Over 20 thousand Tatars deserted from the Red Army units in 1941, betrayed their Motherland, went into the service of the Germans and fought against the Red Army with arms in their hands.” Such a statement was clearly provocative in nature, since it meant that virtually all Crimean Tatars drafted into the Red Army had betrayed their Motherland. However, real facts showed that the majority of Crimean Tatars honestly and courageously fulfilled their

military duty.

To monitor the implementation of the GKO resolution, the State Commission of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR for special resettlement was formed. At the same time, a Commission of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was created to receive livestock, agricultural products and other property from special settlers. She developed instructions on the procedure for the direct execution of these functions by local commissions. It included a list and quantity of essential items that a special settler could take with him, although in practice no one followed the requirements of the instructions.

Crimean Tatars consider May 18 to be their day of national mourning. From early morning, at gunpoint, tens of thousands of people, who did not always have time to get ready and dress their children, were herded to the loading points and transported in freight trains to the east.

By 16:00 on May 20, the operation to evict the Tatar people from Crimea was completed. It took only 60 hours to carry it out - “Only 180,014 people were evicted,” reported B. Kobulov in another telegram to L. Beria.

Later, in information to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Secretary of the Crimean Regional Party Committee P.F. Tyulyaev clarified that “187,859 people of Tatar nationality were evicted from Crimea, including 18,983 from cities, 168,876 from villages

Human. As a result, the population of the peninsula amounted to 445,076 people."

In total, in the spring of 1944, 194,303 people (16.6% of the total population of the pre-war Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) were taken out of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (including those mobilized at the disposal of the Moskovugol trust, where out of 8,000 people in the special contingent, 5,000 were Crimean Tatars)

The remaining population of Crimea by national composition was distributed as follows: Russians - 292,173, Ukrainians - 87,657, Belarusians - 3,223, Greeks - 14,368, Bulgarians - 12,075, Armenians - 11,269, Moldovans - 253, Poles - 2,254, Czechs - 889, Karaites - 6,214, Jews - 499, Estonians - 662, Latvians - 241 and others - 12,378 people. However, none of them imagined that in just a few weeks the list of victims of arbitrariness would be replenished with thousands of new names.

LITERATURE

1. Batov P. I. Perekop 1941. Simferopol, 1970.

2. Borisov B. A. The feat of Sevastopol: memories of the secretary of the city committee. Simferopol, 1977.

3. Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-194 Brief history. M., 1967.

4. Vergasov I. Heroic days from the life of the Crimean partisans M., 1975.

5. Vasilevsky A. M. The matter of a lifetime. M., 1976.

6.Military-patriotic education in teaching history. Sat. articles. M., 1970.

7. Essays on the history of the Crimean regional party organization. - Simferopol: Tavria, 1991.

8. Potekhin V.E. Our Crimea. History textbook. Ch2. 1992.

9. History of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR. Crimean region - Kyiv, 1974.

10. Crimea is multinational. - Simferopol: Tavria, 1988.

Photos of Crimea in 1941-1944.
July 1942 Yalta embankment

December 1941. After a partisan attack.


Yalta against the backdrop of snow-capped mountains


The destroyed Palace of Pioneers on Primorsky Boulevard (former building of the institute)


Refugees with their belongings

Vorontsov Palace. Alupka.


Vorontsov Palace. Inscription in German: "Do not touch the marble statue"

Vorontsov Palace. Alupka.


Vorontsov Palace. Alupka.


1942 Firing a Flak 88 cannon at ships in Yalta Bay

1942 German soldiers on the beach in Crimea


No signature.


July 1942. Smoke in the port of Sevastopol.



July 1942. Destroyed building in the port of Sevastopol.


The tip of the South Bay, Panorama is visible on the mountain on the right


Panoramic view from the gazebo of the Vorontsov Palace.


July 1942. Washing clothes in the port of Sevastopol


The sunken cruiser "Chervona Ukraine" at the Grafskaya pier




A sunken destroyer in the port of Sevastopol.





Destroyed guns of Fort Maxim Gorky.


Just like that. Even Lenin was requisitioned.

Sevastopol. The monument to sunken ships, a symbol of the city, somehow miraculously survived


Sea mine.
By the way, they are still periodically found in the Black Sea.

Burning Yalta after the bombing.


A truck damaged by a bombing.




Double submarine in port.
(Baby - ??? - I think it was called, but I’m not sure). Those who know, correct me in the comments if I’m wrong.

All inscriptions (poster and signs) are in German.


Fascists

More fascists

They gave the fascist a kick and he flew away©

The symbol and embodiment of the defense of Sevastopol, Crimea is the girl sniper, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who, by the end of the war, took the lives of 309 Germans [incl. 36 snipers], becoming the most successful female sniper in history.


Destroyed turret gun mount No. 1 of the 35th coastal battery of Sevastopol.

The 35th tower coastal battery, together with the 30th battery, became the basis of the artillery power of the defenders of Sevastopol and fired at the enemy until the last shell. The Germans were never able to suppress our batteries either with artillery fire or with the help of aviation. On July 1, 1942, the 35th battery fired its last 6 direct-fire shells at the advancing enemy infantry, and on the night of July 2, the battery commander, Captain Leshchenko, organized the explosion of the battery.
Filming location: Sevastopol, Crimea
Time taken: 07/29/1942


A damaged Soviet light double-turret machine-gun tank T-26 near Sevastopol.
June 1942


Control bombing at the entrance to the Northern Bay of Sevastopol.


Women and children evacuated from Sevastopol disembark from the leader of the destroyers Tashkent in the port of Novorossiysk.
Filming location: Novorossiysk, Krasnodar region
Time taken: 1942




One of the workshops produced by the Sevastopol underground military special plant No. 1. The plant was located in the adits of the Troitskaya Balka and produced 50-mm and 82-mm artillery mines, hand and anti-tank grenades, and mortars. He worked until the end of the defense of Sevastopol in June 1942.


Famous photo. Defense of Sevastopol.


Fireworks at the grave of fellow pilots who died near Sevastopol on April 24, 1944.

The inscription on the tombstone from a fragment of the plane's stabilizer: “Here are buried those who died in the battles for Sevastopol, Guard Major Ilyin - attack pilot and air gunner of the Guard, Senior Sergeant Semchenko. Buried by comrades on May 14, 1944.” The photo was taken in the suburbs of Sevastopol.


View of the Feodosia port from the hill. The building in the center is supposedly Aivazovsky's house-museum.


Zander. German soldiers look at 19th century cannons.


Zander. Coastline, view of Cape Alchak.


Zander. Coastline, view of the Genoese fortress.


Fascist. View of Sudak from the Genoese fortress.


View of the coastline from the Genoese fortress.


View of Sudak from the Genoese fortress.


German soldier on the street of Sudak. In the background is Cape Alchak.


Against the backdrop of the current Children's World"(former garment factory).
Self-propelled gun SU-152 of the 1824th heavy self-propelled artillery regiment in Simferopol.
Time taken: 04/13/1944


T-34 tank on the street of liberated Sevastopol. May 1944


Sevastopol, st. Rose Luxemburg. On the right is the current Railway Technical School.


Crew of a Soviet 76.2 mm regimental gun, model 1927, at a firing position in Crimea. The “Polkovushka” was a light weapon for direct fire support of infantry and cavalry. The gun was simple and reliable in operation, but the archaic nature of its design forced the production of the gun to cease in 1943.


A Soviet soldier tears off a Nazi swastika from the gates of the metallurgical plant named after. Voykova in liberated Kerch. The city was finally liberated from the invaders on April 11, 1944.


Kerch, 1943


Partisans in Yalta.
April 16, 1944 - liberation of Yalta


Now this is the central registry office of Simferopol. The fence is long gone. Photo from 1944. Accounting for communists.


Sevastopol is in ruins. Bolshaya Morskaya, 1944.


Servicemen pose on a German Messerschmitt Bf.109 fighter jet abandoned in Crimea.
Author: Evgeniy Khaldey


Sevastopol, 1941.
A German bomber shot down over the city. Streletskaya Bay.


Prisoners


Soviet anti-aircraft gunners in liberated Sevastopol. 1944



May 1944, Sevastopol region.


Yak-9D fighters, 3rd squadron of the 6th GvIAP of the Black Sea Fleet Air Force.


Column of German prisoners, 1944.

Street fighting in Sevastopol.
Infantry detachments fight on the Primorsky Boulevard in Sevastopol


A German heavy 210 mm Moerser 18 gun is firing.
Such tools, among others, were part of
siege artillery groups near Sevastopol.

Mortar "Karl" at a firing position near Sevastopol 1942


German heavy self-propelled mortar "Karl"


Barrel of the 600 mm Karl mortar.
August-September 1944


According to some reports, the command of the Sevastopol defensive region at first did not believe that the Germans had guns of this class near Sevastopol, although the commander of the 30th battery, G. Alexander, reported that they were firing at him with unprecedented weapons. Only a special photograph of an unexploded shell with a person standing next to it (on the back there was an inscription: “The height of the person is 180 cm, the length of the shell is 240 cm”) convinced the commanders of the existence of monster guns, after which it was reported to Moscow. It was noted that approximately 40 percent of the Karlov shells did not explode at all or exploded without fragments into several large pieces.

Unexploded 600 mm. a shell that fell on the 30th coastal defense battery. Sevastopol, 1942


420-mm mortar "Gamma" (Gamma Mörser kurze marinekanone L/16), manufactured by Krupp.
Installed at a position near Sevastopol, it was in service with the 459th separate artillery battery of the 781st artillery regiment (1 gun)


Dora.
German super-heavy gun "Dora" (caliber 800 mm, weight 1350 tons) in a position near Bakhchisarai. The gun was used during the assault on Sevastopol to destroy defensive fortifications, but due to the remoteness (minimum firing range - 25 km) of the position from the targets, the fire was ineffective. With 44 shots of seven-ton shells, only one successful hit was recorded, which caused an explosion of an ammunition depot on the northern shore of Severnaya Bay, located at a depth of 27 m.
Time taken: June 1942


Construction of a firing position for the German super-heavy 800-mm Dora gun near Bakhchisarai. The firing position of the giant 1,350-ton gun required twin railroad tracks with two additional spurs for erection cranes. For engineering preparation of the position, 1,000 sappers and 1,500 workers, forcibly mobilized from among local residents, were allocated. The gun was used in the assault on Sevastopol to destroy defensive fortifications.
Time taken: April-May 1942


The gun was transported using several trains; in particular, it was delivered to Sevastopol using two diesel locomotives with a power of 1050 hp. every. Dora's equipment was delivered in 106 wagons on five trains. The service personnel were transported in 43 carriages of the first train, and the kitchen and camouflage equipment were also located there. The installation crane and auxiliary equipment were transported in 16 cars of the second train. Parts of the gun itself and the workshop were transported in 17 carriages of the third train. The 20 cars of the fourth train carried a 400-ton, 32-meter barrel and loading mechanisms. The last fifth train, consisting of 10 wagons, transported shells and powder charges; an artificial climate was maintained in its wagons with a constant temperature of 15 degrees Celsius.

