Did Stalin know the time of the start of the Great Patriotic War? What did the state security agencies report to him about this? The answers to these questions have interested researchers for several decades. Behind last years A large number of publications have appeared on this topic, a large number of documents have been published, and there are various approaches to their assessment.
Taking into account the fact that new materials on this problem have recently been declassified, we will try once again to analyze the documents reported to Stalin on the eve of the war.
Border fortifications
First, let us mention that Stalin was twice informed about the construction of powerful fortifications on the eastern borders of Germany.
Firstly, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, on August 1, 1940, reported received intelligence data, according to which the Germans were building field and long-term fortifications on the border with the USSR.
It was established that coastal artillery was located in the area of the town of Karkle, 12 kilometers north of Memel (Klaipeda). To the north and south of this area, near the towns of Nemerzhara, Gerule, Taralaukoy and Zandkrug, large reinforced concrete fortifications were built. Work began on the Memel fortress. Reinforced concrete fortifications were built 10 kilometers east of it.
Beria also reported that on the Western Bug, on the line of the towns of Dubenka and Grubeshov, and along the western bank of the San River, military units were digging trenches. In the area of the town of Chelm, as well as on the eastern outskirts of the town of Berdische, long-term fortifications were built. The area adjacent to this area was mined. In the area of the towns of Sosnice, Walawa and Zasan, a line of trenches, dugouts, machine-gun nests, interconnected by communication passages, was built, and guns were also installed in this area.
Secondly, on January 22, 1941, Stalin asked V. M. Molotov, N. A. Voznesensky, Beria, K. E. Voroshilov, S. K. Timoshenko, K. A. Meretskov, G. K. Zhukov, B. M. Shaposhnikov, S. M. Budyonny, A. A. Zhdanov, A. F. Khrenov (Directorate of the Red Army Engineering Troops) and G. I. Kulik, read the note on the “Siegfried Line” transmitted to TASS on January 9.
According to this message, in 1940, the second edition of I. Pechlinger’s book “The Siegfried Line” was published in Germany. It reported that since the National Socialists came to power, Hitler's first concern, along with strengthening the army, was to strengthen military fortifications on the borders of Germany. In 1935, military engineering headquarters were created, which were tasked with building fortifications east of the Rhine demilitarized zone. Until 1938, they carried out a significant part of the construction. On May 28, 1938, Hitler, in response to mobilization in Czechoslovakia, gave the order for the rapid completion of the Siegfried Line. Solving this problem required the mobilization of all construction organizations in the country.
Pechlinger wrote that from a military point of view, the Siegfried Line represented a revolution in fortification construction. It required the use of new military tactics and new methods of warfare.
An air defense line ran parallel to the line of fortifications. The entire fortification zone went deep into the country. In the most critical areas, individual fortifications were connected together into one whole using underground communications. Food, equipment, and military units could be transported underground from the rear. Machine rooms were located deep underground to supply the underground premises with air, water and electricity, and elevators were built between the individual floors of the underground part.
Alarm calls
Other messages sent to Stalin directly related to intelligence data about Germany's preparations for war with the Soviet Union.
In October 1940, the General Staff of the Red Army informed that German troops were arriving in Finland. Intelligence agents reported that in Romania, Germany and Italy were hastily organizing an attack on the left flank of the USSR front, and for this purpose Italian troops were being redeployed there. With its completion, both flanks of the USSR front will be under severe threat from the very beginning of hostilities. With the accession of Finland and Romania to the Hitlerite coalition, the USSR lost significantly to Germany.
On October 8, 1940, the head of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army, Lieutenant General F.I. Golikov, sent a special message to Stalin. It said that on October 4, the Yugoslav military attaché, Colonel Popovic, informed the head of the foreign relations department, Colonel A.V. Gerasimov, about a report received by their envoy from Berlin. It reported that the Germans were postponing the attack on England at least until spring. During this time they intend to strengthen their fleet, intending to commission two 35,000-ton battleships: Bismarck and Tirpitz, submarines and small vessels.
“The Germans cannot come to terms with the USSR remaining in the role of arbiter; they will strive for the Soviet Union to come to an agreement with Japan and join the Rome-Berlin axis; if they do not achieve this diplomatically, they will attack the USSR.”
Earlier, while Popovic was working at the General Staff in Belgrade, the Italian military attaché Bonifati, sent by the Germans, approached him. He tried to find out about plans to conclude a military alliance with the USSR and, with such developments, frightened Yugoslavia with isolation. Two days later, the German military attache Tusen warned Popovich that “we will soon end the Soviets.”
However, Popovich believed that this information was fabricated with the aim of intimidating the Yugoslavs, in order to tear them away from the policy of rapprochement with the USSR and force them to abandon the policy of neutrality.
Popovich asked the USSR to help Yugoslavia with weapons - the country was in dire need of anti-tank, anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft.
Then the Yugoslav colonel read the following message to Gerasimov from the intelligence report of his General Staff: “German military circles are confident that the USSR will avoid a collision with Germany, due to the huge superiority of German forces. Therefore, all rumors about the deterioration of relations between the USSR and Germany are groundless. Germany will sooner or later will attack the Soviets late, because he considers them “elements of disorder and disturbance.” The Soviets need at least 2 years to rebuild the army based on the experience of recent wars.”
On December 5, 1940, the USSR Plenipotentiary Representative in Germany V. G. Dekanozov received an anonymous letter by mail with the following content:
"Dear Mr. Plenipotentiary!
Hitler intends to attack the USSR next spring. The Red Army must be destroyed by numerous powerful encirclements. The following is evidence of this:
1. Most of the freight transport was sent to Poland under the pretext of a lack of gasoline.
2. Intensive construction of barracks in Norway to accommodate the largest number of German troops.
3. Secret agreement with Finland. Finland is advancing on the USSR from the north. There are already small detachments of German troops in Finland.
4. The right to transport German troops through Sweden is forced by the latter force and provides for the fastest transfer of troops to Finland at the time of the offensive.
5. A new army is being formed from the draft of 1901-03. Those serving for military service from 1896-1920 are also under arms. By the spring of 1941, the German army will number 10-12 million people. In addition, the labor reserves of the SS, SA and police amount to another 2 million who will be drawn into the war effort.
6. The High Command is developing two plans for encircling the Red Army.
a) attack from Lublin along Pripyat (Poland) to Kyiv.
Other parts from Romania in the space between Zhasy and Bukovina in the direction of Teteriv.
b) From East Prussia along Memel, Willig, Berezina, Dnieper to Kyiv. Southern advance, as in the first case, from Romania. Bold, isn't it? Hitler said in his last speech: “If these plans succeed, the Red Army will be completely destroyed. The same as in France. Encircle and destroy along the river beds.”
They want to cut off the USSR from the Dardanelles from Albania. Hitler will try, as in France, to attack the USSR with forces three times greater than yours. Germany 14 million, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Romania - 4 million, total 18 million. How much should the USSR have then? 20 million at least. 20 million by spring. The state of highest combat readiness includes the presence of a large army."
Dekanozov sent this message to Molotov, the latter forwarded it to Stalin.
Based on the facts stated in the letter, the military attaché in Germany, Colonel N.D. Skornyakov, made the following analysis:
Regarding point 1, over the past two or three weeks a significant amount of empty vehicles has indeed been sent to the East.
According to paragraph 2, the construction of barracks for German troops in Norway is confirmed from other sources.
According to paragraph 4, the Germans have an agreement with Sweden on the transit of troops, according to which they can transport 1 train per day without weapons.
According to paragraph 5 - about the formation new army Of those specially conscripted between 1901 and 1903, birth years were not known. However, among the newly conscripted there were indeed ages 1896-1920.
According to Skornyakov, by spring the Germans could increase the army to 10 million. The figure about the presence of another 2 million in the person of the SS, SA, labor reserves and police was also quite realistic.
People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union S.K. Timoshenko and his deputies, Army Generals G.K. Zhukov and K.A. Meretskov, monitor the actions of troops during the exercises of the Kyiv Special Military District. September 1940 Photo: RGAKFD / Magazine "Rodina"
From London, Tehran and Bucharest
On February 26, 1941, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Great Britain I.M. Maisky reported that, according to information from Czech circles, the Germans were working hard to build fortifications on the German-Soviet border. Workers and German troops were sent there. This line mainly follows the course of the Bug and has a depth of 40-50 kilometers. It is not yet finished and will continue to the north, apparently along the old German-Polish border.
In November 1940, small pocket German-Russian dictionaries with the same set of phrases as the German-Czech dictionaries distributed in German units on the eve of the occupation of Czechoslovakia were distributed in some military units on the German-Soviet border.
Some officials in the administration of the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia received notices in January to “be ready to go to their destination upon any order.” In this connection it is recalled that early last year a German in Prague was appointed chief of police in Oslo long before the Germans occupied Norway.
In conclusion, Maisky wrote that the source of this information suggests the presence of a certain bias in it, but just in case, he decided to convey this information. On March 27, 1941, the Soviet Ambassador to Iran M.E. Filimonov reported that the Germans were intensively transferring disassembled submarines to the Black Sea through Romania and Bulgaria. Somewhat later, it was established that by mid-April they had delivered 16 submarines, two of which had been assembled.
On April 16, USSR Plenipotentiary Representative in Romania A.I. Lavrentyev informed Stalin that the adviser to the French mission, Spitzmüller, in a conversation with the secretary of the USSR mission, Mikhailov, reported on the concentration of German troops in Moldova. This information was confirmed by the French military attaché, Colonel Seven, who was present during the conversation. In his opinion, together with the newly arrived army corps, about 5 divisions are concentrated in Moldova. Seven believed that in the plans of the German command, the Romanian sector of the front would be of secondary importance, since the main core of German troops was located in the former Poland.
The Germans made major preparations for war in Finland and Sweden. The arrival of the Swedish military attaché in Bucharest, Seven, was directly connected with the preparations for war. According to his information, a group of Romanian officers who visited Germany at the invitation of the German General Staff were talking about the upcoming war with the USSR. Based on information received from other sources, Seven believed that war was inevitable. This was confirmed by the fact that financial institutions in Moldova were ordered to take money into the interior of the country, and urban and rural administrative bodies prepared their archives for evacuation.
Seven also believed that Turkey, after the defeat of Yugoslavia and Greece, could sharply change its policy and join Germany.
