Preparations for a big war, which began in 1939, a sharp increase in the Armed Forces of the USSR, the production of a large amount of military equipment, combat experience gained in Spain, in Khasan and Khalkhin Gol, in the Winter War - all this, it would seem, should have become tangible advantages of the Red Army in battles with the Wehrmacht.
However, in general the country was not yet ready for such a total war. Many divisions formed in 1939-1941 were undermanned and poorly equipped with military equipment, and also had poor command of it. The repressions of the late 30s also had an impact, when a significant part of the experienced command personnel was destroyed, and their place was taken by less competent or inexperienced commanders, unlike the German army, in which all the generals and most of the officers had combat experience dating back to the First World War. , as well as the experience of all campaigns of 1939-1941.
Germany's transport capabilities were an order of magnitude higher than those of the Soviet Union. The Germans could move reinforcements much faster, regroup troops, and organize their supplies. The USSR had significant human resources, but these resources were much less mobile than German ones. By the beginning of hostilities, the Wehrmacht outnumbered the Red Army in the number of trucks by approximately half, i.e. was more mobile. There are also samples that simply did not have an analogue in the Soviet armed forces. These are high-speed heavy artillery tractors and armored personnel carriers.
In general, the German army was much better prepared for war than the Red Army. If in the USSR this preparation lasted less than two years before the war, then Germany began to intensively develop its armed forces and military industry immediately after Hitler came to power. For example, in Germany, universal conscription was restored on March 16, 1935, and in the USSR - only on September 1, 1939.
Strategic miscalculations of the Red Army command
But, if the unpreparedness of the Red Army for war was one of the reasons for the defeat of 1941, then in 1942 the Soviet troops were already experienced, they had behind them not only defeats and retreats, but also victories (the Battle of Moscow, the liberation of Rostov, the Kerch-Feodosia operation , continuation of the defense of Sevastopol). But, nevertheless, it was in 1942 that the Wehrmacht achieved its maximum advance on the territory of the Soviet Union. German troops reached Stalingrad, Voronezh, Novorossiysk, and Mount Elbrus.
The reason for these defeats was the overestimation by the command (and primarily Stalin) of the successes of the Soviet troops during the winter counter-offensive of 1941-1942. German troops were driven back from Moscow and Rostov-on-Don, and also abandoned the Kerch Peninsula and reduced pressure on Sevastopol. But they were not completely defeated, especially in the southern direction. The German active actions in 1942 in the southern direction were also logical - these Wehrmacht forces suffered the least.
Another failure of the Red Army in 1942 was the Kharkov operation, which cost the irretrievable loss of 171 thousand Red Army soldiers. Again, as in 1941, the generals - this time A.M. Vasilevsky - asked for permission to withdraw troops, and again Stalin did not give such permission.
An important aspect of the failures of the Red Army during the winter counteroffensive of 1941-1942. there was a lack of the required number of tank formations, which seriously affected the mobility of Soviet troops. Infantry and cavalry broke through the German defenses, but that was often where it all ended - there was almost no one and nothing to surround the enemy, since the superiority in manpower was minimal. As a result, both “cauldrons” (Demyansky and Kholmsky) were rescued by the Germans without any problems after reinforcements arrived. In addition, the encircled German troops in these pockets were supported by transport aviation, which was difficult to fight due to the huge losses of Soviet aviation in the first months of the war.
A common mistake was incorrectly determining the directions of the enemy's main attacks. Thus, in Ukraine, the command of the Southwestern Front, led by General Kirponos, was constantly afraid of the 1st Tank Group turning south, to the rear of the Lvov salient. This led to unnecessary throwing of mechanized corps, and, as a result, to large losses (in the battle of Dubno-Lutsk-Brody - more than 2.5 thousand tanks, during the Lepel counterattack - about 830 tanks, near Uman - more than 200 tanks, under Kiev - more than 400 tanks.)
Repressions in the pre-war period
According to various sources, during the repressions of 1937-1941. From 25 to 50 thousand officers were shot, arrested or dismissed from the armed forces. The most significant losses were suffered by the senior command staff - from brigade commanders (major generals) to marshals. This greatly affected the actions of Soviet troops during the first period of the war.
The fact is that old, experienced commanders who went through the school of the First World War, the Soviet-Polish, and the Civil War (Primakov, Putna, Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uborevich, Blyukher, Egorov and many others) were subjected to repression, and young officers came to their place, often had no experience in commanding large formations, and even in a war against the best army in the world.
Thus, by the beginning of the war, approximately 70-75% of commanders and political instructors had been in their positions for no more than one year. By the summer of 1941, among the command staff of the Red Army ground forces, only 4.3% of officers had a higher education, 36.5% had a secondary specialized education, 15.9% had no military education at all, and the remaining 43.3% had completed only short-term courses junior lieutenants or were drafted into the army from the reserves.
But even solid military experience could not always help to win a victory. For example, General D.T. Kozlov fought since 1915, but was unable to oppose anything to the superiority of the Wehrmacht during the battles in Crimea in the spring of 1942. The same thing happened with V.N. Gordova - long military experience, command of the front (Stalingrad), a number of failures that would have happened under any other commander, and, as a result, removal from office.
Thus, the already indicated reasons for the defeats of the Red Army were superimposed on the lack of good experienced command, which together led to the terrifying defeats of 1941 and, to a lesser extent, 1942. And only by 1943 were the military leaders of the Red Army able to adequately master the art of mechanized warfare, encirclement and destruction large enemy forces, powerful all-front offensives (similar to the German one in the summer of 1941).
Historians and military leaders of the Great Patriotic War are almost unanimous in the opinion that the most significant miscalculation that predetermined the tragedy of 1941 was the outdated doctrine of warfare adhered to by the Red Army.
Historians and military leaders of the Great Patriotic War are almost unanimous in the opinion that the most significant miscalculation that predetermined the tragedy of 1941 was the outdated doctrine of warfare adhered to by the Red Army.
Researchers V. Solovyov and Y. Kirshin, placing responsibility on Stalin, Voroshilov, Timoshenko and Zhukov, note that they “did not understand the content of the initial period of the war, made mistakes in planning, in strategic deployment, in determining the direction of the main attack of German troops.”
Unexpected blitzkrieg
Despite the fact that the blitzkrieg strategy was successfully tested by Wehrmacht troops in the European campaign, the Soviet command ignored it and counted on a completely different beginning of a possible war between Germany and the USSR.
“The People’s Commissar of Defense and the General Staff believed that the war between such major powers as Germany and the Soviet Union should begin according to the previously existing pattern: the main forces enter the battle a few days after the border battles,” Zhukov recalled.
The command of the Red Army assumed that the Germans would launch an offensive with limited forces, and only after the border battles would the concentration and deployment of the main troops be completed. The General Staff hoped that while the covering army would conduct an active defense, exhausting and bleeding the fascists, the country would be able to carry out a full-scale mobilization.
However, an analysis of the strategy of warfare in Europe by German troops shows that the success of the Wehrmacht was primarily associated with powerful attacks by armored forces, supported by aviation, which quickly cut through the enemy’s defenses.
The main task of the first days of the war was not the seizure of territory, but the destruction of the defenses of the invaded country.
A miscalculation by the USSR command led to the fact that German aviation destroyed more than 1,200 combat aircraft on the very first day of the war and actually secured air supremacy. As a result of the surprise attack, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and officers were killed, wounded or captured. The German command achieved its goal: control of the Red Army troops was disrupted for some time.
Poor deployment of troops
As many researchers note, the nature of the location of Soviet troops was very convenient for striking German territory, but detrimental for carrying out a defensive operation. The dislocation that emerged at the beginning of the war was formed earlier in accordance with the General Staff plan to launch preventive strikes on German territory. According to the September 1940 version of the “Fundamentals of Deployment”, such deployment of troops was abandoned, but only on paper.
At the time of the attack by the German army, the military formations of the Red Army were not with their rears deployed, but were divided into three echelons without operational communication with each other. Such miscalculations of the General Staff allowed the Wehrmacht army to quite easily achieve a numerical superiority and destroy Soviet troops piecemeal.
The situation was especially alarming on the Bialystok Ledge, which stretched for many kilometers towards the enemy. This deployment of troops created a threat of deep envelopment and encirclement of the 3rd, 4th, and 10th armies of the Western District. The fears were confirmed: literally in a matter of days, three armies were surrounded and defeated, and on June 28 the Germans entered Minsk.
Reckless counter-offensives
On June 22 at 7 o’clock in the morning, Stalin issued a directive, which said: “troops with all forces and means to attack enemy forces and destroy them in the area where they violated the Soviet border.”
Such an order indicated a lack of understanding by the USSR high command of the scale of the invasion.
