Introduction to the essence of the problem

As soon as the threat of a “big war” disappeared due to the collapse of the USSR, the degradation of power structures began in the CIS countries. Every official at his workplace has turned into a little president. And all that today connects big and small presidents with each other is the struggle to maintain the stability of existing political regimes, by which they mean the preservation of the system of their personal power.
Communities of officials are exclusively engaged in enrichment, primarily through the theft of state budgets at all levels. But something must be offered to the people, too? In conditions of a serious economic crisis, an ideology like “building a new life” could play such a role. But the current ruling elites, both in Russia and Belarus, are unable to formulate an image of the future that is attractive to the “people.” So they are trying to privatize the past. They chose victory in the Great Patriotic War as their central symbol.

After all, what is the “Great Victory” of 1945 for those in power? This is an understanding of the fact that the peoples of the Soviet Union, at the cost of colossal sacrifices at the front and colossal tension in the rear, saved the pyramid of power of party-Soviet officials, crowned by a dictator, from destruction. Despite the collapse of the USSR, this pyramid has largely survived, only it is called differently today. Aren’t Putin, Lukashenko, Nazarbayev dictators? In Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, are leaders at any level (“little presidents”) elected by citizens or employees of enterprises, and not appointed by “big presidents”? Are the elections of “big” presidents somewhere just elections, and not grandiose machinations? Do authorities anywhere in the post-Soviet space take public opinion into account? Isn't the opposition and the media persecuted everywhere for criticizing the mistakes, stupidities and crimes of the authorities?

That is why the “Great Victory” for the ruling regimes in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan is “our Victory”, which “we will not give up to anyone,” despite the fact that none of the current officials of any rank have any the slightest relation to her.

This is precisely where the persistent calls of rabid court demagogues stem from introducing criminal liability for falsifying the history of the Great Patriotic War. At the same time, falsification is understood as any assessments that contradict the opinions of “big” and “small” presidents. Hence the replacement of the true history of the war with myths. There are thousands of them - big and small. I will mention just nine myths as an example.

Joint Soviet-German parade in 1939

Myth 1. National Socialist Germany attacked the peace-loving Soviet Union without any reason.

In August 1939, the USSR agreed with Germany on the division of spheres of influence in Eastern Europe (secret protocols attached to the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact). According to this agreement, the sphere of influence of the USSR included Finland, the three Baltic republics (without the western half of Lithuania), Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, the eastern voivodeships of ethnic Poland, and Bessarabia.

Three days after the signing of the Pact, Germany attacked Poland. After waiting two and a half weeks, the USSR also invaded its territory, grossly violating the terms of the Treaty of Riga of 1921, and three other treaties with Poland, including non-aggression. And he captured (we officially say and write “annexed”) Western Belarus and Western Ukraine.

And at the end of November 1939, the USSR attacked Finland under the ridiculous pretext that the border with this country was too close to Leningrad. As a pretext, a provocation was staged in the Karelian village of Mainila (a Soviet artillery battery shelled the village, which caused destruction and casualties; Moscow blamed the Finns for this crime). However, it was not possible to establish the power of the councils in Finland: the entire Finnish people, including the communists, came out to defend the Fatherland and inflicted major losses on the Red Army.

In 1940, the USSR ceded “its” part of Poland to Germany in exchange for the western part of Lithuania, with an additional payment to the Germans in gold. Then he provoked uprisings of communist elements in the Baltic countries and immediately “came to their aid” - much like today in the Donbass. As a result, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and then Bessarabia in the summer of 1940, became victims of Moscow’s aggression.

Further, in November of the same 1940, Molotov came to Berlin on an official visit to negotiate the entry of the USSR into the war against England and France on the side of Germany. On behalf of the Soviet government (in fact, on behalf of Stalin), he demanded, as payment for alliance, to include in the sphere of influence of the USSR (that is, to give full control) Romania (from where the Germans received oil), Bulgaria (a source of food and tobacco for the Wehrmacht) and Turkey (Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, Turkish part of Armenia). Stalin was sure that Hitler, having broken down for the sake of decency, would accept these conditions. However, Hitler already knew from his intelligence that the USSR was developing a plan for a surprise attack on Germany (Operation Thunderstorm), troops were being massed to the western border of the country, and staff games were being held to signify a “deep breakthrough.” He decided that the most reasonable thing was to launch a pre-emptive strike, especially since the war with Finland showed: the Red Army (Red Army) is not nearly as strong as it seems. The German attack preceded the USSR attack by a month or two at most.

So there was a reason for the supposedly “unprovoked” attack; its name was the aggressiveness of Stalin and his gang of accomplices. Another thing is that Hitler and his entourage were no better than Stalin. In general, two poisonous reptiles were worth each other.

Myth 2. The German attack came as a complete surprise to the Soviet military-political leadership.

In fact, Stalin received about 80 messages from Soviet agents about the impending attack and its timing. Churchill also warned him about the imminent invasion. Another thing is that Stalin did not trust either his intelligence or Churchill. He thought that he had outwitted Hitler and that he would not dare to fight on two fronts, that the Germans were preparing a landing in England (Operation Sea Lion), and the transfer of part of the troops to the East was a diversionary maneuver to mislead the British. Stalin even placed at Germany's disposal over 20 transport ships, which stood in German ports under Soviet flags and with Soviet crews, awaiting the loading of German troops. On the morning of June 22, the Germans captured these ships without firing a shot.
It is no coincidence that at the first meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks after the attack, Stalin gave an extremely rude assessment of what happened: “they screwed up!”

Myth 3. The armed forces of Germany and its allies were many times superior to the armed forces of the USSR in the European part of the country.

The Red Army in the number of troops located in the western border districts was inferior to the troops of the Wehrmacht and Germany's allies by 1.3 times (not at all multiple) - 3 million 290 thousand people. against 4 million 306 thousand people. But the Red Army had enormous superiority in tanks and self-propelled guns (15,687 against 4,170 German ones, i.e. 3.76 times more), in aviation (10,742 aircraft against 4,642, 2.32 times more) and in artillery (59,787 guns and mortars against 42600, 1.4 times more). At the same time, the bulk of Soviet light tanks (T-26, BT-5, BT-7) were armed with a 45-mm or 37-mm cannon, and the German ones were armed with a 20-mm cannon or machine gun. As for the engines, gasoline engines did not interfere with the German tankers fighting, but the Soviets constantly complained that they had few new T-34 tanks with diesel engines.

If we take into account the second-echelon Soviet troops located in the western regions of the RSFSR adjacent to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine (and this is more than a million people), then the superiority in the number of personnel was also on the side of the Red Army.

Myth 4. The garrison of the Brest Fortress bravely resisted for about 2 months, pinning down significant Wehrmacht forces.

The Germans occupied the city of Brest by 12 noon on June 22. The fortifications (forts) of the Brest Fortress, which is located west of the city, were stormed by the 45th Wehrmacht Infantry Division, consisting of Austrians. Those Soviet troops that were stationed in the fortress left from there on June 22 to the combat deployment area east of Brest, and then retreated. Officers of headquarters and departments, commandant and economic units from the 6th and 42nd rifle divisions, border guards, members of officer families - up to 5 thousand people in total - remained in the fortress. These disparate groups are called “garrison” by Soviet and now Russian and Belarusian propagandists, which is a deliberate lie. The defenders of the fortress capitulated on June 30.

From June 24, a group of soldiers (up to 400 people) led by Major Pyotr Gavrilov concentrated in the Eastern Fort. They had several 45mm cannons. But on the evening of June 29, as a result of a large-caliber bomb hitting the central part of the fort, an ammunition depot exploded. Almost all the soldiers were killed or wounded. Gavrilov with the remnants of the group (12 people) hid in the casemates for several more days. Then he was left alone and was captured only on July 23.

Could this desperate resistance of a handful of people have any strategic significance? In general, only two enemy infantry divisions out of 166 that participated in the invasion (31st and 45th) were engaged in Brest. So there can be no talk of “fettering” significant enemy forces.

Myth 5. Under pressure from superior enemy forces, the Red Army systematically retreated, exhausting the enemy with defensive battles.

This lie was first voiced by Stalin back in the summer of 1945, trying to somehow explain the defeat of the summer of 1941. In reality, Soviet commanders at all levels, in accordance with the pre-war doctrine and regulations of the Red Army, did not think about defense. Everywhere they tried again and again to launch counteroffensives, while suffering huge losses and, as a result, rolling back further and further to the east. Let me remind you that before the evening of June 26 (on the fifth day of the war!) the Germans completely occupied Minsk. And today they lie to us about the heroic resistance on Stalin’s line.

The Party-Soviet leadership of the BSSR fled in panic from Minsk to Mogilev on the afternoon of June 24, having previously managed to pass a resolution on the destruction of “political” prisoner camps and strictly forbade the residents of Minsk to evacuate. The entire western part of the BSSR (including the Bialystok region, which today they prefer not to remember at all) was occupied in less than a week, the eastern part - in the next month.

The retreat of the Red Army in most cases resembled a stampede. This flight stopped only on the approaches to Leningrad, Moscow and Kyiv.

Myth 6. The soldiers and commanders of the Red Army from the beginning to the end of the war fought to the last opportunity, preferring death to the shameful surrender.

How did it happen that, according to today’s official data, 4 million 559 thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army surrendered?! This is the number of all ground forces of the USSR from Brest to Vladivostok in June 1941! According to unofficial data (according to estimates by independent historians), there were one million more Soviet prisoners - one million three hundred thousand people!

Myth 7. In the temporarily occupied territory, ALL PEOPLE rose up in guerrilla warfare against the occupiers.

And that's a lie! According to official Soviet data, inflated in the BSSR by at least 2 times, and in Ukraine and the RSFSR inflated by at least 5 times, no more than 5% of the population of the occupied territories participated in the partisan movement. But these data are relatively correct only for the second half of 1943 - the first half of 1944. In 1941-42 The partisans consisted of the party-Soviet nomenklatura of the district and partly of the regional level, urgently formed detachments of NKVD employees and fighters from defeated units of the Red Army who found themselves surrounded. There were few of them; until the spring of 1943, the partisans did not inflict any noticeable damage on the Wehrmacht armed forces. Tales about the incredible exploits of Father Minai’s detachment, Danukalov’s detachment, Zaslonov’s group in Orsha and other stories of this kind, they are fairy tales.

During the entire war, as a result of the actions of the partisans, the Germans and their allies lost only 35 thousand people, and not a million, as the former “chief partisan commander P.K. Ponomarenko. The Wehrmacht's sanitary losses far exceeded this figure. In general, the Soviet partisan movement is one huge myth!

Myth 8. From the beginning to the end of the war, the Soviet armed forces fought better than the Germans - both on land, in the air, and at sea, but were forced to systematically retreat under pressure from many times superior enemy forces.

And this is a lie. The Germans always and everywhere fought competently and skillfully. The ratio of human losses in the first half of the war (before the Battle of Kursk) was 1 to 10 in favor of the Germans, in the second half 1 to 3-4, also in favor of the Germans. But the USSR had huge human reserves, while Germany had none.

The defeat of Germany was due to three main factors. Firstly, there is a lack of human resources. Secondly, the great superiority of the volumes of total military production of the USA, Canada, Great Britain and the USSR. Thirdly, these two reasons were aggravated by the insane racial policies of the Nazis. They could well have made the bulk of the population of the occupied territories of the USSR their friends and allies (let me remind you that the Germans in the Baltic states, Western Belarus and Western Ukraine were greeted everywhere as liberators, the same thing happened in a number of regions of the RSFSR), but they managed to turn a significant part of these people into their enemies.

The total number of Red Army soldiers killed during the war was 11 million 520 thousand people. The Germans fought on two fronts for a year and a half more, but lost 4.3 million less. So who fought better? The Reds won precisely by overwhelming the enemy with mountains of corpses of their fighters.

And more on this topic. Only 7 Soviet pilots - Kozhedub, Pokryshkin, Rechkalov and others - shot down more than 50 German aircraft each. And the number of German aces who shot down 80 or more aircraft exceeds three hundred! The best German ace Erich Hartmann arrived on the eastern front only in the spring of 1943 and before the end of the war (in two years) he shot down 352 Soviet aircraft. So whose pilots were better?! The same can be said about tank crews, artillerymen, snipers, military reconnaissance officers, and in general about representatives of all military specialties.

Myth 9. Material assistance from the Allies (USA, Canada and England) provided under the Lend-Lease program did not play any significant role in the victory of the USSR.

In reality, Allied assistance was decisive.

Firstly, by the end of 1941, almost all factories producing gunpowder and explosives were lost in the USSR. If the Allies had not started supplying both, the Red Army would have already by the end of the winter of 1941/42. There simply wouldn’t be anything to fight with! Explosives alone in 1942-43. 344 thousand tons were received from the allies.

Secondly, Soviet industry and transport were saved from shutdown. The Allies supplied 1,980 steam locomotives and more than 11 thousand freight cars, this is 90% of the total rolling stock used during the war. 477,785 trucks were received. This is 70% of all Red Army vehicles during the entire war. In addition, several tens of thousands of light Willys-type vehicles were received, which were used by Soviet commanders at all levels by the end of the war.

In the first 6 months of 1942 alone, the USSR received almost 3 thousand metal processing machines, which is equal to pre-war Soviet production per year. Deliveries of telephone wire (1 million 78 thousand km) is the volume of wire production in the USSR over three years.

Deliveries of rails exceeded 56% of their production in the USSR; supplies of tin (without which it is impossible to manufacture primers and fuses for cartridges and shells) - 223% of Soviet production; cobalt supplies – 138%; aluminum supplies – 106%; copper supplies – 77%; tires - 73%, etc.

The USSR received 20,130 military aircraft (bombers, fighters, seaplanes, transport vehicles) from the allies. Let me remind you for comparison that the air forces of Germany and its allies, concentrated in June 1941 against the USSR, numbered 4,642 aircraft. 9816 tanks were received (the Germans had 3844 tanks in 1941). In the spring of 1943, many Soviet units were equipped with 65-70% Western-made tanks. Armored personnel carriers (which were not produced in the USSR) received 9,740 units. This number of armored personnel carriers was enough to staff 40 motorized rifle divisions.

But the most important thing is not the quantity, although it is very large. The main thing is that all this equipment and weapons were received at that critical time, when their tanks (28 thousand by the end of 1941), their planes, their industry and their railway fleet were lost, and the factories evacuated to the East had not yet been started working. A spoon is expensive not in itself, but for dinner!

The fleet received 210 warships, 267 combat boats, 106 landing ships (which were not built at all in the USSR), 33 heavy-duty transport ships.

And finally, food. The Allies supplied 4.8 times more cans of canned meat than were produced in the USSR during the war. Figuratively speaking, the entire Red Army ate the famous American pork stew. Sugar was delivered from the USA 66% of the volume of its production in the USSR for the period 1941-1945. It is now estimated that the USSR received so much food from the allies that it was abundantly enough to feed an army of 10 million for 56 months. Meanwhile, the war with Germany and Japan took 50 months.

These are the facts that today are either hushed up or distorted by Russian propagandists and the Belarusian propagandists who echo them.

During the period from 1991 to 2014, dozens of books were published, hundreds of articles were published, exposing large and small myths about the past war. But this truth, collected by honest researchers of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and other post-Soviet countries, is drowning in an ocean of lies spread by the gigantic machine of Russian state propaganda, as well as “official” historical science, fiction, cinema, theater, and painting.

And yet, lies will not save officials who are plundering national property under the guise of jingoistic fabrications. “No matter how much you shout halva, it won’t be sweet in your mouth,” says an Eastern proverb.

Anatol Taras, scientific secretary of the public Institute of Belarusian History and Culture

Myth 1.
The greatest Battle of Good and Evil in History is called the “Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People against the Nazi Invaders” and lasted 4 years, from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945.

Reality.
The Second World War - it is under this name that the rest of the world knows the great battle - lasted from September 1, 1939 with the joint attack of Germany and the USSR on Poland (the USSR joined on September 17) until September 2, 1945 (the surrender of the Japanese Empire). In many countries, local military conflicts within the Second World War have their own names, but nowhere except the Soviet Union did the name PART of the war replace the name of the WHOLE war.

The reason that forced the Soviet leadership to create their own historiography on this matter was the fact that the Soviet Union de facto took part in the Second World War from September 17, 1939 on the side of the Third Reich (for more details, see Myth No. 2) ( September 17, 1939CCThe SR, in prior agreement with Germany, attacked Poland. The red-browns celebrated their joint victory in Brest. – ER)

That is why the calculation of the war from June 22, 1941, the moment when the Soviet Union was forced to start fighting AGAINST the Third Reich, was fundamental for Soviet historiography.

The land war between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich on the territory of Eastern Europe is the largest, but still an episode (i.e., one of a number of episodes) of the global conflict that took place between the Allies (later the Anti-Hitler Coalition) on the one hand and the Axis Powers on the other. another (for more details, see Myth No. 5).