Spitzmüller concluded by noting that the Germans want to start a war against the USSR “while they do not have a western front and until the United States enters the war.”
Lavrentyev himself believed that the information was biased, but still believed that it deserved attention from the point of view of assessing German aspirations.
On the same day, Lavrentiev reported that, according to engineer Kalmanovich, in Ploiesti and other places around oil tanks, concrete walls were being built under the leadership of the Germans. A hangar with an area of about a thousand is being built in Focsani square meters. Large fortification works are underway near Khush.
On April 23, Lavrentyev reported that, according to information from the Yugoslav ambassador in Bucharest, Avakumovich, two more German divisions had arrived in Moldova and now there should be about ten of them. Avakumovich was firmly convinced that the Germans would soon start a war against the USSR.
According to Avakumovich, military successes turned the heads of the German military and Hitler and may have created the idea that it would be easy to fight the Soviet Union. He noted that prolonging the war with England could undermine the combat effectiveness of the German ground army, further strengthening the military power of the Soviet Union.
Avakumovich suggested that perhaps the Germans hoped that in military actions against the USSR they would find an ideological basis for a faster conclusion of peace with England.
Not from Sorge
Many researchers have written that since the spring of 1941, precise information about the timing of the attack was received from the Soviet resident in Tokyo, Richard Sorge. fascist Germany to the Soviet Union. However, this statement is wrong. Moreover, due to the distrust that had developed among the leadership of the Intelligence Department in him and his work, the information coming from him was taken into question. Sorge was declared a "double and a fascist." Naturally, the information received from him could not be reported and was not reported to Stalin.
On May 6, 1941, the People's Commissar of the Navy, Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov, reported to Stalin a message from the naval attaché in Berlin, Captain 1st Rank Vorontsov.
According to the latter, the Soviet subject Boser reported from the words of one German officer from Hitler’s headquarters that the Germans were preparing an invasion of the USSR through Finland, the Baltic states and Romania by May 14. At the same time, powerful air raids were planned on Moscow, Leningrad and parachute landings in border centers.
Vorontsov’s conclusion is interesting: “I believe that the information is false and was specially sent along this channel, so that it reaches our Government and checks how the USSR will react to this.”
On June 17, the People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR V.N. Merkulov sent Stalin a well-known intelligence message received from Berlin on June 16 from the head of the 1st Directorate of the NKGB of the USSR P.M. Fitin. He informed that a source working at the headquarters of German aviation said that all German military measures to prepare an armed attack against the USSR were completely completed and a strike could be expected at any time.
“Hungary will take an active part in military operations on the side of Germany. Some German aircraft, mainly fighters, are already at Hungarian airfields.” Another source working in the German Ministry of Economy said “that the appointment of heads of military-economic departments of the “future districts” of the occupied territory of the USSR has been made.
The Ministry of Economy says that at a meeting of business executives intended for the “occupied” territory of the USSR, A. Rosenberg also spoke, who stated that “the concept of the Soviet Union should be erased from the geographical map.”
Stalin's resolution was unusually harsh: “To T. Merkulov. You can send your source from the headquarters of the German aviation to the f...ing mother. This is not a source, but a disinformer. I. Stalin.”
Invasion
Before the start of hostilities, on June 21, German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop sent a telegram to German Ambassador to the USSR Schulenberg asking him to “immediately inform Molotov that you have an urgent message for him and that you would therefore like to visit him immediately.”
It was proposed to convey to Molotov a statement that Germany had a number of claims against the Soviet Union. The document indicated that the USSR was involved in subversive activities against Germany. Thus, in all countries bordering Germany and in territories occupied by German troops, anti-German sentiments were encouraged. The Soviet chief of staff offered Yugoslavia weapons against Germany. The blame was also placed on the fact that the leading principle for Russia remained penetration into non-Bolshevik countries with the aim of demoralizing them, and at the right time, crushing them. The warning given to Germany in connection with its occupation of Bulgaria was also clearly hostile.
The policy of the USSR, according to Hitler’s diplomats, was allegedly accompanied by an ever-increasing concentration of all available Russian troops along the entire front from Baltic Sea to Cherny. Since the beginning of the year, the threat directly to the territory of the Reich has increased. "Thus, the Soviet government has violated the treaties with Germany and intends to attack Germany from the rear while she is fighting for her existence. The Fuehrer therefore ordered the German armed forces to counter this threat with all the means at their disposal."
Thus, there was no doubt that war was about to begin. On the same day, Molotov again met with Schulenberg. At 1 hour 17 minutes on June 22, Schulenburg informed the German Foreign Ministry that Molotov had summoned him on the evening of June 21 at 9:30. In the conversation, Molotov stated that, according to the document handed over to him, the German government was dissatisfied with the government of the USSR. Rumors circulate about an imminent war between Germany and the Soviet Union. In this regard, there was a request from Molotov to explain what led to the current state of affairs in German-Soviet relations.
Schulenberg replied: "I cannot give an answer to this question, since I do not have the relevant information; I will, however, convey his message to Berlin."
At the same time that Molotov was talking with the German ambassador, on the evening of June 21, the country’s “power and political bloc” gathered in Stalin’s office. Apparently, at this meeting a decision was made to put the troops on combat readiness, directed by the commander of the 3rd, 4th and 10th armies:
“I am transmitting the order of the People’s Commissariat of Defense for immediate execution:
1. During June 22-23, 1941, a surprise attack by the Germans is possible on the fronts of LVO, PribOVO, ZAPOVO, KOVO, OdVO. An attack may 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, Kyiv and Odessa military districts should be in full combat readiness to meet a possible surprise attack from the Germans or their allies.
I ORDER:
a) during the night of June 22, 1941, secretly occupy firing points of fortified areas on the state border;
b) before dawn on June 22, 1941, disperse all aviation, including military aviation, to field airfields, carefully camouflage it;
c) put all units on combat readiness. Keep troops dispersed and camouflaged;
d) bring the air defense to combat readiness without additional increases in assigned personnel. Prepare all measures to darken cities and objects;
e) do not carry out any other activities without special orders.
Tymoshenko. Zhukov. Pavlov. Fominykh. Klimovsky"
Less than an hour later, at 3 hours 10 minutes, the NKGB for the Lvov region transmitted a message to the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR that the German corporal "Alfred Germanovich Liskov", who had crossed the border in the Sokal area, reported that tonight, after artillery preparation, their unit would begin crossing the Bug on rafts, boats and pontoons.
The defector’s report was confirmed; at 4 o’clock in the morning, German troops, after artillery barrage and massive bombing, invaded the territory of the USSR.
On June 22, Goebbels read Hitler's declaration on a German radio station. It reported that “currently 162 Russian divisions are stationed on our border, Soviet pilots are flying over the Romanian border, making observation flights. On the night of June 17, Russian planes flew over German territory. The entire German people are monitoring the activities of the coalition of Jews and Anglos. -Saxons. German troops, together with Finnish ones, will ensure the protection of little Finland. The task is not only to protect these countries, but also to protect the whole of Europe."
On June 22, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks approved the draft Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On the mobilization of those liable for military service in the Leningrad, Baltic special, Western special, Kiev special, Odessa, Kharkov, Orel, Moscow, Arkhangelsk, Ural, Siberian, Volga, North Caucasus and Transcaucasian Military Districts" and on the declaration of martial law in a number of regions of the USSR.
The Great Patriotic War began...
Date was unknown
So, was it possible for Stalin to know the exact date of the attack on the USSR? Taking into account previously published intelligence documents and the materials presented in this article, we can draw an unambiguous conclusion - Stalin did not know the date of the attack of the Nazi troops on the USSR.
Everyone knew that war was inevitable. State security agencies received information and reported to Stalin that Hitler had approved the Barbarossa plan and given the order for immediate preparations for war. But it was not possible to find out when this plan was supposed to be implemented. Hitler approved the date of the attack on the USSR on April 30, 1941, but USSR intelligence was unable to obtain this information. It is also necessary to take into account the fact that the German command carried out active disinformation activities, which, albeit for a short period of time, still misled our intelligence.
The timing of the attack on the USSR reported by state security agencies changed many times. Naturally, after the fifth or sixth report on the next dates for the start of the war, Stalin stopped trusting this information. They annoyed him...
Despite the abundance of facts indicating that the Germans were preparing for war, the memos sent to Stalin contained very cautious wording. They almost always ended with the words: “this information is fabricated for the purpose of intimidation,” “the source of this information suggests the presence of a certain bias in it,” “the information is biased,” “I believe that the information is false.”
It seems that the leadership of the state security agencies was afraid to take responsibility for the reliability of the information received. That is why they reported according to the principle “we inform, but are not sure”, they tried to protect themselves. If war starts, then Stalin was informed; if it doesn’t, then we reported that the source was unreliable.
The most plausible version for Stalin, most likely, was that Germany would begin to fight the Soviet Union only after the victory over England. No other development of events was expected.
Stalin understood that to wage war with England, Hitler needed bread and oil, which Germany received from the USSR. It would have been easier to continue to enjoy these material benefits in peace and not to start military operations, which would definitely destabilize the situation and would not facilitate these supplies from the occupied territories. The settlement of relations with Germany's ally Japan also calmed down. As you know, on April 13, 1941, the foreign ministers of Japan and the USSR signed a neutrality pact in Moscow for a period of five years.
The political leadership of the Soviet Union tried to delay the start of the impending war as long as possible. This was due to the fact that on the territory of the European part of the USSR the Red Army did not have time to rearm, it was not combat-ready - which was clearly demonstrated by the Soviet-Finnish War. In this regard, there was a fear of any provocation from the Germans. Time was needed. Subsequently, Stalin would tell British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that six months of peace were not enough for the Soviet Union.
On the last evening before the start of the war, a decision was made to put the troops on combat readiness. However, People's Commissar of Defense S.K. Timoshenko and Chief of the General Staff G.K. Zhukov did not show sufficient promptness: what they did on June 21, after leaving Stalin’s office, is unclear. The commanders of the 3rd, 4th and 10th armies were unable to take any action, since the directive quoted above was sent to them on June 22 at 2:30 am, and an hour and a half later the German offensive began. But that is another story…
Chapter from the book by I.I. Garin “The Double Murder of Stalin”, Kyiv, Master class, 2006, 272 p.
