The first and most difficult day of the Great Patriotic War. Victory will be ours: how the Great Patriotic War began The beginning of the war on June 22, 1941

Article 1. Border of the Soviet Union
Article 2. How the Minister of the Third Reich declared war on the USSR

Article 4. Russian spirit

Article 6. The opinion of a Russian citizen. Memo for June 22
Article 7. Opinion of an American Citizen. Russians are best at making friends and fighting.
Article 8. Treacherous West

Article 1. BORDER OF THE SOVIET UNION

Http://www.sologubovskiy.ru/articles/6307/

On this early morning in 1941, the enemy dealt a terrible, unexpected blow to the USSR. From the first minutes, the border guards were the first to engage in mortal combat with the fascist invaders and courageously defended our Motherland, defending every inch of Soviet land.

At 4:00 on June 22, 1941, after a powerful artillery preparation, the forward detachments of the fascist troops attacked the border outposts from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Despite the enormous superiority of the enemy in manpower and equipment, the border guards fought bravely, died heroically, but did not leave the defended lines without an order.
For many hours (and in some areas for several days), the outposts in stubborn battles held back the fascist units on the border line, preventing them from seizing bridges and crossings across border rivers. With unprecedented perseverance and courage, at the cost of their lives, the border guards tried to delay the advance of the advanced units Nazi troops... Each outpost was a small fortress, the enemy could not take possession of it while at least one border guard was alive.
The Hitlerite General Staff set aside thirty minutes to destroy the Soviet border outposts. But this calculation turned out to be untenable.

None of the nearly 2000 outposts that took upon themselves the unexpected blow of superior enemy forces wavered, did not surrender, not a single one!

The fighters of the border were the first to repulse the pressure of the fascist conquerors. They were the first to come under fire from the enemy's armored and motorized hordes. Earlier than all, they stood up for the honor, freedom and independence of their homeland. The first victims of the war and its first heroes were the Soviet border guards.
The most powerful attacks were carried out at the border outposts located in the direction of the main attacks of the German fascist troops. In the offensive zone of Army Group Center in the sector of the August border detachment, two divisions of the fascists crossed the border. The enemy expected to destroy the border outposts in 20 minutes.
1st frontier post of senior lieutenant A.N. Sivacheva defended herself for 12 hours and was completely killed.

3rd outpost of Lieutenant V.M. Usova fought for 10 hours, 36 border guards repulsed seven attacks of the Nazis, and when they ran out of cartridges they went into a bayonet attack.

The border guards of the Lomzhinsky border detachment showed courage and heroism.

4th outpost of Lieutenant V.G. Malieva fought until 12 o'clock on June 23, 13 people remained alive.

The 17th frontier outpost fought with the enemy infantry battalion until 7 o'clock on June 23, and outposts 2 and 13 held their defenses until 12 o'clock on June 22, and only by order did the surviving border guards retreat from their lines.

The border guards of the 2nd and 8th outposts of the Chizhevsky border detachment fought bravely against the enemy.
The border guards of the Brest frontier detachment covered themselves with unfading glory. The 2nd and 3rd outposts held out until 18:00 on June 22. 4th outpost of senior lieutenant I.G. Tikhonov, located by the river, for several hours did not allow the enemy to cross to the eastern bank. At the same time, over 100 invaders, 5 tanks, 4 guns were destroyed and three enemy attacks were repulsed.

In their memoirs, German officers and generals noted that only wounded border guards were captured, none of them raised their hands, did not lay down their arms.

Having passed a solemn march across Europe, the Nazis from the first minutes faced the unprecedented stubbornness and heroism of the fighters in green caps, although the superiority of the Germans in manpower was 10-30 times, artillery, tanks, aircraft were involved, but the border guards stood to death.
The former commander of the German 3rd Panzer Group, Colonel-General G. Goth, was later forced to admit: “both divisions of the 5th Army Corps immediately after crossing the border came across entrenched enemy outposts, which, despite the lack of artillery support, held their positions until the last one. "
This is largely due to the selection and recruitment of border outposts.

Personnel were recruited from all the republics of the USSR. The junior commanding staff and the Red Army men were called up at the age of 20 for 3 years (they served in naval units for 4 years). The commanding staff for the Border Troops were trained by ten border schools (schools), the Leningrad Naval School, the Higher School of the NKVD, as well as the Frunze Military Academy and the
V. I. Lenin.

The junior commanding staff were trained in the district and detachment schools of the Ministry of Taxes and Communications, the Red Army soldiers - at temporary training points at each border detachment or a separate border unit, and naval specialists were trained in two training border naval detachments.

In 1939 - 1941, when staffing border units and subunits on the western section of the border, the leadership of the Border Troops sought to appoint to command positions in the border detachments and commandant's offices persons of middle and senior command personnel with experience of service, especially participants in hostilities on Khalkhin-Gol and on the border with Finland. It was more difficult to equip the border and reserve outposts with command personnel.

By the beginning of 1941, the number of border outposts doubled, and border schools could not immediately meet the sharply increased need for middle command personnel, therefore, in the fall of 1939, courses were organized for accelerated training of outpost command from junior command personnel and Red Army men of the third year of service, and the advantage was given to those who had combat experience. All this made it possible by January 1, 1941 to fully equip all border and reserve outposts in the state.

In order to prepare for repelling the aggression of Nazi Germany, the Government of the USSR increased the density of protection of the western section of the country's state border: from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea. This section was guarded by 8 border districts, including 49 border detachments, 7 detachments of border ships, 10 separate border commandant's offices and three separate air squadrons.

The total number is 87459 people, of which 80% of the personnel were located directly on the state border, including 40963 Soviet border guards on the Soviet-German border. Of the 1,747 border outposts that guarded the state border of the USSR, 715 were located on the western border of the country.

Organizationally, the border detachments consisted of 4 border commandant's offices (each with 4 line outposts and one reserve outpost), a maneuvering group (detachment reserve of four outposts, totaling 200-250 people), a school for junior commanding staff - 100 people, a headquarters, a reconnaissance department, a political agency and the rear. In total, the detachment had up to 2,000 border guards. The border detachment guarded the land section of the border with a length of up to 180 kilometers, on the sea coast - up to 450 kilometers.
Border outposts in June 1941 had a staff strength of 42 and 64, depending on the specific terrain conditions and other conditions of the situation. At the outpost of 42 people there were the head of the outpost and his deputy, the foreman of the outpost and 4 squad leaders.

Its armament consisted of one Maxim heavy machine gun, three Degtyarev light machine guns and 37 five-shot rifles of the 1891/30 model. pieces for an easel machine gun, RGD hand grenades - 4 pieces for each border guard and 10 anti-tank grenades for the entire outpost.
Effective firing range of rifles - up to 400 meters, machine guns - up to 600 meters.

The head of the outpost and two of his deputies, the foreman and 7 squad leaders were at the border post of 64 people. Her armament: two Maxim machine guns, four light machine guns and 56 rifles. Accordingly, the amount of ammunition was higher. By the decision of the head of the border detachment at the outposts, where the most threatened situation developed, the number of cartridges was increased by one and a half times, but the subsequent development of events showed that this supply was enough for only 1 - 2 days of defensive actions. The only technical means of communication at the outpost was the field telephone. The vehicle consisted of two steam-powered carts.

Since the Border Troops during their service constantly met at the border various violators, including those armed and as part of groups with whom they often had to fight, the degree of preparedness of all categories of border guards was good, and the combat readiness of such units as the border outpost and border post , the ship was virtually permanently full.

At 4 o'clock Moscow time on June 22, 1941, German aviation and artillery simultaneously, along the entire length of the USSR state border from the Baltic to the Black Seas, inflicted massive fire strikes on military and industrial facilities, railway junctions, airfields and seaports on the territory of the USSR to a depth of 250 - 300 kilometers from the state border. Armada of fascist planes dropped bombs on peaceful cities of the Baltic republics, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Crimea. Frontier ships and boats, along with other ships of the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets, with their anti-aircraft weapons, entered the fight against enemy aircraft.

Among the objects on which the enemy inflicted fire strikes were the positions of the covering troops and the places of deployment of the Red Army, as well as military camps of border detachments and commandant's offices. As a result of enemy artillery training, which lasted from one to one and a half hours in various sectors, subunits and units of covering troops and subunits of border detachments suffered losses in manpower and equipment.

The enemy struck a short-term but powerful artillery strike on the towns of the border outposts, as a result of which all wooden buildings were destroyed or engulfed in fire, in a significant part the defensive structures built near the towns of the border outposts were destroyed, the first wounded and killed border guards appeared.

On the night of June 22, German saboteurs damaged almost all wire communication lines, which disrupted the control of border units and the troops of the Red Army.

Following the strikes of aviation and artillery, the German high command moved its invasion troops on a front of 1,500 kilometers from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian mountains, having in the first echelon 14 tank, 10 mechanized and 75 infantry divisions with a total number of 1 million 900 thousand troops equipped with 2,500 tanks , 33 thousand guns and mortars, supported by 1200 bombers and 700 fighters.
By the time of the enemy attack, there were only border outposts on the state border, and behind them, 3-5 kilometers away, there were separate rifle companies and rifle battalions of troops performing the task of operational cover, as well as defensive structures of fortified areas.

The divisions of the first echelons of the covering armies were located in areas remote from their assigned deployment lines at 8-20 kilometers, which did not allow them to deploy in a battle formation in a timely manner and forced them to engage in battle with the aggressor separately, in parts, disorganized and with heavy losses in personnel. and military equipment.

The course of hostilities at the border outposts and their results were different. When analyzing the actions of the border guards, it is imperative to take into account the specific conditions in which each outpost found itself on June 22, 1941. They depended to a large extent on the composition of the enemy's forward subunits attacking the outpost, as well as on the nature of the terrain along which the border passed and the directions of action of the shock groups of the German army.

For example, a section of the state border with East Prussia passed along a plain with a large number of roads, without river barriers. It was in this sector that the powerful German Army Group North deployed and struck. And in the southern sector of the Soviet-German front, where the Carpathian Mountains towered and the San, Dniester, Prut, Danube rivers flowed, the actions of large groups of enemy forces were difficult, and the conditions for the defense of border outposts were favorable.

In addition, if the outpost was located in a brick building, and not in a wooden one, then its defensive capabilities increased significantly. It should be borne in mind that in densely populated areas with well-developed agricultural land plots, building a platoon stronghold for the outpost was a big organizational problem, and therefore it was necessary to adapt premises for defense and build covered firing points near the outpost.

On the last night before the war, the border units of the western border districts carried out enhanced protection of the state border. Part of the personnel of the border outposts was on the border section in border detachments, the main staff in platoon strong points, several border guards remained in the premises of the outposts to guard them. The personnel of the reserve units of the border commandant's offices and detachments were in the premises at the place of their permanent deployment.
For the commanders and Red Army men, who saw the concentration of enemy troops, it was not the attack itself that was unexpected, but the power and cruelty of the air raid and artillery strikes, as well as the massiveness of moving and shooting armored vehicles. There was no panic, fuss and aimless shooting among the border guards. What happened was what had been expected for a whole month. Of course, there were losses, but not from panic and cowardice.

Ahead of the main forces of each German regiment, shock groups moved by force up to a platoon with sappers and reconnaissance groups on armored personnel carriers and motorcycles with the tasks of eliminating border detachments, capturing bridges, establishing the positions of the Red Army covering forces, and completing the destruction of border outposts.

In order to ensure surprise, these enemy units began to advance in some sections of the border during the period of artillery and aviation preparation. To complete the destruction of the personnel of the border outposts, tanks were used, which, being at a distance of 500 - 600 meters, fired at the strongholds of the outposts, remaining out of the reach of the outpost's weapons.

The first who discovered the crossing of the state border of the reconnaissance units of the German fascist troops were border detachments who were in service. Using previously prepared trenches, as well as folds of terrain and vegetation, as a shelter, they entered into battle with the enemy and thereby gave a signal of danger. Many border guards were killed in the battle, and the survivors retreated to the strongholds of the outposts and joined in defensive actions.

On the river border sectors, the enemy's forward subunits strove to seize the bridges. Border guards to guard the bridges were sent out in the composition of 5 - 10 people with a light, and sometimes with a heavy machine gun. In most cases, border guards interfered with the capture of bridges by the enemy's forward groups.

The enemy attracted armored vehicles to capture the bridges, carried out the crossing of his forward units on boats and pontoons, surrounded and destroyed border guards. Unfortunately, the border guards did not have the opportunity to blow up the bridges across the border river and they got to the enemy in good order. The rest of the outpost personnel also took part in the battles to hold bridges on the border rivers, inflicting serious losses on the enemy infantry, but being powerless against enemy tanks and armored vehicles.

Thus, while protecting the bridges across the Western Bug River, the personnel of the 4th, 6th, 12th and 14th border outposts of the Vladimir-Volynsky border detachment were killed in full. The 7th and 9th border outposts of the Przemysl border detachment were also killed in unequal battles with the enemy, defending the bridges over the San River.

In the zone where the shock groupings of the German fascist troops were advancing, the advanced enemy units were stronger in size and armament than the frontier post, and, moreover, had tanks and armored personnel carriers in their composition. In these directions, border outposts could hold back the enemy only up to one or two hours. The border guards with fire from machine guns and rifles repelled the attack of the enemy infantry, but enemy tanks, after the destruction of defensive structures with cannon fire, rushed into the outpost stronghold and completed their destruction.

In some cases, the border guards managed to knock out one tank, but in most cases they were powerless against armored vehicles. In an unequal struggle with the enemy, the personnel of the outpost almost all perished. The border guards, who were in the basements of the brick buildings of the outposts, held out for the longest, and, continuing to fight, died, blown up by German landmines.

But the personnel of many outposts continued to fight the enemy from the strongholds of the outposts to the last man. These battles continued throughout June 22, and individual outposts fought surrounded for several days.

For example, the 13th outpost of the Vladimir-Volynsky border detachment, relying on strong defensive structures and favorable terrain conditions, fought surrounded for eleven days. The defense of this outpost was facilitated by the heroic actions of the garrisons of pillboxes in the fortified area of ​​the Red Army, which, during the period of artillery and aviation preparation of the enemy, prepared for defense and met him with powerful fire from guns and machine guns. In these pillboxes, commanders and Red Army men defended themselves for many days, and in some places even more than a month. German troops were forced to bypass the area, and then, using poisonous fumes, flamethrowers and explosives, destroy the heroic garrisons.
Having joined the ranks of the Red Army, together with it, the border guards bore the whole brunt of the struggle against the German invaders, fought against the agents of his intelligence, reliably protected the rear of the Fronts and Armies from saboteur attacks, destroyed the breakthrough groups and the remnants of the encircled enemy groups, showing heroism and chekist ingenuity everywhere , steadfastness, courage and selfless devotion to the Soviet Motherland.

Summing up, it must be said that on June 22, 1941, the fascist German command moved a monstrous war machine against the USSR, which fell on the Soviet people with special cruelty, which had neither measure nor name. But in this difficult situation, the Soviet border guards did not flinch. In the very first battles, they showed boundless devotion to the Fatherland, unshakable will, the ability to remain steadfast and courageous, even in moments of mortal danger.

Many details of the battles of several dozen border outposts remain still unknown, as well as the fate of many border defenders. Among the irrecoverable losses of border guards in battles in June 1941, more than 90% were “missing”.

Not intended to repel an armed invasion of the enemy's regular troops, the border outposts stood firm under the onslaught of the superior forces of the German army and its satellites. The death of the border guards was justified by the fact that, dying in whole units, they provided access to the defensive lines of the covering parts of the Red Army, which, in turn, ensured the deployment of the main forces of the Armies and Fronts and ultimately created conditions for the defeat of the German armed forces and the liberation of the peoples of the USSR and Europe from fascism.

For the courage and heroism shown in the first battles with the Nazi invaders on the state border, 826 border guards were awarded orders and medals of the USSR. 11 border guards were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, of which five were posthumously awarded. The names of sixteen border guards were assigned to the outposts where they served on the day the war began.

Here are just a few episodes of the battles on that first day of the war and the names of the heroes:

Platon Mikhailovich Kubov

The name of the small Lithuanian village of Kybartai became widely known to many Soviet people on the very first day of the Great Patriotic War - a border outpost was located nearby, selflessly entering into an unequal battle with a superior enemy.

No one slept at the outpost that memorable night. Border detachments now and then reported on the appearance of Nazi troops near the border. With the first bursts of enemy shells, the fighters took up a perimeter defense, and the head of the outpost, Lieutenant Kubov, with a small group of border guards drove to the place of the outbreak of firefight. Three columns of the Nazis were heading for the outpost. If he and his group take a fight here, he will try to delay the enemy as much as possible, the outpost will have time to prepare well for a meeting with the invaders ...

A handful of soldiers under the command of 27-year-old Lieutenant Platon Kubov, carefully disguised, repelled enemy attacks for several hours. One by one, all the fighters were killed, but Kubov continued to fire from a machine gun. Out of cartridges. Then the lieutenant jumped on his horse and rushed to the outpost.

The small garrison became one of the many fortified outposts that blocked, even if only for hours, the enemy's path. The border guards of the outpost fought to the last bullet, to the last grenade ...

In the evening, local residents came to the smoking ruins of the border outpost. Among the piles of killed enemy soldiers, they found the mutilated bodies of border guards and buried them in a mass grave.

Several years ago, the ashes of the heroes of the Kubovites were transferred to the territory of the newly rebuilt outpost, which on August 17, 1963 was named after P.M.Kubov, a communist, a native of the village of Revolutionary Kursk region.

Alexey Vasilievich Lopatin

In the early morning of June 22, 1941, shell explosions thundered in the courtyard of the 13th outpost of the Vladimir-Volynsky border detachment. And then planes with a fascist swastika flew over the outpost. War! For 25-year-old Alexei Lopatin, a native of the village of Dyukov, Ivanovo region, it began literally from the first minute. The lieutenant, who had graduated from a military school two years earlier, commanded the outpost.

The Nazis hoped to crush a small unit on the move. But they miscalculated. Lopatin organized a strong defense. For more than an hour, a group sent to the bridge across the Bug did not allow the enemy to cross the river. The heroes died every one of them. The Nazis attacked the defense at the outpost for more than a day, and failed to break the resistance of the Soviet soldiers. Then the enemies surrounded the outpost, deciding that the border guards would surrender themselves. But machine guns continued to interfere with the advance of the Nazi columns. On the second day, the SS company was scattered, thrown into the small garrison. On the third day, the Nazis sent a fresh unit with artillery to the outpost. By this time, Lopatin hid his soldiers and the families of the command staff in a safe basement of the barracks and continued the battle.

On June 26, Hitler's guns rained fire on the ground part of the barracks. However, new attacks by the fascists were again repulsed. On June 27, termite shells rained down on the outpost. The SS men hoped to force the Soviet fighters out of the basement with fire and smoke. But again the wave of the Nazis rolled back, met with well-aimed shots from the Lopatins. On June 29, women and children were sent out from under the ruins, while the border guards, including the wounded, remained to fight to the end.

And the battle continued for three more days, until the ruins of the barracks collapsed under heavy artillery fire ...

The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded by the Motherland of a brave warrior, candidate for party membership, Alexei Vasilyevich Lopatin. His name was given on February 20, 1954 to one of the outposts on the western border of the country.

Fedor Vasilievich Morin

A birch tree at the third blockhouse stood like a wounded soldier with a crutch, leaning on a hanging branch, broken by a shell fragment. The ground shook around, black smoke drifting over the ruins of the outpost. The howl had been going on for more than seven hours.

In the morning the outpost had no telephone connection with the headquarters. There was an order from the chief of the detachment to withdraw to the rear lines, but a messenger sent from the commandant's office did not reach the outpost, struck by a stray bullet. And Lieutenant Fyodor Marin did not even think about retreating without an order.

Rus, give up! - the fascists shouted.

Marin gathered in the blockhouse the seven remaining soldiers in the ranks, hugged each and kissed them.

Better death than captivity, - said the commander to the border guards.

We will die, but we will not surrender, - he heard in response.

Put on your caps! Let's go in full shape.

They loaded their rifles with the last rounds of ammunition, hugged one more time and went to the enemy. Marin sang "Internationale", the soldiers picked up, and over the conflagration rang: "This is our last and decisive battle ..."

Two days later, the fascist sergeant-major, taken prisoner by the soldiers of the Red Army battalion, told how the Nazis were dumbfounded when they heard the revolutionary anthem through the roar.

Lieutenant Fyodor Vasilyevich Morin, posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, is still in the ranks of the border guards. His name was assigned on September 3, 1965, to the outpost, which he commanded.

Ivan Ivanovich Parkhomenko

Awakened at dawn on June 22, 1941 by the roar of artillery cannonade, the head of the outpost, senior lieutenant Maksimov, jumped on his horse and rushed to the outpost, but before reaching it, he was seriously wounded. The defense was led by political instructor Kiyan, but he too soon died in a battle with the Nazis. The command of the outpost was taken over by Sergeant Major Ivan Parkhomenko. Carrying out his instructions, machine gunners and riflemen fired accurately at the Nazis crossing the Bug, trying to prevent them from reaching our shore. But the enemy's superiority was too great ...

The fearlessness of the foremen gave the border guards strength. Parkhomenko invariably appeared where the battle was especially fierce, where his courage and commanding will were needed. A fragment of an enemy shell did not pass Ivan. But even with a broken collarbone, Parkhomenko continued to lead the battle.

The sun was already at its zenith when the trench, in which the last defenders of the outpost were concentrated, was surrounded. Only three people could shoot, including the foreman. Parkhomenko had the last grenade left. The Nazis were approaching the trench. The foreman, gathering his strength, threw a grenade at the approaching car, killing three officers. Bleeding, Parkhomenko slid to the bottom of the trench ...

Before the company of the Nazis, they were exterminated by the soldiers of the frontier post under the command of Ivan Parkhomenko, at the cost of their lives they delayed the enemy's advance for eight hours.