Moreover, there is only 1 (one) country on the planet that participated in the Second World War from its very beginning to the very end, that is, it rattled off the entire war from bell to bell. This country is the British Empire (the author forgot about the USSR, which began drumming from Khalkhin Gol and Spain and continues to drum to this day - ER).

Myth 2.
Soviet Ideology was the principled opponent of Fascism, and the Soviet Union was the principle enemy of Nazi Germany. All fascist accomplices are our enemies, all collaborators are traitors.

Reality.
Soviet ideology became a principled opponent of Fascism mainly since 1938, and only fully since 1941. Propaganda of this time (1933-1939) depicts the German regime and life in Germany in general in much the same way as the social structure and life in the USA, France or the British Empire. That is, this country is ruled by bourgeois forces that are fundamentally opposed to truly popular power - the power of workers and peasants.

Now this fact seems surprising, but at first fascism (if we are talking about German fascism, then the more correct term is “Nazism”, because in the narrow sense the concept of “fascism” applies only to the Italian fascist party) did not seem evil to anyone. The whole history of the global struggle against fascism is a story of gradual epiphanies, and a gradual transition to anti-fascism of countries, peoples and individual groups. Even the British Empire, which can boast of the most principled and consistent anti-fascist position, professed appeasement tactics for a long time.

On September 30, 1938, in Munich, Prime Minister of the British Empire Neville Chamberlain and Prime Minister of France Edouard Daladier signed an agreement with Reich Chancellor of the Third Reich Adolf Hitler and Prime Minister of Italy Benito Mussolini, according to which Germany's right to occupy part of Czechoslovakia was de facto recognized. This fact, called the “Munich Agreement,” is considered a shameful stain on the reputation of Britain and France, who at that moment were trying to come to an agreement with Hitler and not bring the matter to conflict.

As for the Soviet Union, its cooperation with Germany from 1922 to 1939 was extremely large-scale. Before the Nazi Party came to power in the USSR, Germany was viewed as the closest candidate for a socialist revolution, and after that, as a strategic ally in the fight against Western capitalism. The USSR and Germany traded a lot, exchanged technology, and actively cooperated in the military (and) sphere (in 1920-30 in the USSR there were at least three large centers for training German military personnel and developing military technologies, which certainly violated the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty). In many ways, the USSR laid the foundations for the iron machine of the Wehrmacht, which captured most of Europe and fell on the USSR itself on June 22, 1941.

A fragment from Molotov’s report to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR at the end of 1939, which is little known:

Recently, the ruling circles of England and France have been trying to portray themselves as fighters for the democratic rights of peoples against Hitlerism, and the British government has announced that for them the goal of the war against Germany is, no more and no less, the “destruction of Hitlerism.” It turns out that the English, and with them the French, supporters of the war declared something like an “ideological war” against Germany, reminiscent of the old religious wars. Indeed, at one time religious wars against heretics and infidels were in vogue. As is known, they led to the most dire consequences for the masses, to economic ruin and cultural savagery of peoples. These wars could not give anything else. But these wars took place during the Middle Ages. Is it not to these times of the Middle Ages, to the times of religious wars, superstitions and cultural savagery that the ruling classes of England and France are again drawing us? In any case, under the “ideological” flag a war has now been launched on an even larger scale and with even greater dangers for the peoples of Europe and the whole world. But this kind of war has no justification. The ideology of Hitlerism, like any other ideological system, can be recognized or denied; this is a matter of political views. But any person will understand that ideology cannot be destroyed by force, it cannot be ended by war. Therefore, it is not only senseless, but also criminal to wage such a war as the war for the “destruction of Hitlerism,” covered by the false flag of the struggle for “democracy.”

Britain declared war on Germany at 9 a.m. on September 3, 1939. On the same day, September 3, the German submarine U-30 sank the English passenger liner Athenia - thus began the grandiose multi-year Battle of the Atlantic. 5 and 6 September were drowned"Bosnia", "Royal Setre" and "Rio Claro", on October 14, a German submarine sank the battleship Royal Oak right in Scapa Flow, the fleet base - and by December 1939, Britain had lost 114 ships, and in 1940 .another 471 vessels. By the summer of 1941, a third of the merchant fleet's tonnage had already been lost, which created a serious threat to the economy of the country, which was fighting Hitler one-on-one.
And what was the USSR doing at this time, having let the Fuhrer off the leash? He stabbed Poland in the back by attacking her on September 17

At 5 a.m. on September 17, 1939, troops of the Belorussian and Ukrainian fronts crossed the entire length of the Polish-Soviet border and attacked the KOP checkpoints. Thus, the USSR violated at least four international agreements:

• Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 on Soviet-Polish borders
• The Litvinov Protocol, or the Eastern Pact of Renunciation of War
• Soviet-Polish non-aggression pact of January 25, 1932, extended in 1934 until the end of 1945
• London Convention of 1933, which contains a definition of aggression, and which the USSR signed on July 3, 1933

The governments of England and France presented notes of protest in Moscow against the undisguised aggression of the USSR against Poland, rejecting all of Molotov’s justifying arguments. On September 18, the London Times described this event as “a stab in the back of Poland.”

Brothers in Arms

In accordance with the secret protocol to the non-aggression pact between the Third Reich and the USSR (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), after the outbreak of World War II, the USSR de facto entered the war on the side of the Third Reich, invading Poland on September 17, 1939. On September 22, 1939, a joint parade of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army was held in Brest, dedicated to the signing of an agreement on the demarcation line.

Brest was occupied on September 22. Two armies at once. From the eastern side, the vanguard 29th Tank Brigade under the command of Semyon Krivoshein entered the city. According to the secret protocol, Brest became Soviet territory. And the next day German troops had to leave the city. But to demonstrate Soviet-German friendship, the military leaders decided to part beautifully. And since the two armies met as friends, as allies who together carried out a successful military operation, then according to all traditions this should have been celebrated. And they decided to hold a joint parade. Farewell - the Germans were leaving. Not far, on the other side of the Bug.

The celebrations began the day after the arrival of Soviet troops, September 23, at 16.00. Usually parades are hosted by one person. This time there were two hosts. Two commanders in full dress uniform stood up on a wooden podium in the center of Brest: a graduate of the Kazan Tank School, Heinz Guderian, and a graduate of the Frunze Military Academy, Semyon Krivoshein.

It was a sincere celebration. Soldiers of the two armies exchanged cigarettes on the streets of Brest, officers treated each other to beer.

Testimonies from eyewitnesses of the parade:
“We stood in the crowd on the square, approximately opposite the church. A lot of Brest residents had gathered. No one officially announced the parade, but the “heel post” worked flawlessly: already in the morning everyone in the city knew that troops would march across the square. We saw the Germans They hastily built a platform near the voivodeship."

“First the Germans marched. A military band played a march unfamiliar to me. Then German planes appeared in the sky. The Red Army soldiers followed the Germans. They were completely different from them: they walked more quietly and did not stamp their steps with forged boots, since they were shod in canvas boots. They also had canvas belts, not leather, like the Germans. The horses that pulled the Soviet guns were small and unsightly, as long as they had some kind of harness... Behind the Soviet artillery were caterpillar tractors, which pulled guns of larger caliber, and behind them were three tank..."

In the USSR, everyone knew that Brest was a Hero-Fortress, but not everyone knew why all the other settlements that distinguished themselves in the first days of the war were called “Hero-Cities”, and only Brest – “Hero-Fortress”. The answer is quite banal: the residents of Brest did not show themselves in any way during the Third Reich’s attack on the USSR. They did not at all consider themselves citizens of the country that had just been attacked, because two years ago they were citizens of Poland, which the USSR divided with the Third Reich, jointly celebrating this event with a solemn parade. A military garrison based near Brest, in an old fortress, resisted the German attack. Naturally, it consists entirely of Soviet troops who arrived here quite recently. That is why only the fortress is the hero - and not the city (by the way, before this, in 1939, the Brest Fortress was defended from Nazi troops by the Poles and we must give them credit - ER).

Also, few people know about the heroic defense of some cities (for example, Lvov) from the Nazi invaders in September 1939. The defense of Lvov was not distinguished by bloodiness, but was extremely dramatic - the Germans entered the outskirts of the city (as well as later on the outskirts of Moscow) on September 12, and then Polish troops drove them out of there for ten days, until the Red Army came from the other side and offered the garrison surrender the city.

Only on June 22, 1941, with the attack of the Third Reich on the USSR, the Eternal Principled Enmity of Workers and Peasants with the Nazis, which we know so well from Soviet textbooks, begins. As Orwell wrote about this, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

It is no coincidence that Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union was always called not just an attack, but a treacherous attack. Perfidy is a breakdown, an undermining of faith, when they believed so much in a partner, but he...

But how many more “glorious” things could they have accomplished together...
Myth 3.
The Soviet people, in a single impulse, fought against the Nazi Invaders, some in the ranks of the Red Army, some in the ranks of the partisans, and some simply doing little harm. Only traitors and other collaborators did not fight.

Reality.
Let's start with the fact that a significant part of the people who were later part of the “Soviet people”, at the very least, did not identify themselves with it.

I have already written above about the Brest Fortress, but most people do not imagine the scale of the phenomenon. As a result of the Polish campaign of the Red Army in 1939, the Soviet Union occupied a territory of almost 200 thousand square kilometers, which included Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, Eastern Poland and Southwestern Lithuania. In total, 13 million people lived in this territory. In a matter of months, the Soviet authorities organized a “popular will” in this territory and annexed them to the corresponding Soviet republics. In June-July 1940, the Red Army occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina virtually without a fight: a territory of 50 thousand square kilometers, where 3 million 776 thousand people lived (since August 2, 1940 - the Moldavian SSR). In June 1940, the USSR occupied Estonia, Latvia and part of Lithuania, which, after the “elections”, became the corresponding Soviet republics on July 21-22. In total, the territories occupied by the USSR at this time were approximately equal in size and population to, for example, a country like Italy.

At the same time, in the occupied territories, the Soviet government carries out mass repressions, clearing them of unreliable and class-alien elements to the workers and peasants. These elements were arrested without trial, imprisoned, exiled to Siberia, and in extreme situations, shot. The most famous are the deportation operations of residents of the Baltic states (Operation 1940, during which up to 50,000 people were evicted, and Operation Surf in 1949, during which more than 100,000 were evicted), and mass executions of Polish military personnel (in the Katyn Forest, in Starobelsky camp, in Ostashkovsky camp and other places, a total of 22,000 people).

It is easy to imagine that the population of all these territories was not eager to defend the USSR from anyone, even from the bald devil. But even in that part of the Soviet Union that was Soviet until 1939, to put it mildly, not everyone supported Soviet power.

Nationalist sentiments were strong in Belarus and Ukraine, because with the composition of the Soviet Union (just as previously as part of the Russian Empire), both nations were actually asked to forget their culture, completely replacing it with Russian. In addition, in Ukraine the memory of the 1933 famine was still too fresh. 1941 is separated from the Holodomor by some 8 years - this is as much as separates us from the Orange Revolution, and 5 years more than separates us from Yeltsin’s departure, that is, in 1941 the ENTIRE adult population of Ukraine remembered well - not from stories, but from my own experience - the greatest tragedy that has befallen this country in its entire history. Therefore, the words “let there be Germans, but not advice - IT WILL NOT BE WORSE” for Ukrainians not only sounded psychologically convincing, but are also (as we see now) an objective truth.

The beginning of the Great Patriotic War is a surreal event, during which the Red Army mainly... does not even retreat, but rather crumbles into dust. Later, the Germans would remember June-July 1941 with the words “there is no enemy ahead, and no rear behind” (because the convoy could not keep up with the German units rapidly moving deeper into Soviet territory and not encountering resistance). The soldiers do not want to fight, do not understand what they are fighting for, and desert en masse. Cases of rare heroism these days look as surreal as the mass exodus of Red Army soldiers. Konstantin Simonov’s book “100 Days of War,” dedicated to the chaos of the first days of the Great Patriotic War, was never published in the USSR (it was published only in 1982 in a heavily revised form under the title “Different Days of the War”). Only with the advent of barrier detachments and penal battalions was discipline established in the troops, and a “united impulse” was finally achieved, during which the Soviet people... and so on.

Myth 4.
All Germans during the war were fascists, every German soldier was an SS man.

Reality.
This is not the biggest problem associated with the war (I would call it a “minor myth”), but my sense of justice requires me to put in a good word for the Germans. They did not deserve the place in history that they occupy today. From all the great history and grandiose thousand-year culture (which gave us the modern structure of cities and the principles of trade, many crafts and religious reformation, a significant part of classical music and philosophy, and much, much more), we remember today “Hyundai Hoch” and “Hitler - kaput."

Germany after the collapse of the “Second Reich” was the ruins of a huge state with rich cultural and, importantly, military traditions. The Wehrmacht was initially created as an organization devoid of any political coloring; This was the color of the opponents of the Wehrmacht, the “assault troops” (“stormtroopers” or “brownshirts”). After the Night of the Long Knives, stormtroopers (like other German paramilitary organizations) became part of the Wehrmacht, but they did not play leading roles there. Almost the entire Wehrmacht leadership remained out of politics until 1939, and a significant part of the leadership remained non-party until July 20, 1944, when, after the famous assassination attempt on Hitler, organized by high-ranking military opponents of Nazism, Hitler actually forced all the generals to join the party under threat of death.

According to the court verdict, one field marshal, 19 generals, 26 colonels, 2 ambassadors, 7 diplomats of other levels, 1 minister, 3 secretaries of state and the chief of the Reich criminal police were shot for conspiracy on July 20 (a total of 200 people according to the verdict and about 5,000 without trial, more about 7,000 were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps). Among others, Admiral Canaris (hanged in a steel collar) and Rommel (left in his office with a pistol, committed suicide) died.

There were almost no members of the NSDAP among the rank and file of the Wehrmacht until the very end of the war: they were more common among officers and their number did not exceed 5% of the total number of the Wehrmacht. “Party” conscripts and volunteers tried to get into the SS Troops, which, on the one hand, were considered more privileged, on the other, were much more politicized, and carried out almost all the tasks of clearing the civilian population, executing commissars, Jews, etc. But even the SS troops often resisted particularly cannibalistic party orders.

For ordinary Germans, the rise to power of the Nazis was a spontaneous phenomenon: the same as the rise to power in Russia of a small and unpopular Bolshevik party. The desire of the Germans to cleanse themselves of the Nazi past after defeat in the war (denazification, banning nationalist political forces, etc.) certainly deserves respect, and serves as an example for other nations that have gone through similar stages in their history.

Myth 5.
Nazi Germany was defeated by the Soviet Union.

Reality.
Generally speaking, it is incorrect to talk about the victory of COUNTRY over COUNTRY in a global military conflict between large coalitions of states. It is incorrect not only terminologically, but also purely humanly: dividing such an orange as “Victory” between those who made a “larger” contribution and those who, from our point of view, made a “smaller” contribution, is simply ugly: all coalition soldiers are comrades in arms, and everyone’s contribution was invaluable. The soldiers died in the same way, on land, at sea and in the air, and their victory was, as the famous song sang, “one for all.”

As I already wrote in the analysis of Myth No. 1, the only country that fought the entire war from start to finish was the British Empire. Today, most people think of the island of the same name when they hear the word “Britain,” but in 1939 Britain was the largest nation ever to exist, occupying a quarter of the Earth’s landmass, and was home to 480 million people (a quarter of the Earth’s population). The British Empire included Britain itself, as well as Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Canada, India (modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka), Guyana (British Guiana), about a quarter of the African continent (vertical a strip from Egypt to South Africa plus areas of the central Atlantic coast) and a large part of the Middle East (modern Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates). The sun never truly set on the British Empire.

The economic and military power of this state significantly exceeded the forces of the Third Reich - however, the fact that it was “scattered” around the world, and the main hostilities took place in Europe, significantly worsened the capabilities of the British in the fight against Germany, which was completely located in Europe. After the German Blitz Krieg in Poland, and then in the Benelux countries and France, a long trench war begins between the Germans and the British, taking place mainly at sea, and called the “Battle of the Atlantic”. This battle lasted almost the entire 6 years of the war and cost the lives of approximately 100,000 people, turning the Atlantic Ocean into one of the main theaters of combat.

Other significant theaters of action include North Africa, where German forces fought British forces on land, China (and southeast Asia), where the Japanese Empire fought a long list of countries, most of which it captured, then the Pacific, where the Japanese Empire and the United States fought a naval war in 1941-1945, and, of course, the “Eastern Front” - a land theater of military operations in Eastern Europe, where the Third Reich and the USSR fought.