Six months later, when German troops were driven back from Moscow, Stalin demanded a counteroffensive on other fronts. Few could object to him. Despite the unwillingness of the Soviet army to conduct full-scale military operations, a counteroffensive was launched along the entire front - from Tikhvin to the Kerch Peninsula.
Moreover, the troops received orders to dismember and destroy the main forces of Army Group Center. The headquarters overestimated its capabilities: the Red Army at this stage of the war was unable to concentrate sufficient forces in the main direction and could not massively use tanks and artillery.
On May 2, 1942, one of the planned operations began in the Kharkov area, which, according to historians, was carried out while ignoring the enemy’s capabilities and neglecting the complications that an unfortified bridgehead could lead to. On May 17, the Germans attacked from two sides and a week later turned the bridgehead into a “cauldron.” About 240 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers were captured as a result of this operation.
Unavailability of inventories
The General Staff believed that in the conditions of an impending war, material and technical means needed to be brought closer to the troops. 340 of the 887 stationary warehouses and bases of the Red Army were located in border districts, including more than 30 million shells and mines. In the area of the Brest Fortress alone, 34 wagons of ammunition were stored. In addition, most of the artillery of the corps and divisions was not in the front-line zone, but in training camps.
The course of military operations showed the recklessness of such a decision. In a short time, it was no longer possible to remove military equipment, ammunition, and fuel and lubricants. As a result, they were either destroyed or captured by the Germans.
Another mistake of the General Staff was the large concentration of aircraft at airfields, while camouflage and air defense cover were weak. If the advanced units of army aviation were based too close to the border - 10-30 km, then the units of front-line and long-range aviation were located too far - from 500 to 900 km.
Main forces to Moscow
In mid-July 1941, Army Group Center rushed into the gap in Soviet defenses between the Western Dvina and Dnieper rivers. Now the way to Moscow was open. Predictably for the German command, Headquarters placed its main forces in the Moscow direction. According to some reports, up to 40% of the Red Army personnel, the same amount of artillery and about 35% of the total number of aircraft and tanks were concentrated on the path of Army Group Center.
The tactics of the Soviet command remained the same: meet the enemy head-on, wear him down, and then launch a counter-offensive with all available forces. The main task - to hold Moscow at any cost - was completed, but most of the armies concentrated in the Moscow direction fell into the “cauldrons” near Vyazma and Bryansk. In two “cauldrons” there were 7 field army departments out of 15, 64 divisions out of 95, 11 tank regiments out of 13 and 50 artillery brigades out of 62.
The General Staff was aware of the possibility of an offensive by German troops in the south, but concentrated most of the reserves not in the direction of Stalingrad and the Caucasus, but near Moscow. This strategy led to the success of the German army in the Southern direction.
The beginning of the war. Reasons for the failures of the Red Army . The implementation of the Barbarossa plan began at dawn on June 22, 1941 with extensive air bombing of the largest industrial and strategic centers, as well as the offensive of the ground forces of Germany and its allies along the entire European border of the USSR (over 4.5 thousand km). Together with the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Hungary, Italy, Romania and Finland participated in combat operations. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people began, which immediately became the most important component of the Second World War for the fate of the peoples of the Earth.
In the first few days, the fascist troops advanced tens and hundreds of kilometers. The invasion forces were directly opposed by the Red Army of the Western border districts. It included 2.7 million Soviet soldiers and officers, 37.5 thousand guns and mortars, 1.5 thousand new tanks and combat aircraft, not counting a significant number of light tanks and aircraft of outdated designs. In the main directions, the enemy managed to ensure superiority by 3-4 times, and in the main attack areas - even more.
On the evening of June 22, the political leadership rashly gave the Armed Forces the order to defeat the invading enemy groups and fight to break into the territories adjacent to the Soviet borders. But already at the end of June, given the unreality of this task, the troops were given a different directive - to switch to strategic defense. Its main boundaries were also designated: the first - along the line of fortified areas along the old (before August 1939) state borders; the second - at 120 - 200 km. to the east. Somewhat later, a decision was made to prepare a third line of strategic importance, capable of providing troops with the ability to cover the close approaches to Leningrad, Moscow and Donbass. At these lines, with the help of the civilian population, trenches, trenches and ditches were dug, anti-tank hedgehogs and barbed wire barriers were installed, long-term firing points and dugouts were set up. The command also brought up troop reinforcements there. Strategic defense pursued the following goals: to exhaust the enemy’s strike forces, drive out his trained personnel and military equipment, and gain time to create the necessary reserves and conditions in order to achieve a radical turn in the course of the war.
Encountering fierce resistance from the Red Army, the Wehrmacht lost about 200 thousand people, over 1.5 thousand tanks and 1 thousand aircraft in the first five weeks of the war. However, the Soviet troops, taken by surprise, were unable to stop the superior enemy forces.
In the central direction, at the beginning of July 1941, all of Belarus was captured and German troops reached the approaches to Smolensk. In the north-west, the Baltic states were occupied, Leningrad was blocked on September 9. In the south, Hitler's troops occupied Moldova and right-bank Ukraine. Thus, by the autumn of 1941, Hitler’s plan to seize the vast territory of the European part of the USSR was carried out.
The rapid advance of the German troops and their successes in the summer campaign were explained by many objective and subjective factors. Hitler's command and troops had experience in modern warfare and extensive offensive operations accumulated during the first stage of World War II. Germany used not only its own, but also the resources of many other European countries to strike at the USSR. The technical equipment of the Wehrmacht (tanks, aircraft, communications equipment, etc.) was significantly superior to the Soviet one in mobility and maneuverability.
The Soviet Union, despite the efforts made during the Third Five-Year Plan, did not complete its preparations for war. The rearmament of the Red Army was not completed. Military doctrine assumed the conduct of operations on enemy territory. The prevailing thesis was that the USSR, in the event of an attack on it, would conduct offensive military operations with little loss of life and turn them into a civil war - between the world proletariat and the world bourgeoisie. Therefore, more than half of the strategic reserves (weapons, ammunition, uniforms, equipment, fuel) were stored near the border and in the first weeks of the war either fell into the hands of the Germans or were destroyed during the retreat.
In this regard, defensive lines on the old Soviet-Polish border were dismantled, and new ones were not created quickly enough. Stalin's biggest miscalculation was his lack of faith in the start of the war in the summer of 1941. Therefore, the entire country and, first of all, the army and its leadership were not prepared to repel aggression. As a result, in the first days of the war, a significant part of Soviet aviation (3.5 thousand aircraft) was destroyed right at the airfields. Large formations of the Red Army were surrounded, destroyed or captured. However, a national catastrophe was avoided because the military-industrial complex remained, albeit deformed due to losses.
According to most domestic historians, one of the main reasons for the major defeats in 1941 was repression in the Red Army on the eve of the war.
Immediately after the German attack, the Soviet government carried out major military-political and economic measures to repel aggression. On June 23, the Headquarters of the Main Command was formed. On July 10, it was transformed into the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. It included I.V. Stalin (appointed Commander-in-Chief and soon became People's Commissar of Defense), V.M. Molotov, S.K. Timoshenko, S.M. Budyonny, K.E. Voroshilov, B.M. Shaposhnikov and G. K. Zhukov. On June 30, the State Defense Committee (GKO) was created, concentrating all power in the country.
At the end of June - the first half of July 1941, large defensive border battles unfolded (defense of the Brest Fortress, etc.). From July 16 to August 15, the defense of Smolensk continued in the central direction. In the northwestern direction, the German plan to capture Leningrad failed. In the south, the defense of Kyiv was carried out until September 1941, and Odessa until October. The stubborn resistance of the Red Army in the summer and autumn of 1941 thwarted Hitler's plan for a lightning war. At the same time, the seizure by Nazi Germany of the vast territory of the USSR with its most important industrial centers and grain regions by the fall of 1941 was a serious loss for the Soviet country.
On June 22, the Soviet border guards and advanced units of the covering troops were the first to take on enemy attacks. Army Group South met with stubborn resistance from Red Army units in the area of Przemysl, Dubno, Lutsk, and Rivne.
The heroic defense of Mogilev lasted 23 days. The battle for the city of Gomel lasted for more than a month. At the beginning of July, the Soviet command created a new line of defense along the Western Dvina and Dnieper. In the area of Orsha, the enemy was thrown back 30 - 40 km.
Despite the stubborn resistance of the Red Army, German troops quickly advanced deeper into the country. Army Group Center attacked the troops of the Western Front. Army Group North invaded the Baltic states, heading towards Leningrad. The Red Army suffered heavy losses, but the enemy's losses were great. The plan for a “lightning war” clearly failed.
Despite the heroism and courage of the Soviet people, Hitler's troops occupied the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and part of the RSFSR. At the beginning of September the siege of Leningrad closed. On September 19, Kyiv fell.
The reasons for the failures of the Red Army in the initial period of the war:
1. The leadership of the USSR exaggerated the importance of the German-Soviet treaty and ignored reports about the likelihood of a German attack on the USSR.
