When did the Second World War begin 1941 1945. Dates and events of the Great Patriotic War

In the early morning of June 22, 1941, German units crossed the state border of the USSR, and German aviation launched the first massive strikes on important points in the countries. The Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945 began. The Soviet leadership did not immediately believe in the reality of what was happening, and only by noon Molotov addressed the citizens with a statement, he said that the war had begun. A general mobilization was declared in the country.

From the summer of 1941 to the autumn of 1941, the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945 was extremely unsuccessful for the Soviet side. German troops completely occupied the Baltic states, and partially Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine. On September 8, 1941, the siege of Leningrad began. On September 30, a massive offensive against Moscow began. German units were located only 100 kilometers from the capital of the USSR. The turning point came on December 5th. On this day, the Soviet counter-offensive began. It lasted 2 days, ending on December 6th. As a result, in certain sections of the front the Germans were thrown back up to 250 kilometers.

In May 1942, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive near Kharkov. The Germans inflicted a severe defeat on the Soviet troops in this battle. 2 Soviet armies were destroyed. Total losses amounted to 230 thousand people killed.

At the end of June, the German army, which again gained an advantage after the victory at Kharkov, rushed towards Stalingrad. On July 28, Rostov was captured. In September, in Stalingrad, which was practically destroyed, there were hand-to-hand battles between the sides. By November, the Germans no longer had the strength to attack. In the Battle of Stalingrad, the Germans lost about 800 thousand people killed. On November 18, the Soviet offensive began. At this point, the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945 completed its first stage; the second, offensive for the USSR, was ahead.

On January 18, 1943, the blockade of Leningrad was partially lifted. Operations to liberate Donbass began in February.

On July 5, 1943, the Germans planned to launch an offensive, but the Soviet command was aware of this action, and a few minutes before the start of hostilities, they launched a powerful preemptive artillery strike, which thwarted the German offensive. On July 12, the largest tank battle took place near Prokhorovka. In general, on this day the Germans suffered a major defeat at the Kursk Bulge. On August 5, the Soviet offensive began. The Battle of Kursk cost the Germans the lives of 500 thousand people. After this, the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945 moved to its decisive stage.

In January 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was completely lifted, and the Germans were driven back to Narva. In February, the entire territory of right-bank Ukraine was liberated. In April, the Red Army drove the Germans out of Crimea. On June 23, a strong offensive by the Soviet army began on the Belarusian front, during which all of Belarus and part of the Baltic states were liberated. In July, an offensive began on the Ukrainian front, ending with the liberation of Lvov. In August, the offensive against Chisinau began. 252 enemy divisions were destroyed here. As a result, by August 31, Soviet troops captured Bucharest. In September and October the Baltic states were completely liberated.

By April 1945, the Red Army had liberated all of Europe and was close to Berlin. On April 30, the Soviet flag was planted over the Reichstag. On May 8, a pact of unconditional surrender of Germany was signed. This was announced the next day, May 9. This ended the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945.

A few minutes later, Hitler's hordes invaded the USSR. Simultaneously with the invasion of ground forces, hundreds of enemy aircraft began to bomb airfields, naval bases, communication centers and lines, railway stations, military camps and other military installations. Many Soviet cities were subjected to massive air raids: Libau, Riga, Kaunas, Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Zhitomir, Sevastopol, etc. Enemy aircraft operated in the entire western border strip - from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea. First of all, it sought to destroy the fighter aircraft of the border military districts at the airfields. As a result of sudden air strikes, the enemy managed to knock out a significant part of the fighter aircraft, mainly new designs, which greatly facilitated the fight for fascist German aviation for air supremacy.
Thus, Hitler’s Germany, treacherously violating the non-aggression pact concluded in 1939, suddenly attacked our Motherland. Together with it, the armed forces of Finland, Romania, Italy, Slovakia, Finland, Spain, Bulgaria and Hungary began fighting against the Soviet Army. The predatory attack of Hitlerite Germany on the USSR became a fait accompli. However, those people who were not directly exposed to the first blows of the enemy and did not receive combat orders from higher headquarters did not yet believe that the war had begun. And it is no coincidence that, having received the first reports from border posts about an enemy invasion, some commanders gave instructions to the troops not to cross the border and not to open fire on enemy aircraft. But this did not last long. Soviet troops began to rapidly advance to the border to meet the invading enemy. Soon, together with the border guards, they entered into battle with the enemy.

The fighting on the ground and in the air became extremely intense. Fierce and bloody battles unfolded along the entire front. Despite the incredibly difficult situation in which Soviet soldiers, officers and generals had to fight from the very first hours of the war, they showed great courage and massive heroism.

The military-political goals of the Soviet Union in the war with Nazi Germany were defined in the directive of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated June 29, 1941. The goal of the Great Patriotic War against the fascist invaders was not only to eliminate the danger hanging over our country, but also assistance to all the peoples of Europe groaning under the yoke of German imperialism.
The situation for the Soviet Army in the first days of the war was difficult. Due to the delay in taking measures to bring the troops of the border military districts into combat readiness, our formations were not deployed in a timely manner to repel the aggressor's attack, they entered the battle separately, in parts, and as a result often suffered failures. Advancing along various routes to the front line and meeting the enemy, they fought against him in separate areas. Therefore, the defensive actions of the Soviet troops were of a focal nature. Since there was no continuous front, enemy formations, especially tank units, had the opportunity to strike on the flanks and from the rear. Under these conditions, Soviet troops had to fight surrounded and retreat to the rear lines.

The enemy occupied a significant part of the country, advanced up to 300-600 km, losing 100 thousand people killed, almost 40% of tanks and 950 aircraft. Our losses were even more horrific. Border battles and the initial period of the war (until mid-July) generally led to the defeat of the Red Army. She lost 850 thousand people killed and wounded, 9.5 thousand guns, St. 6 thousand tanks, approx. 3.5 thousand aircraft; approx. captured. 1 million people. On June 23, the Headquarters of the High Command was created (from August 8 - the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command). All power was concentrated in the State Defense Committee (GKO), created on June 30. On August 8, J.V. Stalin became the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The main military events of the summer-autumn campaign of 1941 were the Battle of Smolensk, the defense of Leningrad and the beginning of its blockade, the military disaster of Soviet troops in Ukraine, the defense of Odessa, the beginning of the defense of Sevastopol, the loss of Donbass, the defensive period of the Battle of Moscow. The Red Army retreated 850-1200 km, but the enemy was stopped in the main directions near Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov and went on the defensive. The winter campaign of 1941-42 began with a counter-offensive of Soviet troops in the western strategic direction. During it, a counteroffensive near Moscow, the Lyuban, Rzhevsko-Vyazemskaya, Barvenkovsko-Lozovskaya and Kerch-Feodosia landing operations were carried out. Soviet troops removed the threat to Moscow and the North. Caucasus, eased the situation in Leningrad, completely or partially liberated the territory of 10 regions, as well as St. 60 cities. The blitzkrieg strategy collapsed. It was destroyed approx. 50 enemy divisions.

The enemy established an occupation regime on the occupied territory of the USSR. The territories of the Byelorussian SSR, Ukrainian SSR, Estonian SSR, Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR, and 13 regions of the RSFSR were subject to German occupation. Moldova and some areas of the south of the Ukrainian SSR (Transnistria) were included in Romania, part of the Karelo-Finnish SSR was occupied by Finnish troops.
More than ten million Soviet citizens became victims of the occupiers.
As the Russian historian G. A. Bordyugov points out, in the affairs of the Extraordinary State Commission “to establish and investigate the atrocities of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices” (June 1941 - December 1944), 54,784 acts of atrocities against civilians in the occupied Soviet Union were recorded. territories. Among them are crimes such as “the use of civilians during hostilities, the forced mobilization of civilians, the shooting of civilians and the destruction of their homes, rape, the hunt for people - slaves for German industry.”

In the summer-autumn campaign of 1942, Soviet troops had an unrealistic task: to completely defeat the enemy and liberate the entire territory of the country. The main military events unfolded in the southwestern direction: the defeat of the Crimean Front, the military disaster of Soviet troops in the Kharkov operation, the Voronezh-Voroshilovgrad, Donbass, Stalingrad defensive operations, the battle in the North. Caucasus. In the northwestern direction, the Red Army carried out the Demyansk and Rzhev-Sychevsk offensive operations. The enemy advanced 500-650 km, reached the Volga, and captured part of the passes of the Main Caucasus Range. The territory was occupied, where before the war 42% of the population lived, 1/3 of the gross output was produced, and more than 45% of the sown areas were located. The economy was put on a war footing. A large number of enterprises were relocated to the eastern regions of the country (2,593 in the second half of 1941 alone, including 1,523 large ones), and 2.3 million heads of livestock were exported. In the first half of 1942, 10 thousand aircraft, 11 thousand tanks, approx. 54 thousand guns. In the 2nd half of the year their output increased by more than 1.5 times. Soviet-British agreement of July 12, 1941, Moscow Conference of representatives of the USSR, USA and Great Britain (September 29 - October 1, 1941), Declaration of 26 states of January 1, 1942 on the military alliance of countries that fought against fascism, Soviet-American agreement of June 11, 1942 formed the core of the anti-Hitler coalition.

In the winter campaign of 1942-43, the main military events were the Stalingrad and North Caucasus offensive operations and the breaking of the blockade of Leningrad. The Red Army advanced 600-700 km westward, liberating the territory of St. 480 km2, defeated 100 divisions (40% of the enemy forces on the Soviet-German front). Favorable conditions were created to complete the Allied offensive in the North. Africa, Sicily and South. Italy. In the summer-autumn campaign of 1943, the decisive event was the Battle of Kursk. The partisans played an important role (Operation Rail War). During the battle for the Dnieper, 38 thousand settlements were liberated, including 160 cities; With the capture of strategic bridgeheads on the Dnieper, conditions were created for an offensive in Belarus. In the Battle of the Dnieper, the partisans carried out Operation Concert to destroy enemy communications. The Smolensk and Bryansk offensive operations were carried out in other directions. The Red Army fought up to 500-1300 km and defeated 218 divisions. An important stage in the development of international and inter-allied relations was the Tehran Conference (November 28 - December 1, 1943).

During the winter campaign of 1943-44, the Red Army carried out an offensive in Ukraine (10 simultaneous and sequential front-line operations united by a common plan), completed the defeat of Army Group South, reached the border with Romania and transferred hostilities to its territory.

Almost simultaneously, the Leningrad-Novgorod offensive operation unfolded; Leningrad was finally released. As a result of the Crimean operation, Crimea was liberated. Soviet troops advanced westward 250-450 km and liberated approx. 300 thousand km2 of territory reached the state border with Czechoslovakia. In June 1944, the Allies opened the 2nd Front in France, which worsened the military-political situation in Germany. During the summer-autumn campaign of 1944, Soviet troops carried out the Belarusian, Lvov-Sandomierz, East Carpathian, Iasi-Kishinev, Baltic, Debrecen, East Carpathian, Belgrade, partially Budapest and Petsamo-Kirkenes offensive operations. The liberation of Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states (except for some regions of Latvia), partially of Czechoslovakia was completed, Romania and Hungary were forced to capitulate and entered the war against Germany, the Soviet Arctic and the northern regions of Norway were liberated from the occupiers. On February 4-11, 1945, the Crimean Conference of the leaders of the USSR, Great Britain and the USA took place in Yalta.

The 1945 campaign in Europe included the East Prussian, Vistula-Oder, completion of Budapest, East Pomeranian, Lower Silesian, Upper Silesian, Western Carpathian, Vienna and Berlin operations, which ended with the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. After the Berlin operation, Soviet troops, together with the 2nd army of the Polish Army, the 1st and 4th Romanian armies and the 1st Czechoslovak corps, carried out the Prague operation. On June 24, the Victory Parade took place in Moscow. At the Berlin Conference of the leaders of the three great powers, which took place in July-August, an agreement was reached on issues of post-war peace in Europe. On August 9, 1945, the USSR, fulfilling its allied obligations, began military operations against Japan.

During the Manchurian operation, Soviet troops defeated the Kwantung Army and liberated South. Sakhalin and Kuril Islands. On September 2, 1945, Japan signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender. On the Soviet-German front, 607 enemy divisions were defeated and captured, and 75% of their military equipment was destroyed. According to various sources, Wehrmacht losses ranged from 6 million to 13.7 million people. The USSR lost approx. 27 million people, including 11.3 million people at the front, 4-5 million partisans, many people died in the occupied territory and in the rear of the country. There were approx. in fascist captivity. 6 million people. Material damage amounted to 679 billion rubles. In a difficult, bloody war, the Soviet people made a decisive contribution to the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the fascist yoke. Victory Day (May 9) is celebrated annually as a national holiday and a day of remembrance for those killed.

Bordyugov G. A. The Wehrmacht and the Red Army: on the question of the nature of crimes against the civilian population. Report at the International Scientific Conference “The Experience of World Wars in the History of Russia”, September 11, 2005, Chelyabinsk.
Anfilov V.A. The beginning of the Great Patriotic War (June 22 - mid-July 1941). Military historical essay. - M.: Voenizdat, 1962.
http://cccp.narod.ru/work/enciklop/vov_01.html.

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

Eve of war. In the spring of 1941, the approach of war was felt by everyone. Soviet intelligence reported to Stalin almost daily about Hitler's plans. For example, Richard Sorge (Soviet intelligence officer in Japan) reported not only about the transfer of German troops, but also about the timing of the German attack. However, Stalin did not believe these reports, since he was confident that Hitler would not start a war with the USSR as long as England resisted. He believed that a clash with Germany could occur no earlier than the summer of 1942. Therefore, Stalin sought to use the remaining time to prepare for war with maximum benefit. On May 5, 1941, he assumed the powers of Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. He did not rule out the possibility of launching a preemptive strike on Germany.

There was a concentration of a huge number of troops on the border with Germany. At the same time, it was impossible to give the Germans a reason to accuse them of violating the non-aggression pact. Therefore, despite Germany’s obvious preparation for aggression against the USSR, Stalin only on the night of June 22 gave the order to bring the troops of the border districts to combat readiness. The troops received this directive already when German aircraft were bombing Soviet cities.

The beginning of the war. At dawn on June 22, 1941, the German army attacked Soviet soil with all its might. Thousands of artillery pieces opened fire. Aviation attacked airfields, military garrisons, communications centers, command posts of the Red Army, and the largest industrial facilities in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people began, lasting 1418 days and nights.