The last theater was the most significant in terms of the volume of military efforts and the number of losses, and the most important for all allies without exception. Therefore, starting from June 22, 1941, the United States included the USSR in a program of transferring weapons, materials and supplies to the warring party “on credit,” under which they had already supplied weapons to Britain. In total, goods worth 11 billion dollars (140 billion in modern prices), about 17 and a half million tons of various goods, were supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease. These were weapons (small arms, tanks, explosives, ammunition), airplanes, locomotives, cars, ships, machinery and equipment, food, non-ferrous and ferrous metals, clothing, materials, chemical reagents, and so on.

In a number of areas, Lend-Lease accounted for a significant share of the total volume of goods used in the USSR during the war: for example, about a third of all explosives used in the USSR in 1941-1945, about 40% of copper and more than 50 % aluminum, cobalt, tin, wool, railway rails, etc. The number of locomotives delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease was 2 and a half times greater than what was produced by Soviet industry during the war years, most of the Katyushas were on Studebaker chassis, and almost all the canned meat that reached the front was American-made. (By the way, the USSR’s debt for Lend-Lease has not yet been repaid, unlike all other participating countries).

As for official Soviet propaganda, it preferred to downplay the importance of American assistance in every possible way, or even to ignore it altogether. In March 1943, the American ambassador in Moscow, without hiding his resentment, allowed himself an undiplomatic statement: “The Russian authorities apparently want to hide the fact that they are receiving outside help. Obviously, they want to assure their people that the Red Army is fighting in this war alone." And during the Yalta Conference of 1945, Stalin was forced to admit that Lend-Lease was Roosevelt’s remarkable and most fruitful contribution to the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition.

P-63 to be sent to the USSR

Bell P-39 Airacobra before shipment from Edmonton to the USSR. Citizens of Western countries wholeheartedly tried to use supplies to the USSR to support Soviet soldiers, at least with some pleasant little thing, a gift from the heart. Soviet propaganda boorishly ridiculed this; it tried to prevent friendship and mutual understanding between people in private - only through the state and only in the way the state decides. Like in prison - only in the presence of a warden.

American and Soviet pilots next to the P-39 Airacobra fighter, supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease.

Preparation of British Spitfire fighters, delivered under Len-Lease, for transfer to the Soviet side.

Assembly shop for Bell P-39 Airacobra aircraft in the USA for the USSR

Mk II "Matilda II";, Mk III "Valentine" and Mk IV "Valentine"

M4 "General Sherman" as part of the Red Army

Studebakers in Iran on the way to the USSR. If it were not for the Western countries, the Red Army would have entered Berlin on horseback (if it had entered). Before Lend-Lease deliveries, the entire Red Army was horse-drawn.

However, the official point of view of the USSR on Lend-Lease was expressed in the following lines: “The Soviet Union was left to its own devices, did not receive help from the West, in particular from the USA, precisely at that time, which was the most desperate for it, when the issue was being resolved, to be or not to be for the Soviet state." Political and civil brutality has always been our distinguishing feature.

It is not surprising that when the American film “The Unknown War” was shown in cinemas across the country in the 80s, many were shocked: ace Pokryshkin told how he flew the American Airacobra fighter throughout the war. About northern caravans with aid supplies. About many other things that turned everything upside down and therefore were not perceived - this cannot happen, “we know the truth from school.” Is it true?

Phrases like “we would have won without it” or “they would have lost if it weren’t for us” are fantastically amateurish. But since the conversation is often and purposefully diverted in this direction, I must express my personal opinion: “From my (humble) point of view, without the six years of heroic efforts of the British in the Battle of the Atlantic, without the four years of colossal injections of American money into Lend-Lease, which saved hundreds thousands of lives of Soviet citizens, without many other small and medium-sized victims and pockets of resistance from other countries and peoples, the Soviet Union had too slim a chance of winning the war against the Third Reich; with a high degree of probability, the Soviet Union would have lost it.”

Since without the assistance of England and the USA the USSR could not have waged a war against Germany, the assertions of Soviet propaganda about the economic victory of socialism in the Great Patriotic War and the ability of the USSR to independently defeat Germany are nothing more than a myth. Unlike Germany, in the USSR, the goal outlined in the early 1930s to create an autarkic economy capable of providing the army in wartime with everything necessary for waging a modern war was never achieved. Hitler and his advisers miscalculated not so much in determining the military-economic power of the USSR, but in assessing the ability of the Soviet economic and political system to function in conditions of severe military defeat, as well as the ability of the Soviet economy to effectively and quickly use Western supplies, and for Great Britain and the United States to implement such supplies in the required quantity and on time.

“Now it’s easy to say that Lend-Lease meant nothing. It ceased to be of great importance much later. But in the fall of 1941 we lost everything, and if it weren’t for Lend-Lease, weapons, food, warm clothes for the army and other supplies, the question is how things would have turned out.”

(Berezhkov V.M. How I became a translator of Stalin. M., 1993. P. 337)

And, by the way, there is no doubt that if the Soviet Union had been defeated, the Allies would still have won the war - the power of the British Empire and the wealth of the United States would still have done their job.

Three photographs showing the reaction of a 16-year-old German soldier when he was captured by the Americans. Germany, 1945.

View from the roof of the Dresden Town Hall after the Allied bombing of the city from February 13 to 15, 1945. About 3,600 aircraft dropped 3,900 tons of conventional and incendiary bombs on the city. The fire destroyed about 25 square kilometers of the city center, killing more than 22,000 people. (Walter Hahn/AFP/Getty Images)

American soldiers on a landing boat cross the Rhine under fire from German troops.

An American soldier from the 12th Armored Division next to a group of German prisoners somewhere in the forest in Germany

Soviet officers and American soldiers during a meeting on the Elbe in April 1945.

Soviet soldiers fight in the suburbs of Königsberg, East Prussia, April 1945.

A Czech woman kisses a Soviet soldier-liberator, Prague, May 5, 1945. This woman doesn't know about 1968 yet.

The New York City subway came to a standstill during rush hour on May 1, 1945, as news of Hitler's death was received. The leader of Nazi Germany shot himself in a bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945. His successor, Karl Doenitz, announced on the radio that Hitler had died a heroic death and the war against the Allies must continue.

British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (right) reads the surrender pact in the presence of German officers (from left to right): Major Friedel, Admiral Wagner, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg in the headquarters tent of the 21st Army Group, Luneburg Heath, 4 May 1945. The pact provided for a cessation of hostilities on the fronts in northern Germany, Denmark and Holland from 8 a.m. on May 5. German forces in Italy surrendered earlier, on April 29, and the remnants of the army in Western Europe on May 7, on the Eastern Front on the 8th. The five-year war in the vastness of Europe was over.

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signs the Act of Unconditional Surrender of Germany, Berlin. May 8, 1945

Soviet soldiers and officers drink with the Americans for Victory

In Dusseldorf, Germany, on May 8, American troops held a Victory Parade. Local residents preferred to watch him from afar. Not so much because of the bitterness of defeat, but because of a complete lack of understanding of how to continue to live in a country destroyed, mutilated by bombing and captured by the allies.

A huge crowd of people in central London on May 8, Victory in Europe Day, listens to the Prime Minister's announcement of Germany's unconditional surrender. About a million people took to the streets of London that day.

Employees of the Toronto (Canada) telegraph office poured out into the street. For them, the time is over when every day they had to send out dozens of telegrams with news of the deaths of husbands, brothers, and fathers.

In Philadelphia, on May 8, 1945, everything stopped. Trams did not run, banks did not work, construction projects froze.

Times Square in New York City is filled with people celebrating victory over Germany on May 7, 1945. In Europe at this moment it is May 8th (it’s already dark), but they celebrate there too, with the exception of the USSR, which chose a separate date for its own war. To justify this fact, many Soviet historians foam at the mouth with far-fetched arguments, but the truth is extremely simple - for many decades we have never bothered to celebrate Victory Day with the whole world. Even former enemies have long become friends, but only we, the last of Soviet propaganda, have still not been able to reconcile... no, not with enemies, but with our former allies, who helped us a lot in difficult times and fought side by side together with us against a common enemy.

Another myth: The act of surrender was signed not during the day, but on the night of May 8-9, because the allies could not agree on the exact text. There are different dates in the Act because in Western Europe it was still May 8, and in Moscow it was already the 9th. And Moscow time had already been introduced in Berlin.
In fact: The postponement of the signing of the Act from afternoon to night was not due to any political motives. The basis is purely technical reasons. English text of surrender only. The Russian translation of the document was transferred to Berlin incompletely. It took several hours to get the full version. The instrument of ratification was signed at approximately 00.15 Central European Time. By that time, the basic terms of surrender had been in effect for more than an hour. Moscow time was introduced in Berlin by order of the city commandant, General Berzarin, only on May 20 and was in effect for only a few weeks.
Thus, at the time of signing the final act (or rather its peculiar ratification), it was 23.15 in Western European time, 00.15 in Central European time, and 02.15 in Moscow time. The fact that for the USSR the date of surrender is considered May 9 is not related to the time of its signing, but to the time of its announcement to the Soviet people. This was another manifestation of Stalin’s will: in the USSR there appeared its a date that was not yet a holiday. For the first time, Victory Day was widely celebrated in the USSR only two decades later under Brezhnev. In the same anniversary year of 1965, Victory Day became a non-working day.

Two years after the end of World War II, there were two Victory Day holidays in the USSR. Over fascist Germany on May 9 and over militaristic Japan on September 3. It is difficult to say why the second Victory Day was celebrated on the 3rd. The Japanese Surrender Act was signed on September 2, 1945 at 9:02 am Tokyo time on board the American battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. On behalf of the USSR, the document on the end of WWII was signed by Lieutenant General Kuzma Derevianko. At this time, the 2nd, but not the 3rd, of September had already arrived throughout the entire territory of the Soviet Union.

The leapfrog with dates reflected the emerging contradictions between the USSR and the other victorious powers.

We, like rednecks, have set ourselves apart and are celebrating some kind of our own separate war, perverted by propaganda myths, outright lies and patriotic pathos. In it, we are GREAT heroes who won a GREAT victory in a GREAT war, but never received it. Every year we are smeared with this victory on our lips from the rostrum of the mausoleum by those who appropriated it for themselves and we smack our lips enthusiastically - we are heroes.

May 9, 1945, Moscow, Red Square

Military correspondent Alexander Ustinov wrote: “On the night of May 9, 1945, Muscovites did not sleep. At 2:10 a.m., announcer Yuri Levitan read the Act of Military Surrender of Nazi Germany.”

The words of B.N., who spoke on Poklonnaya Hill in the year of the 50th anniversary of the Victory. Yeltsin:

“in the history of the war there are still unwritten and torn out pages.” Many of them are unfinished to this day.

For those who are interested in this and similar topics, we recommend watching the film by Vladimir Sinelnikov "The last myth " . This is an 18-episode film, long, but worth watching.

And here's another video, shorter:

Quote:
70 years have passed since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Even by historical standards, this is a considerable period. There are fewer and fewer living witnesses of those heroic years among us. This means you can fantasize and rewrite history as much as you like. Apparently, this is the opinion of some activists and memoirists, who in their judgments reach the point of outright absurdity, distorting facts and real events. NG tried to debunk the most common and ridiculous myths about that war.

Myth one

Intelligence reported exactly the timing of the start of the war, but Stalin did not believe its reports.
In fact. Our station in Berlin actually found out that the German command was preparing for an attack on the USSR, but our Stirlitz could not find out the name of this plan (“Barbarossa”), its details, or, most importantly, the timing of the proposed attack. The information was very contradictory: March 41st, mid-May, end of May, July... June 22nd was mentioned several times, but why did Stalin need to believe this particular date if the previous ones turned out to be false? According to the deputy director of the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Marat Zhilinsky, even the famous Richard Sorge did not name the exact date. He reported from Tokyo: the war is expected to begin in May - late June.
Stalin asserted more than once in his circle: war is inevitable, but we must delay it by any means in order to rearm the army.

Myth two

Stalin was preparing a pre-emptive strike against Hitler.
In fact. There is not a single document on this subject, including operational plans, presented to Stalin (and accordingly signed by G.K. Zhukov or S.K. Timoshenko) and approved by him. Also, there is not a single document from border military districts containing such plans, says Ivan Basik, candidate of historical sciences, deputy head of the Russian Institute of Military History. According to him, supporters of the theory of preventive war, analyzing the Soviet plans and regulations in force at that time, do not want to notice that they talk about decisive offensive actions of the Red Army after the words “if” or “in the event of a war breaking out.”

Myth three

From the moment of the attack of Nazi Germany, the Red Army did not offer any resistance and “fled” to Moscow, panic and confusion reigned among the troops, soldiers
and the commanders were unable to repel the invaders.
In fact. The implementation of the plans of the Nazi command was hindered primarily by the resilience and mass heroism of Soviet soldiers, says Boris Dolgotovich, associate professor of the history department of BNTU.
“Yes, all sorts of things happened, our troops ended up in pockets, there were alarmists, cowards and traitors, but it was not these phenomena and facts that determined the nature of the war,” the historian notes. “Already in the first hours, days, weeks of fighting, the Red Army made it clear to the enemy: on our soil he will not have an easy walk with a harmonica.” Did the Wehrmacht generals think that the Brest Fortress, which took an hour or two to capture, would hold out for a month? On the first day of the war, the enemy disabled 738 Soviet aircraft at airfields and seized air supremacy, but our pilots were not at a loss. On June 22, they flew 1,900 sorties and shot down more than a hundred German aircraft. Even the top of the Wehrmacht recognized the unprecedented resistance of the Red Army. After three days of fighting, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Field Marshal General Walter von Brauchitsch, wrote that this was “the first serious enemy,” and the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, Franz Halder, noted that the enemy “is fighting fiercely and fanatically. The tank formations suffered significant losses in personnel and equipment.”
By mid-July 1941, the aggressor had lost about 100 thousand soldiers and officers, almost half of the armored vehicles and 1284 aircraft. The fascist army did not know such losses during all the fighting in the West. And if there had been the “flight” that false historians talk about, then there would have been no major victories at Smolensk, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk. There would have been no Great Victory, summarizes Boris Dolgotovich.

Myth four

The USSR won not by skill, but by the number and great bloodshed of its soldiers.
In fact. According to the most recent data, 26.6 million Soviet citizens died during the war. Germans - 7.3 million. Both of these figures included both civilians and soldiers. If we count only soldiers, then Germany lost about 5.2 million, the USSR - 8,668,400 people, of which 2.5 million died in captivity. It turns out that our combat losses are approximately equal. The remaining 18 million Soviet citizens died as a result of Hitler's genocide.
The Nazis were engaged in the targeted extermination of the population of the USSR, shooting and burning entire cities, deporting them to concentration camps and forced labor, and only every second person managed to return from German captivity alive.

Myth fifth

The war was won by the USA and Great Britain, and the USSR fought only with American aid - Lend-Lease.
In fact. “The contribution of Lend-Lease to the USSR economy during the war was only four percent; of the 50 billion dollars at which all US supplies are estimated, the USSR received less than ten percent. But Great Britain received 31 billion,” says MGIMO professor Vladimir Medinsky.
We must not forget: Lend-Lease was not free. We paid for everything with caviar, fur and gold. And the United States grew fat in this war. In 1940, there were 8 million unemployed in America. In 1942 - not a single one.

Myth six

If we had lost that war, we would now live like in Germany.
In fact. “Only those people who either don’t know history at all or simply hate their country can say this,” Vladimir Medinsky is convinced. — The common saying “If we surrendered to the Germans, we would drink beer” is criminal. Hitler clearly did not intend to give us German beer, because the Slavs in Hitler’s hierarchy stood exactly half a step lower than the Jews. This meant that the Jew went to the gas chamber first, and the Slav immediately after him.” But this is the instruction that Nazi ideologist Goebbels wrote for Wehrmacht soldiers: “For your personal glory, you must kill 100 Russians... kill every Russian; don’t stop - the old man in front of you, a woman, a girl or a boy. Kill!..” The memo to an ordinary soldier, not a punitive officer or an SS man, called for killing not commissars and Jews, but women and children.” And this is the whole essence of Nazism.

In the summer of 1943, the fate of World War II was decided near Kursk.

By July, the Soviet and German commands had delivered hundreds of trains of ammunition and fuel to a relatively small section of the front. On each side, about 2,000,000 people, thousands of tanks, aircraft, and tens of thousands of guns prepared for battle. The front-line land was covered with hundreds of hectares of minefields. On the morning of July 5, 1943, a powerful artillery barrage heralded the beginning of a battle unprecedented in bloodshed.

During two weeks of fighting, the opponents rained down millions of shells, bombs and mines on each other. The earth mixed with iron.