2. Quantitative and qualitative superiority of the enemy in manpower, equipment, and intelligence information.
3. Germany had a mobilized army and experience in modern warfare. The USSR did not have such experience.
4. An erroneous military doctrine that excludes the possibility of the enemy breaking through to great depth. The Red Army was preparing for military operations in the adjacent territory, so the troops were pulled up to the border. The defense was of a focal nature.
5. The Red Army was weakened by massive repressions, and as a result, at the beginning of the war, 75% of regiment and division commanders held positions for about a year.
14. The situation on the Soviet-German front in the summer of 1941-autumn 1942. At the end of June - the first half of July 1941, large defensive border battles unfolded (defense of the Brest Fortress, etc.). From July 16 to August 15, the defense of Smolensk continued in the central direction. In the northwestern direction, the German plan to capture Leningrad failed. In the south, the defense of Kyiv was carried out until September 1941, and Odessa until October. The stubborn resistance of the Red Army in the summer and autumn of 1941 thwarted Hitler's plan for a lightning war. At the same time, the capture by the Nazis by the fall of 1941 of the vast territory of the USSR with its most important industrial centers and grain regions was a serious loss for the Soviet government.
Moscow battle. At the end of September - beginning of October 1941, the German Operation Typhoon began, aimed at capturing Moscow. The first line of Soviet defense was broken through in the central direction on October 5-6. Bryansk and Vyazma fell. The second line near Mozhaisk delayed the German offensive for several days. On October 10, G.K. Zhukov was appointed commander of the Western Front. On October 19, a state of siege was introduced in the capital. In bloody battles, the Red Army managed to stop the enemy - the October stage of Hitler's offensive on Moscow ended.
The three-week respite was used by the Soviet command to strengthen the defense of the capital, mobilize the population into the militia, accumulate military equipment and, above all, aviation. On November 6, a ceremonial meeting of the Moscow Council of Workers' Deputies was held dedicated to the anniversary of the October Revolution. On November 7, a traditional parade of units of the Moscow garrison took place on Red Square. For the first time, other military units also took part in it, including militias who left straight from the parade to the front. These events contributed to the patriotic upsurge of the people and strengthened their faith in victory.
The second stage of the Nazis' offensive on Moscow began on November 15, 1941. At the cost of huge losses, they managed to reach the approaches to Moscow in late November - early December, enveloping it in a semicircle in the north in the Dmitrov area (Moscow-Volga canal), in the south - near Tula. At this point the German offensive fizzled out. The defensive battles of the Red Army, in which soldiers and militiamen died, were accompanied by the accumulation of forces at the expense of Siberian divisions, aviation and other military equipment. On December 5-6, a counteroffensive of the Red Army began, as a result of which the ravine was thrown back 100-250 km from Moscow. Kalinin, Maloyaroslavets, Kaluga, and other cities and towns were liberated. Hitler's plan for a lightning war completely failed.
In the winter of 1942, units of the Red Army carried out offensives on other fronts. However, breaking the blockade of Leningrad failed. In the south, the Kerch Peninsula and Feodosia were liberated from the Nazis. The victory near Moscow in conditions of the enemy’s military-technical superiority was the result of the heroic efforts of the Soviet people.
Summer-autumn campaign of 1942 In the summer of 1942, the fascist leadership relied on capturing the oil regions of the Caucasus, the fertile regions of southern Russia and the industrial Donbass. JV Stalin made a new strategic mistake in assessing the military situation, in determining the direction of the enemy’s main attack, in underestimating his forces and reserves. In this regard, his order for the Red Army to advance simultaneously on several fronts led to serious defeats near Kharkov and in the Crimea. Kerch and Sevastopol were lost.
At the end of June 1942, a general German offensive unfolded. Fascist troops, during stubborn battles, reached Voronezh, the upper reaches of the Don and captured Donbass. Then they broke through our defenses between the Northern Donets and the Don. This made it possible for Hitler's command to solve the main strategic task of the summer campaign of 1942 and launch a broad offensive in two directions: to the Caucasus and to the east - to the Volga.
In the Caucasian direction, at the end of July 1942, a strong Nazi group crossed the Don. As a result, Rostov, Stavropol and Novorossiysk were captured. Stubborn fighting took place in the central part of the Main Caucasus Range, where specially trained enemy alpine riflemen operated in the mountains. Despite the successes achieved in the Caucasian direction, the fascist command was never able to solve its main task - to break into the Transcaucasus to seize the oil reserves of Baku. By the end of September, the offensive of fascist troops in the Caucasus was stopped.
An equally difficult situation for the Soviet command arose in the eastern direction. To cover it, the Stalingrad Front was created under the command of Marshal S.K. Timoshenko. In connection with the current critical situation, Order No. 227 of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was issued, which stated: “To retreat further means to ruin ourselves and at the same time our Motherland.” At the end of July 1942, the enemy under the command of General von Paulus struck a powerful blow on the Stalingrad front. However, despite the significant superiority in forces, within a month the fascist troops managed to advance only 60-80 km and with great difficulty reached the distant defensive lines of Slalin-fada. In August they reached the Volga and intensified their offensive.
From the first days of September, the heroic defense of Stalingrad began, which lasted virtually until the end of 1942. Its significance during the Great Patriotic War was enormous. During the struggle for the city, Soviet troops under the command of generals V.I. Chuikov and M.S. Shumilov in September - November 1942 repelled up to 700 enemy attacks and passed all tests with honor. Thousands of Soviet patriots showed themselves heroically in the battles for the city. As a result, enemy troops suffered colossal losses in the battles for Stalingrad. Every month of the battle, about 250 thousand new Wehrmacht soldiers and officers, the bulk of military equipment, were sent here. By mid-November 1942, the Nazi troops, having lost more than 180 thousand people killed and 500 thousand wounded, were forced to stop the offensive.
During the summer-autumn campaign, the Nazis managed to occupy a huge part of the European part of the USSR, where about 15% of the population lived, 30% of gross output was produced, and more than 45% of the cultivated area was located. However, it was a Pyrrhic victory. The Red Army exhausted and bled the fascist hordes. The Germans lost up to 1 million soldiers and officers, more than 20 thousand guns, over 1,500 tanks. The enemy was stopped. The resistance of the Soviet troops made it possible to create favorable conditions for their transition to a counteroffensive in the Stalingrad area.
Battle of Stalingrad. Even during the fierce autumn battles, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command began to develop a plan for a grandiose offensive operation designed to encircle and defeat the main forces of the Nazi troops operating directly near Stalingrad. G. K. Zhukov and A. M. Vasilevsky made a great contribution to the preparation of this operation, codenamed “Uranus”. To accomplish this task, three new fronts were created: Southwestern (N.F. Vatutin), Don (K.K. Rokossovsky) and Stalingrad (A.I. Eremenko). In total, the offensive group included more than 1 million people, 13 thousand guns and mortars, about 1000 tanks, 1500 aircraft.
On November 19, 1942, the offensive of the Southwestern and Don Fronts began. A day later, the Stalingrad Front advanced. The offensive was unexpected for the Germans. It developed at lightning speed and successfully. On November 23, 1942, a historic meeting and unification of the Southwestern and Stalingrad fronts took place. As a result, the German group at Stalingrad (330 thousand soldiers and officers under the command of General von Paulus) was surrounded.
Hitler's command could not come to terms with the current situation. He formed the Don Army Group consisting of 30 divisions. It was supposed to strike at Stalingrad, break through the outer front of the encirclement and connect with the 6th Army of von Paulus. However, an attempt made in mid-December to carry out this task ended in a new major defeat for German and Italian forces. By the end of December, having defeated this group, Soviet troops entered the Kotelnikovo area and began an attack on Rostov. This made it possible to begin the final destruction of the fascist troops surrounded at Stalingrad. On February 2, 1943, the remnants of von Paulus's army capitulated.
The victory in the Battle of Stalingrad led to a widespread offensive by the Red Army on all fronts: in January 1943, the blockade of Leningrad was broken; in February - the North Caucasus was liberated; in February - March - in the central (Moscow) direction the front line moved back by 130-160 km. As a result of the autumn-winter campaign of 1942/43, the military power of Nazi Germany was significantly undermined.