On October 21, 1967 the name of the Komsomol member I. I. Parkhomenko was given to one of the border outposts.
Eternal glory and memory to the Heroes !!! We remember you !!!
http://gidepark.ru/community/832/content/1387276

The tragedy of June 1941 has been studied far and wide. And the more it is studied, the more questions remain.
Today I would like to give the floor to an eyewitness to those events.
His name is Valentin Berezhkov. He worked as a translator. Translated for Stalin. He left a book of magnificent memoirs.
On June 22, 1941, Valentin Mikhailovich Berezhkov met ... in Berlin.
His memories are truly priceless.
As they tell us, Stalin was afraid of Hitler. I was afraid of everything and therefore did nothing to prepare for war. And they also lie that everyone, including Stalin, was confused and scared when the war began.
And this is how it really was.
As Foreign Minister of the Third Reich, Joachim von Ribbentrop declared war on the USSR.
“Suddenly, at 3 am, or 5 am Moscow time (it was already Sunday, June 22), the phone rang. Some unfamiliar voice announced that Reichs Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was waiting for Soviet representatives in his office at the Foreign Office on Wilhelmstrasse. Already from this barking unfamiliar voice, from the extremely official phraseology, something ominous breathed.
As we drove out to Wilhelmstrasse, from a distance we saw a crowd outside the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although it was daylight, the cast-iron canopy was brightly lit by floodlights. Photo reporters, cameramen and journalists were bustling around. The official jumped out of the car first and opened the door wide. We left, blinded by the light of Jupiters and the flashes of magnesium lamps. An alarming thought flashed through my head - is it really a war? There was no other way to explain such a crowd on the Wilhelmstrasse, and even at night. Photographers and cameramen accompanied us relentlessly. Every now and then they ran ahead, clicking the bolts. A long corridor led to the minister's apartment. Along it, stretched out, stood some people in uniform. At our appearance, they loudly clicked their heels, raising their hand up in a fascist greeting. Finally we found ourselves in the minister's office.
At the back of the room was a desk, at which Ribbentrop sat in his everyday gray-green ministerial uniform.
When we came close to the writing table, Ribbentrop got up, silently nodded his head, extended his hand and invited us to follow him to the opposite corner of the room at the round table. Ribbentrop had a swollen crimson face and dull, as if stopped, inflamed eyes. He walked in front of us, head down and staggering a little. "Isn't he drunk?" - flashed through my head. After we sat down and Ribbentrop began to speak, my assumption was confirmed. He apparently really drank thoroughly.
The Soviet ambassador was never able to present our statement, the text of which we took with us. Ribbentrop, raising his voice, said that now it will be about something completely different. Stumbling over almost every word, he began to explain in a rather confused way that the German government had data on the increased concentration of Soviet troops on the German border. Ignoring the fact that over the past weeks, the Soviet embassy, ​​on behalf of Moscow, had repeatedly drawn the attention of the German side to egregious cases of violations of the Soviet Union border by German soldiers and aircraft, Ribbentrop said that Soviet servicemen violated the German border and invaded German territory, although such facts reality was not.
Ribbentrop further explained that he summarized the content of Hitler's memorandum, the text of which he immediately handed over to us. Then Ribbentrop said that the German government viewed the situation as a threat to Germany at a time when she was leading a life-and-death war with the Anglo-Saxons. All this, said Ribbentrop, is regarded by the German government and personally by the Fuehrer as an intention of the Soviet Union to stab the German people in the back. The Fuhrer could not tolerate such a threat and decided to take measures to protect the life and safety of the German nation. The Fuhrer's decision is final. An hour ago, German troops crossed the border of the Soviet Union.
Then Ribbentrop began to assure that these actions of Germany are not aggression, but only defensive measures. After that Ribbentrop got up and stretched out to his full height, trying to give himself a solemn air. But his voice clearly lacked firmness and confidence when he uttered the last phrase:
- The Fuehrer instructed me to officially announce these defensive measures ...
We got up too. The conversation was over. Now we knew that the shells were already bursting on our land. After the robbery attack had taken place, the war was officially declared ... Nothing could be changed here. Before leaving, the Soviet ambassador said:
- This is an impudent, unprovoked aggression. You will still regret that you have carried out a robbery attack on the Soviet Union. You will pay dearly for this ... ".
And now the end of the scene. Scenes of the declaration of war on the Soviet Union. Berlin. June 22, 1941. Office of the Reich Foreign Minister Ribbentrop.
“We turned and headed for the exit. And then the unexpected happened. Ribbentrop, the seed, hastened after us. He began to swiftly, in a whisper, assure that he personally was against this decision of the Fuehrer. He even allegedly dissuaded Hitler from attacking the Soviet Union. Personally, he, Ribbentrop, considers it insane. But there was nothing he could do. Hitler made this decision, he did not want to listen to anyone ...
- Tell in Moscow that I was against the attack, - we heard the last words of the Reich Minister, when we were already going out into the corridor ... ".
Source: V. Berezhkov "Pages of Diplomatic History", "International Relations"; Moscow; 1987; http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/berezhkov_vm2/01.html
My comment: Drunk Ribbentrop and USSR Ambassador Dekanozov, who not only “is not afraid”, but also speaks directly with completely non-diplomatic frankness. It is also worth noting that the German "official version" of the beginning of the war completely coincides with the version of Rezun-Suvorov. More precisely, the London prisoner-writer, traitor-defector Rezun rewrote the version of Nazi propaganda in his books.
Like, poor defenseless Hitler defended himself in June 1941. And they believe this in the West? They believe. And they want to instill this belief in the population of Russia. At the same time, Western historians and politicians believe Hitler only once: June 22, 1941. Neither before nor after they do not believe him. After all, Hitler said that he attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, exclusively defending himself against Polish aggression. Western historians believe the Fuhrer only when it is necessary to discredit the USSR-Russia. The conclusion is simple: whoever believes Rezun, he believes Hitler.
I hope you are starting to understand a little better why Stalin considered an attack on Germany an impossible foolishness.
P.S. The fate of the characters in this scene was different.
Joachim von Ribbentrop was hanged by the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Because he knew too much about the behind-the-scenes politics on the eve and during the world war.
Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov - the then ambassador of the USSR in Germany was shot by the Khrushchevites in December 1953. After the murder of Stalin, and then the murder of Beria, the traitors did the same thing that happened in 1991: they smashed the security organs. They cleaned out everyone who knew and who knew how to make politics at the "world level". And Dekanozov knew a lot (read his biography).
Valentin Mikhailovich Berezhkov lived a difficult and interesting life. I recommend everyone to read his book of memoirs.
http://nstarikov.ru/blog/18802

Article 3. Why was the German attack on the USSR called "treacherous"?

Today, on the 71st anniversary of the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, I would like to write about an issue that, in my memory, did not become the subject of discussion, although it lies right on the surface.
On July 3, 1941, addressing the Soviet people, Stalin called the Nazi attack "treacherous."
Below is the full text of that speech, including the audio recording. But it's worth starting by looking for an answer to the question why Stalin called the attack "treacherous"? Why already on June 22 in Molotov's speech, when the country learned about the beginning of the war, Vyacheslav Molotov said: "This unheard-of attack on our country is treachery unparalleled in the history of civilized peoples."
What is "perfidy"? It means "broken faith." In other words, both Stalin and Molotov characterized Hitler's aggression as an act of "broken faith." But faith in what? So, Stalin believed Hitler, and Hitler broke this faith?
How else to take this word? The USSR was headed by a world-class politician, and he knew how to call a spade a spade.
I offer one of the answers to this question. Found it in an article by our famous historian Yuri Rubtsov. He is a Doctor of Historical Sciences, a professor at the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

Yuri Rubtsov writes:
“During all 70 years that have passed since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, public consciousness has been looking for an answer to an outwardly very simple question: how did it happen that the Soviet leadership, having seemingly irrefutable evidence of Germany's preparation of aggression against the USSR, the opportunity was not believed and was taken by surprise?
This seemingly simple question is one of those to which people are endlessly looking for an answer. One of the answer options is that the leader became a victim of a large-scale disinformation operation carried out by the German special services.
The Hitlerite command understood that surprise and the maximum force of an attack on the troops of the Red Army could be ensured only when attacking from a position of direct contact with them.
Tactical surprise in the first strike was achieved only on condition that the date of the attack was kept secret until the last moment.
On May 22, 1941, as part of the final stage of the operational deployment of the Wehrmacht, the transfer of 47 divisions began to the border with the USSR, including 28 tank and motorized.
Generally speaking, all versions of why such a mass of troops are concentrated in Soviet border, were reduced to the main two:
- to prepare for the invasion of the British Isles, here, in the distance, to protect them from attacks by British aviation;
- to forcefully ensure a favorable course of negotiations with the Soviet Union, which, according to Berlin's hints, were about to begin.
As expected, a special disinformation operation against the USSR began long before the first German military echelons moved east on May 22, 1941.
A. Hitler took a personal and far from formal participation in it.
Let's say about a personal letter that the Fuhrer sent on May 14 to the leader of the Soviet people. In it, by that time, near the borders of the Soviet Union, about 80 German divisions Hitler explained by the need "to organize troops away from British eyes and in connection with the recent operations in the Balkans." “Perhaps this gives rise to rumors about the possibility of a military conflict between us,” he wrote in a confidential tone. - I want to assure you - and I give my word of honor that this is not true ... "
The Fuehrer promised, starting from June 15-20, to begin a massive withdrawal of troops from the Soviet borders to the west, and before that he implored Stalin not to succumb to provocations, to which those German generals who, out of sympathy for England, "forgot their duty" ... “I look forward to seeing you in July. Yours sincerely, Adolf Hitler "- on such a" high "note

He was finishing his letter.
This was one of the peaks of the disinformation operation.
Alas, the Soviet leadership took the Germans' explanations at face value. Striving at all costs to avoid war and not give the slightest pretext for an attack, Stalin until the last day forbade bringing the troops of the border districts on alert. As if the reason for the attack somehow worried the Nazi leadership ...
On the last day before the war, Goebbels wrote in his diary: “The question about Russia is becoming more acute every hour. Molotov asked for a visit to Berlin, but received a decisive refusal. A naive assumption. This should have been done six months ago ... "
Yes, if Moscow really got alarmed at least half a year before, but half a month before the "X" hour! However, the magic of confidence that a clash with Germany could be avoided was so dominant in Stalin that, even after receiving confirmation from Molotov about Germany's declaration of war, in a directive issued on June 22 at 7 o'clock. 15 minutes. For the Red Army to repel the invading enemy, he forbade our troops, with the exception of aviation, to cross the line of the German border. "
Here is a document cited by Yuri Rubtsov.

Of course, if Stalin believed Hitler's letter, in which he wrote “I look forward to meeting in July. Sincerely yours, Adolf Hitler, "then it becomes possible to understand correctly why both Stalin and Molotov called the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union with the word" treacherous ".

Hitler "broke the faith" of Stalin ...

Here, perhaps, it is necessary to dwell on two episodes of the first days of the war.
In recent years, a lot of dirt has been poured onto Stalin. Khrushchev lied that Stalin, they say, hid in the country and was in shock. Documents don't lie.
Here is the "JOURNAL OF JV STALIN'S VISITS IN HIS KREMLIN OFFICE" in June 1941.
Since this historical material was prepared for publication by employees working under the leadership of Alexander Yakovlev, who had a certain hatred of Stalin, there is no doubt about the authenticity of the documents cited. They are published in publications:
- 1941: In 2 books. Book 1 / Comp. L. E. Reshin et al. M.: Mezhdunar. Fund "Democracy", 1998. - 832 p. - ("Russia. XX century. Documents" / Ed. By Academician A. N. Yakovlev) ISBN 5-89511-0009-6;
- The State Defense Committee decides (1941-1945). Figures, Documents. - M .: OLMA-PRESS, 2002 .-- 575 p. ISBN 5-224-03313-6.

Below you will familiarize yourself with the entries "Journal of JV Stalin's visits to his Kremlin office" from June 22 to June 28, 1941. The publishers note:
“The dates of the reception of visitors, which took place outside Stalin's office, are marked with an asterisk. The journal entries sometimes contain the following errors: the day of the visit is indicated twice; there are no entry and exit dates for visitors; the ordinal numbering of visitors is violated; there is an incorrect spelling of surnames. "

So, before you are the real concerns of Stalin in the first days of the war. Notice, no dacha, no shock. From the first minutes of the meeting and conference for decision-making and distribution of instructions. In the very first hours, the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was created.

June 22, 1941
1. Molotov NCO, deputy. Prev SNK 5.45-12.05
2. Beria NKVD 5.45-9.20
3. Tymoshenko NPO 5.45-8.30
4. Mehlis Beginning. GlavPUR KA 5.45-8.30
5. Zhukov NGSH KA 5.45-8.30
6. Malenkov Sekr. Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) 7.30-9.20
7. Mikoyan Deputy. Prev SNK 7.55-9.30
8. Kaganovich NKPS 8.00-9.35
9. Voroshilov Deputy. Prev SNK 8.00-10.15
10. Vyshinsky sotr. MFA 7.30-10.40
11. Kuznetsov 8.15-8.30
12. Dimitrov, member. Comintern 8.40-10.40
13. Manuilsky 8.40-10.40
14. Kuznetsov 9.40-10.20
15. Mikoyan 9.50-10.30
16. Molotov 12.25-16.45
17. Voroshilov 10.40-12.05
18. Beria 11.30-12.00
19. Malenkov 11.30-12.00
20. Voroshilov 12.30-16.45
21. Mikoyan 12.30-14.30
22. Vyshinsky 13.05-15.25
23. Shaposhnikov deputy. Non-profit organization for UR 13.15-16.00
24. Tymoshenko 14.00-16.00
25. Zhukov 14.00-16.00
26. Vatutin 14.00-16.00
27. Kuznetsov 15.20-15.45
28. Kulik deputy. NKO 15.30-16.00
29. Beria 16.25-16.45
Latest came out at 16.45

June 23, 1941
1. Molotov, member. GC rates 3.20-6.25
2. Voroshilov, member. GC rates 3.20-6.25
3. Beria, member. Rates TC 3.25-6.25
4. Tymoshenko, member. GC rates 3.30-6.10
5. Vatutin 1st deputy. NGSH 3.30-6.10
6. Kuznetsov 3.45-5.25
7. Kaganovich NKPS 4.30-5.20
8. Zhigarev teams. Air Force KA 4.35-6.10

Latest released 6.25

June 23, 1941
1. Molotov 18.45-01.25
2. Zhigarev 18.25-20.45
3. Tymoshenko NPO of the USSR 18.59-20.45
4. Merkulov NKVD 19.10-19.25
5. Voroshilov 20.00-01.25
6. Voznesensky Prev. Gospl., Deputy. Prev SNK 20.50-01.25
7. Mehlis 20.55-22.40
8. Kaganovich NKPS 23.15-01.10
9. Vatutin 23.55-00.55
10. Tymoshenko 23.55-00.55
11. Kuznetsov 23.55-00.50
12. Beria 24.00-01.25
13. Vlasik early. personal guard
Latest came out 01.25 24 / VI 41

June 24, 1941
1. Malyshev 16.20-17.00
2. Voznesensky 16.20-17.05
3. Kuznetsov 16.20-17.05
4. Kizakov (Leningrad) 16.20-17.05
5. Salzman 16.20-17.05
6. Popov 16.20-17.05
7. Kuznetsov (Kr.m.fl.) 16.45-17.00
8. Beria 16.50-20.25
9. Molotov 17.05-21.30
10. Voroshilov 17.30-21.10
11. Tymoshenko 17.30-20.55
12. Vatutin 17.30-20.55
13. Shakhurin 20.00-21.15
14. Petrov 20.00-21.15
15. Zhigarev 20.00-21.15
16. Golikov 20.00-21.20
17. Shcherbakov secretary of the 1st MGK 18.45-20.55
18. Kaganovich 19.00-20.35
19. Suprun pilot-test. 20.15-20.35
20. Zhdanov, member p / bureau, secretary 20.55-21.30
Latest came out at 21.30

June 25, 1941
1. Molotov 01.00-05.50
2. Shcherbakov 01.05-04.30
3. Peresypkin NKS, deputy. NCO 01.07-01.40
4. Kaganovich 01.10-02.30
5. Beria 01.15-05.25
6. Merkulov 01.35-01.40
7. Tymoshenko 01.40-05.50
8. Kuznetsov NK Navy 01.40-05.50
9. Vatutin 01.40-05.50
10. Mikoyan 02.20-05.30
11. Mehlis 01.20-05.20
Latest came out 05.50

June 25, 1941
1. Molotov 19.40-01.15
2. Voroshilov 19.40-01.15
3. Malyshev NK tankoprom 20.05-21.10
4. Beria 20.05-21.10
5. Sokolov 20.10-20.55
6. Tymoshenko Prev. GC rates 20.20-24.00
7. Vatutin 20.20-21.10
8. Voznesensky 20.25-21.10
9. Kuznetsov 20.30-21.40
10. Fedorenko teams. ABTV 21.15-24.00
11. Kaganovich 21.45-24.00
12. Kuznetsov 21.05.-24.00
13. Vatutin 22.10-24.00
14. Shcherbakov 23.00-23.50
15. Mekhlis 20.10-24.00
16. Beria 00.25-01.15
17. Voznesensky 00.25-01.00
18. Vyshinsky sotr. MFA 00.35-01.00
Latest came out 01.00

June 26, 1941
1. Kaganovich 12.10-16.45
2. Malenkov 12.40-16.10
3. Budyonny 12.40-16.10
4. Zhigarev 12.40-16.10
5. Voroshilov 12.40-16.30
6. Molotov 12.50-16.50
7. Vatutin 13.00-16.10
8. Petrov 13.15-16.10
9.Kovalev 14.00-14.10
10. Fedorenko 14.10-15.30
11. Kuznetsov 14.50-16.10
12. Zhukov NGSH 15.00-16.10
13. Beria 15.10-16.20
14. Yakovlev early. GAU 15.15-16.00
15. Tymoshenko 13.00-16.10
16. Voroshilov 17.45-18.25
17. Beria 17.45-19.20
18. Mikoyan Deputy. Prev SNK 17.50-18.20
19. Vyshinsky 18.00-18.10
20. Molotov 19.00-23.20
21. Zhukov 21.00-22.00
22. Vatutin 1st deputy. NGSH 21.00-22.00
23. Tymoshenko 21.00-22.00
24. Voroshilov 21.00-22.10
25. Beria 21.00-22.30
26. Kaganovich 21.05-22.45
27. Shcherbakov 1st secretary. MGK 22.00-22.10
28. Kuznetsov 22.00-22.20
Latest came out at 23.20

June 27, 1941
1. Voznesensky 16.30-16.40
2. Molotov 17.30-18.00
3. Mikoyan 17.45-18.00
4. Molotov 19.35-19.45
5. Mikoyan 19.35-19.45
6. Molotov 21.25-24.00
7. Mikoyan 21.25-02.35
8. Beria 21.25-23.10
9. Malenkov 21.30-00.47
10. Tymoshenko 21.30-23.00
11. Zhukov 21.30-23.00
12. Vatutin 21.30-22.50
13. Kuznetsov 21.30-23.30
14. Zhigarev 22.05-00.45
15. Petrov 22.05-00.45
16. Sokoverov 22.05-00.45
17. Zharov 22.05-00.45
18. Nikitin VVS KA 22.05-00.45
19. Titov 22.05-00.45
20. Voznesensky 22.15-23.40
21. Shakhurin NKAP 22.30-23.10
22. Dementyev Deputy. NKAP 22.30-23.10
23. Shcherbakov 23.25-24.00
24. Shakhurin 00.40-00.50
25. Merkulov deputy. NKVD 01.00-01.30
26. Kaganovich 01.10-01.35
27. Tymoshenko 01.30-02.35
28. Golikov 01.30-02.35
29. Beria 01.30-02.35
30. Kuznetsov 01.30-02.35
Latest came out 02.40

June 28, 1941
1. Molotov 19.35-00.50
2. Malenkov 19.35-23.10
3. Budyonny deputy. NCO 19.35-19.50
4. Merkulov 19.45-20.05
5. Bulganin Deputy. Prev SNK 20.15-20.20
6. Zhigarev 20.20-22.10
7. Petrov Ch. construct art. 20.20-22.10
8. Bulganin 20.40-20.45
9. Tymoshenko 21.30-23.10
10. Zhukov 21.30-23.10
11. Golikov 21.30-22.55
12. Kuznetsov 21.50-23.10
13. Boars 22.00-22.10
14. Stefanovskiy pilot-tested. 22.00-22.10
15. Suprun pilot-test. 22.00-22.10
16. Beria 22.40-00.50
17. Ustinov NK thief. 22.55-23.10
18. Yakovlev GAUNKO 22.55-23.10
19. Shcherbakov 22.10-23.30
20. Mikoyan 23.30-00.50
21. Merkulov 24.00-00.15
Latest came out 00.50

And one more thing. Much has been written about the fact that on June 22 he spoke on the radio, announcing the attack of the fascists and the beginning of the war by Molotov. Where was Stalin? Why didn't he speak himself?
The answer to the first question is in the lines of the "Journal of visits".
The answer to the second question, apparently, lies in the fact that Stalin, as the country's political leader, should have understood - in his speech, all the people were expecting to hear the answer to the question "What to do?"
Therefore, Stalin took a break for ten days, received information about what was happening, pondered how to organize resistance to the aggressor, and only after that did he speak on July 3, not just with an appeal to the people, but with a detailed program of warfare!
Here is the text of that speech. Read and listen to the audio recording of this speech by Stalin. You will find in the text a detailed program, including organizing partisan actions in the occupied territories, stealing steam locomotives and much more. And that's just 10 days after the invasion.
This is strategic thinking!
The power of history falsifiers lies in the fact that they juggle with them invented cliches that have a given ideological orientation.
Better read the docs. They contain true Truth and Power ...