Otto Skorzeny. Double agent

Otto Skorzeny is one of the most famous and most mysterious figures in the history of World War II. An officer for special assignments of Adolf Hitler, the main saboteur of the Third Reich, the man who kidnapped Mussolini, the head of the SS special forces, who developed and led the largest military sabotage operations in Southern Iran, France, Italy, Yugoslavia and, of course, in the USSR. He was called the number one German terrorist.

No one could have imagined that this man with scars on his face - traces of student duels with rapiers - worked for the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. These sensational facts were presented by his recruiter Rafi Eitan, former Israeli Mossad officer: “I was not surprised when, within the first half hour of conversation, he agreed to cooperate with us.”

Otto Skorzeny. Russian trace

During his lifetime, Otto Skorzeny became a legend. He was called the king of sabotage. He is known as the organizer of large sabotage operations and the leader of the special forces of Nazi Germany. Of course, Skorzeny did not act alone. But the names of these people remain a mystery to this day. Even in his memoirs, written much later, Skorzeny mentions only a few of his close friends, naturally, Germans.

Only today it became known that there were entire companies of Russian saboteurs in the German special forces. For many years, all these facts were kept classified as “secret”. Recently opened archives shed light on the most unsightly secrets of the Great Patriotic War: among Skorzeny's selected saboteurs, former Soviet citizens fought bravely and skillfully.

Martin Borman. The face of the enemy

He was seen in Italy and Spain, Paraguay and Australia. They searched for him in Indonesia and Egypt, in Africa and Antarctica. He was seen under different names, and different prosecutors issued warrants for his arrest.

His graves are in Italy, Argentina and even at the Lefortovo cemetery in Moscow. The date of birth – 1900 – is the same. The name - Martin Bormann - matches.

The evidence of his suicide on May 2, 1945 in Berlin seems indisputable, but his long post-war life is no less indisputable. Bormann was called the Fuhrer's shadow. During his life, he was known as a tough pragmatist, and after his disappearance he turned into an elusive, mysterious mystical creature, a ghost, a mirage, a legend.

Heinrich Himmler: The fate of a provocateur. The face of the enemy

1939 North-West Germany, Westphalia. Thirteen people gathered in the Baronial Hall at Wewelsburg Castle. They are dressed the same. Everyone has a ritual dagger. Everyone wears a silver signet ring. They solemnly take their places at a huge oak table, reminiscent of the round table of the legendary King Arthur.

The Thirteen take their seats and begin to meditate under the guidance of the Grand Master. The master of the order, who performed the mysterious rites at Wewelsburg Castle, was none other than SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, one of the darkest and most mysterious characters in Nazi Germany.

The Dr. Goebbels Show. The face of the enemy

Moscow, NKVD of the USSR, Comrade Beria. Memorandum: “On May 2, 1945, in Berlin, a few meters from the emergency door of a bomb shelter on the territory of the Reich Chancellery, the burnt corpses of a man and a woman were discovered, with a short man, a half-bent right foot with a burnt orthopedic boot, the remains of a NSDAP party uniform and a party badge. A gold cigarette case, a gold party badge and a gold brooch were found on the burnt corpse of a woman. At the head of both corpses lay two Walther pistols. On May 3, in a separate room of the bunker of the Imperial Chancellery, six children’s corpses were found on sleeping beds - five girls and one boy - with signs of poisoning.”

This article contains an analysis of the main false myths about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, as well as some events related to the war that occurred before its start or after its end. The article examines myths and theories purposefully invented by Russophobes or resulting from illiterate reasoning of people who do not know or are trying to denigrate the history of Russia and the USSR. The article does not consider folk myths about the war, which do not denigrate, but only somewhat distort or exaggerate events. Also, the article does not discuss conspiracy theories, hypotheses about secret behind-the-scenes games and other conjectures and alternative interpretations of events, documents about which are classified as “secret”.

Content

Myth: The USSR attacked weak Poland, thereby supporting the Third Reich

The USSR actually carried out a military campaign against Poland in September 1939, dividing its territory with Germany. But this event is interpreted completely incorrectly by many.

German plans to attack Poland and possible reactions of the USSR

After the war, at the Nuremberg Trials, it was established that on April 11, 1939, that is, long before the signing of the non-aggression pact with the USSR, Hitler approved the “White Plan” for the attack on Poland, and on April 3 he set its date - “no later than September 1, 1939.” G." Thus, the initiative to start the war and capture Poland did not belong to the USSR and the plan of attack was supposed to be carried out regardless of the position of the USSR.

The USSR had a choice between complete non-intervention, attempts to support Poland, or taking part in its next partition. Non-intervention, obviously, was the most unfavorable option - giving all of Poland to Germany would mean bringing it too close to Soviet industrial centers and excessively strengthening the 3rd Reich, which was hostile to the Communists and Russians, which could then attack the USSR in a coalition with other European countries. And the USSR could not just hand over the inhabitants of Western Ukraine and Belarus to the Nazis.

Poland's unwillingness to cooperate with the USSR

To the question, what prevented the Soviet Union from supporting Poland in the war with Germany, the answer is simple: Poland simply did not want the support of the USSR. Moreover, less than a year before the Polish campaign, Poland itself was not averse to being on the side of Germany in a future war with the USSR.

From a letter from the Polish Ambassador to Germany J. Lipski to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland J. Beck dated October 1, 1938:

“In the event of a Polish-Soviet conflict, the German government will take a more than friendly position towards Poland. However, he made it clear that the German government would provide assistance<.…>It is absolutely incredible that the Reich could not help Poland in its fight against the Soviets."

From a conversation between R. Shelia, Counselor of the German Embassy in Poland, and M. Kobylanski, Vice-Director of the Political Department of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

“If Carpathian Rus' goes to Hungary, then Poland will subsequently agree to act on the side of Germany in the campaign against Soviet Ukraine.”

From a conversation between the adviser of the German embassy in Poland, R. Shelia, and the Polish envoy to Iran, J. Karsho-Sedlevsky, on December 28, 1938:

“It is better for Poland before the conflict to definitely take the side of Germany, since Poland’s territorial interests in the west and Poland’s political goals in the east, especially in Ukraine, can only be ensured through a previously reached Polish-German agreement. He, Karsho-Sedlewski, will subordinate his activities as the Polish envoy in Tehran to the implementation of this great Eastern concept, since it is necessary, in the end, to convince and encourage also the Persians and Afghans to play an active role in the future war against the Soviets.

From a conversation between German Foreign Minister J. Ribbentrop and Polish Foreign Minister J. Beck on January 26, 1939:

“Mr. Beck did not hide the fact that Poland lays claim to Soviet Ukraine and access to the Black Sea.”

In 1938, Poland did not allow Soviet troops to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia when it was annexed by Hitler. Moreover, for this, after the capture of Czechoslovakia, Hitler allowed Poland to annex part of the territory of Czechoslovakia (Cieszyn region). Poland refused to accept help from the USSR even in August 1939, when a military clash between the 3rd Reich and Poland became almost inevitable. Thus, on August 19, Marshal of the Polish Army Edward Rydz-Smigly proudly declared:

"Regardless of the consequences, not a single inch of Polish territory will ever be allowed to be occupied by Russian troops."

Note that at that time the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had not yet been signed and Germany and the USSR had only trade agreements, but the option of assistance from the USSR by Poland was not considered.

Betrayal of Poland by allies - England and France

Whose help did Poland count on then? To the aid of their Western allies - England and France. After all, the combined forces of a possible Poland-France-England alliance were enough to defeat Hitler’s army before it had time to get stronger. On the Western German Front, the number of French troops was several times greater than the number of German troops, who did not have a single tank. And it’s not surprising: Hitler threw all his strength into the war with Poland. Did the Allies take advantage? Unfortunately no. The so-called strange war began on the western front, which seemed to be going on, but no major military operations were undertaken. In fact, the Polish allies surrendered Poland to Hitler, just as they had previously surrendered Czechoslovakia and Austria to the much weaker Reich at that time.

Germany did not need military assistance from the USSR to defeat Poland

And what could the Soviet Union do in such a situation? Send your troops into eastern Poland (that is, into Western Ukraine and Western Belarus). The Soviet troops did not provide any military assistance to the 3rd Reich. After all, this only happened on September 17, when the Polish army was defeated, Warsaw fell, and the Polish government, “tail between its legs,” fled abroad. The USSR, of course, could stand on the sidelines and watch, but in this case, Germany was preparing to occupy all of Poland. But the Soviet initiative not only made it possible to protect ethnic Belarusians and Ukrainians, but also pushed the future front line about 600 kilometers to the west, which allowed them to gain time in the coming war.

Reluctance of Great Britain and France to cooperate with the USSR in 1939

At the same time, almost until the very last moment before the signing of the pact with Germany, the USSR negotiated with England and France, but they showed no interest in creating a coalition with the USSR against Germany. Perhaps England and France hoped that after the defeat of Poland, the German Nazis would direct their further efforts to the East and would face their worst enemies - the communists, and after the collision of Germany with the USSR and the heavy struggle that weakened both opponents, the British and French could to seriously intervene in the war and decide its outcome to one’s own benefit by taking one side or another. But this plan of theirs was only partially successful and belatedly: after concluding a pact with the USSR and the division of Poland, Hitler directed aggression to the West, and not to the East, and in a short time inflicted an unexpected crushing defeat on France, occupying it and entering into a full-fledged war with England in sky and sea. And only after more than a year and a half, Hitler finally went to the East, to the USSR. Thus, the conclusion of the pact not only confused the Anglo-French plans and gained time for the USSR, but also largely predetermined the alliance of the West with the USSR against Hitler.

Myth: The USSR started World War II

Rezunism

The theory that the USSR unleashed World War II is actually quite old, it was developed by Joseph Goebbels in order to justify the invasion of Russia. But the topic received a new round of popularity after the publication of the scandalous book “Icebreaker” by the writer and former intelligence officer Vladimir Rezun, who now lives in Britain and writes his books under the mocking pseudonym “Viktor Suvorov.” In the book “Icebreaker”, as well as in the subsequent books “Day M”, “The Last Republic”, “Suicide”, “Purification” and so on, Suvorov-Rezun consistently develops the thesis that the USSR was the initiator of World War II war.

Suvorov-Rezun's books are replete with factual errors, distortions and simply outright lies. Despite this, he has quite a lot of supporters, including in Russia. As a “debriefing” by Rezun-Suvorov, we recommend reading:

“How Viktor Suvorov composed a story” by Vladimir Rodent is an excellent banter book, written easily and with a fair amount of healthy humor.

“Antisuvorov” by Alexey Isaev is a much more “academic”, but no less interesting book.

Equating “Stalinism and Nazism”

Germany attacked Poland, the allied forces in France, occupied half of Europe, and only the Soviet Union, according to our liberals, itself attacked Germany. (In the photo, German soldiers are breaking the barrier on the border with Poland, 1939)

This myth spread in the West and became the official historical version in many countries with legalized Russophobia, such as Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. Currently, the European Union is increasingly trying to equate Hitler and Stalin, between fascism and communism. In particular, it is for this purpose that the history of the Second World War is being rewritten, lies, distortion and suppression of facts are used - all in order to “equalize” the responsibility of the USSR and Germany for starting the war, or even to declare the USSR the main culprit.

Recently, members of the European Parliament adopted a declaration to celebrate the day of “memory of the victims of Stalinism and Nazism” on August 23, when the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” was concluded. In 2011, the official website of the US Embassy in Estonia posted a statement: “On this day... Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union took steps that brought Europe and the entire world to the brink of imminent war.” In Poland, the ministers of justice of the European Union countries adopted the “Warsaw Declaration”, in which they declared the direct responsibility of the USSR for the outbreak of World War II.

Silence of the Munich Agreement

Western historians all forget that before the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” there was the “Munich Agreement” of Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France. On September 29, 1938, Great Britain was represented by N. Chamberlain, France by E. Daladier, Nazi Germany by A. Hitler, and fascist Italy by B. Mussolini. The so-called civilized countries sanctioned Hitler's attack on Czechoslovakia. Now Western propaganda is diligently trying to erase the truth from history books and shift its blame onto the USSR. Few people remember Churchill’s words:

“England was offered a choice between war and dishonor. She chose dishonor and will get war.”

In those same years, US Ambassador to Spain K. Bowers stated:

“...the “Munich Peace” overnight reduced France to the position of a pathetic second-class power, depriving it of friends and universal respect, and dealt England such a crushing blow as it had not received in the last 200 years. A century and a half ago, for such a world, Chamberlain would have been imprisoned in the Tower, and Daladier would have been executed by guillotine.”

As a result of the betrayal of Western countries, Hitler received the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia with a highly developed industry. The Czechoslovak Skoda factories produced a huge amount of military equipment for the Nazi army, which dramatically increased Germany's military power before the attack on Poland.

Perhaps the loudest victim of communism and Nazism, Poland itself, along with Hitler, took part in the division of Czechoslovakia. Simultaneously with the Nazi army, Polish troops entered the territory of Czechoslovakia and captured the Cieszyn region.

Silence of negotiations on a possible pact between the USSR, Great Britain and France

Before the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” there were still Moscow negotiations. The USSR, Great Britain and France tried to agree on repelling German aggression. Negotiations moved slowly, the British and French delayed them in every possible way. The British delegation was able to leave only after 10 days and by the longest route: by sea to Leningrad and then by train to Moscow. Then it turned out that the head of the English delegation, Admiral Drax, did not have any written authority at all. The negotiations reached a “dead point” on the issue of Poland. The Poles firmly refused to provide two corridors through their territory for the advance of the Soviet army towards Germany.

American journalist William Shirer states:

“...England and France have advanced in this matter (note: in the matter of negotiations) far, but not far enough. It is also clear from these documents that the Poles showed incomprehensible stupidity.”

The stubbornness of the Poles led them to disaster. The head of the French military mission, General Doumenc, reported from Moscow to Paris:

“There is no doubt that the USSR wants to conclude a military pact and does not want us to turn this pact into an empty piece of paper that has no specific meaning. The failure of the negotiations is inevitable if Poland does not change its position."

There was a high degree of mistrust between the parties. The USSR and Great Britain simultaneously conducted secret negotiations with Germany. The circumstances were such that the USSR was able to come to an agreement with Germany in order to postpone the start of the inevitable war. And this happened after the Munich Agreement and the attack on Czechoslovakia.

Submyth: Hitler attacked Stalin first because Stalin was going to attack Hitler first

The myth that Stalin planned to attack Hitler is one of the oldest and most unsubstantiated myths, but in our time it has not lost popularity among the liberal public who hates the USSR. Of course, the Soviet government did not plan to attack Germany, and all large-scale army reforms were related not to preparing for an attack, but to protecting against a possible attack. The version of a preventive war on the part of Germany was completely exposed at the Nuremberg trials.

The myth was originally born in the summer of 1941, when German propagandists and Hitler himself announced that the Soviet Union was going to attack Germany from the rear - this is how the Nazis explained to the German people the need to attack the USSR. However, at closed military councils shortly before the war, the German command had a different opinion. In particular, the Chief of the General Staff of the German Ground Forces, Colonel General F. Halder, after analyzing intelligence information, said:

“Russia will do everything to avoid war.”

“The Russians still don’t seem to suspect anything. They deploy their troops in such a way that their position meets our goals; we cannot wish for anything better..."

The Soviet Union was not ready for an offensive war with Germany in 1941. Military campaign of the USSR against Finland in 1939-1940. clearly demonstrated the fact that the USSR army was not in the best condition. By 1941, the country's economy had not been put under martial law, and the production of the latest models of military equipment was just beginning. The Soviet command was well aware of all this and did everything so as not to provoke the Germans into an attack. As G.K. Zhukov wrote:

“All of Stalin’s thoughts and actions at this time were permeated with one desire - to avoid war or delay the start of it, and with the confidence that he would succeed.”

Also in favor of the myth are arguments about Soviet wheeled tanks, which could remove tracks and move on wheels and were specially prepared for the good roads of Europe. Indeed, the Soviet army had wheeled-tracked BT tanks, but they were light tanks and could not be considered a powerful strike force. And the ability to move on wheels was necessary, since the tracks at that time had too little resource. Replacing the chassis on all tanks took a lot of time, which could significantly affect the country's defense in the event of a surprise attack or reveal the army's plans when preparing its offensive. In addition, many countries around the world had tanks of a similar hybrid design, since the concept of high-speed tanks was created by the American designer J. W. Christie.

Myth: Stalin knew there would be a German attack, but did nothing

In fact, there were more than 80 authoritative reports on the date of the start of the war by Germany, messages about this came constantly and more and more new dates were named. Since the beginning of 1941, such intelligence information arrived regularly, but the attack did not occur and Germany, by outward signs, was not actively preparing for it. As a result of this, the Soviet military leadership concluded that most likely an invasion of the USSR would not occur until Germany defeated Great Britain. The option that Hitler would decide to wage a war on two fronts was considered suicidal for Germany and therefore unlikely (subsequently, a war on two fronts actually led the Third Reich to complete disaster).