The country's leadership did not immediately understand what exactly had happened. Still fearing provocations from the Germans, Stalin, even in the conditions of the outbreak of war, did not want to believe what had happened. In the new directive, he ordered the troops to “defeat the enemy,” but “not to cross the state border” with Germany.

At noon on the first day of the war, the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. M. Molotov addressed the people. Calling on the Soviet people to resolutely repel the enemy, he expressed confidence that the country would defend its freedom and independence. Molotov ended his speech with the words that became the program for all the years of the war: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours.”

On the same day, the general mobilization of those liable for military service was announced, martial law was introduced in the western regions of the country, and the Northern, Northwestern, Western, Southwestern, and Southern fronts were formed. To lead them, on June 23, the Headquarters of the Main Command (later the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command) was created, which included I.V. Stalin, V.M. Molotov, S.K. Timoshenko, S.M. Budyonny, K.E. Voroshilov, B. M. Shaposhnikov and G. K. Zhukov. J.V. Stalin was appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

The war required the abandonment of a number of democratic forms of government of the country provided for by the 1936 Constitution.

On June 30, all power was concentrated in the hands of the State Defense Committee (GKO), whose chairman was Stalin. At the same time, the activities of the constitutional authorities continued.

Strengths and plans of the parties. On June 22, the two largest military forces at that time collided in mortal combat. Germany and Italy, Finland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, which acted on its side, had 190 divisions against 170 Soviet ones. The number of opposing troops on both sides was approximately equal and totaled about 6 million people. The number of guns and mortars on both sides was approximately equal (48 thousand for Germany and its allies, 47 thousand for the USSR). In terms of the number of tanks (9.2 thousand) and aircraft (8.5 thousand), the USSR surpassed Germany and its allies (4.3 thousand and 5 thousand, respectively).

Taking into account the experience of combat operations in Europe, the Barbarossa plan provided for waging a “blitzkrieg” war against the USSR in three main directions - to Leningrad (Army Group North), Moscow (Center) and Kiev (South). In a short time, with the help of mainly tank attacks, it was planned to defeat the main forces of the Red Army and reach the Arkhangelsk-Volga-Astrakhan line.

The basis of the tactics of the Red Army before the war was the concept of conducting combat operations “with little blood loss, on foreign territory.” However, the attack by Nazi armies forced these plans to be reconsidered.

Failures of the Red Army in the summer - autumn of 1941. The surprise and power of Germany's attack was so great that within three weeks Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, a significant part of Ukraine, Moldova and Estonia were occupied. The enemy advanced 350-600 km deep into Soviet land. In a short period of time, the Red Army lost more than 100 divisions (three-fifths of all troops in the western border districts). More than 20 thousand guns and mortars, 3.5 thousand aircraft (of which 1,200 were destroyed directly at airfields on the first day of the war), 6 thousand tanks, and more than half of the logistics warehouses were destroyed or captured by the enemy. The main forces of the Western Front troops were surrounded. In fact, in the first weeks of the war, all the forces of the “first echelon” of the Red Army were defeated. It seemed that the military catastrophe of the USSR was inevitable.

However, the “easy walk” for the Germans (which was what Hitler’s generals, intoxicated by victories in Western Europe, were counting on) did not work out. In the first weeks of the war, the enemy lost up to 100 thousand people in killed alone (this exceeded all the losses of Hitler’s army in previous wars), 40% of tanks, and almost 1 thousand aircraft. However, the German army continued to maintain a decisive superiority of forces.

Battle for Moscow. The stubborn resistance of the Red Army near Smolensk, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, and in other sectors of the front did not allow the Germans to carry out plans to capture Moscow by the beginning of autumn. Only after the encirclement of large forces (665 thousand people) of the Southwestern Front and the capture of Kyiv by the enemy did the Germans begin preparations for the capture of the Soviet capital. This operation was called "Typhoon". To implement it, the German command ensured a significant superiority in manpower (3-3.5 times) and equipment in the directions of the main attacks: tanks - 5-6 times, artillery - 4-5 times. The dominance of German aviation also remained overwhelming.

On September 30, 1941, the Nazis began their general offensive against Moscow. They managed not only to break through the defenses of stubbornly resisting Soviet troops, but also to encircle four armies west of Vyazma and two south of Bryansk. In these “cauldrons” 663 thousand people were captured. However, the encircled Soviet troops continued to pin down up to 20 enemy divisions. A critical situation has developed for Moscow. The fighting was already 80-100 km from the capital. To stop the advance of the Germans, the Mozhaisk defense line was hastily strengthened and reserve troops were brought up. G.K. Zhukov, who was appointed commander of the Western Front, was urgently recalled from Leningrad.

Despite all these measures, by mid-October the enemy came close to the capital. The Kremlin towers were clearly visible through German binoculars. By decision of the State Defense Committee, the evacuation of government institutions, the diplomatic corps, large industrial enterprises, and the population from Moscow began. In case of a breakthrough by the Nazis, all the most important objects of the city had to be destroyed. On October 20, a state of siege was introduced in Moscow.

With a colossal effort, unparalleled courage and heroism of the capital’s defenders, the German offensive was stopped in early November. On November 7, as before, a military parade took place on Red Square, the participants of which immediately went to the front line.

However, in mid-November the Nazi offensive resumed with renewed vigor. Only the stubborn resistance of Soviet soldiers saved the capital again. The 316th Rifle Division under the command of General I.V. Panfilov especially distinguished itself, repelling several tank attacks on the most difficult first day of the German offensive. The feat of a group of Panfilov’s men led by political instructor V. G. Klochkov, who detained more than 30 enemy tanks for a long time, became legendary. Klochkov’s words addressed to the soldiers spread throughout the country: “Russia is great, but there is nowhere to retreat: Moscow is behind us!”

By the end of November, the troops of the Western Front received significant reinforcements from the eastern regions of the country, which allowed the Soviet troops to launch a counteroffensive near Moscow on December 5-6, 1941. In the very first days of the Battle of Moscow, the cities of Kalinin, Solnechnogorsk, Klin, and Istra were liberated. In total, during the winter offensive, Soviet troops defeated 38 German divisions. The enemy was driven back 100-250 km from Moscow. This was the first major defeat of German troops during the entire Second World War.

The victory near Moscow had enormous military and political significance. She dispelled the myth of the invincibility of Hitler's army and the Nazis' hopes for a "lightning war." Japan and Türkiye finally refused to enter the war on the side of Germany. The process of creating the Anti-Hitler Coalition was accelerated.

GERMAN ADVANCE OF 1942 PREREQUISITES FOR A ROOT FRACTURE

The situation at the front in the spring of 1942. Plans of the parties. The victory near Moscow gave rise to illusions among the Soviet leadership regarding the possibility of a quick defeat of the German troops and the end of the war. In January 1942, Stalin set the Red Army the task of launching a general offensive. This task was repeated in other documents.

The only one who opposed the simultaneous offensive of Soviet troops in all three main strategic directions was G.K. Zhukov. He rightly believed that there were no prepared reserves for this. However, under pressure from Stalin, the Headquarters nevertheless decided to attack. The dispersal of already modest resources (by this time the Red Army had lost up to 6 million people killed, wounded, and prisoners) inevitably had to lead to failure.

Stalin believed that in the spring and summer of 1942 the Germans would launch a new attack on Moscow, and ordered the concentration of significant reserve forces in the western direction. Hitler, on the contrary, considered the strategic goal of the upcoming campaign to be a large-scale offensive in the southwestern direction with the goal of breaking through the defenses of the Red Army and capturing the lower Volga and the Caucasus. In order to hide their true intentions, the Germans developed a special plan to disinform the Soviet military command and political leadership, codenamed “Kremlin”. Their plan was largely successful. All this had dire consequences for the situation on the Soviet-German front in 1942.

German offensive in the summer of 1942. The beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad. By the spring of 1942, the preponderance of forces still remained on the side of the German troops. Before launching a general offensive in the southeastern direction, the Germans decided to completely capture Crimea, where the defenders of Sevastopol and the Kerch Peninsula continued to offer heroic resistance to the enemy. The May offensive of the fascists ended in tragedy: in ten days the troops of the Crimean Front were defeated. The losses of the Red Army here amounted to 176 thousand people, 347 tanks, 3476 guns and mortars, 400 aircraft. On July 4, Soviet troops were forced to abandon the city of Russian glory, Sevastopol.

In May, Soviet troops went on the offensive in the Kharkov region, but suffered a severe defeat. The troops of two armies were surrounded and destroyed. Our losses amounted to up to 230 thousand people, more than 5 thousand guns and mortars, 755 tanks. The German command once again firmly captured the strategic initiative.

At the end of June, German troops rushed to the southeast: they occupied Donbass and reached the Don. An immediate threat was created to Stalingrad. On July 24, Rostov-on-Don, the gates of the Caucasus, fell. Only now did Stalin understand the true purpose of the German summer offensive. But it was already too late to change anything. Fearing the rapid loss of the entire Soviet South, on July 28, 1942, Stalin issued order No. 227, in which, under threat of execution, he forbade troops from leaving the front line without instructions from higher command. This order went down in the history of the war under the name “Not a step back!”

In early September, street battles broke out in Stalingrad, which was completely destroyed. But the tenacity and courage of the Soviet defenders of the city on the Volga did what seemed impossible - by mid-November the offensive capabilities of the Germans had completely dried up. By this time, in the battles for Stalingrad, they had lost almost 700 thousand killed and wounded, over 1 thousand tanks and over 1.4 thousand aircraft. The Germans not only failed to occupy the city, but also went on the defensive.

Occupation regime. By the fall of 1942, German troops managed to capture most of the European territory of the USSR. A strict occupation regime was established in the cities and villages they occupied. The main goals of Germany in the war against the USSR were the destruction of the Soviet state, the transformation of the Soviet Union into an agricultural and raw materials appendage and a source of cheap labor for the “Third Reich”.

In the occupied territories, the previous governing bodies were liquidated. All power belonged to the military command of the German army. In the summer of 1941, special courts were introduced, which were given the right to impose death sentences for disobedience to the occupiers. Death camps were created for prisoners of war and those Soviet people who sabotaged the decisions of the German authorities. Everywhere the occupiers staged show executions of party and Soviet activists and members of the underground.

All citizens of the occupied territories aged 18 to 45 years were affected by labor mobilization. They had to work 14-16 hours a day. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet people were sent to forced labor in Germany.

The Ost plan, developed by the Nazis even before the war, contained a program for the “development” of Eastern Europe. According to this plan, it was planned to destroy 30 million Russians, and turn the rest into slaves and resettle them in Siberia. During the war years in the occupied territories of the USSR, the Nazis killed about 11 million people (including about 7 million civilians and about 4 million prisoners of war).

Partisan and underground movement. The threat of physical violence did not stop the Soviet people in the fight against the enemy not only at the front, but also in the rear. The Soviet underground movement emerged in the first weeks of the war. In places subject to occupation, party organs operated illegally.

During the war years, more than 6 thousand partisan detachments were formed, in which more than 1 million people fought. Representatives of most of the peoples of the USSR, as well as citizens of other countries, acted in their ranks. Soviet partisans destroyed, wounded and captured more than 1 million enemy soldiers and officers, representatives of the occupation administration, disabled more than 4 thousand tanks and armored vehicles, 65 thousand vehicles and 1,100 aircraft. They destroyed and damaged 1,600 railway bridges and derailed over 20 thousand railway trains. To coordinate the actions of the partisans, the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement was created in 1942, headed by P.K. Ponomarenko.

The underground heroes acted not only against enemy troops, but also carried out death sentences against Hitler’s executioners. The legendary intelligence officer N.I. Kuznetsov destroyed the chief judge of Ukraine Funk, the vice-governor of Galicia Bauer, and kidnapped the commander of the German punitive forces in Ukraine, General Ilgen. The General Commissioner of Belarus Cuba was blown up by underground member E. Mazanik right in bed in his own residence.

During the war years, the state awarded orders and medals to more than 184 thousand partisans and underground fighters. 249 of them were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The legendary commanders of partisan formations S.A. Kovpak and A.F. Fedorov were nominated for this award twice.

Formation of the Anti-Hitler Coalition. From the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Great Britain and the USA announced their support for the Soviet Union. Prime Minister of England W. Churchill, speaking on the radio on June 22, 1941, said: “The danger to Russia is our danger and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of every Russian fighting for his land and home is the cause of free people and free peoples in every part of the globe."

In July 1941, an agreement was signed between the USSR and Great Britain on joint actions in the war against Hitler, and in early August the US government announced economic and military-technical assistance to the Soviet Union “in the fight against armed aggression.” In September 1941, the first conference of representatives of the three powers was held in Moscow, at which issues of expanding military-technical assistance from Great Britain and the United States to the Soviet Union were discussed. After the United States entered the war against Japan and Germany (December 1941), its military cooperation with the USSR expanded even more.

On January 1, 1942, in Washington, representatives of 26 states signed a declaration in which they pledged to use all their resources to fight the common enemy and not conclude a separate peace. The agreement on the alliance between the USSR and Great Britain signed in May 1942 and the agreement on mutual assistance with the United States in June finally formalized the military alliance of the three countries.

Results of the first period of the war. The first period of the Great Patriotic War, which lasted from June 22, 1941 to November 18, 1942 (before the Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive at Stalingrad), was of great historical significance. The Soviet Union withstood a military blow of such force that no other country could have withstood at that time.

The courage and heroism of the Soviet people thwarted Hitler's plans for a "lightning war." Despite heavy defeats during the first year of the fight against Germany and its allies, the Red Army showed its high fighting qualities. By the summer of 1942, the transition of the country's economy to a war footing was basically completed, which laid the main precondition for a radical change in the course of the war. At this stage, the Anti-Hitler Coalition took shape, possessing enormous military, economic and human resources.

What you need to know about this topic:

Socio-economic and political development of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Nicholas II.

Internal policy of tsarism. Nicholas II. Increased repression. "Police Socialism"

Russo-Japanese War. Reasons, progress, results.

Revolution 1905 - 1907 Character, driving forces and features of the Russian revolution of 1905-1907. stages of the revolution. The reasons for the defeat and the significance of the revolution.

Elections to the State Duma. I State Duma. The agrarian question in the Duma. Dispersal of the Duma. II State Duma. Coup d'etat of June 3, 1907

Third June political system. Electoral law June 3, 1907 III State Duma. The alignment of political forces in the Duma. Activities of the Duma. Government terror. Decline of the labor movement in 1907-1910.

Stolypin agrarian reform.

IV State Duma. Party composition and Duma factions. Activities of the Duma.

Political crisis in Russia on the eve of the war. Labor movement in the summer of 1914. Crisis at the top.