July 3 marks 71 years since the legendary speech of I.V. Stalin on the radio. Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov in his last interview called this speech one of the three "symbols" of the Great Patriotic War.
Here is the text of this speech:
“Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters!
Soldiers of our army and navy!
I appeal to you, my friends!
The treacherous military attack of Hitler's Germany on our homeland, which began on June 22, continues, despite the heroic resistance of the Red Army, despite the fact that the best divisions of the enemy and the best units of his aviation have already been defeated and found a grave on the battlefields, the enemy continues to climb forward. throwing new forces to the front. Hitler's troops managed to capture Lithuania, a significant part of Latvia, the western part of Belarus, and part of Western Ukraine. Fascist aviation is expanding the areas of operation of its bombers, bombing Murmansk, Orsha, Mogilev, Smolensk, Kiev, Odessa, Sevastopol. A serious danger looms over our homeland.
How could it happen that our glorious Red Army surrendered fascist troops a number of our cities and regions? Are the German fascist troops really invincible troops, as the boastful fascist propagandists trumpet about it?
Of course not! History shows that there are no invincible armies and never happened. Napoleon's army was considered invincible, but it was defeated alternately by Russian, British, German troops. During the first imperialist war, Wilhelm's German army was also considered an invincible army, but it was defeated several times by Russian and Anglo-French troops and, finally, was defeated by Anglo-French troops. The same must be said about Hitler's current German fascist army. This army has not yet met serious resistance on the continent of Europe. Only on our territory did it meet serious resistance. And if, as a result of this resistance, the best divisions of the German fascist army were defeated by our Red Army, this means that the Hitlerite fascist army can be defeated and will be defeated just as the armies of Napoleon and Wilhelm were defeated.
As for the fact that part of our territory was nevertheless captured by fascist German troops, this is mainly due to the fact that the war of fascist Germany against the USSR began under favorable conditions for the German troops and unfavorable ones for the Soviet troops. The fact is that the troops of Germany, as a country waging a war, had already been completely mobilized and 170 divisions thrown by Germany against the USSR and moved to the borders of the USSR were in a state of full readiness, waiting only for a signal to act, while the Soviet troops still needed mobilize and move to the borders. Of no small importance here was the fact that fascist Germany unexpectedly and treacherously violated the non-aggression pact concluded in 1939 between her and the USSR, regardless of the fact that she would be recognized by the whole world as the attacking side. It is clear that our peace-loving country, unwilling to take the initiative to violate the pact, could not take the path of treachery.
One may ask: how could it have happened that the Soviet government agreed to conclude a non-aggression pact with such treacherous people and monsters as Hitler and Ribbentrop? Was it not a mistake on the part of the Soviet government? Of course not! A non-aggression pact is a peace pact between two states. It was precisely such a pact that Germany proposed to us in 1939. Could the Soviet government refuse such a proposal? I think that no peace-loving state can refuse a peace agreement with a neighboring power, if even such monsters and cannibals as Hitler and Ribbentrop are at the head of this power. And this, of course, under one indispensable condition - if the peace agreement does not affect, either directly or indirectly, the territorial integrity, independence and honor of the peace-loving state. As you know, the non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR is just such a pact. What have we gained by concluding a non-aggression pact with Germany? We ensured peace for our country for a year and a half and the possibility of preparing our forces to repel if Nazi Germany risked attacking our country in spite of the pact. This is a definite gain for us and a loss for Nazi Germany.
What did fascist Germany gain and lose by treacherously breaking the pact and attacking the USSR? She achieved by this some advantageous position for her troops in a short time, but she lost politically, exposing herself in the eyes of the whole world as a bloody aggressor. There can be no doubt that this short military gain for Germany is only an episode, and the enormous political gain for the USSR is a serious and long-term factor on the basis of which the decisive military successes of the Red Army in the war with Nazi Germany should unfold.
That is why all our valiant army, all our valiant navy, all our falcon pilots, all the peoples of our country, all the best people of Europe, America and Asia, finally, all the best people of Germany condemn the treacherous actions of the German fascists and sympathize with To the Soviet government, they approve of the behavior of the Soviet government and see that our cause is just, that the enemy will be defeated, that we must win.
Due to the war imposed on us, our country entered into mortal combat with its worst and most insidious enemy - German fascism. Our troops are fighting heroically against the enemy, armed to the teeth with tanks and aircraft. The Red Army and the Red Fleet, overcoming numerous difficulties, are selflessly fighting for every inch of Soviet land. The main forces of the Red Army, armed with thousands of tanks and aircraft, enter the battle. The bravery of the soldiers of the Red Army is unparalleled. Our resistance to the enemy is growing stronger and stronger. Together with the Red Army, the entire Soviet people is rising to defend the Motherland. What is required in order to eliminate the danger hanging over our Motherland, and what measures must be taken in order to defeat the enemy?
First of all, it is necessary that our people, the Soviet people, understand the full depth of the danger that threatens our country, and renounce complacency, carelessness, and the mood of peaceful construction, which were quite understandable in the pre-war period, but pernicious at the present time, when the war is fundamentally changed position. The enemy is cruel and unforgiving. He sets as his goal the seizure of our lands, watered with our sweat, the seizure of our grain and our oil, obtained by our labor. It sets as its goal the restoration of the power of the landowners, the restoration of tsarism, the destruction of the national culture and national statehood of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Uzbeks, Tatars, Moldovans, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and other free peoples of the Soviet Union, their Germanization, their transformation into slaves of German princes and barons. Thus, it is about the life and death of the Soviet state, about the life and death of the peoples of the USSR, about whether the peoples of the Soviet Union should be free or fall into enslavement. It is necessary for the Soviet people to understand this and stop being carefree, so that they mobilize themselves and reorganize all their work in a new, military way, which knows no mercy for the enemy.
Further, it is necessary that in our ranks there is no place for whiners and cowards, alarmists and deserters, so that our people do not know fear in the struggle and selflessly go to our Patriotic War of Liberation against the fascist enslavers. The great Lenin, who created our state, said that the main quality of Soviet people should be courage, courage, ignorance of fear in the struggle, readiness to fight together with the people against the enemies of our Motherland. It is necessary that this splendid quality of a Bolshevik should become the property of millions and millions of the Red Army, our Red Navy and all the peoples of the Soviet Union. We must immediately reorganize all our work on a war footing, subordinating everything to the interests of the front and the tasks of organizing the defeat of the enemy. The peoples of the Soviet Union now see that German fascism is indomitable in its furious anger and hatred for our Motherland, which has provided all working people with free labor and prosperity. The peoples of the Soviet Union must rise to defend their rights, their land against the enemy.
The Red Army, the Red Fleet and all citizens of the Soviet Union must defend every inch of Soviet land, fight to the last drop of blood for our cities and villages, and display the courage, initiative and intelligence that are characteristic of our people.
We must organize all-round assistance to the Red Army, ensure reinforced replenishment of its ranks, ensure its supply with everything necessary, organize the rapid advance of transports with troops and military supplies, and provide extensive assistance to the wounded.
We must strengthen the rear of the Red Army, subordinating all our work to the interests of this cause, ensure the intensified work of all enterprises, produce more rifles, machine guns, guns, cartridges, shells, aircraft, organize the protection of factories, power plants, telephone and telegraph communications, establish local air defense ...
We must organize a merciless struggle against all sorts of disorganizers of the rear, deserters, alarmists, spreading rumors, destroy spies, saboteurs, enemy parachutists, rendering in all this quick assistance to our destroyer battalions. It must be borne in mind that the enemy is cunning, cunning, experienced in deceiving and spreading false rumors. All this must be taken into account and not succumb to provocations. It is necessary to immediately bring to trial by a military tribunal all those who, by their alarmism and cowardice, interfere with the work of defense, regardless of their faces.
With the forced withdrawal of the Red Army units, it is necessary to hijack the entire rolling stock, not to leave the enemy a single steam locomotive, not a single carriage, not to leave the enemy a single kilogram of bread, not a liter of fuel. Collective farmers must steal all their livestock, hand over grain to government agencies for safekeeping to transport it to rear areas. All valuable property, including non-ferrous metals, bread and fuel that cannot be taken out, must be destroyed unconditionally.
In areas occupied by the enemy, it is necessary to create partisan detachments, horse and foot, to create sabotage groups to fight against parts of the enemy army, to foment partisan war everywhere and everywhere, to blow up bridges, roads, damage telephone and telegraph communications, set fire to forests, warehouses, carts. In the occupied areas, create unbearable conditions for the enemy and all his accomplices, pursue and destroy them at every step, disrupt all their activities.
The war with fascist Germany cannot be considered an ordinary war. It is not only a war between two armies. At the same time, it is a great war of the entire Soviet people against the German fascist troops. The goal of this nationwide Patriotic war against the fascist oppressors is not only to eliminate the danger hanging over our country, but also to help all the peoples of Europe groaning under the yoke of German fascism. In this war of liberation, we will not be alone. In this great war, we will have loyal allies in the person of the peoples of Europe and America, including the German people enslaved by the Hitlerite rulers. Our war for the freedom of our Fatherland will merge with the struggle of the peoples of Europe and America for their independence, for democratic freedoms. It will be a united front of peoples standing for freedom, against enslavement and the threat of enslavement from Hitler's fascist armies. In this regard, the historic speech of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Mr. Churchill, on aid to the Soviet Union and the declaration of the US government on its readiness to provide assistance to our country, which can only evoke a feeling of gratitude in the hearts of the peoples of the Soviet Union, are quite understandable and indicative.
Comrades! Our strengths are incalculable. An arrogant enemy will soon have to make sure of this. Together with the Red Army, many thousands of workers, collective farmers and intelligentsia are rising to fight the attacked enemy. The millions of our people will rise. The working people of Moscow and Leningrad have already begun to create a people's volunteer corps of many thousands to support the Red Army. In every city that is threatened by the danger of an enemy invasion, we must create such a popular militia, raise all working people to fight in order to defend our freedom, our honor, our Motherland in our Patriotic war against German fascism with our breasts.
In order to quickly mobilize all the forces of the peoples of the USSR, to repulse the enemy who treacherously attacked our Motherland, the State Defense Committee has been created, in whose hands all the power in the state is now concentrated. The State Defense Committee has begun its work and calls on the entire people to rally around the Lenin-Stalin party, around the Soviet government for selfless support of the Red Army and the Red Fleet, for the defeat of the enemy, for victory.
All our forces are to support our heroic Red Army, our glorious Red Navy!
All the forces of the people - to defeat the enemy!
Forward, for our victory! "

I.V. Stalin's speech on July 3, 1941
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr3ldvaW4e8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pD5gf2OSZA&feature=related
Another speech of Stalin at the beginning of the War

Stalin's speech at the end of the War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrIPg3TRbno&feature=related
Sergey Filatov
http://serfilatov.livejournal.com/89269.html#cutid1

Article 4. Russian spirit

Nikolay Biyata
http://gidepark.ru/community/129/content/1387287
www.ruska-pravda.org

The fury of Russian resistance reflects a new Russian spirit, backed by new-found industrial and agricultural power

Last June, most Democrats agreed with Adolf Hitler - in three months the Nazi armies will enter Moscow and the Russian case will be similar to the Norwegian, French and Greek. Even the American communists shivered in their Russian boots, believing less in Marshal Timoshenko, Voroshilov and Budyonny than in Generals Frost, Dirt and Slush. When the Germans got stuck, the disbelieving fellow travelers returned to their former convictions, a monument to Lenin was unveiled in London, and almost everyone breathed a sigh of relief: the impossible had happened.

The purpose of Maurice Hindus's book is to show that the impossible was inevitable. According to him, the fury of Russian resistance reflects a new Russian spirit, behind which is a new-found industrial and agricultural power.

Few of those who observe post-revolutionary Russia can speak about this more competently. Among American journalists, Maurice Gershon Hindus is the only professional Russian peasant (he arrived in the United States as a child).

After four years at Colgate University and graduate school at Harvard, he managed to maintain a slight Russian accent and a close bond with the good Russian land. "I," he sometimes says, spreading his arms in Slavic, "a peasant."

Fu-fu, it smells of the Russian spirit

When the Bolsheviks began to “liquidate the kulaks [successful farmers] as a class,” the Hindus journalist traveled to Russia to see what was happening to his fellow peasants. The fruit of his observations is the book Humanity Uprooted, a bestseller whose main thesis is that forced collectivization is hard, exile to the High North for forced labor is even harder, but collectivization is the greatest economic restructuring in human history. ; it changes the face of the Russian land. The future belongs to her. Soviet planners were of the same opinion, giving the Hindus journalist extraordinary opportunities to observe the emergence of a new Russian spirit.

In Russia and Japan, he, relying on his direct knowledge, answers a question that may well decide the fate of World War II. What is this new Russian spirit? It's not all that new. “Fu-fu, it smells of the Russian spirit! Before the Russian spirit had never heard of it, it had never been seen by sight. Nowadays the Russian is rolling around the world, striking in the eyes, hitting in the face. " These words are not taken from Stalin's speech. An old witch named Baba Yaga always pronounces them in the most ancient Russian fairy tales.

Grandmothers whispered them to their grandchildren when the Mongols burned the surrounding villages in 1410.

They repeated them when the Russian spirit expelled the last Mongol from Muscovy twenty years before Columbus discovered the New World. They probably repeat them today.

Three Forces

By “the power of the idea,” Hindus means that in Russia, the ownership of private property has become a social crime. "Deep into the minds of people - especially, of course, young people, that is, those who are twenty-nine or less years old, and there are one hundred and seven million in Russia - the concept of the deep depravity of private entrepreneurship has penetrated."

By "force of organization" the author of Hindus understands the total control of the state over industry and agriculture, so that every function of peacetime actually becomes a military function. “Of course, the Russians never hinted at the military aspects of collectivization, and therefore foreign observers remained completely unaware of this element of a large-scale and brutal agricultural revolution. They emphasized only those consequences that concerned agriculture and society ... However, without collectivization, they would not have been able to wage war as effectively as they are waging it. "

Machine Power is an idea for which an entire generation of Russians denied themselves food, clothing, cleanliness, and even the most basic comforts. "Like the power of a new idea and a new organization, it saves the Soviet Union from dismemberment and destruction by Germany." "In the same way," the author of the Hindus believes, "she will save him from the encroachments of Japan."

His arguments are less interesting than his analysis of Russia's strength in the Far East.

The Wild East of Russia, stretching three thousand miles from Vladivostok, is rapidly becoming one of the largest industrial belts in the world. Among the most fascinating sections about Russia and Japan are those in which the legend that Siberia is an Asian glacier or exclusively a place of hard labor is destroyed. In fact, Siberia produces both polar bears and cotton, has large modern cities such as Novosibirsk ("Siberian Chicago") and Magnitogorsk (steel), and is also the center of Russia's giant arms industry. Hindus believes that even if the Nazis reach the Ural Mountains and the Japanese reach Lake Baikal, Russia will still remain a powerful industrial state.

No separate world

In addition, he believes that the Russians will not go to a separate peace under any circumstances. After all, they are not just waging a war for liberation. In the form of a war of liberation, they continue the revolution. “Too alive to forget them, the memories of the sacrifices that people made for every machine, every locomotive, every brick for the construction of new factories ... Butter, cheese, eggs, white bread, caviar, fish, which should have been there are they and their children; textiles and leather, from which clothes and shoes were to be made for them and their children, were sent abroad ... to receive the currency that was used to pay for foreign cars and foreign services ... Indeed, Russia is waging a nationalist war; the peasant, as always, is fighting for his home and his land. But today's Russian nationalism rests on the idea and practice of Soviet or collectivized control over "the means of production and distribution," while Japanese nationalism rests on the idea of ​​honoring the Emperor. "

Directory

The somewhat emotional judgments of the author of Hindus are surprisingly confirmed by the book of the author Yugov "Russian Economic Front in Peace and Wartime." Not such a friend of the Russian revolution as the author of Hindus, the economist Yugov is a former employee of the USSR State Planning Committee, who now prefers to live in the United States. His book on Russia is much more difficult to read than the book of the author Hindus, and contains more facts. It does not justify the suffering, death and oppression of people that Russia had to pay for its new economic and military power.

He hopes that one of the results of the war for Russia will be a pivot towards democracy - the only system in which he believes economic planning can actually work. But author Yugov agrees with author Hindus in his assessments of why the Russians are fighting so violently, and this is not a "geographic, everyday variety" of patriotism.

“The workers of Russia,” he says, “are fighting against a return to the private economy, against a return to the very bottom of the social pyramid ... The peasants are stubbornly and actively fighting Hitler, because Hitler would have returned the old landowners or created new ones according to the Prussian model. Numerous nationalities of the Soviet Union are fighting because they know that Hitler is destroying all opportunities for their development ... "

“And, finally, all the citizens of the Soviet Union go to the front to fight resolutely until victory, because they want to defend those undoubtedly majestic - albeit inadequately and insufficiently realized - revolutionary achievements in the field of labor, culture, science and art .. There are many claims and demands from workers, peasants, various nationalities and all citizens of the Soviet Union against Stalin's dictatorial regime, and the struggle for these demands will not stop for a day. But at the present time for the people above all is the task of protecting their country from the enemy, personifying the social, political and national reaction. "

"Time", USA

Article 5. Russians come for theirs. Sevastopol - the prototype of Victory

Author - Oleg Bibikov
In a wonderful way, the day of the liberation of Sevastopol coincides with the day Great Victory... In the May waters of the Sevastopol bays, we can still see the reflection of the fiery Berlin sky and the Victory Banner in it.

Undoubtedly, in the solar ripples of those waters one can guess the reflection of other future victories.

“Not a single name in Russia is pronounced with greater reverence than Sevastopol” - these words do not belong to a patriot of Russia, but to a fierce enemy, and they are pronounced not with the intonation that suits our hearts.

Colonel-General Karl Almendinger, appointed on May 1, 1944, commander of the 17th German Army, which was repelling the offensive operation of the Soviet troops, said to the army: “I received an order to defend every inch of the Sevastopol bridgehead. You understand its meaning. Not a single name in Russia is pronounced with greater reverence than Sevastopol ... I demand that everyone defend themselves in the full sense of the word, that no one leaves, holds every trench, every crater, every trench ... The bridgehead is heavily equipped in engineering respect, and the enemy, wherever he appears, will become entangled in the network of our defenses. But none of us should even think of retreating to these positions located in the depths. The 17th Army in Sevastopol is supported by powerful air and naval forces. The Fuehrer gives us enough ammunition, aircraft, weapons and reinforcements. The honor of the army depends on each meter of the assigned territory. Germany expects us to do our duty. "

Hitler ordered that Sevastopol be held at any cost. In fact, this is an order - not a step back.

In a sense, history repeated itself in a mirror image.

Two and a half years earlier, on November 10, 1941, an order was issued by the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, F.S. Oktyabrsky, addressed to the troops of the Sevastopol defensive region: “The glorious Black Sea Fleet and the Maritime Army are entrusted with the defense of the famous historical Sevastopol ... We are obliged to turn Sevastopol into an impregnable fortress and on the outskirts of the city to exterminate more than one division of presumptuous fascist scoundrels ... Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol coastal defense, glorious aviation. Together with us, the battle-hardened Maritime Army ... All this instills in us full confidence that the enemy will not pass, will break his skull against our strength, our might ... "

Our army is back.

Then, in May 1944, Bismarck's long-standing observation was reaffirmed: do not expect that once taking advantage of Russia's weakness, you will receive dividends forever.

Russians always return their ...

In November 1943, Soviet troops successfully carried out the Nizhnedneprovsk operation and blockaded the Crimea. The 17th Army was then commanded by Colonel General Erwin Gustav Jenecke. The liberation of the Crimea became possible in the spring of 1944. The operation was scheduled to begin on April 8th.

It was the eve of Holy Week ...

For most contemporaries, the names of fronts, armies, unit numbers, the names of generals, or even marshals, say nothing or almost nothing.

It worked out - as in the song. Victory is one for all. But let's remember.

The liberation of Crimea was entrusted to the 4th Ukrainian Front under the command of Army General F.I. Tolbukhin, a separate Primorsky army under the command of General of the Army A.I. Eremenko, to the Black Sea Fleet under the command of Admiral F.S. Oktyabrsky and the Azov military flotilla under the command of Rear Admiral S.G. Gorshkov.

Recall that the 4th Ukrainian Front included: 51st Army (commanded by Lieutenant General Ya.G. Kreizer), 2nd Guards Army (commanded by Lieutenant General G.F. Zakharov), 19th Panzer Corps ( commander Lieutenant General I.D. Vasiliev; he will be seriously wounded and on April 11 he will be replaced by Colonel I.A.

Each name is a significant name. Everyone has years of war behind them. Others began their battle with the Germans back in 1914-1918. Others fought in Spain, in China, Khryukin had a sunken Japanese battleship on his account ...

On the Soviet side, 470 thousand people were involved in the Crimean operation, about 6 thousand guns and mortars, 559 tanks and self-propelled guns, 1250 aircraft.

The 17th Army consisted of 5 German and 7 Romanian divisions - a total of about 200 thousand people, 3600 guns and mortars, 215 tanks and assault guns, 148 aircraft.

On the side of the Germans were a powerful network of defensive structures, which had to be torn to shreds.

A big victory is made up of tiny victories.

The chronicles of the war capture the names of privates, officers and generals. The chronicles of the war allow us to see the Crimea of ​​that spring with cinematic clarity. It was a blissful spring, everything that could - bloomed, other things - sparkled with green, everything dreamed of living forever. The Russian tanks of the 19th Panzer Corps had to bring the infantry out into the operational space, hack the defenses. Someone had to go first, lead the first tank, the first tank battalion, and almost certainly die.

The chronicles tell about the day of April 11, 1944: “The lead tank battalion of Major IN. Mashkarin from the 101st Tank Brigade. Leading the attackers, I.N. Mashkarin not only controlled the battle of his units. He personally destroyed six cannons, four machine-gun points, two mortars, dozens of Nazi soldiers and officers ... "

The brave battalion commander died that day.

He was 22 years old, he had already participated in 140 battles, defended Ukraine, fought near Rzhev and Orel ... After the Victory he will be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously). The battalion commander, who broke into the defense of the Crimea in the Dzhankoy direction, was buried in Simferopol in the Victory Square, in a mass grave ...

An armada of Soviet tanks burst out into the operational space. On the same day, Dzhankoy was also released.

Simultaneously with the actions of the 4th Ukrainian Front, the Separate Primorskaya Army went over to the offensive in the Kerch direction. Its actions were supported by the aviation of the 4th Air Army and the Black Sea Fleet.

On the same day, partisans captured the city of Stary Krym. In response, the Germans retreating from Kerch carried out an army punitive operation, killing 584 people, shooting everyone who caught their eye.

Simferopol was cleared of the enemy on Thursday 13 April. Moscow saluted the troops that liberated the capital of Crimea.

On the same day, our fathers and grandfathers liberated the famous resort towns - Feodosia in the east, Evpatoria in the west. On April 14, on Good Friday, Bakhchisarai was liberated, and hence the Assumption Monastery, where many defenders of Sevastopol, who died in the Crimean War of 1854-1856, are buried. On the same day, Sudak and Alushta were released.

Our troops hurricanes swept through Yalta and Alupka. On April 15, Soviet tankers reached the outer defensive line of Sevastopol. On the same day, the Maritime Army approached Sevastopol from the direction of Yalta ...

And this situation was like a mirror image of the fall of 1941. Our troops, preparing for the storming of Sevastopol, stood in the same positions on which the Germans and Romanians were at the end of October 1941. The Germans could not take Sevastopol for 8 months and, as Admiral Oktyabrsky had predicted, smashed their skull on Sevastopol.

Russian troops liberated their holy city in less than a month. The entire Crimean operation took 35 days. The direct assault on the Sevastopol fortified area took 8 days, and the city itself was taken in 58 hours.

For the capture of Sevastopol, which could not be liberated outright, all our armies were united under one command. On April 16, the Maritime Army became part of the 4th Ukrainian Front. General K.S. Miller. (Eremenko was transferred by the commander of the 2nd Baltic Front.)

Changes have also taken place in the enemy's camp.

General Jenecke was dismissed on the eve of the decisive assault. It seemed to him expedient to leave Sevastopol without a fight. Jenecke has already survived the Stalingrad cauldron. Let's remember that in F. Paulus's army he commanded an army corps. In the Stalingrad cauldron, Yenecke survived only thanks to dexterity: he imitated a serious wound with shrapnel and was evacuated. Jenecke also managed to evade the Sevastopol boiler. He did not see any sense at all in the defense of the Crimea in the conditions of the blockade. Hitler thought differently. The next unifier of Europe believed that after the loss of Crimea, Romania and Bulgaria would wish to withdraw from the Nazi bloc. On May 1, Hitler deposed Jenecke. General K. Almendinger was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the 17th Army.

From Sunday 16 April to 30 April, Soviet troops made repeated attempts to break into the defenses; achieved only partial successes.

The general assault on Sevastopol began on May 5 at noon. After a powerful two-hour artillery and aviation training, the 2nd Guards Army under the command of Lieutenant General G.F. Zakharova fell from the Mekenziev mountains to the region of the North Side. Zakharov's army was to enter Sevastopol, crossing the Northern Bay.

The troops of the Primorsk and 51st armies, after an hour and a half of artillery and aviation training, launched an offensive on May 7 at 10:30. On the main direction Sapun-Gora - Karan (the village of Flotskoye), the Primorskaya Army operated. East of Inkerman and Fedyukhin's heights, the 51st Army was leading the offensive on Sapun-Gora (this is the key to the city) ... Soviet soldiers had to break through a multi-tiered system of fortifications ...

Hundreds of bombers belonging to the Hero of the Soviet Union, General Timofei Timofeevich Khryukin, were irreplaceable.

By the end of May 7, Sapun Mountain became ours. Assault red flags were raised to the top by privates G.I. Evglevsky, I.K. Yatsunenko, corporal V.I. Drobyazko, Sergeant A.A. Kurbatov ... Sapun Mountain is the forerunner of the Reichstag.

The remnants of the 17th Army, these are several tens of thousands of Germans, Romanians and traitors to their homeland, have accumulated at Cape Chersonesos, hoping for an evacuation.

In a sense, the situation of 1941 was repeated, it was repeated in a mirror image.

On May 12, the entire Chersonesus peninsula was liberated. The Crimean operation has been completed. The peninsula was a monstrous picture: skeletons of hundreds of houses, ruins, conflagrations, mountains of human corpses, twisted equipment - tanks, airplanes, guns ...

A captured German officer testifies: “... we were constantly receiving replenishment. However, the Russians broke through the defenses and occupied Sevastopol. Then the command gave an obviously belated order - to hold powerful positions on Chersonesos, and in the meantime to try to evacuate the remnants of the defeated troops from the Crimea. Up to 30,000 soldiers have accumulated in our sector. Of these, it was hardly possible to take out more than one thousand. On May 10, I saw four ships enter Kamyshevaya Bay, but only two left. The other two transports were sunk by Russian aircraft. Since then, I have not seen any more ships. Meanwhile, the situation became more and more critical ... the soldiers were already demoralized. Everyone fled to the sea in the hope that maybe some ships would appear at the last minute ... Everything got mixed up, and chaos reigned all around ... It was a complete disaster for the German troops in the Crimea. "

On May 10 at one in the morning (at one in the morning!) Moscow saluted the liberators of the city with 24 volleys from 342 guns.

