Where did the Nazis reach in the USSR (map)? Plan Barbarossa briefly Where did the German troops reach in the Volokolamsk direction.

The Germans who reached the Volga

It is known that during the Great Patriotic War, Hitler’s armies were never able to reach the Middle Volga region, although in accordance with the notorious Barbarossa plan, by the end of the summer of 1941 the Wehrmacht was supposed to reach the Arkhangelsk-Kuibyshev-Astrakhan line. Nevertheless, the war and post-war generations of Soviet people were still able to see the Germans even in those cities that were located hundreds of kilometers from the front line (Fig. 1-5).

But these were not at all those self-confident occupiers with Schmeissers in their hands who marched in formation across the Soviet border at dawn on June 22.

Destroyed cities were rebuilt by prisoners of war

Even in the middle of the war, immediately after the Battle of Stalingrad, whole trainloads of German prisoners of war were delivered to many Soviet cities in the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia, who worked here mainly on national economic facilities. And after 1945, captured Germans were the main labor force in the construction of housing in those cities that a few years earlier had been destroyed by tanks and guns of the Wehrmacht.

However, this fact was widely known back in the Soviet years. But here is information that soon after the Potsdam Conference, at our industrial enterprises, along with prisoners of war, the Soviet authorities forced thousands of “free” technical specialists from Germany to work, at that time they were classified as “Secret” and “Top Secret”. Moreover, most of these Germans, before their forced move to the deep regions of the USSR, worked at tank and aviation enterprises of the Reich. So the participation of German engineers and technicians in the restoration and development of the defense potential of our country is a completely special page of Soviet history that has only recently opened to us.

We know that the victory over Nazi Germany came at an incredibly high price for our people. In 1945, a significant part of the European part of the USSR lay in ruins. It was necessary to restore the destroyed economy, and in the shortest possible time. But the country at that time was experiencing an acute shortage of workers and smart heads, because tens of millions of our fellow citizens, including a huge number of highly qualified specialists, died on the war fronts and in the rear.

It is not surprising that after the Potsdam Conference, where the amount of reparations for each of the allies was determined, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a closed resolution. According to him, when restoring the industry of the USSR, its destroyed cities and villages, it was planned to use the forced labor of German prisoners of war to the maximum extent. And a little later, it was decided to remove all qualified German engineers and workers, especially specialists from defense industries, from the Soviet occupation zone of Germany to USSR enterprises.

Nowhere in the open press was not a word said about this government decision during the first years after the Victory. However, in the following decades, Soviet people were categorically not recommended to discuss in any form the role that technical specialists forcibly removed from defeated Germany played in the post-war restoration of the country's economy.

According to official Soviet history, in March 1946, the first session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the second convocation adopted the fourth five-year plan for the restoration and development of the country's national economy. In the first post-war five-year plan, it was necessary to completely restore the areas of the country that had suffered from the occupation and hostilities, and in industry and agriculture to reach the pre-war level, and then surpass it. About three billion rubles were allocated from the national budget for the development of the economy of the Kuibyshev region in prices of that time.

In the vicinity of post-war Kuibyshev, in the area of ​​​​the Koptev ravine adjacent to the Volga, several camps were also organized for former soldiers of the defeated Nazi armies. The Germans who survived the Stalingrad cauldron were then widely used at various Kuibyshev construction sites. And workers in these years were urgently needed for the development of industry. After all, according to official information, in the last war years and immediately after the war, several new plants were to be built in Kuibyshev, including an oil refinery, a bit, a ship repair plant and a metal structures plant. It was also necessary to reconstruct the 4th GPP, KATEK (later the plant named after A.M. Tarasov), the Avtotractorodetal plant (later the valve plant), the Srednevolzhsky Machine Tool Plant, and some others.

Of course, at that time it was not said anywhere that the government-approved list of newly built and reconstructed Kuibyshev industrial facilities also included a secret section. But even if this document suddenly ended up in the hands of a foreign intelligence officer, he would not see a single name of the enterprise here, but only a strict series of alphabetic codes and numbers of sensitive factories. Among them, under the code designations “OKB-1”, “OKB-2” and OKB-3” were hidden the highly secret design bureaus of Experimental Plant No. 2, which it was decided to locate in the village of Upravlencheskiy, on the territory of the Krasnoglinsky district of Kuibyshev, which had recently been formed ( Fig. 6, 7, 8).

The secret train was heading east

Since the thirties, both the USSR and Germany have been actively developing fundamentally new aircraft engines - gas turbines. However, German specialists were then noticeably ahead of their Soviet colleagues. This was largely facilitated by the fact that after 1937 all the leading Soviet scientists working on the problems of jet propulsion fell under the Yezhov-Beri skating rink of repression. Meanwhile, in Germany, at the BMW and Junkers factories, the first samples of gas turbine engines were produced (Fig. 9)

were already preparing for launch into mass production. And the Germans managed to do this: in particular, by 1945, about five thousand copies of the YuMO-004 model engines were produced.

In this regard, one can imagine the feelings and emotions of the top Soviet leadership when in the spring of 1945 it became clear that the factories and design bureaus of Junkers (Dessau) and BMW (Stasfurt) were in the Soviet occupation zone. Almost immediately they began working for the USSR economy. Moreover, from September 1945, for political reasons, enterprises were turned into joint-stock companies.

Of course, the resumption of work at these production facilities after almost a year of inactivity, even under Soviet control, was received with enthusiasm by the Germans. After all, this gave the country tens of thousands of jobs, and, consequently, wages and rations for workers, employees and their families. However, in 1946, aviation industrial giants were again on the verge of stopping. Oddly enough, the culprits were the former allies of the USSR. Based on their intelligence data about the profile of products manufactured at aircraft factories of the former Reich, the USA and England protested to the Soviet government on this matter: after all, according to the documents of the Potsdam Conference, it was prohibited to develop military equipment in the territory of each of the four occupation zones, including including gas turbine engines.

That is why, in the fall of 1946, a significant part of the qualified personnel of Junkers, BMW and some other German aircraft factories, in the strictest secrecy, on specially equipped trains, was transported to the territory of the USSR, or rather to Kuibyshev, to the village of Upravlencheskiy. In the shortest possible time, 405 German engineers and technicians, 258 highly qualified workers, 37 employees, as well as a small group of service personnel were delivered here. Along with them came 1,174 family members of these specialists (Fig. 10-14).

As a result, at the end of October 1946, in the village of Upravlencheskiy there were more Germans than Russians.

Most of the Germans taken to Kuibyshev worked at the already mentioned experimental plant No. 2 (later the engine-building plant). At the same time, OKB-1 was 85 percent staffed by Junkers specialists, in OKB-2 up to 80 percent of the staff was former BMW personnel, and 62 percent of OKB-3 personnel were specialists from the Ascania plant.