Direct maintenance of the gun was assigned to the special 672nd Artillery Division “E”, numbering about 500 people under the command of Colonel R. Bova and consisting of several units, including headquarters and fire batteries. The headquarters battery included computer groups that carried out all the calculations necessary for aiming at the target, as well as a platoon of artillery observers, which, in addition to the usual means (theodolites, stereo tubes), also used infrared technology that was new for that time. The gun crew also included a transport battalion, a commandant’s office, a camouflage company and a field bakery. In addition, the personnel included a field post office and a camp brothel. Plus, 20 engineers from the Krupp plant were assigned to the division. The commander of the gun was an artillery colonel. During the war, the total number of personnel involved in servicing the Dora gun was more than 4,000 officers and soldiers.


Aerial photograph of Dora's position.
Photo from the Ju 87 by Hptm Otto Schmidt, 7. Staffel/St.G.77
- A general look at the position of “Dora” at the moment of the shot.
In the foreground is obviously an anti-aircraft battery.


The time to prepare a gun for firing consisted of the time to equip the firing position (from 3 to 6 weeks) and the time to assemble the entire artillery installation (three days). To equip the firing position, a section 4120-4370 meters long was required. During assembly, two cranes with 1000 hp diesel engines were used.


The commander of the 11th Army that besieged Sevastopol, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, wrote:

"...And the famous Dora cannon of 800 mm caliber. It was designed to destroy the most powerful structures of the Maginot Line, but there was no need to use it there for this. It was a miracle of artillery technology. The barrel had a length of about 30 m, and the carriage reached the height of a three-story At home, it took about 60 trains to deliver this monster to the firing position along specially laid tracks. To cover it, two divisions of anti-aircraft artillery were constantly standing by. In general, these costs undoubtedly did not correspond to the achieved effect. Nevertheless, this weapon was destroyed with one shot. a large ammunition depot on the northern shore of Severnaya Bay, hidden in the rocks at a depth of 30 m."


The gun's breech was wedge-type, with separate cartridge loading. The vertical guidance mechanism used an electro-hydraulic drive, and the horizontal guidance was carried out due to the fact that the railway tracks were made in the form of curves of a certain radius. The opening of the shutter and the delivery of projectiles were carried out by hydraulic devices. The gun had two lifts - one for shells, the other for cartridges. The gun's recoil devices were pneumohydraulic. The barrel had a rifling of variable depth - the first half of the barrel had a conical rifling, the second - a cylindrical rifling.

Loading: projectile on the left, two half-charges and a cartridge case on the right.


Sleeve.


American soldiers next to a shell and casing of a Dora-type gun.
(I didn’t even know that the Americans managed to visit Crimea during the Second World War)

Partisans who participated in the liberation of Crimea. The village of Simeiz on the southern coast of the Crimean Peninsula. 1944 Author: Pavel Troshkin


An advertisement at the entrance to Primorsky Boulevard, left over from the German administration. 1944

Sevastopol. South Bay. In the foreground is a German self-propelled gun artillery installation StuG III. 1944
Author: Evgeniy Khaldey


The mountain rifle division of Lieutenant Kovalev carries out the task of delivering ammunition to the front line, using domestic donkeys as transport. Crimea, April 1944.
Location: Crimea, Kerch Peninsula
Author: Max Alpert


“Transportation of ammunition through Sivash to Crimean land. December 1943" - signature under the photograph in the exhibition of the Museum of Artillery, Engineering Troops and Signal Troops of the Russian Defense Ministry in St. Petersburg.


Kerch-Feodosia landing operation.


Explosion of a German submarine on a bottom mine.


Evacuation of Soviet soldiers from the Kerch Peninsula. The wounded are loaded into a special box on the wing (!) of the Po-2 aircraft.
Presumably 1942


After the battle on the Kerch Peninsula, the fascists at the entrance to the dugout are waiting for the remaining Red Army soldiers to leave.

A German machine gunner armed with an MG-34 machine gun in battle on the steppe in Crimea.
To the left of the machine gunner is a spare drum magazine for the machine gun, to the right is a belt and elements of the ammunition rack.
Behind the background is a PaK-36 anti-tank gun with a crew.


German soldiers are monitoring Soviet positions from a trench on the Perekop Isthmus.
Filming location: Perekop, Ukraine, USSR
Time taken: October 1941
Author: Weber


The Soviet ambulance transport "Abkhazia" sunk in the Sukharnaya Balka of Sevastopol. The ship was sunk on June 10, 1942 as a result of a German air raid when a bomb hit the stern. The destroyer Svobodny was also sunk, which was hit by 9 bombs.


German soldiers (including a flamethrower) attack Soviet positions near Sevastopol.

A rare shot, the moment of throwing a grenade, a grenade in flight, most likely thrown into a trench. On the left is a flamethrower. In the distance you can see the silhouette of a burning tank.


Anti-aircraft gunners of the armored train "Zheleznyakov" (armored train No. 5 of the Coastal Defense of Sevastopol) at the 12.7 mm heavy machine guns DShK (machine guns mounted on marine pedestals). The 76.2 mm guns of the 34-K naval turret mounts are visible in the background.


Yalta. Dancing Tatar “hivi” (voluntary helpers of the Germans, in short, the same fascist).
This is a very shaky topic, think three times before leaving a comment!

Soviet fighters I-153 "Chaika" over Sevastopol.
1941


Captured French tank S35 from the 204th German tank regiment (Pz.Rgt.204) in Crimea.
1942


The Pz.38(t) tank is unloaded from the Siebel-type self-propelled ferry. Crimea, 1942


Machine gun crew in battle. Sevastopol, April 1942


B-2 heavy flamethrower tank (f)

Soviet armored boats of the Black Sea Fleet Project 1125 at sea. The southern coast of Crimea in the Yalta region is visible in the background.


Marines of the Black Sea Fleet read newspapers.

Filming location: Sevastopol
Time taken: 1942

Apparently, the newspaper “Red Crimea”.
Emoticon "smile"
In the photo in the newspaper title, after the first word “red”, the last letter “m” is clearly visible in the second word.
The editorial office of this newspaper was located in Sevastopol from November 1941.


Marine Corps nurse. Sleeping.
(and you complain that you broke your nail and have nothing to wear)

Marines at rest.
Crimea. Autumn 1941


Partisans. 1944


Partisans in liberated Simferopol.
(So ​​many young people...)


Yak-3 over Sapun Mountain in Sevastopol, May 1944.

Photo: Evgeny Khaldey


Sevastopol, sailors' trophy.


Sevastopol. Bolshaya Morskaya.


Prisoners, Sevastopol. May 1944


Sevastopol. May 1944


Sevastopol. May 1944


Sevastopol. May 1944


Sevastopol after liberation


Inkerman


Inkerman adits


Cape Khersones, 1944. This is all that remains of the conquerors

Sevastopol trophies, 1944, Cape Chersonese


Our soldiers in the trenches in Crimea.
The photo was taken in 1942 in the Kerch region.
Photographer: Anatoly Garanin.
TASS photo chronicle.


German soldiers (fascists) receive their portions in the wardroom of American transport.

Captured German soldiers are pleasantly surprised by the size of the portions.

The non-commissioned officer in the foreground has a shield sewn on the left shoulder of his jacket for fighting in the Crimea.

The photo was taken in 1944.


Cemetery of the 16th infantry regiment in Crimea.
The picture shows German photographer and cinematographer Horst Grund.


Partisans hanged by the Nazis along the road.
The photo was taken in the Yalta area (Crimea).

And she shot off the heads of the fascists.
Sniper, junior lieutenant Pavlichenko with sniper rifle SVT-40.
Junior Lieutenant Lyudmila Pavlichenko is a future hero of the Soviet Union.

Photographer: Ivan Shagin.


The battleship "Sevastopol" (in 1925–1943 - "Paris Commune") fires at enemy positions from the South Bay of Sevastopol.
November 1941


Warships set up a smoke screen in response to an air raid signal in Sevastopol Bay.


A group of Marine reconnaissance fighters conducts reconnaissance behind enemy lines.
Year of filming: June 1942
Filming location: near Sevastopol
Photo by: N. Aspin


Soldiers of the 2nd Guards Taman Division in the battles to expand the bridgehead on the Kerch Peninsula, November 1943. With the defeat of German troops on the Taman Peninsula, the path to the Kerch Strait opened, which the guards took advantage of when landing to seize a bridgehead in the Crimea still occupied by the Germans.
Time taken: November 1943.


Soldiers of the 2nd Guards Taman Division in liberated Kerch. Soviet troops began crossing the Kerch Strait following the Germans fleeing the Taman Peninsula on October 31, 1943. On April 11, 1944, Kerch was finally liberated as a result of a landing operation.
Time taken: April 1944


Soviet marines install a ship's jack on the highest point of Kerch - Mount Mithridates. Crimea.
The city was finally liberated from the invaders on April 11, 1944. Back in October - November 1943, the Nazis carried out a forcible evacuation of the population of Kerch and its environs; those taking refuge were shot. At the time of liberation, there were only 30 residents in the city.
Author: Evgeny Khaldey.


Women mourn their sons and/or husbands.
The photographs were taken in March 1942 near the Bagerovo anti-tank ditch (near Kerch).

Photographer: Dmitry Baltermants.
TASS photo chronicle.