International position of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.

The beginning of the First World War. Origin and nature of the war. Russia's entry into the war. Attitude to the war of parties and classes.

Progress of military operations. Strategic forces and plans of the parties. Results of the war. The role of the Eastern Front in the First World War.

The Russian economy during the First World War.

Worker and peasant movement in 1915-1916. Revolutionary movement in the army and navy. The growth of anti-war sentiment. Formation of the bourgeois opposition.

Russian culture of the 19th - early 20th centuries.

The aggravation of socio-political contradictions in the country in January-February 1917. The beginning, prerequisites and nature of the revolution. Uprising in Petrograd. Formation of the Petrograd Soviet. Temporary Committee of the State Duma. Order N I. Formation of the Provisional Government. Abdication of Nicholas II. The reasons for the emergence of dual power and its essence. The February revolution in Moscow, at the front, in the provinces.

From February to October. The policy of the Provisional Government regarding war and peace, on agrarian, national, and labor issues. Relations between the Provisional Government and the Soviets. Arrival of V.I. Lenin in Petrograd.

Political parties (Kadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks): political programs, influence among the masses.

Crises of the Provisional Government. Attempted military coup in the country. The growth of revolutionary sentiment among the masses. Bolshevization of the capital's Soviets.

Preparation and conduct of an armed uprising in Petrograd.

II All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Decisions about power, peace, land. Formation of government and management bodies. Composition of the first Soviet government.

Victory of the armed uprising in Moscow. Government agreement with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Elections to the Constituent Assembly, its convocation and dispersal.

The first socio-economic transformations in the fields of industry, agriculture, finance, labor and women's issues. Church and State.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, its terms and significance.

Economic tasks of the Soviet government in the spring of 1918. Aggravation of the food issue. Introduction of food dictatorship. Working food detachments. Combeds.

The revolt of the left Socialist Revolutionaries and the collapse of the two-party system in Russia.

The first Soviet Constitution.

Causes of intervention and civil war. Progress of military operations. Human and material losses during the civil war and military intervention.

Domestic policy of the Soviet leadership during the war. "War communism". GOELRO plan.

The policy of the new government regarding culture.

Foreign policy. Treaties with border countries. Russia's participation in the Genoa, Hague, Moscow and Lausanne conferences. Diplomatic recognition of the USSR by the main capitalist countries.

Domestic policy. Socio-economic and political crisis of the early 20s. Famine 1921-1922 Transition to a new economic policy. The essence of NEP. NEP in the field of agriculture, trade, industry. Financial reform. Economic recovery. Crises during the NEP period and its collapse.

Projects for the creation of the USSR. I Congress of Soviets of the USSR. The first government and the Constitution of the USSR.

Illness and death of V.I. Lenin. Intra-party struggle. The beginning of the formation of Stalin's regime.

Industrialization and collectivization. Development and implementation of the first five-year plans. Socialist competition - goal, forms, leaders.

Formation and strengthening of the state system of economic management.

The course towards complete collectivization. Dispossession.

Results of industrialization and collectivization.

Political, national-state development in the 30s. Intra-party struggle. Political repression. Formation of the nomenklatura as a layer of managers. Stalin's regime and the USSR Constitution of 1936

Soviet culture in the 20-30s.

Foreign policy of the second half of the 20s - mid-30s.

Domestic policy. Growth of military production. Emergency measures in the field of labor legislation. Measures to solve the grain problem. Armed forces. The growth of the Red Army. Military reform. Repressions against the command cadres of the Red Army and the Red Army.

Foreign policy. Non-aggression pact and treaty of friendship and borders between the USSR and Germany. The entry of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus into the USSR. Soviet-Finnish war. Inclusion of the Baltic republics and other territories into the USSR.

Periodization of the Great Patriotic War. The initial stage of the war. Turning the country into a military camp. Military defeats 1941-1942 and their reasons. Major military events. Surrender of Nazi Germany. Participation of the USSR in the war with Japan.

Soviet rear during the war.

Deportation of peoples.

Guerrilla warfare.

Human and material losses during the war.

Creation of an anti-Hitler coalition. Declaration of the United Nations. The problem of the second front. "Big Three" conferences. Problems of post-war peace settlement and comprehensive cooperation. USSR and UN.

The beginning of the Cold War. The USSR's contribution to the creation of the "socialist camp". CMEA education.

Domestic policy of the USSR in the mid-40s - early 50s. Restoration of the national economy.

Social and political life. Policy in the field of science and culture. Continued repression. "Leningrad affair". Campaign against cosmopolitanism. "The Doctors' Case"

Socio-economic development of Soviet society in the mid-50s - the first half of the 60s.

Socio-political development: XX Congress of the CPSU and condemnation of Stalin’s personality cult. Rehabilitation of victims of repression and deportation. Internal party struggle in the second half of the 50s.

Foreign policy: creation of the Department of Internal Affairs. Entry of Soviet troops into Hungary. Exacerbation of Soviet-Chinese relations. Split of the "socialist camp". Soviet-American relations and the Cuban missile crisis. USSR and "third world" countries. Reduction in the size of the armed forces of the USSR. Moscow Treaty on the Limitation of Nuclear Tests.

USSR in the mid-60s - first half of the 80s.

Socio-economic development: economic reform of 1965

Increasing difficulties in economic development. Declining rates of socio-economic growth.

Constitution of the USSR 1977

Social and political life of the USSR in the 1970s - early 1980s.

Foreign policy: Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Consolidation of post-war borders in Europe. Moscow Treaty with Germany. Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Soviet-American treaties of the 70s. Soviet-Chinese relations. Entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Exacerbation of international tension and the USSR. Strengthening Soviet-American confrontation in the early 80s.

USSR in 1985-1991

Domestic policy: an attempt to accelerate the socio-economic development of the country. An attempt to reform the political system of Soviet society. Congresses of People's Deputies. Election of the President of the USSR. Multi-party system. Exacerbation of the political crisis.

Exacerbation of the national question. Attempts to reform the national-state structure of the USSR. Declaration of State Sovereignty of the RSFSR. "Novoogaryovsky trial". Collapse of the USSR.

Foreign policy: Soviet-American relations and the problem of disarmament. Agreements with leading capitalist countries. Withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Changing relations with the countries of the socialist community. Collapse of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact Organization.

Russian Federation in 1992-2000.

Domestic policy: “Shock therapy” in the economy: price liberalization, stages of privatization of commercial and industrial enterprises. Fall in production. Increased social tension. Growth and slowdown in financial inflation. Intensification of the struggle between the executive and legislative branches. Dissolution of the Supreme Council and the Congress of People's Deputies. October events of 1993. Abolition of local bodies of Soviet power. Elections to the Federal Assembly. Constitution of the Russian Federation 1993 Formation of a presidential republic. Exacerbation and overcoming national conflicts in the North Caucasus.

Parliamentary elections of 1995. Presidential elections of 1996. Power and opposition. An attempt to return to the course of liberal reforms (spring 1997) and its failure. Financial crisis of August 1998: causes, economic and political consequences. "Second Chechen War". Parliamentary elections of 1999 and early presidential elections of 2000. Foreign policy: Russia in the CIS. Participation of Russian troops in “hot spots” of the neighboring countries: Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan. Relations between Russia and foreign countries. Withdrawal of Russian troops from Europe and neighboring countries. Russian-American agreements. Russia and NATO. Russia and the Council of Europe. Yugoslav crises (1999-2000) and Russia’s position.

• Danilov A.A., Kosulina L.G. History of the state and peoples of Russia. XX century.

We have collected for you the best stories about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. First-person stories, not made up, living memories of front-line soldiers and witnesses of the war.

A story about the war from the book of priest Alexander Dyachenko “Overcoming”

I was not always old and frail, I lived in a Belarusian village, I had a family, a very good husband. But the Germans came, my husband, like other men, joined the partisans, he was their commander. We women supported our men in any way we could. The Germans became aware of this. They arrived in the village early in the morning. They kicked everyone out of their houses and drove them like cattle to the station in a neighboring town. The carriages were already waiting for us there. People were packed into the heated vehicles so that we could only stand. We drove with stops for two days, they gave us no water or food. When we were finally unloaded from the carriages, some were no longer able to move. Then the guards began throwing them to the ground and finishing them off with the butts of their carbines. And then they showed us the direction to the gate and said: “Run.” As soon as we had run half the distance, the dogs were released. The strongest reached the gate. Then the dogs were driven away, everyone who remained was lined up in a column and led through the gate, on which it was written in German: “To each his own.” Since then, boy, I can't look at tall chimneys.

She exposed her arm and showed me a tattoo of a row of numbers on the inside of her arm, closer to the elbow. I knew it was a tattoo, my dad had a tank tattooed on his chest because he is a tanker, but why put numbers on it?

I remember that she also talked about how our tankers liberated them and how lucky she was to live to see this day. She didn’t tell me anything about the camp itself and what was happening in it; she probably pitied my childish head.

I learned about Auschwitz only later. I found out and understood why my neighbor couldn’t look at the pipes of our boiler room.

During the war, my father also ended up in occupied territory. They got it from the Germans, oh, how they got it. And when ours drove a little, they, realizing that the grown-up boys were tomorrow’s soldiers, decided to shoot them. They gathered everyone and took them to the log, and then our airplane saw a crowd of people and started a line nearby. The Germans are on the ground, and the boys are scattered. My dad was lucky, he escaped with a shot in his hand, but he escaped. Not everyone was lucky then.

My father was a tank driver in Germany. Their tank brigade distinguished itself near Berlin on the Seelow Heights. I've seen photos of these guys. Young people, and all their chests are in orders, several people - . Many, like my dad, were drafted into the active army from occupied lands, and many had something to take revenge on the Germans for. That may be why they fought so desperately and bravely.

They walked across Europe, liberated concentration camp prisoners and beat the enemy, finishing them off mercilessly. “We were eager to go to Germany itself, we dreamed of how we would smear it with the caterpillar tracks of our tanks. We had a special unit, even the uniform was black. We still laughed, as if they wouldn’t confuse us with the SS men.”

Immediately after the end of the war, my father’s brigade was stationed in one of the small German towns. Or rather, in the ruins that remained of it. They somehow settled down in the basements of the buildings, but there was no room for a dining room. And the brigade commander, a young colonel, ordered the tables to be knocked down from shields and a temporary canteen to be set up right in the town square.

“And here is our first peaceful dinner. Field kitchens, cooks, everything is as usual, but the soldiers do not sit on the ground or on a tank, but, as expected, at tables. We had just started having lunch, and suddenly German children began crawling out of all these ruins, basements, and crevices like cockroaches. Some are standing, but others can no longer stand from hunger. They stand and look at us like dogs. And I don’t know how it happened, but I took the bread with my shot hand and put it in my pocket, I looked quietly, and all our guys, without raising their eyes to each other, did the same.”

And then they fed the German children, gave away everything that could somehow be hidden from dinner, just yesterday’s children themselves, who very recently, without flinching, were raped, burned, shot by the fathers of these German children on our land they had captured.

The brigade commander, Hero of the Soviet Union, a Jew by nationality, whose parents, like all other Jews of a small Belarusian town, were buried alive by the punitive forces, had every right, both moral and military, to drive away the German “geeks” from his tank crews with volleys. They ate his soldiers, reduced their combat effectiveness, many of these children were also sick and could spread the infection among the personnel.

But the colonel, instead of shooting, ordered an increase in the food consumption rate. And German children, on the orders of the Jew, were fed along with his soldiers.

What kind of phenomenon do you think this is - the Russian Soldier? Where does this mercy come from? Why didn't they take revenge? It seems beyond anyone’s strength to find out that all your relatives were buried alive, perhaps by the fathers of these same children, to see concentration camps with many bodies of tortured people. And instead of “taking it easy” on the children and wives of the enemy, they, on the contrary, saved them, fed them, and treated them.

Several years have passed since the events described, and my dad, having graduated from military school in the fifties, again served in Germany, but as an officer. Once on the street of one city a young German called out to him. He ran up to my father, grabbed his hand and asked:

Don't you recognize me? Yes, of course, now it’s hard to recognize that hungry, ragged boy in me. But I remember you, how you fed us then among the ruins. Believe me, we will never forget this.

This is how we made friends in the West, by force of arms and the all-conquering power of Christian love.

Alive. We'll endure it. We will win.

THE TRUTH ABOUT WAR

It should be noted that not everyone was convincingly impressed by V. M. Molotov’s speech on the first day of the war, and the final phrase caused irony among some soldiers. When we, doctors, asked them how things were at the front, and we lived only for this, we often heard the answer: “We are scuttling. Victory is ours... that is, the Germans!”

I can’t say that J.V. Stalin’s speech had a positive effect on everyone, although most of them felt warm from it. But in the darkness of a long line for water in the basement of the house where the Yakovlevs lived, I once heard: “Here! They became brothers and sisters! I forgot how I went to jail for being late. The rat squeaked when the tail was pressed!” The people were silent at the same time. I have heard similar statements more than once.

Two other factors contributed to the rise of patriotism. Firstly, these are the atrocities of the fascists on our territory. Newspaper reports that in Katyn near Smolensk the Germans shot tens of thousands of Poles we had captured, and that it was not us during the retreat, as the Germans assured, that were perceived without malice. Anything could have happened. “We couldn’t leave them to the Germans,” some reasoned. But the population could not forgive the murder of our people.

In February 1942, my senior operating nurse A.P. Pavlova received a letter from the liberated banks of the Seliger River, which told how, after the explosion of a hand fan in the German headquarters hut, they hanged almost all the men, including Pavlova’s brother. They hung him on a birch tree near his native hut, and he hung for almost two months in front of his wife and three children. The mood of the entire hospital from this news became menacing for the Germans: both the staff and the wounded soldiers loved Pavlova... I ensured that the original letter was read in all the wards, and Pavlova’s face, yellowed from tears, was in the dressing room before everyone’s eyes...

The second thing that made everyone happy was the reconciliation with the church. The Orthodox Church showed true patriotism in its preparations for the war, and it was appreciated. Government awards showered on the patriarch and clergy. These funds were used to create air squadrons and tank divisions with the names “Alexander Nevsky” and “Dmitry Donskoy”. They showed a film where a priest with the chairman of the district executive committee, a partisan, destroys atrocious fascists. The film ended with the old bell ringer climbing the bell tower and ringing the alarm, crossing himself widely before doing so. It sounded directly: “Fall yourself with the sign of the cross, Russian people!” The wounded spectators and the staff had tears in their eyes when the lights came on.