Stalin's mistake was that he considered the latest reports about the attack on the USSR, which turned out to be correct, to be disinformation that was spread by Great Britain in order to provoke the USSR and ward off a German attack. But no one doubted that sooner or later there would be war.

Of course, in anticipation of a future war, the armed forces of the USSR needed rapid modernization and an increase in the number of personnel, and the Soviet leadership was actively engaged in building up military power. According to the measures taken, staffing on a personnel basis made it possible to increase the number of personnel to 2 million people. The equipment of troops with anti-aircraft systems, guns and mortars has increased significantly. In 1938-40, the armored forces began to actively renew themselves, which received the latest T-34 and KV tanks, which became famous in subsequent battles.

The situation was complicated by the fact that the movement of German troops to the Soviet border until the last moment was not critical and threatening. The redeployment of German troops in the eyes of the Soviet command could be explained by the Germans' plans to cover themselves from the east during the landing on the British Isles. As a result, the time for the full deployment of Soviet troops was lost.

Numerous sources and disinformation made it difficult to draw clear conclusions about the start of the war. When, at the last moment, the threat of attack became obvious, measures were taken immediately. In the corrected full version of the memoirs of Marshal G.K. Zhukov, published in 2002, the following phrase appeared:

Now there are different versions about whether we knew or not the specific start date and plan of the war. The General Staff learned about the day of the attack by German troops from the defector only on June 21, which we immediately reported to I.V. Stalin. He immediately agreed to put the troops on combat readiness. Apparently, he had previously received such important information through other channels...

Accordingly, Stalin made some changes and approved a military directive, which was immediately drawn up and submitted to Tymoshenko and Zhukov:

Point 3. 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 air defense to combat readiness without additional increase in assigned personnel. Prepare all measures to darken cities and objects;

e) do not carry out any other activities without special orders.

But by the time of the German attack, the directive was not communicated to all units. The famous writer-historian Vladimir Karpov in his book “Marshal Zhukov” describes these events as follows:

The troops did not have time to fulfill the first directive of June 21, which ordered them to occupy the firing points of fortified areas on the state border. The directive reached the troops very late; It turned out, as Zhukov writes in his memoirs, “that before dawn on June 22, wire communications with the troops were disrupted in all western border districts and the headquarters of the districts and armies were not able to quickly transmit their orders. The sabotage groups previously abandoned by the Germans on our territory destroyed the wire communications. They killed communications delegates and attacked commanders. A significant part of the troops in the border districts were not provided with radio equipment.”

The myth of the USSR's superiority in human resources

There is often a statement that the USSR was almost several times superior to Germany in human resources. The reality was somewhat different. The human resources of the USSR as of June 22, 1941 were about 195 million people. However, as the war showed, the readiness and ability of different peoples to fight was very heterogeneous. The quality of human resources was also heterogeneous, but on average it was significantly lower than the European average. If in Germany universal secondary education worked since the 1870s, then in the USSR only in 1942 officers went to the front, having behind them, in addition to vocational education, also universal secondary education. On average, a Red Army conscript on the eve of the war had 4 years of education.

The enemy’s human resources included far more than just the population of Germany itself:

- 3rd Reich (with Austria, the Sudetenland, the Pomeranian and Poznan regions of Poland, Alsace and Lorraine, the protectorate of the Czech Republic and Moravia) - 111 million people.

— Hungary — about 8 million.

— Romania — 13 million.

— Finland — 3.7 million.

— Slovakia — 2.3 million.

Total - 137 million people.

And that was not all, since human resources are used not only for mobilization into the army, but also for the production of weapons for the army, for the production of agricultural products for the army and for those who work for the army. A case in point: after the mobilization of Petrograd workers to the front of the First World War in 1914, a few months later they had to be urgently demobilized and returned to the machines, since there was simply no one to replace them. Therefore, people capable of producing cars for the army, food for soldiers, or working for the economy of a working country are also a demographic resource.

The population of the conquered countries of Europe worked quite successfully for the 3rd Reich (indicated approximately to the nearest million, rounded down):

— France — 40 million.

— Belgium — 8 million.

— Netherlands — 10 million.

— Norway — 3 million.

— Denmark 3 million (?) (although in its position it was more of a satellite country)

Total: + 64 million

The population of these countries quite successfully produced military products, supplied mineral resources and agricultural products to the Reich, and later - volunteers to the SS units. For example, tiny Denmark in 1942 covered the needs of the German civilian population for butter by 10 percent, meat by 20 percent, and fresh fish by 90 percent. France, among other things, supplied Hitler with over 20% of the trucks produced for military needs. Of the 218 minesweepers built for the Kriegsmarine in 1936-1945, 60 were launched from the shipyards of the occupied Netherlands, and 18 were manufactured with the participation of French shipbuilders in Toulon. And all this is just the tip of the iceberg of what the “conquered” peoples of Europe did for the victory of the Reich.

War time

Myth: The Red Army was superior in capabilities to the Wehrmacht already at the beginning of the war

The USSR Army was indeed superior to the Third Reich in certain respects, but in general the idea of ​​the total superiority of the Red Army over the Wehrmacht in terms of the number of personnel and the number of tanks is a myth.

In fact, the numerical superiority of the Red Army over the Wehrmacht arises only when comparing that part of it that participated in the attack on the USSR, and the entire Red Army as a whole. On June 22, 1941, there were a total of 5.5 million people in the Red Army (including 0.5 million conscripts) against the Wehrmacht with a total number of 7.23 million people, excluding the armies of satellite countries (ratio 10/13).

Directly on the Soviet-German front, the strength of the Red Army was 2.74 million people, another 619 thousand were in reserve, while the number of Wehrmacht and allied troops participating in the attack on the USSR, according to various sources, ranged from 3.8 to 4.9 million Human.

With the overall superiority of the Red Army in tanks, 90% of Soviet tanks had armor from 6 to 22 mm, that is, they could be hit by anti-tank guns from a distance of up to 1 kilometer, and in terms of tanks and self-propelled guns with anti-shell armor, the Wehrmacht outnumbered the Red Army by about 2.5 times.

As of June 22, 1941, the Red Army was several times or absolutely inferior to the Wehrmacht in such “technical” indicators as rocket artillery, armored personnel carriers, transport, motorcycles, as well as in the quality of human resources - in the form of a difference in education (the Germans had universal secondary education since 1880 's years).

Some historians put forward the version that the Red Army lost the beginning of the war only because it allegedly did not want and did not know how to fight. That Stalin allegedly only destroyed the army, shot the military and fanatically believed in Hitler. In reality, the first defeats of the Red Army were due to several serious reasons, which together led to a deep retreat in 1941.

Firstly, the Wehrmacht had the advantage of surprise. The Soviet command did not know the exact time of the attack until the last moment. As a result, the order to put the troops on combat readiness came only a few hours before the start of the German offensive. This led to an organizational unwillingness to repel the largest military invasion in world history.

Secondly, the Wehrmacht had a superior number of troops in the eastern direction (that is, in the direction of the main attack): 190 German divisions against 170 Soviet. At the same time, the number of personnel of the German army divisions exceeded the Soviet ones by 1.5 - 2 times, and the concentrated attack in several directions led to the fact that the Germans' superiority in manpower and equipment reached from 3 to 5 times.

Thirdly, despite the presence of a huge number of tanks and aircraft, the Soviet army experienced a shortage of ammunition and fuel. This situation was observed during the Soviet tank counterattack in the Dubno-Lutsk-Rovno area, carried out in order to stop the German advance. Having approximately equal strength in this clash, the Soviet troops were defeated and forced to retreat mainly due to lack of fuel and ammunition. The fact is that the first main blow of German artillery and aviation was aimed precisely at fuel and lubricants and weapons warehouses in the border areas, as a result of which they were almost completely destroyed in the first days of the war. And it was extremely difficult to quickly organize the supply of ammunition and fuel for the huge border group of the Soviet army.

Fourthly, neither the Red Army nor any other army in the world at that time had experience in successfully fighting the German tactics of a massive offensive using tank wedges and motorized groups quickly moving far forward, which was also complemented by powerful and well-coordinated air support. In 1940, these offensive tactics and the superiority of German tanks allowed Hitler to carry out a blitzkrieg in France, which was conquered in just a month. By 1941, the recipe for countering these tactics had not yet been invented and tested. The situation was significantly complicated by the fact that Hitler's invasion on June 22, 1941 was unprecedented in scale. Neither the successful steppe battles with the Japanese at Khalkhin Gol, nor the battles with the Finns in the swamps and forests of the Karelian Isthmus (the conditions, the opponents, and the scale of the battles there were completely different) could provide the necessary experience for the Red Army. In addition, the Red Army only recently increased its numbers several times; there were not enough experienced officers there, and a significant part of the officers and soldiers continued to rely on the experience of the First World War and the Civil Wars, which took place even before the full start of the motor era.

Submyth: The Red Army was many times superior to the Wehrmacht in tank power

The essence of the myth is as follows: against 4.5 thousand German tanks, the USSR had as many as 26 thousand tanks on June 22, 1941.

How is this ratio obtained?

4,500 German tanks are tanks ONLY on the border with the USSR, and serviceable ones at that.

26,000 Soviet tanks are ALL tanks of the USSR, in varying degrees of readiness and preservation (from “just from the factory” to “time for scrap”).

In fact, as of June 22, 1941, the quantitative ratio of armored vehicles was as follows:

Wehrmacht (total, excluding tanks of the armies of satellite countries): 6290 tanks and self-propelled guns + 2054 French captured tanks = 8,344.

Red Army (total) - 25,932.

At the same time, the Wehrmacht surpassed the Red Army in the number of tanks with shell-proof armor:

Wehrmacht - 1415 medium and 90 heavy tanks.

Red Army - 1114 medium and 508 heavy tanks.

That is, in terms of the ratio of tanks capable of holding a shot from an anti-tank gun, we have a ratio of 3/5 in favor of the Wehrmacht.

It is noteworthy that on June 22, 1941, on the border with the USSR, the Wehrmacht had 1667 medium tanks and self-propelled guns (having a potential reserve of 1621 tanks or the same number that were thrown into battle), while the USSR in the border districts (that is, scattered from Odessa and Vilnius, to Kiev and Leningrad) had formally combat-ready (1st and 2nd categories) 1732 heavy and medium tanks - all that was available (that is, the potential reserve was zero). Conclusion: with a formal ratio of tanks with anti-ballistic armor of approximately 1/1, the Wehrmacht was able to quickly compensate for the decommissioning of tanks with anti-ballistic armor, but the USSR did not.

In total, in the Border Districts, according to the estimates of the famous researcher of the “tank theme” Mikhail Baryatinsky, there were about 14 thousand tanks. Of these, only tanks of the 1st category and about 70% of tanks of the 2nd category were actually combat-ready, that is, about 8.5 thousand tanks, including 1,590 heavy and medium tanks and about 6,900 light tanks. The Wehrmacht, in turn, advanced 2034 light tanks and self-propelled guns based on them to the borders of the USSR. Thus, on June 22, 1941, the USSR had a superiority in light tanks of approximately 7/2.

Could this superiority give the USSR significant trump cards? Unfortunately no. Since the era of light tanks essentially ended with the introduction of rapid-fire anti-tank guns in the mid-30s. Komkor D. G. Pavlov, drawing on the experience of the war in Spain in the mid-30s, wrote discouraged that one anti-tank gun could disable several tanks at once, while remaining invulnerable to them. The thickness of the armor of Soviet light tanks ranged from 10 to 22 mm. The images on the right show examples of German infantry weapons that made it possible to penetrate the thin armor of Soviet light tanks from long distances. The basis of the Red Army tank fleet consisted of T-26 tanks (15 mm armor) and BT tanks (armor thickness depending on the series from 13 to 22 mm), and the German infantryman, armed with Solothurn S18-100 (optics, bipod, 5 rounds in the magazine, cartridge 20x138B), from cover from a distance of about a kilometer, was able to hit the crew of any light Red Army tank through the frontal armor (the thickest). Or another example: one Wehrmacht rifle squad relied on one 30-mm Gewehrgranatgerat rifle grenade launcher, which had an aiming range of up to 250 meters. Due to the fact that the grenade launcher was mounted on the muzzle of the Mauser 98k carbine, which was the standard weapon of the German infantry, the grenade launcher was considered as a regular marksman, using his grenade launcher if necessary. And if Soviet light tanks tried to counterattack the Germans and ran into a Wehrmacht rifle company that had taken up the defense, then, among other things, they were also met by fire from 12-13 German 30-mm grenade launchers. Moreover, the view of a German infantryman sitting in a trench with a carbine was much better than that of a tanker looking at the world from the viewing slit of a tank.

Submyth: 1864 T-34 and KV

The essence of the myth is as follows: at the beginning of the war, the Red Army had 1864 T-34 and KV tanks.

In fact, the figure of 1864 T-34 and KV is not at all an indicator of what was in the troops on 06/22/1941, but the sum of the tanks produced as of 07/01/1941. That is:

— it includes those tanks that were produced in the first week of the war... and in the last week of the reporting period (quarter). Needless to say, under such extraordinary conditions productivity will increase dramatically, even at the expense of redirecting resources planned for use in a longer period.

- it includes those tanks that had just been produced, were on the way, or were moving back to the factory for repairs, but were not in service with the troops. For example, the T-34, produced on June 21, 1941 at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, would hardly have been able to help the unit to which it was sent being beaten at the border.

- the figure of 1864 tanks includes those T-34 and KV that were already quite worn out and needed repairs or were already under repair - as of 06/22/1941, 127 T-34 and KV units needed routine repairs and 4 pieces - in capital.

In fact, as of June 22, 1941, the troops had 892 T-34s and 504 KVs, for a total of 1,396 tanks.

Submyth: Soviet medium and heavy tanks were superior to their German counterparts

There is a myth that the Red Army was qualitatively superior to the Wehrmacht in heavy and medium tanks - this means the T-34 and T-28 medium tanks, and the heavy T-35 and KV tanks that the Red Army had at the beginning of the war. They can also be divided according to other criteria: T-35 and T-28 are “old” tanks, and T-34 and KV are “new” tanks.

Old tanks were united not only by the age of adoption, but also by the degree of wear. By the beginning of the war, out of 481 T-28 tanks, only 292 tanks were formally recognized as combat-ready, and out of 59 T-35 tanks, 48 ​​were formally recognized as combat-ready. However, in reality, the first months of battles showed that the assessment of the combat effectiveness of the tanks was clearly overestimated: wear of the mechanisms, lack of spare parts for tanks that had already been discontinued, and low reliability of the equipment had an impact. For example, out of 51 T-28 tanks lost by the 10th TD of the 15th Mechanized Corps in June-August 1941, only 4 vehicles were knocked out in battle, another 4 failed while performing a combat mission, 4 were left operational due to due to lack of fuel and lubricants, 3 went missing and 2 got stuck on obstacles. The remaining 32 tanks failed due to technical reasons and were abandoned. Almost all T-35s were lost on the march due to technical defects and general unreliability.

The new tanks - T-34 and KV - also had their drawbacks. The KV and T-34 went into production in 1939 and 1940, respectively. With all the advantages of the appearance of new tanks, there were also disadvantages. Their German “opponents” on the Eastern Front—medium tanks PZ-3 and PZ-4—were “older” than them by about 1-2 years, either in production start date or in development time, and they managed to pass the “crash test” in during the Polish and French campaigns and were able to show defects and shortcomings that need to be corrected. Compared to them, the T-34 and KV were still rather “raw” vehicles. The V-2 diesel engine installed on the T-34 and KV had an average service life of 30-40 hours. All this quite clearly explains the poor marching capabilities of mechanized units and formations in 1941. The engine life of the German PZ-3 tank in the same period was about 400 engine hours.

At the beginning of the war, the Red Army had 8513 76-mm divisional guns, in addition, 1396 T-34 and KV tanks equipped with this weapon were produced. That is, in total the Red Army had 8513+1396 = 9,909 76-mm guns. And they were able to fire 192,700 armor-piercing shells. Accordingly, one 76-mm gun accounted for as many as 19 pieces of armor-piercing shells, or one ammunition load. And according to the Tank Forces Regulations, one tank must have three ammunition loads (one in the tank and two in reserve).

Very often they like to compare the thickness of the 45-mm armor of the T-34 and the 30-mm armor of the PZ-3, naturally to the detriment of the latter, however, as of June 22, 1941, modifications of the German PZ-3 tank with the index “J” had been carried out for several months , which had a frontal armor thickness of 50 mm, although the large angles of the T-34 armor still had a good effect on its survivability.

In addition, as of June 22, 1941, the T-34 was inferior to its German “opponent” PZ-3 in other respects: in the number of crew members - 4 versus 5, in ease of control and, above all, in the quality of optics, but was superior in terms of fire safety - for a diesel engine.

