THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

Eve of war. In the spring of 1941, the approach of war was felt by everyone. Soviet intelligence reported to Stalin almost daily about Hitler's plans. For example, Richard Sorge (Soviet intelligence officer in Japan) reported not only about the transfer of German troops, but also about the timing of the German attack. However, Stalin did not believe these reports, since he was confident that Hitler would not start a war with the USSR as long as England resisted. He believed that a clash with Germany could occur no earlier than the summer of 1942. Therefore, Stalin sought to use the remaining time to prepare for war with maximum benefit. On May 5, 1941, he assumed the powers of Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. He did not rule out the possibility of launching a preemptive strike on Germany.

There was a concentration of a huge number of troops on the border with Germany. At the same time, it was impossible to give the Germans a reason to accuse them of violating the non-aggression pact. Therefore, despite Germany’s obvious preparation for aggression against the USSR, Stalin only on the night of June 22 gave the order to bring the troops of the border districts to combat readiness. The troops received this directive already when German aircraft were bombing Soviet cities.

The beginning of the war. At dawn on June 22, 1941, the German army attacked Soviet soil with all its might. Thousands of artillery pieces opened fire. Aviation attacked airfields, military garrisons, communications centers, command posts of the Red Army, and the largest industrial facilities in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people began, lasting 1418 days and nights.

The country's leadership did not immediately understand what exactly had happened. Still fearing provocations from the Germans, Stalin, even in the conditions of the outbreak of war, did not want to believe what had happened. In the new directive, he ordered the troops to “defeat the enemy,” but “not to cross the state border” with Germany.

At noon on the first day of the war, the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. M. Molotov addressed the people. Calling on the Soviet people to resolutely repel the enemy, he expressed confidence that the country would defend its freedom and independence. Molotov ended his speech with the words that became the program setting for all the years of the war: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours.”

On the same day, the general mobilization of those liable for military service was announced, martial law was introduced in the western regions of the country, and the Northern, Northwestern, Western, Southwestern, and Southern fronts were formed. To lead them, on June 23, the Headquarters of the High Command (later the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command) was created, which included I.V. Stalin, V.M. Molotov, S.K. Timoshenko, S.M. Budyonny, K.E. Voroshilov, B. M. Shaposhnikov and G. K. Zhukov. J.V. Stalin was appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

The war required the abandonment of a number of democratic forms of government of the country provided for by the 1936 Constitution.

On June 30, all power was concentrated in the hands of the State Defense Committee (GKO), whose chairman was Stalin. At the same time, the activities of the constitutional authorities continued.

Strengths and plans of the parties. On June 22, the two largest military forces at that time collided in mortal combat. Germany and Italy, Finland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, which acted on its side, had 190 divisions against 170 Soviet ones. The number of opposing troops on both sides was approximately equal and totaled about 6 million people. The number of guns and mortars on both sides was approximately equal (48 thousand for Germany and its allies, 47 thousand for the USSR). In terms of the number of tanks (9.2 thousand) and aircraft (8.5 thousand), the USSR surpassed Germany and its allies (4.3 thousand and 5 thousand, respectively).

Taking into account the experience of combat operations in Europe, the Barbarossa plan provided for waging a “blitzkrieg” war against the USSR in three main directions - to Leningrad (Army Group North), Moscow (Center) and Kyiv (South). In a short time, with the help of mainly tank attacks, it was planned to defeat the main forces of the Red Army and reach the Arkhangelsk-Volga-Astrakhan line.

The basis of the tactics of the Red Army before the war was the concept of warfare " little blood, on foreign territory." However, the attack of Nazi armies forced us to reconsider these plans.

Failures of the Red Army in the summer - autumn of 1941. The surprise and power of Germany's attack was so great that within three weeks Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, a significant part of Ukraine, Moldova and Estonia were occupied. The enemy advanced 350-600 km deep into Soviet land. In a short period of time, the Red Army lost more than 100 divisions (three-fifths of all troops in the western border districts). More than 20 thousand guns and mortars, 3.5 thousand aircraft (of which 1,200 were destroyed directly at airfields on the first day of the war), 6 thousand tanks, and more than half of the logistics warehouses were destroyed or captured by the enemy. The main forces of the Western Front troops were surrounded. In fact, in the first weeks of the war, all the forces of the “first echelon” of the Red Army were defeated. It seemed that the military catastrophe of the USSR was inevitable.

However, the “easy walk” for the Germans (as Hitler’s generals, intoxicated by victories in Western Europe, were counting on) did not work out. In the first weeks of the war, the enemy lost up to 100 thousand people in killed alone (this exceeded all the losses of Hitler’s army in previous wars), 40% of tanks, and almost 1 thousand aircraft. However, the German army continued to maintain a decisive superiority of forces.

Battle for Moscow. The stubborn resistance of the Red Army near Smolensk, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, and in other sectors of the front did not allow the Germans to carry out plans to capture Moscow by the beginning of autumn. Only after the encirclement of large forces (665 thousand people) of the Southwestern Front and the capture of Kyiv by the enemy did the Germans begin preparations for the capture of the Soviet capital. This operation was called "Typhoon". To implement it, the German command ensured a significant superiority in manpower (3-3.5 times) and equipment in the directions of the main attacks: tanks - 5-6 times, artillery - 4-5 times. The dominance of German aviation also remained overwhelming.

On September 30, 1941, the Nazis began their general offensive against Moscow. They managed not only to break through the defenses of stubbornly resisting Soviet troops, but also to encircle four armies west of Vyazma and two south of Bryansk. In these “cauldrons” 663 thousand people were captured. However, the encircled Soviet troops continued to pin down up to 20 enemy divisions. A critical situation has developed for Moscow. The fighting was already 80-100 km from the capital. To stop the advance of the Germans, the Mozhaisk defense line was hastily strengthened and reserve troops were brought up. G.K. Zhukov, who was appointed commander of the Western Front, was urgently recalled from Leningrad.

Despite all these measures, by mid-October the enemy came close to the capital. The Kremlin towers were clearly visible through German binoculars. By decision of the State Defense Committee, the evacuation of government institutions, the diplomatic corps, large industrial enterprises, and the population from Moscow began. In case of a breakthrough by the Nazis, all the most important objects of the city had to be destroyed. On October 20, a state of siege was introduced in Moscow.

With a colossal effort, unparalleled courage and heroism of the capital’s defenders, the German offensive was stopped in early November. On November 7, as before, a military parade took place on Red Square, the participants of which immediately went to the front line.

However, in mid-November the Nazi offensive resumed with renewed vigor. Only the stubborn resistance of Soviet soldiers saved the capital again. The 316th Rifle Division under the command of General I.V. Panfilov especially distinguished itself, repelling several tank attacks on the most difficult first day of the German offensive. The feat of a group of Panfilov’s men led by political instructor V. G. Klochkov, who detained more than 30 enemy tanks for a long time, became legendary. Klochkov’s words addressed to the soldiers spread throughout the country: “Russia is great, but there is nowhere to retreat: Moscow is behind us!”

By the end of November, the troops of the Western Front received significant reinforcements from the eastern regions of the country, which allowed the Soviet troops to launch a counteroffensive near Moscow on December 5-6, 1941. In the very first days of the Battle of Moscow, the cities of Kalinin, Solnechnogorsk, Klin, and Istra were liberated. In total, during the winter offensive, Soviet troops defeated 38 German divisions. The enemy was driven back 100-250 km from Moscow. This was the first major defeat of German troops during the entire Second World War.

The victory near Moscow had enormous military and political significance. She dispelled the myth of the invincibility of Hitler's army and the Nazis' hopes for a "lightning war." Japan and Türkiye finally refused to enter the war on the side of Germany. The process of creating the Anti-Hitler Coalition was accelerated.

GERMAN ADVANCE OF 1942 PREREQUISITES FOR A ROOT FRACTURE

The situation at the front in the spring of 1942. Plans of the parties. The victory near Moscow gave rise to illusions among the Soviet leadership regarding the possibility of a quick defeat of the German troops and the end of the war. In January 1942, Stalin set the Red Army the task of launching a general offensive. This task was repeated in other documents.

The only one who opposed the simultaneous offensive of Soviet troops in all three main strategic directions was G.K. Zhukov. He rightly believed that there were no prepared reserves for this. However, under pressure from Stalin, the Headquarters nevertheless decided to attack. The dispersal of already modest resources (by this time the Red Army had lost up to 6 million people killed, wounded, and prisoners) inevitably had to lead to failure.

Stalin believed that in the spring and summer of 1942 the Germans would launch a new attack on Moscow, and ordered the concentration of significant reserve forces in the western direction. Hitler, on the contrary, considered the strategic goal of the upcoming campaign to be a large-scale offensive in the southwestern direction with the goal of breaking through the defenses of the Red Army and capturing the lower Volga and the Caucasus. In order to hide their true intentions, the Germans developed a special plan to disinform the Soviet military command and political leadership, codenamed “Kremlin”. Their plan was largely successful. All this had dire consequences for the situation on the Soviet-German front in 1942.

German offensive in the summer of 1942. The beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad. By the spring of 1942, the preponderance of forces still remained on the side of the German troops. Before launching a general offensive in the southeastern direction, the Germans decided to completely capture Crimea, where the defenders of Sevastopol and the Kerch Peninsula continued to offer heroic resistance to the enemy. The May offensive of the fascists ended in tragedy: in ten days the troops of the Crimean Front were defeated. The losses of the Red Army here amounted to 176 thousand people, 347 tanks, 3476 guns and mortars, 400 aircraft. On July 4, Soviet troops were forced to abandon the city of Russian glory, Sevastopol.

In May, Soviet troops went on the offensive in the Kharkov region, but suffered a severe defeat. The troops of two armies were surrounded and destroyed. Our losses amounted to up to 230 thousand people, more than 5 thousand guns and mortars, 755 tanks. The German command once again firmly captured the strategic initiative.

At the end of June, German troops rushed to the southeast: they occupied Donbass and reached the Don. An immediate threat was created to Stalingrad. On July 24, Rostov-on-Don, the gates of the Caucasus, fell. Only now did Stalin understand the true purpose of the German summer offensive. But it was already too late to change anything. Fearing the rapid loss of the entire Soviet South, on July 28, 1942, Stalin issued order No. 227, in which, under threat of execution, he forbade troops from leaving the front line without instructions from higher command. This order went down in the history of the war under the name “Not a step back!”

In early September, street battles broke out in Stalingrad, which was completely destroyed. But the tenacity and courage of the Soviet defenders of the city on the Volga did what seemed impossible - by mid-November the offensive capabilities of the Germans had completely dried up. By this time, in the battles for Stalingrad, they had lost almost 700 thousand killed and wounded, over 1 thousand tanks and over 1.4 thousand aircraft. The Germans not only failed to occupy the city, but also went on the defensive.

Occupation regime. By the fall of 1942, German troops managed to capture most of the European territory of the USSR. A strict occupation regime was established in the cities and villages they occupied. Germany's main goals in the war against the USSR were the destruction of the Soviet state, the transformation of the Soviet Union into an agricultural and raw materials appendage and a source of cheap labor for the "Third Reich".

In the occupied territories, the previous governing bodies were liquidated. All power belonged to the military command of the German army. In the summer of 1941, special courts were introduced, which were given the right to impose death sentences for disobedience to the occupiers. Death camps were created for prisoners of war and those Soviet people who sabotaged the decisions of the German authorities. Everywhere the occupiers staged show executions of party and Soviet activists and members of the underground.

All citizens of the occupied territories aged 18 to 45 years were affected by labor mobilization. They had to work 14-16 hours a day. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet people were sent to forced labor in Germany.

The Ost plan, developed by the Nazis even before the war, contained a program for the “development” of Eastern Europe. According to this plan, it was planned to destroy 30 million Russians, and turn the rest into slaves and resettle them in Siberia. During the war years in the occupied territories of the USSR, the Nazis killed about 11 million people (including about 7 million civilians and about 4 million prisoners of war).

Partisan and underground movement. The threat of physical violence did not stop the Soviet people in the fight against the enemy not only at the front, but also in the rear. The Soviet underground movement emerged in the first weeks of the war. In places subject to occupation, party organs operated illegally.

During the war years, more than 6 thousand were formed. partisan detachments, in which more than 1 million people fought. Representatives of most peoples of the USSR, as well as citizens of other countries, acted in their ranks. Soviet partisans destroyed, wounded and captured more than 1 million enemy soldiers and officers, representatives of the occupation administration, disabled more than 4 thousand tanks and armored vehicles, 65 thousand vehicles and 1,100 aircraft. They destroyed and damaged 1,600 railway bridges and derailed over 20 thousand railway trains. To coordinate the actions of the partisans, the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement was created in 1942, headed by P.K. Ponomarenko.

The underground heroes acted not only against enemy troops, but also carried out death sentences against Hitler’s executioners. The legendary intelligence officer N.I. Kuznetsov destroyed the chief judge of Ukraine Funk, the vice-governor of Galicia Bauer, and kidnapped the commander of the German punitive forces in Ukraine, General Ilgen. The General Commissioner of Belarus Cuba was blown up by underground member E. Mazanik right in bed in his own residence.

During the war years, the state awarded orders and medals to more than 184 thousand partisans and underground fighters. 249 of them were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The legendary commanders of partisan formations S.A. Kovpak and A.F. Fedorov were nominated for this award twice.

Formation of the Anti-Hitler Coalition. From the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Great Britain and the USA announced their support for the Soviet Union. Prime Minister of England W. Churchill, speaking on the radio on June 22, 1941, said: “The danger to Russia is our danger and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of every Russian fighting for his land and home is the cause of free people and free peoples in every part of the globe."

In July 1941, an agreement was signed between the USSR and Great Britain on joint actions in the war against Hitler, and in early August the US government announced economic and military-technical assistance to the Soviet Union “in the fight against armed aggression.” In September 1941, the first conference of representatives of the three powers was held in Moscow, at which issues of expanding military-technical assistance from Great Britain and the United States to the Soviet Union were discussed. After the United States entered the war against Japan and Germany (December 1941), its military cooperation with the USSR expanded even more.

On January 1, 1942, in Washington, representatives of 26 states signed a declaration in which they pledged to use all their resources to fight common enemy and not conclude a separate peace. The agreement on the alliance between the USSR and Great Britain signed in May 1942 and the agreement on mutual assistance with the United States in June finally formalized the military alliance of the three countries.

Results of the first period of the war. The first period of the Great Patriotic War, which lasted from June 22, 1941 to November 18, 1942 (before the Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive at Stalingrad), had a great historical meaning. The Soviet Union withstood a military blow of such force that no other country could have withstood at that time.

The courage and heroism of the Soviet people thwarted Hitler's plans for a "lightning war." Despite heavy defeats during the first year of the fight against Germany and its allies, the Red Army showed its high fighting qualities. By the summer of 1942, the transition of the country's economy to a war footing was basically completed, which laid the main precondition for a radical change in the course of the war. At this stage, the Anti-Hitler Coalition took shape, possessing enormous military, economic and human resources.

What you need to know about this topic:

Socio-economic and political development of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Nicholas II.

Domestic policy tsarism. Nicholas II. Increased repression. "Police Socialism"

Russo-Japanese War. Reasons, progress, results.

Revolution 1905 - 1907 Character, driving forces and features of the Russian revolution of 1905-1907. stages of the revolution. The reasons for the defeat and the significance of the revolution.

Elections to the State Duma. I State Duma. The agrarian question in the Duma. Dispersal of the Duma. II State Duma. Coup d'etat of June 3, 1907

Third June political system. Electoral law June 3, 1907 III State thought. The alignment of political forces in the Duma. Activities of the Duma. Government terror. Decline of the labor movement in 1907-1910.

Stolypin agrarian reform.

IV State Duma. Party composition and Duma factions. Activities of the Duma.

Political crisis in Russia on the eve of the war. Labor movement in the summer of 1914. Crisis at the top.

International position of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.

The beginning of the First World War. Origin and nature of the war. Russia's entry into the war. Attitude to the war of parties and classes.

Progress of military operations. Strategic forces and plans of the parties. Results of the war. The role of the Eastern Front in the First World War.