On the contrary, the huge money contributed by the chairman of the collective farm, it seems, Ferapont Golovaty, caused evil smiles. “Look how I stole from the hungry collective farmers,” said the wounded peasants.

The activities of the fifth column, that is, internal enemies, also caused enormous indignation among the population. I myself saw how many of them there were: German planes were even signaled from the windows with multi-colored flares. In November 1941, at the Neurosurgical Institute hospital, they signaled from the window in Morse code. The doctor on duty, Malm, a completely drunken and declassed man, said that the alarm was coming from the window of the operating room where my wife was on duty. The head of the hospital, Bondarchuk, said at the morning five-minute meeting that he vouched for Kudrina, and two days later the signalmen were taken, and Malm himself disappeared forever.

My violin teacher Yu. A. Aleksandrov, a communist, although a secretly religious, consumptive man, worked as the fire chief of the House of the Red Army on the corner of Liteiny and Kirovskaya. He was chasing the rocket launcher, obviously an employee of the House of the Red Army, but could not see him in the darkness and did not catch up, but he threw the rocket launcher at Alexandrov’s feet.

Life at the institute gradually improved. The central heating began to work better, the electric light became almost constant, and water appeared in the water supply. We went to the movies. Films such as “Two Fighters”, “Once Upon a Time There Was a Girl” and others were watched with undisguised feeling.

For “Two Fighters,” the nurse was able to get tickets to the “October” cinema for a show later than we expected. Arriving at the next show, we learned that a shell hit the courtyard of this cinema, where visitors to the previous show were being released, and many were killed and wounded.

The summer of 1942 passed through the hearts of ordinary people very sadly. The encirclement and defeat of our troops near Kharkov, which greatly increased the number of our prisoners in Germany, brought great despondency to everyone. The new German offensive to the Volga, to Stalingrad, was very difficult for everyone. The mortality rate of the population, especially increased in the spring months, despite some improvement in nutrition, as a result of dystrophy, as well as the death of people from air bombs and artillery shelling, was felt by everyone.

My wife’s food cards and hers were stolen in mid-May, which made us very hungry again. And we had to prepare for winter.

We not only cultivated and planted vegetable gardens in Rybatskoe and Murzinka, but received a fair strip of land in the garden near the Winter Palace, which was given to our hospital. It was excellent land. Other Leningraders cultivated other gardens, squares, and the Field of Mars. We even planted about two dozen potato eyes with an adjacent piece of husk, as well as cabbage, rutabaga, carrots, onion seedlings, and especially a lot of turnips. They planted them wherever there was a piece of land.

The wife, fearing a lack of protein food, collected slugs from vegetables and pickled them in two large jars. However, they were not useful, and in the spring of 1943 they were thrown away.

The ensuing winter of 1942/43 was mild. Transport no longer stopped; all wooden houses on the outskirts of Leningrad, including houses in Murzinka, were demolished for fuel and stocked up for the winter. There was electric light in the rooms. Soon the scientists were given special letter rations. As a candidate of science, I was given a group B ration. It included monthly 2 kg of sugar, 2 kg of cereal, 2 kg of meat, 2 kg of flour, 0.5 kg of butter and 10 packs of Belomorkanal cigarettes. It was luxurious and it saved us.

My fainting stopped. I even easily stayed on duty all night with my wife, guarding the vegetable garden near the Winter Palace in turns, three times during the summer. However, despite the security, every single head of cabbage was stolen.

Art was of great importance. We began to read more, go to the cinema more often, watch film programs in the hospital, go to amateur concerts and artists who came to us. Once my wife and I were at a concert of D. Oistrakh and L. Oborin who came to Leningrad. When D. Oistrakh played and L. Oborin accompanied, it was a little cold in the hall. Suddenly a voice said quietly: “Air raid, air alert! Those who wish can go down to the bomb shelter!” In the crowded hall, no one moved, Oistrakh smiled gratefully and understandingly at us all with one eye and continued to play, without stumbling for a moment. Although the explosions shook my legs and I could hear their sounds and the barking of anti-aircraft guns, the music absorbed everything. Since then, these two musicians have become my biggest favorites and fighting friends without knowing each other.

By the autumn of 1942, Leningrad was greatly deserted, which also facilitated its supply. By the time the blockade began, up to 7 million cards were issued in a city overcrowded with refugees. In the spring of 1942, only 900 thousand were issued.

Many were evacuated, including part of the 2nd Medical Institute. The rest of the universities have all left. But they still believe that about two million were able to leave Leningrad along the Road of Life. So about four million died (According to official data, about 600 thousand people died in besieged Leningrad, according to others - about 1 million. - ed.) a figure significantly higher than the official one. Not all the dead ended up in the cemetery. The huge ditch between the Saratov colony and the forest leading to Koltushi and Vsevolozhskaya took in hundreds of thousands of dead people and was razed to the ground. Now there is a suburban vegetable garden there, and there are no traces left. But the rustling tops and cheerful voices of those harvesting the harvest are no less happiness for the dead than the mournful music of the Piskarevsky cemetery.

A little about children. Their fate was terrible. They gave almost nothing on children's cards. I remember two cases especially vividly.

During the harshest part of the winter of 1941/42, I walked from Bekhterevka to Pestel Street to my hospital. My swollen legs almost couldn’t walk, my head was spinning, each careful step pursued one goal: to move forward without falling. On Staronevsky I wanted to go to a bakery to buy two of our cards and warm up at least a little. The frost penetrated to the bones. I stood in line and noticed that a boy of seven or eight years old was standing near the counter. He bent down and seemed to shrink all over. Suddenly he snatched a piece of bread from the woman who had just received it, fell, huddled in a ball with his back up, like a hedgehog, and began greedily tearing the bread with his teeth. The woman who had lost her bread screamed wildly: probably a hungry family was impatiently waiting for her at home. The queue got mixed up. Many rushed to beat and trample the boy, who continued to eat, his quilted jacket and hat protecting him. "Man! If only you could help,” someone shouted to me, obviously because I was the only man in the bakery. I started shaking and felt very dizzy. “You are beasts, beasts,” I wheezed and, staggering, went out into the cold. I couldn't save the child. A slight push would have been enough, and the angry people would certainly have mistaken me for an accomplice, and I would have fallen.

Yes, I'm a layman. I didn't rush to save this boy. “Don’t turn into a werewolf, a beast,” our beloved Olga Berggolts wrote these days. Wonderful woman! She helped many to endure the blockade and preserved the necessary humanity in us.

On their behalf I will send a telegram abroad:

“Alive. We'll endure it. We will win."

But my unwillingness to share the fate of a beaten child forever remained a notch on my conscience...

The second incident happened later. We had just received, but for the second time, a standard ration and my wife and I carried it along Liteiny, heading home. The snowdrifts were quite high in the second winter of the blockade. Almost opposite the house of N.A. Nekrasov, from where he admired the front entrance, clinging to the lattice immersed in the snow, a child of four or five years old was walking. He could hardly move his legs, his huge eyes on his withered old face peered with horror at the world around him. His legs were tangled. Tamara pulled out a large, double piece of sugar and handed it to him. At first he didn’t understand and shrank all over, and then suddenly grabbed this sugar with a jerk, pressed it to his chest and froze with fear that everything that had happened was either a dream or not true... We moved on. Well, what more could the barely wandering ordinary people do?

BREAKING THE BLOCKADE

All Leningraders talked every day about breaking the blockade, about the upcoming victory, peaceful life and restoration of the country, the second front, that is, about the active inclusion of the allies in the war. However, there was little hope for allies. “The plan has already been drawn up, but there are no Roosevelts,” the Leningraders joked. They also remembered the Indian wisdom: “I have three friends: the first is my friend, the second is the friend of my friend and the third is the enemy of my enemy.” Everyone believed that the third degree of friendship was the only thing that united us with our allies. (This is how it turned out, by the way: the second front appeared only when it became clear that we could liberate all of Europe alone.)

Rarely did anyone talk about other outcomes. There were people who believed that Leningrad should become a free city after the war. But everyone immediately cut them off, remembering “Window to Europe”, and “The Bronze Horseman”, and the historical significance for Russia of access to the Baltic Sea. But they talked about breaking the blockade every day and everywhere: at work, on duty on the roofs, when they were “fighting off airplanes with shovels,” extinguishing lighters, while eating meager food, going to bed in a cold bed, and during unwise self-care in those days. We waited and hoped. Long and hard. They talked about Fedyuninsky and his mustache, then about Kulik, then about Meretskov.

The draft commissions took almost everyone to the front. I was sent there from the hospital. I remember that I gave liberation to only the two-armed man, being surprised at the wonderful prosthetics that hid his handicap. “Don’t be afraid, take those with stomach ulcers or tuberculosis. After all, they will all have to be at the front for no more than a week. If they don’t kill them, they will wound them, and they will end up in the hospital,” the military commissar of the Dzerzhinsky district told us.

And indeed, the war involved a lot of blood. When trying to get in touch with the mainland, piles of bodies were left under Krasny Bor, especially along the embankments. “Nevsky Piglet” and Sinyavinsky swamps never left the lips. Leningraders fought furiously. Everyone knew that behind his back his own family was dying of hunger. But all attempts to break the blockade did not lead to success; only our hospitals were filled with the crippled and dying.

With horror we learned about the death of an entire army and Vlasov’s betrayal. I had to believe this. After all, when they read to us about Pavlov and other executed generals of the Western Front, no one believed that they were traitors and “enemies of the people,” as we were convinced of this. They remembered that the same was said about Yakir, Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, even about Blucher.

The summer campaign of 1942 began, as I wrote, extremely unsuccessfully and depressingly, but already in the fall they began to talk a lot about our tenacity at Stalingrad. The fighting dragged on, winter was approaching, and in it we relied on our Russian strength and Russian endurance. The good news about the counteroffensive at Stalingrad, the encirclement of Paulus with his 6th Army, and Manstein’s failures in trying to break through this encirclement gave the Leningraders new hope on New Year’s Eve 1943.

I celebrated the New Year with my wife alone, having returned around 11 o’clock to the closet where we lived at the hospital, from a tour of evacuation hospitals. There was a glass of diluted alcohol, two slices of lard, a 200 gram piece of bread and hot tea with a lump of sugar! A whole feast!

Events were not long in coming. Almost all of the wounded were discharged: some were commissioned, some were sent to convalescent battalions, some were taken to the mainland. But we didn’t wander around the empty hospital for long after the bustle of unloading it. Fresh wounded came in a stream straight from the positions, dirty, often bandaged in individual bags over their overcoats, and bleeding. We were a medical battalion, a field hospital, and a front-line hospital. Some went to the triage, others went to the operating tables for continuous operation. There was no time to eat, and there was no time to eat.

This was not the first time such streams came to us, but this one was too painful and tiring. All the time, a difficult combination of physical work with mental, moral human experiences with the precision of the dry work of a surgeon was required.

On the third day, the men could no longer stand it. They were given 100 grams of diluted alcohol and sent to sleep for three hours, although the emergency room was filled with wounded people in need of urgent operations. Otherwise, they began to operate poorly, half asleep. Well done women! Not only did they endure the hardships of the siege many times better than men, they died much less often from dystrophy, but they also worked without complaining of fatigue and accurately fulfilled their duties.

In our operating room, operations were performed on three tables: at each table there was a doctor and a nurse, and on all three tables there was another nurse, replacing the operating room. Staff operating room and dressing nurses, every one of them, assisted in the operations. The habit of working many nights in a row in Bekhterevka, the hospital named after. On October 25, she helped me out in the ambulance. I passed this test, I can proudly say, as a woman.

On the night of January 18, they brought us a wounded woman. On this day, her husband was killed, and she was seriously wounded in the brain, in the left temporal lobe. A fragment with fragments of bones penetrated into the depths, completely paralyzing both of her right limbs and depriving her of the ability to speak, but while maintaining the understanding of someone else's speech. Women fighters came to us, but not often. I took her to my table, laid her on her right, paralyzed side, numbed her skin and very successfully removed the metal fragment and bone fragments embedded in the brain. “My dear,” I said, finishing the operation and preparing for the next one, “everything will be fine. I took out the fragment, and your speech will return, and the paralysis will completely disappear. You will make a full recovery!”

Suddenly my wounded one with her free hand lying on top began to beckon me to her. I knew that she would not start talking any time soon, and I thought that she would whisper something to me, although it seemed incredible. And suddenly the wounded woman, with her healthy naked but strong hand of a fighter, grabbed my neck, pressed my face to her lips and kissed me deeply. I couldn't stand it. I didn’t sleep for four days, barely ate, and only occasionally, holding a cigarette with a forceps, smoked. Everything went hazy in my head, and, like a man possessed, I ran out into the corridor to come to my senses at least for one minute. After all, there is a terrible injustice in the fact that women, who continue the family line and soften the morals of humanity, are also killed. And at that moment our loudspeaker spoke, announcing the breaking of the blockade and the connection of the Leningrad Front with the Volkhov Front.

It was deep night, but what started here! I stood bleeding after the operation, completely stunned by what I had experienced and heard, and nurses, nurses, soldiers were running towards me... Some with their arm on an “airplane”, that is, on a splint that abducts the bent arm, some on crutches, some still bleeding through a recently applied bandage . And then the endless kisses began. Everyone kissed me, despite my frightening appearance from the spilled blood. And I stood there, missing 15 minutes of precious time for operating on other wounded in need, enduring these countless hugs and kisses.

A story about the Great Patriotic War by a front-line soldier

1 year ago on this day, a war began that divided the history of not only our country, but the whole world into before And after. The story is told by Mark Pavlovich Ivanikhin, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, Chairman of the Council of War Veterans, Labor Veterans, Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies of the Eastern Administrative District.

– – this is the day when our lives were broken in half. It was a nice, bright Sunday, and suddenly they announced war, the first bombings. Everyone understood that they would have to endure a lot, 280 divisions went to our country. I have a military family, my father was a lieutenant colonel. A car immediately came for him, he took his “alarm” suitcase (this is a suitcase in which the most necessary things were always ready), and we went to the school together, me as a cadet, and my father as a teacher.

Immediately everything changed, it became clear to everyone that this war would last for a long time. Alarming news plunged us into another life; they said that the Germans were constantly moving forward. This day was clear and sunny, and in the evening mobilization had already begun.

These are my memories as an 18-year-old boy. My father was 43 years old, he worked as a senior teacher at the first Moscow Artillery School named after Krasin, where I also studied. This was the first school that graduated officers who fought on Katyushas into the war. I fought on Katyushas throughout the war.