At first, the secret factory where the Germans worked was run exclusively by military personnel. In particular, from 1946 to 1949 it was headed by Colonel Olekhnovich. However, in May 1949, an engineer unknown to anyone at that time arrived here to replace the military, and was almost immediately appointed the responsible manager of the enterprise. For many decades, this man was classified in much the same way as Igor Kurchatov, Sergei Korolev, Mikhail Yangel, Dmitry Kozlov. But now his name, which has already become legendary, is known to everyone: that unknown engineer was Nikolai Dmitrievich Kuznetsov (Fig. 15),

a designer with a capital letter, and later an academician and twice Hero of Socialist Labor.

Kuznetsov immediately directed all the creative forces of the design bureaus subordinate to him to develop a new turboprop engine, based on the German model YuMO-022. This engine was designed back in Dessau and developed power up to 4 thousand horsepower. It was modernized, its power was further increased and it was put into production. In subsequent years, the Kuznetsov Design Bureau produced not only turboprops, but also turbojet engines for bomber aircraft. German specialists took a direct part in the creation of almost each of them. Their work at the motor plant in the village of Upravlencheskiy continued almost until the mid-50s (Fig. 16, 17, 18).

They gave me six hours to get ready.

In the summer of 2000, former German electrical engineer Helmut Breuninger visited Samara, who was part of the same group of German technical specialists that, more than half a century ago, was taken to the village of Upravlencheskiy under cover of secrecy. In the late autumn of 1946, when the train with the Germans arrived in our city, Mr. Breuninger was 36 years old (Fig. 19, 20).

In 1946, I worked as an engineer at the state enterprise Ascania,” Helmut Breuninger recalled during our conversation. - It must be said that in defeated Germany it was very difficult for even a qualified specialist to find a job. Therefore, when several large factories were launched under the control of the Soviet administration at the beginning of 1946, there were a lot of people who wanted to work here. But I was immediately lucky: I got a job at Ascania as an electrical engineer.

But in the early morning of October 22, my apartment doorbell rang. A Soviet lieutenant and two soldiers stood on the threshold. The lieutenant said that my family and I were given six hours to get ready for subsequent departure to the Soviet Union. He didn’t tell us any details, we only learned that we would be working in our specialty at one of the Soviet defense enterprises.

Under heavy security in the evening of the same day, the train with technical specialists departed from the Berlin station. While loading onto the train, I saw many familiar faces. These were experienced engineers from our enterprise, as well as some of my colleagues from the Junkers and BMW factories. The train traveled for a whole week to Moscow, where several engineers and their families disembarked. But we moved on. None of the Germans knew the final destination of our forced journey. There was a rumor that we were going to Siberia, and we all shuddered in advance from the premonition of terrible Siberian frosts.

However, a week after our stop in Moscow, they brought us to some small village and announced that from now on we would live and work here. I knew a little about the geography of Russia, but I had never heard of a city called “Kuibyshev” before. Only when they explained to me that it used to be called Samara, I remembered that there really is such a city on the Volga. But, of course, I only learned about its suburb with the name “Managerial”, difficult for a German, only at the time of our arrival here.

It soon became clear that an aircraft engine plant was located here, and the production facility to which specialists from Ascania were sent was called “Experimental Design Bureau No. 3,” or simply OKB-3. Here I worked until September 1950, after which I was transferred with my family to one of the Moscow factories. But we were able to return home to Germany only in 1958.

Legendary "Chief"

The Germans were not supposed to know what the last name of their boss was - everyone simply called him “Chief.” And only in the 90s did Breuninger read in the newspapers that in post-war Kuibyshev he worked under the leadership of Nikolai Dmitrievich Kuznetsov, who was already one of the leading Soviet designers of aircraft engines (Fig. 21).

Surprisingly, the German veteran from the post-war period still has fond memories of both the experimental plant No. 2 and the personal qualities of the chief designer of the enterprise, Nikolai Kuznetsov.

According to Breuninger, already at their first meetings with the “Chief”, the engineers brought from Germany were surprised to see that the Russian boss spoke their native language well. It turns out that Kuznetsov, immediately after his appointment to Kuibyshev, in order to improve contacts with visiting specialists, ordered the organization of courses at the plant for Soviet personnel in mastering the German language, which was stimulated by an increase in the official salary. Later, classes also began with the Germans to study the Russian language. And Kuznetsov himself studied with the translator Hans Pohl every day for an hour before the start of the working day, and he soon achieved good success in mastering the language of defeated Germany.

The German specialists quickly developed a good relationship with the Chief, Helmut Breuninger recalled. “Once, already in the early 50s, several of our engineers plucked up courage and, at an opportunity, asked him whether they would soon begin to let us go home. After all, we are not prisoners of war, they said. Although we understand that Germany is very guilty before Russia for the destruction and death of millions of people, we probably personally have already made up for our guilt before your country over the years.

The “chief” listened carefully to the engineers and said that this issue did not depend on him, but promised to find out everything. It is not known where he called and with whom he spoke about this, but already in 1951, German families began to be sent back to Germany one by one. And already in 1953 there was not a single German specialist left at the pilot plant.

Students, colleagues and just ordinary citizens who worked or met with Nikolai Dmitrievich at different times also remember his personal human qualities exclusively in excellent terms. Here is what, for example, Evgeny Gritsenko writes about him (Fig. 22),

Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, who in 1994-2004 worked as General Director - General Designer of OJSC SNTK named after N.D. Kuznetsova":

Being an exceptionally modest person, Nikolai Dmitrievich never mentioned his personal proposals or theoretical developments anywhere, attributing the achievements of the enterprise he led to the merits of the entire team. Therefore, much in the development of the domestic aircraft engine industry remained, as it were, nameless. Meanwhile, most of the projects at the plant were first developed either by Nikolai Dmitrievich himself, or on the basis of his ideas and under his leadership. At the same time, everything that Nikolai Dmitrievich undertook was ahead of the work of related domestic and foreign companies. This was his style of work.

Kuznetsov understood perfectly well that one in the field is not a warrior, and therefore paid great attention to the education of the team. He was unusually patient and tolerant when accepting another person's opinion. Like no one else, he knew how to talk to his subordinates without reminding them that he was the boss. Under no circumstances did he say: “I decided,” “I proposed,” “I applied,” but only: “Our team proposed,” “Our team developed.” He put the merits of the entire enterprise at the forefront, but not his own. This was his essence both as a general designer and as a person.

For his ability in a difficult situation to create conditions in a team for calm, well-coordinated work, and for this quality alone, he was already considered an outstanding leader of his time. When he scolded someone for various omissions in their work, even on merit, he always did it correctly, without humiliating the person.

At the same time, Nikolai Dmitrievich always showed himself to be a very independent person. He recognized the authority of the luminaries of power and science only when they delved seriously into matters and offered something competent and sensible. Only then did he listen to them and treat their opinions with respect.

All of the above only to a small extent characterizes the personality of Nikolai Dmitrievich Kuznetsov. Of course, he was much more multifaceted, more complex - both as a person and as a designer. But others will probably say and write about this.

The Germans were scared when the Russians drank vodka

But let's return again to the German engineer Helmut Breuninger.