15. Activities of the USSR in the international arena. The beginning of the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition. Anti-Hitler coalition, a union of states and peoples who fought in the Second World War of 1939-45 against the aggressive bloc of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, militaristic Japan and their satellites. It united states that were at war with the countries of the fascist bloc, but the contribution of its individual participants to the defeat of the enemy was very different. The decisive force of Azerbaijan was the Soviet Union, which played the main role in achieving victory. Four other great powers - the USA, England, France and China - also participated with their armed forces in the fight against Nazi Germany, its allies in Europe and against Japan. On one scale or another, formations of several other countries—Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, India, Canada, the Philippines, Ethiopia, etc.—took part in military operations. Individual states of the AK (for example, Mexico) helped the main its participants mainly through the supply of military raw materials. The creation of the AK began with statements of mutual support made by the governments of the USSR, USA and England after the attack of Hitler Germany on the USSR, Anglo-Soviet and Soviet-American negotiations in the summer of 1941, signing on July 12, 1941 the Soviet-British agreement on joint actions in the war against Germany, the 1941 Moscow meeting of the three powers, as well as a number of other agreements between the allies in the war against the fascist bloc. On January 1, 1942, a Declaration was signed in Washington by 26 states that were at that time at war with Germany, Italy, Japan and their allies; The Declaration contained the obligation of the AK countries to use all the military and economic resources they had to fight against the fascist states and not to conclude a separate peace with them. Subsequently, the allied relations between the participants of the AK were sealed by a number of new documents: the Soviet -the English Treaty of 1942 on an alliance in the war against Nazi Germany and its accomplices in Europe and on cooperation and mutual assistance after the war (signed on May 26), an agreement between the USSR and the USA on the principles applicable to mutual assistance in waging a war against aggression (June 11 1942), the Soviet-French Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance of 1944 (concluded on December 10), resolutions of the Tehran (November-December 1943), Crimean (February 1945) and Potsdam (July-August 1945) conferences of the heads of government of the USSR, USA and Great Britain. Throughout the war, two political lines fought within the AK - the line of the USSR, which consistently and unswervingly sought to make decisions aimed at achieving a quick victory and the development of democracy, the principles of the post-war world order, and the line of the Western powers, which sought to subordinate the conduct of the war and the decisions of the post-war problems for their imperialist interests. These two lines opposed each other in determining the goals of the war, coordinating military plans, developing the basic principles of a post-war peace settlement, creating a new international body for maintaining peace and security - the United Nations, etc. The ruling circles of the USA and England allowed rude violation of allied obligations towards the USSR, which was expressed in the delay in the opening of a second front in Europe in order to bleed and weaken the Soviet Union as much as possible, in repeated delays in the supply of weapons to it, in the attempts made behind the back of the USSR by various representatives of the ruling circles to agree with Nazi Germany on the conclusion of a separate peace. However, the victories of the Soviet armed forces, the consistent line of the USSR to strengthen allied relations, as well as the contradictions between the imperialist states made it possible for the AK as a whole to successfully cope with the tasks that arose throughout the war, right up to the victory over Germany, and then Japan. But soon after the end of the war, the leadership circles of the Western powers began to pursue an unfriendly and then clearly hostile policy towards the USSR and the people's democracies that emerged after the war. The last major political act jointly carried out in this difficult situation by the AK states was the development and conclusion in February 1947 of peace treaties with Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Finland. The USA and England, together with their Western allies, embarked on the path to unleash The arms race, the creation of aggressive military-political blocs, atomic blackmail, the deployment of their armed forces and military bases along the borders of the USSR and other socialist countries marked the beginning of the Cold War, which sharply aggravated the entire international situation.
16. Military actions of the Allies in the Pacific Ocean and North Africa in 1941-1942. Since 1941, a threatening situation has developed for the Allies in the Far East. Here Japan increasingly declared itself as the sovereign master. There was no consensus among Japanese politicians and military personnel about where the main blow should be struck: in the north, against the Soviet Union, or in the south and southwest, to capture Indochina, Burma, India and the countries of Southeast Asia. In July 1941, Japanese troops occupied Indochina. In response, the United States imposed an embargo on oil supplies to Japan. After this, Japan was faced with a choice: to yield to US pressure and leave Indochina, or to provide itself with oil by capturing Indonesia, a Dutch colony that was rich in oil fields. It was decided to start a war against the USA, England and Holland, to destroy the American Pacific Fleet. Early on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japanese aviation and navy suddenly attacked the American naval base of Pearl Harbor (Hawaii Islands), where the main forces of the US Pacific Fleet were located. . The Japanese managed to sink or disable 18 American warships. Half of the aircraft at the base airfield were destroyed. About 2,500 American troops died. The Japanese lost 29 aircraft and several submarines in this operation. The attack on Pearl Harbor marked Japan's entry into the war on the side of the fascist bloc. At the same time, the Japanese blocked the British military base in Hong Kong and began landing troops in Thailand. The English squadron, which came out to intercept, was attacked from the air, and two battleships, the striking force of the British, sank to the bottom. This ensured Japan's hegemony in the Pacific. So, she won the first stage of the largest ocean war in human history.
On December 11, 1941, 4 days after Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Japan's zone of action included China, all of Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the Soviet Far East, and Siberia. By May 1942, Japan had captured a vast territory of 3,880 thousand km2 with a population of about 150 million people. Having calmed down from the first setbacks, the Allies slowly but steadily switched to active defense, and then to the offensive. Japan's advance in the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia was suspended until the summer of 1942. In a naval battle in the Coral Sea (May 1942), Japan's advance towards Australia was thwarted. On June 4-6, 1942, a fierce battle unfolded near Midway Island, in which aircraft carriers played the main role. The Japanese lost 4 of their 8 aircraft carriers, while the US only lost 1. As a result, Japan lost its main strike force. This was the first major defeat of the Japanese fleet, after which Japan was forced to switch from offensive to defensive. A relative balance of power was established in the armed struggle in the Pacific. War in North Africa. On the African continent, a large-scale war began in September 1940 and lasted until May 1943. Hitler’s plans included the creation of a colonial empire on this territory based on the former possessions of Germany, which was to include English and French possessions in Tropical Africa. The Union of South Africa was supposed to be turned into a pro-fascist dependent state, and the island of Madagascar into a reservation for Jews expelled from Europe. Italy hoped to expand its colonial possessions in Africa at the expense of large parts of Egypt, Sudan, French and British Somalia.
At the beginning of 1940, Great Britain had 52 thousand soldiers in Africa. They were opposed by two Italian armies: one in Libya (215 thousand), the other in Italian East Africa (200 thousand). With the fall of France, both Italian armies received freedom of action and directed their power against the British garrisons. In June 1940, the Italians launched an offensive against the British. However, this offensive was not very successful - British troops were only driven out of British Somalia. In September 1940 - January 1941, the Italians launched an offensive with the aim of capturing Alexandria and the Suez Canal. But it was thwarted. The British army inflicted a crushing defeat on the Italians in Libya. In January - March 1941, British troops defeated the Italians in Somalia; in April 1941 they entered the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. The Italians were completely defeated. The failures of the Italians in Africa pushed Germany to take decisive action. In February 1941, the German Expeditionary Force Africa, commanded by General Rommel, landed in North Africa, in Tripoli. Germany provided assistance to allied Italy and began an independent invasion of the Mediterranean. In support of Rommel's corps, a detachment of German submarines moved from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea. Rommel, supported by Italian troops, invaded Egypt at the end of June. However, the further advance of the Italo-German troops stalled. They failed to capture the Suez Canal. The front in North Africa stabilized 100 km from Alexandria, near El Alamein. The position of Rommel's corps began to deteriorate. Losses in personnel and weapons were poorly compensated because the main resources of the Nazis were absorbed by the fight against the USSR. Rommel was cut off from supply bases. Realistically assessing the situation, he left for Europe in March 1943, hoping to convince Hitler and Mussolini of the need to evacuate troops from Africa, but was actually removed from command.
17. Administrative-territorial division of the occupied territory of Belarus during the war years With the arrival of the Nazis, a brutal occupation regime was established on the territory of the USSR - the “new order,” as the Germans called it. Vast areas came under German rule: the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Moldova, part of the central and southern lands of the RSFSR. Throughout the territory of Belarus, the occupation regime was established by the beginning of September 1941, it lasted three terrible years -
until the liberation of the republic in the fall of 1943 and summer of 1944 during Operation Bagration. The political goal of Nazi Germany was the desire to destroy the USSR as a state, to eliminate the socialist system and to disunite the peoples of the Soviet Union, as well as to undermine the biological potential of the Russian people and turn Russia into a conglomerate of disparate territories. The Nazis divided the lands of the BSSR without any regard for national and
cultural integrity of this region. The western regions of the republic (with the cities of Grodno, Volkovysk and the Bialystok district) became part of East Prussia, that is, they were considered part of the Reich itself. The central part (about a third of the pre-war BSSR, with the cities of Minsk and Baranovichi) was included in the Reichskommissariat Ostland as the general district of Belarus. Also, this Reichskommissariat included small areas on
in the north-west of the republic, transferred to the general district “Lithuania”. Until September 1943, the General District "Belarus" was headed by Gauleiter V. Kube, and after his murder by Soviet patriots - by SS Gruppenführer K. von Gottberg. The southern regions of Belarusian Polesie were transferred to two general districts of the Reichskommissariat “Ukraine”. Finally,
The eastern regions of the republic (Vitebsk, Mogilev, part of the Gomel regions) were not transferred to the rule of the German civil administration until the end of the war. They were in the rear zone of Army Group Center (the rear commander was General Max von Schenkendorff). Here power belonged to the military command of 4 security divisions and one
army corps, and on the ground it was carried out by field and local commandant's offices (in 1942, in the rear zone of Army Group Center there were 11 field and 23 local commandant's offices). The general districts were divided into regions - gebits, which, in turn, were divided into districts, districts - into volosts, volosts - into “communal yards” and
villages. The general districts and gebits were headed exclusively by German officials. Representatives of the local population were appointed district and volost chiefs, as well as village elders. In the cities there was a dual administration: German commissariats, as well as city councils headed by a burgomaster from among the residents themselves. A “new order” was established in the occupied lands - a regime based on terror and violence. These were not the “costs of war,” as some Germans tried to justify after the defeat of Germany.
military and politicians. The “New Order” was a pre-thought-out and planned system based on the racial theories of Nazism; for its implementation, even before the outbreak of hostilities, an appropriate apparatus was created and numerous instructions were written.