It was a victory.

This was a foreshadowing of the Great Victory.

The newspaper Pravda wrote: "Hello, dear Sevastopol! Favorite city of the Soviet people, hero city, hero city! The whole country joyfully greets you!" "Hello, dear Sevastopol!" the whole country really repeated then.

"Fund for Strategic Culture"

S A M A R Z N K A
http://gidepark.ru/user/kler16/content/1387278
www.odnako.org
http://www.odnako.org/blogs/show_19226/
Author: Boris Yulin
I think everyone knows that the Great Patriotic War began on June 22, 1941.
But when reminded of this event on TV, you usually hear about a "preemptive strike", "Stalin is no less guilty of the war than Hitler," "why did we get involved in this unnecessary war", "Stalin was Hitler's ally" and other vile nonsense.
Therefore, I consider it necessary to briefly recall the facts once again, for the flow of Artistic Truth, that is, vile nonsense, does not stop.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked us without declaring war. She attacked deliberately, after a long and careful preparation. Attacked with superior forces.
That is, it was an impudent, uncovered and unmotivated aggression. Hitler made no demands or claims. He did not try to urgently scrape away the troops for a "preemptive strike" - he simply attacked. That is, he arranged an act of obvious aggression.
On the contrary, we were not going to attack. In our country, no mobilization was carried out or even started, no orders were given for an offensive or preparation for it. We fulfilled the terms of the non-aggression pact.
That is, we are a victim of aggression, without any options.
A non-aggression pact is not a union treaty. So the USSR was never (!) An ally of Nazi Germany.
The Non-Aggression Pact is precisely the Non-Aggression Pact, no less, but no more. It did not give Germany the opportunity to use our territory for hostilities, did not lead to the use of our armed forces in hostilities with Germany's opponents.
So all the talk about the alliance between Stalin and Hitler is either a lie or nonsense.
Stalin fulfilled the terms of the treaty and did not attack - Hitler violated the terms of the treaty and attacked.
Hitler attacked without making claims or conditions, without giving the opportunity to resolve everything peacefully, so the USSR had no choice whether to enter the war or not. The war was imposed on the USSR without asking for consent. And Stalin had no choice but to fight.
And it was impossible to resolve the "contradictions" between the USSR and Germany. After all, the Germans did not seek to seize the disputed territory or change the terms of the peace agreements in their favor.
The goal of the Nazis was the destruction of the USSR and the genocide of the Soviet people. It just so happened that the communist ideology, in principle, did not suit the Nazis. And it just so happened that some Slavs insolently lived in the place that represented the "necessary living space" and intended for the harmonious resettlement of the German nation. And all this was unambiguously voiced by Hitler.
That is, the war was not for the reshaping of treaties and border lands, but for the destruction of the Soviet people. And the choice was simple - to die, disappear from the map of the Earth, or fight and survive.
Did Stalin try to avoid this day and this choice? Yes! Tried to.
The USSR made every effort to prevent the war. He tried to stop the partition of Czechoslovakia, tried to create a system of collective security. But the contractual process is so complicated that it requires the consent of all the contracting parties, and not one of them. And when it turned out to be impossible to stop the aggressor at the beginning of the journey and save the whole of Europe from war, Stalin began to try to save his country from war. Hold back from war at least until defense readiness is achieved. But I managed to win only two years.
So on June 22, 1941, the might of the strongest army and one of the strongest economies in the world fell upon us without a declaration of war. And this power was intended to destroy our country and our people. Nobody was going to negotiate with us - only to destroy.
On June 22, our country and our people accepted a battle that they did not want, although they were preparing for it. And they withstood this terrible, difficult battle, broke the back of the Nazi creature. And they got the right to live and the right to be themselves.

Everyone remembers what the outcome of the talks between Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama looked like. The leaders of the two countries could not look each other in the eye. The moment of truth has arrived. The details of the meeting of the leaders of the two countries are beginning to filter through and many still unclear things become clear. Why there was no face on both presidents. Today it is safe to say that today the two powers are closer than ever to fatal actions.
Everything turned out to be very simple. Realizing the impossibility of pushing through the UN Security Council resolution on Syria necessary for the war, Washington is betting on putting pressure or striking Iran. After all, Washington is not interested in Syria, but Iran. The United States is moving troops to Kuwait, from here to the border with Iran, only 80 kilometers. The very troops that Obama promised to withdraw from Afghanistan will now be redeployed to Kuwait. The first 15,000 troops have already received a redeployment order.
In the editorial offices of the Western media, travel sentiment reigns. Everything is moving towards a serious deterioration in the situation.
President Vladimir Putin said quite a lot in his own words, stating that he would not go into intelligence with anyone, jokingly that he had "not served for a long time."

The world did not understand his joke, but it was wary.

In this joke, as indeed in all others, there is a grain of truth, sometimes a very large fraction. In general, it was necessary to listen carefully to what the Russian president was saying.
It seems that the US Marines are quite seriously going to act against the Russian paratroopers.
At the mere thought of what might happen, a cold sweat appears on the body. This location of ground forces, which is too dangerous for its proximity, is almost guaranteed to end in a collision.

This first step - the redeployment of 15 thousand marines to Kuwait, may not be the most obvious intention, because in the end you cannot start a war with such forces, but if this batch of military personnel is followed by the next, it will be possible to speak with confidence about an impending threat.

In the meantime, in fact, this redeployment plays into the hands of Russia more than America. Of course, now the oil will creep up, the risks are getting higher. Russia will be the main beneficiary in this show, because it is always good to be a seller when the price of your product is high, and, of course, it is unprofitable to buy oil when you yourself "raised" the price for it.
In this case, the US budget will bear additional burdens.
Another truth in this story is that none of the presidents will be able to back down in this confrontation. If Obama backs down, he will bury his election because Americans don't like weaklings (and who loves them?).
Therefore, Obama will have to come up with something to stay with a "beautiful face".
Putin, too, cannot back down. In addition to geopolitical interests, there is an expectation among Russian citizens that their president will not give up this time, just as he never gave up before. No wonder they voted for him and entrusted him to build a strong Russia.
Putin cannot deceive the expectations of his citizens, he has never really deceived those who voted for him, and it seems that this time he is also going to demonstrate his highly advanced qualities of a leader, perhaps even a crisis manager.
The matter, perhaps, could be resolved in a peaceful way, if the presidents of the two countries announced some new idea, program, joint project of the two states. In this case, no one would dare to reproach their president, because two countries would benefit from this, and the whole world would become safer.
Here, both presidents would benefit. But such a project still needs to be invented. Judging by the faces of Obama and Putin, there is no such project.
But there are more and more disagreements.
In this case, Obama's career is a big question, nothing threatens Putin's career. Putin has already passed the elections, and Obama is still ahead.
However, as always in such cases, you need to look at the details. They are sometimes very eloquent.

Nuclear ships make their first moves

According to some reports, the nuclear-powered ships of the two most powerful fleets - the North and the Pacific, in the coming days may receive a combat mission to take a strike position in neutral waters off the mainland of the United States. This was the case earlier, when in 2009 two nuclear missile carriers surfaced in different places off the east coast of the United States. This was done completely deliberately, in order to indicate their presence.
The report of an American journalist, an expert on military topics, looks strange. Then he said that these boats are not terrible, because they do not have intercontinental missiles. It only remains to understand why a boat, which is 200 nautical miles from the coast, needs intercontinental ballistic missiles, if its standard P-39s cover a distance of up to 1,500 nautical miles.
The R-39 missiles, solid-propellant with three-stage propulsion engines, used by the D-19 complex, are the largest submarine-launched missiles with 10 multiple nuclear warheads, 100 kilograms each. Even one such rocket can lead to a global catastrophe for an entire country, 20 units are nominally located aboard the Project 941 Akula submarine that surfaced in 2009. Considering that there were two boats, the optimistic mood of the American commentator on this event is simply incomprehensible.

Where is Georgia and where is Georgia

The question may arise, why now talk about what happened in 2009. I think there are parallels here. On August 5, 2009, when the military events of the 08.08.08 war were still fresh in the memory, serious pressure was exerted on Russia. Orders were dictated almost by order Russian authorities withdraw from Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Then all the events revolved around Georgia. On July 14, 2009, the US Navy destroyer Stout entered Georgian territorial waters. Of course, this is putting pressure on the Russians. Then, after half a month, two boats surfaced off the coast of North America.
If one of them was in Greenland, then the second surfaced under the very nose of the largest naval base. The Norfolk naval base is located only 250 miles northwest of the ascent site, but it may be indicative that the boat surfaced nevertheless closer to the coastline of Georgia (this is the name of the former Georgian SSR, now Georgia, in the English manner.) That is, in some special way, these two events may intersect. You sent a ship to us in Georgia (Georgia), so get our submarine from your Georgia.
It looks like some kind of hellish joke, from which it would never occur to anyone to laugh. By this juxtaposition of events, the author wants to show that there is no need to think that Putin has no way out and he must concede in Syria, where the US Navy group is ten times more representative than the Russian Navy in Tartus, even after the arrival of Russian paratroopers there.
Today, the war may be such that having defeated Russia in Syria, one can again be surprised off the coast of Georgia. The Pentagon understands this very well. Americans are good at understanding the meaning of what is said, and even better they understand the meaning of what is shown.
Thus, one should not expect Putin to back down from his plans in Syria. The only thing that can force Putin to take a step back is truly normal human relations.
Naive Russians still believe in friendship. The author of these lines is already tired of repeating to his American colleagues and writing in his articles: Russians, in general, are best at making friends and at war. Whatever the American president in the Russian version would prefer to choose from, it will always be done "from the heart and on a grand scale."

http://gidepark.ru/community/8/content/1387294

"Democratic" America surpassed Nazi Germany ...
Olga Olgina, with whom I am constantly in contact in Hydepark, published an article by Sergei Chernyakhovsky, whom I know from honest, topical publications.
I read it and thought ...
June 22, 1941. I just published in my blogs an article by my friend Sergei Filatov "Why was the German attack on the USSR called" treacherous "? And in one comment, an anonymous blogger, no data, I looked into his personal account - he writes to me (I keep his spelling):
“On June 22, 1941, at 4:00 am, the Reich Foreign Minister Ribbentrop handed the Soviet Ambassador to Berlin Dekanozov a note declaring war. Officially, the formalities were followed. "
This anonymous person is unhappy that we Russians call the German attack on our homeland treacherous.
And then I caught myself that ...
My parents survived on June 22, 1941. Father, a colonel, a former cavalryman, was then in Monino. At the aviation school. As they said then, from "horse to motor!" We trained personnel for aviation…. Dad and Mom experienced the first bombings ... and then .... Four terrible years of war!
I experienced something else - March 19, 2011. When the NATO alliance began to bomb the Libyan Jamahiriya.
What am I doing this for?
“Foreign Minister Ribbentrop handed the Soviet Ambassador to Berlin Dekanozov a note declaring war. Officially, the formalities were followed. "
And the Ambassador of the Libyan Jamahiriya in some capital of a democratic country of the NATO alliance received a note?
Have the formalities been officially followed?
The answer is no!
There were no notes, memoranda, letters, no formalities.
It turns out that it was a new, humane, democratic war of a humane, democratic West against a sovereign, Arab, African state.
To anyone who begins to hint at the UN Security Council resolution 1973, which allegedly gave the NATO alliance the right to this war, I will say - and I will be supported by all international lawyers who still have a conscience: make a tube out of the paper of this resolution and insert yourself into one place ... This resolution gave no one any right in any of its letters. Everything is invented, composed, distributed, and therefore cast in bronze! Steadfast as the Statue of Liberty!
I really like one image of her, which I found on the Internet: the statue, unable to withstand the bullying of America and its partners over freedom and human rights, covers its face with its hands. She's ashamed!
Why is it embarrassing?
Because there was no declaration of war. And no one can say about the treachery of the West in relation to the Jamahiriya and personally to its leader, with whom every Western politician - and thousands of photographs confirm this - sought to personally kiss each other.
Kiss of Judas!
Now each of us knows what it is!
Kissed - and now everything is possible!
No notes and formalities!

And so I came to the most important thing: if the West is talking at every corner that it is ready to strike Syria, then, forgive me, will the formalities be observed? Notes of the declaration of war will be handed in ADVANCED to the Syrian ambassadors in the Western capitals?
Ah, there are no ambassadors already?
And there is no one to hand over?
What a shame!
It turns out that the smart, cunning West surpassed Hitler. Now you can attack, bomb, kill, commit any atrocities WITHOUT DECLARING WAR!
And no treachery!
Now read the article by Chernyakhovsky, which was published by Olgina.
"Democratic" America has surpassed fascist Germany ...
Olga Olgina:

Sergey Chernyakhovsky:
Sergey Filatov:
http://gidepark.ru/community/2042/content/1386870
Anonymous blogger:
http://gidepark.ru/user/4007776763/info
The situation in the world is worse now than it was in 1938-1939. Only Russia can stop the war
On June 22, we remember the tragedy. We mourn the lost. We are proud of those who took the blow and responded to it, as well as the fact that, having received this terrible blow, the people gathered their strength and crushed the one who struck it. But all this is turned into the past. And society has long forgotten about the thesis that kept the world from war for 50 years - "The forty-first year should not be repeated", and it kept it not by repetition, but by practical implementation.
Sometimes even quite pro-Soviet-oriented people and political figures (not to mention those who think of themselves as subjects of other countries) are skeptical about the overloading of the USSR economy with military expenditures, ironically about the “Ustinov doctrine” - “The USSR must be ready to wage a simultaneous war with any two other powers "(meaning the United States and China) and claim that it was precisely the adherence to this doctrine that undermined the economy of the USSR.
It is a big question whether it has blown up or not, because up to 1991, output was growing in the overwhelming majority of industries. But why, at the same time, the store shelves turned out to be empty, but at the same time they were filled with food for some two weeks after it was allowed to arbitrarily increase prices for them - this is another question for other people.
Ustinov really defended this approach. But it was not he who formulated it: in world politics, the status of a great country has long been determined through the ability to wage a simultaneous war with any two other countries. And Ustinov knew why he was defending him: because on June 9, 1941, he accepted the post of People's Commissar of Armaments of the USSR and knew what it was worth to arm the army when it was already forced to wage a war unarmed. And with all the changes in the title of the position, he remained in it until he became Minister of Defense - until 1976.
Then, in the late 1980s, it was announced that the USSR's weapons were no longer needed, that the Cold War was over, and that now no one threatened us. The Cold War has a very important merit: it is not "hot". But as soon as it ended, in the world, and now in Europe, precisely "hot" wars began.
True, no one has attacked Russia yet - from among independent countries and directly. But, firstly, it has already been repeatedly attacked by "small military subjects" - under the guidance and with the support of large countries. Secondly, the large ones did not attack mainly because Russia had the weapons that were created in the USSR, and, with all the decomposition of the army, state and economy, these weapons were enough to repeatedly destroy any of them individually and all together. But after the creation of the American missile defense system, such a situation will no longer exist.
Moreover, the current situation in the world is not much better, or rather, no better than the situation that developed both before 1914 and before 1939-1941. The talk that if the USSR (Russia) ceases to resist the West, disarms and renounces its socio-economic system, then the threat of a world war will disappear and everyone will live in peace and friendship, cannot even be considered bewilderment. This is an outright lie aimed at the moral surrender of the USSR, in particular, because most wars in history were not wars between countries with different socio-political systems, but between countries with a homogeneous system. In 1914, England and France differed little from Germany and Austria-Hungary, and monarchist Russia fought on the side not of the last monarchies, but of the British and French democracies.
In the 30s, the leader of fascist Italy Benito Mussolini was one of the first to call for the creation of a system of European collective security to repel a possible Nazi aggression, and he entered into an alliance with the Reich only when he saw that Britain and France were refusing to create such a system. And the Second World War began not with the war between the capitalist countries and the socialist USSR, but with conflicts and wars between capitalist countries. And the immediate cause was the war between two not just capitalist, but fascist countries - Germany and Poland.
To believe that there can be no war between the United States and Russia because both of them today are, let’s be careful, “non-socialist”, is simply to be in captivity of aberrations of consciousness. By 1939, Hitler had conflicts not so much with the USSR as with countries that were socially homogeneous to him, and these conflicts were fewer than those in which the United States was already involved.
Hitler then sent troops into the demilitarized Rhineland, which was, however, on the territory of Germany itself. Implemented the Anschluss of Austria, formally - peacefully on the basis of the will of Austria itself. With the consent of the Western powers, he seized the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, and then seized Czechoslovakia itself. And he fought on Franco's side in the Spanish Civil War. There are four conflicts in total, of which one is actually armed. And everyone recognized him as the aggressor and said that the war was on the doorstep.
USA and NATO today:
1. Twice they carried out aggression against Yugoslavia, dismembered it into parts, seized part of its territory and destroyed it as a single state.
2. They invaded Iraq, overthrew national power and occupied the country, establishing a puppet regime there.
3. The same was done in Afghanistan.
4. Prepared, organized and unleashed the war of Saakashvili's regime against Russia and took it under open protection after the military defeat.
5. Carried out aggression against Libya, subjected it to barbaric bombing, overthrew national power, killed the country's leader, brought a barbaric regime to power.
6. They unleashed a civil war in Syria, practically participate in it on the side of their satellites, and are preparing military aggression against the country.
7. Threatening war on sovereign Iran.
8. Overthrew national governments in Tunisia and Egypt.
9. They overthrew the national government in Georgia and established a puppet dictatorial regime there, and in fact occupied the country. Up to the deprivation of her right to speak her native language: now the main requirement in Georgia when applying for civil service and when receiving a diploma of higher education is fluency in the US language.
10. Partially implemented the same or tried to implement in Serbia and Ukraine.
In total, there are 13 acts of aggression, and 6 of them are direct military interventions. Against four, including one armed, Hitler had by 1941. The words are pronounced different - the actions are similar. Yes, the United States can say that in Afghanistan they acted in self-defense, but Hitler could also say that in the Rhineland he acted in defense of German sovereignty.
It would seem ridiculous to compare the democratic United States with fascist Germany, but this does not make it easier for the Libyans, Iraqis, Serbs and Syrians killed by the Americans. In terms of the scale and number of acts of aggression, the United States has long and far surpassed the pre-war Nazi Germany. Only Hitler, paradoxically, was much more honest: he sent his soldiers into battle, sacrificing their lives for him. The United States, on the other hand, mainly sends its mercenaries, and itself strikes almost from around the corner, killing the enemy from aircraft from a safe position.
The United States, as a result of its geopolitical offensive, committed three times more acts of aggression and unleashed six times more military acts of aggression than Hitler in the pre-war period. And the point in this case is not which of them is worse (although Hitler looks almost like a moderate politician against the background of non-stop US wars in recent years), but that the situation in the world is worse than it was in 1938-39 ... A leading and hegemonic country has carried out more aggression than a similar country by 1939. Acts of Hitler's aggression were relatively local and mainly concerned the adjacent territories. US acts of aggression are widespread throughout the world.
In the 1930s, several relatively equal centers of power existed in the world and in Europe, which, with a fortunate coincidence, could prevent aggression and stop Hitler. Today there is one center of power striving for hegemony and many times superior in its military potential to almost all other participants in world political life.
The danger of a new world war is greater today than in the second half of the 1930s. The only factor that so far makes it unrealistic is Russia's constraining capabilities. Not the rest of the nuclear powers (their potential is insufficient for this), but Russia. And this factor will disappear in a few years, when the American missile defense system is created.
Maybe war is inevitable. Maybe she won't. But it will not be there only if Russia is ready for it. The whole situation is developing too much like the beginning of the 20th century and the 1930s. The number of military conflicts with the participation of the leading countries of the world is growing. The world is heading for war.
Russia has no other choice: it must prepare for it. To put the economy on a war footing. Seek allies. Re-equip the army. Destroy agents and the fifth column of the enemy.
June 22, 1941 really shouldn't happen again.
Here is an article by Sergei Chernyakhovsky. I will add: of course, it should not be repeated. But if it repeats itself, then the first strikes, vile, VEROULOUS, and you cannot name them otherwise, will fall on peaceful Syrian cities and villages ...
How it happened with the cities and villages of the Soviet Union.
June 22, 1941 ...
http://gidepark.ru/community/8/content/1386964

On Sunday, June 22, 1941, at dawn, the troops of Nazi Germany, without declaring war, suddenly attacked the entire western border of the Soviet Union and inflicted bombing air strikes on Soviet cities and military formations.

The Great Patriotic War began. She was expected, but still she came suddenly. And the point here is not a miscalculation or Stalin's distrust of intelligence data. During the pre-war months, different dates for the start of the war were called, for example, May 20, and this was reliable information, but due to the uprising in Yugoslavia, Hitler postponed the date of the attack on the USSR to a later date. There is another factor that is rarely mentioned. This is a successful disinformation campaign by German intelligence. So, the Germans spread rumors through all possible channels that the attack on the USSR would take place precisely on June 22, but with the direction of the main attack in an area where this was obviously impossible. Thus, the date looked like misinformation, so it was on this day that an attack was least expected.
And in foreign textbooks, June 22, 1941 is presented as one of the current episodes of World War II, while in the textbooks of the Baltic states this date is considered positive, giving "hope for liberation."

Russia

§4. The invasion of the USSR. The beginning of the Great Patriotic War
At dawn on June 22, 1941, Nazi troops invaded the USSR. The Great Patriotic War began.
Germany and its allies (Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia) did not have an overwhelming advantage in manpower and equipment and, according to the Barbarossa plan, relied heavily on the surprise attack factor, blitzkrieg tactics ("lightning war"). The defeat of the USSR was envisaged within two or three months by the forces of three army groups (Army Group North, advancing on Leningrad, Army Group Center, advancing on Moscow, and Army Group South, advancing on Kiev).
In the first days of the war, the German army inflicted serious damage on the Soviet defense system: military headquarters were destroyed, the activities of communications services were paralyzed, and strategically important objects were captured. The German army was advancing at a rapid pace deep into the USSR, and by July 10, Army Group Center (commander von Bock), having captured Byelorussia, approached Smolensk; Army Group South (commander von Rundstedt) seized the Right-Bank Ukraine; Army Group North (commander von Leeb) occupied part of the Baltic. The losses of the Red Army (including those who were surrounded) amounted to more than two million people. The current situation was catastrophic for the USSR. But the Soviet mobilization resources were very large, and by the beginning of July 5 million people had been drafted into the Red Army, which made it possible to close the gaps that had formed at the front.