It must be said that the living conditions of German specialists and their families in the village of Upravlencheskiy were much better than those of Soviet workers and employees working in the same production,” the elderly German tourist continued his story. - We were immediately assigned to live in houses with all amenities, and at the same time all the local residents from here were evicted to barracks (Fig. 23-27).

Visitors from Germany were paid up to three thousand rubles a month, and Soviet engineers for the same work were paid no more than 1,200 rubles. In addition, special food rations were brought for us weekly. They contained good sausage, butter, cheese, tea, tobacco, canned food and other products, which, as I later learned, could not be found on free sale in Kuibyshev at that time.

Also from the memories of those years, I want to emphasize that in all the years of my family’s life in the village of Upravlencheskiy there were never any conflicts or even verbal altercations between Germans and Russians. Although almost every step we took was almost openly controlled by NKVD officers, we had more than enough opportunities for “informal” communication with Soviet people. In particular, we have repeatedly invited each other to small family celebrations. And the Russians’ attitude towards us has always been kind and benevolent, albeit mixed with burning curiosity. After all, we were people of different cultures.

Some of our customs or norms of behavior caused bewilderment among the Russians. For example, they could not understand why the Germans drink not only vodka, but even wine in very small glasses, by their standards, savoring every sip. And we, for our part, watched with fear as Russian men, without wincing, drank vodka in cut glasses. For example, it seemed to me that after such a dose a person should immediately fall and at least fall asleep, or even die. But the Russians - nothing, after such drinking they even sang and danced. Only then did I understand the meaning of the expression I accidentally heard: “What is good for a Russian is death for a German.”

Or another example. When the hot summer came, we, several German families, went to the Volga to swim on our days off. The men wore shorts, and the women wore dresses that were short for that time (that is, slightly below the knee). And when we walked through the village in such outfits, the Russians looked at us with fear and bewilderment. Only later were we told that the local population did not know the word “shorts” at that time, and everyone thought that the Germans walked around in shorts. And this, according to the standards of that time, was very indecent. True, after a few days the Russians got used to the shorts of German men - just like the indecently short dresses of German women, and stopped paying special attention to us (Fig. 28-32).

Meeting after half a century

In the same conversation, it became clear why Helmut Breuninger decided to visit Samara again more than fifty years after his forced business trip to the banks of the Volga. It turned out that this time he arrived here at the private invitation of the local Esperantist club, since the former electrical engineer had been interested in studying this international language for quite some time.

He also took his daughter Emma and grandson Alexander with him to Russia. By the way, Emma was born in Moscow in 1956, when her father worked at one of the capital’s enterprises. Already as an adult, she visited a number of cities of the Soviet Union, primarily, of course, Moscow and Leningrad, but this was her first time in Samara. Like her father, Emma spoke Russian quite well. But her son Alexander, Mr. Helmut’s grandson, did not know Russian.

The very next day after arriving in Samara, the German guests went to the village of Upravlencheskiy. For Helmut Breuninger, visiting the places of his youth brought many emotions. He hardly recognized the village, which had grown greatly over the past half century, but noticed that the house where he and his family moved in 1946 stood in the same place, and had not changed much.

The former engineer, of course, was unable to get into the engine plant. However, according to Mr. Breuninger, even externally the enterprise has changed a lot: new buildings and buildings have appeared, old structures have disappeared, and there is much more greenery around the plant. In addition, the checkpoint turned out to be in a completely different place, so the German guest could not even determine at which point in the enterprise his office was located half a century ago.

Mr. Breuninger could not even compare how much the old part of Kuibyshev-Samara had changed during this time. According to him, half a century ago they generally tried not to let them leave the Upravlencheskiy village, and during the years of his work at OKB-3 he visited the old part of the city only two or three times. At the same time, he saw post-war Kuibyshev only from the car window, so he simply did not remember any details.

But Mr. Breuninger said that already in the early 50s, after things at the engine plant gradually began to improve, German specialists, one after another, began to be released to their homeland. The last such group left for Germany in 1954. From them, as a souvenir for local residents, neat “Finnish” houses were left in which some of the families of German specialists lived. True, to this day not one of them has survived. The last of the surviving houses were demolished back in the 80s, and now modern residential “boxes” of the late Soviet era rise on the site of the former German village.

And in the old cemetery of the village of Upravlencheskiy there are graves of visiting specialists who died here during the years of their forced stay. During those years when Kuibyshev was a closed city, no one looked after these graves, and as a result they became almost indistinguishable. Only starting in the 90s, after Samara was reopened to foreigners, relatives of the Germans who died after the war began to come here, and even some of those specialists who worked half a century ago at the Administrative. You could read a conversation with one of them, Helmut Breuninger, above.

Now German graves in the local cemetery are always well-groomed, the names on the monuments are written in German, and the paths between them are regularly sprinkled with sand. Of course, a tombstone can eventually crumble from time to time, but even time is powerless in the face of human memory.

Valery EROFEEV.

Note.

To illustrate this article, photographs of Gunther Spohr, one of the German specialists taken in the post-war years to Kuibyshev, to the village of Upravlencheskiy, to pilot plant No. 2 (later SNTK named after N.D. Kuznetsov) in the village of Upravlencheskiy, were used. He mainly photographed his family, as well as the daily life and everyday life of highly skilled German workers and employees who worked next to him. These photos were discovered in the archives of Gunther Spohr by his relatives and then made public via the Internet (Fig. 33-54).

Event maps: Attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR Defeat of Nazi Germany A radical turning point during the Great Patriotic War Victory over militaristic Japan Video archive materials: A. Hitler Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact June 22, 1941 Beginning of the Great Patriotic War Tank battle near the village of Prokhorovka Stalingrad Berlin operation Tehran Conference Yalta Conference Signing of the Act of Surrender of Germany Victory Parade.

The names of Soviet military leaders became known to the whole world: Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, Ivan Stepanovich Konev, Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky.

The front line at the beginning of the Soviet counteroffensive
Russian troops (11/19/1942)
OMbyOSHMGMgDO o Shakht*
The direction of the attacks of the Soviet troops in November 1942. The encirclement of the Nazi troops
Front line on November 30, 1942.
The direction of attack of the Nazi troops trying to break through to the encircled group
Counter-offensive of Nazi troops and their withdrawal
Front line by December 31, 1942
Final liquidation of the encircled Nazi troops (January 10 - February 2, 1943)
Front line by July 5, 1943 Offensive of the Nazi troops Defensive battles and counterattacks of the Soviet troops Line where the Nazi troops were stopped Soviet counteroffensive

In near-historical articles, interviews and memoirs concerning the Battle of Moscow, a myth has long been firmly rooted, which can be briefly summarized in the words: “On October 16, the Germans broke through to Khimki. Panic began in Moscow."

Despite the obvious inconsistency regarding the date and the breakthrough as the cause of the panic (there was a month and a half left before the real Germans in Khimki), this legend widely roams the Internet, developing in attempts to explain it (they specify, for example, that the motorcyclists broke through from the direction of Tver).