“Young, inexperienced guys walked under bullets. Was it certain death?

– We still knew how to do a lot. Back in school, we all had to pass the standard for the GTO badge (ready for work and defense). They trained almost like in the army: they had to run, crawl, swim, and also learned how to bandage wounds, apply splints for fractures, and so on. At least we were a little ready to defend our Motherland.

I fought at the front from October 6, 1941 to April 1945. I took part in the battles for Stalingrad, and from the Kursk Bulge through Ukraine and Poland I reached Berlin.

War is a terrible experience. It is a constant death that is near you and threatens you. Shells are exploding at your feet, enemy tanks are coming at you, flocks of German planes are aiming at you from above, artillery is firing. It seems like the earth turns into a small place where you have nowhere to go.

I was a commander, I had 60 people subordinate to me. We must answer for all these people. And, despite the planes and tanks that are looking for your death, you need to control yourself and the soldiers, sergeants and officers. This is difficult to do.

I can’t forget the Majdanek concentration camp. We liberated this death camp and saw emaciated people: skin and bones. And I especially remember the children with their hands cut open; their blood was taken all the time. We saw bags of human scalps. We saw torture and experiment chambers. To be honest, this caused hatred towards the enemy.

I also remember that we entered a recaptured village, saw a church, and the Germans had set up a stable in it. I had soldiers from all the cities of the Soviet Union, even from Siberia; many had fathers who died in the war. And these guys said: “We’ll get to Germany, we’ll kill the Kraut families, and we’ll burn their houses.” And so we entered the first German city, the soldiers burst into the house of a German pilot, saw Frau and four small children. Do you think someone touched them? None of the soldiers did anything bad to them. Russian people are quick-witted.

All the German cities we passed through remained intact, with the exception of Berlin, where there was strong resistance.

I have four orders. Order of Alexander Nevsky, which he received for Berlin; Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, two Orders of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree. Also a medal for military merit, a medal for the victory over Germany, for the defense of Moscow, for the defense of Stalingrad, for the liberation of Warsaw and for the capture of Berlin. These are the main medals, and there are about fifty of them in total. All of us who survived the war years want one thing - peace. And so that the people who won are valuable.

Photo by Yulia Makoveychuk

The war of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics against Nazi Germany and its European allies (Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Spain) 1941-1945, with horrific consequences, swept across the world, devastatingly across Europe. offers to go into the history of that time in detail...

The Great Patriotic War began on June 22, 1941. According to the Barbarossa plan, the military forces were divided into three main army groups: North, Center, South.

On the basis of border districts the following were created:

1) Northern Front (M. M. Popov);

3) Northwestern Front (F.I. Kuznetsov);

4) Western Front (D. G. Pavlov);

5) Southwestern Front (M. P. Kirpson);

6) Southern Front (I.V. Tyulenev).

The basis of the German plan was lightning war - blitzkrieg. According to this plan, by the winter of 1941 it was planned to reach the Arkhangelsk-Volga-Astrakhan line. The course of the Great Patriotic War can be divided into 4 main stages:

1) the first stage - the beginning of the war, November 1941 - is characterized by the retreat of the Red Army. The strategic initiative was in the hands of the German command (the Germans occupied the Baltic states, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, blocked Leningrad and approached Moscow);

2) the second stage (December 1941 - November 1942) - an unstable balance of forces. In May 1942, German troops launched a counteroffensive and, according to the new strategic plan, in the summer of 1942 they reached the Caucasus and Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad (July 17 - November 18) ended with the encirclement of over 330 thousand enemy troops;

3) the third period of the Great Patriotic War (December 19, 1942 - December 31, 1943) - the transition of strategic initiative to the Soviet Union.

During the Battle of Kursk (July-August 1943), the Wehrmacht lost over 500 thousand people, 3 thousand guns, 1.5 thousand tanks, over 3.7 thousand aircraft, which meant the collapse of the German offensive strategy. After the victory at Kursk, a powerful offensive of the Red Army began on a front stretching up to 2 thousand km;

4) fourth period (1944 - May 9, 1945) - in January 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was completely lifted. During Operation Bagration, which began on June 23, most of Belarus was liberated. Successful actions in Poland allowed Soviet troops to enter German territory by January 29, 1945.

The final operation of the Great Patriotic War was the capture of Berlin. On May 8, 1945, an act of unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany was signed. Prague was liberated on May 9.

By September 1, 1940, three army groups (a total of 181 divisions, including 19 tank and 14 motorized, and 18 brigades), supported by three air fleets, were concentrated and deployed near the borders of Prussia. In the zone from Goldap to Memel on a 230 km front, Army Group North (29 German divisions with the support of the 1st Air Fleet) was located under the command of Field Marshal W. Leeb. Its divisions were united into the 16th and 18th armies, as well as the 4th tank group. By a directive dated January 31, 1941, she was tasked with “destroying enemy forces operating in the Baltic States and seizing ports on the Baltic Sea, including Leningrad and Kronstadt, depriving the Russian fleet of its support bases.” In the Baltic, to support Army Group North and actions against the Baltic Fleet, the German command allocated about 100 ships, including 28 torpedo boats, 10 minelayers, 5 submarines, patrol ships and minesweepers.

To the south, in the zone from Gołdap to Włodawa on a 500 km front, Army Group Center (50 German divisions and 2 German brigades supported by the 2nd Air Fleet) was located under the command of Field Marshal F. Bock. The divisions and brigades were united into the 9th and 4th field armies, as well as the 2nd and 3rd tank groups. The task of the group was: “Advancing with large forces on the flanks, defeat the enemy troops in Belarus. Then, by concentrating mobile formations advancing south and north of Minsk, it is possible to quickly reach the Smolensk region and thereby create the preconditions for the interaction of large tank and motorized forces with Army Group North in order to destroy enemy troops operating in the Baltic states and the Leningrad region.”

In the zone from Polesie to the Black Sea, on a front length of 1300 km, Army Group “South” was deployed (44 German, 13 Romanian divisions, 9 Romanian and 4 Hungarian brigades, which were supported by the 4th Air Fleet and Romanian aviation) under the command of G. Rundstedt. The group was divided into the 1st Panzer Group, the 6th, 11th and 17th German armies, the 3rd and 4th Romanian armies and the Hungarian corps. According to the Barbarossa plan, the troops of the South group were instructed - having tank and motorized formations in front and delivering the main blow to Kiev with the left wing, to destroy Soviet troops in Galicia and the western part of Ukraine, to timely capture crossings on the Dnieper in the Kyiv area and to the south to ensure a further offensive east of the Dnieper. The 1st Tank Group was ordered, in cooperation with the 6th and 17th armies, to break through between Rava-Russkaya and Kovel and through Berdichev, Zhitomir to reach the Dnieper in the Kyiv region. Further, moving along the Dnieper in a southeastern direction, it was supposed to prevent the withdrawal of the defending Soviet units in Right Bank Ukraine and destroy them with a blow from the rear.

In addition to these forces, a separate Wehrmacht army “Norway” under the command of General N. Falkenhorst was deployed in the territory of occupied Norway and in Northern Finland - from the Varangerfjord to Suomussalmi. It was directly subordinate to the High Command of the German Armed Forces (OKW). Army “Norway” was given the task of capturing Murmansk, the main naval base of the Northern Fleet Polyarny, the Rybachy Peninsula, as well as the Kirov Railway north of Belomorsk. Each of its three corps was deployed in an independent direction: the 3rd Finnish Corps - in Kestenga and Ukhta, the 36th German Corps - in Kandalaksha and the German mountain rifle corps "Norway" - in Murmansk.

There were 24 divisions in the OKH reserve. In total, over 5.5 million people, 3,712 tanks, 47,260 field guns and mortars, and 4,950 combat aircraft were concentrated to attack the USSR.

Nazi plans for the USSR. The following documents testify to the military-political and ideological goals of Operation Barbarossa:

The chief of staff of the operational leadership of the OKW, after appropriate corrections, returned the draft document “Instructions regarding the special problems of Directive No. 21 (variant of the Barbarossa plan)” presented to him on December 18, 1940 by the “National Defense” department,” making a note that this project could be reported to the Fuhrer after revision in accordance with the following provisions:

The upcoming war will be not only an armed struggle, but also at the same time a struggle between two worldviews. To win this war in conditions where the enemy has a huge territory, it is not enough to defeat his armed forces, this territory should be divided into several states, headed by their own governments, with which we could conclude peace treaties.

The creation of such governments requires great political skill and the development of well-thought-out general principles.

Every large-scale revolution brings to life phenomena that cannot simply be cast aside. It is no longer possible to eradicate socialist ideas in today's Russia. These ideas can serve as an internal political basis for the creation of new states and governments. The Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia, which represents the oppressor of the people, must be removed from the scene. The former bourgeois-aristocratic intelligentsia, if it still exists, primarily among emigrants, should also not be allowed to come to power. It will not be accepted by the Russian people and, moreover, it is hostile towards the German nation. This is especially noticeable in the former Baltic states. Moreover, we must under no circumstances allow the Bolshevik state to be replaced by a nationalist Russia, which will ultimately (as history shows) once again confront Germany.

Our task is to create these socialist states dependent on us as quickly as possible with the least amount of military effort.

This task is so difficult that one army cannot solve it. - Entry dated March 3, 1941 in the diary of the Operations Headquarters of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW). 30.3.1941 ... 11.00. Big meeting with the Fuhrer. Almost 2.5 hour speech...

The struggle of two ideologies... The huge danger of communism for the future. We must proceed from the principle of soldierly camaraderie. The communist has never been and will never be our comrade. We are talking about a fight of destruction. If we don't look at it this way, then even though we defeat the enemy, in 30 years the communist danger will arise again. We are not waging war in order to mothball our enemy.

Future political map of Russia: Northern Russia belongs to Finland, protectorates in the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus.

The fight against Russia: the destruction of the Bolshevik commissars and communist intelligentsia. The new states must be socialist, but without their own intelligentsia. A new intelligentsia should not be allowed to form. Here only the primitive socialist intelligentsia will be sufficient. The fight must be waged against the poison of demoralization. This is far from a military judicial issue. Commanders of units and units are required to know the goals of the war. They must lead in the struggle..., keep the troops firmly in their hands. The commander must give his orders taking into account the mood of the troops.

The war will be very different from the war in the West. In the East, cruelty is a blessing for the future. Commanders must make sacrifices and overcome their hesitations... - Diary of the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces F. Halder

Soviet Union

On June 22, 1941, in the border districts and fleets of the USSR there were 3,289,850 soldiers and officers, 59,787 guns and mortars, 12,782 tanks, of which 1,475 T-34 and KV tanks, 10,743 aircraft. The three fleets included about 220 thousand personnel, 182 ships of the main classes (3 battleships, 7 cruisers, 45 leaders and destroyers and 127 submarines). Direct protection of the state border was carried out by border units (land and sea) of eight border districts. Together with operational units and units of internal troops, they numbered about 100 thousand people. Reflecting a possible attack from the west was entrusted to the troops of five border districts: Leningrad, Baltic special, Western special, Kyiv special and Odessa. From the sea, their actions were to be supported by three fleets: the Northern, Red Banner Baltic and Black Sea.

The troops of the Baltic Military District under the command of General F.I. Kuznetsov included the 8th and 11th armies, the 27th army was in formation west of Pskov. These units held defenses from the Baltic Sea to the southern border of Lithuania, on a front length of 300 km.

Troops of the Western Special Military District under the command of General D. G. Pavlov covered the Minsk-Smolensk direction from the southern border of Lithuania to the Pripyat River on a front length of 470 km. This district included the 3rd, 4th and 10th armies. In addition, formations and units of the 13th Army were formed in the area of ​​Mogilev, Minsk, Slutsk.

The troops of the Kyiv Special Military District under the command of General M.P. Kirponos, consisting of the 5th, 6th, 12th and 26th armies and formations of district subordination, occupied positions on a front stretching 860 km from Pripyat to Lipkan.

Troops of the Odessa Military District under the command of General Ya. T. Cherevichenko covered the border in the area from Lipkan to the mouth of the Danube, 480 km long.

The troops of the Leningrad Military District under the command of General M. M. Popov were supposed to defend the borders of the northwestern regions of the country (Murmansk region, Karelo-Finnish SSR and the Karelian Isthmus), as well as the northern coast of the Estonian SSR and the Hanko Peninsula. The length of the land border in this section reached 1300 km, and the sea border - 380 km. The 7th, 14th, 23rd armies and the Northern Fleet were located here.

The initial period of the Great Patriotic War(June 22, 1941 – November 18, 1942)

At dawn on June 22, 1941, without a declaration of war, after artillery and air preparation, the main forces of the Wehrmacht and satellite troops (about 190 divisions) suddenly launched a powerful offensive along the entire western border of the USSR from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. Enemy aircraft attacked the entire border strip to a depth of more than 400 km. Murmansk, Riga, Brest, Smolensk, Kyiv, Sevastopol and others were subjected to aerial bombardment. Only an hour and a half after the start of the offensive, the German Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Count W. von Schulenburg, made a statement declaring war on the USSR.

The fascist troops met stubborn resistance in battles near Minsk, Smolensk, Vladimir-Volynsky, Przemysl, Lutsk, Dubno, Rovno, Mogilev, etc. Despite superior enemy forces, the Brest Fortress held out for more than a month. Almost all of its garrison died, but did not surrender. And yet, in the first three weeks of the war, the Red Army troops abandoned Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, a significant part of Ukraine and Moldova. The German army advanced in various directions from 350 to 600 km. The Red Army lost almost 800 thousand people, while the Wehrmacht lost 100 thousand people.

The reasons for the failures of the Red Army in the first months of the war were previously seen in the surprise of Germany's attack on the Soviet Union and the incompleteness of preparatory measures on the eve of the war. These reasons undoubtedly existed. True, the factor of surprise should not be exaggerated, since Stalin received about two hundred reports about the possibility and timing of an attack. It would be more correct to talk about his self-confidence and unwillingness to listen to the opinions of informed people, including the military. Despite the efforts made during the Third Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Union did not complete preparations for war. The rearmament of the Red Army and the strengthening of new borders by June 1941 had not been completed. The military doctrine of the Soviet leadership was also erroneous: the war was supposed to involve little bloodshed on foreign territory, and it was also believed that the battle tactics of the Civil War would be of paramount importance.