V.L. Kheifets, L.S. Kheifets, K.M. Severinov. General history... Grade 9. Ed. Academician V.S. Myasnikov. Moscow, publishing house "Ventana-Graf", 2013

Chapter XVII. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people against the German fascist invaders
The treacherous attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR
Fulfilling the grandiose tasks of the third Stalinist five-year plan and steadily and firmly pursuing a policy of peace, the Soviet government, at the same time, did not for a moment forget about the possibility of a new "attack by the imperialists on our country. Comrade Stalin tirelessly called on the peoples of the Soviet Union to be in mobilization readiness. In February 1938, In his response to the letter of Komsomol member Ivanov, Comrade Stalin wrote: "Indeed, it would be ridiculous and stupid to close our eyes to the fact of capitalist encirclement and think that our external enemies, for example, the Nazis, will not try to launch a military attack on the USSR on occasion."
Comrade Stalin demanded that the defense capability of our country be strengthened. “It is necessary,” he wrote, “to strengthen and strengthen our Red Army, Red Fleet, Red Aviation, Osoaviakhim in every possible way. It is necessary to keep our entire people in a state of mobilization readiness in the face of the danger of a military attack, so that no "accident" and no tricks of our external enemies could catch us by surprise ... "
Comrade Stalin's warning alerted the Soviet people, made them more vigilant to monitor the intrigues of their enemies and to strengthen the Soviet army in every possible way.
The Soviet people understood that the German fascists, led by Hitler, were striving to unleash a new bloody war, with the help of which they hoped to win world domination. Hitler declared the Germans to be the "superior race" and all other peoples to be inferior, inferior races. The Nazis treated the Slavic peoples with particular hatred and, first of all, the great Russian people, which more than once in its history fought against the German aggressors.
The Nazis based their plan on the plan of military attack and lightning defeat of Russia developed by General Hoffmann during the First World War. This plan provided for the concentration of huge armies on the western borders of our homeland, the capture of the vital centers of the country for several weeks and a rapid advance deep into Russia, up to the Urals. Subsequently, this plan was supplemented and approved by the Hitlerite command and was called the "Barbarossa" plan.
The monstrous war machine of the Hitlerite imperialists began its movement in the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine, threatening the vital centers of the Soviet country.

Textbook "History of the USSR", 10th grade, K.V. Bazilevich, S.V. Bakhrushin, A.M. Pankratova, A.V. Foht, M., Uchpedgiz, 1952

Austria, Germany

Chapter "From the Russian campaign to complete defeat"
After careful preparation, which lasted many months, on June 22, 1941, Germany launched a "war of total annihilation" against the Soviet Union. Its goal was to conquer a new living space for the Germanic Aryan race. The essence of the German plan was a lightning attack called "Barbarossa". It was believed that under the rapid onslaught of a well-trained German military machine, Soviet troops would not be able to offer decent resistance. Within a few months, the Hitlerite command seriously expected to reach Moscow. It was assumed that the capture of the capital of the USSR would finally demoralize the enemy and the war would end in victory. However, after a series of impressive successes on the battlefields, within a few weeks the Nazis were thrown back hundreds of kilometers from the Soviet capital.

Textbook "History" for grade 7, a team of authors, publishing house Duden, 2013.

Holt McDougal. The World History.
For high school high school, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pub. Co., 2012

Hitler began planning an attack on his ally, the USSR, in the early summer of 1940. The Balkan countries of Southeast Europe played a key role in the Hitlerite invasion plan. Hitler wanted to create a bridgehead in Southeast Europe for an attack on the USSR. He also wanted to make sure that the British did not interfere.
In order to prepare for the invasion, Hitler proceeded to expand his influence in the Balkans. By early 1941, threatening to use force, he convinced Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to join the Axis. Yugoslavia and Greece, ruled by pro-British governments, resisted. In early April 1941, Hitler invaded both countries. Yugoslavia fell 11 days later. Greece surrendered after 17 days.
Hitler attacks the Soviet Union. Having established tight control over the Balkans, Hitler could carry out Operation Barbarossa, his plan to invade the USSR. In the early morning of June 22, 1941, the roar of German tanks and the hum of aircraft marked the beginning of the invasion. The Soviet Union was not ready for this attack. Although he had the largest army in the world, the troops were neither well equipped nor well trained.
The invasion continued week after week until the Germans plunged 500 miles into the interior of the Soviet Union (804.67 kilometers - Ed.). Retreating, Soviet troops burned and destroyed everything in the enemy's path. The Russians used this scorched earth strategy against Napoleon.

Section 7. World War II
The attack on the Soviet Union (the so-called Barbarossa plan) was carried out on June 22, 1941. The German army, which numbered about three million soldiers, launched an offensive in three directions: in the north - to Leningrad, in the central part of the USSR - to Moscow and in the south - to the Crimea. The onslaught of the invaders was swift. Soon the Germans laid siege to Leningrad and Sevastopol, and came close to Moscow. The Red Army suffered heavy losses, but the main goal of the Nazis - the capture of the capital of the Soviet Union - was never realized. Vast expanses and the early Russian winter, with fierce resistance from Soviet troops and ordinary residents of the country, thwarted the German plan for a lightning war. In early December 1941, units of the Red Army under the command of General Zhukov launched a counteroffensive and drove the enemy troops 200 kilometers from Moscow.

History textbook for 8th grade elementary school (Klett Publishing House, 2011). Predrag Vayagich and Nenad Stoshich.

Never before had our people treated a German invasion otherwise than with decisiveness to defend their land, but when Molotov announced the German attack in a trembling voice, the Estonians felt everything but sympathy. On the contrary, many have hope. The Estonian population enthusiastically welcomed the German soldiers as liberators.
The average Estonian disliked Russian soldiers. These people were poor, poorly dressed, extremely suspicious, at the same time often very pretentious. The Germans were more familiar to the Estonians. They were cheerful and addicted to music, from the places where they gathered, laughter and playing musical instruments could be heard.

Lauri Vakhtre. Textbook "Turning points in Estonian history".

Bulgaria

Chapter 2. Globalization of the conflict (1941-1942)
Attack on the USSR (June 1941). On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a major offensive against the USSR. Starting the conquest of new territories in the east, the Fuhrer proposed in practice the theory of "living space", proclaimed in the book "My struggle" ("Mein Kampf"). On the other hand, the termination of the German-Soviet pact again enabled the Nazi regime to present itself as a fighter against communism in Europe: the aggression against the USSR was presented by German propaganda as a crusade against Bolshevism with the aim of exterminating the "Jewish Marxists".
However, this new blitzkrieg escalated into a long and grueling war. Shocked by a surprise attack, bled from the Stalinist repressions and ill-prepared Soviet army was quickly discarded. Within a few weeks, the German armies occupied one million square kilometers and reached the environs of Leningrad and Moscow. But fierce Soviet resistance and the rapid arrival of the Russian winter stopped the German offensive: the Wehrmacht could not defeat the enemy on the move in one campaign. In the spring of 1942, a new offensive was required.

Long before the attack on the USSR, the German military-political leadership was developing plans for an attack on the USSR and the development of the territory and the use of its natural, material and human resources. The future war was planned by the German command as a war of annihilation. On December 18, 1940, Hitler signed Directive # 21, known as the Barbarossa Plan. In accordance with this plan, Army Group North was to attack Leningrad, Army Group Center - through Belarus to Moscow, Army Group South - to Kiev.

The plan of "lightning war" against the USSR
The German command hoped to approach Moscow by August 15, 1941 to complete the war against the USSR and create a defensive line against "Asian Russia", by the winter of 1941 to reach the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line.
On June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began with an attack by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union. Mobilization was announced in the USSR. Voluntary entry into the Red Army became widespread. The people's militia became widespread. In the frontline zone, fighter battalions and self-defense groups were created to protect important national economic facilities. The evacuation of people and material values ​​began from the territories threatened by the occupation.
The military operations were led by the Headquarters of the Supreme Command, created on June 23, 1941. Headquarters was headed by I. Stalin. Italy
June 22, 1941
Giardina, G. Sabbatucci, V. Vidotto, Manuale di Storia. L "eta`contemporanea. History textbook for the 5th grade of high school. Bari, Laterza. Textbook for the 11th grade of high school" Our new history ", publishing house" Dar Aun ", 2008
With the German attack on the Soviet Union in the early summer of 1941, a new phase of the war began. The broadest front opened in eastern Europe. Great Britain was no longer forced to fight alone. Ideological confrontation became simpler and radicalized with the end of the anomalous agreement between Nazism and the Soviet regime. The international communist movement, which after August 1939 took an ambiguous position of condemning "opposing imperialisms", revised it in favor of an alliance with democracy and the fight against fascism.
The fact that the USSR was the main goal of Hitler's expansionist intentions was no mystery to anyone, including the Soviet people. However, Stalin believed that Hitler would never attack Russia without ending the war with Great Britain. So when the German offensive (codenamed "Barbarossa") began on 22 June 1941 on a 1,600-kilometer front from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the Russians were unprepared, and this lack of readiness, exacerbated by the 1937 purge depriving Red army of its best commanders, made it easier at first the task of the aggressor.
The offensive, in which the Italian expeditionary corps also took part, which was sent in great haste by Mussolini, who dreamed of participating in a crusade against the Bolsheviks, continued throughout the summer: in the north through the Baltic States, in the south through Ukraine in order to reach the oil regions in the Caucasus ...

June 22, 1941 will forever remain in the history of our country as the day of the beginning of a bloody and brutal war. NTV tells what happened on that terrible morning and how the Great Patriotic War began.

Read below

June 21, 1941

13:00 (Berlin time) German forces received the Dortmund signal indicating that the offensive would begin on 22 June as planned.

In Germany, Colonel General Guderian checked the readiness of the forward combat units for the offensive: “... Careful observation of the Russians convinced me that they were unaware of our intentions. In the courtyard of the fortress of Brest, which could be seen from our observation posts, to the sounds of an orchestra, they conducted a set of guards. The coastal fortifications along the Western Bug were not occupied by Russian troops. "

21:30 In Moscow, a conversation between the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Molotov and the German Ambassador Schulenburg took place. Molotov protested against multiple violations of the USSR border by German planes. The ambassador avoided answering.

23:00 German minelayers, who were in Finnish ports, began to mine the exit from the Gulf of Finland. At the same time, Finnish submarines began laying mines off the coast of Estonia.

June 22, 1941

00:10 The border troops detained Alfred Liskov, a defector from the German side, who left the location of his unit and swam across the Bug. During interrogation, the detainee said that at about 4 am the German army would begin crossing the Bug.

01:00 Stalin summoned the Chief of the General Staff Georgy Zhukov and the People's Commissar of Defense Semyon Timoshenko to the Kremlin. They reported on Liskov's message. They are joined by the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov. Zhukov and Tymoshenko insist on issuing Directive # 1.

01:45 Directive No. 1 was sent to the districts with an order to secretly occupy firing points on the border, not to succumb to provocations and to bring the troops on alert.
"one. During 22-23.6.41, a surprise attack by the Germans is possible on the fronts of the LPO, PribOVO, ZAPOVO, KOVO, OdVO. The attack can begin with provocative actions.
2. The task of our troops is not to succumb to any provocative actions that could cause major complications. At the same time, the troops of the Leningrad, Baltic, Western, Kiev and Odessa military districts should be in full combat readiness to meet a possible surprise strike by the Germans or their allies.
3. I order:
a) during the night on 22.6.41, secretly occupy firing points of fortified areas on the state border;
b) before dawn on 22.6.41, to disperse all aviation, including military, to field airfields, carefully camouflage it;
c) bring all units on alert. Keep the troops dispersed and disguised;
d) bring the air defense into combat readiness without an additional increase in the assigned personnel. Prepare all activities to darken cities and objects;
e) do not carry out any other events without a special order.
Tymoshenko. Zhukov."

3:07 The first reports of shelling began to arrive.

3:40 People's Commissar of Defense Semyon Timoshenko asks Zhukov to report to Stalin about the beginning of full-scale hostilities. At this time, the cities of Brest, Grodno, Lida, Kobrin, Slonim, Baranovichi, Bobruisk, Volkovysk, Kiev, Zhitomir, Sevastopol, Riga, Vindava, Libava, Shauliai, Kaunas, Vilnius and many others were bombed.

The chief of staff of the Black Sea Fleet, Rear Admiral I. D. Eliseev, ordered the opening of fire on German aircraft that had invaded Soviet airspace.

4:00 German troops launched an offensive. The Great Patriotic War began.

Photo: TASS

4:15 The defense of the Brest Fortress began.

4:30 The Western and Baltic districts reported on the beginning of large-scale hostilities by German troops on land sectors. 4 million soldiers of Germany and allies invaded the border territory of the USSR. 3,350 tanks, 7,000 different guns and 2,000 aircraft were involved in the battles.

4:55 Almost half of the Brest Fortress is occupied by German troops.

5:30 The German Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a note to the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, in which it declared: “Bolshevik Moscow is ready to strike in the back of National Socialist Germany, which is fighting for existence. The German government cannot be indifferent to the serious threat on the eastern border. Therefore, the Fuehrer ordered the German armed forces to avert this threat by all means and means ... "

7:15 Directive No. 2 was sent to the western military districts of the Soviet Union, which ordered the USSR troops to destroy enemy forces in areas where the border was violated, as well as “reconnaissance and combat aviation to establish the location of enemy aviation and the grouping of its ground forces. Destroy aircraft at enemy airfields and bomb the groupings of his ground troops with powerful blows from bomber and assault aviation ... "

9:30 Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Mikhail Kalinin signed decrees on the introduction of martial law in the country, on the formation of the Headquarters of the High Command, on military tribunals and general mobilization, which were subject to all persons liable for military service born from 1905 to 1918.

Photo: TASS

10:00 An air raid on Kiev and its suburbs was completed. A railway station, factories, power plants, military airfields and residential buildings were attacked.

12:00 The People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR made a radio speech. V. M. Molotov.
“... Today at 4 o'clock in the morning, without making any claims to the Soviet Union, without declaring war, German troops attacked our country, attacked our borders in many places and bombarded our cities from their planes - Zhitomir, Kiev, Sevastopol, Kaunas and some others, and more than two hundred people were killed and wounded. Enemy aircraft raids and artillery shelling were also carried out from Romanian and Finnish territory ... Germany attacked the USSR, despite the peace-loving position of the Soviet Union, and thus Nazi Germany is the attacking party ...
Now that the attack on the Soviet Union has already been accomplished, the Soviet government has given our troops an order to repulse the predatory attack and expel the German troops from the territory of our Motherland ... Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours".

After a while, the text of Molotov's speech was repeated by the famous announcer Yuri Levitan. Until now, there is an opinion that it was he who first read on the radio the message about the beginning of the war.

12:30 German troops entered Grodno. Minsk, Kiev and Sevastopol were subjected to repeated bombing.

13:00 Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano said that Italy had declared war on the USSR:
"In view of the current situation, due to the fact that Germany has declared war on the USSR, Italy, as an ally of Germany and as a member of the Triple Pact, also declares war on the Soviet Union from the moment German troops entered Soviet territory, that is, from 5.30 am on June 22"

14:00 The Brest Fortress continued to defend itself. The German commanders decided that only infantry would take the fortress - no tanks. It took no more than 8 hours to capture it.

Photo: TASS / Valery Gende-Rote

15:00 German bomber pilots continue air raids. The Baltic strategic defensive operation of the North-Western Front of F.I.Kuznetsov and part of the forces of the Baltic Fleet began. At the same time, the Byelorussian strategic defensive operation of the Western Front of D. G. Pavlov and the defensive operation in Western Ukraine of the South-Western Front began.

16:30 Beria, Molotov and Voroshilov left the Kremlin. In the first days after the start of the war, no one met with Stalin anymore, and there was practically no connection with him. Stalin made a speech to the Soviet people only on July 3, 1941. Historians still argue about why this happened.

18:30 One of the German commanders gives the order to "pull back their own forces" from the Brest Fortress. This was one of the first orders for the retreat of German troops.

Photo: TASS

19:00 The commander of the German Army Group Center gives the order to stop the shooting of the first Soviet prisoners of war and to create special camps for them.

21:15 Directive # 3 was sent to the western military districts of the Soviet Union. In it, the People's Commissar of Defense Semyon Timoshenko orders the bombing of Konigsberg and Danzig, as well as air strikes into the depths of Germany 100-150 km.

23:00 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is making a radio address in which he declares that Britain is ready to provide the USSR with all the assistance it can give.
“... We are determined to destroy Hitler and all traces of the Nazi regime. Nothing can turn us away from it, nothing. We will never come to an agreement, we will never enter into negotiations with Hitler or any of his gang. We will fight with him on land, we will fight with him at sea, we will fight with him in the air, until, with God's help, we will rid the earth from his very shadow and free the peoples from his yoke. Any person or state that fights against Nazism will receive our help. Any person or state that goes with Hitler is our enemy ... This is our policy, this is our statement. Hence it follows that we will render all the assistance we can to Russia and the Russian people. We will appeal to all our friends and allies in all parts of the world with an appeal to adhere to the same course and to carry it out as steadily and unswervingly to the end, as we will ... ".

23:50 The Main Military Council of the RKKA sent out a directive, which ordered on June 23 to inflict counterattacks on the enemy forces.

June 23, 1941

00:00 In the night radio news for the first time, a summary of the main command of the Red Army appeared: “At dawn on June 22, 1941, the regular troops of the German army attacked our border units on the front from the Baltic to the Black Sea and were held back by them during the first half of the day. In the afternoon, German troops met with the advanced units of the field forces of the Red Army. After fierce fighting, the enemy was repulsed with heavy losses. Only in the Grodno and Kristinopol directions did the enemy manage to achieve insignificant tactical successes and occupy the townships of Kalwaria, Stoyanov and Tsekhanovets (the first two are 15 km away and the last 10 km from the border). Enemy aircraft attacked a number of our airfields and settlements, but everywhere they met a decisive rebuff from our fighters and anti-aircraft artillery, which inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. We shot down 65 enemy aircraft. "

Photo: TASS / Nikolay Surovtsev

It is known that on the first day of the war, German troops advanced along the entire border 50-60 km deep into the territory of the USSR. There were still almost 4 years of war ahead.

Victory will be ours: how the Great Patriotic War began

Part 1.

Seventy-six years ago, on June 22, 1941, the peaceful life of the Soviet people was interrupted, Germany treacherously attacked our country.
Speaking on the radio on July 3, 1941, J.V. Stalin called the outbreak of war with Nazi Germany - the Patriotic War.
In 1942, after the establishment of the Order of the Patriotic War, this name was officially confirmed. And the name - "Great Patriotic War" appeared later.
The war claimed about 30 million lives (now they are talking about 40 million) of Soviet people, brought grief and suffering to almost every family, cities and villages were in ruins.
Until now, the question of who is responsible for the tragic start of the Great Patriotic War, for those colossal defeats that our army suffered at the beginning and the fact that the Nazis ended up at the walls of Moscow and Leningrad are being discussed. Who was right, who was wrong, who did not fulfill what he was obliged to do, because he took the oath of allegiance to the Motherland. You need to know the historical truth.
As almost all veterans recall, in the spring of 1941, the approach of war was felt. Informed people knew about its preparation, the inhabitants were alarmed by rumors and gossip.
But even with the declaration of war, many believed that "our indestructible and best army in the world," which was constantly repeated in newspapers and on the radio, would immediately crush the aggressor, moreover, on his own territory, encroaching on our borders.

The existing main version about the beginning of the War of 1941-1945, born during the time of N.S. Khrushchev by the decisions of the XX Congress and the memoirs of Marshal G.K. Zhukov, reads:
- “The tragedy of June 22 happened because Stalin, who was“ afraid ”of Hitler, and at the same time“ believed ”him, forbade the generals to bring the troops of the western districts to combat readiness before June 22, so that as a result, the soldiers of the Red Army met the war asleep in their barracks ";
“The main thing, of course, that prevailed over him, over all his actions, which also affected us, was the fear of Hitler. He was afraid of the German armed forces "(From the speech of G.K. Zhukov in the editorial office of the" Voenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal "13.08.1966. Published in the magazine Ogonyok # 25 1989);
- "Stalin made an irreparable mistake, relying on false information that came from the relevant authorities ..." (GK Zhukov "Memories and Reflections". M. Olma-Press. 2003.);
- “…. Unfortunately, it should be noted that I.V. On the eve and at the beginning of the war, Stalin underestimated the role and importance of the General Staff .... he had little interest in the activities of the General Staff. Neither my predecessors, nor I had the opportunity to fully report to I. Stalin on the state of the country's defense and on the capabilities of our potential enemy ... ". (GK Zhukov "Memories and Reflections". M. Olma - Press. 2003).

Until now, in different interpretations it sounds that the "main culprit", of course, Stalin, since "he was a tyrant and despot", "everyone was afraid of him" and "without his will, nothing happened", " readiness in advance ", and" forced "the generals to leave the soldiers in the" sleeping "barracks before June 22, etc.
In a conversation held at the beginning of December 1943 with the commander of long-range aviation, later Chief Marshal of Aviation A.E. Golovanov, unexpectedly for the interlocutor, Stalin said:
“I know that when I am gone, more than one tub of dirt will be poured over my head, a heap of rubbish will be applied to my grave. But I am sure that the wind of history will blow it all away! "
This is also confirmed by the words of A.M. Kollontai, recorded in her diary, back in November 1939 (on the eve of the Soviet-Finnish war). According to this testimony, even then Stalin clearly foresaw the slander that would fall upon him as soon as he passed away.
AM Kollontai wrote down his words: “And my name will also be slandered, slandered. Many atrocities will be attributed to me. "
In this sense, the position of Marshal of Artillery I.D. Yakovlev, who was repressed at one time, is characteristic, who, speaking of the war, considered it most honest to say this:
“When we undertake to talk about June 22, 1941, which covered our entire people with a black wing, then we need to distract ourselves from everything personal and follow only the truth, it is impermissible to try to place all the blame for the surprise attack of Nazi Germany only on J.V. Stalin.
In the endless complaints of our commanders about "surprise", one can see an attempt to absolve themselves of all responsibility for failures in the combat training of troops, in their command and control during the first period of the war. They forget the main thing: having taken the oath, the commanders of all echelons - from front commanders to platoon commanders - are obliged to keep troops on alert. This is their professional duty, and explaining the failure to fulfill it by referring to JV Stalin does not suit the soldiers. "
Stalin, by the way, just like them, gave a military oath of allegiance to the Fatherland - below is a photocopy of the military oath given to him in writing as a member of the Main Military Council of the Red Army back on February 23, 1939.

The paradox is that it was precisely those who suffered under Stalin, but even under him the rehabilitated people subsequently showed exceptional decency towards him.
Here, for example, what the former People's Commissar of the aircraft industry of the USSR A.I.Shakhurin said:
“You can't blame everything on Stalin! For something, the minister should be responsible ... So I, for example, did something wrong in aviation, so I am responsible for this and certainly bear responsibility. Otherwise, it's all about Stalin ... ”.
The same were the great General Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky, and the Chief Marshal of Aviation A.E. Golovanov.

Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky can be said very far "sent" Khrushchev with his proposal to write something disgusting about Stalin! For this he suffered - very quickly he was retired, dismissed from his post as Deputy Minister of Defense, but he did not renounce the Supreme. Although he had many reasons to take offense at I. Stalin.
I think that the main one is that he, as the Commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, who was the first to reach the distant approaches to Berlin and was already preparing for its future assault, was deprived of this honorable opportunity. I. Stalin removed him from the Command of the 1st Belorussian Front and appointed him to the 2nd Belorussian Front.
As many said and wrote, he did not want the Pole to take Berlin, and G.K. Zhukov.
But K.K. Rokossovsky here also showed his nobility, leaving G.K. Zhukov, practically all of his officers of the Front Headquarters, although he had every right to take them with him to the new front. And the staff officers of K.K. Rokossovsky has always been distinguished, as all military historians note, by the highest staff training.
The troops led by K.K. Rokossovsky, unlike those led by G.K. Zhukov, did not have defeats in any battle during the entire war.
A. E Golovanov was proud that he had the honor to serve the Motherland under the command of Stalin personally. He also suffered under Khrushchev, but he did not renounce Stalin!
Many other military leaders and historians speak about the same.