Moreover, the myth about the Germans in Khimki in mid-October turned out to be so tenacious that it penetrated into the notorious school textbook by Danilov and Kosulina, which is today recommended by the ministry as the main and mandatory one ( “By mid-October the enemy came close to the capital. The Kremlin towers were clearly visible through German binoculars.”) and even in the anniversary article for the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow - a fragment from a book being prepared for publication edited by G.F. Krivosheev “The Great Patriotic War on Russian Land”:
“Suffering heavy losses, the enemy reached the near approaches to Moscow and was stopped at the line:
Khimki (19 km from Moscow, 17 October)
…»
(“Military Historical Journal”, 12’2006).

In general, the rumor of October 41, 60 years later, penetrated into the official history textbook and the official printed organ of the RF Ministry of Defense, and this, despite the topic being studied far and wide, is a very impressive fact.
In this regard, I am interested in the question: who and when first introduced this myth into circulation?
Is there any real basis for it, for example, the rumors that Muscovites used to explain the evacuation of government offices that began in mid-October?
Or did this explanation arise after the war, when the events of the autumn of 1941 became distant and confused in people’s memories?

“And what would I have done with the archive then, on October 13, when I myself was leaving Moscow for Tashkent, when Moscow was overwhelmed with panic, like a squall, when the Germans had already come very close, when the defense line ran a hundred, seventy kilometers, and in some places and closer, when they said that a German parachute landing had been dropped in Khimki!”
M. Belkina “Crossing of destinies”
http://www.ipmce.su/~tsvet/WIN/belkina/belkB09.html

ADF:
I repeat that the post is primarily about the absurdity of the date of October 16-17. There is no doubt that the Germans later, on the November-December border, appeared in Khimki, albeit only in the form of reconnaissance units. As for who and where they got there - this is a separate topic in which there is a lot of ambiguity. You can look at it, for example, this.

Vitaly Dymarsky: Good evening, dear listeners. On the air of “Echo of Moscow” is another program from the “Price of Victory” series. Today I am hosting it, Vitaly Dymarsky. And I’ll immediately introduce you to our guest - journalist, historian Iskander Kuzeev. Hello, Iskander.

Iskander Kuzeev: Hello.

And it is no coincidence that he was invited to us today, since it was today in the newspaper “Top Secret” that Iskander Kuzeev’s material entitled “The Moscow Flood” was published, which talks about a secret operation in the fall of 1941. The author of the article himself will tell you in more detail, and I will make one digression and simply tell you that, you see, life has its own way, and I repeat, Dmitry Zakharov and I try to go in chronological order through the events of the Second World War, but when something comes... that’s interesting, we’re going back, maybe we’ll get ahead of ourselves. And today we are returning back to the autumn of 1941, when the events that our guest today, Iskander Kuzeev, investigated and wrote about took place. Iskander, what are we talking about? What kind of secret operation took place in the fall of 1941 and why are we talking about a flood?

Let me start with some preface. I have always been fascinated by the episode of November 1941, which I became quite familiar with from memoir literature, in particular, the recently published memoirs of Guderian, who fought south of Moscow, in Russian. Guderian's troops, the 2nd Panzer Army, had practically completed the encirclement of Moscow from the south. Tula was surrounded, the troops approached Kashira, moved towards Kolomna and Ryazan. And at this time, the Soviet troops, which repelled Guderian’s attacks, received reinforcements from the north of the Moscow region, where practically no clashes took place. In the north of the Moscow region and further along the Tver region, Kalinin was taken, the troops stood in the vicinity of Rogachevo and Konakovo, and clashes there took place practically only in two points: near the village of Kryukovo and on the Permilovsky heights between Yakhroma and Dmitrov, where the troops of Army Group Center were opposed in fact, one NKVD armored train that accidentally ended up there - it was coming from Zagorsk towards Krasnaya Gorka, where German artillery was already stationed. And there were no other clashes in this region. At the same time, already when I began to get acquainted with this topic, I became aware that individual, literally units of German military equipment had penetrated the territory of Moscow.

This famous incident when some motorcyclists almost reached the Falcon?

Yes, yes, they were stopped at the second bridge over the railway, which later became known as the Victory Bridge. There, two of our machine gunners guarded this bridge, and they protected it from air raids. Motorcyclists crossed the first bridge across the canal and in the area of ​​the current metro station "Rechnoy Vokzal", the weather was bad there, and as the researchers who worked on this topic told me, they went down to the ice to kick a ball, at that time 30 motorcyclists passed by, and they already stopped on the last bridge before the Sokol station. And there was one German tank between the current metro stations “Skhodnenskaya” and “Tushinskaya”.

Volokolamsk direction.

Yes. This is the Western Bridge over the diversion canal in the Tushino area. And as the people who were engaged in these studies told me, this was told to me in the management of the Moscow-Volga canal, as it is now called, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Moscow Canal”, the tallest building on the hill between the 7th and 8th locks, and this story was passed down from generation to generation, from there it was clearly visible: some lost German tank came out, stopped on the bridge, a German officer looked out, looked back and forth, wrote something down in a notebook and drove off somewhere in the opposite direction Aleshkinsky forest. And third, there was German large-caliber artillery on Krasnaya Gorka, which was already ready to shell the Kremlin, an armored train was moving from the north to this point, and local residents crossed the canal and reported this to the leadership, the Ministry of Defense, and after that the shelling of this point began , where large-caliber artillery was stationed. But there were no troops in this place. When I began to study this topic, I found out what was happening - exactly the event that in this publication is called “The Moscow Flood” took place.

So what kind of flood was this? They simply flooded a large area in order to impede the advance of German troops, do I understand correctly?

Yes. Exactly. In the Volokolamsk direction, the dam of the Istrinsky hydroelectric complex, which is called the “Kuibyshev Hydroelectric Complex,” was blown up. Moreover, the drains were blown up below the level of the so-called “dead mark”, when water descends to discharge the spring flood. Huge streams of water in the place where the German troops were advancing hit the area of ​​​​the offensive and several villages were washed away, and the stream reached almost to the Moscow River. There the level is 168 meters above sea level, the mark of the Istrinsky reservoir, and below it the mark is 143, that is, it turns out to be more than 25 meters. Imagine, this is a waterfall that washes away everything in its path, flooding houses and villages. Naturally, no one was warned about this; the operation was secret.

Who carried out this operation? Troops or some civil services?

In Istra it was a military operation, that is, the engineering department of the Western Front. But there was also another operation, which was carried out jointly by the management of the Moscow-Volga Canal, which is now called the Moscow Canal, and the same engineering department of the Western Front, and...

What other operation?

Another, in a different place.

Oh, there was another one.