The main principle in the occupied territories was the arbitrariness and omnipotence of military authorities and officials, complete disregard for norms
rights from the German occupation apparatus. This was the state policy of the Third Reich, enshrined in a number of documents: in the “Instructions on Individual Areas” to Directive No. 21 (03/13/1941), in
Hitler’s directive “On military jurisdiction in the Barabarossa area and on special powers of troops” (05/13/1941), at the disposal of the “Twelve
commandments of the behavior of the Germans in the East and their treatment of the Russians" (06/01/1941), in the order of the commander of the 6th Army, Field Marshal General
64Reichenau “On the conduct of troops in the East” (12/10/1941) and many others. In accordance with these instructions, the German army, officials and colonists were taught that they were complete masters in the occupied territories, and they were relieved of any responsibility for
crimes committed on these lands. At one of the post-war trials, the accused SS man Müller
said: “We saw in every Russian only an animal. This was instilled in us every day by our superiors. Therefore, when committing murders, we did not think about it, since in our eyes the Russians were not people.” The “New Order” was based on a policy of genocide - the deliberate destruction of entire social groups according to nationality.
racial, religious and other principles. The genocide affected the entire population of the occupied territories.
18. Export of the Belarusian population to work in Germany. Politics of genocide. The Nazis developed a plan for the development of the eastern territories - the Ost plan. According to it, it was planned to transform the territories of the former USSR
to a German colony. The local population was subject to the so-called “eviction” - in fact, this meant destruction. The remainder were to be Germanized and turned into slaves
to serve German colonists. It was planned to “relocate” and exterminate 31 million people (80
- 85% Poles, 75% Belarusians, 65% Western Ukrainians, 50% Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians each), and within 30 years after the occupation of the territories of Poland and the USSR, it was planned to destroy 120 - 140 million people. In general, it was about undermining the “vital force” of the Russian
people and their biological extinction by creating unbearable living conditions. Instead of the former population, the eastern lands were to be filled
German colonists, and it was planned to leave some of the local residents who had undergone Germanization as a workforce to serve them. For example, 50 thousand Germans were supposed to be settled in Minsk and 100 thousand local residents were to be temporarily left for use as labor, in Gomel 30 and 50 thousand, respectively, in Vitebsk - 20 and 40 thousand, in Grodno - 10 and 20 thousand, in Novogrudok – 5 and 15 thousand, etc. The policy of genocide was carried out by numerous punitive forces:
Wehrmacht security divisions, SS troops, German field gendarmerie, security service (SD), military intelligence (Abwehr), special Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos (created to destroy “enemies”
Reich"), local police formations and collaborationist units (Belarusian Self-Defense Corps, Russian Liberation Army, etc.).
To implement their plans, the invaders created a system of concentration and death camps. In Europe (in Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium) there were 1,188 camps, through which 18 million people passed. Of these, 11 million
died. Over 260 camps operated on the territory of Belarus, among them the largest in the USSR and the third largest in Europe - Maly Trostenets near Minsk, where, according to rough estimates, more than 206 people died
thousand people. More than 300 thousand people were killed in Vitebsk and Polotsk, about 200 thousand in Mogilev and Bobruisk, about 100 thousand in Gomel, etc. According to incomplete data, about
1.4 million inhabitants of Belarus, of which 80 thousand are children.
However, the common population could not feel safe, even being free. According to the order of the Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces W. Keitel dated September 16, 1941, a system was introduced to suppress the “communist insurgency”
hostage taking, that is, for every killed German soldier, officer or official, 50-100 local residents were exterminated. For example, in Minsk, after the murder of the general commissar by partisans and underground fighters
Belarus V. Cuba in the fall of 1943 punitive forces killed several thousand city residents. The occupiers practiced public executions by hanging, and brutal torture was applied to those who ended up in German dungeons. During punitive operations against partisans, civilians
were burned alive, as was done in the Belarusian village of Khatyn (where 149 residents, including 75 children, died on March 22, 1943). The fate of Khatyn was repeated by another 627 Belarusian villages. In total, during the years of occupation
punitive forces destroyed over 5,295 Belarusian settlements (and in total, 9,200 settlements were destroyed during the war and occupation
points of Belarus). A separate page of genocide is represented by the Holocaust - the extermination of the Jewish population. According to Nazi theory, Jews were subject to
complete destruction as a people inferior and harmful to the Aryan race. In the occupied territories, ghettos were created - places of forced detention and then extermination of Jews, military fortifications and communications.
However, the labor of USSR citizens was used not only for
occupied lands. In 1942, due to the protracted war and the sending of a large number of German workers to the front, the Nazi leadership decided to replace them with people from the occupied territories.
territories. A special department was created under the leadership of F. Sauckel, the General Commissioner for the Use of Labor. He was entrusted with the recruitment and delivery of labor resources to Germany. It was originally planned that this would be a voluntary move.
German propagandists promised foreign workers high salaries, good living conditions, the opportunity to get acquainted with German culture and technologies that would be used in the future
by these workers and in their homeland. Relatives who remained in their homeland were to be paid monthly benefits. However, in practice, the situation of foreigners in Germany was more like imprisonment. Those who arrived from the territory of the USSR were called “ostarbeiters” - eastern workers. They were ordered to sew special signs “Ost” - “East” on their clothes; they were kept in camps in
barracks, leaving the territory was prohibited. Ostarbeiters were mercilessly exploited in the most difficult jobs, paid significantly less,
than German workers, but they did not give money in their hands, but credited it to special savings accounts. Not a single case of money transfer from Germany to the territory of Belarus or to other countries has been recorded.
occupied areas of the USSR! The food of the eastern workers did not even ensure the maintenance of basic working capacity; it was set at the level of norms for Soviet prisoners of war. Directorate of one
from German factories, Krupp described this situation to her superiors this way: “The nutrition of the Russians is indescribably bad, so they are becoming weaker and weaker every day. The survey showed, for example, that some
The Russians are unable to turn the screw, they are so weak physically.” Information about the actual situation of star workers spread very quickly in their homeland, despite all the tricks of Nazi censorship. Therefore, already in the summer of 1942, all voluntariness was discarded, and recruitment began to be carried out exclusively by violent methods. People were seized on the streets and markets, and raids were carried out in cinemas. Often, during punitive operations against partisans, the population of entire villages was expelled to Germany. According to historians, approximately 3 to 5 million Soviet citizens were deported to the Reich, of which about 400
thousand – from the territory of Belarus. This was the “new order” - a regime of terror and murder, a regime
outright robbery and violence.
19. Economic policy of the German occupation authorities. The economic policy of the occupiers was based on the “Directive for the management of the economy in the occupied eastern regions” and was aimed at economic robbery and colonization of the occupied territories. For economic robbery and exploitation of natural resources, a special apparatus was created: the economic headquarters "Oldenburg", the central trading partnership "Vostok" with trading offices in Borisov and other cities, the economic associations "Vostok", "Hermann Goering", "ShoravaWerk", "Trebets" ", "Troll", "Shlyakhtgof", etc. The working day at industrial enterprises was 10-12 hours, the salary was small.
In the rural areas of the western regions of Belarus, the Nazis immediately dissolved collective and state farms and restored private property and 1,509 landowner estates. In the eastern regions, collective farms were initially preserved, but all land, equipment, and livestock were declared the property of the German state. On February 16, 1942, the Minister of the Occupied Eastern Regions, Rosenberg, issued a directive “On a new order of land use,” according to which collective farms were transformed into “communities,” state farms into German state estates and MTS into agricultural centers. On June 3, 1943, Rosenberg issued the “Declaration of Peasant Property Rights,” but in fact, individual plots of land were allocated only to those who had proven their loyalty to the authorities. In general, the economic policy of the Nazis was aimed at exporting the maximum amount of food and raw materials from Belarus. However, they met passive and active resistance from the population and partisans, and as a result they were able to fulfill only 25-40% of the planned supplies.