Armored boats of the Black Sea Fleet of Project 1124 carry out the landing of Soviet troops on the Crimean coast of the Kerch Strait on the bridgehead near Yenikale during the Kerch-Eltigen landing operation.
Time taken: November 1943


Armored boat of project 1124. Crimean coast of the Kerch Strait, most likely a bridgehead near Yenikale. Kerch-Eltigen landing operation.
Late 1943



Photo: Evgeniy Khaldey


Kerch. Lighthouse. Cape Golubiny. German prisoners (April 1944)
Photo: Evgeniy Khaldey


Kerch. April 1944 (presumably), prisoners (?). Young... Still boys, but already at the front...
Photo: Evgeniy Khaldey


German prisoners (April 1944)
Photo: Evgeniy Khaldey


Kerch. Stand Window TASS, dedicated to the victims of the execution in the Bagerovo ditch (January 1942)
Photo: Evgeniy Khaldey


Kerch landing. Nurse Ekaterina Mikhailova, later Dyomina (winter 1943-1944)
Photo: Evgeniy Khaldey


German cemetery. Chapel on Mithridates.
The photo was taken during the German occupation; after the liberation of the city, the cemetery was naturally demolished.

Airship "Pobeda" with a volume of 5000 cubic meters. in a parking lot in Sevastopol (Kilen-balka).

Photo from the collections of the DNPP/DMZ museum.

After the war, the Pobeda aircraft was used to search the Black Sea waters - in the bay of Sevostopol - for mines and sunken ships.

After 3 years of impeccable work, the Pobeda airship tragically died.
On January 29, 1947, while flying at low altitude, the airship caught a power line.


Gorge defensive barracks on the right flank of the South Fort. The eastern barracks was in a more advantageous position due to the façade being covered by a ditch from Soviet artillery fire. It is clear that relative order has been restored in front of the barracks. Most likely the photo was taken no earlier than the December assault.

Shelter for rolling guns on the right flank of the fort. The photograph shows that the frenzy of the November battles had passed, the Soviet artillery stopped hitting the fort with direct fire (apparently the guns of the 19th battery had already been dismantled) and the Germans settled in casemates in the eastern part of the fort for the winter. As it seems to me, the photograph was taken after the relocation of the two surviving guns from the 19th battery or after the fall of Sevastopol, because smoke from the chimney is a very attractive reference point for an artillery spotter.


German soldiers against the backdrop of the casemed observation post of the South Balaklava Fort. During the siege of Sevastopol, this was the safest place throughout the fort, because... it was located on the eastern slope of Mount Spilia, protected from direct fire. Nevertheless, rare shells flew here. Judging by the wires, the NP was equipped with a telephone switch. From the heights of Mount Spilia it was convenient to adjust artillery fire not only on Balaklava, but on all the adjacent heights up to the Fedyuninsky ones. The photo was most likely taken already in 1942, when the Germans, after an unsuccessful December assault, were forced to thoroughly settle down before the summer. Contemporary photo taken in August 2005.


No signature.


No signature.

The Great Patriotic War in Crimea.

1941-1945

The title of a city of Russian glory is not given just like that. Sevastopol received it not for the beautiful name that Catherine the Great gave it, and not for the beautiful view of the sea waves. This title is sprinkled with the blood of Russian soldiers and sailors - and in more than one war. In each of them, Crimeans, soldiers, sailors of Russia, demonstrated miracles of heroism, perseverance and courage. One of the most striking episodes showing the fighting spirit of the Crimeans was the Great Patriotic War.

Our entire history clearly demonstrates that enemies can defeat the Russian world only during great unrest. In this way, in the First world war, during the civil war, German troops came to Crimea. Russia was strong - the German generals did not even think about such success in their wildest dreams. In World War II, Hitler planned in advance the occupation of the peninsula. The calculation was twofold - for the “invincible Wehrmacht” and for sowing discord within the peoples of the Soviet Union. Only the order in which the German army appeared in Crimea in 1918 and 1941 was fundamentally different. During the Civil War, the German army entered Crimea with virtually no resistance - the reason for this was discord in Russia. During the Great Patriotic War, the Nazis came to Crimea after bloody battles, after the heroic defense of Sevastopol, which lasted 250 days. And only after this they began to sow discord, divide and conquer.

In the plans of the leadership of the Third Reich, Crimea was of strategic importance both for taking control of the Black Sea and for the subsequent attack on the Caucasus. That is why during the occupation of the peninsula by the Germans, significant human and material resources were used. The struggle for Crimea lasted for three years, which we can roughly divide into three periods:

The Fuhrer had very specific plans for the “pearl of Russia,” as Catherine II once lovingly nicknamed Crimea. Hitler decided that the peninsula should be settled by Germans and annexed directly to Germany, turned into "Gotenland", the country of the Goths. Thus, the Fuhrer, who knew history, wanted to emphasize the continuity of the “Aryan race” in Crimea, and at the same time directly control the most important bridgehead of the Black Sea. Simferopol was supposed to be renamed Gothenburg, and Sevastopol - Theodorichshafen. Subsequently, the SS even sent an expedition to the Crimean fortress of Mangup, where there was once the capital of the principality of Theodoro, destroyed by the Turks in 1475. Of course, as a result of the expedition, the local SS Fuhrer L. von Alvensleben found out that the Mangup fortress, along with many other cities on the southern coast of Crimea, was built by the Goths. That is, by the Germans, which “gave the right to return” Crimea to the jurisdiction of the heirs of this German tribe. On the eve of the war, one of Hitler's most important ideologists, Alfred Rosenberg, drew up a plan for the future occupation of the territory of the USSR. According to it, five Reichskommissariats were to manage the occupied lands: “Muscovy”, “Ostland” (Baltic states and Belarus), “Ukraine” (with Crimea), “Caucasus” and “Turkestan”. As you know, the Nazi blitzkrieg failed, so the Reich managed to create only two Reichskommissariats - “Ukraine” and “Ostland”. The German leadership understood that it was impossible to govern the occupied territories solely by military force, without using political methods. One of these methods was playing on national contradictions. Rosenberg planned that Crimea would become part of “Great Ukraine” under the name “Tavria”. He understood that it was only a stretch to classify Crimea as Ukraine, since the number of Ukrainians living on the peninsula was negligible. In order to somehow solve the problem, Rosenberg proposed evicting all Russians, Tatars and Jews from the peninsula. In this he followed the will of Hitler, who on July 16, 1941, at a meeting of the political leadership of the Third Reich, declared that Crimea “needs to be cleared of all strangers and populated by Germans.” At the same time, it should be controlled directly from Berlin, and its annexation to Ukraine should be of a purely technical nature.

The Great Patriotic War, which began on June 22, 1941, quickly reached Crimea. Already on September 24, 1941, seven German divisions, together with the Romanian corps as part of the 11th German Army of Army Group South under the command of General Erich von Manstein, began an attack on Crimea from the territory of occupied Ukraine through the Perekop Isthmus. With the help of artillery and aviation, in two days of battles they manage to break through the Turkish Wall and occupy Armyansk. With the forces of one cavalry and two rifle divisions, the Red Army operational group under the command of Lieutenant General P. I. Batov goes on a counteroffensive. Due to the complete consumption of ammunition and large losses among the personnel of the divisions, Manstein decides to temporarily suspend the offensive on the peninsula. On October 18, 1941, three divisions of the 11th German Army attacked the Ishun positions, which were defended by coastal batteries and units of the Black Sea Fleet. After ten days of bloody battles, Manstein manages to break through the defenses of the Soviet troops. As a result, our Primorsky Army retreats to Sevastopol, and the 51st Army, previously transferred to Crimea from Odessa, retreats to Kerch, from where it is later evacuated to the Taman Peninsula. On October 30, 1941, the heroic defense of Sevastopol begins.

The first attempts of the German army to take the city "by raid" failed. At that time, the Sevastopol defensive region had excellent fortifications, which included two coastal defense batteries with 305-mm large-caliber guns. Consisting of the marines of the Black Sea Fleet, the garrison of Sevastopol, after being reinforced by the Primorsky Army, numbered about 50 thousand people with 500 guns. Powerful defenses allowed the Soviet army to defend the city for a year.

On December 17, 1941, the second assault on Sevastopol began. The city was subjected to severe bombing by German aircraft. Air defense The city was not ready for such a turn of events, so the defenders suffered heavy losses.

Despite the fact that the Nazis managed to wedge into the Sevastopol defenses in the area of ​​the Mekenzi Heights, they were never able to make a breach in it. This was facilitated by the above-mentioned coastal defense batteries. Then the Germans delivered to the battlefield more powerful heavy guns of 420 and 600 mm calibers, as well as the unique Dora super-heavy railway artillery gun developed by Krupp. It fired 53 seven-ton (!) shells at the Sevastopol forts. It didn’t help - the city held on.

Moreover, even at the moment when the Germans were on the outskirts of Moscow, the Soviet command tried to seize the initiative from the enemy and carried out active operations in the Crimea. On December 26, 1941, a large landing was landed in Kerch and Feodosia. The 44th and 51st armies of the Transcaucasian Front and the Black Sea Fleet took part in it. The landing conditions were not just difficult, but, one might say, inhumane. A storm was raging on the cold December sea. The shore was covered with a crust of ice, which prevented the approach of ships. At the same time, the fleet did not have special means for unloading heavy equipment and delivering troops to an unequipped shore. Transport and fishing vessels were used for these purposes. Nevertheless, through incredible efforts, the landing operation was carried out. The main forces of the 44th Army under the command of General A.N. Pervushin landed in the port of Feodosia, and units of the 51st Army of General V.N. Lvov landed on the northeastern coast of the Kerch Peninsula. The Germans began to retreat: Feodosia was liberated on December 29, Kerch on the 30th, and by the end of January 2, 1942, the Kerch Peninsula was completely liberated from the invaders. Erich von Manstein believed that the fate of the German troops at that moment “hanged by a thread.”

The activity of the Red Army did not stop there. The Marine Corps of the Black Sea Fleet, which landed in Yevpatoria on January 5, 1942, with the help of rebel citizens, drove out the Romanian garrison. But even here the victory did not last long - two days later the reserves brought up by the Germans defeated the marine battalion. In mid-January, the Soviet front was broken through - the Germans captured Feodosia.