There was also a second one, or rather, even two, since the second operation was carried out at two points. When the Germans occupied Kalinin and came close to the line of the Moscow-Volga canal and there were no forces to repel these attacks, evacuation was already being prepared, Stalin was already preparing to evacuate to Kuibyshev, now Samara, a meeting was held at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, at which a decision was made to release water from all six reservoirs north of Moscow - Khimkinskoye, Ikshinskoye, Pyalovskoye, Pestovskoye, Pirogovskoye, Klyazminskoye, and to release water from the Ivankovskoye reservoir, which was then called the Moscow Sea, from a dam near the city of Dubna. This was done in order to break the ice and thus troops and heavy equipment would not be able to cross the Volga and the Moscow Sea and would not be able to cross this line of six reservoirs near Moscow.

The first operation on the Istra Reservoir, November 1941?

Yes, end of November.

What about others?

That is, all these operations were carried out one after another at the end of November. And what is the result, if I may say so? What did the Soviet command sacrifice in order to stop the German troops?

There were two options for releasing water - from the Ivankovo ​​reservoir to the Volga downstream and releasing water from the reservoirs towards Moscow. But a completely different option was adopted. To the west of the canal flows the Sestra River, it passes through Klin-Rogachevo and flows into the Volga below Dubna, flowing where the canal passes high above the surrounding area. It runs in a tunnel under the canal. And the Yakhroma River flows into the Sestra River, which also flows much below the level of the canal. There is the so-called Emergency Yakhroma Spillway, which, in case of any repair work, allows water from the canal to be discharged into the Yakhroma River. And where the Sestra River flows under the canal, there are emergency hatches, also provided for the repair of engineering structures that allow water from the canal to be discharged into the Sestra River. And the following decision was made: through the pumping stations that raise water to the Moscow reservoirs, they all stand at the same level of 162 meters above sea level, it was decided to run these pumping stations in the reverse, so-called generator mode, when they spin in the other direction and they do not consume, but produce electric current, so this is called generator mode, and the water was released through these pumping stations, all the sluice doors were opened and a huge stream of water rushed through this Yakhroma spillway, flooding the villages, there are located there at a very low level above the water various villages, there are peat enterprises, experimental farms, a lot of irrigation canals in this triangle - the canal, the Yakhroma River and the Sestra River, and a lot of small villages that are located almost at water level. And in the fall of 1941, the frost was 40 degrees, the ice broke, and streams of water flooded the entire surrounding area. All this was done in secrecy, so people...

No precautions were taken.

And at the third point, where the Sestra River passes under the canal, there were also constructions there - there is a book by Valentin Barkovsky, a veteran of the Moscow-Volga canal, there is a researcher such as Mikhail Arkhipov, he has a website on the Internet, where he talks about this in detail he says that metal gates were welded there that did not allow water from the Sestra River to flow into the Volga, and all the water that was discharged, imagine, a huge body of water from the Ivankovo ​​Reservoir went into the Sestra River and flooded everything around. According to Arkhipov, the level of the Yakhroma River rose by 4 meters, the level of the Sestra River rose by 6 meters.

Explain, as you just said, according to all the evidence - we did not see it with our own eyes and did not feel it with our skin - it was a very hard and cold winter, the frosts were terrible. This water, which poured out in huge quantities onto the earth's surface, was supposed to turn into ice.

Almost yes. At first the ice was broken...

But then, in the cold, it all probably turned into ice?

But this does not happen immediately. I wondered how a person could be saved in such a situation. And the professor of anesthesiology with whom I talked told me that it is enough to stand for half an hour knee-deep in such water and a person simply dies.

How many villages were flooded in this way?

In all these operations there is somewhere around 30-40.

But, if I’m not mistaken, there was an order from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Comrade Stalin, to flood, in my opinion, more than 300 villages around Moscow in order to stop the German advance?

There was an order. It didn't talk about flooding, it talked about destruction.

Villages. As a matter of fact, one story is very famous. This is where Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was caught, these sabotage groups...

Yes, this is in accordance with this order 0428 of November 17 at the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. And in accordance with this order, all villages deep into the front at a distance of 40-60 kilometers were to be destroyed. Well, there is such an ornate wording that this is an operation against German troops. And there was even such a wording as “taking the Soviet population with you.”

That is, the sabotage groups were supposed to take the Soviet population with them before burning the village?

No, the retreating troops had to be withdrawn. But since they had already retreated and since there was an order to burn precisely those villages that were behind the front line, this postscript was simply a fiction. This postscript now is for those who defend Stalin. When individual excerpts from these materials were published on various blogs, a lot of Stalinists spoke in the comments and cited this phrase.

As an example of humanism.

Yes Yes. But this phrase means absolutely nothing, we know. And then, when the offensive began, a lot of newsreels appeared about burned villages. Naturally, the question did not arise who burned them. There were Germans there, so cameramen came and filmed the burned villages.

That is, wherever there were Germans, to this depth, as Comrade Stalin ordered, all these villages where the Germans stood had to be destroyed in one way or another.

Did they report to Stalin?

Yes. In two weeks they reported that 398 settlements had been destroyed. And that’s why these 30-40 flooded villages are a drop in the ocean...

Tenth, 10 percent.

Yes, and few people paid attention to this. Moreover, here in the report Zhukov and Shaposhnikov write that artillery was allocated for this, and aviation, and the mass of these saboteurs, 100 thousand Molotov cocktails, and so on, and so on.

Is this document genuine?

Yes, this is an absolutely genuine document, there is even data on where, in which archive it is located, a fund, an inventory.

In full - no.

I've never met. And do you cite it in the article?

We will have an addition in the next issue and we will talk about it, we will publish order 0428 and the report, the report of the Military Council of the Western Front to the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command dated November 29, 1941. This immediately clears up the whole picture.

You know what else interests me in this whole story. The history, to put it diplomatically, is little known. And to be more honest, it is practically not known at all. In our country, as I understand it, neither in military literature nor in memoirs was this story of the flooding told anywhere, or it was somewhere, but under some heading “top secret,” which is what the newspaper is called, strictly speaking, where did you publish?

The only thing I was able to find that was published in previous years was a book edited by Marshal Shaposhnikov, which was published in 1943, dedicated to the defense of Moscow, and it came out with the stamp “secret” and in recent years the stamp “secret” was removed and stood classified as “chipboard”, and it was declassified only in 2006. And this book talked about the explosion of waterways in Istra. But nothing was said about the operation on the channel. I was able to find this only in a book that was published for the anniversary of the Moscow-Volga channel; last year the 70th anniversary was celebrated, and Valentin Barkovsky’s book was published in a circulation of only 500 copies. And it talks about this in detail.

And this book, edited by Shaposhnikov, has had all its stamps removed, but apparently it is simply in libraries.

Well, yes, it was never reprinted.

I knew, of course, that many documents were classified, but in order to release a book immediately classified as “secret”, what circulation could it have had and who was it intended for then?

The circulation is very small. Well, for the management team.

And then here’s the question. Did the Germans know about this operation and was it described anywhere in German military literature?