Notes and citations appear in the text of the book.
History should be looked at from the sky - then Waterloo looks like a street fight, and Hitler or Stalin - like the leaders of street gangs. There is a persistent myth about the greatness, almost divinity, of the two most terrible flayers and bonebreakers in human history. This is utter nonsense of idiots, because the scale of violence does not indicate greatness, but exclusively inhumanity: all states built on the bones of millions are direct evidence of grandiose cannibalism and nothing more. The Russian and German peoples, literally and figuratively “pissing themselves” from the happiness of Hitler’s and Stalin’s “victories”, are nothing more than visual evidence of stupidity and debasement, but not of greatness. Also, suppliers of bones for the construction of the most sinister and infernal empires in human history... If you look at history from the skies, then Stalinism and Hitlerism are only the dark, sinister nights of history, giving birth and multiplying monsters...
I have already touched on the hidden springs of the relationship between Stalin and Hitler. This topic needs to be continued, because to understand Stalin’s personality it is important to comprehensively consider and understand the deep sources of his trust in Hitler, trust that he did not even hide until June 1941. For example, Stalin believed that Hitler was much better than Western democracies and repeated many times that he completely trusted this man *. I'm not even talking about the alliance of two fanatics who divided Europe in 1939-1941.
It is impossible not to mention the strange relationship between the two Fuhrers of the twentieth century, between whom there was much in common. Both came from the lower classes, both were humiliated by their fathers, both suffered ridicule and practical jokes from their comrades, both were characterized by unbridled outbursts of anger, impatience with objections, sadistic, megalomaniacal and psychopathological complexes, projection of their own failures onto political opponents, etc. Hitler’s Armadas were already ready to invade the East, and Pravda wrote on June 14, 1941: “... according to the USSR, Germany is steadily observing the terms of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, like the Soviet Union, which is why there are rumors about Germany’s intention to break the pact and launch an attack on The USSR is deprived of any basis... The friendship between the peoples of Germany and the Soviet Union, sealed with blood (?), has every reason to be long and strong.”
A week before Hitler’s attack, Stalin personally authorized TASS to publish the quoted communique regarding “gossip about the imminence of war between the USSR and Germany.” This communiqué also contains the following words: “...The transfer of German troops, freed from operations in the Balkans, to the eastern and northeastern regions of Germany (troops were already stationed on the borders of the USSR), presumably, is connected with other motives that do not have regarding Soviet-German relations" **.
“TASS states that: according to the USSR, Germany also steadily complies with the terms of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, like the Soviet Union, which is why, according to Soviet circles, rumors about Germany’s intention to break the pact and launch an attack on the USSR are devoid of any basis, and the recent transfer of German troops, freed from operations in the Balkans, to the eastern and northeastern regions of Germany is connected, presumably, with other motives that have nothing to do with Soviet-German relations.”
Just a few hours before Hitler's invasion, the "great strategist" assured members of the Politburo that "Hitler will not attack in the near future" ***. Let me remind you once again that on June 14, that is, 8 days before the attack Nazi Germany, a TASS message was published about the need for all alarmists and those who talk about the inevitability of war to be arrested, shot and severely punished, because these are provocative speeches. Such “brilliant foresights”...
Stalin's behavior before the start of the war, his refusal to heed the huge stream of warnings about the impending danger that was obvious to everyone, is explained not only by his special relationship with Hitler - completely trusting his instincts, Stalin believed in the impending conspiracy between Germany and England. Stalin feared Britain much more than Germany. Stalin considered the May 10 flight to England of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi Party, to be direct evidence of the preparation of such a conspiracy. Nevertheless, Stalin’s trust in his “brother” was so deep and comprehensive that the “great seer” ignored not only the huge number of warnings about the impending war coming to him in a stormy stream, including the warnings of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill *, but and the plans of Lebensraum in the East, unconcealed by Hitler himself **.
The most amazing thing about the war is the total concealment of historical documents about the most important moments war, providing the basis for the most extravagant versions of its beginning. The situation here is literally as if World War II began before the new era.
Serving and engaged historians to this day squirm and grind out Stalin’s crap about the military and technical superiority of the Wehrmacht over the Red Army on the eve of the war. Why crap? - Because according to the Treaty of Versailles, the German armed forces were limited to a 100,000-strong land army, mandatory military service was cancelled, the bulk of the surviving navy was to be transferred to the winners and Germany was prohibited from having many modern types of weapons. Mobilization into the army and rearmament of the country by Hitler began not even after Hitler came to power, but only 3-4 years (!!!) before the start of World War II. There really was superiority, but - the Red Army over the Wehrmacht...
By the way, the USSR largely contributed to the restoration of the German army: to train German military personnel, training and research centers “Lipetsk” (aviators), “Kama” (tankers), and “Tomka” (chemical weapons) were organized in the country. Future military commanders of the Third Reich and SS troops underwent training in the USSR. In 1939, Stalin categorically rejected attempts to organize an anti-Hitler coalition with the participation of the USSR, demanding that he be given the opportunity to occupy the eastern regions of Poland in exchange for participation in an alliance with France and Great Britain. Such a condition was unacceptable for these countries.
How, in this case, can we explain its crushing defeat, one might say, the defeat of 1941 and early 1942? The fact is that Hitler fooled Stalin like a wretched sucker: he cheated him not only with a non-aggression pact, but with the deeply instilled idea that Germany’s main enemy is England and that it is necessary to unite to defeat it. AND " great commander“He not only believed his “brother,” but even on the day of the German attack on June 22, he forbade his soldiers to shoot at the enemy. Until June 12, Stalin generally believed that there was not a war going on on the country’s western border, but a distracting conflict and hoped to resolve it through negotiations.
On the eve of the war, our troops were not on the border. They were concentrated in a zone from 30 to 300 kilometers from it, while the Wehrmacht before the attack was at a distance of 800 meters... How could such military savagery even occur in an atmosphere when only the blind and deaf could not know about the approaching war? Not to mention the fact that on the eve of the war, German specialists were taken around our military factories, showing in detail the production lines for creating the latest weapons. The historian testifies: “Here are the registers of the German aviation delegation, which tours our aircraft factories, and they are shown only two aircraft, their full cycle, the Pe-2, our best, so to speak, dive bomber, and the MiG-3, the highest altitude, which can reach planes flying at altitudes where the Germans do not fly, but the British fly. They are allowed everywhere."
Realizing that Germany alone could not defeat England, Hitler tricked Stalin ahead of time by offering to participate in the war against the British. The Berlin negotiations in November 1940, which supposedly ended in nothing, most likely ended in a secret agreement between the Soviet and German leadership to jointly conduct this operation. From that moment on, the main idea for Stalin was to bring his armies to the shores of the North Sea with the help of the Germans, and then decide where to strike: London - together with the Germans, or Berlin - together with the British.
It doesn’t hurt to remind people suffering from amnesia that it’s not even a matter of a non-aggression pact and secret protocols: in addition to them, the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship and borders with Hitler’s Germany and, together with Hitler, sent troops into Poland.
On the eve of the invasion of the USSR, Hitler, through Ambassador Dekanozov, conveyed to Stalin the plan for Operation Barbarossa, inspiring his “friend” that this plan was just a distracting fake created to deceive the British. And the “ally” took the hook, perceiving all the data from his own intelligence about the preparations for war as English sabotage. He believed Hitler, but not his own agents!
This was the dictatorial style of leadership: the leader knows everything, the “false” plan for Operation Barbarossa is on his desk, a friend-ally will not let him down, and everyone else is traitors and saboteurs. Even Lavrentiy Beria did not know then what Stalin’s plans were for ’41...
The historian testifies:
And something happened that had never happened in history: the Russians were completely defeated. During the 41st year, 3.8 million people were captured, a million died, that’s 4.8. Our entire army at the beginning of the war was 5.2 million. That is, the entire army was actually destroyed... The second most striking thing is that Germany, starting in 1919, did not have an army. She was forbidden to have an army, and she became... Hitler issued a law on conscription in 1935 only. And therefore, Germany in 1939, in 4 years, could not create an army superior to the colossal army of the USSR, in principle.
If you put it on two palms, on one on June 22, and what happened, well, of course, with the consequences, on that day, and on the second - all the other days of the war, I’m still not sure which hand will win. Because 50% of all our supplies that were brought to the border were captured or undermined, blown up, or disappeared. That is, it was an unheard of defeat... A thousand planes on the first day, in two days - two and a half thousand planes. This is completely unheard of in history.
The personal sympathy and trust of the “brilliant” Stalin in his “foster brother” outweighed all the facts, arguments, logic and general premonitions of impending disaster. This unnatural sympathy led to the USSR's unpreparedness for war, to the tragic irreparable defeats and losses of 1941-42 and to the unnecessary death of millions of people. Just two months before Hitler’s invasion of the USSR, when all the blind had already seen, Stalin hugged Baron Werner von Schulenburg *** at the send-off of Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka.
The trust in the “brother” was so fantastic and transcendental that even on the day of Hitler’s blow, Stalin’s first reaction was to deny what had happened. Don't believe me? Here's a fact: Combat General Boldin calls Marshal Timoshenko and reports the situation: the enemy has crossed the border, is bombing Soviet cities, soldiers are dying. And what does he hear from the marshal? Here's what:
- No retaliatory actions without our consent!
- What? Our troops are retreating, cities are burning, people are dying...
- Joseph Vissarionovich believes that perhaps this is a provocation on the part of some German generals ****.
Psychologists believe that this also became possible as a result of Stalin’s psychological self-identification with the aggressor, the ideological “transfer” of the threatening danger emanating from Germany to “world imperialism” (Britain and the USA), and also because of the exaggerated faith of the “brilliant leader” in his infallibility and his extreme suspicion of his own agents, whose reports about the impending war were completely ignored by him. It was found that instead of concentrating on the growth of Hitler’s militaristic machine, Stalin, by the way, supported in this regard by such “mongrels” as Malenkov and Khrushchev, exaggerated the hostile intentions not of Hitler, but... of Churchill.
Stalin's brain, as well as Hitler's, had a dangerous ability to accept chimeras harmoniously constructed by his own consciousness as reality. Pathological narrow-mindedness, one might say, a radical deformation of reality by a painful consciousness, ultimately brought the two “geniuses” to the grave.