Despite the initial success of the Red Army in Kerch, it was not possible to develop the offensive. On February 27, 1942, the Crimean Front (formed near Kerch after the landing of the 44th, 47th and 51st armies) together with the Primorsky Army (under the command of General I.E. Petrov), located in Sevastopol, went on the offensive. Bloody battles continued for several months. And on May 7, 1942, the Germans launched Operation Bustard Hunt. The commander of the 11th Army, General Manstein, planned to defeat our troops, leaving them no opportunity to evacuate through the Kerch Strait. The weakest place in the defense of the Crimean Front was chosen for the strike - the narrow, 5-kilometer coast of the Feodosia Gulf. Here is what Manstein said about this operation in his memoirs: “The idea was to deliver a decisive blow not directly on the protruding arc of the enemy’s front, but in the southern sector, along the Black Sea coast, that is, in the place where the enemy, “Apparently, he least expected it.” Especially to support the Wehrmacht in the air, units of the 4th Luftwaffe Air Fleet under the command of General von Richthofen were transferred to Crimea. Despite its large numbers (about 308 thousand people), the Crimean Front was poorly controlled and therefore was not ready for an enemy attack. Having carried out a diversionary attack in the south along the Black Sea coast, Manstein, with the help of one tank division, penetrated the entire defense line right up to the Azov coast, opening the way for the Wehrmacht infantry. For ten days, from May 8 to May 18, 1942, one tank division and five infantry defeated the Crimean Front, the total losses of which were enormous: 162 thousand people, almost 5 thousand guns, about 200 tanks, 400 aircraft, 10 thousand vehicles. The reason for such a catastrophic defeat lies in the mediocrity of the commanders of the Crimean Front. As stated in a special order from the Headquarters, the defeat was largely due to the serious mistakes of the commander of the Crimean Front, General D. T. Kozlov and the representative of the Headquarters, L. Z. Mehlis. For which they were both removed from their positions. On May 9, 1942, shortly before the defeat of the Crimean Front, Stalin sent Mehlis a telegram with the following content:

“Crimean Front, Comrade Mehlis:

I received your encryption number 254. You hold the strange position of an outside observer who is not responsible for the affairs of the Crimean Front. This position is very convenient, but it is completely rotten. On the Crimean Front, you are not an outside observer, but a responsible representative of Headquarters, responsible for all the successes and failures of the front and obliged to correct command errors on the spot. You, together with the command, are responsible for the fact that the left flank of the front turned out to be extremely weak. If “the whole situation showed that the enemy would advance in the morning” and you did not take all measures to organize a resistance, limited to passive criticism, then so much the worse for you. This means that you still do not understand that you were sent to the Crimean Front not as State Control, but as a responsible representative of Headquarters. You demand that we replace Kozlov with someone like Hindenburg. But you cannot help but know that we do not have Hindenburgs in reserve. Your affairs in Crimea are not complicated, and you could handle them yourself. If you had used attack aircraft not for secondary purposes, but against enemy tanks and manpower, the enemy would not have broken through the front and the tanks would not have gotten through. You don't have to be the Hindenburg to understand this simple thing, sitting for 2 months on the Crimean Front.

Our army was just learning to fight. This is 1942, not 1941. There is no surprise, but Manstein crushes Kozlov. Do we know the great commander Kozlov? No. But Zhukov, Rokossovsky and many other famous military leaders, precisely from 1942, will begin to become the creators of our Victory. We fought worse in Crimea, and this unpleasant truth must be recognized. The prerequisite for the defeat of our army in Crimea is solely the inability of the commander to conduct combat operations properly...

Meanwhile, after the liquidation of the Crimean Front, the Germans were able to concentrate all their forces on the assault on Sevastopol. On June 7, 1942, the third, final and decisive assault on the city begins. It was preceded by five days of bombing and shelling. The defenders did not have enough fighter aircraft, as well as shells for anti-aircraft artillery, which was the reason big losses- in some brigades only 30-35% of the personnel remained. In addition, the Germans, who dominated the air, sank transport ships approaching the city, thereby depriving the defenders of Sevastopol of ammunition and food. On June 17, after bloody battles, the Germans reached the foot of Sapun Mountain in the south and at the same time the foot of the Mekenzi Heights in the north of the city. Since the city was more fortified from the south, Manstein organized a surprise attack on the Northern Bay on the night of June 29 - German soldiers secretly crossed into the bay in inflatable boats. The height dominating the city, Malakhov Kurgan, was taken by the Germans on June 30. As in the Crimean War, the capture of Malakhov Kurgan became the final chord of the defense of Sevastopol. The defenders' ammunition, as well as drinking water, were running out, so the commander of the defense, Vice Admiral F. S. Oktyabrsky, received permission from Headquarters to evacuate the top and senior command staff of the army and navy from the peninsula with the help of aviation. The rest continued the selfless fight.

The heroic defense of Sevastopol, the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, lasted 250 days and nights. On July 1, 1942, the resistance of the defenders of Sevastopol was broken, and only isolated groups Soviet soldiers and sailors fought over the next couple of weeks. The loss of Crimea changed the situation both on the Black Sea and on the southern flank of the Soviet-German front. The path to the Caucasus through the Kerch Strait was open to the German invaders. The German army was at the zenith of its power - the Germans were marching towards Stalingrad. To find themselves completely defeated and demoralized in the Stalingrad cauldron in six months...

Crimea was finally occupied by the Germans after the last defenders of Sevastopol fell or were captured. But the occupation should not be perceived as a one-time action. As German troops advanced across the peninsula behind the front line, occupation departments were created. Formally, the General District "Crimea", which was part of the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine", was created on September 1, 1941. It was headed by Erich Koch, whose residence was in the city of Rivne. The General District "Crimea" was governed by the General Commissariat under the command of A. Frauenfeld. Since until the summer of 1942 the territory of the Crimea district was the rear of the active army, problems were observed with the implementation of the planned administrative-territorial structure. Until General Manstein's 11th Army left Crimea in August-September 1942, the peninsula was under dual control: civilian and military. The first was only nominal, and the second was real. This state of affairs led to the fact that the center of the general district was moved from Simferopol to Melitopol, and the administrative unit itself received the name “Tavria” general district. Therefore, in historiography you can often find the combined name of the district “Crimea - Tavria”.

In the occupied territory of Crimea, the Nazis deployed their instruments of terror. In this sense, Crimea was no different from Belarus, Ukraine or Latvia, where immediately after the arrival of the “German liberators,” mass executions began and concentration camps were built. During their stay in Crimea, the Nazis shot 72 thousand Crimeans and tortured more than 18 thousand in prisons and camps. In addition to the civilian population, 45 thousand Soviet military personnel who were captured were destroyed. The local “Dachau” was the state farm near Simferopol “Red”, which was converted into a death camp. It held both Soviet prisoners of war and residents of Crimea. During the occupation, daily executions alone took the lives of more than 8 thousand people.

“According to eyewitnesses, a barbaric regime reigned in the camp. With exhausting and long hours of work, a loaf of bread was given per day for 6-8 people and one liter of gruel consisting of water and small amount barley bran. People were used as horse-drawn transport, they were harnessed to carts and carts loaded with stone and earth. When there was no work, prisoners were forced to drag stones and earth from one place to another and back. For offenses, prisoners were beaten with sticks and whips made of wire and bull skin... On the night of April 10-12, 1944, from 8 pm to 3 am, German executioners took prisoners out one by one and threw them alive in small groups into a well up to 24 meters deep . During the autopsy of the recovered bodies, only 10 people were found to have bullet wounds. Medical examination The rest of the recovered corpses (60 people) were found to have been thrown into the well alive. About 200 corpses remained unextracted from that well... On November 2, 1943, at least 1,200 corpses were taken out of the camp; two kilometers from the camp in a gully in Dubki, they were doused with flammable substances and burned. When the commission examined the burning site, it was established that in the gully in Dubki the burning of the corpses of civilians was carried out repeatedly in the period 1942-1943. The field where the burning took place is an area of ​​340 square meters. m. Burnt human bones, metal parts of clothing, and pieces of resin were found here.

At the direction of local residents, the commission found and examined the second place where prisoners from the camp were burned, at the end of the garden of the Krasny state farm, near the poultry farm, an area of ​​about 300 square meters. m where material evidence was found, as at the above-described burning site.

In addition, over 20 pits filled with human corpses were discovered in the camp. The commission established that in the Dubki tract near the camp territory, citizens from the SD, field gendarmerie, as well as citizens captured during raids were systematically brought from the camp, who were driven in groups into caponiers, where they were shot. Many victims fell into the pits alive. Only in 4 pits fully examined by the commission, 415 corpses were found... 122 people were identified, among them a group of artists and workers of the Crimean State Theater. The relatives of the captured were informed that the prisoners were supposedly being sent to Sevastopol, and the murdered themselves were informed of the same. Knapsacks, pillows, and blankets were found in the pits with the corpses. In one of the pits, out of 211 corpses, 153 male corpses were found with their hands twisted backwards and tied with wire...”

As elsewhere with the Germans, local “elements” were used to guard the concentration camps. It is no secret that many Nazi death camps (in particular, Sobibor) were guarded by Ukrainian nationalists. According to evidence, the camp at the Krasny state farm, according to the same German “scheme,” was guarded by Tatar volunteers from the 152nd Shuma auxiliary police battalion. The Nazis began their favorite tactic of pitting peoples against each other, which we saw in full after the coup in Ukraine, during the tragedy unfolding in the South-East. Where the population was not multinational, other methods of division were used. That is why we see such strange things when in one Bryansk region, populated in rural areas mainly by Russians, there was the Lokotsky district and the Dyatkovo district. In the first, self-government and a brigade under the command of Kaminsky functioned, fighting against the partisans, and in the second, full-fledged Soviet power operated and the Germans did not interfere there at all. And this is within one Russian region! Some helped the Germans fight partisans and civilians, others destroyed the invaders. When Kaminsky’s brigade was formed in the Lokotsky region, helping the occupiers, atrocities were committed in the same Bryansk region, sometimes with the participation of ethnic Russians against ethnic Russians. Just a few numbers:

“For more than two years, the horror of the fascist occupation lasted on the Bryansk land. The Nazis created 18 concentration camps for prisoners of war and 8 death camps for civilians. Many villages were destroyed for connections with the partisans, and their inhabitants, including children and old people, were shot or burned alive. So, in the village of Boryatino, Kletnyansky district, on June 30, 1942, all the men and many women were shot - 104 people, five people were hanged. In the village of Vzdruzhnoe, Navlinsky district, on September 19, 1942, 132 people were shot and tortured, in the village of Worki, 137 people were shot and burned, in July 1942, all 125 residents of the village of Uprusy, Zhiryatinsky district, were shot.”