Here is what General N.F. Chervov writes in his book "Provocations against Russia" Moscow, 2003:

“... there was no surprise attack in the usual sense, and Zhukov's wording was invented at one time in order to shift the blame for the defeat at the beginning of the war on Stalin and to justify the miscalculations of the high military command, including their own during this period ... ".

According to the long-term chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, General of the Army P. Ivashutin, “neither strategically nor tactically, the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union was not sudden” (VIZh 1990, No. 5).

The Red Army in the pre-war years was significantly inferior to the Wehrmacht in mobilization and training.
Hitler declared universal military service on March 1, 1935, and the USSR, based on the state of the economy, was able to do this only from September 1, 1939.
As you can see, at first Stalin thought about what to feed, what to wear and what to equip the recruits with, and only then, if the calculations proved this, he conscripted into the army exactly as much as, according to the calculations, we could feed, clothe and arm.
On September 2, 1939, by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars No. 1355-279ss, the "Plan for the reorganization of the ground forces for 1939 - 1940" was approved, developed by the head from 1937. The General Staff of the Red Army, Marshal B.M. Shaposhnikov.

In 1939, the Wehrmacht numbered 4.7 million people, in the Red Army - only 1.9 million people. But by January 1941. the number of the Red Army increased to 4 million 200 thousand people.

It was simply impossible to train an army of this size and re-equip it in a short time to conduct a modern war with an experienced enemy.

JV Stalin perfectly understood this, and very soberly assessing the capabilities of the Red Army, he believed that it would be ready to fully fight the Wehrmacht no earlier than mid-1942-43. That is why he tried to delay the start of the war.
He had no illusions about Hitler.

I. Stalin knew perfectly well that the Non-Aggression Pact, which we concluded in August 1939 with Hitler, was viewed by him as a disguise and a means to achieve the goal - the defeat of the USSR, but he continued to play a diplomatic game, trying to drag out time.
All this is a lie that Stalin trusted and feared Hitler.

Back in November 1939, before the Soviet-Finnish war, an entry appeared in the personal diary of the USSR Ambassador to Sweden A.M. Kollontai, recording the following words of Stalin that she personally heard during an audience in the Kremlin:

“The time for persuasion and negotiations is over. We must practically prepare for a rebuff, for a war with Hitler. "

As to whether Stalin "trusted" Hitler, his speech at a meeting of the Politburo on November 18, 1940, when summing up the results of Molotov's visit to Berlin, testifies very well:

“… .As we know, immediately after the departure of our delegation from Berlin, Hitler announced loudly that“ German-Soviet relations have been finally established ”.
But we well know the value of these statements! It was clear to us even before the meeting with Hitler that he would not want to reckon with the legitimate interests of the Soviet Union, dictated by the security requirements of our country ...
We saw the Berlin meeting as a real opportunity to probe the position of the German government ....
Hitler's position during these negotiations, in particular his stubborn unwillingness to reckon with the natural security interests of the Soviet Union, his categorical refusal to end the de facto occupation of Finland and Romania - all this testifies to the fact that, despite demagogic assurances about the non-infringement of the "global interests" of the Soviet Union, in fact, preparations are underway for an attack on our country. Seeking a Berlin meeting, the Nazi Fuehrer sought to disguise his true intentions ...
One thing is clear: Hitler is playing a double game. While preparing aggression against the USSR, he is at the same time trying to gain time, trying to create in the Soviet government the impression that he is ready to discuss the question of the further peaceful development of Soviet-German relations ....
It was at this time that we managed to prevent the attack of Nazi Germany. And in this case, the Non-Aggression Pact concluded with her played an important role ...

But, of course, this is only a temporary respite, the immediate threat of armed aggression against us is only somewhat weakened, but not completely eliminated.

But by concluding a non-aggression pact with Germany, we have already won more than a year to prepare for a decisive and deadly struggle against Hitlerism.
Of course, we cannot view the Soviet-German pact as the basis for creating reliable security for us.
State security issues are now even more acute.
Now that our borders have been pushed back to the west, we need a mighty barrier along them, with operational groupings of troops put on alert in the near, but ... not in the immediate rear. "
(The closing words of I. Stalin are very important for understanding who is to blame for the fact that our troops of the Western Front were taken by surprise on June 22, 1941).

On May 5, 1941, at a reception in the Kremlin for graduates of military academies, Stalin said in his speech:

“… .Germany wants to destroy our socialist state: to exterminate millions of Soviet people, and turn the survivors into slaves. Only a war with fascist Germany and victory in this war can save our Motherland. I propose to drink to the war, to the offensive in the war, to our victory in this war .... "

Some saw in these words of I. Stalin his intention to attack Germany in the summer of 1941. But this is not so. When Marshal S.K. Tymoshenko reminded him of the statement about the transition to offensive actions, then he explained: "I said this to encourage those present to think about the victory, and not about the invincibility of the German army, which is trumpeted by newspapers around the world."
On January 15, 1941, speaking at a meeting in the Kremlin, Stalin spoke to the commanders of the military districts:

“The war creeps up unnoticed and will begin with a surprise attack without a declaration of war” (AI Eremenko “Diaries”).
V.M. Molotov recalled the beginning of the war in the mid-1970s:

“We knew that the war was not far off, that we were weaker than Germany, that we would have to retreat. The whole question was whether we would have to retreat to Smolensk or Moscow, we discussed this before the war .... We did everything to delay the war. And we succeeded in this for a year and ten months .... Even before the war, Stalin believed that only by 1943 we could meet the Germans on an equal footing. …. Air Chief Marshal A.E. Golovanov told me that after the defeat of the Germans near Moscow, Stalin said: “God grant that we end this war in 1946.
Yes, by the hour of the attack, no one could be ready, not even the Lord God!
We were waiting for an attack, and we had a main goal: not to give Hitler a reason to attack. He would say: “Now the Soviet troops are gathering at the border, they are forcing me to act!
The TASS report of June 14, 1941 was sent to give the Germans no reason to justify their attack ... It was needed as a last resort .... It turned out that Hitler on June 22 became an aggressor in front of the whole world. And we had allies ... He was already in 1939 was determined to unleash a war. And when will he untie it? The delay was so desirable for us, for another year or for several months. Of course, we knew that we had to be ready for this war at any moment, but how to ensure this in practice? It is very difficult ... "(F. Chuev." One hundred and forty conversations with Molotov. "

Much is said and written that Stalin ignored and did not trust that mass of information on Germany's preparation for an attack on the USSR, which was presented by our foreign intelligence, military intelligence and other sources.
But this is far from the truth.

As one of the heads of foreign intelligence at the time, General P.A. Sudoplatov, “although Stalin was irritated with intelligence materials (why, it will be shown below-sad39), nevertheless he tried to use all the intelligence information that was reported to Stalin to prevent war in secret diplomatic negotiations, and our intelligence was entrusted with communicating to the German military circles of information about the inevitability for Germany of a long war with Russia, emphasizing that we have created a military-industrial base in the Urals, invulnerable to a German attack. "

So, for example, I. Stalin ordered to acquaint the German military attaché in Moscow with the industrial and military might of Siberia.
At the beginning of April 1941, he was allowed a trip to new military factories that produced tanks and aircraft of the latest designs.
And about. German attaché in Moscow G. Krebs reported on April 9, 1941 in Berlin:
“Our representatives were allowed to see everything. Obviously, Russia wants to intimidate possible aggressors in this way. "

The external intelligence of the People's Commissariat of State Security, at Stalin's instructions, specially provided the Harbin station of the German intelligence in China with the opportunity to "intercept and decipher" a certain "circular from Moscow", which ordered all Soviet representatives abroad to warn Germany that the Soviet Union had prepared to defend its interests. " (Vishlev OV "On the eve of June 22, 1941." M., 2001).

The most complete information about Germany's aggressive intentions against the USSR was obtained by foreign intelligence through their agents (the "great five" - ​​Philby, Cairncross, McLean and their comrades) in London.

Intelligence has obtained the most secret information about the negotiations that the British Foreign Ministers Simon and Halifax had with Hitler in 1935 and 1938, respectively, and the Prime Minister Chamberlain in 1938.
We learned that Britain agreed with Hitler's demand to remove part of the military restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, that Germany's expansion to the East was encouraged in the hope that access to the borders of the USSR would remove the threat of aggression from Western countries.
At the beginning of 1937, information was received about a meeting of the highest representatives of the Wehrmacht, at which issues of the war with the USSR were discussed.
In the same year, data was obtained on the operational-strategic games of the Wehrmacht, conducted under the leadership of General Hans von Seeckt, the result of which was the conclusion ("Seeckt's testament") that Germany would not be able to win the war with Russia if the hostilities dragged on for a period more than two months and if during the first month of the war it is not possible to capture Leningrad, Kiev, Moscow and defeat the main forces of the Red Army, while occupying at the same time the main centers of the military industry and the extraction of raw materials in the European part of the USSR. "
The conclusion, as we can see, was fully justified.
According to General P.A. Sudoplatov, who was in charge of the German direction of intelligence, the results of these games were one of the reasons that prompted Hitler to come up with the initiative to conclude a non-aggression pact in 1939.
In 1935, data was received from one of the sources of our Berlin station, Agent Breitenbach, on the testing of a liquid-propellant ballistic missile with a range of up to 200 km, developed by engineer von Braun.

But the objective, full-fledged characterization of Germany's intentions in relation to the USSR, specific goals, dates, and the direction of her military aspirations remained unclear.

The obvious inevitability of our military clash was combined in the reports of our intelligence with information about a possible agreement between Germany on an armistice with England, as well as Hitler's proposals to delimit the spheres of influence of Germany, Japan, Italy and the USSR. This naturally caused a certain degree of mistrust in the reliability of the received intelligence data.
It should also not be forgotten that the repressions that took place in 1937-1938 did not escape intelligence. Our residency in Germany and other countries was greatly weakened. In 1940, People's Commissar Yezhov said that he "cleaned up 14 thousand Chekists"

On July 22, 1940, Hitler made a decision - to start an aggression against the USSR even before the end of the war with England.
On the same day, he instructs the commander-in-chief of the ground forces of the Wehrmacht to develop a plan for war with the USSR, having completed all preparations by May 15, 1941, in order to start hostilities no later than mid-June 1941.
Hitler's contemporaries claim that, as a very superstitious person, he considered the date June 22, 1940 - the surrender of France - very happy for himself and then set June 22, 1941 as the date of the attack on the USSR.

On July 31, 1940, a meeting was held at the headquarters of the Wehrmacht, at which Hitler substantiated the need to start a war with the USSR, without waiting for the end of the war with England.
On December 18, 1940, Hitler signed Directive # 21 - Plan "Barbarossa".

“For a long time it was believed that the USSR did not have the text of Directive No. 21 -" Plan Barbarossa ", and it was indicated that American intelligence had it, but did not share it with Moscow. American intelligence did have information, including a copy of Directive No. 21 "Plan Barbarossa".

In January 1941, it was obtained by Sam Edison Woods, Commercial Attaché of the United States of America in Berlin, through his connections in the government and military circles in Germany.
US President Roosevelt ordered to familiarize the Soviet Ambassador to Washington K. Umansky with the materials of S. Woods, which was done on March 1, 1941.
At the direction of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, his deputy, Samner Welles, handed these materials over to our Ambassador Umansky, and, moreover, with an indication of the source.

The information of the Americans was very significant, but nevertheless a supplement to the information of the NKGB intelligence department and military intelligence, which at that time had much more powerful agent networks in order to independently keep abreast of the German plans of aggression and inform the Kremlin about it. " (Sudoplatov PA "Different days of secret war and diplomacy. 1941". M., 2001).

But the date - June 22 in the text of Directive No. 21 is not and was not.
It contained only the date of completion of all preparations for the attack - May 15, 1941.

First page of Directive No. 21 - Barbarossa Plan

General of the Army Ivashutin, chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU GSh), for many years, said:
"The texts of almost all documents and radiograms concerning Germany's military preparations and the timing of the attack were reported regularly according to the following list: Stalin (two copies), Molotov, Beria, Voroshilov, the People's Commissar of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff."

Therefore, the statement of G.K. Zhukov that “... there is a version that on the eve of the war we allegedly knew the Barbarossa plan ... I will allow myself to state with full responsibility that this is pure fiction. As far as I know, neither the Soviet government, nor the People's Commissar of Defense, nor the General Staff had any such data "(GK Zhukov" Memories and Reflections "M. APN 1975, vol. 1, p. 259).

It is permissible to ask what data did the Chief of the General Staff G.K. Zhukov, if he did not have this information, and also was not even familiar with the memorandum of the head of the Intelligence Directorate (from February 16, 1942, the Intelligence Directorate was transformed into the Main Intelligence Directorate - GRU) of the General Staff of Lieutenant General F.I. Golikov, who was subordinate to directly G.K. Zhukov, dated March 20, 1941 - "Variants of military operations of the German army against the USSR", compiled on the basis of all the intelligence information obtained through military intelligence and which was reported to the country's leadership.

This document set out options for possible directions of attacks by German troops, and one of the options essentially reflected the essence of the "Barbarossa plan" and the direction of the main attacks of the German troops.

So G.K. Zhukov answered a question posed to him by Colonel Anfilov many years after the war. Colonel Anfilov later cited this answer in his article in Krasnaya Zvezda dated March 26, 1996.
(And it is characteristic that in his most "truthful book about the war" GK Zhukov described this report and criticized the incorrect conclusions of the report).

When Lieutenant General N.G. Pavlenko, whom G.K. Zhukov assured that he knew nothing on the eve of the war about the "Barbarossa plan", showed G.K. Zhukov copies of these German documents, which bore the signatures of Timoshenko, Beria, Zhukov and Abakumov, then according to Pavlenko - G.K. Zhukov was amazed and shocked. Strange forgetfulness.
But F.I. Golikov quickly corrected the mistake he made in his report conclusions of March 20, 1941 and began to present irrefutable evidence of the preparation of the Germans for an attack on the USSR:
- 4, 16.April 26, 1941 Head of the General Staff Department F.I. Golikov sends special messages to I.Stalin, S.K. Tymoshenko and other leaders on strengthening the grouping of German troops on the border of the USSR;
- On May 9, 1941, the head of the RU F.I. Golikov introduced I.V. Stalin, V.M. Molotov to the People's Commissar of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff report "On the plans of a German attack on the USSR", which assessed the grouping of German troops, indicated the directions of strikes and gave the number of concentrated German divisions;
-15 May 1941, a message from the RU "On the distribution of the German armed forces in theaters and fronts as of 05/15/1941" was presented;
- On June 5 and 7, 1941, Golikov presented a special report on the military preparations of Romania. A number of other messages were submitted before June 22nd.

As mentioned above, G.K. Zhukov complained that he did not have the opportunity to report to I. Stalin about the potential of the enemy.
What capabilities of a potential adversary could have been reported by Chief of the General Staff G. Zhukov, if, according to him, he was not familiar with the main intelligence report on this issue?
Regarding the fact that his predecessors did not have the opportunity for a detailed report to I. Stalin - also a complete lie in "the most truthful book about the war."
For example, only in June 1940, the People's Commissar of Defense S.K. Timoshenko spent 22 hours 35 minutes in Stalin's office, Chief of the General Staff B.M. Shaposhnikov 17 hours 20 minutes.
G.K. Zhukov, from the moment of his appointment as Chief of the General Staff, i.e. from January 13, 1941 to June 21, 1941, he spent 70 hours and 35 minutes in I. Stalin's office.
This is evidenced by the entries in the Journal of visits to Stalin's office.
(“At Stalin’s reception. Notebooks (journals) of records of persons taken by IV Stalin (1924-1953)” Moscow. New chronograph, 2008. The records of I.V. Stalin for 1924-1953, in which every day, with an accuracy of the minute, the time spent in Stalin's Kremlin office of all his visitors was recorded).

In the same period, Stalin's office was repeatedly visited, in addition to the People's Commissar of Defense and the Beginning. General Staff, Marshalov K.E. Voroshilova, S.M. Budyonny, Deputy People's Commissar Marshal Kulik, General of the Army Meretskov, Lieutenant Generals of Aviation Rychagov, Zhigarev, General N.F. Vatutin and many other military leaders.

On January 31, 1941, the main command of the Wehrmacht ground forces issued directive No. 050/41 on the strategic concentration and deployment of troops in order to implement the Barbarossa plan.

The directive determined "Day B" - the day of the start of the offensive - no later than June 21, 1941.
On April 30, 1941, at a meeting of the top military leadership, Hitler finally named the date of the attack on the USSR - June 22, 1941, writing it on his copy of the plan.
June 10, 1941 Order No. 1170/41 of the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces Halder "On the appointment of the date for the start of the offensive against the Soviet Union" was determined;
"one. June 22, 1941 is proposed to be considered the D-day of Operation Barbarossa.
2. In case of postponing this deadline, a corresponding decision will be made no later than 18 June. The data on the direction of the main attack will remain secret as before.
3.At 13.00 on June 21, one of the following signals will be transmitted to the troops:
a) Signal "Dortmund". It means that the offensive will begin on June 22 as planned and that it is possible to proceed with the open execution of the order.
b) Signal "Altona". It means that the offensive is postponed to another date. But in this case, it will already be necessary to go to the full disclosure of the objectives of the concentration of German troops, since the latter will be in full combat readiness.
4. June 22, 3 hours 30 minutes: the beginning of the offensive and the flight of aviation across the border. If the meteorological conditions delay the departure of aviation, the ground forces will launch an offensive on their own. "

Unfortunately, our foreign, military and political intelligence, as Sudoplatov said, “intercepting data on the timing of the attack and correctly determining the inevitability of war, did not predict the Wehrmacht's rate of blitzkrieg. This was a fatal mistake, for the rate on the blitzkrieg indicated that the Germans were planning their attack regardless of the end of the war with England. "

Foreign intelligence messages about Germany's military preparations came from various residencies: England, Germany, France, Poland, Romania, Finland, etc.

Already in September 1940, one of the most valuable sources of the Berlin residency "Corsican" (Arvid Harnack. One of the leaders of the "Red Chapel" organization. He began to cooperate with the USSR since 1935. In 1942 he was arrested and executed) transmitted information that year Germany will start a war against the Soviet Union. " There have been similar reports from other sources.

In December 1940, a message was received from the Berlin station that on December 18, Hitler, speaking about the graduation of 5 thousand German officers from the schools, spoke out sharply against "injustice on earth, when the Great Russians own one-sixth of the land, and 90 million Germans huddle on a piece of land ”and called on the Germans to eliminate this“ injustice ”.

“In those pre-war years, there was a procedure for reporting to the country's leadership each material received through foreign intelligence separately, usually in the form in which it was received, without its analytical assessment. Only the degree of reliability of the source was determined.

The information reported to the management in this form did not create a unified picture of the events, did not answer the question for what purpose these or those measures were being carried out, whether a political decision on the attack had been made, etc.
Summarizing materials were not prepared, with a deep analysis of all information received from sources and conclusions for consideration by the country's leadership. " ("The secrets of Hitler on Stalin's desk" published by the Moscow State Archive 1995).

In other words, before the war, I. Stalin was simply “inundated” with various intelligence information, in a number of cases contradictory and sometimes false.
Only in 1943 an analytical service appeared in foreign intelligence and counterintelligence.
It should also be taken into account that in preparation for the war against the USSR, the Germans began to carry out very powerful camouflage and disinformation measures at the level of state policy, in the development of which they took the highest ranks of the Third Reich.

At the beginning of 1941, the German command began to implement a whole system of measures to falsely explain the military preparations being made on the borders with the USSR.
On February 15, 1941, document No. 44142/41 was introduced, signed by Keitel, "Guidelines of the Supreme High Command for Disguising the Preparation of Aggression Against the Soviet Union", which provided for concealing from the enemy the preparations for the operation according to the "Barbarossa" plan.
The document prescribed at the first stage, “until April, to maintain the uncertainty of information about their intentions. At subsequent stages, when it will no longer be possible to hide the preparation for the operation, it will be necessary to explain all our actions as disinformation, aimed at diverting attention from the preparation of the invasion of England. "

On May 12, 1941, the second document was adopted - 44699/41 "Order of the Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the Armed Forces of May 12, 1941 to conduct the second phase of enemy disinformation in order to preserve the secrecy of the concentration of forces against the Soviet Union."
This document provided for:

“... from May 22, with the introduction of the maximum tight schedule for the movement of military echelons, all efforts of the disinformation agencies should be aimed at presenting the concentration of forces for Operation Barbarossa as a maneuver in order to confuse the western enemy.
For the same reason, it is necessary to continue preparations especially energetically for an attack on England ...
Among the formations located in the East, rumors should circulate about rear cover against Russia and "a diversionary concentration of forces in the East", and the troops located on the English Channel should believe in actual preparations for the invasion of England ...
Spread the thesis that the action to capture the island of Crete (Operation Mercury) was a dress rehearsal for the landing in England ... ".
(During Operation Mercury, the Germans airlifted more than 23,000 soldiers and officers, more than 300 artillery pieces, about 5,000 containers with weapons and ammunition and other cargoes to Crete by the Germans. This was the largest airborne operation in the history of war) ...

The agent provocateur "Lyceumist" (O. Berlinks. 1913-1978. Latvian. Recruited in Berlin on August 15, 1940.) was substituted for our Berlin station.
During interrogation in May 1947, Abwehr Major Siegfried Müller, who was in Soviet captivity, testified that in August 1940 Amayak Kobulov (a resident of our foreign intelligence in Berlin) was set up by an agent of German intelligence, Latvian Burlings ("Lyceist"), who, on the instructions of the Abwehr for a long time supplied him with disinformation materials.).
The results of the meeting of the "Lyceumist" with Kobulov were reported to Hitler. Information for this agent was prepared and agreed with Hitler and Ribentrop.
There were messages from the "Lyceum" about the low likelihood of a way out of Germany from the USSR, reports that the concentration of German troops on the border was a response to the movement of Soviet troops to the border, etc.
However, Moscow knew about the "double day" of the "Lyceist". Foreign policy intelligence and military intelligence of the USSR had such strong agent positions in the German Foreign Ministry that a quick determination of the true face of the "Lyceist" did not leave any difficulty.
The game began and, in turn, our resident in Berlin Kobulov supplied the "Lyceum student" with the relevant information at meetings.

In German disinformation actions, information began to appear that German preparations near our borders were aimed at putting pressure on the USSR and forcing it to accept demands of an economic and territorial nature, a kind of ultimatum that Berlin allegedly intends to put forward.

Information was spread that Germany was experiencing an acute shortage of food and raw materials, and that without solving this problem through supplies from Ukraine and oil from the Caucasus, she would not be able to defeat England.
All this misinformation was reflected in their reports not only by the sources of the Berlin station, but it also fell into the field of vision of other foreign intelligence services, from where our intelligence also received it through its agents in these countries.
Thus, multiple overlapping of the obtained information was obtained, which, as it were, confirmed their "reliability" - and they had the same source - disinformation prepared in Germany.
On April 30, 1941, information came from "Corsican" that Germany wants to solve its problems by presenting an ultimatum to the USSR on a significant increase in the supply of raw materials.
On May 5, the same "Corsican" gives information that the concentration of German troops is a "war of nerves" for the USSR to accept Germany's conditions: the USSR must give guarantees of entering the war on the side of the Axis powers.
Similar information comes from the British residency.
On May 8, 1941, in a message from "Sergeant Major" (Harro Schulze-Boysen) it was said that the attack on the USSR was not removed from the agenda, but the Germans would first present us with an ultimatum demanding to increase exports to Germany.

And so all this mass of information from foreign intelligence, as they say, in its original form, fell out, as mentioned above, without carrying out its generalized analysis and conclusions on the table of Stalin, who himself had to analyze it and draw conclusions ..