Almost everyone around Stalin knew that he was greatly impressed by some of Hitler's traits and actions. The process of self-identification of the two dictators went so far that in almost all their actions they were practically indistinguishable: both had ambitions of total domination, instilled geopolitical ideas of “victory throughout the world,” ruthlessly destroyed opponents, introduced absolute censorship, demanded iron discipline, relied on militarization of the economy, were anti-Semites, controlled not only the import of goods, but also the import of ideas and lifestyles, and persecuted the same cultural figures. The music of Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, the prose of Kafka and Joyce, the philosophical works of Spengler and Ortega (the list is endless!) were equally ostracized by fascism and communism. The fascists saw in them a symbol of anti-German art, the communists saw them as a symbol of degenerate art... There they removed newcomers from the Prussian Academy of Arts, here they persecuted Shostakovich and Prokofiev, there they expelled Einstein and Fermi, here they smashed the theory of relativity, genetics and cybernetics. In both cases, entire areas of knowledge were subjected to “flogging”; relevant research was stopped or falsified.
Stalin copied even the bloodiest “purge” of the Red Army from Hitler’s “night” long knives”, except by increasing the scale many times. The following confession of the “great leader” has been preserved: “I must deal with my opponents in the same way as Hitler did.” The list goes on and on. It is highly significant that the book “Fascism” by the Bulgarian dissident philosopher Zhelyu Zhelev was banned immediately after publication, because the parallels between regimes and leaders were so striking that replacing the title with the word “Bolshevism” did not change the content of the book.
It is curious that Bukharin's attacks on the fascist regime in Germany were perceived by many as an Aesopian polemic directed against Stalin himself. Time magazine, which in 1939 named Stalin “man of the year” (!) (doesn’t mean anything to you in the light of recent history?), time after time returned to the Stalin-Hitler parallels. The idea of cooperation and agreement with a “friend” gradually became the guiding principle in Stalin’s policy: the Russians courted the Germans, signed non-aggression pacts and secret agreements of joint annexation, and until the day the war began they supplied Germany with strategic goods and food, so Trotsky had every reason to call Stalin “ Hitler's quartermaster."
After the end of the most destructive war in Russian history, Stalin repeatedly regretted his lost ally. Svetlana Alliluyeva recalls her father’s often repeated phrase: “Oh, with the Germans we would be invincible!”, and Stalin admitted to the writer V. Nekrasov: “If we had fought all these allies together, the Churchills, the Roosevelts, we would have conquered the whole world, you know, the whole world!
Many explain Stalin's pre-war repressions not only by the elimination of personal enemies, but also by opponents who opposed the union with Germany. This, in particular, can explain the purge of the army - generals and senior officers who disagreed with the policy of the alliance with the fascists, with the Moscow-Berlin axis created by Stalin, aimed at the joint annexation of Europe, were removed. Stalin systematically eliminated his own and other communists who did not agree with his expansionist plans, especially since the latter increasingly came down to a planned alliance with the fascists. Stalin's "purges" were carried out according to fascist scenarios so much that in 1938 Mussolini even wondered whether "Stalin had slowly become a fascist?" *.
All that has been said is one extended evidence of Stalin’s constant and deep self-identification with two dictators - Hitler and Lenin at the same time, with the merciless idols by which he always measured life. The name Lenin in this context was used not because of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, but because of the latter’s ability to endlessly maneuver in achieving government goals. Isn’t this where the pretentious slogan comes from: “Stalin is Lenin today”? Both Stalinist idols at one time committed acts of aggression against him, Lenin in the Testament, Hitler in the European conquests, so the psychoanalytic basis for self-identification with “strong personalities” was more than sufficient.
According to many researchers of Stalin’s personality, the tendency to self-identify with potential aggressors was fully consistent with Stalin’s “divide and conquer” policy. He perfectly mastered the technology of uniting with some to destroy others and, perhaps, saw in Hitler a temporary ally during the next round of total destruction of “enemies.” Stalin was let down by a miscalculation: he underestimated the enemy’s cunning and mastery of the same technology. In a sense, Hitler, even dead, outplayed him - not to mention the fact that this self-identification did not prevent Hitler from attacking Russia, which had been bled white by Stalin.
Our people have written a lot about “ historical victory“of the Soviet people in World War II, but in insights I often see this victory as the last historical defeat of Russia in a series of centuries-long incorrect responses to the challenges of history. Even if I am mistaken and my vision fails me, look around: how the defeated Germans live today and how the Russians live - 5 million street children, children's drug addiction, prostitution, drunkenness, record crime, poverty, morbidity threatening the existence of the people, including AIDS, which have reached alarming proportions. , high mortality rate, blatant disregard of the modern authorities for the country’s slide into the abyss?..
The beginning of the war was accompanied by Stalin's nervous breakdown, confusion and deep depression: strange love played a cruel joke on him, an outcast. Avtorkhanov called Stalin an actual “deserter,” but this is an unsuccessful symbol - Stalin did not leave the battlefield, but, like an abandoned woman, panicked, showed nervousness and hysteria - what in such conditions is called a “nervous crisis”, “nervous prostration.” A pragmatist and utilitarian, he lost the ability to understand what happened and cope with what happened. The blow to my own narcissism was crushing.
Despite the latest justifications of the apologists, there is no escaping the fact that there was a moment at the very beginning of the war when he feared that his comrades-in-arms might rebel for his mistakes or even arrest the leader who had screwed up. I see a man in a state of shock with an abyss opening at his feet. His behavior at that moment, according to eyewitnesses, fully corresponded to a mental breakdown: “Stalin spoke in a kind of dull and colorless voice, often stopped and breathed heavily... It seemed that Stalin was sick and spoke through force” *.
There are reconstructions of Stalin's consciousness at the very moment when he was informed about the fascist invasion. Among the incredible confusion of thoughts, wild leaps, in the stream of consciousness one can recognize a passionate desire to “preserve the image”, one’s own confidence in Hitler’s inability to be deceitful: “What really happened? Probably just the panic of the coward generals. The usual hysteria of weaklings who are unable to understand the essence of the phenomenon, this shit that has been floating on the surface all its life... No, this is a common provocation. Or maybe the usual political game of brother Hitler? Yes, of course, this is an ordinary game - you can’t fool me with chaff! But why so many warnings from all these brainless lackeys? They all sought to pass off lies as truth, they all had a secret goal of letting me down. Could the clever Adolf make such a mistake - attack without solving the problem with England? No, the bombings are only a provocation and precisely on such a scale as to plunge the faint of heart into panic. But you can’t fool me! What if they did? What if everyone around you conspires?”
After the fall of Minsk, Stalin felt terrible fear. Yes, of course everyone conspired behind his back. In general, everything that happened was a conspiracy, a conspiracy, a conspiracy. Now they will come and arrest you. What to do? What to do? To hell with it, with the war. How to survive yourself, save your skin?..
It happened that time! But we definitely need to learn lessons from what happened, we need to tie the filthy overfed dogs even tighter. And now it’s time to throw them a bone - eat, yours took it.
In the first days of the war, Stalin experienced a nervous breakdown, but did not lose his composure. This is completely impossible for critical moments, and now was one of the most critical in his life. According to the records of Y. Chadayev, the manager of the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars, whom Stalin instructed to keep brief notes of all meetings of the Government and the Politburo that took place in his office, at dawn on June 22, 1941, members of the Politburo plus Timoshenko and Zhukov were gathered at Stalin's house. Timoshenko reported: “The German attack should be considered a fait accompli, the enemy bombed the main airfields, ports, large railway communication centers...” Then Stalin began to speak, speaking slowly, searching for words, sometimes his voice was interrupted by a spasm. When he finished, everyone was silent and he was silent. Finally he approached Molotov: “We need to contact Berlin again and call the embassy.”
Stalin still clung to hope: maybe, after all, the provocation will carry through?
“Molotov called the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs from his office, everyone was waiting, he said to someone, stuttering slightly: “Let him go.” And he explained: “Schulenburg wants to see me.” Stalin said briefly: “Go.”
Molotov went out to talk with the German ambassador. His staggering shadow returned. He didn’t say, but whispered: “The German government has declared war on us.” Stalin, too, could barely stay on his feet, literally collapsed on standing nearby chair. There was a painful pause, even though you could hang yourself in this silence. Nobody knew what to do or how to react.
“I took the risk,” Zhukov later recalled, “to break the prolonged silence and proposed to immediately attack the enemy units that had broken through with all the forces available in the border districts and delay their further advance...
“Give us a directive,” the dead leader squeezed out for the second time in 24 hours...
That day there was a lot of criticism and threats - Vatutin, Timoshenko, Malyshev, former ambassador in Germany Dekanozov... Everyone consoled themselves with the hope that the enemy was about to be stopped and defeated, but he continued to move, roll forward... In the end, Stalin fell silent, he looked pale and upset...
Then, after Minsk, the great director staged a play: the leader disappeared for several days. How did you disappear? Which disappeared? Yes, he disappeared - he didn’t go to work, didn’t answer calls. The comrades panicked: is everything okay? What game did Stalin decide to play? Having weighed everything and calculated everything, assessing his own miscalculations, Stalin decided to leave the “boyars” alone - let, instead of shifting the blame onto him, they would feel fear and their own insignificance, and I would play cat and mouse with them. When Molotov arranged for members of the Politburo to go to the dacha, the great actor played a familiar performance, the “game of resignation.”
Bulganin testifies: “We were all struck then by the sight of Stalin. He looked emaciated, haggard... his sallow face, covered with pockmarks... he was gloomy.”
Stalin said: “Yes, there is no great Lenin... He left us a great empire, and we screwed it up... There is a stream of letters from the Soviet people in which they rightly reproach us: is it really impossible to stop the enemy, to fight back. There are probably some among you who would not mind shifting the blame, of course, to me.”
Molotov: “Thank you for your frankness, but I declare: if someone tried to direct me against you, I would send this fool to hell... We ask you to return to business, for our part we will actively help.”
Stalin: “But still think: can I continue to justify hopes, to bring the country to a victorious end. Maybe there are more worthy candidates?
Voroshilov: “I think I can unanimously express my opinion: there is no one more worthy.”
And immediately friendly voices were heard: “That’s right!”
Stalin won once again: now that they themselves begged him to remain their Leader, he seemed to be invested with power again.