However, during the four years of occupation, 18.5 thousand vehicles, more than 10 thousand tractors and combines, 90% of machine tools and technical equipment, 8.5 million heads of livestock, 2 million tons of grain and flour, 3 million tons of potatoes and vegetables, 100 thousand hectares of forest were cut down and removed. Cultural and educational institutions were looted. Only direct material losses that were caused to the national economy and population of Belarus amounted to 75 billion rubles. (in 1941 prices), or half of the national wealth of the republic.
20. German propaganda and agitation. Collaborationism. there were people who, for various reasons, agreed to voluntary cooperation with the enemy, served in German institutions, in the police, in various types of military formations. This phenomenon has received
name of collaboration (collaborationism). The term itself came from France, where collaboration was the name given to collaboration with the Germans by the government of Marshal F. Petain, created after the surrender of France in June 1940. The phenomenon of collaboration was also widespread in a number of other European countries where there were pro-fascist parties that openly supported Hitler. Cooperation with the fascist regime manifested itself in various areas, so several types of collaboration can be distinguished. The most obvious were political and military collaborations, manifested in the creation of political and military organizations and institutions (governments, parties, army and police
units) that supported fascism, direct political-administrative cooperation and service with arms on the side of Germany. More complex is civil collaboration (cooperation in everyday life, economic, administrative spheres). This
This type of cooperation with the enemy was not associated with direct betrayal; it was often forced due to the need to survive in conditions of war and occupation of ordinary citizens and ordinary people. The need to earn food for themselves and their families, to ensure physical survival by demonstrating the appearance of loyalty to the new regime pushed people to such forms of cooperation as work in enterprises and institutions, in schools and hospitals. It was impossible to do without everyday contacts with the occupiers, communication, etc. Evaluation of such contacts is not
always clearly negative, since it helped people survive. The reasons why citizens of the USSR took the side of the invaders were different. A small part, especially from among the emigrants who left Russia during the revolution or fleeing
Stalinist repressions, they believed that in this way they were fighting the criminal Bolshevik regime. Some may have subscribed to Nazi racial theory, especially its anti-Semitic tenets. Among the peasantry there were dissatisfied with the collective farm system and the policy of dispossession; they were guided by a sense of revenge. There were also openly criminal elements who thus satisfied their sadistic inclinations and desire for easy enrichment. However, most of them became collaborators due to circumstances, guided by the strategy of survival in war conditions. Among them were prisoners of war, given a choice: service in collaboration units or death. Not everyone had the determination to choose the second, but not change
oath. These are civilians who find themselves in the occupied zone and are forced to feed their families by going to work or serving for the sake of a piece of bread. These are those forcibly appointed at gunpoint by the German
pistol village elders. Finally, there are a number of patriots who entered the service of the occupiers in order to wage an effective fight against the enemy under official cover. On the part of the German leadership, attracting the population of the occupied territories to cooperation was a forced phenomenon. Hitler
was an ardent opponent of granting conquered peoples any kind of self-government or the right to bear arms. However, as the situation at the front worsened, the fascist leadership had to violate its principles. In Belarus, Commissioner General V. Kube began flirting with the population. With his permission, on October 22, 1941, the Belarusian People's Self-Help (BNS) was created under the leadership of the Belarusian emigrant I. Ermachenko, who came from Prague. The leadership of the BNS (the so-called Central) was appointed and removed by the General Commissioner. The goals of the BNS were to provide assistance to those affected by the war, restore
destroyed Belarus, the development of Belarusian culture. However, in reality this organization became a propagandist of the Nazi “new order”, collected
food and warm clothes for German soldiers, provided direct assistance in the deportation of the population of Belarus for forced labor in Germany. BNS leaders tried to use this organization as the first
step in the creation of the Belarusian national government, they proposed organizing armed detachments on its basis to fight the partisans.
For a long time, the German leadership ignored these proposals, but in June 1942, the Belarusian Self-Defense Corps (BCS) was created on the basis of the BNS. This military formation was headed by I. Ermachenko. It was planned
create 3 divisions of the BCS, dispersed throughout the regions. To train the Belarusian officer corps, special courses were opened in Minsk, the head of which was a former officer of the Polish army
F. Kushel. However, difficulties with recruiting volunteers and concerns on the part of the German leadership about the disloyalty of BKS members led to the liquidation
corps in the spring of 1943. The Nazis relied on the creation of police battalions from the local population, but under the direct command of German officers. In September-November 1943, mobilization into these formations was carried out, often forced. However, by the end of 1943, it was possible to recruit only 3 battalions in the amount of 1,481 people. In 1944, 7 battalions (3,648 people) were created through forced conscription. On June 22, 1943, the Union of Belarusian Youth (UBY) was created in
headed by M. Ganko and N. Abramova. The model for this youth organization was the fascist Hitler Youth. They tried to educate Belarusian teenagers on the ideas of National Socialism, in the spirit of devotion to A. Hitler and Great Germany. However, relatively few boys and girls were able to recruit into this organization - about 12.5 thousand. Flirting with the national Belarusian intelligentsia, at the direction of
The Belarusian Scientific Society and trade unions were created in Cuba, and schools were opened. The Nazis spoke demagogically about the need to develop Belarusian culture and language. On June 27, 1943, under the General Commissioner, the Belarusian Council of Trust was created - an advisory body without any real powers. However, on September 22, 1943, Kube was killed and his place was taken by SS Gruppenführer Gottberg. The new leader of Belarus was more skeptical than his predecessor about the possibility of voluntary
cooperation of the local population, so he began to use open violence more often. He did not have confidence in the leadership of the BNS, so Ermachenko was forced to leave Belarus. In December 1943, when part of the territories of the BSSR was liberated by the Red Army, Gottberg initiated the creation of the Belarusian Central
Rada (BCR) - a puppet government under the leadership of President R. Ostrovsky. In order to mobilize local forces and resources, the leadership
The BCR received authority to manage issues of school affairs, culture, and the social sphere. He was also entrusted with the creation of a new military unit - the Belarusian Regional Defense (BKO). In March 1944,
On the eve of the liberation of Belarus, about 25 thousand people were forcibly mobilized into the BKO.
All-Belarusian On June 27, 1943, the Second Congress was organized in Minsk - the last congress of Belarusian collaborators, orchestrated by the Nazi occupation leadership. He declared himself the only legitimate government of Belarus, creating a precedent for future non-recognition of Soviet power. The congress delegates sent a greeting
telegram to Hitler. However, approaching Soviet troops forced the congress to interrupt its work, and its participants fled along with the retreating German army.
In addition to Belarusian collaboration organizations,
In the occupied territories of the BSSR, units of the ROA, the Russian Liberation Army, were also stationed under the command of Soviet General A. Vlasov, who had defected to the Germans. In 1943 to the territory
Lepelsky and Chashniksky districts were transferred to RONA - the Russian Liberation People's Army, commanded by B. Kaminsky, who had previously created the Lokot Republic in the Oryol region under the terms of self-government. Some Belarusians went to serve in these formations. These people can be understood, but it is difficult to justify, since by their actions they objectively helped the enemy and could not help but see it. However, the phenomenon of collaboration has still not been sufficiently studied and causes a lot of controversy.
21. Partisan movement in Belarus during the Second World War. The main activities of the partisans. The attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR put the Soviet people in the face of mortal danger. The situation at the front from the first days showed that the struggle would be long and
exceptionally persistent. It was obvious that it was possible to defend the freedom and independence of the Soviet state and defeat the enemy only if the struggle against the occupiers acquired a nationwide character, if
Soviet people in one form or another will take part in the defense of the Fatherland. The partisans were given tasks: to destroy communications, cars, airplanes behind enemy lines, cause train crashes, set fire to warehouses
fuel and food. Guerrilla warfare must be combative and offensive in nature. “Do not wait for the enemy, look for him and destroy him, giving no rest day or night,” called on the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus. Emphasizing that the guerrilla war in the rear of the occupation forces must
take a comprehensive character, the Party Central Committee, in a resolution dated July 18, noting the desire of the Soviet people to actively fight the fascist invaders, indicated: “The task is to create unbearable conditions for the German interventionists, to disorganize their communications, transport and military units themselves, to disrupt everything their events." To create an underground and form partisan detachments, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) B sent to the occupied regions of the republic only in July
1941 118 groups of party and Komsomol workers and combat detachments with a total number of 2644 people. The fight against the enemy included workers, peasants and intellectuals, men and women, communists, Komsomol members, non-party people, people
of different nationalities and ages. former soldiers of the Red Army who found themselves behind enemy lines or escaped from captivity, the local population. Special groups and detachments of the NKVD of the BSSR made a great contribution to the development of the partisan movement. They helped the partisan forces in protecting them from the penetration of secret service agents of Nazi Germany, who were thrown into partisan detachments and formations on reconnaissance and terrorist missions. The Pinsk partisan detachment (commander V.Z. Korzh) fought its first battle on June 28, attacking an enemy convoy . The partisans set up ambushes on the roads and impeded the advance of enemy troops. The partisan detachment “Red October” under the command of T.P. Bumazhkov and F.I. Pavlovsky in mid-July destroyed the headquarters of the enemy division, destroyed 55 vehicles and armored cars, 18 motorcycles, and captured a large amount of weapons. In August and the first half of September, Belarusian partisans carried out massive destruction of telegraph
telephone communications on the lines connecting army groups “Center” and “South”. Partisan detachments and groups of N.N. were most active in the second half of 1941.