Here it will become clear why, according to Sudoplatov, Stalin felt some irritation towards intelligence materials, but not all materials.
Here is what V.M. Molotov:
“When I was the Pre-Council of People's Commissars, I spent half a day every day reading intelligence reports. There was so much that was not there, no matter what terms were called! And if we had succumbed, the war could have begun much earlier. The scout's task is not to be late, to have time to report ... ".

Many researchers, speaking of Stalin's “mistrust” of intelligence materials, cite his resolution on the special message of the People's Commissar of State Security V.N. and "Corsican" (Arvid Harnack):
"Comrade. Merkulov. Can send your source from germ headquarters. aviation to fucking mother. This is not a source, but a disinformer. I.St. "

In fact, those who spoke about Stalin's distrust of intelligence apparently did not read the text of this message, but made a conclusion only on the resolution of I. Stalin.
Although a certain amount of mistrust in the intelligence data, especially in the numerous dates of a possible German attack, after all, more than ten of them were reported only through military intelligence, apparently Stalin developed it.

Hitler, for example, issued an offensive order during the war on the Western Front, but canceled it on the planned day of the offensive. On the offensive on the Western Front, Hitler issued an order 27 times and canceled it 26 times.

If we read the message of the "Sergeant Major" itself, then Stalin's irritation and resolution will become understandable.
Here is the text of the message of the "Sergeant Major":
"one. All military measures to prepare for an armed attack against the SSR are completely completed and a strike can be expected at any time.
2. In the circles of the aviation headquarters, the TASS message of June 6 was perceived very ironically. They emphasize that this statement cannot have any meaning.
3. The objects of the raids of the German aviation, first of all, will be the Svir-3 power plant, Moscow factories producing individual parts for aircraft, as well as car repair shops ... ".
(Further in the text is the message of the "Corsican" on the economy and industry of Germany).
.
"Sergeant Major" (Harro Schulze-Boysen 2.09.1909 - 22.12.1942. German. Born in Kiel in the family of a captain of the 2nd rank. Studied at the Faculty of Law of the University of Berlin. Before the outbreak of World War II, Schulze-Boysen established contact with Dr. Arvid Harnack ("Corsican"). On August 31, 1942, Harro Schulze-Boysen was arrested and executed. Posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1969) has always been honest an agent who gave us a lot of valuable information.

But his report of June 17 looks rather frivolous already because it confused the date of the TASS report (not June 14, but June 6), and the second-rate Svirskaya hydroelectric power station, Moscow factories, “producing separate parts for aircraft, as well as auto repair shops ".

So Stalin had every reason to doubt such information.
At the same time, we see that Stalin's resolution refers only to the "Sergeant Major" - an agent working in the headquarters of the German aviation, but not to the "Corsican".
But after such a resolution, Stalin then summoned V.N. Merkulov and the chief of foreign intelligence P.M. Fitin.
Stalin was interested in the smallest details about the Sources. After Fitin explained why the intelligence trusts the "Sergeant Major", Stalin said: "Go double-check everything and report to me."

A huge amount of intelligence information also came through military intelligence.
Only from London, where a group of military intelligence officers was led by the military attaché, Major General I.Ya. Sklyarov, in one pre-war year, 1,638 sheets of telegraph reports were sent to the Center, most of which contained information about Germany's preparation for war against the USSR.
Widely known was the telegram of Richard Sorge, who worked in Japan through the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff:

In reality, there has never been a message from Sorge with such a text.
On June 6, 2001, Krasnaya Zvezda published materials from a round table dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the war, in which SVR Colonel Karpov quite definitely said that unfortunately this was a fake.

The same forgery and "resolution" of L. Beria of June 21, 1941:
"Many workers are spreading panic ... To wipe the secret employees of" Yastreb "," Carmen "," Almaz "," Verny "into camp dust as accomplices of international provocateurs who want to embroil us with Germany."
These lines are circulating in the press, but their falsification has long been established.

Indeed, since February 3, 1941, there was no foreign intelligence under Beria, because the NKVD was divided that day into Beria's NKVD and Merkulov's NKGB, and foreign intelligence was completely subordinated to Merkulov.

And here are some actual reports from R. Sorge (Ramsay):

- "May 2:" I talked with the German ambassador Ott and the naval attaché about the relationship between Germany and the USSR ... The decision to start a war against the USSR will be made only by Hitler either in May or after the war with England. "
- May 30: “Berlin informed Ott that the German offensive against the USSR would begin in the second half of June. Ott is 95% confident that the war will start. "
- June 1: “The expectation of the start of the German-Soviet war around June 15 is based solely on the information that Lieutenant Colonel Scholl brought with him from Berlin, from where he left - on May 6 for Bangkok. In Bangkok, he will take the post of military attaché. "
- June 20 "The German Ambassador to Tokyo Ott told me that a war between Germany and the USSR is inevitable."

According to military intelligence alone, there have been more than 10 messages about the date of the start of the war with Germany, starting in 1940.
Here they are:
- December 27, 1940 - from Berlin: the war will begin in the second half of next year;
- December 31, 1940 - from Bucharest: the war will begin next spring;
- February 22, 1941 - from Belgrade: the Germans will perform in May - June 1941;
- March 15, 1941 - from Bucharest: the war should be expected in 3 months;
- March 19, 1941 - from Berlin: the attack is planned between May 15 and June 15, 1941;
- May 4, 1941 - from Bucharest: the beginning of the war is scheduled for mid-June;
- May 22, 1941 - from Berlin: an attack on the USSR is expected on June 15;
- June 1, 1941 - from Tokyo: the beginning of the war - about June 15;
- June 7, 1941 - from Bucharest: the war will begin on June 15 - 20;
- June 16, 1941 - from Berlin and France: German attack on the USSR on June 22 - 25;
June 21, 1941 - from the German Embassy in Moscow, the attack is scheduled for 3-4 o'clock in the morning on June 22.

As you can see, the latest information from a source at the German Embassy in Moscow contains the exact date and time of the attack.
This information was received from the agent of the Intelligence Directorate - "KhVTs" (aka Gerhard Kegel), an employee of the German embassy in Moscow, who was on the early morning of June 21st. "KhVTs" itself summoned its curator, Colonel RU K.B. Leontyv, to an urgent meeting.
On the evening of June 21, Leontyev met again with an agent of the KhVTs.
Information from "KhVTs" was immediately reported to IV Stalin, VM Molotov, SK Timoshenko and GK Zhukov.

There was very extensive information from various sources about the concentration of German troops at our borders.
As a result of intelligence activities, the Soviet leadership knew and represented a real threat from Germany, its desire to provoke the USSR into military action, which would compromise us in the eyes of the world community as the culprit of the aggression, thereby depriving the USSR of allies in the fight against the true aggressor.

The fact that the agents of our military intelligence were such celebrities as the film actresses Olga Chekhova and Marika Rekk also shows how ramified the network of agents of Soviet intelligence was.

An illegal scout, acting under the pseudonym "Merlin", she is Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova, worked for Soviet intelligence from 1922 to 1945. The scale of her intelligence activities, the volume and especially the level and quality of the information she sent to Moscow is clearly evidenced by the fact that the connection between O. K. Chekhova and Moscow was supported by three radio operators in Berlin and its environs at once.
Hitler conferred on Olga Chekhova the specially established title of State Artist of the Third Reich for her, invited her to the most prestigious events, during which he demonstratively showed her the signs of the highest attention, invariably seated her in the ranks with him. (AB Martirosyan "Tragedy of June 22: Blitzkrieg or treason.")

OK. Chekhov at one of the receptions next to Hitler.

Marika Rekk belonged to the intelligence group of the Soviet military intelligence, which bore the code name "Krona". Its creator was one of the most prominent Soviet military intelligence officers Yan Chernyak.
The group was created back in the mid-20s. XX century and it operated for about 18 years, but none of its members was discovered by the enemy.
And it consisted of over 30 people, most of whom became important officers of the Wehrmacht, major industrialists of the Reich.

Marika Reck
(Known to our viewer from trophy German
the film "Girl of My Dreams")

But G.K. Zhukov nevertheless did not miss the opportunity to fool our intelligence and accused the Intelligence Directorate of insolvency, writing in a letter to the writer V.D. Sokolov dated March 2, 1964, the following:

“Our intelligence service, which was led by Golikov before the war, worked poorly and failed to reveal the true intentions of the Hitlerite high command. Our intelligence service was unable to refute Hitler's false version of his unwillingness to fight the Soviet Union. "

Hitler continued to play his disinformation game, hoping to outplay Stalin in it.

So on May 15, 1941, the off-flight Ju-52 aircraft (the Junkers-52 aircraft were used by Hitler as personal transport), having flown unhindered over Bialystok, Minsk and Smolensk, landed in Moscow at 11.30 on Khodynskoye field, without encountering opposition from Soviet means Air defense.
After this landing, many leaders of the Soviet air defense and aviation forces had very "serious troubles."
The plane brought a personal message from Hitler to J. Stalin.
Here is part of the text of this message:
“During the formation of the invasion troops away from the eyes and aircraft of the enemy, as well as in connection with the recent operations in the Balkans, a large number of my troops, about 88 divisions, accumulated along the border with the Soviet Union, which, possibly, gave rise to the now circulating rumors of a possible military conflict between us. I assure you on the honor of the head of state that this is not the case.
For my part, I also understand that you cannot completely ignore these rumors and that you have also concentrated a sufficient number of your troops on the border.
In such a situation, I do not at all exclude the possibility of an accidental outbreak of an armed conflict, which, given such a concentration of troops, can take on a very large scale, when it is difficult or simply impossible to determine what was its root cause. It will be no less difficult to stop this conflict.
I want to be very frank with you. I am afraid that one of my generals will deliberately go into such a conflict in order to save England from her fate and thwart my plans.
It's only about one month. Around June 15-20, I plan to start a massive transfer of troops to the West from your border.
At the same time, I most earnestly ask you not to succumb to any provocations that may occur on the part of my generals who have forgotten their duty. And, needless to say, try not to give them any excuse.
If provocations from one of my generals cannot be avoided, please, show restraint, do not take retaliatory actions and immediately report the incident through the communication channel known to you. Only in this way can we achieve our common goals, which, it seems to me, we have clearly agreed with you. I thank you for meeting me halfway on the issue known to you, and I ask you to excuse me for the method that I have chosen to deliver this letter to you as soon as possible. I continue to hope for our meeting in July. Sincerely yours, Adolf Hitler. May 14, 1941 ".

(As we can see in this letter, Hitler practically himself "names" the approximate date of the attack on the USSR on June 15-20, covering it with the transfer of troops to the West.)

But I. Stalin always had a clear position regarding Hitler's intentions and confidence in him.
The question of whether he believed or did not believe simply should not exist, he never believed.

And all subsequent actions of I. Stalin show that he really did not believe the "sincerity" of Hitler and continued to take measures to "bring operational groupings of troops to combat readiness in the near, but ... not in the immediate rear," which he spoke about in his speech from On November 18, 1940, at a meeting of the Politburo, so that the German attack would not take us by surprise.
So directly on his instructions:

On May 14, 1941, directives of the General Staff No. 503859, 303862, 303874, 503913 and 503920 (for the Western, Kiev, Odessa, Leningrad and Baltic districts, respectively) were sent on the preparation of border defense and air defense plans.
However, the command of all military districts, instead of the deadline for submitting plans by May 20-25, 1941, submitted them by June 10-20. Therefore, these plans were not approved by either the General Staff or the People's Commissar of Defense.
This is the direct fault of the commanders of the districts, as well as the General Staff, which did not demand the submission of plans by the specified date.
As a result, thousands of soldiers and officers were responsible for this with their lives at the beginning of the war;

- “... In February - April 1941, commanders of troops, members of military councils, chiefs of staff and operational departments of the Baltic, Western, Kiev special and Leningrad military districts were summoned to the General Staff. Together with them, the order of covering the border was outlined, the allocation of the necessary forces and forms of their use for this purpose .. "(Vasilevsky AM" The Work of All Life ". M., 1974);

From March 25 to April 5, 1941, a partial conscription into the Red Army was carried out, thanks to which it was possible to additionally call in about 300 thousand people;

On January 20, 1941, the order of the People's Commissar of Defense was announced to enroll in the cadres of the command personnel of the reserve, called up for mobilization on the eve of the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940, which was detained in the army after the end of this war until the special unloading;

On May 24, 1941, at an expanded meeting of the Politburo, Stalin openly warned all the top Soviet and military leadership that in the very near future the USSR might be subjected to a sudden attack by Germany;

During May-June 1941. as a result of "hidden mobilization" about a million "appointees" from the inner districts were raised and sent to the western districts.
This made it possible to bring almost 50% of the divisions to the standard wartime strength (12-14 thousand people).
Thus, the actual deployment and resupply of the troops of the western districts began long before June 22.
This hidden mobilization could not be carried out without Stalin's instructions, but it was carried out secretly in order to prevent Hitler and the entire West from accusing the USSR of aggressive intentions.
After all, this has already happened in our history, when in 1914 Nicholas II declared mobilization in the Russian Empire, which was regarded as a declaration of war;

On June 10, 1941, at the direction of I. Stalin, the Directive of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 503859 / ss / s was sent to ZapOVO, which provided for: "To increase the combat readiness of the district troops, all deep rifle divisions ... withdraw to the areas provided for by the cover plan", which meant the actual bringing troops to increased combat readiness;
- On June 11, 1941, a Directive of the People's Commissar of Defense was sent on the immediate restoration of proper condition and full combat readiness of the defensive structures of the first line of the fortified areas of the Western OVO, first of all, strengthening their firepower.
“General Pavlov was obliged to report on the execution by June 15, 1941. But the report on the implementation of this directive was not received. " (Anfilov V.A. "The failure of the" Blitzkrieg ". M., 1975).
And as it turned out later, this directive was not implemented.
Again the question, where was the General Staff and its chief, who were supposed to demand its execution, or was Stalin supposed to control these issues for them ?;

On June 12, 1941, directives from the People's Commissariat of Defense were sent, signed by Timoshenko and Zhukov, to put into effect the Covering Plans for all western districts;

On June 13, 1941, at the direction of I. Stalin, a directive of the General Staff was issued on the advancement of troops located in the depths of the district, closer to the state border (Vasilevsky A.M. "The Work of a Lifetime").
In three out of four districts, this directive was fulfilled, except for the Western OVO (District Commander General of the Army D.F. Pavlov).
As the military historian A. Isaev writes, “since June 18, the following units of the Kiev OVO moved closer to the border from their places of deployment:
31 sk (200, 193, 195 sd); 36 sc (228, 140, 146 SD); 37 sc (141.80.139 cd); 55 sc (169.130.189 sd); 49 sc (190.197 sd).
In total - 5 rifle corps (SK), including 14 rifle divisions (SD), and this is about 200 thousand people "
In total, 28 divisions were moved closer to the state border;

In the memoirs of G.K. Zhukov also find the following message:
“People's Commissar of Defense S.K. Timoshenko already in June 1941 recommended the commanders of the military districts to conduct tactical exercises of formations in the direction of the state border in order to bring the troops closer to the deployment areas according to cover plans (i.e., to the defense areas in the event of an attack).
This recommendation of the People's Commissar of Defense was carried out by the districts, however, with one significant reservation: a significant part of the artillery did not take part in the movement (to the border, to the line of defense) ...
... The reason for this was that the commanders of the districts (Western OVO-Pavlov and Kiev OVO-Kirponos), without agreement with Moscow, decided to send most of the artillery to the shooting ranges. "
Again the question: Where was the General Staff, its chief, if, without their knowledge, the commanders of the districts are carrying out such measures when the war with Germany is on the verge?
As a result, some corps and divisions of the covering forces were left without a significant part of their artillery during the attack of Nazi Germany.
K.K. Rokossovsky writes in his book that “back in May 1941, for example, an order was issued from the district headquarters, the expediency of which was difficult to explain in that alarming situation. The troops were ordered to send artillery to the training grounds located in the border zone.
Our corps managed to defend its artillery. "
Thus, artillery of large calibers, the striking force of the troops, was practically absent in the battle formations. And most of the anti-aircraft weapons of the Western OVO were generally located near Minsk, far from the border, and could not cover units and airfields attacked from the air in the first hours and days of the war.
The district command rendered this "invaluable service" to the invading German forces.
Here is what the German General Blumentritt writes in his memoirs - Chief of Staff of the 4th Army of Army Group "Center" (2nd Panzer Group of this army, commanded by Guderian, advanced on June 22, 1941 in the Brest region against the 4th Army of the Western OVO - Army Commander Major General M.A. Korobkov):
“At 3 hours 30 minutes all our artillery opened fire ... And then something happened that seemed like a miracle: the Russian artillery did not respond ... A few hours later the divisions of the first echelon were on the other side of the river. Boog. Tanks crossed, pontoon bridges were built, and all this was almost without resistance from the enemy ... There was no doubt that they had caught the Russians by surprise ... Our tanks almost immediately broke through the strip of Russian border fortifications and rushed east across flat terrain "(" Fatal Decisions " Moscow. Military Publishing, 1958).
To this it must be added that the bridges in the Brest region were not blown up, along which the German tanks were moving. Guderian was even surprised by this;

On December 27, 1940, the People's Commissar for Defense Timoshenko issued order No. 0367 on the mandatory camouflage of the entire airfield network of the Air Force in a 500-km strip from the border with the completion of work by July 1, 1941.
Neither the Main Directorate of the Air Force, nor the districts complied with this order.
The direct fault is that of the Air Force Inspector General, Assistant Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army for Aviation Smushkevich (in accordance with the order, he was entrusted with control and a monthly report on this to the General Staff) and the Air Force command;

On June 19, 1941, the order of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 0042 was issued.
It states that “nothing significant has been done to camouflage airfields and major military facilities”, that planes in the “complete absence of camouflage” are crowded at airfields, and so on.
The same order states that “... Artillery and mechanized units show a similar carelessness in camouflage: the crowded and linear arrangement of their parks represents not only excellent observation objects, but also targets advantageous for engaging from the air. Tanks, armored vehicles, commander and other special vehicles of motorized and other troops are painted with paints that give a bright reflection, and are well observed not only from the air, but also from the ground. Nothing has been done to camouflage warehouses and other important military facilities ... ”.
What was the result of this carelessness of the command of the districts, primarily of the Western OVO, was shown on June 22, when about 738 aircraft were destroyed at its airfields, including 528 were lost on the ground, as well as a large number of military equipment.
Who is to blame for this? Again I. Stalin, or the command of the military districts and the General Staff, which failed to exercise strict control over the implementation of their orders and directives? I think the answer is clear.
The commander of the Air Force of the Western Front, Hero of the Soviet Union, Major General II Kopets, having learned about these losses, on the same day - June 22, shot himself.

Here I will quote the words of the People's Commissar of the Navy N.G. Kuznetsova:
“Analyzing the events of the last peaceful days, I assume: I.V. Stalin represented the combat readiness of our armed forces higher than it actually was ... He believed that at any moment, upon a signal of a combat alert, they could give a reliable rebuff to the enemy ... , he believed that at any moment, at the signal of a combat alarm, they could take off into the air and give a reliable rebuff to the enemy. And I was simply stunned by the news that our planes did not manage to take off, but died right at the airfields. "
Naturally, Stalin's idea of ​​the state of combat readiness of our armed forces was formed from the reports, first of all, of the People's Commissar of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff, as well as other military leaders, whom he regularly heard in his office;

On June 21, Stalin made a decision to deploy 5 fronts:
West, Southwest. South, Northwest, North.
By this time, the command posts of the fronts were already equipped, tk. As early as June 13, it was decided to separate the command structures in the military districts and transform the military district directorates into front-line ones.
The command post of the Western Front (Front commander, General of the Army D.G. Pavlov was deployed in the area of ​​the Obuz-Lesnaya station. But Pavlov did not appear there before the start of the war).
The front-line command post of the South-Western Front was located in the city of Ternopil (Front commander, Colonel General M.P. Kirponos died on 20.09.1941).

Thus, we see that before the war, on the instructions of I. Stalin, a number of measures were taken to strengthen the readiness of the Red Army to repel aggression from Germany. And he had every reason to believe, as the People's Commissar of the Navy N.G. Kuznetsov, "the combat readiness of our armed forces is higher than it actually turned out to be ...."
It should be noted that I. Stalin, receiving information about the impending war from the residencies of Merkulov's foreign intelligence from the NKGB, from the military intelligence of General Golikov of the RU General Staff, through diplomatic channels, apparently could not be completely sure that all this was not a strategic provocation of Germany or Western countries that see their own salvation in the collision of the USSR and Germany.
But there was also intelligence of the border troops, subordinate to L. Beria, which provided information about the concentration of German troops directly near the borders of the USSR, and its reliability was ensured by constant observation of border guards, a large number of informants of border areas who directly observe the concentration of German troops - these are residents of border areas, train drivers , switchmen, lubricants, etc.
Information from this intelligence is integral information from such an extensive peripheral intelligence network that it cannot be unreliable. This information, generalized and collected together, gave the most objective picture of the concentration of German troops.
Beria regularly reported this information to I. Stalin:
- In information No. 1196 / B on April 21, 1941, Stalin, Molotov, Timoshenko were given specific information about the arrival of German troops at points adjacent to the state border.
- On June 2, 1941, Beria sent a note No. 1798 / B personally to Stalin with information about the concentration of two German army groups, the increased movement of troops mainly at night, the reconnaissance carried out by German generals near the border, etc.
- On June 5, Beria sends Stalin another note No. 1868 / B on the concentration of troops on the Soviet-German, Soviet-Hungarian, Soviet-Romanian border.
In June 1941, more than 10 such information messages from the intelligence of the border troops were presented.

But this is what Air Chief Marshal A.E. Golovanov recalls, who in June 1941, commanding a separate 212nd bomber regiment of long-range aviation subordinate directly to Moscow, arrived from Smolensk to Minsk to present to the Commander of the Air Force of the Western Special Military District I.I. Kopets and then to the Commander of the Western Military District D.G. Pavlov himself.

During a conversation with Golovanov, Pavlov contacted Stalin via HF. And he began to ask the general questions, to which the District Commander answered the following:

“No, Comrade Stalin, that's not true! I have just returned from the defensive lines. There is no concentration of German troops on the border, and my scouts are working well. I'll check it again, but I think it's just a provocation ... "
And then, turning to him, he said:
“Master is not in the spirit. Some bastard is trying to prove to him that the Germans are concentrating troops on our border ... ". Apparently, by this "bastard" he meant L. Beria, who was in charge of the border troops.
And many historians continue to assert that Stalin allegedly did not believe Pavlov's "warnings" about the concentration of German troops ...
The situation was heating up every day.

On June 14, 1941, a TASS report was published. It was a kind of test balloon to test the reaction of the German leadership.
The TASS report, intended not so much for the population of the USSR as for official Berlin, refuted rumors about "the proximity of a war between the USSR and Germany."
Berlin did not receive any official reaction to this message.
It became evident to J. Stalin and the Soviet leadership that Germany's military preparations for an attack on the USSR had entered the final stage.

June 15 came, then June 16, 17, but no "withdrawal" and "transfer" of German troops, as Hitler assured in his letter of May 14, 1941, from the Soviet border, "in the direction of England" did not happen.
On the contrary, an intensified accumulation of Wehrmacht troops began on our border.

On June 17, 1941, a message was received from Berlin from the USSR naval attaché, Captain 1st Rank M.A. Vorontsov, that Germany's attack on the USSR would take place on June 22 at 3.30 am. (Captain 1st rank Vorontsov was summoned by I. Stalin to Moscow and, according to some information, on June 21 in the evening attended a meeting in his office. This meeting will be discussed below).