The Russian economy during the First World War.

Worker and peasant movement in 1915-1916. Revolutionary movement in the army and navy. The growth of anti-war sentiment. Formation of the bourgeois opposition.

Russian culture of the 19th - early 20th centuries.

The aggravation of socio-political contradictions in the country in January-February 1917. The beginning, prerequisites and nature of the revolution. Uprising in Petrograd. Formation of the Petrograd Soviet. Temporary Committee of the State Duma. Order N I. Formation of the Provisional Government. Abdication of Nicholas II. The reasons for the emergence of dual power and its essence. The February revolution in Moscow, at the front, in the provinces.

From February to October. The policy of the Provisional Government regarding war and peace, on agrarian, national, and labor issues. Relations between the Provisional Government and the Soviets. Arrival of V.I. Lenin in Petrograd.

Political parties (Cadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks): political programs, influence among the masses.

Crises of the Provisional Government. Attempted military coup in the country. The growth of revolutionary sentiment among the masses. Bolshevization of the capital's Soviets.

Preparation and conduct of an armed uprising in Petrograd.

II All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Decisions about power, peace, land. Formation of government and management bodies. Composition of the first Soviet government.

Victory of the armed uprising in Moscow. Government agreement with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Elections to the Constituent Assembly, its convocation and dispersal.

The first socio-economic transformations in the fields of industry, agriculture, finance, labor and women's issues. Church and State.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, its terms and significance.

Economic tasks of the Soviet government in the spring of 1918. Aggravation of the food issue. Introduction of food dictatorship. Working food detachments. Combeds.

The revolt of the left Socialist Revolutionaries and the collapse of the two-party system in Russia.

The first Soviet Constitution.

Causes of intervention and civil war. Progress of military operations. Human and material losses during the civil war and military intervention.

Domestic policy of the Soviet leadership during the war. "War communism". GOELRO plan.

Policy new government in relation to culture.

Foreign policy. Treaties with border countries. Russia's participation in the Genoa, Hague, Moscow and Lausanne conferences. Diplomatic recognition of the USSR by the main capitalist countries.

Domestic policy. Socio-economic and political crisis of the early 20s. Famine 1921-1922 Transition to a new economic policy. The essence of NEP. NEP in the field of agriculture, trade, industry. Financial reform. Economic recovery. Crises during the NEP period and its collapse.

Projects for the creation of the USSR. I Congress of Soviets of the USSR. The first government and the Constitution of the USSR.

Illness and death of V.I. Lenin. Intra-party struggle. The beginning of the formation of Stalin's regime.

Industrialization and collectivization. Development and implementation of the first five-year plans. Socialist competition - goal, forms, leaders.

Formation and strengthening of the state system of economic management.

The course towards complete collectivization. Dispossession.

Results of industrialization and collectivization.

Political, national-state development in the 30s. Intra-party struggle. Political repression. Formation of the nomenklatura as a layer of managers. Stalin's regime and the USSR Constitution of 1936

Soviet culture in the 20-30s.

Foreign policy of the second half of the 20s - mid-30s.

Domestic policy. Growth of military production. Emergency measures in the field of labor legislation. Measures to solve the grain problem. Armed forces. The growth of the Red Army. Military reform. Repressions against the command cadres of the Red Army and the Red Army.

Foreign policy. Non-aggression pact and treaty of friendship and borders between the USSR and Germany. The entry of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus into the USSR. Soviet-Finnish war. Inclusion of the Baltic republics and other territories into the USSR.

Periodization of the Great Patriotic War. The initial stage of the war. Turning the country into a military camp. Military defeats 1941-1942 and their reasons. Major military events. Surrender fascist Germany. Participation of the USSR in the war with Japan.

Soviet rear during the war.

Deportation of peoples.

Guerrilla warfare.

Human and material losses during the war.

Creation anti-Hitler coalition. Declaration of the United Nations. The problem of the second front. "Big Three" conferences. Problems of post-war peace settlement and comprehensive cooperation. USSR and UN.

The beginning of the Cold War. The USSR's contribution to the creation of the "socialist camp". CMEA education.

Domestic policy of the USSR in the mid-40s - early 50s. Recovery National economy.

Social and political life. Policy in the field of science and culture. Continued repression. "Leningrad case". Campaign against cosmopolitanism. "The Doctors' Case"

Socio-economic development of Soviet society in the mid-50s - the first half of the 60s.

Socio-political development: XX Congress of the CPSU and condemnation of Stalin’s personality cult. Rehabilitation of victims of repression and deportation. Internal party struggle in the second half of the 50s.

Foreign policy: creation of the Department of Internal Affairs. Entry of Soviet troops into Hungary. Exacerbation of Soviet-Chinese relations. Split of the "socialist camp". Soviet-American relations and the Cuban missile crisis. USSR and "third world" countries. Reduction in the size of the armed forces of the USSR. Moscow Treaty of Limitation nuclear tests.

USSR in the mid-60s - first half of the 80s.

Socio-economic development: economic reform of 1965

Increasing difficulties in economic development. Declining rates of socio-economic growth.

Constitution of the USSR 1977

Social and political life of the USSR in the 1970s - early 1980s.

Foreign Policy: Non-Proliferation Treaty nuclear weapons. Consolidation of post-war borders in Europe. Moscow Treaty with Germany. Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Soviet-American treaties of the 70s. Soviet-Chinese relations. Entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Exacerbation of international tension and the USSR. Strengthening Soviet-American confrontation in the early 80s.

USSR in 1985-1991

Domestic policy: an attempt to accelerate the socio-economic development of the country. An attempt to reform the political system of Soviet society. Congresses of People's Deputies. Election of the President of the USSR. Multi-party system. Exacerbation of the political crisis.

Exacerbation of the national question. Attempts to reform the national-state structure of the USSR. Declaration of State Sovereignty of the RSFSR. "Novoogaryovsky trial". Collapse of the USSR.

Foreign policy: Soviet-American relations and the problem of disarmament. Agreements with leading capitalist countries. Withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Changing relations with the countries of the socialist community. Collapse of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact Organization.

Russian Federation in 1992-2000.

Domestic policy: “Shock therapy” in the economy: price liberalization, stages of privatization of commercial and industrial enterprises. Fall in production. Increased social tension. Growth and slowdown in financial inflation. Intensification of the struggle between the executive and legislative branches. Dissolution of the Supreme Council and the Congress of People's Deputies. October events of 1993. Abolition of local bodies of Soviet power. Elections to the Federal Assembly. Constitution of the Russian Federation 1993 Formation of a presidential republic. Exacerbation and overcoming national conflicts in the North Caucasus.

Parliamentary elections of 1995. Presidential elections of 1996. Power and opposition. An attempt to return to the course of liberal reforms (spring 1997) and its failure. Financial crisis of August 1998: causes, economic and political consequences. "Second Chechen War". Parliamentary elections of 1999 and early presidential elections of 2000. Foreign policy: Russia in the CIS. Participation of Russian troops in “hot spots” of the neighboring countries: Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan. Relations between Russia and foreign countries. Withdrawal of Russian troops from Europe and neighboring countries. Russian-American agreements. Russia and NATO. Russia and the Council of Europe. Yugoslav crises (1999-2000) and Russia’s position.

• Danilov A.A., Kosulina L.G. History of the state and peoples of Russia. XX century.

By June 1941, the Second World War, having drawn about 30 states into its orbit, came close to the borders of the Soviet Union. There was no force in the West that could stop the army of Nazi Germany, which by that time had already occupied 12 European states. The next military-political goal - the main one in its significance - was the defeat of the Soviet Union for Germany.

Deciding to start a war with the USSR and relying on “lightning speed,” the German leadership intended to complete it by the winter of 1941. In accordance with the Barbarossa plan, a gigantic armada of selected, well-trained and armed troops was deployed at the borders of the USSR. The German General Staff placed its main bet on the crushing power of a sudden first strike, the rapid rush of concentrated forces of aviation, tanks and infantry to the vital political and economic centers of the country.

Having completed the concentration of troops, Germany attacked our country early in the morning of June 22, without declaring war, unleashing a barrage of fire and metal. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union against the Nazi invaders began.

For 1418 long days and nights, the peoples of the USSR walked towards victory. This path was incredibly difficult. Our Motherland has fully experienced both the bitterness of defeat and the joy of victory. It was especially difficult initial period.

Invasion of German troops on Soviet territory

While a new day was breaking in the east - June 22, 1941, the shortest night of the year was still ongoing on the western border of the Soviet Union. And no one could even imagine that this day would be the beginning of the bloodiest war that would last four long years. The headquarters of the German army groups concentrated on the border with the USSR received the pre-arranged signal “Dortmund”, which meant to begin the invasion.

Soviet intelligence discovered the preparations the day before, which the headquarters of the border military districts immediately reported to the General Staff of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA). Thus, the chief of staff of the Baltic Special Military District, General P.S. Klenov reported at 22:00 on June 21 that the Germans had completed the construction of bridges across the Neman, and civilian population ordered to evacuate at least 20 km from the border, “there is talk that the troops have received orders to take their starting position for the offensive.” Chief of Staff of the Western Special Military District, Major General V.E. Klimovskikh reported that the German wire fences that had stood along the border during the day had been removed by evening, and the noise of engines could be heard in the forest located not far from the border.

In the evening, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V.M. Molotov invited the German Ambassador Schulenburg and told him that Germany, without any reason, was worsening relations with the USSR every day. Despite repeated protests from the Soviet side, German planes continue to invade its airspace. There are persistent rumors about an impending war between our countries. The Soviet government has every reason to believe this, because the German leadership did not react in any way to the TASS report of June 14. Schulenburg promised to immediately report the claims he had heard to his government. However, on his part this was just an ordinary diplomatic excuse, because the German ambassador was well aware that the Wehrmacht troops were on full alert and were just waiting for a signal to move east.

With the onset of dusk on June 21, the Chief of the General Staff, Army General G.K. Zhukov received a call from the Chief of Staff of the Kyiv Special Military District, General M.A. Purkaev reported on a German defector who said that at dawn the next day the German army would start a war against the USSR. G.K. Zhukov immediately reported this to I.V. Stalin and People's Commissar of Defense Marshal S.K. Tymoshenko. Stalin summoned Timoshenko and Zhukov to the Kremlin and, after an exchange of views, ordered a report on the draft directive prepared by the General Staff on bringing the troops of the western border districts to combat readiness. Only late in the evening, after receiving an encrypted message from one of the residents of Soviet intelligence, who reported that the coming night there would be a decision, this decision is war, adding another point to the draft directive read to him that the troops should in no case succumb to possible provocations, Stalin allowed it to be sent to the districts.

The main meaning of this document was that it warned the Leningrad, Baltic, Western, Kiev and Odessa military districts about a possible attack by the aggressor on June 22-23 and demanded “to be in full combat readiness to meet a sudden attack by the Germans or their allies.” On the night of June 22, the districts were ordered to secretly occupy fortified areas on the border, by dawn to disperse all aviation to field airfields and camouflage it, to keep troops dispersed, to bring air defense to combat readiness without additionally raising assigned personnel, and to prepare cities and objects for darkening . Directive No. 1 categorically prohibited holding any other events without special permission.
The transmission of this document ended only at half past one in the morning, and the entire long journey from the General Staff to the districts, and then to the armies, corps and divisions as a whole took more than four hours of precious time.

Order of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 1 of June 22, 1941 TsAMO.F. 208.Op. 2513.D.71.L.69.

At dawn on June 22, at 3:15 a.m. (Moscow time), thousands of guns and mortars of the German army opened fire on border outposts and the location of Soviet troops. German planes rushed to bomb important targets throughout the border strip - from Barents Sea to Cherny. Many cities were subjected to air raids. To achieve surprise, the bombers flew over the Soviet border in all sectors simultaneously. The first strikes fell precisely on the bases of the latest types of Soviet aircraft, control posts, ports, warehouses, and railway junctions. Massive enemy air strikes disrupted the organized exit of the first echelon of border districts to the state border. Aviation, concentrated at permanent airfields, suffered irreparable losses: on the first day of the war, 1,200 Soviet aircraft were destroyed, most of them not even having time to take off. However, contrary to this, in the first 24 hours the Soviet Air Force carried out about 6 thousand sorties and were destroyed in air battles over 200 German planes.

The first reports of the invasion of German troops into Soviet territory came from border guards. In Moscow, at the General Staff, information about the flight of enemy aircraft across the western border of the USSR was received at 3:07 am. At about 4 o'clock in the morning, Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army G.K. Zhukov called I.V. Stalin and reported what had happened. At the same time, already in open text, the General Staff informed the headquarters of military districts, armies and formations about the German attack.

Upon learning of the attack, I.V. Stalin convened senior military, party and government officials for a meeting. At 5:45 a.m. S.K. arrived in his office. Timoshenko, G.K. Zhukov, V.M. Molotov, L.P. Beria and L.Z. Mehlis. By 7:15 a.m., Directive No. 2 was developed, which, on behalf of the People's Commissar of Defense, demanded:

"1. The troops are to attack enemy forces with all their might and means and destroy them in areas where they have violated the Soviet border. Do not cross the border until further notice.

2. Using reconnaissance and combat aircraft to establish the concentration areas of enemy aircraft and the grouping of their ground forces. Using powerful strikes from bomber and attack aircraft, destroy aircraft at enemy airfields and bomb the main groupings of his ground forces. Air strikes should be carried out to a depth of 100-150 km on German territory. Bomb Koenigsberg and Memel. Do not carry out raids on the territory of Finland and Romania until special instructions are given.”

The prohibition to cross the border, in addition to limiting the depth of air strikes, indicates that Stalin still did not believe that a “big war” had begun. Only by noon, members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks - Molotov, Malenkov, Voroshilov, Beria - prepared the text of a statement by the Soviet government, which Molotov made on the radio at 12:15 p.m.

Radio speech by the Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars
and People's Commissioner for Foreign Affairs
Molotova V.M. dated June 22, 1941 TsAMO. F. 135, Op. 12798. D. 1. L.1.

At the meeting in the Kremlin, the most important decisions were made, which laid the foundation for turning the entire country into a single military camp. They were formalized as decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR: on the mobilization of those liable for military service in all military districts, with the exception of Central Asian and Transbaikal, as well as the Far East, where the Far Eastern Front existed since 1938; on the introduction of martial law in most of the European territory of the USSR - from the Arkhangelsk region to the Krasnodar region.

Decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on martial law
and on approval of the Regulations on Military Tribunals
dated June 22, 1941 TsAMO. F. 135, Op. 12798. D. 1. L.2.

Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on mobilization by military districts.
Reports of the Main Command of the Red Army for June 22-23, 1941.
TsAMO. F. 135, Op. 12798. D. 1. L.3.

On the morning of the same day, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) of the USSR N.A. Voznesensky, having gathered the people's commissars responsible for the main industries, gave orders provided for by the mobilization plans. Then no one even thought that the outbreak of war would very soon ruin everything planned, that it would be necessary to urgently evacuate industrial enterprises to the east and create there, essentially anew, a military industry.

The majority of the population learned about the beginning of the war from Molotov’s speech on the radio. This unexpected news deeply shocked people and caused concern for the fate of the Motherland. The normal course of life was suddenly disrupted, not only were plans for the future upset, but there was a real danger to the lives of family and friends. At the direction of Soviet and party bodies, rallies and meetings were held at enterprises, institutions, and collective farms. The speakers condemned the German attack on the USSR and expressed their readiness to defend the Fatherland. Many immediately applied for voluntary enlistment in the army and asked to be immediately sent to the front.

The German attack on the USSR was not only a new stage in the life of the Soviet people, to one degree or another it affected the peoples of other countries, especially those who were soon to become its main allies or opponents.

The government and people of Great Britain immediately breathed a sigh of relief: the war in the east would, at least for some time, delay the German invasion of the British Isles. So, Germany has another, and quite serious, enemy; this would inevitably weaken it, and therefore, the British reasoned, the USSR should immediately be considered as its ally in the fight against the aggressor. This is precisely what Prime Minister Churchill expressed when he spoke on the radio on the evening of June 22 regarding another German attack. “Any person or state that fights against Nazism,” he said, “will receive our help... This is our policy, this is our statement. It follows that we will provide Russia and the Russian people with all the help we can... Hitler wants to destroy the Russian state because, if successful, he hopes to recall the main forces of his army and air force from the east and throw them at our island.”