The myth that the Soviet Union won the war solely with the help of severe frosts, mud and snowstorms is the leading one in the list of myths about the war. Europeans like to tell exactly the same myth about the all-powerful Russian General Frost about the invasion of Russia in 1812, which ended in the collapse of Napoleonic Grand Army.

Firstly, it is important to clarify that in 1941 frosts began at the end of October, which allowed German tanks to move freely off roads. Then the main battles for Moscow began.

If you look at the plans of the German command to attack the USSR, it becomes clear that the victory over the main forces of the Soviet army, including the capture of Moscow, should have occurred during the summer or, at most, the summer-autumn campaign. That is, Hitler initially did not plan to conduct active hostilities during the cold period. The victory over the Allied forces in France in 44 days inspired him and gave him confidence in the upcoming war in the East. But as a result of powerful attacks and the capture of key cities of the USSR, the defense of the Red Army did not break, and the German units suffered losses that they had never experienced before. In addition, despite the crushing defeats of the beginning of the war, Soviet military leaders led by Marshal Zhukov managed to carry out a brilliant counter-offensive near Yelnya, during which the German army retreated and went on the defensive for the first time in the entire Second World War. Up to five German divisions were defeated, and the attack on Moscow stopped for a long time. It is worth noting that all these events took place in the summer and early autumn. At the same time, weather conditions in the summer of 1941, as is known, turned out to be almost ideal for the German offensive. Dry, cloudless weather not only allowed the German army to fully realize its air superiority, but also dried up part of the Belarusian swamps and country roads, which greatly facilitated the maneuver warfare practiced by the Wehrmacht and rendered useless a significant part of the Soviet pre-war defense plans designed for the presence of impassable swamps.

It is known that, hoping to end the war before winter, the German command did not bother with the timely purchase of winter clothing and other necessary equipment, which partly caused the Soviet authorities to disbelieve in the German attack at the end of June, since according to the calculations of the Soviet General Staff, the time for a completely summer war was already missed. Practice has shown that it was the Soviet staff officers who turned out to be right, but the problems of the German troops, who found themselves without the necessary equipment, turned out to be caused not by the Russian winter, which came regularly from year to year, but either by gross errors in the plans of the German command, or by the high fighting qualities shown by the Red Army. Army.

From all of the above, it follows that the weather was more likely to favor the German offensive, which, had the summer been a little waitier, could easily have been left without air support and gotten stuck in impassable mud in the west of Belarus.

In addition, we should not forget that the muddy roads that slowed down the German offensive near Moscow affected both sides. Moreover, its effect on the retreating Red Army was in some respects even more negative than on the Wehrmacht: for the advancing side, a tank stuck in the mud is just a tank stuck in the mud, but for the retreating side, a tank stuck in the mud is often equal to a lost tank.

Fans of this myth spread it strictly to the 41st and 42nd years, but do not talk about subsequent years. For example, the Great Battle of Kursk or Operation Bagration are kept silent. These battles took place exclusively in the summer and both sides were preparing for such enemy actions, unlike in 1941, when Germany attacked the USSR without declaring war and in violation of the non-aggression pact.

Myth: Soviet soldiers threw down their weapons and surrendered en masse

Among the liberal public, the myth that Soviet soldiers did not want to fight for the Soviet Union and surrendered en masse is extremely popular. In particular, the famous opposition journalist Yulia Latynina was noticed in spreading this myth:

How did it happen that the Russian people, tell me at least one more war, in which such crowds went over to the side of the enemy, threw such fantastic weapons, and how to explain this...

According to liberals, for whom hostility to the USSR is traditional, there was nothing like this anywhere in the world, and a significant number of prisoners of war in the first period of the war was allegedly caused by the terrible “Stalinist repressions” in the pre-war period.

Myth has nothing to do with reality. The main war strategy of the Germans was a tank “blitzkrieg”, that is, a deep lightning-fast breakthrough of the enemy’s defenses with tank wedges, which was at that time the latest offensive practice. In this case, of course, the attack was not carried out by a common front, but by several strike groups that penetrated deep into enemy territory. The subsequent merging of strike groups led to the encirclement of enemy troops, who found themselves in the so-called “cauldrons.” An example of such an offensive is the capture of Kiev by the Germans: while Soviet troops were defending Kiev from the strike army group "SOUTH", another strike group "CENTER" broke through the Soviet defenses, went far ahead, and then stopped and turned south, as a result of which the Red Army soldiers defending Kiev found themselves in the "cauldron". Surrounded, under powerful blows from the enemy, the soldiers had to either surrender, as was the case near Kiev, or defend with huge losses, holding back the enemy forces, as was later the case near Vyazma. Thus, even in the most difficult conditions of encirclement, Soviet soldiers, to put it mildly, did not always surrender en masse.

At the beginning of World War II, mass surrenders under the pressure of the German blitzkrieg took place several times and occurred during attacks by the German army on countries with very different social systems, so this is not a matter of “totalitarianism” and “Stalinist repressions.” Before the attack on the USSR, the German army conquered Poland in 33 days, the allied army in France in 44 days, while 1.8 million French soldiers out of a total of 2.8 million were captured. And only in the USSR, despite the successful start of the invasion, Ultimately, the German blitzkrieg failed - the Nazis were detained for two months near Smolensk and Kiev, and then near Leningrad and on deeper lines of defense, and they failed to take Moscow either in the winter or after.

Myth: Soviet KV tanks alone could stop the German advance

The essence of the myth was voiced by Yulia Latynina in the “Clinch” program on the liberal radio “Echo of Moscow”:

“... the KV tank could destroy any German tank and any howitzer at any distance, and in fact, for example, on August 1, 1941, the KV tank under the command of Zinovy ​​Kolobanov fights with 40 German tanks, when this battle ends, 22 tanks are knocked out, and the tank turns around and leaves . ...Yes, there were 265 of them on the southwestern front. If multiplied by 22, then one and a half times they could destroy all German tanks..."

The KV tank (Klim Voroshilov) was indeed one of the best tanks of the beginning of World War II. A successful design and powerful armor, on which German tanks left only small dents, made it possible to conduct a successful defense against enemy equipment. In her speech, Latynina was referring to the heroic defense of Senior Lieutenant Zinovy ​​Grigorievich Kolobanov against a column of 22 German tanks. However, she did not take into account the fact that the KV, led by Kolobanov, was specifically aimed at fighting German tanks and was filled with anti-tank shells. The ambush site was also successful, where the enemy tanks had no maneuver and could not turn around. Also at that moment, the Germans did not have aviation, which many times destroyed even more successful ambushes with Ju-87 dive bombers.

In the battle with Kolobanov, the Germans did not have heavy self-propelled guns that could penetrate the KV’s armor, as happened in another, more tragic case. In the battle that took place from June 23 to 26 near the Lithuanian city of Rasiainiai, one KV tank was able to delay a German armored column for three days. But as soon as the heavy 88 mm guns arrived, the tank was destroyed. The KV was defenseless against an 88 mm gun, not to mention a 105 mm one. In addition, we should not forget that German units never attacked the defending troops head-on. They bypassed pillboxes, fortresses, tank units and other obstacles from the flanks and continued the offensive, leaving the defending forces in their rear.

A remarkable incident occurred on February 12, 1943, during one of the attempts by Soviet troops to break through the blockade of Leningrad, where 3 German Tiger tanks, armed with 88-mm guns, destroyed 10 KV tanks, while they themselves were not even damaged. The rather weak 76-mm KV gun made it impossible to get within striking distance of the Germans. Such a comparison clearly shows that the KV's armor could not withstand 88 mm hits. Since the German army had 88-mm FlaK anti-aircraft guns in service by 1941, successfully adapted to destroy tanks, a small number of KVs did not pose a serious threat to the Wehrmacht offensive. In addition, the German units had 50 mm Pak-38 guns, whose armor-piercing projectile hit the KV from a distance of 500 meters.

Myth: The Russians won solely by numerical superiority (they overwhelmed the enemy with corpses)

Similar myth: The cost of victory is not comparable to losses

Similar myth: The losses of the Red Army are kept silent, in reality they are much greater

The myth about the gigantic unjustified losses of the Red Army during the war is one of the key ones in anti-Soviet propaganda. Many pseudo-historians claim that the losses of the Red Army are allegedly three times greater than the losses of the German one. In especially severe cases, you can face absolutely incredible numbers of 40-60 million dead. Of course, Stalin and the incompetent Soviet leadership, which sent soldiers with bare hands to machine guns, are blamed for everything. It is argued that we won all the battles only with the number of soldiers, going head-on and not taking into account losses.

Estimates of the losses of Soviet soldiers in the Great Patriotic War remained general and approximate for a long time, and only in 1993, historian Grigory Krivosheev, in his book “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century: Losses of the Armed Forces,” made an accurate and detailed calculation. According to his calculations, the total number of soldiers killed during the Great Patriotic War was 8,668,400 people. This figure includes losses in the campaign against Japan and a variety of categories of losses: those who died in hospitals from wounds and illnesses, those killed, those who died as a result of accidents, those executed by verdicts of military tribunals, and those who did not return from captivity. All these figures were obtained by analyzing and summarizing reporting and statistical materials from all fronts and armies, as well as other archival information from the Ministry of Defense. From this information it becomes clear that the loss figures of more than 9 million cited by various historians are overestimated.

The total number of irretrievable losses - killed, dead and prisoners - in the period from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 is:

Third Reich: 7,181.1 thousand;

Together with allies: 8,649.2 thousand;

Of these, prisoners: 4,376.3 thousand;

The Red Army together with its allies on the Soviet-German front: 11,520.2 thousand;

Of these prisoners: 4,559 thousand.

Let’s compare the losses of Soviet and German units (including allies) and get a ratio of 1 to 1.3, that is, all the speeches of liberals and anti-Stalinists about “ten of ours for one German” or about “filled with corpses” are lies and myths. Nevertheless, the Red Army has a slight advantage in losses associated with the unsuccessful and in many ways catastrophic start of the war for it. Do not forget that Germany attacked the USSR unexpectedly, without declaring war, which caused large losses (which occurred mainly in encirclement pockets). But even in those years there was no talk of dumping corpses, take, for example, the Brest Fortress, where the garrison consisted of 9,000 soldiers who defended themselves against a 17,000-strong German division. The active defense lasted seven days, while the losses of the fortress defenders amounted to 2,000 people, against 1,100 Germans (a significant part of the losses was again due to the surprise of the attack). If we take the end of the war, then in the “Berlin Operation” Soviet soldiers lost 78,000 people, while defeating a group of more than a million Germans. Thus, if at the beginning of the war the Soviet troops suffered many times greater losses, then by the end of the war the situation completely changed, and the Germans began to suffer many times and tens of times more losses than the Red Army.

Sometimes you can find lower numbers of losses among the Germans and their allies - this happens when only soldiers who died during the war (from any reasons) are considered, that is, we are talking about irretrievable losses with the exception of those taken prisoner and those who returned from captivity alive. Such a calculation does not reflect the real effectiveness of the armies' actions, but it does reflect the cruelty and inhumanity of Nazism: more than 2.5 million Soviet soldiers did not return from German captivity, while only 420 thousand Germans died in Soviet captivity.

When comparing the losses of the USSR and Germany with its allies on the Eastern Front, it would also be useful to remember with what ratio of losses the Entente won against the Quadruple Alliance in the First World War. According to calculations of these losses (B. Ts. Urlanis “Wars and Population of Europe”, 1960, pp. 391-392): The Entente lost 5,413 thousand soldiers and officers killed and died from all causes, the Central Powers lost killed and died from all causes 4029 thousand soldiers and officers. Ratio 1.34:1. The winning side lost more than the losing side.

Myth: If Leningrad had been surrendered to the Germans, there would have been much fewer casualties

The liberal TV channel Dozhd, which is known for its anti-Russian sentiments, conducted a survey asking: “Was it necessary to surrender Leningrad in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives.” The survey caused a scandal and a storm of indignation throughout Russia, which almost put an end to the channel itself, which, under pressure from public opinion, operators disconnected from cable networks. The channel later admitted the survey was an error and apologized. This statement comes up very often in liberal circles. Opponents of the Soviet regime argue that keeping the city in the hands of the Red Army was a mistake that cost hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, and that surrendering the city to the Germans would have avoided this catastrophe. Of course, this statement has nothing to do with common sense and does not take into account the catastrophic consequences for the entire front as a whole if such a decision were made.

The catastrophe that occurred in besieged Leningrad was of terrible proportions. It is erroneous to say that surrendering the city would have saved the lives of its inhabitants. The German command planned not only to capture the city, but also to destroy all the inhabitants, and wipe out the ruins of Leningrad (as well as Moscow) from the face of the earth. In his report, General Jodl reported to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch:

“The capitulation of Leningrad, and later of Moscow, should not be accepted even if it were proposed by the enemy... Great fears from epidemics should be expected. Therefore, not a single German soldier should enter the city. Whoever leaves the city against our lines must be driven back by fire... It is unacceptable to risk the life of a German soldier to save Russian cities from fire, just as it is impossible to feed their population at the expense of the German homeland... This will of the Fuhrer must be brought to the attention of all commanders." .

From this message it follows that the Germans did not need either the city or its inhabitants and they were not going to let anyone out alive.

In addition, the city played a huge role in terms of strategic importance. Leningrad was a good springboard for an attack from the north on the main German target - Moscow. It was the retention of the city in the hands of Soviet soldiers that did not allow the Germans to use large strike forces to storm Moscow and organize an offensive to encircle the capital of the USSR. The German plan to encircle Moscow never took place thanks to the courageous defenders of the besieged city, who pulled over almost the entire Army Group “NORTH”.

Submyth: The Soviet command left people in Leningrad to die

The assertion that the Soviet command abandoned people in the besieged city and did not seek to lift the blockade is fundamentally incorrect. Almost immediately in 1941, the Road of Life began to function, running, among other things, on the water and ice of Lake Ladoga. The city was supplied with food, weapons and ammunition along this road, and the population (mostly women and children) was evacuated from Leningrad along it. But such transportation could not fully provide people with food and could not completely remove the population.

Before the partial breakthrough of the encirclement (January 1943), the Soviet command carried out four major operations to relieve the siege of Leningrad:

Due to the lack of forces that were occupied in other sectors of the front, the key goals of these operations were not achieved, however, the task of breaking through to Lake Ladoga, to which it became possible to transport cargo by rail, was completed. In addition, during these offensives, the German Operation Northern Lights to capture the city was disrupted, and large enemy forces were pinned down, which prevented their transfer to important strategic directions, such as Moscow and Stalingrad.

Myth: Bandera's followers were freedom fighters, not Nazi punishers and bandits

During the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, followers of Stepan Bandera and other criminal leaders from the Great Patriotic War have become more active. During the Second World War, Bandera headed the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), whose members were popularly called simply “Bandera”; the same name was extended to members of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) and other Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis and terrorized the civilian population. Modern radical Ukrainian nationalist organizations, rejecting known historical data, believe that German troops were the liberators of Ukraine, and Bandera’s supporters were the heroes of Ukraine who helped restore order in the occupied territories and fought the Soviet regime.

The German veterans themselves are very surprised to learn that the Banderaites consider them liberators, since during the war, 5 million 300 thousand of the civilian population of Ukraine were destroyed by the hands of the Nazis, and another 2 million 300 thousand able-bodied Ukrainians were driven to Germany for forced labor. Bandera’s followers tried to keep up with their “liberators” in this regard and regularly carried out punitive actions, killing people for every slightest reason, as well as for entertainment. They were particularly cruel and were noticeably superior to the Germans in this: Stepan Bandera’s minions did not spare either women, children, or the elderly. The Germans themselves were so impressed by the atrocities of the OUN that they quickly arrested Bandera, placing him in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. However, Bandera was not shot, which was in the order of things for the Germans, but was left just in case, so that there would be someone to head the OUN later.

In total, during punitive actions and combat operations, the OUN punitive forces killed:

850 thousand Jews;

220 thousand Poles;

400 thousand Soviet prisoners of war;

500 thousand civilian Ukrainians;

20 thousand soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army and law enforcement agencies;

from 4 to 5 thousand of their own supporters from the OUN for insufficient cruelty and undeveloped national identity

Submyth: Bandera’s ideology was not fascist

Modern followers of Bandera claim that the ideology and policies of the OUN were not fascist and had nothing to do with German nationalist theories. In fact, one of the main theorists of the OUN, A. Andrievsky, wrote in his works:

“Our newest nationalism is not a consequence of the efforts of the Ukrainian mind, but rather a product of Italian fascism and German national socialism. Dontsov prepared the basis for such a hobby.”