And then a reconnaissance flight of the border was made with an "inspection" of German units near our border.
Here is what he writes in his book - "I am a fighter" - Major General of Aviation, Hero of the Soviet Union G. N. Zakharov. Before the war, he is a colonel and commanded the 43rd Fighter Aviation Division of the Western Special Military District:
“Somewhere in the middle of the last pre-war week - it was either the seventeenth or the eighteenth of June 1941 - I received an order from the aviation commander of the Western Special Military District to fly over the western border. The length of the route was four hundred kilometers, and it was to fly from south to north - to Bialystok.
I flew to U-2 together with the navigator of the 43rd Fighter Aviation Division, Major Rumyantsev. The border areas west of the state border were filled with troops. In the villages, in the farmsteads, in the groves, there were poorly disguised, or even not at all disguised, tanks, armored vehicles, and guns. Motorcycles darted along the roads, cars — apparently, staff — cars. Somewhere in the depths of the vast territory, a movement was arising, which here, at our very border, slowed down, resting against it ... and was about to spill over it.
We flew then for a little over three hours. I often landed the plane at any suitable site, which might seem random if the border guard did not immediately approach the plane. The border guard appeared silently, silently saluted (as we can see, he knew in advance that a plane with urgent information -sad39 would land soon) and waited for several minutes while I wrote a report on the wing. Having received the report, the border guard disappeared, and we again rose into the air and, having covered 30-50 kilometers, sat down again. And I again wrote the report, and the other border guard waited silently and then, having saluted, silently disappeared. In the evening, in this way, we flew to Bialystok
After landing, the commander of the air force of the district, General Kopets, took me after the report to the commander of the district.
DG Pavlov looked at me as if he had seen me for the first time. I got a feeling of dissatisfaction when at the end of my message he smiled and asked if I was exaggerating. The intonation of the commander openly replaced the word "exaggerate" with "panic" - he clearly did not accept until the end of everything that I said ... With that we left. "
D.G. Pavlov did not believe this information either ...

June, 22. An ordinary Sunday afternoon. More than 200 million citizens are planning how to spend their day off: go on a visit, take their children to the zoo, someone is in a hurry to go to football, someone on a date. Soon they will become heroes and victims of war, killed and wounded, soldiers and refugees, blockade and concentration camp prisoners, partisans, prisoners of war, orphans, and invalids. Winners and veterans of the Great Patriotic War. But none of them know about it yet.

In 1941 The Soviet Union was quite firmly on its feet - industrialization and collectivization bore fruit, industry developed - out of ten tractors produced in the world, four were Soviet-made. Dneproges and Magnitka have been built, the army is being re-equipped - the famous T-34 tank, Yak-1, MIG-3 fighters, Il-2 attack aircraft, Pe-2 bomber have already entered service with the Red Army. The world situation is turbulent, but the Soviet people are confident that "the armor is strong and our tanks are fast." In addition, two years ago, after three hours of negotiations in Moscow, the USSR People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Molotov and the German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop signed a non-aggression pact for a period of 10 years.

After an abnormally cold winter of 1940-1941. a rather warm summer has come to Moscow. There are attractions in the Gorky Park, and football matches are held at the Dynamo stadium. The Mosfilm film studio is preparing the main premiere in the summer of 1941 - the editing of the lyric comedy Hearts of Four, which will only be released in 1945, has just been completed here. Starring the favorite of Joseph Stalin and all Soviet moviegoers, actress Valentina Serova.

June 1941 Astrakhan. Near the village of Linear

1941 Astrakhan. On the Caspian Sea

July 1, 1940. A scene from the film "My Love" directed by Vladimir Korsh-Sablin. In the center is actress Lydia Smirnova as Shurochka

April 1941 A peasant welcomes the first Soviet tractor

July 12, 1940. Residents of Uzbekistan work on the construction of a section of the Great Fergana Canal

August 9, 1940 Byelorussian SSR. Collective farmers of the village of Tonezh, Turovsky district, Polesie region for a walk after a hard day

May 05, 1941 Kliment Voroshilov, Mikhail Kalinin, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrey Andreev, Alexander Shcherbakov, Georgy Malenkov, Semyon Timoshenko, Georgy Zhukov, Andrey Eremenko, Semyon Budyonny, Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich and others in the presidium of the ceremonial meeting dedicated to the graduation commanders who graduated from military academies. Joseph Stalin speaking

June 1, 1940. Civil defense training in the village of Dikanka. Ukraine, Poltava region

In the spring and summer of 1941, exercises of the Soviet military began to be held more and more often on the western borders of the USSR. A war is already underway in Europe. Rumors are reaching the Soviet leadership that Germany may attack at any moment. But such messages are often ignored, as a non-aggression pact was recently signed.
August 20, 1940. Villagers talk with tankers during a military exercise

"Higher and higher and higher
We strive for the flight of our birds,
And in every propeller breathes
Calmness of our borders ”.

Soviet song, better known as "March of the Aviators"

June 1, 1941. An I-16 fighter is suspended under the wing of the TB-3 aircraft, under the wing of which a high-explosive bomb weighing 250 kg

September 28, 1939 USSR People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop shake hands after the signing of the joint Soviet-German Treaty on Friendship and Border

Field Marshal V. Keitel, Colonel General W. von Brauchitsch, A. Hitler, Colonel General F. Halder (from left to right in the foreground) near the table with a map during a meeting of the General Staff. In 1940, Adolf Hitler signed the main directive number 21, codenamed "Barbarossa"

On June 17, 1941, V.N.Merkulov sent to I.V. Stalin and V.M. Molotov an agent message received by the NKGB of the USSR from Berlin:

“A source working at the headquarters of the German aviation reports:
1. All German military measures in preparation for an armed attack against the USSR are completely over, and a strike can be expected at any time.

2. In the circles of the aviation headquarters, the TASS message of June 6 was perceived very ironically. They emphasize that this statement cannot have any meaning ... "

There is a resolution (regarding point 2): “Comrade Merkulov. You can send your "source" from the headquarters of the German aviation to the fucking mother. This is not a "source", but a disinformer. I. Stalin "

July 1, 1940 Marshal Semyon Timoshenko (right), General of the Army Georgy Zhukov (left) and General of the Army Kirill Meretskov (2 left) during an exercise in the 99th Infantry Division of the Kiev Special Military District

June 21, 21:00

At the site of the Sokal commandant's office, a German soldier, corporal Alfred Liskof, was detained, having crossed the Bug river by swimming.

From the testimony of the chief of the 90th border detachment, Major Bychkovsky:“Due to the fact that the translators in the detachment are weak, I called the teacher of the German language from the city ... and Liskoff repeated the same thing again, that is, that the Germans were preparing to attack the USSR at dawn on June 22, 1941 ... Ustilug (first commandant's office) heavy artillery fire. I realized that it was the Germans who opened fire on our territory, which was confirmed immediately by the interrogated soldier. He immediately began to call the commandant, but the connection was broken. "

21:30

In Moscow, a conversation between the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Molotov and the German Ambassador Schulenburg took place. Molotov protested against numerous violations of the USSR border by German aircraft. Schulenburg avoided answering.

From the memoirs of corporal Hans Teuchler:“At 22 o'clock we were lined up and the order of the Fuehrer was read out. Finally, we were told directly why we are here. Not at all for throwing into Persia to punish the British with the permission of the Russians. And not in order to lull the vigilance of the British, and then quickly transfer troops to the English Channel and land in England. No. We - soldiers of the Great Reich - are in for a war with the Soviet Union itself. But there is no such force that could hold back the movement of our armies. For the Russians it will be a real war, for us it will be just a Victory. We will pray for her. "

June 22, 00:30

Directive No. 1 was sent to the districts, containing an order to secretly occupy firing points on the border, not to succumb to provocations and to bring the troops on alert.

From the memoirs of the German general Heinz Guderian:“On the fateful day of June 22, at 2 hours 10 minutes in the morning, I went to the command post of the group ...
Our artillery preparation began at 3:15 pm.
At 3 hours 40 minutes - the first raid of our dive bombers.
At 4:15 am, the crossing of the Bug began. "

03:07

The commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Oktyabrsky, called the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Georgy Zhukov and said that a large number of unknown aircraft were approaching from the sea; the fleet is on full combat readiness. The admiral offered to meet them with naval air defense fire. He was instructed: "Take action and report to your People's Commissar."

03:30

The Chief of Staff of the Western District, Major General Vladimir Klimovskikh, reported on the German air raid on the cities of Belarus. Three minutes later, the chief of staff of the Kiev district, General Purkaev, reported on the air raid on the cities of Ukraine. At 03:40 am, the commander of the Baltic region, General Kuznetsov, announced a raid on Kaunas and other cities.

From the memoirs of I.I.Geibo, deputy regiment commander of the 46th IAP, ZapVO:“... My chest went cold. In front of me are four twin-engined bombers with black crosses on their wings. I even bit my lip. Why, these are Junkers! German Ju-88 bombers! What to do? .. Another thought arose: "Today is Sunday, and Germans do not have training flights on Sundays." Is it a war? Yes, war! "

03:40

People's Commissar of Defense Timoshenko asks Zhukov to report to Stalin about the beginning of hostilities. Stalin, in response, ordered that all members of the Politburo be assembled in the Kremlin. At this point, Brest, Grodno, Lida, Kobrin, Slonim, Baranovich, Bobruisk, Volkovysk, Kiev, Zhitomir, Sevastopol, Riga, Vindava, Libava, Shauliai, Kaunas, Vilnius and many other cities were bombed.

From the memoirs of Alevtina Kotik, born in 1925 (Lithuania):“I woke up from the fact that I hit my head on the bed - the earth shook from the falling bombs. I ran to my parents. The Pope said, “The war has begun. We must get out of here! " We did not know with whom the war began, we did not think about it, it was just very scary. Dad was a military man, and therefore he was able to call a car for us, which took us to the railway station. They took only their clothes with them. All furniture and household utensils remained. First, we rode a freight train. I remember how my mother covered me and my brother with her body, then they got on a passenger train. The fact that the war with Germany was learned somewhere around 12 noon from the people we met. Near the town of Shauliai, we saw a large number of wounded, stretchers, doctors. "

At the same time, the Belostok-Minsk battle began, as a result of which the main forces of the Soviet Western Front were surrounded and defeated. German troops captured a significant part of Belarus and advanced to a depth of over 300 km. On the part of the Soviet Union, 11 rifle, 2 cavalry, 6 tank and 4 motorized divisions were destroyed in the Bialystok and Minsk "cauldrons", 3 corps corps and 2 division commanders were killed, 2 corps commanders and 6 division commanders were captured, 1 corps commander and 2 commanders divisions were missing.

04:10

The Western and Baltic special districts reported on the beginning of hostilities by German troops in the land sectors.

04:12

German bombers appeared over Sevastopol. The enemy raid was repulsed, and the attempt to strike at the ships was thwarted, but residential buildings and warehouses were damaged in the city.

From the memoirs of Anatoly Marsanov from Sevastopol:“I was then only five years old ... The only thing that remained in my memory: on the night of June 22, parachutes appeared in the sky. It became light, I remember, the whole city was lit up, everyone was running, such joyful ones ... They were shouting: “Parachutists! Parachutists! "... They do not know that these are mines. And they gasped - one in the bay, the other - down the street below us, so many people killed! "

04:15

The defense of the Brest Fortress began. The first attack by 04:55 the Germans occupied almost half of the fortress.

From the memoirs of the defender of the Brest Fortress Pyotr Kotelnikov, born in 1929:“In the morning we were awakened by a strong blow. Broke through the roof. I was stunned. I saw the wounded and the killed, I realized that this was no longer an exercise, but a war. Most of the soldiers in our barracks were killed in the first seconds. I followed the adults rushing to arms, but they didn’t give me a rifle. Then I with one of the Red Army men rushed to extinguish the clothing warehouse. Then I went with the soldiers to the cellars of the barracks of the neighboring 333rd Infantry Regiment ... We helped the wounded, carried them ammunition, food, water. Through the western wing we made our way to the river at night in order to get water, and came back. "

05:00

Moscow time, Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop summoned Soviet diplomats to his office. When they arrived, he informed them about the beginning of the war. The last thing he said to the ambassadors was: "Tell Moscow that I was against the attack." After that, telephones did not work in the embassy, ​​and the building itself was surrounded by SS detachments.

5:30

Schulenburg officially informed Molotov about the beginning of the war between Germany and the USSR, reading a note: “Bolshevik Moscow is ready to stab in the back of National Socialist Germany, which is fighting for existence. The German government cannot be indifferent to the serious threat on the eastern border. Therefore, the Fuehrer ordered the German armed forces to avert this threat by all means and means ... "

From the memoirs of Molotov:"The adviser to the German ambassador, Hilger, shed a tear when he handed the note."

From the memoirs of Hilger:“He gave vent to his indignation, saying that Germany attacked a country with which it had a non-aggression pact. This has no precedent in history. The reason given by the German side is an empty pretext ... Molotov concluded his angry speech with the words: “We did not give any grounds for this”.

07:15

Directive No. 2 was issued, instructing the USSR troops to destroy enemy forces in areas where the border was violated, to destroy enemy aircraft, and also to “bomb Konigsberg and Memel” (modern Kaliningrad and Klaipeda). The USSR Air Force was allowed to enter "the depth of German territory up to 100-150 km." At the same time, the first counterattack of Soviet troops took place near the Lithuanian town of Alytus.

09:00

At 7:00 Berlin time, Reich Minister of Education and Propaganda Josef Goebbels read on the radio Adolf Hitler's appeal to the German people in connection with the outbreak of the war against the Soviet Union: “... Today I decided to put the fate and future of the German Reich and our people back into our hands soldier. May the Lord help us in this struggle! "

09:30

Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Mikhail Kalinin signed a number of decrees, including a decree on the imposition of martial law, on the formation of the Headquarters of the High Command, on military tribunals and on general mobilization, which was subject to all persons liable for military service born from 1905 to 1918.

10:00

German bombers raided Kiev and its suburbs. The railway station, the Bolshevik plant, the aircraft plant, power plants, military airfields, and residential buildings were bombed. According to official figures, 25 people died as a result of the bombing, according to unofficial figures, there were many more victims. However, a peaceful life continued for several more days in the capital of Ukraine. Only the opening of the stadium, scheduled for June 22, was canceled; on this day, the football match Dynamo (Kiev) - CSKA was to be held here.

12:15

Molotov on the radio made a speech about the beginning of the war, where he first called it patriotic. Also in this speech, for the first time, the phrase that has become the main slogan of the war sounds: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours".

From Molotov's appeal:“This unheard-of attack on our country is treachery unparalleled in the history of civilized peoples ... This war was imposed on us not by the German people, not by German workers, peasants and intellectuals, whose sufferings we well understand, but by a clique of bloodthirsty fascist rulers of Germany who enslaved the French and Czechs. , Poles, Serbs, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Greece and other peoples ... This is not the first time our people have to deal with an attacking arrogant enemy. At one time, our people responded to Napoleon's campaign in Russia with a Patriotic War, and Napoleon was defeated, came to his own collapse. The same will happen with the arrogant Hitler, who has announced a new campaign against our country. The Red Army and all our people will once again wage a victorious patriotic war for the Motherland, for honor, for freedom. "

Leningrad workers listen to the news about the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union

From the memoirs of Dmitry Savelyev, Novokuznetsk: “We gathered at the poles with loudspeakers. We listened attentively to Molotov's speech. Many had a feeling of a certain alertness. After that, the streets began to empty, after a while groceries disappeared from the shops. They weren’t bought - just the supply decreased ... People were not scared, but rather focused, doing everything that the government told them. "

After a while, the text of Molotov's speech was repeated by the famous announcer Yuri Levitan. Thanks to his heartfelt voice and the fact that Levitan read the front-line reports of the Soviet Information Bureau throughout the war, it is believed that he was the first to read the message about the beginning of the war on the radio. Even Marshals Zhukov and Rokossovsky thought so, as they wrote about in their memoirs.

Moscow. Announcer Yuri Levitan during filming in the studio

From the memoirs of the announcer Yuri Levitan:“When we, the announcers, were called on the radio early in the morning, the calls began to ring out. They call from Minsk: “Enemy planes over the city”, they call from Kaunas: “The city is on fire, why aren't you broadcasting anything on the radio?”, “Enemy planes over Kiev”. Women's crying, excitement - "is it really a war? .. And now I remember - I turned on the microphone. In all cases, I remember myself that I was worried only internally, only internally worried. But here, when I uttered the word “Moscow is speaking,” I feel that I can’t speak further - a lump in my throat is stuck. They are already knocking from the control room - “Why are you silent? Continue! " He clenched his fists and continued: "Citizens and citizens of the Soviet Union ..."

Stalin made a speech to the Soviet people only on July 3, 12 days after the start of the war. Historians are still arguing why he was silent for so long. Here is how Vyacheslav Molotov explained this fact:“Why me and not Stalin? He didn’t want to be the first. It is necessary to have a clearer picture, what tone and what approach ... He said that he would wait a few days and speak when the situation on the fronts becomes clear. "

And here is what Marshal Zhukov wrote about it:"AND. V. Stalin was a strong-willed person and, as they say, "not from a cowardly dozen." Confused, I saw him only once. It was at dawn on June 22, 1941, when Nazi Germany attacked our country. During the first day, he could not really pull himself together and firmly manage events. The shock inflicted on JV Stalin by the enemy's attack was so strong that he even lost his voice, and his orders for organizing the armed struggle did not always correspond to the current situation. "

From Stalin's speech on the radio on July 3, 1941:"The war with fascist Germany cannot be considered an ordinary war ... Our war for the freedom of our Fatherland will merge with the struggle of the peoples of Europe and America for their independence, for democratic freedoms."

12:30

At the same time, German troops entered Grodno. A few minutes later, the bombing of Minsk, Kiev, Sevastopol and other cities began again.

From the memoirs of Ninel Karpova, born in 1931 (Kharovsk, Vologda region):“We listened to the message about the beginning of the war from the loudspeaker at the House of Defense. There were a lot of people crowded there. I was not upset, on the contrary, I was proud: my father will defend the Motherland ... In general, people were not afraid. Yes, the women, of course, were upset, crying. But there was no panic. Everyone was confident that we would quickly defeat the Germans. The men said: "Yes, the Germans will skewer from us!" "

Recruiting offices were opened in military registration and enlistment offices. In Moscow, Leningrad and other cities, queues lined up in them.

From the memoirs of Dina Belykh, born in 1936 (Kushva, Sverdlovsk region):“All men were immediately called up, including my dad. Dad hugged mom, they both cried, kissed ... I remember how I grabbed his tarpaulin boots and shouted: “Daddy, don't go! They will kill you there, they will kill you! " When he got on the train, my mother took me in her arms, we were both sobbing, she whispered through her tears: "Wave to dad ..." What is it, I sobbed, I could not move my hand. We never saw him again, our breadwinner. "

Calculations and the experience of the mobilization carried out showed that to transfer the army and navy to wartime, it was required to call up 4.9 million people. However, when the mobilization was announced, 14 ages liable for military service were called up, the total number of which was about 10 million people, that is, almost 5.1 million people more than was required.

The first day of mobilization for the Red Army. Volunteers at the October military registration and enlistment office

The call of such a mass of people was not caused by military necessity and introduced disorganization in the national economy and alarm in the masses. Not realizing this, Marshal of the Soviet Union G.I.Kulik suggested that the government additionally call on the older age groups (born in 1895-1904), the total number of which was 6.8 million people.

13:15

To capture the Brest Fortress, the Germans put into operation new forces of the 133rd Infantry Regiment on the South and West Islands, but this "did not bring any changes in the situation." The Brest Fortress continued to defend itself. Fritz Schlieper's 45th Infantry Division was sent to this sector of the front. It was decided that only infantry would take the Brest Fortress - no tanks. The capture of the fortress was given no more than eight hours.

From a report to the headquarters of Fritz Schlieper's 45th Infantry Division:“The Russians are fighting fiercely, especially behind our attacking companies. In the Citadel, the enemy organized a defense with infantry units supported by 35–40 tanks and armored vehicles. The fire of Russian snipers led to large losses among officers and non-commissioned officers. "

14:30

Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano told the Soviet ambassador to Rome Gorelkin that Italy had declared war on the USSR "from the moment German troops entered Soviet territory."

From Ciano's diaries:“He takes my message with rather great indifference, but it's in his nature. The message is very short, without further ado. The conversation lasted two minutes. "

15:00

The pilots of the German bombers reported that they had nothing more to bomb, all airfields, barracks and accumulations of armored vehicles were destroyed.

From the memoirs of Air Marshal, Hero of the Soviet Union G.V. Zimin:“On June 22, 1941, large groups of fascist bombers attacked 66 of our airfields, where the main aviation forces of the western border districts were based. First of all, airfields, on which aviation regiments armed with aircraft of new designs were based, were subjected to air strikes ... As a result of attacks on airfields and in fierce air battles, the enemy managed to destroy up to 1200 aircraft, including 800 at airfields. "

16:30

Stalin left the Kremlin for Blizhnyaya Dacha. Even members of the Politburo are not allowed to see the leader until the end of the day.

From the memoirs of a member of the Politburo Nikita Khrushchev:
“Beria said the following: when the war began, members of the Politburo gathered at Stalin's. I do not know, all or just a certain group, which most often gathered at Stalin's. Stalin was morally completely depressed and made the following statement: “The war has begun, it is developing catastrophically. Lenin left us the proletarian Soviet state, and we fucked it up. " I literally put it that way.
“I,” he says, “refuse the leadership,” and left. He left, got into the car and drove to a nearby dacha. "

Some historians, referring to the recollections of other participants in the events, claim that this conversation took place a day later. But the fact that in the first days of the war Stalin was confused and did not know how to act is confirmed by many witnesses.

18:30

The commander of the 4th Army Ludwig Kübler gives the order to "pull back his own forces" from the Brest Fortress. This is one of the first orders for the retreat of German troops.

19:00

The commander of Army Group Center, General Fyodor von Bock, gives the order to stop the execution of Soviet prisoners of war. After that, they were kept in hastily fenced fields with barbed wire. This is how the first prisoner-of-war camps appeared.

From the notes of the SS Brigadeführer G. Keppler, the commander of the Der Führer regiment from the SS Das Reich division:"In the hands of our regiment were rich trophies and a large number of prisoners, among whom were many civilians, even women and girls, the Russians forced them to defend themselves with weapons in their hands, and they fought bravely together with the Red Army."

23:00

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is making a radio address in which he said that England "will provide Russia and the Russian people with all the assistance it can."

Winston Churchill's speech on BBC radio:“Over the past 25 years, no one has been a more consistent opponent of communism than me. I will not take back a single word that I have said about him. But all this pales before the spectacle unfolding now. The past with its crimes, follies and tragedies disappears ... I see Russian soldiers standing on the doorstep of their native land, guarding the fields that their fathers have cultivated since time immemorial ... I see how the vile Nazi war machine is approaching all this. "

23:50

The Main Military Council of the RKKA sent out Directive No. 3, ordering on June 23 to inflict counterattacks on enemy groups.

Text: Information Center of Publishing House "Kommersant", Tatiana Mishanina, Artem Galustyan
Video: Dmitry Shelkovnikov, Alexey Koshel
Photo: TASS, RIA Novosti, Ogonyok, Dmitry Kuchev
Design, programming and layout: Anton Zhukov, Alexey Shabrov
Kim Voronin
Commissioning Editor: Artem Galustyan