The US leadership made an official statement on June 23. On behalf of the government, it was read by Acting Secretary of State S. Welles. The statement emphasized that any rallying of forces against Hitlerism, regardless of their origin, would hasten the fall of the German leaders, and Hitler’s army now represented the main danger to the American continent. The next day, President Roosevelt said at a press conference that the United States was pleased to welcome another opponent of Nazism and intended to provide assistance to the Soviet Union.

The population of Germany learned about the beginning of a new war from the Fuhrer’s address to the people, which on June 22 at 5:30 a.m. was read on the radio by Propaganda Minister J. Goebbels. Following him, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop spoke with a special memorandum, which listed the accusations against the Soviet Union. It goes without saying that Germany, as in its previous aggressive actions, placed all the blame for starting the war on the USSR. In his address to the people, Hitler did not forget to mention the “conspiracy of Jews and democrats, Bolsheviks and reactionaries” against the Reich, the concentration of 160 Soviet divisions on the borders, which allegedly threatened not only Germany, but also Finland and Romania for many weeks. All this, they say, forced the Fuhrer to undertake an “act of self-defense” in order to secure the country and “save European civilization and culture.”

The extreme complexity of the rapidly changing situation, the high mobility and maneuverability of military operations, and the stunning power of the first strikes of the Wehrmacht showed that the Soviet military-political leadership did not have an effective system of command and control. As previously planned, the leadership of the troops was carried out by the People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal Timoshenko. However, without Stalin he could not solve practically any issue.

On June 23, 1941, the Headquarters of the Main Command of the Armed Forces of the USSR was created, consisting of: People's Commissar of Defense Marshal Timoshenko (chairman), Chief of the General Staff Zhukov, Stalin, Molotov, Marshal Voroshilov, Marshal Budyonny and People's Commissar of the Navy Admiral Kuznetsov.

At Headquarters, an institute of permanent advisers to Headquarters was organized consisting of Marshal Kulik, Marshal Shaposhnikov, Meretskov, Chief of the Air Force Zhigarev, Vatutin, Chief air defense(Air Defense) Voronov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Beria, Voznesensky, Zhdanov, Malenkov, Mehlis.

This composition allowed the Headquarters to quickly solve all tasks related to the leadership of the armed struggle. However, there were two commanders-in-chief: Timoshenko - the legal one, who, without Stalin’s sanction, did not have the right to give orders to the army in the field, and Stalin - the actual one. This not only complicated command and control of troops, but also led to belated decisions in the rapidly changing situation at the front.

Events on the Western Front

From the first day of the war, the most alarming situation arose in Belarus, where the Wehrmacht delivered the main blow with its most powerful formation - the troops of Army Group Center under the command of Field Marshal Bock. But the Western Front that opposed it (commander General D.G. Pavlov, member of the Military Council, corps commissar A.F. Fominykh, chief of staff, General V.E. Klimovskikh) had considerable forces (Table 1).

Table 1
The balance of forces in the Western Front at the beginning of the war

Strengths and means	Western Front*	Army Group "Center" (without 3 tgr)**	Ratio
Personnel, thousand people
Tanks, units
Combat aircraft, units

*Only working equipment is taken into account.
** Until June 25, the 3rd Tank Group (tgr) operated in the North-Western Front.

In general, the Western Front was slightly inferior to the enemy in guns and combat aircraft, but significantly superior to it in tanks. Unfortunately, the first echelon of the covering armies was planned to have only 13 rifle divisions, while the enemy concentrated 28 divisions in the first echelon, including 4 tank divisions.
Events in the Western Front unfolded in the most tragic way. Even during the artillery preparation, the Germans captured bridges across the Western Bug, including in the Brest area. The assault groups were the first to cross the border with the task of literally capturing the border outposts within half an hour. However, the enemy miscalculated: there was not a single border post that would not offer him stubborn resistance. The border guards fought to the death. The Germans had to bring the main forces of the divisions into battle.

Fierce fighting broke out in the skies over the border areas. The front pilots fought a fierce battle, trying to wrest the initiative from the enemy and prevent him from seizing air superiority. However, this task turned out to be impossible. Indeed, on the very first day of the war, the Western Front lost 738 combat vehicles, which amounted to almost 40% of the aircraft fleet. In addition, the enemy pilots had a clear advantage in both skill and quality of equipment.

The belated exit to meet the advancing enemy forced the Soviet troops to enter the battle on the move, in parts. They failed to reach the prepared lines in the directions of the aggressor’s attacks, which means they did not succeed in creating a continuous defense front. Having met resistance, the enemy quickly bypassed the Soviet units, attacked them from the flanks and rear, and tried to advance his tank divisions as deep as possible. The situation was aggravated by sabotage groups dropped by parachute, as well as machine gunners on motorcycles who rushed to the rear, knocking out communication lines, capturing bridges, airfields, and other military installations. Small groups of motorcyclists fired indiscriminately from machine guns to create the appearance of encirclement among the defenders. With ignorance of the general situation and loss of control, their actions disrupted the stability of the defense of the Soviet troops, causing panic.

Many rifle divisions of the first echelon of armies were dismembered from the very first hours, some found themselves surrounded. Communication with them was interrupted. By 7 o'clock in the morning, the headquarters of the Western Front had no wire communication even with the armies.

When the front headquarters received the directive of People's Commissar No. 2, the rifle divisions were already drawn into battle. Although the mechanized corps began to advance to the border, due to their great distance from the enemy’s breakthrough areas, the disruption of communications, and the dominance of German aviation in the air, they “attacked the enemy with all their might” and destroyed his strike forces, as required by the order of the People’s Commissar, Soviet troops, Naturally, they couldn't.

A serious threat arose on the northern front of the Bialystok ledge, where the 3rd Army of General V.I. operated. Kuznetsova. Continuously bombarding the army headquarters located in Grodno, the enemy disabled all communications centers by mid-day. It was not possible to contact either the front headquarters or the neighbors for the whole day. Meanwhile, the infantry divisions of the 9th German Army had already managed to push back Kuznetsov’s right-flank formations to the southeast.

On the southern face of the ledge, where the 4th Army led by General A.A. took the battle. Korobkov, the enemy had three to four times superiority. Management was broken here too. Not having time to occupy the planned defense lines, the army's rifle formations began to retreat under the attacks of Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group.

Their withdrawal put the formations of the 10th Army, located in the center of the Bialystok bulge, in a difficult position. From the very beginning of the invasion, the front headquarters had no contact with her. Pavlov had no choice but to send his deputy General I.V. by plane to Bialystok, to the headquarters of the 10th Army. Boldin with the task of establishing the position of the troops and organizing a counterattack in the Grodno direction, which was provided for in the wartime plan. During the entire first day of the war, the command of the Western Front did not receive a single report from the armies.

And Moscow did not receive objective information about the situation at the fronts throughout the entire day, although it sent its representatives there in the afternoon. To clarify the situation and help General Pavlov, Stalin sent the largest group to the Western Front. It included Deputy People's Commissar of Defense Marshals B.M. Shaposhnikov and G.I. Kulik, as well as Deputy Chief of the General Staff General V.D. Sokolovsky and the head of the operational department, General G.K. Malandin. However, it was not possible to identify the actual situation both on this front and on others, and to understand the situation. This is evidenced by the operational report of the General Staff for 22 hours. “German regular troops,” it stated, “during June 22, fought with the USSR border units, having little success in certain directions. In the afternoon, with the approach of the advanced units of the field troops of the Red Army, attacks by German troops along the predominant length of our border were repulsed with losses to the enemy.”

Based on reports from the fronts, the People's Commissar of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff concluded that most of the fighting was taking place near the border, and the largest enemy groups were the Suwalki and Lublin groups, and the further course of the battles would depend on their actions. The powerful German group that was striking from the Brest area was clearly underestimated by the Soviet High Command because of the disorienting reports of the Western Front headquarters; however, it was also not aware of the general air situation.

Believing that there were quite enough forces for a retaliatory strike, and guided by the pre-war plan in case of war with Germany, the People's Commissar of Defense signed Directive No. 3 at 21:15. The troops of the Western Front were ordered to cooperate with the North-Western Front, restraining the enemy in the Warsaw direction, with powerful counterattacks to the flank and rear, destroy his Suwalki group and, by the end of June 24, capture the Suwalki area. The next day, together with the troops of other fronts, it was necessary to go on the offensive and defeat the strike force of Army Group Center. Such a plan not only did not correspond to the true situation, but also prevented the troops of the Western Front from creating a defense. Pavlov and his headquarters, having received Directive No. 3 late at night, began preparations for its implementation, although it was simply unthinkable to do this in the hours remaining before dawn, and even in the absence of communication with the armies.

On the morning of June 23, the commander decided to launch a counterattack in the direction of Grodno, Suwalki with the forces of the 6th and 11th mechanized corps, as well as the 36th cavalry division, uniting them into a group under the command of his deputy, General Boldin. Units of the 3rd Army were also to participate in the planned counterattack. Note that this decision was absolutely unrealistic: the formations of the 3rd Army operating in the direction of the counterattack continued to retreat, the 11th mechanized corps fought intense battles on a wide front, the 6th mechanized corps was too far from the counterattack area - 60-70 km, and further from Grodno there was the 36th Cavalry Division.

General Boldin had at his disposal only part of the forces of the 6th Mechanized Corps of General M.G. Khatskilevich and then only by noon on June 23. Considered rightfully the most equipped in the Red Army, this corps had 1022 tanks, including 352 KB and T-34. However, during the advance, being under constant attacks from enemy aircraft, he suffered significant losses.

Fierce fighting broke out near Grodno. After the capture of Grodno by the enemy, the 11th mechanized corps of General D.K. was introduced into the battle. Mostovenko. Before the war, it consisted of only 243 tanks. In addition, in the first two days of fighting, the corps suffered significant losses. However, on June 24, formations of Boldin’s group, with the support of front-line aviation and the 3rd Long-Range Bomber Corps of Colonel N.S. Skripko managed to achieve some success.

Field Marshal Bock sent the main forces of the 2nd Air Fleet against the Soviet troops launching a counterattack. German planes continuously hovered over the battlefield, depriving units of the 3rd Army and the Boldin group of the possibility of any maneuver. Heavy fighting near Grodno continued the next day, but the strength of the tankers quickly dried up. The enemy brought up anti-tank and anti-aircraft artillery, as well as an infantry division. Nevertheless, Boldin’s group managed to pin down significant enemy forces to the Grodno region for two days and inflict significant damage on them. The counterattack eased, although not for long, the position of the 3rd Army. But they failed to wrest the initiative from the enemy, and the mechanized corps suffered huge losses.

Hoth's Panzer Group deeply enveloped Kuznetsov's 3rd Army from the north, and formations of General Strauss's 9th Army attacked it from the front. Already on June 23, the 3rd Army had to retreat beyond the Neman to avoid encirclement.

The 4th Army of General A.A. found itself in extremely difficult conditions. Korobkova. Guderian's tank group and the main forces of the 4th Army, advancing from Brest in the northeast direction, cut the troops of this army into two unequal parts. Fulfilling the front directive, Korobkov was also preparing a counterattack. However, he managed to assemble only parts of the tank divisions of the 14th mechanized corps of General S.I. Oborin, and the remnants of the 6th and 42nd rifle divisions. And they were opposed by almost two tank and two infantry divisions of the enemy. The forces turned out to be too unequal. The 14th Mechanized Corps suffered heavy losses. The rifle divisions were also bled dry. The oncoming battle ended in favor of the enemy.

The gap with the troops of the North-Western Front on the right wing, where the Hoth tank group rushed, and the difficult situation on the left wing, where the 4th Army was retreating, created a threat of deep coverage of the entire Bialystok group from both the north and the south.

General Pavlov decided to strengthen the 4th Army with the 47th Rifle Corps. At the same time, the 17th Mechanized Corps (63 tanks in total, divisions with 20-25 guns and 4 anti-aircraft guns each) was transferred from the front reserve to the river. Sharu to create a defense there. However, they failed to create a strong defense along the river. Enemy tank divisions crossed it and on June 25 approached Baranovichi.

The position of the troops on the Western Front became increasingly critical. Of particular concern was the northern wing, where an unprotected gap of 130 km had formed. The Hoth tank group, rushing into this gap, was removed from the command of the commander of the 9th Army by Field Marshal Bock. Having received freedom of action, Hoth sent one of his corps to Vilnius, and the other two to Minsk and bypassing the city from the north, in order to connect with the 2nd Panzer Group. The main forces of the 9th Army were turned to the south, and the 4th - to the north, in the direction of the confluence of the Shchara and Neman rivers, to dissect the surrounded group. The threat of complete disaster loomed over the troops of the Western Front.

General Pavlov saw a way out of the situation by delaying the advance of the 3rd Panzer Group of Hoth with reserve formations united by the command of the 13th Army; three divisions, the 21st Rifle Corps, the 50th Rifle Division and the retreating troops were transferred to the army ; and at the same time, with the forces of Boldin’s group, continue to launch a counterattack on Gotha’s flank.

Before the 13th Army of General P.M. Filatov to concentrate his forces, and most importantly, to put in order the troops retreating from the border, including the 5th Tank Division of the North-Western Front, as enemy tanks burst into the army headquarters. The Germans captured most of the vehicles, including those with encryption documents. The army command returned to its troops only on June 26.

The position of the troops on the Western Front continued to deteriorate. Marshal B.M. Shaposhnikov, who was at the front headquarters in Mogilev, turned to Headquarters with a request to immediately withdraw the troops. Moscow allowed the withdrawal. However, it is already too late.

For the withdrawal of the 3rd and 10th armies, deeply bypassed by the tank groups of Hoth and Guderian from the north and south, a corridor no more than 60 km wide remained. Advancing off-road (all roads were occupied by German troops), under continuous attacks from enemy aircraft, with an almost complete absence of vehicles, and in dire need of ammunition and fuel, the formations could not tear themselves away from the advancing enemy.

On June 25, Headquarters formed a group of reserve armies of the High Command, led by Marshal S.M. Budyonny as part of the 19th, 20th, 21st and 22nd armies. Their formations, which began advancing on May 13, arrived from the North Caucasus, Oryol, Kharkov, Volga, Ural and Moscow military districts and concentrated in the rear of the Western Front. Marshal Budyonny received the task of starting to prepare a defensive line along the line Nevel, Mogilev and further along the Desna and Dnieper rivers to Kremenchug; at the same time “to be ready, on the special instructions of the High Command, to launch a counteroffensive.” However, on June 27, the Headquarters abandoned the idea of ​​a counteroffensive and ordered Budyonny to urgently occupy and firmly defend the line along the Western Dvina and Dnieper rivers, from Kraslava to Loev, preventing the enemy from breaking through to Moscow. At the same time, the troops of the 16th Army, and from July 1, the 19th Army, which had arrived in Ukraine before the war, were rapidly transferred to the Smolensk region. All this meant that the Soviet command finally abandoned offensive plans and decided to switch to strategic defense, shifting the main efforts to the western direction.

On June 26, Hoth's tank divisions approached the Minsk fortified area. The next day, Guderian's advanced units reached the approaches to the capital of Belarus. Units of the 13th Army defended here. Fierce fighting began. At the same time, the city was bombed by German aircraft; fires started, water supply, sewerage, power lines, telephone communications failed, but most importantly, thousands of civilians died. However, the defenders of Minsk continued to resist.

The defense of Minsk is one of the brightest pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War. The forces were too unequal. The Soviet troops were in dire need of ammunition, and to transport them there was not enough transport or fuel; moreover, some of the warehouses had to be blown up, the rest were captured by the enemy. The enemy stubbornly rushed towards Minsk from the north and south. At 16:00 on June 28, units of the 20th Panzer Division of the Gotha Group, having broken the resistance of the 2nd Rifle Corps of General A.N. Ermakov, burst into Minsk from the north, and the next day the 18th Panzer Division from Guderian’s group rushed towards from the south. By evening, the German divisions united and closed the encirclement. Only the main forces of the 13th Army managed to retreat to the east. A day earlier, the infantry divisions of the 9th and 4th German armies linked up east of Bialystok, cutting off the retreat routes of the 3rd and 10th Soviet armies. The surrounded group of troops of the Western Front was cut into several parts.