Submyth: Bandera’s supporters did not consider the Russian people an enemy

The essence of this myth, which Bandera’s followers are actively trying to pass off as the truth, is that Bandera’s OUN members allegedly never considered the Russian people an enemy, just like all other peoples. They allegedly fought only against direct enemies of Ukraine and occupiers. However, in reality, Bandera’s supporters took the position of Russophobia and anti-Semitism. One of the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists, Yaroslav Stetsko, made the following speech in 1941:

“Moscow and Judaism are the biggest enemies of Ukraine. I consider the main and decisive enemy to be Moscow, which imperiously kept Ukraine in captivity. And, nevertheless, I appreciate the hostile and sabotage will of the Jews who helped Moscow enslave Ukraine. Therefore, I stand in the position of extermination of Jews and the advisability of transferring German methods of extermination of Jews to Ukraine, excluding their assimilation.”

Submyth: Bandera fought against the Germans

Similar myth: Bandera’s followers stopped collaborating with the Germans after 1941

Another myth about Bandera and his minions says that in fact the OUN fought against German units. As evidence, they cite the fact that Stepan Bandera himself was in the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen, and other OUN members were brutally tortured in other camps. The reason for Bandera’s imprisonment is said to be the attempt by the OUN members to create an independent Ukrainian republic, which was a very dubious undertaking, since Western and Central Ukraine was by that time already deep in the rear of the Germans and they did not need an independent state in the middle of the occupied territories.

The real reason for Bandera's imprisonment was the unbridled terror of the OUN against civilians. This, firstly, destabilized the situation (which was already tense) and caused massive uprisings of the population, and secondly, according to the then German plans, the population should have worked for the good of Germany, and not lie with their throats cut. At one of the meetings in 1941, Hitler directly said:

“Parteigenosse Himmler, machen Sie Ordnung mit diesen Bande!” (Parteigenosse Himmler, put this gang in order!)

Almost immediately, Bandera and 300 other OUN members were arrested. It is worth considering that Bandera was not in an ordinary concentration camp for prisoners, but in a specialized one created for German officers, which in terms of amenities was sometimes compared to a sanatorium. Bandera’s collaboration with the Germans did not end there, as modern Ukrainian nationalists claim. All OUN members were released in 1944 to fight the advancing Red Army. From Müller's testimony at the Nuremberg trials on September 19, 1945:

“At the beginning of April 1945, Bandera had instructions from the Main Directorate of Imperial Security to gather all Ukrainian nationalists in the Berlin area and defend the city from the advancing units of the Red Army. Bandera created detachments of Ukrainian nationalists who acted as part of the Volkssturm, and he himself fled. He left the dacha of Department 4-D and fled to the city of Weimar. Burlay told me that Bandera agreed with Danylyvy about a joint defection to the side of the Americans.”

As for Bandera’s accomplices, they died in the German concentration camp Auschwitz not at the hands of the Germans, but were beaten to death by Polish prisoners. They were not forgiven for their brutal crimes on Polish territory.

Myth: Red Army soldiers were given one rifle between them and were forced to get the second one in battle

Similar myth: From sapper blades to machine guns

The myth that Soviet soldiers were thoughtlessly thrown on the offensive at the beginning of the war, without even being supplied with weapons, is actively covered on the Internet and inflated by liberal pseudo-historians. The desire to turn the Soviet leadership into a cannibalistic regime, sending unarmed people to the enemy and clearing minefields with living human bodies, drowns out all other reasonable thoughts and simple logical conclusions among haters of the USSR.

None of the pseudo-historians seriously dared to assert that the soldiers of the regular army were not provided with weapons, but many myths were invented about the DNO (people's militia divisions). Of course, in 1941, the hastily created popular units had problems with weapons and supplies, but no one was sent into battle without weapons, especially since they had them in abundance. This is what S. E. Soboleva writes in her article “Small arms of the capital’s defenders during the formation of the Moscow people’s militia”:

The provision of rifles, machine guns, light and heavy machine guns, 50 mm mortars, 76 mm divisional guns, 122 mm howitzers is listed as 100% in archival documents. In reality, the situation with the logistics of the militia divisions looked somewhat different. According to a report from the headquarters of the 33rd Army to the headquarters of the Reserve Front on the combat and numerical strength of the army units - six divisions of the people's militia, sent no earlier than September 20, 1941 (dating according to the text). There were 34,721 rifles instead of the required 28,952, and 714 heavy machine guns instead of the required 612.

As can be seen from the documents, the militia units were fully equipped with personal small arms, and there was even an excess of rifles and machine guns, but there were problems with a shortage of modern and automatic weapons. Eg:

There were 7,796 automatic rifles, 21,495 were required;

There were 869 light machine guns, 956 were required;

There were 784 Degtyarev machine guns, 928 were required.

It must be taken into account that in most cases, units of the people's militia did not have anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, and the small arms issued to the militia were often not unified in terms of ammunition and spare parts. What reduced the effectiveness of confronting enemy troops and complicated supply

Submyth: With checkers for tanks

Similar myth: Cavalry versus tanks

There are very common myths about Soviet cavalrymen, which claim that soldiers rushed with sabers at German tanks, trying to stop them. Later, they tried to distort the myth even more, talking not about cavalry with swords, but about foot soldiers attacking tanks with bayonets. With such inventions, pseudo-historians are trying to show the Soviet soldier in the image of a savage who does not have ammunition or weapons, does not know the minimum basics of warfare, and goes into battle with his bare hands. In his book “Ten Myths of World War II,” historian Alexey Valerievich Isaev writes about these myths:

It all started with an arrogant phrase in Heinz Guderian’s memoirs “Memoirs of a Soldier”: “The Polish Pomeranian cavalry brigade, due to ignorance of the design data and methods of operation of our tanks, attacked them with melee weapons and suffered monstrous losses.” These words were taken literally and creatively developed in fiction: “The blades of the brave Warsaw zholners clattered loudly on Krupp’s armor, and the pikes of the Polish cavalry broke on the same armor. Every living thing died under the tracks of the tanks...” The cavalrymen began to seem like some kind of violent madmen, rushing in horse formation at tanks with sabers and pikes. The battle between the mythical “zholners” and Guderian’s tanks became a symbol of the victory of technology over outdated weapons and tactics. Such attacks began to be attributed not only to the Poles, but also to the cavalry of the Red Army, and they were even depicted cutting tanks with sabers on film. The obvious strangeness of such an action: a soldier and an officer of the 1930s. - this is not a Mongol who came from the depths of centuries and not even a crusader. Being of sound mind and good memory, he will not try to chop metal objects with a saber. Although this was noticeable, it was not explained. For a long time, cavalrymen received the stigma of being brave but dull savages, unfamiliar with the properties of modern technology.

The next step was to expose the Red Army cavalry and cavalrymen in the leadership of the Soviet armed forces. The orgy of humiliation of the cavalry reached complete ecstasy in the 90s. The ideological blinders fell, and everyone who was not too lazy considered it necessary to demonstrate their “professionalism” and “progressive views.”

Submyth: NKVD troops sat in the rear and shot innocent people

The barrier detachments were not only engaged in guarding the army's rear (“hiding behind the backs of the soldiers”). According to eyewitnesses, in difficult moments at the front, NKVD units were transferred to the front line, where they fought side by side with other soldiers. For example, in the battles for the Estonian city of Tallinn, the barrier detachments lost over 60% of their personnel and almost all commanders. Also, the NKVD counterintelligence officers carried out other important work, namely: they conducted “radio games” with the enemy using disinformation, prepared and sent reconnaissance and sabotage groups to the rear of German units, and detained enemy saboteurs and spies in the front line. During the war, up to 100 thousand NKVD soldiers died. Among the defenders of the Brest Fortress was the 132nd separate battalion of the NKVD troops.

NKVD officers played a major role in the heroic defense of Leningrad; their main task was to establish the Road of Life, and later to protect it. NKVD fighters also showed up in Stalingrad. The 10th Division, numbering 7.9 thousand people, was able to stop the advance of the Germans, who planned to immediately break into the city.

Myth: The Soviet leadership abandoned its prisoners of war to their fate

The myth that the Soviet leadership abandoned the captured Red Army soldiers to their fate and did not care about their release was invented by the Germans themselves to justify their own atrocities. Even at the beginning of the war, General Keitel justified himself this way about the large number of prisoners of war who died in German captivity:

The Soviet Union did not join the agreement of July 27, 1929 regarding the treatment of prisoners of war. As a result, we are not obliged to provide Soviet prisoners of war with supplies that would comply with this agreement, both in quantity and quality.

Later, opponents of the USSR, including the Russian liberal public, joined similar myths. They accuse Stalin of not wanting normal conditions for his captured soldiers and therefore not signing the relevant conventions and agreements. Also, information began to appear in some sources that the government of the USSR did not sign the Hague Convention.

Active supporters of this myth are not embarrassed even by the fact that the “Nuremberg Trials” did not recognize such German justifications, and there is no need to convict Nuremberg of sympathizing with the USSR. The criminal fascist government, guilty of the genocide of millions of people, burning concentration camp prisoners in ovens, bombing the Red Cross, exterminating people by starvation in besieged Leningrad, clearly did not care about the legal component. Hitler never complied with any conventions and, apparently, did not intend to comply, although by the end of the war the attitude towards prisoners improved somewhat, and evidence of mass crimes was destroyed. Apparently, the leadership of the Third Reich saw where things were headed.

As for the Hague Convention, Soviet Russia adopted it back in 1918. In particular, it was stated:

The international conventions and agreements relating to the Red Cross recognized by Russia before October 1915 are recognized and will be respected by the Russian Soviet Government, which retains all rights and prerogatives based on these conventions and agreements.

And the USSR signed the Geneva Convention partially, the first point of two. The second point did not fully satisfy the Soviet government, and it was rejected, but later, on March 19, 1931, the USSR adopted the “Provision on Prisoners of War,” which differed only slightly from the Geneva Agreement.

It is known that from the very beginning of the war, the leadership of the USSR constantly tried to establish a dialogue with the enemy in order to agree on the exchange of prisoners or express their claims regarding detention in the camps. On June 27, 1941, Molotov, on behalf of the Soviet government, expressed his readiness to accept the Red Cross’s offer to provide information about prisoners of war. Dialogue was established with Hungary and Romania, which were Germany's main allies. Then the information about the prisoners of war was transferred to the German leadership through the mediation of Sweden, but Hitler pointedly ignored the appeal of the Soviet government, since the goal of the Nazis was the destruction of the Russian people, and not at all compliance with legal norms and international agreements. Of course, attempts to improve the conditions of Soviet prisoners or at least obtain some information were made in the future, but they were rejected or simply ignored.

Meanwhile, captured German soldiers on the territory of the USSR were kept in accordance with all international standards and in accordance with the principles of humanity. The prisoners were fed no worse than the Soviet soldiers at the front, and this continued until the end of the war. This is evidenced by official data: out of 2,388,443 captured Germans, 356,700 died for various reasons. Most of these losses occurred before 1946, and subsequently the mortality rate decreased.

Submyth: Soviet prisoners of war were sent to the Gulag after liberation

Similar myth: We have no prisoners of war, only traitors

An extremely widespread myth tells that all Soviet soldiers who were released from captivity or even escaped encirclement were immediately sent to the Gulags as enemies of the people, and later shot.

The military situation at that time did not allow soldiers who had escaped encirclement or been released from captivity to be immediately sent into the ranks of the Red Army. Such actions could lead to the appearance of a large number of enemy scouts and saboteurs directly on the front line. Therefore, it was decided to check soldiers who had been captured, as well as those temporarily surrounded or in occupied territory. However, the myths that soldiers were allegedly shot for captivity or called enemies of the people are in no way connected with reality. Official figures tell a different story:

Special camps for former prisoners of war from 1941 to 1944

Total hits: 317,594 people

Checked and sent to the Red Army: 223,281 people (70.3%)

In the convoy troops of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs: 4,337 people (1.4%)

In the defense industry: 5,716 people (1.8%)

Sent to hospitals: 1,529 people (0.5%)

Died: 1,799 people (0.6%)

Sent to assault (penalty) units: 8,255 people (2.6%)

Arrested: 11,283 people (3.5%)

Verification ongoing: 61,394 people (19.3%)

As for Soviet legislation, it clearly states what kind of surrender is a crime. Article 193.14. The Criminal Code of the RSFSR stated:

Unauthorized abandonment of the battlefield during battle or deliberate surrender, not caused by the combat situation, or refusal to use weapons during battle entails the application of the highest measure of social protection.

From this text it becomes clear that the law punished only criminal surrender, and not any surrender in general. The notes to the Criminal Code clearly state which surrender is criminal:

Surrender. Each serviceman is obliged to fulfill his military duty in accordance with the solemn promise he made (the red oath) “without sparing his strength or life itself.”

However, in certain cases, the situation on the battlefield may develop in such a way that resistance essentially seems impossible, and the destruction of fighters is pointless. In these cases, surrender is a permissible act and cannot lead to prosecution.

In view of the above, Article 22 provides as a crime only such surrender as is not caused by a combat situation, i.e. surrender in order to avoid the risk associated with being in the ranks of fighters (being killed, wounded, etc.).

Thus, it becomes clear that surrender was not a crime and not every prisoner of war served his sentence in the camps.

Myth: The war was won by the penal battalions

Similar myths: Only the Red Army had penal battalions; Penalties were sent to certain death

Many myths have been created about penal units that successfully fought the enemy in the most difficult sectors of the front. Myths on this topic turned out to be so skillfully invented that they even began to make films about penal battalions based on these myths. Nikolai Dostal’s famous series “Penal Battalion” was no exception, which contains almost all the myths about penal battalions.

The plot and historical details of the film "Penal Battalion" are completely implausible or grossly distorted. For example, neither camp criminals nor ordinary soldiers and sergeants ever served in penal battalions and could not serve. Penal battalions were created for middle and senior commanders, and privates and sergeants served in penal companies.

A large number of distortions are also associated with the fundamental order for penal units “Not a step back No. 227” dated July 27, 1942, which deals with the creation of penal battalions and barrier detachments. Many historians claim that these units were created for each other; the detachments shot the retreating penal prisoners. In fact, the NKVD barrier detachments were located in the rear of the “restless” divisions, to restore order, to detain deserters or alarmists and send them back to the front. While the penalty prisoners were not in the rear, but on the front line, and the NKVD, of course, could not shoot them in the back from machine guns. And penal soldiers were often sent into battle mixed with ordinary units.

The opinion that only the Red Army had penalties is also not true. First they appeared in the German army, six months before order 227, and only then in the Soviet troops. Although the penalty soldiers actually fought in the most dangerous areas, it is incorrect to assume that only they played a decisive role in the war, because all units and formations of the Red Army won the war and the Victory was common. Only 427,910 people served in penal units; if we take into account that during the entire war 34,476,700 soldiers passed through the military registration and enlistment offices of the USSR, then the share of penal units is 1.24%. Hardly one and a half percent of the total number of troops could have a decisive influence on the course of events.

Another misconception is related to the process of release from penal battalions, that is, with transfer back to the unit. It is believed that the only reason for release was injury in battle, which is not entirely true, although injury was one of the possible grounds. Unlike German penal prisoners, who served for up to 3-5 years, our penal prisoners were kept in units for no more than 3 months and at the end of this period had to be restored to their rights and ranks. Also, the reason for early release was courage and personal courage in battle.

The myth about the monstrous personal accounts of German pilots

There is a large gap in the number of aircraft shot down between the best Allied and Axis military pilots, leading to much debate regarding the skill of Soviet combat pilots. Thus, the best German pilot Erich Hartmann had 352 aircraft shot down, while the best Allied ace Ivan Kozhedub had only 64. Such a big difference is explained by several reasons. The most important of these reasons is the looser and less auditable counting system, which was stimulated by the German propaganda machine interested in creating superhuman icons.

English pilot James Johnson joined the Royal Air Force as a volunteer in 1939, and ended the war as the RAF's top ace, scoring 38 confirmed victories and flying nearly a thousand sorties. In his book “The Best English Ace,” he became interested in such a large difference in the scores of victories between the Germans and the Allies, having conducted his own investigation:

The number of victories attributed to the best German aces is very large. Their top driver, Erich Hartmann, had 352 victories, with several drivers having over 200 victories. However, it should be remembered that fast-paced and chaotic air battles unwittingly encourage pilots to overestimate the results...

After the war, when we learned about the monstrous personal scores of German pilots, I suspected that we were confusing scores and victories. But the experienced German pilot with whom I discussed this issue insisted that we were talking specifically about victories. There is no doubt that the German pilots had much more opportunities to increase their personal account than we or the Americans. At the beginning of the war against Russia, German pilots destroyed a huge number of Russian aircraft. On the Western Front, especially since 1943, the situation for them was extremely unfavorable, and yet they managed to shoot down many Allied aircraft. Moreover, the Luftwaffe brought the mobility of its units to the highest degree. Fighter squadrons were transferred from one front to another on demand.