Recently, documents were published in Germany indicating that already in July 1941, at a meeting with Hitler, the question of what to do with hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners of war was decided. For the Germans themselves it was a shock: they were expecting a blitzkrieg, but could not calculate the scale of the defeat of the Red Army and the number of those who surrendered...
Meanwhile, Stalin recovered from the shock only after two weeks and only spoke on the radio on July 3. It was a colossal lie: “Despite the fact that the enemy’s best divisions and the best parts of his army have already been defeated and have found their graves on the battlefields, the enemy continues to push forward.” His own army was crushed, and Stalin brazenly lies about the defeated enemy army... And he continues to lie even more brazenly: “The enemy sets as his goal the restoration of the power of the landowners and the restoration of tsarism.” And in addition to this idiotic lie, the person who botched the start of the war blames his compatriots - what do you think? - In carefreeness: “So that the Soviet people understand this and stop being carefree.” It turns out that Soviet people were carefree...
Victory in the war, which cost the Soviet people 26 million victims (according to Western estimates - 43 million...), further strengthened the power and glory of the “great leader”. Now, even outside the USSR, the oppressed peoples saw light and hope for themselves. The ominous shadow cast by the figure standing on the Kremlin wall has almost faded - you have to be crazy yourself to remember the “enemies of the people” in the days of the greatest historical triumph.
But four years of a grueling and bloody war, carried out according to the same principles as before - according to the principles of dumping enemies with their own corpses, were not in vain. Nothing ever goes for free. It would seem that you are a triumphant, but the “ashes of Klaas” still “knock” in your soul, you cannot hide from yourself even in your own underground, spiritual destructiveness cannot be drowned out even by the fanfare of continuous victories.
Stalin gave up, weakened physically and mentally. It would seem that we could rest on our laurels, but it turned out that this was not the case. The higher you go into the sky, the more painful the fall. It seemed that there could be no greater glory, but the cats were scratching at their souls: the marshals and generals gained strength, the soldiers had seen enough of a “different life”, the people believed in freedom, and their henchmen felt a weakened grip.
“At the height of his power he was all alone. His comrades - these future dead - annoyed him. The daughter has become a stranger...” *.
“In the last years of his life he became even more lonely than before. After the great task that fell to his lot was completed, Stalin's life seemed empty. He spent almost all his time at one of his dachas, most often in Kuntsevo. On his trips he was accompanied by strong security, special trains moved non-stop. Connection with reality, with real life ordinary people stopped, he judged it from films. His daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, says in her memoirs that her father had no idea about the purchasing power of money. The simple joys of life did not excite him; he lived like a Spartan, occupying only one room at the dacha. He still has three hobbies: a pipe, Georgian wines and films.
Current affairs were decided in the “secretariat of Comrade Stalin,” headed for many years by the faithful executor of his orders, A. N. Poskrebyshev. Individual members of the top party leadership were invited to Stalin's dacha, usually in the evening. During a leisurely dinner that lasted until dawn, business was discussed. Those present, of course, only assisted in Stalin’s decision-making” **.
Reviews
A few questions:
1. If Stalin did not believe in Hitler’s attack so much that even on the day of the German attack on June 22 he forbade his soldiers to shoot at the enemy (I wonder what this ban looked like?), then how to understand the pre-war actions in the USSR, such as the hidden mobilization of 800 thousand reservists, the transfer in the western districts of dozens of divisions, orders to put troops on combat readiness on the 10th of June 1941?
2. How to understand: the Germans were waiting for the blitzkrieg, but could not calculate the scale of the defeat of the Red Army and the number of those who surrendered? What did the Germans count on when they started the blitzkrieg? That the Red Army will suffer partial failures, and there will be few captured Red Army soldiers?
3. If the mobilization into the army and the rearmament of the country by Hitler began only 3-4 years before the start of World War II, what explains the DEFEAT of ALL (except perhaps Great Britain) European opponents of Hitler, including France, which was considered the strongest power in the world before the war? And only Hitler failed to defeat the Soviet Union. Even in 1941, the Germans did not at all feel that the Russians had been completely defeated. Why?
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The text of the Barbarossa plan, signed by the Fuhrer on December 18, 1940, began with the words: “The German armed forces must be prepared for defeat Soviet Russia V as soon as possible" This plan was kept in the strictest confidence. Even to his ambassador in Moscow, Count Schulenburg (Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg), when he appeared in Berlin in April 1941, Hitler lied: “I do not intend to wage war against Russia.” The Moscow Center set the task for Soviet agents in different countries to take measures to ascertain as accurately as possible the plans of the German leadership and the timing of their implementation.
From "The Corsican" to "Ramsay"
Even during the development of the German plan for war against the USSR, information of a very definite nature began to arrive in Moscow. Here, for example, is a message (without number) to the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR S.K. Timoshenko, dated October 1940:
“Owl. Secret. The NKVD of the USSR reports the following intelligence data received from Berlin:
Our agent “Corsican”, working in the German Ministry of Economy as an assistant in the trade policy department, in a conversation with an officer of the headquarters of the High Command, learned that at the beginning of next year Germany would start a war against the USSR. The preliminary step to the start of military operations will be the military occupation of Romania by the Germans...”
On October 24, 1940, a note from the NKVD of the USSR No. 4577/6 was sent to I.V. Stalin: “The NKVD of the USSR is sending you a summary of political plans in the field of German foreign policy, compiled by our agent, who has connections in the press department of the German Foreign Ministry... Ribbentrop Bureau 20 October completed the development of a large political plan in the field of German foreign policy and began its implementation on October 25... We are talking about the isolation of the United States and the possibility of a compromise in the event of war between Germany and England.” Signed: “Correct, Deputy. beginning 5th Department of the GUGB NKVD USSR Sudoplatov."
The fact that the war against the USSR would begin after the victory over England or the conclusion of peace with it was reported by Soviet residents “Alta” (Ilse Stöbe) from Germany, “Ramsay” (Richard Sorge) from Japan and “Sif” (Nikolai Lyakhterov) from Hungary. Looking ahead, let's say that none of them was able to find out the exact date of Germany's attack on the USSR. The “Ramsay” telegram published in the 60s of the last century that Germany would attack the USSR on the morning of June 22, according to V.N. Karpov, an employee of the press bureau of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, expressed on “ Round table"in the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, is a fake, concocted in Khrushchev's times.
Forewarned is forearmed
Soviet counterintelligence also obtained information about what the enemy knew about Soviet preparations. One of the main sources of this information was Orest Berlings, a former correspondent for the Latvian newspaper Briva Zeme, recruited in Berlin in August 1940 by the adviser to the Soviet embassy Amayak Kobulov and the head of the TASS department Ivan Fillipov. “The Lyceum Student,” as Berlings was dubbed, immediately offered his services to the Germans, who coded him under the name “Peter.”
“Although neither the Russian nor the German sides completely trusted Burlings,” writes historian O.V. Vishlev, “nevertheless, the information coming from him went to the very top: in Moscow it was provided to Stalin and Molotov, in Berlin to Hitler and Ribbentrop."
On May 27, 1941, the “Lyceum Student” informed Filippov, who was in touch with him: “The Imperial Foreign Minister is of the opinion that the policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union should continue...”. This was pure misinformation.
Around the same time, Hitler suspected Burlings of playing a double game, noting in his report dated June 17, 1941 the phrase: “Phillipov showed no interest in the visit of Tsar Boris and General Antonescu.” The Fuhrer called this message “illogical and childish”, since “the interest of the Russians in the visit of General Antonescu should be great...”. Hitler added in his own hand: “...what does the agent tell the Russians if they have placed such high trust in him for so long?” And he ordered to establish “strict surveillance” over him, and with the outbreak of war, “be sure to take him under arrest.”
It was believed that disinformation of the enemy was no less important than protecting one's own secrets. “The secret... of the Fuhrer’s true plans... was kept virtually until the last day,” the head of the Ribbentrop Bureau (foreign policy department of the NSDAP) summed up the results of his work on June 22, 1941. And he turned out to be wrong.
Last signal
On June 19, 1941, in the office of the attache of the Soviet embassy in Berlin, Boris Zhuravlev, which was located at house number 63 on Unter den Linden, two telephone calls rang out one after another. As soon as the caller got connected, he hung up. An outsider would not have paid attention to these calls, but for an employee of the Berlin station of the NKVD, who was actually Boris Zhuravlev, this was a conditioned signal. The signal meant that agent A-201 with the operational pseudonym “Breitenbach” was calling Zhuravlev for an unscheduled meeting.
The Soviet resident and the German officer met in a public garden at the end of the Charlottenburg Highway (now 17 June Street). The strongly built German, who knows how to control himself in any circumstances, was clearly alarmed this time.
- War!
- When?
- On Sunday, the 22nd. With dawn at three in the morning. Along the entire border line, from south to north...
Within an hour, the information went to Moscow.
Convinced anti-fascist Willy Lehman
In 1929, an employee of the political department of the Berlin police, Willy Lehmann, himself offered his services to the Foreign Department of the OGPU. Different authors put forward different explanations for this. According to one version, Lehman sympathized with the Russians. This sympathy allegedly arose during his service in his youth on a German warship in the Far East: he witnessed the bloody Tsushima battle for the Russians. And the pictures of the death of Russian battleships that sank to the bottom without lowering St. Andrew’s flag were imprinted in his memory for the rest of his life.
Another version cannot be ruled out: Lehman needed money, and a lot of it: his beloved wife Margaret and beautiful mistress Florentina required large expenses. The Soviet agent's fees were comparable to his earnings in the Berlin police.
Lehmann was named “Breitenbach” and assigned a number starting with the first letter of the Russian alphabet.
It should be noted that he was a cheerful, always smiling person. At work he was known only as “Uncle Willie”; everyone knew that if necessary, Willy would always lend a dozen or two Reichsmarks before payday. His innate charm more than once contributed to success during operations.
In addition to his mistress, Lehman had another weakness: he loved to gamble at the races. But he managed to turn even this to benefit the cause. When the Center allocated a significant amount of money for treatment to Lehmann, who suffered from kidney disease and diabetes, the agent told his Berlin police colleagues that he had successfully bet on the race and won.
Over 12 years of cooperation, he passed on secret information to Soviet intelligence about the development of 14 new types of German weapons. There is reason to believe that the Soviet Katyusha and rockets for the Il-2 attack aircraft were developed in the USSR based on data transmitted by agent A-201.