So if you tell the truth, then tell it all...

This is what the head of the USSR partisan movement P.K. Ponomarenko wrote to Stalin on August 18, 1942: “The Germans are using all means to attract to the fight against the partisans... contingents from our population of the occupied regions, creating from them military units, punitive and police detachments . By this they want to ensure that the partisans get stuck in a fight not with the Germans, but with formations from the local population... There is frenzied nationalist propaganda around the formations... This is accompanied by incitement of national hatred and anti-Semitism. Crimean Tatars, for example, received gardens, vineyards and tobacco plantations taken from Russians, Greeks, etc.”

Why did the Nazis decide to choose for information processing and began to be deliberately attentive specifically to the Crimean Tatars, whom it is extremely difficult to call Aryans? The key to understanding the Nazis’ perception of the Crimean Tatars should be looked for in another country - Turkey. By providing patronage to the Crimean Tatar people, the leaders of the Third Reich were looking for an opportunity to drag Turkey into the war on the side of the Axis countries. For this purpose, Turkish delegations were invited to the peninsula several times. For the first time in October 1941, two Turkish general- Ali Fuad Erden and Hüsnü Emir Erkilet. The official purpose of the trip was to get acquainted with the successes of the German troops. However, according to the memoirs of W. von Hentig, a representative of the Foreign Ministry of the Third Reich under the command of the 11th Army, they were least interested in military successes, but on the contrary, they were very active in the political intentions of the Germans regarding the Crimean Tatars. The second delegation from Turkey visited the peninsula during the period of its occupation by the Germans, on August 8, 1942. It even included members of the Turkish parliament, who were given a luxurious reception.

When it comes to collaboration during the Nazi occupation of Crimea, many remember only the Crimean Tatars through the efforts of Soviet propaganda. For the most part, this myth was the result of a national tragedy - the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people. However, it is worth noting that, firstly, not all Crimean Tatars chose the path of collaboration. Secondly, not only the Crimean Tatars collaborated with the occupation administration. People who were active accomplices of the occupiers were appointed to the positions of heads of local self-government. Let's see who the Nazi appointees were. By the way, V. Maltsev was appointed to the post of Yalta burgomaster. The same one who, on the night of August 1, 1946, together with General Vlasov and other senior officers of the so-called “Russian Liberation Army” (ROA), was hanged in the courtyard of Butyrka prison. The head of the Simferopol city administration was also M. Kanevsky, a Russian by nationality. In Feodosia, the district administration was headed by the Ukrainian N. Andrzheevsky, and the city administration by the Russian V. Gruzinov, after him by the Belarusian I. Kharchenko.

Collaborationist military formations played a major role, helping the Wehrmacht in the fight against the Crimean partisans. Their number for the entire period of occupation was as follows: in Russian and Cossack units - about 5 thousand people, in Ukrainian units - about 3 thousand people, in parts of the eastern legions - about 7 thousand people and in Crimean Tatar formations - from 15 to 20 thousand Human.

Since June 1943, a recruitment point for the Vlasov “Russian Liberation Army” appeared on the peninsula. It should be said that he was not popular. If among the Crimean Tatars the Germans easily played on national contradictions, then of the Russians over the entire time they hardly managed to recruit only a few thousand people into the ranks of the ROA (including those languishing in concentration camps). And then, closer to the beginning of 1944, at least a third of them went over to the side of the partisans.

Thus, talking about collaboration among only Crimean Tatars is fundamentally wrong. It is also important to note that, according to the 1939 census, the Crimean Tatars were the second largest nationality of the peninsula - 19.4% (218,179 people) of the total population (Russians - 49.6%, 558,481 people). Therefore, based on national policy, which Rosenberg promoted, they were a priority even in comparison with Ukrainians, of whom at that time there were only 13.7% on the territory of the peninsula. And the Germans directed their main efforts towards pitting Russians and Crimean Tatars against each other. However, not all representatives of the Crimean Tatar people chose this path. For example, the head of the Southern headquarters of the partisan movement, Comrade Seleznev, closer to the spring campaign of 1944 for the liberation of Crimea, said in a radiogram: “The atrocities, robberies, violence of the Germans are aggravating and embittering the population of the occupied territories. Dissatisfaction with the occupiers is growing daily. The population awaits the arrival of the Red Army. It is characteristic that Crimean Tatars en masse become partisans" Thus, the commissar of the 4th partisan brigade was Mustafa Selimov. There were 501 Crimean Tatars in the brigade itself, which was approximately a quarter of its strength. In general, with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, many Crimean Tatars stood up to defend our country along with its other peoples. In particular, Abdraim Reshidov served as commander of a bomber aviation regiment. During the entire war, he flew 222 combat missions and was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Fighter pilot Akhmet Khan Sultan personally shot down 30 German planes, for which he was twice awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 15 fascist tanks were knocked out by guns under the command of Seitnafe Seitveliev during the defense of Odessa, in the battles of Kerch and Sevastopol, in the Battle of Kursk and during Operation Bagration.

In November 1941, there were 27 partisan detachments in Crimea with a total number of 3,456 people. The leadership of the partisan movement was carried out by the headquarters of the Crimean partisan movement formed in October 1941. The headquarters was headed by Colonel A.V. Mokrousov. 27 partisan detachments operated on the territory of six districts, into which the entire territory of the peninsula was conditionally divided. The partisans fought hard and decisively, causing great inconvenience to the 11th Army. The commander of the 11th Army, Erich von Manstein, said this during interrogation at the Nuremberg Tribunal: “The partisans became a real threat from the moment we captured Crimea (in October-November 1941). There can be no doubt that in Crimea there was a very extensive partisan organization that had been created for a long time. Thirty fighter battalions... represented only part of this organization. The bulk of the partisans were in the Yayla mountains. There were probably many thousands of partisans there from the very beginning... But the partisan organization was by no means limited to those detachments that were located in the Yayla mountains. It had large bases and its assistants mainly in cities... The partisans tried to control our main communications. They attacked small units or single vehicles, and at night a single vehicle did not dare to appear on the road. Even during the day, the partisans attacked small units and single vehicles. In the end we had to create a system of sorts of convoys. All the time that I was in Crimea (until August 1942), we could not cope with the danger from the partisans. When I left Crimea, the fight with them was not over yet.”

By the way, not only adults took part in the partisan movement - pioneers and Komsomol members also made their contribution to the defeat of the enemy. It is worth mentioning here 15-year-old Vilor Chekmak, who showed the world an example of dedication and courage. As part of the Sevastopol detachment, on November 10, 1941, he was on patrol near the village of Morozovka (at that time Alsu) in the Balaklava region. Noticing an approaching enemy squad, he signaled to his squad by firing a rocket launcher. After which he single-handedly took on an unequal battle with the enemy. When the brave young man ran out of ammunition, he blew himself up along with a grenade as soon as the enemy approached him.

However, not all partisans were based in the mountains and forests. It is worth telling about the Adzhimushkai quarries located near Kerch, where limestone was mined. In force natural features Over the course of centuries, a network of branched and extensive catacombs formed in the quarries. After the defeat of the Crimean Front in May 1942, more than 10 thousand local residents and surviving Red Army soldiers took refuge in them. The newly formed partisan detachment was led by Colonel P. M. Yagunov, under whose command rapid attacks were carried out on an unsuspecting enemy. For a long time the Nazis could not understand where the partisans were coming from. When the quarries were identified, bloody battles began. The Nazis bombed the partisans and gassed them. In the end, they simply filled up the wells and cut off the water supply to the partisans. But the defenders of the peninsula were not broken even then and held out until the end of October 1942 - only a few surrendered. The rest died brave deaths. The heroic struggle of partisans in Crimea is not isolated episodes, but a mass phenomenon. During the 26 months of struggle against the occupiers, 80 partisan detachments with a total number of over 12.5 thousand people, as well as 220 underground groups and organizations, operated in Crimea. During this time, more than 29 thousand German soldiers and police were killed, more than 250 battles and 1,600 operations were carried out.

In response to the actions of the partisans, the Nazis began to commit atrocities. For example, in the mountainous Crimea, 127 settlements were burned and destroyed. In the Greek village of Laki, on March 24, 1942, the Germans burned 38 people alive. In the village of Ulu-Sala (now Sinapnoye), which is located 18 kilometers southeast of Bakhchisarai, in the upper reaches of the Kacha River, the Nazis burned 34 people alive - old people, women and children. Moreover, all of them, with the exception of one person, were Crimean Tatars.

The year 1943 was a turning point in the Great Patriotic War. The liquidation of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk, the crossing of the Dnieper - this is how the victorious march of the Red Army began, liberating the world from Nazism. Crimean offensive began at eight o'clock in the morning on April 8, 1944. After two hours of artillery and air preparation, the forces of the 4th Ukrainian Front under the command of Army General F.I. Tolbukhin attacked Perekop. At the time of this attack, the enemy group of the 17th Army in Crimea numbered 200 thousand soldiers and officers, had about 3,600 guns and mortars, 215 tanks and assault guns, as well as 148 aircraft based in Crimea. In addition, the Nazis could use aviation, which was located at airfields in Moldova and Romania. In the Black Sea, the enemy had seven destroyers and destroyers, 14 submarines, 28 torpedo boats, as well as a large number of smaller ships.

After three days of fierce fighting, the enemy defenses at Perekop were broken through. Through the resulting gap, mobile formations of the 19th Tank Corps were introduced, rushing towards Dzhankoy. The city was liberated on April 11, 1944, and the tank corps continued to actively advance deeper into the peninsula, forcing the Kerch enemy group to begin retreating to the west. In parallel with this, on the night of April 11, the Separate Primorsky Army under the command of General A.I. Eremenko attacked the enemy from the Kerch crossing with the support of the Black Sea Fleet and the 4th Air Army. In the shortest possible time, Feodosia, Simferopol, Evpatoria, Sudak and Alushta were liberated. On April 16, 1944, troops of the 4th Ukrainian Front reached Sevastopol. The Soviet troops involved in this operation had a significant superiority in all respects - about 470 thousand soldiers and officers, 5982 guns and mortars, 559 tanks and self-propelled guns, 1250 aircraft. The partisans provided enormous assistance to the Soviet army.