I discovered that it was quite possible to conduct a detailed verification of the claims of a well-known German who was called the “unsurpassed virtuoso” (we are talking about Hans-Joachim Marcel). September 1, 1942 was his greatest day in the Western Desert when he claimed 17 victories, including 8 within 10 minutes. However, according to our documents, only 11 aircraft were killed that day, including 2 Hurricanes, which this German pilot did not claim. In addition, some of our planes were shot down while he was on the ground.

A. V. Isaev, “Ten Myths of the Second World War”:

I would like to emphasize with a red pencil that all of the above [crediting downed planes to the pilot’s account without hard evidence] applies to both sides of the conflict. Despite a theoretically more advanced system for recording downed victims, Luftwaffe aces often reported something unimaginable. Let's take two days as an example, May 13 and 14, 1942, the height of the Battle of Kharkov. On May 13, the Luftwaffe announced 65 downed Soviet aircraft, 42 of which were attributed to the III Group of the 52nd Fighter Squadron. Documented losses of the Soviet Air Force on May 13 amount to 20 aircraft. The next day, pilots of the III Group of the 52nd Fighter Squadron report that 47 Soviet aircraft were shot down during the day. The commander of the 9th squadron of the group, Hermann Graf, declared six victories, his wingman Alfred Grislavski chalked up two MiG-3s, Lieutenant Adolf Dickfeld declared nine (!) victories for that day. The real losses of the Red Army Air Force on May 14 amounted to three times less, 14 aircraft (5 Yak-1, 4 LaGG-3, 3 Il-2, 1 Su-2 and 1 R-5). MiG-3 is simply not on this list. The “Stalinist falcons” did not remain in debt either. On May 19, 1942, twelve Yak-1 fighters of the 429th Fighter Aviation Regiment, which had just arrived at the front, got involved in a battle with a large group of Messerschmitts and, after a half-hour air battle, declared the destruction of five Xe-115s and one Me. 109". The “Xe-115” should be understood as a modification of the “Bf.109F”, which was very different in its sleek fuselage with a smooth transition between the propeller spinner and the engine cowling from the angular “Bf.109E”, which is more familiar to our pilots. However, enemy data confirms the loss of only one Xe-115, that is, Bf.109F-4/R1 from the 7th Squadron of the 77th Fighter Squadron. The pilot of this fighter, Karl Stefanik, went missing. The 429th Regiment's own losses amounted to four Yak-1s, three pilots successfully landed by parachute, one was killed. Everything is as always, the enemy’s losses were stated to be slightly greater than their own losses. This was often one of the ways to justify the high losses of their aircraft in the face of the command. For unjustified losses, they could be put on trial, but if these losses were justified by equally high losses of the enemy, an equivalent exchange, so to speak, then repressive measures could be safely avoided.

As you can see, German pilots repeatedly and very significantly overestimated the number of their victories.

In addition to the above reasons for the overestimation of personal accounts by Axis pilots, there are additional objective reasons that none of the Allied air aces could even come close to the achievements of the best Axis pilots (even adjusted to take into account the overstatements):

The German leadership made more intensive use of its pilots, who eventually made many more combat sorties, and flying units were constantly transferred between sectors of the front.

Encouraging personal achievements led to the pursuit of the score to the detriment of the combat mission, when easy targets were shot down, not the most important ones.

For Soviet pilots, the most important thing was to complete a combat mission, and not to shoot down an enemy aircraft. For example, if the task is to prevent the bombing of your target, then the most rational thing is to attack the leader, after knocking him out, as a rule, the whole group scattered. But this is a dangerous task, fraught with mortal risk and not leading to an easy increase in your personal account.

The main task of fighters is to fight enemy strike aircraft: bombers and attack aircraft, and not with fellow fighters, as German aces often preferred to do.

In the Soviet Air Force during the war, the task was considered completed if the fighters did not allow a bomb attack on their targets and did not allow the enemy fighters to shoot down their protected attack aircraft, but whether they shot down the enemy aircraft was not so important.

Thus, this myth is a combined one: firstly, the number of aircraft actually shot down by German aces was exaggerated several times over. Secondly, the number of declared downed aircraft is not any objective indicator when comparing the skill of air force pilots of two countries. A.V. Isaev: “You can achieve three-digit aces by consciously choosing to conduct an air war with the enemy’s numerical superiority and constant castling of aviation units and formations from passive sectors of the front into the thick of battle. But this approach is a double-edged sword and will most likely lead to the loss of the air war.” That’s what happened: the Axis countries, having aces with three-digit personal accounts, lost the air war. It turned out like the joke: “But there will be no air support - the pilot is sick.”

If we compare Kozhedub and Pokryshkin from the Soviet side, and Hartman and Kittel from the German side according to the ratio “number of combat sorties / enemy aircraft shot down” or “number of air battles conducted / number of enemy aircraft shot down,” then it turns out that the sides are approximately equal in skill, and sometimes the Soviet side surpasses the enemy. This contrast is explained by the fact that:

Before the GKO order of May 7, 1943, air regiments were practically not replenished at the front. The regiment was at the front for 1-3 months until it was almost completely worn out, losing materiel and pilots, and then was withdrawn to the rear for several months. Accordingly, promising pilots died along with the rest. Only individual talents or lucky ones could survive to see the reformation.

Reformation took at least a month, during which time the pilot did not fly combat missions. There were also frequent reorganizations for retraining for a new type of aircraft, which took longer. (For example, the pilot of a carburetor I-153 could only evade with his nose up and slightly to the sides: when diving with his nose down, the engine could stall, and starting it in flight was a non-trivial task. To go down, he had to turn the plane over, thereby warning his opponent. Refusing this aircraft expanded the capabilities of pilots. On the other hand, no subsequent type of aircraft had such a short time to turn - 10 seconds. The Messerschmitts turned in 20 seconds and while they were just starting to turn, the I-153 was already finishing and opening fire. Accordingly, air combat tactics changed for each type of aircraft).

The most successful pilots of the USSR were transferred from the front to aviation schools to pass on their experience to new recruits. German aces were used to create a propaganda image, so removing them from the front was fraught with ideology.

As already mentioned, the Luftwaffe pilots did not occupy one sector of the front. They were transferred from place to place - to where they were most needed. On some days they flew 6 combat missions. They were called “the most tired people of the war.”

Submyth: Superman Hans Rudel destroyed one and a half Soviet tank divisions

Russian Wikipedia in the article Rudel, Hans-Ulrich cites as a source Sergei Voropaev’s project “Encyclopedia of the Third Reich” (Voropaev does not give a source of information - the primary source, apparently, is the memoirs of Rudel himself), which indicates the figure of 532 tanks destroyed by Rudel alone (and also 150 self-propelled guns, 4 armored trains, 800 vehicles, 2 cruisers, a destroyer, the battleship "Marat" and numerous small vessels that cannot be accurately counted such as rafts, motor boats, but these are trifles).

One can only marvel at the modesty of this man. But he could have declared about 1000 destroyed tanks - that would have been just 3 full-fledged Soviet tank divisions. But then such a moment is incomprehensible. What prevented Goering from training another 5-10 Rudels using the same method, and together they would have destroyed all Soviet tank armies (as well as American and British), and the Third Reich would have won World War II?

The 532 tanks destroyed by Rudel are one and a half tank divisions destroyed by one man! It is known that aviation was not the main enemy of tanks and on average accounted for about 2% of tank losses. Obviously, the 532 tanks Rudel destroyed is Wikipedia nonsense and does not need further debunking.

Post-war time

Myth: The US defeated Japan with the atomic bomb

The essence of the myth is this: on August 6, the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and the city was completely destroyed, then on August 9, the city of Nagasaki was subjected to atomic bombing. On the same day, the Supreme Military Council met in Japan to discuss unconditional surrender. Such a coincidence in dates made the whole world believe that Japan capitulated, seeing the horror and consequences of a US nuclear strike. For a long time, the Japanese, Americans and residents of the USSR and Russia believed in such an interpretation of events, but today even the “victorious” Americans began to understand that the version they were offered was false, and events developed completely differently. For example, the author of the book “Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons” and a leading employee of the British American Security Information Council research company, Ward Wilson, believes that the surrender of Japan has nothing to do with the US use of atomic weapons, which led to the destruction of two cities. “It was not the Bomb that won the victory over Japan, but Stalin,” the historian is sure.

In reality, at the Japanese War Council meeting on August 9, atomic strikes on cities were not even discussed. The imperial government simply hid the fact that two cities had been wiped off the face of the earth. The Japanese army was determined to continue the war and create weapons of retaliation. But the entry of the USSR into the war crossed out all plans. As Prime Minister K. Suzuki stated:

“The entry of the Soviet Union into the war this morning puts us completely in a hopeless situation and makes it impossible to continue the war.”

The Japanese government hoped to conclude neutrality with the USSR, and against this background, having drawn the United States into ground battles, offer peace on favorable terms, but the unexpected transition of the Red Army to the offensive confused all plans. During the Manchurian operation (August 9 - September 2, 1945), Soviet troops penetrated 200-300 kilometers deep into Chinese territory within just a few days, sometimes capturing large Japanese units that did not have time to alert their combat personnel. In the following days, the Yuzhno-Sakhalin operation (August 11 - 25, 1945) and the Kuril landing operation (August 18 - September 1, 1945) were carried out. Such a rapid offensive by Soviet troops put a final end to the plans of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito to conclude a truce. In a message to soldiers and sailors dated August 17, he said:

“When the Soviet Union also entered the war against us, to continue resistance ... means to jeopardize the very basis of the existence of our empire.”

The fact that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not greatly influence the decision of the Japanese leadership to surrender is also evidenced by the facts of numerous non-nuclear air attacks on Japanese cities. During the summer of 1945, American troops subjected Japanese cities to massive airstrikes, during which 68 cities were bombed. All of them were completely or partially destroyed, 1.7 million residents were left homeless, 300,000 were killed, and 750,000 were injured of varying degrees of severity. 66 of these raids were non-nuclear, but they caused far more damage than two atomic bombs. Here are the percentages of destruction of some cities as a result of conventional bombing: Kuwane - 75%, Numazu - 90%, Fukui - 80%, Toyama - 99.5%. Against the backdrop of such destruction, the loss of two more cities was not something stunning; the only difference was the use of a new type of weapon.

Myth: The USA and Great Britain defeated fascism

This Russophobic myth is spreading in the West and is based on the suppression or distortion of facts about where the main theater of military operations of the Second World War was located. This myth is also closely related to the myth about the outbreak of war by the Soviet Union - trying to equate Nazism with communism and blaming the USSR for starting the war, Western myth-makers seek to devalue the contribution of the USSR to the Victory, presenting the war not as a struggle of the whole world against Nazism, but as a struggle of Western “free countries” against “totalitarian regimes” (within the framework of this approach, for the myth-makers, it does not matter how fierce the battles were between the Germans and the Russians - for them the only thing that matters is that the Western countries managed to end the war to their advantage).

Throughout the post-war period, Western propaganda worked to downplay the role of the USSR and exaggerate the role of the United States. If in 1945, according to a survey, 57% of the French believed that it was the USSR that made the greatest contribution to the victory over Germany, and only 20% and 12% thought so about the USA and Great Britain, respectively (and this despite the fact that it was the USA and Britain liberated the territory of France), then in 1994 only 25% called the largest contribution of the USSR, and 49% considered the largest contribution of the United States (16% supported Great Britain). By 2004, the French perception of history was even more distorted: only 20% considered the contribution of the USSR to be the largest, while 58% considered the role of the United States to be the most important (16% supported the UK).

In popular English-language literature, the events in Africa and the Allied landings in Normandy are often presented as the main moments of the war. If they talk about any defeats of Germany on the territory of the USSR, then it happens that only the names of cities are mentioned, but the winner is not mentioned. For example: “Surrender at Stalingrad marks Germany’s first major defeat” (Surrender at Stalingrad was Germany’s first major defeat). And next to it: “British and Indian forces fight Japanese in Burma” (British and Indian forces are fighting against the Japanese in Burma). Here it is immediately clear who is fighting whom, which cannot be said about the above description of the Battle of Stalingrad.

To dispel the myth of the decisive role of Great Britain and the United States, one need only look at the statistics of casualties in the Second World War.

The losses of Soviet soldiers accounted for 35% of the losses of soldiers of all 53 countries participating in the war.

The losses of the civilian population of the USSR amounted to 33.7% of the civilian losses suffered by all 53 countries participating in the war.

At the same time, it is generally accepted that the army of Nazi Germany suffered 70-80% of losses on the Soviet front, and according to Valentin Falin - 93% of losses. It is obvious that it was the USSR that suffered the greatest losses in the war and that it was the USSR that destroyed the most enemy soldiers, undermining its military power. The Allied successes in Africa might not have been achieved if Hitler had not constantly had to throw his troops at the Soviet-German front, and the Allied landing in Normandy would have been impossible and meaningless if the main German forces had not been shackled in battles with the Red Army.

Similar myth: Soviet soldiers raped millions of German women (and also Polish women)

In the last decade, the campaign to denigrate the Soviet soldiers who liberated the countries of Eastern and Central Europe from Nazism has intensified. As part of this campaign, anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propagandists are trying to get into people's heads that the Red Army was a bunch of murderers and rapists who had no mercy for civilians. Initially, myths of this kind arose through the efforts of the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and then were replicated by the former allies of the USSR during the Cold War. In his diaries, Goebbels wrote:

...in fact, in the person of Soviet soldiers, we are dealing with steppe scum. This is confirmed by information about atrocities received from the eastern regions. They are truly terrifying. They cannot even be reproduced individually. First of all, mention should be made of the terrible documents coming from Upper Silesia. In some villages and towns, all women from ten to 70 years old were subjected to countless rapes. It seems that this is being done on orders from above, since an obvious system can be seen in the behavior of the Soviet soldiers. We will now launch a broad campaign against this within the country and abroad...

Goebbels' assistant Werner Naumann later admitted:

Our propaganda regarding the Russians and what the population should expect from them in Berlin was so successful that we brought the Berliners to a state of extreme horror,” but “we overdid it - our propaganda ricocheted back at us.” The German population had long been psychologically prepared for the image of an animal-like cruel “subhuman” and was ready to believe in any crimes of the Red Army.

Indeed, the propaganda turned out to be so strong that for the most part the Germans believed all the myths about Russian atrocities. As a result, when Soviet troops approached Berlin, the city was overwhelmed by a wave of mass suicides. According to some reports, in May-June alone the number of suicides reached 30-40 thousand.

Myths about Russian atrocities were promoted by Goebbels’ department in order to discredit the Red Army in the eyes of the German population, so that the inhabitants of Germany would meet the enemy not with flowers in their hands, as liberators from the fascist regime (this was the case in most countries of Eastern Europe), but with weapons, as occupiers and murderers of civilians. Of course, Soviet soldiers did not have warm feelings for the citizens of Germany, who were directly or indirectly to blame for the troubles and suffering that befell the peoples of the USSR during the war. However, Stalin’s order of January 19, 1945 “On behavior on German territory” read:

Officers and Red Army soldiers! We are going to the enemy's country. Everyone must maintain self-control, everyone must be brave... The remaining population in the conquered areas, regardless of whether they are German, Czech, or Pole, should not be subjected to violence. The perpetrators will be punished according to martial law. In conquered territory, sexual relations with women are not allowed. For violence and rape, those responsible will be shot.

Of course, cases of violence and killings of civilians occurred, especially during military operations, but such violations were suppressed and punished. Russian historian Makhmut Gareev writes:

Of course, manifestations of cruelty, including sexual cruelty, occurred. It's stupid to deny this. They simply could not not exist after what the Nazis did on our land. But such cases were resolutely suppressed and punished. And they did not become widespread. After all, as soon as we occupied a populated area, a commandant’s office was immediately created there. It provided the local population with food and medical care. Order was controlled by the commandant's patrol service.

Submyth: Russian soldiers took bicycles from German women

A photograph has been widely circulated in which a Russian soldier allegedly takes a bicycle from a German woman. In fact, the photographer captured a misunderstanding. In the original Life magazine publication, the caption under the photo reads: “A misunderstanding occurred between a Russian soldier and a German woman in Berlin over a bicycle he wanted to buy from her.”

More detailed comments from the author of the photo are also available:

“A Russian soldier tries to buy a bicycle from a woman in Berlin, 1945.

The misunderstanding happened after a Russian soldier tried to buy a bicycle from a German woman in Berlin.

Having given her the money for the bicycle, he believes that the deal has been completed. However, the woman thinks differently.”

In addition, experts believe that the photo is not a Russian soldier. The cap he is wearing is Yugoslavian, the roller cap is not worn in the same way as was customary in the Soviet army, and the material of the rollercoat is also not Soviet. Soviet rolling sheets were made of first-class felt and did not wrinkle as much as can be seen in the photograph.