No less important was Breitenbach's information about the secret codes used in Gestapo official correspondence. This more than once saved Soviet “illegals” and career intelligence officers working in Germany from failure.
Agent A-201 is waiting for contact
Unforeseen circumstances also happen to scouts. In 1938, Lehmann's curator Alexander Agayants died of a stomach ulcer in Berlin. There was no one to replace him: 12 of the 15 OGPU employees who knew about the existence of agent A-201 were shot during Stalin’s purges. The agent's contact with the Soviet intelligence services was interrupted for many months.
Leman had the courage to remind himself. At the risk of being exposed, he threw a letter into the mailbox of the Soviet diplomatic mission in Berlin, where he said in plain text: “I am in the same position that is well known in the Center, and I think that I am again able to work in such a way that my bosses will are happy with me... I consider this period of time so important and full of events that one cannot remain inactive.”
The Center's connection with Breitenbach was restored. How Lehmann was valued in Moscow is evidenced by a telegram with the personal instructions of People’s Commissar Beria, which was received by the Berlin residency on September 9, 1940: “No special assignments should be given to Breitenbach. It is necessary to take for now everything that is within his immediate capabilities, and, in addition, everything that he will know about the work of various intelligence services against the USSR, in the form of documents and personal reports from the source.”
In addition to the information already mentioned, Lehman managed to report several more strategically important data, for example, about the preparation of the invasion of German units into Yugoslavia.
With the outbreak of the war against the USSR, after all Soviet diplomats left Berlin, communication with the agent was interrupted again. The message about the impending attack on the Soviet Union turned out to be the last.
The mission ended prematurely
To restore ties with pre-war agents, several German anti-fascists trained in Moscow were sent to Germany in 1942. Parachuted over East Prussia, they had to make their way to the center of the country and establish contacts with former Soviet agents. But the organizers of the operation made a grave mistake. Assuming that some of the agents would refuse to renew contact, the paratroopers, in order to blackmail the “refuseniks,” were provided with copies of payment documents certifying their past cooperation with the Soviets. Some paratroopers were arrested by the Gestapo while working on the Red Chapel, and the documents fell into the hands of counterintelligence officers. Willy Lehman was exposed - along with other agents.
The news that “Uncle Willy” was a Soviet spy was like a lightning strike for the leadership of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security. If those at the top had found out about this, displacements and even arrests could not have been avoided. Therefore, Himmler (Heinrich Himmler) did not report the existence of agent A-201 to anyone. On Christmas Eve 1942, Willie Lehman was urgently called to work, where he was arrested and shot without trial. The places of execution and burial are unknown.
Information about agent A-201 on for a long time turned out to be classified by the Soviet side and were published only in 2009. There was also little information in the German archives, and it was also kept silent. And although Lehman’s widow Margaret received a gold watch from the Soviet command after the war in memory of her husband’s services, any perpetuation of the memory of one of the most successful Soviet agents did not occur. The circumstances of his death as a result of a gross mistake also played a role in such oblivion. Soviet authorities, and the fact that he served as an agent in the Gestapo, and post-war ideology implied that there could be no “good” Gestapo men.
The books of Viktor Rezun, who took the pseudonym “Suvorov”, are well known to those interested in history. They are written in an interesting way, and if you don’t know the essence of what happened before the start of World War II, you can “take the bait” of Rezunov’s bait. The main goal of his books is to blame the USSR for the beginning of the world massacre. That's what they were written for.
The biography of Viktor Rezun is less known - a career employee of Soviet military intelligence was recruited by the British while staying abroad. I fell for the “honey trap” - a classic of the genre, recruitment through bed. Blackmail, photographs and his agreement to cooperate. He was taken by MI6 to the UK, where he “accidentally” became a writer. In the USSR he was sentenced to death for treason. The verdict has not been canceled...
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Rezun-Suvorov has a co-author of his books - these are the British intelligence services.
This is something to keep in mind if you decide to read his books.
But the recently appeared magazine “Historian”, from the point of view of knowing the historical truth and dispelling myths and lies about our history, is not only possible, but also necessary to read.
What are the “pillar” directions of falsification of history and anti-Russian propaganda aimed at the past in order to change the future today?
There are two of these directions:
- Stalin = Hitler. The USSR bears responsibility for the Second World War along with the Third Reich.
- The USSR won the war despite Stalin, Stalin is to blame for everything that is possible. But it has nothing to do with Victory.
Added to this is another Western propaganda “trend”, the meaning of which goes in the same direction: May holiday Victory is not a holiday but a day of bitterness, reconciliation and sorrow. And the Victory Parade is saber rattling and a distraction on the part of the authorities.
I am sure that everyone has read and heard similar “verses” performed by the Fifth Column and Western politicians.
And now Viktor Rezun-Suvorov’s interview with the Voice of America, pay attention to what the “Russian writer” says
“The Nazis were defeated despite Stalin
... In an interview with the Russian service of the Voice of America, which the writer gave after the completion of large-scale celebrations in Moscow in honor of the 70th anniversary of the victory over the Nazis, a conversation took place about what Viktor Suvorov thinks about these celebrations, as well as about the reasons for the huge losses of the Soviet people in that war.
Victor Suvorov: I see mass insanity among the people. I see some kind of explosion of vulgarity, absolutely monstrous vulgarity, and a monstrous level of, as Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov said, “ignorance.” Plus some kind of savage rejoicing, as if the savages were given beads, and they are dancing around the fire on which the cannibals are roasting their captives. No, I think the holiday was once truly a “celebration with tears in our eyes.” Now he doesn't cry, and I don't like it. And this Victory turns into a tool for maintaining power, the criminal power of people who robbed the country.
In many of your books, the idea is obvious that the Soviet people won the Great Patriotic War in spite of, and not because of, Stalin. How much do you think in that war people also had to overcome everything that was placed on them? Soviet authority, the way she bent them?
Stalin prepared to attack, and because of this, the Red Army suffered a terrible defeat in 1941. And yet the people turned this situation around and ended the war the way they ended it. The peoples of our country - Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Azerbaijanis, Tatars, Georgians - ended the war contrary to the plans prepared by Stalin, his General Staff, Zhukov and everyone else. The people achieved this victory despite the anti-people regime.”
Here is such a “historian”, completely “independent” in his judgments and assessments... Which began to coincide 100% with the anti-Russian propaganda of the West.
Here's another quote on the same topic. I completely agree with her, just as I completely disagree with the protégé of British intelligence, Rezun.
« Often Can hear opinion, What Soviet people won war contrary to Stalin. How much fair such statement?
This is the same as saying that the Patriotic War of 1812 Russian empire won in spite of Alexander I or the Northern War with the Swedes - in spite of Peter the Great. It is stupid to claim that Stalin only interfered and harmed with his orders. Contrary to the command, the soldiers at the front cannot do anything at all. As are the workers in the rear. There is simply no talk of any kind of self-organization of the people. The Stalinist system worked, which proved its effectiveness in the conditions of the most difficult war.”
This is a fragment of an interview with the head of the scientific sector of the Russian Military Historical Society, Candidate of Historical Sciences Yuri Nikiforova. Below I will give this interesting interview in full. And now a few words about the magazine and resource that published this interview.
Some time ago I came across a new Russian magazine called “Historian. Magazine about the current past." And I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the material, beautiful illustrations, and, most importantly, by the level of my materials. I think that the magazine “Historian” is worthy of close attention. And in in paper form and for reading online.
I think that in the very near future I will publish more materials from the “Historian” that I found interesting. And now, to understand the deceitfulness of Rezun-Suvorov, here is the promised interview with a Russian historian...
"Stalin and the war
What was the contribution to the victory of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief? The head of the scientific sector of the Russian Military Historical Society, Candidate of Historical Sciences Yuri Nikiforov shared his thoughts on this matter with the “Historian”.
Photo by Ekaterina Koptelova
The role of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR Joseph Stalin in the defeat of Nazi Germany is still a topic of heated journalistic debate. Some say that the Soviet Union won the war solely thanks to the military and organizational talents of the country's leader. Others, on the contrary, argue: it was not Stalin who won the war, but the people, and not thanks to, but in spite of the Supreme Commander, whose numerous mistakes allegedly only multiplied the cost of victory.
Of course, these are extremes. But it just so happens that the figure of Stalin has been assessed for many decades according to the “either-or” principle: either a genius or a villain. Meanwhile, in history, halftones are always important, assessments based on an analysis of sources and basic common sense are important. And so we decided to talk about Stalin’s role in the war sine ira et studio - without anger and, if possible, without bias, to figure out what his contribution to the Victory was.
– Long years There was an opinion that in the first days of the Great Patriotic War, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Joseph Stalin, was almost in prostration and could not lead the country. How true is this?
– This, like a number of other myths, has long been refuted by professional historians. As a result of the archival revolution of the early 1990s, previously inaccessible documents became known, in particular the Journal of Stalin's visits to his Kremlin office. This document has long been declassified, fully published and allows us to draw an unambiguous conclusion: there can be no talk of any prostration of Stalin. Every day during the first week of the war, members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, people's commissars and military leaders came to his office, and meetings were held there.
The leader of the country spent several days after June 29 and until July 3 at his dacha. It is not known exactly what he did there. But it is known that he returned to the Kremlin with draft resolutions developed State Committee Defense (GKO), Council of People's Commissars and other departments, which were adopted immediately upon his return to the Kremlin. Apparently, at the dacha, Stalin worked on these documents and the text of his famous speech, with which he addressed the Soviet people on July 3. When you read it carefully, you understand that its preparation took time. It was clearly not composed in half an hour.
– To what extent does Stalin bear responsibility for the failures of the first months of the war? What is his main mistake?
– This question is one of the most difficult. Even among historians who deal with it specifically, there is no single, canonical point of view.
I would emphasize that the Soviet Union (as well as the Russian Empire on the eve of the First World War) was in a more difficult situation than Germany not only in economic, but also in geographical and climatic conditions. And above all, from the point of view of the deployment of armed forces in the future theater of military operations. To see this, just look at the map. We always needed much more time to mobilize, as well as concentrate and deploy the army that was to engage the enemy.