Hitler called on the Germans to defend Crimea “as the last fortress of the Goths” until their last breath. Sevastopol was declared a “fortress city” by the Fuhrer, which means that the Germans had to fight for the city to the last soldier. Fierce fighting continued for three weeks. The general assault on the Sevastopol fortified area began on May 7, 1944 at 10:30 a.m. after an hour and a half of artillery preparation and with massive air support. The fascist defense was broken through a 9-kilometer section. The heights once again played a key role in the capture of the city - Soviet troops captured Sapun Mountain, on which the Germans built a multi-tiered line of fortifications with continuous trenches, 36 pillboxes and 27 bunkers. From its top one could see the entire city right up to Cape Chersonesus. The 51st Army, coming from the north, connected with the Separate Primorsky Army, moving from the east.

On May 10, 1944, the order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief followed: “The troops of the 4th Ukrainian Front, with the support of massive air and artillery strikes, as a result of three days of offensive battles, broke through the heavily fortified long-term German defenses, consisting of three strips of reinforced concrete defensive structures, and a few hours ago stormed the fortress and the most important naval base on the Black Sea - the city of Sevastopol. Thus, the last center of German resistance in Crimea was eliminated and Crimea was completely cleared of Nazi invaders.”

On this day, Moscow saluted the 4th Ukrainian Front, which liberated Sevastopol from the occupiers. It is worth especially noting the role of the partisans in the liberation of Crimea: six of them received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, 14 - the Order of Lenin. As for the units that were part of the 4th Ukrainian Front, many of them were awarded the titles of Perekop, Sivash, Kerch, Feodosia, Simferopol and Sevastopol. 126 soldiers received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, thousands received other high government awards.

In May 1944, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars took place. In addition to the Tatars, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians were evicted from the peninsula. The Crimean Tatars suffered the most, of course. However, when assessing these events, you need to understand the conditions under which decisions were made, what cruelty was committed around by the Nazis and their accomplices, and what a terrible war our country took part in.

On May 10, 1944, a note from L.P. Beria with a draft decision on the eviction of the Crimean Tatars was placed on Stalin’s desk. After which it adopts a resolution of the State Defense Committee (GKO), which contained such points.

up to 500 kg per family. Property, buildings, outbuildings, furniture and household lands remaining in place are accepted by local authorities... Acceptance of livestock, grain, vegetables and other types of agricultural products is carried out with the issuance of exchange receipts for each settlement and each farm. To entrust the NKVD of the USSR, the People's Commissariat for Agriculture, the People's Commissariat of Meat and Milk Industry, the People's Commissariat for State Farm and the People's Commissariat for Transport of the USSR from July 1 this year. g. submit to the Council of People's Commissars proposals on the procedure for returning livestock, poultry and agricultural products received from them to special settlers using exchange receipts.

provide medical and sanitary services for special settlers on the way... provide all trains with special settlers with hot meals and boiling water every day.

I buy with installments up to 7 years.

The operation to deport the Crimean Tatars began on May 18, 1944, that is, almost a week after the liberation of the peninsula. On May 20, 1944, a telegram was sent to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L.P. Beria.

“We hereby report that started in accordance with your instructions on May 18 this year. The operation to evict the Crimean Tatars was completed today, May 20, at 16:00. A total of 180,014 people were evicted, loaded into 67 trains, of which 63 trains numbered 173,287 people. sent to their destinations, the remaining 4 echelons will also be sent today.

In addition, the regional military registration and enlistment offices of Crimea mobilized 6,000 Tatars of military age, who, according to the orders of the Head of the Red Army, were sent to the cities of Guryev, Rybinsk and Kuibyshev.

Of the number of 8,000 special contingent people sent at your direction to the Moskovugol trust, 5,000 people. also constitute Tatars.

Thus, 191,044 persons of Tatar nationality were removed from the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. During the eviction of the Tatars, 1,137 people were arrested against anti-Soviet elements, and in total during the operation - 5,989 people. Weapons seized during the eviction: 10 mortars, 173 machine guns, 192 machine guns, 2,650 rifles, 46,603 ammunition. In total, during the operation, the following were confiscated: 49 mortars, 622 machine guns, 724 machine guns, 9,888 rifles, 326,887 pieces of ammunition.

There were no incidents during the operation.

Kobulov, Serov

One of the common myths says that all Crimean Tatars were evicted. This is not true. Members of the Crimean underground and members of their families, front-line soldiers and their relatives were exempt from eviction. Women who married representatives of other nationalities were left behind or even returned back to Crimea.

In 1967, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council was adopted, which absolved the Crimean Tatars of charges of collaboration and recognized them as full Soviet citizens. But the Crimean Tatar people were able to return to their small homeland only in 1989, after the post-war deportation was declared illegal. Today, when Russia regained Crimea, the Crimean Tatar language has become one of the official languages ​​here. “Crimean Tatars returned to their land. I believe that all necessary political decisions must be made that will complete the process of rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatar people, decisions that will restore their rights and good name in full,” President Putin noted in his address on March 18, 2014.

To conclude the story about this period in the history of Crimea, I would like to remind you that it was on Crimean soil that the meeting of the leaders of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain took place, at which the fate of post-war world. Almost a year after the liberation of Crimea, from February 4 to 11, 1945, the famous conference of the three powers was held in Yalta. Its work was attended by I.V. Stalin, F. Roosevelt and W. Churchill, ministers of foreign affairs, representatives general staffs USSR, USA and Great Britain. At that time, Soviet troops were already 60-70 kilometers from Berlin. Agreement was reached on a United Nations conference, which began on April 25, 1945 in San Francisco. In fact, on February 11, 1945, the leaders of the USSR, USA and Great Britain publicly declared their determination to establish the UN. This is how Crimea once again became the center of world politics...

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

GBOU HE RK "Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University"

Faculty of Engineering and Technology

Department of Technology and Fashion Design and Professional Pedagogy

Abstract

« Crimea during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945»

Completed:

1st year student,

groups TDO-15

Eredzhepova Feruze

Simferopol 2015

The Great Patriotic War in Crimea.

1941-1945

The title of a city of Russian glory is not given just like that. Sevastopol received it not for the beautiful name that Catherine the Great gave it, and not for the beautiful view of the sea waves. This title is sprinkled with the blood of Russian soldiers and sailors - and in more than one war. In each of them, Crimeans, soldiers, sailors of Russia, demonstrated miracles of heroism, perseverance and courage. One of the most striking episodes showing the fighting spirit of the Crimeans was the Great Patriotic War.

Our entire history clearly demonstrates that enemies can defeat the Russian world only during great unrest. It was in this way that during the First World War, during the civil war, German troops came to Crimea. Russia was strong - the German generals did not even think about such success in their wildest dreams. In World War II, Hitler planned in advance the occupation of the peninsula. The calculation was twofold - for the “invincible Wehrmacht” and for sowing discord within the peoples of the Soviet Union. Only the order in which the German army appeared in Crimea in 1918 and 1941 was fundamentally different. During the Civil War, the German army entered Crimea with virtually no resistance - the reason for this was discord in Russia. During the Great Patriotic War, the Nazis came to Crimea after bloody battles, after the heroic defense of Sevastopol, which lasted 250 days. And only after this they began to sow discord, divide and conquer.

In the plans of the leadership of the Third Reich, Crimea was of strategic importance both for taking control of the Black Sea and for the subsequent attack on the Caucasus. That is why during the occupation of the peninsula by the Germans, significant human and material resources were used. The struggle for Crimea lasted for three years, which we can roughly divide into three periods:

The Fuhrer had very specific plans for the “pearl of Russia,” as Catherine II once lovingly nicknamed Crimea. Hitler decided that the peninsula should be settled by Germans and annexed directly to Germany, turned into "Gotenland", the country of the Goths. Thus, the Fuhrer, who knew history, wanted to emphasize the continuity of the “Aryan race” in Crimea, and at the same time directly control the most important bridgehead of the Black Sea. Simferopol was supposed to be renamed Gothenburg, and Sevastopol - Theodorichshafen. Subsequently, the SS even sent an expedition to the Crimean fortress of Mangup, where there was once the capital of the principality of Theodoro, destroyed by the Turks in 1475. Of course, as a result of the expedition, the local SS Fuhrer L. von Alvensleben found out that the Mangup fortress, along with many other cities on the southern coast of Crimea, was built by the Goths. That is, by the Germans, which “gave the right to return” Crimea to the jurisdiction of the heirs of this German tribe. On the eve of the war, one of Hitler's most important ideologists, Alfred Rosenberg, drew up a plan for the future occupation of the territory of the USSR. According to it, five Reichskommissariats were to manage the occupied lands: “Muscovy”, “Ostland” (Baltic states and Belarus), “Ukraine” (with Crimea), “Caucasus” and “Turkestan”. As you know, the Nazi blitzkrieg failed, so the Reich managed to create only two Reichskommissariats - “Ukraine” and “Ostland”. The German leadership understood that it was impossible to govern the occupied territories solely by military force, without using political methods. One of these methods was playing on national contradictions. Rosenberg planned that Crimea would become part of “Great Ukraine” under the name “Tavria”. He understood that it was only a stretch to classify Crimea as Ukraine, since the number of Ukrainians living on the peninsula was negligible. In order to somehow solve the problem, Rosenberg proposed evicting all Russians, Tatars and Jews from the peninsula. In this he followed the will of Hitler, who on July 16, 1941, at a meeting of the political leadership of the Third Reich, declared that Crimea “needs to be cleared of all strangers and populated by Germans.” At the same time, it should be controlled directly from Berlin, and its annexation to Ukraine should be of a purely technical nature.