Mass repressions in the army of the late 1930s had a huge negative impact on combat effectiveness, when, as a result of the “discovery of a military conspiracy,” more than 40 thousand middle and senior command personnel were killed. Of the 733 senior military commanders, 579 were repressed. As a result, by June 1941, 75% of officers had less than a year of experience in the position in which the war found them. Young commanders had to master the skills of modern warfare on the battlefield, suffering huge losses in manpower and equipment. The repression also affected the moral atmosphere in the army (suspicion, denunciation, fear of responsibility for an independently made decision).

The disruption of constant communication between troops and headquarters in the first days of the war, general disorganization and confusion did not allow the command to correctly assess the situation. Not realizing the true extent of the disaster, the country's top political leadership lost control over the course of events for some time. In the first hours of the war, front-line and army aviation were given an order: not to cross borders under any circumstances, to destroy the enemy only over their territory. The concentration of most of the Soviet military aviation at the western borders of the USSR led to the fact that a significant part of it (about 1,200 aircraft) was destroyed directly at the airfields. And only on June 25, the Headquarters allowed the transition to strategic defense at the border of the Western Dvina and Dnieper rivers. The order to hold occupied positions under any circumstances often led to entire divisions and armies being surrounded and then captured. Over the entire history of the Great Patriotic War, 5.4 million Soviet soldiers were captured, of which 4.9 million were captured in the first six months of the war. The decline in the effectiveness of military leadership was facilitated by the abandonment of unity of command in the army. Based on the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Party, which revived the experience of the civil war, on July 16, the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces adopted a resolution “On the reorganization of political propaganda bodies and the introduction of the institution of military commissars in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army,” the effect of which was extended to the fleet. Commissars and political instructors controlled the actions of the military. The institution of military commissars and political instructors existed in the army and navy until October 1942 and was abolished with the introduction of complete unity of command.

Germany's superiority in economic and military-strategic plans should also be taken into account. It used not only its own resources, but also the resources of the dependent and occupied countries of Europe.

With the outbreak of war, a number of measures are being taken to organize resistance to the aggressor. At noon on June 22, V.M. addressed the people on the radio. Molotov. The appeal ended with the words: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours". It is significant that I.V. Stalin, afraid to make a rash public appearance, did not dare to speak to the people that day. He did this only on July 3. Addressing the Soviet people as “brothers” and “sisters,” he defined the war as a “national patriotic war,” in which we are talking “about the life and death of the Soviet state, about the life and death of the peoples of the USSR.”

On June 22, the Presidium of the Supreme Council adopted a Decree on the mobilization of those liable for military service in the territory of 14 military districts from June 23 and the introduction of martial law in a number of western regions of the country. On June 23, the Headquarters of the Main Command was formed, headed by the People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union S.K. Tymoshenko. By the directive of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of June 29, the party and Soviet bodies of the front-line regions were tasked with mobilizing all forces and means to repel the enemy, “in a merciless struggle to defend every inch of Soviet land,” to strengthen the rear of the Red Army, to drive away its forced withdrawal of mobile railway transport, create partisan detachments and sabotage groups, hand over alarmists and cowards to a military tribunal. On June 30, the State Defense Committee (GKO) was created, headed by I.V. Stalin, to whom all power in the country was transferred. On July 10, the Headquarters of the Main Command was transformed into the Headquarters of the Supreme Command, which was also headed by I.V. Stalin. In August 1941, he was declared Supreme Commander-in-Chief (from July 16 - People's Commissar of Defense), and the Headquarters became known as the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command (SHC). Thus, Stalin concentrated in his hands all party, state and military power in the country, which could not but affect the efficiency of resolving issues and indicated a refusal of collegiality in the work of state and military bodies.

In order to improve the material supply of the active army, on July 28, 1941, with the creation of the Main Logistics Directorate, the post of Chief of Logistics of the Red Army was established, headed by General A.V. Khrulev. On July 18, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the organization of struggle in the rear of German troops,” which provided for the formation of underground party and Komsomol organizations, sabotage groups and partisan detachments with the aim of destroying “the invaders and their accomplices.”

Along with political and educational work, repressive methods were widely used. Thus, according to the order of the Supreme Command Headquarters No. 270 of August 16, 1941, all military personnel who were captured were declared traitors to the Motherland, and the NKO directive of September 12, 1941 authorized the creation of barrage detachments in each rifle division. They were charged with the duty of using weapons against “panic-ridden military personnel” and shooting deserters as traitors. Even more inhumane was the NGO order of September 21, which equated civilian Soviet citizens taken hostage to “enemy collaborators” who were subject to destruction as traitors. In the first weeks of the war, Stalin and his entourage could not yet clearly imagine the extent of the catastrophe that had struck the country. It seemed that a strict directive, order, shout or replacement of the army or front commander would be enough and an advantage in the fight against the aggressor would be achieved. The realization that the fight against fascist aggression would be long, intense and complex, that it would require the consolidation of the entire society, the mobilization of all its physical and spiritual forces, occurred gradually and with great difficulty.

In the first months of the war, large-scale measures were taken to transfer industry to a war footing. The decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On martial law” dated July 22, 1941 provided for the introduction of labor conscription and regulation of the work of industrial enterprises. The next day, the mobilization plan for the production of ammunition began to take effect. On June 24, an Evacuation Council was created under the Council of People's Commissars (A.N. Kosygin, N.M. Shvernik). From July to December 1941, 2,593 industrial enterprises, as well as more than 12 million people, were evacuated from areas at risk to the Urals, Volga region, Siberia and Central Asia. In addition, significant food supplies, agricultural equipment, cultural values, etc. were brought.

On June 26, 1941, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the decree “On the working hours of workers and employees in wartime,” which introduced overtime work. In December 1941, the decree “On the responsibility of workers and employees of military industry enterprises for unauthorized departure from enterprises” came into force, and on February 13, 1942 - “On mobilization for work in production and construction.” In accordance with these decrees, workers and employees were considered mobilized for the period of war. In April 1942, mobilization also affected rural residents. The bulk of those mobilized were women.

National economic mobilization plans aimed at increasing the output of military products are being approved. On June 30, 1941, the Labor Allocation Committee was created. To ensure the transfer of the country's economy to a military footing, representatives of the State Defense Committee and the State Planning Committee of the USSR were sent to large industrial centers and defense enterprises. In order to speed up the commissioning of industrial facilities, on September 11, a decree “On the construction of industrial enterprises in wartime conditions” was adopted.

At the cost of the titanic efforts of home front workers, by December 1941 it was possible to stop the decline in production volume, and from March 1942 its increase began. 1.3 thousand industrial enterprises were evacuated to the east. In 1942, compared to 1940, in these areas the production of electricity increased by more than 2 times, coal - almost 2.3 times, steel - 2.4 times. The output of military products in March 1942 in the eastern regions reached the all-Union level at the beginning of the war. In June of the same year, the USA and the USSR signed an agreement on supplies under Lend-Lease. According to it, during the war years the Soviet Union received about 14.8 thousand aircraft, 7.1 thousand tanks, 8.2 thousand anti-aircraft guns, a large number of cars, tractors, etc.

The country's agriculture found itself in a difficult situation. The gross grain harvest in 1941 compared to 1940 decreased by almost 1.7 times. On July 20, 1941, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks approved a plan to increase the planting of winter crops in the Volga region, Siberia and Kazakhstan. Thanks to the measures taken, the gross grain harvest in the eastern regions, including the Volga region, doubled in 1942 compared to 1940.

Significant difficulties were noted in transport, especially railways, which bore the brunt of military transport. In addition, the most extensive railway network was in the occupied territory. In order to ensure the smooth operation of railway transport, on June 24, 1941, a military train schedule was introduced. At the end of 1942, 35 locomotive columns of the NKPS reserve were created. Over 3 thousand km were built at the same time. railways.

The stubborn resistance of the Red Army in the summer of 1941 thwarted Hitler's plans. The Nazis failed to quickly take either Moscow or Leningrad, and in September the long defense of Leningrad began. In the Arctic, Soviet troops, in cooperation with the Northern Fleet, defended Murmansk and the main fleet base - Polyarny. Although in Ukraine in October-November the enemy captured the Donbass, captured Rostov, and broke into the Crimea, yet here, too, his troops were fettered by the defense of Sevastopol. Formations of Army Group South were unable to reach the rear of the Soviet troops remaining in the lower reaches of the Don through the Kerch Strait.

At the end of September - beginning of October, German troops begin Operation Typhoon, aimed at capturing Moscow. Its beginning was unfavorable for the Soviet troops. Bryansk and Vyazma fell. On October 10, G.K. was appointed commander of the Western Front. Zhukov. On October 19, Moscow was declared under siege. In bloody battles, the Red Army still managed to stop the enemy. Having strengthened Army Group Center, the German command resumed its attack on Moscow in mid-November. Overcoming the resistance of the Western, Kalinin and right wing of the Southwestern fronts, enemy strike groups bypassed the city from the north and south and by the end of the month reached the Moscow-Volga canal (25-30 km from the capital) and approached Kashira. At this point the German offensive fizzled out. The bloodless Army Group Center was forced to go on the defensive, which was also facilitated by the successful offensive operations of Soviet troops near Tikhvin (November 10 - December 30) and Rostov (November 17 - December 2). On December 6, a counteroffensive of the Red Army began, as a result of which the enemy was thrown back 100–250 km from Moscow. Kaluga, Kalinin (Tver), Maloyaroslavets and others were liberated.

The victory near Moscow had enormous strategic, moral and political significance, since it was the first since the beginning of the war. The immediate threat to Moscow was eliminated. Although, as a result of the summer-autumn campaign, our army retreated 850 - 1200 km inland, and the most important economic regions fell into the hands of the aggressor, the “blitzkrieg” plans were still thwarted. The Nazi leadership faced the inevitable prospect of a protracted war. The victory near Moscow also changed the balance of power in the international arena. The Soviet Union began to be looked upon as the decisive factor in the Second World War. Japan was forced to refrain from attacking the USSR. In winter, units of the Red Army carried out offensives on other fronts. However, it was not possible to consolidate the success, primarily due to the dispersal of forces and resources along a front of enormous length. At the beginning of January 1942, the Supreme Command headquarters decided to launch a general offensive along the entire front. The main blow was planned to be delivered to Army Group Center by destroying its main forces in the area of ​​Rzhev, Vyazma and Smolensk by troops of the North-Western, Kalinin and Western Fronts. The armies of the Leningrad, Volkhov and right wing of the North-Western Fronts were supposed to defeat Army Group North. The Southwestern and Southern Fronts were supposed to defeat the entire Army Group South, liberating the Donbass, and the Caucasian Front and the Black Sea Fleet were to liberate Crimea. The Supreme Command Headquarters overestimated the offensive capabilities and strength of the Soviet Armed Forces; the rear could not yet cope with the logistical and combat support of the troops necessary for an offensive on such a large scale. The front went on the defensive.

In the summer of 1942, Hitler concentrated his main efforts on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front, relying on the capture of the oil regions of the Caucasus and the fertile regions of the Don, Kuban, and Lower Volga region.

Supreme Commander-in-Chief I.V. Stalin set the main task of the Soviet troops for the summer-autumn campaign to defeat the Wehrmacht and liberate the entire territory of the country. His order for the Red Army to attack simultaneously on several fronts testified to an underestimation of the enemy and an overestimation of his own forces. This turned out to be a real tragedy for the Soviet troops. During the offensive of German troops in May 1942, the Crimean Front (commander General D. Kozlov, representative of Headquarters L. Mekhlis) was defeated in 10 days on the Kerch Peninsula. The losses of Soviet troops here amounted to over 176 thousand people. On May 15, Kerch had to be abandoned, and on July 4, 1942, after stubborn defense, Sevastopol fell. The enemy completely captured Crimea.

Military operations also unfolded unsuccessfully in the Kharkov region. At the insistence of Stalin, contrary to the opinion of the Chief of the General Staff B.M. Shaposhnikov, on May 12, the troops of the Southwestern Front began an offensive here. The forces turned out to be unequal, and the enemy managed to encircle several armies from the north and south. Our losses amounted to 267 thousand people, including about 200 thousand prisoners. In addition, a large number of weapons and equipment were destroyed. From June to July, German troops occupied the Donbass, entered the big bend of the Don, and were able to launch a broad offensive into the North Caucasus and the Volga.

In July–August, Rostov, Stavropol and Novorossiysk were captured. Stubborn fighting took place in the central part of the Caucasus ridge. But, despite stubborn battles, the Nazis failed to solve their main task - to break into the Transcaucasus to seize the oil reserves of Baku. At the end of September, the offensive of fascist troops in the Caucasus was stopped.

To contain the enemy onslaught in the eastern direction, the Stalingrad Front was created under the command of Marshal S.K. Tymoshenko. In connection with the current critical situation, on July 28, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief signed order No. 227, which stated: “Not a step back! To retreat further means to ruin ourselves and at the same time our Motherland.” Middle and senior commanders and political workers who wavered in battle were sent to penal battalions, ordinary soldiers and junior commanders were sent to penal companies in the most difficult sectors of the front. Penalties who were wounded in battle were considered to have served their sentences and returned to their units. In each army, barrier detachments were created, which were located behind the advancing divisions, and in case of retreat or panic they were obliged to shoot “alarmists and cowards” on the spot.

On July 17, the enemy under the command of General von Paulus struck a powerful blow on the Stalingrad front. In August, the Nazis broke through to the Volga in stubborn battles. From the beginning of September the heroic defense of Stalingrad began. The battles were fought literally for every inch of land, for every house. Only from September to November, Soviet troops under the command of generals V.I. Chuikov and M.S. Shumilov repelled about 700 enemy attacks and passed all the tests with honor. Both sides suffered colossal losses. By mid-November, the Nazis were forced to stop the offensive. The heroic resistance of the Soviet troops made it possible to create favorable conditions for their launching a counteroffensive at Stalingrad and thereby mark the beginning of a radical change in the course of the war.

In other directions, the Soviet command, during the summer-autumn campaign of 1942, carried out a number of private offensive operations that pinned down the enemy’s forces and prevented him from carrying out strategic transfers along the front.

By November 1942, almost 40% of the population was under German occupation. The regions captured by the Germans were subject to military and civil administration. In Germany, a special ministry for the affairs of the occupied regions was even created, headed by A. Rosenberg. Political supervision was carried out by the SS and police services. Locally, the occupiers formed the so-called self-government - city and district councils, and the positions of elders were introduced in villages. People who were dissatisfied with Soviet power were invited to cooperate. All residents of the occupied territories, regardless of age, were required to work. In addition to participating in the construction of roads and defensive structures, they were forced to clear minefields. The civilian population, mainly young people, were also sent to forced labor in Germany, where they were called “ostarbeiter” and were used as cheap labor. In total, 6 million people were kidnapped during the war years. More than 6.5 million people were killed due to hunger and epidemics in the occupied territory, more than 11 million Soviet citizens were shot in camps and at their places of residence.