Belyavsky in the Turov region, I.S. Fedoseenko in the Gomel region, I.A. Yarosh in the Borisov region, I.Z. Izokha in the Klichev region and others. From the first days of the enemy invasion, sabotage began and expanded
partisans and underground fighters on railway communications. As you know, after the failure of the “blitzkrieg”, designed to capture Moscow outright, the battered Nazi units were forced to
1941, switch to temporary defense. The organization of partisan formations on the territory of the Vitebsk region, which from the beginning of 1942 became front-line, had a certain peculiarity. Many partisan detachments here maintained close contacts with the Vitebsk Regional Party Committee and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which operated behind the front line, as well as with the Military Councils of the 3rd and 4th Shock Armies. Of great importance was also the creation of the “Surazh (Vitebsk) Gate” (a 40-kilometer gap in the front line at the junction of the German army groups “Center” and “North” between Velizh and Usvyaty), through which sabotage forces were sent from the “Mainland” to the enemy’s rear groups, weapons, ammunition, etc., back to the Soviet rear - wounded, replenishment of the Red Army, food. The gate operated from February to September 1942. Since the spring of 1942, many partisan detachments began to unite into brigades. By the end of 1942, Belarusian partisans had derailed 1,180
enemy trains and armored trains, 7,800 platform cars with manpower and military equipment, blew up 168 railway bridges, killed tens of thousands of German soldiers and officers. By the beginning of 1943, Belarusian partisans controlled about 50 thousand square kilometers of territory, by the end of the year - more than 108 thousand, or about 60 percent of the occupied territory of the republic liberated a territory equal to 38 thousand square kilometers of Belarusian land. During the Great Patriotic War, over 370 thousand partisans fought the enemy in Belarus. The struggle was international in nature. Along with Belarusians, representatives of 70 nationalities and
peoples of the Soviet Union. In the ranks of the partisans there were about 4 thousand foreign anti-fascists, including 3 thousand Poles, 400 Slovaks and Czechs, 235 Yugoslavs, 70 Hungarians, 60 French, about 100 Germans and others. From June 1941 to July 1944, the Belarusian partisans disabled about 500 thousand military personnel of the occupation forces and puppet formations, officials of the occupation administration, armed
colonists and accomplices (125 thousand of them were irreparable losses), blew up and derailed 11,128 enemy trains and 34 armored trains, destroyed 29 railway stations, 948 enemy headquarters and garrisons, blew up, burned and destroyed 819 railway and 4,710 other bridges, killed more than 300 thousand rails, destroyed over 7300 km.
telephone and telegraph communication line, shot down and burned 305 aircraft at airfields, knocked out 1,355 tanks and armored vehicles, destroyed 438 guns of various calibers, blew up and destroyed 18,700 vehicles, destroyed
939 military warehouses. During the same period, the Belarusian partisans took the following trophies: guns - 85, mortars - 278, machine guns - 1,874, rifles and machine guns - 20,917. The total irretrievable losses of the Belarusian partisans in 1941-1944, according to incomplete data, amounted to 45 thousand people .
After the liberation of Belarus, 180 thousand former partisans
continued the war in the ranks of the active army. July 16, 1944 at the Minsk hippodrome (at the end of Krasnoarmeyskaya Street)
A parade of Belarusian partisans took place. The parade was hosted by the commander of the 3rd Belorussian Front, Army General I.D. Chernyakhovsky. It is symbolic that the next day - July 17 - in Moscow on the street. Columns passed Gorky
German prisoners of war captured in Belarus.
22. Party, Komsomol and anti-fascist underground in Belarus during the Second World War: organizational structure, composition, forms and methods of struggle. Simultaneously with the armed partisan struggle, underground anti-fascist activity unfolded in cities and other populated areas. The patriots who remained there, despite the terror, did not let the enemy down. They sabotaged the economic, political and military activities of the invaders, and committed numerous acts of sabotage. This is precisely what the directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of June 30, 1941 focused on.
"On the transition to underground work of party organizations in areas occupied by the enemy." Attention was drawn to the fact that the partisan struggle should be in sight and conducted under the direct leadership of conspiratorial underground structures. More than 1,200 communists were left behind enemy lines alone for organizational and managerial activities, including 8 secretaries of regional committees; 120 secretaries of city and district party committees. In total, over 8,500 communists remained to work illegally in Belarus. Like the partisan formations, the emerging underground immediately independently began sabotage, combat and political activities. In Minsk, already in the second half of 1941, underground fighters blew up warehouses with weapons and military equipment, workshops and workshops for the repair of military equipment, food, and destroyed enemy officials, soldiers and officers. In December 1941, during intense fighting near Moscow, they carried out successful sabotage at a railway junction: the result was that instead of 90-100 trains in
Only 5-6 days were sent to the front. The occupation administration in Minsk received information about
active sabotage and combat activities of the underground fighters of Brest, Grodno, Mozyr, Vitebsk, Gomel. In November 1941, Gomel underground workers T.S. Borodin, R.I. Timofeenko, Ya.B. Shilov planted explosives in the restaurant
and a time bomb. When German officers gathered there to celebrate the successes of the Wehrmacht troops near Moscow, there was a powerful explosion. Dozens of officers and a general were killed. At the railway junction in Orsha, the group of K.S. Zaslonov operated effectively. In December 1941, she used briquette-coal mines to remove
Several dozen locomotives were out of action: some of them were blown up and frozen at the station, others exploded on the way to the front. Characterizing the situation in the frontline zone, the Orsha SD security group reported to its leadership: “sabotage on the railway line
Minsk-Orsha have become so frequent that it is impossible to describe each of them. Not a single day goes by without one or more acts of sabotage." After the battle of Moscow, underground struggle in cities and towns
points in Belarus has intensified. An undoubted role in this was played by the strengthening of connections between the underground and the population, partisan detachments and groups, and the establishment of connections between the leading underground centers and the “Mainland”. The underground members transmitted valuable intelligence data behind the front line, and assistance with weapons and mine-explosive equipment came back through the airfields of the partisan formations. The Minsk underground in 1942 focused on mass propaganda work among city residents, sabotage, and intelligence collection. Along with others, the group was active in Minsk
underground students of the BPI, which later became part of the underground organization headed by former party worker S.A. Romanovsky. In September 1942, members of this group, BPI students Vyacheslav Chernov and Eduard Umetsky, blew up the officers' casino of the German aviation headquarters. As a result of sabotage, more than 30 Nazi officer-pilots were killed and wounded. In March-April 1942, the Nazis dealt a heavy blow to the Minsk
underground. More than 400 people were arrested, including members of the underground city party committee S.G. Zayats (Zaitsev), I.P. Kozinets, R.M. Semenov. On May 7, they, along with 27 other patriots, were hanged. On the same day there were
another 251 people were shot. Nevertheless, the Minsk underground continued to operate. The remaining members of the city party committee and activists carried out a structural
reorganization, 5 underground district party committees and a number of underground groups at enterprises and institutions were created. However, in September-October 1942, the Minsk underground suffered another blow. Hundreds of patriots were arrested, most of them were sentenced to death.