The Great Patriotic War, which began on June 22, 1941, quickly reached Crimea. Already on September 24, 1941, seven German divisions, together with the Romanian corps as part of the 11th German Army of Army Group South under the command of General Erich von Manstein, began an attack on Crimea from the territory of occupied Ukraine through the Perekop Isthmus. With the help of artillery and aviation, in two days of battles they manage to break through the Turkish Wall and occupy Armyansk. With the forces of one cavalry and two rifle divisions, the Red Army operational group under the command of Lieutenant General P. I. Batov goes on a counteroffensive. Due to the complete consumption of ammunition and large losses among the personnel of the divisions, Manstein decides to temporarily suspend the offensive on the peninsula. On October 18, 1941, three divisions of the 11th German Army attacked the Ishun positions, which were defended by coastal batteries and units of the Black Sea Fleet. After ten days of bloody battles, Manstein manages to break through the defenses of the Soviet troops. As a result, our Primorsky Army retreats to Sevastopol, and the 51st Army, previously transferred to Crimea from Odessa, retreats to Kerch, from where it is later evacuated to the Taman Peninsula. On October 30, 1941, the heroic defense of Sevastopol begins.

The first attempts of the German army to take the city "by raid" failed. At that time, the Sevastopol defensive region had excellent fortifications, which included two coastal defense batteries with 305-mm large-caliber guns. Consisting of the marines of the Black Sea Fleet, the garrison of Sevastopol, after being reinforced by the Primorsky Army, numbered about 50 thousand people with 500 guns. Powerful defenses allowed the Soviet army to defend the city for a year.

On December 17, 1941, the second assault on Sevastopol began. The city was subjected to severe bombing by German aircraft. The city's air defense was not prepared for such a turn of events, so the defenders suffered heavy losses.

Despite the fact that the Nazis managed to wedge into the Sevastopol defenses in the area of ​​the Mekenzi Heights, they were never able to make a breach in it. This was facilitated by the above-mentioned coastal defense batteries. Then the Germans delivered to the battlefield more powerful heavy guns of 420 and 600 mm calibers, as well as the unique Dora super-heavy railway artillery gun developed by Krupp. It fired 53 seven-ton (!) shells at the Sevastopol forts. It didn’t help - the city held on.

Moreover, even at the moment when the Germans were on the outskirts of Moscow, the Soviet command tried to seize the initiative from the enemy and carried out active operations in the Crimea. On December 26, 1941, a large landing was landed in Kerch and Feodosia. The 44th and 51st armies of the Transcaucasian Front and the Black Sea Fleet took part in it. The landing conditions were not just difficult, but, one might say, inhumane. A storm was raging on the cold December sea. The shore was covered with a crust of ice, which prevented the approach of ships. At the same time, the fleet did not have special means for unloading heavy equipment and delivering troops to an unequipped shore. Transport and fishing vessels were used for these purposes. Nevertheless, through incredible efforts, the landing operation was carried out. The main forces of the 44th Army under the command of General A.N. Pervushin landed in the port of Feodosia, and units of the 51st Army of General V.N. Lvov landed on the northeastern coast of the Kerch Peninsula. The Germans began to retreat: Feodosia was liberated on December 29, Kerch on the 30th, and by the end of January 2, 1942, the Kerch Peninsula was completely liberated from the invaders. Erich von Manstein believed that the fate of the German troops at that moment “hanged by a thread.”

The activity of the Red Army did not stop there. The Marine Corps of the Black Sea Fleet, which landed in Yevpatoria on January 5, 1942, with the help of rebel citizens, drove out the Romanian garrison. But even here the victory did not last long - two days later the reserves brought up by the Germans defeated the marine battalion. In mid-January, the Soviet front was broken through - the Germans captured Feodosia.

Despite the initial success of the Red Army in Kerch, it was not possible to develop the offensive. On February 27, 1942, the Crimean Front (formed near Kerch after the landing of the 44th, 47th and 51st armies) together with the Primorsky Army (under the command of General I.E. Petrov), located in Sevastopol, went on the offensive. Bloody battles continued for several months. And on May 7, 1942, the Germans launched Operation Bustard Hunt. The commander of the 11th Army, General Manstein, planned to defeat our troops, leaving them no opportunity to evacuate through the Kerch Strait. The weakest place in the defense of the Crimean Front was chosen for the strike - the narrow, 5-kilometer coast of the Feodosia Gulf. Here is what Manstein said about this operation in his memoirs: “The idea was to deliver a decisive blow not directly on the protruding arc of the enemy’s front, but in the southern sector, along the Black Sea coast, that is, in the place where the enemy, “Apparently, he least expected it.” Especially to support the Wehrmacht in the air, units of the 4th Luftwaffe Air Fleet under the command of General von Richthofen were transferred to Crimea. Despite its large numbers (about 308 thousand people), the Crimean Front was poorly controlled and therefore was not ready for an enemy attack. Having carried out a diversionary attack in the south along the Black Sea coast, Manstein, with the help of one tank division, penetrated the entire defense line right up to the Azov coast, opening the way for the Wehrmacht infantry. In ten days, from May 8 to May 18, 1942, one tank division and five infantry divisions defeated the Crimean Front, the total losses of which were enormous: 162 thousand people, almost 5 thousand guns, about 200 tanks, 400 aircraft, 10 thousand vehicles. The reason for such a catastrophic defeat lies in the mediocrity of the commanders of the Crimean Front. As stated in a special order from the Headquarters, the defeat was largely due to the serious mistakes of the commander of the Crimean Front, General D. T. Kozlov and the representative of the Headquarters, L. Z. Mehlis. For which they were both removed from their positions. On May 9, 1942, shortly before the defeat of the Crimean Front, Stalin sent Mehlis a telegram with the following content:

“Crimean Front, Comrade Mehlis:

I received your encryption number 254. You hold the strange position of an outside observer who is not responsible for the affairs of the Crimean Front. This position is very convenient, but it is completely rotten. On the Crimean Front, you are not an outside observer, but a responsible representative of Headquarters, responsible for all the successes and failures of the front and obliged to correct command errors on the spot. You, together with the command, are responsible for the fact that the left flank of the front turned out to be extremely weak. If “the whole situation showed that the enemy would advance in the morning” and you did not take all measures to organize a resistance, limited to passive criticism, then so much the worse for you. This means that you still do not understand that you were sent to the Crimean Front not as State Control, but as a responsible representative of Headquarters. You demand that we replace Kozlov with someone like Hindenburg. But you cannot help but know that we do not have Hindenburgs in reserve. Your affairs in Crimea are not complicated, and you could handle them yourself. If you had used attack aircraft not for secondary purposes, but against enemy tanks and manpower, the enemy would not have broken through the front and the tanks would not have gotten through. You don’t need to be Hindenburg to understand this simple thing while sitting on the Crimean Front for 2 months.

STALIN. Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks 9.V.42.”

Our army was just learning to fight. This is 1942, not 1941. There is no surprise, but Manstein crushes Kozlov. Do we know the great commander Kozlov? No. But Zhukov, Rokossovsky and many other famous military leaders, precisely from 1942, will begin to become the creators of our Victory. We fought worse in Crimea, and this unpleasant truth must be recognized. The prerequisite for the defeat of our army in Crimea is solely the inability of the commander to conduct combat operations properly...

Meanwhile, after the liquidation of the Crimean Front, the Germans were able to concentrate all their forces on the assault on Sevastopol. On June 7, 1942, the third, final and decisive assault on the city begins. It was preceded by a five-day bombing and shelling. The defenders did not have enough fighter aircraft, as well as shells for anti-aircraft artillery, which caused large losses - in some brigades only 30-35% of the personnel remained. In addition, the Germans, who dominated the air, sank transport ships approaching the city, thereby depriving the defenders of Sevastopol of ammunition and food. On June 17, after bloody battles, the Germans reached the foot of Sapun Mountain in the south and at the same time the foot of the Mekenzi Heights in the north of the city. Since the city was more fortified from the south, Manstein organized a surprise attack on the Northern Bay on the night of June 29 - German soldiers secretly crossed into the bay in inflatable boats. The height dominating the city, Malakhov Kurgan, was taken by the Germans on June 30. As in the Crimean War, the capture of Malakhov Kurgan became the final chord of the defense of Sevastopol. The defenders' ammunition, as well as drinking water, were running out, so the commander of the defense, Vice Admiral F. S. Oktyabrsky, received permission from Headquarters to evacuate the top and senior command staff of the army and navy from the peninsula with the help of aviation. The rest continued the selfless fight.

The heroic defense of Sevastopol, the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, lasted 250 days and nights. On July 1, 1942, the resistance of the defenders of Sevastopol was broken, and only isolated groups of Soviet soldiers and sailors fought over the next couple of weeks. The loss of Crimea changed the situation both on the Black Sea and on the southern flank of the Soviet-German front. The path to the Caucasus through the Kerch Strait was open to the German invaders. The German army was at the zenith of its power - the Germans were marching towards Stalingrad. To find themselves completely defeated and demoralized in the Stalingrad cauldron in six months...

Crimea was finally occupied by the Germans after the last defenders of Sevastopol fell or were captured. But the occupation should not be perceived as a one-time action. As German troops advanced across the peninsula behind the front line, occupation departments were created. Formally, the General District "Crimea", which was part of the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine", was created on September 1, 1941. It was headed by Erich Koch, whose residence was in the city of Rovno. The General District "Crimea" was governed by the General Commissariat under the command of A. Frauenfeld. Since until the summer of 1942 the territory of the Crimea district was the rear of the active army, problems were observed with the implementation of the planned administrative-territorial structure. Until General Manstein's 11th Army left Crimea in August-September 1942, the peninsula was under dual control: civilian and military. The first was only nominal, and the second was real. This state of affairs led to the fact that the center of the general district was moved from Simferopol to Melitopol, and the administrative unit itself received the name “Tavria” general district. Therefore, in historiography you can often find the combined name of the district “Crimea - Tavria”.

In the occupied territory of Crimea, the Nazis deployed their instruments of terror. In this sense, Crimea was no different from Belarus, Ukraine or Latvia, where immediately after the arrival of the “German liberators,” mass executions began and concentration camps were built. During their stay in Crimea, the Nazis shot 72 thousand Crimeans and tortured more than 18 thousand in prisons and camps. In addition to the civilian population, 45 thousand Soviet military personnel who were captured were destroyed. The local “Dachau” was the state farm near Simferopol “Red”, which was converted into a death camp. It held both Soviet prisoners of war and residents of Crimea. During the occupation, daily executions alone took the lives of more than 8 thousand people.