From the very beginning of the war, the civilian population offered spontaneous resistance to the invaders. On May 30, 1942, the Soviet leadership decided to widely deploy partisan warfare in enemy-occupied territory. For this purpose, the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement was created at the Supreme Command Headquarters (headed by P.K. Ponomarenko). Partisan headquarters were also created at the military councils of the fronts. The partisan movement was formed from local residents, escaped prisoners of war, and soldiers who strayed from their units. Military specialists (demolitionists, radio operators, intelligence officers, etc.) were sent here from the army and weapons and ammunition were transferred.

The formation of the anti-Hitler coalition. From the first days of the war, the USSR began to actively fight for the creation of an anti-Hitler coalition based on the general idea of ​​​​the fight against fascism, preserving the sovereignty and independence of states. In the face of impending danger, the governments of the United States and Great Britain were forced to cooperate with the Soviet Union. Already on June 22, 1941, having learned about the attack of German troops on the Soviet Union, the government of W. Churchill declared its support for the USSR in the war with Hitler. On July 12, 1941, a Soviet-British agreement on joint actions in the war against Germany was signed in Moscow. On June 24, US President F. Roosevelt said at a press conference that his country would provide “all possible assistance to the Soviet Union” in the fight against Hitlerism. This was confirmed in the negotiations of his personal representative G. Hopkins with Stalin in Moscow at the end of July 1941. The general principles of national policy of the USA and Great Britain in the conditions of the Second World War were set out in the Atlantic Charter (August 1941), to which he joined on September 24 and the USSR. Each side pursued its own political goals. This led to the complex and contradictory nature of cooperation. The Soviet Union insisted on opening a second front, i.e. on the direct participation of Great Britain and the United States in military operations against Germany in Europe (in France and Belgium). The West hoped, with the help of the Red Army, to keep Germany from participating in a world war in other regions of the globe for as long as possible.

Due to the fact that the main efforts of the fascist bloc in the summer and autumn of 1941 were focused on waging war against the Soviet Union, activity on other fronts of the Second World War noticeably decreased. Combat operations in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and North Africa were limited and carried out with varying degrees of success.

On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a war against the United States with a surprise attack on the American military base at Pearl Harbor. In December 1941 - March 1942, Japanese troops captured the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia, and fortified themselves in Indochina. The theater of operations of the Second World War expanded significantly. The successful actions of Soviet troops near Moscow in December 1941 - January 1942 strengthened the international authority of the USSR and accelerated the unification of anti-fascist forces on the world stage. The formation of the anti-Hitler coalition was also facilitated by the holding in the fall of 1941 of the Moscow Conference of representatives of the USSR, Great Britain and the USA on the issue of military supplies.

A significant role in the development of anti-fascist military-political cooperation was played by the United Nations Declaration signed in Washington on January 1, 1942, which was joined by 26 states that were at war with the Axis powers. This meant the creation of a coalition led by the USSR, USA and Great Britain against the fascist bloc.

The legal formalization of the allied relations of the three main participants in the anti-Hitler bloc was completed in the spring and summer of 1942 after the signing of the Soviet-British agreement of May 26 and the Soviet-American agreement of June 11.

This period of the Patriotic War was the most difficult for the country and people. The sacrifices and losses were great. By the fall of 1942, the aggressor's troops occupied the territory where about 12% of the population lived before the war, 1/3 of the gross output was produced, and more than 45% of the sown areas were located. The defeats and huge losses of the Soviet troops were the result of major miscalculations of a political and strategic nature, errors in the organization of supplies, weapons and command and control of troops. But, despite this, the fascist German troops on the Soviet-German front suffered huge losses for the first time during the Second World War. Germany and its allies failed to achieve their goals, and their political and military plans failed. At the cost of enormous efforts of the Soviet people, in the second year of the war, a coherent military economy was created, producing more military equipment and weapons than Germany and the countries it occupied. The combat prowess of armed forces personnel has increased, experience has been gained in organizing defense and offensive, and the combat use of military branches and branches of the Armed Forces. The military and labor exploits of the Soviet people created the conditions for a radical turning point during the war with Nazi Germany.

In mid-November 1942, the position of the Soviet troops remained difficult. On a front stretching 6,200 km, the Soviet Armed Forces were opposed by 258 divisions and 16 brigades of the fascist bloc, numbering over 6.2 million people (or 71% of all enemy forces). In Western Europe, a second front had not yet been opened by the Anglo-American allies. This allowed the fascist command to strengthen the grouping of troops against the USSR by 80 divisions. The Soviet active army by this time numbered about 7 million people, and some superiority over the enemy in forces and means was created. The headquarters of the Supreme High Command as the main goals of this period of the war determined the seizure of the strategic initiative and the creation of a turning point in the war.

During the winter of 1942/43, it was planned to defeat the troops on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front and at the same time significantly improve the strategic position near Moscow and Leningrad. On November 19, 1942, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive near Stalingrad (Operation Uranus). The forces of the Southwestern (N.F. Vatutin), Don (K.K. Rokosovsky) and Stalingrad (A.I. Eremenko) fronts in the area of ​​​​the cities of Kalach and Sovetsky were surrounded by 22 divisions and 160 separate units of the Wehrmacht (about 330 thousand). Human). Hitler's command formed Army Group Don, consisting of 30 divisions, and tried to break through the encirclement. However, this attempt was unsuccessful. In December, the troops of the South-Western and left wing of the Voronezh Front, having defeated this group, reached the Kotelnikovo area and launched an attack on Rostov (Operation Saturn). At the end of the Battle of the Volga, formations of the Don Front by the beginning of February 1943 liquidated a group of fascist troops that found themselves in a ring. 91 thousand people were captured, including 2,500 officers and 24 generals, led by the commander of the 6th German Army, General Field Marshal von Paulus. During the 6.5 months of the Battle of Stalingrad (July 17, 1942 - February 2, 1943), Germany and its allies lost up to 1.5 million people, as well as a huge amount of equipment. The military power of Nazi Germany was significantly undermined. To make up for losses, the Wehrmacht command transferred over 34 divisions to the Eastern Front, thereby facilitating the actions of Anglo-American troops in North Africa and Italy. The defeat at Stalingrad caused a deep political crisis in Germany. It declared three days of mourning. The morale of German soldiers fell, defeatist sentiments gripped wide sections of the population, who trusted the Fuhrer less and less.

The victory of the Soviet troops at Stalingrad marked the beginning of a radical change in the course of the Second World War. The strategic initiative finally passed into the hands of the Soviet Armed Forces. In January - February 1943, the Red Army launched an offensive on all fronts. In the Caucasian direction, Soviet troops advanced 500–600 km by the summer of 1943, liberating most of this region. On the northern section of the Soviet-German front in January 1943, the blockade of Leningrad was broken, and in the center (Moscow direction), after heavy fighting, enemy groups were defeated and the front line moved west by 130 - 160 km, as a result of which the formation of called the Kursk ledge.

In the spring of 1943, a strategic pause occurred on the Soviet-German front. The warring parties were preparing for a summer-autumn campaign. By this time, the Soviet rear could provide all the needs of the front. Life in the rear passed under the slogan “Everything for the front!” Everything for victory! The industry was finally rebuilt on a military scale and mastered the production of the latest types of weapons. Mass production of new military equipment eliminated the Wehrmacht's superiority in technical equipment and created the possibility of powerful strikes in decisive areas of military operations. Simultaneously with the modernization of weapons, a reform of the Red Army was carried out: its structure was improved, qualitative changes took place in aviation, engineering troops, in the automobile, road and military medical services. Back in October 1942, the institution of military commissars was abolished and complete unity of command was restored. The requirements for command personnel and troop personnel have increased. New ranks and insignia were introduced. As part of the Soviet troops, as part of international assistance, a Czechoslovak battalion is formed; in May 1943, the 1st Polish Division named after. T. Kosciuszko, French air squadron (then air regiment) “Normandy”, Romanian and Yugoslav units.

In 1943, Germany and its satellites carried out total mobilization and sharply increased the production of military products, including new types of weapons (Tiger tanks and Ferdinand self-propelled guns). By the beginning of July 1943, the enemy had over 5.3 million people on the Soviet-German front. The balance of forces in favor of the Soviet troops was 1.2 times in personnel, 1.9 times in guns and mortars, 1.7 times in tanks, 3.4 times in aircraft.

The Wehrmacht command planned in the summer of 1943 to conduct a major strategic offensive operation in the area of ​​the Kursk salient (Operation Citadel), defeat Soviet troops here, and then strike in the rear of the Southwestern Front (Operation Panther) and subsequently, building on the success , again create a threat to Moscow. For this purpose, up to 50 divisions were concentrated in the Kursk Bulge area, including 19 tank and motorized divisions, and other units - a total of over 900 thousand people. This group was opposed by the troops of the Central and Voronezh fronts, which had 1.3 million people. In the rear of the Soviet troops there were large strategic reserves, united on July 9 into the Steppe Front.

The Supreme High Command headquarters adopted a plan for deliberate defense on the Kursk salient with the goal of first defeating enemy tank groups and then launching a counteroffensive. After this, a general offensive was planned in the western and southwestern directions to defeat Army Group Center and Army Group South. It was planned to liberate Left Bank Ukraine and Donbass, cross the Dnieper and clear the eastern regions of Belarus, the Taman Peninsula and Crimea from the enemy.

During the strategic pause in the Kuban in the spring of 1943, there was an air battle for strategic dominance. The Soviet Air Force inflicted significant damage on the enemy, destroying 1,100 aircraft.

In preparation for the Battle of Kursk, the Soviet command created a deeply layered defense of eight lines.

On July 5, a massive offensive by Soviet troops began. Within 5 - 7 days, our troops, stubbornly defending, stopped the enemy, who had penetrated 10 - 35 km behind the front line, and launched a counter-offensive. It began on July 12 in the Prokhorovka area, where the largest oncoming tank battle in the history of wars took place (with the participation of up to 1,200 tanks on both sides). On the same day, our troops launched a counteroffensive in the Oryol direction. In August 1943 they captured Orel and Belgorod. In honor of this victory, a salute of 12 artillery salvoes was fired for the first time in Moscow. Continuing the offensive, our troops inflicted a crushing defeat on the Nazis in the Belgorod-Kharkov direction. In September, Left Bank Ukraine and Donbass were liberated. In October, at the cost of huge losses and mass heroism of our soldiers and officers, the Dnieper was crossed. For the heroism shown during the crossing of the Dnieper, 2,438 Soviet soldiers and officers were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. (In total, 11,603 soldiers were awarded this high rank during the war years). On November 6, formations of the 1st Ukrainian Front entered Kyiv. In the battles on the Arc of Fire, the Wehrmacht lost over 0.5 million people, as well as a large amount of military equipment. The victory at Kursk was evidence of a radical turning point in the course of the war and marked the final collapse of the Wehrmacht's offensive strategy. At this time, troops of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts liberated Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk and blocked the enemy in Crimea.

On October 9, troops of the North Caucasus Front, in cooperation with the Black Sea Fleet and the Azov Military Flotilla, liberated the Taman Peninsula and captured a bridgehead northeast of Kerch.

The forces of the Kalinin, Western and Bryansk fronts successfully carried out an offensive in the western strategic direction. Having thrown the enemy back 200 - 300 km from Moscow, Soviet troops began to liberate Belarus. From that moment on, our command maintained the strategic initiative until the end of the war. From November 1942 to December 1943, the Soviet Army advanced westward by 500 - 1300 km, liberating about 50% of the enemy-occupied territory. 218 enemy divisions were defeated. During this period, partisan formations, in whose ranks up to 250 thousand people fought, caused great damage to the enemy. In 1943, they carried out major operations to destroy railway communications behind enemy lines (“Rail War” and “Concert”), which played an important role in disrupting the transport of German troops and military equipment.

The victories of the Soviet troops in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943 were decisive for the intensification of the Allied military operations. In the Battle of El Alamein (North Africa, October 23 - November 4, 1942), British troops inflicted a crushing defeat on the Italo-German tank army. The enemy lost up to 55 thousand people killed and wounded, as well as up to 320 tanks. Until the spring of 1943, military operations in North Africa were carried out with varying degrees of success. On March 17, 1943, the troops of the 18th Army Group of the Anglo-American Allies under the overall command of the English Field Marshal T. Alexander launched an offensive in Tunisia against the Italian-German Army Group “Africa” reinforced with reserves, which ended in mid-May with the surrender of the troops of the countries “ axis". The expulsion of the troops of the fascist bloc from Africa allowed the Anglo-American command to begin preparations for the invasion of Italy. It was during the Battle of Kursk from July 7 to August 17, 1943 that the Western Allies successfully carried out a major landing operation in Sicily. On July 25, 1943, the government of the Italian dictator B. Mussolini was overthrown, and the head of the new cabinet, Marshal P. Badoglio, signed a truce with the Western allies. On October 13, Italy declared war on Germany. The collapse of the fascist bloc began. In the Pacific theater of operations during 1943, American forces dealt a significant blow to the Japanese navy and merchant fleet.

The significant successes of the Soviet troops in 1943 intensified diplomatic and military-political cooperation between the USSR, the USA and Great Britain. On November 28 – December 1, 1943, the Tehran Conference of the “Big Three” took place with the participation of I. Stalin (USSR), W. Churchill (Great Britain) and F. Roosevelt (USA). The leaders of the leading powers of the anti-Hitler coalition determined the timing of the opening of a second front in Europe (the landing operation Overlord was scheduled for May 1944), agreed on support for the partisans in Yugoslavia, relations with Turkey, and outlined the contours of the post-war world order. The Allies decided to transfer part of East Prussia (now the Kaliningrad region) to the USSR, agreed to the annexation of the Baltic states to the USSR, and agreed to restore independent Poland within the borders of 1918. The decision on the post-war structure of Germany was postponed. In exchange for these concessions, the USSR accepted the obligation to start a war against Japan no later than 3 months after the defeat of Germany.

The most important military-political events of this period were determined by the growing power of the military-economic potential of the anti-Hitler coalition, the decisive victorious actions of the Soviet Armed Forces and the intensification of the struggle of the Anglo-American allied forces in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, which ended in the complete defeat of Nazism.