On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, Stalin was faced with the same problem that the Imperial General Staff struggled with before the First World War: how not to lose the “race to the border”, how to mobilize and deploy in time. In 1941, as in 1914, our conscript, having received a summons, had to get on a cart, get to the military registration and enlistment office, which was often located at a very distant distance, then get to railway and so on.
– In Germany, everything was simpler with this...
– Judge for yourself: it took several weeks to deploy and bring into combat readiness the multi-million army of 1941. And the main thing is that if a decision is made simultaneously in Moscow and Berlin, the Soviet Union objective reasons This “race to the border” is losing. This problem, by the way, was recognized by the General Staff, as evidenced by the contents of the Note Georgy Zhukov dated May 15, 1941 with considerations on the strategic deployment of the Red Army, as well as a report from the General Staff dated June 22, where Zhukov quite deliberately, in my opinion, inserted the phrase for Stalin: “The enemy, having forestalled us in deployment...” Unfortunately, there is no adequate answer to this problem the People's Commissar of Defense Semyon Timoshenko and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Zhukov were not found.
It was much easier for the Nazis to organize the gradual concentration of their invasion force on the Soviet-German border in such a way that until the last moment the Kremlin remained in the dark about their plans. We know that tank and motorized units of the Wehrmacht were the last to be transferred to the border.
Judging by the known documents, the understanding of the inevitability of an imminent German attack on the USSR came on June 10–12, when it was practically impossible to do anything, especially since the generals could not declare open mobilization or begin to carry out accelerated transfers of troops to the border without Stalin’s sanction. But Stalin did not give such a sanction. It turned out that the Red Army, being approximately equal in number of personnel to the invasion forces and superior to them in tanks, aircraft and artillery, did not have the opportunity to use its full potential in the first weeks of the war. Divisions and corps of the first, second and third echelons entered the battle in parts, at different times. Their defeat in this sense was programmed.
– What decisions were made to bring the troops into combat readiness?
– Back in the spring, partial mobilization was carried out under the guise of Large Training Camps (BUS), and the transfer of forces to the state border began. In the last week before the war, orders were given to move divisions from border districts to concentration areas and to camouflage airfields and other military installations. Literally on the eve of the war, there was an order to separate front-line departments from district headquarters and move them to command posts. For the fact that many orders and instructions of the People's Commissariat of Defense and the General Staff were executed late or remained only on paper, the commanders and headquarters of the border districts and the armies subordinate to them are responsible. To place all the blame on Stalin for being late in bringing the troops to combat readiness, as has been the custom since the days of Nikita Khrushchev, I think it's wrong.
Nevertheless, as the head of state, Stalin was obliged to delve deeper into the difficulties of ensuring timely mobilization of troops and bringing them to combat readiness and to encourage the military to act more energetically. It seems that until the very last moment he was not sure that the war would begin with a sudden attack by the Germans and that this would happen on the morning of June 22. Accordingly, no clear, unambiguous signal from the Kremlin on this matter has ever passed through the “vertical of power.” Only on the night of June 21-22 was a corresponding decision made and Directive No. 1 was sent to the troops. So, responsibility for the defeats of the first weeks and even months of the war cannot be removed from Stalin: he is to blame, and there is no getting away from it.
Seeing off to the front
– You can often hear: “But intelligence reported!”
– The assertions that Stalin had accurate information about the start date of the war are incorrect. Soviet intelligence obtained a lot of information about Germany’s preparations for an attack on the USSR, but it was extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, to draw clear conclusions regarding the timing and nature of the attack. Many messages reflected German disinformation about Germany’s preparation of ultimatum demands on the Soviet Union, in particular regarding the rejection of Ukraine. German intelligence services deliberately spread such rumors.
Probably, the Kremlin expected that the first shot would be preceded by some kind of diplomatic demarche on the part of Hitler, as was the case with Czechoslovakia and Poland. Receiving such an ultimatum made it possible to enter into negotiations, even if they were obviously unsuccessful, and to gain time, which was so necessary for the Red Army to complete preparatory measures.
– What do you see as the main reasons for the failures of the first years of the war?
– The main reasons for the failures of 1941–1942 are “derived” from the disaster of the summer of 1941. Industry had to be hastily evacuated to the east. Hence the sharp drop in production. In the winter of 1941–1942, the army had little equipment, and there was nothing to shoot with. Hence the high losses. This is the first thing.
Secondly, when the regular army died surrounded, it was replaced by poorly trained people who had just been mobilized. They were hastily rushed to the front to close the gaps that had formed. Such divisions had less combat effectiveness. This means that more of them were needed.
Thirdly, huge losses in tanks and artillery in the first months of the war led to the fact that our command in the winter of 1941-1942 lacked the main tool for a successful offensive - mechanized units. But you can’t win a war by defense. We had to restore the cavalry. The infantry near Moscow launched a counter-offensive in the literal sense of the word...
– ...in the snow and off-road.
- Exactly! Large casualties resulted systemic problems, and those arose as a result of heavy defeat in border battles. Naturally, there were also subjective reasons for our failures, related to the adoption of a number of erroneous decisions (both at the front and in the rear), but they did not determine the general course of events.
The Germans are advancing
– What was the mechanism for making decisions on military issues?
– This mechanism is reconstructed from the memories of people who participated in the discussion and decision-making. Everything was concentrated around the figure of Stalin as chairman of the State Defense Committee and Supreme Commander-in-Chief. All issues were resolved at meetings in his office, to which persons were invited who had jurisdiction and responsibility for these issues. This approach allowed the Soviet leadership to successfully solve the problem of coordinating the needs of the front with evacuation, the deployment of military production, construction, and, in general, with the life of the entire country.
– Did the Supreme Commander-in-Chief’s approaches to decision-making change throughout the war? Was the Stalin of the beginning of the war very different from the Stalin who signed the order “Not a step back!” in July 1942? How and in what ways did Stalin of 1945 differ from Stalin of 1941?
– First of all, I would agree with the historian Mahmut Gareev, who have long drawn attention to the fallacy of portraying Stalin exclusively as a civilian. By the beginning of World War II, he had more military experience than Winston Churchill or Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Let me remind you that during the Civil War Joseph Stalin personally responsible for the defense of Tsaritsyn. He also took part in the Soviet-Polish War of 1920. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks led industrialization and the creation of the country's military-industrial complex. That is, this side of the matter was well known to him.
Of course, from the point of view of the operational art that is required of a commander, he made mistakes. But we must not forget that Stalin looked at events from the point of view of grand strategy. His decision at the beginning of 1942 to go on the offensive along the entire Soviet-German front is usually criticized. This is interpreted as a gross miscalculation by Stalin, who allegedly overestimated the successes achieved by the Red Army during the counter-offensive near Moscow. Critics do not take into account that the dispute between Stalin and Zhukov was not about whether it was necessary to go on a general offensive. Zhukov was also in favor of the offensive. But he wanted all reserves to be thrown into the central direction - against Army Group Center. Zhukov hoped that this would allow the German front to collapse here. But Stalin did not allow this to be done.
- Why?
– The fact is that Stalin, as the leader of the country and Supreme Commander-in-Chief, had the entire Soviet-German front before his eyes. We must not forget that at this time the question was about the survival of Leningrad. About 100 thousand people died there every month. Not to allocate forces to try to break through the blockade ring would be a crime against the Leningraders. Therefore, the Lyuban operation begins, which later ended with the death of the 2nd shock army of the general Andrey Vlasov. At the same time, Sevastopol was dying. Stalin tried, with the help of a landing force that landed in Feodosia, to pull part of the enemy forces away from Sevastopol. The defense of the city continued until July 1942.
Thus, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief in that situation could not give all the reserves to Zhukov. As a result, neither the Rzhev-Vyazemsky operation nor the attempt to break the blockade of Leningrad were successful. And then Sevastopol had to be abandoned. After the fact, Stalin's decision looks wrong. But put yourself in his place when he made a decision at the beginning of 1942...
“It’s unlikely that Stalin’s critics would want to be in his place.”
– We must also take into account the fact that the Germans’ reconnaissance was better than ours. Our command imagined the theater of military operations worse. Kyiv “cauldron” 1941 – bright that confirmation. Not Stalin, but the intelligence of the South- Western Front overlooked the second, southern “claw” of the encirclement.
In addition, we must pay tribute to Hitler’s generals. In many cases they acted in such a way as to mislead the command of the Red Army. And in 1941 they also had the strategic initiative.
Stalin needed time to learn to listen to his subordinates and take into account objective circumstances. At the beginning of the war, he sometimes demanded the impossible from the troops, not always having a good idea of how a decision made in the cabinet could be implemented directly by the troops and whether it could even be implemented within the specified time frame, in certain specific circumstances. According to the testimony of those of our military leaders who most often communicated with him during the war years, Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Vasilevsky, in 1941 and 1942 Stalin was often overly nervous and reacted sharply to failures and emerging problems. It was difficult to communicate with him.
– The burden of responsibility weighed on me.
- Yes. Plus constant overload. It seems that at the beginning of the war he tried to take everything upon himself, tried to delve into all the issues down to the smallest detail, and trusted very few people. The defeats of 1941 shocked him. He must have been tormented by the question: “Before the war, we invested so much money in strengthening the country’s defense capability, the whole country spent so much effort... Where is the result? Why are we retreating?
– You touched on the topic of the relationship between Stalin and Zhukov. How was the hierarchy built in the relationship between the leader of the country and the largest commander during the war? Did Stalin listen to his words more or give orders more often?
– Zhukov did not immediately become in Stalin’s eyes the person who could be trusted unconditionally. At the end of July 1941, after leaving Smolensk, he was removed from the post of Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army. Stalin sent Zhukov to command the front. At the beginning of the war, he removed many and appointed many. I was looking for people to lean on.
Fateful for Georgy Zhukov became two events. When he was appointed commander of the Leningrad Front, there was a glitch in the Barbarossa plan. Hitler then decided to transfer the group's tank divisions Erich Hoepner near Moscow. Although Zhukov’s role in saving the city on the Neva cannot be denied. He forced the defenders of Leningrad to stand to the death. When the new commander arrived at the Leningrad Front, he had to fight panic.
After Zhukov restored order near Leningrad and the situation there stabilized, with the same task - to save the city - Stalin transferred him to Moscow. A portrait of Georgy Konstantinovich was published in newspapers. During the Battle of Moscow, apparently, Zhukov managed to truly win the respect and trust of Stalin.