Nevertheless, the underground continued to operate. In the ranks of the Minsk underground, more than 9 thousand people fought the enemy, including about 1000 communists and 1500 Komsomol members. During the occupation, over 1,500 acts of sabotage were committed in Minsk, during one of which Gauleiter V. Kube was destroyed. In Vitebsk in 1941-1942. 56 underground groups operated. One of them in 1942 was led by V.Z. Khoruzhaya, who was sent here by the Belarusian headquarters of the partisan movement. On November 13, 1942, the Nazis captured and after lengthy interrogations tortured her, as well as S.S. Pankova, E.S. Suranova, and the Vorobyov family. Posthumously, V.Z. Khoruzhey was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The underground movement acquired wide scope in Osipovichi, Borisov, Bobruisk,__ The underground movement acquired wide scope in Osipovichi, Borisov, Bobruisk, Zhlobin, Mozyr, Kalinkovichi, and other cities and towns of Belarus. In fact, there was not a single sufficiently large railway station in the republic where patriots did not operate. The underground workers acted boldly and decisively at the railway
Osipovichi station. On the night of July 30, 1943, they committed one of the largest acts of sabotage of the Second World War. The leader of one of the underground groups, Komsomol member Fyodor Krylovich, working at a railway station on the night shift, planted two magnetic mines under a train with fuel, which was supposed to move towards Gomel. However, the unexpected happened. The partisans committed sabotage on
railway and as a result there was an accumulation of trains at the station. The train with fuel was transferred to the so-called Mogilev Park, where there were three more trains with ammunition and a train with Tiger tanks. After the explosion of the mines, at about 10 o'clock a fire raged at the station, which was accompanied by explosions of shells and aerial bombs. As a result of the operation, 4 trains were completely destroyed, including one with tanks, 31 tanks with fuel, 63 wagons with ammunition. The underground Komsomol organization “Young Avengers” was created at the Obol railway station in the Vitebsk region in the spring of 1942. It was headed by a former employee of the Vitebsk factory “Banner of Industrialization”, Komsomol member Efrosinya Zenkova. The underground group included 40 people. Young underground fighters committed 21 acts of sabotage, handed over weapons, medicines, intelligence information to the partisans, and distributed leaflets. In western Belarus there were also mass anti-fascist organizations created on the initiative and under the leadership of the communists,
former leaders of the Communist Party of Belarus, other patriots. In May 1942, on the basis of underground groups in the Vasilishsky, Shchuchinsky, Radunsky and Skidelsky districts, the “District Belarusian Anti-Fascist Committee of the Baranovichi Region” was created. It was headed by G.M. Kartukhin, A.I. Ivanov, A.F. Mankovichi, B.I. Gordeichik. By the fall of 1942, under the leadership of the district committee, more than 260 underground fighters were fighting the occupiers. An important role in the development of the anti-fascist movement in the Brest region belonged to the “Committee for the Fight against German Occupiers” created in May 1942 on the initiative of Communist Party members P.P. Urbanovich, M.E. Krishtopovich, I.I. Zhizhka. The Committee did not limit its activities only to the Brest region, but extended its influence to a number of
districts of Baranovichi and Bialystok regions.
In Gomel, active fight against the enemy was carried out by groups at the railway junction, locomotive repair plant, lumber mill and other enterprises of the city - more than 400 people in total. Their activities were managed by the operational center consisting of T.S. Borodin, I.B. Shilov, G.I. Timofeenko.
The anti-fascist struggle in occupied Mogilev did not stop for a single day. In the spring of 1942, about 40 groups, more than 400 people, united into the underground organization "Relief Committee
Red Army." Analysis of such a historical phenomenon during the Great Patriotic War as the activities of the anti-fascist underground on the territory of Belarus temporarily occupied by the Germans indicates
the fact that the underground from the beginning to the end of its existence (and 70 thousand people passed through it) was closely connected with the masses of the people and relied on their constant support. Most of the Belarusian patriots who took part in the partisan and underground movement
were young people under the age of 26. A significant part of the population, representatives of different social classes and nationalities, took part in the fight against the occupiers. In organizing this struggle, the communists played a significant role, they were in the enemy rear and enjoyed the trust of the local population. Evidence of this is the fact that during three years of enemy occupation the party directly
More than 12.5 thousand patriots entered the occupied territory of Belarus. For heroism and courage, 140 thousand Belarusian partisans and underground fighters were awarded orders and medals, 88 people were awarded the title of Hero
Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of patriots gave their lives for the freedom of their homeland.
Related information.
In military historical literature and in the memoirs of participants in the Great Patriotic War, there are many different reasons for the failures and defeats of the Red Army at the beginning of the war.
Military experts say one of the main reasons for the failures was the miscalculations of the country's military-political leadership in assessing the timing of Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union. Despite the regular receipt of information from Soviet intelligence since mid-1940 about the preparation of Nazi Germany for an attack on the USSR, Stalin did not exclude the possibility that in 1941 war could be avoided and through various political maneuvers the start of it could be delayed until 1942. For fear of provoking a war, the Soviet troops were not given the task of bringing the border districts to full combat readiness, and the troops did not occupy the designated defensive lines and positions before the enemy attack began. As a result, Soviet troops were actually in a peacetime position, which largely predetermined the unsuccessful outcome of the border battles of 1941.
Of the 57 divisions intended to cover the border, only 14 design divisions (25% of the allocated forces and assets) managed to occupy the designated defense areas, and then mainly on the flanks of the Soviet-German front. The construction of the defense was designed only to cover the border, and not to conduct a defensive operation in order to repel the offensive of superior enemy forces.
Before the war, the military-political leadership of the USSR did not sufficiently develop and master the forms and methods of strategic and operational defense. The methods of conducting operations in the initial period of the war were incorrectly assessed. The possibility of the enemy going on the offensive at once with all existing pre-deployed groupings of troops simultaneously in all strategic directions was not provided for.
Difficulties in preparing a theater of military operations (TVD) were created by the transfer of the border and the withdrawal of the bulk of the troops of the western military districts to the territory of Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, the Baltic republics and Bessarabia. A significant part of the fortified areas on the old border was mothballed. There was a need for urgent construction of fortified areas on the new border, expansion of the airfield network and reconstruction of most airfields.
The possibility of conducting military operations on its territory was practically excluded. All this had a negative impact on the preparation of not only defense, but also, in general, theaters of military operations in the depths of its territory.
It also turned out to be a mistake to concentrate the main forces of the Soviet troops in the southwestern strategic direction at the beginning of the war, i.e. in Ukraine, while the fascist troops delivered the main blow in June 1941 in the western direction - in Belarus. The decision to bring supplies of material and technical resources closer to the border, which made them vulnerable at the outbreak of war, was also unjustified.
Not enough attention was paid to the mobilization preparation of industry. The mobilization plans developed for transferring the national economy to a war footing were designed for too long a period.
Before the war, a major organizational and technical reorganization of the Soviet Armed Forces began, which was planned to be completed before 1942. A radical restructuring of the system of operational, combat and political training of the armed forces began. And here major miscalculations were made. Excessively cumbersome formations and associations were created without taking into account the real possibilities of equipping them with modern weapons and staffing. The completion dates for the formation of most new compounds turned out to be unrealistic. As a result, by the beginning of the war, a significant part of them could not be formed, equipped with equipment and trained. This happened, for example, with new mechanized corps that were formed almost simultaneously, many of which turned out to be ineffective.
The Soviet troops were not fully equipped with command and rank-and-file personnel, as well as tanks, aircraft, anti-aircraft guns, automobiles, means of traction for artillery, fuel supply, equipment repair and engineering weapons.
The Red Army did not have sufficient quantities of such important technical equipment as radio, engineering equipment, cars, and special tractors for artillery.
Soviet troops were inferior to the enemy in the number of personnel and artillery, but outnumbered them in the number of tanks and aircraft. However, qualitative superiority was on the side of Germany. It was expressed in better technical equipment, higher coherence, training and staffing of troops. The enemy had tactical and technical superiority in the main aircraft fleet.
For the most part, Soviet tanks were no worse, and the new ones (T34, KB) were better than German ones, but the main tank fleet was badly worn out.
On the eve of the war, enormous damage was caused to the personnel of the Soviet armed forces and intelligence: almost 40 thousand of the most qualified commanders and political workers were subjected to massive repression. The majority of commanders of military districts, fleets, armies, commanders of corps, divisions, regiments, members of military councils, and other party and political workers were arrested and destroyed. Instead, military personnel who did not have the necessary practical experience were hastily promoted to leadership positions.
(Military encyclopedia. Military publishing house. Moscow, in 8 volumes. 2004)
In the management system of the Armed Forces, there were continuous changes in leadership in the central apparatus and military districts. Thus, in the five pre-war years, four chiefs of the General Staff were replaced. In the year and a half before the war (1940-1941), the heads of the air defense department were replaced five times (every 3-4 months on average); from 1936 to 1940, five heads of the intelligence department, etc., were replaced. Therefore, most officials did not have time to master their duties related to the implementation of a wide range of complex tasks before the war.
By this period, the command staff of the German army had acquired the necessary practical skills in command and control, in organizing and conducting large offensive operations, and in using all types of military equipment and weapons on the battlefields. The German soldier had combat training. As the events of the first weeks of the war showed, the presence of combat experience in the German army played an important role in the first successes of the fascist troops on the Soviet-German front.
As a result of the defeat suffered by the European states in the first period of World War II, the economic and military resources of almost all of Western Europe were in the hands of fascist Germany, which significantly strengthened its military-economic potential.
The material was prepared based on information from open sources.