Almost three dozen divisions fell into the cauldron. Deprived of centralized control and supplies, they, however, fought until July 8. On the internal front of the encirclement, Bock had to hold first 21 and then 25 divisions, which amounted to almost half of all the troops of Army Group Center. On the external front, only eight of its divisions continued to advance towards the Berezina, and even the 53rd Army Corps acted against the 75th Soviet Rifle Division.

Exhausted by continuous battles, difficult treks through forests and swamps, without food or rest, those surrounded were losing their last strength. The reports of Army Group Center reported that as of July 2, in the area of ​​Bialystok and Volkovysk alone, 116 thousand people were captured, 1,505 guns, 1,964 tanks and armored vehicles, and 327 aircraft were destroyed or captured as trophies. The prisoners of war were kept in appalling conditions. They were located in rooms unequipped for living, often directly in the open air. Every day, hundreds of people died from exhaustion and epidemics. Those who were weakened were mercilessly destroyed.

Until September, the soldiers of the Western Front emerged from encirclement. At the end of the month towards the river. The remnants of the 13th Mechanized Corps, led by their commander, General P.N., left Sozh. Akhlyustin. 1,667 people, of which 103 were wounded, were brought out by the deputy front commander, General Boldin. Many who were unable to escape the encirclement began to fight the enemy in the ranks of partisans and underground fighters.

From the first days of the occupation, in areas where the enemy appeared, resistance from the masses began to arise. However, it unfolded slowly, especially in the western regions of the country, including Western Belarus, whose population was merged into the USSR only a year before the start of the war. At first, mainly sabotage and reconnaissance groups sent from behind the front line, many military personnel who were surrounded, and partly local residents began to operate here.

On June 29, on the 8th day of the war, a directive was adopted by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to party and Soviet organizations in the front-line regions, which, along with other measures to transform the country into a single military camp to provide nationwide resistance to the enemy, contained instructions on the deployment of the underground and the partisan movement, organizational forms, goals and objectives of the struggle were determined.

Of great importance for the organization of partisan warfare behind enemy lines was the appeal of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army dated July 15, 1941, “To military personnel fighting behind enemy lines,” issued in the form of a leaflet and scattered from airplanes over the occupied territory. In it, the activities of Soviet soldiers behind the front line were assessed as a continuation of their combat mission. The military personnel were encouraged to switch to guerrilla warfare methods. This leaflet-appeal helped many encircled people find their place in the common struggle against the invaders.

The fighting was already far from the border, and the garrison of the Brest Fortress was still fighting. After the withdrawal of the main forces, part of the units of the 42nd and 6th Infantry Divisions, the 33rd Engineer Regiment and the border outpost remained here. Advancing units of the 45th and 31st infantry divisions supported by siege artillery fire. Having barely recovered from the first stunning blow, the garrison took up the defense of the citadel with the intention of fighting to the end. The heroic defense of Brest began. Guderian recalled after the war: “The garrison of the important Brest fortress defended itself especially fiercely, holding out for several days, blocking the railway and highways leading through the Western Bug to Mukhavets.” True, for some reason the general forgot that the garrison held out not for several days, but for about a month - until July 20.

By the end of June 1941, the enemy had advanced to a depth of 400 km. The troops of the Western Front suffered heavy losses in men, equipment and weapons. The front air forces lost 1,483 aircraft. The formations that remained outside the encirclement fought in a zone over 400 km wide. The front was in dire need of replenishment, but it could not even get what it was supposed to be fully equipped according to the pre-war plan in case of mobilization. It was disrupted as a result of the rapid advance of the enemy, the extremely limited number of vehicles, disruption of railway transport and general organizational confusion.

By the end of June, the Soviet military-political leadership realized that to repel aggression it was necessary to mobilize all the country's forces. For this purpose, an emergency body was created on June 30 - State Committee Defense (GKO) headed by Stalin. All power in the state was concentrated in the hands of the State Defense Committee. His decisions and orders, which had the force of wartime laws, were subject to unquestioning implementation by all citizens, party, Soviet, Komsomol and military bodies. Each GKO member was responsible for a specific area (ammunition, aircraft, tanks, food, transport, etc.).

The country continued to mobilize military personnel from 1905 to 1918. birth into the army and navy. In the first eight days of the war, 5.3 million people were drafted into the armed forces. 234 thousand cars and 31.5 thousand tractors were sent from the national economy to the front.

Headquarters continued to take emergency measures to restore the strategic front in Belarus. Army General D.G. Pavlov was removed from command of the Western Front and tried by a military tribunal. Marshal S.K. was appointed the new commander. Tymoshenko. On July 1, the Headquarters transferred the 19th, 20th, 21st and 22nd armies to the Western Front. Essentially, a new defense front was being formed. The 16th Army was concentrated in the rear of the front, in the Smolensk region. The transformed Western Front now consisted of 48 divisions and 4 mechanized corps, but by July 1, the defense on the line of the Western Dvina and the Dnieper was occupied by only 10 divisions.

The resistance of Soviet troops encircled near Minsk forced the command of Army Group Center to disperse its formations to a depth of 400 km, with the field armies falling far behind the tank groups. In order to more clearly coordinate the efforts of the 2nd and 3rd tank groups to capture the Smolensk region and with the further attack on Moscow, Field Marshal Bock on July 3 united both groups into the 4th tank army led by Kluge's 4th Field Army. The infantry formations of the former 4th Army were united by the control of the 2nd Army (it was in the reserve of the High Command of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces - OKH), under the command of General Weichs, to eliminate the Soviet units surrounded west of Minsk.

Meanwhile, fierce battles took place between the Berezina, Western Dvina and Dnieper rivers. By July 10, enemy troops crossed the Western Dvina and reached Vitebsk and the Dnieper south and north of Mogilev.

One of the first strategic defensive operations of the Red Army, which later received the name Belarusian, ended. In 18 days, the troops of the Western Front suffered a crushing defeat. Of the 44 divisions that were originally part of the front, 24 were completely lost, the remaining 20 lost from 30 to 90% of their strength. Total losses - 417,790 people, including irrecoverable - 341,073 people, 4,799 tanks, 9,427 guns and mortars and 1,777 combat aircraft. Leaving almost all of Belarus, the troops retreated to a depth of 600 km.

Defense of the Northwestern Front and the Baltic Fleet

With the outbreak of the war, the Baltic states also became the scene of dramatic events. The Northwestern Front defending here under the command of General F.I. Kuznetsov was significantly weaker than the fronts operating in Belarus and Ukraine, since it had only three armies and two mechanized corps. Meanwhile, the aggressor concentrated large forces in this direction (Table 2). In the first strike against the North-Western Front, not only Army Group North under the command of Field Marshal W. Leeb took part, but also the 3rd Panzer Group from the neighboring Army Group Center, i.e. Kuznetsov’s troops were opposed by two German tank groups out of four.

table 2
The balance of forces in the Northwestern Front at the beginning of the war

Strengths and means	Northwestern	Army group	Ratio
		"North" and 3 Tgr
Personnel, thousand people
Guns and mortars (without 50 mm), units.
Tanks,** units
Combat aircraft**, units

* Without Baltic Fleet forces
**Only serviceable ones are taken into account

Already on the first day of the war, the defenses of the Northwestern Front were split. Tank wedges made significant holes in it.

Due to the systematic disruption of communications, the front and army commanders were unable to organize command and control of the troops. The troops suffered heavy losses, but could not stop the advance of the tank groups. In the zone of the 11th Army, the 3rd Tank Group rushed to the bridges across the Neman. And although specially designated demolition teams were on duty here, enemy tanks also slipped across the bridges along with the retreating army units. “For the 3rd Panzer Group,” wrote its commander, General Hoth, “it was a great surprise that all three bridges across the Neman, the capture of which was part of the group’s task, were captured intact.”

Having crossed the Neman, Hoth's tanks rushed towards Vilnius, but encountered desperate resistance. By the end of the day, the formations of the 11th Army were dismembered into pieces. A large gap opened up between the North-Western and Western fronts, and there was nothing to close it.

During the first day, German formations penetrated to a depth of 60 km. While the enemy's deep penetration required vigorous response measures, both the front command and the army command showed obvious passivity.

Order of the Military Council of the Baltic Special Military District No. 05 of June 22, 1941
TsAMO. F. 221. Op. 1362. D. 5, volume 1. L. 2.

On the evening of June 22, General Kuznetsov received directive from People's Commissar No. 3, in which the front was ordered: “While firmly holding the Baltic Sea coast, launch a powerful counterattack from the Kaunas area to the flank and rear of the Suwalki enemy group, destroy it in cooperation with the Western Front and capture the area by the end of June 24 Suwalki."

However, even before receiving the directive, at 10 o’clock in the morning, General Kuznetsov gave the order to the armies and mechanized corps to launch a counterattack against the Tilsit enemy group. Therefore, the troops carried out his order, and the commander decided not to change tasks, essentially failing to fulfill the requirements of Directive No. 3.

Six divisions were to attack Gepner's tank group and restore the situation along the border. Against 123 thousand soldiers and officers, 1800 guns and mortars, more than 600 enemy tanks, Kuznetsov planned to field about 56 thousand people, 980 guns and mortars, 950 tanks (mostly light ones).

However, a simultaneous strike did not work: after a long march, the formations entered the battle on the move, most often in scattered groups. With an acute shortage of ammunition, artillery did not provide reliable support to the tanks. The task remained unfinished. The divisions, having lost a significant part of their tanks, withdrew from the battle on the night of June 24.

At dawn on June 24, the fighting flared up with renewed vigor. On both sides, more than 1 thousand tanks, about 2,700 guns and mortars, and more than 175 thousand soldiers and officers took part in them. Parts of the right flank of Reinhardt's 41st Motorized Corps were forced to go on the defensive.

An attempt to resume the counterattack the next day came down to hasty, poorly coordinated actions, moreover, on a wide front, with poor management organization. Instead of launching concentrated attacks, corps commanders were ordered to act in “small columns in order to disperse enemy aircraft.” The tank formations suffered huge losses: only 35 tanks remained in both divisions of the 12th Mechanized Corps.

If, as a result of the counterattack, it was possible to delay for some time the advance of Reinhardt’s 41st motorized corps in the Siauliai direction, then Manstein’s 56th corps, bypassing the counterattacking formations from the south, was able to make a swift rush to Daugavpils.

The position of the 11th Army was tragic: it found itself squeezed between the 3rd and 4th tank groups. The main forces of the 8th Army were more fortunate: they remained aloof from the enemy's armored fist and retreated north in a relatively orderly manner. Cooperation between the armies was weak. The supply of ammunition and fuel has almost completely stopped. The situation required decisive measures to eliminate the enemy breakthrough. However, having no reserves and having lost control, the front command could not prevent the retreat and restore the situation.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht ground forces, Field Marshal Brauchitsch, ordered the 3rd Panzer Group Hoth to turn southeast, towards Minsk, as provided for by the Barbarossa plan, so from June 25 it acted against the Western Front. Taking advantage of the gap between the 8th and 11th Armies, the 56th Motorized Corps of the 4th Tank Group rushed to the Western Dvina, cutting off the rear communications of the 11th Army.

The Military Council of the Northwestern Front considered it expedient to withdraw formations of the 8th and 11th armies to the line along the Venta, Shushva, and Viliya rivers. However, on the night of June 25, he made a new decision: to launch a counterattack with the 16th Rifle Corps of General M.M. Ivanov to return Kaunas, although the logic of events required the withdrawal of units beyond the river. Vilia. Initially, General Ivanov's corps had partial success, but he was unable to complete the task, and the divisions retreated to their original position.

In general, the front troops did not complete the main task - to detain the aggressor in the border zone. Attempts to eliminate deep penetrations of German tanks in the most important directions also failed. The troops of the Northwestern Front were unable to hold on to intermediate lines and rolled back further and further to the northeast.

Military operations in the northwestern direction unfolded not only on land, but also at sea, where the Baltic Fleet was subjected to attacks from enemy aircraft from the very first days of the war. By order of the fleet commander, Vice Admiral V.F. Tributa, on the night of June 23, the installation of minefields began at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland, and the next day the same barriers began to be created in the Irben Strait. Increased mining of fairways and approaches to bases, as well as the dominance of enemy aviation and the threat to bases from land, fettered the forces of the Baltic Fleet. Dominance at sea passed to the enemy for a long time.

During the general withdrawal of the troops of the North-Western Front, the enemy met stubborn resistance at the walls of Liepaja. The German command planned to capture this city no later than the second day of the war. Against a small garrison consisting of units of the 67th Infantry Division of General N.A. Dedayev and the naval base of Captain 1st Rank M.S. Klevensky, the 291st Infantry Division operated with the support of tanks, artillery and marines. Only on June 24 did the Germans blockade the city from land and sea. The residents of Liepaja, led by the defense headquarters, fought alongside the troops. Only by order of the command of the North-Western Front on the night of June 27 and 28, the defenders left Liepaja and began to make their way to the east.

On June 25, the North-Western Front received the task of withdrawing troops and organizing defense along the Western Dvina, where the 21st Mechanized Corps of General D.D. was moving forward from the Headquarters reserve. Lelyushenko. During the withdrawal, the troops found themselves in a difficult situation: after an unsuccessful counterattack, the command of the 3rd Mechanized Corps, led by General A.V. Kurkin and the 2nd Tank Division, left without fuel, found themselves surrounded. According to the enemy, over 200 tanks, more than 150 guns, as well as several hundred trucks and cars were captured and destroyed here. From the 3rd Mechanized Corps, only one 84th Motorized Division remained, and the 12th Mechanized Corps, out of 750 tanks, lost 600.

The 11th Army found itself in a difficult position. Moving beyond the river Viliy was hampered by enemy aircraft, which were destroying the crossings. There was a threat of encirclement, and the transfer of troops to the other side progressed very slowly. Having not received help, General Morozov decided to retreat to the northeast, but only on June 27 it became clear that the enemy, who had captured Daugavpils the day before, had cut off this route as well. Only the eastern direction remained free, through forests and swamps to Polotsk, where, on June 30, the remnants of the army entered the strip of the neighboring Western Front.

Field Marshal Leeb's troops quickly advanced deep into the Baltic territory. Organized resistance was provided to them by the army of General P.P. Sobennikova. The 11th Army’s defense line remained uncovered, which Manstein immediately took advantage of, sending his 56th Motorized Corps along the shortest route to the Western Dvina.

In order to stabilize the situation, the troops of the Northwestern Front needed to gain a foothold on the line of the Western Dvina. Unfortunately, the 21st Mechanized Corps, which was supposed to defend here, had not yet reached the river. The formations of the 27th Army also failed to take up defensive positions in a timely manner. And the main goal of Army Group North at that moment was precisely the breakthrough to the Western Dvina with the direction of the main attack on Daugavpils and to the north.

On the morning of June 26, the German 8th Panzer Division approached Daugavpils and captured the bridge over the Western Dvina. The division rushed into the city, creating a bridgehead that was very important for the development of the attack on Leningrad.

Southeast of Riga, on the night of June 29, the advance detachment of General Reinhardt's 41st Motorized Corps crossed the Western Dvina at Jekabpils on the move. And the next day, the advanced units of the 1st and 26th Army Corps of the 18th German Army broke into Riga and captured bridges across the river. However, a decisive counterattack by the 10th Rifle Corps of General I.I. Fadeev, the enemy was knocked out, which ensured the systematic withdrawal of the 8th Army through the city. On July 1, the Germans recaptured Riga.

Back on June 29, the Headquarters ordered the commander of the Northwestern Front, simultaneously with the organization of defense along the Western Dvina, to prepare and occupy the line along the river. Great, while relying on the fortified areas that existed there in Pskov and Ostrov. The 41st Rifle and 1st Mechanized Corps, as well as the 234th Rifle Division, moved there from the reserves of the Headquarters and the Northern Front.