“According to eyewitnesses, a barbaric regime reigned in the camp. With exhausting and long hours of work, a loaf of bread was given per day for 6-8 people and one liter of gruel consisting of water and a small amount of barley bran. People were used as horse-drawn transport, they were harnessed to carts and carts loaded with stone and earth. When there was no work, prisoners were forced to drag stones and earth from one place to another and back. For offenses, prisoners were beaten with sticks and whips made of wire and bull skin... On the night of April 10-12, 1944, from 8 pm to 3 am, German executioners took prisoners out one by one and threw them alive in small groups into a well up to 24 meters deep . During the autopsy of the recovered bodies, only 10 people were found to have bullet wounds. A medical examination of the remaining recovered corpses (60 people) established that they were thrown into the well alive. About 200 corpses remained unextracted from that well... On November 2, 1943, at least 1,200 corpses were taken out of the camp; two kilometers from the camp in a gully in Dubki, they were doused with flammable substances and burned. When the commission examined the burning site, it was established that in the gully in Dubki the burning of the corpses of civilians was carried out repeatedly in the period 1942-1943. The field where the burning took place is an area of ​​340 square meters. m. Burnt human bones, metal parts of clothing, and pieces of resin were found here.

At the direction of local residents, the commission found and examined the second place where prisoners from the camp were burned, at the end of the garden of the Krasny state farm, near the poultry farm, an area of ​​about 300 square meters. m where material evidence was found, as at the above-described burning site.

In addition, over 20 pits filled with human corpses were discovered in the camp. The commission established that in the Dubki tract near the camp territory, citizens from the SD, field gendarmerie, as well as citizens captured during raids were systematically brought from the camp, who were driven in groups into caponiers, where they were shot. Many victims fell into the pits alive. Only in 4 pits fully examined by the commission, 415 corpses were found... 122 people were identified, among them a group of artists and workers of the Crimean State Theater. The relatives of the captured were informed that the prisoners were supposedly being sent to Sevastopol, and the murdered themselves were informed of the same. Knapsacks, pillows, and blankets were found in the pits with the corpses. In one of the pits, out of 211 corpses, 153 male corpses were found with their hands twisted backwards and tied with wire...”

As elsewhere with the Germans, local “elements” were used to guard the concentration camps. It is no secret that many Nazi death camps (in particular, Sobibor) were guarded by Ukrainian nationalists. According to evidence, the camp at the Krasny state farm, according to the same German “scheme,” was guarded by Tatar volunteers from the 152nd Shuma auxiliary police battalion. The Nazis began their favorite tactic of pitting peoples against each other, which we saw in full after the coup in Ukraine, during the tragedy unfolding in the South-East. Where the population was not multinational, other methods of division were used. That is why we see such strange things when in one Bryansk region, populated in rural areas mainly by Russians, there was the Lokotsky district and the Dyatkovo district. In the first, self-government and a brigade under the command of Kaminsky functioned, fighting against the partisans, and in the second, full-fledged Soviet power operated and the Germans did not interfere there at all. And this is within one Russian region! Some helped the Germans fight partisans and civilians, others destroyed the invaders. When Kaminsky’s brigade was formed in the Lokotsky region, helping the occupiers, atrocities were committed in the same Bryansk region, sometimes with the participation of ethnic Russians against ethnic Russians. Just a few numbers:

“For more than two years, the horror of the fascist occupation lasted on the Bryansk land. The Nazis created 18 concentration camps for prisoners of war and 8 death camps for civilians. Many villages were destroyed for connections with the partisans, and their inhabitants, including children and old people, were shot or burned alive. So, in the village of Boryatino, Kletnyansky district, on June 30, 1942, all the men and many women were shot - 104 people, five people were hanged. In the village of Vzdruzhnoe, Navlinsky district, on September 19, 1942, 132 people were shot and tortured, in the village of Worki, 137 people were shot and burned, in July 1942, all 125 residents of the village of Uprusy, Zhiryatinsky district, were shot.”

So if you tell the truth, then tell it all...

This is what the head of the USSR partisan movement P.K. Ponomarenko wrote to Stalin on August 18, 1942: “The Germans are using all means to attract to the fight against the partisans... contingents from our population of the occupied regions, creating from them military units, punitive and police detachments . By this they want to ensure that the partisans get stuck in a fight not with the Germans, but with formations from the local population... There is frenzied nationalist propaganda around the formations... This is accompanied by incitement of national hatred and anti-Semitism. Crimean Tatars, for example, received gardens, vineyards and tobacco plantations taken from Russians, Greeks, etc.”

Why did the Nazis decide to choose for information processing and began to be deliberately attentive specifically to the Crimean Tatars, whom it is extremely difficult to call Aryans? The key to understanding the Nazis’ perception of the Crimean Tatars should be looked for in another country - Turkey. By providing patronage to the Crimean Tatar people, the leaders of the Third Reich were looking for an opportunity to drag Turkey into the war on the side of the Axis countries. For this purpose, Turkish delegations were invited to the peninsula several times. For the first time in October 1941, two Turkish generals came to Crimea - Ali Fuad Erden and Husnü Emir Erkilet. The official purpose of the trip was to get acquainted with the successes of the German troops. However, according to the memoirs of W. von Hentig, a representative of the Foreign Ministry of the Third Reich under the command of the 11th Army, they were least interested in military successes, but on the contrary, they were very active in the political intentions of the Germans regarding the Crimean Tatars. The second delegation from Turkey visited the peninsula during the period of its occupation by the Germans, on August 8, 1942. It even included members of the Turkish parliament, who were given a luxurious reception.

When it comes to collaboration during the Nazi occupation of Crimea, many remember only the Crimean Tatars through the efforts of Soviet propaganda. For the most part, this myth was the result of a national tragedy - the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people. However, it is worth noting that, firstly, not all Crimean Tatars chose the path of collaboration. Secondly, not only the Crimean Tatars collaborated with the occupation administration. People who were active accomplices of the occupiers were appointed to the positions of heads of local self-government. Let's see who the Nazi appointees were. By the way, V. Maltsev was appointed to the post of Yalta burgomaster. The same one who, on the night of August 1, 1946, together with General Vlasov and other senior officers of the so-called “Russian Liberation Army” (ROA), was hanged in the courtyard of Butyrka prison. The head of the Simferopol city administration was also M. Kanevsky, a Russian by nationality. In Feodosia, the district administration was headed by the Ukrainian N. Andrzheevsky, and the city administration by the Russian V. Gruzinov, after him by the Belarusian I. Kharchenko.

Collaborationist military formations played a major role, helping the Wehrmacht in the fight against the Crimean partisans. Their number for the entire period of occupation was as follows: in Russian and Cossack units - about 5 thousand people, in Ukrainian units - about 3 thousand people, in parts of the eastern legions - about 7 thousand people and in Crimean Tatar formations - from 15 to 20 thousand Human.

Since June 1943, a recruitment point for the Vlasov “Russian Liberation Army” appeared on the peninsula. It should be said that he was not popular. If among the Crimean Tatars the Germans easily played on national contradictions, then of the Russians over the entire time they hardly managed to recruit only a few thousand people into the ranks of the ROA (including those languishing in concentration camps). And then, closer to the beginning of 1944, at least a third of them went over to the side of the partisans.

Thus, talking about collaboration among only Crimean Tatars is fundamentally wrong. It is also important to note that, according to the 1939 census, the Crimean Tatars were the second largest nationality of the peninsula - 19.4% (218,179 people) of the total population (Russians - 49.6%, 558,481 people). Therefore, based on the national policy that Rosenberg promoted, they were a priority even in comparison with the Ukrainians, of whom at that time there were only 13.7% on the territory of the peninsula. And the Germans directed their main efforts towards pitting Russians and Crimean Tatars against each other. However, not all representatives of the Crimean Tatar people chose this path. For example, the head of the Southern headquarters of the partisan movement, Comrade Seleznev, closer to the spring campaign of 1944 for the liberation of Crimea, said in a radiogram: “The atrocities, robberies, violence of the Germans are aggravating and embittering the population of the occupied territories. Dissatisfaction with the occupiers is growing daily. The population awaits the arrival of the Red Army. It is characteristic that Crimean Tatars en masse become partisans" Thus, the commissar of the 4th partisan brigade was Mustafa Selimov. There were 501 Crimean Tatars in the brigade itself, which was approximately a quarter of its strength. In general, with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, many Crimean Tatars stood up to defend our country along with its other peoples. In particular, Abdraim Reshidov served as commander of a bomber aviation regiment. During the entire war, he flew 222 combat missions and was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Fighter pilot Akhmet Khan Sultan personally shot down 30 German planes, for which he was twice awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 15 fascist tanks were knocked out by guns under the command of Seitnafe Seitveliev during the defense of Odessa, in the battles of Kerch and Sevastopol, in the Battle of Kursk and during Operation Bagration.

In November 1941, there were 27 partisan detachments in Crimea with a total number of 3,456 people. The leadership of the partisan movement was carried out by the headquarters of the Crimean partisan movement formed in October 1941. The headquarters was headed by Colonel A.V. Mokrousov. 27 partisan detachments operated on the territory of six districts, into which the entire territory of the peninsula was conditionally divided. The partisans fought hard and decisively, causing great inconvenience to the 11th Army. The commander of the 11th Army, Erich von Manstein, said this during interrogation at the Nuremberg Tribunal: “The partisans became a real threat from the moment we captured Crimea (in October-November 1941). There can be no doubt that in Crimea there was a very extensive partisan organization that had been created for a long time. Thirty fighter battalions... represented only part of this organization. The bulk of the partisans were in the Yayla mountains. There were probably many thousands of partisans there from the very beginning... But the partisan organization was by no means limited to those detachments that were located in the Yayla mountains. It had large bases and its assistants mainly in cities... The partisans tried to control our main communications. They attacked small units or single vehicles, and at night a single vehicle did not dare to appear on the road. Even during the day, the partisans attacked small units and single vehicles. In the end we had to create a system of sorts of convoys. All the time that I was in Crimea (until August 1942), we could not cope with the danger from the partisans. When I left Crimea, the fight with them was not over yet.”