Unfortunately, I couldn't find it. When I had doubts about whether everything was really flooded and people were dying there, I traveled all over this territory in the Yakhroma-Rogachevo-Konakovo-Dubna square, and I met a lot of people there, well, not just a lot of people, this very elderly people who remembered this, who told it, and this story was passed down from generation to generation. A resident of the village named 1 May told me, this is a working village right at the level of the irrigation canals flowing into Yakhroma, and he told me how my grandmother survived all this, she survived. Many did not survive, but those who survived left memories. She said that they hid in a potato storage area, and several soldiers who crossed Yakhroma and the irrigation canal simply saved them. Firstly, there was artillery firing from all sides. There were low, completely panel houses, lower than even peasant huts, and naturally, the artillery hit what was visible, and a potato storage facility with a high chimney was visible. And so they say: “Why are you sitting here? They’ll kill you now.” And water began to flow, they went out and managed to get out along the road that ran along the embankment just above the canal and go towards Dmitrov.

Iskander, tell me, is it known whether anyone kept such calculations of how many people died as a result of the flooding of these villages?

I couldn't find these calculations anywhere. And when they published on blogs, I gave excerpts to my friends, there were a lot of objections from Stalinist people, it was clear from their blogs on LiveJournal that they were ardent admirers of Stalin, they said that in general no one could have died there, that at home stand high above the river level, and even though there is an attic, there is also a roof. But when I talked to doctors, they said that there was little chance of survival in such a situation.

Is it even known what the approximate population of these villages was before the flood?

There are no such estimates for specific villages. It is known that out of 27 million, this figure is now considered, the regular composition of the Red Army accounts for only one third of this number.

Even less.

Two thirds are civilians. The military told me that there is no need to raise this topic at all, because any shelling means the death of civilians.

Iskander, I will interrupt you and interrupt our program for a few minutes while the news broadcast passes, after which we will continue our conversation.

Good evening again, dear listeners. We continue the “Price of Victory” program, which is hosted today by me, Vitaly Dymarsky. Let me remind you that our guest is journalist, historian Iskander Kuzeev, author of the article “The Moscow Flood”, published in today’s issue of the newspaper “Top Secret”. And we talk with our guest about those events of the autumn of 1941, which Iskander Kuzeev describes. So, we settled on trying to find out how many people lived and how many died in those 30-40 villages that were flooded by special order of the Supreme High Command by releasing water from the Istra and other reservoirs at the end of 1941. It is clear that such calculations are difficult; it is unlikely that we will find the exact number. Have you ever wondered how many of these villages were later revived? Do they exist now or is there nothing left of them and everything was built in a new place?

Many villages that stood almost at water level were rebuilt. Those villages that were on higher ground were flooded and survived. But it’s also difficult to say how flooded they were. Here I must respond to opponents who have already spoken out about the fact that the flooding could not have happened at all, that the villages on the Sestra River are located very low above the water level. This is due to the fact that there was no flooding there. Here I must make a short historical digression. The Sestra River is located on the route of the old canal, which began to be built in the time of Catherine, there is such a village on the Istra River Catherine's Walls, and the canal passes through the city of Solnechnogorsk, it was not completed due to the fact that the need no longer existed. Almost all the structures were already ready. This canal is actually on the Moscow-Petersburg highway. And when the Nikolaev railway was built, the construction of the canal stopped, but all the hydraulic structures were built - locks, mills. And the Sestra River to Solnechnogorsk, it was all, as the river workers say, locked, there were a lot of locks and mills. And all these old hydraulic structures did not allow floods to overflow, so the villages on this route were navigable. One village where I visited, for example, is called Ust-Pristan, it is at the confluence of the Yakhroma and the Istra, and the houses are very low, it is clear that if the rise was 6 meters, then all this could be flooded.

It's clear. I have your article in front of me and I want to read out the dialogue between Zhukov and Stalin. When Stalin says that everything should be ready in two days, Zhukov objects to him: “Comrade Stalin, we must evacuate the population from the flood zone.” To which follows the following response from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief: “So that information leaks to the Germans and so that they send their reconnaissance company to you? This is war, Comrade Zhukov, we are fighting for victory at any cost. I have already given the order to blow up the Istra dam. He didn’t even regret his dacha in Zubatovo. She too could have been covered by a wave.” Well, as I understand it, this is not a real dialogue? Not exactly fictional, but reconstructed?

This is a reconstruction, yes.

Reconstruction based on some individual evidence, apparently?

Yes. After all, the flow from the Istrinsky reservoir practically reached the Moscow River and could flood all these dacha villages, dachas in Zubatovo, which are on Rublevka and up to the Rublevskaya dam. The level there is 124 meters, and the level of Istra...

And, tell me, Iskander, have you talked with any military leaders, our strategists, military experts? Sacrifice, the price of Victory is an issue that we constantly discuss. As for just purely military effectiveness, was this an effective measure to stop the Germans?

In general, yes. After all, the front line from Kalinin to Moscow was actually reduced to two points - the village of Kryukovo, known even from songs, and Permilovsky Heights, where there is a monument, by the way, the only monument to General Vlasov in Russia.

Is it still worth it?

Yes. His name is stamped there; he commanded the 20th Army there.

And, well, as one of, not a separate monument to him.

Yes. Kuznetsov’s shock army then appeared there when the offensive began, an armored train of the 73rd NKVD, and some other military units, including the 20th Army.

But this same operation can be done differently, so there was no other way out?

Well, yes, and this operation was not the only one of its kind. After all, there was another dictator on the other side...

We'll talk about this later, I'm just interested in this situation. You can also say this, like those Stalinists who object to you, well, they dispute the fact itself, but why should they dispute the fact itself, because we can say that there was no other way out, yes, it was difficult, associated with huge victims, but it nevertheless turned out to be effective.

At the same time, yes, there was a risk that the war would end in 1941; Guderian had already received orders to move towards Gorky. Troops from the north and south should have converged somewhere in the Petushki area...

Well, yes, it’s a known thing that Hitler had already decided that Moscow had actually fallen and that troops could be transferred to other directions.

I want to return once again to the question of the number of victims. I will once again refer to your article, where you write that when they tried to find out the flood zone and at least the approximate number of victims, the villagers turned your attention to something else. I’ll quote again, in this case the quote is accurate, since you heard it yourself: “See that hill? There are just skeletons piled up there.” And they pointed to a small hill on the bank of the Sestra River. “The Canal Army men lie there.” Apparently, these are the people, the Gulag people, who built this canal. That's why I'm asking this. Apparently, there, in addition to villages, in addition to living souls, there were some burial places, cemeteries, and so on, which were also all flooded?

Most likely, the cemeteries were on the right side. In the village of Karmanovo, where they told me about the Canal Army soldiers, I still thought that I had misheard, and asked: “Red Army soldiers?” - “No, channel army men.” There, after all, the canal became a fortification structure and, in fact, all the canal builders can also be considered people who became victims of this war, the defense of Moscow. According to various sources, in the city of Dmitrov, scientists in the local museum counted, there, according to their estimates, from 700 thousand to 1.5 million people died.

Did you die or were you involved in construction?