Instead of generals F.I. Kuznetsova and P.M. Klenov, on July 4, generals P.P. were appointed. Sobennikov and N.F. Vatutin.

On the morning of July 2, the enemy struck at the junction of the 8th and 27th armies and broke through in the direction of Ostrov and Pskov. The threat of an enemy breakthrough to Leningrad forced the command of the Northern Front to create the Luga Task Force to cover the southwestern approaches to the city on the Neva.

By the end of July 3, the enemy captured Gulbene in the rear of the 8th Army, depriving it of the opportunity to retreat to the river. Great. The army, which General F.S. had just taken command of. Ivanov, was forced to retreat north to Estonia. A gap opened between the 8th and 27th armies, where formations of the enemy’s 4th Tank Group rushed. The next morning, the 1st Panzer Division reached the southern outskirts of the Island and crossed the river on the move. Great. Attempts to throw it away were unsuccessful. On July 6, the Germans completely captured Ostrov and rushed north to Pskov. Three days later, the Germans broke into the city. There was a real threat of a German breakthrough to Leningrad.

In general, the first defensive operation of the North-Western Front ended in failure. During three weeks of fighting, his troops retreated to a depth of 450 km, leaving almost the entire Baltic region. The front lost over 90 thousand people, more than 1 thousand tanks, 4 thousand guns and mortars and more than 1 thousand aircraft. His command failed to create a defense capable of repelling the attack of the aggressor. The troops were unable to gain a foothold even on such barriers as advantageous for defense as pp. Neman, Western Dvina, Velikaya.

The situation at sea was also difficult. With the loss of bases in Liepaja and Riga, the ships moved to Tallinn, where they were subjected to constant severe bombing by German aircraft. And at the beginning of July, the fleet had to come to grips with organizing the defense of Leningrad from the sea.

Border battles in the area of ​​the Southwestern and Southern fronts. Actions of the Black Sea Fleet

Southwestern Front, commanded by General M.P. Kirponos was the most powerful group of Soviet troops concentrated near the borders of the USSR. The German Army Group South, under the command of Field Marshal K. Rundstedt, was tasked with destroying Soviet troops in Right Bank Ukraine, preventing them from retreating beyond the Dnieper.

The Southwestern Front had enough strength to give the aggressor a worthy rebuff (Table 3). However, the very first day of the war showed that these opportunities could not be realized. From the first minute, formations, headquarters, and airfields were subjected to powerful air strikes, and the air force was never able to provide adequate counteraction.

General M.P. Kirponos decided to launch two strikes on the flanks of the main enemy group - from the north and south, each with the help of three mechanized corps, which had a total of 3.7 thousand tanks. General Zhukov, who arrived at front headquarters on the evening of June 22, approved his decision. Organizing a frontal counterattack took three days, and before that only part of the forces of the 15th and 22nd mechanized corps managed to advance and attack the enemy, and the only forward detachment of the 10th tank division operated in the 15th mechanized corps. An oncoming battle broke out east of Vladimir-Volynsky. The enemy was detained, but soon he rushed forward again, forcing the counterattackers to retreat beyond the river. Styr, in the Lutsk region.

The 4th and 8th mechanized corps could play a decisive role in defeating the enemy. They had over 1.7 thousand tanks. The 4th Mechanized Corps was considered especially strong: it had 414 vehicles at its disposal only with new KB and T-34 tanks. However, the mechanized corps was fragmented into parts. His divisions operated on different directions. By the morning of June 26, the 8th Mechanized Corps of General D.I. Ryabysheva went to Brody. Of the 858 tanks, barely half remained; the other half fell behind on the almost 500-kilometer route due to various breakdowns.

At the same time, mechanized corps were being concentrated to launch a counterattack from the north. The strongest in the 22nd Mechanized Corps, the 41st Tank Division was partly assigned to rifle divisions and did not take part in the frontal counterattack. The 9th and 19th mechanized corps, which advanced from the east, had to cover 200-250 km. Both of them numbered only 564 tanks, and even those were of old types.

And at this time, the rifle formations fought stubborn battles, trying to detain the enemy. On June 24, in the 5th Army zone, the enemy managed to encircle two rifle divisions. A 70-kilometer gap was formed in the defense, using which German tank divisions rushed to Lutsk and Berestechko. The surrounded Soviet troops defended stubbornly. For six days the units fought their way to their own. Only about 200 people remained from the division's two rifle regiments that were surrounded. Exhausted in continuous battles, they retained their battle flags.

The soldiers of the 6th Army also defended themselves staunchly in the Rava-Russian direction. Field Marshal Rundstedt assumed that after the capture of Rava-Russkaya, the 14th Motorized Corps would be introduced into the battle. According to his calculations, this should have happened by the morning of June 23. But all of Rundstedt’s plans were thwarted by the 41st Division. Despite the fierce fire of German artillery and massive bomber strikes, the division's regiments, together with the battalions of the Rava-Russian fortified area and the 91st border detachment, held back the advance of the 4th Army Corps of the 17th Army for five days. The division left its positions only on the orders of the army commander. On the night of June 27, she retreated to the line east of Rava-Russkaya.

The 12th Army of General P.G. defended on the left wing of the Southwestern Front. Monday. After the transfer of the 17th Rifle and 16th Mechanized Corps to the newly created Southern Front, the only rifle corps left was the 13th. It covered a 300-kilometer section of the border with Hungary. For now there was silence here.

Intense battles took place not only on the ground, but also in the air. True, the front’s fighter aircraft were unable to reliably cover the airfields. In the first three days of the war alone, the enemy destroyed 234 aircraft on the ground. Bomber aircraft were also used ineffectively. With 587 bombers, front-line aviation made only 463 sorties during this time. The reason is unstable communications, lack of proper interaction between combined arms and aviation headquarters, and remoteness of airfields.

On the evening of June 25, the 6th Army of Field Marshal W. Reichenau crossed the river on the 70-kilometer stretch from Lutsk to Berestechko. Styr, and the 11th Panzer Division, having broken away from the main forces by almost 40 km, captured Dubno.

On June 26, the 8th mechanized corps entered the battle from the south, and the 9th and 19th from the northeast. General Ryabyshev's corps advanced 10-12 km from Broda to Berestechko. However, his success could not be supported by other connections. The main reason for the uncoordinated actions of the mechanized corps was the lack of unified leadership of this powerful tank group on the part of the front command.

The actions of the 9th and 19th mechanized corps turned out to be more successful, despite the smaller forces. They were included in the 5th Army. There was also an operational group headed by the first deputy front commander, General F.S. Ivanov, who coordinated the actions of the formations.

On the afternoon of June 26, the corps finally attacked the enemy. Overcoming enemy resistance, the corps, commanded by General N.V. Feklenko, together with the rifle division, reached Dubno by the end of the day. Operating to the right was the 9th Mechanized Corps of General K.K. Rokossovsky turned around along the Rovno-Lutsk road and entered into battle with the enemy’s 14th Tank Division. He stopped her, but could not advance a single step.

An oncoming tank battle unfolded near Berestechko, Lutsk and Dubno - the largest since the beginning of World War II in terms of the number of forces participating in it. About 2 thousand tanks collided on both sides in an area up to 70 km wide. Hundreds of planes were fighting fiercely in the sky.

The counterattack of the Southwestern Front delayed the advance of Kleist’s group for some time. In general, Kirponos himself believed that the border battle was lost. The deep penetration of German tanks in the Dubno area created the danger of a strike to the rear of the armies that continued to fight in the Lvov salient. The front's Military Council decided to withdraw the troops to a new defensive line, which it reported to Headquarters, and, without waiting for Moscow's consent, gave the armies the appropriate orders. However, the Headquarters did not approve of Kirponos’ decision and demanded that counterattacks be resumed. The commander had to cancel his own orders that had just been given, which the troops had already begun to carry out.

The 8th and 15th mechanized corps barely had time to leave the battle, and then a new order came: stop the retreat and strike in a northeast direction, to the rear of the divisions of the enemy’s 1st tank group. There was not enough time to organize the strike.

Despite all these difficulties, the battle flared up with renewed vigor. The troops in stubborn battles in the Dubno area, near Lutsk and Rivne until June 30 pinned down the 6th Army and the enemy tank group. German troops were forced to maneuver in search of weak points. The 11th Tank Division, covering itself with part of its forces from the attack of the 19th Mechanized Corps, turned to the southeast and captured Ostrog. But it was still stopped by a group of troops created on the initiative of the commander of the 16th Army, General M.F. Lukina. These were mainly army units that did not have time to embark on trains to be sent to Smolensk, as well as the 213th motorized division of Colonel V.M. Osminsky from the 19th Mechanized Corps, whose infantry, lacking transport, lagged behind the tanks.

The soldiers of the 8th Mechanized Corps tried with all their might to break out of the encirclement, first through Dubno, and then in a northern direction. The lack of communication did not allow us to coordinate our own actions with neighboring connections. The mechanized corps suffered heavy losses: many soldiers died, including the commander of the 12th Tank Division, General T.A. Mishanin.

The command of the Southwestern Front, fearing encirclement of the armies defending in the Lviv ledge, decided on the night of June 27 to begin a systematic retreat. By the end of June 30, Soviet troops, leaving Lvov, occupied a new line of defense, 30-40 km east of the city. On the same day, the vanguard battalions of the mobile corps of Hungary went on the offensive, which declared war on the USSR on June 27.

On June 30, Kirponos received the task: by July 9, using fortified areas on the state border of 1939, “to organize a stubborn defense with field troops, highlighting primarily artillery anti-tank weapons.”

Korostensky, Novograd-Volynsky and Letichevsky fortified areas, built back in the 1930s 50-100 km east of the old state border, were put on combat readiness with the beginning of the war and, reinforced with rifle units, could become a serious obstacle to the enemy. True, in the system of fortified areas there were gaps reaching 30-40 km.

In eight days, the front troops had to withdraw 200 km into the interior of the territory. Particular difficulties befell the 26th and 12th armies, which faced the longest journey, and with the constant threat of an enemy attack in the rear, from the north, by formations of the 17th Army and the 1st Tank Group.

To prevent the advance of the Kleist group and gain time to withdraw its troops, the 5th Army launched a counterattack on its flank from the north with the forces of two corps, which in previous battles had exhausted their forces to the limit: in the divisions of the 27th Rifle Corps there were about 1.5 thousand people, and the 22nd mechanized corps had only 153 tanks. There was not enough ammunition. The counterattack was prepared hastily, the attack was carried out on a hundred-kilometer front and at different times. However, the fact that the attack fell on the rear of the tank group gave a significant advantage. Mackensen's corps was delayed for two days, which made it easier for Kirponos' troops to exit the battle.

The troops retreated with heavy losses. A significant part of the equipment had to be destroyed, since even a minor malfunction could not be eliminated due to the lack of repair tools. In the 22nd Mechanized Corps alone, 58 faulty tanks were blown up.

On July 6 and 7, enemy tank divisions reached the Novograd-Volyn fortified area, the defense of which was to be strengthened by the retreating formations of the 6th Army. Instead, some units of the 5th Army were able to get here. Here, Colonel Blank’s group, which had escaped from encirclement, went on the defensive, created from the remnants of two divisions - a total of 2.5 thousand people. For two days the units of the fortified area and this group held back the enemy onslaught. On July 7, Kleist's tank divisions captured Berdichev, and a day later - Novograd-Volynsk. Following the tank group on July 10, the infantry divisions of the 6th Army of Reichenau bypassed the fortified area from the north and south. It was not possible to stop the enemy at the old state border either.

The breakthrough in the Berdichev direction caused particular concern, as it created a threat to the rear of the main forces of the Southwestern Front. Through joint efforts, formations of the 6th Army, 16th and 15th Mechanized Corps held back the enemy's onslaught until July 15.

To the north, the enemy's 13th Tank Division captured Zhitomir on July 9. Although the 5th Army tried to delay the rapid rush of enemy tanks, the approaching infantry divisions repelled all its attacks. In two days, German tank formations advanced 110 km and on July 11 approached the Kyiv fortified area. Only here, on the defensive line created by the garrison troops and the population of the capital of Ukraine, was the enemy finally stopped.

The people's militia played a major role in repelling the enemy's attack. Already on July 8, 19 detachments with a total number of about 30 thousand people were formed in Kyiv, and in the Kyiv region as a whole, over 90 thousand people joined the ranks of the militia. An 85,000-strong volunteer corps was created in Kharkov, and a corps of five divisions with a total of 50,000 militiamen was created in Dnepropetrovsk.

Not as dramatic as in Ukraine, the war began in Moldova, where the border with Romania along the Prut and Danube was covered by the 9th Army. Opposing it were the 11th German, 3rd and 4th Romanian armies, which had the task of pinning down the Soviet troops and, under favorable conditions, going on the offensive. In the meantime, Romanian formations sought to seize bridgeheads on the eastern bank of the Prut. Fierce fighting broke out here in the first two days. Not without difficulty, the bridgeheads, except for one in the Skulyan area, were liquidated by Soviet troops.

Military actions also flared up in the Black Sea. At 3 hours 15 minutes on June 22, enemy aircraft carried out raids on Sevastopol and Izmail, and artillery shelled settlements and ships on the Danube. Already on the night of June 23, fleet aviation took retaliatory measures by raiding the military installations of Constanta and Sulina. And on June 26, a special strike group of the Black Sea Fleet, consisting of the leaders “Kharkov” and “Moscow”, struck this port of Constanta. They were supported by the cruiser Voroshilov and the destroyers Soobrazitelny and Smyshleny. The ships fired 350 130-mm caliber shells. However, the 280-mm German battery returned fire from the leader “Moskva”, which, while retreating, hit a mine and sank. At this time, enemy aircraft damaged the leader of the Kharkov.

On June 25, the Southern Front was created from the troops operating on the border with Romania. In addition to the 9th, it included the 18th Army, formed from troops transferred from the Southwestern Front. The directorate of the new front was created on the basis of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District, headed by its commander, General I.V. Tyulenev and Chief of Staff General G.D. Shishenin. The commander and his staff in the new location faced enormous difficulties, primarily due to the fact that they were completely unfamiliar with the theater of military operations. In his first directive, Tyulenev set the front troops the task: “Defend the state border with Romania. If the enemy crosses and flies into our territory, destroy him with active actions of ground troops and aviation and be ready for decisive offensive actions.”

Considering the success of the offensive in Ukraine and the fact that Soviet troops in Moldova held their positions, Field Marshal Rundstedt decided to encircle and destroy the main forces of the Southern and Southern Western fronts.

The offensive of German-Romanian troops against the Southern Front began on July 2. In the morning, shock groups attacked formations of the 9th Army in two narrow sectors. The main blow from the Iasi area was delivered by four infantry divisions at the junction of the rifle divisions. Another attack by two infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade hit one rifle regiment. Having achieved decisive superiority, the enemy broke through the poorly prepared defenses on the river on the first day. The rod is to a depth of 8-10 km.

Without waiting for a decision from Headquarters, Tyulenev ordered the troops to begin withdrawing. However, the High Command not only canceled it, on July 7 Tyulenev received an order to push the enemy back beyond the Prut with a counterattack. Only the 18th Army, which was adjacent to the Southwestern Front, was allowed to withdraw.

The undertaken counterattack managed to delay the advance of the 11th German and 4th Romanian armies operating in the Chisinau direction.

The situation on the Southern Front was temporarily stabilized. The enemy's delay allowed the 18th Army to withdraw and occupy the Mogilev-Podolsk fortified area, and the 9th Army managed to gain a foothold west of the Dniester. On July 6, its left-flank formations remaining in the lower reaches of the Prut and Danube were united into the Primorsky Group of Forces under the command of General N.E. Chibisova. Together with the Danube military flotilla, they repelled all attempts by Romanian troops to cross the border of the USSR.