By the beginning of 1944, Germany's position had deteriorated sharply, and its material and human reserves were depleted. However, the enemy was still strong. The armed forces of Germany and its allies on the Soviet-German front amounted to about 5 million people (236 divisions and 18 brigades), 5.4 thousand tanks and assault guns, up to 55 thousand guns and mortars, more than 3 thousand aircraft. The Wehrmacht command switched to tough positional defense. In the active army of the USSR by 1944 there were over 6.3 million people, there were over 5 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, over 95 thousand guns and mortars, 10 thousand aircraft. The production of military equipment in the USSR reached its peak in 1944. Soviet military factories produced 7-8 times more tanks, 6 times more guns, almost 8 times more mortars, and 4 times more aircraft than before the war.

The Supreme High Command set the Red Army the task of clearing Soviet soil of the enemy, beginning to liberate European countries from the occupiers, and ending the war with the complete defeat of the aggressor on its territory. The main content of the winter-spring campaign of 1944 was the implementation of successive strategic operations of Soviet troops as part of four Ukrainian fronts on Right Bank Ukraine in a strip stretching up to 1,400 km, during which the main forces of the fascist German army groups “South” and “A” were defeated and access to the state border, to the foothills of the Carpathians and to the territory of Romania is open. At the same time, the troops of the Leningrad (General L.A. Govorov), Volkhov (General K.A. Meretskov) and 2nd Baltic Fronts defeated Army Group North, liberating the Leningrad and part of the Kalinin regions. In the spring of 1944, Crimea was cleared of the enemy. As a result of a four-month campaign, the Soviet Armed Forces liberated 329 thousand square meters. km of Soviet territory, defeated over 170 enemy divisions numbering up to 1 million people.

In these favorable conditions, the Western Allies, after two years of preparation, opened a second front in Europe in northern France. On June 6, 1944, the combined Anglo-American forces (General D. Eisenhower), numbering over 2.8 million people, up to 11 thousand combat aircraft, over 12 thousand combat and 41 thousand transport ships, crossed the English Channel and Pas-de-Calais, began the largest Normandy landing operation during the war (Overlord) and entered Paris in August.

Continuing to develop the strategic initiative, in the summer of 1944, Soviet troops launched a powerful offensive in Karelia (June 10 - August 9), Belarus (June 23 - August 29), Western Ukraine (July 13 - August 29) and Moldova (June 20 - 29). August). As a result of the advance of Soviet troops in the north, on September 19, Finland, having signed an armistice with the USSR, withdrew from the war, and on March 4, 1945 declared war on Germany.

During the Belarusian operation (code name “Bagration”) Army Group “Center” was defeated, the Belarusian salient was eliminated, troops of five Soviet fronts liberated Belarus, Latvia, part of Lithuania, the eastern part of Poland and reached the border with East Prussia. As a result of the Lvov-Sandomierz operation, the western regions of Ukraine and the southeastern regions of Poland were liberated, and during the Iasi-Kishinev operation, Moldova was liberated. This forced Romania to withdraw from the war on the side of Germany and, after the anti-fascist uprising of the Romanian people on August 24, to declare war on it.

The victories of Soviet troops in the southern direction in the fall of 1944 helped the Bulgarian, Hungarian, Yugoslav and Czechoslovak peoples in their liberation from fascism. On September 9, 1944, as a result of the uprising, the government of the Fatherland Front came to power in Bulgaria and declared war on Germany. In September–October, Soviet troops liberated part of Czechoslovakia and supported the Slovak National Uprising. Subsequently, the Soviet Army, together with the troops of Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, continued the offensive with the aim of liberating Hungary and Yugoslavia.

In September–November, the troops of the three Baltic and Leningrad fronts cleared almost the entire Baltic territory of fascists, defeating 26 and destroying 3 enemy divisions and blocking about 38 enemy divisions in Courland. At the same time, from October 7 to October 29, the troops of the Karelian Front (commander - Marshal K. A. Meretskov), in cooperation with the forces of the Northern Fleet, liberated the Arctic and the northern regions of Norway from the invaders (Petsamo-Kirkenes operation).

Thus, as a result of the military actions of 1944, the state border of the USSR, treacherously violated by Germany in June 1941, was restored along the entire length from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea. The Nazis were expelled from Romania, Bulgaria, and most areas of Poland and Hungary. In these countries, pro-German regimes were overthrown and patriotic forces came to power. The Soviet Army entered the territory of Czechoslovakia. Together with the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, she cleared the eastern regions of the country from fascists.

Germany lost its satellites and found itself in complete political isolation. With the opening of a second front in Europe, Hitler could no longer transfer his forces from West to East and was forced to carry out a new total mobilization. The morale of the fascist army was steadily weakening. Many deserted from the front. In December 1944, the German command intensified the fight against defectors. From now on, those who defected to the enemy were sentenced to death, and their families were repressed. In March 1945, military courts were introduced, according to the sentences of which officers and soldiers who violated the order were subject to immediate execution.

While the bloc of fascist states was falling apart, the anti-Hitler coalition was strengthening, as evidenced by the success of the Crimean (Yalta) conference of the leaders of the USSR, the United States and Great Britain (from February 4 to 11, 1945). The problems of completing the defeat of Germany and its post-war settlement were agreed upon. Germany was divided by the Allies into four occupation zones. The allies agreed that the USSR should receive reparations from it in the amount of $10 billion (export of goods and capital, use of human power, etc.). Subsequently, however, this decision was not fully implemented. The USSR confirmed its obligations to enter the war with Japan 2 - 3 months after the end of the war in Europe. For this, the allies agreed to the annexation of the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin. The decision was made to create the United Nations (UN). The Soviet Union received three seats in it - for the RSFSR, Ukraine and Belarus, i.e. those republics that bore the brunt of the war and suffered the greatest losses and casualties.

At the beginning of 1945, the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition were already coordinating their efforts to defeat Germany. By 1945, the Allied ground forces in Western Europe numbered 81 divisions, united in two main groups of forces (three army groups). They were opposed by 58 divisions and three brigades of the Wehrmacht. On the Soviet-German front there were 185 enemy divisions and 21 brigades (including Hungarian troops) in the amount of 3.7 million people. The intensification of armed struggle in the East allowed the Anglo-American command to occupy vast territory between the Meuse and Rhine rivers during January–March 1945 and, having accumulated forces, cross the Rhine on March 24. In early April, Western Allied forces successfully encircled and then captured about 19 enemy divisions in the Ruhr region. After this operation, Nazi resistance on the Western Front was practically broken. Taking advantage of favorable conditions, the Anglo-American-French troops developed an offensive in the center of Germany and reached the river line by mid-April. Elbe, where a historic meeting between Russians and Americans took place in the Torgau area on April 25, 1945. Subsequently, the Western allies advanced in the north - to Lubeck and Weimar, blocking Denmark, and in the south - they occupied the southern lands of Germany, entered Upper Austria, and took the Czechoslovak cities of Karlovy Vary and Pilsen.

And yet, the Soviet Union played a decisive role in defeating the enemy at the final stage. Thanks to the titanic efforts of the entire people, the technical equipment and armament of the army and navy of the USSR reached its highest level by the beginning of 1945. In January - early April 1945, as a result of a powerful strategic offensive on the entire Soviet-German front with forces on ten fronts, the Soviet Army decisively defeated the main enemy forces. During the East Prussian, Vistula-Oder, West Carpathian and completion of the Budapest operations, Soviet troops created the conditions for further attacks in Pomerania and Silesia, and then for an attack on Berlin. Almost all of Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well as the entire territory of Hungary, were liberated.

The capture of the capital of the Third Reich and the final defeat of fascism was carried out during the Berlin operation (April 16 - May 8, 1945). Troops of the 1st (commander - Marshal G.K. Zhukov) and 2nd (commander - K.K. Rokossovsky) Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian (commander - Marshal I.S. Konev) fronts with the support of two armies of the Polish Army Having defeated 93 enemy divisions, they captured about 480 thousand people, capturing a huge amount of military equipment and weapons. On April 30, Hitler committed suicide in the Reich Chancellery bunker. On the morning of May 1, over the Reichstag by sergeants M.A. Egorov and M.V. Kantaria was hoisted the Red Banner as a symbol of the Victory of the Soviet people. On May 2, Soviet troops completely captured the city. Attempts by the new German government, which was headed by Grand Admiral K. Dönitz on May 1, 1945 after the suicide of A. Hitler, to achieve a separate peace with the USA and Great Britain failed. May 9, 1945 at 0:43 a.m. In the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst, the Act of Unconditional Surrender of the Armed Forces of Nazi Germany was signed. On behalf of the Soviet side, this historical document was signed by the war hero, Marshal G.K. Zhukov, from Germany - Field Marshal Keitel. General Spaats (USA), Marshal Tedder (Great Britain) and General Delattre de Tasigny (France) put their signatures. On the same day, the remnants of the last large enemy group on the territory of Czechoslovakia in the Prague region were defeated. The day of the liberation of the city - May 9 - became the Victory Day of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. The news of the Victory spread throughout the world with lightning speed. The Soviet people, who suffered the greatest losses, greeted it with popular rejoicing. Truly, it was a great holiday “with tears in our eyes.” In Moscow, on Victory Day, a festive fireworks display of a thousand guns was fired.

The conference of heads of government of the USSR, USA and Great Britain (July 17 – August 2, 1945), held in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam, took important decisions on the post-war world order in Europe, the German problem and other issues. The conference participants developed a plan aimed at implementing the demilitarization and democratization of Germany. It was about the liquidation of the German military industry, the prohibition of the fascist party and Nazi propaganda, and the punishment of war criminals. An agreement was also reached on reparations to Germany, a third of which would go to the USSR. According to the decision of the conference, Koenigsberg was transferred to the Soviet Union. At the expense of German lands, the territory of Poland expanded significantly. The principles for signing peace treaties with German satellites were agreed upon, taking into account the geopolitical interests of the USSR.

The question of the need to punish Nazi criminals was first raised in December 1941 by the governments of the USSR and Poland. Subsequently, this was discussed at the Tehran and Yalta conferences. The trial of the leaders of the Third Reich took place from December 1945 to October 1946 in Nuremberg. It was carried out by a specially created International Military Tribunal of the victorious countries. The leaders of fascist Germany Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Kaltenbruner, Keitel and others appeared before him. They were accused of organizing a conspiracy against peace and humanity. All defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death or life imprisonment. The Nuremberg trials became the first court in world history to recognize aggression as a serious criminal offense, punishing statesmen guilty of starting and waging aggressive wars as criminals.

Japan's military-economic potential was seriously undermined by the successful military operations of members of the anti-Hitler coalition in the Far Eastern theater of operations (Pacific Ocean, Indochina, Indonesia, Philippines) in 1944 - the first half of 1945. After the Japanese rejected the ultimatum of unconditional surrender, the United States launched a nuclear strike on the cities of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 8). The world's first atomic bomb killed more than 100 thousand and injured about half a million people. This US action made no strategic sense. It was driven by US claims to world domination and was designed to intimidate the enemy and demonstrate to all countries the military power of this state.

In the spring of 1945, the redeployment of troops of the USSR and its allies began to the Far East. The forces of the United States and England were quite sufficient to defeat Japan. But the political leadership of these countries, fearing possible losses, insisted on the USSR entering the war in the Far East. The Soviet Army was given the goal of destroying the striking force of the Japanese - the Kwantung Army, stationed in Manchuria and Korea and numbering about a million people. In accordance with its allied duty, on April 5, 1945, the USSR denounced the Soviet-Japanese neutrality treaty of 1941 and on August 8 declared war on Japan.

On August 9, a group of Soviet troops consisting of the Transbaikal (commander - Marshal R.Ya. Malinovsky), 1st (commander - Marshal K.A. Meretskov) and 2nd (commander - General M.A. Purkaev) Far Eastern Fronts, and Also, the Pacific Fleet (commander - Admiral I.S. Yumashev) and the Amur Military Flotilla (commander - Rear Admiral N.V. Antonov), numbering 1.8 million people, launched military operations. For strategic leadership of the armed struggle, on July 30, the Main Command of Soviet Forces in the Far East was created, headed by Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky. The offensive of the Soviet fronts developed quickly and successfully. During 23 days of stubborn battles on a front stretching over 5 thousand km, Soviet troops and naval forces, successfully advancing during the Manchurian, South Sakhalin and Kuril landing operations, liberated Northeast China, North Korea, the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands . Soldiers of the Mongolian People's Army also took part in the war with Japan along with Soviet troops. Soviet troops captured about 600 thousand enemy soldiers and officers, and many weapons and equipment were captured. Enemy losses were almost double those suffered by the Soviet army.

The entry of the USSR into the war finally broke Japanese resistance. On August 14, her government decided to ask for surrender.

On September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay on board the American battleship Missouri, Japanese representatives signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender. This meant the end of the Second World War.

The victory of the USSR and the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition over Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan in the Second World War was of world-historical significance and had a huge impact on the entire post-war development of mankind. The Patriotic War was its most important component. The Soviet Armed Forces defended the freedom and independence of the Motherland, participated in the liberation of the peoples of eleven European countries from fascist oppression, and expelled the Japanese occupiers from Northeast China and Korea.

During the four-year armed struggle (1,418 days and nights) on the Soviet-German front, the main forces of the fascist bloc were defeated and captured: 607 divisions of the Wehrmacht and its allies. In battles with the Soviet Armed Forces, Nazi Germany lost over 10 million people (80% of all military losses), over 75% of all military equipment.

In the fierce battle with fascism, the question was about life and death of the Slavic peoples. At the cost of colossal efforts, the Russian people, in alliance with all other large and small nations of the USSR, were able to defeat the enemy. However, the cost of the victory of the Soviet people over fascism was enormous. More than 29 million people passed through the war in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces. The war claimed (according to rough estimates) over 27 million lives of our fellow citizens, including military losses amounting to 8,668,400 people. The ratio of losses between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht is defined as 1.3: 1. About 4 million partisans and underground fighters died behind enemy lines and in the occupied territories. About 6 million Soviet citizens found themselves in fascist captivity. The USSR lost 30% of its national wealth. The occupiers destroyed 1,710 Soviet cities and towns, over 70 thousand villages and villages, 32 thousand industrial enterprises, 98 thousand collective farms and 2 thousand state farms, 6 thousand hospitals, 82 thousand schools, 334 universities, 427 museums, 43 thousand libraries. Direct material damage alone (in 1941 prices) amounted to 679 billion rubles, and total war expenses amounted to 1,890 billion rubles.

Today, all countries participating in the Second World War celebrate the Day of its completion - the Day of the victory of the countries of the Soviet Union over the Nazi invaders of Nazi Germany.