Gradually, Zhukov turned into a person to whom the Supreme Commander-in-Chief began to entrust the solution of the most difficult and important tasks. So, when the Germans broke through to the Volga, he appointed Zhukov as his deputy and sent him to defend Stalingrad. And since Stalingrad also survived, trust in Zhukov increased even more.
If we talk about the hierarchy, then it has always been like this: Stalin ordered, and Zhukov carried out. To say, as some do, that Zhukov allegedly could have evaded the orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief or acted on his own initiative, regardless of opinion from above, is stupid. Of course, as the war progressed, Stalin increasingly granted him the right to accept independent decisions. Already during the Battle of Stalingrad, the telegrams to Supreme Zhukov contained the phrase “Make decisions on the spot,” including on the question of when exactly to go on the offensive. Confidence was also expressed in the satisfaction of requests for the allocation of reserves and their distribution along the front.
– What did Stalin focus on when selecting personnel in the first place?
– The determining factor during the war was the ability of leaders of all ranks – both at the front and in industry – to achieve the required result. The generals who knew how to solve the tasks set by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief made their careers. People had to prove their professional suitability by deeds, that’s all. This is the logic of war. In its conditions, Stalin had no time to pay attention to any purely personal moments. Even the denunciations of political bodies did not impress him. The compromising evidence came into play when the war was won.
– You can often hear the opinion that the Soviet people won the war despite Stalin. How true is this statement?
– This is the same as saying that the Russian Empire won the Patriotic War of 1812 in spite of Alexander I or the Northern War with the Swedes in spite of Peter the Great. It is stupid to claim that Stalin only interfered and harmed with his orders. Contrary to the command, the soldiers at the front cannot do anything at all. As are the workers in the rear. There is simply no talk of any kind of self-organization of the people. The Stalinist system worked, which proved its effectiveness in the conditions of the most difficult war.
– They also often claim that if not for Stalin’s mistakes, the war would have been won with “little bloodshed.”
– When they say that, they apparently assume that someone else in Stalin’s place would have made different decisions. The question arises: what kind of solutions? Offer an alternative! After all, the choice is made based on the available opportunities.
For example, offer a worthy alternative to the agreement signed Molotov And Ribbentrop in Moscow on August 23, 1939, which in those circumstances would have been more beneficial from the point of view of ensuring the national and state interests of the Soviet Union. I note that numerous critics of this step by the Soviet leadership were unable to offer anything intelligible on this score.
Commanders of Victory. Generalissimo of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin with marshals, generals and admirals. March 1946
The same can be said about 1941. After all, Stalin then, by the way, also thought that in the coming war with Germany, the United States should be on our side. And for this it was important not to give the Americans a reason to “believe” that Hitler was only defending himself against the aggression of the USSR and that Stalin, not Hitler, was to blame for starting the war.
– A favorite topic of liberal historians and journalists is the price of victory. It is argued that the USSR won due to colossal human sacrifices. How true is this statement and what explains the unprecedented losses of the Soviet Union?
– I have always been uncomfortable with the very formulation of the question in such terminology – “price” and “quality of services provided.” During the war, the question of the survival of the peoples of the USSR was decided. To save their children and loved ones, Soviet people sacrificed their lives; it was the free choice of millions of people. Finally, multimillion-dollar casualties are not the price of victory, but the price of fascist aggression. Two-thirds of the human losses suffered by our country are a consequence of the exterminatory policy of the Nazi leadership to depopulate the occupied territories; these are victims of Hitler’s genocide. Three of the five Soviet prisoners of war died.
The losses of the armed forces of the warring parties are quite comparable. None of the serious historians see any reason to criticize the data on losses in the armies presented in the research of the team led by Colonel General Grigory Krivosheev. Alternative calculation methods lead to greater error. So, according to these data, the irretrievable losses of the Red Army amounted to about 12 million people (killed, died from wounds, missing and captured). But not all of these people died: about 3 million of them remained in the occupied territory and, after liberation, were re-conscripted or survived captivity and returned home after the war. As for the total losses of the Soviet Union at 26.6 million people, there are reasons to believe that they are somewhat exaggerated, but this issue requires additional study.
– In the West, and even among our liberals, it is customary to equate Stalin with Hitler. How do you feel about the figure of Stalin and the historical memory of him?
– The notorious “equation” of Stalin and Hitler must be considered primarily in the context of propaganda technologies and events designed to influence public consciousness. It has nothing to do with the search for historical truth, or indeed with science in general. Any Russian citizen thinking about the future of his country is obliged to understand and accept the following: historical figures of such magnitude must be protected from insults and caricatures in the public space. By discrediting in one way or another outstanding figures of Russian history in the public consciousness, we will, wittingly or unwittingly, discredit an entire period of our history, the accomplishments of an entire generation of our ancestors. Stalin, as the leader of the country, remains a symbol of his era and those people who built and won under his leadership. The main cause of Stalin's life was the defeat of fascism in the Great Patriotic War. This determines his contribution not only to the history of our country, but also to the history of mankind.
Many agree that Stalin is to blame for the difficult beginning of the war and the huge losses in personnel and material of our army. It’s hard to disagree with this - after all, he was the ruler of the state. And the ruler of a state is responsible for all processes that influence the entire people on the territory of his country. But at the same time they somehow forget that he is also “responsible” for the Victory. They remember his guilt, but forget about his contribution, or, even worse, they say that “the people won in spite of Stalin,” the system, themselves.
What are the most popular accusations brought against Stalin personally during the initial period of the war? “Stalin fell into prostration” and was silent, he could not even announce the start of the war, “Stalin was a coward.” We will look at them in this article.
Stalin's silence
The essence of the myth was well expressed by J. Lewis and F. Whitehead in their work “Stalin”: “Stalin was in prostration. During the week he rarely left his villa in Kuntsevo. His name disappeared from the newspapers. For 10 days the Soviet Union had no leader. Only on July 1 did Stalin come to his senses.” The accusation is very serious - cowardice and inaction in the most difficult days, when the military-political leadership of the country needs to be instilled with the will to win and inspired to fight.
On June 22, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR Vyacheslav Molotov announced the beginning of the war. In Germany, A. Hitler personally announced the beginning of the war; in Great Britain, W. Churchill announced the war. Some researchers, “justifying” Stalin, proposed the version that Stalin was not entirely sure that this was the beginning of a big war, but was thinking about a provocation that would not go beyond the border conflict. There have already been examples of such enemy actions - on the border with the Japanese army, battles near Lake Khasan in 1938, in the area of the Khalkin-Gol River in 1939. This hypothesis was also put forward by Khrushchev at the famous 20th Congress. At the same time, he reported on the mythical order “not to respond to provocations with fire,” also from the realm of fantasy - there were heavy battles, with the use of all types (except chemical), and Khrushchev reports that the Red Army was supposed to “not respond with fire.”
But this is complete nonsense - Hitler himself declared war on the USSR, and before that, at 5.30 in the morning, the Reich Ambassador to the Union Schulenburg presented a note declaring war.
In general, Stalin rarely spoke publicly, no more than once or twice a year, and on the radio, on open air, for several years he did not speak at all. He was not a public politician, unlike Roosevelt, other American presidents, and Churchill. There was not a single public performance in 1940! And in 1941 he never performed, until the famous “Brothers and Sisters!” July 3, 1941.
It is quite likely, and from a psychological point of view, it was not right for Stalin to speak on June 22, the Kremlin understood this, they were far from fools there. The fact of Stalin's speech, after more than two years of silence, is the last public speaking– in March 1939 on the XVIII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party(b) could cause panic. Therefore, it is quite logical that V. Molotov, the head of Soviet diplomacy, practically the second person in the country, spoke; from 1930 to May 1941, he was the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, that is, the head of government.
In addition, they worked together on the text of the speech, according to the recollections of the head of the Comintern G. Dimitrov, Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Malenkov worked in the office. No panic, no fear, everyone is calm and confident.
"Prostration"
However, documents and memoirs of other figures of that time completely refute the fabrications of Khrushchev and his followers. The same G. Zhukov refutes the opinion of “prostration”, reports that Stalin “worked with great energy...”. There is also a schedule of visitors to Stalin’s office in the first days of the war. From these documents it is clear that Stalin worked hard and met with the military-political leadership of the state.
Cowardice
It is difficult to blame Stalin for this quality; he is a participant Civil War, participated in organizing defense in the most difficult sectors of the front (Tsaritsyn, Perm, Petrograd, Southwestern Front in the war with Poland), did not panic, on the contrary, helped restore order.
There is an interesting memoir by long-range aviation commander A. Golovanov: in October 1941, the Wehrmacht was rushing to Moscow, Corps Commissar Stepanov, a member of the Military Council, called Headquarters. He said that he was at the headquarters of the Western Front, in Perkhushkovo, and said that the command was concerned about the difficult situation, they say it was necessary to move the front headquarters beyond Moscow. Then Stalin asked: “Comrade Stepanov, ask the headquarters, do they have shovels?” ... Stepanov: “Now ... There are shovels, Comrade Stalin.” Stalin: “Tell your comrades, let them take shovels and dig their own graves. The front headquarters will remain in Perkhushkovo, and I will remain in Moscow. Goodbye". All this was said without anger, in a calm tone.
The leader did not leave Moscow during the panic of October 16th. On October 19, by decree of the State Defense Committee, a state of siege was introduced, which “sobered up” the capital. It’s funny to read and listen to statements about panic, “prostration”, fear; apparently, these people confuse themselves and the military-political leadership of the USSR at that time. Let me remind you that these people went through the crucible of the most terrible Civil War, when the white armies and interventionists controlled most of the country, the Reds still had a relatively small region of the country in their hands - with Moscow and Petrograd, and then they attacked Petrograd twice. Many went through the most difficult “school” of underground struggle. They won this “bloodbath”, and then they “fell into prostration”?!
Compare the behavior of the Polish leadership, or the French, the Polish military-political leadership abandoned the country, the army and fled Poland. The French government stopped fighting and surrendered Paris without a fight.
Sources:
Zhukov G.K. Memories and reflections. In 2 vols. M., 2002.
Medinsky V. War. Myths of the USSR. 1939-1945. M., 2011.
Pykhalov I. The Great Slandered War. M., 2005.