The defensive operation in Western Ukraine (later it became known as the Lvov-Chernivtsi strategic defensive operation) ended in the defeat of the Soviet troops. The depth of their retreat ranged from 60-80 to 300-350 km. Northern Bukovina and Western Ukraine, the enemy reached Kyiv. Although the defense in Ukraine and Moldova, unlike the Baltic states and Belarus, still retained some stability, the fronts of the South-Western strategic direction were unable to use their numerical superiority to repel the attacks of the aggressor and were ultimately defeated. By July 6, the casualties of the Southwestern Front and the 18th Army of the Southern Front amounted to 241,594 people, including irrevocable losses - 172,323 people. They lost 4,381 tanks, 1,218 combat aircraft, 5,806 guns and mortars. The balance of forces changed in favor of the enemy. Having the initiative and retaining offensive capabilities, Army Group South was preparing a strike from the area west of Kyiv to the south to the rear of the Southwestern and Southern fronts.

The tragic outcome of the initial period of the war and the transition to strategic defense

The initial period of the Great Patriotic War, which lasted from June 22 to mid-July, was associated with serious failures of the Soviet Armed Forces. The enemy achieved major operational and strategic results. His troops advanced 300-600 km deep into Soviet territory. Under enemy pressure, the Red Army was forced to retreat almost everywhere. Latvia, Lithuania, almost all of Belarus, a significant part of Estonia, Ukraine and Moldova found themselves under occupation. About 23 million Soviet people fell into fascist captivity. The country has lost many industrial enterprises and acreage with ripening harvests. A threat was created to Leningrad, Smolensk, and Kyiv. Only in the Arctic, Karelia and Moldova the enemy’s advance was insignificant.

In the first three weeks of the war, of the 170 Soviet divisions that took the first blow of the German military machine, 28 were completely defeated, and 70 lost more than half of their personnel and military equipment. Only three fronts - Northwestern, Western and Southwestern - irretrievably lost about 600 thousand people, or almost a third of their strength. The Red Army lost about 4 thousand combat aircraft, over 11.7 thousand tanks, about 18.8 thousand guns and mortars. Even at sea, despite the limited nature of the fighting, the Soviet fleet lost a leader, 3 destroyers, 11 submarines, 5 minesweepers, 5 torpedo boats and a number of other combat ships and transports. More than half of the reserves of the border military districts remained in the occupied territory. The losses suffered had a heavy impact on the combat effectiveness of the troops, who were in dire need of everything: ammunition, fuel, weapons, and transport. It took Soviet industry more than a year to replenish them. At the beginning of July, the German General Staff concluded that the campaign in Russia had already been won, although not yet completed. It seemed to Hitler that the Red Army was no longer able to create a continuous front of defense even in the most important directions. At a meeting on July 8, he only clarified further tasks for the troops.

Despite the losses, the Red Army troops, fighting from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea, had 212 divisions and 3 rifle brigades by mid-July. And although only 90 of them were full-fledged formations, and the rest had only half, or even less, of the regular strength, it was clearly premature to consider the Red Army defeated. The Northern, Southwestern and Southern fronts retained their ability to resist, and the troops of the Western and Northwestern fronts quickly restored their combat effectiveness.

At the start of the campaign, the Wehrmacht also suffered losses unmatched in the previous years of World War II. According to Halder as of July 13, only in ground forces More than 92 thousand people were killed, wounded or missing, and the damage in tanks averaged 50%. Approximately the same data is given in post-war studies by West German historians, who believe that from the beginning of the war until July 10, 1941, the Wehrmacht lost 77,313 people on the eastern front. The Luftwaffe lost 950 aircraft. In the Baltic Sea, the German fleet lost 4 minelayers, 2 torpedo boats and 1 hunter. However, the losses of personnel did not exceed the number of field reserve battalions available in each division, due to which they were replenished, so the combat effectiveness of the formations was basically preserved. Since mid-July, the offensive capabilities of the aggressor remained large: 183 combat-ready divisions and 21 brigades.

One of the reasons for the tragic outcome of the initial period of the war was the gross miscalculation of the political and military leadership of the Soviet Union regarding the timing of the aggression. As a result, the troops of the first operational echelon found themselves in an extremely difficult situation. The enemy crushed the Soviet troops in parts: first, the formations of the first echelon of the covering armies located along the border and not brought into combat readiness, then with counter blows - their second echelons, and then, developing the offensive, he forestalled the Soviet troops in occupying advantageous lines in the depths, on the move mastering them. As a result, the Soviet troops found themselves dismembered and surrounded.

The attempts of the Soviet command to carry out retaliatory strikes with the transfer of military operations to the territory of the aggressor, which they made on the second day of the war, no longer corresponded to the capabilities of the troops and, in fact, were one of the reasons for the unsuccessful outcome of the border battles. The decision to switch to strategic defense, made only on the eighth day of the war, also turned out to be belated. Moreover, this transition took place too hesitantly and at different times. He demanded that the main efforts be transferred from the southwestern direction to the western, where the enemy delivered his main blow. As a result, a significant part of the Soviet troops did not so much fight as move from one direction to another. This gave the enemy the opportunity to destroy the formations piece by piece as they approached the concentration area.

The war revealed significant shortcomings in military command and control. The main reason is the weak vocational training command cadres of the Red Army. Among the reasons that led to shortcomings in troop management was an excessive reliance on wired communications. After the first strikes by enemy aircraft and the actions of his sabotage groups, permanent wire communication lines were put out of action, and the extremely limited number of radio stations and the lack of necessary skills in their use did not allow establishing stable communications. The commanders were afraid of radio direction finding by the enemy, and therefore avoided using the radio, preferring wired and other means. And the strategic leadership bodies did not have pre-prepared control points. Headquarters, the General Staff, the commanders of the armed forces and branches of the armed forces had to lead the troops from peacetime offices that were absolutely unsuited for this.

The forced withdrawal of Soviet troops extremely complicated and significantly disrupted mobilization in the western border districts. The headquarters and rear of divisions, armies, and fronts were forced to conduct fighting as part of peacetime.

The initial period of the Great Patriotic War ended with the defeat of the Soviet Armed Forces. The military-political leadership of Germany did not hide its jubilation over the expected imminent victory. Back on July 4, Hitler, intoxicated by his first successes at the front, declared: “I always try to put myself in the position of the enemy. In fact, he has already lost the war. It's good that we defeated the Russian tank and air force at the very beginning. The Russians will no longer be able to restore them.” And here is what the Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces, General F. Halder, wrote in his diary: “... it would not be an exaggeration to say that the campaign against Russia was won within 14 days.”

However, they cruelly miscalculated. Already on July 30, during the battles for Smolensk, for the first time in two years of World War II, fascist German troops were forced to go on the defensive. And the same German general F. Halder was forced to admit: “It became completely obvious that the method of warfare and the fighting spirit of the enemy, as well as the geographical conditions of this country, were completely different from those that the Germans encountered in previous “lightning strikes.” wars" that led to successes that amazed the whole world." During the bloody Battle of Smolensk, heroic soviet soldiers thwarted the plans of the German command for a “lightning war” in Russia, and the most powerful army group “Center” was forced to go on the defensive, postponing the non-stop offensive on Moscow for more than two months.

But our country had to make up for the losses suffered, rebuild industry and agriculture on a war footing. This required time and enormous effort from all the peoples of the Soviet Union. Stop the enemy at all costs, not allow yourself to be enslaved - for this the Soviet people lived, fought, and died. The result of this massive feat of the Soviet people was the Victory won over the hated enemy in May 1945.

The material was prepared by the Research Institute (military history) of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation

Photo from the archive of the Voeninform Agency of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

Documents reflecting the activities of the leadership of the Red Army on the eve and in the first days of the Great Patriotic War were provided by the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

We have collected for you the best stories about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Stories from the first person, not made up, living memories of front-line soldiers and witnesses of the war.

A story about the war from the book of priest Alexander Dyachenko “Overcoming”

I was not always old and frail, I lived in a Belarusian village, I had a family, a very good husband. But the Germans came, my husband, like other men, joined the partisans, he was their commander. We women supported our men in any way we could. The Germans became aware of this. They arrived in the village early in the morning. They kicked everyone out of their houses and drove them like cattle to the station in a neighboring town. The carriages were already waiting for us there. People were packed into the heated vehicles so that we could only stand. We drove with stops for two days, they gave us no water or food. When we were finally unloaded from the carriages, some were no longer able to move. Then the guards began throwing them to the ground and finishing them off with the butts of their carbines. And then they showed us the direction to the gate and said: “Run.” As soon as we had run half the distance, the dogs were released. The strongest reached the gate. Then the dogs were driven away, everyone who remained was lined up in a column and led through the gate, on which it was written in German: “To each his own.” Since then, boy, I can't look at tall chimneys.

She exposed her arm and showed me a tattoo of a row of numbers on the inside of her arm, closer to the elbow. I knew it was a tattoo, my dad had a tank tattooed on his chest because he is a tanker, but why put numbers on it?

I remember that she also talked about how our tankers liberated them and how lucky she was to live to see this day. She didn’t tell me anything about the camp itself and what was happening in it; she probably pitied my childish head.

I learned about Auschwitz only later. I found out and understood why my neighbor couldn’t look at the pipes of our boiler room.

During the war, my father also ended up in occupied territory. They got it from the Germans, oh, how they got it. And when ours drove a little, they, realizing that the grown-up boys were tomorrow’s soldiers, decided to shoot them. They gathered everyone and took them to the log, and then our airplane saw a crowd of people and started a line nearby. The Germans are on the ground, and the boys are scattered. My dad was lucky, he escaped with a shot in his hand, but he escaped. Not everyone was lucky then.

My father was a tank driver in Germany. Their tank brigade distinguished herself near Berlin on the Seelow Heights. I've seen photos of these guys. Young people, and all their chests are in orders, several people - . Many, like my dad, were drafted into the active army from occupied lands, and many had something to take revenge on the Germans for. That may be why they fought so desperately and bravely.

They walked across Europe, liberated concentration camp prisoners and beat the enemy, finishing them off mercilessly. “We were eager to go to Germany itself, we dreamed of how we would smear it with the track tracks of our tanks. We had special part, even the uniform was black. We still laughed, as if they wouldn’t confuse us with the SS men.”

Immediately after the end of the war, my father’s brigade was stationed in one of the small German towns. Or rather, in the ruins that remained of it. They somehow settled down in the basements of the buildings, but there was no room for a dining room. And the brigade commander, a young colonel, ordered to knock down tables from shields and set up a temporary canteen right in the town square.

“And here is our first peaceful dinner. Field kitchens, cooks, everything is as usual, but the soldiers do not sit on the ground or on a tank, but, as expected, at tables. We had just started having lunch, and suddenly German children began crawling out of all these ruins, basements, and crevices like cockroaches. Some are standing, but others can no longer stand from hunger. They stand and look at us like dogs. And I don’t know how it happened, but I took the bread with my shot hand and put it in my pocket, I looked quietly, and all our guys, without raising their eyes to each other, did the same.”

And then they fed the German children, gave away everything that could somehow be hidden from dinner, just yesterday’s children themselves, who very recently, without flinching, were raped, burned, shot by the fathers of these German children on our land they had captured.

The brigade commander, Hero of the Soviet Union, a Jew by nationality, whose parents, like all other Jews of a small Belarusian town, were buried alive by the punitive forces, had every right, both moral and military, to drive away the German “geeks” from his tank crews with volleys. They ate his soldiers, reduced their combat effectiveness, many of these children were also sick and could spread the infection among the personnel.

But the colonel, instead of shooting, ordered an increase in the food consumption rate. And German children, on the orders of the Jew, were fed along with his soldiers.

What kind of phenomenon do you think this is - the Russian Soldier? Where does this mercy come from? Why didn't they take revenge? It seems beyond anyone’s strength to find out that all your relatives were buried alive, perhaps by the fathers of these same children, to see concentration camps with many bodies of tortured people. And instead of “taking it easy” on the children and wives of the enemy, they, on the contrary, saved them, fed them, and treated them.

Several years have passed since the events described, and my dad, having graduated from military school in the fifties, again served in Germany, but as an officer. Once on the street of one city a young German called out to him. He ran up to my father, grabbed his hand and asked:

Don't you recognize me? Yes, of course, now it’s hard to recognize that hungry, ragged boy in me. But I remember you, how you fed us then among the ruins. Believe me, we will never forget this.

This is how we made friends in the West, by force of arms and the all-conquering power of Christian love.

Alive. We'll endure it. We will win.

THE TRUTH ABOUT WAR

It should be noted that not everyone was convincingly impressed by V. M. Molotov’s speech on the first day of the war, and the final phrase caused irony among some soldiers. When we, doctors, asked them how things were at the front, and we lived only for this, we often heard the answer: “We are scuttling. Victory is ours... that is, the Germans!”

I can’t say that J.V. Stalin’s speech had a positive effect on everyone, although the majority felt warm from it. But in the darkness of a long line for water in the basement of the house where the Yakovlevs lived, I once heard: “Here! They became brothers and sisters! I forgot how I went to jail for being late. The rat squeaked when the tail was pressed!” The people were silent at the same time. I have heard similar statements more than once.

Two other factors contributed to the rise of patriotism. Firstly, these are the atrocities of the fascists on our territory. Newspaper reports that in Katyn near Smolensk the Germans shot tens of thousands of Poles we captured, and that it was not us during the retreat, as the Germans assured, that were perceived without malice. Anything could have happened. “We couldn’t leave them to the Germans,” some reasoned. But the population could not forgive the murder of our people.

In February 1942, my senior operating nurse A.P. Pavlova received a letter from the liberated banks of Seliger, which told how, after the explosion of a hand fan in the German headquarters hut, they hanged almost all the men, including Pavlova’s brother. They hung him on a birch tree near his native hut, and he hung for almost two months in front of his wife and three children. The mood of the entire hospital from this news became menacing for the Germans: both the staff and the wounded soldiers loved Pavlova... I ensured that the original letter was read in all the wards, and Pavlova’s face, yellowed from tears, was in the dressing room before everyone’s eyes...

The second thing that made everyone happy was the reconciliation with the church. The Orthodox Church showed true patriotism in its preparations for the war, and it was appreciated. Government awards showered on the patriarch and clergy. These funds were used to create air squadrons and tank divisions with the names “Alexander Nevsky” and “Dmitry Donskoy”. They showed a film where a priest with the chairman of the district executive committee, a partisan, destroys atrocious fascists. The film ended with the old bell ringer climbing the bell tower and ringing the alarm, crossing himself widely before doing so. It sounded directly: “Fall yourself with the sign of the cross, Russian people!” The wounded spectators and the staff had tears in their eyes when the lights came on.

On the contrary, the huge money contributed by the chairman of the collective farm, it seems, Ferapont Golovaty, caused evil smiles. “Look how I stole from the hungry collective farmers,” said the wounded peasants.

The activity of the fifth column, that is, internal enemies, also caused enormous indignation among the population. I myself saw how many of them there were: German planes were even signaled from the windows with multi-colored flares. In November 1941, at the Neurosurgical Institute hospital, they signaled from the window in Morse code. The doctor on duty, Malm, a completely drunken and declassed man, said that the alarm was coming from the window of the operating room where my wife was on duty. The head of the hospital, Bondarchuk, said at the morning five-minute meeting that he vouched for Kudrina, and two days later the signalmen were taken, and Malm himself disappeared forever.

My violin teacher Yu. A. Aleksandrov, a communist, although a secretly religious, consumptive man, worked as the fire chief of the House of the Red Army on the corner of Liteiny and Kirovskaya. He was chasing the rocket launcher, obviously an employee of the House of the Red Army, but could not see him in the darkness and did not catch up, but he threw the rocket launcher at Alexandrov’s feet.

Life at the institute gradually improved. The central heating began to work better, the electric light became almost constant, and water appeared in the water supply. We went to the movies. Films such as “Two Fighters”, “Once Upon a Time There Was a Girl” and others were watched with undisguised feeling.

For “Two Fighters,” the nurse was able to get tickets to the “October” cinema for a show later than we expected. Arriving at the next show, we learned that a shell hit the courtyard of this cinema, where visitors to the previous show were being released, and many were killed and wounded.