They died during construction, there are mass graves there. I was told in the village of Test Pilot, on the shore of the Ikshinsky reservoir, now some structures there have occupied the last collective farm field, began to build cottages on a small mound, and there they came across mass graves. Recently, builders reconstructed the Volokolamskoye Highway, they were building the third line of the tunnel and the interchange at the intersection of Svoboda and Volokolamskoye Highways, there was a mass of skeletons under each support, there was a cemetery, and there was a mass of skeletons piled up under the canals themselves. There, if a person fell or simply stumbled, there was an order not to stop any concrete work, everything was done at a continuous pace, and people simply died. There is such a case described in the literature during the construction of the 3rd lock, when a person simply fell into concrete in front of everyone.

Iskander, one more question. There is a version that when the Soviet leadership was preparing to evacuate from Moscow and when it was believed that Moscow would have to be surrendered to the Germans, was there actually a plan to flood the city of Moscow itself?

Yes, researchers who are associated with this topic also told me about this. There is such a Khimki dam between the Leningradskoye Highway and the cottage village of the current Pokrovskoye-Glebovo in the Pokrovskoye-Glebovo park. This dam holds the entire cascade of reservoirs north of Moscow - Khimkinskoye, Pirogovskoye, Klyazminskoye, Pestovskoye, Uchinskoye and Ikshinskoye, is at a level of 162 meters, like all reservoirs, the water in the Moscow River is in the city center at a level of 120 meters, that is the drop is 42 meters, and, as I was told, a ton of explosives was planted there, including this dam and its dead volume, which is already below the discharge of flood waters, below the discharge of the Khimki River that flows from it, and this flow could simply fall on capital. I spoke with a veteran, the former head of the canal, we were sitting on the third floor of the building next to the 7th lock at the intersection of Volokolamsk Highway and Svoboda Street, he said: “Here, we are sitting on the third floor, the flow is exactly according to our calculations.” , it was to this level that he could rise.” And then a lot of even high-rise buildings would practically be flooded.

But there is no documentary evidence of these plans, as I understand it? Are there only oral testimonies from people?

Yes. And there they told me that when they were dismantling the old bridge across the Klyazminskoye Reservoir, now a new bridge has been built there on Dmitrovskoe Highway, and already in the 80s they found explosives in huge quantities.

Which, apparently, was intended specifically for an explosion.

To blow up the bridge. But here this territory is closed, back in the 80s it was possible to drive along this dam, and there was a “brick” and it was written “from 20.00 to 8.00”, that is, the road was only closed in the evening, but now it is completely closed, fenced with barbed wire and this area is completely inaccessible.

Actually, when we say that there is no documentary evidence, documentary evidence, one can also assume that we simply do not have access to all documents, because, as you know, our archives are opened, but very lazily, I would say.

And this story in the form of a legend circulated for a long time and it was attributed that it was Hitler’s idea to flood Moscow after the Germans arrived. There was a play like this by Andrei Vishnevsky “Moskau See”, “Moscow Sea”. Such a reconstruction, when after Hitler’s victory they walk on boats...

It was as if it was a purely propaganda move that Hitler was going to sink.

Or maybe it was some kind of preparation for the fact that they themselves could be flooded.

Yes, a transformation of real events.

By the way, Comrade Hitler himself also launched a similar operation in Berlin.

Yes, here, from these operations, it is clear that there is very little difference between two such dictators; when it comes to saving his own life, the dictator is ready to sacrifice the lives of his own people. In the film “Liberation” there was an episode when the floodgates on the Spree River and the dampers were opened...

Yes, and the actor Olyalin, who played Captain Tsvetaev there.

Who died there heroically. You can have different attitudes towards this film, which is also largely propaganda, but there was an amazing scene when the Germans, who were literally opponents just five minutes ago, carried out the wounded together, held the cordon line together so that women and children could get out first, this is on Unter den Linden station, right next to the Reichstag.

By the way, about the film “Liberation” I could say that, yes, it is indeed perceived, and probably quite rightly, as a film primarily a propaganda film, but there are quite a lot of real events of the war reproduced there, from which every unbiased person can draw their own conclusions . I remember, for example, a lot of episodes from the film “Liberation” that made me think completely, perhaps not what the authors of the film expected. And about how Comrade Stalin gave orders to take certain cities at any cost, and so on. Therefore, this film also has its own, so to speak, perhaps even historical value. By the way, in my opinion, flooding was being prepared not only in Berlin. It seems to me that somewhere else, in my opinion, in Poland there was an option for flooding the city? No, there was an explosion; in my opinion, they wanted to blow up Krakow completely.

As for Krakow, I think this is also rather a matter of legend, because Krakow stands very high...

There really was no flooding there. First of all, thank you for opening, although perhaps not completely yet, yet another page in the history of the war. To what extent did you feel like you opened it, and how much is still closed on this page?

Oh, a lot of things are closed. In general, a very interesting topic is the attitude of the military leadership towards the civilian population. Just the other day, the memoirs of the Meyerhold Theater director Alexander Nesterov were published. This is such a titanic feat of the Moscow poet German Lukomnikov, who turned out to have decayed, literally collected from scraps, diary entries from the war, 1941-42, in Taganrog. And when I read these diary entries of Nesterov, my hair just stood on end. I felt like I was reading passages from Orwell's 1984, when bombs are systematically dropped on the city of London and people are killed in artillery attacks. Russian people were dying, they were shelled throughout the winter of 1941 and in the summer of 1942, the city and its residential areas were shelled, people died, they were shelled and bombs were dropped on residential buildings. The front-line city of Rostov surrendered several times and was again occupied by Soviet troops. And from these diary entries one can see people’s attitude to this: “The Bolsheviks dropped bombs, the Bolsheviks shelled the city.”

That is, both sides who fought did not take the civilian population into account, I think we can draw the following conclusion. By the way, if you look at the losses in the Second World War, not only of the Soviet Union, but also of all participants on both sides, both the anti-Hitler coalition and supporters of Germany, you can see that purely military losses are the ratio, of course, in each country its own, it all depends on the degree of participation in the war - but much more civilians died than on the battlefields.

Yes. At the same time, I did not hear that, for example, the Germans bombed Koenigsberg occupied by Soviet troops. This did not happen.

Well, there are, of course, examples of such saving people. They can also probably be treated differently. Many, for example, believe that the same French, having yielded to Hitler quickly enough, we know, there was practically no resistance there, that by doing so they simply saved people’s lives and saved cities, the same Paris, relatively speaking, occupied by the Germans, it remained so , as it was. And there are still many discussions on the topic of the siege of Leningrad. This is a difficult topic. There's an insane amount of people there. Firstly, that this blockade could have been avoided if they had pursued a wiser, or perhaps more rational, policy in relations with Finland, on the one hand.

Well, yes, it's a complicated story.

And in none of the occupied cities was there such a situation as in Leningrad. In Guderian’s memoirs, I read his notes, where he talked about the supply of food, that notices were posted that there was enough food so that the population did not worry in Orel, for example.