The summer of 1942 passed through the hearts of ordinary people very sadly. The encirclement and defeat of our troops near Kharkov, which greatly increased the number of our prisoners in Germany, brought great despondency to everyone. The new German offensive to the Volga, to Stalingrad, was very difficult for everyone. The mortality rate of the population, especially increased in the spring months, despite some improvement in nutrition, as a result of dystrophy, as well as the death of people from air bombs and artillery shelling, was felt by everyone.

My wife’s food cards and hers were stolen in mid-May, which made us very hungry again. And we had to prepare for winter.

We not only cultivated and planted vegetable gardens in Rybatsky and Murzinka, but also received a fair strip of land in the garden near Winter Palace, which was given to our hospital. It was excellent land. Other Leningraders cultivated other gardens, squares, and the Field of Mars. We even planted about two dozen potato eyes with an adjacent piece of husk, as well as cabbage, rutabaga, carrots, onion seedlings, and especially a lot of turnips. They planted them wherever there was a piece of land.

The wife, fearing a lack of protein food, collected slugs from vegetables and pickled them in two large jars. However, they were not useful, and in the spring of 1943 they were thrown away.

The ensuing winter of 1942/43 was mild. Transport no longer stopped; all wooden houses on the outskirts of Leningrad, including houses in Murzinka, were demolished for fuel and stocked up for the winter. There was electric light in the rooms. Soon the scientists were given special letter rations. As a candidate of science, I was given a group B ration. It included monthly 2 kg of sugar, 2 kg of cereal, 2 kg of meat, 2 kg of flour, 0.5 kg of butter and 10 packs of Belomorkanal cigarettes. It was luxurious and it saved us.

My fainting stopped. I even easily stayed on duty all night with my wife, guarding the vegetable garden near the Winter Palace in turns, three times during the summer. However, despite the security, every single head of cabbage was stolen.

Art was of great importance. We began to read more, go to the cinema more often, watch film programs in the hospital, go to amateur concerts and artists who came to us. Once my wife and I were at a concert of D. Oistrakh and L. Oborin who came to Leningrad. When D. Oistrakh played and L. Oborin accompanied, it was a little cold in the hall. Suddenly a voice said quietly: “Air raid, air alert! Those who wish can go down to the bomb shelter!” In the crowded hall, no one moved, Oistrakh smiled gratefully and understandingly at us all with one eye and continued to play, without stumbling for a moment. Although the explosions shook my legs and I could hear their sounds and the barking of anti-aircraft guns, the music absorbed everything. Since then, these two musicians have become my biggest favorites and fighting friends without knowing each other.

By the autumn of 1942, Leningrad was greatly deserted, which also facilitated its supply. By the time the blockade began, up to 7 million cards were issued in a city overcrowded with refugees. In the spring of 1942, only 900 thousand were issued.

Many were evacuated, including part of the 2nd Medical Institute. The rest of the universities have all left. But they still believe that about two million were able to leave Leningrad along the Road of Life. So about four million died (According to official data, about 600 thousand people died in besieged Leningrad, according to others - about 1 million. - ed.) a figure significantly higher than the official one. Not all the dead ended up in the cemetery. The huge ditch between the Saratov colony and the forest leading to Koltushi and Vsevolozhskaya took in hundreds of thousands of dead people and was razed to the ground. Now there is a suburban vegetable garden there, and there are no traces left. But the rustling tops and cheerful voices of those harvesting the harvest are no less happiness for the dead than the mournful music of the Piskarevsky cemetery.

A little about children. Their fate was terrible. They gave almost nothing on children's cards. I remember two cases especially vividly.

During the harshest part of the winter of 1941/42, I walked from Bekhterevka to Pestel Street to my hospital. My swollen legs almost couldn’t walk, my head was spinning, each careful step pursued one goal: to move forward without falling. On Staronevsky I wanted to go to a bakery to buy two of our cards and warm up at least a little. The frost penetrated to the bones. I stood in line and noticed that a boy of seven or eight years old was standing near the counter. He bent down and seemed to shrink all over. Suddenly he snatched a piece of bread from the woman who had just received it, fell, huddled in a ball with his back up, like a hedgehog, and began greedily tearing the bread with his teeth. The woman who had lost her bread screamed wildly: probably a hungry family was impatiently waiting for her at home. The queue got mixed up. Many rushed to beat and trample the boy, who continued to eat, his quilted jacket and hat protecting him. "Man! If only you could help,” someone shouted to me, obviously because I was the only man in the bakery. I started shaking and felt very dizzy. “You are beasts, beasts,” I wheezed and, staggering, went out into the cold. I couldn't save the child. A slight push would have been enough, and the angry people would certainly have mistaken me for an accomplice, and I would have fallen.

Yes, I'm a layman. I didn't rush to save this boy. “Don’t turn into a werewolf, a beast,” our beloved Olga Berggolts wrote these days. Wonderful woman! She helped many to endure the blockade and preserved the necessary humanity in us.

On their behalf I will send a telegram abroad:

“Alive. We'll endure it. We will win."

But my unwillingness to share the fate of a beaten child forever remained a notch on my conscience...

The second incident happened later. We had just received, but for the second time, a standard ration and my wife and I carried it along Liteiny, heading home. The snowdrifts were quite high in the second winter of the blockade. Almost opposite the house of N.A. Nekrasov, from where he admired the front entrance, clinging to the lattice immersed in the snow, a child of four or five years old was walking. He moved his legs with difficulty, his huge eyes on his withered old face peered with horror at the world. His legs were tangled. Tamara pulled out a large, double piece of sugar and handed it to him. At first he didn’t understand and shrank all over, and then suddenly grabbed this sugar with a jerk, pressed it to his chest and froze with fear that everything that had happened was either a dream or not true... We moved on. Well, what more could the barely wandering ordinary people do?

BREAKING THE BLOCKADE

All Leningraders talked every day about breaking the blockade, about the upcoming victory, peaceful life and the restoration of the country, the second front, that is, the active inclusion of allies in the war. However, there was little hope for allies. “The plan has already been drawn up, but there are no Roosevelts,” the Leningraders joked. They also remembered the Indian wisdom: “I have three friends: the first is my friend, the second is the friend of my friend and the third is the enemy of my enemy.” Everyone believed that the third degree of friendship was the only thing that united us with our allies. (This is how it turned out, by the way: the second front appeared only when it became clear that we could liberate all of Europe alone.)

Rarely did anyone talk about other outcomes. There were people who believed that Leningrad should become a free city after the war. But everyone immediately cut them off, remembering “Window to Europe”, and “The Bronze Horseman”, and the historical significance for Russia of access to Baltic Sea. But they talked about breaking the blockade every day and everywhere: at work, on duty on the roofs, when they were “fighting off planes with shovels,” extinguishing lighters, while eating meager food, going to bed in a cold bed, and during unwise self-care in those days. We waited and hoped. Long and hard. They talked first about Fedyuninsky and his mustache, then about Kulik, then about Meretskov.

The draft commissions took almost everyone to the front. I was sent there from the hospital. I remember that I gave liberation to only the two-armed man, being surprised at the wonderful prosthetics that hid his handicap. “Don’t be afraid, take those with stomach ulcers or tuberculosis. After all, they will all have to be at the front for no more than a week. If they don’t kill them, they will wound them, and they will end up in the hospital,” the military commissar of the Dzerzhinsky district told us.

And indeed, the war involved a lot of blood. When trying to get in touch with the mainland, piles of bodies were left under Krasny Bor, especially along the embankments. “Nevsky Piglet” and Sinyavinsky swamps never left the lips. Leningraders fought furiously. Everyone knew that behind his back his own family was dying of hunger. But all attempts to break the blockade did not lead to success; only our hospitals were filled with the crippled and dying.

With horror we learned about the death of an entire army and Vlasov’s betrayal. I had to believe this. After all, when they read to us about Pavlov and other executed generals of the Western Front, no one believed that they were traitors and “enemies of the people,” as we were convinced of this. They remembered that the same was said about Yakir, Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, even about Blucher.

The summer campaign of 1942 began, as I wrote, extremely unsuccessfully and depressingly, but already in the fall they began to talk a lot about our tenacity at Stalingrad. The fighting dragged on, winter was approaching, and in it we relied on our Russian strength and Russian endurance. The good news about the counteroffensive at Stalingrad, the encirclement of Paulus with his 6th Army, and Manstein’s failures in trying to break through this encirclement gave the Leningraders new hope on New Year’s Eve 1943.

I celebrated the New Year with my wife alone, having returned around 11 o’clock to the closet where we lived at the hospital, from a tour of evacuation hospitals. There was a glass of diluted alcohol, two slices of lard, a 200 gram piece of bread and hot tea with a lump of sugar! A whole feast!

Events were not long in coming. Almost all of the wounded were discharged: some were commissioned, some were sent to convalescent battalions, some were taken to the mainland. But we didn’t wander around the empty hospital for long after the bustle of unloading it. Fresh wounded came in a stream straight from the positions, dirty, often bandaged in individual bags over their overcoats, and bleeding. We were a medical battalion, a field hospital, and a front-line hospital. Some went to the triage, others went to the operating tables for continuous operation. There was no time to eat, and there was no time to eat.

This was not the first time such streams came to us, but this one was too painful and tiring. The most difficult combination was required all the time physical work with mental, moral human experiences with the clarity of the dry work of a surgeon.

On the third day, the men could no longer stand it. They were given 100 grams of diluted alcohol and sent to sleep for three hours, although the emergency room was filled with wounded people in need of urgent operations. Otherwise, they began to operate poorly, half asleep. Well done women! They are not only many times better than men endured the hardships of the blockade, died much less often from dystrophy, but also worked without complaining of fatigue and accurately fulfilling their duties.

In our operating room, operations were performed on three tables: at each table there was a doctor and a nurse, and on all three tables there was another nurse, replacing the operating room. Staff operating room and dressing nurses, every one of them, assisted in the operations. The habit of working many nights in a row in Bekhterevka, the hospital named after. On October 25, she helped me out in the ambulance. I passed this test, I can proudly say, as a woman.

On the night of January 18, they brought us a wounded woman. On this day, her husband was killed, and she was seriously wounded in the brain, in the left temporal lobe. A fragment with fragments of bones penetrated into the depths, completely paralyzing both of her right limbs and depriving her of the ability to speak, but while maintaining the understanding of someone else's speech. Women fighters came to us, but not often. I took her to my table, laid her on her right, paralyzed side, numbed her skin and very successfully removed the metal fragment and bone fragments embedded in the brain. “My dear,” I said, finishing the operation and preparing for the next one, “everything will be fine. I took out the fragment, and your speech will return, and the paralysis will completely disappear. You will make a full recovery!”

Suddenly my wounded one with her free hand lying on top began to beckon me to her. I knew that she would not start talking any time soon, and I thought that she would whisper something to me, although it seemed incredible. And suddenly the wounded woman, with her healthy naked but strong hand of a fighter, grabbed my neck, pressed my face to her lips and kissed me deeply. I couldn't stand it. I didn’t sleep for four days, barely ate, and only occasionally, holding a cigarette with a forceps, smoked. Everything went hazy in my head, and, like a man possessed, I ran out into the corridor to come to my senses for at least one minute. After all, there is a terrible injustice in the fact that women, who continue the family line and soften the morals of humanity, are also killed. And at that moment our loudspeaker spoke, announcing the breaking of the blockade and the connection of the Leningrad Front with the Volkhov Front.

It was deep night, but what started here! I stood bleeding after the operation, completely stunned by what I had experienced and heard, and nurses, nurses, soldiers were running towards me... Some with their arm on an “airplane”, that is, on a splint that abducts the bent arm, some on crutches, some still bleeding through a recently applied bandage . And then the endless kisses began. Everyone kissed me, despite my frightening appearance from the spilled blood. And I stood there, missing 15 minutes of precious time for operating on other wounded in need, enduring these countless hugs and kisses.

A story about the Great Patriotic War by a front-line soldier

1 year ago on this day, a war began that divided the history of not only our country, but the whole world into before And after. The story is told by Mark Pavlovich Ivanikhin, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, Chairman of the Council of War Veterans, Labor Veterans, Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies of the Eastern Administrative District.

– – this is the day when our lives were broken in half. It was a nice, bright Sunday, and suddenly they announced war, the first bombings. Everyone understood that they would have to endure a lot; 280 divisions attacked our country. I have a military family, my father was a lieutenant colonel. A car immediately came for him, he took his “alarm” suitcase (this is a suitcase in which the most necessary things were always ready), and we went to the school together, me as a cadet, and my father as a teacher.

Immediately everything changed, it became clear to everyone that this war would last for a long time. Alarming news plunged us into another life; they said that the Germans were constantly moving forward. This day was clear and sunny, and in the evening mobilization had already begun.

These are my memories as an 18-year-old boy. My father was 43 years old, he worked as a senior teacher at the first Moscow Artillery School named after Krasin, where I also studied. This was the first school that graduated officers who fought on Katyushas into the war. I fought on Katyushas throughout the war.

“Young, inexperienced guys walked under bullets. Was it certain death?

– We still knew how to do a lot. Back in school, we all had to pass the standard for the GTO badge (ready for work and defense). They trained almost like in the army: they had to run, crawl, swim, and also learned how to bandage wounds, apply splints for fractures, and so on. At least we were a little ready to defend our Motherland.

I fought at the front from October 6, 1941 to April 1945. I took part in the battles for Stalingrad, and from the Kursk Bulge through Ukraine and Poland I reached Berlin.

War is a terrible experience. It is a constant death that is near you and threatens you. Shells are exploding at your feet, enemy tanks are coming at you, flocks of German planes are aiming at you from above, artillery is firing. It seems like the earth turns into a small place where you have nowhere to go.

I was a commander, I had 60 people subordinate to me. We must answer for all these people. And, despite the planes and tanks that are looking for your death, you need to control yourself and the soldiers, sergeants and officers. This is difficult to do.

I can’t forget the Majdanek concentration camp. We liberated this death camp and saw emaciated people: skin and bones. And I especially remember the children with their hands cut open; their blood was taken all the time. We saw bags of human scalps. We saw torture and experiment chambers. To be honest, this caused hatred towards the enemy.

I also remember that we went into a recaptured village, saw a church, and the Germans had set up a stable in it. I had soldiers from all the cities of the Soviet Union, even from Siberia; many had fathers who died in the war. And these guys said: “We’ll get to Germany, we’ll kill the Kraut families, and we’ll burn their houses.” And so we entered the first German city, the soldiers burst into the house of a German pilot, saw Frau and four small children. Do you think someone touched them? None of the soldiers did anything bad to them. Russian people are quick-witted.

All the German cities we passed through remained intact, with the exception of Berlin, where there was strong resistance.

I have four orders. Order of Alexander Nevsky, which he received for Berlin; Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, two Orders of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree. Also a medal for military merit, a medal for the victory over Germany, for the defense of Moscow, for the defense of Stalingrad, for the liberation of Warsaw and for the capture of Berlin. These are the main medals, and there are about fifty of them in total. All of us who survived the war years want one thing - peace. And so that the people who won are valuable.

Photo by Yulia Makoveychuk

Much has been written about the war in the Soviet Union. Memoirs of commanders, notes of officers and soldiers, prose, poetry, historical research. There are also memories of home front workers (both ordinary workers and managers, plant directors, people's commissars, aircraft designers). All this makes up an impressive library, from which it would seem possible to reconstruct historical facts with complete certainty. In addition, films were shot - feature and documentary, short and serial. In schools, technical schools and institutes, students discussed in detail with teachers all the stages of the great battle, which claimed tens of millions of lives. And with all this, it turned out that our people know surprisingly little about what happened during the Great Patriotic War.

Two calendar dates - black and red

Two main dates are firmly entrenched in the consciousness of the masses - June 22, 1941 and May 9, 1945. Unfortunately, not everyone knows about what exactly happened during these days. In the early summer morning, “Kyiv was bombed, they declared to us...”, and the general summary is that the Germans attacked suddenly, they did not declare war. This is all about the first date. The information is not entirely true. There was a declaration of war, the German ambassador Schulenburg handed a note to Molotov. True, this did not matter; at that moment the Junkers and Henkels were already gaining altitude over the border, and there was no time left to prepare to repel the attack. But that’s what war is for, so as not to warn about an attack in advance. Why they didn’t prepare for defense is a different matter.

At first glance, more is known about what year the Great Patriotic War ended and on what day. But not everything is clear here either.

Start

On June 22, something happened for which the USSR had been preparing for a long time. An unprecedented modernization of industrial potential took place, called industrialization. Peasant life was radically restructured, and the basis for private initiative in the village was eliminated. This led to a sharp decline in the well-being of the entire people. Large-scale efforts, since they did not lead to an increase in living standards, could be aimed at only one thing - defense. Propaganda persistently instilled the idea of ​​the inevitability of war and at the same time the peacefulness of the world's first state of workers and peasants. The scenario of future fateful events was described in a feature film with the eloquent title “If there is war tomorrow.” The insidious enemy attacked, and he was immediately overtaken by retribution of terrible force. He was completely destroyed, and real freedom came to his land, like in the USSR. Why did things turn out a little differently in June 1941?

Almost the entire military power of the Red Army as of mid-June 1941 was concentrated near the western borders of the USSR. There were also reserves of weapons, fuel, ammunition, medicines, food and everything necessary for waging war on foreign territory with little loss of life. The airfields were also pushed as far as possible into the border strips. The equipment was not completed; the delivery of military cargo and trains with equipment continued. All this was covered in works of art and in many memoirs.

We can conclude that the Patriotic War to defend his country was not planned by Stalin.

What did Hitler count on?

The German Fuhrer apparently relied mainly on the discontent of the population Soviet power. The agents reported on the terrible consequences of more than twenty years of communist rule, the repressions that had decapitated the Red Army, millions of starving peasants on collective farms, a frightened working class and suppressed intelligentsia. The Fuhrer had virtually no doubt that when the Wehrmacht approached the borders of the USSR, the population would come out to joyfully greet the “liberators.” Similar situations, by the way, took place in some western regions, but in general, hopes did not come true.

How Germany prepared for war

If it were not for the hope of the speedy destruction of the “colossus with feet of clay,” Adolf Hitler would hardly have decided to attack. The situation in Germany at the beginning of the summer of 1941 could not be called brilliant. Against the backdrop of successful actions in Europe, not very pleasant processes took place. Half of France remained “under-occupied,” 100% control over Yugoslavia was never established, things were going badly in North Africa, and naval operations also had varying degrees of success. America did not enter the war, but in fact already participated in it, helping Britain with its practically inexhaustible material resources.

Germany's allies - Romania, Italy and Japan - were more trouble than they were worth. against the USSR in such conditions could be considered a crazy step. Practically no preparation was carried out; the Wehrmacht soldiers did not even have warm clothes and shoes (they never appeared), frost-resistant fuel and lubricant. Soviet intelligence knew about this and reported to the Kremlin.

However, the war began for the USSR in a completely unexpected way and in an extremely unfavorable situation for us. The Germans quickly advanced deeper into the territory, the situation became more and more threatening. It became clear that without the participation of the entire people in the defense it would be impossible to win. And the war became Patriotic.

Patriotic War

Almost immediately after Hitler's attack, the war was declared Patriotic. This happened for the second time in Russian history. A threat arose not just to some social system, but to the very existence of the country and the Eurasian civilization. How was it the first time, under the Tsar-Liberator?

The Patriotic War with France took place in 1812 until Napoleonic hordes were expelled from Russian soil. They drove Bonaparte all the way to Paris, reached it, and, having captured it in 1814, did not find the usurper emperor there. We spent a little time “visiting” and then returned home to brave songs. But after crossing the Berezina, all this was just a campaign. Only the first year, while the battles continued along Borodino and Maloyaroslavets, and partisans attacked the invaders from the forests, the war was considered Patriotic.

Version one: 1944

If we draw historical analogies, then the question of what year the Great Patriotic War ended should be answered: in 1944, in the fall. It was then that the last armed German, Romanian, Spaniard, Italian, Hungarian and any other soldier who fought on the side of Nazi Germany left the territory of the USSR. Prisoners and dead don't count. The war itself continued, but it had ceased to be domestic; it entered the phase of finishing off the enemy in his lair while simultaneously liberating the peoples he had enslaved. The threat to the existence of the USSR had passed; the only question was the timing of the final defeat of the enemy and the conditions of the subsequent peace.

Version two - May 8, 1945

True, this version also has opponents, and their arguments deserve respect. The end of the Second World War, in their opinion, chronologically coincides with the moment of signing the surrender in Karlshorst, a suburban district of Berlin. On our side, Marshal G.K. Zhukov and other military leaders took part in the ceremony, on the German side - Keitel with officers and generals of the German General Staff. Hitler had been dead for eight days. date historical event- May 8, 1945. A day earlier, there was another signing of surrender, but the high Soviet command was not present at it, so J.V. Stalin did not recognize it and did not give an order to stop hostilities. The victorious end of the Great Patriotic War on May 9 became a national holiday; all radio stations in the Soviet Union announced it. The people rejoiced, people laughed and cried. And someone else had to fight...

Fights on May 9, after the Victory

The signing of the act of surrender of Germany did not yet mean the end of the war. Soviet soldiers died on May 9 as well. In Prague, the German garrison, consisting of selected SS men, refused to lay down their arms. The situation became acute; the townspeople tried to resist the Nazi fanatics, who understood that their days were numbered, and they had nothing to lose. The rapid rush of Soviet troops saved the Czech capital from a bloodbath. The outcome of the battles was a foregone conclusion, but there were losses. On the ninth of May it all ended. It was a shame to die on the last day of the war, but such is a soldier’s lot...

There was also a little-known war in the Far East. Quickly and decisively, the Soviet Army defeated the Kwantung group of Japanese armed forces, reaching Korea. There were also losses, although they were incomparably smaller than during the war with Germany.

Patriotic War front and rear

The ninth of May is the day of the end because, although it was carried out since the fall of 1944 not on our territory, in fact the efforts of the entire country were aimed at overcoming the enemy’s resistance. The entire economic potential of the USSR worked according to the principle “everything for the front, everything for victory.” The fighting took place to the west of the Soviet borders, but in the rear there was a battle of its own. Tanks, planes, guns, ships that were destined to crush the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine - everything was built in the rear.

The workers, including many women and teenagers, spared no effort to supply their native Red Army with everything necessary; they fought their war, crying a lot over the funeral and not eating enough. Victory in the Great Patriotic War was the result of the efforts not only of soldiers, officers, generals, admirals and sailors, but also of the rest of the Soviet people. In this sense, the war was domestic from the first to the last day.

Version three - 1955

The signing of Germany's surrender took place in a difficult and nervous environment. The defeated enemy tried to maintain the appearance of some kind of dignity, Keitel even saluted the victors. The allies added tension, they tried to maintain their own geopolitical interests, which, in general, is quite natural. Mutual wariness interfered with the celebration of the expected great holiday. It is not surprising that in this situation they forgot about a very important document, namely the peace treaty. Wars end, but what comes next? That's right, peace. But not some abstract one, but one that the winners will agree on. The vanquished can only accept the conditions offered to them. The end of the Great Patriotic War in May 1945 was de facto, but there was no legal formalization; it was simply forgotten.

Legal snag

They realized it almost ten years later. On January 25, 1955, by a Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet signed by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR K. Voroshilov and the Secretary of the Presidium N. Pegov, the state of war with Germany was ended. Of course, this legislative act was symbolic, and even the defeated state itself did not exist in its previous form at that time - it was divided into two parts, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, but teachers for history students had a question to fill in: “In what year did the Great War end?” Patriotic War in the legal sense? And the correct answer, which not everyone knew, is: in 1955!

Legal subtleties today no longer matter much; they are important only for those who consider themselves experts and want to show off their erudition to others. Today, when not every graduate high school knows in what year the Great Patriotic War ended, it’s not so difficult. A couple of decades ago, everyone knew this. The events of history are becoming more and more distant from us, and fewer and fewer eyewitnesses can tell about them. The date of the end of the Great Patriotic War is written in textbooks, but it is also on the pedestals of monuments.

There is a well-known saying of one of the great commanders that until at least one dead soldier is buried, the war cannot be considered over. Unfortunately, our country has lost so many sons and daughters that to this day search teams find their remains in places of past battles. They are seen off on their last journey with military honors, relatives learn about the fate of their fathers and grandfathers, fireworks roar... Will we ever be able to say that all the soldiers who gave their lives for their Motherland found a worthy rest? This is unlikely, but you should strive for it.

Main periods of the Great Patriotic War.

Plan

1. USSR on the eve of the war. Periodization of the Great Patriotic War.

2. The beginning of the Great Patriotic War: the causes of the military disaster in the initial period of the war.

3. A radical turning point in the war. Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk.

4. Victories of the Red Army at the final stage of the war (1944–1945).

5. Results and lessons of the Great Patriotic War.

Key concepts and terms: war, revanchism, policy of appeasement of the aggressor, collective security system, Munich agreement, Anschluss, fascism, Nazism, fascist aggression, anti-fascist coalition, “funny war”, blitzkrieg, second front, partisan movement, Lend-Lease, strategic initiative, radical change

At dawn on June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. On the side of Germany were Romania, Hungary, Italy and Finland. The grouping of aggressor troops consisted of 5.5 million people, 190 divisions, 5 thousand aircraft, about 4 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns artillery installations(self-propelled guns), 47 thousand guns and mortars.

In accordance with the Barbarossa plan developed in 1940, Germany planned to enter the Arkhangelsk-Volga-Astrakhan line as soon as possible (in 6-10 weeks). It was a setup for blitzkrieg - lightning war. This is how the Great Patriotic War began.

Main periods of the Great Patriotic War.

First period (June 22, 1941 – November 18, 1942) from the beginning of the war to the beginning of the Soviet offensive at Stalingrad. This was the most difficult period for the USSR.

Having created multiple superiority in men and military equipment in the main directions of attack, the German army achieved significant success. By the end of November 1941, Soviet troops, retreating under the blows of superior enemy forces to Leningrad, Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, left a huge territory to the enemy, lost about 5 million people killed, missing and captured, most of the tanks and aircraft .

The main efforts of the Nazi troops in the fall of 1941 were aimed at capturing Moscow. The Battle of Moscow lasted from September 30, 1941 to April 20, 1942. On December 5-6, 1941, the Red Army went on the offensive and the enemy’s defense front was broken through. Fascist troops were driven back 100-250 km from Moscow. The plan to capture Moscow failed, and the lightning war in the east did not take place.

The victory near Moscow was of great international significance. Japan and Türkiye refrained from entering the war against the USSR. The increased authority of the USSR on the world stage contributed to the creation of an anti-Hitler coalition. However, in the summer of 1942, due to the mistakes of the Soviet leadership (primarily Stalin), the Red Army suffered a number of major defeats in the North-West, near Kharkov and in the Crimea. Nazi troops reached the Volga - Stalingrad and the Caucasus. The persistent defense of Soviet troops in these directions, as well as the transfer of the country's economy to a military footing, the creation of a coherent military economy, and the deployment of the partisan movement behind enemy lines prepared the necessary conditions for the Soviet troops to go on the offensive.

Second period (November 19, 1942 – end of 1943)- a radical turning point in the war. Having exhausted and bled the enemy in defensive battles, on November 19, 1942, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive, encircling 22 fascist divisions numbering more than 300 thousand people near Stalingrad. On February 2, 1943, this group was liquidated. At the same time, enemy troops were expelled from the North Caucasus. By the summer of 1943, the Soviet-German front had stabilized.

Using the front configuration that was advantageous to them, fascist troops on July 5, 1943 went on the offensive near Kursk with the goal of regaining the strategic initiative and encircling the Soviet group of troops on the Kursk Bulge. During fierce fighting, the enemy's advance was stopped. On August 23, 1943, Soviet troops liberated Orel, Belgorod, Kharkov, reached the Dnieper, and on November 6, 1943, Kyiv was liberated.

During the summer-autumn offensive, half of the enemy divisions were defeated and significant territories of the Soviet Union were liberated. The collapse of the fascist bloc began, and in 1943 Italy withdrew from the war.

1943 was the year of a radical turning point not only in the course of military operations on the fronts, but also in the work of the Soviet rear. Thanks to the selfless work of the home front, by the end of 1943 an economic victory over Germany was won. Military industry in 1943 it gave the front 29.9 thousand aircraft, 24.1 thousand tanks, 130.3 thousand guns of all types. This was more than Germany produced in 1943. The Soviet Union in 1943 surpassed Germany in the production of the main types of military equipment and weapons.

Third period (late 1943 – May 8, 1945)- the final period of the Great Patriotic War. In 1944 Soviet economy reached its highest level during the entire war. Industry, transport, and agriculture developed successfully. Military production grew especially rapidly. The production of tanks and self-propelled guns in 1944, compared to 1943, increased from 24 to 29 thousand, and combat aircraft - from 30 to 33 thousand units. From the beginning of the war to 1945, about 6 thousand enterprises were put into operation.

1944 was marked by victories of the Soviet Armed Forces. The entire territory of the USSR was completely liberated from the fascist occupiers. The Soviet Union came to the aid of the peoples of Europe - the Soviet Army liberated Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and fought its way to Norway. Romania and Bulgaria declared war on Germany. Finland left the war.

The successful offensive actions of the Soviet Army prompted the allies to open a second front in Europe on June 6, 1944 - Anglo-American troops under the command of General D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) landed in northern France, in Normandy. But the Soviet-German front still remained the main and most active front of the Second World War.

During the winter offensive of 1945, the Soviet Army pushed the enemy back more than 500 km. Poland, Hungary and Austria, and the eastern part of Czechoslovakia were almost completely liberated. The Soviet Army reached the Oder (60 km from Berlin). On April 25, 1945, a historic meeting between Soviet troops and American and British troops took place on the Elbe, in the Torgau region.

The fighting in Berlin was exceptionally fierce and persistent. On April 30, the Victory Banner was hoisted over the Reichstag. On May 8, the signing of the act of unconditional surrender fascist Germany. May 9 became Victory Day.

From July 17 to August 2, 1945, the Third Conference of Heads of Government of the USSR, USA and Great Britain in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam, which made important decisions on post-war structure peace in Europe, the German problem and other issues. On June 24, 1945, the Victory Parade took place in Moscow on Red Square.

The victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany was not only political and military, but also economic. This is evidenced by the fact that in the period from July 1941 to August 1945, the USSR produced significantly more military equipment and weapons than in Germany. Here are the specific data (thousand pieces):

This economic victory in the war became possible due to the fact that the Soviet Union managed to create a more advanced economic organization and achieve more effective use all its resources.

War with Japan. The end of World War II. However, the end of hostilities in Europe did not mean the end of World War II. In accordance with the agreement in principle at Yalta (February 1945 G.) The Soviet government declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945. Soviet troops launched offensive operations on a front stretching over 5 thousand km. The geographical and climatic conditions in which the fighting took place were extremely difficult. The advancing Soviet troops had to overcome the ridges of the Greater and Lesser Khingan and the East Manchurian Mountains, deep and wild rivers, waterless deserts, impenetrable forests. But despite these difficulties, the Japanese troops were defeated.

During stubborn fighting in 23 days, Soviet troops liberated Northeast China, North Korea, the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. 600 thousand enemy soldiers and officers were captured, and a large amount of weapons and military equipment was captured. Under the blows of the armed forces of the USSR and its allies in the war (primarily the USA, England, China), Japan capitulated on September 2, 1945. The southern part of Sakhalin and the islands of the Kuril ridge went to the Soviet Union.

The United States, having dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, marked the beginning of a new nuclear era.

Thus, the Great Patriotic War was an important component of the Second World War. Soviet people and its Armed Forces bore the main burden of this war on their shoulders and achieved a historic victory over Nazi Germany and its allies. Participants in the anti-Hitler coalition made their significant contribution to the victory over the forces of fascism and militarism. The main lesson of World War II is that preventing war requires unity of action among peace-loving forces. During the preparation for World War II, it could have been prevented. Many countries and public organizations tried to do this, but unity of action was never achieved.

Self-test questions

1. Tell us about the main periods of the Great Patriotic War.