So people were sacrificed without looking back, without any calculations. And I, perhaps even indirectly answering many of our listeners who often write to us why we are talking about this, this, that, I want to remind you once again that our program is about the price of Victory. The price of Victory, I emphasize the word “price,” could have been different, in our opinion. And the price of Victory, which is primarily expressed by the number of deaths, the number of human lives given and laid on the altar of this Victory. And just to get to the bottom of this, because victory at any cost is very often, it seems to me, a Pyrrhic victory. In any case, you need to be able to look critically at your past and somehow understand it. Iskander, as we say in interviews with writers, what are your creative plans? Will you continue this topic? Will you still be involved in it, some kind of investigation, research?

In the next issue we plan to continue this topic specifically in the Moscow region. I think that Nesterov’s memoirs, which were published on the Internet just the other day, deserve to be discussed separately. It is very interesting. It is a miracle that such records have survived. After all, it was dangerous to store them. There is, for example, the following entry: “Residents of Taganrog are celebrating the anniversary of the city’s liberation from the Bolsheviks.” It is a miracle that such records have survived.

It’s a miracle that they survived in the hands of private individuals, because I think there is quite a lot of evidence of this kind. Another thing is that they all ended up, as they once said, “in the right place.” I think that many listeners probably remember that I have now conducted several programs with a researcher from Veliky Novgorod who is involved in collaboration during the war. And there are a lot of documents there. I even went to Veliky Novgorod and saw that there were a lot of documents preserved from that time, where there was a lot of evidence of how all this happened. Occupation is also a very difficult topic. So there are some documents, evidence.

After all, Novgorod is a city that was occupied for almost four years.

Smaller, there Pskov, in my opinion, was under German occupation for the longest time. Well, okay, I thank Iskander Kuzeev for our conversation today. And we say goodbye to you, dear listeners, until our next program. All the best, goodbye.
Original taken from

The famous German plan “Barbarossa” can be briefly described as follows: it is Hitler’s almost unrealistic strategic plan to capture Russia as the main enemy on the path to world domination.

It is worth remembering that by the time of the attack on the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, had almost unopposedly captured half of the European states. Only Britain and the USA resisted the aggressor.

The essence and goals of Operation Barbarossa

The Soviet-German non-aggression pact, signed shortly before the start of the Great Patriotic War, was nothing more than a head start for Hitler. Why? Because the Soviet Union, without assuming a possible betrayal, fulfilled the said agreement.

And the German leader thus gained time to carefully develop a strategy for capturing his main enemy.

Why did Hitler recognize Russia as the biggest obstacle to the implementation of the blitzkrieg? Because the resilience of the USSR did not allow England and the USA to lose heart and, perhaps, surrender, like many European countries.

In addition, the fall of the Soviet Union would serve as a powerful impetus to strengthen Japan's position on the world stage. And Japan and the United States had extremely tense relations. Also, the non-aggression pact allowed Germany not to launch an offensive in the unfavorable conditions of winter cold.

The preliminary strategy of the Barbarossa plan looked something like this:

1. A powerful and well-trained Reich army invades Western Ukraine, instantly defeating the main forces of the disoriented enemy. After several decisive battles, German forces finish off the scattered detachments of surviving Soviet soldiers.
2. From the territory of the captured Balkans, march victoriously to Moscow and Leningrad. Capture both cities that are extremely important to achieve the intended result. The task of capturing Moscow as the political and tactical center of the country stood out especially. Interesting: the Germans were sure that every single remnant of the USSR army would flock to Moscow to defend it - and it would be as easy as shelling pears to completely defeat them.

Why was Germany's attack plan on the USSR called Plan Barbarossa?

The strategic plan for the lightning capture and conquest of the Soviet Union was named after Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who ruled the Holy Roman Empire in the 12th century.

The said leader went down in history thanks to his numerous and successful campaigns of conquest.

The name of the Barbarossa plan undoubtedly reflected the symbolism inherent in almost all actions and decisions of the leadership of the Third Reich. The name of the plan was approved on January 31, 1941.

Hitler's goals in World War II

Like any totalitarian dictator, Hitler did not pursue any special goals (at least those that could be explained using the elementary logic of common sense).

The Third Reich unleashed the Second World War with the sole purpose: to take over the world, establish dominance, subjugate all countries and peoples to its perverted ideologies, and impose its picture of the world on the entire population of the planet.

How long did it take for Hitler to take over the USSR?

In general, Nazi strategists allocated only five months—one single summer—to capture the vast territory of the Soviet Union.

Today, such arrogance may seem unfounded, unless we remember that at the time the plan was developed, the German army had captured almost all of Europe in just a few months without much effort or loss.

What does blitzkrieg mean and what are its tactics?

Blitzkrieg, or the tactic of lightning the capture of the enemy, is the brainchild of German military strategists of the early 20th century. The word Blitzkrieg comes from two German words: Blitz (lightning) and Krieg (war).

The blitzkrieg strategy was based on the possibility of capturing vast territories in record time (months or even weeks) before the opposing army came to its senses and mobilized its main forces.

The tactics of a lightning attack were based on the close cooperation of infantry, aviation and tank formations of the German army. Tank crews, supported by infantry, must break through behind enemy lines and surround the main fortified positions important for establishing permanent control over the territory.

The enemy army, being cut off from all communication systems and all supplies, quickly begins to experience difficulties in solving the simplest issues (water, food, ammunition, clothing, etc.). The forces of the attacked country, thus weakened, are soon captured or destroyed.

When did Nazi Germany attack the USSR?

Based on the results of the development of the Barbarossa plan, the Reich's attack on the USSR was scheduled for May 15, 1941. The date of the invasion was shifted due to the Nazis carrying out the Greek and Yugoslav operations in the Balkans.

In fact, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war on June 22, 1941 at 4:00 am. This mournful date is considered the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

Where did the Germans go during the war - map

Blitzkrieg tactics helped German troops in the first days and weeks of the Second World War to cover enormous distances across the territory of the USSR without any particular problems. In 1942, the Nazis captured a fairly impressive part of the country.

German forces reached almost Moscow. They advanced through the Caucasus to the Volga, but after the Battle of Stalingrad they were driven back to Kursk. At this stage, the retreat of the German army began. The invaders passed through the northern lands to Arkhangelsk.

Reasons for the failure of Plan Barbarossa

If we consider the situation globally, the plan failed due to the inaccuracy of German intelligence data. William Canaris, who led it, may well have been a British double agent, as some historians claim today.

If we take these unconfirmed data on faith, it becomes clear why he “fed” Hitler the misinformation that the USSR had practically no secondary lines of defense, but there were huge supply problems, and, moreover, almost all the troops were stationed on the border.

Conclusion

Many historians, poets, writers, as well as eyewitnesses of the events described, admit that a huge, almost decisive role in the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany was played by the fighting spirit of the Soviet people, the love of freedom of the Slavic and other peoples who did not want to drag out a miserable existence under oppression world tyranny.